President Biden and congressional Democrats could fall victim to overreaching on a massive COVID-19 package opposed by Republicans that could "poison" work on other legislation, experts say, even as the White House feels emboldened by a deep well of support for the president and his proposal.
White House aides and their boss have made clear for over a week that Biden prefers a bipartisan stimulus bill but will not wait much longer for a pact to emerge before he greenlights Democratic leaders to move a version of his $1.9 trillion plan using a fast-track budget tactic. That presents a conundrum for a new chief executive who ran vowing to work with Republicans: Push his package through with scant, if any, GOP votes or settle for a much slimmer bill to keep alive his hopes to pursue bipartisan deals on infrastructure, health, climate, and immigration reform.
One former senior Senate GOP aide said overreach by Democrats could result in legislative gridlock and failure to accomplish Biden's full legislative agenda.
"There is a real chance that Democrats will overreach," said Bill Hoagland, a former aide to then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and now with the Bipartisan Policy Center. Overlooking the potential for "more centrist, targeted legislation" makes this "very likely to poison the well for later legislation related to infrastructure, climate, health, immigration that will required bipartisan support," he added.
"As a result, once again, the challenges facing the country would go unaddressed," Hoagland said.
The president has broad support among the public, with 61% approving of how the president is “handling his job in his first days in office,” according to a nationwide Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. And in a survey published last week by Navigator Research, 7 in 10 people in the United States said they support Biden's economic relief package. Three in four shared a negative economic outlook, while half said they believed that economic circumstances were deteriorating.
The president fears a too-small relief package, rebuffing Republicans' $618 billion counterproposal, and last week, essentially gave Democrats their orders: “We have to go big, not small.”
And while his bill promises to get vaccines into arms, return children to the classroom, increase the minimum wage, and help people weather the next six months of the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, analysts have said that Biden's broader goals, such as full employment, could be achieved through much smaller plans.
The nearly $2 trillion package carries certain economic risks, said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Putting more money in the economy than what it can absorb could mean "that it is not very effective stimulus," Goldwein said, with the economic benefit of a $1.9 trillion plan "not much different than the economic benefit of a $600 or $700 billion package."
"You're just getting a low bang for your buck," he said.
The result could be that people don't notice at all, or notice "and feel like it was ineffective," making it harder to make the case for another package, Goldwein said.
If the White House's proposed package overheats the economy, as former Obama White House economic adviser Larry Summers warns it could, it might make the case for another package harder.
"It may make a lot of economists wary of it and make the public wary," Goldwein said.
Like Summers, Hoagland said there is a risk of a return to inflation should the plan be too large.
What's more, an urge to go big now could even help GOP lawmakers in the next election cycle, according to Hoagland.
"Overreach now could play into the hands" of Republicans who argued last year that under Biden, the country would move in a "socialist" direction, he said, noting there is a chance for Republicans to regain control of both chambers of Congress in 2022.
Biden told a group of Republicans after meeting with them last week that their $618 billion GOP counterproposal was too small, but he has continued to insist on bipartisan talks with the hope of getting "some" votes from the opposition party. But hopes for a cross-party deal have all but faded away.
Biden has said he fears that negotiating parts of the relief package much longer would only further delay aid that people say they are in urgent need of. Unemployment relief from the December package will expire next month, and the president has said he hopes to sign a bill before then.
He has also pointed to the slow economic recovery under former President Barack Obama after the 2008-2009 financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession as a reason to go big — and move quickly. Democrats now say the Obama stimulus bill back then was too small and came too slowly.
Biden, who was vice president at that time and helped muscle through the package, called it "hard as hell" to secure the necessary votes even though the bill became part of an economic recovery widely deemed lackluster.
Pushback by centrist lawmakers over the cost of Biden's plan could be an early indicator of the criticism awaiting Biden and Democrats if the package overshoots the needs of people.
Democrats' struggle in the midterm elections during Obama's first term was viewed as a response to the party's far-reaching agenda on issues such as healthcare.
According to Goldwein, "The underlying economic situation, when you take the pandemic aside, in some ways is much healthier than it was in 2009."
He said the sum of fiscal support proposed under Biden's plan is significant, more so on top of the aid that has already been appropriated.
"In the first year of this pandemic, we've done more than we did in the five years of the Great Recession, effectively," said Goldwein, who agreed with the administration that it is "broadly better to do more than less."
However, he said, "it's possible to over-learn a lesson."
