PERSPECTIVE-The Republicans are now up by two in the US Senate and could very well pick up two more seats (Alaska and Louisiana), giving them 54. With 53 or 54, the GOP will have little worry about one-off defections on some votes that would put Vice President Biden in a position to cast the tiebreaker. 52 seats could be a little dicey for the Senate Majority Leader-Elect McConnell to control on some issues, but he should have his way almost all of the time.
At stake is a stockpile of legislation passed by the Republican House that has been blocked by current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. These include jobs bills, ACA fixes and the Keystone Pipeline.
In all, there are about 350 bills on the sideline in the Senate, some with strong bi-partisan support. McConnell will be in a position to cherry-pick which bills advance for consideration. If he is smart, he will be conciliatory to some of his Democratic colleagues by allowing amendments.
Aside from Keystone, only a handful of the stalled bills have star power that will propel them to the headlines and, therefore, become rallying points for supporters and detractors. But there are others, when viewed in the aggregate, could have significant impact on the economy. With some horse trading, McConnell could enlist support from several Democrats to advance his broader Republican agenda by backing bills which will make them look good in their respective states.
The Republicans to be successful, then, need to manage the legislative backlog in the Senate as a whole and not by the individual pieces. While they bemoaned Reid’s iron hand approach to suppressing bills initiated by the House, they now have a stash of ready-made components to package and roll out.
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President Obama has the veto power and could block everything, but he would then be viewed as the same obstructionist he accused the Republican leadership of being. In the process, he would likely alienate some Democrats and hurt the party’s appeal in the 2016 elections. Even a lame duck president does not want to do that.
To protect his party, Obama should emulate former presidents Clinton’s and Reagan’s willingness to strike deals and avoid Gerald Ford’s excessive use of vetoes, according to New Your Times columnist Michael Beschloss.
Reagan and Clinton are generally admired and respected; Ford is little more than a footnote in history.
(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and former NC Valley Village board member and treasurer. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected])
–cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 90
Pub: Nov 7, 2014
