What does the rising use of discharge petitions tell about the dynamics in Congress?
There have been more successful discharge petitions in this 119th Congress than in any other congressional session since the legislative tool was created in its modern form. Discharge petition refers to a mechanism that allows lawmakers to pull the bill out of the committee to be deliberated directly on the House floor. Importantly, for a discharge petition to come into effect 218 members must sign it. That is why, historically, it has been extremely difficult to make discharge petitions work - the level of coalition-building required around a single issue would simply be too difficult to overcome.
The success rate of discharge petitions prior to 2023 had hovered at just below 4% - that is only 4% of the petitions introduced would reach the required level of signatures. The success rate in this Congress alone has jumped up to almost 26% - every fourth discharge petition introduced ultimately forces a bill onto the House floor. The recent use of the mechanism by Rep. Thomas Massie (R.- KY) showcases one of the effects, and causes, of this rise. Individual members of the House now feel more empowered in going against their party’s leadership. As well as some structural changes in the House dynamics, the present political context - narrow Republican majority, approaching mid-terms, current members of Congress who lost their primaries - also play a role in explaining the rise in the use of discharge petitions.
Massie’s discharge petition was bound to capture the headlines purely because of the nature of the story involved. However, the reasons why the Kentucky Representative might feel optimistic about his chances of success go straight into the nature of this 119th Congress. Discharge petitions tend to be successful under smaller minorities, where it becomes much tougher for the leadership to ensure discipline. The Republican majority in this House is razor-thin. This and an overall fractious session under Speaker Mike Johnson, makes it easier for individual members to form effective coalitions in cases when the leadership does not address their priorities. With the midterms fast approaching, many Republicans in competitive states might have an incentive to break with the leadership and pursue policy issues that are popular with their base. On the other hand, those who will leave the Congress at the end of the session do not have to worry about appeasing the leadership at all - at least in the near future.
Massie’s discharge petition is a great example of this. Having lost his primary fight to Trump-backed Ed Gallrein, he likely feels free to pursue issues important to him without fearing for his short-term political prospects. And it is not Massie’s first discharge petition on Epstein files either. Last year he, along with a Democrat Ro Khana (D. - CA), introduced a successful petition to force the ‘Epstein Files Transparency Act’ onto the floor. The most recent petition is essentially designed to address noncompliance with the first one, with Massie alleging that the DOJ still has not released all of the files. Whether or not this newest discharge petition ends up gathering the needed 218 signatures is still unclear. However, it represents a clear dynamic whereby discharge petitions are essentially used as an effective lawmaking tool by individual members in an unusually unproductive Congress (there have been fewer than 40 bills signed into law in this session).
Ultimately, the rise in the use of discharge petitions can mostly be explained by the context in which the current Congress operates. While Republicans have a majority, it is by no means an effective or strong one. In a situation like this, individual members can feel empowered to defy the leadership - and, more importantly, do so effectively. However, such a substantive increase in the use and success of discharge petitions might point to an overall change of dynamic that can prove to be long-standing irrespective of the size of congressional majority - in that individual members are becoming simply too difficult to control by the party apparatus. There are still legislative tools that the leadership can use to limit the use of the tool - rule changes or suspensions to make the petitions harder to use, for instance. None of these have proven effective so far as discharge petitions continue gaining force as a legislative tool.
