Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has incredible power as the Senate's majority leader. He sets the floor schedule and can single-handedly kill legislation by not bringing it up for a vote.
Yet Senate Republicans are testing the limits of that power as they exploit obscure laws, and Democrats’ threadbare majority, to thwart Schumer’s ability to stop the GOP’s legislative agenda.
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Last week, Republicans forced President Joe Biden to issue the first veto of his presidency, and on Wednesday, the Senate passed a resolution that will draw his second.
Both measures took aim at new regulations from the Biden administration, one on protections for waterways and another allowing environmental, social, and corporate governance, or ESG, factors to be considered by retirement fund managers making investment decisions.
Their passage marks a new strategy by congressional Republicans to use “privileged” resolutions, which cannot be filibustered, to force votes on legislation Schumer would never schedule himself.
Their biggest victory came earlier this month on one such measure — a “disapproval resolution” to undo the District of Columbia’s new criminal code, which lowered penalties for offenses ranging from homicide to carjackings.
The vote put Democrats in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether or not to defend Washington, D.C.’s autonomy and risk being labeled as soft on crime ahead of the 2024 elections.
Biden backed down from his opposition to the measure, opening the floodgates for Senate Democrats to vote with Republicans.
Biden had deja vu this week when another Republican priority, ending the national emergency declaration for COVID-19, passed the Senate in a landslide over his earlier opposition.
The legislation has created a political headache for Biden, who has upset House Democrats for his reversals after they took politically sensitive votes in opposition.
But the GOP’s tactics have also created problems for Schumer. Not only are Republicans undermining his say over what gets brought up for a vote, but at least one senator is forcing him to spend valuable floor time approving the nominations of military personnel.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is holding up the promotions of some 180 general and flag officers over a new policy from the Pentagon that pays for time off and travel expenses for service members receiving an abortion.
Tuberville says his protest is not about abortion per se but rather taxpayer funds being used to facilitate the procedures, which he says violates the Hyde Amendment.
That decision belongs to Congress, not the Pentagon, he says.
The holdup, more than any other GOP tactic, has infuriated Schumer, who railed against Tuberville in floor speeches three days in a row this week.
The majority leader can still move the Pentagon nominations forward, but he must do them one by one instead of in batches by unanimous consent.
The prospect of spending valuable floor time that could otherwise go toward judicial nominees or his preferred legislation has Schumer irked, Tuberville told the Washington Examiner.
“This whole thing is about power,” he said. “You know, they've had the power over us for two years. Now that we're fighting back, and I'm fighting back on this — we got plenty of generals — you know, so the big thing that I want to do is make sure that the American taxpayers don't spend their money on something they didn't vote for.”
Schumer, for his part, has framed the holdup as detrimental to the readiness of the U.S. military.
“The senator from Alabama risks permanently injecting politics into the confirmation of routine military promotions, and that would risk our entire national security. For what? So he can push the MAGA hard line on blocking women’s choice, something that most women in this country, most people in this country, reject?" he said in a Tuesday floor speech. "That is beyond the pale."
Schumer has urged Senate Republicans to press Tuberville to stop holding the promotions up. Yet, for now, his conference is defending him, even as a handful have expressed reservations with the tactic. Tuberville says GOP leadership has not asked him to drop his fight.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), previously the majority whip in the Senate, said Schumer is “just putting on a show” with the floor speeches.
“He's not really upset,” Cornyn told the Washington Examiner. “He understands that this is within the authority of any senator to put holds on nominations, and anything that interferes with Sen. Schumer's exercise of arbitrary power is something he finds inconvenient.”
“It'll eat up some floor time. But he's got the tools to file for cloture on each and every one of these nominations, just like we do on judges and other nominations,” he added.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told the Washington Examiner the holds are useful for slowing the confirmation of Schumer’s judicial nominees even if that’s not Tuberville’s intent.
The aggressive GOP posture is a marked contrast from the last session of Congress, when Schumer successfully ushered through a series of policy wins, sometimes with the help of Republicans. Congress passed gun control, infrastructure legislation, and a bill on chip manufacturing on a bipartisan basis.
And he successfully got the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature policy achievement, passed through a process called reconciliation that denied Republicans the ability to filibuster.
Yet ever since Democrats expanded their 50-50 majority in the Senate by one seat in the midterm elections, the momentum has ironically been with Republicans despite the fact that they only control the House.
The circumstance is partially due to the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the Senate, hampered by the temporary absence of two senators, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and John Fetterman (D-PA). Fetterman, who was being treated for clinical depression, is expected to return after the Easter recess, while it’s not clear when Feinstein will return as she recovers from the shingles at home in California.
The push to repeal Biden’s ESG rule illustrates just how critical every vote is for Schumer. Although two Democrats, Joe Manchin (WV) and Jon Tester (MT), joined Republicans to pass the measure in a 50-46 vote, it would have likely failed had every senator been present.
Republicans were able to force the vote using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to repeal regulations published in the last 60 days.
But they were likely able to peel off Democratic votes, on this resolution and others, because a number of Democrats are up for reelection in states that former President Donald Trump won in 2020.
“Some of it is the fact that we have a pretty good map in 2024, and you’ve got some vulnerable Democrats who are looking over their shoulder and thinking about how they want to do a course correction. So, that's a consideration as well,” Cornyn said.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), who spearheaded the ESG repeal, suggested that the new political dynamic will keep the momentum with Republicans.
“How much do you think the Schumer Senate is going to produce that would agree with the McCarthy House? So, I think that the Congressional Review Act was just made for times like these,” he told the Washington Examiner.
The CRA isn’t the only avenue by which Republicans have had success. Braun sponsored a bill with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) requiring the Biden administration to declassify intelligence on the origins of COVID-19. The legislation, which Biden signed into law last week, passed the House and Senate unanimously.
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But Braun does believe Republicans will continue to be able to use the CRA as a check on the Biden administration.
“I think they're just gonna do a lot of things that are gonna be out of sync with the majority of Americans, and that'll give us the opportunity,” he said.