House Democrats continue to do the legislative heavy lifting

As awful as the current Congress is, it would be an overstatement to argue that lawmakers haven’t passed anything of note. As we discussed earlier, NBC News reported overnight on the House passing a $78 billion tax package that includes an expansion of the child tax credit.

The fate of the legislation in the Senate is certainly of interest, but so too are the details of the House vote: The compromise measure on tax policy cleared the lower chamber with bipartisan support, but Democratic votes outnumbered Republican votes, despite the fact that there’s a GOP majority in the House, and despite the fact that the bill enjoyed the support of Republican leaders.

The fact that the Democratic minority did the legislative heavy lifting was not unusual. On the contrary, this keeps happening.

As 2023 came to an end, and members of Congress wrapped up their work on Capitol Hill, Axios highlighted an underappreciated pattern: “Republicans may hold the House majority, but Democratic yeas outnumbered GOP votes on every major bill that landed on President Biden’s desk this year.”

One month into 2024, the pattern remains intact. Two weeks ago, a bill to prevent a partial government shutdown cleared the House with 314 votes, but most of those votes — 207 — came from the House Democratic minority. Or put another way, GOP leaders, eager to avoid a crisis of their own making, relied on Democrats to govern.

On the tax package, the partisan split was narrower, but a majority of the votes, once again, came from the chamber’s Democratic minority.

The circumstances are becoming routine. Last September, to prevent a government shutdown, it was Democrats who provided most of the votes. Two months later, again to prevent a government shutdown, Republicans also relied on Democratic votes.

During the mid-November debate on that bill, Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois joked during floor remarks, “Next week, Americans will gather around their dinner tables and share what they’re thankful for. I hope my Republican colleagues will use that moment to reflect on how lucky you are to work with us House Democrats.”

A month later, when the House needed to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Democrats again provided a majority of the votes.

And when Republicans threatened to crash the economy on purpose by leveraging the debt ceiling, it was — you guessed it — Democrats who cast most of the votes to pass the bipartisan solution.

When John Boehner was a Republican House speaker, he too found himself dependent on Democrats when his far-right members didn’t want to govern. During Paul Ryan’s tenure, it happened some more. When Kevin McCarthy did the same thing, it contributed to the intraparty revolt that cost him his gavel.

And now, here we are, watching House Speaker Mike Johnson do the same thing.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.