Public fears about terrorism and doubts about the Obama administration’s handling of foreign policy helped propel Republicans on Tuesday to a prize they have been seeking since they lost it in 2006: control of the Senate, and with it, the congressional agenda.
But when the celebration is over, they will face a stark reality: Barack Obama is still president.
Though the new GOP majority will try to boost defense spending and prod the president to be more aggressive about confronting threats from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and a resurgent Russia, neither will be easy. And if the White House does decide to bypass Congress to achieve a nuclear deal with Iran, Republican leaders will need Democratic help to thwart that move, as they have in the past.
One of the top priorities for many Republicans is reversing the mandatory cuts on defense spending imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011. But those cuts were imposed partly because of demands from the Tea Party and other budget hawks for reductions in federal spending, and GOP leaders will need to get their own house in order before they can confront Obama’s reluctance on the issue.
“The Republican Party started its drift away from a strong defense as a central tenet of its platform six to seven years ago,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, an expert on the defense budget at the American Enterprise Institute.
“There really was a marked shift and I don’t think the party’s had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment,” she said.
Events of the past year, such as the Russian seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and the rise of the Islamic State, have made voters more willing to take another look at defense spending. Military leaders have not been shy about trying to reopen the debate over the automatic sequestration cuts mandated by the 2011 law.
“We are working very, very hard to try to get Congress to remove it, to repeal it,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Tuesday.
But lawmakers from both parties, as well as the White House, prefer to protect other priorities such as entitlement spending and reducing the federal debt, and the election isn’t likely to change the fact that there isn’t enough political support to repeal the mandatory cuts.
Eaglen said it’s more likely lawmakers will agree to increase the war funding account, which is not subject to the spending caps in the 2011 law and would be an easier political lift than ending sequestration. But that won’t solve the Pentagon’s long-term problem: the growing gap between what the military is expected to do and the money it gets from Congress to pay for those missions.
“I actually think there’s more money coming, but I don’t think it’s the right money,” she said.
On foreign policy, Obama, like all presidents, will remain in the driver’s seat, because the Constitution gives him primary control in that area, in spite of Republican efforts to prod him on key issues such as Iran.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who easily won re-election on Tuesday, promised that a Republican Senate would vote on legislation to toughen sanctions on Iran that has been stalled by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., at the request of the Obama administration, which is negotiating a deal with Iran to limit the Islamic regime’s nuclear ambitions.
But the chance of that succeeding depends not on the results of Tuesday’s vote as much as it does many Democrats also supporting tougher sanctions as a means of keeping Tehran honest.
