Democrats on tour promoting stimulus bill
PHILADELPHIA – U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan sat around a picnic table with three single moms, chatting about how the economic stimulus bill passed by Congress could ease some of the stress of raising children during a pandemic, and beyond.
“I’m first and foremost a mom,” Houlahan, a Chester County Democrat, told them last Monday at a park in Kennett Square. “There’s quite a lot in the legislation that’s helping people be able to afford the cost of children. … These issues are not women’s issues, they’re human issues.”
Three days later in Wilkes-barre, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright highlighted how the $1.9 trillion legislation will boost funding for social services agencies.
“All of us have been through a lot over this ugly, nasty COVID-19 pandemic,” Cartwright, a Lackawanna County Democrat, said Thursday at the Children’s Service Center, a behavioral and mental health provider. “A key goal of the American Rescue Plan is helping this entire country get over tough times.”
In their first recess from Washington since passing the sweeping coronavirus relief measure last month, Democrats across the country are crisscrossing their districts for a hybrid celebration education tour. Their mission: ensure constituents know how the package can help them, and make clear that Democrats were responsible for the legislation, which passed without any Republican support.
“Lots of people are aware in very broad strokes what’s in the plan, but they don’t necessarily know about some of the specifics,” said U.S. Rep. Susan Wild, of Allentown. “A lot of people still don’t understand what a refundable tax credit is. We’re going to need to do a big educational push to make sure people who might not otherwise even file taxes do.”
There were more than 90 events across the country on Wednesday alone, House Democrats said. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the party held the blitz “so that the public would know … what is in the bill and how they can benefit from it directly.”
For many Democrats, the effort is born out of harsh lessons from the Obama administration. They saidd they failed to sell voters on their economic rescue package and the Affordable Care Act, and suffered severe political consequences.
“If you move on from a major piece of legislation like that and you don’t highlight what’s in it, people may not remember why it was passed, what was in it,” U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-PA., said in March, just before President Joe Biden came to Delaware County to promote the measure. “It’s important to really lay down a marker about this bill.”
Former president Barack Obama’s stimulus and his signature health care law became prime targets for the GOP. They helped sink Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans won the House and severely limited the remaining six years of Obama’s presidency.
“There was actually a big tax cut … and it didn’t seem that people were aware that that tax cut came from that recovery bill,” Casey said. “One of the jobs of being a party that’s implementing good policy is you’ve got to communicate.”
The new American Rescue Plan is widely popular, with 70% of Americans in favor and 29% opposed, according to a Pew Research Center survey in March. Even 4 out of 10 Republicans supported it, including a majority of low-income Republicans, said Carroll Doherty, a Pew pollster.
“That’s significant,” Doherty said. “Even in a polarized environment, you still get 41% of Republicans favoring it, which compared to other things we’ve seen in recent years is pretty high.”
A key question, though, is whether those initially high numbers endure if attention shifts to other topics. And rather than counter the Democratic publicity blitz, Republicans are trying to turn attention elsewhere – namely immigration.
Although Democrats were promoting the stimulus last week, U.S. Rep. Fred Keller, R-PA., was planning to join Republican colleagues on a trip to the southern border. It was one of roughly 10 trips that groups of GOP lawmakers have organized to examine and emphasize the growing immigration surge and the Biden administration’s struggle to manage it, according to a Republican aide.
“I’m convinced that they’re talking about (the stimulus bill) because they don’t want to talk about the mess at the southern border,” Keller said in a telephone interview.
When House Minority Leader Kevin Mccarthy, R-calif., issued a statement Thursday responding to Biden’s executive actions on gun control, much of it centered on the border.
Only 24% of Americans approve of how Biden has handled the surge of unaccompanied children arriving at the border, and 40% disapprove, according to an Associated Press poll released last week.