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[News] Fight over top Biden pick highlights battles that will shape his presidency


Dewey

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The reeling nomination of Neera Tanden as White House budget director is highlighting the crucial early battles on Capitol Hill that will shape the future of the Biden presidency, the terrain of the midterm elections and the fate of the Republican Party.

Two Senate committees overseeing Tanden's nomination postponed votes on Wednesday on whether to move her candidacy to the full chamber. The White House insisted it would not fold on trying to get her from her confirmed from her but her path from her forward from her - amid controversy about her past tweets slamming Republicans - is looking increasingly impossible. Aides to Joe Biden know this first big fight over a key nominee will help set the terms of the new President's relationship with Congress.
The controversy shows how after four years of politics by tweeted decree in the Trump era, normal service is resuming inside the Beltway in all its brutal, hypocritical, and high-stakes glory as everyone with power tries to wield it to set the tone for the coming years. Other bitter confirmation hearings are turning into early de-facto fights on the great issues of the Biden era, like climate change and expanding access to health care.
Republicans are meanwhile beginning to mobilize against Biden's $ 1.9 trillion Covid rescue package in the hope of billing it as an example of massive liberal overreach and winning a political payoff. Yet they are making a significant gamble. If Biden pulls the country out of the pandemic with the help of the bill - that is currently popular - the GOP will look mean and irresponsible.

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 from him? 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 of him 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.

Looming clash over Covid package
Elsewhere in the Capitol on Tuesday, Republican senators worked through the intricacies of the budget procedure known as reconciliation, which Democrats plan to use to ease the Covid rescue bill past filibuster attempts.
At their weekly conference lunch, the GOP caucus also strategized on how to challenge Democratic unity during debate on the package, CNN's Lauren Fox reported. In one possible troublemaking maneuver that would double as points on the board ahead of congressional elections in November 2022, Romney and Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton are working on a plan to raise the minimum wage to $ 10 an hour on condition that there are mandatory requirements on business to discourage the hiring of undocumented migrants.

Fight over top Biden pick highlights battles that will shape his presidency  - CNNPolitics

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