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Congress Isn’t Ready for Coronavirus

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A pandemic like this could paralyze the government just when we need it most.Members of Congress fill a small room to get a briefing from administration officials on the coronavirus response in February. | Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesAs congressional leaders sniped their way through the coronavirus crisis this week—wrestling with how to act and avert a massive economic shock amid a quickly evolving tsunami of national closures, collapsing stock prices and a worsening pandemic—an even more ominous thought hung in the background of Capitol Hill: A pandemic, particularly one whose primary victims are older than 60, presents the long-feared worst-case scenario for Congress’ existence itself.Since the end of World War II, efforts to force the House and Senate to confront how it would function in an emergency have stalled, and even the lackluster efforts after 9/11 to improve congressional continuity planning fell short of addressing the potential impact of a pandemic: While the outright death of senators and representatives poses its own unique set of problems for the body and democracy, an illness like COVID-19 that threatens to sicken a wide swath of members threatens to paralyze or destabilize the entire legislative branch of government when its quick action is most needed.This Congress, according to the Congressional Research Service, is among the ever. Even with the of young Democratic members elected in the midterms, the is older than the Congress before—the average age of a representative is nearly 58 years old, whereas senators average nearly 63 years old. Fourteen senators are over 75, meaning Congress has failed to come up with meaningful continuity planning for their entire lives.Members appear to know they’re at increased risk; several, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), were recommended to recently after having contact with an infected attendee at the Conservative Political Action Conference. On Capitol Hill, one representative this week was using a tissue to , and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told USA Today he’s his travel because, at 85, he’s in the demographic most at risk. “Our lifestyle is the exact opposite of a quarantine. We are by nature public animals and in contact with the public, and, you know, I spent the weekend going to a dozen events—a dozen—and half the time people elbow, fist bump, shake hands,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, 75, said . “I’m not scared. I’m healthy, I can deal with it—but I’m in the age group, and I take it seriously.”In a with POLITICO this week, Florida’s comparatively sprightly 48-year-old senator, Marco Rubio, anticipated at least some members would end up with the virus. “I don’t think there’s any way to avoid that, to be frank,” he said. “Nobody wants to talk about it, but it’s a fact.”The novel coronavirus is already hitting the leadership of other countries. Iran’s gerontocracy and its Parliament have been , the The United Kingdom’s health minister has and Canada’s leader, Justin Trudeau, is after his wife tested positive.Yet the reality ahead for Congress—and the U.S. population writ large—is almost certainly much worse than a handful of cases. Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, was that nearly two-thirds of its population will likely face the virus in the coming months, and Congress’ own attending physician, Dr. Brian Monahan, said in a Tuesday that a third or more of the U.S., from 70 million to 150 million people, will be affected by the virus in the coming months.If even just half of Congress’ 535 voting members get COVID-19 in the months ahead—and if the virus’ infection profile follows the rough outline medical experts are seeing globally, in which 80 percent of cases are relatively mild and just 20 percent are serious, Congress might see more than 50 serious cases requiring hospitalization. (Of course, given Congress’ advanced average age, its risk might actually be worse than the overall population’s.)So what happens when dozens of lawmakers are suddenly lying in quarantine, confined to hospitals beds across the country, from their districts to the capital, unable to make it to the floor to vote?Since the beginning of the Cold War, Congress has been woefully disengaged in thinking about its own mortality and planning for its own survival. President Dwight D. Eisenhower effectively had to build the secret Cold War congressional bunker at West Virginia’s Greenbrier Hotel of his own accord after Congress dragged its feet on planning how it would survive nuclear war. In the first two decades of the Cold War, more than 30 bills were introduced to deal with how to continue functioning in the event of a widescale death of its membership, yet while three such bills passed out of the Senate, all of them died in the House. Eventually, Congress gave up the question entirely.There are two catastrophic scenarios for Congress: The death of a large number of members and the incapacitation of a large number of members. Each comes with massively different outcomes in terms of its impact on legislative business and massively different outcomes for democracy.The outright death of members of Congress puts in motion a relatively straightforward process, albeit a potentially slow one. The Senate, with its tradition of appointment by state legislature, largely has procedures to allow itself to reconstitute quickly through gubernatorial appointments, followed by special elections. The House, which prides itself on direct election by the people, has long fought any effort to allow for emergency appointments to the body, so any vacancies would be filled only by special elections, a process that would take months.As representatives and senators die and vacancies arise, Congress can keep legally functioning no matter how small its remaining elected membership becomes—even though a notably smaller Congress might find its public legitimacy in question. Norm Ornstein—the scholar who has most consistently raised alarms about congressional continuity—pointed out after 9/11 that Congress has, since the Civil War, interpreted the quorum necessary for it to function as consisting of the majority of members “duly chosen, sworn, and living,” a definition settled on as a workaround to avoid the unpleasantness of the many senators and representatives who departed as the Confederacy seceded.Nuclear war and terrorist attack scenarios contemplated, for instance, that even the death of 300 representatives, bringing the size of the House to 135, would allow a quorum of just 68 congressmen and congresswomen to continue legislating, leaving aside any uncomfortable questions about the partisan skew of those who survived and who would thus be making sweeping decisions about emergency measures.This week from Politico MagazineMore troubling, though, is precisely the scenario that Congress might face in a pandemic or biological attack, whereby a large number of members are sick and incapacitated—living, but unable to perform their congressional and constitutional duties. While the death of members subtracts from the overall number needed for a quorum (and changes the number for a majority vote) simple illness or incapacitation or quarantine doesn’t—and the process to declare the seat of an incapacitated member vacant is slow and rarely used.Congress has only once in modern history declared a seat vacant ahead of a regularly scheduled election; in 1980, Rep. Gladys Noon Spellman (D-Md.) fell into a coma after suffering a heart attack and Congress legally declared her seat vacant four months later, with her family’s permission.That means any large number of incapacitated members might quickly lead to paralysis even amid a fast-moving crisis like a pandemic; the Senate can’t function without the House and vice versa. A Congress that lacks a quorum in the House can’t pass appropriations bills, since the Constitution requires spending bills to originate in that body. Similarly, any mass illness or hospitalization of its members could skew Congress’ partisan mix and alter the number of votes required to pass legislation, particularly in the Senate. It has a more narrow partisan split—and a much older membership: 7 of its 10 oldest members are Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In fact, the Senate alone is statistically likely to see more severe cases requiring hospitalization than the partisan split in the body.Years of stop-and-start effort after 9/11 to address these “congressional continuity” problems—including proposals to allow members of Congress to chose their own designated successors—led to an awkward legislative Band-Aid, forced through by GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert that would force states to hold “expedited” elections within 49 days if the speaker declares that more than 100 congressional seats are “vacant,” a definition that would not be met simply by illness or incapacity but would require deaths.And yet the fact that 2020 is already an election year poses a unique challenge too: Some states prohibit special House elections within 180 days of a regularly scheduled election, meaning that any House vacancies affecting those states that crop up after May 7 would be unable to be filled until the 117th Congress is sworn-in in January.For now, America’s best hope is that congressional members are really good at washing their hands.

A pandemic like this could paralyze the government just when we need it most.Members of Congress fill a small room to get a briefing from administration officials on the coronavirus response in February. | Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesAs congressional leaders sniped their way through the coronavirus crisis this week—wrestling with how to act and avert a massive economic shock amid a quickly evolving tsunami of national closures, collapsing stock prices and a worsening pandemic—an even more ominous thought hung in the background of Capitol Hill: A pandemic, particularly one whose primary victims...

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Senior staff writer, @POLITICO, @POLITICOMag. St. Pete Times alum. @DavidsonCollege grad. Love Lauren and the girls. I let people keep talking.

Michael Kruse

Politico, known originally as The Politico, is an American political journalism company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and internationally. It distributes content through its website, television, printed newspapers, radio, and podcasts. Its coverage in Washington, D.C. includes the U.S. Congress, lobbying, the media, and the presidency.

Congress Isn’t Ready for Coronavirus

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