Congress rocked by consequential battles that will shape Biden’s presidency

After four years of politics by tweeted decree, normal service is resuming inside the Beltway in all its brutal, hypocritical, and high-stakes glory as everyone with power tries to wield it to set the tone for the coming years. The White House is standing firm behind Neera Tanden, its pick for budget director, though her nomination seems doomed. Aides to Joe Biden know this first big fight will help set the terms of the new President’s relationship with Congress. Other bitter confirmation hearings are turning into early de-facto fights on the great issues of the Biden era, like climate change and expanding access to health care.

Republicans are meanwhile beginning to mobilize against Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid rescue package in the hope of billing it as an example of massive liberal overreach and winning a political payoff. Yet they are making a significant gamble. If Biden pulls the country out of the pandemic with the help of the bill — that is currently popular — the GOP will look mean and irresponsible.

Party splits

The Republican Party is even more divided than Democrats. While some senators like Mitt Romney are working through principled objections to Biden’s policies and nominees, Trump loyalists like Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Ron Johnson are performing for their watching leader in exile and, perhaps more critically, his base of supporters. They are forcing their party into what may turn into a four-year fight over Trump’s lies about an election he lost.

The president of the Center for American Progress has fallen foul of Republicans upset by her outspoken tweets and some progressives like Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders with whom she sparred as a senior aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. After West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat walking a tightrope over his deeply conservative state, said he couldn’t back Tanden, her prospects of confirmation appeared bleak. But the White House is not yet willing to fold and is searching for a Republican to get Tanden over the line.

“We feel good about…