President Joe Biden was aspiring to be the next Franklin Roosevelt when aides first started drafting his sprawling social welfare and climate spending proposal during the campaign.
Roosevelt delivered the New Deal — Biden described his former boss Barack Obama’s passage of a healthcare law as a “big f***ing deal.” Now Biden and his Democratic allies are frantically defending his updated $1.75 trillion partisan framework in the hope it will be “historic” enough to compensate for the drama it has caused and help his party hold on to its congressional majorities next year.
BIDEN’S SPENDING PACKAGES MAY NOT SAVE HIS JOB APPROVAL NUMBERS, POLITICOS SAY
If Democrats can pass a social welfare and climate package and the House clears the already Senate-approved $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal, their political win is simply sidestepping the loss they will endure if Biden does not sign the bills into law, according to political analyst Dan Schnur.
For Schnur, a Republican-turned-independent University of Southern California politics professor, it is difficult to assess how the legislation will assist Democrats before the 2022 midterm elections. It is easier to predict it will be “catastrophic” if the measures stay stuck in Congress, he said.
“Something isn’t always better than nothing, but for a candidate who ran on competence and deal-making experience, not bringing it across the finish line would be a huge embarrassment,” Schnur told the Washington Examiner.
Some progressive Democrats complained they were caught off-guard by the $1.75 trillion framework Biden announced Thursday before flying to Italy for a G-20 summit and Scotland for the 26th United Nations climate meeting. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told reporters “it needs to be improved.” And far-left House members looking for firm commitments from their centrist counterparts before voting for the infrastructure deal were unsatisfied by Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema describing it as “significant progress.”
Other centrist Democrats grumbled that Biden did not push liberal House lawmakers harder to back the infrastructure deal, boosting him before his second foreign trip. The White House had framed Biden’s departure as a make-or-break deadline for his presidency. Surface transportation workers could now be furloughed when federal funding expires on Oct. 31, and he is traveling to Glasgow without taking substantive domestic climate action.
Progressive Democrats’ preoccupation with the social welfare and climate package’s top-line cost instead of its contents, which introduces a range of cradle-to-grave programs, is “proof that they don’t know how to even act like winners,” one Senate staffer said.
But the aide remained confident Biden’s $1.75 trillion framework would be “historic,” a word repeated this week by the White House and its allies.
Democrats have “shot themselves in the foot” with their infighting and infighting-induced delays after months of negotiations, according to Northeastern University politics chairman Costas Panagopoulos.
“Any number smaller than the original target will seem like defeat,” he said of the initial $6 trillion and $3.5 trillion price tags. But Panagopoulos added: “If Democrats can get the messaging right to focus on how it will affect ordinary Americans’ lives rather than how large the package is, it can still be a major victory for the party.”
Aggressive Progressive podcast host and former political consultant Christopher Hahn was more optimistic, calling the framework “historic,” particularly when combined with the infrastructure deal.
“These programs are popular and will be hard to kill. I’m anxious to see the details, but I’m excited that it’s moving,” he said.
Biden unveiled his $1.75 trillion framework Thursday, which encompasses a yearlong extension of his enhanced child tax credit, Affordable Care Act tax credits until 2025, expanded Medicare to cover hearing, $150 billion for home care support, two years of free pre-kindergarten, and $555 billion for clean energy investments, as well as a 15% corporate minimum tax and a millionaire surtax.
Biden has pledged to continue advocating for Medicare dental and vision coverage, paid family medical leave, free community college, and corporate tax increases, but historically very little is achieved in election years.
“No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on,” the president said during an East Room address.
While some liberal Democrats claimed they were not briefed on Biden’s new framework, former President Barack Obama was ready to endorse it.
“In a country as large and diverse as ours, progress can often feel frustrating and slow, with small victories accompanied by frequent setbacks,” Biden’s old boss said. “The fight continues, but today’s landmark agreement is an important step on our long journey to live up to our highest ideals.”
The Democratic National Committee also borrowed Biden’s own remarks after Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
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“As President Biden would say, this is a BFD,” DNC chairman Jaime Harrison said. “The American people put Democrats in charge because they wanted a government that works for them, especially after the past four years under Republican control. And once again, Democrats are delivering results in a very big way.”
