How Georgia’s Senate races could be make-or-break for Joe Biden’s presidential plan
If Democrats win both Georgia U.S. Senate seats — which would allow Democrats to control the chamber for the next two years — the party would have a much easier time winning approval for its tax plans, judges, health care reforms and more.
That’s why the political world is watching Georgia closely.
Democrat Raphael Warnock, the 51-year-old senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, faces Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican who was appointed to fill Johnny Isakson’s seat
In the other Senate race, Jon Ossoff, 33, is a media executive who has never held public office but is best known for his unsuccessful bid in the 2017 Georgia 6th congressional district special election. He forced David Perdue, the state’s senior Senator and President Donald Trump ally, into a runoff after neither candidate garnered 50% of the vote total in November.
The state hasn’t elected a Democrat Senator since 2000, but Democrats hope President-elect Joe Biden’s success in Georgia will translate to two more victories in January, victories that would make a big difference to the fate of Biden’s agenda.
Big changes in health care policy?
Health care reform was an important promise Democrats made throughout the 2020 campaign, and in a 50-50 Senate, Biden would be poised to deliver.
But if the GOP retains control, “President-Elect Biden’s larger health care agenda is almost certainly dead in the water,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Biden would be expected to push for expanding Obamacare subsidies to middle income consumers to help pay premiums. He’s supported a public health care option that would be available to anyone, regardless of income. The age of eligibility for Medicare, now generally 65, could drop to 60.
Chris Grant, a Mercer University political science professor, said health care reform would be among Biden’s most impactful policies in Georgia, where 23% of people don’t have health insurance. Georgia will partially expand Medicaid in July 2021, but without the ACA’s federal funding that comes with full expansion, reports Healthinsurance.org. Both Ossoff and Warnock support health care reform.
No health care victory would come automatically, of course. “Some proposals, like a public option, would still be controversial and might have trouble attracting the support of moderate Democrats, let alone Republicans,” said Levitt.
But the Senate could use the reconciliation process.
The importance of 51 senators
It usually takes 60 votes to limit debate in the Senate. But there’s an important exception for certain spending, tax and debt legislation.
Called “reconciliation,” if bill-writers follow the process’ rules, they can pass massive changes in certain tax and spending items with 51. Vice President Kamala Harris would break the tie in a 50-50 Senate.
“If Democrats can hold a consensus, they can use reconciliation and do a lot,” said William Hoagland, senior vice president at Washington’s Bipartisan Policy Center and veteran Senate staffer.
The rules say such a maneuver has to stick strictly to changes in the numbers and cannot alter policy. Three efforts are allowed each year: One for the budget, one for taxes and one dealing with debt.
This process is how Republicans in 2017 were able to pass their massive tax cut plan without any Democratic votes.
Biden has proposed a tax plan that would increase taxes for the wealthy while having little impact on others. He would raise the top individual income tax rate, now 37%, to 39.6%, and impose Social Security taxes on income amounts over $400,000. Currently, people stop paying that tax once their income hits $137,700.
Whether all the Democrats will go along with this plan remains uncertain, particularly if any economic recovery looks shaky.
“Introducing a tax hike during a crisis would probably not be well-received, especially by businesses already hurt by lost revenue from social distancing,” said Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at Standard & Poor Global.
Better times for Biden judges
Historically, Cabinet nominees get big confirmation majorities, as members of the minority party concede that the new president deserves his own team and try to have appointees in place on the first day of the new term.
Whether that tradition holds this year is uncertain.
Still, having 51 Democratic votes will make it easier. And throughout the first two years of his presidency, it will particularly make it easier for Biden to win confirmation of judges and Justice Department officials, reversing the Trump-era trend of naming conservatives.
If he had 51 votes, Biden is likely to appoint civil rights attorneys, public defenders, Black women (as he promised for the Supreme Court), Native Americans (there has never been a Native American federal Circuit Court judge), and others ”reflecting the demographic diversity of the nation and the experiential diversity of the legal profession,” said Myesha Braden, director for Special Justice Initiatives at the Alliance for Justice.
Trump has been unusually active in naming judges. As of July, Pew Research Center found he’d appointed about one-fourth of the nation’s 792 federal judges. Thirty-nine percent of judges were named by President Barack Obama during his eight years.
A majority leader has power over what will be considered, and current leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has emphasized confirmation of Trump-appointed judges.
But in a 50-50 Senate, Chuck Schumer, D-New York, would be the key player, and that will make a difference, on judges, health care, taxes and a lot more.
Can Democrats stick together?
While national Democrats’ chances of success would improve with Georgia wins, theirs would be a shaky coalition. Not all 50 Democrats would necessarily move in lockstep.
Brookings Institution’s Robert Litan notes that Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., “is likely to be the deciding one on all of the legislation that the new administration will be asking Congress to enact.” President Donald Trump won West Virginia this year by 39 percentage points.
Also no certainty is the vote of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who faces re-election in 2024 in a swing state where she narrowly won her seat in 2018. She has voted with Trump 51.5% of the time, roughly the same as Manchin, according to data compiled by FiveThirtyEight.
And in Georgia, Ossoff and Warnock would be “more moderate” than some of the other Democrats, Grant, the Mercer University professor, said.
There’s some incentive to not follow the party on certain votes. If Warnock was to win in January, his seat would be up for election again in 2022, meaning he could be more willing to be “buck his party” ahead of what would likely be a difficult reelection battle, Grant said.
“The fact that he has to run again in two years would suggest to us that he would be more cautious in his voting behavior than Ossoff would,” he said. “Warnock doesn’t have the level of experience a lot of other politicians do... A strategic politician would not go very left during this term, and he needs some opportunities to buck his party.”
The fates of Ossoff and Warnock are linked. One likely does not win without the other, Grant said. Outside of Biden’s November success, Democrats did not perform well in down-ticket, local races. The party has work to do before January.
“Georgia is a red state that has a tinge of purple now,” Grant said. “This is not Virginia now. This is Virginia, maybe 10 years ago when the Democrats started to win elections”.
This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How Georgia’s Senate races could be make-or-break for Joe Biden’s presidential plan."
.jpg)