Biden must change to pass ambitious agenda
WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’s pitch during the 2020 campaign to unseat President Donald Trump was simple: Trade in a stubborn, immovable leader for one with a proven record of taking half a loaf when a full one is out of reach.
That approach appears to have brought Biden to the precipice of victory on a $2 trillion deal that could begin to define his legacy as a successful Oval Office legislative architect, one reshaping government spending and doing so by the narrowest of margins in a country with deep partisan and ideological chasms.
But the bill is certain to be far smaller than what he originally proposed and far less ambitious than he and many of his allies had hoped. It won’t make him the one who finally secured free community college for everyone. Seniors won’t get free dental, hearing and vision coverage from Medicare. And there won’t be a new system of penalties for the worst polluters.
“Hey, look, it’s all about compromise,” Biden said at a CNN town hall meeting Thursday, shrugging off the doubters as he sought to close the deal with lawmakers and the public.
But accepting less and calling it a win has its limits — and consequences.
By spending the past several months pushing for an even larger and more ambitious agenda, knowing he likely would have to pare it back, Biden has let down some supporters who believed he could deliver on his soaring rhetoric about the need for better higher education, expanded Medicare services and bold advances in the fight against climate change.
“In order to make real progress, you have to inspire people about the importance of the work,” said Doug Elmendorf, the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “And then any compromise is a disappointment.”
Negotiations are continuing on the package’s final framework. But after pushing for months for a $3.5 trillion bill, the president likely will end up with a measure that includes less than $2 trillion in spending on social programs and climate change initiatives.
Once the spending bills are behind him, Biden still faces challenges not so easily solved by compromise. On Thursday, he appeared to acknowledge that reality by hinting that he was open to altering the Senate’s longstanding filibuster rules if that’s what it takes to break through Republican opposition to protecting voting rights and passing other parts of the Democratic agenda.
“We’re going to have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter the filibuster,” he told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
That’s a dramatic concession for a politician such as Biden, who embraced the often arcane rules of the Senate during the three decades he served there. Like other institutionalists in the chamber, Biden has resisted demands from liberal activists to shatter those rules, fearful of the consequences the next time Republicans are in charge.
But the Washington that Biden often reminisces about — the one in which Democrats and Republicans work together toward common goals — is largely a distant memory. If he wants to make progress on voting rights, climate change, prison reform, an immigration overhaul and more, he likely won’t be able to lean on the same instincts that have animated most of his political life and defined the brand that helped him win the White House.
The political differences are stark: Republicans argue that the president’s spending program would burden future generations with more debt and be a drag on the economy. They insist the voting rights legislation is intended to benefit Democrats, and they oppose many of the president’s climate policies because they say they’ll be bad for jobs and business.
John Podesta, who was former President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, said Biden “has done a pretty good job of pushing as far as he could in the style that he was a champion of.” But he said that beyond the spending bills, “it’s hard to see how he gets that same spirit of collaboration, goodwill, honorable compromise.”
The issue of voting rights may be the clearest example in the months to come.
Just last week, Republicans used the filibuster to block an already watered-down Democratic voting rights bill for the third time since Biden took office. The takeaway? If Democrats want federal legislation to stop what they view as an assault on voting in Republican-controlled states, they’ll need to play hardball.
That likely means persuading all 50 Democrats and independents in the chamber to vote for changing the filibuster rule — if he can.
But perhaps the biggest promise Biden made during the campaign was to be the president who finally would confront the environmental dangers facing the planet. On Thursday, he put it in the bluntest possible terms: “The existential threat to humanity is climate change.”
Biden and his party probably will face that threat alone in the coming months and years. Most Republicans have shown little appetite for aggressive action to counter the environmental damage from cars, manufacturing and other economic activities.
And even within his own party, the president faces divisions that make it difficult to persuade the rest of the world that the U.S. is serious about reducing the emissions causing global warming.
For Biden, then, the question will be: Is he willing to treat the debate of core issues such as climate, voting rights and immigration as a “break the glass” moment in which he and his Democratic allies have no choice but to change the rules, even if it means Republicans will take advantage of the chance to advance their own agenda once they return to power?
One argument at his disposal: Changing the rules to allow more of the Democratic agenda to pass could be vital for the party’s success at the polls.
Strategists say enthusiasm among core Democratic voters is critical to defeating the Republican Party in the midterm elections of 2022 (and perhaps Trump, its leader, two years later). If crucial parts of the president’s coalition remain unhappy because they’re disappointed in the compromise bill, that could threaten Democratic hopes to keep control of Congress and the White House.
“The political costs of this will be large,” Elmendorf said.
Podesta, who advised Hillary Clinton during her runs for the presidency, agreed. He said it was a “big problem” if Democrats couldn’t deliver on the fundamental promises.
Biden’s approval ratings already have fallen into the low-to-mid-40s.
“Particularly younger voters,” Podesta said. “You are seeing it among independents, African American and Latino voters. They are just feeling like these guys are not delivering.”
Biden might turn the enthusiasm gap around by making progress on the rest of his agenda, including voting rights, immigration and climate change.
He vowed Thursday that he would continue to press for parts of his agenda that were left on the cutting room floor during the debate over the spending bills. He called increasing Pell Grants for college students “a start,” but he pledged to keep trying for free community college — in part to satisfy the demands of his wife, Jill Biden, a longtime college professor.
“I’m going to get it done,” he vowed, adding with a smile at his wife in the front row, “and if I don’t, I’ll be sleeping alone for a long time.”