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Pelosi’s pandemic-era control marks a dramatic departure from the regular operation of the House.
The past several months have been like a scavenger hunt for D.C. congressional reporters, as they root around for any scrap of news about negotiations for a bill on coronavirus economic relief. Each day provides optimism and pessimism in equal measures, with a final agreement just out of reach. The fact remains that, despite the White House’s renewed commitment to an upwards of $2 trillion pact, it’s extremely unlikely any such agreement will pass Mitch McConnell’s Senate before the election, or even after. That’s assuming there is a tangible agreement at all. According to Politico, as of last week, the contents remain a mystery: “No one knows what the hell Pelosi and [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin in their clandestine calls have agreed to.”
At this point, any stimulus package passed before January would be an extreme surprise, meaning at minimum six months will have elapsed since federal unemployment benefits expired, and ten months since the initial “starter” bill, the CARES Act, passed in March. The outcome of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s maneuvering has been a failure in that sense, but the process has been extremely revealing nonetheless. It has shown how, since the coronavirus struck in March, Pelosi has managed to consolidate control of the entirety of her congressional cohort. In a chamber with 435 members, and 232 Democrats, Pelosi has assumed near-total authority over legislation and negotiation for all official activity, to a degree virtually without precedent in modern congressional history. Outside of the few committee chairs, who may be consulted at various points in the doomed negotiations, the remainder of the Democratic side of the aisle has been reduced primarily to a bunch of warm bodies expected to show up and vote the party line, whatever it is.
That dynamic was very much on display with a recent government funding bill, one of the few non-stimulus-related pieces of legislation that the House has taken up this year, a stopgap proposal in September that averted a government shutdown. Like the stimulus bill, it was negotiated between Pelosi and Treasury Super-Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and then foisted upon the House floor for a vote, where Democrats hastily and almost uniformly supported its passage. The lone Democratic dissent came in the form of a “present” vote from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; she said she hadn’t even had time to read the bill through by the time the vote was called (and the implication is not that she’s a slow reader). Outside of that stopgap funding bill and CARES, one of the only other major-ish pieces of legislation to be passed in the House was the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act, a slapdash compilation of green-energy proposals championed by Pelosi and passed in the House in late September over the objections of environmental-activist groups and the dissenting votes of the Squad.
More and more, in recent years, House Speakers have ruled imperiously, compared to a bygone era when committee chairs held much more power. But Pelosi’s pandemic-era control marks a dramatic departure from the regular operation of the House. Historically, members below the very top rung of leadership have played at least some role in governance. This House of one represents a reductio ad absurdum of the recent trajectory, where the rank and file just doesn’t matter except as a hand to press the electronic voting button.
Don’t forget that the 116th Congress began in January 2019 as a historic one for Democrats, the result of a wave election that flipped over 40 seats and resulted in the largest number of female representatives in American history. For that cadre, nearly half of its two-year term has been defined by the overwhelming majority of the caucus watching from the sidelines while Pelosi legislates.
Some part of this arrangement owes itself to the difficulties and exigencies of the coronavirus. But while that may have made sense in March, it’s much less plausible in October. The House returned to in-person sessions months ago, and the virus has certainly shown no signs of abating. At a minimum, coronavirus will endure through the rest of the year, and likely, through the rest of the Trump administration, if Biden prevails as expected in November. It’s almost certain to be a major social reality well into 2021, and the 117th Congress. Progressives have been fighting hard to obtain more seats next year in the House, but seeing the unilateral control from the leadership makes you wonder what all the effort is for.
Because Republicans hold the White House and the Senate, it might seem inevitable that Pelosi must triangulate between her counterparts to muster something that can pass into law. A Biden victory would theoretically change the nature of that structure (presuming, of course, that Democrats win the Senate, and that Biden is not saving Treasury secretary for one of those Cabinet positions he’s dying to bequeath upon a Republican). But that would still set an odd standard going forward, where the House majority leader could do this anytime the opposition party rules the executive. The question remains whether Pelosi intends to relinquish the control she currently has when a new session starts, which would amount to a considerable concession of power.
This House of one represents a reductio ad absurdum of the recent trajectory, where the rank and file just doesn’t matter except as a hand to press the electronic voting button.
More importantly, it begs the question of how the 117th Congress might function, if Democrats are to hold it and Pelosi is to remain at the helm. Pelosi has famously pledged to seek just one more term as Speaker, and step aside after 2022, when she’ll be 82 years old. But she needs two-thirds support within the Democratic caucus to secure the gavel again, and it’s possible that younger members of the House, especially those in the swelling progressive ranks, may not be so inclined to return her to that position, after having watched her box them out of basically all official functions over the course of the last year.
Pelosi has long been at odds, to put it lightly, with the young and burgeoning class of progressives within the House, a group that stands to be larger come January. So far, this arrangement where she has managed to assume proxy power for the entire chamber, disenfranchising every Democrat in the House, has kept the effective power of that group at bay. But she won’t be able to do that forever, and a highly motivated group of progressives, sick of having been made powerless by their own leadership while the country cascades into an astonishing set of parallel crises, could mount a challenge to Pelosi’s reign in the new year. If she hasn’t endeared herself to her colleagues with 2020’s arrangement, her clumsy handling of negotiations in her few public-facing moments (see her set-to with Wolf Blitzer) haven’t endeared her to Democratic voters either.
At a certain point, those voters are going to look to their newly minted representation for something resembling governance. Pelosi managed to shepherd through a doomed impeachment hearing, but has mustered precious little in the way of legislation or oversight, owing in part to the Republican obstructionism that defines the opposite chamber. But at some point, she’s going to have to let her colleagues touch the ball, at least a little bit.
Any meditation on post-Pelosi House leadership from frustrated progressives runs into the problem of who exactly would be put up for the role. In 2018, most of the energy that went into challenging her came from well to her right. A more organized and bigger progressive wing could mount something more spirited. They may have to if they want to participate in government at all.
