OKPOLICY.ORG
Former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner was once quoted as saying that “a leader without followers is just a man taking a walk.”
Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, must have found himself feeling that way at times this year. One might think that leading a Senate with 40 Republicans and only 8 Democrats would make it easy to put together a 25-vote majority any time leadership needs to. After all, that leaves 15 Republican votes to spare. But this year in the Senate, it turned out not quite that simple.
For starters, this year’s Senate majority was fractured between the so-called “Freedom Caucus” and the remainder of the Senate. The sizable Freedom Caucus, consisting of senators modeled ideologically “conservative” like the U.S. Congressional Freedom Caucus, had its own agenda and often voted in a bloc. When they were locked up together, members of the Freedom Caucus were simply not persuaded by leadership.
The remainder of the Senate was loosely divided between members the leadership could usually count on, plus a swing group that was only sometimes available. The swing group and the Freedom Caucus, together, could on occasion account for enough senators to leave only a slim margin in the Republican caucus for leadership to work with.
Even usually reliable supporters are hard to keep united on every vote. Issues that allow for legitimate disagreement leave little room for error. And if a two-thirds majority is required, it is essentially out of reach.
Adding to the difficulty, the House of Representatives brought its own agenda to the table, none of which was necessarily popular with the Senate. When the end-of-session dealmaking included proposals disliked by one faction or the other in the Senate, the situation became untenable. Thus, the messy ending to this session.
It’s not unusual for the Senate and the House to have blowups toward the end of the session. The two bodies operate surprisingly independently until the end, when they are forced to get together to agree in both chambers. I’ve seen legislative activity on hold for weeks during wrangling between the House and Senate leadership before the two chambers finally get together.
What seemed different this year was the ideological divisions within the Senate majority, which were far enough apart that what one group wanted, the other found totally unacceptable. Apparently, the senators decided the best way to resolve the issue was to take their case to the voters. It may take a couple of election cycles to get this worked out. Let’s hope not.
