It wasn’t pretty, but the Republicans won a much-needed victory Thursday in a raucous special election for Montana’s sole seat in the House of Representatives.
The winner, Greg Gianforte, faces misdemeanor assault charges for allegedly choking and body-slamming a reporter the night before the election. He joins a Republican House majority with problems even more serious than the prospect of a member who could end up in jail.
The GOP faces a looming fight over raising the debt ceiling; a still-unresolved effort to repeal Obamacare; and an attempt to reform the tax system before Christmas. All three efforts are in danger of delay or defeat.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
It seems like a distant memory now, but it was only about six months ago that Republican leaders were giddily proclaiming a new political era.
“Welcome to the dawn of a new unified Republican government,” House Speaker Paul Ryan crowed, a week after Donald Trump’s surprise victory and the party’s no-less-surprising ability to hang onto a thin Senate majority. “This will be a government focused on turning President-elect Trump’s victory into real progress for the American people,” Ryan promised.
What a difference half a year makes.
Ethical stumbles, rookie errors and sheer political arrogance have left the Republican agenda — and the GOP legislative majority itself — in grave peril.
The problems began with the confused, disastrously rushed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. After bitterly divided House Republicans barely managed to get a repeal bill passed — a bill that has still not been transmitted to the Senate for further action — the Congressional Budget Office estimated the measure would result in 23 million Americans being uninsured by 2026.
That virtually guarantees the Senate will kill or substantially rework the legislation, leaving the Republicans’ No. 1 promise — shouted daily on the campaign trail by Trump and virtually every Republican lawmaker — unfulfilled.
The second main agenda item, tax reform, also looks shaky: Congressional leaders have already fallen behind the aggressive schedule needed to produce a bill by August.
There’s no secret about the reason for the rocky Republican rollout: the steady drip-drip-drip of the Russia investigations. The Trump administration is playing defense against multiple probes of the undisclosed contacts that key members of the President’s campaign had with Russian operatives bent on influencing the 2016 presidential election.
Washington, even under one-party control, can’t function so long as lawmakers and the news media continue to get buffeted by new revelations, such as the failure by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to note his contacts with Russian officials and the remarkable spectacle of the former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, announcing he will invoke the Constitutional right against self-incrimination rather than testify before Congress about his own dealings with Russia.
These aren’t just gossipy distractions. Enacting major legislation requires a White House that is focused, confident and coherent. That is how the Reagan administration led a divided Congress to tax reform in 1986 and how the Obama White House won passage of a stimulus bill, auto industry bailout and health care reform.
The White House, beset by leaks and low morale, is in no position to lead Congress through complex legislative fights. In fact, the overlapping Trump-Russia investigations require investigation and hearing time, adding considerably to Congress’s already full inbox. That doesn’t leave much time for reworking the health care system (estimated at one-sixth of the national economy) and even less time for tax reform (the other five-sixths).
It remains to be seen whether voters will punish Republican members of Congress for the problems of the man in the White House. But while the Trump-Russia investigation grinds on, congressional Republicans would do well to find other ways to enact their agenda, mostly by working closely with GOP governors.
Congress will need substantial buy-in at the state level to enact many of the big-ticket Republican agenda items, from reforming health care to building a border wall and other infrastructure. Now would be a good time to work with GOP governors on Republican agenda items like state-run high-risk health insurance pools and shovel-ready infrastructure projects.
