Praising Washington Post journalist Dana Milbank’s survey of the current state of the U.S. House of Representatives, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) says Milbank “ably captures the middle-school food fight Republicans have made of the House.”
Milbank, whose WaPo bio says he “sketches the foolish, the fallacious and the felonious in politics,” was the right choice, according to Whitehouse, for a look at the House GOP where co-operation and compromise have been in short supply since well before the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
The piece Whitehouse references gives itself away in the title: “The House is most definitely not in order.” But Milbank does not, as Whitehouse does in his comment, put the onus on Republicans alone, instead calling out Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) for “heckling.”
Dana Milbank quite ably captures the middle-school foodfight Republicans have made of the House, as shutdown looms. https://t.co/BHFeOGXOg3
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) November 11, 2023
Milbank describes the scene of Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib‘s censure, as one where the House floor “degenerated into sobs, heckling, fist shaking and sobbing.”
For those who imply, like Whitehouse, that the rancor in the House is new, it’s true that before McCarthy’s ouster no Speaker had ever been cut down by a motion to vacate, and that censure, historically a rare move, has been tried eight times in two weeks.
But Bush, unlike some who think Congress has recently devolved to this place of disgrace, says it is not surprising because, going back, she reminds that “this place is where 1700 members of Congress — this elected body — enslaved black people.”
Bush delivered a fiery defense of Tlaib, objecting to the “reckless manner that people in this House speak when they don’t realize or don’t care that they put targets on the back of actual people, most of whom are black and brown, because of… a lack of seeing the humanity of those who look like Rashida Tlaib.”
Worse, perhaps, than the censure name-calling and blame-throwing — probably understandable under the brutal circumstances of the Israel-Hamas war — are more prosaic challenges like funding the government that continue to bedevil compromise even among a GOP conference with a new Speaker at the helm.
That aspect of the House’s dysfunction is the target of Whitehouse’s “food fight” assertion, as Speaker Johnson’s latest funding effort didn’t win plaudits from either side — and drew derision from the far right, just as McCarthy’s plans had.
I guess Mike Johnson was a bunch of much-a-do about nothing. Really really sad. I think this is the last straw. We need a new party. The Republican Party is not worth saving.
— Debbie M (@GRJO1957) November 11, 2023
Milbank writes:
The serial failures are the direct result of GOP leadership’s stubborn insistence on passing spending bills with Republican votes alone — in contrast to the Senate, where all 12 appropriations bills command bipartisan support.
Whitehouse, sitting among the hundred lawmakers in the reputedly more mature legislative body — one that even with a tenuous 51-49 majority still managed the appropriations feat above — looks with the disdain of a high schooler at this middle school chaos.
But Whitehouse can’t quite view the House with the same remove the high schooler enjoys because it’s his government, too, that the House seems determined to shut down. The Senate and House need symbiosis.
All this is accompanied by a raft of extraneous grudge malarkey, as Whitehouse might put it — stuff that exasperates the majority (not all, but the majority) of Americans in both parties.
That includes House business like Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s attempt to impeach Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas, other attempts to reduce his salary to a dollar a year, and Greene’s attempt to reduce Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg‘s salary to a dollar also — plugged into a spending bill, but really a sort of tardy censure for not arriving in East Palestine, Ohio, until the initial investigation into the train wreck there had been completed. (Note: Mayorkas is under pressure for serious problems at the U.S.-Mexico border that reducing his salary is unlikely to fix.)
The coin of the congressional realm in these cases seems to be the “diss” — a middle school behavioral staple meant to establish or disrupt a pecking order. In food fights, the “diss” is king.
