Spending bill full of Biden’s agenda
WASHINGTON — No president has ever packed as much of his agenda, domestic and foreign, into a single piece of legislation as President Joe Biden has with the $3.5 trillion spending plan that Democrats are trying to wrangle through Congress over the next six weeks.
The bill combines major initiatives on the economy, education, social welfare, climate change and foreign policy, funded in large part by an extensive rewrite of the tax code, which aims to bring in trillions from corporations and the rich. That stacking of priorities has raised the stakes for a president resting his ambitions on a bill that could fail over the smallest of intraparty disputes.
If successful, Biden’s farreaching attempt could result in a presidency-defining victory that delivers on a decadeslong campaign by Democrats to expand the federal government to combat social problems and spread the gains of a growing economy to workers, striking a fatal blow to the government-limiting philosophy of President Ronald
Reagan that has largely defined U.S. politics since the 1980s.
But as Democrats are increasingly seeing, the sheer weight of Biden’s progressive push could cause it to collapse, leaving the party empty-handed, with the president’s top priorities going unfulfilled. Some progressives fear a watered-down version of the bill could fail to deliver on the party’s promises and undermine its case for a more activist government. Some moderates worry that spending too much could cost Democrats — particularly those in more conservative districts — their seats in the 2022 midterm elections, erasing the party’s control of Congress.
The legislation, which Democrats are trying to pass along party lines and without Republican support, contains the bulk of Biden’s vision to overhaul the rules of the economy in hopes of reducing inequality and building a more vibrant middle class. But its provisions go beyond economics.
Democrats hope the package will create a pathway to citizenship for as many as 8 million immigrants living in the country illegally, make it easier for workers to form unions and lower prescription drug costs for seniors. They want to guarantee prekindergarten and community college for every American, bolster the nation’s strategic competitiveness with China and stake an aggressive leadership role in global efforts to fight climate change and corporate tax evasion.
The plan includes a large tax cut for the poor and middle class, and efforts to reduce the cost of child care, expand access to home health care for older and disabled Americans, and create the first federally guaranteed paid leave for American workers.
It is almost as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had stuffed his entire New Deal into one piece of legislation, or if President Lyndon B. Johnson had done the same with his Great Society, instead of pushing through individual components over several years.
One fell swoop
If the effort succeeds, Biden will have accomplished much of what he campaigned on in one fell swoop. Observers say he will carry a strengthened hand into global summits in October and November that are meant to galvanize the world around transitioning from planet-warming fossil fuels and ending the use of offshore havens that companies have long used to avoid taxation.
White House officials say that the breadth of programs in the package forms a unified vision for the U.S.’ domestic economy and its place in the world and that the planks serve as a coalition glue — a something-for-everyone approach that makes it difficult to jettison pieces of the plan in negotiations.
But the sheer scope of its contents has opened divisions among Democrats on multiple fronts, when Biden cannot afford to lose a single vote in the Senate and no more than three votes in the House.
Centrists and progressives have clashed over the size of the spending in the legislation and the scale and details of the tax increases that Biden wants to use to help offset its cost. They are divided over prescription drug pricing, the generosity of tax credits for the poor, the aggressiveness of key measures to speed the transition to a loweremission energy sector and much more.
Even items that are not top priorities for Biden have opened rifts. On Friday, one of the party’s most outspoken progressives, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., took aim at a crucial priority of several top Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., saying she would resist attempts to fully repeal a cap on deductions for state and local property taxes that would aid high earners in high-tax areas.
If Biden’s party cannot find consensus on those issues and the bill dies, he will have little immediate recourse to advance almost any of those priorities. Outside of a hardfought victory on a bipartisan infrastructure package — which has passed the Senate but not yet cleared the House — Biden has found almost no reception from Republicans for his proposals. His economic, education and climate agendas, and perhaps even additional efforts to rebuild domestic supply chains and counter China, could be blocked by Republicans under current Senate most legislation.
Brady pushes back
rules for
Republicans say the breadth of the bill shows that Democrats are trying to drastically shift national policy without full debate on individual proposals.
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, the top GOP member on the Ways and Means Committee, complained repeatedly last week that Republicans and conservatives “believe that our government is wasting so much to kill so many American jobs.” Biden’s plan would “hook a whole new generation of the poor on government dependency,” he said.
Biden administration officials say the bill’s contents are neither secret nor socialist. They say the plan tracks with the proposals Biden laid out in the campaign, in his first budget request and in an address to a joint session of Congress.
As they scuffle over the bill’s final cost and levels of taxation, Democrats have tried to find savings without discarding entire programs — by reducing spending on home health care, for example, instead of dropping it or another provision entirely.
Progressive groups say that is a reason for lawmakers to not further reduce the size of the effort, worrying that scaled-back programs could undermine the case for broad government intervention to solve problems.
For now, Biden continues to publicly set high expectations for a bill that aides say he sees as fundamental to demonstrating that democratic governments can deliver clear and tangible benefits for their people.
“This is our moment to prove to the American people that their government works for them, not just for the big corporations and those at the very top,” Biden said Thursday. “This is an opportunity to be the nation we know we can be.”