Lindsey Graham backs Sessions for Budget Chairman

Two senior Senate Republicans are preparing for a rare intraparty showdown over who will lead the Budget Committee, testing how big a platform the party will give one of the loudest conservative voices in the new GOP-controlled Congress.

That’s how POLITICO describes the current battle between Sens. Jeff Sessions and Mike Enzi over who will head the Budget Committee once Republicans take control in January. And when they say “one of the loudest conservative voices,” they mean Sessions, who most recently has led the charge against President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, sometimes even positioning himself at odds with GOP leadership.

But on Thursday, Sen. Sessions got a boost from exactly the kind of establishment-type Republican who many people assume are behind attempts to keep him from becoming chairman.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says he plans to back Sessions when the Budget Committee members convene in January to vote for their chairman by secret ballot. Graham is probably best known among Alabamians as a close ally of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on foreign policy issues, but his support of Sessions is particularly notable because they have been on opposite sides of the immigration debate for years.

“I told Jeff I would be with Jeff,” Graham told POLITICO.

But Graham’s support also comes with the admission that he committed to Sessions without realizing that Enzi is actually considered more senior than Sessions on the Budget Committee.

We’ve written about this in detail and at great length, but here’s the situation, in a nutshell:

Seniority determines almost everything in the Senate. Sessions and Enzi were elected in the same year, but by a random drawing Enzi is considered more senior on the Budget Committee. However, Enzi decided to forego his senior position on Budget while Republicans were in the minority in favor of taking the top GOP post on the Health Committee. As a result, Sessions has been the top Republican on the Budget Committee for the last several years. And until Enzi suddenly decided he wanted to reassert his seniority next year, it was widely assumed that Sessions would be the Budget Chairman moving forward.

“I didn’t know there was a seniority problem,” Graham said, explaining why he’d committed to Sessions. “I think that will matter to a lot of people. But I didn’t even know that Enzi was senior. I feel bad in the sense that I [committed] before I knew what I was getting into.”

From Sessions’ perspective, it is, of course, a positive development that Graham will vote for him to become chairman. On the other hand, Graham’s admission that Enzi’s luck-of-the-draw seniority will likely matter a great deal to other senators is concerning.

Here’s some more insight from POLITICO:

The rest of the panel is tight-lipped. POLITICO asked all eight current Republicans on the panel, aside from Enzi and Sessions, whom they would support, and all, except for Graham, declined to answer. (Republicans are also likely to pick up one or two more seats on the committee next year, and those new members will also have a vote.)

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However, several GOP sources warned that many members of the Senate are cool to superseding seniority in any fashion. One Republican senator pointed out that Sessions beating the more senior Enzi for the post could create a chain reaction across the Senate’s committees.