Iowa's "Can't Govern Caucus" in Congress
The state's delegation is too busy being part of the problem to help find a solution
Future historians will not be kind to Republicans in the current“Do Nothing” Congress. Their dysfunction appears to be never ending. Their partisanship is not just off the charts, but stratospheric. The only time they actually do something seems to be when they find a path to do something so astonishingly tone deaf and counter productive - some would even say so stupid - that it would be laughable if it weren’t so damaging to our country.
Sadly, Iowa’s current all-Republican congressional delegation will not be seen as exception to any of that. Iowa’s members of the “Can’t Govern Caucus” in both chambers in Congress are hip deep in the current dysfunction future historians will so disdain.
This past week was a banner week for members of the “Can’t Govern Caucus.” Its dysfunction and hyper-partisanship were on astounding and full display.
Let’s start with the House:
After years of claiming they want to all but close America’s southern border because refugees fleeing for their lives were entering the country there, House Republicans - including Iowa’s entire delegation - made clear they don’t want to actually solve the border problem they talk so much about. They just want to rail about it on the campaign trail.
Solving the problem would require some actual governing. They got out of that business at least a decade ago. They are more in the ‘round the clock, 24/7 campaign and demolition business these days.
Oh, Republicans would have been willing to act if the bi-partisan border security plan had called for deliberately drowning refugees by entangling them in razor wire in the middle of a river; or stealing refugee kids from their parents and locking them up in baby jails until they can be sent off to often unvetted new “parents” in the US without the records needed to ever reunite kids with their actual parents.
We know they’d have gone for those two “plans” in a heartbeat because they already have implemented both without objections from their ranks, and in fact, with some enthusiasm.
But when they were offered a serious policy package that offered real results and a humane solution - a package that was the product of bipartisan negotiations and was supported by President Biden - and that would significantly strengthen border security, which is what they say they want to do, they turned up their noses.
The Republican “Can’t Govern Caucus” in Congress collectively ran and dove under the porch where they intend to stay and hide until after the election when it comes to producing a real solution.
The bi-partisan package had $20.23 billion for stepped up border security enforcement. Yet, House Republicans dropped that package like a hot potato the minute Donald Trump ordered them to do so.
Trump doesn’t want to solve the border problems. He wants those problems to fester and compound so he can use them as a campaign issue in his campaign.
All four Iowans in the House went along with Trump’s directive. Not one of them objected: Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA); Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA); Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA); Randy Feenstra (R-4th - IA) - they are all complicit in this dereliction of duty, in this substitution of partisan fire setting in the place of the problem solving they were elected by voters to do.
What did the “Can’t Govern Caucus” in Congress do instead?
Now, this is where things really get stupid.
They tried to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. And even failed to do that, falling short with not enough votes. Apparently accurately counting votes before bringing major matters to the House floor is also beyond their current capabilities.
All four Iowa Republicans in the House dutifully voted for this transparent partisan charade, even as it failed.
You’d think impeachment of a member of the president’s cabinet would be a pretty serious thing, right? You’d be very careful walking up to it. Very careful. It hasn’t been done in nearly 150 years, and even when it was done then, that was the only time in the history of America it has ever been done. Before or after.
Iowa trivia fans may find it interesting to note that the cabinet officer impeached all those years ago was an Iowan, by the way. He was President U.S. Grant’s Secretary of War, William Belknap, a former and previously well regarded Civil War General.
No one behind the attempted impeachment/knee capping of Secretary Mayorkas has ever bothered to state what “high crimes and misdemeanors” they think he committed, or offered any evidence to back their claim, not before the vote nor after it.
An inconvenient fact for Republicans - that is the bar the Constitution sets for impeachment: high crimes and misdemeanors.
But radio silence is what Secretary Mayorkas and the rest of us got from the mighty, brave and great impeachers. Two of the Iowans in the House, Miller-Meeks and Nunn - neither one usually a bit shy about sending out news releases - didn’t even both to put out a statement explaining why they thought the extraordinary and historic action of impeaching a member of the cabinet was necessary or even justified.
The complaints House Republicans did lodge against Mayorkas were little more than weak and flimsy policy disputes that, in some cases were just factually inaccurate, and in most others traced their origins back to a lack of congressionally appropriated funding - funds the bi-partisan package they are hiding under the porch to avoid enacting would have provided.
Iowa’s Republican House congressional delegation owns that absurdity as much as any other Republican in the House.
They all rejected a real solution to, instead, put on a circus. They did it not to strengthen the country, but to bank some campaign fodder. Which tells us just how weak the rest of their arguments are in the 2024 campaign. They have to create and prolong problems so they can run against them.
Republicans certainly can’t run against the strong economy - low unemployment, a record high stock market, 14.8 million new jobs - 353,000 added in just the last month - declining inflation, though, of course, we know they will try.
Over in the Senate:
The same kind of nonsense was going on this past week in the Senate, but at least Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer made the Senators vote on a procedural motion to bring the bi-partisan border package to the Senate floor. It failed, 49 YES - 50 NO, with both Iowa Senators Grassley and Ernst voting to block the Senate’s opportunity to even consider it.
Grassley and Ernst got Trump’s message too, apparently. And they dutifully obeyed.
It is astonishing that Iowa’s entire congressional delegation - in the House and Senate - would choose to follow the dictates of a man with 91 felony criminal counts against him; and choose to let the problems at our southern border continue to fester so that 91 times indicted con man can have something to rant against on the campaign trail.
It’s hard to believe that today’s Iowa Republicans in the US House and US Senate are even members of the same political party that once included the likes of Governor Bob Ray who is remembered to this day for his humanitarian leadership on behalf of Southeast Asian Tai Dam refugees.
This current Republican gang will be remembered, too, long after they are gone for what they are doing in response to today’s refugee challenges.
They will be remembered as a generation of Republicans who would rather have a campaign issue - something to rile people up about, something to make people angry about, something they can get people to project their bias and hateful bigotry against, rather than have a solution.
All on the direct orders of the most corrupt man ever to occupy the presidency.
There will be no statues erected for them.
Only memories of embarrassment and shame.
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Frankly, I’m not astonished by anything out of the national Republicans nor the Iowa delegation anymore and haven’t been for, oh, many years. Nope. Nothing. The Grand Old Party of Pissing and Moaning and Power and P**** Grabbing just doesn’t move my astonishment needle anymore. I’m on board with your perspective…fully….but not astonished. Nope.
Thank you!