WASHINGTON — In the opening months of Joe Biden’s presidency, Mitch McConnell was content to sit idle and take measure of Democratic Party unity.
“The old Joe will only come back when he has to and that will depend upon whether or not he can succeed in running the table with Democrats only. If he can’t, then we’ll be back in the game,” McConnell said, according to “Peril,” a book charting the end of Donald Trump’s presidency through the early months of Biden’s first year.
McConnell’s thought process was to engage only when Biden failed to hold Democrats together, handing the minority leader maximum leverage.
That moment appears to have arrived now.
Democrats are struggling finding the votes to avoid defaulting on the nation’s debt and keep the government funded. That’s snarling their timelines on their twin domestic spending initiatives of infrastructure and massive social programming.
McConnell’s ability to keep his caucus united around his strategy is a big reason Democrats are in such a pickle.
And his posture so far — as outlined in “Peril” and described by Capitol Hill observers — has revealed a sort of political doctrine in handling the Biden presidency: Wait, delay and instigate.
Wait for the moment Democrats would no longer be able to go it alone. Put up as many roadblocks to delay Democrats’ sprawling spending endeavors. And highlight Democratic divisions and tactical mistakes as often as possible to turn members of the opposition against each other.
The next several weeks will go a long way in defining Biden’s first term, as well as McConnell’s strategy to counter it. At the moment, the Kentuckian looks like he’s back in the game, holding a heavy hand.
“He’s in a strong position,” said Rory Cooper, a former aide to Eric Cantor when he was House Majority Leader. “The president, Speaker and Senate Majority Leader trying to blame inaction on a minority leader is going to be a tough sell.”
The most integral piece of McConnell’s power play is his refusal to provide Republican votes to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, a byzantine Washington ritual that many Capitol Hill veterans increasingly find to be an unnecessary and tedious requirement.
On Monday evening, a vote to proceed toward raising the debt limit failed on strict party lines, leading Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to label the Republican Party as “the party of default.”
But that won’t relieve him of his immediate political problem.
Schumer said on Tuesday he plans to ask for consent to raise the debt ceiling with a simple majority, requiring only Democratic votes, an outcome McConnell has been predicting for months.
“They intend to sideline Republicans and go it alone to slam American families with historic tax hikes and borrowing. So they will need to raise the debt limit on a partisan basis as well,” McConnell said Monday night. “There never had to be one ounce of drama to any of this. Any drama here is self-created by Democrats.”
Schumer has decided to take McConnell up on his own offer. “I can’t imagine the Republican Leader would object to his own request,” Schumer said.
McConnell has also said Republicans would approve legislation to keep government funding flowing through Dec. 3 if Democrats detach the debt ceiling from the bill, an outcome which now looks likely.
While the government funding problem should be resolved this week and the debt ceiling limit could be raised in the coming weeks, they’re both distracting Democrats from achieving their signature policy initiatives. Some Democrats fear the bogged down process is essentially a long, slow bleed of their agenda at a time when Biden’s popularity is sinking.
A $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the Senate in early August, and supported by McConnell, still needs U.S. House approval. But it remains unclear if Democrats can push that through without first finding agreement on the more controversial $3.5 trillion social spending plan, a priority of progressives which is unlikely to earn a single Republican vote.
“McConnell has also benefited from Democrats making themselves easy for Republicans to rally against. Democrats have the White House, Senate, and House, and have spent much of 2021 taunting and steamrolling the GOP — which puts Republicans in no mood to help Democrats pass bills they refuse to pass themselves,” said Brian Riedl, a former economist for GOP Sen. Rob Portman who is now a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute. “Republicans are happy to watch Democrats fight on infrastructure and reconciliation because many would just assume both initiatives collapse.”
And pointing out the “disarray” among Democrats has become a running joke among McConnell’s team, which relishes in highlighting even the smallest disagreements among the opposition.
According to “Peril,” McConnell told others that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin was “mad as hell” during the negotiations over COVID-19 relief back in the spring.
Schumer made Manchin and his side look like fools, McConnell said, citing the back-and-forth on amendments around the extension of unemployment insurance. Democratic leadership eventually cut a deal with Manchin to trim the benefits and get him on board.
But the book says McConnell wondered if the Democratic pressure on Manchin had soured him on doing much more for Biden in 2021.
A slow-rolling legislative process isn’t all upside for Republicans. Most voters don’t pay much attention to daily machinations on issues as obtuse as debt and reconciliation, but narratives that take hold can reshape opinions gradually.
Last week, when a Morning Consult poll showed that more voters would blame Democrats than Republicans if the U.S. were to default on its debt, Democrats chalked that up to the perils of being in power.
“Republican obstruction is a reality, but voters aren’t generally paying close enough attention to follow that. So when something bad happens, rightly or wrongly voters look to the party in charge,” explained Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster.
But on Monday, new data from Morning Consult revealed a murkier picture of the potential political fallout, showing a plurality of voters hoisting equal blame on both parties if the country sank into an unprecedented default on its financial obligations.
The share of voters blaming Republicans inched up 4% — a small shift, but not one that should be ignored, especially if these standoffs slog on for weeks.
