According to Breitbart News, Biden had been in the U.S. Senate for 36 years before he became Obama’s vice president, in 2008, so in the 2020 presidential election, Biden’s allies and supporters are calling Biden a “master legislator,” and Biden himself is Biden himself is constantly telling voters how he has coordinated and legislated between the two parties, so the impression is that Biden is very good at legislating.
“Compromise is not a dirty word, it’s the way our government works,” Biden told the National Education Association last July. “I’ve been doing it all my Life.” At the Time, he added, “I’ve been able to bring Democrats and Republicans together in the United States Congress to pass big bills and deal with big issues.”
In the presidential campaign, the Biden campaign’s momentum gave the impression that Biden alone could break the decades-long gridlock in Washington, D.C. In the months leading up to the inauguration, Biden and his team promised that they would go full steam ahead on “day one” and play up the flurry of legislative work. The momentum continued after the election, and in early January Biden’s new chief of staff, Ron Klain, made public a memo that said the administration’s first 10 days would be important because it would communicate to the outside world that the United States had begun to turn the corner.
But in Biden’s first 10 days in office, the legislative process he’s pushing through Congress hasn’t gone very well. Breitbart News comments that there are two reasons why these bills are moving more slowly in Congress, one because of Biden’s own factors and the other because, although the Democrats control the federal Senate and House of Representatives for the first time since 2008, the Democrats don’t seem to be particularly clear on how to exercise their power in this area.
The Senate is like herding a bunch of cats, it’s impossible to control
The Senate is currently 50 to 50 between the two parties, but Vice President He Jinli has a key vote in the event of a tie, which would allow for the passage of bills that the Democrats want to pass when a tie occurs.
But, so far, the Democrats’ majority in the Senate is still very tenuous. The Senate Democratic Conference includes not only far-left Senator Bernie Sanders, who is the incoming chairman of the Budget Committee, but also moderates like Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-CA).
And the Senate’s rules and procedures lean heavily in favor of minority dissent; it’s not about who has the most people and who has the say. This characteristic of the Senate is evident in the procedure of effortlessly dragging things out.
What does it mean to bother dragging things out? According to the current bylaws of the U.S. Senate, for certain proposals, senators can block bills from going to a vote by making lengthy speeches, etc. Sixty members of the 100-seat Senate must be on the floor to put a stop to the effort to drag things out, resume proceedings, and go to a vote. Since in the vast majority of cases, the Senate cannot move on to the next proposal until it has been agreed upon, the result is that if there are not 60 votes to stop the effort to drag things out, then it goes directly to the following bill, and the one that the effort to drag things out is shot and needs to be started all over again. In other words, it takes a 60% super majority to pass a proposal in the Senate.
A large part of the Democrats and their current view is that since the Democrats control the Senate, the senators who take the trouble to drag things out must be limited. Leftist Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) want to abolish the effort to delay things in order to ensure that Biden can move quickly on needed legislative agendas, such as abortion legislation, such as gun legislation, and so on.
The Democratic left is increasingly vocal about eliminating the Philly drag, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is trying to get protections for the Philly drag written into the power-sharing agreement. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is definitely not on board with this, and accepting McConnell’s terms would leave the Democrats in the Senate with nothing to do with the Republicans. And McConnell is asking too much in this regard, instead of being a pressure on the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, especially Manchin and Senema, who are facing fierce questions and scrutiny within the Democratic Party on the issue of bothering to put things off.
The state of the Senate now is that Schumer does not want to eliminate the effort to drag things out, and McConnell has dropped his demand to put the effort to drag things out on paper.
There are Democrats in the House who are moderates and those who don’t listen, and the Democrats don’t have much of an advantage
The Democrats seem to be doing only a little better in the House than in the Senate, and now the Democrats have just five more seats in the House than the Republicans.
In early January, many moderate Democrats did not vote for Pelosi as speaker, so although Pelosi was re-elected as speaker this time, she received very few votes. Since the moderates refused to openly support Pelosi, Pelosi had to rely on the votes of the far left, including AOC and Cori Bush (D).
Breitbart News believes that Pelosi is in charge of a House that is now divided, currently because the vacant Democrats only have a three-seat majority, which is really not a solid base for governing.
The political risks of the immigration bill
The political divide among House Democrats, combined with the few Democratic advantages in the House, is a problem for any presidential administration. And some observers also believe that the measures Biden has taken will only exacerbate an already complicated situation.
The immigration bill Biden introduced into Congress on his first day in office, legislation that would give U.S. citizenship to 11 million foreigners who immigrated to the country illegally, was warmly welcomed by immigration rights advocates but met with skepticism among congressional Democrats.
Biden’s initial proposal angered moderates, and behind the scenes, Democrats were concerned about the political ramifications of voting for citizenship. Democratic moderates in the House and Senate said privately that the legislation was too sweeping. U.S. media politicians reported that some lawmakers and staffers privately wondered if Biden was trying to appease radicals.
Trump campaigned on limiting immigration in 2016, and even then, Trump received more support than expected among blue-collar voters and Latino voters. Democrats had hoped that after four years of strict restrictions on immigration by Trump, their proposed policy of openness to immigrants would receive a great deal of support, however, their hopes were dashed. In 2020 Trump and the Republican Party, even with advocating restrictions on immigration without open borders, the Republicans won most of the federal seats in Latino districts in Texas and Florida.
In this case, Democrats fear that allowing illegal aliens to gain U.S. citizenship will allow Republicans to make a comeback in the 2022 midterm elections. And historically, after a president of either party takes office, that party loses in midterm congressional elections.
And there are factors that complicate things, Biden’s proposed pathway to let illegal immigrants get U.S. passports, now as written in the bill, would create more risk for the Democrats than more reward. To reduce the political impact of this bill, Biden’s team suggested that the time period for these illegal immigrants to obtain U.S. citizenship could be extended to eight years. Biden is doing this mainly because the right in the United States is now saying that Biden wants these illegal immigrants to get U.S. status quickly so that he can support the Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections or support Biden’s re-election in the 2024 presidential election. Faced with these pressures, some Democrats are pushing back the timetable for this legislation.
The Biden Administration is also now having to compromise, telling Biden supporters in Congress that the legislation can be broken down into smaller bills that are more politically feasible. Some sources close to the heart of the discussion told Politico magazine, “This bill is not saying you pass it all or deny it all, it just tells you what we want to do and you legislators have to figure out how to move this legislation forward. “
Communist Virus Evacuation Bill
A similar stalemate occurred with Biden’s plan to address the effects of the coronavirus (CCP virus) and the economic embargo. When Biden took office, he called on Congress to quickly pass a $1.9 trillion relief package. The proposal, if passed, would provide more money for vaccine distribution, $1,400 directly to individuals and additional loans for small businesses.
But more controversially, the bill also wants to bail out cities and states with deficits in public spending and also wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Since the relief plan was announced, Democrats have been discussing what can be done to ensure that the bill is approved? Initially, Biden was hoping for bipartisan support for the bill, but with Democrats insisting on bailouts for some cities and states, getting Republican support is becoming increasingly unlikely. All of these Republicans, especially those in the Senate, opposed the relief bill.
There are two moderate Democrats in the Senate who disagree with the elimination of the effort to drag things out, and it is unlikely that the Democrats will have 60 votes to pass this bill under these circumstances. Senate Leader Schumer suggested passing the spending plan through a budget reconciliation, which would allow the Senate to pass such legislation affecting spending, revenue and the debt ceiling with a simple majority of 51 votes.
Biden’s attitude of lukewarm support for the Republican proposal to split the relief law into separate bills was greatly disagreed with by Schumer. While Schumer wanted to show his ability to pass the bill through a coordinated compromise, he repeatedly claimed that a budget reconciliation was the only way to avoid a massive compromise.
Even if the budget reconciliation is passed, it is not clear that the $1.9 trillion package will remain intact. Specifically, the guiding principles for the budget reconciliation process leave little room for maneuver, and what can and cannot be done is strictly defined, and it is unclear that even if the bill could pass the budget reconciliation rules, Schumer could do it in a way that would get the entire Democratic Party behind him and get 51 votes.
Some moderate Democrats have expressed concern about the final solution to the massive bailout, with Senator Jon Tester telling CNN on Thursday that while he would vote to start the budget reconciliation, he would take a “wait-and-see” approach to the entire bill.
Senator Manchin also did not fully support the bill, Capitol Hill Media said, expressing concern about the impact the minimum wage could have on an already sluggish economy.
Breitbart News concluded that the Senate is very busy because of the impeachment of Trump, so there is no time, the debate on immigration and budget reconciliation will also be launched, plus the need to determine the administrative appointments of other members of the Biden cabinet, all of which will further delay Biden’s agenda.
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