It took more than a week for the election results to become clear, but it looks like Republicans have won control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is the first federal GOP trifecta since 2017 and makes it official.
But the party’s razor-thin majority makes things even less certain for both Republicans and Democrats, since a single vacancy could change the balance of power in the nation’s capital.
This possibility has brought up an issue that isn’t often talked about: how well older or sick federal lawmakers can do their jobs and even keep their seats.
In November, the general age of the 118th Congress was 57.9 years old in the House and 64 years old in the Senate. There will be 20 oldest House members next year, and more than a dozen from California will be on that list.
The Democrats on that list include Nancy Pelosi, John Garamendi, and Maxine Waters, who will be the third oldest member of Congress next year at 86 years old.
In the past few years, many elected officials have also talked about getting cancer or other serious health problems. In July, Garamendi, who is from California’s 8th District, was told he had a rare blood cancer and started chemo-immunotherapy in Sacramento.
The 79-year-old incumbent won 74% of the vote in the Nov. 5 election and will be going back to Congress for a ninth term.
At the moment, if a federal lawmaker is physically or mentally unable to work but has not resigned voluntarily, there is only one way to replace them: a two-thirds vote to expel the member from either House, which would allow the governor of that person’s state to call a special election. Congress has never seen anything like this happen.
More than 110 years ago, the 17th Amendment made sure that Senators could be appointed temporarily until a special election could be held to fill a vacancy. A special election is also held when a member of Congress dies or quits before the end of their term.
But members of the House don’t have any similar short-term choices.
Federal lawmakers have occasionally talked about calls for a constitutional amendment that would let the House fill open seats with temporary appointments. They say that elected officials should be able to name a list of successors so that there aren’t delays that could change what voters wanted.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, one of the most well-known Democrats in the Bay Area, is one of many people who say that having a backup plan is important for national security and keeping the government running.
In a Thursday interview from D.C., Lofgren said, “It’s pretty clear that if you really wanted to kill democratic government, the way to do it would be to wipe out the House of Representatives.” “I don’t mind saying it because any smart enemy from another country already knows it.” “No one knows about it.”
Lofgren, 76, said that changing the Constitution to make a way to re-assemble Congress before disaster strikes is the best way to stop bad people from choosing violence as the best way to change the House majority.
One problem keeps coming up: to change the Constitution, two-thirds of each chamber of Congress must agree and three-fourths of state legislatures must also agree.
Representatives have warned before that a disaster like 9/11, the 2017 GOP baseball practice shooting, the pandemic, or the Jan. 6 uprising could quickly turn the balance of power in Congress upside down. But after each of those crises, when things calmed down, the last seven speakers either didn’t care about or stopped efforts to change the House’s rules on vacancies.
In 2019, Democrats were in charge of Congress. Lofgren was put in charge of the bipartisan Select Committee on Modernization of Congress, which made 97 suggestions over four years to make Congress work better and more efficiently.
On that list were plans to have each member of Congress make a list of possible successors. If that member died, the governor of that state would pick someone from that list to take their place until the next election. This is the same idea that was talked about in 2001, 2017, and 2021.
Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., led the committee that was dissolved last year, and he called the idea that majority power could be changed for months “horrifying.”
“And we can’t say, ‘Well, that will never happen,'” Kilmer said in September, “Or, ‘Well, we’ll deal with that when the time comes.'” “Because it’s too late when the time comes.”
When it comes to cancer or other serious illnesses, Lofgren hopes that all of her coworkers can get better and go back to work. But she also said that the fact that many members of Congress miss work sometimes because of illness is “not a small thing.”
“Especially with narrow majorities, sickness and death could decide who controls the House instead of the election,” Lofgren said. “You’d think people would also want to stop that, but I think part of the resistance is that people don’t like to think about their own death.”
People were angry when people tried to fix the House’s vacancy problem and protect the institutions of government in the past. This was true even when strong plans were made for succession planning after Congress just barely avoided disaster in September 2001.
Representatives like Republican David Dreier wouldn’t budge because they thought the idea was anti-democratic, even though appointments and special elections were meant to keep one party from getting an advantage.
Lofgren said that there hasn’t been a big partisan fight in the last few years, but it’s not possible to get the two-thirds vote that’s needed.
Most of the trouble has been getting people to pay attention.
“I could rant and rave and spend all my time on something that isn’t going to happen, like changing the Constitution,” Lofgren said. “But I would rather work on things that have even a small chance of happening.” “We just can’t make progress.”
