To retake control of the House of Representatives, Republicans need to pick up just five seats in the 2022 midterm elections. It's Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney's job to make sure that doesn't happen.
The New York Democrat and chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told NPR that the party is hopeful that an ambitious, multitrillion-dollar economic agenda trumpeted by the Biden administration will resonate with voters when it's time to head to the polls next fall.
Betting on major domestic policy programs
"We're making a bet on substance," Maloney says, before adding a colorful adage: "What's the old saying — any jackass can kick down a barn, it takes a carpenter to build one. It's harder to build it than to kick it down. And so we're the party that's going to build the future."
That future includes proposals to combat climate change; overhaul immigration laws; massively invest in traditional infrastructure like roads, bridges and expanded access to broadband, along with investments in affordable child care and early childhood education; and provide an expanded child tax credit with payments that top out at $3,600 a year per child.
Tens of millions of American families are already starting to receive those direct cash payments.
"That's a huge thing for a family trying to pay for the kids' basketball shoes or keep food in the fridge till Saturday when it's been running out on Thursday," Maloney says.
The monthly credit is scheduled to last one year, but some Democrats have already discussed making it permanent.
The influx of government aid is projected to cut poverty nearly in half in 2021, according to a new analysis from The Urban Institute first reported in The New York Times.
"No Democratic majority, no Democratic president, has made this much progress in a long time," Maloney says.
But there are roadblocks to fully enacting Democrats' agenda. Their thin majorities in both chambers of Congress mean nearly all Democrats have to get on board with every agenda item in order to push through major legislative priorities. And without adjusting or eliminating the legislative filibuster in the Senate, Democrats need 10 Republicans to join them for various legislation — a near-impossible task.
Possible 2010 or 2014 midterm repeat?
Big bets on policy also don't necessarily pay off at the ballot box, a lesson Democrats learned a decade ago when they passed the Affordable Care Act. President Barack Obama's domestic policy achievement also helped decimate congressional Democratic majorities in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.
It's just one reason why Republicans feel good about their chances in 2022, along with structural advantages like the redistricting process, where House districts are redrawn every decade to reflect population changes. Republicans control the process in more states and are better positioned to gain seats.
"This deck is already stacked, because they've been gerrymandering these districts," Maloney says. "And now they're trying to do even more of it and add to that with these Jim Crow-style voter suppression laws throughout the country."
He maintains that efforts among Republican-led state legislatures to enact more voting restrictions show the party has a losing policy hand for the midterm elections.
"If they're going to try to rely on rigging this game, because they don't have a plan for the future and they can't talk to the voters about their ideas and their vision, well, I think that makes me proud to be a Democrat."
Maloney also posits that GOP turnout will be depressed in an election that doesn't feature former President Donald Trump himself.
"There's no evidence that this toxic Trump message will motivate voters without Trump on the ballot," he says. "If the other side is making one big mistake, I think that might be it, which is a doubling down on this toxic Trump message of division and anger and racism and yet there's no evidence they can pull out voters with the message without the messenger."
He points to Texas Republican Jake Ellzey as a recent example. Ellzey was sworn in to the House on Friday, days after winning a special election that saw him defeat a Trump-backed candidate.
Maloney underscores: "It seems like the Trump endorsement's not what it used to be."
Here are more highlights from his conversation with NPR's Susan Davis.
On polarization in Congress:
"I think when you watch your colleagues spread an incendiary lie that leads to a violent attack on the Capitol, that gets a lot of people hurt — hundreds of cops in a violent, vicious, hand-to-hand fight with these lunatics that were coming in the Capitol ... I don't think it's the kind of thing where you say, 'Well, reasonable people can disagree and let's go have a beer, all due respect.' I think that's a time where you find a moral voice, and you say, this is wrong. And if you can't see that it's wrong, then you need to go walk around the block and think about your values. And it's not my job to meet you in the middle, because this one is black and white."
On the Republican Party:
"It's very hard to be a responsible Republican right now in Washington. If you don't believe me, ask Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Liz Cheney has lost her leadership position because she told the truth about what happened on Jan. 6. So unfortunately, the Republican Party has been captured by some reckless and extreme elements who believe in dangerous conspiracy theories, who spread an incendiary lie about the election that resulted in the attack on the Capitol and the death of a bunch of police officers, and who are now hampering our efforts to end the pandemic because they will not get on the program with masking and the vaccine. And I don't think that's going to be good politics in the districts that are competitive for them."
On his own reelection in 2022:
"I go to my voters every two years and ask them to renew my contract and I don't take anything for granted. I have a record I'm proud of ... I haven't stopped working for the Hudson Valley for one minute. But let me tell you what, if the Republicans want to waste a bunch of money trying to beat me, it's going to make it easy for me to beat a bunch of their guys that are in districts I'm gonna win. So bring it, is what I say. If they want to waste their money trying to beat Sean Maloney, that's great, because they're gonna wake up in the minority."
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