As the year comes to an end, the Senate is poised to pass huge spending bills that contain Biden’s campaign promises. Some of these provisions were promised within the first one hundred days of his presidency, however, Democrats sabotaged those efforts. Now, Senate Republicans have the opportunity to have the upper hand in negotiations if they play their cards right.
The most immediate issue at-hand is funding the government. Congress can never seem to agree on spending matters, so they constantly kick the can down the road every couple of months. Current government funding is set to run out on December 3rd, and Republicans have a major negotiation tool: vaccine mandates.
Last month, eleven Senate Republicans sent a letter to Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) threatening to oppose spending bills that fund Biden’s vaccine mandate. The courts seem to be on their side as well. Federal judges in Kentucky and Louisiana halted the mandate in ten states and a U.S. District Judge in Frankfurt, Kentucky stopped the mandate from going into effect in new government contracts. This solidified Republicans’ positions enough to threaten a government shutdown if vaccine mandate funding is in any spending bill. In a statement to Axios, Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) was clear about their unified intentions:
There is leverage immediately in the Senate, and we think that House Republicans ought to be backing up any number of Senate Republicans … to use all procedural tools to deny the continuing resolution passage Friday night — unless they restrict use of those funds for vaccine mandates.
Democrats are already being embarrassed publicly by these rulings, so they might as well walk back their authoritarian stance on vaccine mandates.
Next on their list is the debt limit. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made a deal with Democrats last month to suspend the debt limit until December. In that amount of time, lawmakers did nothing to offset costs, so they have found themselves in the same predicament. Sen. McConnell promised that he would not suspend the debt limit again but has recently indicated that he is working on a deal with Sen. Schumer. As former President Donald Trump has indicated, this would be the perfect opportunity to stop Biden’s agenda. Sen. Schumer has committed to pass the Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376) as early as December 13th which is tied to the debt ceiling negotiations. It would be lofty to think Sen. McConnell could scrap the entire bill, but he could significantly weaken the blow.
The last piece of legislation the Senate wants to pass before the end of the year is the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4350). The NDAA has historically been a bipartisan bill, however, Democrats have inserted their own “woke” provisions including drafting women. A handful of Senate Republicans are on-board with this notion putting every young woman at risk of being put in combat situations. Some Senators have said they would offer amendments to strike the language from the bill, but the chances of it passing is bleak. Senators are also afraid of taking a vote against a national defense spending bill lest they be portrayed as anti-military, however, this bill actually weakens our armed forces. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) has promised to fight to get the language out of the bill once it goes to conference to work out the differences between the House and Senate-passed versions.
Eagle Forum will score against the government spending bill, the debt limit increase, and NDAA as they currently stand. We will also send you alerts to take action on these bills.