Hope for bipartisanship is dead. And Biden killed it.
Remember when President Joe Biden solemnly declared in his inaugural address, “My whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation”? It was a lie. Less than two months into his new administration, hope for unity and bipartisanship is dead — and Biden killed it.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki boasted the $1.9 trillion COVID19 stimulus Biden signed into law Thursday is the “most progressive bill in American history.” But Biden did not campaign on a promise to be the most progressive president in American history. That was Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders’ pledge. Biden campaigned on a promise to bring Republicans and Democrats together. And he didn’t even try.
Democrats are now trying to redefine what Biden meant by “bipartisanship,” saying his stimulus
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Pat Buchanan Marc A. Thiessen George Will is bipartisan because polls show it has support from some Republican voters. Sorry, but that’s not what Biden promised. During the campaign, Biden pledged to work “across the aisle to reach consensus.” After his election, he declared: “Refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another. It’s not some mysterious force beyond our control. It’s a decision, a choice we make. If we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate.”
Well, on his first major initiative, Biden made a decision not to cooperate. Ten Senate Republicans led by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine — enough to give him the 60 votes needed for a bipartisan, filibuster-proof majority — answered his call for cooperation. Biden didn’t even make a pretense of pretending to negotiate. He held one meeting with them and then effectively told them he didn’t need their votes.
Why? Because Democrats knew that time was running out to use COVID19 as a pretext for an unprecedented miasma of government spending. Cases are declining across the country. The economy is reviving. That means the pandemic emergency is almost over — and with it, the need for “emergency” action.
This was not about COVID-19 relief. Even parts of the bill Democrats claimed were about the pandemic really are not. For example, Biden said the $170 billion for education was necessary to reopen schools. But as Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, pointed out, the Congressional Budget Office found only 4% of the money for K-12 schools will be spent this year, and some won’t be spent until 2029. Democrats cynically used the desperation of American parents to get their kids back in school as a ruse to pay off their teachers’ union allies.
The irony is that Biden not only failed to advance the cause of unity in Washington, but he actually set it back. Until now, every one of the relief bills passed since the pandemic began had been a bipartisan effort.
It’s now clear Democrats aren’t interested in working “across the aisle to reach consensus.” They intend to use their historically narrow congressional majorities to ram through as much big government spending as they can. And if Senate Republicans try to block them, they will use their “obstreperousness” as a pretext to get rid of the filibuster, which would permanently eliminate the need for bipartisan compromise whenever one party controls the levers of power.
If we continue down this path, there is no coming back. And Joe Biden — the president who promised to restore bipartisanship — will preside over its burial.