Congress Spends $40K To Change Color of House Lapel Pins From Green to Navy Blue Because They Can

With a government shutdown looming in less than a week, the GOP-led House of Representatives started 2024 by checking off an essential item of business: buying new navy-blue identification lapel pins for House members to the tune of $40,000, replacing the green ones with which they started the term.

“Today we’re getting a new pin, half way through the term because the @HouseGOP didn’t like the color,” Illinois Democrat Sean Casten wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Big congrats to them on their first tangible accomplishment of the 118th.”

Casten was referring to the fact that this legislative session has been one of the most unproductive in U.S. history, with the combination of a divided Congress and vicious Republican internecine squabbling keeping the legislative branch from passing little but a handful of uncontroversial laws.

“I’m awfully proud of these guys for getting something done,” Casten told HuffPost. “When we have a war in Ukraine that we can’t get funding to, a crisis in Israel and Gaza, and a government shutdown eight days away, and we’re prioritizing the color of fashion choices, that speaks for itself.”

Every lawmaker in the House of Representatives and the Senate is given an identification pin at the start of the congressional term, which allows them to get through security without having to wear an identification card. The pin’s background color changes every two years and has been apple green since the beginning of the 118th session of the House in January 2023. As of Saturday, the reasons for making the change midway through this current Congress were unclear.

So far, opinions on the switch have been mixed. North Carolina Democrat Deborah Ross told Semafor that some congresswomen complained that the new pin was too small to affix on larger chains, while South Carolina Republican Ralph Norman said he knew “there were many congressmen who didn’t like the green pin.” Indiana Republican Rudy Yakym III told a reporter for NOTUS, a new publication from the Albritton Journalism Institute, that he preferred the new pin. And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she didn’t understand why House leadership made the switch mid-session — at all.

The news of the $40,000 splurge—sources with knowledge of the pin change confirmed the number to both Semafor and The New York Times—comes as Congress rapidly approaches a January 19 government funding deadline. Without a spending deal by then, 20 percent of government funding is set to expire. The rest expires in early February.

Throughout the past week, arch-conservative House Republicans continued to pressure Speaker Mike Johnson to reject the topline funding agreement he struck with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last weekend. Johnson said Friday that he stood by the deal. “Our topline agreement remains,” he said in a press conference. “We are getting our next steps together, and we are working toward a robust appropriations process. So stay tuned for all that.”