Oct. 9, 2023
Lee Drutman wrote for The Atlantic on potential reforms for the House of Representatives.
In ousting McCarthy from the speakership last week, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and several Freedom Caucus members still clamored for regular order, a legislative process in which bills are deliberated on committees with input from various members before getting to the floor. But Gaetz and company were madder about something else—that the speaker they had purposefully weakened at the beginning of the year had gone ahead and compromised with Democrats to pass a spending bill.
What Gaetz and his cohort don’t seem to realize is that by heightening partisan divides over unwinnable fights on the debt ceiling and government spending, they are undermining the conditions necessary for a more decentralized, and functional, Congress.
The Freedom Caucus has a point: The House speakership, in its current form, is too powerful. More committee autonomy could make for a better, more productive Congress—and might at least temporarily placate the rebels on the right. The challenge is that a more open process demands a far less polarized party system than we have today, one that’s not zero-sum, in which members seek out difficult compromises and operate on a system of trust and good faith. In a polarized Congress, a more open system just creates more opportunities for individual bad-faith actors to derail the legislative process.