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It’s time to start showing our gratitude to President Biden and the majority of congressional Democrats who have fought for weeks to pass as much of the president’s desperately needed agenda as possible to rebuild the American economy to begin serving all of us instead of complaining about how long it’s taken.
That’s obviously not their fault. Despite media claims of warring factions within the Democratic Party, there really aren’t any. There’s the President of the United States and the overwhelming majority of elected Democrats in the House and Senate on one side and two obstructive Senate Democrats on the other.
Jeering from the sidelines is the peanut gallery. That’s nearly every unpatriotic House and Senate Republican who intend to do everything they can to prevent Biden from improving the lives of the American people hoping everyone will be so miserable they’ll elect more Republicans. Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill won the votes of only 19 out of 50 Republican Senators. It’s only expected to attract about a dozen Republican votes out of 214 in the House.
All 50 Votes
Even under special budget rules in the Senate preventing Republican filibusters, Biden can’t pass anything else without the votes of all 50 Democrats with Vice President Kamala breaking ties with 50 Republicans. That allows any Democrat who’s arrogant enough to put his or her personal agenda above that of all the rest of the party including the president to block legislation. The Senate has two of them, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema.
No one expected it to be easy for Biden and Democrats to achieve the president’s dream of recreating an American economy that for decades primarily benefitted those at the very top and start redirecting those benefits to working Americans and those left behind just like President Franklin Roosevelt did after the Great Depression. Roosevelt had the advantage of large congressional majorities. Biden’s are razor thin.
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What’s amazing is even after those terrifying telephone calls from slashers Democrats in this movie always knew were coming from inside their own house, Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and $1.75 trillion social spending bill are still the most significant restructuring of the American economy since Roosevelt’s New Deal. Add the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed without Republican votes in March and nearly $5 trillion over the next decade will be going to improve life in America for everyone without raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year.
A Better America
The long list of major benefits include free pre-kindergarten for all three and four year olds, extension of the new refundable child tax credit sending monthly payments to families raising children, a network of safe and affordable child care, increased subsidies for those buying insurance through the Affordable Care Act, home health care and hearing aids for the elderly, a million affordable homes with assistance for renters and first-time buyers and half a trillion dollars to fight climate change with tax breaks reducing the cost of electric vehicles by $12,500, building a national network of charging stations and creating tax credits for U.S. manufacturers of solar panels and home owners who install them.
It’s safe to say most Americans have little idea of the wide variety of popular programs that will benefit American families and create millions of good-paying jobs to restore a booming economy out of the national destruction left behind by the previous president. After weeks of negotiations distorted by the media’s hyping of conflict, only those keeping close track know what’s in and what’s out.
That’s why every elected Democrat has to shout it from the rooftops for an entire year until the midterm elections next November. Biden reportedly told the Democratic caucus as he was leaving for Europe on Thursday: “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week.”
Come on Wisconsin!
Wisconsin has a special role to play in determining the nation’s future in those midterms because it has a prime opportunity to flip the expiring term of Trumpian Sen. Ron Johnson by electing a Democrat who supports American democracy and opposes violent insurrections.
The Republican Party has basically abandoned its support of democracy at the urging of its defeated president who encouraged his violent supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s election. Republican legislators across the country are now rewriting election laws to reduce voting rights and empower themselves to reverse election outcomes they don’t like.
Beside protecting democracy itself, increasing the Democratic majority in the Senate will have the added bonus of eliminating the power of a couple of Democrats like Manchin and Sinema to rewrite the progressive agenda Biden was elected to deliver by the largest voter turnout in American history to their own personal specifications.
