She is breaking ties and the spirit of her haters. “Every time I vote, we win,” she once joked about her tie-breaking power. Harris, who is on pace to cast the most tie-breaking votes in Senate history, recognizes the importance of her role. Vice President Kamala Harris March 27, 2021 A better night’s sleep,” Harris tweeted about the plan.Ĭhecks in pockets. Harris had to return to the Senate floor in March to pass an additional vote to move forward with the plan, known as the American Rescue Plan. to overcome Republican objection to Democrats’ proposed budget resolution, which would allow them to pass a nearly $2 trillion COVID relief stimulus bill. 5, only a few weeks after being sworn in, Harris returned to the Senate floor at around 5 a.m. The few times that Harris has broken a Senate tie on something other than a nomination have been in service of a major part of the administration’s agenda: COVID-19 relief. Harris also broke a tie to appoint Catherine Lhamon as assistant secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, a position Lhamon previously held during the Obama administration. These include Rachael Rollins, who is now the first Black woman to serve as U.S. Faced with such opposition, Harris has used her vote to push through a number of key appointments. Senate Republicans have purposely blocked many of Biden’s nominations, holding up the administration’s appointments to a degree not before seen in Washington. Most of the votes Harris has cast as vice president have been for officials nominated to various roles within the Biden administration. To give further context, Biden never had to be a tie-breaker during his eight years as vice president.
However, because of the even split between Democrats and Republicans in the current Senate, Harris cast 15 tie-breaking votes in 2021, more than Mike Pence cast during his entire time as vice president. The Senate website states that vice presidents have cast 283 tie-breaking votes since 1789, which averages to a little more than one tie-breaker per year. Constitution, one of the few direct powers of the vice president is to serve as president of the Senate and to break any ties in Senate voting.
In December, Harris announced that a variety of private businesses had pledged more than $1 billion to invest in Central American countries in order to create economic opportunities.Īs outlined by the U.S. The Call to Action initiative has been working with American corporations to improve economic conditions in countries that have been the source of migrants. Harris has been routinely criticized by conservative and liberal media for her handling of the so-called border crisis, despite several experts arguing that the seeming increase in border crossings was in line with past seasonal fluctuations combined with the after-effects of the 2020 border closure due to COVID.Ĭriticisms aside, the vice president launched a “Call to Action” initiative to address the economic hardships driving emigration from Central America to the United States. Though policing the border technically falls under the Department of Homeland Security, Biden tasked Harris with addressing the underlying causes of the migration surge from Central America. One of the early challenges for the Biden-Harris administration was a reported “surge” in migrants from Mexico and Central America attempting unauthorized entry into the U.S.
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