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WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet choices quickly collide with the political reality of a tightly controlled Senate that will leave the new Democratic administration dependent on rival Republicans for anything.
Under the leadership of Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican senators will have a great influence on the confirmation of Biden’s candidates, regardless of which party holds the majority after the run-off election. in January. Biden will have little room to maneuver and little voice to spare.
As Biden deployed his economic team Tuesday – after presenting his national security team last week – he called on the Senate to quickly review its candidates, saying they “deserve and expect nothing less.”
But that seems unlikely. Republicans are quick to signal that they are eager to fix the terms of the debate and demand a price for their votes. Biden’s choice for budget chief Neera Tanden was immediately dismissed as “radioactive.” His candidate for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, quickly met resistance GOP senators exploded its record amid their own potential White House campaigns in 2024.
While most Republican senators still refuse to publicly acknowledge the defeat of President Donald Trump, they are launching new battles for the Biden era. The GOP is suspended between an incumbent president they need to stay close – Trump can still make or break a career with just one tweet – and the new one they don’t know how to approach. Nearly a month since the Nov. 3 election, McConnell and Biden have yet to speak out.
“The disagreement, disorientation and confusion among Republicans will make them unite in opposition,” Ramesh Ponnuru, visiting researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, said in a briefing Tuesday.
“They don’t necessarily know what they’re for, but they can all agree that they don’t like Neera Tanden.
A new president often has problems with at least a few cabinet or administration candidates, people who rub the Senate the wrong way and fail to win enough votes to be confirmed or are forced to step down after grueling public hearings.
Trump’s candidates have faced enormous resistance from Senate Democrats, who have used their minority party status to slow down confirmation of even lower positions. It has been an escalation of procedural battles in the Senate for at least a decade.
But the battles ahead are particularly heated as Biden attempts to defend an administration during the COVID-19 crisis and economic free fall, rebuilding a government after Trump ousted many career professionals and named often untested newcomers. .
Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer praised the expertise Biden’s choices will bring to the government. He mocked Republicans for complaining about Tanden’s penchant for sharp tweets after four years of endless beards on Trump’s Twitter that GOP senators have often tried to ignore.
“After everything we’ve been through for the past four years, I would expect almost every candidate for President-elect Biden to be broadly acceptable,” Schumer said from the Senate.
Instead, he warned, “the switch is starting to flip” to Republican opposition.
To be sure, some key Biden choices will have an easier path to confirmation. Janet Yellen, who would become the country’s first female treasury secretary, drew few public complaints from Republicans. Many voted to confirm her in 2014 as President of the Federal Reserve.
Democrats have their own battles ahead. Biden faces the daunting task of preventing the party’s centrist and progressive factions from breaking up as he tries to put his team together.
Republicans now hold a 50-48 advantage in the Senate, but if Democrats win both seats in Georgia in the Jan.5 runoff, they will take control, as the vice president, who will be Kamala Harris, becomes a tiebreaker.
The nomination fights will serve as an early indicator of the approach Republicans take towards Biden as they find their political foothold in a post-Trump environment.
Trump continues to wield great influence over the party as he is released, and senators, in particular, must keep him close for the run-off election in Georgia.
President plans to visit Georgia on Saturday, where two GOP senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, failed to cross the 50% threshold to win re-election in November. Perdue takes on Democrat Jon Ossoff and Loeffler faces Democrat Raphael Warnock in a state that has turned to support Biden.
McConnell has said next to nothing about Biden’s candidates or next year’s agenda as he continues to give Trump time and space to challenge election results in court cases that have delivered little victories.
Instead, he’s letting other Republicans in the Senate, especially those seen as having White House ambitions, make names for themselves. GOP Meaning. Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley, among others, have all made sharp complaints about Biden’s choices.
Despite Trump’s defeat, Republicans in Congress may have little incentive to work with Biden. They performed better than Trump, retaining many House and Senate seats they were supposed to lose. Perhaps one lesson Republicans learned from the November election is to keep doing what they did.
McConnell nodded on what lies ahead after GOP senators met by conference call on Tuesday, forced to ditch their traditional sit-down lunches as the COVID-19 crisis erupts and threatens to further disrupt Capitol Hill .
McConnell spoke of ending the final weeks of “this government” and “the new administration” to come.
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