Members of Congress Are Not Enjoying Themselves

Here’s what they are getting done, though.

Don Bacon has not been happy lately.

The moderate Nebraska congressman — one of only three House Republicans representing a district won by Kamala Harris in 2024 — has been one of the sharpest GOP Trump critics on Capitol Hill, bashing the president’s threats against the media and calling for Pete Hegseth’s ouster after Signalgate.

Bacon, a retired Army brigadier general, has recently gone guns-blazing against Trump’s new Russia/Ukraine peace proposal, calling the president’s comments on Ukraine “reprehensible” and the plan “disgusting.”

So what does a congressman do when he feels that strongly about a proposal coming from the White House?

Bacon told Axios that he was so “so angry” about the peace plan that he “thought about” stepping down from Congress.

Ultimately, the Nebraskan decided to finish his term, which he is already retiring at the end of. But the fact that Bacon even considered resignation says so much about the era that we live in. It would be rare, but perfectly understandable, for a Cabinet member to resign in protest over a presidential policy he disagreed with. But members of Congress, even ones who belong to the president’s party, don’t work for the president! (At least, that’s not how the Founders would have envisioned it.) In fact, if the president is promoting something you disagree with, you would think that serving in Congress would offer you one of the best platforms possible to push back.

We have reached a point, however, where it’s almost more natural for a member of Congress in a dispute with their party’s president to resign than to use their leverage against the White House.

Bacon is not alone. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), of course, is resigning in January; Punchbowl News reported yesterday that several other Republicans are considering jumping ship mid-term. Plus, as journalist Jamie Dupree has noted, almost twice as many House members who are leaving Congress this year are doing so to seek another office rather than to actually retire — a reversal from previous election cycles. It’s not that most retiring lawmakers are old and done with politics; they just don’t enjoy serving in Congress and they want a better job.

“Morale has never been lower,” one House Republican told Punchbowl.

On both sides of the aisle, it is an increasingly unenjoyable experience to be that one member of your party raising concerns about the direction of the caucus (see: Bacon retiring, and also Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine doing the same.) And, of course, legislators are quantifiably getting less done these days than in the past.

That said, here at Wake Up To Politics, we like to show you both sides of the coin: pointing out examples of Congress’ diminishment, but also shining a light on what is getting done, including the lower-profile pieces of legislation often neglected by other outlets. Yesterday’s newsletter and the beginning of this one have focused on congressional dysfunction — which make it a good time to check in on government function as well. We hear plenty about what Congress isn’t doing; if we’re going to pay our lawmakers almost $200,000 a year, we should probably also know what they are doing with their time, too.

Here are some of the measures that advanced in Congress across party lines last week that you probably didn’t hear about:

Headed to the president’s desk. President Trump has signed 38 measures into law this year, most recently including the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But that number is about to grow, after Congress sent six bills to the president’s desk last week (none of them receiving a fraction of the attention of the Epstein bill). All of them passed both the House and Senate unanimously. They are:

• The Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act, which would increase VA disability benefits by 2.8%, in order to keep pace with the cost of living.

• The Veteran Fraud Reimbursement Act, which would speed the process of reimbursing a veteran’s benefits if they are defrauded out of them. A 2021 report found that veterans in this situation sometimes have to wait upwards of a year — and even found examples of veterans dying before their benefits were returned to them.

• The Fairness for Servicemembers and their Families Act, which would require the maximum life insurance policy for servicemembers, veterans, and their families to be increased every five years in pace with the cost of living. The maximum VA life insurance policy was not increased once between 2006 to 2023, falling far behind the rate of inflation.

• The Bottles and Breastfeeding Equipment Screening Enhancement Act, which would require the TSA to strengthen and streamline its protocols for screening breast milk and baby formula, in order to prevent it from being confiscated or contaminated or from causing travel delays for parents. The legislation was inspired by the science influencer Emily Calandrelli, who went viral talking about being prevented by TSA from bringing ice packs on a plane to chill her breast milk.

• The Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, which would require the State Department to more regularly reassess the current strict limits that have been placed on U.S. officials having contact with Taiwanese officials since 1979.

• The Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserves Tuition Fairness Act, which aims to create more parity between the Montgomery GI Bill program (which offers educational benefits to members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard Reserves, and Army and Air National Guards) and other GI Bill programs for those who served in active duty. The bill would require public colleges and universities to charge the same in-state tuition rates for veterans using the Montgomery GI Bill program as other GI Bill programs.

Passed the House. Three notable bills that unanimously passed the House last week:

• The Strengthening Oversight of DHS Intelligence Act, which would require that intelligence collected by the Department of Homeland Security be “shared, retained, and disseminated consistent with the protection of privacy rights, civil rights, and civil liberties.” An interesting bill to get through the Republican-led House during the Trump era!

• The National Strategy for School Security Act, which would require the government to craft a National Strategy for School Security. The bill was written by the congressman who represents the district of the Uvalde, Texas school shooting.

• The PEARL Act, which would establish a program for Customs and Border Protection to adopt dogs from local animal shelters to be trained as support dogs for “grief assistance, trauma mitigation, and morale.”

Passed the Senate. Three notable bills that unanimously passed the Senate last week:

• The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which would once again allow school lunches to include whole and 2% milk. Obama-era regulations imposed under a 2010 law generally restricted school lunch milk options to skim and low-fat milk, which some experts say was a mistake.

• The Countering Threats and Attacks on Our Judges Act, which would create a State Judicial Threat Intelligence and Resource Center to provide technical assistance, training, and monitoring of threats for state and local judges. No central organization currently exists to monitor threats against non-federal judges, which have skyrocketed in recent years.

• The Fallen Servicemembers Religious Heritage Restoration Act, which would create a program to correct the graves of members of the Armed Forces who were Jewish and buried in U.S. military cemeteries with Christian crosses