Bipartisanship? In the next Congress? With a GOP majority in the House and a bare Democratic majority in the Senate? Seriously?
Consider two big reasons.
First, there are more areas of potential agreement than you might think. They include China policy, antitrust, implementation of infrastructure investment, and even same-sex marriage, to name four. Some of these policies have already passed, and others will get done in the lame-duck. They are a good starting point for a working relationship in the next Congress.
Second, there is the paradoxical power of the weak. The weak in this case are the anti-MAGA House Republicans. There are maybe 15 of them on a good day, far fewer than the ultra-right that dominates the House Republican caucus.
Yet with the tiny Republican majority, the MAGA pressure on would-be Speaker Kevin McCarthy to lurch even further to the far right gives the relative moderates power far beyond their numbers. Moreover, several of them, particularly in New York, enter Congress threatened by losing their seats in 2024, and if they support the far-right agenda, they likely will.
These moderates have warned McCarthy not to count on their votes. Some legislators have even raised the possibility of moderate Republicans working with House Democrats in a deal to elect a centrist Republican as House Speaker.
This is perfectly legal under House rules. In 1859, Republicans had a plurality but not a majority. After several ballots, the compromise Speaker was a former Whig affiliated with neither party, William Pennington of New Jersey, elected by a mix of Northern Democrats and Republicans. In 1923, it took Republican Frederick H. Gillett nine ballots to win election as Speaker, as progressive Republicans (who had more in common with today’s progressive Democrats) withheld their votes and held out for reforms.
Something similar was done, in reverse, in New York state. Despite a Democratic majority in the state Senate, several corporate Democrats calling themselves the Independent Democratic Conference allied themselves with the Republican minority in the 2013-2014 session to defy their own caucus and elect a Republican leadership. And just in the past week, nine Democrats and eight Republicans formed a bipartisan governing majority in the Alaska state Senate, subjecting three MAGA Republicans to the minority.
Beyond the weakening of MAGA Republicans produced by parliamentary maneuvering, there is a surprising amount of bipartisan agreement on several issues.
On the economic containment of China, many Senate Republicans are more hawkish than some Senate Democrats. A bipartisan consensus supports President Biden’s recent policies to toughen the rules on export controls and vigorously enforce of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The bipartisan US-China Economic and Security Review Commission has issued a unanimous report calling on the administration and Congress to suspend China’s permanent normal trade relations with the U.S., which were granted during the Clinton administration in 1999.
The Respect for Marriage Act, codifying the right to same-sex marriage, passed the House, 267-157, on July 19, with 47 Republicans joining all Democrats in support. The Senate invoked cloture, 62-43, on Nov. 14, with 12 Republicans and all Democrats voting aye. The Senate passed the bill with an amendment 61-35 Nov. 29, and Dec. 8 the House passed the amended bill, 258-169, on to the White House.
Antitrust is somewhat trickier. Several Republican senators favor tougher antitrust laws, both out of support for small businesses that get undermined by monopolies, and out of opposition to Silicon Valley’s Democratic leanings. Here the obstacle is not the Republicans; it’s a Democrat, namely Chuck Schumer.
Earlier this year, the Senate Judiciary Committee reported two major antitrust bills—the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act. The first would prevent platform monopolies from giving preference to their own products at the expense of rivals that use their platforms. The second would end Apple and Google’s extortionate pricing on their mobile app stores, allowing small developers to innovate and compete without granting a king’s ransom to monopolists. The bills were approved with strong bipartisan support by the Judiciary Committee (16-6 and 20-2).
The majority leader is juggling many priorities for the lame-duck session. But even though Schumer has the votes to pass the antitrust legislation, he has repeatedly failed to bring it up for floor action, making excuses about higher-priority bills or vulnerable senators being up for re-election. There is some reason to believe that he would be just as happy to let it die. Schumer needs a united caucus for his top priorities in the lame-duck session, and he has been under pressure from Democrats with close ties to tech not to pass this legislation.
Progressives have been pressing Schumer to call up these bills since June. The White House has treated antitrust as must-pass legislation. It still may happen. As often is the case, corporate Democrats are almost as much of a problem as MAGA Republicans.
And let’s not forget the bipartisan infrastructure act, spending over a trillion dollars, about half of it new money. It passed the Senate, 69-30, with even Mitch McConnell in support. The vote was closer in the House, 228-206, where some progressive Dems held out for more and most Republicans did not want to give Biden this victory at all. Thirteen Republicans supported it, while six Democrats voted against it.
But the bill did pass, and it provides concrete investments to every state and congressional district. In the bad old days, this would have been disparaged as pork barrel. But this means that Republicans, despite the games they play with the debt ceiling and the FY 2023 budget, have a political stake in making sure that money actually gets spent.
If America is ever to get back to something like a normal democracy, we need more genuine bipartisanship—which by definition isolates and marginalizes the MAGA far right. As the infrastructure, antitrust, and marriage legislation shows, this can and should be bipartisanship on progressive terms.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect (prospect.org) and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. Like him on facebook.com/RobertKuttner and/or follow him at twitter.com/rkuttner.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2023
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