Why would the US have a ‘divided’ government with a Republican majority in the House? And what does it mean

The United States will have a “divided government” from January.

The term refers to a situation where one or both Houses of Congress is controlled by a party other than the party to which the incumbent president, currently Democrat Joe Biden, belongs.

The Republican Party’s takeover of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections means the United States will have this type of government once new congressmen take office, according to estimates released Wednesday night (11/16). .

Split governments have been quite common in the country since the 1970s, and the most recent occurred during the last two years of the administration of former President Donald Trump, when Democrats controlled the House.

Experts predict that regaining the House majority that Republicans lost in 2018 could mean two years of political struggle with few legislative successes.

“I think a bipartisan agreement would be very difficult, given the great divide between the two parties on almost every major issue facing the country,” says Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in the US and author of several books on elections. To BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanish news service.

way of a law

According to estimates by the BBC’s US partner CBS News, Republicans won the 218 seats needed to win a majority in the House of Representatives.

Still, according to CBS, Republicans should win a total of 218 to 223 seats in the House, out of a total of 435 seats.

That majority is tight, but enough to stall President Biden’s agenda for the next two years of his term.

But the Democrats managed to retain their minimum majority in the Senate, avoiding the wave of Republican victory many had expected.

The fact that the two Houses of Congress are in the hands of different parties, albeit by a narrow margin, can have many consequences.

In the United States, any House can initiate a legislative process. And for the bill to become law, it must be approved by both parties before it is sent to the president.

A law can be destroyed at any time if one of the chambers votes against it or is vetoed by the president.

Abramowitz argues that control of the House of Representatives could give Republicans more power to investigate the Biden administration and try to impeach its members, and even the president himself.

But he adds that the Democrats’ control of the Senate means that the president can appoint senior government officials and federal judges, including the Supreme Court, before the Republican minority can stop him.

Some people support a divided government because it means that each political party can follow the other, for example, by reining in unwanted spending measures or blocking certain bills to prevent them from being enacted.

Recently, businessman Elon Musk, the current owner of Twitter, advised his millions of followers on the social network to vote Republican in the midterm elections, since President Biden is a Democrat.

His argument was that “shared power contains the worst excesses of both sides”.

Advantages and disadvantages

Control of the House of Representatives gives some relief to the Republican Party, which is disappointed with the midterm election results.

But to enforce this narrow majority, Republican lawmakers will have to act in concert at a time when new signs of dissent are emerging in their ranks.

Several Republicans blame Trump for his failed attempt to gain a stronger majority in the House and regain control of the Senate, despite President Biden’s low popularity in the US and high inflation rates.

Although his name is not on any ballot papers, Trump has supported candidates like himself who refused to admit defeat in the 2020 election and lost key races for Republican control of the Senate.

Despite this and growing doubts about his ability to win the election, Trump announced on Tuesday that he will run for president again in 2024.

The task of uniting Republicans in Congress will largely fall to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who was nominated by the party on Tuesday to occupy the House presidency occupied today by Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

If McCarthy, a Republican from California, gets that unit, Biden will have more trouble pushing his agenda.

Divided governments can force legislators to pass laws with a broader base of support, making them harder to overthrow when power changes hands.

In this case, cooperation ensures legal stability.

But when parties are polarized in their positions, as they are now, a divided government can make it impossible for one party to pass legislation and lead to a stalemate where it is difficult to advance policy across the country.

Major legislative changes often occur in one-party governments (when both Houses are controlled by the president’s party) and the two Houses are in controlled sympathy, such as former President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and the Health Act available from Barack Obama. known as Obamacare.

Divided governments can also lead to further government shutdowns when parties fail to agree on a budget to continue public funding.