Biden under pressure to abandon Senate traditions by progressives in wage fight
President Joe Biden’s needs as a president are starting to clash with his reverence for the Senate.
The Senate parliamentarian on Thursday determined that lawmakers could not include a minimum wage increase — one of Biden’s campaign promises — in a COVID-relief bill based on the budgetary procedure they planned to use to pass it.
That decision sparked outrage on the left, with many leading progressive lawmakers and activists calling on Biden to support not just overruling the parliamentarian but lowering the voting threshold much of his policy agenda will need to pass the Senate -- something the president has repeatedly said he does not want to do.
Biden reveres the procedures of the U.S. Senate and has said he has no desire to support scraping the rules of the chamber he served in for more than three decades. It’s a commitment that’s about to receive a stern test.
Democratic strategists warn that if the Senate does not change legislative procedures, much of Biden’s agenda — from voting rights to immigration — will fail to become law, threatening his legacy and disappointing many of the voters who elected him last year.
“His soul is an institutionalist, who has worked in the Senate for 30 years, he’s obviously not going to be someone who’s in a hurry to change many Senate rules, the filibuster included,” said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist who was an aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “So he’s loath to do that. But Joe Biden also is very aware that his base is counting on him to exhaust all options to pass a pretty ambitious agenda.”
Progressives are urging Biden to give his blessing to Democratic leaders to do away with Senate procedures like the filibuster, which imposes a 60-vote threshold on most pieces of legislation.
In the current 50-50 split Senate, many Democratic initiatives would require getting Republicans on board to meet that threshold for moving bills forward.
Progressives insist that Vice President Kamala Harris can overrule the Senate parliamentarian on what can and cannot be passed by a simple majority of lawmakers when they use a budget process known as reconciliation. They are pushing Biden to give Harris permission to do so.
Reconciliation requires 51 votes for bills to become law. Democrats have exactly 51 votes when Harris leverages her role as president of the Senate to act as the tie-breaker.
More than 40 progressive groups, including the Black Women’s Roundtable and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, sent Biden a letter on Friday telling him that Harris has the power to ignore the parliamentarian’s ruling and allow the legislation to move forward with a controversial provision that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
“President Biden simply must rise up for the communities who turned out in record numbers to elect him and support the Vice President in taking this action on behalf of his Administration,” the groups wrote.
Biden Resists
White House press secretary Jen Psaki issued a statement Thursday night saying that the president “respects” the parliamentarian’s ruling. Biden has previously said he didn’t expect the minimum wage increase proposal in his coronavirus relief package to make it through the reconciliation process.
White House officials said Friday that they were consulting with congressional allies and leaders to determine a path forward on the minimum wage.
Psaki said the COVID stimulus legislation “should garner Republican support,” in response to a question about pressure to do away with the filibuster from progressives.
Progressive activists say the situation should highlight what they consider the necessity of deeper changes to the lawmaking process, especially to a filibuster rule that blocks most legislation in the Senate that doesn’t have the support of 60 members.
“The net effect of this ruling is a one-day blip of commentary about the parliamentarian, and an immense amount of pressure to reform the filibuster,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Because that’s the real obstacle to progress on everything from the minimum wage to voting rights.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in a statement Thursday echoed many progressive lawmakers who argued that the Senate should take action to reform its rules.
“The ruling only makes it more clear than ever that the Senate must reform its archaic rules, including reforming the filibuster to allow populist and necessary policies like the $15 minimum wage to pass with a majority of the Senate,” she said.
As soon as the parliamentarian’s ruling was announced, progressives also began to put public pressure on Harris to take action.
The progressive group Our Revolution, which emerged from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ political operation, invoked Harris’ bid for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election and said she “must fight for $15 like she promised on the campaign trail.”
Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese told McClatchy that the group’s intention was to signal to the White House that it is “not acceptable to backtrack” on a wage raise and that progressives “will not give them a pass” on the priority issue that has been under debate since Biden was vice president.
“I think there will be repercussions for Democrats in 2022. Walking away from the fight for $15 is turning your back on your base,” he said. “And I think there’s gonna be repercussions in 2024 for any Democrat who is not for the fight for $15. It is now a litmus test for being a good Democrat.”
White House chief of staff Ron Klain had previously ruled out an attempt to go around the parliamentarian, saying in a Wednesday interview on MSNBC, “Certainly that’s not something we would do. We’re going to honor the rules of the Senate and work within that system to get this bill passed.”
Some progressives argued after the decision that Harris could act independently of Biden if she wanted. But Payne, the strategist who worked for former Senate Democratic leader Reid, said it is unlikely that Harris would “go rogue” on Biden.
“While she will make her feelings known about this, and I’m sure she will be vocal, I’m sure she’s going to be loath to cross the president on this,” he said.
Neither Biden nor Harris have publicly commented on the ruling directly. A spokeswoman for Harris said the statements by Psaki and Klain are the positions of the administration, and declined to offer further comment.
Progressives said the fight is not over yet and they would continue to press the White House and Harris to overrule the parliamentarian.
“I would hope she’s in the decisional loop in pushing back,” Geevarghese said. “I hope she can maybe convince the president to reverse the White House’s position.”
