What Congress?

NY Times….

The legislative branch of the government is in crisis. The shutdown is entering a second month. Millions of Americans were given a reprieve on Friday after a judge ordered the Trump administration to continue paying for food stamps. The Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle discusses the repercussions of a weakening Congress with the Opinion columnists Jamelle Bouie and David French, and what the future could hold for this institution.

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Cottle: Delicious. Jamelle and I have been writing this week about the sad, extreme dysfunction of the legislative branch, about the House speaker not swearing in a new member and Congress putting the hurt on millions of Americans with this shutdown. So let’s just start here: We’re taping on Thursday morning, so the government has been shut down for a month. On Nov. 1, SNAP benefits — a program that provides food assistance to lower income households — are going to abruptly stop.

David, Jamelle, you’ve had time to process. What’s your take on what’s happening — or not happening — with this Congress? Are we seeing a difference in kind or a different degree from the level of dysfunction that we’ve all pretty much become accustomed to?

Jamelle Bouie: I think this is a difference in kind. I think what we’re seeing, with how Speaker Johnson, especially, is handling the House, is something novel. He kept it out of session. No one is meeting, and critically, there are not really negotiations happening, nothing to begin the process of trying to wind down the shutdown. It’s as if Speaker Johnson and House Republicans are acting as if they have nothing to do.

What I find not baffling but just striking is even as this SNAP cliff approaches, Republican members seem completely, by and large, indifferent to the fact that many of their constituents are about to lose food assistance. No matter what kind of old stereotypes they may throw out about who they think SNAP recipients are, the fact of the matter is that many people who are represented by Republican governors and Republican lawmakers are recipients of SNAP — and they’re disproportionately children, disabled people and seniors.

And so just observing how House Republicans feel no urgency about this and have taken no steps to try to negotiate this — as if they have no obligation to — I find it genuinely striking and something that marks this as a different kind of phenomenon.

Cottle: David, what about you?

French: I’m going to agree that we are dealing with a difference in kind on two fronts here. One is the absolute total subservience of the majority of the legislative branch to the executive branch. That is a thing that is a difference in kind. It’s sort of this idea that whatever the president says, we’re going to snap into line and do. That combined with an absolute abdication of the power of that entire branch of government.

The impetus seems to be that as long as the president is ready to fight, there will be no real discussion here. There will be no compromise at all. This is going to be all about who gets to point at the scoreboard at the end of this, whenever the end of this occurs. So you are looking at the absolute breakdown, at least so far, of anything approaching a legislative process.

This is not unprecedented to have differences between Republicans and Democrats in a budgeting process. And what happens is, in generations past, typically in a year they would get in and hammer out, say, a 65 to 35 or a 70 to 30 compromise that would leave people at the extreme edges upset — but a majority would be at least accepted or comfortable with it.

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Cottle: One of the things that senators have complained to me about in respect to the leadership-focused way that Congress is run, is that part of what’s fueling that problem is the way that money is dealt with. The Senate leaders control huge campaign funds, and they can decide who gets what piece. That is a very powerful tool in a system where money is vital to surviving in these campaigns. David, what is your thought on all of that?

French: I think we’re going to be in a difficult position until there’s a change in a fundamental reality. And that fundamental reality is that every Republican member of Congress believes that their entire career, their place in that House, depends on Donald Trump’s approval. So I think even Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House: If Trump came out and said he needs to go, then Mike Johnson loses his job. Why do we know this? Look at the last 10 years. How many people are left in the Republican Party whom Donald Trump has specifically targeted? I mean, I can think of one at the state level: Brian Kemp in Georgia. He’s the Harry Potter “ boy who lived” of the G.O.P.

Cottle: He’s viewed with a kind of magical reverence.

French: Exactly. But this will not last forever…..

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