It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.

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Montana Sen. Jon Tester, surrounded by reporters, leaves a 2023 Senate briefing on China. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your inbox.

3 BIG QUESTIONS FOR 3 OUTGOING MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent

A regular feature in covering the Capitol is that members of Congress tell me things off the record, meaning I cannot use those moments publicly.

Which is why I pay attention to those who are leaving Congress, with the hope that we can get more on-the-record insight.

In the past month, I sat down with three departing members who have each been power players and affected the history of Congress and the nation:
* Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, a Democrat who lost his race ([link removed]) for a fourth term in November
* Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, an independent and former Democrat who is leaving after one term ([link removed])
* Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a Republican retiring after nearly 20 years ([link removed]) in office and who stepped in as House Speaker Pro Tem last year, following the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy

They represent different states, politics and views.

But I found they shared some sharp opinions, including the idea that Washington needs urgent repair. Below, I lay out major takeaways from each of their interviews for this week’s newsletter. (Find their full interviews in the links below.)

Is Congress broken?

All three see what voters often do: a Congress that has not functioned properly. They diverge in how blunt they are about it — and what could get it back on the right track.

Tester argues the main problem is an avalanche of money.

“Congress is broken because the campaign finance regime has caused them to be broken,” he told me. ([link removed])

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Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana inside his congressional office. Photo by Lisa Desjardins/PBS News

One of the biggest issues in this country right now is division, he added.

“Everybody's incredibly divided on everything. I don't care what it is. … The truth is that if you want to stop the division, make it so people can work together and you can't work together as long as you’ve got this amount of money coming into these campaigns.”

This matters, he said, because all this money “makes you think twice whether you're going to take up an issue that's controversial. And yet during my 18 years, it's caused a real paralysis here.”

Sinema sees a lack of willingness to compromise.

“I think that elected officials are breaking [Congress],” she said. “The institution is just us. … It's how we behave, how we show up to work, how we engage with each other.”

When asked what it means when she and others, like McHenry, are leaving Congress, Sinema said, “I think this place is not as interested in getting things done as it used to be.”

When asked why, she said, “One of the reasons is that there is low tolerance in the community writ large for people who are willing to compromise and do hard work and settle for part, but not all of what you want.”

McHenry believes the next Congress could improve things, but that members need more personal interaction.
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Watch the segment in the player above.
“We're at a low ebb of functionality and I think we're on the edge of really active legislating next Congress,” he told us. ([link removed]) “I think the reform we need is to once again allow members of the House to be here in D.C. with their families. The best relationships I have from across the aisle are because of my kids and because of my wife and those normal interactions we have.”

What does the Democratic Party stand for?

Tester argues the party has gotten stuck in an insular bubble.

“We've got a communication problem within the party. … We don't spend enough time getting out to people outside of our bubble,” he said. “What I think killed Democrats this cycle [was] immigration, the economy, cost of goods and the border.”

The truth, he added, is that the Democratic Party “needed to focus on the meat and potatoes issues a lot more. We didn't.”
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The waiting area outside Sen. Jon Tester’s emptied office. Photo by Lisa Desjardins/PBS News
Sinema declined to answer the question.

“I've left the Democratic Party, so I don't think that I'm qualified to have that conversation,” she said.

McHenry said Democrats have some reflecting to do and that the country needs them to do it.

“I think that is a point of soul searching for them. They didn't really have to go through this process, this election cycle. And that is a disservice to a competitive, great party, he said. “But what I'll say is this: We need two great parties to stand up in. Competition will get better results as Americans will get better results in terms of policy. We'll have a better economy.”

What does the Republican Party stand for?

Tester sees a historic shift — Republicans gaining with traditional Democratic groups.

“Maybe the parties are flipping places. I mean, Trump's really going after the working man in a big way and he's getting them. And young people and Hispanics,” he said. “I think part of it is the message and part of that is getting that message out.”

“We’ve really got to focus on things that are important to people. Not the fringe stuff,” he added.

Sinema again declined to comment ([link removed]) , and said she speaks for what she stands for, not what defines the political parties.
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Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona departs from the Senate chambers. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
McHenry said the Republican Party right now stands for “a strong economy and traditional American ways of life. And is there a tinge of populism that's in part of the stew? Yes, that's the case.”

Other thoughts that stood out

Tester sees elected members who are not serious about legislating.

“I'm not supposed to judge, but there's a lot of people in here that I don't know why they're here. They're really not serious policymakers. And so my question is: Why are you here?”

He continued: “Is it just because you hate government and you want to stop government from working? Because that's really a bad idea. Because government has its role. So there's that.”

I asked Sinema what she thinks about the press.

“The press is highly reductive. Yeah, highly reductive. And I get it because it's the world that we live in,” she told us. ([link removed])

“But asking someone to talk about other people or what's happening in negotiations all the time – I know it's incredibly frustrating, when during negotiations I would never say things and everyone else would. But I got the deals done, right?”

She added: “But what I will say is that that pressure, which many people find difficult to avoid, it hurts the work.”

McHenry was blunt about the lack of women chairing House committees next Congress, but did not answer when asked how that came to be.

“For us to have no women chairs of committees is a huge mistake and really an unfortunate thing because we have powerful, smart, capable, tenacious Republican women that are capable of leading big committees and doing major things.”

“So what’s going on here?” I asked him.

“It's an unfortunate set of things, set of circumstances.” He pauses and then adds, “I'm leaving Congress.”

You can watch the full exchange here. ([link removed])
More on politics from our coverage:
* Watch: Remembering the extraordinary life ([link removed]) of former President Jimmy Carter.
* One Big Question: How did Carter define his legacy? NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter discuss. ([link removed])
* A Closer Look: Why Trump asked the Supreme Court to delay the TikTok ban and what’s next. ([link removed])
* Perspectives: Experts on what another Trump administration could mean for crypto. ([link removed])

BROOKS AND CAPEHART ON THE POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR
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Watch the segment in the player above.
By Joshua Barajas
Senior Editor, Digital

In last week’s newsletter, we revealed readers’ Political Word of the Year: exhausted.

While New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart looked back ([link removed]) on the turbulent year in politics, we asked them what each of their choices would be for Political Word of the Year.

Brooks picked “chastened.”

“For those of us who oppose Donald Trump, we should be chastened because of the plurality of the American people thought we were wrong,” he explained.

For Capehart, simply, “there are too many words.”

THIS WEEK’S TRIVIA QUESTION

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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

By Joshua Barajas
Senior Editor, Digital

And now, a round of applause.

Brenda Radford is our most winningest trivia player this year! Though there was some tough competitors — Carol Rutz, John Cleveland, and Beverley Chang among them — Brenda was most often the fastest to send in correct answers.
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Here’s the Deal’s most winningest trivia player in 2024. Photo courtesy of Brenda Radford
We asker her to help us write this week’s trivia question, which focuses on the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters Program. ([link removed])

The final round of women that will appear on the nation’s quarters have been revealed. Civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells and disability justice activist Stacey Park Milbern are among those to be featured on the last five quarters designed as part of this program, which ends in 2025.

Dr. Vera Rubin, a highly decorated astronomer, will also show up on the coins.

Our question: Rubin’s research helped confirm the existence of this mysterious, invisible substance. What is it?

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: House members were summoned back to Washington for a rare Christmas Eve session in 1963 to push an urgent bill that approved what agricultural product to be sold to the Sover Union?

The answer: Wheat. ([link removed]) Nearly 150 millions bushels of it. And some members of Congress were not happy to not be home for the holidays. So much so that President Lyndon Johnson threw a last-minute Christmas party ([link removed]) for the frustrated lawmakers.

Congratulations to our winners: Joseph Warner and Will Simpson!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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