No Stimulus Deal, Lots Of Judges: McConnell’s Lame Duck Agenda Takes Shape

Topline

The Senate will be hard at work in the period between the election and the inauguration even if Republicans are swept out of power on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggested – but the Republicans’ priorities won’t align with the public opinion polls.

Key Facts

McConnell, who is well known for his largely realized goal of reshaping the federal judiciary, said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that “judges will come first” if Republicans beat the odds and manage to hang on to their Senate majority.

But even if Republicans do get swept out of power, don’t expect them to pack up and go home until the inauguration, said McConnell, asserting “we go through the end of the year, and so does the President.”

“We’re going to fill the 7th Circuit,” McConnell said, referring to the vacancy left by Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation, while also stating a desire to fill a 1st Circuit vacancy and “clean the plate, clean all the district judges off as well.”

As for a stimulus bill, McConnell called for a “more modest” package than the one passed by the Democratic House targeted at small businesses, schools and hospitals, but said “we’ll need to do right at the beginning of the year,” casting doubt on the prospects of a bill by the end of 2020.

McConnell’s timeline may be a moot point, however, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin have been locked in a heated war of words in recent days, suggesting the two have come to an impasse in stimulus negotiations.

Surprising Fact

Absent from McConnell’s interview with Hewitt was any mention of President Trump, who trails Democratic candidate Joe Biden by a wide margin in most polls. Biden was mentioned several times in the interview, with McConnell warning of a “level of radicalism I’ve not seen in the Democratic Party in my lifetime” and stating “the solution to this is 51 Republican senators.”

Big Number

66%. That’s the share of voters in a Yahoo/YouGov poll released last week who said the Senate should prioritize passing a Covid-19 relief bill over confirming Barrett to the Supreme Court, compared to just 25% who said Barrett should be prioritized. A New York Times/Siena College poll also released last week found 72% of voters favor a $2 trillion bill, just under the amount House Democrats have proposed in the HEROES Act.

What To Watch For

While the U.S. posted 33% GDP growth in the third quarter of 2020, the economy still has not fully recovered from the damage of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Forbes contributor Chuck Jones. Analysts have also expressed concerns about a considerable slowdown in economic growth in the weeks and months ahead if the coronavirus outbreak continues to worsen moving into winter.

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