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WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden feels at home on Capitol Hill, but the location has certainly changed since he left.
The clubby atmosphere that Biden knew so well during his 36-year Senate career is gone, probably forever. Negotiators are hard to find. And the election results did not give it a helping hand to continue its legislative agenda, with Democrats’ poor performance in top-down ballot races likely leaving them unchecked by Congress.
The dynamic leaves Biden with no choice but to try to rule from the dying midst of a Washington that has been severely shattered by the uproar of the past decade. With the forces of partisanship and deadlock entrenched, ending what Biden called “the dark era of demonization” could be the central challenge of his presidency – and a challenge that could prove to be vexing if left and right forces refuse to follow.
“There is some opportunity for bipartisanship, but it will all be interim deals,” said Rohit Kumar, former assistant to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “What I don’t know is if the parties (Democratic and Republican) will allow them to do this because the parties have become a lot more polarized.
While that remains unresolved, Biden faces a high probability of becoming the first Democrat in modern history to take office without his party controlling Congress. Republicans are favored to retain control of the Senate ahead of the second round of elections in Georgia in January. Democrats have already won the House.
The GOP’s control over the Senate would force Biden to scale back his ambitions, while ensuring that big issues like climate change, immigration and the expansion of “Obamacare” remain mostly unresolved.
But it would also create space for a different kind of legislative agenda – based on bipartisanship and consensus that would seem to play on Biden’s strengths. And some lawmakers say voters made it clear in the election that governance by the middle is exactly what they want.
Among them is Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, who emerged from a brutal re-election campaign empowered to pursue a form of pragmatic centrism that was once common among lawmakers, but is now quite rare.
“I have seen, based on the number of phone calls I have received from Democratic senators and fellow Republicans, real interest in trying to expand the center and working together to address some of the challenges that our nation is facing, ”Collins said. “And I’m encouraged by that.”
The half-full glass also hinges on a sympathetic assessment from McConnell, a much hated foe of Capitol Hill Democrats with a penchant for hardball tactics – and no stranger to filibustering.
McConnell is an old friend of Biden’s, and as vice president, Biden has worked successfully with the Kentucky Republican to avoid several fiscal and budget crises under the Obama administration, including an increase in income taxes. higher in exchange for renewing most of the Bush tax cuts in 2001.
“These deals were largely made out of necessity in times of crisis – fiscal cliffs, debt limits, government shutdowns – that sort of thing,” said Brendan Buck, a former senior aide to the former president of the Paul Ryan House, R-Wis. “That’s when they had to come together and get things done. I don’t know if there is a long history of proactive rapprochement on major political issues.
McConnell hasn’t let a lot of laws get to the Senate recently, but has the muscle memory to make bipartisan deals when he sees them. Often, these smaller bills provide political benefits to its members, such as a 2016 bill to address the opioid threat or a widely supported public lands bill this year. Other recent deals include COVID relief, a 2015 freeway bill, and a 2016 cancer bill that was handed over as a sign of goodwill to Biden, who lost his son. Beau of brain cancer in 2015.
But the space for bipartisanship has shrunk, there is hardly any political milieu left on Capitol Hill. Soon there will be no more southern white Democrats in the House or Senate, while in the GOP there are only a handful of moderates left.
Biden, by contrast, served in a Senate where Democrats strongly represented the Southern and Great Plains Republican states, and where Republicans represented now Democratic strongholds like Minnesota and Oregon. Compromise came more easily under such circumstances. Now, the party distribution of the chamber is primarily determined by whether a state is red or blue on the presidential map, with Republicans dominating the South and Midwest and Democrats controlling the West Coast and most of New Brunswick. -England and central Atlantic.
Democrats are not giving up on Georgia’s two polls, given the stakes. House control would give Biden the chance to craft a Democrats-only budget bill that could reverse some of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, expand the Affordable Care Act, and increase tax credits for poor people.
“The difference between a 50-50 Democratic-controlled Senate and a 51-49 Republican-controlled Senate could not be more striking,” said veteran Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.
But even if Democrats win both rounds of voting in Georgia, the hopes of progressives to get through a liberal agenda by getting rid of legislative filibuster – the 60-vote threshold for most laws – have simply vanished.
It’s a disappointing blow to the left, but one that could be welcomed by moderate Democrats who warn that the party’s message does not resonate in swing neighborhoods and who would prefer to focus their energies on bipartisan areas such as infrastructure and government. rural broadband, COVID assistance and annual spending.
“There is the capacity within the Democratic caucus to move forward and make big gains on these issues and understand that people will not always get 100% of what they want,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
The Biden-McConnell relationship is obviously crucial. The Kentucky Republican’s management of the Senate has been marked by sharp elbows and at times fierce tactics. The Senate floor has been a legislative dead zone of late, but it might be a mistake to assume that McConnell will be satisfied by simply stifling Biden’s agenda.
Instead, McConnell could look for opportunities to put points on the board for a tough mid-round with competitive races and another White House hit in 2024.
“He has a remarkable record of shaping up to run his conference in a way uniquely determined by the political imperative of the moment,” former Senate Democratic aide Mike Spahn said. “So I would expect that to happen again.”
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