STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here's what happened in the House of Representatives the last several years. Democrats had an extremely narrow majority. They needed almost every Democrat to stick together to pass anything. And then Republicans had an extremely narrow majority and needed almost every Republican to stick together to pass anything. This election is looking a little different. According to NPR at 6:22 here on Wednesday morning, Democrats have 222 seats. That is several more than a majority. And a lot of seats are undecided. That majority may get a lot bigger. So what does that mean? NPR's senior national political correspondent, Mara Liasson, is here in Studio 31. Mara, good morning.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: OK, so Hakeem Jeffries, the presumptive speaker of the House, does he have an effective governing majority, do you think?
LIASSON: I think he does in the House. And what Barbara Sprunt, our congressional correspondent, said earlier this morning, he - she talked about the gift of a big majority. And it is really a gift. When you think about the way that Republicans chewed up and spit out speakers over the last 10 years or so - Mike Johnson struggled every day to put together a majority. He was beholden to his far-right flank in the Freedom Caucus.
Hakeem Jeffries is not going to have that problem. He's not going to have to be fighting with the group of left-wing Democratic congressmen. He's going to be able to pass bills. Now, then, of course, he has a very big question - what kind of bills do they want to pass? Because there's a very good chance those bills are not going to become law.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
LIASSON: They - there is not a veto-proof majority in the Senate of Democrats. But he starts with a bigger majority, a solid majority, and it's going to make Democrats' lives just much easier than Republicans have been.
INSKEEP: Well, let's talk through. We don't know, of course, what piece of legislation will come first or anything like that, but what are the things that you can do with a House majority?
LIASSON: Well, you can have investigations. Doesn't mean that members of the administration that you subpoena will show up. But you can have investigations that tell a story - that tell a story about the corruption of the Trump administration. That's what Democrats want to do. They're going to talk about how much money Donald Trump made and how he made it and how his family made it in the last two years. And it's a lot of money. It's at least $2 billion.
And then they're going to try to pass bills that are related to those investigations. They want to send a message to the American people that if they ever got all three branches of government again, this is what they'd do. This is what they'd do to bring down gas prices. This is what they'd do to bring down fertilizer prices. This is what they'd do to make it easier to afford healthcare and education and housing.
I mean, they have - let's - how can we say this? They have messed up opportunities in the past, and the big question for Democrats is, how are they going to avoid that? How are they going to avoid overreading the mandate that they think they got from this election?
INSKEEP: And we heard earlier this morning, Ken Martin said opportunity, which sounds like we're giving a chance, getting a chance, but then changed the word to mandate...
LIASSON: Yeah, yeah.
INSKEEP: ... And said mandate. Mara Liasson, thanks so much. Stick with us. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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