https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/its-crunch-time-for-joe-biden-and-the-democratic-party
Our Columnists
It’s Crunch Time for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party
This week, the President and congressional leaders must hold the Party together if they hope to enact a landmark economic agenda.
By John Cassidy
August 2, 2021
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A budget resolution that Senate Democrats agreed on last month includes $3.5 trillion in new spending, with roughly five hundred and sixty billion dollars for clean-energy investments, according to an analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It would also provide funding for a wide range of other Democratic priorities, including universal day care; a permanent expansion of the child tax credit; paid family and medical leave for all workers; an expansion of Medicare to cover vision, dental, and hearing benefits; and free community college.
On Sunday, Chuck Schumer, the Majority Leader in the Senate, indicated that he has the votes to pass a budget resolution before the Senate enters its summer recess this weekend. Such a vote would enable the process of writing an actual spending bill to begin, but Kyrsten Sinema, the centrist Democratic senator from Arizona, said bluntly last week: “I do not support a bill that costs $3.5 trillion.” Sinema’s colleague from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, has also expressed reservations about parts of the Democratic spending plan, although he currently appears to be on a charm offensive. “It’s all about compromise,” he told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I respect my colleagues who believe something a lot different than I do. And I’m willing to listen and learn.”
The long and the short of all this is that Biden and other Democratic leaders are facing a dual challenge. If they don’t want to rely on Republican votes in the House to pass the infrastructure bill, they will have to somehow pair it with the big reconciliation package. At the same time, maintaining Party unity to pass the reconciliation package must be their overriding priority. As I wrote at the end of June, this will involve persuading Sinema; Manchin; Bernie Sanders, the head of the Senate Budget Committee; and A.O.C.—a group with vastly different political priorities—to come together. Equally important will be maintaining the support of some of the less vocal centrist Democrats who are facing tough reëlection challenges next year, such as Mark Kelly, Sinema’s colleague in Arizona, and Maggie Hassan, of New Hampshire. (Kelly and Hassan are both members of the bipartisan group of senators who negotiated the infrastructure proposal.)
For Biden, but also for the country, the stakes are very high. Enactment of the President’s economic agenda would address climate change, fill in some big gaps in the social safety net, and strengthen America’s physical and human capital. At roughly two per cent of G.D.P. per year, the sums involved are substantial but eminently affordable. Assuming that they were largely financed by raising levies on corporations and the very wealthy, that would amount to a much-needed rebalancing of the tax system.
As crunch time approaches, many progressives are looking to Biden and the White House to present this case more forcefully. “There is a set of full-throated political arguments that can be made right now, about taking credit for what has already been done and investing in future transformation,” Wong said when I spoke with her again, on Monday. “Now is the time to double down with long-term changes.”
