Bicameralism is a Drag

The House abandoned its planned legislative agenda for the week after over a dozen Republicans voted against their own party to reject a special rule that would allow the chamber to consider several important bills.

Why did Republicans vote to reject the rule? For many, it was because the GOP-led Senate has refused to consider the SAVE Act, a bill that would impose new requirements on would-be voters.1

It’s hard to see how this will get the Senate – a different chamber whose members are elected separately from the House – to take up the legislation. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) described the dissident’s gambit this way: “They’re shitting in their own house because they’re mad at the neighbor.”

To be fair, House Republicans have been trying to get the SAVE Act turned into law for quite a while, passing one version of it last year and adding another version as an amendment to a different bill this year. They have also repeatedly pushed to include it in unrelated bills in the hopes of forcing Senate approval, and President Trump has called for the measure’s enactment as well.

The problem is that, in a bicameral system like ours, there is little that one chamber can do to make the other chamber act. This is no accident. James Madison justified creating a two-chamber Congress to prevent the legislature from being too powerful, because “in republican government, the legislative authority necessarily dominates.” Having two chambers also ensures that both the people (via the House) and the states (via the Senate) are represented – and thus assent to any legislative proposal.

While lawmakers may agree with Madison in principle, the consequences of bicameralism can frustrate them greatly. And House anger at the Senate is an old story. There is a famous saying that has long circulated2 among members of the House: “Remember, the other party in the House is the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.”3

There are tricks that each chamber can use to compel the other to act. Among the most favored is for one chamber to “jam” the other by passing legislation that, for whatever reason, must become law (a so-called “must-pass” bill), then going into recess. The other chamber must either pass that bill or be blamed for its failure. The House did this not long ago to force the Senate to repeal a measure that would have allowed senators to sue the federal government for damages if their phone records were taken without warning.

What House Republicans did this week was not the same thing. And I agree with Congressman Bacon: I don’t see why the Senate would change its agenda just because the House chooses to leave town. This is especially the case because Senate leaders have repeatedly – and, in my view, credibly – argued that they cannot muster the votes to pass the SAVE Act.

Of course, it’s possible that Senate Republicans are lying. Or, the House Republicans who have been most adamant about the SAVE Act don’t really care if the Senate actually passes the measure; they just want senators to vote on it. This would accomplish two political objectives: (a) showing their base that they are doing something (or “fighting,” as they often like to call it), and (b) putting electoral pressure on Republican Senators who vote no, perhaps making them more vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right. Needless to say, neither objective is likely shared by very many senators.

Regardless, Republican backers of the SAVE Act can perhaps take some solace in knowing that their exasperation has been a part of legislative life throughout our history.

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