WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is off for the campaign season, as lawmakers from one of the most chaotic and unproductive legislative sessions in modern times try to persuade voters to keep them on the job.
The House Republicans led the tumult — painstakingly electing their speaker in a bitter public feud then swiftly booting him from office, something never before seen. But the deeply divided Senate was not immune from the inaction, lumbering through a modest agenda.
Taken together, the lack of big-ticket accomplishments is underscoring a volatile November election season with control of Congress a toss-up.
“The good thing is Congress didn’t allow much to go through law,” said Rep. Ryan Zinke, a former Trump administration Cabinet secretary who is now running for re-election to his House seat in Montana. “But what it didn’t do, either, is it didn’t reach its potential.”
House Republicans blocked not only the Biden-Harris priorities of the Democrats, he said, but “in many ways, we blocked our own agenda.”
The situation the lawmakers find themselves in, particularly the House Republicans trying to preserve their slim majority control, is not academic. The House Republicans now have to face the voters who sent them to Washington on their “Commitment to America” two years ago having come up well short.
New House Speaker Mike Johnson remains upbeat that Republicans will not only stay in control but win more seats to bolster their ranks, but it’s been an uphill slog for him during a tight election year.
“It’s almost impossible,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, adding he would have little patience for hearing out the “idiots” he said Johnson has to contend with in leading a slim four-seat majority.
“You had a group grow up in the House Republican Party who think that voting no and getting nothing done is a victory,” Gingrich said Friday at the Capitol. “You’ve got to find a way to break up this idea that being a nihilist and getting nothing done is a success. It’s not.”
Congress has passed fewer substantive bills than is normal, putting this two-year session on track to be among the least productive sessions ever. The representatives and senators returned to Washington for a brief three-week September work period and essentially punted one of their most important tasks, funding the federal government, for a few more months, to December.
While…