Congress
House Democrats assert themselves as Republicans struggle to set agenda
On paper, Democrats are locked out of legislative power in the majority-rules House. In practice over the past several months, they have been a swaggering force.
Time and again this year, Democrats under Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have maneuvered to successfully undercut the GOP agenda and put its leaders on the back foot. From a daily drumbeat on health care to the long-running saga over the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to a new focus on the rising cost of living, they believe they’re succeeding by making the party in power talk about Democratic priorities, not its own.
Their success was underscored this week when four House Republicans joined a Jeffries-led effort to force a vote on expiring Obamacare insurance subsidies — a major embarrassment for the GOP speaker.
“Our message to Mike Johnson is clear — you can run, but you cannot hide,” Jeffries said as he took a victory lap on the House steps Thursday.
The New Yorker was referring to his party’s effort to address a so-called health care “crisis” brought about by Republican governance. But it could just as well apply to the overall Democratic attitude at the moment, with the party increasingly buoyant about its political fortunes heading into next year’s midterm elections.
Johnson and his leadership allies have been able to put some wins on the board since lawmakers returned from their summer recess. Republicans ultimately triumphed and ended a record-long shutdown without agreeing to a costly extension of the Obamacare subsidies. They managed to unite and pass a small-bore health care package this week as well as a bipartisan permitting reform bill.
But it has come at a cost. To win the shutdown fight, Johnson kept the House out of session — giving up roughly a fifth of the year’s scheduled legislative days. And managing a razor-thin majority with its constantly clashing factions has left many of his members airing dissatisfaction with the status quo.
“I think the House as a whole has not been nearly as proactive as we should have been in recent months,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.). “It certainly didn’t help that we weren’t even here for two of those months.”
“I believe that we’re behind,” added Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). “We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and the midterms.”
With a sizable band of Republican malcontents willing to buck their party’s leadership, Democrats have sought opportunities to divide the majority party — often by using discharge petitions, one of the few legislative tools available to the minority party.
Already this year three discharge petitions have garnered the necessary 218 signatures, forcing votes Johnson tried to avoid on releasing the Epstein files, restoring federal workers’ collective bargaining rights and now extending the Obamacare subsidies for three years. Each one succeeded with the vast majority of Democrats signing on at Jeffries’ direction, with a handful of GOP rebels joining in.
“We’re in the minority, but our ideas are still really good, and they deserve bipartisan support,” said Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.).
Democrats, Jeffries said, have already “won more discharge petitions in the last three weeks than have been successful in the last 30 years.” More could be coming next year, with more lawmakers planning to move on Russia sanctions legislation and a ban on congressional stock trading.
Beyond the discharge petitions, House and Senate Democrats made a larger strategic calculation in September that has since dominated the congressional agenda: centering a government shutdown fight on health care — in particular, the pending Dec. 31 expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits enacted and extended under former president Joe Biden.
The decision shifted the conversation on Capitol Hill away from President Donald Trump’s controversial but popular assault on federal spending to much more favorable political ground for Democrats. The party knew well that health care was a minefield for Republicans — one that many in both parties blamed for the GOP’s massive House losses in the 2018 midterms.
Ultimately, the shutdown ended after 43 days when a handful of Democratic senators decided the standoff had run its course. But House Democrats strategized to keep health care center stage, with Jeffries filing a discharge petition seeking a vote on a straight three-year extension of the expiring tax credits before moderate Republicans started filing their own discharge petitions.
Within a week, it had more than 200 signatures, and as the vulnerable Republicans scrambled for an off-ramp, Jeffries frequently noted the simplest solution would be for a handful of GOP members to sign on to the Democratic effort. Some moderate Democrats mulled backing a competing discharge petition from Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) that would force a vote on his bipartisan plan for a shorter extension with strings attached. But the vast majority of Democrats kept away, signaling they wanted to stay behind Jeffries’ approach.
“Nobody wanted Gottheimer to dictate strategy for the whole caucus,” said one person directly involved who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about strategy.
The maneuvering paid off. While Jeffries kept Republicans and some of his own members guessing by suggesting he might get behind one of the bipartisan plans, he ultimately never wavered on the straight three-year approach.
When, as many Democrats expected, Johnson refused to put one of the compromise extensions on the floor, GOP moderates were left with no choice but to join the Jeffries effort.
Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.) called it an “incredibly strategic move” by Jeffries “to have a discharge petition in place and create a safe space for members to do the right thing.”
The completion of the discharge petition has amounted to an internal debacle for Johnson, whose members are now unhappy that GOP leaders got outplayed and will now vote on a measure that the vast majority of them loathe.
“I hate that we are voting on a three-year clean extension and not a bipartisan bill that has smart reforms to the tax credits,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said. “The worst option is being put on the floor — and one that the Senate will not pass.”
Republican leaders, for their part, initially underestimated whether enough of the moderate holdouts would be willing to break ranks and sign on to Jeffries’ discharge petition. They viewed two in particular — Pennsylvania Reps. Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie — as unlikely to sign given their willingness to fall in line on the GOP megabill over the summer, according to two people granted anonymity to describe internal conversations.
But as each side dug in early this week and leaders moved away from allowing a floor vote on a compromise amendment, the moderates made clear to GOP leaders they would retaliate via the Jeffries discharge petition. Bresnahan and Mackenzie were among the four who signed, pushing it over the top.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in an interview that the possibility of the moderates linking arms with Democrats “was heavily discussed” and that leaders “didn’t want it to happen.”
“But, you know, we tried to find a different way to address it,” he said. “I mean, nobody was blindsided.”
ALBANY, New York — The Big Apple’s largest municipal workers union helped sink the New York State AFL-CIO’s endorsement of Democratic House candidate Brad Lander.
The union’s president, Henry Garrido, said in an interview Thursday that Lander’s audit of New York City’s Health Insurance Stabilization Fund as city comptroller was a factor in the opposition to his endorsement. The report, which recommended the fund’s dissolution, angered the union.
“Our members were really upset about that,” Garrido said.
Lander has also been at odds with the union after the group backed moving retirees to a Medicare Advantage Plan, which the then-comptroller opposed.
Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for Lander’s campaign, pointed to his efforts as the city comptroller to support workers at companies like Starbucks, Amazon and eBay as well as hotels across the country. He also plans to support a federal bill in Congress meant to address unfair labor practices and make it easier to unionize.
“Brad is a relentless supporter of workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively,” Hitt said. “In just the last few months, Brad joined food service workers, nurses, residential building workers, bartenders, researchers, teachers, and many others on their picket line, demanding union recognition and fair contracts.”
The potential endorsement of another Democrat, socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier, is considered to be on hold. Garrido said he expects to meet with Avila Chevalier, whose insurgent left-wing candidacy toppled influential Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat. DC-37 endorsed Espaillat’s reelection earlier this year as well as that of Rep. Dan Goldman, who Lander defeated in the June primary.
“I don’t know the young lady,” Garrido said. “I hear good things. I want to meet her; I want to talk with her.”
Avila Chevalier’s campaign did not immediately comment.
Declining to endorse two Democrats considered shoe-ins to win their deep blue districts concerned some labor leaders eager to present a united front ahead of the November elections.
“We want a New York delegation elected in November that will fight and do things for worker pay and embody the fighting spirit we need across the nation,” said PSC-CUNY Vice President Jen Gaboury, whose union represents public higher education workers.
Garrido, though, disputed that his union was solely responsible for sinking the endorsements, noting that Lander would still have struggled to win over the full New York State AFL-CIO, a federation of some 3,000 unions of varying political stripes. To win an endorsement, candidates needed to get backing from two-thirds of the unions that fall under the AFL-CIO umbrella.
As the umbrella organization met in Albany this week, Lander received support from unions that backed Goldman during the primary, his spokesperson said. His campaign also pointed to endorsements during his successful primary from a range of labor groups including the United Auto Workers, 32BJ SEIU and the Communications Workers of America.
Both Lander and Avila Chevalier are part of a surging left-flank that won upset races against establishment-backed Democrats in June — losses that shook New York City’s political establishment and highlighted Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s kingmaker role in predominantly left-leaning districts.
Joe Anuta contributed to this story.
Rep. Chuck Edwards, who dropped his plans for reelection following a scathing House Ethics report earlier this month, lobbied his colleagues this week to oppose an expected censure resolution that would condemn him over claims of inappropriate conduct towards two female staffers.
The North Carolina Republican argued in a six-page letter obtained by POLITICO that his conduct did not amount to sexual harassment, arguing that the Ethics Committee selected specific pieces of evidence to fit a narrative. He also told fellow House members that while he did not expect them to approve of every action detailed in the report, “context matters” when it comes to the consequences.
“I am asking you to distinguish between the conduct that someone, examining isolated excerpts after the fact, might consider unconventional and conduct that actually establishes sexual harassment,” Edwards wrote. “That distinction is critical because of what the Committee did not find.”
The House Ethics Committee report released Aug. 3 recommended censuring Edwards for engaging in “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers.” Edwards dropped his reelection bid two days later amid pressure from House Republican leaders.
Edwards’ letter, to which he appended a fact sheet and a 14-page response memo provided to the committee by his lawyers, is being circulated ahead of the censure vote, which could happen as soon as next week. NOTUS first reported on Edwards’ letter.
A spokesperson for Edwards did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Edwards said in the letter that his interactions with the two female employees were similar to how he treated the rest of his staff, outlining examples of similar gifts he’d given and trips he’d taken with other staffers.
The Ethics Committee’s determination that his actions “could be interpreted as romantic,” he argued, did not mean he made unwanted sexual advances.
“An affectionate friendship is not a sexual proposition. A gift is not sexual misconduct. A compliment is not sexual misconduct. Poetry is not sexual misconduct. Socializing with a colleague is not sexual misconduct. Caring deeply about someone with whom you have worked and come to know for years is not sexual misconduct,” Edwards wrote.
Edwards also said investigators failed to take into account preexisting relationships with some of the staffers from before he was in Congress.
“That history matters. Gift-giving, travel, time together outside the office, and familiarity with my home did not suddenly emerge after I became a Member of Congress,” Edwards said. “They were established features of longstanding relationships. Yet despite knowing this history, the Committee completely omitted it from its report while assigning a different meaning to similar conduct in Washington.”
Edwards’ claims seek to undermine the committee’s investigative report, which found that the two women “were uncomfortable with his behavior (which they attempted to communicate) but were put in an untenable position by virtue of his status as their boss and a Member of Congress.”
At one point, a senior staffer confronted Edwards over his dealings with the young women — which included frequent public comments about their dress and appearance as well as a series of lavish gifts.
That staffer testified that “Edwards ‘got very angry’ and said she ‘didn’t understand the unique relationship’ he had with them,” according to the report.
The panel said its findings were based on a “thorough” record that “includes not only significant testimony from multiple witnesses, but also contemporaneous text messages.”
Edwards claimed in his letter that investigators cast those messages and testimonials in a false light, writing that “conduct does not become sexual harassment merely because someone looking backward through thousands of pages can construct a theory under which it ‘could be interpreted as romantic.’”
A sudden cut to Social Security checks — long seen as a far-off doomsday — is now an imminent problem for the next president and whomever voters send to Congress in the coming years.
The trust fund that bankrolls monthly checks to retirees is set to be drained of reserves in late 2032. That means tens of millions of Americans age 62 and older, as well as children and widowed spouses who get survivor benefits following the death of a family member, would see their monthly payments shrink by more than 20 percent — or an average of about $500 a month — unless Congress and the president act.
Capitol Hill saw a noticeable surge this summer in the sense of urgency to enact a fix, and alliances have started forming between prominent Republicans and Democrats rallying for a solution. But President Donald Trump and congressional leaders have yet to join the calls to action or back any of the numerous bipartisan bills aimed at preventing benefit cuts.
“This train wreck is going to happen,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said in an interview. “So as early as six years from now, we’re going to have to have a plan. And of course, I’m a big believer that we need to deal with it now, or we need to start the process of dealing with it now.”
Trump has yet to signal interest in a specific fix for the federal government’s single largest safety-net program, sticking instead to broad promises to safeguard benefits.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) recalled discussing the issue with Trump during his first term as president.
“He said, ‘Tom, I’ll be for this the first day of my second term,’” Cole told reporters this summer about trying to get Trump to push for a fix. “Well, we’re here.”
White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in a statement that Trump “will always protect and strengthen Social Security” and noted that the Republican megabill enacted last summer created a temporary tax deduction for people 65 and older that can be used to reduce taxes owed on Social Security benefits.
“Under his leadership, there will be zero reductions to Social Security payments,” she said, without specifying how Trump proposes to address the 2032 cliff.
Trump isn’t the only Washington power player uninterested in risking their political legacy by diving into a policy thicket where proposals include hiking payroll taxes, raising the age for benefit eligibility or letting some taxpayer cash ride the waves of the stock market.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson rarely discuss the approaching benefit cliff, nor have they called to advance any of the bills lawmakers have proposed to prevent it — prompting criticism this summer from top Democrats demanding the two GOP leaders “put forward their plan” to protect Social Security.
Meanwhile, some lawmakers have been telling voters the whole notion of a cliff is a hoax.
“Your Social Security is safe. You can write that down and take it home to mama,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said at an event this summer. “All we got to do is go take the money out of the general fund, which we always do.”
But backfilling a depleted trust fund with Treasury dollars, as Kennedy suggests, would not be automatic. Congress would need to pass a bill to do so, and winning support to siphon that cash could be difficult considering the U.S. public debt zoomed past $40 trillion this month after exceeding the nation’s annual economic output earlier this year.
“Those are the politics that are bringing us a debt crisis,” former Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview, knocking the “populist” approach lawmakers like Kennedy are taking in assuring voters that Social Security benefits would be covered by growing the deficit.
During the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Ryan pushed controversial plans to invest some Social Security contributions into private savings accounts and make changes like raising the retirement age.
“Regrettably, if we had reformed it back when we were trying to in the Bush administration, we would not be at this place,” Ryan said. “But the politics got the better of us in those days.”
Ryan was a member of the bipartisan 2010 fiscal commission led by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson but ultimately voted against the group’s final proposal, which included plans to increase the age for receiving full Social Security payments, changing the formula for benefits and taxing more wages.
Obama backed away from a deal in 2011 with then-Speaker John Boehner to enact changes to Social Security as part of a broader fiscal “grand bargain.”
Today, not only is the Social Security cliff much closer, but the nation’s overall fiscal trajectory has worsened. In recent weeks, market watchers have blamed endless deficits for helping spike long-term Treasury bond yields — increasing borrowing costs and raising fears of a “debt spiral.”
Fixing the Social Security benefit cliff is not the same as solving the country’s larger fiscal issues. But it could be a test case for Washington’s ability to make difficult tradeoffs that will be necessary to bring deficits under control.
“My sense is that there’s pretty wide recognition of the fiscal situation — that the fiscal trajectory is unsustainable,” Congressional Budget Office director Phillip Swagel said in an interview. “And the interest in Social Security seems like the first kind of translation … into sort of realistic policy alternatives.”
The last time Social Security was headed toward insolvency, in the early 1980s, Congress didn’t enact a solution until a few months before benefits were set to be cut. A commission appointed by then-President Ronald Reagan developed proposals for overhauling the safety-net program, and lawmakers then passed a 1983 overhaul that gradually increased the age for receiving full benefits to 67 and raised taxes on those benefits, among other tweaks.
In a nod to Reagan’s approach, Cole and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) released a bill this summer to create a bipartisan commission that would recommend a plan for staving off benefit cuts and then fast-track that proposal through Congress on an up-or-down vote. Several Republicans and Democrats are signed on to a similar bill across the Capitol led by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), both of whom are leaving office at the end of the year.
“The senators elected this November will be here when we have to solve this. The next president who’s elected will be here when we have to solve this,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a sponsor of that Senate bill, said in an interview. “So rather than wait till 2032, let’s go ahead and get this started now.”
Those bipartisan plans have critics on Capitol Hill, however. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) publicly warned Democrats this month not to allow Republicans “to slash or privatize Social Security through an unelected commission.” And backlash has emerged to other proposals that have delved into controversial policy specifics.
For instance, anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist has slammed a bill from the odd-bedfellows duo of progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and MAGA Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) that would make the nation’s highest earners pay Social Security payroll taxes on 100 percent of their earnings.
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), who has pushed a similar plan for years, said in an interview that because Trump “has absolutely no interest whatsoever in solving this problem,” the issue needs to be at the center of the presidential primary debates for Trump’s successor.
“Like it or not,” Boyle said, “this will be on the plate of the next president.”
- Public workers union helped sink labor nod for Lander
- Chuck Edwards defends himself ahead of censure vote: ‘Context matters’
- Will Kevin Warsh Squander a Huge Opportunity?
- The Social Security benefit cliff is here. Washington is struggling to wake up.
- The primaries testing Democratic 2028ers
- House GOP leaders under pressure to act on data centers before the midterms
- Lawmakers press Treasury to target Chinese banks over Iran
- House GOP leaders eye quick vote on Senate-passed stopgap
- Senate Democrats urge Netanyahu to stop surge of violence in West Bank
- Pentagon claims to have found ‘hidden’ files on final days of the Afghanistan war
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Dictatorship12 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words