President Joe Biden’s celebration of the infrastructure bill’s signing may be short-lived, as it only heightens the pressure on Democrats to do more and keep the congressional wings of the party unified.
But with centrist Democrats still threatening to thwart the roughly $2 trillion social welfare and climate spending bill, Biden is at risk of disappointing his base and exacerbating the perception that Washington is out of touch with the rest of the country.
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People cast ballots predicated on how they feel, and activists focus on policy, according to former California Democratic Party adviser Bob Mulholland.
“After the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats lost 63 House seats,” he said of the 2010 midterm cycle. “Democrats in Congress need more conversations with the voters and less with each other, as the American people right now don’t feel good.”
Polling supports Mulholland. On average, fewer than 3 in 10 people believe the country is headed in the right direction, according to RealClearPolitics. More than two-thirds of respondents tell pollsters the country is trending in the wrong direction.
The White House stepped on its own success this week when Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other dignitaries, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, implored Congress to pass the Democrats-only social welfare and climate bill at the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal’s signing ceremony.
“Getting folks back to work and reducing costs of things like child care, elder care, housing, healthcare, prescription drugs, and meeting the moment on climate change. I’m confident that the House will pass this bill, and then we’re going to have to pass it in the Senate,” Biden said on the White House South Lawn of the larger bill.
Democrats hope the $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal, delayed for three months because House liberals withheld their endorsement for leverage in negotiations over the social welfare and climate bill, will boost Biden’s job approval ratings. Two-fifths of people approve of Biden’s job as president, again according to RealClearPolitics. A majority currently disapprove.
But one centrist House Democratic aide told the Washington Examiner the party more generally is under pressure “to make people feel relief in the checkbooks.”
“Less about [Build Back Better], more about programs we’ve passed and will pass actually having impact sooner rather than later,” the source wrote in a text message. “We should be talking more about what’s in [the March-passed $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending measure and infrastructure deal] and less about the process of the next bill and giving ourselves false deadlines.”
The White House has declined to lay out a timeline for the social welfare and climate bill after missing deadlines imposed by a Pelosi compromise between House liberals and centrists to consider it and the infrastructure deal “in tandem.”
Pelosi has foreshadowed a social welfare and climate bill vote this week before the Congressional Budget Office releases a full assessment of how Congress will pay for the framework. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer then told reporters Tuesday his chamber would deliberate on the bill before Christmas. But within an hour of Schumer’s comments, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin had expressed “a lot of concerns” regarding the time frame given last month’s 30-year record-high inflation figures.
The White House proactively downplayed the CBO’s findings on Tuesday. Shortfalls are expected due to tax enforcement complications.
“CBO does not have experience analyzing revenue amounts gained from cracking down on wealthy tax cheats, who are taking advantage of every honest taxpayer,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said on Air Force One.
For Seth Masket, director of the University of Denver’s Center on American Politics, it is “certainly possible” that the House will pass the social welfare and climate bill this week before Manchin and his centrist colleagues block it in the Senate. And that could further draw out when the electorate feels “a little bit better financially,” according to Masket.
But Masket disagreed that liberal Democrats were not needling Biden to pass the social welfare and climate bill after all but six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus supported the infrastructure deal “in good faith.”
“It’s a pretty central part of Democrats’ governing agenda that’s been packed into these two bills. And it’s a lot of what Biden ran on and said he wanted to accomplish in his first year, first two years,” he said.
Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg remained confident Congress would pass the social welfare and climate bill “before the end of the year.” He cited this week’s “renewed momentum and enthusiasm” and dismissed Manchin’s inflation argument.
“There’s no question that this five-plus months of debating these two bills has been bad for the president’s approval rating and bad for the Democratic Party,” he said, referencing the Virginia gubernatorial race. “We need to put this rancorous period behind us, and get this thing done, and move on to other things. We need to bring the family back together.”
Rosenberg, the founder of the New Democrat Network and the New Policy Institute, conceded 2022 would be “very competitive” for his party. But he was optimistic Biden’s overarching economic policy would be a positive record for Democrats.
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“Democrats shouldn’t count on these two bills as being the central offering,” he said.”But we can say we defeated COVID. We got the economy back on track. We got us back to normal.”
