Head of Democratic Caucus says thin House margins make attendance vital next year

The head of the House Democratic Caucus is sending an early message to his troops heading into the 119th Congress: Attendance will be crucial given the razor-tight margins in the lower chamber.

“It’s important for every member to come to work and to do their job. That's what we're telling our caucus,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said during a press briefing in the Capitol. 

“Their attendance is incredibly important, and the work that we do here is important, and pushing back against Republican overreach is potentially something that we have to do next year,” he continued. “And in order to do that, we're going to need them coming” to Washington.

While Democrats generally fared poorly in this year’s elections — losing the Senate and White House while failing to flip the House — the party outperformed the top of the ticket in the lower chamber, where GOP leaders will have just a spare 220 to 215 advantage in the next Congress. 

That thin advantage will get even thinner in the early part of next year, as Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) are set to join the Trump administration, while former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — who won reelection last month — has already resigned ahead of his failed bid to lead the Justice Department in Trump’s second term. 

Those shifts will leave Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who’s expected to keep the gavel in the next Congress, with a hairline 217 to 215 majority for several months of 2025, when President-elect Trump is hoping to use the GOP majorities in Congress to move an ambitious 100-day agenda that includes a sweeping extension of his 2017 tax cuts. 

The tiny cushion means GOP leaders will have to achieve perfect unity among Republican lawmakers in order to pass their partisan agenda, since even a single defection would lead to a tie — 216 to 216 — which spells failure under House rules. 

The math changes, however, if there are Democratic absences, which would lower the threshold Republicans would need to pass their bills, thereby padding their cushion to allow more GOP defections. 

It’s that scenario that Aguilar and other Democratic leaders are already fighting to avoid by encouraging every member to be in the chamber when hot-button legislation hits the floor. The Democratic Caucus chairman said he’s sympathetic to lawmakers who are suffering from serious illnesses, including several with cancer, but quickly emphasized that those members volunteered to seek reelection, even knowing of their health troubles. 

“That's life, but members also ran for these jobs,” Aguilar said. "Members ran for these jobs and were reelected knowing that that was what they were experiencing. And if they asked their voters to send them to D.C. to do work, my expectation is that they're going to come to D.C. to do work. 

“That's how I approach it."