Senate Democrats and Republicans continue putting finishing touches on the trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill very few in either party believed President Joe Biden would ever succeed in passing.
What makes Biden’s political achievement so impressive in a 50-50 Senate where Republicans can block most legislation with 41 votes is that the president overcame hostile efforts to sabotage his agenda by the two most powerful figures in the Republican Party.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell declared in early May: “What we have in the United States Senate is total unity from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz in opposition to what the new Biden administration is trying to do to this country.” Apparently not when Biden’s trying to restore and improve our lives, something long overdue.
The other powerful figure among far too many Republicans has no right to hold power in any legitimate American political party. Donald Trump lost that right when he urged his supporters to violently attack Congress to stop certification of Biden’s presidential election so Trump could illegally remain in office.
Despite Trump
Trump condemned every Republican supporting the bipartisan infrastructure deal to create millions of jobs for all those still unemployed after Trump’s failure to protect American lives destroyed the U.S. economy. “Don’t do the infrastructure deal,” Trump commanded Republicans. “Wait until after we get proper election results in 2022 . . . Republicans, don’t let the Radical Left play you for weak fools and losers!”
How about it, America? Want to wait until 2023 to begin job creation to restore the successful U.S. economy reduced to a shambles in Trump’s final year as president? In fact, even if Republicans win the House of Representatives next year through corrupt gerrymandering, they don’t intend to help Biden create jobs in the final two years of his term. That would give Democrats an advantage in the 2024 presidential election.
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Apparently, Republicans decided they might not survive politically if they tell Americans they won’t do anything for three and a half years to help Biden restore the economy. On the day of Trump’s irrational ravings, 17 Republican Senators including McConnell voted to move forward toward passing the bipartisan bill.
Stunning Reversal
It was a stunning public reversal of McConnell’s decade-long strategy of Senate Republicans creating gridlock to prevent Democratic presidents from making life better for Americans. It began when McConnell refused to help President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden end the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression resulting from President George W. Bush’s economic blunders. Why did McConnell suddenly throw in the towel during the Biden administration?
It’s pretty simple really. Refusing to do anything to resolve America’s most critical problems isn’t very smart politics. McConnell didn’t try to hide the obvious racist motive for opposing Obama. McConnell said limiting Obama to a single term was the party’s top political priority rather than restoring the cratering economy to put millions of Americans back to work. Obama and Biden won re-election for doing their jobs.
By feeding the racism within the Republican Party, McConnell shares responsibility for the biggest disaster of all for Republicans—Trump’s nomination and election as the most openly racist, anti-American president in history. Ironically, McConnell’s now one of the few Republicans recognizing how dangerous Trump and his violent supporters could be for the future of the party and America itself.
It’s a little late but fitting that rebuilding infrastructure is what’s attracting Republicans to join Democrats instead of automatically opposing everything Biden wants to do. Trump always claimed “Infrastructure Week” would be next week, but it was just another lie. Trump never stopped watching himself on Fox long enough to think of a plan.
Tax the Millionaires?
Now Biden has plenty of infrastructure plans to create a booming American economy. The bipartisan plan is just the beginning because Republicans refuse to support anything raising taxes on billionaires and millionaires who often pay no taxes at all on income.
Biden has larger companion legislation aimed specifically at the needs of working families that can be passed under Senate budget rules without Republican votes. Among many benefits, it would extend for years the popular new child tax credit for families, expand affordable childcare and health care and start reducing the deadly heatwaves, fires and floods from climate change.
One of the most popular provisions among both Democrats and Republicans is financing it all by requiring the wealthy to finally start paying their fair share in taxes without raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year.
Ordinary Americans aren’t used to their government talking about spending trillions of dollars over the next decade to directly benefit them. It’s about time. Trump’s 2017 tax cut costing $2 trillion over 10 years with 80% of the benefits going to the wealthy was just business as usual for the richest people in America under Republicans.
