The chairman of the House Democratic Caucus is sending an early message to his troops heading into the 119th Congress: Given the tight margins in the House, attendance will be critical.
“It is important that every member comes to work and does their job. That’s what we’re telling our caucus,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-California) said during a press conference at the Capitol.
“Your presence is incredibly important, and the work we’re doing here is important, and we may need to push back against Republican dominance next year,” he continued. “And to do that, we have to bring them to Washington.”
While Democrats generally fared poorly in this year’s election – losing the Senate and the White House and failing to swing the House – the party outperformed the front-runners in the House, where GOP leaders only held a narrow lead of 220 to 215 will have next congress.
That slim margin will narrow early next year as Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) will join the Trump administration, while former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — who won re-election last month — has already resigned ahead of his failed attempt to take over the Justice Department in Trump’s second term.
These shifts will result in Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who is expected to remain in charge in the next Congress, having a 217-215 majority for several months of 2025, when President-elect Trump hopes to Using GOP majorities in Congress to pass an ambitious 100-day agenda that includes a sweeping extension of his 2017 tax cuts.
The miniature cushion means GOP leaders must achieve complete unity among Republican lawmakers to pass their partisan agenda, as even a single defection would result in a tie – 216-216 – under House rules Failure means.
However, the bill changes if there are Democratic absentees, which would lower the hurdle Republicans would need to pass their bills and thus pad their cushion to allow further Republican defections.
It’s this scenario that Aguilar and other Democratic leaders are already trying to prevent by encouraging every member to be in the chamber when a sensitive bill is passed. The Democratic Caucus chairman said he sympathized with lawmakers who are suffering from earnest illnesses, including several from cancer, but was quick to point out that those members volunteered to run for re-election despite knowing about their health problems.
“That’s life, but members also ran for these jobs,” Aguilar said. “Members ran for these jobs and were re-elected because they knew that was what they were experiencing. And if they asked their constituents to send them to DC to work, I expect them to come to DC to work.”
“That’s how I approach it.”
