As 2024 got underway, House Speaker Mike Johnson struggled in ways that were hard to miss. Following some notable and avoidable legislative failures, The New York Times went so far as to say the Louisiana Republican was facing a “political crisis“ of sorts, as GOP members raised the prospect of ousting him.
Punchbowl News spoke in early January to a “well-plugged-in House Republican,” who is not a Freedom Caucus member, who said a growing number of GOP members had “significant concerns” about the speaker’s ability to deliver. The unnamed Republican lawmaker added that there was a “growing feeling” that Johnson was in “way, way over his head.”
That was last month. Conditions are considerably worse now.
Just this week, House GOP leaders tried and failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, only to try and fail 10 minutes later to pass a foreign aid bill.
In the aftermath of these floor defeats, the speaker apparently thought it’d be a good idea to boast about his chamber’s capacity for dealing with affairs of state. The Hill reported:
Johnson also said it was “simply not true” that Congress is unable to do basic functions. “We’re governing here. Sometimes it’s messy,” Johnson said.
As someone who’s covered Capitol Hill for more years than I care to admit, I will gladly concede the point that the legislative process is often shambolic, even when it’s working. There’s a reason political observers have long compared lawmaking to sausage making.
But if the House speaker believes he and his colleagues are “governing here,” I have some bad news for him.
In first year of the current Congress, productivity fell to levels unseen since the Great Depression, due entirely to the far-right majority in the lower chamber, and as a Washington Post report noted this week, “This year is on track to be worse.”
It’s not just that Republicans have killed the bipartisan border bill they requested, though that certainly…
Read the full article here
