If Biden becomes president, it doesn’t look like the GOP-controlled Senate will be much of an opposition.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested he would work well with Biden, telling opinion writer Scott Jennings of the Courier-Journal: “Well, first of all, I am going to treat him a hell of a lot better than Chuck Schumer ever treated Donald Trump.” He went on to say that he will not “bring the [Biden] administration to its knees” the way his Democrat counterparts did when President Trump came into office.
“They [Biden’s nominees] aren’t all going to pass on a voice vote, and they aren’t all going to make it, but I will put them on the floor,” McConnell added.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has never been majority leader under President Trump, but filibustered over 128 Trump appointees in the last four years, forcing McConnell to file cloture to break the filibuster and move forward with a vote.
McConnell has publicly spoken about his “friendship” with Joe Biden. Following the Electoral College vote last week, the majority leader on the Senate floor called the former vice president the “president-elect.”
“The Electoral College has spoken,” he said from the floor of the Senate.
“I told him that while we disagree on a lot of things, there are things we can work together on. We’ve always been straight with one another. And we agreed to get together sooner than later. And I’m looking forward to working with him,” McConnell said to reporters about the former vice president.
McConnell has in recent days placed himself at odds with President Trump. Although many of the president’s supporters are hoping he can pull off an eleventh-hour win through an initiative being led by Representative Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) in the House that would challenge Electoral College votes from states in which significant fraud occurred, the Alabaman lawmaker needs at least one senator to join him in the effort.
But McConnell has made it clear to Republicans that he does not want them participating.
“McConnell warned that any GOP senator who signed onto a House Republican objection to a state’s electoral votes would then force the Senate to debate and vote on the objection, putting fellow GOP senators in a bad position,” The Hill reports.
And McConnell wasn’t alone among the chamber’s leadership in urging the GOP caucus to refrain from making any waves next month. Republican Whip Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) and Rules Committee Chairman Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) gave the same instruction.
Furthermore, McConnell has said senators will be back in Washington, D.C., on December 29 to attempt to override a potential veto from President Trump on the National Defense Authorization Act.
“In the event that President Trump does elect to veto this bipartisan bill, it appears the House may choose to return after the holidays to set up a vote to consider the veto…. In the event that the president has vetoed the bill, and the House has voted to override the veto, the Senate would have the opportunity to process a veto override at that time,” the majority leader declared.
President Trump has vowed to issue a veto unless the legislation includes a repeal of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which currently protects the big social-media platforms from liability for content posted on them.
The president and other detractors of Big Tech argue that these corporations should lose this protection because, in constantly censoring user content, they are behaving more like publishers (which are liable for the content they publish) than neutral platforms.
It is not yet certain whether McConnell will keep hold of his majority leader seat or pass it off to Schumer come January. That will depend on the result of the two Senate runoff races in Georgia.
If Democrats win both races, the Senate would be split 50-50, which, assuming Kamala Harris becomes Vice President (and thus President of the Senate), would give Democrats a one-vote majority. Under those circumstances, Schumer would be named majority leader, but he’d have to broker a deal with McConnell on everything from committee seats to floor procedures. If Republicans win one or both Senate races, McConnell retains his current title.
