Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says a swath of bills recently passed by the Democratic-majority House will meet a swift demise across the Capitol.
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That includes a sweeping voting bill, H.R. 1, passed by the House. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has promised to bring up for consideration his chamber’s own version of the proposal, S. 1. McConnell also warned Senate Democrats about passing a “partisan” version of infrastructure legislation, which would largely reflect priorities of President Joe Biden’s administration.
“It’s pretty clear that bipartisanship is over,” McConnell said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “We passed six bills so far this year — significant bills on a bipartisan basis. Bills that came out of committee that had buy-in from both sides. But I think that’s coming to a screeching halt.”
McConnell and Senate Republicans have considerable leverage to stymie the Democratic agenda. Each party has 50 seats, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting tiebreaking votes. But the chamber’s filibuster rule effectively requires at least 60 votes to pass most bills.
“It looks to me like the majority decided that June is kind of a check-the-box month with all of the extreme left-wing provisions that they support that have been coming out of the House,” McConnell said. “Hopefully, we’ll sober up after that and get back to doing work together.”
Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, a member of the Republican leadership, painted the Democratic agenda as outside the mainstream.
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“They’re ordering and including lots of things that are not what the traditional infrastructure ideas would include,” Barrasso said. “They’re focused on climate change and social welfare. Those are the sorts of things that they want to have massive tax increases to pay for it.”
