Biden Plays Disaster Politics

The Biden administration continues to follow that old Democratic maxim: Never let a crisis go to waste. Senate Republicans continue to follow their own: Let’s create a crisis for ourselves.

Congress is trickling back from summer recess, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer intends to move swiftly to pass a giant “supplemental aid” package that funds Ukraine assistance, disaster relief and border security (for starters). The goal is to jam House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, forcing him to forgo whatever spending restraint was negotiated in the June debt-ceiling agreement and potentially sending his caucus into chaos. The crazy thing is that Senate Republicans are signing up to help.

The White House bait—or cudgel—is “crisis” disaster-relief funding. The Federal Emergency Management Agency warned in April that its disaster fund could be out of money by July. Yet somehow the administration didn’t make a priority of this “critical” FEMA funding during the May debt ceiling talks, unwilling as it was then to cede any of its other domestic pork, such as green subsidies and its $80 billion IRS blowout. Only after next year’s spending levels were set did it cry poverty, asking for an “emergency” $16 billion for FEMA. President Biden is threatening to blame Republicans for failing to help victims of Maui fires and hurricanes if they don’t now give him the money he didn’t care about then.

The administration, meanwhile, is playing politics by insisting this disaster money be wrapped with its request for $24 billion in aid to Ukraine. Mr. Biden wants his Ukraine dollars, but he wants even more to heighten the divide within the GOP. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been making daily floor speeches on the need for more Ukraine funding, worried Mr. McCarthy can’t get this crucial aid past House GOP spending hard-liners. So Mr. McConnell is taking the bait, signing up to help Mr. Schumer ram the whole package down the House’s throat.

The dollar costs alone of such an exercise could prove obscene, given this Senate’s skill at greasing the legislative skids with pork. The White House already jacked up its opening supplemental bid to $40 billion—significantly higher than what it suggested earlier this summer. Progressive lawmakers are lining up with additional demands for climate dollars, food-and-shelter money for border crossers, and $16 billion in new child-care funding. Senate Republicans aren’t drawing any bright lines as to what can be included. Where would be the spending fun in that? Never forget last year’s beyond-the-pale omnibus.

The political costs to the GOP could be grave. This supplemental could easily wipe away whatever spending restraint House Republicans negotiated in the debt-ceiling deal, destroying the hard-fought effort at demonstrating GOP commitment to getting deficits and inflation under control.

An even bigger political price would be paid for jamming a speaker with such a slim majority. The GOP kamikazes won’t be bullied into submission, and they might use the Senate pressure as an excuse to dig in against work on regular appropriations, provoking a government shutdown. In that case, the GOP will take total blame. Under the debt-ceiling rules, if Congress fails to enact all 12 regular appropriations bills by year’s end, discretionary accounts (including the military) are subject to a 1% cut. How does that help Mr. McConnell’s Ukraine priority? Conversely, suppose the pressure grows so great on Mr. McCarthy that he’s forced to pass a supplemental appropriation with Democratic votes. The next call may be a motion to vacate the chair, leaving the House speakerless again.

Republicans ought to remember that they won the House last year, and it is their base of power. Mr. McCarthy is negotiating to get his members to agree to a short-term continuing resolution that will allow the House to complete its appropriations process. He wants some of the proposed supplemental spending to go through that regular order, providing Republicans more opportunity to scrutinize provisions and pressure Democrats to agree to offset some White House demands. Some Senate Republicans (and virtually all the media) will sneer that the speaker has no chance of navigating his fractious caucus through a continuing resolution, 12 spending bills and a supplemental. Certainly the potential for failure is high.

Then again, the same fatalism prevailed in the run-up to the debt deal, only for the House GOP to wrench notable concessions from Bidenland. That win ought to earn Mr. McCarthy the same opportunity now—via a new round of “must pass” bills—to unite his team and notch some policy and political victories. It’s certainly a better strategy than handing, on bended knee, Messrs. Biden and Schumer the supplemental keys to the castle. Republicans win only when they stick together.

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