Democrats, get behind Biden’s bills
Like many political battles in Washington, the effort to pass the Biden Build Back Better agenda seems to operate in a different universe, where common sense dies at the altar of special interests, inside baseball and Republican intransigence. Watching cable news, you’d think Democrats were repeating the mistakes of 2010, dooming themselves to lose their House majority and risking the Senate in the midterms. Give me a break. Passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill and reconciliation package would put our government and economy back on the side of working and middle-class Americans for the first time in generations. Passing it won’t cost the Democrats the House or Senate; in fact, it’s the only thing that can help them keep it.
Taken together, the infrastructure bill and reconciliation package contain proposals that politicians — on both sides of the aisle — have promised to enact for decades. Our failure to do so is exactly what has allowed the Republican Party to sow so much distrust and cynicism in communities across America.
The infrastructure bill would create potentially hundreds of thousands of union jobs, rebuild our roads and bridges and water systems, and dramatically expand mass transit so that the United States doesn’t fall behind China. Meanwhile, policies likely to be included in the reconciliation package would provide everything from free community college and child care to universal pre-K, expanded health care for millions of Americans, and lower prescription drug prices. One of the best parts? It’s financed by making corporations and the highest-income Americans pay their fair share after decades of being subsidized by taxpayers while ordinary families got stuck with higher bills and trillions of dollars in unnecessary deficit spending.
In a surprise to no one with a brain, this agenda has proven popular. Despite nonstop attacks by the Republicans, the American people want to see it enacted. Both bills were backed by a solid majority of Americans in a recent USA Today/ Suffolk University Poll. With this kind of popular and life-changing agenda on the line, we can’t fall victim to arguments over procedural nonsense. In the real world, no one cares about when the House votes on the infrastructure bill, they only care that their lives are better off because of it.
Think about it. No one is going to fire an elected official who made child care and college truly affordable and expanded health care; who made it possible for them to get a job rebuilding our infrastructure with a prevailing wage so they could provide for their own family with the pride and dignity every human being deserves; and who actually did something to save the planet and stop catastrophic wildfires, floods and hurricanes that took everything from them.
You don’t have to believe me; just open a textbook. That’s what we did with the New Deal, and in the process built a decades-long Democratic electoral majority. We built that majority because we delivered on our promises. We showed the country — and every nation on Earth — that the story of what America was capable of can be their story as well. Our policies lifted a nation off of its knees and led to decades of economic growth and a reduction of poverty, disease and hunger that no one could have ever dreamt of. This is our chance to finish the job.
As a member of Congress, I had to take tough votes and take a stand knowing there’d be consequences. Delivering on an agenda we promised to the American people year after year is neither of those things. Indeed, we spent a majority of the 116th Congress passing legislation just like this in the House only to see it die in Mitch McConnell’s Senate. Only among pundits, consultants and the Twitterati is voting on something you already voted for considered politically perilous.
It is going to be difficult to build the coalition necessary to pass both bills. Unlike Congressional Republicans, the Democratic caucus isn’t a cult devoted to a would-be tyrant. We have real policy differences rooted in sincerely held beliefs. Yet we cannot let this moment pass. If Democrats fail to make these policies law, it would only confirm to the American people that politicians care more about politics than people. If we are going to hold onto Congress, then the Democratic Party needs to be better than that.
To my former colleagues: Take it from me — there is no guarantee any current member of Congress will be there in 2023. Losing sucks, but I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if I hadn’t taken every opportunity to improve the lives of my constituents. If we aren’t willing to risk it all to build a better, safer and more just America, then why run for office in the first place?