At Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and J. Miles Coleman post their final analysis before the midterm elections. As is their custom they have changed all of the elections formerly listed as toss-ups to leaning one way or the other. The TL;DR version is that they predict that the Republicans will carry the Senate 51-49 and the House 237-198. Although that carries both houses of the Congress it falls short of a veto-proof 2/3s majority in either one of them so there’s a pretty fair likelihood of very little being accomplished in the next Congress other than investigations. A lot will depend on how angry the incoming Congress is.
“there’s a pretty fair likelihood of very little being accomplished in the next Congress other than investigations”
I agree in some respects and not in others. In terms of discretionary accomplishments; I think low expectations are in order.
In terms of accomplishments because the next Congress had no choice but to make decisions — the odds are higher than usual. Here are some in no particular order:
a) Congress is asked to authorize use of military force against the Russian Federation
b) Congress is asked to authorize use of military force against the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan
c) Congress is asked to authorize use of military force against Iran
d) Congress must decide a 25th amendment, Section 4 dispute or confirm a new Vice President under 25th amendment, Section 2. (The actuarial table says Biden has 10% chance of dying before Jan 2025).
e) Congress must pass legislation regarding the Federal Reserve; which due to interest rates / QT / inflation is losing > $100+ billion a year and potentially triliions in loses in its assets.
f) Congress must pass legislation due to a fiscal emergency like what happened to the UK
g) Congress must pass legislation to deal with the effects of a recession
h) Congress must pass legislation to deal with energy shortages (export ban, price controls, nationalizations, etc.).
Republicans and Democrats are pretty much agreed on Russia, China, and Iran, so a war authorization will pass if *Biden* wants it.
The coming deep recession/depression in Europe will spill over to our economy. The deficit in FY 2022 was $1.38 trillion. That’s likely to go up sharply. The current 1 year T-bill rate is 4.80%. It also is likely to go up.
Add one more to your list, CO. One or both of the major Social Security trust funds are likely to become insolvent during the next presidential term. Without action they’ll only pay a fraction of what’s been promised.
The single digit percentage decrease in the Medicare reimbursement rate that’s presently being whined about will be trivial in comparison to what’s coming. A 25% cut in SSRI will put a lot of elders on the streets.
A-C- Almost zero chance.
D-Yes
E- They will punt in some form
F- Only if the GOP manages to control both houses and POTUS, like when Reagan had to go back and raise taxes because the theory about cutting taxes bringing in more revenue failed.
G-Tax cuts. (They will do that anyway so not sure this should count.)
H-Not for the US.
Expect lots of investigations where they dont find anything. Expect them to repeal the ACA or something else about 100 times. Expect a big squabble about the debt ceiling.
IIRC both SS funds are good through 2024 so this Congress will not address it.
Steve
As I have intimated in the past IMO Republicans will find tax cuts as disappointing in spurring the economy as Democrats have consumer subsidies and for the same reason: they will contribute to inflation.
Right now we don’t need either tax cuts or consumer subsidies unless they are very highly targeted. What we need is to produce more of what we consume.
An additional complication is that it remains empirically true that increased debt reduces GDP growth. There isn’t a “cliff” at 100% of GDP as used to be believed but it still constitutes a drag.
Tax cuts, spending increases, that’s discretionary.
I was talking about non-discretionary decisions — like if the treasury market crashes as happened in the UK. If the markets read the riot act to Congress, treasury, federal reserve — the only decisions will be what form tax increases, spending cuts will occur, not if they will occur or how much.
Please read what happened to the UK in the past 2 months. They were forced to raise taxes, cut spending, and raise interest rates into a recession!
One other point to ponder after reading Ruy Teixeira in the Atlantic. Perhaps we are all focusing on the wrong thing, the horserace results and the pursuit of getting those results right. Ruy’s recollection of the last 15 years of politics says what matters is how election results are interpreted by partisans.
And at that level, I (and most pollsters) have no idea how Democrats and Republicans will interpret the midterm results.
That’s easy enough. The losers will think the election was stolen from them. The winners will think they have a mandate to do whatever it is they want to do.
Given the actual results last night. My point about interpretation seems more relevant then ever.
And no; the Republican commentariat didn’t seem to think it was stolen or they have a mandate to do much. Interesting times ahead.