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Congress returns Monday from a one-week recess it should never have taken. Although the Democratic leadership in both chambers is somewhat at fault, I'll put the bulk of the blame at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. For the most part, President Joe Biden has done a pretty good job at balancing his promise to return to normal with his promise to enact an ambitious Democratic agenda, but this time he leaned toward normal. It was a mistake, and he should learn from it.
Normally, I'm the first to defend congressional recesses. They're often called "district work periods," and most members of Congress, most of the time, work pretty hard when they return home (the case of Senator Ted Cruz last week notwithstanding). Representation requires action in Washington, but it also involves reporting back to citizens in the district about those actions — and, equally important, listening to them to learn more about what needs to be done at the Capitol.
However. There were both practical and symbolic reasons for this particular recess to be cancelled. If Biden is serious about the urgency of his legislative agenda, beginning with the huge pandemic relief bill, then it made sense to ask lawmakers to stick around and make progress on it. That the bill is both advancing fairly well and wildly popular with the public were good reasons to press harder for quick action. That would've been true even if cancelling the recess didn't actually speed passage; the symbolism would've been worthwhile. Publicly calling for Congress to stay and get work done on popular provisions would surely have created headlines that Biden's political team would've liked.
The practical issue, however, isn't about the relief bill. It's about executive-branch nominations, and in particular, Biden's cabinet. Senator Mitch McConnell's decision to delay hearings for nominees while Republicans still held the majority in January has put the Senate well behind normal schedule, even though for the most part Biden's selections have been free of controversy. Impeachment slowed things up, too, as has Republican foot-dragging (matching, to be sure, Democratic foot-dragging during Donald Trump's presidency). Skipping a recess would've expanded the floor time available to get to final votes on nominees. Biden should've demanded it. Senate Democrats should've been happy to comply.
There's another issue here that's less about partisanship and more about the Senate's place in the constitutional system. As executive-branch nominations have become harder to get through the Senate, presidents have found workarounds. I'm only speculating, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons that Biden has been quiet about the delays is that he's been aggressive about putting political appointees in positions at departments and agencies that don't need Senate confirmation, and the White House thinks that's enough to ensure that his policies will be carried out.
That may or may not be true — I've argued that Trump's use of acting officials instead of Senate-confirmed ones was probably counterproductive because it made it easier for the bureaucracy to buck White House initiatives. But it certainly could reduce the influence of individual senators, from both parties, over the executive branch. The old system, in which the Senate gave the president wide latitude over personnel in return for using the confirmation process to extract policy promises, was better — for the Senate collectively, for democratic control of the government and probably even for the out-party. Unfortunately, it's fading.
At any rate: Call last week a missed opportunity for Biden, for the Senate and for Congress as a whole.
1. Gabriele Magni and Andrew Reynolds at the Monkey Cage on continuing bias against people with HIV.
2. Kevin Kosar on congressional capacity and new members. Yup. My suggestion remains: We need another subcommittee revolution.
3. Ariel Edwards-Levy on what we've lost to the pandemic.
4. Interesting: Jason Noble makes the case — in Iowa — for abandoning the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.
5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Francis Wilkinson on religion and partisan polarization.
6. Jamelle Bouie on a Republican Party that isn't even pretending to want to govern.
7. Matt Fuller on Republican Hill staffers upset with their bosses after Jan. 6.
8. And Jessica Sidman on what it was like at Trump's Washington hotel. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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