U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy attends a gathering with US President Joe Biden (R) and other Congressional Leaders to debate legislative priorities through the tip of 2022, on the White House on November 29, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden hosted a rare meeting of the 4 House and Senate leaders Tuesday on the White House, where Republicans and Democrats agreed to pass a bill to avert a nationwide rail employees’ strike before the U.S. economy could begin to feel its effects as soon as this weekend.
The meeting with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, each of California, was a last-minute addition to Biden’s public schedule. It also marked the primary time the group referred to as “the Big 4” has met with Biden since Republicans narrowly won control of the House earlier this month, and Democrats held on to the Senate despite strong political headwinds.
The meeting Tuesday was not partisan or contentious at the same time as the facility dynamics in Washington are set to vary, in response to attendees.
“It was a really positive meeting, and it was candid,” Pelosi told reporters on the Capitol after the meeting. “But from a timing standpoint, at once what we’d like to do is avoid the strike.”
McConnell struck an identical note: “We had a extremely good meeting, and laid out the challenges that we’re all collectively facing here.”
A rail strike could formally begin on Dec. 9 if no agreement is reached between unions and rail firms. But the results of it may very well be felt before then. Freight rail firms are required to alert customers a couple of potential strike every week ahead of time, to present them time to make contingency plans.
Congress can intervene using its power through the Structure’s Commerce Clause to pass laws ending a strike or a lockout, and to set terms of the agreements between the unions and the carriers. On this case, Congress appears poised to enact a tentative labor agreement that was approved in September by some — but not all — of the sector’s major labor unions.
Pelosi said she planned to bring a bill to the House floor Wednesday morning.
“It isn’t all the pieces I would really like to see. I believe that we should always have paid sick leave,” she said.
“And I do not like going against the power of unions to strike. But weighing the equities, we must avoid a strike,” Pelosi added.
Each Pelosi and McCarthy said Tuesday that they believed the rail strike bill had the votes it needed to pass the House.
But within the Senate, where it only takes one objecting senator to carry up a bill, the emergency rail strike laws could face latest hurdles.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has already announced he’ll oppose the bill.
 “Simply because Congress has the authority to impose a heavy-handed solution doesn’t mean we should always,” Rubio said in a press release Tuesday.
An unlikely ally for Rubio on other side of the political spectrum could also be Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, who criticized the agreement when it was first reached in September. On Tuesday, he refused to say whether he would support the bill.
“Staff throughout this country who work for the railroads, people who find themselves working at dangerous jobs in inclement weather, have zero paid sick leave. That’s outrageous,” Sanders told reporters within the Capitol on Tuesday.
“I believe it’s incumbent upon Congress to do all the pieces that it may to guard these employees to ensure that the railroad starts treating them with the respect and the dignity that they deserve,” he added.
Either Rubio or Sanders, or every other senator, could resolve to mount a filibuster of the bill, potentially holding it up for days under Senate rules.
McConnell declined to take a position Tuesday on what number of Republicans would back the bill.
“You will have to ask our members,” he told reporters. “I believe some could also be inclined to vote against it, and others are arguing that the economic price of doing that is just too great.”
The House is predicted to pass a version of the bill Wednesday morning. After that, the timeline becomes harder to predict, given the flexibleness afforded senators under the chamber’s debate and filibuster rules.
