Anything that breaks the partisan gridlock would likely be welcome news to a president. W.H. ponders life with GOP Senate

Nervous that Democrats could lose control of the Senate, the White House is already discussing how to cut deals with a Republican majority.

As bad as the electoral map for Democrats is this year, the map for Republicans in 2016 is even worse. GOP incumbents are up in seven states President Barack Obama won twice and two he won once, including Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Rob Portman in Ohio, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Mark Kirk in Illinois and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania.


Those senators, goes one thought circulating in the West Wing, would be under pressure to move toward the middle and be the bridge to larger deals with a caucus eager to show it can get things done.

Aides are discussing potential areas for agreement: tax reform, infrastructure, sentencing reform, renewing unemployment insurance, raising the minimum wage and expanding early childhood education.

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Anything that breaks the partisan gridlock would likely be welcome news to a president who sees a lot of unfinished business as he stares down the last two years of his administration and not much to show for his “pen and phone” strategy to govern via executive action.

Others in the White House dismiss all this as, at best, an absurdly best-case scenario. If Republicans are in the majority, nothing will come to the floor without the approval of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and anything would need 60 votes — not to mention the green light from what’s likely to be a larger GOP majority in the House.

It’s enough of a stretch to imagine McConnell signing off on handing Obama a victory, they say, but Republicans would also need to be worried about setting off primaries from the right for themselves. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, for instance, worked with Democrats to pass an immigration bill out of the Senate last year and was eviscerated by conservatives, without even a final law to show for it. And former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) surprise primary loss was blamed on talk he would deal with the White House on immigration. But expect Obama to talk about immigration no matter what, even if there isn’t a deal to be reached.

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So far, there hasn’t been much in the way of big White House strategy sessions about what to do in a Republican Senate. But the conversations have begun, though Obama staffers — superstitious as always, and with enough in poll numbers they see to keep them from giving up hope — would not openly delve into what’s being discussed.

Many Hill insiders laugh at all of this.

Republicans in control in the Senate, they say, would mean two years of obstruction, subpoenas and brutal confirmation fights. Instead of 2016 creating pressure to get things done , it will set up yet another cycle of running the clock with the majority up for grabs again in two years.

Asked last week if the White House had considered what life would be like with a Republican Senate, press secretary Josh Earnest said only, “Not really.”

Regarding potential areas for deals, Earnest’s deputy Eric Schultz declined to speculate. “The president is committed to helping Democrats maintain control of the Senate in November, and we are confident they will do so,” Schultz said.

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Republicans, for their part, are projecting the idea that being in the majority would be the way through the gridlock, which they blame on Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blocking anything before they can even start real negotiations.

They claim to be ready to go on trade, infrastructure spending, even sentencing reform. Minimum wage, not so much. Tax reform could happen, but only if Obama drops his push to get $1 trillion in new revenue (Obama says it’s a short-term fix that will disappear in the long term, but Republicans aren’t buying it).

“In a Republican Senate, the difference would be the president would actually have to make the decision whether to sign or veto bills that would be presented to him — because more would actually be sent his way,” said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart.

McConnell’s said that if he’s in charge, he’d be open to things like having amendments on bills from the minority, and Republicans say that more likely than losing some of their own moderates to Democrats on votes, they’ll be the ones picking off people to join them.

“In a situation where there was actually an opportunity for debates and amendments, you’d have bills getting passed and Democrats joining Republicans on legislation that you don’t have now,” Stewart said.

Trade is an obvious area on which the White House and Hill Republicans could get together. But with the Democratic base and many unions opposed, Reid was the one who squelched any of the plans immediately after Obama announced in his last State of the Union that he wanted to work with the GOP to get agreements ratified.

The Obama White House has a history of insisting Republicans are going to work with it as soon as the elections are done. In 2008, White House officials thought they had a mandate after sweeping into office. After the “shellacking,” as Obama put it, in 2010, the idea was that Republicans were now going to have to govern and not just say no. In 2012, they said the fever would break once defeating Obama was off the table, and immigration reform, which was supposed to be a cinch, never happened.

As for other Obama priorities, such as actually closing Guantánamo Bay before leaving office, one of the first promises he made as president, he currently lacks support from his own party. He cannot simply empty the facility without congressional approval to send the prisoners away.

In order to actually get something done with Congress, the Obama White House would also need to dramatically improve its outreach to lawmakers, something members from both sides of the aisle have complained about for the past six years.

Portman, for example, has already been part of several conversations, including a one-on-one with Obama where tax reform was a major topic. Nothing’s come of any of them so far. Last month at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, Portman predicted that a Republican majority would change that, even forcing Obama to make a deal on the Keystone XL pipeline.

“When we have divided government, that’s when we’ve done tax reform, that’s when we’ve done entitlement reform, that’s when we’ve helped to move the economy forward when we take on these big issues,” Portman said.

Not that Democrats, either in Washington or in the states, will be eager for Obama to work with Republicans on that or anything else. There will be enormous 2016 political pressure not to let the GOP overall or any individual senator look anything other than obstructionist and out of step.

And Democrats say they’ll try to make sure any goodwill Republicans might get from making deals gets drowned out anyway.

In Pennsylvania, for example, Toomey, elected in 2010 as part of the GOP wave, will be running for reelection in a state Obama carried by 5½ percentage points in 2012. Meanwhile, Toomey’s fellow Pennsylvanian in the Senate, Democrat Bob Casey, won reelection in 2012 by nearly 10 points.

Jim Burn, the Pennsylvania Democratic chairman, said he’d like to see the White House get more legislation through but won’t let Toomey get any of the credit even if he’s involved.

“Sen. Toomey on too many occasions in Washington has said and done things which are truly reflective of his tea party roots,” Burn said. “It will be difficult for him to attempt to fool folks into thinking he’s willing to work in a bipartisan fashion.”