Biden sends DNC dollars to House, Senate committees

President Biden has agreed to transfer $15 million from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to the two chief committees battling to save Democrats’ House and Senate majorities in midterm elections later this year. 

Biden on Wednesday sat down with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and with Speaker Nancy Pelosi  (D-Calif.) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) for a briefing on midterm elections.

At those meetings, Biden said the DNC would sent $7.5 million each to the two committees, a DNC spokesperson told The Hill.

“President Biden understands the stakes of this midterm election — if Republicans take the Senate, they’ll push the agenda of the ultra-wealthy and big corporations at the expense of working Americans,” Peters said in a statement.

Peters thanked Biden for his “strong support” of Senate Democrats. Maloney said he and Pelosi had had a “productive” meeting with Biden.

“He is all in on the midterms,” Maloney said in his own statement.

The DNC spokesperson said the early investment was the largest-ever cash transfer to the two party committees. 

Democrats face a steep climb to maintain their narrow majorities in the House and Senate, in part because of Biden’s dismal approval rating, which most polls show in the low-to-mid 40s.

A president’s party tends to suffer losses in midterm elections, losses that are made steeper when the president’s rating is low. Republicans under Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump and Democrats under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all lost dozens of seats in midterm elections when the incumbent’s approval rating sat below 50 percent.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee had outraised the DSCC by about $13.6 million in the last year, according to just-filed reports with the Federal Election Commission, while the DCCC raised about $6.3 million more than the National Republican Congressional Committee. 

The Republican National Committee pulled in $158 million over the last year, more than the DNC’s $151 million. The RNC transferred $10 million to their House and Senate affiliates last year.

The DNC has said it is going farther than ever before to build alliances to save their majorities, and Biden’s agenda. The DNC will help fund coordinated campaigns in eight battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that have competitive Senate races and House races, some of which also have fraught governor’s races. The party is already paying for 200 staffers in those states.