Are Members Of Congress Essential Workers During The Pandemic?

Thursday, the House was forced back into session by the unwillingness of at least Thomas Massie (R-KY) to go along with the unanimous consent rule to pass the latest bailout. In the end there were 5 members of Congress who voted NO-- Massie + 3 other extremist Republicans-- Andy Biggs in Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado and Jody Hice of Georgia-- and one values-driven Democrat, AOC. Another Democrat told me he didn't want to vote for the bill because it failed to address the priorities that were more important to Americans than what was in the bill.

About a dozen crackpot Republicans-- Jim Jordan (OH) and Michael McCaul (TX) among them-- tried making the point that there was nothing they were afraid of by refusing to wear masks on the floor, thereby exposing their colleagues to possible COVID-19. Jordan, widely regarded a sociopath to begin with, was seen coughing without adequately covering his mouth. As we noted yesterday, Maryland Democrat, Jamie Raskin, told us that "Jordan’s decision to defy the recommendation of the Capitol physician is not a sign of personal bravery but of personal irresponsibility. If you want to show how brave and tough you are, go volunteer to work with the nurses and doctors. Go spend a week with the grocery clerks or drive a bus. If you have a mask at your disposal and you don’t wear it around other people, you’re just acting like a jerk and advertising it to the world. We wear masks to protect other people as well as ourselves, and that’s just a challenging concept for some right-wing Republicans who are acting like members of a deranged cult without any commitment to the national community. This little episode about masks is reflective of the general irresponsibility and malice which have infected the GOP’s response to the pandemic from the start. And now America has gone over 50,000 deaths and is rapidly approaching one million cases. And they throw a tantrum because they have to wear a mask in public settings. What a disgrace!"

After two votes, the members rushed out of the Capitol and out of the capital as fast as they could. DC has a far higher rate of infection (and rate of death) than most of their hometowns. As of Sunday morning, the nation's capital reported 142 new cases since Saturday, bringing their total confirmed cases to 3,851, which is 5,611 per million people, approaching double the national average. The only worse of states are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Louisiana.

This brings up the question of why, in the midst of the pandemic, Congress isn't meeting-- if not in person, then remotely. From day one, it was a decision made by Speaker Pelosi, one the GOP and many Democrats do not agree with. Yesterday, the Washington Post published a piece by Mike DeBonis and Paul Kane, Hobbled House Majority Frets About Effectiveness Amid Pandemic, explaining the parameters of the problem. "[A]mid the biggest national crisis in generations," they wrote, "the one branch of government where Democrats hold power has largely sidelined itself, struggling so far to adopt remote voting, Zoom video hearings or any of the other alternative methods that have become standard for most workplaces in the age of covid-19. No administration official has appeared at a congressional hearing in over a month. Committees have been unable to meet in person to debate and advance bills. There is no firm date for when the new oversight panel will start its work... [F]rustration is evident among House Democrats, with many increasingly convinced that Congress is functioning as a shadow of its former self, with rank and file largely bystanders as party leaders hastily assemble massive spending bills. More than a dozen told the Washington Post in recent days that the House was failing to meet its constitutional mandate amid an epochal global crisis, abdicating power to the Trump administration as the nation demands strong political leadership." They must be talking to the same members I'm talking to.

That discontent has increased pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other leaders to change more than 230 years of rules to allow for remote deliberations and voting-- and some Democrats are joining calls from Republicans who simply want to bring Congress back to Washington, spurning advice from public health authorities who continue to recommend that Americans work from home whenever possible.

Congress’s inability to adapt some of its core functions to the new reality stands in contrast to other organs of the federal government, including the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments by teleconference for the first time starting next month.

Trump, meanwhile, presides over near-daily televised briefings from the White House and commands the vast powers of the executive branch-- imposing an immigration ban one day and promoting unproven medical treatments the next-- as hobbled lawmakers struggle to provide an institutional counterweight.

While the Democratic-run House considers a path forward on possible remote work, the 100-member, Republican-led Senate is on track to return to Washington as soon as May 4. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in media interviews last week that he intends to quickly return to confirming judges and other Trump appointees.

Bringing the House back stands to be a riskier decision, and its leaders have signaled that they are concerned not only about its current 429 members but also about its much larger population of aides and support staff. But as the only arm of government under Democratic control, it is uniquely positioned to challenge Trump.

...Pelosi, meanwhile, is under pressure from her caucus’s left flank to move quickly on an expansive new relief bill amid the worst unemployment since the Great Depression-- one that directs aid to poor and working-class Americans rather than large employers and small-business owners, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in additional relief for state and local governments.

“Not having Congress here absolutely hurts our capacity to push,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). “Because we are not here, these negotiations are happening behind closed doors. We can’t message on the developments. We can’t go every day and say: Republicans are fighting against hospitals. Republicans are fighting against testing... If we were actually legislating in a normal schedule, then we can report these day-by-day developments and use public pressure to get more. And so I think that we’re losing a lot of leverage.”

Compounding the frustration has been an emerging partisan split on how to adapt the House’s work to the new normal. A push for remote voting that began in mid-March, as the dimensions of the pandemic first became apparent, languished for weeks as House leaders explored the technological, constitutional and security implications of such a change.

Last week, Pelosi endorsed a plan devised by House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) to allow for proxy voting in limited circumstances-- permitting members to authorize a colleague to vote on the floor on their behalf-- but Republicans erupted in protest, and plans for a vote were postponed.

Meanwhile, a measure creating the new investigative committee passed on a party-line vote. Pelosi plans to name members to the panel this week, a spokesman said, in a first step toward getting it functioning.

A bipartisan group of negotiators met Thursday to discuss rules changes, and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) left the meeting with narrower ambitions-- saying he hoped to move forward with remote committee work in the coming weeks to allow for the passage of the yearly defense and spending bills. Proxy voting, or any other remote voting alternative, he said, would be a heavier lift.

“We need to build confidence,” he said. “And how do you build confidence? You do it in small segments, and using the committees to do this, it seems to me, makes sense.”

McGovern said in an interview Friday that the slow pace reflected the innate conservatism of an institution where change is judged not just in the implication for the present, but for decades if not centuries — including scenarios in which the other party might wield the majority.

“To some, it’s not like a big deal, but it is a big deal,” he said. “There were constitutional questions which we had to explore. There are logistical questions. There are security questions. There’s also the reality that not all members of Congress are, you know, at the same level in terms of being comfortable with technology.” Congress is not alone among legislatures in its struggle to figure out how the business of convening and deliberating-- which by definition violate social-distancing guidelines-- can proceed. On Tuesday, the British Parliament unanimously approved new rules that will allow for videoconferencing in debates and during the famous “question time” of the prime minister, while approving a goal of moving toward remote voting using technology. But one of the world’s longest continuing legislatures, at 700 years, still faces great limits. Just 50 of the 650 members will be allowed on the House of Commons floor for debates and only another 120 can participate by video.

In Brussels, the European Parliament has gone entirely online, including a vote-by-email system, and its members report mixed results so far. McGovern said Friday that he had been in touch with that body’s officials about their system.

In U.S. state capitals, the legislatures have taken different approaches. In Richmond, the state House of Delegates met under a canopy on the lawn outside the Capitol, while the smaller state Senate took over a massive event space inside a nearby museum.

New Jersey, Vermont and Kentucky adopted some version of either remote electronic voting or proxy voting, and in Oklahoma, the state House has operated similarly to the U.S. House, with very small groups of lawmakers allowed on the floor to vote.

Many Democratic House members identified another obstacle last week: The belief that House Republicans are slow-walking any rules changes out of political self-interest-- that is, a more functional House means a more powerful counterweight to Trump and a GOP-majority Senate.

...House lawmakers said they are perplexed that three months after federal authorities confirmed the first covid-19 case in the United States, Capitol Hill remains in a state of suspended animation. None have been more exasperated than the freshmen who propelled Democrats back into the majority in 2018-- a group of more than 60 relatively young lawmakers, many from national security or private-sector backgrounds.

...McGovern said Pelosi “has come to the understanding” that something will have to be done in the coming weeks to expand remote operations even if Republicans do not agree.

“Shame on us if we don’t do something,” he said. “I mean, what happens if this virus comes back, surges in the fall more fiercely, and even more extraordinary measures have to be put into place? The bottom line is, we need to be ready for that.”

Yet Democrats left Washington again Thursday-- six weeks after the House first left Washington amid the pandemic-- with no firm remedy in place for how to hold committee hearings, craft legislation and get it ready for a House vote.

Reporting for Vox a few days earlier, Ella Nilsem and Li Zhou wrote that Pelosi and Hoyer failed to get minority leader Kevin McCarthy to agree to proxy voting so, rather than pass it on a party-line vote, they canceled-- or postponed-- the decision. "Had the resolution passed," they wrote, "it would have been an unprecedented change-- House rules say that members shall be present to vote-- in keeping with the unprecedented challenges of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Instead, Pelosi announced Wednesday on a caucus phone call that a bipartisan group will consider ways to do remote voting and committee work, to allow Congress to social distance during the pandemic."

The Rules Committee resolution would establish proxy voting during times of a pandemic... The resolution spells out that proxy voting would be temporary and would end after 60 days unless leadership and the Sergeant at Arms decided there should be another 60-day extension if a pandemic were to continue. The period of time for proxy voting could also be terminated early by the House Speaker.

The resolution also spells out the process of how proxy voting will occur; the member who cannot physically be present will submit a signed letter (which can also be submitted electronically) to the House clerk designating who their proxy is.

The proxy would then enter their colleague’s vote into the record during voting, whether done electronically or through a roll call vote. The proxy for a member will indicate they are voting on behalf of another colleague during voting and is expressly not allowed to change their colleague’s vote.

What the resolution did not allow is remote voting being done by Zoom, FaceTime, or any other type of video-conferencing service. Pelosi has stated her opposition to this in the past, even though Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House endorsed the idea on Tuesday.

“I have maintained from the beginning of this discussion that the electronics that we use, like FaceTime, Zoom, Teams-- there are a number of different technologies available-- millions of people are using those regularly,” Hoyer told reporters. “Frankly, if I’m in my den here in Saint Mary’s County and the clerk is looking at me over FaceTime and I say ‘aye’ and the clerk recognizes me, they mark me as ‘aye.’ I’m not asking anybody else to cast my vote for me; I’m casting it personally.”

While House Republicans have registered their displeasure with the idea, with several lawmakers insisting members should be physically present to conduct the House’s business, Democrats had enough votes to pass the changes along party lines.

But because such a historic proposed change to House rules would impact lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, Pelosi ultimately decided to take more time and allow Republicans to weigh in before voting on such a change.

Man-In-The-Middle by Nancy Ohanian