GOP cautions that Senate control would have limits

WASHINGTON — How much difference will it make if Republicans win the Senate majority on Nov. 4, joining the GOP-run House against a Democratic White House?

Congress’ persistent gridlock is due largely, but not entirely, to the current power split in the two chambers. But even if Republicans add Senate control to their safe House majority, big legislative roadblocks will remain.

President Barack Obama still can veto legislation.

Should Democrats lose six or more Senate seats, ceding the majority, they can use the power of the filibuster to thwart dozens of GOP initiatives. Republicans have employed this tactic from the minority side.

In the House, House Republicans’ deep philosophical divisions will remain. That will further complicate effort by Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to pass bills without help from Democrats, who generally demand significant concessions.

In short, conservatives who see Republican control of both houses of Congress as the path to repealing the health law, slashing regulations and other priorities probably will be disappointed.

“I think the country will face two more years of gridlock,” said Democrat Ted Strickland of Ohio, a former congressman and governor who now is president of the Washington-based Center for American Progress Action Fund.

At least three Republican senators — Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky — are considering running for president in 2016. If the GOP controls the Senate after Election Day, Strickland said, it’s hard to imagine “there not being a fight breaking out within the Republican family.”

Some Republicans are more optimistic. But even they say that if Republicans are in charge on Capitol Hill, they may have to play down conservatives’ expectations and settle for symbolic victories that highlight their differences with Democrats.

“They have to have an agenda and have to perform,” said GOP Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, who is retiring after 22 years in the House. The party’s conservative base, he said, is tired of fiery rhetoric yielding scant results.

Republican senators, Kingston said, must be able to tell voters that “we did tax reform, we did welfare reform, we did spending reform, or something that shows that there were Republican fingerprints” at government’s highest levels.

Obama probably would veto such measures, Kingston acknowledged.

But making Obama do so will show the difference between the parties, Kingston said, and “that helps build the case why you need a Republican president.” If nothing else, Kingston said, Republicans must force Obama to sign or veto a bill to repeal his 2010 health care overhaul, a GOP priority that Senate Democrats have blocked for years.

Obama certainly would veto that effort, but he would be powerless to stop several other initiatives.

Republicans say a GOP-led Senate would join the House in conducting investigations into political matters such as the killing of Americans in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of conservative groups, and perhaps a failed law enforcement program called Operation Fast and Furious.