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Why Mitch McConnell is stepping down
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
What are the implications of the retirement of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell from his leadership post?
This week Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell announced his intention to step down as leader of the Republicans after serving longer in that post than anybody else in American history. There are really two implications that I can see.
The first is that McConnell was basically acknowledging the inevitable. It was very unlikely that he would be able to stay on as leader after this Congress anyway. If Donald Trump wins the presidential election, then he almost certainly is going to push McConnell out of the job. And if he didn't win the election, there's a whole generation of Republicans in the Senate who are looking for an opportunity to step up. McConnell, at 82 years old, did not represent that new generation. So the time had come to pass on the torch, and McConnell chose this February to announce it.
The second takeaway is that McConnell is really giving the speech the Democrats are hoping Joe Biden would give. McConnell's only eight months older than President Joe Biden, who's running for a second term right now. And lots of questions have come up recently about Biden's fitness for office because of his advanced age. This is going to be an increasing problem for Biden as more and more Democrats start talking about it. But in the absence of any challenger, it looks like Biden's going to be the nominee and his age will just be a liability they all have to learn to live with.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) arrives for the signing into law a bill at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, December 17, 2010.
Mitch McConnell takes his cue
Why now? McConnell was frank: The winds have turned against him. The Reaganite ideals in vogue when McConnell first came to office in 1985 have been supplanted by Trumpist populism.
“I have many faults,” McConnell said. “Misunderstanding politics is not one of them.”
Even ardent opponents would have to agree. McConnell’s tactical reputation is legendary – to give arguably the most impactful example, he ensured a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court by blocking confirmation hearings for then-nominee Merrick Garland during President Barack Obama’s last term. The ramifications of that legacy will outlive us all.
Who’s next? The iPhone wasn’t on the market the last time Senate Republicans confronted leadership questions, but expect a little more MAGA. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas would seem to fit the bill, but keep your eye on Minority Whip John Thune, who might be more palatable to moderates.US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters after the weekly Senate caucus lunches at the US Capitol in Washington, on Oct. 24, 2023.
McConnell takes a stand on Ukraine
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the longtime Senate Republican leader, is known for cutting shrewd political deals. Most are designed to keep Senate Republicans unified, others include give-and-take with Democrats, but nearly all are struck quietly behind closed doors.
It’s all the more striking, then, that McConnell is campaigning so publicly and forcefully on the increasingly controversial issue of continued US financial support for Ukraine. The veteran senator appeared on widely watched television shows on Sunday and appeared with Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States on Monday to reaffirm US backing. It’s also notable that he appears motivated less by political calculus than by his stated conviction that President Joe Biden’s support for Kyiv is in the US national interest.
McConnell’s push comes at a moment when opposition to Ukraine funding has surged among House Republicans, including newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson, while also spreading to members of his own Senate caucus. To advance further Ukraine funding through the Senate, he needs to deliver nine Republican votes to the Democratic majority to avoid an opposition filibuster. But to push any deal past the increasingly resistant Republican House majority, he’ll need every Republican vote he can get.
NATO flag
What We’re Watching: NATO members’ defense budgets, Social Security as a political weapon, China’s support for Sri Lanka
NATO chief wants more defense spending
As Russian aggression in Ukraine enters year two, NATO members need to boost their defense spending. That was the message from NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg Wednesday after a summit with member states’ defense ministers. Back in 2014, around the time of Russia’s invasion of Crimea, NATO states committed to raising their respective defense spending to 2% of gross domestic product. (NATO’s direct budget is separate from national defense budgets.) Still, while many have increased their spending on military equipment and training, most NATO states – including Germany, France, Italy, and Canada – still fall short of the 2% threshold. The US, for its part, leads the pack, spending 3.47% of GDP on defense. (You’ll likely remember that former President Donald Trump made a habit of slamming NATO members, particularly Germany, for not paying their fair share. As war ravages Europe again and tensions with China soar, Stoltenberg says that the 2% target, which expires next year, should be the floor – not the ceiling. Finland and Sweden, both vying to join the bloc, respectively spend 2% and 1.3% of GDP on defense.
The politics of entitlements
President Joe Biden has made crystal clear that he believes the protection of Social Security and Medicare benefits – federally protected pension and healthcare entitlements for seniors – is a powerful political weapon that Democrats can wield against Republicans. Some in the GOP have inadvertently helped him. A number of Republicans have signaled support for plans to reduce spending on these programs by raising retirement ages and finding other ways to reduce future benefits, and Florida Sen. Rick Scott has proposed a plan that would require Congress to reauthorize all federal programs every five years. The GOP’s House and Senate leaders, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, respectively, have said publicly they have no such intentions. But politics aside, the funding problems that Republicans point to are real. On Wednesday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report warning that Social Security and Medicare spending will grow much faster than federal tax revenues over the next decade as the fast-rising number of retirees puts measurable strain on the solvency of both programs. Biden says the gap can be filled without cutting benefits by asking wealthier workers to pay more in payroll taxes. Republicans counter that tax increases on the needed scale would weigh heavily on future economic growth. The two parties remain miles apart on solutions.
Will China offer Sri Lanka debt salvation?
Sri Lanka is grasping for debt relief as it heads into a key international meeting with foreign lenders organized by the International Monetary Fund on Friday. Colombo hopes to pump the brakes on the country’s downward economic spiral that saw the country run out of foreign currency and experience its first-ever default last year, triggering food shortages, power cuts, and the wrath of protesters, which forced the resignations of the president and prime minister. The island nation pines for cuts in its debt from international backers, especially China, as the Middle Kingdom is one of Sri Lanka’s biggest creditors, holding about 10% of its $51 billion debt. Beijing has so far been opaque about debt reduction. It expressed ‘support’ for Sri Lanka this week heading into the meeting but stopped short of committing to lowering the debt. Doing so would be a dodgy proposition, not just for Chinese creditors who want to be paid, but for fear that other heavily indebted poor countries will want reductions in their debt burden as well. This puts the 22 million-strong nation, often cited as a cautionary example of China’s debt trap, in yet another tough bind: It needs an emergency IMF loan, but the Fund wants creditors to reduce Sri Lanka's debt beforehand. We’ll be watching to see how far China goes for Sri Lanka.
Ian Explains: The debt ceiling
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that her department had begun using extraordinary cash management measures to prevent a credit default until June 5th, but the clock is ticking. If Congress fails to increase the debt ceiling by the time the Treasury runs out of cash, then the US government could default on its loans for the first time in history, Ian Bremmer explains. Not only would this shake investor confidence in US bonds, raising the prospect of an American recession, but because US debt is the cornerstone of the world economy, it could also spark a global financial calamity.
So, what’s the holdup? Politics, of course. Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who handed the hard-right delegation of his party everything short of a kidney to secure his leadership role, is signaling that the only way Republicans will agree to increase the debt ceiling is if President Biden works with them on spending cuts in the federal budget—a budget that has grown nearly 30% over the last three years.
“I don’t know anyone who agrees with the President that we should just raise the debt limit and have no negotiations. That they believe there’s no area in government where we can eliminate waste.”
McCarthy’s senior-most ally in the Senate, Minority leader Mitch McConnell, has plenty of experience mudwrestling over the debt limit during the Obama years (apologies for that mental image). But interestingly, he’s not touching this latest squabble with a ten-foot pollster.
President Biden, for his part, has made clear that he’s not going to, as he puts it, let a far-right Republican House hold the American economy hostage. But it’s clear that the fight over the debt ceiling is just the first of many bitter government standoffs to come, given McCarthy’s razor-thin majority in the House and the Democrats’ control of the Senate and White House. What happens, you ask, when Congress must tackle crises far more urgent and unexpected than a long-awaited debt-ceiling increase? And what can the more moderate Republican members of Congress do to rein in their hard-right colleagues?
Watch the GZERO World episode: Sen. Mitt Romney on DC dysfunction, Russian attacks, and banning TikTok
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Who will cave on raising US debt ceiling (again?)
In a development that will surprise exactly no one, there’s more than a little kicking and screaming going on these days in Washington over the debt ceiling debate. On GZERO World, Utah Senator Mitt Romney, a throwback from another era of US politics, has a message for the rabble-rousers on both sides: pipe down.
That means stop playing brinkmanship with a US debt default, Romney tells Ian Bremmer in the latest episode of GZERO World.
“Our economy will be dramatically impacted almost immediately” Romney warns, if a default comes to pass. Despite the dysfunction that is already kneecapping this young Congressional session, Romney is confident that a deal will get passed before the worst comes to pass. “At the end of the day we are going to get it done, because if we don’t we’ll get blamed.”
Watch the GZERO World episode: Sen. Mitt Romney on DC dysfunction, Russian attacks, and banning TikTok
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Is the GOP still a MAGA party? Or just Trump's party?
There's a lot of hand-wringing going on right now within Republican ranks after the GOP's worse than expected midterm results.
The big question is: Is the Republican party still the party of Trump? NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith tells Ian Bremmer that there may be no going back to what the party used to be.
"There's just a lot of people in the Republican party who don't see themselves going back to the nice, polite Mitch McConnell, Bob Dole Republican Party," Keith says in this week's episode of GZERO World.
Why? A lot of it has to do with how voters have become as polarized as the candidates they're electing.
Watch the GZERO World episode: US democracy after US midterms: polarized voters & Trump's GOP
Democrats and Republicans unite! At least against China.
This week, the US Senate passed the so-called Endless Frontier Act, a $250 billion investment in development of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, the manufacture of semiconductors, and other tech-related sectors. The goal is to harness the combined power of America's public and private sectors to meet the tech challenges posed by China.
In its current form, this is the biggest diversion of public funds into the private sector to achieve strategic goals in many decades. The details of this package, and of the Senate vote, say a lot about US foreign-policy priorities and this bill's chances of becoming law.
Why did Democrats and Republicans agree to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars? The high-stakes tech competition with China is a threat both parties take seriously. Beijing is directing historic amounts of money toward development of AI and quantum computing technologies that experts say will determine the 21st century's balance of economic, political, and military power.
Just as the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, spurred a surge in US spending and new strategic thinking, Washington is now finally heeding warnings that China has taken a great tech leap forward. Democrats and Republicans may not agree on what aspect of China's rise worries them most, but leaders of both parties see a threat to US competitiveness and national security.
What's in the bill? It focuses mainly on tech, with $120 billion for research and development funding, $52 billion for domestic semiconductor production, and $20 billion for space programs. But it also promotes new strategies to counter China's global influence and punish its abuses at home. For example, it authorizes new sanctions in response to China's crackdown in Hong Kong, its use of forced labor in Xinjiang, its skill in cyber espionage, and its theft of intellectual property. The bill also commissions a new study about the origin of the pandemic and calls for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing by US officials -- though not by US athletes.
What does this bill say about the domestic politics of competition with China? President Biden heralded the news of the Senate passage with a warning for the future: "As other countries continue to invest in their own research and development, we cannot risk falling behind. America must maintain its position as the most innovative and productive nation on Earth." It's safe to assume that "other countries" mainly means China since the bill explicitly labels that country's government the "greatest geopolitical and geoeconomic threat" to US foreign policy.
But it also makes clear there is strong bipartisan support for the Biden administration's position that the era of engagement with China is over. China's growing power has Washington's attention, and its military expansion, human rights abuses, and tech capabilities, and trade practices ensure there is something for everyone on Capitol Hill to oppose.
China has responded. An official statement says this bill is "full of Cold War thinking and ideological prejudice." It will now be easier for Xi to make the case at home that the US intends to stunt China's growth as a great power. US officials counter that years of unfair Chinese trade practices and President Xi Jinping's newly aggressive foreign policy are responsible for the sharp downturn in relations.
What happens next? The bill now heads for the House of Representatives where its fate is TBD. News coverage rightly focuses on the rarity of 68 Senate votes for any bill of this cost and ambition, but 32 senators voted against it, and their reasoning highlights partisan differences lurking beneath the bipartisan consensus which might force a rework in the lower house.
Thirty-one Republican senators opposed it. Some said it costs too much. Others said it should include funding for border security. Former Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders voted no to protest the amount of money the bill would move from US taxpayers to private-sector companies without enough accountability for how the money is spent. Other Democrats warn that its aggressiveness can make Cold War fears a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We won't know until autumn just how ambitious the final legislation will be, but the bipartisan Senate bill makes clear that the US-China rivalry will only become more intense.
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