No vice president has broken more Senate ties as early as Kamala Harris has

[DonViejo]

By Philip Bump
April 22, 2021 at 5:28 p.m. EDT

During the eight years that Joe Biden served as vice president to Barack Obama, he never cast a tiebreaking vote in the Senate. For eight years, Biden was just at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, should the Senate have needed his services. It never did.

This was a function of the composition of Congress, of course. Obama won in 2008 and came to Washington with a healthy Democratic majority in the Senate and his party controlling the House. There never was a point at which enough Democrats balked at a bill to require Biden to cast a vote. Then, in 2010, Democrats lost control of the House. Sure, there could have been something in the Senate that came down to a 50-50 split, but it didn’t happen.

Contrast that with Biden’s successors. Mike Pence was elected vice president in 2016 and, within the first 70 days, cast three such votes. His party had a four-vote advantage, meaning that losing two votes would require Pence to weigh in. So he did. Only Chester A. Arthur had broken more ties at that point in his term.

Then along came Kamala D. Harris. On Wednesday, as Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux pointed out, she cast her fourth tiebreaking vote as vice president. It’s a faster pace than any prior vice president.




more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/22/no-vice-president-has-broken-more-senate-ties-soon-kamala-harris

[mucifer]

1. only because all the repub senators are efwads.