Biden’s dilemma in virus aid fight: Go big or go bipartisan
President was part of an Obama administration facing GOP opposition
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s push for a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill is forcing an internal reckoning that pits his instincts to work toward a bipartisan deal against the demands of an urgent crisis and his desire to deliver for those who helped elect him.
His bipartisan bona fides have been a defining feature of his political career, first as a Senate dealmaker, later as he led legislative negotiations for the Obama administration when vice president.
But the scope of the multiple crises confronting the nation now, along with the lessons Democrats learned from four years of Republican opposition during Barack Obama presidency, seem to be pushing Biden toward quick action on the coronavirus aid bill, even if Republicans get left behind.
“I have told both Republicans and Democrats that’s my preference: to work together. But if I have to choose between getting help right now to Americans who are hurting so badly and getting bogged down in a lengthy negotiation or compromising on a bill that’s up to the crisis, that’s an easy choice,” Biden said Friday. “I’m going to help the American people who are hurting now.”
So far, the administration has proceeded on two parallel tracks.
One featured a public show of trying to reach across the political aisle, with bipartisan rhetoric and a White House invitation for Republican senators. Their housewarming gift was a proposal more than $1 trillion short of what Biden wanted.
At the same time, Biden has insisted on the need for a sizable package to address the deadly pandemic. The administration has encouraged Democratic senators to be prepared to go it alone, to ready a plan that combines money to address the virus with money to fulfill a progressive agenda that includes a higher federal minimum wage.
Democrats say they have learned some key lessons from Obama’s first term about bipartisanship in the face of crisis.
Biden made overtures to Congress in dealing with the financial meltdown. For months, Biden focused his efforts on his former GOP colleagues, in the end to get the backing of just three Republicans.
The process of securing the $787 billion package left a bad taste for the Obama-Biden White House. Many in the Democratic Party have come to believe it was too small, a missed opportunity to not just help the economy but reinvent it.
“The lesson from the Great Recession is that without sustained economic relief, the recovery will take longer, unemployed workers will experience more pain, and already historic levels of inequality will worsen,” said Chris Lu, a deputy labor secretary under Obama.
Democrats also say they will not be burned again by expectations for bipartisanship that proved to be naive during the Obama years.
Austan Goolsbee, a former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said one of the other lessons of those negotiations was that “Republicans are going to argue against Joe Biden if he does anything at all.”
“Everyone believed at that time that if the economy struggled, we could come back” and pass additional aid, Goolsbee said. But Republicans were staunchly opposed to Obama’s agenda throughout his eight years in office. The prospect that they will again refuse to work with Biden should make him go big while he still can, in Goolsbee’s view.
“If there is a hyperpartisan gridlock environment in Washington, that ought to make you doubly careful about trimming your own wings out of the gate,” he said.