Democrats Are Actually Running the House

Jesse Berney

The 114th Congress is off to a roaring start. The Senate and House have sent just two newsworthy bills to the president’s desk: approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and a one-week funding bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security running.

The pipeline bill was a symbolic measure; the president made good on his threat to veto it, and Congress doesn’t have the votes to override it.

That means one significant bill has passed into law so far, and all it did was keep DHS’ doors open for seven days while Congress tries to figure out what to do next.

And that bill only passed because Democrats voted for it.

John Boehner has virtually no control over his caucus. It’s easy enough to marshall Republican votes to pass symbolic conservative nonsense that will never make it into law. If you need a vote to repeal Obamacare, he’s your guy.

But when you need a bill to keep the government running, time and again Boehner has crossed the aisle, hat in hand, to ask Democrats to get the job done.

 

This is what happens when your caucus is populated with politicians beholden to (and terrified of) the most extreme elements of your party. When your second-in-command loses his primary race to a Tea Party challenger, you can bet the rest of the Republicans won’t see loyalty to you as their top concern.

What this means is that the most powerful person in the House is no longer John Boehner. It’s Nancy Pelosi, who has no trouble whipping up the votes she needs when Boehner needs an extra hand.

Congress just squeaked out a DHS funding extension last week, and it took Democratic votes to do it. We’re going to see this pattern repeated over and over in this Congress.

The GOP will pass lots of bills without Democratic votes to be sure, but those bills will be dead the moment they leave the House. When it comes to the votes that keep the doors of the government open, it will be Democrats ultimately calling the shots.