Biden Lacks Clear Legislative Strategy After Democrats Achieve Senate Majority

President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are celebrating Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) clinching an absolute Senate majority for the party without the need for Vice President Kamala Harris‘s tiebreaking vote after last month’s midterm elections.

Democrats will now face fewer obstacles from Republicans on the Senate floor and in the chamber’s committees, making it easier to confirm federal judges or even issue subpoenas. But the party’s broader legislative agenda is still set to be thwarted by the Republican-held House.

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Democrats reveled in Warnock’s decisive Senate runoff victory over former NFL player Herschel Walker (R-GA), despite heralding the end of the party’s unified control of Washington.

“Having 51 votes will give Democrats significantly more power to get measures out of committees because Republicans will no longer have the power to block action by denying committees a quorum,” one Democratic Senate aide told the Washington Examiner.

Costas Panagopoulos, Northeastern University’s political science chairman, agreed there is a “big” difference between a 50-50 and 51-49 Senate majority. The latter margin provides Democrats with “some cushion” and “diminishes the power of any single intractable senator,” according to Panagopoulos, a veiled reference to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).

“One gadfly is no longer sufficient to forestall Democratic action in the Senate,” he said. “Democrats will likely attempt to revisit some policy priorities that never saw the light of day, but that will still be an uphill battle given GOP control in the House.”

Panagopoulos added, “The biggest difference for Democrats will likely be felt in committees, where the party will now have true majorities as opposed to even splits, enabling them to move forward legislation and, perhaps especially, judicial and other nominations.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) particularly appeared to relish Warnock’s triumph, which, “after one year, 10 months, and 17 days,” concluded “the longest 50-50 Senate in history.

“The people of Georgia are better off,” he told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “The Democratic Senate caucus is better off, and America is better off because he ran and won.”

Biden, who had avoided Georgia during Warnock’s general and runoff campaigns before conveying his congratulations to the reverend late Tuesday, similarly praised the state’s voters for defending democracy and rejecting so-called ultra-MAGAism. But White House staffers have been more circumspect about what Warnock’s success means for Democrats during the last two years of the president’s administration.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, for one, described Warnock securing his first full term as offering the White House and Democrats with “a little bit more breathing room, a little bit more ability to deliver for the American people.”

“The president has been very clear these past almost two years that his main objective is to make sure that the American public, the American people, when it comes to the economy, we build it from the bottom up, middle out, giving people real opportunities,” she told reporters during her Wednesday briefing. “They were very clear in the midterms. What the American people want is they want to continue the agenda that the president has had for the last two years.”

But when pushed for specifics, Jean-Pierre could only repeat that Biden hoped to add to the already “historic” number of black women judges on federal benches. His top spokeswoman also could not outline a filibuster-proof strategy for the president’s proposed assault-style weapons ban amid partisan bickering over defense spending and the Pentagon’s budget.

“There’s so many areas of bipartisanship that the president sees when it comes to delivering for the American people — on the economy, on healthcare, on issues that they truly care about,” she said. “When the president had his meeting with the Big Four, the Republican and Democratic leadership in Congress just last week, he was very clear — you saw the readout, and you heard me say this as well — this past almost two years, there were more than 200 pieces of legislation that the president signed into law that were bipartisan. So it is possible to get things done.”

Republicans will still be able to filibuster most legislation in the Senate, and without the House, reconciliation, which was used to pass both the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act, won’t be as much of an option for the Democrats.

Warnock, Georgia’s first black senator, dispatched Walker narrowly but relatively early Tuesday night, with 51% of the vote to Walker’s 49%, in their $401 million general and runoff races, making it the country’s most expensive 2022 contest. Walker’s defeat punctuates a disappointing election season for Republicans, the first midterm cycle since 1934 in which the party in power kept all of its Senate seats.

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The development, too, tilts the Senate’s ideological composition slightly to the political Left, weakening the influence of Manchin and Sinema, who may seek reelection in 2024. At the same time, House Republicans are preparing to investigate Biden and his family, regardless of whether House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becomes speaker next year.