The Democratic National Committee distributed a memo Wednesday encouraging allies to frame the ongoing negotiations over President Joe Biden’s social safety net spending package as pitting “Scranton” against “Park Avenue.”
BIDEN PUSHES RECONCILIATION PRICE TAG EVEN LOWER TO MAKE A DEAL
The memo itself, obtained by the Washington Examiner, was distributed the same day the president touted the package in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and hearkens back to one of Biden’s most heavily touted economic lines on the 2020 campaign trail.
“President Biden’s agenda is for Scranton, not Park Avenue. It will provide transformational change for working families and finally hold big corporations and the wealthiest Americans accountable. How can you tell? Just take one look at who is fighting against it. While Democrats are hard at work to bring the Build Back Better agenda across the finish line, Republicans are teaming up with corporate lobbyists and special interests to pour tens of millions of dollars into the fight to try and defeat President Biden’s Agenda,” the memo reads. “The rich and powerful are fighting so hard against this agenda because they know that not only will President Biden’s agenda lower costs for families, but it will finally ensure big corporations and the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share and finally fork up the taxes they owe.”
The DNC specifically a number of private sector groups standing “shoulder to shoulder with Republicans” in spending “hundreds of millions” opposing Biden’s economic agenda. That list included:
- The pharmaceutical and healthcare industries for spending “over $179 million on lobbying so far this year while employing nearly 1,500 registered lobbyists” in opposition to proposals to “lower health care and drug costs.”
- The $30 million spent by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce toward “trying to kill President Biden’s agenda.”
- Private-equity firms opposition to closing loopholes that would result in the wealthiest Americans owing an additional $1 billion a year in taxes.
It’s worth noting that the DNC also criticized a number of companies that have publicly partnered with the Biden administration to promote its health and economic pandemic response policies, such as Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, and Walmart, for skipping out on billions in corporate taxes.
The DNC claims that it’s “clear why they are fighting so hard against” Biden’s proposal: “It’ll hurt their bottom line.”
“Are Republicans really going to continue to oppose tax cuts for hard-working Americans in favor of the interests of wealthy corporations?” the tail end of the memo asks. “Are Republicans really prepared to go to the mat against a tax cut for the American people after they passed hundreds of billions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and big corporations?”
Ammar Mousa, the DNC’s rapid response director, told the Washington Examiner that “when the rich and powerful are pouring millions to fight your agenda, it’s a pretty clear sign you’re on the right side.”
“On one side you have President Biden and Democrats working tirelessly to lower costs for families and make the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations pay what they owe,” he continued in a statement. “On the other side, you have Republicans and the largest corporations spending millions to defeat that agenda and protect their billion-dollar bottom line. You can count on Democrats across the country to make sure voters hear about that clear contrast in values every day from now until November 2022.”
As of Wednesday, Biden and the White House had made progress in bridging the divide between centrist and progressive Democrats on the topline figure for his budget reconciliation proposal, which previously would have cost taxpayers $3.5 trillion over 10 years.
Pramila Jayapal, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told reporters after a Tuesday meeting at the White House that the president was focusing on a bill worth between $1.75 trillion and $1.9 trillion.
The smaller proposal also reportedly cut out a number of Biden’s top priorities, including a long-term extension of the expanded child tax credit and sweeping investments in green energy sources and climate science.
A number of Democrats have signaled in recent days that, this late in the game, they are more focused on passing legislation to give the party something to campaign on in the midterm elections than guaranteeing any specific proposals make it into the final bill.
“We oversold it and underperformed for too long,” Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin told Politico. “Now we get a chance to close it the right way, hopefully.”
A number of senior Democratic officials previously voiced similar sentiments regarding the negotiations to the Washington Examiner.
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“We’ve got a unique opportunity to tout real, tangible things for voters next year and whack Republicans over the head for opposing really popular programs,” one such official said at the time. “I think everyone recognizes that. Maybe the number comes down a bit, but at the end of the day, progressives, the White House, and moderates all know we’ve got to head into ’22 with some tangibles for voters, on top of getting us out of the pandemic.”
