Mitch McConnellâs way
At a closed-door lunch late last month, one Republican senator after another questioned how their party will escape its political jam on immigration. But the most important man in the room wasnât offering many answers. The GOP-led House had just created a quandary with no easy way out â passing a $39.7 billion Department of Homeland Security spending bill loaded with riders on immigration policy that stand no chance of clearing a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. And with funding set to run out at the end of February, some GOP senators were in no mood to play endless games with the House. Story Continued Below âWe just need to rip the Band-Aid off,â said one Republican senator, saying the Senate should strip out all the immigration language and pass a âcleanâ DHS funding bill. âI think the House guys rolled a grenade in the room,â a second GOP senator said later. In the middle of it all, showing little emotion as usual, was the person who holds the key to the most important questions facing the Senate these days: Mitch McConnell. McConnell, the shrewd new Senate majority leader, acknowledged that the immigration matter poses âa challengeâ but said little about the way forward â even as the DHS funding battle begins in earnest on Tuesday, senators said. It was vintage McConnell: Listen to the competing options Republicans lay out, see whether thereâs consensus, keep your cards very close to your vest â then strike when allies and opponents alike are trying to figure out your next move. And as McConnell now heads into a tumultuous period atop the Senate, with huge fights looming over immigration, national security, the budget, highway funding and taxes, the Kentucky Republican is playing an inside game to keep his partyâs warring factions together and outmaneuver a recalcitrant and robust Democratic minority. Yet with 54 GOP seats, six shy of overriding a Democratic filibuster and 13 short of overriding a presidential veto, McConnell says there are limits to what he can do. âWhat I would also remind everybody and mentioned to our House friends at our joint retreat: How would you like to have to get 261 votes on almost everything you do?â McConnell said in a phone interview. âI hope that some day we will have a supermajority in the Senate, but for 100 years we havenât, and there are some obvious limitations.â To overcome the next round of tests, McConnell has set up meetings and briefings to get back-channel intelligence with the blocs of his caucus. He has instituted a weekly Wednesday meeting with committee chairmen in the Strom Thurmond Room just off the floor, where he suggested last week he may hold off on pushing new Iran sanctions until after March, senators said. He promises to invite the 12 GOP freshmen to monthly sessions in his leadership suite, which boasts grand views of the National Mall. Heâs even inviting Utah Sen. Mike Lee, leader of the Senateâs conservative Steering Committee and close ally of tea party firebrand Ted Cruz, to sit in on his weekly leadership meetings. To keep his caucus on the same page, McConnell sends out nightly emails to all GOP senators, including one that defended his refusal to let Democrats stage brief debates on their amendments to the Keystone XL oil pipeline bill before Republicans tabled them â a move that had given the Democrats a rallying cry. To help his most vulnerable senators, McConnell is also on an aggressive fundraising drive, including helping North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr pull in $1.1 million last Wednesday night, while vowing to help promote their proposals on the floor and give them chances to break from the party line. To keep tabs on the House, McConnell leans heavily on Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). For intelligence on Democrats, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the GOP majority whip, often shares useful tidbits after working out in the Senate gym nearly every morning with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a top Democratic leader. âWe talk a little business, we talk a little smack,â said Cornyn, who typically runs on the treadmill while Schumer rides the exercise bike. While the final outcome of the legislative fights remains an open question, what McConnell can control is the Senateâs schedule. To that end, he has promised a return to so-called regular order, loosening the grip on the amendment process from the days that Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, now the Democratic minority leader, ran the chamber. The move, Republicans say, is an attempt to restore the Senate to its deliberative nature, but it could very well slow down the GOP agenda. In his first legislative test, McConnell pushed through the bill to mandate construction of Keystone, after three weeks of at times acrimonious debate and 47 votes on the floor. When McConnell announced that the number of votes on amendments had exceeded the 15 that Democrats had allowed in all of 2014, Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz jokingly told the GOP leader he âwanted to applaud, but Iâm on Team Blue.â There were so many votes that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told McConnell he needed to limit them to 10 minutes apiece, rather than letting them drag on to 15 minutes, saying that âif mothers ran the Senate, they would understand the concept of behavior modification.â âIf he were a mother, he would understand you have to inflict some pain in order to get behavior to modify,â McCaskill later said, recounting her conversation with the majority leader on the Senate floor. Still, the Keystone pipeline, which was approved in the Senate last week with the backing of nine Democrats, amounted to a legislative layup compared with the rigorous battles ahead. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats plan to filibuster the Houseâs Homeland Security funding bill, which includes provisions to block President Barack Obamaâs unilateral decision to defer deportations for roughly 5 million undocumented immigrants. Senate Democrats say theyâll accept only a clean bill, giving McConnell a choice: He can heed the Democratic demands or push the fight closer to the Feb. 27 deadline, risking a shutdown for an agency central to national security. House conservatives are warning McConnell not to cave. âI didnât set the high expectations: It was Mitch McConnell and every other candidate, who said, âWe were going to stop the amnesty; we are going to stop Obamacare; we are going to take on this president,ââ said Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.). Added Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.): âAll I know is 60 votes has been the rule in the Senate for a long time. Other Republican Congresses have gotten stuff done. Go find a way to make it happen.â McConnell decided to move the measure straight to the floor, bypassing the regular order that would have allowed the Senate Appropriations Committee to take it up initially. Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said letting his panel consider the bill first âwould be my preference.â But, he added, âItâs a leadership call.â McConnell, who clearly knows where the votes are in the Senate, doesnât want conservatives to think heâs planning to do anything other than try to pass the House plan â though heâll clearly need some Plan B after the Democrats block it. Asked Friday whether he would rule out moving a Homeland Security bill that doesnât block Obamaâs immigration policies, McConnell said he didnât have âany announcements to make today about the way forward on that.â And, asked whether he would bring up the House bill repeatedly to spotlight the Democratic obstruction, McConnell laughed and said: âHow many different ways are you going to ask the same question?â Given the nature of the Senate, where the minority can stall and derail legislation, McConnell is trying to keep expectations in check while also promising to be fair to the presidentâs nominees. (He said he âabsolutelyâ would bring the nomination of Loretta Lynch for attorney general to the floor for a confirmation vote.) Since voters started popularly electing senators in 1914, McConnell said, GOP senators have never occupied more than 55 seats. âIn other words, the American people have never given us the kind of hammerlock on the Senate that the Democrats had during the New Deal, during the Great Society and the first few years of Barack Obama. Thatâs just the way it is,â McConnell said. Asked whether he was lowering expectations, McConnell deadpanned: âNo, itâs just stating the facts.â Just as heâs managed to run the Senate floor, heâs also been on a relentless fundraising drive â and last week, the two conflicted. McConnell, the Republicansâ biggest fundraising draw, was slated to headline back-to-back money events Wednesday night for his partyâs efforts to keep its thin majority, but his new freewheeling Senate had scores more amendments left to consider. Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, buttonholed McConnell on the floor and pointed to the clock as it was quickly approaching dinnertime. The two parties later agreed to delay the rest of the votes until the next day, allowing McConnell to swing by two events, including the big cash haul for Burr. âOf course, first and foremost â we have a job to do,â said Wicker. âBut we had people who planned for quite some time and were expecting to see us. And we have to be mindful of that, also.â The next day, Burr pushed an amendment to reauthorize the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, but attaching it to the Keystone pipeline could have complicated its chances for quick passage in the House. So McConnell persuaded three GOP senators â Georgiaâs David Perdue and Johnny Isakson, and Jerry Moran of Kansas â to flip their votes and oppose the Burr plan. It was defeated by one vote, though Burr received assurances it would come up again and Isakson now hopes McConnell will repay the favor. âTo accommodate the leader was the right thing to do,â Isakson said. âHopefully, I got a chip in the barrel somewhere.â McConnell also did a favor for Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who could face a tough reelection next year, by putting forward his energy efficiency proposal in one of the first votes of the new Congress. âHe has spent a lot of time with those of us who are up in 2016,â Portman said. In the interview, McConnell said the free-flowing set of amendment votes will also offer his vulnerable senators an opportunity to show independence from their partyâs leadership. That, he contended, didnât happen in Senate votes leading up to the 2014 elections that red-state Democratic senators lost in states like Arkansas, North Carolina, Louisiana and Alaska. âMany of these red-state Democrats were defeated with ads that said they voted with the president 98 percent of the time,â McConnell said. âIn other words, they were not able to have the opportunity to demonstrate through voting on the Senate floor their differences with the national Democratic Party. I think our senators from blue and purple states appreciate the opportunity to point out to their constituents where they may differ with us on some of the issues.â Often, few senators know his next step. When Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) pushed an amendment saying climate change is not a âhoax,â Republicans saw an opportunity to vote for it because it did not attribute the phenomenon to human activity. But virtually nobody knew that was the GOPâs plan until McConnell made his preference known moments before the vote from the well of the chamber, sources said. âSen. McConnell is a famously deep thinker,â Cornyn said, âand he keeps a lot of his thoughts to himself.â