Last week, we all watched as the normally inside-baseball process of selecting leaders for a new Congress played out in public. Constitutionally, a new Congress is sworn in on January 3 after the November elections. Part of the business of organizing the new Congress involves selecting party leaders.
Most people don’t pay much attention to the internal organization of Congress – mostly because it is conducted within Congress itself and doesn’t interest the public until something bizarre happens. We saw bizarre last week.
We hear a lot about how our political parties are in decline. We hear people say “I vote for the person, not the party.” If they are disgruntled with how our politics is operating, people will proclaim “we need to get rid of political parties altogether.” But despite how much distaste people have for our political party system, it is undeniable that, within Congress, parties rule.
As the diagram at the top of this essay illustrates, both parties have an internal power structure within which virtually all of the important decisions in Congress are made. People like the Speaker and the Minority Leader often make the news: Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy in the 117th Congress, Kevin McCarthy and Hakeem Jeffries in the 118th Congress. But we don’t hear much of the other representatives chosen to lead their party in the Congress.
Side note: Congresses are given a number based on how many times Congress has organized and started fresh since the first congress in 1789. This reorganization happens every two years. For example, the first Congress served from 1789-1791; the 21st Congress served from 1829-1831; the 91st Congress served from 1969-1971. The Congress that was sworn in last week is the 118th Congress, which will serve from 2023 through 2025 before it has to reorganize and start again. Any legislation that is introduced in a given Congress has to be passed during that Congress or it is dead and would have to start over again.
The two bodies around which Congress organizes are the Republican Conference and the Democratic Caucus. These organizations include all of the members of Congress who identify with the parties. There are currently no representatives who identify as “independent,” although there are three such creatures in the Senate.
Another side note: the Senate has an organizational structure almost identical to that in the House, but I’m not going to talk about it today because they did not behave bizarrely in public last week.
If there were any Independent representatives, they can choose to caucus with one of the parties (this is what the Senate Independents do – they all caucus with the Democrats) or they can choose not to affiliate with either party.
Each party has a leader – labeled the majority or minority leader based on which party has control in Congress. The entire body votes to elect a Speaker; in practical terms, this is always the leader of the majority party, although the routine straight party-line votes we have seen in previous Congresses were not what we saw last week. The weakness of the GOP in Congress was evidenced by the 15 ballots that were required before McCarthy could bring all Republicans in line – or at least enough of them to defeat the 112 Democrats who voted for Jeffries.
The Speaker of the House is responsible for administering the oath of office to the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, giving Members permission to speak on the House floor, designating Members to serve as Speaker pro tempore, counting and declaring all votes, appointing Members to committees, sending bills to committees, and signing bills and resolutions that pass in the House. The Speaker is also second in line, behind the Vice President, to become President should the President be unable to fulfill his or her duties.
While serving as Speaker of the House, the Speaker continues to serve the residents of his or her district and has all of the duties of other Members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Traditionally, unlike other Members, the Speaker does not serve on committees or participate in floor debate. The Speaker has two offices – a ceremonial one in the Capitol for when he is performing the duties as Speaker, and a personal office (in one of the House office buildings) for when he is performing the duties involved in representing his constituency.
But there is also an entire structure of leadership within each party. These positions get little attention, but the career of a member of Congress can be made or broken by the relationship the member has with this leadership structure. The leaders control almost everything that a representative needs to have a successful career: committee memberships and chairmanships, campaign money, success in passing legislation, and visibility on the floor and in the media.
Let’s look at what these leaders do.
Like the Speaker, the majority leader is elected every two years. The majority party selects the majority leader during meetings before the start of a new Congress.
The majority leader is second-in-command to the Speaker of the House. The majority leader schedules legislation to be considered on the House floor; organizes daily, weekly, and yearly legislative plans; consults with Members to understand how party members feel about issues; and works to advance the goals of the party.
The majority leader continues to represent his or her district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Like the Speaker, however, the majority leader usually doesn’t serve on legislative committees and does not lead floor debate on major issues.
The minority leader is selected every two years during minority party meetings before the start of a new Congress. The minority leader serves as the floor leader of the “loyal opposition,” and minority counterpart to the Speaker of the House.
The minority leader is responsible for leading the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives. These responsibilities include speaking for the party and its policies, protecting the minority’s rights, and nominating minority party Members to committees. Like the Speaker and the majority leader, the minority leader continues to serve the residents of his or her district. Usually, like the majority leader, the minority leader does not usually lead floor debate on major issues.
Party whips, like other House leaders, are elected during party meetings before the start of a new Congress. Each party selects at least one chief deputy whip and a number of deputy and other whips, each for a two-year term. Whips are responsible for assisting the party leadership in bringing the party’s bills to the House floor, maintaining communication between the leadership of the party and its members, counting votes on key legislation, and persuading Members to vote for the party position. Whip notices and advisories to all party members about the legislative agenda are key products of both parties’ whip organizations and are posted on each party’s website. A competent whip organization should prevent the embarrassing debacle we saw among the Republicans last week. The parties need whips who can count. One of Nancy Pelosi’s strengths was having whips who could count. Kevin McCarthy needs better whips if he wants to avoid continuing embarrassment. Competent Speakers don’t allow bills to come to the floor unless their
whips have told them that the vote is going to go their way.
But wait, there’s more.
The Republican Policy Committee serves as an advisory committee to House Republicans and provides a forum for Republican Members to discuss legislative proposals and current topics before the House. The committee produces issue backgrounders and conservative policy solutions to the House Republican Conference. Statutory members include the full conference leadership, the committee chairs or ranking members (depending on a majority or minority) of Appropriations, Budget, Energy, Rules, and Ways and Means, and the elected leaders of the sophomore and freshman classes. Appointed members include regional representatives, at-large members, members from the standing committees, and designated appointees by the sophomore (2) and freshman (1) class leaders.
The Republican Steering Committee determines committee appointments for Republicans in the House. The membership includes the Speaker, the Majority Leader, the Whip, and the Chief Deputy Whip. It also includes various other leaders of the conference, committee chairs, and regional representatives.
The Democrats have combined the Steering and Policy functions into one committee – the Steering and Policy Committee, which performs the functions of the two committees that the Republicans have.
Members of Congress decide early in their careers which career path they’re going to take – the leadership path or the legislative path. Kevin McCarthy selected the leadership path – which is why you won’t find much legislation bearing his name. As a party leader, he was a very successful fundraiser for his party. This is one reason why so many members of his party were loyal to him.
Someone like Rep. Jim Jordan has chosen the legislative path – although it’s not easy to find legislation bearing his name. He did not want to be Speaker because he wanted to be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a position he had earned because of his seniority on this legislative committee. This will let him be on television a lot as he launches a myriad of investigations into everything that the Biden family or the Democrats have ever done. He would not have been able to do that as Speaker.
Another example: Rep. Katie Porter has taken the legislative path, as we have seen by her already-famous whiteboards. Rep. Pramila Jayapal appears to be focusing on the leadership path, as she chairs the House Progressive Caucus and also serves as Senior Democratic Whip.
The Republican or Democratic Party’s Campaign Committees - the RCCC (Republican Congressional Campaign Committee) of DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) — are also important parts of the party structure in Congress. These committees strategize about how to allocate campaign funds for upcoming elections – which incumbents and challengers to support in order to increase their party’s representation in Congress.
Here’s one example of the power of these organizations. In 2022, the DCCC (called the D Triple C) chose to put money into incumbent Elaine Luria’s reelection bid in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District but not to put money into Herb Jones’s bid to unseat incumbent Republican Rob Wittman in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District.
This was a strategic decision. Congresswoman Luria had achieved visibility (and some local notoriety) through her participation on the January 6 Committee, and the Democrats felt that if she lost her seat it would reflect badly on the Democratic Party, who had pushed for and dominated this controversial committee. Conversely, they believed that political newcomer Herb Jones did not have much of a chance of defeating a ten-term Republican incumbent in a pretty red district. This didn’t work out as the Democrats had hoped – both Elaine and Herb lost.
This is probably enough for today.
And so it goes. Enjoy your weekend!
Thanks. I knew this, but it's always important for me to see how things are organized. Then I understand them better.