President Joe Biden came out nearly five hours late on Tuesday to deliver remarks on the situation in Afghanistan and promptly began talking about infrastructure — a possible preview of how he plans to turn the page on a messy withdrawal.
Biden appeared after the White House confirmed the United States would stick with its original Aug. 31 withdrawal date amid increasing concerns among allies and a bipartisan group of lawmakers about whether that timeline will be adequate for evacuations. Hours earlier, the head of the CIA met with top Taliban officials as rumors of an extension flew, to no avail.
“But to win the future, we need to take the next step,” Biden said at the top of his Afghanistan speech from the White House. “Today, the House of Representatives did just that. Today’s vote in the House allowed them to consider my ‘Build Back Better’ agenda, a broad framework to make housing more affordable, bring down the cost of prescription drugs by giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for drugs, make elder care more affordable, provide two years of universal high-quality pre-K, and two years of free community college.”
ONCE A POINT OF AGREEMENT, BIDEN AND TRUMP TRADE BLAME ON AFGHANISTAN
“Provide clean energy tax credits,” Biden continued. “Continue to give the middle-class families the well-deserved tax cut for daycare and healthcare that they deserve, allowing a lot of women to get back to work, primarily.”
It appeared Biden waited to speak until House Democrats advanced their $3.5 trillion budget framework that funds a variety of liberal policy priorities, giving his Afghanistan remarks the cover of good news. This partisan reconciliation measure, delayed by hours due to Democratic infighting, is intended to complement the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package Biden would also like to sign into law.
This could be a longer-term strategy past this week: The idea that increased federal spending, especially in the form of investments in public projects, will prove more popular to voters than continuing a protracted fight in Afghanistan. By the time midterm elections come around next year, Biden appears to be betting the disturbing images from the Kabul airport will be a distant memory while all the roads and bridges will be shovel-ready.
It is not a uniquely Democratic political calculation.
“If you want us to quit sending $50 billion every year to Afghanistan to build their roads and bridges instead of building them here at home,” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said at last year’s Republican National Convention, “you need to support President Trump for another term.”
Former President Donald Trump also campaigned on infrastructure and Afghanistan withdrawal, although neither were completed during his term. Trump has increasingly criticized Biden’s execution of the Afghanistan pullout, arguing he would have deterred the Taliban and finished evacuating people before removing the last troops.
Whether this strategy pays off closer to next year’s midterm elections remains to be seen. In the shorter term, Biden’s job approval ratings have taken a hit in a series of public polls. Both USA Today/Suffolk University and Rasmussen have the president in the low 40s.
The initial hope was that retrenchment from long-running military interventions in the Middle East would help Biden rebuild at home, following a pandemic that slowed the economy to a crawl as businesses shut down to slow the spread of a highly contagious virus.
At the moment, unsettling news abroad appears to be undermining public support for Biden’s domestic political program. Still, the midterm elections are over a year away, and the president is not up for reelection until 2024.
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Democrats hope to use their narrow majorities to pass as much of Biden’s agenda as possible before attention turns to the 2022 midterm elections. The Afghanistan withdrawal is said to be “on pace” to end on Aug. 31, though the White House reiterated there are contingency plans in place if the Taliban disrupt evacuations and the U.S. military presence needs to last beyond that date.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday hailed “the largest airlift in U.S. history” as officials raced to get people out of Afghanistan.
“[T]hat is bringing American citizens out, it is bringing our Afghan partners out, it is bringing allies out,” she told reporters. “So, no, I would not say that is anything but a success.”
