Mitch McConnell reaches new milestone as longest-serving US Senate leader

WASHINGTON - Mr Mitch McConnell broke Democrat Mike Mansfield’s record as the longest-serving Senate party leader on Tuesday when he began his 17th year as Republican leader – a mark of stability in a Capitol riven by chaos in the House.

Mr McConnell, 80, is now poised to serve as he did a dozen years ago: as a key negotiator and deal-maker with a Democratic president, a newly empowered but divided House Republican majority, and a Democratic Senate.

In 2011, Mr McConnell helped cut the crucial deal that put a straitjacket on government spending and raised the debt limit. A similar deadline is looming in 2023.

Mr Mansfield served as Senate majority leader for a momentous and turbulent 16 years from 1961 to 1977, shepherding the passage of sweeping legislation from civil rights to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.

The late Montana senator will still hold the record for most years as majority leader, but Mr McConnell will top him as leader of his party.

Mr McConnell lauded Mr Mansfield at length on Tuesday, praising his penchant for “discussion over dictatorship, and a winning record on his party’s key priorities, without attacking the institution to do it”.

The Kentuckian easily swatted away a challenge to his leadership late last year, trading blame with Mr Donald Trump for disappointing midterm elections that saw Democrats add a seat to their narrow Senate majority.

Their relationship turned frosty two years ago, when Mr McConnell refused to go along with Mr Trump’s scheme to overturn his election defeat, and after Mr McConnell

blamed Mr Trump for the Jan 6, 2021, insurrection.

Mr McConnell had voted to acquit Mr Trump in his impeachment trial, citing his status as a former president – a circumstance he himself had created by refusing to bring the Senate back to hold the trial while Mr Trump was still in office.

But in the Capitol, it is Mr McConnell, not Mr Trump, who has long held the keys to passing legislation. Thanks to the Senate’s filibuster rule and his hold over his conference, few Bills have become law without at least the acquiescence of Mr McConnell in the past dozen years or so.

In late 2022, Mr McConnell engineered a

US$1.7 trillion (S$2.3 trillion) omnibus spending package

built to his specifications, with his top priorities included – record defence spending and a fresh injection of aid to Ukraine – and without some Democratic priorities and spending he considered to be poison pills and excessive.

It was one of many deals Mr McConnell reached with Democrats and President Joe Biden’s administration in the last two years, sometimes angering members of his party’s right wing.

But Mr McConnell’s strategy preserved his top priority: maintaining the Senate’s filibuster rule with its 60-vote threshold on most legislation – what he calls “the essence of the Senate” – by successfully wooing moderates Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Ultimately, that duo killed the bulk of Mr Biden’s sweeping “Build Back Better” social agenda, and by

preserving the filibuster

they wiped out a slew of other Democratic priorities, including a proposed overhaul of voting and election laws.

In a highly unusual move, Mr Biden and Mr McConnell were set to appear together on Wednesday in Kentucky to tout the bipartisan infrastructure deal that both backed in 2021, with Mr Biden touting bipartisanship with divided government returning to Washington.

That package is set to provide key funding for a long-sought new bridge between Mr McConnell’s home state and Ohio.

The two men served together for decades in the Senate and cut several budget deals together when Mr Biden served as vice-president.

“We’ve been friends a long time... Everybody is talking about how significant it is; it has nothing to do about our relationship,” Mr Biden told reporters on Monday. “It’s a lot of money. It’s important.”

Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader who became the longest-serving senator from New York, congratulated Mr McConnell on the milestone. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, so I hope we can find some ways to come together and not succumb to gridlock,” he said.

Mr McConnell, who called his autobiography The Long Game, still counts the conservative courts as his signature achievement.

His moves as majority leader from 2015 to 2021 solidified a conservative Supreme Court for perhaps a generation, and has already led to the toppling of a number of precedents, including Roe v Wade.

Mr McConnell also shepherded his party’s tax overhaul in 2017, including an end to the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, though his efforts to pass a more sweeping repeal of President Barack Obama’s healthcare law failed in spectacular fashion with then Senator John McCain’s thumbs down earlier that year.

While there are several other Senate Republicans who could vie to succeed Mr McConnell when he steps down, he has given no indication he will do so soon. Mr McConnell would next face voters in 2026 if he chooses to run for an eighth term. BLOOMBERG