US Senate
Subterms
More stories
- in US Politics
Biden and Republicans agree to further Covid relief talks but deep divisions remain
Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterTen Republican senators have agreed to continue talks with the White House in an attempt to negotiate a bipartisan coronavirus relief package, after a two-hour meeting with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Monday night ended short of a breakthrough.The meeting lasted much longer than expected, providing a visible example of the president’s stated ambition to reach across the aisle. But the group of senators who emerged from the Oval Office shortly after 7pm did so empty-handed.The leader of the Republican pack, Susan Collins of Maine, described the meeting with the president and the vice-president as “excellent”, and “frank and very useful”. But she was clear about the huge gulf that still exists between Biden’s proposed $1.9tn package and the alternative posed by the 10 senators, which is less than a third of that size.“It was a very good exchange of views,” Collins told reporters as the meeting came to a close. “I wouldn’t say that we came together on a package tonight – no one expected that in a two-hour meeting.”She added that they did agree to “follow up and talk further on how we can continue to work together on this very important issue”.After the meeting, the White House put out a statement that bluntly underlined Biden’s unwillingness to allow his relief efforts to be delayed. “While there were areas of agreement, the president reiterated his view that Congress must respond boldly and urgently, and noted many areas which the Republican senators’ proposal does not address.”The lack of any major advance between the two sides means that Democrats are likely to continue to press ahead quickly with plans to push through Biden’s much larger package without Republican support. Hours earlier, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, filed a joint budget resolution, a step towards passing a relief package without Republican backing.That 10 Republican senators were prepared to enter into such a high-profile interaction with Biden and Harris in the first formal meeting held in the Oval Office under the new administration was significant in itself. That is the number who would be needed to vote in favor of any package to reach the 60-vote threshold in the Senate able to resist a filibuster.The gap between the Democrats’ proposed package and what the Republican senators envision remains enormous – not only is the Republican alternative small by comparison at $618bn, but it contains no funding for state and local governments and differs in other key regards.The Republican package would offer direct stimulus checks of $1,000 per individual, phasing out for anyone earning above $40,000 a year. By contrast, the Biden plan would offer $1,400 and begin phasing out above $75,000 a year.Biden’s package is also more generous in extending enhanced unemployment insurance.Reporters were allowed to witness the start of the Oval Office gathering. Biden and Harris sat on either side of a fire, with Collins on a sofa to Biden’s left and Mitt Romney of Utah to Harris’s right.The White House made efforts through the day to lower expectations about the discussions. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, indicated in the daily press briefing that there was no intention to “make or accept an offer”.She emphasized that Biden was determined to move swiftly to address the multiple crises posed by the pandemic and its economic consequences. She added: “The president believes that the risk is not going too small, but going not big enough.”Nine of the senators were physically present at the Oval Office. In addition to Collins and Romney, they included: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Todd Young of Indiana, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.Mike Rounds of South Dakota attended by phone. More
- in US Politics
Why Republicans won’t agree to Biden’s big plans and why he should ignore them | Robert Reich
If there were ever a time for bold government, it is now. Covid, joblessness, poverty, raging inequality and our last chance to preserve the planet are together creating an existential inflection point.Fortunately for America and the world, Donald Trump is gone, and Joe Biden has big plans for helping Americans survive Covid and then restructuring the economy, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and creating millions of green jobs.But Republicans in Congress don’t want to go along. Why not?Mitch McConnell and others say America can’t afford it. “We just passed a program with over $900bn in it,” groused Senator Mitt Romney, the most liberal of the bunch.Rubbish. We can’t afford not to. Fighting Covid will require far more money. People are hurting.Besides, with the economy in the doldrums it’s no time to worry about the national debt. The best way to reduce the debt as a share of the economy is to get the economy growing again.The real reason Republicans want to block Biden is they fear his plans will workRepairing ageing infrastructure and building a new energy-efficient one will make the economy grow even faster over the long term – further reducing the debt’s share.No one in their right mind should worry that public spending will “crowd out” private investment. If you hadn’t noticed, borrowing is especially cheap right now. Money is sloshing around the world, in search of borrowers.It’s hard to take Republican concerns about debt seriously when just four years ago they had zero qualms about enacting one of the largest tax cuts in history, largely for big corporations and the super-wealthy.If they really don’t want to add to the debt, there’s another alternative. They can support a tax on super-wealthy Americans.The total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires has grown by a staggering $1.1tn since the start of the pandemic, a 40% increase. They alone could finance almost all of Biden’s Covid relief package and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. So why not a temporary emergency Covid wealth tax?The real reason Republicans want to block Biden is they fear his plans will work.It would be the Republican’s worst nightmare: all the anti-government claptrap they’ve been selling since Ronald Reagan will be revealed as nonsense.Government isn’t the problem and never was. Bad government is the problem, and Americans have just had four years of it. Biden’s success would put into sharp relief Trump and Republicans’ utter failures on Covid, jobs, poverty, inequality and climate change, and everything else.Biden and the Democrats would reap the political rewards in 2022 and beyond. Democrats might even capture the presidency and Congress for a generation. After FDR rescued America, the Republican party went dark for two decades.Trumpian Republicans in Congress have an even more diabolical motive for blocking Biden. They figure if Americans remain in perpetual crises and ever-deepening fear, they’ll lose faith in democracy itself.This would open the way for another strongman demagogue in 2024 – if not Trump, a Trump-impersonator like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley or Donald Trump Jr.The worst-kept secret in Washington is Biden doesn’t really need RepublicansIf Biden is successful, Americans’ faith in democracy might begin to rebound – marking the end of the nation’s flirtation with fascism. If he helps build a new economy of green jobs with good wages, even Trump’s angry white working-class base might come around.The worst-kept secret in Washington is Biden doesn’t really need Republicans, anyway. With their razor-thin majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats can enact Biden’s plans without a single Republican vote.The worry is Biden wants to demonstrate “bipartisan cooperation” and may try so hard to get some Republican votes that his plans get diluted to the point where Republicans get what they want: failure.Biden should forget bipartisanship. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans didn’t give a hoot about bipartisanship when they and Trump were in power.If Republicans try to stonewall Biden’s Covid relief plan, Biden and the Democrats should go it alone through a maneuver called “reconciliation”, allowing a simple majority to pass budget legislation.If Republicans try to block anything else, Biden should scrap the filibuster – which now requires 60 senators to end debate. The filibuster isn’t in the constitution. It’s anti-democratic, giving a minority of senators the power to block the majority. It was rarely used for most of the nation’s history.The filibuster can be ended by a simple majority vote, meaning Democrats have the power to scrap it. Biden will have to twist the arms of a few recalcitrant Democrats, but that’s what presidential leadership often requires.The multiple crises engulfing America are huge. The window of opportunity for addressing them is small. If ever there was a time for boldness, it is now. More
- in US Politics
Explainer: what is the filibuster and why do some Democrats want to get rid of it?
Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterWhile the US Senate has temporarily averted a showdown over its so-called filibuster rule, the issue appears likely to resurface, as the wafer-thin Democratic majority endeavors to pass Joe Biden’s legislative agenda into law – and Republicans try to stop them. Here’s what you need to know:What is the filibuster? There is a movie version, in which an impassioned senator holds the floor by speaking at marathon length to block or force an issue – and a much more common version, lodged deep in the parliamentary weeds. The latter, less cinematic version, is the current focus.So what’s the gist?The filibuster is a way for a relatively small group of senators to block some action by the majority. The filibuster rule allows a minority of 41 senators (out of 100 total) to prevent a vote on most species of legislation.Whether you see that capability as an important safeguard against the tyranny of the majority, or a guarantee of institutional paralysis, likely corresponds with your party identity and who controls the Senate at the time.For progressives, what is the strongest argument in favor of keeping the filibuster?The legislative filibuster has been used by Democrats in recent years to block funding for Donald Trump’s border wall project, to protect unemployment benefits and to stop Republicans from restricting abortion access.Also, some Democrats fear that if there is no filibuster, Republicans will, next time they hold the Senate majority, pass horrifying laws, for example to restrict voting access, encourage environmental despoilment, reward Wall Street, curtail reproductive rights – who knows.Why are so many influential Democrats calling for an end to the filibuster?Democrats say Republicans have abused it serially, forcing their minority vision on the entire country with narrow-minded parliamentary tactics and blocking policies the people support, such as gun control.Abolishing the filibuster rule would theoretically allow Democrats to finally get some things done while they hold power: immigration reform, climate legislation, voter protections, racial justice legislation, and so on.Would ending the filibuster really work?Ending the filibuster in 2021 may not net Democrats the legislative victories they dream of. Because they hold only very slight majorities in both houses, Democrats would need to maintain a unified caucus to take advantage of a Senate sans filibuster. And that would mean only passing legislation that the most centrist senators agree with. So, it’s complicated.Should the Senate really get rid of the filibuster?There are risks, definitely, but many top Democrats have concluded that the time is nigh, because Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell have grown so relentlessly obstructionist that Democrats are powerless to enact policy even after they win elections. A study by the Center for American Progress found that Republicans have used the filibuster roughly twice as often as Democrats to prevent the other side from passing legislation.Basically, it’s down to the last straw. Democrats have put McConnell on notice that if Republicans continue trying to block everything that fairly elected Democrats would like to do, it’s bye-bye filibuster.“It’s going to depend on how obstreperous they become,” Biden told reporters last summer. “But I think you’re going to just have to take a look at it.”But couldn’t Republicans just block any effort to end the filibuster … with a filibuster?No. In a paradox best left alone, the power of the filibuster may be exorcised by a straight majority vote. Note that as of January 2021, the Democrats might not even be able to muster such a majority, despite controlling the Senate, with some centrists (and Bernie Sanders) wanting to keep the filibuster. So maybe Democrats would not be able abolish the filibuster even if they tried. For now. But that could change.Wouldn’t scrapping the filibuster violate hallowed history?On the contrary. The filibuster has a generally ignominious history, with some moments of glory. It’s not in the constitution and it emerged in its current form only through the exigencies of wartime a century ago. Since then, the filibuster has prominently been used to prop up racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws.Two of the most famous uses of the movie-version filibuster mentioned above were by the segregationist senator Strom Thurmond, who in 1957 held the Senate floor for more than 24 hours in an attempt to block civil rights legislation – and who mounted a sequel filibuster to sequel legislation in 1964.“For generations, the filibuster was used as a tool to block progress on racial justice,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is eager to bin the filibuster, told the National Action Network in 2019. “And in recent years, it’s been used by the far right as a tool to block progress on everything.”Who else hates the filibuster?In a separate address at the funeral of the civil rights leader representative John Lewis in 2020, Barack Obama laid the filibuster on the chopping block.“Once we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we should keep marching,” Obama said, referring to a bill to stop minority disenfranchisement. “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster – another Jim Crow relic – in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.”Which party pioneered filibuster abuse?The who-started-it argument about killing the filibuster revolves around federal judicial nominees and whether they could be filibustered.In brief, the Democrats were first to filibuster a federal judge nominee, in response to a loathed George W Bush pick who at the time was taken to be so uniquely unacceptable as to warrant unusual measures.Years later, McConnell adopted the strategy on steroids, blocking an army of Obama-nominated judges. In response, the Democrats in 2013 killed the filibuster for executive nominees below the level of supreme court justice.In 2017, to begin cramming the supreme court with what would turn out to be three Donald Trump justices, McConnell killed what was left of the judicial filibuster. Only the legislative filibuster remains, and it’s on life support.Will the gentleman yield his time?Thought you’d never ask. More
- in US Politics
Kill Switch review: how the Senate filibuster props up Republican power
For nearly a month, Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans have waged the parliamentary equivalent of a guerrilla war. Having lost the Georgia runoffs and with them the Senate, McConnell has still managed to stymie formal reorganization of the chamber. In an already sulfurous political landscape, the filibuster – the need for super-majorities of 60 votes to pass legislation – looms once again as a flashpoint.
In other words, Adam Jentleson’s book is perfectly timed and aptly subtitled. Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy is an authoritative and well-documented plea for abolishing a 19th-century relic used to thwart the majority’s agenda.
As Jentleson makes clear, the filibuster was first wielded by an agrarian and slave-holding south in opposition to the north’s burgeoning manufacturing economy – and modernity itself. A century on, in the 1960s, the filibuster became synonymous with Jim Crow, segregation and the malignant doctrine of separate but equal.
A 54-day filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act refocused the nation on the jagged legacy of slavery, a full 101 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In a century and a half, so much and so little had changed.
In Jentleson’s telling, John Calhoun stands as progenitor of the filibuster. As a senator from South Carolina in the 1840s, he sought to gag voices supporting the abolition of slavery. Constricting debate was one way to do it. Calhoun had also been vice-president to John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. He saw slavery as more than just an evil to be tolerated. As Jentleson notes, to Calhoun, slavery was “a good. A positive good.”
Calhoun also believed states could secede from the union. For that, he earned the ire of Jackson, a fellow slave-owner. Jackson reportedly said: “John Calhoun, if you secede from my nation, I will secede your head from the rest of your body.” Old Hickory was an ex-general as well as a president.
Jentleson draws a line from Calhoun to McConnell via Richard Russell, a segregationist Georgia senator and Democrat who served from 1933 to 1971. Russell once said: “Any southern white man worth a pinch of salt would give his all to maintain white supremacy.” One of the Senate’s three office buildings is named after him.
As for the Senate’s current minority leader, Kill Switch reminds the reader of an earlier McConnell quote: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” A dubious distinction, but one Donald Trump would instead come to hold.
Jentleson is not a dispassionate observer. An avowed Democrat, he was once deputy chief of staff to Harry Reid. As Democratic leader in the Senate for a decade, Reid, an ex-boxer from Nevada, frequently sparred with McConnell. Reid’s legacy includes the Affordable Care Act and scrapping the filibuster for nominations to lower federal courts and the executive branch.
Picking up where Reid left off, McConnell ended the filibuster for supreme court confirmations. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have him to thank for their jobs, not just Trump.
“With the flick of a wrist,” Jentleson writes, McConnell had gone “nuclear himself”.
These days, the author hangs his hat at Democracy Forward, a political non-profit chaired by a Democratic super-lawyer, Marc Elias, which includes on its board John Podesta, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama White Houses. Ron Klain, now Joe Biden’s chief of staff, was once treasurer. The group’s targets have included Ivanka Trump and her alleged ethics violations.
Kill Switch can become myopic when it points the finger elsewhere. For example, the book takes Republicans to task for attempting in 2013 to block the confirmation of Mel Watt, a longtime North Carolina congressman, to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), a financial regulator. But Jentleson makes no mention of Watt’s lapses.
Watt sought to slash funding for the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) – after it cleared him over allegations he diluted consumer protection legislation in exchange for campaign contributions. For his efforts, the liberal-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington branded Watt’s conduct “disgraceful”.
In 2018, furthermore, reports surfaced of Watt being investigated for sexual harassment. More than a year later, the FHFA reached a settlement.
Jentleson can also make too much out of race and ethnicity, interconnected realms strewn with pitfalls and landmines. He asserts that of the Senate’s current members of color, only two are Republican: Tim Scott of South Carolina, an African American, and Marco Rubio of Florida, whose parents came from Cuba. But Rubio self-identifies as both white and Hispanic.
Book embed
In the beginning, senators relied on the filibuster to block civil rights and labor legislation. Now it’s the new normal, wielded by Democrats and Republicans alike. Not much legislating gets done. When the Republican party is home to a congresswoman who muses about Jewish laser beams deployed to “clear space or something for high speed rail”, as a colleague put it, finding common ground is unlikely.
Whether the filibuster is abolished or modified remains to be seen. Although only a simple majority is needed to end it, it appears safe for now. Two Democrats have voiced opposition to changing the rules and the president is OK with the status quo.
If the Democrats can bypass the filibuster through reconciliation, a process used for budgeting that relies upon a simple majority, calls to end the filibuster will likely soften. If not, expect the filibuster to remain front and center heading into the 2022 midterms. Keep Kill Switch close at hand.
Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy, is published by Liveright Publishing Corporation More - in US Politics
Boost for Trump as 45 Republican senators vote to dismiss impeachment
[embedded content]
Donald Trump’s hopes of avoiding conviction by the US Senate received a boost on Tuesday when 45 Republicans tried to dismiss his impeachment trial before it even began.
The procedural vote was not enough to prevent the trial going ahead, since 55 senators voted that it should, but it did suggest that Democrats face an uphill battle to get the 67 senators they will need for a conviction on a two-thirds majority vote.
Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” following the storming of the US Capitol, including the Senate chamber, by an angry mob on 6 January. Senators gathered at the scene of the crime on Tuesday to begin his trial.
After they were sworn in and signed the oath book – each using a different pen due to coronavirus precautions – Rand Paul of Kentucky challenged the legitimacy of the trial.
He argued on a point of order that, since Trump is no longer president, pressing ahead with it “violates the constitution”.
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, dismissed Paul’s theory as “flat-out wrong”, contending: “It’s been completely debunked by constitutional scholars from all across the political spectrum … The history and precedent is clear. The Senate has the power to try former officials.”
Schumer said: “The theory that the Senate can’t try former officials would amount to a constitutional get-out-of-jail-free card for any president who commits an impeachable offence.”
Senators then voted 55-45 against Paul’s point of order, ensuring the trial will proceed – but also signalling the strength of Trump’s residual support among Republicans in the Senate and beyond.
The only five Republicans who voted to go ahead with the trial were the longtime Trump critics Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Romney was the sole Republican to vote for Trump’s removal from office at his first impeachment trial a year ago.
Trump is the first president to have been twice impeached by the House of Representatives and the first to face a trial after leaving power.
The House approved a single article of impeachment – the equivalent of an indictment in a criminal trial – on 13 January, accusing him of inciting an insurrection with a speech to supporters before they stormed the US Capitol on 6 January. A police officer and four other people died in the riot.
The nine House Democrats who will serve as prosecutors set the trial in motion on Monday by delivering the article of impeachment to the Senate in a solemn march along the same halls where the mob rampaged three weeks ago.
The supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, is not presiding at the trial, as he did during Trump’s first impeachment, because the president is no longer in office. Instead, Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who serves in the largely ceremonial role of Senate president pro tempore, oversaw proceedings.
The trial will begin in earnest in the week of 8 February. Despite his departure, Trump remains a significant force among Republicans and his supporters have vowed to mount election challenges to senators who support conviction.
Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, tweeted: “45 GOP Senators just voted that Trump’s trial is unconstitutional since he isn’t in office now. Those who thought 17 R Senators would somehow vote to convict Trump have presumably awakened from their dream. As guilty as Trump is, Rs still cower before him.”
Joe Biden told CNN that the trial “has to happen” but doubted the chances of conviction. More - in US Politics
Joe Biden on Donald Trump's impeachment trial: 'It has to happen'
The impeachment trial of Donald Trump “has to happen”, Joe Biden told CNN on Monday.While acknowledging the effect it could have on his agenda, the president said there would be “a worse effect if it didn’t happen”.Biden said he didn’t think enough Republican senators would vote for impeachment to convict, though he also said the outcome might well have been different if Trump had had six months left in his term.“The Senate has changed since I was there, but it hasn’t changed that much,” Biden said.The US House on Monday delivered its article of impeachment against Trump to the Senate, setting the stage for Trump’s second impeachment trial and the first ever Senate trial of a former US president.Trump has been charged with inciting the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, when an assault by a violent pro-Trump mob lead to the deaths of five people.Monday’s delivery and formal reading of the charge marks the opening of the trial, although arguments are set to start the week of 8 February.Republicans and Democrats last week agreed to a two-week delay to the start of the proceedings to allow both sides to prepare arguments and give senators a fortnight to negotiate vital legislation to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus and consider Biden’s cabinet appointments.Following Trump’s impeachment in the House on 13 January, Biden had said he hoped senators would “deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation”.At least 17 Republican senators will have to vote with all the Democrats in order to convict Trump.Although Senate Republicans have been slower to rally to Trump’s defense than during his first impeachment trial, and a handful of Republicans have signaled an openness to convicting the former president, a conviction remains an uphill battle. More
- in Elections
Mitch McConnell 'plays the long game' to retain some power as it slips away
Out of power in the chamber, the Republican now faces unruly politicians and pressure over how to handle Trump impeachmentFor Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, the first few days of Joe Biden’s presidency has not been about fighting the new Democratic majority in government, it’s been about gaming out how much power he now has.McConnell, the leader of Senate Republicans for over a decade, now finds himself in the position every caucus leader dreads: out of power in the chamber, in charge of a somewhat unruly bunch of politicians, and under pressure over how to handle the impeachment of the last Republican president. Continue reading… More
