ATLANTA (AP) – It is usually the president’s first half-term election that reorders the White House’s political approach and priorities. For President-elect Joe Biden, his most decisive congressional election is coming before he takes office.
Two runoffs on Tuesday in Georgia will decide which party controls the Senate and, therefore, how far the new president can go legislatively on issues such as the pandemic, health, taxation, energy and the environment. For a politician who sold himself to the Americans as a unifier and an experienced legislative broker, the Georgia elections will help determine whether he will be able to meet his bill.
“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,” said Jim Manley, once the main advisor. former Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid, who held the post alongside current Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are expected to win on Tuesday to split the Senate 50-50. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, as president of the Senate, would provide the necessary tiebreaker to determine control.
Certainly, even a divided Democratic Senate would not give Biden everything he wants. Senate rules still require 60 votes to advance most important legislation; as yet, there are not enough democrats willing to change that requirement. So, regardless of Georgia’s results, Biden will have to win over Republicans in a Senate, where a bipartisan group of more centrist senators will face off to see their stocks soar.
A Democratic Senate would still open an easier path for Biden’s nominees to important positions, especially in the federal judiciary, and give Democrats control over committees and much of the plenary action. On the other hand, a Senate led by McConnell would almost certainly deny Biden major legislative victories, as he did at the end of President Barack Obama’s term, by preventing his agenda from receiving positive or negative votes.
Biden’s team is well aware of what is at stake. The president-elect will travel to Atlanta on Monday, the eve of the second round, to campaign with Ossoff and Warnock for the second time in three weeks. Biden’s campaign advisors helped raise millions to boost the party infrastructure that helped Biden become the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 to win the state. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will campaign on Sunday in Savannah.
On his last visit, Biden called the Republicans Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of “roadblocks” and urged Georgians “to vote for two US 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 main representative of Congress. Biden relied on this curriculum to present himself to the country as a consensus builder; he also criticized the increasing use of executive actions by presidents to circulate in Congress and insisted that it would be different in his presidency.
Even some Republicans are hopeful. Michael Steel, who was once a top adviser to Republican House Speaker John Boehner, Obama’s defense chief along with McConnell, blamed Obama’s problems on Capitol Hill in his personal approach to his political colleagues. On the other hand, Steel said: “President-elect Biden is a legislator by vocation, 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” about infrastructure and immigration – areas of policy that have confused many administrations. Steel noted that a handful of Republican senators, including Marco Rubio of Florida and Rob Portman of Ohio, could face tough struggles for re-election in 2022, potentially making them eager to strike deals they could tout in campaigns.
Still, there is no indication that McConnell would allow consideration of other important Biden priorities, most notably a “public option” expansion of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which passed without a single Republican vote when Democrats controlled both chambers. on the Capitol. The tax hikes proposed by Biden on corporations and wealthier Americans are also likely to be dead in the Republican Senate.
Biden will need his negotiating skills to navigate his own party’s left flank as well. Although progressives say they have lowered their expectations of what is possible – even under a Democratic Senate – they still intend to put pressure on Biden.
Larry Cohen, president of Our Revolution, the 2016 presidential run-off of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said progressives will pressure Democrats in Congress to use the “budgetary reconciliation” process to get around the 60-vote obstruction limit of Senate. Cohen argued that the tactic could be used to meet long-sought goals, such as ending tax subsidies for fossil fuel companies and allowing Medicare and Medicaid Service Centers to negotiate as a single customer with pharmaceutical companies.
Such measures, Cohen noted, can generate considerable savings, creating new revenue, even if Republicans do not agree to any tax increases.
He also said that progressives will pressure Biden to use executive authority. He cited two initiatives that Biden publicly called for: ending new drilling on federal land and raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $ 15 an hour, even if Congress does not set that floor for the economy. Another progressive priority, the cancellation of student debt in federal loan programs, is something that Biden did not say 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 made in disputes in Georgia.
In Perdue and Loeffler’s narrative, a Democratic Senate would “stamp” a “socialist agenda”, “end private insurance” and “expand the Supreme Court” to adopt a “New Green Deal” wholesale that would spend trillions and increase taxes on every American family in thousands of dollars each year. In addition to misrepresenting 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 “blow my mind”. He scoffed at the claim that his political ideas, which closely align with Biden, amount to a leftist coup. But the challenger agreed with the incumbent on the importance of Georgia’s runoff.
“We have a lot of good work to do,” said Ossoff, “to get stuck in traffic jams and obstructions for years to come.”