Democrats mum on economic successes
DUNWOODY, Ga. — In the midst of a critical runoff campaign that would determine control of the Senate, the Rev. Raphael Warnock promised Georgia voters that, if elected, he would help Presidentelect Joe Biden send checks to people digging out of the pandemic recession.
Warnock won. Democrats delivered payments of up to $1,400 per person.
But this year, as Warnock is locked in a tight reelection campaign, he barely talks about those checks.
Democratic candidates in competitive Senate races this fall have spent little time on the trail or the airwaves touting the centerpiece provisions of their party’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue package, which party leaders had hoped would help stave off losses in the House and Senate in midterm elections. In part, that is because the rescue plan has become fodder for Republicans to attack Democrats over rapidly rising prices, accusing them of overstimulating the economy with too much cash.
The economic aid, which was intended to help keep families afloat amid the pandemic, included two centerpiece components for households: the direct checks of up to $1,400 for lower- to middle-class individuals and an expanded child tax credit, worth up to $300 per child per month. It was initially seen as Biden’s signature economic policy achievement, in part because the tax credit dramatically reduced child poverty last year. Polls suggested Americans knew they had received money and why — giving Democrats hope they would be rewarded politically.
Liberal activists are particularly troubled that Democratic candidates are not focusing more on the payments to families.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has surveyed voters in detail on the child credit, said data suggest the party’s candidates should be selling Americans on the pieces of Biden’s policies that helped families cope with rising costs.
“We have a narrative on inflation,” Lake said in an interview. “We just aren’t using it.”
Many campaign strategists disagree. They say voters are not responding to messages about pandemic aid. Some Democrats worry that voters have been swayed by the persistent Republican argument that the aid was the driving factor behind rapidly rising prices of food, rent and other daily staples.
Shifting focus
Economists generally agree that the stimulus spending contributed to accelerating inflation, although they disagree on how much. Biden administration officials and Democratic candidates reject that characterization. When pressed, they defend their emergency spending, saying it has put the United States on stronger footing than other wealthy nations at a time of rapid global inflation.
Republicans have spent nearly $150 million on inflation-themed television ads across the country this election cycle, according to data from AdImpact.
Democrats have tried to deflect blame, portraying inflation as the product of global forces like crimped supply chains while touting their efforts to lower the cost of electricity and prescription drugs. They have aired nearly $50 million of their own ads mentioning inflation, often pinning it on corporate profit gouging. “What if I told you shipping container companies have been making record profits while prices have been skyrocketing on you?” Warnock said in an ad aired earlier this year.
Candidates and independent groups that support the stimulus payments have spent just $7 million nationwide on advertisements mentioning the direct checks, the child tax credit or the rescue plan overall, according to data from AdImpact.
Far more money has been spent by Democrats on other issues, including $27 million on ads mentioning infrastructure, which was another early economic win for Biden, and $95 million on ads that mention abortion rights.
Warnock has not cited any of the rescue plan’s provisions in his ads, focusing instead on issues like personal character, health care and bipartisanship, according to AdImpact data.
For months after the rescue plan’s passage, Democratic leaders were confident that they had solved an economic policy dilemma that has vexed Democrats and Republicans stretching back to the George W. Bush administration: They were giving Americans money, but voters weren’t giving them any credit.
Tax cuts and direct spending aid approved by Bush, President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump failed to win over large swaths of voters and spare incumbent parties from large midterm losses. Economists and strategists concluded that was often because Americans had not noticed they had benefited from the policies each president was sure would sway elections.
That was not the case with the direct checks and the child tax credit. People noticed them. But they still have not turned into political selling points at a time of rapid inflation.
Ignoring payments
As the November elections approach, most voters appear to be motivated by a long list of other issues, including abortion, crime and a range of economic concerns.
Warnock’s speech last week to a group of Democrats in an unfinished floor of an office space in Dunwoody, a northern Atlanta suburb, underscored that shift in emphasis.
He began the policy section of the rally with a quick nod to the child credit, then ticked through a series of provisions from bills that Biden has signed in the last two years: highways and broadband internet tied to a bipartisan infrastructure law, semiconductor plants spurred by a China competitiveness law, a gun safety law and aid for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. He lingered on one piece of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act: a cap on the cost of insulin for Medicare patients, which Warnock cast as critical for diabetics in Georgia, particularly in Black communities.
The direct payments never came up.
Direct pandemic payments began under Trump and continued under Biden, with no serious talk of another round after the ones delivered in the rescue plan. Most Democrats had hoped the one-year, $100 billion child credit in the rescue plan would be made permanent in a new piece of legislation.
But the credit expired, largely because Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a key swing vote, opposed its inclusion in what would become the Inflation Reduction Act, citing concerns the money would exacerbate inflation.
Lake, the Democratic pollster, said talking more about the child credit could help reenergize Democratic voters for the midterms. Warnock’s speech in Dunwoody — an admittedly small sample — suggested otherwise.
Warnock drew cheers from the audience after he called the child tax credit “the single largest tax cut for middle- and workingclass families in American history.”
But his biggest ovation, by far, came when the economics section of his speech had ended, and Warnock had moved on to defending abortion rights.