Suddenly, Everything Has Changed in Congress

The prospect of a delayed Supreme Court fight and coronavirus relief is on the table.

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As we get more indications that the Amy Coney Barrett nomination announcement was a superspreader event, with numerous officials who attended—the president and his wife, Hope Hicks, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, and Fr. John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame—all announcing positive tests in the last 24 hours, the two biggest items on the legislative calendar have been radically transformed.

Yesterday, there was a resignation of an inevitable march to confirming Barrett before the election. Now, there’s a significant question as to whether you can legitimately hold a confirmation hearing or a floor vote when so much of the upper echelon of the Republican Party is compromised. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein just released a joint statement calling it “premature” to commit to a hearing date of October 12, a week from Monday, “when we do not know the full extent of potential exposure stemming from the president’s infection and before the White House puts in place a contact tracing plan to prevent further spread of the disease.”

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They’re absolutely right, though poor planning and reckless disregard for human life has been a hallmark of the modern Republican Party. Still, there is a chance that this could delay the Barrett nomination. Unlike the House, the Senate has no rule in place for proxy voting, so if Sen. Lee is quarantining at home, he cannot vote on anything. You wouldn’t need that many senators out on the Republican side to literally not have the votes for Barrett, especially if Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) stick to their vows to not vote affirmatively for a Supreme Court nominee so close to the election. A couple more senators get sick and there’s no majority for Barrett, though of course Lee could recover in time for a vote at the end of the month.

On the other outstanding issue—coronavirus-related economic relief—there’s been a presumed opening. Speaker Pelosi remarked on MSNBC today, “This kind of changes the dynamic because here they see the reality of what we have been saying all along—this is a vicious virus.” But it seems like the newfound leverage for a deal between Democrats and the White House has its origins in Trump’s slippage in the polls. He wants to fork over money to the public to buy votes, and Democrats want to protect millions of people from financial ruin, so there’s a chance for a deal again, where there wasn’t before.

I wouldn’t call it a good chance, at least not yet. The House passed its slimmed-down $2.2 trillion Heroes Act last night, and the White House came back with a $1.6 trillion offer. Talks are ongoing but there’s a lot of unfinished business—state and local government relief, unemployment enhancement, and a temporary increase to the child tax credit chief among them. The two sides seem in agreement on another round of $1,200 stimulus checks, and money for testing and tracing (just testing and tracing from the White House out will take a princely sum).

What I haven’t heard is a single word from Senate Republicans about this. There’s an assumption that they would follow the president, but they couldn’t pass anything above $300 billion, let alone something five times higher. Undoubtedly there would be a protracted fight among people looking already to 2024 and attracting Tea Party fiscal conservatives. You’d see the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Rand Paul (R-KY) or Tom Cotton (R-AR) take some kind of floor action. There might be a majority for something if Democrats jump aboard, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may feel like the election is over and assisting the economy just helps out the Biden administration in the early going. It’s a psychotic way of thinking but also not unreasonable for McConnell.

There’s also the matter that a drawn out floor fight over coronavirus relief will make it harder to get the floor fight over Barrett done. But Democrats now have some cards to play. I don’t think they played very well on the CARES Act. This is another opportunity, one that could delay out Barrett until after the election and get real relief for the American public. It’s one of those hinge points that almost never come up. Now we’ll have had two in seven months.

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