“The
president must now evaluate whether the new Republican offer is a good faith
opening bid in an effort to find common ground, or a bluff calling exercise
that would cause lasting damage to a new President’s authority and political
capital if he were to accept it.
And
while Biden is keen prove his capacity to make divided Washington work, he
knows he risks fracturing support from Capitol Hill Democrats if he
significantly downsizes his own plan to win Republican support in the Senate.
“As
leading economists have said, the danger now is not in doing too much: it is in
doing too little. Americans of both parties are looking to their leaders to
meet the moment,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on
Sunday evening.
Prospects
for cross party talks in the Senate are hardly rosy, as the chamber gears up
for Trump’s impeachment trial next week in which it is already clear sufficient
Republicans to avoid a two-thirds majority intend to acquit him over the most
outrageous attack on the US government by a president in history.
Biden
meanwhile will seek to keep up the momentum of his first few weeks in office
with a major foreign policy address (rescheduled from Monday until later in the
week owing to a snowstorm) and with new initiatives to tackle the jobs crisis.”
Biden faces presidency-defining dilemma over
Republican offer on Covid-19 rescue plan
Analysis by
Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated
0611 GMT (1411 HKT) February 1, 2021
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/01/politics/joe-biden-coronavirus-congress-republicans-trump/index.html
(CNN)President
Joe Biden will on Monday meet with 10 Republican senators who have drawn up a
smaller counter-proposal to his $1.9 trillion Covid-19 rescue plan in the most
critical test yet of his core promise to forge unity over bitter partisan
lines.
But hopes
for a rare bipartisan deal at the start of a new administration still look
doubtful because the offer pushed by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and
her colleagues has a potentially fatal catch. It is less than a third of the
size of the economic shock treatment the White House says the nation needs.
Biden's
original legislation proposes direct payments to most Americans and extends
unemployment benefits until September as it seeks to plug a huge hole in the
economy caused by the pandemic. It also raises the federal minimum wage to $15
an hour, fulfilling a major campaign promise. The plan provides hundreds of
billions of dollars to expand Covid-19 testing, to improve the rollout of
vaccines and to get kids back in school.
The
President must now evaluate whether the new Republican offer is a good faith
opening bid in an effort to find common ground, or a bluff calling exercise
that would cause lasting damage to a new President's authority and political
capital if he were to accept it.
And while
Biden is keen prove his capacity to make divided Washington work, he knows he
risks fracturing support from Capitol Hill Democrats if he significantly
downsizes his own plan to win Republican support in the Senate.
While
welcoming the willingness of the 10 Republicans to engage with the President,
the White House is also subtly underscoring that a plan that is well short of
Biden's ambitions will not be acceptable.
"As
leading economists have said, the danger now is not in doing too much: it is in
doing too little. Americans of both parties are looking to their leaders to
meet the moment," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement
on Sunday evening.
The
senators said in a joint statement Sunday that they appreciated Biden's quick
response to their proposal and had accepted an invitation to meet the President
at the White House on Monday afternoon.
The
intrigue over the Covid relief negotiations adds another high-stakes
confrontation to an already tense and combative moment on Capitol Hill as the
political forces that will shape the first two years of the Biden presidency
emerge. Fierce mistrust between Democrats and Republicans in the House — over
personal safety in the wake of the January 6 insurrection incited by former
President Donald Trump -- means any hope of bipartisan negotiation on Covid
relief is all but unthinkable. Trump's move to assert control over the House caucus,
with his meeting last week with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his
call over the weekend with QAnon supporter and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor
Greene is sure to inject new poison into the political atmosphere.
And
prospects for cross party talks in the Senate are hardly rosy, as the chamber
gears up for Trump's impeachment trial next week in which it is already clear
sufficient Republicans to avoid a two-thirds majority intend to acquit him over
the most outrageous attack on the US government by a President in history.
Biden
meanwhile will seek to keep up the momentum of his first few weeks in office
with a major foreign policy address (rescheduled from Monday until later in the
week owing to a snowstorm) and with new initiatives to tackle the jobs crisis.
Democrats
ready to move despite GOP offer
Democratic
leaders in Congress are this week already set to go down a route that would
trigger a controversial budget procedure known as reconciliation to pass the
$1.9 trillion rescue bill with no GOP votes — a move Biden critics would be
sure to seize upon to argue that his offers of unity and negotiations are
hollow. Reconciliation is a measure that allows the swift passage of laws
related to the budget, spending and debt. It is controversial because it would
allow Democrats to pass the package with a simple majority and get around
Republican blocking tactics rooted in the 60-vote supermajority needed to get
most legislation through the chamber.
The new
President's dilemma is exactly the kind of scenario that he said on the
campaign trail that he would be able to navigate with his decades of Senate
experience. The extreme political circumstances in which his first significant
dealmaking will take place explain why many key Washington players, on either
side of the aisle have long been skeptical of his bipartisan aspirations.
With
Democrats pushing to use their slender majorities in the House and Senate to
act fast, Biden must also consider how to turn down any GOP bid he deems
insufficient to avoid crushing any future cross party coalitions.
The
Republican plan includes commitments from 10 senators — a sufficient number for
the Senate to pass it under normal rules and for Biden to tout a rare victory
that would unite a Democratic President and a significant group of GOP members.
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska on whom Biden
hopes to coax into future bipartisan efforts are among senators who have signed
up to the counteroffer.
Any hope
for an agreement however probably rests on whether the Republican plan is an
opening bid in a negotiation that could see its prize raise significantly or is
a symbolic gesture that was never designed to succeed.
If that is
the case, the Republican plan will come to look little more than an effort to
ease pressure on the party to produce its own version of a credible rescue plan
and a trap to split the new President from his party.
Speaking on
CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Brian Deese, the director of
Biden's National Economic Council, said that the President's plan was a direct
fit for the scale of the challenge facing the economy.
"We're
in a unique crisis. And the elements of this plan really were designed and are
designed to take on that crisis head on," Deese said, referring to the
worst economic year since the aftermath of World War II, a million new first
time unemployment claims, and 30 million Americans with too little food to eat.
On top of
that dire reality, Deese also warned that the rescue plan needed to be
sufficiently large to speed up the administration of vaccines to end the
pandemic and to help millions of kids get back to school.
"We're
certainly open to input from anywhere where we can find a constructive idea to
make this package as effective as possible. But the President is uncompromising
when it comes to the speed that we need to act at to address this crisis,"
Deese said.
Later on
Sunday, after Biden met his advisers to discuss the relief package, a senior
administration official said Biden was open to some negotiation but that the
$600 billion Republican plan is "not going to scratch the itch."
Offering a
carrot to the GOP group, the official told CNN's Pamela Brown that the
President is specifically willing to discuss waiving stimulus checks for
families making more than $150,000 per year.
One
complication is that the smaller GOP plan would likely force the White House to
return to Capitol Hill for new extensions in unemployment benefits in a matter
of months — at a time when an already treacherous political climate will likely
have worsened and will make agreement even more difficult to forge.
Initial
indications were that Capitol Hill Democrats have little appetite for the GOP
counterproposal at a time when many are warning that swift action is mandatory
to stop the economy sliding into an even deeper hole.
Democratic
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the New York Daily News that the
Republican offer was insufficient.
"They
should negotiate with us, not make a take-it-or-leave-it offer," he said.
And Vermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders said on ABC News "This Week" that he believed
Democrats had sufficient votes to pass the bill by using reconciliation.
Signs that
bipartisanship will prove impossible
The gap
between two conflicting visions of the size of the crisis and the measures that
might fix it was on display when CNN's Dana Bash interviewed Ohio Sen. Rob
Portman — who is among the 10 Republican senators who signed on to the smaller,
alternative plan — on "State of the Union."
"It is
extraordinary to me that you have a great speech ... at the inaugural, talking
about the need to heal and the need for us to work together as a country,
Republican and Democrat alike, and a pledge to do more outreach to Republicans,
and then the next day landing on our desks a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 package,
when, only a month ago, we passed a $900 billion Covid-19 package that was
entirely bipartisan," Portman said.
Portman
also criticized the potential use of reconciliation — even though Republicans
used it in the last administration to push through Trump's massive tax cut bill
and in an effort to invalidate the Affordable Care Act -- saying the move could
tear the country apart.
Many
Democrats however are likely to calculate that most Americans are hardly going
to be alienated by an obscure parliamentary procedure. For them, passing the
bill in its entirety without Republican support is not just vital to shore up a
deeply destabilized economy but is a crucial moment that must be used to
display Democratic power in Washington at the opening of the new presidency.
And there will be concerns of a repeat of the scenario that played out during
efforts to pass the ACA during the Obama administration. The former President
spent time trying to accommodate some GOP goals -- a process that delayed the
bill for months, but then the Republican Party rejected it anyway.
And unless
Biden can persuade Republicans to significantly increase their offer, his own
need to demonstrate his authority and to get to grips with a crisis that will
define his presidency is likely to weigh against his hopes to win GOP votes he
doesn't strictly need.
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