Syndicated columnist Jamie Stiehm: The House showed the Senate the way, time after time
The People's House to Senate: hello, we are what American democracy - and demographics - look like. The upper Capitol chamber is more country, while the House is more city.
The Senate, the "world's greatest deliberative body," is growing old - literally. It does not deserve all the credit when the House does all the work.
Diverse House Democrats turned in a bravura performance after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot smoke cleared. The two-year session ends Monday, when the new 118th Congress comes in.
In this tragic yet fruitful session of Congress, House lawmakers starkly showed senators how it's done for the greater good.
They are the little engine that could, nudging the big 50-50 Senate train stuck on the tracks.
The Senate rule requiring 60 votes to overcome the brakes (a filibuster) is a huge impediment to the divided body moving forward on most fronts.
Voting rights and extending the equal rights amendment for women, for example, were bills the House passed with robust Democratic majority support.
Despite an eloquent plea from Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., the Senate killed a path for one - with a little help from Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. The Senate didn't vote on the other.
The Democratic House voted to codify reproductive rights when the Supreme Court lashed out at the Roe v. Wade constitutional case. (The Republican 6-3 majority is no friend to the people.)
The rights bill passed the House with flying colors, but failed in the Senate, with 49 votes.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, broke with his party. Yet he criticized the high Court for striking down "the law of the land."
The Senate is often skewed and twisted like that.
It would help to get rid of the 60-vote rule for most legislation. Ironically, the sleepy Senate could do this with 51 votes.
In the woke House, everyone knows where everyone stands. It's like homeroom, majority rules.
Right-wing Republicans will take over the House majority with more plans to tear it down than build it up. They are in disarray and can't reach consensus on the next Speaker. Good luck, guys.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., directed her disciplined caucus to making major marks on social progress.
The Respect for Marriage (equality) bill became law this month, a sweet swan song for the Speaker, stepping down as the House Democratic leader. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn will succeed her.
Democratic House members, galvanized by the Jan. 6 mob storming the Capitol as the session started, did not flinch in the face of outgoing President Donald Trump's violent plot to undo the 2020 election.
Quite the opposite. The legislative branch used its co-equal power to pursue the first attempted coup in American history.
A vast swath remembered the sounds: broken glass, gunfire and howls ricocheting in the marble halls.
The House, not the Senate, conducted a brilliant investigation of the armed mob attack. Interviewing a thousand witnesses, the select committee report concluded the cause came down to "one man": Trump.
The Senate had defeated naming an independent Jan. 6 commission, so Pelosi decided the House would go it alone.
The House impeached Trump twice. The Senate failed to convict him twice - on grave offenses.
The first charge was trying to bribe a foreign leader, Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for political gain. Later, Trump was impeached by the House for inciting the deadly mob attack on the Capitol.
Just seven Republican senators joined all 50 Democrats in voting to convict the former president. Two-thirds (67 members) of the Senate are needed to turn the president out of office.
The House's greatest unsung act was to finally approve making lynching a federal hate crime. It took years and a former Black Panther, Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago, to make it happen.
Rush named the act for Emmett Till, the Chicago youth murdered in Mississippi while visiting family down South. His 1955 lynching was a catalyst for the civil rights movement.
Rush, who's retiring at 76, told me Till relatives came to the House chamber to witness the vote. The Senate then passed the anti-lynching legislation by voice vote. President Joe Biden signed it into law in the spring. Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in the closing days of Congress.
The House saved the soul of America.
© 2022, Creators