The NPR Politics Podcast - Congress' 2024 Outlook: More Legislating, Less Drama?

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Lawmakers made headlines in 2023 for seemingly everything but making laws. We look back at their work last year and at their priorities for this year. This episode: White House correspondents Asma Khalid & Deepa Shivaram, and congressional reporter Eric McDaniel.This episode was edited by Erica Morrison. It was produced by Jeongyoon Han and Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Teepa Shivram. I also cover the White House. And I'm Eric McDaniel. I cover Congress. And Happy New Year, folks.

Happy New Year. It is now officially 2024. And that means we have a new year for the 118th Congress. Though I will say I am not sure that I'm expecting Congress to have any sort of grand New Year's resolutions to do anything fundamentally different than what they've done this past year. Last year was a wild, drama-filled year. We saw some lawmakers being fired. We saw others just throwing up their hands and quitting. And today on the show, we're going to look back at what Congress was able to accomplish and what to expect in the year ahead.

Eric, I want to begin with you because you cover Congress and there was, I would say, a lot of main character energy in the year of 2023. I'm thinking of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, former congressman from New York, George Santos. Just to name a couple, how would you describe what went on in 2023? I mean, let's focus on the House here for a second, right? It was basically all the greatest hits of our fine podcast. It was fractious. It was partisan. It was emblematic of a very broken system and incentives in American democracy right now. So there was a wafer-thin House Republican majority.

They basically could not pass legislation because of internal divides in the Republican conference. And last January, after a record number of votes to elect Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, I'm sure we all remember those podcasts. You had that very speaker ousted by his colleagues. And in fact, it was the same folks who ousted him that he worked to recruit to the Republican Party starting in like 2010. This is hardline folks, anti-compromise, and they were ultimately his undoing. And I think it's worth sort of understanding in context here, which is this is how our system is set up right now for the House. We've got districts largely drawn by lawmakers to maximize both parties' electoral advantage, depending on who's drawing the maps. And that, of course,

maximizes for the most partisan person being elected to that seat. So, you know, we have maybe three dozen seats left in the House where folks are elected in competitive general election, and that essentially removes any incentive for compromise. I mean, one of the people who was elected from a fairly competitive district, I believe, was George Santos, right? He is no longer serving in the House. I mean, how do you explain what happened there? George Santos was expelled from Congress by his colleagues over concerns about his past deceptions and the 23 federal charges related to campaign and money fraud that he's facing right now.

He became the first person expelled who wasn't a Confederate sympathizer from the House before being formally convicted of a crime. So what Eric is describing, Deepa, sounds like a lot of just character drama. But one thing that the House was able to move forward with this past year was an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. How did you hear the White House react not only to this impeachment, but I would say broadly to what Congress has or hasn't done this year? Oh, my gosh. I feel like the first thing that comes to mind is like I just feel like the White House thought of this impeachment inquiry as just some silly goose behavior. OK, like they were sending out memos, emails, like,

a lot of summaries about what they thought extreme House Republicans were doing. They called it a stunt. They called it a shiny object. Failure theater was a phrase that was often used to describe what House Republicans were doing here. And I will say, like, it wasn't just a way of them talking about, you know, like, look at this circus of sorts, but they also kind of used it as a twofold way to be like, this is what extreme House Republicans are focusing on. And here's what they're not doing in the meantime. Right. And so one thing that really stood out to me was back when the government was, you know, about to shut down. Sharon Yang, one of the spokespeople for the White House, I don't know if you guys remember this, was sending out emails every hour,

every hour, every 30 minutes. She was just like, you know, there's X, Y, Z hours and minutes left until extreme House Republicans shut down the government. And so they really use this as a twofold way, not just to be like, you know, yes, this impeachment thing is happening in the background. It's baseless. There's no evidence for it, et cetera, et cetera. But also using that as a way to pivot and be like, and here's all the things they're not talking about and not working on and not getting done for the American people. And credit where credit's due, they did manage to keep the government open, at least with a short-term bill for a little while. But for Republicans, House Republicans, this is low-hanging fruit, right? Where they can't agree as a party on most things because of differences between these very few moderates in swing districts and the hardliners from safer districts. Impeachment is a place where they all don't like President Biden. So they can say, well, we can focus on this and get an easy win. And I think that's why we saw the impeachment inquiry authorization vote when we did. So, Eric, for all the drama that we have been talking about, Congress did manage to actually pass a number of bills. I will say 27 bills in total.

Were any of them of note? Yeah, I shouldn't have been quite so negative, though 27 bills is way below even divided era government, what Congresses have done in their first year before. I summarized every law they passed in fewer than a thousand words on NPR.org. Nice plug there. But I will say they named two Veterans Affairs clinics and asked the Treasury to mint some coins to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps. House Republicans continued to kick the can down the road on the heavy lifting, namely approving those 12 annual federal spending bills. Instead, they passed short term measures, like I mentioned before. They're going to try again in January with two looming shutdown deadlines at the beginning of the year. It is a little bit different of a picture

in the Senate from what I've been talking about. The top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and the top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell are actually overseeing cooperative negotiations on things like immigration and foreign aid. McConnell, who recently became the longest tenured leader in Senate history, is a more practiced hand than current Speaker Mike Johnson at quelling disagreement within his own caucus. So it is a little bit of a different vibe over there. But even in the Senate, Eric, I'm thinking back to Senator Tommy Tuberville and his ability to hold up a whole bunch of nominations. Explain what was going on there. It seems like ultimately by the end of the year, these came through.

Sure. So just as a refresher, Senator Tommy Tuberville, he's a Republican senator from Alabama, and he objected to the Pentagon's policy under the Biden administration of paying for transit for abortion care for service members. And in the Senate, you can do what's called a hold where any senator can sort of object to unanimous consent on some straightforward business, including things like military promotions. So often military promotions are done in a big block. When the Defense Department says it's time to promote people, the Senate gets to advise and consent and approve those things. In protest of this policy, Tuberville, for months and months, starting near the beginning of 2023, put a hold on those nominations and the backlog got to more than 450 people. He finally, at the end of December, sort of let up on that without any change in policy. And I would say the difference between sort of disagreements in the House and disagreements in the Senate where he basically got unanimous bipartisan objections to what he was doing. There were lots of people in his own party and in the Democratic and they were able to

pass, I would say, really transformational legislation that we had not seen in decades. Whether or not you agree with what was done, it was just monumental in its size and scope. Right. It absolutely was. And, you know, obviously, let's not forget that this was at a time when the country was in deep economic peril. We were in the middle, very in the middle of a raging pandemic. Like there were a lot of things going on that, you know, the stakes were very high. Let me put it that way. So, yeah, you saw these major, major pieces of legislation getting past the American Rescue Plan, all of these COVID bills that gave aid to people, you know, the infrastructure bill, like the Inflation Reduction

Act. I mean, climate jobs, like these are major. The CHIPS Act. The CHIPS Act. There were major, major things that were going on and things that, you know, were kind of starting steps for other programs. So like the Safer Community, like there was just so much going on in those first two years, like you mentioned. And it has been a little bit different. In 2023, with the divided Congress, you kind of had to see the White House sort of talk about it all in a past tense, right? Where it's like, look at all the things we did rather than look at all the things we're currently doing. And so 2023 was a big year for the White House to try to take a victory lap without calling it a victory lap. Because as we know, so many of these things that were passed that were supposed

to help Americans, you know, feel better about the economy, line their wallets a little bit more. People aren't really feeling that way, right? Like they're not really giving the president for the credit for a lot of these things that he did get done in those first two years. And so they are trying to sort of remind the American people like, you know, this is the work that we did get done. But that was a little harder in 2023 when you look at, you look at Congress and them not really making movement on immigration reform, not making any movement when it comes to gun violence prevention. And so there are some big ticket items that are still very much on pause in the works that they couldn't really promote or say that they were actively getting things done on because things are not getting done. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll have more to talk about in just a moment. And welcome back. Deepa, we mentioned earlier that the House has a new speaker now. How would you characterize the White House's relationship with this new speaker,

Mike Johnson? Yeah. You know, I feel like nonexistent is kind of harsh, but like this is a very new person to Washington, especially when you compare him to Joe Biden, right, who has been around for decades. So they're really, they had to start from scratch in 2023 to sort of build this relationship, try to get to know who this person is, what his priorities were. And I would say it's definitely still a bit of a work in progress. They met once briefly in 2023. As of now, there really isn't anything on the table for them to meet again. And it all comes as this huge crisis over the border is unfolding. At the end of last year, there was a letter that the speaker sent to the president that was really harsh, basically saying,

like, laying all of the blame on Biden's feet when it comes to this crisis at the border. He said, you know, it must start now. It must start with you. And had all of these points that he wanted Biden to just do unilaterally to try to fix some of what's going on at the border. The White House is sort of just like, you know, the president's done. All he's going to do in Congress is, you know, the one that needs to act. We need more funding. We need all of these resources. So very much, especially when it comes to this issue of immigration, butting heads, not a lot of, you know, we don't really see them working together at this point. And that kind of leads us to, you know, what Congress is going to do about it.

And I will say there's a lot of political incentive right now for Speaker Johnson to make those demands. Right now, immigration and border security is the most active bit of legislative negotiation that's going on in Congress. Senate negotiators have been working on it for weeks at this point. But when it gets to the House side, Mike Johnson has to contend with hardliners in his party who want to see many of the things that he's calling on Biden to do unilaterally in this Senate deal. And that seems very unlikely to happen at this point. This border debate is tied up also with foreign aid funding for both Ukraine and Israel. Presumably, these are going to be the issues that are top of mind for lawmakers in this new year. You've heard the White House repeatedly

say that they don't have enough resources to fund Ukraine's fight with Russia. There is a sense of urgency we were hearing, frankly, even at the end of the year from the White House. I don't understand enough resources to fund Ukraine's fight with Russia. There is a sense of urgency. We were hearing, frankly, even at the end of the year from the White House. I don't understand how this is all going to get quickly resolved with the urgency that we're hearing from folks. I suspect it's not going to get quickly resolved. I mean, this has been going on for more than six weeks, I would say at this point. It even got tied up in the short term funding fight that we saw, you know, in in November. And so you wouldn't think these are linked together, but it's all under this banner of national security. Right. So helping Ukraine, protecting a democracy, helping Israel protect its democracy.

And Republicans are saying, well, that, you know, enforcing the southern border is protecting U.S. democracy. And I would say the White House has been pretty clear about how urgent this is. You know, towards the end of last year, you heard John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, repeatedly talk about how this is the last payment of money. This is the last payment of money. And he had a phrase that he was quoting Shalonda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. There's no magic pot here. There is really nothing left. And so they not that they were being alarmist, but I think it was very clear that, you know,

this is the deadline that we've all been talking about for months. That's here. And this is where we're at. I mean, this is what I think is remarkable, though, about this. This big fight is that there certainly are Republicans, at least in the Senate side, definitely, who do support this continued funding of Ukraine. Including Mitch McConnell. And you're still not able to somehow separate these things or move things through the current legislative body because there's just so much internal disagreement as well. Eric, you mentioned earlier that Congress avoided a government shutdown in 2023 by passing

a pair of stopgap bills to keep the government temporarily open. We are now in the new year. That threat of a government shutdown has certainly returned. Those deadlines are coming up again. So what's the plan? The plan, as it's been stated, is to pass 12 full-year federal spending bills. This is regular order, you might hear it described, where the government is kept open by agreeing on spending

levels, setting policy, doing all of these things, and Congress has the power of the purse. They allocate that money and they send it off to these agencies. But how that looks in practice, that's really complicated. House Republicans can agree among themselves on what these spending levels are. It has to be bipartisan in the Senate to attract the 60 votes it needs to pass the chamber. So whether they can actually meet these funding deadlines on January 19th and February 2nd, we'll have to wait and see. January 19th, coming up real soon. And Congress is supposed to be out until January 8th. So there's not a lot of time left to do this.

Deepa, as we look at this new year, are there specific issues that you're hearing from the White House that they really do want Congress to take on? I realize this is going to be a huge challenge given that they do not control, Democrats do not control the current House of Representatives. But what are the ambitions for this year ahead? Yeah, there's definitely a lot of focuses that I think are going to come into play. Let's all remind ourselves for a moment. We are now fully in an election year. So one of the things that I think is really interesting, you know, as we've seen

from multiple polls, the White House has lost a lot of ground. Biden has lost a lot of ground with younger voters. And one of the issues that they know young people in particular really care about is gun violence prevention. And that's something that, you know, obviously has been stuck for years and years and years now in Congress. And so I'm kind of interested to see how they move forward with that this month with the vice president taking on a bigger role in this issue. So I think that's something that you can expect to see more of coming out of the White House. And I guess, like, I don't know, on a positive note, there could be some bipartisan agreements here. I think one thing that I'm also really interested in is the AI stuff. I think this is something where Republicans, Democrats, it's so new.

It's so fresh. It's such an important issue that there hasn't really been a lot of factions among, you know, these two parties yet when it comes to trying to legislate or figuring out how to legislate this. And so that is a rare issue where I think we are at a point where the White House and Congress and everyone in Congress can kind of be on the same page here at least a little bit. All right. Well, we will leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I also cover the White House. And I'm Eric McDaniel. I cover Congress. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.