Leave it to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to break into a home run trot while the ball remains aloft.
It could go foul, could stay fair. Could reach the seats, could wind up in the glove of the second baseman camped under it. Regardless, Mitch is dashing for the plate, confidant he’ll get credit for a grand slam regardless of where it lands.
McConnell, of Louisville, was on something of a victory tour during the July 4 congressional recess, regaling Bluegrass crowds about his heroic exploits as the new man who gets to call the tune in the upper chamber, a job he has held for just short of six months.
Appearing before Commerce Lexington, McConnell proudly declared “the era of dysfunction in the Senate is over’’ and that “there’s a new majority with a different view about how to make progress for the country.”
To hear McConnell tell it, according to news reports, he already has assumed his rightful place next to the great Lyndon Baines Johnson when it comes to running the upper chamber. Appearing before Commerce Lexington, McConnell proudly declared “the era of dysfunction in the Senate is over’’ and that “there’s a new majority with a different view about how to make progress for the country.”
What he failed to acknowledge to the good folks of Fayette County is that he was the one person primarily responsible for the “era of dysfunction’’ that has roiled the Senate throughout President Obama’s time in office. As former Sen. George Voinovich. R-Ohio, famously noted in Time magazine in 2012, “If he (Obama) was for it, we had to be against it.” Thus was the way the GOP operated during McConnell’s time leading the minority.
Now it could be, when the final page is written, McConnell will emerge as one of the giants of the Senate, a man who did, indeed, create an atmosphere where lawmakers can get together and actually get things done to the nation’s benefit. But right now he looks to be taking guidance from former Vermont Sen. George Aiken, a Republican who famously said of the Vietnam War that we should simply declare victory and come home.
And we all know how that turned out.
To this point McConnell has experienced some success, but it has come from picking low-hanging fruit. He managed to push through legislation seeking the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, thanks to the support of energy state Democrats. And recently the Senate passed legislation providing the president with fast-track trade authority – a bill supported by the White House. And he also managed to force through a rather gruesome budget, an almost worthless sheet of paper that Democrats under Senate rules were prohibited from filibustering.
It’s fair to say, his tenure still in its infancy, that McConnell has not emerged as an abject failure sans hope for the future. And he has reigned in his tendency to bully, though lord knows how long that might last. But the floodgates have yet to open and there’s no telling how he might react once the waters come rushing in.
The greatest clue unearthed thus far for what the future might hold is his handling of the renewal of some provisions of the Patriot Act. McConnell hoped to extend those provisions – including Section 215, which permitted the National Security Agency to collect U.S. phone metadata in bulk– without alteration. He even went so far as to “fill the tree,’’ a process that blocked substantive amendments, which he vehemently criticized when it was employed by his predecessor, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada.
The whole thing eventually came tumbling down. As a result of his maneuvering, certain security measures vital to U.S. interests expired, leaving the federal government without a number of surveillance instruments for several days.
What that debate displayed was McConnell’s willingness to forgo his vows to open the process and rely on the work of the committee system when it suits his purposes. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it may work. It may also blow up in his face when things start getting hot.
And that should happen in pretty short order. The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act pretty much etches what is popularly known as Obamacare in stone with little or no hope of changing its dictates for at least the next two years. But the dead-enders on the Republican side – several of whom are running for president in 2016 – remain unwilling to accept reality, let alone embrace it. It remains to be seen just how far McConnell is willing to go to placate those folks.
Then there is McConnell’s plan to all but halt the confirmation of federal judges during the remainder of Obama’s term – including two key district judges in his home state. The Senate did manage to confirm Kara Farnandez Stoll to the U.S. Circuit Court in Washington, D.C., by a vote of 95-0 this week. It marked the first time during the 114th Congress that lawmakers voted on a circuit court nominee. It’s not jolly well likely that many others will follow.
To this point McConnell has experienced some success, but it has come from picking low-hanging fruit.
“Six months into this new Republican-led Congress, the Senate has only confirmed a handful of judges – and it has been more than six weeks since a vote was scheduled by the majority leader for a single judicial nominee,” noted Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This glacial pace of confirmations is a dereliction of the Senate’s constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on judicial nominees. Many are concerned that such treatment threatens the functioning of our independent judiciary.”
Stoll was only the fifth judicial nominee to be confirmed this year. At a similar point during the administration of Republican President George W. Bush, working under a Democratic majority, 21 judges were confirmed. There currently are 11 other consensus judicial nominations pending on the Senate Executive Calendar. No Senator has spoken out against any of the pending nominees, who all were reported by the Judiciary Committee on voice votes.
But McConnell is committed to slow-walk the process and it raises questions about how long Democrats are willing to accept that burr under their saddle.
And there is McConnell’s ongoing war with the Environmental Protection Agency, an outfit he would not be averse to killing altogether. That is only one issue sure to emerge when lawmakers get down to cases and start in on the appropriations process.
McConnell has vowed that the federal government will not face a shutdown when the fiscal year ends on Oct. 1. It may be an empty promise. Senate Democrats who, unlike Republicans of recent yore, have been reluctant to play the filibuster card, may begin tossing it out at random. If McConnell moves to placate them, he faces opposition from his fellow Republicans in the upper chamber. And if he somehow manages to resolve those differences – oil, meet water – he will have to hold a fragile coalition together when dealing with the House, which offers more crazies per square inch than the Senate ever dreamed of.
After all that, Obama holds a veto pen. This time, after putting up with McConnell’s detrimental tenure as minority leader, he won’t be afraid to use it.
Ultimately, that’s why McConnell is touring the state, telling everyone what a wonderful job he’s doing with the jury still out. He’s already setting up Obama and his fellow Democrats as the fall guys and gals. You can’t blame me, one can imagine McConnell as saying, I said there wouldn’t be a shutdown and brought “a different view about how to make progress for the country.”
And the ball hasn’t reached the grandstands.
Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.