View from K Street: The U.S. House in absentia

In a stunning display of its own irrelevance and ineptitude, on September 16, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) suspended the session and sent the members home until after the midterm elections. It’s a fitting conclusion to the least active and least effective House in living memory. In 1948, Harry Truman ran against the “do-nothing” Congress, which actually passed over 900 bills in its two-year term. This 113th Congress managed only 200, a low point in modern Congressional history. This House will be remembered for what it didn’t accomplish: a failed budget bill that led to another lengthy government shutdown; a refusal to be heard on the fundamental issue of war or peace; failing to fulfill its promised disclosure of the Epstein files; fleeing the responsibility even to examine and regulate artificial intelligence (AI); and ignoring (and dramatically adding to) the deficit, thus demeaning its constitutional role as controlling the “power of the purse.” 

But even more than its failures and its inactivity, this House will be remembered for its supine acquiescence to the president’s wishes and whims. The pretense of independence was conceded without resistance, its constitutional role as the core function of a democracy discarded without opposition. Many Congresses have been pressured by executive power, but none has surrendered with such speed, even relief. By the time the hapless Speaker shut the House down, almost no one took much notice. It’s hard to miss what was barely there. 

It wasn’t intended to be this way.