Democrats’ Georgia triumph gives Biden’s agenda a green light — for the most part

Democrats’ stunning victories in Georgia not only give the party control of the U.S. Senate for the first time in six years — they open up a new world of possibility for President-elect Joe Biden.

An incoming administration that was bracing for life with a divided government will now, thanks to wins in Tuesday’s runoff elections by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, have a chance to pursue a far more expansive agenda with unified control of Congress, reshaping what it can achieve on Capitol Hill while giving it freer rein to build Biden’s cabinet and fill important judicial vacancies.

On all of those priorities, a Republican-controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell would have restricted Biden, likely forcing him to push a more modest set of goals. But after incumbent Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler suffered defeats, both parties will hold 50 Senate seats. Ties can be broken by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris after she takes office later this month, giving Democrats functional control over the upper chamber, even by only the barest of margins.

It will be the first time since 2011 that Democrats have unified control of Congress and the White House — and only the second time in the last 25 years. The newfound opportunity already has veteran Democrats predicting a rush of policy-making on issues like racial justice, clean energy, and economic stimulus as Biden tries to capitalize on the party’s electoral success.

“We now have a first-world problem of figuring out how to squeeze everything we are willing to take up in the next two years,” said Brian Fallon, a veteran Democratic strategist and executive director of Demand Justice, a liberal judicial activism group.

At the moment, a robust policy agenda or an unfettered chance at remaking the judicial branch likely aren’t top of mind, after a violent insurrection Wednesday in the Capitol left a nation rattled and Biden promising to renew a bipartisan spirit in Washington.

But earlier in the week, he gave an example of how electing Ossoff and Warnock could immediately affect policy-making, saying at a campaign stop in Georgia that if they take office, Democrats can come together to issue $2,000 checks to help Americans recover from the pandemic-related recession. The issue has been hotly debated in Congress, with Republicans eventually agreeing only to legislation that issued $600 to many citizens.

“Their election will put an end to the block in Washington on the $2,000 stimulus check,” Biden said Monday. “That money will go to the door immediately to people who are in real trouble.”

If Republicans had held the Senate, Biden would have been the first newly inaugurated president whose party didn’t control Congress in 32 years, since George H.W. Bush in 1989. Instead, Biden joins his four most recent predecessors, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, who all entered office with their parties in control of the House and Senate.

Biden and the Democrats, of course, still face steep challenges enacting their agenda even after the Georgia elections. The party’s control of both chambers is tenuous, holding just an 11-member edge in the House after Republicans made gains there in November while holding just 50 seats in the Senate.

That means any bill can afford only a tiny number of defections in the House, while just a single member can derail a bill in the Senate.

“In a 50-50 world, every single senator is a kingmaker,” said Scott Jennings, a veteran GOP operative. “Any one person can sink a nomination. So they have to be aware of what those pitfalls would be.”

Biden will also have to grapple with the filibuster in the Senate, which can prevent legislation from passing with anything short of a 60-vote majority. That could stymie any legislative push from Democrats with the exception of budget-related reconciliation measures, which need only a simple majority to pass.

And efforts from some Democrats and liberal activists to eliminate the filibuster hit a major snag after the election, when Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of the party’s most conservative members, said he would not support doing so regardless of which party wins Georgia.

“I want to lay those fears to rest that that won’t happen because I will not be the 50th Democrat voting to end that filibuster or basically stack the court,” Manchin said during an interview with Fox News in November.

Other more moderate members of the Senate Democratic caucus, such as Kysten Sinema of Arizona, have also voiced opposition to eliminating the filibuster in the past.

To some Democratic strategists, the filibuster might end hopes of passing major government reforms, like reshaping campaign finance laws.

But it won’t necessarily stop the party from reaching a compromise on infrastructure spending with GOP senators or passing budget bills through reconciliation that increase spending for coronavirus relief or clean energy investments.

“It’s going to be hard to get the filibuster,” said Sean McElwee, the co-founder of the liberal activist group Data for Progress. “You’re going instead to see a desire among Democrats to use as much as possible the power of appropriation. You want to be, on day one, delivering to voters.”

McElwee added that he also thought Democrats should still pursue ambitious goals, like statehood for the District of Columbia. And he said they should focus on issues that are politically popular to bring to bear the most pressure possible on Republicans.

“Make Mitch McConnell use the filibuster to prevent the Senate majority from delivering a minimum wage increase to millions of Americans,” he said. “Do that with your 90% issues and campaign against Mitch McConnell the same way you would if he was majority leader.”

Biden campaigned during the general election on bringing sweeping change to Washington, arguing that the pandemic and resulting economic fallout exposed deep vulnerabilities within the country’s middle class. Among his proposals were large investments to reduce fossil fuel use and expanding the Affordable Care Act, the foundation for what Biden officials argued was the most progressive agenda of any modern Democratic presidential nominee.

Democrats’ control of Washington could also add pressure from progressive leaders like Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York for Biden to pursue a bigger and bolder agenda than he’s politically comfortable with, particularly after winning the party’s presidential primary last year as one of the race’s more moderate candidates.

That pressure from the left could also increase tensions with more moderate lawmakers like Manchin, who have argued since the election that the party needs to be more careful about advocating for progressive policies they worry are unpopular with the general public.

“He’s going to be under enormous pressure to do a lot of radical progressive things that may not be good for him politically and, frankly, might not even be possible in a 50-50 Senate,” Jennings said.

Still, some Democrats argue the biggest advantage of controlling the Senate will come with Biden’s Cabinet and judicial appointments, where he will no longer need the support of any Republicans to confirm his selections.

“In terms of the ability to nominate people that are young and progressive and people who can represent a true counter-balance to the types of people Trump has put on the court, that job will be so much easier,” Fallon said.

Other Democratic officials also said that two Biden cabinet appointees who have drawn the most criticism from Republicans — Neera Tanden for the Office of Management and Budget and Xavier Becerra for the Department of Health and Human Services — now stand much better chances of confirmation.

This story was originally published January 7, 2021 at 10:25 AM.