This week: Senate gets ready for showdown over Gorsuch

Republicans short of significant legislative victories to date plan on touting one accomplishment when they return home to their constituents during this month’s spring recess: confirming Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

The House and Senate will have been in session for six consecutive weeks, but failed spectacularly to uphold their seven-year campaign pledge to repeal and replace the healthcare law.

Lawmakers nonetheless plan to depart Washington at the end of this week for a two-week Easter recess. And when they do, the Senate will likely have reached a historic milestone in abolishing 60-vote filibusters on Supreme Court nominees.

{mosads}The showdown over President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee will come to a head this week. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to clear Gorsuch’s nomination on Monday, with a full Senate vote by Friday. 

But Gorsuch is facing an uphill battle to get 60 votes and break an expected Democratic filibuster. Only three Democratic senators, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), have said they will support Gorsuch’s nomination.

His path to 60 got infinitely harder with Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), red-state Democrats up for reelection in 2018, coming out against Gorsuch’s nomination.

McCaskill’s Friday decision came roughly a day after leaked audio from a recent fundraiser was published online by the Missouri Republican Party. During the private event she warned supporters about the risks of blocking Gorsuch.

“So they move it to 51 votes and they confirm either Gorsuch or they confirm the one after Gorsuch,” she said. “They go on the Supreme Court and then, God forbid, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies, or [Anthony] Kennedy retires or [Stephen] Breyer has a stroke or is no longer able to serve.

Thirty-nine Democrats have said they will oppose the president’s pick, though Sen. Patrick Leahy (Vt.), a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ben Cardin (Md.) have left the door open to helping Gorsuch get over the 60-vote threshold.

Six Democratic senators remain undecided on Gorsuch’s nomination, according to The Hill’s whip list.

If Republicans can’t win over enough Democrats they are expected to go “nuclear” and change the Senate rules to allow Supreme Court nominees to squeak through the upper chamber with a simple majority. 

The move would allow Gorsuch, and any future Supreme Court nominee, to be approved by a simple majority.

“We’re going to get Judge Gorsuch confirmed,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters during a weekly press conference. “It’ll be an opportunity for the Democrats to invoke cloture. We’ll see where that ends.”

Lower-court and executive nominations are already able to clear through the Senate with 51 votes after Democrats, led by then Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), lowered the threshold in 2013.

Republican senators appeared uneasy, but resigned, to changing the Senate’s rules, arguing it was the only way they would be able to get Republican-appointed Supreme Court nominees confirmed.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, predicted that Gorsuch will get “57 or 58” votes—short of the amount needed to break a filibuster. 

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) took to the Senate floor and urged with his colleagues to talk to each other and find agreement.

“I hope somehow or another we’ll have the ability to avoid what I see as something that’s very, very detrimental to the United States, and in the process very detrimental to our country,” he said.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) sidestepped saying she wouldn’t change the rules, but told reporters: “I don’t want to change the rules and the Senate, and I hope we’re not confronted with that choice.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters on Thursday that he is having “conversations” with his colleagues in both parties about trying to find a deal that would allow Gorsuch to be confirmed and stave off having to go nuclear.

But the GOP senator noted that the talks had been going on for months and downplayed that senators were actively negotiating. 

“I’m having just a few conversations that I’ve been having for a long time with my friends on the Democratic side,” he said. “I’m not having negotiations and there is no gang.”

McCain, Collins and GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) are the only three senators left from a 2005 “Gang of 14” that reached a deal to avoid nuking the filibuster.  

Shutdown deadline

Lawmakers will only have a few days to spare to avoid a government shutdown when they return from recess the last week of April. 

Funding runs out on April 28, and any measure to meet the deadline isn’t expected to come up for a vote until a few days prior, at the earliest. Neither chamber is expected to consider a spending bill or even unveil a compromise this week before leaving town.

House and Senate GOP leaders have already started backing away from including provisions like defunding Planned Parenthood or providing money for the U.S.-Mexico border wall promised by President Trump. Both are nonstarters for Democrats, who Republicans expect will need to help pass legislation to keep the government’s lights on.

As with the healthcare fight and past spending bills, conservatives can’t be relied upon to supply votes for legislation put forth by the GOP leadership. 

“It’s very likely,” centrist Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) said of having to turn to Democrats to help pass the spending bill. “It certainly wouldn’t be anything new. That’s how things have gotten done here for the past five or six years.”

Democrats are making clear that they won’t feel an incentive to supply votes for the spending bill unless it’s a “clean” measure without any poison pill provisions.

“They’re in charge. It is their responsibility to adopt these bills,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), House Democrats’ top vote counter. “We would be interested in talking to them about them if they want to talk, but if we do so, it will be on the basis that it will be a consensus.”

In the meantime, the House is expected to keep a relatively light floor schedule. On tap are two financial services measures, as well as a bill allowing stop-loss insurance to circumvent certain rules established by ObamaCare. Stop-loss insurance protects insurers from major losses in the event of catastrophic health claims.

Nominations

The Senate will take up Elaine Duke’s nomination to be deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security as they run out the procedural clock on Gorsuch’s nomination. 

The Senate is scheduled to start debating Duke’s nomination on Monday evening with a final vote expected on Tuesday.

Duke, a former undersecretary of management at DHS who served under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, sailed through the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee earlier this month where she was approved by a voice vote. 

Duke was asked about Trump’s pledge to build a physical wall along the U.S.-Mexico border during her confirmation hearing and signaled she would be open to building a virtual wall instead. 

“We should use the results of this pilot and the other information Customs and Border Protection has in their program,” Duke said, referring to the department’s request for a $20 million request to study the effectiveness of the wall. 

She added that officials should “take all that and determine what is the right combination for the complete security of the southwest border.”

Duke, as deputy secretary, would also be the department’s chief operating officer.