ATLANTA (AP) – This is usually the first midterm election for a president to reorder the political approach and priorities of a White House. For President-elect Joe Biden, his most decisive congressional election comes before he takes office.
Two rallies Tuesday in Georgia will decide which party the Senate controls and thus how far the new president can legislate on issues such as the pandemic, health care, taxes, energy and the environment. For a politician who has sold himself to Americans as a unit and an experienced legislative broker, the Georgian election will help determine whether he can meet his bill.
“It’s not that you can do anything in the minority or do anything in the majority, but having the hammer and the lead can be the difference in success or failure for a government,” Jim said. Manley, once said. former assistant to former Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid, who has held office to current Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.
Both Georgian Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock must win Tuesday to split the Senate 50-50. Elected Vice President Kamala Harris, as President of the Senate, will provide the necessary tiebreaker to determine control.
To be sure, even a narrowly divided Democratic Senate will not give Biden everything he wants. Senate rules still require 60 votes to advance the most important legislation; for now, there are not enough Democrats willing to change the requirement. So regardless of Georgia’s results, Biden will have to beat the Republicans in a Senate where a dual group of more centric senators stand to see their stock rise.
A Democratic Senate will still facilitate an easy path for Biden’s nominees to key positions, especially in the federal judiciary, and give Democrats control over committees and much of the action. Conversely, a Senate led by McConnell Biden would almost certainly deny the greatest victories in legislation, as late in President Barack Obama’s tenure, by preventing his agenda from even getting votes up or down.
Biden’s team is well aware of the interests. The president-elect travels to Atlanta on Monday, before the end of the series, to fight with Ossoff and Warnock for the second time in three weeks. Biden’s collaborators of the campaign helped raise millions to promote the party infrastructure that helped Biden become the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 to carry the state. Elected Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning in Savannah on Sunday.
In his last visit, Biden had the Republican sense. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler called “roadblocks” and urged Georgians “to vote for two U.S. senators who know how to say the word ‘yes’ and not just ‘no’.”
Congressional makeup forms any administration, but perhaps even more so for Biden, who has spent 36 years in the Senate, plus eight as Obama’s vice president and top congressman. Biden relies on the CV to throw him to the country as a consensus builder; he also criticized the increasing use of presidents to use Congress and insisted that it would be different in his presidency.
Even some Republicans are hopeful. Michael Steel, once a leading adviser to Republican House Speaker John Boehner, a Obama chief, along with McConnell, blamed Obama’s Capitol Hill problems for his personal approach to his fellow politicians. Conversely, Steel said: “President-elect Biden is a legislator by call, 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 policies that have stalled several administrations. Steel noted that a handful of Republican senators, including Marco Rubio of Florida and Rob Portman of Ohio, could face difficult re-election battles in 2022, potentially making them eager to cut deals they could run in campaigns.
There is, however, no indication that McConnell could consider other leading Biden priorities, particularly a “public option” of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which passed without a single Republican vote when Democrats controlled both chambers on Capitol Hill. Biden’s proposed tax increases on companies and the richest Americans are likely dead in a GOP Senate.
Biden will need his negotiation skills to also navigate the left flank of his own party. While progressive people say they have lowered their expectations of what is possible, even under a Democratic senate, they still intend to push Biden.
Larry Cohen, president of Our Revolution, the offshoot of Vermont president Bernie Sanders’ president in 2016, said progressives would press Democrats in Congress to use the ‘budget reconciliation’ process to push the filibuster of the Senate to circumvent. Cohen argued that tactics could be used to achieve long-sought-after goals, such as ending tax subsidies to fossil fuel companies and enabling the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to negotiate as a single customer with pharmaceutical companies.
The actions, Cohen noted, could yield significant savings and generate new revenue, even if Republicans do not agree to tax increases.
He also said that progressive Biden would push to use executive power. He cites two initiatives Biden has publicly called for: ending new drilling on federal lands and raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $ 15 an hour, even if Congress does not set the floor in the economy. Another progressive priority, the cancellation of student debt under federal loan programs, is something Biden has not said whether he would be willing to try unilaterally.
Democrats’ limited expectations of their own power, even with a potential majority, believe the exaggerated allegations the Republicans used in the Georgia races.
In the narrative of Perdue and Loeffler, a Democratic Senate would stamp a ‘socialist agenda’ from ‘the termination of private insurance’ and ‘the extension of the Supreme Court’ to the adoption of wholesalers a ‘Green New Deal’ worth billions would spend and tax increase every U.S. household every year thousands of dollars. Except that Biden and most Democratic senators misrepresent the policy preferences, the characterization ignores the reality of the Senate.
Ossoff said during a campaign stop this week that Perdue’s “ridiculous” attacks make me wave. “He jokes that his policy ideas, which now join Biden’s, amount to a left-wing lung. But the challenger agrees with the incumbent on how much the run – off of Georgia matters.
“We have too much good work to do,” Ossoff said, “to be trapped in a grid and obstruction for the next few years.”