“I learned this early when I got here: I don’t pay much attention to what the House does,” said Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.). “I just do what we do.”
Since Biden took office, the House has passed most of its substantive bills on party lines, leaving the measures with little chance of passing through the Senate without removing legislative obstruction. This list of decadent legislation includes everything from expanding voting rights and labor organization to preventing LGBTQ discrimination and protecting public lands – bills that would require the support of 10 Republican senators.
The two chambers of Congress have always had different natures, according to the Founders’ project. But the current gulf between House and Senate legislative strategies demonstrates that Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.), still need to decide exactly which ones. parts of your post-pandemic relief the agenda will have priority to follow.
“It’s very aggressive, let’s put it that way,” said West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, of the House’s litany for more progressive legislation. “Did you see the $ 15 minimum wage go through a committee, a process, a hearing, a raise or something? Tell them to try a process at some point. It can work. “
House Democrats already held the majority when Biden won, a two-year lead in legislation that left them with an accumulation of bills to pass this year. They held lengthy hearings on raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour in February 2019, for example.
The structural and behavioral differences between the two chambers are not exclusive to Democrats and emphasize the Senate’s tendency to moderate the more partisan impulses of both parties. For example, House and Senate Republicans have adopted divergent approaches towards former President Donald Trump this year and have failed to approve the repeal of Obamacare because of the single vote of a Republican senator.
Biden’s party invaded Washington this year with an ambitious set of goals that included not only a single pandemic in a generation, but also a series of party issues that have been in the background for a decade or more with House Democrats. looking forward to acting fast. This increases the urgency of the Democrats’ current situation.
“House Democrats have a responsibility to voters to pass meaningful legislation, regardless of the composition of the Senate. Everything that is being approved and sent to the Senate is widely popular, ”said an aide to the Democratic leadership in the House.
Senators, however, are quick to point out that, unlike the House, they also had to confirm Biden’s nominees, deal with an organizing resolution that delayed control of the committees and put Trump on trial for inciting an insurrection. House Democrats’ calls for senators to go beyond the limits of the traditional upper house – first to disregard or fire their congressman after she spoke out against adding a minimum wage increase to a budget bill, then to end the – are not convincing their colleagues.
House Democrats “must understand a little bit that we have some different challenges on our shoulders,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). The House’s call to change Senate rules, he added, “does not make us more or less likely to. We are not freelancers on House rules.”
Still, requests for change in the Senate are getting louder and moving up the House’s Democratic leadership structure. Majority leader in the House, Jim Clyburn (DS.C.), is the latest proponent of banning legislative obstruction, while Pelosi recently threw an exception to the Senate supermajority requirement for civil rights legislation for his caucus.
Democrats on both sides of the Capitol are proud of their swift approval of Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package, with only one Democratic defection from the House in the House and none in the Senate. But even that process illustrated that not all Senate Democrats fully agree with the House’s more liberal agenda. While the House passed the $ 15 minimum wage as part of its Covid legislation, eight Democratic senators voted against a similar amendment by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
“We are in the cheap seats here, ” ironic the chairman of the House Budget Committee, John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), who is serving his eighth term in the House. “But I don’t think you would find many dissidents among Democrats who think the Senate needs to find a way to act.”
Senate Democrats have not yet finalized their agenda for when the House returns from its two-week break in April. Schumer promised to prepare the Senate action for several bills passed by the House, including background checks for gun buyers, voting rights, expanding LGBTQ protections and policing reform, but he has not yet specified when he will do so.
Senior House Democrats say the Senate will need to make a decision soon about which parts of the party’s agenda will move first – and then whether to seek a bipartisan agreement or move toward a settlement of the obstruction.
Some House Democrats, especially on the left, are starting to get impatient after two years in the majority, seeing their bills fall sharply into a Senate then controlled by Republicans.
“We won the house. We won the Senate there. We won the presidency. Let’s get these things moving. There is no reason why they should have this obstruction, ”said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.). “We have to get rid of this damn thing.”
A senior House Democrat, Colorado MP Diana DeGette (D-Colorado), said she was not surprised by the Senate’s legislative backwardness, considering the January 6 uprising, the impeachment trial and its long list of nominees. The pandemic aid bill passed, DeGette noted, at “dizzying speed” for the Senate.
Still, when asked about his reaction to the pace of the Senate so far, DeGette said, “I would say concerned.”
Some Senate Democrats have acknowledged that they share the frustrations of their colleagues in the House. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Who supports removing the obstruction, said the clamor to destroy the 60-vote limit “is growing.”
“Thank goodness the members of the House continue to pressure,” he said.
As Democrats in both chambers look at their next steps on the agenda, many lawmakers said it could all boil down to what Biden desires most.
“If we didn’t have the White House, I think the tension would be much stronger,” said Representative Dan Kildee (D-Mich.). “Even though he is a few blocks away, he is closer to the Senate than we are. That makes a big difference. ”