Democrats brace for life with a House GOP majority
by Alexander Bolton - 09/19/22 6:00 AM ET
Senate Democrats are bracing for the possibility for life under a divided government, with President Biden in office and a strong possibility of a Republican-controlled House.
Democrats hope they can retain their majority in the Senate, where a number of political handicappers say the party is favored. That would give Democrats more leverage and congressional support for Biden over the next two years.
But if the House does fall as expected, lawmakers expect partisan gridlock.
Some Democrats are predicting government shutdowns and standoffs over raising the federal debt limit will take center stage.
“If Republicans win control of the House, they will not be able to govern. It’ll be a cascading nightmare of dysfunction and horrible for the country and horrible news for anybody who relies on federal funding,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Murphy predicted that if Republicans are in charge of one or both chambers, “it’s probably a series of shutdowns and funding crises.”
“This new breed of Republicans are anarchists. They don’t really believe government should be funding anything,” he added.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the House minority leader who is in line to become Speaker if Republicans win the lower chamber, is more allied with former President Trump than his Senate GOP counterpart, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
McCarthy sided with Trump last year when the former president called on Republicans to block legislation to raise the debt limit, which would have put the nation at risk of default.
Not a single House Republican voted to raise the debt ceiling in October and it fell to McConnell and his leadership team and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to provide the votes to keep the United States fulfilling its debt obligations.
Trump, who retains a strong grip on the Republican base, slammed McConnell for compromising with Democrats, arguing that GOP lawmakers should have sought to paralyze Biden’s agenda.
Trump presided over a 35-day government shutdown at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 — the longest in U.S. history — which was triggered by his demand to spend nearly $6 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
FiveThirtyEight.com, a political forecasting website, gives Republicans a 7 in 10 chance of winning the House majority and Democrats a 7 in 10 chance of keeping control of the Senate.
Another Democratic senator who requested anonymity to comment frankly on the likely result of the November election, said if Republicans capture the House, it will yield “a series of investigations” of the Biden administration.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3646793-democrats-brace-for-life-with-a-house-gop-majority/
