Photo via Wikimedia Commons
President Biden’s first speech to Congress clearly laid out the conflict. Biden and Democrats have a bold, progressive program to rebuild America’s economy devastated by the previous president’s incompetence during the worst public health and economic crises in modern history and Republicans will do everything they can to prevent Democrats from succeeding,
That’s bad news for the entire country because Americans can’t afford for their national recovery to be blocked by mean-spirited Republican gridlock for four more years. The verb “afford” is intentional. The pandemic that left our economy in ruins exposed decades of spending far too little to modernize U.S. infrastructure to compete in a rapidly changing global economy.
Biden recognizes the necessity to “build back better.” Simply restoring the economy as it existed before is not enough. It left behind so many Americans they lost faith in America and nearly destroyed democracy itself by electing a clueless, B-List TV celebrity who made every national crisis worse.
Good Paying Jobs
Biden is expanding the concept of economic infrastructure. Beyond repairing deteriorating roads, bridges, the electric grid and eliminating poisonous lead pipes still carrying water to homes, other services are necessary to put Americans back to work in good-paying jobs—universal broadband internet, pre-school for 3 and 4-year-olds and affordable childcare freeing more women to work full-time and no-tuition community college and other advanced education to prepare workers for the jobs of the future.
Republicans pretend Biden’s infrastructure isn’t needed as if they were still living in a country with an all-male workforce where childcare is provided for free by women in the home. Every time Biden articulates his carefully crafted proposals to improve the lives of all Americans, he also refutes the continuing personal attacks on his intelligence from Republicans.
Americans smart enough not to pay any attention to the racist lies and conspiracy theories of Fox News may not realize the most absurd is that Biden is a senile, doddering, old fool who has no idea what he’s reading off teleprompters and his government is really being run by that terrifying Black revolutionary Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Democrats have narrow control of both the House and Senate, but many provisions of Biden’s three major legislative packages—he American Rescue Plan, the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan—are supported by more than 70% of Americans, Democrats, Republicans and independents. Elected Republicans were on the wrong side unanimously opposing Biden’s popular Rescue Plan speeding vaccinations to Americans and putting $1400 payments into their pockets along with monthly payments starting in July to every family of $3,000 to $3,600 a year for every child.
GOP Wants Biden to Fail
How long can Republicans oppose Biden’s popular legislation to restore the economy before voters realize Republicans simply want to prevent America’s economic recovery under a Democratic president? Good luck convincing Americans economic recovery is too expensive when Biden declares he’ll do it without raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year.
Biden’s willingness to break his large packages of legislation into sizable chunks presents the possibility of passing popular infrastructure spending in a bipartisan bill with some Republican votes. That could also solve the Democrats’ Joe Manchin problem. West Virginia’s conservative Democratic Sen. Manchin wants his party to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill. But Manchin also represents one of the nation’s poorest states. He could be persuaded to support a separate vote under budget reconciliation requiring only a Senate majority of all Democrats to expand the social safety net to retrain workers and assist poor families, which Republicans would never support.
Passing bipartisan legislation is over-rated. Americans tell pollsters they want the parties to work together because it sounds nice, but it’s nearly impossible to achieve in today’s polarized political environment. It’s become even worse since accepting Donald Trump’s fraudulent claim a landslide election was stolen from him by a multi-state conspiracy among Democratic and Republican election officials dishonestly counting votes has now become a loyalty test within the Republican Party.
Republican state legislators are using Trump’s Big Lie as an excuse to pass undemocratic voting restrictions throughout the country making it harder for Americans, especially black and brown ones, to vote. It’s impossible for Democrats to compromise with Republicans who no longer support American democracy.
Unfortunately, Republicans believe they will be able to flip enough House seats in the 2022 midterms through corrupt gerrymandering alone in states where Republicans have total political control over redistricting. They could then block Biden from passing any more legislation. But the arrogance of Republicans in unpatriotically opposing America’s economic recovery under Biden could be their downfall.
Democrats know exactly what to do to make it happen. They need to pass as much of Biden’s popular agenda as possible over the next two years. Then they need to turn out an overwhelming majority of voters in November 2022 just like they did in the 2018.
