Biden’s agenda remains unrealized as Democrats
fail to close deal again
Pelosi forced to postpone infrastructure vote on
Thursday ahead of Biden’s meeting with world leaders in Rome
Lauren
Gambino in Washington
@laurenegambino
Fri 29 Oct
2021 13.53 EDT
Joe Biden’s
nearly $3tn domestic agenda remains unrealized after an 11th-hour push to rally
Democrats around a pared-down package that he framed as historic, failed to
close the deal in time for his meeting with world leaders in Rome at the G20
summit.
But after a
dramatic Thursday of bold promises and dashed hopes, the House speaker, Nancy
Pelosi, was forced to postpone a vote on a $1tn infrastructure bill for a
second time in a month, as progressives demanded more assurances that a
compromise $1.75tn social policy plan would also pass.
It was a
setback – though perhaps only a temporary one – for Democratic leaders, who had
hoped to hand the president a legislative victory that he could tout during his
six-day trip to Europe for a pair of international economic and climate
summits.
The delay
underscored the depth of mistrust among Democrats – between the House and
Senate, progressives and centrists, leadership and members – after a lengthy
negotiating process yielded a plan that was about half the size of Biden’s
initial vision.
Biden’s
proposal includes substantial investments in childcare, education and health
care as well as major initiatives to address climate change that, if enacted,
would be the largest action ever taken by the US Congress. Revenue would come
from tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy.
But in
concessions to centrists like the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin and Arizona
senator Kyrsten Sinema, paid family leave, free college tuition and efforts to
lower prescription drug prices were stripped from the latest iteration of the
plan. Progressives were left disappointed by the cuts but their desire to pass
the legislation ultimately held little leverage to force major changes.
In a speech
before departing for Europe, Biden acknowledged the bill fell short of his
legislative ambitions, but reflected the limits of what was politically
possible given Democrats’ narrow governing majorities and unified Republican
opposition.
“No one got everything they wanted, including me,” he
said. “But that’s what compromise is.”
As
lawmakers and activists digested the newly released details of the plan, there
seems to be a growing consensus among progressives that, while insufficient,
the plan makes critical investments in many of their top priorities, especially
in the field of tackling the climate crisis.
“The newly
announced Build Back Better Act can be a turning point in America’s fight
against the climate crisis – but only if we pass it,” leaders of the climate
advocacy group Evergreen Action wrote in a memo on Friday.
Julian
Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University, said unified control of the White
House and Congress can, perhaps paradoxically, make governing harder. Because
these moments are rare and often fleeting, there is a rush by the president and
his party to pursue an ambitious, legacy-defining agenda, he said.
“But the
challenges of legislating don’t go away,” Zelizer said. “And in some ways, the
tensions within the party are exacerbated by the stakes being so high.”
Some have
argued that scaling back key programs could make it harder for Americans to
feel the impact of the new benefits, despite the substantial size of the
legislation. That could make it difficult for Biden, whose approval ratings
have slid in recent weeks, to sell the plan he told House Democrats would
determine the fate of his presidency and their political futures.
Senate’s 50-50 split lets Manchin and Sinema
revel in outsize influence
Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have almost
single-handedly narrowed the scale and scope of Biden’s grand vision.
David Smith
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Fri 29 Oct
2021 14.46 EDT
Joe Biden
recently summed up his problems getting things done.
In an
America where the US Senate is split 50-50, then effectively any single senator
can hold a veto over the president’s entire agenda. “Look,” laughed Biden at a
CNN town hall, “you have 50 Democrats, every one is a president. Every single
one. So, you got to work things out.”
It explains
why the most powerful man in the world is currently struggling to get his way
in Washington – and why two members of his own party, Senators Joe Manchin and
Kyrsten Sinema, are standing in his way.
Such is the
distribution of power that American presidents can only impose their will up to
a point if Congress refuses to yield. While the White House can do much with
executive orders and actions, major legislation must gain a majority of votes
in the House of Representatives and Senate.
Democrats
do currently control both chambers – but only just. The Senate is evenly
divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, meaning that Vice-President
Kamala Harris must cast the tie-breaking vote. That means all 50 Democratic
senators must be on board in the face of united Republican opposition – an
increasingly safe (and bleak) assumption in polarised era.
By
contrast, President Franklin Roosevelt’s Democrats reached 59 seats in the then
96-member Senate, while President Lyndon Johnson’s Democrats had 68 in what by
then was a 100-seat chamber. Biden is trying to match the scale of both men’s
ambition with no room for error.
This is why
his agenda – huge investments in infrastructure and expanding the social safety
net – depends on the blessing of Manchin and Sinema in what might seem to the
watching world as a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Bernie
Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont defeated by Biden in last year’s
Democratic primary, tweeted earlier this month: “2 senators cannot be allowed
to defeat what 48 senators and 210 House members want.”
But the
cold reality is that, after months of painful wrangling and concessions,
Manchin and Sinema have almost single-handedly narrowed the scale and scope of
Biden’s grand vision.
This week
it emerged that Build Back Better plan would be halved from $3.5tn to $1.75tn,
axing plans for paid family leave, lower prescription drug pricing and free
community college. Sanders’s dream of including dental and vision care also
failed to make the cut.
Biden
insists that the framework still represents the biggest ever investment in
climate change and the greatest improvement to the nation’s healthcare system
in more than a decade.
He said at
the White House on Friday: “No one got everything they wanted, including me,
but that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on. I’ve
long said compromise and consensus are the only way to get big things done in a
democracy, important things for the country.”
But what
makes it especially galling for many is that opinion polls show the eliminated
measures are highly popular. Manchin and Sinema have ensured that the US is
destined to remain one of seven countries – along with the Marshall Islands,
Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga – without paid leave for
new mothers, according to UCLA’s World Policy Analysis Center.
Biden met
late on Tuesday evening with both senators at the White House. Countless
newspaper columns and hours of airtime have been expended trying to understand
the motives of the two holdouts, who can effectively decide whether Democrats
keep their campaign promises – with huge implications for next year’s midterm
elections.
Manchin is
not so mysterious. He hails from coal-rich West Virginia, a conservative state
that Donald Trump won twice in a landslide, and once ran a campaign ad in which
he shot a rifle at a legislative bill. He owns about $1m in shares in his son’s
coal brokerage company and has raised campaign funds from oil and gas
interests.
Critics
accuse him of putting personal and local concerns ahead of his party, the
nation and the world. The USA Today newspaper wrote in an editorial: “It’s no
stretch to conclude that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is risking the planet’s
future to protect a dwindling pool of 14,000 coal mining jobs in his home state
of West Virginia.”
Sinema,
however, has been described as enigmatic, sphinx-like and whimsical. In 2018
she became Arizona’s first Democratic senator for more than two decades and,
despite progressive credentials and a flair for fashion statements, has taken
conservative positions on several issues.
She also
provokes the left with stunts such as a thumbs-down gesture on the Senate floor
when she voted against raising the federal minimum wage and, on Thursday, a
parody of the TV comedy Ted Lasso with the Republican senator Mitt Romney.
Perhaps tellingly, Sinema raised $1.1m in campaign funds in the last quarter
with significant donations from the pharmaceutical and financial industries.
In a
divided Senate, where Republicans are consumed by Trump’s election lies, this
duo holds the fate of Biden’s presidency in their hands. The haggling could go
on for weeks more, granting Manchin and Sinema continued outsized influence and
guaranteeing that their every move and word will be avidly scrutinised.
Joe
Lockhart, a former White House press secretary, tweeted: “My dream? Democrats
pick up a few more Senate seats in 2022 and when Joe Manchin holds a press
conference to declare what he can live with and what he can’t, nobody shows
up.”
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