Put President Biden down for a prediction on the COVID-19 relief package working its way through Congress: “We’ll get Republican support.”
“I think we’ll get some Republicans,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office. Then he turned to the Democratic senators who were there to meet with him and said: “Welcome all home. This is their new home, for a while anyway. And with a little bit of luck, the grace of God, and the goodwill of the neighbors, and the crick not rising, it’s going to be longer than just four years.”
That wasn’t the only time the president’s competing desires to deliver for the Democrats who elected him, albeit with the help of some battleground state suburbanites who normally vote Republican, and to project bipartisan “unity” came into conflict. Before Biden’s session with Senate Democrats, he met at the White House with 10 Republican senators to talk about ways to find common ground on the stimulus legislation.
The White House then promptly threw its support behind using the budgetary maneuver known as reconciliation to pass the bill. This will make it possible to avoid the 60-vote threshold to end a filibuster and clear the Senate with a simple majority of 50 Democratic senators plus Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote — thus making it unnecessary to engage upper chamber Republicans at all.
It wasn’t exactly a surprise. The Biden-endorsed measure clocks in at around $1.9 trillion, while the Republican counteroffer is $618 billion. “The risk is not that it is too big, this package — the risk is that it is too small. And that remains [Biden’s] view, and it is one he will express today,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters ahead of the meeting. She had previously suggested that reconciliation should be no obstacle to bipartisanship.
“Reconciliation is a parliamentary process. It’s a way to get legislation through,” Psaki said at an earlier White House press briefing. “Republicans can still vote for a package even if it goes through with reconciliation. There’s no blood oath that anybody signs.” In a statement rejecting the GOP counteroffer, she said of Biden, “He reiterated that while he is hopeful that the Rescue Plan can pass with bipartisan support, a reconciliation package is a path to achieve that end.”
During his 36 years in the Senate, Biden sought to balance his reputation as a solid Democrat with bipartisan deal-making. As vice president, he was former President Barack Obama’s point man in dealing with Capitol Hill Republicans. The 10 GOP senators looking to cut a deal on the COVID-19 package outstrip anything they were able to get on Obamacare or the 2009 stimulus program at the beginning of the Obama administration.
“Given how divided the country is and the challenges we’re facing, every small step toward bipartisanship is a chance for Biden to build up political capital,” said Kevin Madden, a political strategist who advised Sen. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns.
“I’d like to think that the pandemic and the economy are areas where the two parties can work together,” said Democratic strategist Atiba Madyun. “But I’m not even sure about that.”
The early indications are that Biden wants bipartisan support more than he seeks bipartisan compromise. That is certainly how many GOP lawmakers see the matter.
“From what we’ve seen of budget reconciliation thus far, it appears those calls for unity were really calls for conformity,” Rep. Rob Wittman, a Virginia Republican, said in a statement. “Working across party lines should not require we abandon our principles in the process.”
“With the slimmest majority in modern political history, Washington Democrats have once again shown they are not serious about working across the aisle or uniting the country,” said Rep. Fred Keller, a Pennsylvania Republican. “Instead, Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and Democrat leaders are taking advantage of every procedural tool necessary to fast-track their $2 trillion partisan bill, which includes policies unrelated to COVID relief and comes on top of the $3.5 trillion that Congress has already approved in response to the pandemic, of which $1 trillion has not even been spent.”
Democrats maintain that what matters most is slaying the twin dragons of the pandemic and economic ruin, with a higher amount of federal spending more likely to achieve those results.
“President Biden said the cost of inaction and doing too little is greater than the cost of doing too much,” Psaki told reporters at the White House.
