In the News

After spending the past eight years in the minority, Democrat Gwen Moore of Milwaukee has something to relish.

Her party is now in control of the House of Representatives. And she’s about to fulfill a dream of serving on one of the most powerful bodies in Congress.

“It is a big deal,” said Moore. “Being in the minority has denied me the one thing that I have wanted since I got here in 2005. That was to be on the Ways and Means Committee. It’s the jurisdiction under which so many issues I care about and are important are handled.”

Moore mentioned child care, welfare reform, taxes, entitlements, trade and the minimum wage, for starters.

The 2018 election has turned things upside down for Wisconsin’s eight U.S. House members and altered how the state’s interests will be served in Washington.

One of the most obvious changes: The state’s congressional delegation lost one of the most powerful politicians on the planet with the retirement of Republican Speaker Paul Ryan.

Another: While Wisconsin still has five House Republicans and three House Democrats, their roles are reversed, with Republicans relegated to the often stifling role of House minority party and Democrats suddenly empowered.

Republican Sean Duffy, who got elected in the GOP wave election of 2010, has never served in the minority.

“I haven’t really gotten to experience it yet. We might talk in three more months and I might be really upset,” said Duffy, whose first taste of life in the minority has been dominated by a partial government shutdown, with the Democratic majority passing bills — to reopen shuttered federal departments — that Senate Republicans have refused to take up. 

Though they number only three and none has high seniority, Wisconsin’s House Democrats will be strategically placed in one regard. Two will serve on Ways and Means, the powerful panel that deals with taxes and entitlement programs. Ron Kind of La Crosse was a member already.  And with Democrats picking up added committee seats as the majority party, Moore has been tapped to fill one of them.

The city of Milwaukee hasn’t been represented on the Ways and Means Committee since Democrat Jerry Klezcka served more than a decade ago.

“It was very, very frustrating, year in and year out, to not be able to make progress on things … like health care, like protecting the environment, common-sense gun safety,” Moore said of her time in the minority.

The state’s third House Democrat, Mark Pocan, sits on the Appropriations Committee, which writes spending bills. The two appropriations subcommittees he serves on —agriculture and the subcommittee that deals with labor, health and human services and education — control more than half the federal money that goes to the University of Wisconsin, he said.

“It feels great. Also, it feels like it’s going to be a lot more work,” said Pocan, calling that a good thing. Elected in 2012, Pocan has never been in the majority.

Members of the minority have choices to make about how to stay relevant, he said.

“You’re kind of in some ways in an opposition role. ... You also choose what role you want. If you just want to throw grenades you can do it. If you just want to try to get things done, you can do that,” Pocan said.  

“The majority party has the keys to the car,” he said. When you’re in the minority, “you’re no longer in the front seat of the car, you’re in the back seat and occasionally you might be riding from the trunk.”

Republican Jim Sensenbrenner of Menomonee Falls is the second longest-serving member of the House.

He has spent roughly half his 40 years in Congress in the minority (1979 to 1994 and 2007 to 2010) and roughly half in the majority (1995 to 2006 and 2011 to 2018).

His time in the majority included chairing the Judiciary Committee, when he left his stamp on major laws like the Patriot Act. But he spent his first 15 years in the minority. Sensenbrenner said it was easier to play a legislative role as a minority member back then.

“There were more opportunities for minority input because the Congress and public were not as bitterly divided as they are now,” said Sensenbrenner, citing his role reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act in the early 1980s when Democrats were in power.  “It is more constraining today" to be in the minority.

He said that makes it even more important to carve out areas of expertise, because you have less staff to rely on, and to have working relationships with lawmakers on the other side of the aisle, who are calling the shots.   

“While I agree with (New York Democrat) Jerry Nadler on practically nothing, the two of us respect each other,” he said of the new Judiciary chairman. “I know when it’s something that is not superpartisan, I will at least get a hearing from him.” 

Pocan made a similar point about his time in the minority, saying, “you have to have relationships across the aisle.” He said he worked on some legislation with conservative Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, a former champion wrestler at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is in Pocan’s district.

“There are lot of things we actually work on together,” said Duffy, who said he will wait and see what life is like under Democrats in the House. “If you’re just fighting all the time … that is disheartening. … If this is just, ‘let’s try to impeach, let’s try to investigate,’ that will be really disappointing.”

Sensenbrenner said he was not discouraged about returning to the minority after an eight-year stretch in power.

“I can throw more bombs. There are consequences in the majority when you throw bombs. Not everyone appreciates it. But not in the minority. You get cheered on,” he said. 

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