What does it mean to be bipartisan in Congress these days?
Does it involve civility, not calling each other extremists? Working across party lines to shape key legislation moving through both chambers and into law?
Not according to an annual index produced from within Georgetown University that’s been around for a decade.
The most recent index of 2023 claims that Colorado Democrats Yadira Caraveo and Joe Neguse are some of the most bipartisan members of Congress.
Neguse issued a press release bragging about his ranking and pretended to be working with Republicans.
A hot minute later, Neguse did an about face and told NBC News:
“At the end of the day, I think the extreme agenda that House Republicans had pursued over the course of the last 15 months is deeply out of step with the American public.”
Wildly ironic is that this index only takes into account how many people a lawmaker can convince from the other party to sign on as a cosponsor to their legislative measures.
The lawmaker doesn’t have to do any actual work to pass the bill or even speak to the bill’s sponsor, they just sign their names on the dotted line.
Boom.
Bipartisan.
For example, more than 11,000 bills, amendments, and resolutions, have been introduced since the congressional session began last year.
And yet in 2023, the year of this so-called index, only 27 bills made it into law.
Out of 435 members, Neguse ranked 18 and Caraveo ranked 28.
Which Republican bills did they cosponsor? The survey doesn’t say.
How many Republicans signed onto their measures? Survey doesn’t say.
But since she was elected last year, Caraveo has only introduced 28 of her own bills, and yet not a single one has even passed committee.
Of the 94 measures introduced by Neguse last year, none became law, and only two passed the House — the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Location Act and the Drought Preparedness Act.
However, Neguse signed his name as a cosponsor onto 520 measures sponsored by other lawmakers while Caraveo cosponsored 460 measures.
Does this mean Neguse and Caraveo are bipartisan, or they just made it a priority for their staffers to sign onto a bunch of bills going nowhere because they want the so-called bipartisan rankings to brag about at election time?
We say the latter.
Neguse went on to tell NBC News:
“I think if you ask most Americans, they would be deeply distressed that House Republicans have spent an inordinate amount of time on the Refrigerator Freedom Act and Liberty in Laundry Act, and a variety of extreme policy conversations that are, in my view, very much focused on undermining fundamental freedoms, whether it’s reproductive freedom, the freedom to vote, so much more. And then not addressing the core economic issues that American people have cared about.”