No more sleepy Senate: Schumer seeks to jump-start agenda

The Senate is a legislative ghost town lately. Chuck Schumer is telegraphing plans to bring it back to life.

After spending six months focused on confirming President Joe Biden’s nominees and fighting off GOP regulatory rollbacks, the Senate majority leader is planning to pivot into bipartisan policymaking mode. During an interview with POLITICO, Schumer outlined an enterprising agenda that includes must-pass bills on defense, aviation and farm policy, as well as long-held priorities like marijuana banking and China competitiveness.

That’s on top of a rail safety plan that could run into a wall of GOP resistance and a challenging push to lower prescription drug prices — plus more. And any of those bills risk falling to a filibuster by Republicans who are deciding whether they’re in a mood to compromise before the 2024 election, which could give them control of the Senate.

“There are a bunch of Republicans in the Senate who want to work with us,” Schumer said in an interview. “We’ll try to get as many [bills] done as we can. Legislating in the Senate with the rules we have is not easy, right? But if you push ahead, we're going to get some good things done.”

The scale won’t approach 2021 and 2022, when Schumer toggled between approving massive party-line bills and bipartisan measures covering everything from gun safety to infrastructure to same-sex marriage. The House is controlled by the GOP now, and the retirement of several deal-seeking Senate Republicans last year makes things harder for Democrats.

Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) predicted farm, aviation and China legislation would be “most likely” to pass and that everything else is “probably” going to be harder.

“I don't want people to think that every Congress is going to be like last Congress, where we passed major pieces of legislation,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a red-state incumbent seeking reelection. Simply funding the government, passing the annual defense bill and getting a farm bill done is “not a bad day’s work," he added.

Given how closely Congress is divided, Senate Democrats face a tricky balancing act as they prioritize. Confirming judges is easier and sometimes more consequential than building bipartisan coalitions, given that Schumer needs nine Senate Republicans to support any legislation; then has to convince Speaker Kevin McCarthy to take it up.

Schumer described his mantra as “judges above all," a bid to counteract the conservative confirmation juggernaut that former President Donald Trump and GOP Leader Mitch McConnell presided over. Passing more legislation, though, could benefit Democrats, both substantively and politically, dividing the GOP while giving endangered incumbents more accomplishments.

And some Republican colleagues might give Schumer surprising room to get things done.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), for one, is working closely with the New York Democrat on an artificial intelligence measure after success on microchip legislation last year. The Indiana Republican predicted the prospects for AI policymaking are “quite good.”

“It’s been more fruitful than I would have expected,” Young said of his relationship with Schumer. “To the extent I can play a helpful role in connecting the current majority leader to members of our caucus so that they can advance their legislative priorities, I want to do that.”

Then there’s Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), whose job as his party’s campaign chair is to make Schumer the minority leader. Nevertheless, Daines said that this Congress is the “best opportunity that we’ve had” to move legislation that eases banking constraints for cannabis business.

“Leader Schumer has been working hard and effectively to assure that we have a safe banking bill and not something beyond that,” Daines said. His biggest fear is that Democrats might try to expand the bill’s scope.

Should even half of Schumer’s vision become law, it would be a marked contrast to the last few months. With a light Senate schedule and very little legislation passing besides the debt deal, the GOP has enjoyed the placid pace as it launches repeated attempts to nullify Biden’s regulations.

“For having the majority, they don’t have much of an agenda,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 GOP leader.

The bipartisan rail safety bill is perhaps the closest to floor-ready of any legislation on Schumer's list, but it will provoke a tough intra-GOP fight on the floor. Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) is advocating for action next month, while Schumer did not give a firm timetable: “We're going to pick some good bipartisan bills to move forward on the floor in July.”

Meanwhile, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance has recruited an unlikely coalition of fellow Republicans to support the rail bill he helped craft, saying that “we’re pretty clearly there” in assembling sufficient support. Yet Thune, a former Commerce Committee chair, said the bill needs its regulatory ambition scaled back to pass the Senate.

“There’s not a ton of rush, because the House is not in a huge hurry to take it up. But I think it will happen soon. I'm not worried about it,” Vance said.

Getting 60 votes is always hard for a Senate majority leader; it's the task of convincing McCarthy to move on the Senate's work that could define Schumer’s next 18 months. The majority leader knows too well that the House GOP can easily ignore bipartisan deals: His Gang of Eight immigration bill passed the Senate by a whopping margin in 2013, then went nowhere across the Capitol.

McCarthy has mocked Schumer for passing non binding resolutions and underestimating the House GOP on the debt ceiling. But Schumer forecast that “sooner or later, there'll be some pushback against the hard right" that wants to tug McCarthy in its direction.

“If we pass some bipartisan bills … it's going to put pressure on McCarthy,” he added.

Must-pass bills like the annual Pentagon policy measure have a definite leg up in that department. This year’s looming expirations of the farm bill and Federal Aviation Administration legislation should also prompt action.

Yet even the FAA bill’s already seen some drama, as Cantwell postponed a committee vote amid a dispute with Thune and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) over reducing pilot training hours.

Schumer made no bones about it: “They knew my position was very strongly“ in favor of keeping training hours intact.

The rail bill has already cleared committee, and the FAA will be back in July. A bill to claw back bank executives' pay and fentanyl legislation recently cleared the Banking Committee, the defense bill advanced last week and portions of drug pricing legislation are ready for the floor. Daines is hopeful the cannabis banking bill will follow suit.

In addition, Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) energy permitting reform push already failed once, but he’s resolute about another shot — which could help Democrats cajole him into seeking reelection. And some of the dozen spending bills are starting to advance, which will require their own ample chunk of the Senate's most valuable commodity: floor time.

And there's not a lot of it left this year, with seven more weeks on the schedule before government funding expires on Sept. 30. Meanwhile, legislating gets tougher every day the election creeps closer. Schumer said he doesn't "have an artificial deadline" for when the chamber will close for bipartisan business.

“It is going to be like two years ago? No,” Schumer said. “But it'll be good."