A partisan war over spending has increased tensions between the top party leaders in the Senate, and it’s likely to get worse.
A group of Republican lawmakers Thursday night took an unusual trip across the Senate floor to the Democratic side of the chamber. The GOP lawmakers confronted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had just delivered a vicious broadside against Republicans moments after they helped Democrats pass a critical extension of the debt limit following a weekslong standoff.
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“Republicans played a dangerous and risky partisan game, and I am glad that their brinkmanship did not work,” Schumer said as Republicans stood aghast.
Republicans told the New York Democrat his post-vote attack on the GOP was “combative” and out of line.
But Schumer’s vitriol has become commonplace in a 50-50 Senate, where Republicans are blocking much of President Joe Biden’s agenda and throwing out any obstacle they can find to prevent Democrats from passing it.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who has led the GOP for two decades, is vexing Schumer by using every legislative tool in the GOP’s limited arsenal to thwart Democrats and prevent them from passing Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda.
The massive social welfare spending package was initially authored with a $3.5 trillion price tag, but Democrats are in the midst of difficult negotiations with hold-out party centrists seeking a lower-priced package.
McConnell, watching Democrats struggle among themselves for a deal that could make or break the Biden agenda, has for months warned Schumer that Republicans would not help Democrats with another pressing deadline: an increase in the debt ceiling by Oct. 18.
Republicans, led by McConnell, refused to provide the 10 needed GOP votes, arguing it would be used to pay off the “Build Back Better” plan. Republicans believe the plan is reckless and would hurt the economy by raising taxes and creating too many entitlement programs.
“They want that shortcut so they can pivot right back to partisan spending as fast as possible,” McConnell said, explaining the GOP’s position. “And Republicans have spent two-and-a-half months explaining they will not get it.”
The two parties clash daily on the Senate floor, and the exchanges are becoming increasingly bitter and accusatory as Democrats struggle with Biden’s low approval ratings and a stalled agenda.
McConnell called Schumer’s handling of the looming debt ceiling crisis representative of the party’s “entire failed approach to governing in a nutshell, on full display for the country to see,” taking a jab at a series of foreign policy and domestic policy disasters that have saddled the Biden administration for months.
And on Friday night, McConnell told Biden in a letter that Republicans will not offer any more assistance to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. The Kentucky Republican cited Schumer’s Senate floor speech 24 hours earlier, saying it had “poisoned the well even further.” McConnell said when the nation’s borrowing capacity reaches its limit, again, in December, Democrats should not bank on any Republican help.
Schumer, meanwhile, never misses an opportunity to zing McConnell and Republicans, most recently accusing the party of rooting for fiscal disaster by refusing to back a long-term debt limit hike.
“By now, it’s clear that despite what they say, Republicans seem intent on seeing the U.S. miss out on its payments for the first time ever,” Schumer said last week. “They seem perfectly at ease telling the American people, including our active military, our Social Security recipients, and all those who rely on Medicare, that they are unequivocally the party of default. The Republicans are unequivocally the party of default, and some of them seem to be proud of it.”
Partisan tensions are only likely to escalate in the weeks ahead.
Republicans are encouraging Democratic centrists Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to continue blocking the social welfare spending package that now seems hopelessly stalled.
“I’m praying for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two Democratic Senators that seem to have some resistance to all this,” McConnell told Kentucky constituents last month. “I pray for their good health and wise judgment every night.”
Democrats have only a few weeks to try to bridge the wide gulf between the $1.5 trillion Manchin said he is willing to accept and the $3.5 trillion that far-left Democratic House members and socialist Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders are demanding.
It may not be enough time.
In about two months, Democrats must pivot to raising the debt ceiling and extending government funding, and they will again seek a bipartisan vote.
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Manchin, lamenting “civility is gone,” in Congress, told reporters as he left the Capitol following Schumer’s speech on Thursday that the political vitriol between the two leaders stands in the way of the kind of bipartisanship Schumer is seeking.
“We have to deweaponize,” he said. “You can’t be playing politics. Both sides have been guilty of this.”
