The midterm elections are still four months away, and the next Congress won’t be sworn in until January. But Republicans have already started laying the groundwork for aggressive oversight of the Biden administration, in anticipation of their expected return to power in the House. The president’s legislative agenda would face stiff resistance in a divided Congress. And it would be all but dead on arrival if Republicans also manage to capture the Senate in November.
As they look ahead to the next phase of his presidency, Biden’s advisers are bracing for a bitter clash with Republicans, according to several people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the thinking inside the White House.
“They won’t be able to get anything done. It’s going to be a knock-down, drag-out partisan political fight until 2024,” one Biden ally said. “The White House is aware of this reality, and they’re preparing to have the resources in place to take on Republicans.”
One of the biggest adjustments Biden might have to make next year is dealing with a constant drumbeat of investigations and oversight hearings in the House.
Representative James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican poised to chair the Committee on Oversight and Reform in a GOP-led House, told Newsweek he would prioritize an investigation into the foreign business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
“We believe his shady business dealings have compromised the Biden administration. We’re going to try to determine that and go from there,” Comer said in a phone interview. He said his oversight efforts would also focus on the origins of the pandemic and the administration’s border policies.
Hunter Biden’s business activities received national attention in 2019, when former President Donald Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate the Bidens spurred an investigation by House Democrats that led to his first impeachment. Trump and other Republicans kept up their attacks on Hunter Biden during the 2020 election, and he has remained in the spotlight since because of an ongoing investigation into his business activities by the Department of Justice.
President Biden has publicly defended his son, denying he committed any wrongdoing or that Hunter’s business activities in countries like Ukraine while he was vice president influenced his decision-making.
The president’s allies are confident a Republican-led investigation into Hunter Biden would not reveal anything new, and believe the public would view it as a distraction from pressing issues such as the economy and pandemic.
But they conceded that high-profile hearings focused on his son would be a major headache. And many Democrats are already resigned to the likelihood that House Republicans will use their probe into Hunter Biden as a pretext to launch impeachment proceedings against the president.
Comer downplayed the possibility of an impeachment, noting that even if Republicans win the Senate along with the House, they would likely fall far short of the two-thirds vote needed for a conviction in the upper chamber.
“We’re not going to go in and immediately talk about impeaching,” he said. “The chances of ever getting a conviction in the Senate are slim to none.”
Still, the White House has been preparing for months for the coming oversight onslaught. Earlier this year, the White House hired attorney Richard Sauber to help respond to potential oversight investigations. The move came as Democrats behind the scenes urged the White House to beef up its legal team going into next year.
“We have built and continue to build a strong legal team to conduct our work and serve the public and the president,” said Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House counsel’s office.
A second White House official said preparations were underway to respond to oversight from both parties, regardless of the outcome of the November elections.
But while the White House has taken steps to gird itself for more oversight, it’s less clear what plans, if any, are being put in place to advance Biden’s domestic and foreign policies goals in the event Democrats lose control of one or both chambers of Congress.
Presidents typically have more room to maneuver on foreign affairs. But Biden’s hand might be forced on some of the biggest issues facing the United States and its allies, including the war in Ukraine.
Republicans, and some Democrats, have expressed concern about the U.S. continuing to send billions in military assistance to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia. It would be harder for the president to secure an open-ended commitment to aid Ukraine with Republicans in charge in Congress, a shift that would complicate his ability to influence the outcome of the conflict.
“House Republicans appear less interested in spending significant money on Ukraine,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist.
Getting bogged down in domestic political disagreements over security in Europe would also make it harder for the Biden administration to focus on adversaries like China and North Korea, said Sung-Yoon Lee, an expert on U.S.-East Asia relations at Tufts University.
“If Biden is hobbled politically, then China will view that as an opportunity to push its agenda,” he said.
On domestic affairs, Biden’s post-midterm game plan will depend in part on what Democrats are able to accomplish in the coming months while they still control Congress.
Senate Democrats released the outlines of a new spending package Wednesday. But even if it passes, the bill won’t include the most ambitious elements of Biden’s original Build Back Better plan, leaving broader proposals around climate and other issues unresolved.
Biden could follow the example set by his recent predecessors and respond to his party losing power in Congress by using executive action to move his agenda forward. In the years after Democrats lost the House in the 2010 midterms, former President Barack Obama acted on his own on immigration and climate issues. Trump’s use of executive authority increased after Republicans lost the House in the 2018 elections.
“Especially as year three rolled around, [Trump] stressed to his staff: Find me ways to act without Congress,” said Eric Ueland, a former senior Trump White House official.
But Obama and Trump faced legal challenges over their use of executive power, and Biden will likely face greater opposition in the courts, legal experts said.
In a worrisome sign for Biden, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority last month issued a ruling limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate power plant emissions. The decision signaled that the court might seek to limit the power of other federal agencies in the future, said Louis Michael Sideman, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University.
“This court has a strong conservative bias against government regulation,” Sideman said. “That is a problem Biden will face.”
The administration will also face a time crunch when it comes to crafting executive actions. They typically take months, if not longer, to prepare, and then can take even longer to implement.
“The mistake that the Trump administration made with a lot of their executive actions was that they just wrote regulations but didn’t go through the process,” and as a result it often lost in litigation, Cecilia Muñoz, a former senior adviser to Obama, said in an interview. “Regulation takes time if you’re going to do it in a way that’s going to stick. That’s a limiting factor.”
White House aides are aware of the constraints they’ll face starting in January, according to a source familiar with the matter.
“They’re not obsessed about it because they’ve got so much stuff on their plate,” the person said about coming up with a list of future executive actions for next year and beyond. “But they’re thinking about it, absolutely.”
Biden entered office promising to restore bipartisanship in Congress. But if Democrats suffer large losses at the polls in November, he would face pressure to take on the role of partisan warrior, especially if he has to wage battles at the same time with House Republicans and in the courts over his use of executive authority.
The president has been hesitant to veer into partisan politics, often to the frustration of members of his own party. In recent weeks, Biden’s cautiousness around the issue of abortion has drawn ire from Democrats who would like him to move faster in responding to the Supreme Court’s ruling last month overturning Roe v. Wade. Still, some Democrats argued that Biden is capable of quickly switching gears.
“Biden has shown through the years that he can be very partisan as needed,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant.
Biden, who has insisted he plans to run for re-election, won’t have to search hard for political motivation. By the time the next Congress takes over in January, the early stages of the 2024 presidential election will be underway. He’ll be facing a slew of attacks from Republican White House hopefuls—a group that might include Trump, who is reportedly considering announcing his plans to run for president again before the end of the year.
The president will have plenty of opportunities to defend his record while presenting voters with a stark choice ahead of the 2024 election, Devine said.
“He can meet Republicans head-on, and present himself as the safeguard of America. That’s the space Biden wants to occupy,” Devine said. “I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom politically if Democrats lose [badly in November]. It all depends on how Biden handles it.”
