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BIDEN’S SENATE WEAKNESS. President Biden wants to pass a massive, $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. His fellow Democrats want it to be far-reaching, even including an increase in the federal minimum wage that was a Democratic priority long before the virus ever appeared. But now Biden and his party are feeling the effects of the delicate balance between Democrats and Republicans in the United States Senate.
When is control of the Senate not really control of the Senate? When each party has 50 votes. Yes, Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties, and that is why Senator Charles Schumer is Majority Leader. But if an issue divides the Senate along party lines, and Republicans are unanimously opposed to something, Harris cannot use her tie-breaking power unless Democrats have all 50 of their senators on board. Losing even one Democratic senator means losing.
In other words, when it comes to controversial legislation, Biden has only two options. One, he can convince some Republicans to join Democrats in creating a majority; or two, he can keep all 50 Democratic senators in line and win with Harris’s vote. It has to be one or the other.
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On the COVID relief issue, Biden has talked a lot about bipartisanship but hasn’t really done much to win Republican votes. He will meet today with a group of ten GOP senators who have a counter-proposal on relief, but that is really their initiative, not Biden’s. Right now, the president seems to be more interested in pressuring Democrats to go along with his plan.
The pressure campaign backfired on the White House in recent days when Harris decided to give interviews to TV stations in West Virginia and Arizona. Why would she do that? To let two centrist Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, know that they should get on board for the Democratic proposal. But at least one of the senators, Manchin, was blindsided by the tactic and made his unhappiness known. “I saw it, I couldn’t believe it,” Manchin said of Harris’s interview. “No one called me. We’re going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward, but we need to work together. That’s not a way of working together.”
Now come the ten Republicans — Senators Rob Portman, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Bill Cassidy, Mitt Romney, Shelley Moore Capito, Todd Young, Jerry Moran, Mike Rounds, and Thom Tillis. Their plan is far smaller than the Democrats’ — about $600 billion. It does not include the minimum wage proposal. It would send smaller checks to individual Americans — $1,000 instead of $1,400. And it recognizes that Congress passed a huge relief measure in December — $900 billion — and much of that money, as well as some of the relief money passed in March 2020, hasn’t been spent yet. Perhaps Congress should not be piling on new billions in spending until the previously-approved billions have been spent.
“We note that billions of dollars remain unspent from the previous COVID relief packages,” the Republican senators wrote in a letter to Biden. “The proposal we have outlined is mindful of these past efforts, while also acknowledging the priorities that need additional support right now.”
So now Biden has a choice. There is no doubt the Republicans are making the proposal in good faith. Some of them are certainly open to compromise. Biden can either work toward a compromise with them, or try to whip all 50 Democrats in line behind him and pass a bill with Harris’s tie-breaking vote.
COVID is by far the most important issue of Biden’s presidency. It is the reason he was elected. He clearly wants to move on all sorts of issues important to his Democratic base, but COVID is at the top of the list. If Biden messes that up, he will be in a bad way.
“For the next period of time nothing else is more important,” wrote the left-wing Center for American Progress’s Ruy Teixeira, as quoted in this valuable article by National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar. “Not immigration reform. Not criminal justice reform. Not climate change. Not child poverty. Not executive orders. Not Trump’s trial. Either solve the twin crises [of COVID and the economic downturn it has caused] or prepare yourself for the wrath of voters who will, not unreasonably, think you have failed them.”
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