Trump’s legacy rides on Georgia run-offs

Kelly Loeffler meets creatures great and small while door knocking in Loganville, Georgia, on Sunday. Picture: AFP

What’s the difference in policy between a Senate run by Chuck Schumer with 50 Democrats and one run by Mitch McConnell with 51 or 52 Republicans?

That’s the question that matters for the next two years, so it’s worth explaining the stakes with realistic specificity in Wednesday’s Georgia Senate run-offs.

Start with control of committees, which would shift markedly leftward. Republicans would lose their ability to investigate issues like FBI abuse and Hunter Biden’s China dealings. A GOP Senate is likely to approve most of Biden’s cabinet picks, but Democrats would whisk through even controversial nominees like Neera Tanden at the White House budget office or Xavier Becerra at Health and Human Services. There would be no check on judicial nominees.

Democrat chairmen would include Bernie Sanders, who would try to gut the Pentagon at the budget committee. Sherrod Brown at banking and Elizabeth Warren on the financial institutions subcommittee would try to change rules to steer lending and capital to their priorities and punish lending to fossil-fuel companies.

Ron Wyden, who would run the tax-writing finance committee, wants to tax gains in capital assets each year even if they aren’t sold. The judiciary committee would go to Dick Durbin, who after having deposed Dianne Feinstein would target conservative non-profits and think tanks for political attack.

Congress needs only a simple majority to repeal Trump administration regulations under the Congressional Review Act. Say goodbye to the new rule speeding environmental reviews on public works. A 50-vote Senate (with Vice-President Kamala Harris breaking ties) also guarantees a huge tax increase since current rules allow a simple majority to pass a budget.

Democrat Raphael Warnock is challenging Republican senator Kelly Loeffler on Wednesday’s Georgia run-off election. Picture: AFP

That probably means an increase in the corporate tax rate to 28 per cent from 21 per cent, plus higher rates on individuals, capital gains and dividends. Democrats will need the money to finance the trillions of dollars in additional spending they want. Buoyant financial markets don’t seem to have discounted this possibility, and the tax increases are sure to be retroactive to January 1, 2021. Forget about extending the temporary provisions of the 2017 tax reform.

Some of our friends think Democrats couldn’t blow up the 60-vote legislative filibuster rule with a mere 50 votes. Their confidence hangs on West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who says he supports the filibuster. But imagine the political and media pressure on Manchin if Republicans use the filibuster to block Joe Biden’s agenda. He’s always been a loyal party man when it really matters.

If the filibuster stays, Biden will need to compromise to get GOP votes for an infrastructure bill, new ObamaCare subsidies or repealing section 230 on tech liability. A public option on healthcare is probably out of reach, as would be much of his climate agenda.

But if the filibuster goes, so do bipartisan restraints. Statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico become possible, with four new Senate seats to cement a Democrat majority. Biden’s aggressive union agenda has a chance, including overtime pay mandates and easier organising of franchise chains. So do nationwide mandates for ballot harvesting and mail-in voting, a ban on arbitration in business contracts, price controls on drugs, huge subsidies for green energy and perhaps a carbon tax. We could go on.

Nancy Pelosi’s narrower majority in the House of Representatives might constrain some of this, but she proved in 2010 with ObamaCare that she is willing to sacrifice swing-district members to pass progressive priorities.

She has also suggested this will be her last term as Speaker, which means she’ll care more about her legislative legacy than keeping the house in 2022.

All of this is what the candidates should be debating in Georgia. But Donald Trump has obscured the stakes with his claims of November vote fraud and demand for $US2000 COVID cheques.

The irony is that if Democrats take the Senate, Trump will have made it much easier for Biden and Pelosi to repeal the President’s achievements.

The consequences would echo far into the future.

The Wall Street Journal