Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaks during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) “What are we doing here?”
That’s the question I’m hearing as Congress leaves town for the August recess.
Political insiders laugh when they ask the question. Readers ask it in bold letters, apparently screaming.
Voters gave President Trump and his fellow Republicans unified control of Congress for two years with a mandate: Bring down grocery and gas prices for working Americans while avoiding another endless war.
How is that working out?
Here are defining facts from this Congress: With the passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) last week, six members of Congress have died in office during this term. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is away and hospitalized at 84. More than one hundred current lawmakers are over the age of 70.
Confirmation hearings for Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general are being led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), 92, and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), 81. The president who nominated him is 80 and wasting time on fables about a stolen election.
Earlier this year, a Republican congressman disappeared from public view for nearly four months before returning with vague explanations centered on depression. His absence barely registered because Congress simply wasn’t voting on much of consequence. Public records, however, showed that he continued trading stocks during his absence.
Last Congress, the Republican chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee left Washington and moved into a dementia care facility while she and her staff still collected taxpayer funded salaries.
“What are we doing here?”
Defenders of Congress’s gerontocracy argue that senior lawmakers bring invaluable experience. But experience should bring results. The signature legislative accomplishment of this Congress will be a large tax cut, called the “Big Beautiful Bill.” The Republicans who voted to pass the bill are now silent about it. On the campaign trail for the upcoming midterms, Republican candidates find it hard to defend a bill whose largest benefits flow disproportionately to high-income Americans and major corporations.
Lower taxes on tips and overtime, a relief for some working families, has been overwhelmed by persistently high grocery prices, elevated gas costs, and rising health insurance premiums.
“What are we doing here?”
From farmers to auto workers, Americans have felt the economic disruption caused by the president’s failed tariffs as well as the global economic fallout from closing the Strait of Hormuz.
What about congressional oversight? There is no oversight of another endless war.
And as lawmakers noted during Blanche’s hearings last week, questions remain about whether the administration has fully complied with congressional demands for information on the Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse scandal.
“What are we doing here?”
Democrats are happy to point out the contrast to when they controlled the White House and Capitol Hill.
Under President Obama, Democratic majorities in the House and Senate enacted the Affordable Care Act, extending health coverage to millions of Americans. They also ended insurers’ ability to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
When Democrats again controlled Washington under President Biden, they passed the largest infrastructure investment in generations, rebuilding roads, bridges, broadband, ports, and water systems while directing significant investment toward rural America.
Even if you disagree with those policies, they represent an effort to use a unified government to enact a governing agenda.
Unified government under Trump’s Republicanshas produced something different: Tax relief concentrated at the top, increasing income inequality. There are now more billionaires and more working-class people juggling bills.
The biggest beneficiaries of this congressional paralysis are people labeled by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) as “the Epstein class.”
Congressional scholars Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann famously described Congress at the start of the century as “the broken branch” of American government.
“We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional,” they wrote.
They concluded that the Republican Party had become “an insurgent outlier” — “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Their warning fits today: when one major party moves too far outside the political mainstream, Congress becomes incapable of addressing the country’s biggest challenges.
Today, a different phenomenon is on stage. It features what NPR recently dubbed the Senate’s “YOLO Caucus.” This geriatric group of “you only live once” Republicans includes senators such as John Cornyn (R-Texas), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). Despite their loyalty, Trump opposed two of them in their primaries. Tillis retired because he knew he could not beat a Trump-backed primary challenge. In the brief time left before the midterms, they are the most powerful group of Republican lawmakers. Free from reelection concerns, they can make bipartisan deals and demand answers for corrupt behavior.
They will have to get it done in the 21 days left on the House calendar and 31 days left on the Senate calendar before Nov. 3, Election Day. The August recess and the October pre-election recess will eat up a lot of time.
President Ronald Reagan famously asked voters, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?“
This year, Americans can ask: Are we better off than two years ago? In other words: “What are we doing here?”
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.“
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