Photo courtesy of Joe Biden for President
In just a month and a half, President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party succeeded in passing what could stand forever as the largest national recovery plan in history to finally end the deadly health pandemic that shattered the U.S. economy and put Americans back to work. The ugly, unpatriotic part is not a single Republican in the House or Senate supported the recovery all Americans desperately need for their lives and livelihoods to return to normal.
Republicans really don’t care about the overwhelming public support for the $1,400 economic stimulus checks that will go to most Americans, up to $3,600 a year in tax credits for every child reducing the number of children living in poverty by a third, enhanced unemployment benefits when so many Americans are unable to work, an expanded safety net feeding families and ending evictions and the aid to state and local governments to halt the defunding of police, teachers and other public employees forced by Republican hostility toward providing any assistance to “blue states” or racially diverse cities.
Wisconsin’s Republican members of Congress unanimously demonstrated how little they and their party care about the lives of their own voters. All five House Republicans joined Sen. Ron Johnson in opposing Biden’s stimulus bringing $5.5 billion to their state to speed COVID vaccinations and reopen businesses. State government will get $3.2 billion and every local community will share $2.3 billion including $406 million for Milwaukee and $183 million for Milwaukee County.
What’s with Johnson?
No one knows exactly what Johnson is up to politically, but he continues to raise his profile nationally trying to prove he can be just as obnoxiously Trumpian as the Great Man himself. Johnson apparently has delusions of grandeur that he can either be re-elected in 2022 or beat Tony Evers for governor in preparation for joining Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley as mini-Trumps in 2024. That makes it even more important Wisconsin voters end Johnson’s repellent political career once and for all in the midterms.
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Johnson used Biden’s emergency rescue bill to pointlessly delay the Senate vote on American recovery for nearly 11 hours by insisting Senate clerks read the entire 628-page bill out loud. Johnson told a rightwing radio host he wanted voters to realize Biden’s government program to vaccinate all Americans and reopen the economy was actually a radical, leftwing plot “setting things up for a more socialist society.”
No one but extremists dancing out on the edge of the Republican lunatic fringe are buying Johnson’s absurd cartoon of Biden as a terrifying, radical lefty. Republicans themselves are now the radical, unAmerican threat to democracy. Biden’s quiet competence and professionalism as president are exactly what we need to repair our democracy after Trump and his violent mob tried to disenfranchise 81 million voters and overthrow Trump’s decisive election loss to Biden. The Republican campaign to sabotage democracy actually preceded Trump by decades as the party continues trying to restrict voting rights throughout the country, especially for black and brown voters.
Biden Was There
America is also fortunate Biden was there in 2009 as vice president when President Barack Obama took office. That was the first time Republicans united behind Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell to try to prevent a Democratic president from successfully rescuing the country from what until Trump was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Biden knows the lockstep opposition from Republicans against his American rescue plan is just the beginning. Republicans don’t intend to lift a finger to help Biden improve the lives of Americans.
Elected Republicans assume their unpatriotic opposition to American recovery under Biden will have the same success the racist Republican Tea Party achieved in the 2010 midterms against Obama. But Trump has now pushed racism well past its limit within the Republican Party. By expressing his virulent racism right out loud instead of using subtle Republican code words, Trump attracted the violent Nazis and Klansmen who continue to drive decent, well-educated voters out of the party.
The colliding health and economic crisis created by Trump’s incompetent presidency disrupted the lives of every American and left the nation desperate for exactly the kind of well-funded, comprehensive national recovery plan Biden just passed, no thanks to a single Republican. The mean-spirited opposition to Biden’s politically popular recovery plan could be a fatal political mistake for Republicans. Even a dog knows the difference between being stepped on and kicked. So do the American voters.
Biden remains confident in his ability to deliver on his campaign promises. “Quite frankly, without the overwhelming, bipartisan support of the American people, this would not have happened,” Biden said after Democrats in the Senate passed the recovery plan. Biden said all Americans “will be able to see and know and feel the changes in their own lives.”
