Should Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue lose their runoff elections in Georgia on Tuesday, Democrats will hold 50 Senate seats and the tie-breaking vote in vice president-elect Kamala Harris, giving them unified control of the presidency and Congress.
These are the stakes.
Democrats warn that a Biden agenda would be dead on arrival with a GOP-led Senate, while Republicans have portrayed a win for candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff as ushering in a new era of unchecked socialism.
“If Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer and Senator Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez win in Georgia, you’ve got nothing to worry about unless you are a taxpayer, a business owner, a parent, a cop, a gun owner, a person of faith, or an unborn baby,” Senator John Kennedy (R., La.) said in an appearance on Fox News in November.
During a campaign stop in Columbus, Ga., Harris told supporters of Ossoff and Warnock that “everything” is on the line in the runoffs.
“Everything that was at stake in November is at stake leading up to January 5th,” Harris said. Speaking at the same event, Ossoff warned supporters that “if Mitch McConnell continues to control the U.S. Senate, he will try to do to Joe and Kamala just like he tried to do to President Obama.”
The prospect of unified Democratic control has pro-life Republicans worried that the Hyde amendment could be in jeopardy. The law bars federal funding for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or where a woman’s life is at stake, and has been passed repeatedly by Congress for decades.
Biden supported the amendment throughout his four-decade career in the Senate on the grounds that eliminating it would violate the conscience rights of pro-life Americans.
“I will continue to abide by the same principle that has guided me throughout my 21 years in the Senate: those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them,” Biden wrote to a constituent in 1994. “As you may know, I have consistently — on no fewer than 50 occasions — voted against federal funding of abortions.”
But the president-elect reversed himself in June of last year, just one day after affirming his support for the amendment, under immense pressure from his party’s left wing. He justified the reversal by appealing to the need to counterbalance pro-life legislation in conservative states.
Among Democrats, only Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania officially support the Hyde amendment, and Casey’s voting record on other abortion-related legislation has earned him praise from Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
“Repealing the Hyde amendment would be foolish and I’m strongly opposed to this push from some Members of Congress,” Manchin told National Review last week. “If this legislation is brought before the Senate I will vote against repealing the Hyde amendment.”
Centrist Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, however, have opposed the Hyde amendment. In the event of a 50–50 Senate tie, a vote on the Hyde amendment could put enormous pressure on those four lawmakers.
Additionally, should a vacancy arise in the Supreme Court during a tied Senate, the confirmation hearing could resemble Brett Kavanaugh’s grilling before the Judiciary Committee. After five years during which Senate Republicans blocked President Obama’s 2016 nominee to the Court, Merrick Garland, and subsequently confirmed three judges to give the Court a 6–3 conservative majority, Democrats would pull out all the stops to confirm a justice of Biden’s choosing.
However, there are some major Democratic legislative goals that would be difficult to enact. The parity between the two sides lends outsized strength to moderate senators who could stymie controversial proposals from the party’s left wing, among them packing the Supreme Court, implementing the so-called Green New Deal and Medicare for All, and eliminating the filibuster.
Senator Manchin made headlines in November when he told Fox News’s Bret Baier that he would oppose eliminating the Senate filibuster and packing the Supreme Court, both policies that gained traction among Democrats after Trump moved to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat. Manchin is a Democrat representing a state where close to 69 percent of voters chose Donald Trump for the presidency, and over 70 percent chose Manchin’s Republican colleague, Senator Shelley Moore Capito.
“I commit to you tonight, and I commit to all of your viewers and anyone else who’s watching . . . when they talk about packing the courts, or ending the filibuster, I will not vote to do that,” Manchin said on November 10. Even if Democrats win 50 Senate seats this week, Manchin could prevent any attempts to eliminate the filibuster simply by refusing to vote.
Manchin has also criticized the Green New Deal proposed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Senator Ed Markey (D., Mass.). Currently the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Manchin would be unlikely to approve the legislation.
“While I appreciate the renewed conversation around climate change that the Green New Deal and its supporters sparked, I think we need to focus on real solutions that recognize the role fossil fuels will continue to play,” the West Virginia senator said in 2019.
Manchin is not the only moderate Democrat to watch. Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona’s first Democratic senator elected in 30 years, has acquired a reputation for independence by voting with Republicans on various pieces of legislation. Sinema originally entered politics as an anti-war activist and campaign staffer for Ralph Nader, but she has moved considerably toward the political center.
“They will not get my vote [to eliminate the filibuster],” Sinema told Politico in October 2019. “Whether I’m in the majority or the minority, I would always vote to reinstate protections for the minority.”
Progressives will likely be unable to legislate a single-payer health-care system, or Medicare for All, if the Senate filibuster stands. Indeed, a tied Senate would empower Democratic centrists, who could water down proposals put forward by their more ideological colleagues. Joe Biden portrayed himself as a centrist candidate who would return the U.S. to some version of “normalcy” after the Trump years and a devastating pandemic, and many Democrats seem eager to marginalize the progressive wing of their party after election disappointments.
The bone thrown to progressives in a tied Senate could be a strengthened version of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, along with the discontinuation of U.S.–Mexico border-wall construction. Democrats could probably expand or refine the Affordable Care Act, and could enact climate-change initiatives that are less radical than Green New Deal adherents would wish.
Meanwhile, many in the GOP could be dismayed if the Hyde amendment doesn’t make it through the tied Senate. Unless, of course, Senators Perdue and Loeffler win the Georgia runoffs.