Trust is key in collaboration, but Congress is fresh out

WASHINGTON - Congress is consumed by a trust deficit.

The distrust goes beyond the increasingly hostile, personal terms of policy negotiations that have dominated the fall and summer. It stretches all the way to lawmakers and their feelings of personal health and safety.

House Democrats so distrust House Republicans with their own personal safety that metal detectors remain at the doors of the chamber to keep weapons out. They so distrust some Republicans that, for the first time in 11 years and just the 24th time in more than 230 years, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., faced censure Wednesday in the well of the House for posting a violent video depicting him killing another lawmaker and attacking President Joe Biden.

They so distrust Gosar, who has ties to white nationalists, that they also removed him from his legislative committees so that other lawmakers would be limited in their interactions with him.

Republicans, for their part, do not trust Democrats and accuse them of overstating the danger Gosar and his closest allies pose to the chamber, mocking his video as a mere cartoon that meant no harm. They nonetheless spent the past two days warning Democrats that Republicans will return the favor in 2023 if they win the House majority in the midterm elections, identifying Democrats who they will probably try to oust from committees in the not-so-distant future for intemperate statements.

Democrats, also, do not trust Democrats. For more than three months, two wings of that party held pieces of Biden’s agenda hostage to try to get the other side to commit to something akin to a blood oath to do what the other Democratic faction wanted.

Nothing summed up this lack of trust better than the scene late Friday, Nov. 12, as the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) gathered behind closed doors to discuss negotiations with centrist Democrats in the House and Senate.

The table outside their meeting room filled with cellphones covered in yellow notes identifying whose phone it was - the liberals were afraid that their own fellow liberals would leak their discussions to outsiders as the meeting transpired.

“In functional institutions, there’s a semblance of trust that enables collaboration, and that’s not always as abundant as it needs to be in this place. Between the two parties, within both parties, that can be challenging,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., chairman of a special committee designed to craft solutions to make Congress function better.

Kilmer spoke just off the House floor, a couple of feet from the Speaker’s Lobby, at about the same spot where a Jan. 6 clash with Capitol Police and rioters left one dead as lawmakers fled the chamber for a secure location across the street.

That day set the tone for the entire year. In the aftermath, some Republicans expressed a desire to carry their own guns to defend themselves. Those sentiments, combined with provocative statements new lawmakers had been making about wanting to flout District of Columbia gun laws, prompted the detectors to be set up.

Fines were imposed on those who skirted the detectors, and no guns have been detected, prompting some to believe it is an unnecessary intrusion into their workplace.

And yet Gosar, along with several close allies, continues to take actions that support those who have committed violent acts, making it harder for Democrats to find any level of trust to pull back the security devices.

He got censured after posting an animated video that superimposed his face on a character shown killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and that included an attack on Biden.

Earlier this month, Reps. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., visited the District’s prison and demanded entry into what they called “the patriot wing” so they could visit defendants facing charges for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Afterward, Greene tweeted that she sang the national anthem with those prisoners.

Two weeks ago, after 13 Republicans joined most Democrats in passing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, Greene tweeted the 13 GOP office numbers. A few days later, several of them reported violent calls, including some death threats.

On Wednesday, Democrats drew a straight line from that attack to the Gosar video and the surging number of threats against lawmakers.

“Just 10 months ago, this very chamber was attacked,” said Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., chairman of the House Ethics Committee.

Given the chance to speak, Gosar refused to apologize and instead claimed the video was meant to depict “a policy battle” about border security. He said he “self-censored” himself and took down the staff-created video after some considered it a threat against Ocasio-Cortez.

“I will continue to speak out,” he said.

As Democrats look across the aisle, they see little hope beyond a couple dozen of the 213 Republicans in the House.

“With Republicans, it is very tough, because we are still dealing with Jan. 6, whether or not the election was a ‘big lie,’ according to them, the insurrection,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said Tuesday.

Jayapal chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, making her the point person on the decision to have her own ideological kindred spirits surrender their phones before entering a closed-door meeting.

These weren’t centrist Democrats meeting with the CPC, or even Republicans meeting with them. They were all members of the same wing, and they did not feel free to speak in front of one another if their friends had phones.

“It wasn’t about a lack of trust. It was just about everybody being able to feel comfortable that what they were going to say was not in any way, shape or form - with good intent or not good intent - be leaked to somebody outside,” Jayapal said, using a tortured turn of phrase to avoid admitting that liberals don’t trust one another.

They had spent months trying to get centrist Democrats to agree to the approximately $2 trillion package of social policy spending and climate change proposals, and they wanted to work through, word for word, the type of statement they would accept from the centrists before they would agree to support the infrastructure bill.

“It was a touchy moment. We wanted to be able to have a real discussion, where nobody worried about what they were going to say or that it was going to be shared,” she said.

Kilmer is still hoping one of his recommendations will get approved, which would create a common space in which members of the House could just talk to one another in an off-the-record setting - a hangout spot.

The Senate has a lobby off the chamber floor and a senators-only meeting room one floor below. The House doesn’t have anything like that.

“The ability for Democrats and Republicans to just sit and talk is the type of thing that I think most Americans presume . . . happens,” Kilmer said.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., issued an odd declaration - that she trusted Gosar, in that he has shown his true face.

“Paul Gosar has shown us who he is,” Wild said. “Believe him, censure him.”