Get real, Democrats, and pass Biden’s plan

Biden’s new framework makes genuinely significant progress toward ending the trickle-down paradigm on both spending and taxation. It does not go nearly as far as progressives believe is necessary. But it is by far the biggest shift away from Reaganomics since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

It’s time to get real. Democrats have the chance to pass and sign into law transformational investments in the nation’s human and physical infrastructure. They should go ahead and get it done — and then they should stop focusing on what had to be left out of these spending packages and begin loudly celebrating all that is included.

I understand what Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.VA., thinks he’s doing, and I don’t much like it. I have no idea what Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-ariz., thinks she’s doing, but whatever that might be, I don’t like it at all. But without their votes, the $1.75 trillion “Build Back Better” framework of social spending that President Joe Biden laid out last week will die a tragic and needless death.

This is a matter of cold, heartless arithmetic. Without each and every one of the party’s 50 votes in the Senate, Biden and the Democrats can accomplish precisely none of their social agenda. The only way to take away Manchin’s and Sinema’s effective veto power is for Democrats to win more Senate seats in next year’s midterm elections — and that prospect is more likely if the party can campaign by touting successes rather than lamenting failures.

The separate $1.2 trillion spending bill to modernize the nation’s physical infrastructure, already passed by the Senate, has the backing of a few Republicans. But the “human infrastructure” package has no GOP support at all — not because it could add to the national debt, which Republicans care about only when a Democrat is in the White House, but because it delivers a mighty blow to the “trickle down” paradigm that has held sway in Washington for the past four decades.

Since Ronald Reagan shifted the whole political spectrum far to the right, the reigning philosophy has been to let the rich become obscenely richer and hope some of that wealth makes its way down to the unwashed masses. The result has been shocking levels of inequality that have destabilized our democracy and, for the poor and the working class, turned the highway to the American dream into a grinding, soul-sapping treadmill.

In an address to the nation Thursday — aimed especially at Democrats in Congress — Biden tried to get everyone to see the big picture.

These are “historic investments in our nation and in our people,” Biden said. “Somewhere along the way, we stopped investing in ourselves, investing in our people . ... We need to build America from the bottom up and the middle out, not from top down.”

Biden’s new framework makes genuinely significant progress toward ending the trickle-down paradigm on both spending and taxation. No, it does not go nearly as far as progressives believe is necessary. It doesn’t go nearly as far as I believe is necessary. But it is by far the biggest shift away from Reaganomics since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and maybe the biggest since Reagan left office.

There is $400 billion for child care and universal preschool. There is $150 billion for home care, which will help families taking care of elderly parents. There is $200 billion to extend the enhanced child tax credit and to make it permanently refundable, meaning low-income families will get its full benefit. There is a whopping $555 billion to speed the transition to clean energy and ensure that the United States does not idiotically stand by while China and Europe reap the economic benefits.

On the other side of the ledger, over a decade the framework would raise $325 billion in revenue by imposing a 15% minimum tax on corporations, including the mega-firms that now use loopholes to pay no tax at all on their massive profits; $125 billion from companies that use their profits to buy back their own stock, rather than use the money in ways that create jobs; $350 billion from corporations that ship jobs and profits overseas; and $230 billion from a small income tax surcharge on the wealthiest .02% of U.S. taxpayers, who more accurately should be called tax-avoiders because of the cleverness of their high-priced accountants and lawyers.

“No one got everything they wanted, including me,” Biden said, in an understatement. But the clear impact is to shift federal tax and spending policy in a more progressive direction. With the World Series now underway, I wish Democrats had been able to make Build Back Better into a grand slam. But a two-run homer is a great thing — especially when the alternative is a game-ending strikeout.

It’s time for Democrats to heed the slogan of a company, Nike, that reportedly paid no federal income tax last year but would pay at least 15% under Biden’s plan: Just do it.