The Covid relief plan is meanwhile stretching the papered over unity observed by Democrats in their election-year zeal to beat Donald Trump, with a split widening over including a minimum wage hike in the huge plan.
The internal Democratic tussle begs many questions, including, when will Biden step in and impose his authority? How fair is he willing to appease moderate Democrats who want a watering down of some aspects of the package? And would any Democrat — however infuriated they might be over compromises made to either the right or the left — dare to break with their new President on the test of his power in a 50-50 Senate?
Party splits
The Republican Party is even more divided than Democrats. While some senators like Mitt Romney are working through principled objections to Biden’s policies and nominees, Trump loyalists like Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Ron Johnson are performing for their watching leader in exile and, perhaps more critically, his base of supporters. They are forcing their party into what may turn into a four-year fight over Trump’s lies about an election he lost.
The president of the Center for American Progress has fallen foul of Republicans upset by her outspoken tweets and some progressives like Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders with whom she sparred as a senior aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. After West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat walking a tightrope over his deeply conservative state, said he couldn’t back Tanden, her prospects of confirmation appeared bleak. But the White House is not yet willing to fold and is searching for a Republican to get Tanden over the line.
“We feel good about Neera,” senior Biden adviser Cedric Richmond told CNN. “If it has to be a Republican, it will be a Republican.”
“Why not just let these workers keep their jobs?” Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso asked Haaland, as part of an emerging strategy by Republicans to leverage the hearings to…
Read More: Congress rocked by consequential battles that will shape Biden’s presidency