Reference News Network reported on December 3rd. The article entitled “The fate of the new U.S. government is in the hands of the Senate” published by Kent Calder, director of the Reischoll Center for East Asian Studies in the United States on November 30. The article pointed out that the importance of the Senate, the U.S. internal affairs agency, continues to rise. Who controls it will affect the global economy. The full text is excerpted as follows:
The election results subvert expectations
The 2020 U.S. presidential election and the simultaneous elections of both houses of Congress have completely subverted expectations. Public opinion surveys conducted before the election show that Democratic candidate Biden will defeat incumbent Trump in the presidential election, and Democrats will also control both the House of Representatives in the congressional election. But the reality is that Biden won by a small margin, and in some swing states, it was once difficult to distinguish between victory and defeat. The House of Representatives completely exceeded expectations. The number of Republican seats did not fall, but rose, almost threatening the Democratic Party’s dominant position.
It is worth noting that the Democratic offensive has been frustrated in the Senate. Although the Republican Party had a slight advantage of 53 seats before the election, it was predicted that it would lose control of the Senate in the election. Although the Republican Party is only one seat away from defeat, the incumbent Republican lawmakers have kept their seats in Maine, Iowa and North Carolina, which were originally in critical situations.
On the one hand, Biden won in the swing state that had been fiercely fought, and on the other hand, Senator Cory Gardner, a Republican from Colorado, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s East Asian and Pacific Affairs Group, unexpectedly lost. The Democratic victory in some northern states is not so much the collapse of Trump’s support base as the rise in the proportion of African-American voters and the fall of high-educated and high-income voters to the Democratic Party. On the other hand, the white blue collars in the Rust Belt still choose to continue to support Trump. In the Senate election, the Republican Party’s ability to recruit good deeds not only benefited from the votes of a stable blue-collar class, but also some veteran members basically kept their seats.
The importance will continue to rise.
We are faced with the following question worth pondering. What role can the Senate, as the internal affairs body of the United States, play now in the economic relationship between the United States and the world. From the perspective of globalization, what is the importance of the Senate?
The U.S. Congress is an important part of the structure of the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers. According to the Constitution, laws and regulations related to fiscal issues such as tax reform and budget approval only need to be approved by the House of Representatives. However, the Senate has veto power over the appointment and removal of ambassadors, federal justices, cabinet members, etc. After January 20 next year, the Biden administration will face this powerful force.
Judging from the policy introduction and legislative process in the United States in recent years, the importance of the Senate will continue to rise during Biden’s administration. Under the Trump administration, in addition to drastic corporate and personal income tax rates, three conservative justices of the Supreme Court have been appointed. If Democrats gain a Senate majority during the Biden administration, the change itself will be reversed.
The plan to expand fiscal spending advocated by Biden and House Speaker Pelosi may lead to the depreciation of the dollar and the rise in commodity prices such as gold, even if it can stimulate economic growth. The sharp adjustment of tax and regulatory measures may also be strongly resisted by the economic community, and the stagnation of U.S. financial markets will lead to broader social unrest.
Whether the Biden administration’s economic policy will be subject to the Senate, and the Georgia second round of voting on January 5 will have a significant impact, as it will determine the final membership of the Senate.
The U.S. Congress has a lot of decision on whether to introduce fiscal stimulus, and the current policies of the Senate and the House of Representatives are significantly different. Democratic Speaker Pelosi proposed a $2 trillion relief package, including financial assistance to local governments, but the stimulus bill favored by Republican Senate Majority Leader McConnell was only $500 billion.
It is bound to affect the global economy.
Who controls the Senate will not only affect the tax and regulatory policies of the United States, but also affect the appointment and removal of personnel, including the president, which is bound to have an impact on the global economy.
Assuming that the two parties finally tie in the Senate with 50 seats each, then the vice president’s vote is still in fact still Democratic. At that time, the Senate committees will be restructured to attract more Democrats, and may focus more energy on issues of concern to liberals. This will create a situation similar to that in the early days of the Obama administration, that is, the Democratic Party controls both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The U.S. Senate is no longer the same as it used to be. In recent years, it has become the place to decide on major issues affecting the whole world. In this era of COVID-19 pandemic, the fiscal deficit, bailout policy, tax system, government personnel, etc. of the United States have become issues of concern all over the world. In the context of political tearing, does the Senate have the ability to implement the necessary reforms? The whole world cannot not pay attention to the movement of the U.S. Senate.
