REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

 DEMOCRATS CLOSE TO A MOJORITY IN THE U.S. SENATE

 

      …Mitch McConnell may finally pay for his iron hand in running the US Senate

 

The usually Very Red state of Georgia seems to be turning Purple

 

It is appearing that the Democrats are in process of remaking history in Georgia as they are expected to win both US Senate run-off elections.  One candidate has been deemed the winner and the second Democrat is in the lead.  The remaining votes to be counted are from three counties that are traditionally very Democratic.

So, if these elections both go to the Democrats, the Senate will be split 50-50.  That would mean that the new Democratic vice president, as the president of the Senate, would hold the decisive vote for any tied legislation. That split is very rare and it has only happened three times, and one of those times, it was only split for a few days in 2001 when Al Gore was the vice president.  But when the Supreme Court voted that George W. Bush had beat Al Gore for the presidency, that made Dick Cheney the new Vice President and the new president of the senate.

The two other times were in 1881, and it remained split for the two year session, and in 1954.  But in 1954, the split, was because of a senator’s death, and it only lasted for a few months.

So, if the vote is evenly split, the deciding vote is always for the party that holds the vice presidency, and if today, the projections remain a split Senate, the president of the Senate will be Kamala Harris, or the Democrats will have the deciding vote for the up-coming two year session under President Joe Biden.

Now, the two party leaders of the US Senate can change the rules of the senate if they so decide.

That’s what happened twice in the past.  In both 1881 and in 2001, the two parties struck deals that allowed for some sharing of power. That left the out-of-power party with more leverage than a minority party typically has.  In 2001, for instance, the parties agreed to split the committee memberships evenly, instead of overloading them with members of the majority party (as is usual).  They also changed the rules so that, if a committee deadlocked on a bill, the bill could still be brought to a vote on the Senate floor.

However, the animosity of the departing and untruthful president has made it a basic war between the two parties.  It is hard to see that after the way the Republican-run US Senate has acted under Mitch McConnell, I am doubting that there is a positive attitude between all the members of the US Senate.

When McConnell denied President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee to be voted on because he said, it was the last year of Obama’s presidency and the voters should decide on a new president before a Supreme Court nominee is chosen.  But that rule did not apply in the last year of Donald Trump’s first term.  McConnell rushed Donald Trump’s nominee through the Senate after Supreme Court Justice, Ruthe Bader Ginsburg died, and of course that high-court nominee was quickly approved in the Republican run Senate.

In addition, there are many bills that have been passed by the House that have gone on to the Senate, and under McConnell, they have died because McConnell didn’t allow the senate to vote on them.

Before the 2016 election, when there was a chance of another 50-50 split, McConnell then told the reporters he would seek to use the 2001 agreement as a model.“I think if we ended up 50-50, that we would simply replicate what we did” then, he said.

But the Senate has changed greatly since 2001, becoming sharply divided and polarized.  Less prone to bipartisan cooperation.

“Tom Daschle [in 2001] and I used to talk more in a day, than Mitch McConnell and [Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer do today, in a month of Sundays,” . Trent Lott (R-Miss.) then the Senate’s top Republican has said.

This week, for instance, some Republican senators say they will object to the counting of electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden.  This turns one of Congress’s most basic, mostly ceremonial, bipartisan functions into a venue for President Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud.

After that, and after the two elections in Georgia that involved hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spending, I doubt that the Democrats would be willing to hand any of their newly won power back to Republicans?

So, with having the majority in the US Senate, what examples could the Democrats pass for the new president?

With 51 votes, Democrats could confirm Biden’s nominees for key Cabinet positions, for federal judgeships, and, if one came open, for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

They could also use the legislative mechanism known as “reconciliation” to pass some legislation, if it is related to budgets or spending.  That mechanism, which the Democrats used to pass “Obamacare” reform in 2009 and the Republicans tried to use their power, but failed to repeal it in 2017.  It allows the Senate to pass legislation with just 51 votes.

But it is limited and could not be used to pass legislation unrelated to the budget.  That sort of legislation is still subject to the filibuster rules, which require 60 votes for passage.  That’s why the GOP failed in 2017

The Senate could, theoretically, change the rule setting that 60-vote threshold.  But that sort of change seems unlikely: It would require support from every Democrat, and at least one Republican Senator.  One Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin (W.Va.) has already said he won’t support that approach.

Copyright G. Ater 2021