Crisis is lurking for Biden
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has had a great start. When he can act by himself, or when the majority can rule in Congress, he can get a lot done. But a crisis is lurking. The Democrats’ thinas-thin-can-be majority in the Senate combined with the filibuster rule and other arcane procedural restrictions means that ever ything will get a lot harder ver y quickly.
Let’s star t with the good news. Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue and stimulus package is on its way to enactment. It passed the House and can get through the Senate with 50 Democratic votes, plus Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaker, because the Senate’s “reconciliation” rule essentially allows money bills to pass on a simple majority.
Yes, there are some differences among Democrats that are being ironed out — how exactly to structure the $1,400 checks, for example, and whether to move some money from one program to another. But these are part of a normal give-and-take.
And the president had a good day when he announced a White House-brokered deal in which the big pharmaceutical company Merck will help manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine. Biden was thus able to announce that there would be enough vaccines “for ever y adult in America by the end of May.”
But the limits placed on legislating by what Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has rightly called the Senate’s “incredibly obtuse and undemocratic rules” have already opened a rift in the party over the minimum wage. And the big showdown will come when the pro-voting rights, prodemocracy political reform bill, which the House (passed), hits the Senate floor.
The House included a minimum-wage increase to $15 by 2025 in its version of Biden’s economic rescue plan. But the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the wage provision didn’t fit under reconciliation rules. Senate Democrats seem likely to knock it out of the bill rather than overrule parliamentarian.
Still, let’s assume the Democrats manage to push a minimum-wage increase through by tacking it on to a defense bill or some other measure Republicans feel they must vote for. The inescapable confrontation will come over the For the People Act, and, later, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Right before our eyes, Republicans in states such as Georgia and Arizona are engaging in blatant voter suppression.
If Democrats who continue to defend the filibuster, notably Sens. Joe Manchin III, W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, Ariz., don’t accept lifting it on behalf of political reform, they will be asking their party to commit political suicide in the face of the GOP’s discriminator y, anti-voter drive. They will be maiming democracy, too.
It will eventually fall to Biden to have a hear t-to-hear t with Manchin, Sinema and other senators reluctant to part with the old rules. As a Senate warhorse himself, Biden will have special credibility if he says it’s time for change.
Something is wrong. This is not about “tradition” or “bipar tisanship.” This is a choice between obstruction and majority rule — in the Senate, yes, but also in our elections. If Biden wants to build on the success he has enjoyed so far, he needs to defuse the crisis that awaits him.