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There’s lots of scandal-mongering and indignation about the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Texas Republican Kay Granger, who had missed every vote in the House since July and was recently discovered to be in an assisted living facility for dementia patients. To be sure, our congressional leadership is starting to resemble the old Soviet Politburo for its decrepitude:

However, everyone is missing a key point. The fact that almost no one seems to have missed Granger ought to tell us just how unimportant committee chairs are in the House these days. Once upon a time if a chair of a key fiscal committee was missing for that long a time, it would not only get noticed, but might cause a crisis in passing a budget. Because so much of budgeting has been concentrated in the leadership offices of both the House and Senate, and then rolled into the sudden, emergency year-end “continuing resolutions,” the Granger absence shows how badly Congress’s traditional functions have atrophied. It’s almost as if we could send nearly every House member home and let the leadership just run everything.  (Actually, that is just what Speaker Nancy Pelosi did during Covid. Every House member “worked” from home. And also voted from home.) But the fact that so much congressional power has been concentrated in the handful of leadership offices is another parallel to the old Soviet Politburo besides the lengthening age of members.