With the election of Democrat Raphael Warnock over Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., Tuesday evening, the Senate’s Republican majority stood at a perilous 51 seats to 49 for the Democrats.
Should Sen. David Perdue fall to Democrat Jon Ossoff in the race for the Peach State’s other Senate seat, then the Democrats would have control over both houses of Congress.
As vice president, Kamala Harris would cast the tie-breaking vote in a 50-50 Senate and not only make Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., majority leader, but give the chairmanship of some powerful committees to some seasoned Democrat leftists.
“That means Joe Biden will push all those things he called for in the primaries and his very public appearance after the nomination,” historian Donald Critchlow of Arizona State University, author of eleven books on politics, told Newsmax. “Raising taxes; the Green New Deal; expansion of ObamaCare as the first step toward nationalized healthcare; a massive stimulus bill; immigration reform with border security in name only; and appeasement with China.”
A Democrat Senate would mean Vermont’s two left-of-center senators in powerful slots: Bernie Sanders, 79, as budget committee chairman and Pat Leahy, 80, as chairman of the all-powerful appropriations committee.
Another favorite of progressive Democrats, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, would chair the banking committee under Democrat control.
Capitol Hill observers generally agree that one of the first pursuits of a Democrat-controlled Senate would be admission of statehood for both the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico — a move that would guarantee both two senators and a Democrat Senate majority for years to come.
“Democrats learned from the lost opportunities in the first days of the Obama administration,” said Critchlow. “They got ObamaCare, a stimulus program, and bailouts, but not much more. This was a lot, but more could have been done given their control of the Senate and the House. The Biden team, experienced in Washington politics, will not waste this opportunity. The first 100 Days of the Biden administration might very well go down in the history books as the ‘100 Days of No Return.’”
As of Wednesday morning, Democrat Ossoff held a wafer-thin lead of 12,806 votes over Republican Perdue with than 4 million cast. With 99% of the votes counted, no one is calling any winner.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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