J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Veterans, military family members, and advocates call for Senate Republicans to change their votes on a bill designed to help millions of veterans exposed to toxic substances during their military service, on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, August 1, 2022.
In an almost unbelievable turn of events, Senate Republicans have found themselves badly outmaneuvered by their Democratic colleagues over the past week. The GOP thought they had killed the entire Biden agenda, only for a reasonably large chunk of it to come back from the dead. Then, when they blocked a veterans’ health care bill in revenge, they walked into a media firestorm. After some weak attempts to deflect blame, Politico reports, they scrambled into retreat, and passed the bill.
Now, it would be highly premature to declare total victory at this point. The Inflation Reduction Act (the amusing new appellation for the remains of the Biden agenda) has not passed yet, thought the veteran’s healthcare bill has. At the least, we can at least conclude that Republicans are not invincible, and indeed have a major political weakness—namely, they are easily baited into overreaching.
Here’s what’s happened. Mitch McConnell didn’t want the Biden agenda passed, but he couldn’t do anything about the fact that Democrats could bypass the filibuster through the reconciliation process. So he threatened to block the CHIPS semiconductor bill, which had large bipartisan support, if Democrats kept working on a reconciliation bill.
When Joe Manchin announced that he would no longer support any Biden agenda, McConnell relaxed and the CHIPS Act sailed through. Just hours later—in a display of elementary Machiavellian cunning I never thought I would see from Senate Democrats—Manchin and Chuck Schumer announced a deal they had previously negotiated in secret, which was largely focused on climate policy. Ha!
As an aside, I have to admit that I was wrong about Manchin here. I’d thought that once the bipartisan infrastructure package was passed in late 2021—meaning the rest of the Democratic caucus had no more leverage over party conservatives—he would block any more reforms. His shifting and incoherent reasons for cutting away at Build Back Better, which violated his own prior agreement with Schumer, seemed to indicate cynical dishonesty if not outright corruption.
And while it is true that Manchin’s demands (along with those of his fellow conservatives) cut the size of the Biden agenda as passed by the House by something like 90 percent, and he personally demanded all kinds of money for fossil fuels in West Virginia, it is apparently possible to make a deal with him, so long as you don’t expect rational bargaining, clear demands, or prompt decisions.
At any rate, Senate Republicans were furious. Manchin and Schumer had tricked them, the dogs, and so in vindictive spite they blocked the PACT Act, a long-planned bill to provide extra health care to veterans living with chronic illnesses thanks to being exposed to Agent Orange or “burn pits” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, in a display of his signature chivalrous generosity that has made him so popular among voters and his own colleagues, shared a fist bump with Sen. Steve Daines of Montana.
Senate Republicans are of course free to vote against the troops. But this turned out to be a miscalculation. Disabled veterans are basically the most sympathetic group in American politics, and Republican senators had previously voted for the same exact bill (it only needed a slight technical correction). It’s unfortunate that Medicaid recipients don’t inspire the same support, but still, the bill is genuinely needed.
Well over half of McConnell’s congressional caucus is composed of Fox News–addled lunatics who are profoundly deluded about the popularity of their own political movement.
Moreover, Democrats did not make any kind of agreement with Republicans to sink their own agenda. Manchin and Schumer merely kept their talks strategically quiet. In any case, there’s no law against tricking your political enemies. It’s obvious to everyone that McConnell absolutely would have done the same thing if the positions were reversed, and just as obvious that Republicans had no substantive objection.
Jon Stewart, who had been pushing for the bill for years, led the attack. In a press conference near the Capitol, he lambasted Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) as a “fucking coward” for not even taking a meeting with veterans’ groups. When Cruz attempted to blame Democrats for the bill’s defeat by lying that they had added a slush fund, Stewart carefully explained to Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that there was no such fund and anyway Cruz had voted for a bill with the exact same provisions previously. Stewart even got a respectful hearing on Fox News and Newsmax—demonstrating how radioactive the Republican position was.
If Democrats can get their reconciliation bill through after forcing Republicans to reverse course on the PACT Act, they will have earned themselves several tidy victories in just a couple of weeks—a semiconductor bill, a climate bill, a drug price reduction bill, numerous damaging Republican votes against wounded veterans—that they can invoke in their midterm campaign. What's more, that veteran healthcare bill has been obtained by forcing their opponents into a humiliating retreat.
Anecdotally, morale in liberal precincts is soaring, though people are of course trying not to count their chickens. It demonstrates the political value of action and achievement instead of endless dithering and self-imposed defeat. It also shows how badly liberals want their party to fight the Republicans—much of the deep dislike of Manchin accumulated among rank-and-file Dems has dissipated simply thanks to him pulling a cheeky bait and switch on the hated McConnell.
Finally, it shows that Republicans have an overconfidence problem. McConnell has earned a reputation as a parliamentary mastermind in large part by taking advantage of the fecklessness and pathological hunger for bipartisanship among his opponents. He could assume that simply by being as irresponsible and intransigent as possible, Democrats would fold. Up until now, he’s usually been right.
But part of this process has required McConnell to tolerate increasingly deranged party members that helpless Democrats have hitherto failed to defeat. Now, well over half of McConnell’s congressional caucus is composed of Fox News–addled lunatics who are profoundly deluded about the popularity of their own political movement. Witness the huge majorities of House Republicans who recently voted against ensuring that birth control and gay marriage remain legal, or who wanted to overthrow the Constitution and install Trump as president-for-life last year.
Perhaps Senate Democrats, enjoying a rare taste of victory, might use this opportunity to abolish the filibuster and force their opponents into vote after vote on the most unpopular parts of the conservative agenda, which as the CPAC invitation of the openly racist authoritarian Viktor Orban indicates, amounts to turning this country into a right-wing dictatorship. One can hope, at least.
