Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is looking for a way to avoid a messy public split between President Biden and Senate Democrats over Russia and China policy by looking for a way to neutralize tough amendments on those two hot-button topics.
Pressure is growing on Congress to act as Biden is scheduled to hold a video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to warn against a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Monday acknowledged that U.S.-Russia policy has taken on new importance amidst reports that Russia has 70,000 troops in Ukraine and plans to mass 175,000 troops along its border with Ukraine in preparation for an invasion early next year.
Durbin said there’s more pressure on lawmakers to pass some kind of new sanctions legislation on Russia.
“I’m very concerned with Putin. We know it isn’t just his provocation and disruption. He took Crimea and still occupies it. He threatens the Baltics and he should be taken very seriously,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday called on Biden to take tougher stance with Putin during his call.
“President Biden has an opportunity to set the tone when he speaks with Putin tomorrow,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “The stakes for the president’s call with Putin couldn’t be clearer. We know what happens when the United States fails to engage with Russia from a position of strength. We know what weakness and capitulation get us.”
Republicans are pairing their pressure campaign on Biden with a push for a vote on tougher sanctions legislation in Congress.
Republicans are demanding a vote on an amendment sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James Risch (R-Idaho) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to sanction the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a top Putin priority that would undermine the national security of Ukraine.
But Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken has lobbied against the effort and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) blocked a vote on tougher sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline before Thanksgiving.
The amendment appeared to have a chance of getting a vote last week, but that effort fell apart after Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree on a package of amendments.
Democrats found some political cover on the Nord Steam 2 issue when Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) put together an alternative sanctions amendment that Democrats believe will be more palatable to the Biden administration.
But Republicans say the Menendez amendment is a poor alternative because they argue it hasn’t been fully vetted.
They are still insisting on a floor showdown over Nord Stream 2 to hash out the differences between the two proposals. They also hope to drive a wedge between Democrats and the Biden administration on the proposal.
Schumer on Monday hinted he may sidestep a messy floor fight altogether by bringing a finalized defense bill to the floor later in the week after negotiations with the House and avoid voting on any amendments at all.
He told colleagues that leaders “anticipate we will be able to reach a final conference agreement on the NDAA,” or National Defense Authorization Act, even though the Senate didn’t get to pass its own version of the bill because of last week’s fight over amendments.
While the final version of the bill, which has been hammered out by Democratic members of the Senate and House Armed Services committees, will be subject to amendments when it comes to the floor — because technically it’s a House-passed bill and not a true conference report — Republicans don’t expect there to be any votes.
“I know there’s interest on both sides of the aisle on both subjects,” said Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who said he doesn’t expect Schumer to allow votes on the Russia- and China-related amendments despite bipartisan support for a tougher policy stance on both Russia and China.
Schumer cited procedural problems in the House when he initially blocked consideration of the Risch-Cruz amendment on Nord Stream 2 sanctions and Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) amendment to ban the import of manufactured goods from China’s Xinjiang region.
Republicans, however, said that the arguments from Schumer and Reed that the Risch-Cruz and Rubio amendments would face a procedural “blue slip” objection from the House Ways and Means Committee was a political smokescreen to avoid tough votes.
The Biden administration has also raised concerns about the Rubio amendment, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, because it could interfere with the administration’s strategic plan to negotiate with China.
Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin reported last week that Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman urged the Democratic co-sponsor of Rubio’s forced-labor bill, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) to slow down on pushing the proposal.
Sherman informed Merkley that the administration wanted a more targeted and deliberative approach to deciding what goods are labeled as the products of forced labor, according to Rogin.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act passed the Senate in July by unanimous consent, so it would not be politically feasible to set it up against a side-by-side Democratic amendment on Chinese products that might be easier for the administration to accept.
Senate Democratic and Republican aides say Schumer and McConnell are now mulling adding to the defense bill a proposal to raise the debt limit, though the precise details about how that would be done are being kept secret.
Some Republican aides predict that adding debt-limit language to the bill, and making it even more important to pass, will allow Schumer to argue that the defense bill shouldn’t be further changed in a way that would require it to be sent back to the House and perhaps make it tougher to pass in the lower chamber.
That scenario would make it even more unlikely that Democrats will be forced to vote on either tougher sanctions against Russia or China at a time when the Biden administration is pushing for more flexibility in dealing with those two governments.
“I think they’re getting a lot of pressure from corporate America, I think there are elements in this administration that are worried about destabilizing the relationship with China, that it would be an irritant, that it would hurt their ability to do a China deal with China,” Rubio said of why the administration is opposed to the forced-labor provision.
Rubio noted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says she will vote on separate companion House legislation to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act but that he would reserve judgment on it until he reviews its details.