Leaders in the new Republican Senate majority have been basking in a string of recent legislative successes, including a major trade bill and last week, a comprehensive bill overhauling federal education policy.
But summer and fall could bring the return of gridlock as Democrats gear up to fight the GOP on federal spending levels.
“Democrats Prepare For Filibuster Summer,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor recently, reading from a newspaper headline.
“You can already feel Americans tense up,” McConnell added. “They don’t even like the sound of it. Who would?”
Since taking the gavel in the Senate, McConnell has repeatedly pledged to end the logjam that had come to define the Senate in 2013 and 2014. McConnell has allowed lawmakers to offer more amendments and has been willing to bring to the floor and pass legislation that he opposes.
Democrats say the change isn’t that dramatic, and say Republicans are merely passing bills they blocked themselves when they were in the minority.
“They built up an enormous backlog by blockading everything while they are in the minority, and are now trying to take credit for resolving the backlog they created themselves with six years of relentless, knee-jerk partisan obstruction,” Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the Washington Examiner.
But Republicans insist they’ve made positive changes.
“We’ve already had more than 140 roll call votes on amendments,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart told the Examiner. “There were 15 roll call votes on amendments last year. In fact, we’ve already have more roll call votes on amendments than Reid allowed during the last two years combined.”
McConnell’s aides have also compiled a long list of bills that have passed both the Senate and House and which have made it into law.
But the Republicans’ legislative success story could all come to a crashing halt in a matter of weeks. That’s because Congress must approve a string of spending bills by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, or risk a federal government closure that in all likelihood, the public would blame squarely on the GOP.
Republicans set spending levels in all domestic funding legislation that adhere to caps imposed by by the 2011 Budget Control Act, an unpopular measure that requires a $1 trillion reduction in federal spending over a decade. Senate Democrats want to negotiate with Republicans to lift the caps, but that will require finding savings elsewhere or raising revenue via taxes or new fees.
Republicans say they want to pass the bills with the caps in place and send them to Obama’s desk, even though he’s vowed to veto them. At that point, Republicans and Obama (and to a lesser extent, Senate Democrats) would negotiate a final spending deal.
Democrats want to block the bills in Congress, keeping the blame away from Obama and the negotiating power in their hands. And the Democratic plan could work.
Republicans are in charge of both chambers, and during past spending fights, polls show the GOP sinks significantly further in popularity than Democrats, even when Republicans are in the minority. Democrats, keenly aware of this dynamic, are ramping up the rhetoric.
“The choice for Republicans is clear,” Sen. Patty Murray, the number-four Senate Democrat, said in a recent news conference. “Work with us now on another bipartisan budget deal while we still have the time to get this right, or work with us later after you’ve pushed us to a crisis. It should be an easy choice. We hope they make the right one.”
