When President Joe Biden entered the Oval Office last year, he expressed a commitment to work across the aisle with Republicans to craft legislation — something he has carried out throughout his 36-year career in the Senate. From last year’s bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure package to the recent $52 billion chip funding bill, the administration has had some major successes in garnering support from Democrats and Republicans and breaking some of the bipartisan logjam that has become a very common form has blocked legislation in recent years. But the consensus wave doesn’t sit well with Rep. Jim Jordan, the conservative Ohio Republican and longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, who could play a major role in Congress next year if Republicans regain control of the House. Jordan recently told Politico that Senate Republicans joining their Democratic counterparts in supporting legislation backed by Biden is “a mistake.” “I wish they wouldn’t,” the lawmaker said of his GOP counterparts in the upper chamber. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — known for applying tight partisan maneuvering from Supreme Court nominations to GOP-led tax plans — has been surprisingly supportive of some of the legislation endorsed by Biden, the leader of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California led the caucus on most of the administration’s agenda items. Jordan praised McCarthy for taking such a stand, telling Politico that the GOP leader was “on the side of the American people.” The Ohio Republican then argued that voters disliked the bipartisan legislation coming out of Congress. “Look at all the repressed,” he added. McCarthy opposed both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the CHIPS Act of 2022. But some Senate Republicans are reluctant to follow McCarthy’s approach to passing legislation, frustrated that he could reject good bills and allow Democrats to portray the party as intransigent. GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who represents West Virginia along with her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Joe Manchin, expressed such reservations. “I wish [McCarthy] would see a deeper policy on some of these issues that we rallied around, understanding that they might want to make changes,” he told Politico. “Just unilaterally against? I prefer to do things, put it that way.”
