Why Republicans are still in charge of Senate business as Schumer and McConnell craft a power-sharing

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This is how we start the day and end the week. Biparty talks quickly become entangled in vital Senate business, including getting an agreement on how the Senate will work over the next two years. It sounds simple, but it’s a big deal and it turns out to be a lot harder to secure than anyone expected.

The Senate operates on the organizational resolution of the last Congress, when the GOP had a majority. For this reason, for example, President Joe Biden’s Cabinet pick confirmation hearings this week are chaired by Republicans.

Bottom line: The fight for the Organizational Resolution, which appeared to be a temporary disagreement on Wednesday, raised its head as an all-out legislative crisis that could threaten to block committee work, cast a shadow over discussions on when to begin the dismissal. testing and constraining the early days of Chuck Schumer’s role as majority leader.

Put simply, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is making a play to wield as much power as possible over the Senate in his new role and Schumer is going to have to make some impossible choices about how to move forward.

Challenges

Democrats don’t want to put anything in writing. As we have pointed out several times, there are no votes to get rid of filibuster. Moderate Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema have made it clear they don’t want to remove minority party protection anytime soon.

But Democratic aides point out that putting this in writing while you are at the very start of your new Senate reign would be unprecedented. It threatens to weaken Schumer with an invigorated base that would see this move as a massive concession to move forward with anything that looks like a progressive agenda. It would also take away a potential and powerful tool if Republicans raised obstacle after obstacle to push through Biden’s agenda over the next two years. As an aide in the Democratic Senate told me: At the moment Manchin does not support the elimination of filibuster, but after eight months of filibuster, would that change his mind?

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The next few hours are going to be a crucial stage in learning how Schumer and McConnell operate now that their roles have been reversed. In the past, interactions between the two leaders have been minimal, largely reserved for discussions between their staff and heated and dueling speeches in the Senate. As majority leader, McConnell operated swiftly and decisively with consulting his conference, but rarely the minority.

It’s a unique moment when Schumer must come to an agreement with McConnell to fully unleash the powers of his new role, and it tests a new dynamic that we haven’t seen between them. While negotiations over the organization resolution remain stalled, discussions over the timing of an impeachment trial are more of an open question at this time. As CNN’s Manu Raju reported on Thursday night, these two are inextricably linked, and CNN reports there is much more openness to accepting McConnell’s plan to delay the start of the impeachment trial than there is to the suggestion. McConnell that Democrats preserve filibuster in the organizing resolution. .

But Democrats won’t just agree to delay the trial without a long list of deals on how to proceed not only with Biden’s national security candidates, but with his cabinet as a whole. Will it work? Who knows, but aides say the hope is that the push and pull of multiple, simultaneous, high-stakes negotiations between the two leaders will give the two men plenty of areas for the horse trade.

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Look, McConnell’s last-minute request on Thursday night threw a wrench into Democratic thinking about how to run this trial. As of Thursday morning, House impeachment officials were set to send the articles out as early as Friday, but it is still unclear how Democrats will proceed with McConnell’s offer. Schumer needs time to see how serious a proposal is and if he can extract concessions in other areas to push through a delayed trial that is worth its time. If McConnell doesn’t make the pledge to speed up a nominee streak, you can expect it to be rejected and the trial could begin as early as next week. But, if Republicans make concessions on approval of Biden’s cabinet – which could benefit both sides – the trial could be postponed until mid-February.

Remember, this is all a negotiation.

Another reminder: McConnell’s offer to Democrats said nothing about how a trial would be run once it started. The offer only hinted at how the “pre-trial” process would work. This means that McConnell’s offer did not suggest when the trial would actually begin (although it is customary for it to begin the day after House officials submitted their pre-trial rebuttal). In this case, it would be February 14. The offer also made no promises to double-track this process and allow other Senate business to take place in the morning. He made no promises on the time each side would have to present their case or on the presence of witnesses. These are all major and outstanding issues and you can expect these to be important issues that Schumer Land could try to resolve as part of these discussions.

This story and title was updated with additional developments on Friday.

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