President Biden’s team is preparing a national rollout of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending package he will sign into law Friday, targeting red and other states in an all-hands-on-deck messaging effort, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The plan, billed informally as the “Help is Here Tour,” was circulated among senior aides on Wednesday and beckons a whole-of-West Wing approach, enlisting Biden and first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff, Cabinet officials, and top aides in a country-wide sales pitch for the American Rescue Plan.
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“As the President often said during the campaign, ‘help is on the way,’ and with the Rescue Plan passed, the American people can be confident in knowing that the help they need will be there for them,” wrote Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s deputy chief of staff and his 2020 campaign manager.
“That will be the distillation of our message to the American people in the coming weeks,” she said, explaining that the White House would take their message in person “to every corner of our country,” through regional media and by engaging with constituencies directly.
“We’re going to make sure the American people know tangibly what the Rescue Plan means for them,” she added, with Biden and Harris “hitting the road.” Surrogates and senior officials will appear “on local TV in markets around America,” including in Republican-led states or states that voted for former President Donald Trump.
The White House began making headway on this effort Wednesday, dispatching Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for a victory lap on an Indiana broadcast network.
“We have a lot of support in here for local transit agencies that are absolutely vital, especially for front-line workers who depend on them to get to work,” the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor told WXIN.
Early next week, Harris and her husband will head to Las Vegas, Nevada, before another stop in Denver, Colorado.
“Each day we’ll talk about one of 10 key aspects of the plan that will benefit regular Americans: from additional money for veterans health, to lower health care premiums, support for small business, and money to reopen schools safely,” O’Malley Dillon said in her memo.
Biden told House Democrats earlier this month that the Obama administration had “paid a price” for failing to adequately message the 2009 Recovery Act after its passage and instructed his party not to repeat the error.
On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, a former Obama administration official, was similarly contrite.
“Any of my colleagues at the time would say that we didn’t do enough to explain to the American people what the benefits were of the rescue plan, and we didn’t do enough to do it in terms that people would be talking about at their dinner tables,” she told reporters.
Despite failing to garner any Republican votes for the massive spending bill in either chamber, West Wing officials point to the bipartisan support for the bill in public polls, which they say fulfills the president’s pledge to reach across the political aisle.
On Wednesday, O’Malley Dillon did the same, noting surveys showing “over 70% of Americans backing the package, including a majority of Republicans.”
In a new CNN-SSRS poll, for instance, Biden fared best across a host of issues on his coronavirus response, with 60% approval to 34% disapproval.
Other advisers suggested the overall bill does not need a sales pitch. Rather, they say, officials need to focus hard on explaining how the public can tap the aid that it will provide.
“You don’t actually need to go sell this bill,” Anita Dunn, a senior White House adviser, told the Washington Post. “It’s one of the few bills that has become more popular as it moved through Congress, not less. We don’t need to convince people that Americans need help; we need to tell them how they can get that help.”
Historian David Greenberg said Biden would be better off had he secured some GOP support, “but he tried” and couldn’t reconcile Republicans’ $600 billion counterproposal with his own.
The bill proposed by 10 Republican moderates that Biden met with at the White House “was so meager that it didn’t seem to be offered in good faith,” said Greenberg, author of a book about presidential spin. “At least Biden proved that he wants to work in a bipartisan fashion. The onus is now on the Republicans to show that they’re serious about doing the same.”
Support for the Democrats’ bill bodes well for the president, he said. “It suggests that most people think Biden is being reasonable.”
Still, the failure to draw a single Republican vote on the COVID-19 package after Trump twice passed bipartisan legislation on the issue may leave some wondering what lies ahead for the rest of Biden’s agenda, with a question mark hanging over the new president’s unifying ambitions.
A statement from Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel appeared to galvanize the opposition Wednesday, taking aim at “wasteful pork spending” that the Trump ally said would do more to fulfill a “progressive wish list” than “ease the burdens facing small businesses and families as a result of COVID-19.”
“With less than 10% of the nearly $2 trillion package dedicated to directly combating the virus and only 1% for vaccines, this enormous package makes a mockery of the crisis our country is facing,” McDaniel said.
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“Americans deserve targeted legislation that will accelerate vaccine distribution, get Americans back to work, and safely re-open our schools — not hyperpartisan and wasteful pork spending,” she added.
