The Military Aid Bill Could Be Law This Week
That is If Congress functions the way the Founders Intended
By Mark Strand
Iran’s attack on Israel has finally made Americans realize that our enemies are more than willing to attack our allies. Not only had the United States helped Israel develop its incredible missile defense system, but American aviators shot down numerous drones and missiles aimed at population centers. It was an apt and timely example of how allies work together to defeat our common enemies.
It has also become increasingly clear that an alliance of dictators is closing ranks to oppose the United States and our allies. Russia quickly announced its support for Iran, and China expressed “concern” about Israel's potential response to the missile attack. But as we have seen in Ukraine and now Israel. This alliance of dictators is willing to use deadly force against our allies while trying to prevent the United States from helping them. But that is not who we are.
Months ago, the Senate passed a military aid bill that includes essential aid for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan; however, it has languished in the House as Speaker Mike Johnson looks for a way to pass some form of assistance without losing his job. Johnson’s problem is that he has been trying to manage the House the way Speakers do when they have a more cohesive majority. It should be evident by now that this is not possible.
To help our allies, the House needs a bipartisan agreement to vote on the military aid bill. As I wrote last week,
“The easiest way, and probably the way that offers Speaker Johnson the best prospects for survival, is for an overt deal with Hakeem Jeffries to bring up the Senate bill in the Rules Committee with the support of the six Johnson loyalists and the four Democratic Members. The legislation would then go to the Floor, where only a simple majority is needed.”
Passage could be accomplished in a matter of days. Do this, and replacement missiles for Israel’s Iron Dome and more artillery shells for Ukraine’s beleaguered forces could be on their way in a matter of weeks.
If the House of Representatives were a parliament, Republicans would have lost at least 15 no-confidence motions by now. But fortunately, we are not a parliamentary system. The majority is embarrassed when it fails on the House Floor, but the government does not fall.
That is how the Founders intended it. As I wrote back in September:
One of the most consistent motivations for the authors of the Constitution was the fear of concentrated power. They set up a system of checks and balances to ensure no one branch of government, no regional faction, no ideological movement, or no political party (or interests as they called them) could dominate and dictate outcomes to the rest of the country. The Constitution was designed to promote consensus to achieve transformational change.
From that perspective, the failure of a one-party faction in Congress to do its job is precisely what the Constitution intended. Rep. Matt Gaetz’s ability to block his party, much less the entire House, from performing its essential Constitutional duties indicates that Congress should stop acting like a parliamentary government. It takes two parties to govern—as it should.
Politics has gone from being a sport where one team wins to a war where one team tries to destroy the other. Like in combat, an army will lose if it fights itself. When a handful of members pull the pin from the grenade to threaten to kill their fellow soldiers, that faction needs to be neutralized. No army fighting its opponents will survive if it allows a mutinous fifth column to shoot them in the back while they are manning the front lines.
With the narrow Republican majority of 218-213, it only takes a tiny fraction of extremists to block bipartisan efforts to pass legislation. If a political party insists on passing major legislation without any votes from the minority party, it will always be held hostage by its extremes.
In legislative politics, the answer to an extreme faction threatening to kill a bill is to find a credible source of votes to replace that faction. It’s called bipartisanship. This happens daily in state legislatures, county governments, and city councils. Amendments are offered to gain a majority for passage. Yes, even if that includes members of Congress in the other party. This is why Marjorie Taylor Greene rails against the “Uniparty.” She only has leverage if the Democratic party refuses to vote for a bill. Once coalitions start building to win an amendment on the Floor, Greene has no more leverage. Her ability to prevent Congress from passing something depends on her ability to use the Democrats as leverage. In other words, if the Democrats are united against the Republicans, Greene has power.
Again, as I wrote in September:
The price for House Republicans would be that they must allow the entire Congress to participate in the amendment process on the House Floor. This is called “regular order.” The purpose of a Congress is to be an institution where diverse representatives of the people come together to debate with and attempt to persuade their colleagues in a structured setting that requires mutual respect. The authors of the Constitution did not think Congress should work strictly on party lines like the British parliament. The original Congress did not even have political parties until late in George Washington’s second term.
In other words, the answer to the Republicans’ problem of an extreme faction blocking any progress is to behave as the Constitution designed it to behave. Open the Floor and see who can build a majority on any bill. The final bill will not be as conservative as the Republican majority is. Still, since the Democrats control the Senate and the Presidency, they will never pass an ideologically pure piece of legislation anyway.
Congress needs to start acting like a Congress, where all of its elected Members get to participate in the legislative process. In political science, we talk about the “Pivotal Voter” theory developed by Keith Krehbiel.
Krehbiel argues that in legislative politics, parties are not important, but the pivotal voter on any issue is what matters when issues are well-defined, and lawmakers’ preferences are well-ordered.
In other words, when left to their own devices, natural majorities will occur on different issues, and the focus of proponents and opponents of a bill will be to focus on the pivotal 218th vote (a simple majority). For instance, Members from agriculture districts will vote together regardless of their party identification because that is what their districts will expect from them. Members from energy-producing states will form coalitions against energy-consuming states. Members with many military personnel and defense industry employees will coalesce together regardless of party because their constituents have similar needs.
The most important thing for a Speaker is to pass legislation on the Floor while maintaining his party’s influence on the policy. When there is a Democratic-controlled Senate and a Democratic President, influencing the bill toward the Republican position is difficult. But since, presumably, the Democrats also want to pass a bill, the more control the Speaker exerts over the process, the more likely he will be able to force compromise.
Given the four House vacancies, the pivotal voter is the 216th vote. Ironically, the House has been, albeit kicking and screaming, behaving like the Pivotal Voter theory. Whether through the passage of legislation to prevent a default on debt, the various appropriation bills and continuing resolutions, or last week’s vote on the FISA Reauthorization bill, the House has been passing its most crucial legislation with bipartisan majorities. Regardless of your views on the FISA legislation, last week’s vote was a classic case of Members voting their own preferences on policy. Both parties were split, and the outcome hinged on whoever could earn a majority on the House Floor.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is the way Congress is supposed to work. Indeed, that is how it worked for most of its history before the beginning of the 21st Century.
The Speaker must be strong and exercise control to maintain the majority party’s influence on legislation. Mike Johnson has only been Speaker for six months and, indeed, had not been planning out how he would run the Congress before his surprise election. But he has certainly gained on-the-job experience in a short time.
This is what a Speaker needs to do. He can go to his own Conference and address the extremes. “I would like to pass this legislation with your support, but to do that, you must compromise. If you compromise and the 216th vote is in our Conference, then great. But, if you do not compromise, I will offer the other side an amendment that, while less conservative than I might like, will pass the bill without your votes.”
So far in this Congress, this is what has happened with must-pass legislation. A bipartisan majority has carried the legislation, while both ideological extremes have opposed it. Johnson has used various legislative tools, especially the suspension calendar, to accomplish this. Back in February, I called it “Accidental Bipartisanship.”
Speaker Johnson ought to be more deliberate about bipartisanship. Through regular meetings with the Democratic Leader, he can explore areas where bipartisanship is possible. A good minority leader should look for opportunities to give their members some legislative victories. When the President is from his own party, he should look for ways to pass his most urgent legislative policies.
Sometimes, that just won’t be possible—and that is normal, too. The Republican House is not going to vote for President Biden’s abortion policies. But on legislative items that must pass to keep the government open, prevent a debt default, or protect the national security interests of the United States, it is normal, indeed expected (at least in a historical sense) for the leaders of the two parties to work together to find a way to pass the underlying bill.
As we know, the elephant in the room right now is Marjorie Taylor Greene. It was Matt Gaetz six months ago, and it could be someone else next week. The Republicans sabotaged themselves by allowing a single member to offer a motion to vacate the Speaker’s office. As we have discussed before, they should change that.
But suppose Hakeem Jeffries and Mike Johnson can establish a close working relationship. In that case, the Democrats will be far less interested in joining the most extreme members of the opposition party to shut Congress down like they did last October. Why? Democratic members who want to get things done for their constituents are interested in a functioning Congress. Republicans will find they have a whole new range of legislative options if they can form bipartisan coalitions on Floor amendments or in Committee.
We all know that Congress isn’t working. We also know that the nation faces numerous threats, including stubborn inflation, the threat of a recession, an out-of-control border, and an emerging alliance of authoritarian states that threaten us and our allies. Congress can address many other bipartisan issues, such as the American Privacy Rights Act proposed by Republican House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Democratic Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Chair Maria Cantwell.
Legislative decision-making remains a revolutionary idea that requires trusting the people instead of a dictator to make critical decisions. When legislatures fail, authoritarians step into the vacuum. That is why Congress needs to function again as the Founders intended. Why not start this week?