ATLANTA (AP) – It is usually the first mid-term presidential election that rearranges the White House’s political focus and priorities. For President-elect Joe Biden, his most final congressional election will come before he takes office.
On Tuesday in the second round in Georgia, it will be decided which party controls the Senate and, therefore, how far the new president can go in legislation on issues such as the pandemic, health care, taxation, energy and the environment. For a politician who sold himself to Americans as an experienced unionist and legislative broker, the Georgia election will help determine if he is able to live up to his billing.
“It’s not that you can’t do anything in the minority or do everything in the majority, but having the hammer, having that leadership control can be the difference in the success or failure of an administration,” Jim Manley said. , once a top aide to former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who held office before current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Both Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are due to win Tuesday to split the Senate between 50 and 50. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, as Senate Speaker, would provide the tiebreaker needed to determine control.
Certainly, even a narrowly divided Democratic Senate would not give Biden all he wants. Senate rules still require 60 votes to advance in most major legislation; at the moment, not enough Democrats are willing to change that requirement. Therefore, regardless of Georgia’s results, Biden will have to beat the Republicans in a Senate where a bipartisan group of more centrist senators stand up to see how their actions increase.
A Democratic Senate would open an even easier path for Biden’s candidates to key positions, especially in the federal judiciary, and give Democrats control of committees and much of the council’s action. By contrast, a McConnell-led Senate would almost certainly deny Biden’s major legislative victories, as he did late in President Barack Obama’s term, keeping his agenda even without getting votes up or down.
The Biden team is very aware of the bets. The president-elect will travel to Atlanta on Monday, the eve of the playoffs, to campaign with Ossoff and Warnock for the second time in three weeks. Supporters of the Biden campaign have helped raise millions to boost the party’s infrastructure that helped Biden become the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 to lead the state. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will campaign in Savannah on Sunday.
On his last visit, Biden called Republican sensor David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler “road barriers” and urged Georgians to “vote for two U.S. senators who know how to say the word ‘yes’ and not just ‘no.’ “”.
The composition of Congress shapes any administration, but perhaps even more so for Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate, plus eight as Obama’s vice president and top congressional liaison. Biden relied on this curriculum to present himself in the country as a consensus builder; he also criticized the presidents ’increased use of executive action to tour Congress and insisted it would be different from his presidency.
Even some Republicans have hope. Michael Steel, who was one of the top advisers to Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, an Obama leader with McConnell, blamed Obama’s problems on Capitol Hill for his personal approach to his fellow politicians. By contrast, Steel said, “President-elect Biden is a legislator by advocacy, by training, by instinct, by experience in a way that former President Obama was not.”
Steel predicted that Biden and McConnell, two former colleagues, could find “common ground” on infrastructure and immigration, political areas that have plunged multiple administrations. Steel noted that a handful of Republican senators, including Marco Rubio of Florida and Rob Portman of Ohio, could face tough re-election fights in 2022, which could make them want to reduce the deals they could reach in campaigns.
However, there is no indication that McConnell would consider Biden’s other top priorities, most notably a “public option” extension of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, which passed without a single Republican vote when Democrats controlled the two quarters of Capitol Hill. The tax hikes proposed by Biden to businesses and wealthier Americans are also likely dead in a Republican Senate.
Biden will need his negotiating skills to navigate the left flank of his own party as well. Although progressives say they have lowered their expectations as much as possible, even under a Democratic Senate, they still intend to push Biden.
Larry Cohen, president of Our Revolution, the result of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders ’2016 presidential candidacy, said progressives will pressure Democrats in Congress to use the“ budget reconciliation ”process to work around the threshold. 60 votes from the Senate. Cohen argued that the tactic could be used to achieve long-standing goals, such as ending tax subsidies to fossil fuel companies and allowing the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to negotiate as a single customer with pharmaceutical companies. .
These moves, Cohen noted, could generate considerable savings, creating new revenue even if Republicans don’t accept any tax increases.
He also said that progressives will push Biden to use the executive branch. He named two initiatives Biden has publicly called for: ending new drilling on federal land and raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $ 15 an hour, even if Congress doesn’t establish that flat across the economy. Another progressive priority, student debt cancellation in federal loan programs, is something Biden has not said if he would be willing to try unilaterally.
Democrats ’limited expectations of their own power, even with a potential majority, belie the exaggerated claims Republicans have used in Georgia races.
According to Perdue and Loeffler’s account, a Democratic Senate would “stamp” a “socialist agenda,” from “ending private insurance” and “expanding the Supreme Court” to wholesale adopting a “green New Deal” that it would spend trillions and raise taxes on every U.S. household by thousands of dollars each year. In addition to distorting the political preferences of Biden and most Democratic senators, this characterization ignores the reality of the Senate list.
At a campaign stop this week, Ossoff said Perdue’s “ridiculous” attacks “blew my mind.” He mocked the claim that his political ideas, which fit closely with Biden, amount to a left-wing lunge. But the rival agreed with the headline as far as Georgia runoffs matter.
“We have too much good work to do,” Ossoff said, “to get caught up in the blockade and obstruction for years to come.”