Byron York’s Daily Memo: Progressive Democrats go for it

PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS GO FOR IT. During the campaign Republicans warned that if Democrats won control of all of Washington — White House, House, and Senate — they would try to enact a progressive agenda that would have seemed crazy, even to some of those very same Democrats, just a few years ago. If elected, the warning went, those Democrats would try to pack the Supreme Court, to make Washington DC a state, and perhaps even try to pass reparations for slavery.
 
Now, it’s happening. House Judiciary Committee Democrats have written a new bill to increase the size of the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee approved a DC statehood bill. And also on Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee approved a reparations bill.
 
First, the Court. The bill was put together by Judiciary chairman Representative Jerrold Nadler in the House and Senator Ed Markey in the Senate. It would add four justices to the Court, increasing its size to 13 from the current nine justices.

Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!

If it became law, the bill would just happen to give President Joe Biden the ability to tip the balance of the Court from Republican to Democrat. At the moment, there are six Republican-appointed justices and three Democratic-appointed justices. Add four more Democrats and — Voila! — Democrats will have a seven-to-six majority.
 
Democratic activists will claim that the Court is somehow “broken” and that it needs to be “reformed.” But there’s no doubt the move is payback for 1) Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal in 2016 to consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, and 2) McConnell’s confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett just before the election last year. Democrats have been stewing about it ever since. “The anger has taken hold within the Democratic Party,” reports NBC News, “and the new push indicates that it has not dissipated in an era when the party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress.”

Of course, Democratic control of the Senate is extremely tenuous. The body is tied 50-50 and requires the vote of Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties. That means Democrats will have to first kill the filibuster and then, in a partisan vote, have all 50 members on board to make something happen. That makes Court packing highly unlikely.

The DC statehood bill is called The Washington, DC Admissions Act. It passed the Oversight Committee on a party-line vote, 25 to 19. It would create, out of part of the current Washington, DC, the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth and would without doubt add two new Democratic senators to the Senate. Its passage in the full House is guaranteed — the House passed the same bill last year. But again, the Senate would have to kill the filibuster and then muster all 50 Democratic senators to give the vice president a chance to break a tie vote.

Finally, reparations. The bill passed by the Judiciary Committee would establish a commission to recommend ways “to address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865.” The same bill has been proposed multiple times since it was first introduced by the late Democratic Representative John Conyers in 1989. “This year,” reports NPR, “the legislation has the support of more than 170 Democratic co-sponsors and key congressional leaders.” But again, even if the bill passes the full House, it would have to clear the same hurdles in the Senate.

Progressive Democrats know all this is unlikely to happen. In part, they are taking action to show their base that they really mean it. But they also know that they are laying a foundation. Maybe they can’t make their goals a reality now. But they’re getting started.
 
If anything, the Democrats’ move this week highlights the importance of the filibuster in preventing Congress from veering off in wild directions. The more momentous the move — say, expanding the Supreme Court, or expanding the United States itself — the more likely it is to have public support if it can command a broad majority in Congress. It is audacious of today’s Democrats to believe they can enact such far-reaching changes in American governance in a 50-50 Senate. But that’s what they’re trying to do. And now they are under way.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.