Conservative Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama could be chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, injecting a much needed shot of populism into the GOP policymaking apparatus.
Sessions would join other conservative chairmen with populist leanings, including the two men whose committees oversee Wall Street. But Sen. Mike Enzi — a Wyoming conservative who is closer to the party Establishment and the business lobby — could take the gavel instead.
Here’s the background on the race for Budget chairman:
Technically, the entire Senate Republican Conference — all 53 or 54 GOP senators — choose the committee chairman. But as a matter of history, the conference confirms the selection of the committee members. So the campaign for the gavel is a campaign to win the majority of the dozen or so Republicans who are placed on the Senate Budget Committee. We likely won’t know the committee membership until January.
Historically, Republicans select the most senior senator vying for a gavel — the only exception being Jesse Helms winning the Foreign Relations chairmanship over Richard Lugar during the Cold War.
Enzi and Sessions were both elected in 1996. Enzi holds seniority over Sessions because, as they were sworn in, they drew straws — and Enzi won. Sessions has been the ranking minority member of the committee for four years, despite being third in seniority, because Chuck Grassley preferred to be ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and Enzi focused on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Sessions was widely considered the next Budget chairman, but Enzi in late November announced he would seek the gavel.
The men are similar in ideology and voting record, but different in temperament. Enzi is more compromise-minded and more closely aligned with the party leadership. Enzi’s tightness to Majority Leader-elect Mitch McConnell has led conservatives to paint him as a McConnell operative. On circumstantial evidence, conservative bloggers and Hill staffers charge McConnell with trying to block Sessions. McConnell’s office flatly denies any involvement.
Sessions has been more of a thorn in the side of leadership. For weeks he has threatened to derail the appropriations process over President Obama’s extraordinary expansion of executive authority on immigration, while GOP leadership has tried to tamp down any suggestion of another government shutdown. Enzi’s bid for the gavel seems to have pushed Sessions to moderate his combative tone.
More interesting than Sessions’ positions or tactics on immigration may be his rhetoric. Sessions, for more than a year, has framed the debate over immigration as a fight between the big business lobby and working Americans. At a November Heritage Foundation speech, Sessions said the push for increased immigration levels served “the interests of certain powerful forces.”
“It’s time for us to stand up for the American worker for a change.” Sessions said, calling out billionaire Bill Gates for demanding more immigrant labor “the same week Microsoft laid off 18,000.”
Sessions said of advocates for more immigrant labor: “They read the Wall Street Journal in the morning, see wages going up, and they think that’s bad.”
Sessions’ scuffles with the business lobby over immigration seems to have planted a seed of populism in him. Behind closed doors, he complains about corporate welfare and mocks financial giants as “masters of the universe.” In April 2013, Sessions signed on as a co-sponsor of the Brown-Vitter bill to break up the big banks.
This newfound populism (Sessions voted for plenty of corporate welfare before the 2012 election, including the Export-Import Bank) could be a benefit on the Budget Committee if Sessions applies it in matters beyond immigration. Will a GOP budget target corporate tax credits and corporate welfare spending? Sessions could steer them that way.
Fellow Alabaman Richard Shelby, incoming chairman of the Banking Committee, also has a populist streak. Like Sessions, Shelby opposed the 2008 Wall Street bailout. Shelby was one of only three Republicans to support the Brown-Kaufman amendment in 2010 — the precursor to Brown-Vitter.
Shelby’s House counterpart, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, has been very harsh on bank subsidies, has opposed bailouts, and has crusaded to kill the Export-Import Bank.
One malady hurting the Republican Party in recent years has been excessive deference to the business lobby. This has hurt Republicans politically, making it harder for them to win blue-collar swing voters, and has driven them to expand government.
Shelby and Hensarling will bring some populism to the GOP’s approach to finance. Sessions would make a good partner.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
