Ep 150 - Back Porch Files: The Two-Year Clock Starts Now

The midterm celebrations were well earned. So was my little victory dance, although reasonable people can disagree about whether it needed to be filmed. Now comes the part that matters. In January, Democrats take control of the House and Senate, and Donald Trump will still be sitting behind the Resolute Desk with a veto pen. I’d like Democrats to spend the next two years giving him reasons to use it and making him answer for it every time he does. 

On January 3, Democrats take control of Congress and get two years to show voters what they’ll do with it.

A lame duck can still win. In 2007, after Democrats took both chambers of Congress, they sent George W. Bush an Iraq War funding bill with a timetable for bringing troops home. Bush vetoed it. The House fell short of an override, and Congress sent him a second bill with the money and without the timetable. Bill Clinton spent his entire second term facing a Republican House and Senate and still had room to bargain. Presidents keep plenty of leverage after their last election. Bush showed how much more they can get when Congress gives ground on the next vote.

So here’s what I want Democrats to do with both majorities. Pass every worthwhile bill you can get through both chambers. If you can lower the cost of a prescription or make childcare more affordable, put the bill on Trump’s desk. If he signs it, tell people when they can expect to see the benefit. If he vetoes it, tell them what it would have done, who it would have helped, and what reason he gave. I want somebody to be able to explain it at the dinner table without pulling up a congressional fact sheet.

The same goes for bills that die before Trump ever sees them. In 2022, the Senate came three votes short of keeping a thirty-five-dollar cap on what people with private insurance would pay for a thirty-day supply of covered insulin. Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin voted against waiving the budget rule to keep it in the bill. He said Democrats were using the wrong process and pointed to a different insulin proposal he’d supported. Fine. Tell people that, then ask him if he’d vote for the cap on its own. The person standing at the pharmacy counter deserves a straight answer, and the senator deserves a chance to give one.

Republicans should also have to answer for how they talk about the people they represent. Florida Congressman Randy Fine chose to turn an online joke about dogs into a swipe at Muslims. Imagine being a Muslim kid in his district and hearing that from the guy whose office your family is supposed to call for help. When Republicans make transgender people into a campaign punch line, push for Christianity to get special treatment from the government, or rush onto television to defend whatever stupid thing Trump just said, show people what was said and why it matters. Then get back to the bill you were working on. Trump can fill every hour of cable news if you let him.

The war with Iran is where all of this gets harder. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken after the election found that seventy-one percent of Americans wanted Congress to pass legislation ending the conflict. People had plenty of reasons for voting the way they did, and Democrats owe an answer to the people who gave them power because they wanted this needless war to end. If Democrats use their spending power to put limits on the war and Trump vetoes the bill, I want every Democrat who backed it in front of a camera that day. Tell people, plainly, that you heard them, you acted, and the president chose to veto the bill.

Then comes the vote that tells us whether you meant it. If Trump demands a replacement bill with the limits stripped out, what are you getting in exchange? There are real reasons to compromise, especially when people serving overseas are depending on Congress to fund what they need. So tell us exactly what you secured and when it takes effect. If all you got was a promise that the White House will talk to you later, remember how that second Iraq funding bill turned out.

And for God’s sake, show up. Eleven Democrats were recorded as absent from the vote to send the Pete Hegseth impeachment resolution to the Judiciary Committee. Eight more votes against referral, with everything else held constant, would have defeated that motion. People have legitimate reasons to miss votes. Leadership needs to know who can be there, and members who can make it need to be in the room. Your constituents did their part at the ballot box. They’re entitled to see you do yours on the House floor.

That’s where party unity starts. Democrats represent different places and will have real disagreements. Get in a room and work through them. When the president vetoes something people were counting on, the country should spend the evening hearing what he just turned down. If the caucus spends the next two years staging public slap fights over who said what about whom, don’t act surprised when another Republican is standing there with a hand on a Bible on January 20, 2029.

When the presidential campaign starts in earnest, I want to see that record in every damn ad. Pick one bill Trump vetoed. Tell people what it would have done. Ask the Republican nominee whether they would have signed it. If they say yes, get a commitment. If they defend the veto, let voters hear them do it. Democrats can start earning the right to make that case in January, one bill and one vote at a time. And when they’ve shown people what was on Trump’s desk and what he did with it, they should ask the same question every time. Why should we elect another Republican to the White House? 

SOURCES

Associated Press — Calling control of the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms - https://www.ap.org/the-definitive-source/behind-the-news/calling-control-of-congress-in-the-2026-midterm-elections/

National Archives — The Constitution’s provisions on presidential vetoes and federal spending - https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript

National Archives — The 20th Amendment on when congressional terms begin and the 22nd Amendment on presidential term limits - https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27

U.S. House Historian — Party control of Congress during the Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies - https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/Party-Government/

U.S. Senate — George W. Bush’s veto of the 2007 Iraq War funding bill and the failed House override - https://www.senate.gov/legislative/vetoes/BushGW.htm

Congressional Research Service — The 2007 Iraq War funding bills, including the compromise that dropped the withdrawal timetable - https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RL33900.pdf

Congressional Record — Text of the proposed insulin cost-sharing cap for people with private insurance - https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2022-08-06/pdf/CREC-2022-08-06.pdf

U.S. Senate — Roll Call 314 on waiving the budget rule to keep the private-insurance insulin cap in the bill - https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00314.htm

ABC News — The insulin cap vote and Senator Ron Johnson’s explanation - https://abcnews.com/Politics/republicans-strip-35-insulin-price-cap-democrats-bill/story?id=88069589

Reuters — Rep. Randy Fine’s remarks about Muslims and the response to them - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-lawmaker-fine-criticized-by-rights-advocates-democrats-after-anti-muslim-2026-02-17/

Associated Press — Trump’s 2024 campaign rhetoric about transgender and nonbinary Americans - https://apnews.com/article/1b9d3a1d928ea78c21372da63600c6d1

Reuters — What the incoming Congress can do about the war with Iran - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/can-new-us-congress-mean-an-end-iran-war-2026-11-12/

Reuters/Ipsos — Post-election poll on whether Congress should pass legislation ending the war with Iran - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-americans-want-new-democratic-congress-end-trumps-iran-war-reutersipsos-2026-11-10/

U.S. House Clerk — Roll Call 317 on referring the Pete Hegseth impeachment resolution to committee - https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2026317

ABC News — Reporting on the Democrats who missed the Hegseth referral vote and the explanations members gave - https://abcnews.com/Politics/democrats-missed-crucial-hegseth-impeachment-vote-blamed-traffic/story?id=138053963