If Democrats take control of the House but fail to secure a majority in the Senate, what comparative impacts would that have on governance, given Trump still occupies the White House, as opposed to if the Dems take both the Senate and House?
Sure, bills must pass through both legislative chambers but regardless the Executive still retains veto powers (which you know Trump will wield capriciously and spitefully). I suppose judicial appointments are handled by the Senate. Seems like treaties are also supposed to be ratified by the Senate, but nowadays it seems like most ‘treaties’ are actually executive agreements which don’t involve the Senate.
So what else am I missing? How would control of both legislative houses provide a political party a bigger cudgel?.
Remember there are thousand of appointments in the executive branch which must be approved by the Senate. Who are the department heads you are most negative about: Robert F.Kennedy, Jr., Hegseth, Patel, Voight, Gabbard, or one of many others? Many of these heads would not have been approved by the Senate. I expect a Democratic Senate would require a reasonable level of competence before approving appointments. For something like the independent regulatory commissions a Democratic Senate may require package deals–that Democrats must be appointed as well to maintain the traditional bipartisan nature of these commissions.
Agree that confirmations are incredibly important. But everyday legislating is as well.
The majority party has a majority on every committee as well as its chair. That affects all bills; if they can’t get out of committee they normally don’t get to the floor to be voted on. And the committee controls hearings, both on bills and on investigations, as the Republican Jack Smith fiasco just proved to their dismay.
A Republican Senate wouldn’t just have this advantage. They could pass their own version of any bill, which would force the bill into concurrence to get an agreed-upon version with the House.
Trump would also almost certainly force them to get rid of the filibuster so that a mere majority could effortlessly pass any bill.
Bottom line is that the going would be enormously tougher every single day if the Democrats don’t get a majority.
You want the ability to drag people before the Senate Armed Services committee and grill them both for political points and put the fear of god in people
Just thought of another one - the Senate confirms general grade officers. Normally, this is little more than a rubber stamp…’ they say good ol’ Colonel Soandso is gonna retire. We gotta give him his star as a retirement present…’ this normally pro forma procedure suddenly assumes much more significance when you consider they’ve been attempting to conduct a systematic cull of as many officers as they could that would be unwilling to execute Order 66 in the event Trump declares an ‘Emergency’
Controlling the house means no GOP budget reconciliation bills in 2027 or 2028. It also means investigations (which probably won’t accomplish much) but the house can refuse to fund trumps agenda domestically and internationally
If we’re going to be considering all of the scenarios, we should also consider the possibility of controlling the Senate but not the House. Less likely, but still possible.
Despite the stated intentions of the Founding Fathers, the Senate is by far the more powerful of the two houses. The only power reserved for the House is initiating spending bills, which seems like a big deal, but it doesn’t actually matter which house originates a bill, and if you can’t get some ally in the House to initiate the bill, they wouldn’t have voted for it anyway.
I’ll add the power to investigate. Each has it. In each, the party with majority decides what to investigate and can subpoena witnesses.
With control of both, you can have a more unified investigation of subjects, or at least not “investigate” nonsense. Controlling only the house, the senate can continue to investigate Trump witch hunt stuff, and whatever other nonsense they wanna do.
Package deals for independent agencies were pretty common in the before times. Agencies with two vacancies would get one Democrat and one Republican at the same time. But, the Supreme Court has overruled Humphrey’s Executor, and consequently, there are effectively no such things as independent agencies anymore. Trump could agree to appoint people to nonpartisan agencies in package deals and just fire the Democrat seconds after they are sworn in. He may not bother because he will already have a majority at each of them but the potential is always there. Having a supermajority at the Supreme Court hasn’t satisfied him.
It’s even less of a big deal than that. If the House originates and passes any spending bill on any topic, it counts, even if the Senate later replaces every word of the original bill with new text. So a bill passed in the house funding $5000 for a doghouse in East Bumfuck, Iowa can become an omnibus bill governing all taxing and spending for 100 years in the Senate. Every new Congress seems to pass a couple such dog house bills that the Senate just keeps in its pocket for when it needs to pass a budget.
You all are missing the point. This isn’t bypassing the need for both houses to pass the same bill, this is bypassing the need for the Senate to wait until it gets a fleshed out budget bill from the House, because they most likely already have several in the hopper.