Democrats say Mitch McConnell is back to all-out obstruction. He says that's 'nonsense'

Show Caption

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — Many Democrats warn Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is using the same obstructionist playbook under President Joe Biden that he deployed during former President Barack Obama's tenure. 

They say McConnell doesn't want to cut bipartisan deals. Instead, they predict, he'll scuttle election reforms and let negotiations over Biden's big infrastructure plan drag on too long, then unify Republicans against it — a replay of what happened in 2009 with Obama's Affordable Care Act.

"Dems are burning precious time ... McConnell’s plan is to run out the clock," tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who cautioned against "playing patty-cake" with GOP senators. "It's a hustle. We need to move now."

Kentucky's top senator insists he actually is interested in compromise and said "the arguments about obstruction are nonsense."

"Look, I did three major deals with Joe Biden during the Obama years. I’m not opposed to bipartisan agreements, but it has to be obviously around things where agreement is possible," he told The Courier Journal. 

He said he wants to pass plans for infrastructure and police reform, in particular. But Senate Republicans will block bills like Democrats' For the People Act, which would (among other things) require states to offer automatic voter registration, permit widespread mail-in voting for federal elections, and let people convicted of felonies vote post-incarceration. 

More: McConnell says he'd block Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee in 2024 and maybe even in 2023

Winning the 2022 midterm election and retaking the Senate majority is McConnell's top priority, but he said that doesn't preclude bipartisanship.

"What I want our party to be perceived as is a responsible, right-of-center party that will make deals in the middle on issues where we can possibly reach an agreement," he said. "And where we can draw a bright line and distinguish between the parties, absolutely. We aren't the same."

Regardless, conjecture that McConnell is shifting into full-on obstruction mode intensified over the past couple of months, especially after he led Senate Republicans in blocking a proposed commission to investigate the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

When McConnell said in May that "100% of my focus is on stopping this new administration," that just fueled more chatter.

"There's certainly a lot of obstruction going on," said Michael Starr Hopkins, a Washington-based Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns, including Hillary Clinton's. 

He predicted a "block everything" strategy could be a risky gamble for McConnell, though, because Biden "truly is a bipartisan person."

"It’s hard for him to just flat-out be obstructionist against President Biden, but he’s certainly trying to," Hopkins said of McConnell. 

Hopkins suggested the real issue isn't McConnell when it comes to determining what legislation can pass, but instead Democrats' ability to unite on policy goals. 

"Look, Joe Manchin’s more powerful than Mitch McConnell at this point," he said, referencing West Virginia's senator — a moderate Democrat whose opposition to the For the People Act and to axing the filibuster has imperiled some of congressional Democrats' goals.

More: Mitch McConnell blocked an Obama judicial nominee but couldn't pull it off a second time

As long as the filibuster stays intact, Democrats need 10 Republican votes to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to approve most legislation. That makes McConnell's leadership of the Republican caucus consequential.

Tres Watson, a Kentucky-based GOP consultant, said congressional Democrats are promoting proposals that are too progressive.

"I think they're trying to push an agenda, with a new president in office, that is partisan, and that’s fine. That’s what you’re supposed to do," he said. "But don't be surprised and act shocked when the other side fights back."

The bad news for Democrats: McConnell is good at killing bills he dislikes.

"If we’ve learned anything, it’s that Leader McConnell is better at procedural maneuvers in the U.S. Senate than potentially anybody in history," Watson said. "So, when he decides he doesn't want something to pass, it’s unlikely to pass."

'The only tool I have is persuasion'

Zero Senate Republicans voted for Biden's first big policy achievement: the American Rescue Plan Act, his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, which Democrats passed with a simple majority through budget reconciliation.

Every vote on legislation hasn't been a partisan shutout like that, though.

McConnell stressed the Senate has passed several bills this year with bipartisan support, including:

• The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which is meant to combat hate crimes against Asian Americans;
• An extension of the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program that has provided federal funds to businesses; 
• The Innovation and Competition Act, which is meant to invest billions in science and tech development to help America compete with China;
• A bill providing $35 billion for drinking water and wastewater projects.

However, he preemptively blamed Democrats for what many politicos anticipate will be a breakdown of bipartisan efforts this summer.

He recently suggested Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is setting up votes on bills in June that are nonstarters for Republican senators in order to bolster his case for trashing the filibuster.

Senate Republicans already blocked one proposal, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which is meant to make it tougher for businesses to underpay women. (McConnell criticized it as a "windfall" for trial lawyers.)

You might also like: How one-time GOP colleagues Mitch McConnell and John Yarmuth ended up fierce opponents

Rutgers University political science professor Ross Baker said McConnell is just as disciplined about pumping out always-oppositional messages that are critical of Democrats and Biden as he was under Obama.

However, Baker said he thinks McConnell's opposition to Democratic proposals was more absolute during the early Obama years than it is now.

He said McConnell seems to be giving GOP senators who want to reach compromises on certain issues more space to try that. (For example, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., tried to reach an infrastructure deal with Biden, and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., is working on a bipartisan police reform bill.)

"He’s got to let his people do deals that are going to enable them to appeal to a constituency broader than Donald Trump’s followers," Baker said.

"If anything gets completely out of line, I’m sure he’ll step in, as leaders do," he also said. "It’s subtle, and I don't think everybody recognizes that there’s a lot of bipartisan chatter going on, and some of it’s serious talk." 

McConnell dismissed the notion that he's letting senators try to cut deals.

"I don't have a dictatorship. I can't order my members to engage or not engage. The only tool I have is persuasion," he said. 

"And on issues like police reform and on issues like infrastructure, we’d like to get an outcome. I’d like to get an outcome," he continued. "And that's why we’re talking and why I hope we’ll get somewhere."

McConnell's opinions do carry weight within his caucus, political science professor Gisela Sin of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign noted.

When McConnell says he opposes something that needs 60 votes to pass — as he has with the For the People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the proposed Jan. 6 commission — Sin said that wrecks Democrats' shot at getting the 10 Republican votes they need.

"That’s a 'no' from the minority from the get-go,” she said. "Then you know you’re not going to get 60 votes."

More:McConnell guarantees 'nightmare' if Democrats ax the filibuster

Sin noted that obstruction has become more common for both parties, and any senator — not just McConnell — can use the Senate's rules to slow down or filibuster legislation.

Democrats blocked plenty of bills when they were in the minority during the Trump administration. "I think it’s more of a majority-minority game," she said.

Watson, the Republican consultant, thinks Kentucky's powerful senator is willing to build consensus on bills that can get significant bipartisan buy-in. 

However, if something's only capable of winning over a couple Republicans, Watson said McConnell would rather try to unite his caucus against it to avoid giving Democrats a talking point about how it got conservative support.

'Quite often, his tactic is obstruction'

The GOP won big in the 2010 midterm elections, when they retook the House of Representatives and shrunk Democrats' majority in the Senate.

Congressional Republicans' obstruction of Obama's agenda and simultaneous PR assault on the Affordable Care Act, along with America's hard-knocks economy back then, were often cited as key factors in that victory.

McConnell himself said that keeping Republican senators united against Democratic policies like the ACA was part of their electoral strategy, even if they were unable to prevent those bills from becoming law.

Related: 'Discipline, shrewdness, shamelessness': Obama writes about Mitch McConnell in new memoir

"We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” he said roughly a decade ago. “Because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward."

McConnell told The Courier Journal he sees a big difference between now and Obama's first year as president: the size of the Democratic caucus' Senate majority. 

Democrats had nearly 20 more seats than Republicans did then, and even had a 60-vote majority for a while that gave them the power to overcome filibusters without GOP support. (That's when they passed the ACA.)

Twelve years later, the Senate is split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote that gives Democrats majority power.

What's achievable depends upon what the American people decide at the ballot box, McConnell said, and they gave Senate Democrats a thin lead.

"They don't have a mandate to pursue a far-left agenda," he said. "And we don't agree with the items that the majority leader (Schumer) has indicated he’s going to put on the floor this month, and they will not pass."

Sarah Binder, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said there's some truth to McConnell's assessment of what policy achievements are and aren't possible in a 50-50 Senate.

"But I also think there’s a path of bipartisanship that McConnell seems to have very little interest in even as members of his own conference are doing the hard work of trying to reach compromise," she said, even on policies that polls show most Americans support.

Binder said McConnell's strategy is to take whatever procedural path could help Republicans win or maintain a majority in the Senate. 

"Quite often, his tactic is obstruction," she said.

Even before he led Republicans in blocking the Jan. 6 commission, Binder said, McConnell has been using the Senate's rules to his party's advantage. As an example, she pointed to how he delayed the establishment of a Senate power-sharing agreement with Schumer in January in a failed attempt to get the Democratic caucus to promise to preserve the filibuster. 

However, she indicated McConnell's goal of winning the midterms doesn't make all bipartisan deal-making a no-go.

"And then the question really is: On what issues and on what terms is it in the Republicans’ interest to go to the bargaining table and to make it successful?" she said.

Reach reporter Morgan Watkins: 502-582-4502; mwatkins@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @morganwatkins26.