On Washington: How Congress Is Weaponizing a Series of Hot-Button Votes
WASHINGTON — Members of Congress like to say that governing is not a game, but they are increasingly playing round after round of gotcha.
As a watershed election looms next year and little of real significance is happening on the legislative front, lawmakers are consumed with trying to trap one another with hot-button votes that don’t have much to do with real legislative business.
Whether such show votes really matter when it comes to actual voters is another issue entirely. It is hard to find a case in which an incumbent senator or representative was knocked off solely because of an ill-considered decision in a postmidnight vote-a-rama in the Senate or on a particularly devious motion to recommit in the House.
“It’s unlikely that a single vote will undermine a member’s re-election chances,” said Nathan L. Gonzales, the nonpartisan political handicapper and editor and publisher of Inside Elections.
Still, that is not going to stop anyone — particularly Republicans at the moment — from trying. Much of the activity on Capitol Hill these days is more akin to trolling on Twitter than tackling national priorities.
For instance, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, is gleefully preparing to force Democrats to take a stand on the so-called Green New Deal resolution, which, among other things, calls for 100 percent of American energy to come from clean sources within 10 years.
The nonbinding document is essentially a set of ambitious progressive goals that has zero chance of passage in a Republican-controlled Senate with Donald J. Trump as president. As legislation, it would take years to develop and push through Congress. But Republicans are itching for a vote now to get Democrats, notably the presidential contenders, on the record. They have relentlessly mocked the Green New Deal as a framework for eliminating airplane travel and cheeseburgers because of restrictions on fossil fuels and cow emissions.
“We have done some wacky things on our side, but this is the wackiest thing I have ever seen,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee.
Democrats call the coming Republican maneuver a cynical stunt. They have suggested they will simply vote “present” and not be recorded on the resolution — a stance that may cost them with progressives who want Democrats to have the courage of their convictions no matter how premature the vote might be.
At the same time, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, has demanded that Republicans offer an alternative, an offer they seem unlikely to accept. He also wants a vote on a separate Democratic resolution that would call for immediate action on climate change. His trap is to try to either force Republicans to admit climate change is real or deny it — a result that could hurt them no matter the outcome.
“When is Leader McConnell going to schedule time for consideration of this and other climate change legislation?” asked Mr. Schumer, who is newly embracing climate change as an issue that appeals to younger voters.
While the Senate is playing green deal or no green deal, the House is caught up in an arcane struggle that gives the term “inside baseball” a bad name. Newly relegated to the minority, House Republicans have been tormenting the Democratic majority with what is known as a motion to recommit.
It is basically one final opportunity for the minority party to amend legislation about to pass on the floor. It has been transformed by both parties over the years as minority leaders have learned to spring politically charged M.T.R.s, as they are known, on the majority at the last minute. Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, a former member of the House Democratic leadership who cut his political teeth on House races, was one of the early adapters of a weaponized motion to recommit and considered it a form of psychological political warfare.
“Obviously, they are ‘gotcha’ amendments designed to give people political problems,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader. “And by the way, that’s what we did. So this is not a new, you know, invention of the Republicans.”
For Democrats, the problem is that Republicans seem to be better at drafting the motions. Now some are passing with the support of nervous new Democratic lawmakers from tough districts who don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of issues such as gun sales, immigration, anti-Semitism or domestic violence. The split has incited an internal party fight and has leaders worried that the more the motions pass, the more they will be considered serious rather than procedural and lead to political problems down the road.
“You have members who won by less than a percentage point, and I have sympathy for them,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, who oversees the Rules Committee. But he said Democrats could not allow Republicans to carry the day with their political guerrilla attacks. “We cannot legitimize their underhanded tactics. It is just to put people in a bad spot.”
The Republican success has some Democrats calling for a rules change to either dilute or eliminate the motion to recommit, talk that has Republicans crying foul. They say Democrats are already retreating on their pledge to make the House more transparent and bipartisan than it was under Republican control the previous eight years.
“Here we are just two months into the new Democratic majority, which was touted to be about open debate, with an issue about process,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Rules Committee. He called discussion of changes to the motion to recommit “an affront to the institution.”
Mr. McGovern said that any consideration of changes would be part of an extensive dialogue. After spending a fair amount of time in the minority himself, he showed some reluctance to tinker with the motion to recommit no matter the potential penalty for Democrats.
“I still believe the minority should be guaranteed a constructive voice in the legislative process,” Mr. McGovern said. “You can’t just shut everybody out. That is not what this place is about and shouldn’t be about.”
It probably also shouldn’t be about a running game of gotcha.