Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is not known for his tactical brilliance, nevertheless outfought Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is known for his tactical brilliance. Schumer's keen maneuver followed his recent tripping of Senate Republicans on the veterans PACT Act, propelling an embarrassing pratfall.
When the Senate parliamentarian speared the insulin price cap in Democrat's climate and healthcare bill — the Inflation Reduction Act — Schumer chose to retain the cap anyway, knowing that Republicans would raise a point of order about the parliamentarian's ruling. That's precisely what they did. And that led to a separate vote on the insulin cap. The provision failed to break a Republican filibuster — and today, Republicans are wishing it had.
Congressional Democrats can now proceed in this election season reminding voters at every turn that Republicans opposed a $35 limit on insulin costs for those with private health insurance, roughly 150 million Americans. fMedicare will honor the cap, but diabetes waits not for its victims to age. The Dems can also boast about their authorization of Medicare's ability to negotiate lower drug prices, long a party priority.
All this comes after Republicans blundered on the veterans bill, hailed the Supreme Court's enormously unpopular abortion ruling, and threatened to block, in all their pettiness, the essential microchip bill if Democrats continued pushing the climate and healthcare-oriented Inflation Reduction Act. McConnell & Friends mistakenly believed that Democrats were overreaching with the climate-healthcare bill; the GOP could happily, preemptively scream that the enemy's big government would gobble more of your money through higher taxes — a straight-up lie, though nothing unusual among Republicans.
McConnell's offensive gimmickry on the microchip bill only incensed and motivated Sen. Joe Manchin to silently regroup and work with Schumer in reaching a compromise on yesterday's legislation. Said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, "Any time you threaten a bill you support because you are not getting your way on something else, you are in a bad spot. It just looks bad. It was so crassly political." In speaking of McConnell, the senator was redundant.
And McConnell, speaking of his later, flip-floppery support of government's assistance to the microchip industry, told Fox News last week that "Just because there is a Democrat in the White House, I don’t think means Republicans should do nothing that is good for the country in the meantime." This was the laughable opposite of what McConnell expressly promised on 23 October 2010: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president" — that is, to obstruct and wreck his agenda.
Meanwhile, Schumer is reveling in the departure of his approach from McConnell's customary approach: "He brags about the graveyard. I’d like to be proud of the achievements, of getting things done — not not getting things done." From here, he and his fellow Senate Democrats plan on further pushing for same-sex marriage protection, lower oil prices, and any other bills that will lead to Republicans looking like what they are: small, mean, and altogether out of touch.
Sen. John Barrasso is already suited up for Republicans' especial out of touchness: "The highest inflation in 40 years, 9.1 percent, families are hurting, they can’t afford a full tank of gas. The end of the month just came, and they ran out of money before they ran out of month."
In other words, unremitting falsehoods and do-nothing negativity. In the past, the strategy has also unremittingly helped Republicans electorally. But in this election season, their squalid do-nothingness could boomerang. Democrats might retain their 50 Senate seats; they may even add to that number. If nothing else, the 2022 midterms are going to be one unbuckled ride.