Key Takeaways
- Tuesday Senate Banking Committee holds hearing on Jay Powell’s nomination to serve a second term as Fed Chair. The 2018 vote to confirm was 84 to 13. Will evenly divided Senate make vote tougher?
- Budget talks continue with no resolution in sight. Biden decision to wait until March 1 to give State of the Union is sign of tough talks ahead.
- February 18 current Continuing Resolution expires and need for Budget Bill to avoid government shutdown. Can Democrats act on their Build Back Better plan before CR deadline as new BBB spending will make it difficult to get Republican votes on new CR or Omnibus Spending package?
- Senate next turns to voting rights with Democrats pushing for broad reform and Republicans beginning to engage on the flawed Electoral Count Act of 1887 that raised the issue of the role of Congress and VP in counting electoral votes.
Powell nomination
On Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Jay Powell to serve a second term as Federal Reserve Board Chair. When the Senate considered his nomination in 2018 the final vote on confirmation was 84 to 13. 9 of the 13 votes against Powell came from Democrats. Clearly if Powell is to be re-nominated it will again require a bipartisan vote in the evenly divided 50/50 Senate.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has already announced her strong opposition to the re-nomination, was one of the nine Democrats who opposed Powell in 2018. She sits on the Banking Committee and much of the press is likely to be focused on her questioning. Having prepared witnesses for Congressional testimony I am sure the Chair will be well prepared. In my view the questions to be asked by Senator Warren are likely pretty predictable.
The bigger challenge will be to answer questions in such a way as to not offend Republicans, to avoid a firestorm where an answer ignites Fox News and other Republican opinion leaders to urge opposition to the nomination. The most likely pitfall is large Democratic stimulus such as the spending in the BBB legislation which has become a lynchpin to Republican opposition to Biden and Congressional Democrats.
However, I am confident Powell will be well prepared, avoid mistakes, and win a bipartisan confirmation vote both in the Banking Committee and on the Senate floor.
Budget
A firm prediction: one day it will be February 18 and a government shutdown risk comes again. The White House knows that there will be a delay in submitting a budget for FY 2023 and has set a date for the annual State of the Union address for March 1. Congress seems to be avoiding making the tough decision required to pass an appropriation bill needed to fund the government for FY 2022 which began on October 1, 2021. The government has been running on a series of Continuing Resolutions (CR) that maintain spending levels at the prior year’s level. This means that new programs and new priorities can’t receive the funding required.
One possible incentive to pass FY 2022 appropriations for some of the government is the massive Defense Department authorization bill that recently passed with large bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate. The bill approved spending of $768B, $25B more than the White House had requested. However, to get the new money out will require Congress to pass a new FY 2022 DoD appropriations bill. While many Democrats favor the higher spending levels for Defense, they will insist on similar increased spending levels for domestic programs. In the past compromise spending bills have included an even split between Defense and Domestic funding increases. This seems like a deal that could be done in conjunction with a limited Omnibus Spending Bill for part of the government and a long term CR for other parts of the government that would run through the end of the fiscal year that goes until October 1.
Voting Rights in Senate
Senate Leader Chuck Schumer has announced that the next issue the Senate will turn to is voting rights and approving protections for bills passing in many Republican controlled state legislatures that Democrats believe will suppress the vote. The two major bills are the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Both bills have been opposed by all 50 Republicans. As has become the rule for the Senate this year the Democratic voting rights agenda is being held up by Senators Manchin and Sinema who refuse to pass the bills by a simple majority vote exempting them from the filibuster rules.
Most Democrats in the Senate argue that voting rights are so central to American democracy that the issue should be exempt from the filibuster rules. However, Manchin and Sinema appear to continue their opposition to any filibuster rules change, but both are coming under mounting pressure to allow for at least a one-time exemption for these bills.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell surprised many when he came up with an alternative voting rights issue; amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA). The 1887 Act was passed after the close election of 1886 in order to clarify issues related to the Electoral College. In fact it has several vague provisions; it was these provisions that raised issues related to the powers of Vice President Pence during the January 6 vote count. It also allowed objections to state vote counts with the objection of just one Member of the House and one Senator. After the issues raised in the 2020 election there is broad bipartisan support for reforming the ECA.
While Democratic leaders opposed McConnell’s move to develop a bipartisan ECA bill, it may open the door for some bipartisan election reform legislation. With the February 18 budget deadline mentioned above, time that can be dedicated to election reform is limited. The idea of starting with an area where there is bipartisan agreement, and then seeing what might be added is a strategy that could lead to some election reform legislation.