So Who Will Be the Next GOP Majority Leader?

Also: Teaching legislators to do their job, and voting on the legality of eating cats and dogs.

Dall-E-3’s effort at a comic of senators climbing the greasy poll. Keep working at it, Dall-E-3.

There is a lot of very good content being published on Congress these days. That is one reason I write this Substack: to highlight for readers publications, podcasts, etc. that they may have missed but are of very high quality.

By the way, if you have suggestions for me to consider—post them below as comments or email them to me at my AEI email address.

So, who will replace Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)?

Kelly D. Johnston, a former secretary of the Senate and longtime GOP guy has a couple of posts on his Against the Grain Substack that will help you place your bets.

• How Senate Leadership Elections Work: Part I

• How Senators Choose Their Leader: Part II

His posts give you a sense of the drama that will surround it and the mechanics.

“When the GOP Senators gather behind closed doors, likely in the Mansfield Room of the Capitol, no one other than the Senators and, maybe, a couple of staff necessary to facilitate the election will occur. The staff directors for the leadership offices won’t even be in the room. Secret votes are by paper ballot, probably a blank piece of paper and a pen where Senators will enter the name of their preferred candidate and place them in a box. It’s old-fashioned stuff, but traditions matter deeply in the Senate, where they still feature two (unused and nicely polished) brass spittoons underneath the respective leaders’ desks on the Senate floor.”

Johnston also describes the machinations as inevitably more than one senator will waant to climb that greasy pole to perch as his party’s Senate leader.

If I had to place a bet, it would be on… heck, I do not know. Does Sen. John Thune (SD) have more friends who believe in him than Sen. John Barasso (WY)? Or is John Cornyn (TX) the guy his copartisan think can best facilitate the Republicans to work collaboratively and with whomever will occupy the White House come January 2025? For all the cameras and media, the Senate remains a very private place and I cannot be certain who will get the nod.

Teaching Legislators how to Do Their Jobs

Santi Ruiz, “How to Teach Congress to Do Its Job,” Statecraft, May 8, 2024.

Nobody who comes to Capitol Hill is fully ready for the job. How could they be? How Congress operates is exceedingly complex, and the executive branch is immense and complex. To help legislators, we have the legislative branch support agencies. In this article, Santi Ruiz intervies me about the Congressional Research Service, an agency that plays an invaluable role in informing our national legislature.

Yet, CRS has its challenges. Its statute has hardly changed in 50 years, its last two directors were pushed out of their jobs for management issues, and the agency faces a variety of challenges, including party polarization on the Hill and competition from private firms who provide expert analysis. Please pour a cup of coffee and give this long conversation a read!

Transactional Politics and the Last Train Leaving the Station

Gabe Fleisher, “Christmas Comes Early at the Capitol,” Wake Up to Politics, May 6, 2024.

“If the bill has such lopsided support, why won’t it breeze to passage? Welcome to Congress, where nothing is that simple.

“With the government already funded and the debt ceiling raised, the FAA bill is one of the last “must-pass” pieces of legislation left for this year. It’s the “the last train leaving the station,” as one staffer put it to Axios. (I would have gone with “last plane leaving the runway,” but whatever.)

“Because Congress passes so few major bills that it doesn’t absolutely have to, senators from both parties view this as their best opportunity to get their pet projects passed before campaign season — which means they’re all trying to tack various priorities onto the bill as amendments, complicating its passage.”

Note: This is a good example of legislators behaving rationally and it leading to a slowdown in legislative action and the possible failure of a bill with majority support in the chamber. It also is a good reminder that passing legislation is a complex undertaking that requires the incentives and preferences of a lot of people to line up.

Voting On the Legality of Eating Cats and Dogs

Prof. Casey Burgat chats with former Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX) on his Mastering the Room podcast. One of Hurd’s first congressional expriences was deciding how or if to vote on a bill that would ban the eating of cats and dogs. It was, as he noted, a little confounding as he had never thought about the topic. The discussion ranges from Hurd’s time as a kkid in Texas who thought he might be a computer programmer to the serendipitous experences that led him to serving in the CIA and then Congress.

Thanks for reading, and please forward Substack this to anyone who might enjoy it!