The Take Bakery: Anonymous Congress

What happens when members of Congress take off their uniforms?

It’s groundhog week for Mike Johnson.

Once again, the speaker struggled to convince his caucus to abandon certain hard-lined ideological commitments and vote to prevent a government shutdown. In times of such high stakes legislating, I bet Mike Johnson and his gavel-wielding forebears would’ve appreciate it if the partisan media and interest groups would just close their eyes, and allow Congress to pass the legislation with some peace and quiet.

The solution? Anonymous Congress.

With anonymous Congress, we can turn every tormented congressional leaders dream into reality. The premise is simple: members of the House and Senate are allowed, periodically, to vote completely anonymously.

The American public generally valorizes representatives who publicly “votes their conscience.” But there are valid political reasons why many refuse to do so. Maybe there’s a special interest group breathing down their neck and threatening to fundraise for a primary challenger. Maybe their district is significantly conservative or liberal, and they just can’t be seen collaborating on bipartisan legislation. Maybe they can’t stomach taking an ideological stand that will jeopardize their regular appearance on Jesse Waters or Rachel Maddow’s show.

Whatever the reason, I believe we can get the courageous and principled leadership we desperately crave, as long as they have the freedom to demonstrate that legislative bravery in private.

Anonymous Congress

In an effort to insulate members from extreme partisanship, congressional rules require the House Speaker and Senate majority leader to call special joint sessions that allow members of Congress to vote completely anonymously in an attempt to mitigate the vetocracy and mainline some bipartisan consensus legislation.

• Anonymous Congress will be held once every fiscal quarter and will last one week.

• During anonymous Congress, each chamber will be temporarily run by a trio that includes the party leaders of the majority and minority party and the President of the United States.

• A 2/3 majority of the new leadership is needed to bring legislation to the floor to vote. The only requirement is that the legislation is passed with the support of 20% of the minority party.

Anonymous Congress will draw support from that squishy political middle. From the incredibly high profile to the completely mundane, legislation is more likely to be prioritized based on the principle of consensus. The new leadership rule is also essential because while anonymous voting would strip partisan incentives away, a chamber leader could just refuse to introduce any legislation. Splitting the gavel between more leaders allows for more legislative outcomes.

Perhaps most importantly, anonymous Congress will be able to limit the number of government shutdowns or contentious (and globally embarrassing) instances in which we nearly default on the debt ceiling. Why? Many of these debates hinge on members of one party staking out ideological commitments and holding these spending bills hostage. Anonymous Congress would benefit the members who are willing to abandon these views, but fear partisan reprisal. And while it would be hard to avoid instances like the government shutdown of 2018,¹ voting anonymously would generally provide the necessary cover.

It’s also fascinating to imagine what this new leadership trio in the House and Senate could decide to bring to the floor for a vote.

Under the 2/3 rule, minority leader Jeffries and President Biden could outvote McCarthy and introduce legislation that draws support from some moderate Republicans. Ultimately, this has the potential to foster an environment in which progress can be made on some real legislative white wales.

Did I hear someone say bipartisan immigration reform? Yes, the consensus legislation that passed in the Senate and died in the House earlier this year would have a shot at making it in anonymous Congress. There was a legislative majority in the House that would’ve passed the Senate bill and sent it to Biden’s desk, but then Trump and the conservative media apparatus snapped into gear and Mike Johnson shut the whole debate down. Under this plan, Jeffries and Biden could jointly decide to bring it to a House floor vote and pass it with sufficient (private) support from the necessary members of the Republican party.

Of course, the benefits aren’t just limited to the Democratic side. If anonymous voting existed during the Trump turn, he could’ve introduced legislation that picked off 20% of the democratic caucus. Infrastructure and immigration reform are two examples where a moderate coalition of democrats existed and seemed willing to negotiate. Maybe they would have been more wore willing to buck their party in private.

Less salient debates that face high-level special interest lobbying would also stand to benefit from anonymous Congress. Senators J.D. Vance and Sherrod Brown’s Railway Safety Act has drawn significant bipartisan support, but continues to languish in the Senate because the opportunity cost of bucking special interest groups is too high for the nine Republican senators who are needed to clear the filibuster. But if we close the curtains the curtains and let leaders vote outside the grasp of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who knows what’ll happen. Maybe, we’d be able to avoid devastating train derailments like we saw in East Palestine.

When evaluating the benefits of anonymous Congress, don’t just limit your imagination to the high-profile legislation that was almost signed into law. Think about all the legislation that leaders didn’t even advance out of committee because everyone knew it had no chance of getting a vote. Anonymous Congress could unlock a whole realm of hidden bipartisanship. It could turn government into a consensus legislative machine that is once again respected by the American public.

The wide-range of anonymous Congress outcomes

The problem that I see for anonymous Congress is that it’s either too effective, or not effective at all.

Let’s start with the latter. In this scenario, I’ve just totally overestimated the willingness of individual members to work across party lines and underestimated the power of groupish party politics. Again, take last year’s bipartisan immigration reform bill. The best case scenario I laid out hinges on the hope that some Republican lawmakers actually want to see immigration reform, but are too scared of bucking Trump. But the worst case scenario is that they prioritize the electoral edge that a chaotic border gives the GOP. So even in private, they decide against compromise.

This extends to the Democratic side as well. Even if there’s a sufficient percentage of the caucus that is fine with some sort of bipartisan legislation that will meaningfully reduce the deficit, Democratic legislators might still be scared of branding the party with any positions that would be unpopular with certain base interest groups. With both parties, for anonymous Congress to work, we’re really banking on the idea that a 20% contingent exists that is willing to advance bipartisan legislation.

Conversely, there's a problem with our representatives using anonymous voting as a sort of congressional cure-all. That’s because we don’t want to live in a world where our representatives are passing every important piece of legislation and funding the government through an entirely anonymous process. While we are at the point where voters struggle to divorce individual candidates from national parties, it’s still important that our representatives have some voting record and are forced to answer to the general public.

What also worries me is the extent to which this would encourage our elected leaders to essentially lie to voters. While representatives will be able to shield their voting records, that won’t stop the media and opposing candidates from putting officials on the spot and asking them specifically about the legislation that was voted on.

If they go full Vegas bachelor party and adopt the ethos of “What happens in anonymous Congress, stays in anonymous Congress,” I can imagine voters wouldn’t question a less newsy piece of legislation like the Railway Safety Act. But imagine if the second Trump impeachment happened completely anonymously. There’s a decent chance that Republicans would’ve been willing to privately buck their president and vote for impeachment. Do we really want such a historic vote that carries such repercussions for the fabric of our democracy happening in complete darkness?

Let Congress do its thing

The good thing is that anonymous Congress happens four times a year and lasts only one week each time. Contrary to popular belief, representatives are generally smart and more importantly, politically savy folks. Given the opportunity, I think they would use anonymous Congress advantageously.

That means they’d understand that it’s politically toxic and completely untenable to govern entirely on the basis of anonymous Congress, and would save the quarterly session for the types of legislation that really needs it. That means most of the year, Congress would continue to function as normal, with members taking principled votes and pandering to interest groups. Important work can still happen without anonymous Congress. But if there’s a bill that must pass to avoid a government shutdown, or a bipartisan piece of legislation that could pass in a different legislative environment, anonymous Congress will be there to give it the push it needs.

There’s a lot of unknowns, and fully gaming this out is as entertaining as it is stupefying.

But one thing I’m confident of is that members of Congress agree on more than we realize, and I think we’d be surprised at what happens when we eliminate partisan incentives and actually let them vote their conscience.

1. Since Trump was generally in support of the government shutdown, anonymous congress would’ve been ineffective in stopping this one.