Remember the House?

There is a certain rhythm to the way in which the House of Representatives conducts its business.

The House begins each year with a few weeks of voting before cutting out for an extended Easter break. Then they come back, spend a few more weeks doing things and then taking a lengthy break for August. September is often spent finalizing spending for the next fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1.

After that’s done, things get patchy. In years with midterm elections, the House tends to take most of October off so that they can head to their districts and convince people to re-hire them for their jobs. It’s a bit like knowing that you have an upcoming performance review with your boss so you skip work for three weeks to figure out how to convince her how good at it you are.

Then, a few more weeks of voting and that’s that. Visualized, the pattern looks like the chart below.

You might notice something odd about that chart. There are years with unusual blank periods, like the stretch in 2020 when there weren’t many votes cast thanks to the advent of the coronavirus pandemic. But there’s also a significant stretch in the far-right column — that is, this year — during which no votes have been taken.

Since 2008, the House has cast an average of 91 votes from Aug. 1 to Oct. 31. This year, the House has cast only 64. What’s more, the House has cast no votes since Sept. 19. Since 2008, the House has cast an average of 55 votes from Sept. 19 through Oct. 27, the only exception being in the midterm election year of 2014.

Again, midterm years are an obvious exception. But this isn’t a midterm year.

It’s not as though they weren’t planning to go into session, to pass legislation and resolutions. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) released a calendar earlier this year that showed the House spending 16 days in session this month. That has not happened.

Perhaps it’s because of the government shutdown, you might be thinking. Well, even when the government was shutdown in October 2013, the House was still casting votes and still showing up to work.

The work stoppage really began a bit before Congress’ failure to finalize a spending bill. Sept. 19 was a Friday. The following Tuesday, Sept. 23, Adelita Grijalva won an election to represent Arizona in the House. Ever since, she’s been waiting to take her seat and, ever since, there have been no votes taken.

Conspiracy theorists will note that Grijalva’s election meant that there are now 218 representatives and representatives-elect who support a petition that would force the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. But I’m not a conspiracy theorist, so feel free to run with that if you’d like.

Speaking to the press on Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was asked why he wouldn’t bring members back to DC to do the work of governance — even work that isn’t voting-related. Johnson insisted that he was eager to bring people back to “regular legislative session,” but that this couldn’t happen while the government was shutdown, for some reason.

Of course, it may not be entirely up to him.

“I’m the speaker and the president,” President Trump is reported to have said, recognizing that his grip on the House Republican caucus, like his grip on Republicans generally, is much tighter than the speaker’s. And with the House out of session and the government shut down, Trump has an excuse (albeit not a valid one) for sidestepping the appropriations process and refusing to disburse money as he is obligated to do. What incentive is there for Trump (and therefore Johnson) to get back to normal, much less to seat another Democrat?

So here we are, with the members of the federal government specifically tasked with representing the people sitting at home while the president does what he wants.

Photo: Trump and one of his staffers. (White House/Flickr)