President Joe Biden is arriving back at the White House in the biggest presidency-defining moment of his nine-month-old term, which has so far been tested at home and abroad.
While Biden was overseas, progressive Democrats shifted tacks in their intraparty fight over the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal and Biden’s $1.75 trillion partisan social welfare and climate spending framework, repeating they “trust” Biden to persuade the likes of centrist Sen. Joe Manchin to support the larger package. Now, against the backdrop of the closer-than-expected Virginia gubernatorial race, Biden is under pressure to perform.
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Preparations are underway to hold votes this week on both the Senate-passed infrastructure deal and Biden’s social welfare and climate spending framework. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already directed her committees to start the mark-up process for the latter, despite Manchin not endorsing it. But if the bills keep floundering, it will be another low point for Biden, according to presidential historian and political commentator David Greenberg.
“Clearly Biden’s honeymoon is over and the Democratic internecine squabbling has taken a toll. How much [of] a toll remains to be seen,” he said.
Greenberg defended his prediction that voters will eventually approve of Biden and Democrats’ economic management. On average, two-fifths of the polling respondents currently approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, while 52% disapprove, according to RealClearPolitics. That is slightly lower than his overall job approval of 43% and 51% disapproval.
“With infrastructure and a scaled-down social spending bill, they can blunt the backlash over their unpopular positions on some of the racial questions,” the Rutgers University professor said. “But if they can’t deliver on economics, they are vulnerable across the board.”
But Greenberg was unsure whether Biden could convince Manchin to support the social welfare and climate framework after the West Virginia senator told reporters this week he wished to understand its consequences on “our debt, and our economy, and our country” and for progressive Democrats to pass the infrastructure deal. Manchin’s press conference drew attention away from Biden announcing a methane pledge at the United Nations’s 26th climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
“Biden has seemed unwilling to play the tough guy thus far,” Greenberg said.
Biden expressed a different opinion during his closing remarks in Glasgow. He has been in Europe since last week for the G-20 meeting in Rome before heading to the United Kingdom for the environmental gathering.
“He will vote for this if we have in this proposal what he has anticipated,” Biden said of Manchin. “That is looking at the fine print of the detail of what comes out of the House in terms of the actual legislative initiatives. I believe that Joe will be there.”
Bert Johnson, a political commentator from Middlebury College, quoted former Vermont Republican Sen. George Aiken, who once suggested the United States should declare victory in Vietnam and go home.
“Biden will be happy if he can go home and then declare victory,” Johnson said “If they can’t reach agreement soon, I suspect what will happen is what usually happens in such circumstances: The bill’s advocates will claim they’ll keep working on it and then change the subject. But Democrats would sure rather have something rather than nothing, sooner rather than later.”
Progressive Democrats have been surprisingly relaxed about Manchin’s comments considering Biden’s framework is already drastically whittled down from their original $6 trillion plan. Several lawmakers have since even recommitted to passing the infrastructure deal without firmer statements from Manchin regarding the larger measure.
“The president says he can get 51 votes for the bill — we are going to trust him,” Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said. “I trust the president.”
But for Johnson, Jayapal’s message is “tantamount” to saying, “OK, Mr. President, give us Manchin’s vote.”
“Liberals want to push as far as possible for the broadest version of their agenda — but no farther, since they lose out as well if nothing gets done,” he said.
Biden’s second foreign trip notched a handful of accomplishments, though trust was at issue as well.
Biden’s first international jaunt in June was pitched as a U.S. return to the world stage. His most recent was more understated, including a pull-aside with French President Emmanuel Macron scheduled to patch up the relationship roiled by the botched rollout of the new United Kingdom-Australia national security alliance.
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Many leaders continue to query whether they can trust the U.S. after Biden’s deadly withdrawal of troops to Afghanistan, undermining his foreign policy credentials, and his weak domestic polling, which some are concerned may precipitate another former President Donald Trump administration.
But Biden did clinch an agreement from leaders of the world’s top 20 economies to introduce minimum corporate taxes of 15%, preventing those countries from being tax havens. He also removed Trump’s 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs on the European Union as part of a broader carbon-based arrangement.
