American Rescue Plan (2021)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      This Presidency Isn’t Turning Out as Planned

      by

      Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president. His Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, was Obama’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve. The director of Biden’s National Economic Council, Brian Deese, was deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, was his chief of staff for the first two years of the Obama administration and then Obama’s top Ebola adviser. And so on.The familiar names and faces can obscure how different the new administration, in practice, has become. The problems Biden is facing are an almost perfect inversion of the problems Obama faced. The Obama administration was bedeviled by crises of demand. The Biden administration is struggling with crises of supply.For years, every conversation I had with Obama administration economists was about how to persuade employers to hire and consumers to spend. The 2009 stimulus was too small, and while we avoided a second Great Depression, we sank into an achingly slow recovery. Democrats carried those lessons into the Covid pandemic. They met the crisis with overwhelming fiscal force, joining with the Trump administration to pass the $2.2 trillion CARES Act and then adding the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and the assorted Build Back Better proposals on top. They made clear that they preferred the risks of a hot economy, like inflation, to the threat of mass joblessness.“We want to get something economists call full employment,” Biden said in May. “Instead of workers competing with each other for jobs that are scarce, we want employers to compete with each other to attract work.”That they have largely succeeded feels like the best-kept secret in Washington. A year ago, forecasters expected unemployment to be nearly 6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020. Instead, it fell to 3.9 percent in December, driven by the largest one-year drop in unemployment in American history. Wages are high, new businesses are forming at record rates, and poverty has fallen below its prepandemic levels. Since March 2020, Americans saved at least $2 trillion more than expected. And that’s not just a function of the rich getting richer: a JPMorgan Chase analysis found the median household’s checking account balance was 50 percent higher in July 2021 than in the months before the pandemic.It is easy to imagine the wan recovery we could’ve had if the mistakes of 2009 and 2010 had been repeated. Instead, we met the pandemic with tremendous, perhaps excessive, fiscal force. We fought the recession and won. The problems we do have shouldn’t obscure the problems we don’t.But we do have problems. Year-on-year inflation is running at 7 percent, its highest rate in decades, and Omicron has shown that the Biden administration wasted months of possible preparation. It is not to blame for the new variant, but it is to blame for the paucity of tests, effective masks and ventilation upgrades.The conversations I have with the Biden administration’s economists are very different from the conversations I had with the Obama administration’s economists, even when they’re the same people. Now the discussion is all about what the economy can produce and how fast it can be shipped. They need companies to make more goods and make them faster. They need more chips so there can be more cars and computers. They need ports to clear more shipments and Pfizer to make more antiviral pills and shipping companies to hire more truckers and schools to upgrade their ventilation systems.Some of these problems reflect the Biden administration’s successes. (Read my colleague Paul Krugman for more on this.) For all the talk of supply chain crises, many of the delays and shortages reflect unexpectedly strong demand, not a pandemic-induced breakdown in production. Supply chains are built to produce the goods that companies think will be consumed in the future. Expectations were off for 2021, in part because forecasters thought demand would slacken as people lost work and wages, in part because the fiscal response was massively larger than anyone anticipated and in part because when people couldn’t go out for meals and movies, they bought things instead. Overall spending is more or less on its prepandemic trend, but the composition of spending has changed: Americans purchased 18 percent more physical goods in September 2021 than in February 2020.Now the Biden administration fears that its supply problems will wipe out its demand successes. In recent remarks, Biden took aim at those who would lower prices by breaking the buying power of the working class. “If car prices are too high right now, there are two solutions,” Biden said. “You increase the supply of cars by making more of them, or you reduce demand for cars by making Americans poorer. That’s the choice. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of people in the second camp.”He’s right, but this is a practical fight, not just an ideological one, and the Biden administration is making its own mistakes. His administration is suffering right now from directly mismanaging Covid supplies. It did an extraordinary job in its first months, flooding the country with vaccines. Today, any adult who wants one, or three, can get the shots. But vaccines aren’t the only public health tool that matters, and there was every reason to believe the Biden administration knew it. The American Rescue Plan had about $20 billion for vaccine distribution, but it had $50 billion to expand testing and even more than that to retrofit classrooms so teachers and children alike would feel safe. Where did that money go?Getting the pandemic supply chain right would help ease every other supply chain, too. If Americans could move about their lives more confidently, they could buy services instead of things, and if companies could test and protect their work forces more effectively, they could produce and ship more goods.But the Biden administration hasn’t fully embraced its role as an economic planner. When Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, was asked about testing shortages in December, she shot back, “Should we just send one to every American?”Psaki’s snark soon became Biden’s policy. The administration is launching a website where any family can request four free tests. That’s a start, but no more than that. For rapid testing to work, people need to be able to do it constantly. But because the administration didn’t create the supply of tests it needed months ago, there aren’t enough tests for it or anyone else to buy now. Part of this reflects the ongoing failure of the Food and Drug Administration to approve many of the tests already being sold in Europe.The same is true, I’d argue, about masks. There’s simply no reason every American can’t pick up an unlimited supply of N95s and KN95s at every post office, library and D.M.V. Instead, people are buying counterfeit N95s on Amazon and wearing cloth masks that do far less to arrest spread. Now the Biden administration is moving toward supplying masks. But more needs to be done: How about ventilation? How about building the vaccine production capacity needed to vaccinate the world and prevent future strains from emerging? How about building capacity to produce more antiviral pills so that the next effective treatment can ramp up more quickly?For decades, Democrats and Republican administrations alike believed the market would manage supply. We live in the wreckage of that worldview. But it held for so long that the U.S. government has lost both the muscle and the confidence needed to manage supply, at least when it comes to anything other than military spending. So Biden’s task now is clear: to build a government that can create supply, not just demand.This may not be the presidency Biden prepared for, but it’s the one he got.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Your Monday Briefing: Omicron Evades Many Vaccines

      by

      And elections in Hong Kong.Good morning. We’re covering the latest Omicron news, the Hong Kong elections and a Times investigation into civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes.People waiting in line for AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines in Dhaka, Bangladesh.Mohammad Ponir Hossain/ReutersOmicron outstrips many vaccinesA growing body of preliminary research suggests most Covid vaccines offer almost no defense against infection from the highly contagious Omicron variant. The only vaccines that appear to be effective against infections are those made by Pfizer and Moderna, reinforced by a booster, which are not widely available around the world.Other vaccines — including those from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and vaccines manufactured in China and Russia — do little to nothing to stop the spread of Omicron, early research shows. Because most countries have built their inoculation programs around these vaccines, the gap could have a profound impact on the course of the pandemic.Still, most vaccines used worldwide do seem to offer significant protection against severe illness. And early Omicron data suggests South Africa’s hospitalizations are significantly lower in this wave.U.S.: A fourth wave has arrived, just days before Christmas. More than 125,000 Americans are testing positive every day, and hospitalizations have increased nearly 20 percent in two weeks. Only one in six Americans has received a booster shot.Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.In other developments:Some Southeast Asian tourism spots have reopened, but few foreigners are making the trip.Two lawyers and a civil rights activist are on trial in Iran after trying to sue the country’s leaders over their disastrous handling of the pandemic.The U.K. is considering a lockdown as cases skyrocket.National security organizations vetted candidates running in Sunday’s legislative elections. Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York TimesBeijing steers Hong Kong’s voteHong Kong held legislative elections this weekend, the first since Beijing imposed a drastic “patriots only” overhaul of the political system, leaving many opposition leaders in jail or in exile.Understand the Hong Kong ElectionsHong Kong’s legislative election on Dec. 19 will be the first since Beijing imposed a drastic overhaul of the island’s political system.What to Know: New electoral rules and the crackdown on the opposition have eliminated even the slightest uncertainty of previous elections.An Unpopular Leader: Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, appears to relish the new state of affairs.Seeking Legitimacy: The outcome is already determined, but the government is pressuring opposition parties to participate. A Waning Opposition: Fearing retaliation, pro-democracy politicians who had triumphed in the 2019 local elections have quit in droves.Under the overhaul, only 20 seats were directly elected by residents; the rest were chosen by industry groups or Beijing loyalists. The establishment’s near-total control of the legislature is now guaranteed, reports my colleague Austin Ramzy.Analysis: Even though the government has effectively determined the outcome of the elections, it is pressuring voters and opposition parties to participate in order to lend the vote legitimacy.Profile: Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, is the territory’s most unpopular leader ever, polls show. But Lam appears reinvigorated and is poised to seek a second term — if Beijing allows it.A 2016 airstrike aimed at an Islamic State recruiter in Iraq hit Hassan Aleiwi Muhammad Sultan, now 16 and in a wheelchair.Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesA pattern of failures A five-year Times investigation found that the American air wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan have been plagued by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, thousands of civilian deaths — with scant accountability.The military’s own confidential assessments, obtained by The Times, document more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties since 2014, many of them children. The findings are a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs.The documents show, too, that despite the Pentagon’s highly codified system for examining civilian casualties, pledges of transparency and accountability have given way to opacity and impunity.Details: Here are key takeaways from the first part of the investigation. The second installment will be published in the coming days.Records: The Times obtained the records through Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits filed against the Defense Department and the U.S. Central Command. Click here to access the full trove.THE LATEST NEWSAsiaA child recovered belongings from his home, which was severely damaged by Super Typhoon Rai.Jay Labra/Associated PressOfficials now believe that more than 140 people died after a powerful typhoon struck the Philippines last week.Police in Japan identified a suspect in the Friday arson fire that killed 24 people in an office building in Osaka.U.S. Olympic leaders criticized China’s response to allegations of sexual assault from one of its star athletes, while trying not to jeopardize American athletes headed to Beijing.Marja, a district in Afghanistan, was once the center of the U.S. campaign against the Taliban. Now residents there are increasingly desperate for foreign humanitarian aid.“In my mind, I was dead,” said Ko Aung Kyaw, a journalist in Myanmar who said he was tortured by the military junta, adding: “I didn’t look like a human.”World NewsRussian troops participated in drills at a firing range last week.Associated PressRussia laid out demands for a Cold War-like security arrangement in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which were immediately rejected by NATO.Chileans began voting for president on Sunday after one of the most polarizing and acrimonious election campaigns in the country’s history.Israel is threatening to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, but experts and officials say that is beyond the capabilities of its military.The Baghdad International Book Fair drew readers from across Iraq eager to connect with the outside world through literature.What Else Is HappeningLegal and military experts are considering whether to seek a ban on killer robots, which are technically called “lethal autonomous weapons systems.”Senator Joe Manchin said he would not support President Biden’s expansive social spending bill, all but dooming the Democrats’ drive to pass it as written.Asian and Black activists in the U.S. are struggling to find common ground over policing and safety.Lawyers for Britney Spears are questioning whether her manager improperly enriched herself during the conservatorship.A Morning Read“I wanted to perform rakugo the exact same way that men do,” Niyo Katsura, right, said after winning a top award.Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesRakugo, one of Japan’s oldest and raunchiest comedic arts, has long been dominated by men. But a woman artist, Niyo Katsura, is now winning acclaim for her uncanny ability to portray a range of drunks and fools — male and female alike.ARTS AND IDEAS Clockwise from top left: Reuters, The New York Times, AFP, The New York Times, AFP, ReutersThe faces of 2021The New York Times Faces Quiz offers a chance to see how well you know some of the defining personalities of 2021. We have chosen 52. When we show you each face, you need to tell us the name. (And yes, we’re lenient on spelling.)Play it here, and see how well you do compared with other Times readers.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Simpson for The New York TimesPernil, a pork shoulder roast from Puerto Rico that is often made for holidays or special occasions, is slow-roasted on high heat to achieve a crisp skin known as chicharrón.What to ReadHere are nine new books to peruse, which include a cultural history of seven immigrant cooks, reflections on suicide and a biography of H.G. Wells.What to WatchAn experimental Canadian drama, an Egyptian weight lifting documentary and a Chilean buddy comedy are three of five international movies available to stream this month.Now Time to PlayHere’s today’s Mini Crossword.And here is today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Carlos Tejada, The Times’s deputy Asia editor and a fierce advocate for our journalism, died on Friday of a heart attack. We will miss him.The latest episode of “The Daily” is about the next phase of the pandemic.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      So You Lost the Election. We Had Nothing to Do With It.

      by

      Among Democrats, there is no question that the Democratic Party is sailing in rough waters. Yes, it assembled a winning national majority in the 2020 presidential election, but it has struggled to sustain itself at every other level of government.The Republican Party controls a majority of states and state legislatures, holds a modest advantage in the fight for control of the House ahead of the 2022 midterm elections and holds a substantial advantage in the fight for control of the Senate on account of the chamber’s rural bias. It also has a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court and can more easily win the Electoral College — and thus the presidency — without winning a majority of votes, as it did in 2000 and 2016.Everyone, within the Democratic Party, can see the problem. The question is who, or what, is to blame. For the past year, the answer from many moderate Democrats — and a sympathetic coterie of journalists, commentators and strategists — is that progressives have sailed the ship aground with their views on race, crime, immigration and education, which alienate potential swing voters, including working-class and blue-collar Hispanics.Writing on this problem for The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein quotes the demographer and election analyst Ruy Teixeira, who argues, “The more working class voters see their values as being at variance with the Democratic Party brand, the less likely it is that Democrats will see due credit for even their measures that do provide benefits to working class voters.”In a similar piece, my colleague Tom Edsall quotes William Galston of Brookings, who also argues that progressives threaten to limit efforts to win blue-collar support and that “Some progressives, I fear, would rather be the majority in a minority party than the minority in a majority party.”It is true that some progressives — either Democratic lawmakers or affiliated activists — hold unpopular views or use unpopular language. It is also true that Republicans have amplified this to some electoral success. But missing in this conversation is one inconvenient fact: Progressives are not actually in the driver’s seat of the Democratic Party.It’s easy to think otherwise. Even the most sober version of this critique makes it sound as if the Democratic Party is in the grip of its most left-wing officials and constituents. But it isn’t — to the dismay and frustration of those officials and constituents.The president of the United States, and leader of the Democratic Party, is Joe Biden, the standard-bearer for a bygone era of centrist governance and aisle-crossing compromise, who made his mark in domestic politics as a drug warrior in the 1980s and a “law and order” Democrat in the 1990s.The speaker of the House is Nancy Pelosi, a long-serving liberal establishmentarian. Her leadership team — the majority leader, Steny Hoyer; the majority whip, James Clyburn; the assistant speaker, Katherine Clark; and the Democratic caucus chairman, Hakeem Jeffries — are similarly positioned in the center-left of the Democratic Party. The same is true of Chuck Schumer, the majority leader in the Senate, as well as the people who run the various organizations of the institutional Democratic Party.Although the share of progressives within the Democratic Party is much larger than the share of progressives writ large (12 percent of the party versus 6 percent nationally, according to the most recent political typology survey from the Pew Research Center), a large majority of Democrats are moderate to moderately liberal on most issues. That’s why — and how — Joe Biden won the nomination for president in the first place, easily beating his more left-wing opponents in the South Carolina primary and rallying much of the rest of the party behind him on Super Tuesday and beyond.In office, Biden has led from the center of the Democratic Party. His main legislative achievement so far, Covid relief notwithstanding, is a bipartisan infrastructure bill. The next phase of his agenda, the Build Back Better plan, now rests in the hands of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. He does not celebrate violent protests; he denounces them. He supports law enforcement and the criminal justice system — see his comments on the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict — and avoids most cultural battles. This is true, as well, of most elected Democrats in Washington.There was a battle for control of the Democratic Party, and the moderates won. They hold the power and they direct the message. But despite this victory, moderate Democrats and their allies can’t seem to take responsibility for the party’s fortunes. When faced with defeats — as they were last month when Terry McAuliffe fell to Glenn Youngkin in the race to succeed Ralph Northam as governor of Virginia — they blame the left. It’s the same song, each time. If progressives would just stop alienating the public, then they could make gains and put power back in Democratic hands. Somehow, the people in the passenger’s seat of the Democratic Party are always and forever responsible for the driver’s failure to reach their shared destination.Writing for his newsletter, the journalist Osita Nwanevu made a version of this point earlier in the year. Progressive politicians and activists may be occasionally off-message but in the main, “The simple truth is that most of the things moderate liberals tend to argue Democrats should be doing and saying are, in fact, being done and said by the Biden administration, Democratic leaders in Congress, and the vast majority of Democratic elected officials.”If, despite their influence, moderate Democrats are not satisfied with the state of their party, then they might want to turn their critical eye on themselves. What they’ll find are a few fundamental problems that may help explain the party’s current predicament.After all, 2020 was not the first year that Democrats fell short of their expectations. They did so in 2010, when moderates had an even stronger grip on the party, as well as in 2014 and 2016. Here, again, I’ll echo Nwanevu. Despite pitching his administration to the moderate middle — despite his vocal critiques of “identity politics,” his enthusiastic patriotism and his embrace of the most popular Democratic policies on offer — Barack Obama could not arrest the Democratic Party’s slide with blue-collar voters. For the past decade, in other words, “the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects have been in decline for reasons unattributable to progressive figures and ideas that arrived on the political scene practically yesterday.”Perhaps the problem, then, lies less with the rhetoric (or existence) of progressive Democrats and more with any number of transformations in the material circumstances of American life and the response — or lack thereof — from the Democrats with the power to do something. What was the Democratic Party’s response to a generation of neoliberal economic restructuring? What was its response to the near-total collapse of private-sector unions? What was its response to the declining fortunes of American workers and the upward redistribution of American wealth?The answer, for most of the past 30 years, is that the moderate Democrats who led the party have either acquiesced in these trends or, as in the case of the Clinton administration, actively pushed them along. And to the extent that these Democrats offered policies targeted to working Americans, they very often failed to deliver on their promises.As a result, as David Dayen of The American Prospect notes in “The Case for Deliverism,” “cynicism finds a breeding ground. People tune out the Democratic message as pretty words in a speech. Eventually, Democratic support gets ground down to a nub, surfacing only in major metropolitan areas that have a cultural affinity for liberalism.” These Democrats, in their failure to deliver, lend credence to the view that Washington is more a hindrance than a help. We can see this right now, as moderate and conservative Democratic resistance to the most ambitious parts of Biden’s agenda has bogged down the entire party and hurt its overall standing.Read in this light, the frequent focus on progressives as the cause of Democratic woes looks less like hard-nosed analysis and more like excuse-making. And my sense is that this excuse-making will only get worse as Republicans weaponize the institutions of American politics to entrench their power and lay the conditions for durable minority rule.Right now, the moderate Democrats who run the party have a narrow and slipping hold on Congress against an opposition that relies on structural advantages, which could be mitigated, or at least undermined, with federal power. They have failed to act, and there’s no sign, so far, that anything will change.If and when Democrats lose one or both chambers of Congress — and when we all face the consequences of their failure — I am confident that we’ll hear, once again, how it’s everyone’s fault but their own.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      There Is Another Democrat A.O.C. Should Be Mad At

      by

      Progressive Democrats in the House of Representatives can be forgiven their anxiety about whether Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona will support the more than $1.8 trillion Build Back Better plan. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, for example, rues the two senators’ outsize influence, while her colleague Rashida Tlaib of Michigan worries that Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema are “corporate Dems” led astray by special interests.But if disappointed progressives are looking for a Democrat to blame, they should consider directing their ire toward one of their party’s founders: James Madison. Madison’s Constitution was built to thwart exactly what Democrats have been attempting: a race against time to impose vast policies with narrow majorities. Madison believed that one important function of the Constitution was to ensure sustained consensus before popular majorities could prevail.Democrats do represent a popular majority now. But for Madison, that “now” is the problem: He was less interested in a snapshot of a moment in constitutional time than in a time-lapse photograph showing that a majority had cohered. The more significant its desires, Madison thought, the longer that interval of coherence should be. The monumental scale of the Build Back Better plan consequently raises a difficult Madisonian question: Is a fleeting and narrow majority enough for making history?In this Madisonian sense, Democrats are tripping over their own boasts. Even in announcing that the spending plan had been scaled back, President Biden repeatedly called the measure “historic.” No fewer than four times in a single statement, his White House described elements of the Build Back Better framework as the most important policy innovations in “generations.” Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, called the bill the House passed last week “historic, transformative and larger than anything we have done before.”Before the plan was trimmed from its original $3.5 trillion price tag, Democratic descriptions of it were even more grandiose. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, called the party’s initial proposal “the most significant legislation to expand support for American families since the era of the New Deal and the Great Society. If not quite Rooseveltian in scope, it is certainly near-Rooseveltian.” Ms. Pelosi said the legislation would “stand for generations alongside the New Deal and the Great Society as pillars of economic security for working families.”Madison might ask why legislation that will stand for generations should be enacted in months. The pragmatic answer, of course, is that Democrats may lose their majorities in the House and Senate next November. But that is part of the problem. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson passed the New Deal and Great Society with enormous, broad-based legislative majorities. The policies were so popular that they commanded at least some bipartisan support.There is a reason Madison thought it should be that way. In evaluating public opinion, he saw two distinctions as essential. The first was whether the public’s views were based on reason or passion. The second was whether the views were settled or fluctuating.According to Madison’s political psychology, passions were inherently short-lived. That was why he could say in Federalist 10 that factions would not overtake a geographically large republic: In the time it took for them to spread, passions would cool and dissipate. By contrast, opinions based on reason could withstand the test of time.Madison encapsulated his theory of democracy in Federalist 63, which pertained to the unique role of the Senate in pumping the brakes on speeding majorities. He assumed that “the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers,” just as there would be unusual moments when the people would get swept up in passionate measures “which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.”The most significant Madisonian fact is that majority rule is both a good idea and an inevitable one: public opinion both “ought” to and “will” win out in a republic. But, crucially, it will do so “ultimately,” not immediately. One original purpose of the Senate’s six-year terms was to give its members time between elections to resist public opinion. The different electoral clocks for representatives, presidents and senators require that public opinion cohere to prevail.In 1791, with the young Constitution in operation and nascent partisan alliances appearing, Madison wrote in a newspaper essay that the government owed deference to public opinion only when that opinion was “fixed” rather than fluctuating: “This distinction, if kept in view, would prevent or decide many debates on the respect due from the government to the sentiments of the people.”It is difficult to identify a case in American history of sustained, broad public opinion that did not ultimately manifest itself in public policy. Americans have been thwarted or delayed with respect to vague ideas like expanding access to health care. But they have also disagreed profoundly and deeply about what form those ideas should concretely take. When Americans have settled into an enduring consensus on particulars, they have almost always prevailed.One way proponents of particular policies encourage consensus is by appealing to public opinion. But according to Madison, the constitutional system judges majorities on their durability. A nearly $2 trillion bill that fundamentally alters relations between the government and the governed — even if in constructive and needed ways — should demonstrate broad and enduring support. A tied Senate and nearly tied House, acting in a space of months, cannot demonstrate that support on Madisonian terms.Democrats should not be overly faulted for failing to attract Republican support. At least since Democrats took the House in 2018, and arguably for longer, Republicans have been dogmatically uncooperative and uninterested in legislating.But the overuse of omnibus bills that throw every possible priority into a single measure make bipartisan support nearly impossible. Madison may have predicted the future of factions poorly. But his assumption was that coalitions would shift from issue to issue. A stand-alone bill on any one Democratic priority might well receive votes from across the aisle, as the recent $1 trillion infrastructure bill did. One reason for that bipartisan support is that isolating issues raises the cost of opposing them.In addition, the fact that one of the country’s two major political parties refuses to budge and — the decisive fact — feels no pressure from its constituents to do so is evidence that the Madisonian tests of durability and fixity have not been met. If majorities of the American people truly support the Democratic approach to social policy, the party’s candidates should be able to make that case on the campaign trail. The fact that they are trying to beat the clock instead suggests they know their support is fragile. Fragility is a poor foundation for major legislation.Polarization, especially when it falls along geographic lines, does not help. Madison, who foresaw that the enslavement from which he benefited might split the nation, warned against geographic fault lines. But to write off Republican politicians is also to write off broad swaths of voters who support them.Similarly, to blame Mr. Manchin for obstructing Democrats, as Representative Cori Bush of Missouri did in denying his authority “to dictate the future of our country,” is to ignore the fact that a 50-50 Senate gives every member of the body that power. A broader majority would deprive Mr. Manchin or Ms. Sinema of it. But because they serve as a moderating force that ensures wider support for legislation, disempowering them also risks increasing polarization.Devices like gerrymandering have the effect of exaggerating Republican support in the House. So does the geographic polarization reflected in the narrowly divided Senate. Consequently, Democrats’ slender margins in Congress may understate the degree of public support for their policies. But there is no constitutional means of registering public opinion other than elections. And it is equally unquestionable that the tragic flaw of many successful candidates for public office is exaggerating their mandates. The narrow majorities Democrats possess in Congress counsel caution instead. Mr. Biden’s mandate was largely for normalcy after four years of mania. It’s hard to make a case for being F.D.R. without a Great Depression.If progressive Democrats want to do more, they should demonstrate what Lincoln called “a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people.” If the people stand with them, Democrats will eventually — just not immediately — prevail.Greg Weiner (@GregWeiner1) is a political scientist at Assumption University, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Madison’s Metronome: The Constitution, Majority Rule, and the Tempo of American Politics.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      John Yarmuth of Kentucky, House Budget Chairman, Announces Retirement

      by

      Mr. Yarmuth, the lone Democrat in his state’s congressional delegation and a key proponent of President Biden’s domestic agenda, said he would not seek re-election.WASHINGTON — Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the lone Democrat in his state’s congressional delegation and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek re-election in 2022.Mr. Yarmuth, who is playing a leading role in shepherding President Biden’s sprawling domestic agenda through Congress, is the first senior House Democrat to say he will not run in the midterms, when Republicans are widely believed to have a good chance of wresting the majority.In a video circulated on social media, Mr. Yarmuth, who will be 75 at the end of the current Congress, said he was leaving because of “a desire to have more control of my time in the years I have left” and to spend more time with his family.He also faced the prospect that his Louisville-centered district could be redrawn this year, potentially leading to a more difficult re-election race, though Mr. Yarmuth told reporters later on Tuesday that he was confident the district “won’t change significantly.” Even if he were to prevail, he would face the loss of his committee chairmanship if Democrats lost the House.“I know that on my first day as a private citizen, I will regret this decision, and I will be miserable about having left the most gratifying role of my professional life,” Mr. Yarmuth said in the video. “But I also know that every day thereafter, I will find other ways to help my fellow citizens, and I will be more confident that the decision I announced today is the right one.”He has held his seat since 2006 and has been the only Democrat in the congressional delegation since 2013.Mr. Yarmuth is among the most high-ranking Democrats set to depart Congress at the end of 2022, joining a trickle of rank-and-file lawmakers who have decided to seek a different political office or vacate a district that is likely to change significantly once state officials redraw them using data from the 2020 census.“In Chairman John Yarmuth, the Louisville community and indeed all Americans have had a fierce and extraordinarily effective champion for their health, financial security and well-being,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement. With his retirement, she added, “the Congress will lose a greatly respected member, and our caucus will lose a friend whose wise counsel, expertise, humor and warmth is cherished.”In his role leading the Budget Committee, Mr. Yarmuth helped oversee passage of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package in March, which he called the proudest moment of his congressional career. He has also drafted the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that Democrats pushed through over the summer to pave the way for Mr. Biden’s signature domestic bill addressing climate change, expanding health care and public education programs and increasing taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals.Asked by reporters on Capitol Hill about the reaction to his announcement, Mr. Yarmuth said “it’s been overwhelming — I’ve been doing my best to keep it together all day.” More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Biden’s Honeymoon Is Over, and He Knows It

      by

      The first seven months of the Biden presidency have been easy compared with what’s coming down the pike.Key provisions of Covid relief legislation came to an end on Aug. 1, with more set to follow — including a cessation of moratoriums on evictions and mortgage foreclosures, termination of extended unemployment benefits (which carried $300-a-week supplemental payments) and a stop to enhanced food stamp subsidies and student loan forbearance.The prospect of millions of families forced from their homes as Covid variants infect growing numbers of people provoked frenzied attempts by the White House and congressional Democrats to take emergency steps to halt or ameliorate the potential chaos and a possible tragedy of national proportions.On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered a 60-day freeze on evictions — although the order faces possible rejection by the courts.“Any call for a moratorium, based on the Supreme Court’s recent decision, is likely to face obstacles,” Biden told reporters, adding that the “bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.”In a June report, the Census Bureau found that 1,401,801 people 18 and older living in rental housing were “very likely” to be evicted and 2,248,120 were “somewhat likely.” In addition, 345,556 people were “very likely” to lose their homes through mortgage foreclosure, and 746,030 were “somewhat likely” to face foreclosure and the loss of their homes. The combined total was 4.7 million adults.The eviction crisis has come at a time when an additional series of potentially damaging developments have come to the fore.The rate of inflation has been rising at its fastest pace in over a decade — to 5.4 percent in June, from 1.4 percent in January when Biden took office, with no end in sight. The number of homicides grew by 25 percent from 2019 to 2020, and the 2021 rate, 6.2 homicides per 100,000 residents, is on track to become, according to The Washington Post, “the highest recorded in the United States in more than 20 years.”The number of illegal border crossings has more than doubled during Biden’s seven months in office, raising the potential for immigration to become a central campaign issue once again, both next year and in 2024.U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that in June of this year the enforcement agency “encountered 188,829 persons attempting entry along the Southwest Border,” a 142 percent increase from the 78,000 in January 2021 when Biden assumed the presidency.As the 2022 and 2024 elections get closer, Biden is in a race to keep public attention on policies and initiatives favorable to the Democratic Party and its candidates against the continuing threat that inflation, crime, urban disorder and illegal immigration — all issues that favor the Republican Party — take center stage.The danger for Biden if crime and immigration become a primary focus of public attention is clear in polling data. The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent polls shows Biden’s favorability at plus 7.5 points (51.1 positive and 43.6 negative) and that the public generally approves of his handling of the Covid pandemic, of jobs, of the economy and of the environment.Regarding Biden’s handling of crime and immigration, however, the numbers go negative. In the July 17-20 Economist/YouGov Poll, 38 percent of voters approved of his handling of crime, and 45 percent disapproved. In the Economist/YouGov poll taken a week later, Biden’s numbers on immigration were worse: 35 approving, 50 disapproving.The Biden administration has initiated a set of programs designed to “stem the flow of guns into the hands of those responsible for violence” — the centerpiece of its anti-crime program — but the Economist/YouGov poll found in its July 24-27 survey that 30 percent of voters approve of Biden’s handling of gun issues while 48 percent disapproveWhat does this all portend? Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, replied by email to my inquiry:The Biden administration has done a good job so far avoiding hard-to-defend, controversial positions on Republican hot button issues. That is really all they need to do. It is more likely that Covid and economic conditions will matter more in determining the Democratic Party’s fate in November.Cain argues thatthe best defense for the Democrats is to go on the offense in 2022 and remind voters about who Trump is and what the Republican Party has become. The resistance to supporting vaccination among Trumpist Republican officials could hurt the party’s national image substantially in 2022 if the unvaccinated are to blame for our inability to put this issue behind us.Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, has a very different take. In an email he wrote:The Democrats have lost a great deal of credibility when it comes to crime and policing by thoughtlessly adopting slogans like ‘defund the police’ without considering what the phrase means, how policies based on the idea might lead to surges in crime, or how the slogan might backfire in the face of rising crime and lawlessness.Biden, Westwood continued,was smart to distance himself from these factions, but many of those he needs in Congress and in state houses have been much less careful. Without a serious repositioning on criminal justice policies, the Democrats face the midterms with a gaping self-inflicted wound.Biden received a lift last week in keeping a bread-and-butter agenda front and center from an unexpected source, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. McConnell abandoned his Dr. No stance toward all things Democratic and joined 16 fellow Republicans in support of a key motion to take up a $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill. If enacted into law, the measure would legitimize Biden’s claim that he is capable of restoring a semblance of bipartisanship in the nation’s capital.McConnell has not fully explained his political reasoning, but his tactical shift suggests that he thinks the wind remains at Biden’s back, making the Republican strategy of destruction a much riskier proposition, at least for the moment.Early indicators suggest that in some ways Biden has yet to face the kind of voter opposition that characterized the administrations of his predecessors from both parties at this stage in their presidencies.Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, tweeted on Aug. 2:Still no sign of strong grassroots or conservative media opposition focused on Biden or congressional agenda At this point in Obama admin, it was clear August congressional recess would be full of boisterous town halls. Infrastructure doesn’t get base animated.Similarly, G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist for The Economist, wrote on Aug. 1 that there is a long-term “trend by which the people react in a thermostatic manner against the party in power,” with the public mood shifting to the right during Democratic presidencies and to the left during Republican presidencies.So far during the Biden presidency, Morris wrote, the expected tilt toward conservatism has not materialized:Where we go from here is a big question. As stated, the thermostatic model would predict a reversion in 2021 in the conservative direction. But the issue remains open; the public has not appeared very thermostatic on, say, immigration policy over the last year, and their demand for public spending is still very high.The trickiest issues facing the Biden administration are crime and urban disorder because these are issues that play to the advantage of conservatives, who have demonstrated expertise in weaponizing them.The June 29-July 6 USA Today/Ipsos poll found that “concerns about crime and gun violence have surged to the top of issues that worry Americans” and, in an ominous note for the Biden administration,Crime and public safety is the issue on which the Republican Party now holds its strongest advantage. By 32 percent to 24 percent, those polled said the G.O.P. was better at handling crime.There is considerable disagreement over the optimal strategy for Democrats to adopt when addressing crime — along with widespread concern over the party’s credibility on the issue itself.Rebecca Goldstein, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, emailed to say that she believes “the Biden Administration has correctly read the political winds by doubling the amount they are requesting for police hiring grants in 2022 compared to the 2021 appropriation, and also requesting eight-figure sums for police training and body-worn cameras.”These initiatives, Goldstein continued, are “not the outcome that any of last summer’s activists would have wanted. But the Biden Administration has realized that some of those proposals, particularly defunding or abolishing police agencies, were politically dead on arrival.”The crucial question, in Goldstein’s view, iswhether the administration will be able to convincingly advertise its support for police, and for police oversight and reform, while neither alienating some of the activists who mobilized to help Biden win in 2020 and might be put off from putting in the same sweat equity in 2022 or 2024, nor succumbing to the longstanding critique from the right that Democrats are “soft on crime.” This is a tightrope that even the most skilled politician might not be able to walk.Stanley Feldman, a political scientist at Stony Brook University, argued in an email that trying to engage voters on crime and other issues that have worked to the advantage of the Republican Party in the past is a fool’s errand:The Democratic Party has been losing voters who want economic benefits from the federal government but who are supporting Republican candidates because of their conservative positions on social and cultural issues. Biden can’t win back voters by engaging on these issues. Any positions he takes will raise the salience of these issues and that’s not helpful for him.Crime and policing, Feldman noted,are largely local concerns. Immigration is a potential minefield so the best he can do is to try to keep it from becoming a major media story. Given his limited options, any attempt to address these concerns would just give Republicans an opportunity to portray him in an unfavorable light. Providing concrete economic benefits to people while reducing the volume on social/cultural issues is the best way forward in 2022 and 2024.Aaron Chalfin, a professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, agrees that engaging the debate over crime is inherently risky for Democrats:In my view, the political liabilities for the Democrats are probably fairly substantial. The surge in violence is rapid and has reversed 20 years of progress in just 18 short months. While I think the cause of the violence has little to do with Democratic political priorities at the national level, it seems likely that the Democrats will be held to account given the rhetoric around “Defund” that is associated with the left wing of the party.Lawrence Sherman, director of the Cambridge Center for Evidence-Based Policing at the University of Cambridge, agrees that “the greatest threat to Biden on policing and disorder comes from the left,” but he differs from some of his colleagues in arguing that Biden should take the issues of crime and urban dysfunction head on.Sherman contends that public anxieties over crime are just one part of a larger, more comprehensive “fear of chaos.” In that more expansive context, Sherman continued, Biden has strengthened his credentials as an adversary of disorder through his workon Covid and the economy, for which his competence grows more impressive daily in comparison to Trump’s. Climate change will also become a bigger issue (favoring Biden) for the swing vote, with smoke, heat and floods proving more scary than an unprecedented spike in murders. In a politics of fear, the targets of fear become identified with different candidates, and Biden’s fears now seem paramount: Covid, Climate and Chaos.Trump’s actions leading up to and during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump loyalists seeking to disrupt the vote count have opened the door for Biden to take the initiative on law and order and, in doing so, to counter the image of the Democratic Party as soft on crime, Sherman argued:“After what Trump did on Jan. 6, Biden has been able to stress his own historic support for the police as emblematic of his opposition to chaos,” Sherman wrote in an email:The “defund the police” movement probably did help to lose Dem seats in the House in 2020, and may increasingly be blamed for the huge spike in violent crime. But as long as Biden remains strong in his position that policing “works” to prevent crime, and that it is essential to saving Black lives, he will attract the suburban swing vote.Biden should take the initiative, Sherman argues, with “a major policing initiative,” and that initiative should stress “hot spots policing,” the focusing of police resources on small sections of urban areas, “under 5 percent of land in most cities,” while “pulling way back on stop and frisk everywhere else, especially suburban traffic stops, like the late Sandra Bland.”Biden goes into battle with one crucial advantage: He, his appointees and his advisers have more experience in the trenches of elections, legislative fights and bureaucratic maneuvering than the top personnel of any recent administration.On the other hand, if what his voters need is equality — that is, resource redistribution — experienced advisers may not be enough.Mart Trasberg and Hector Bahamonde, of Wake Forest University and the Universidad de O’Higgins in Chile, authors of “Inclusive institutions, unequal outcomes: Democracy, state capacity, and income inequality,” pointed out in an email that redistribution is exceptionally hard to achieve in an advanced democracy like the one in operation in the United States:The increase in inequality through market processes puts pressure on fiscal policy, making it difficult to increase redistribution via taxes and transfers. With increasing foreign investment flows and more developed financial sectors, domestic and international corporate and financial elites become stronger actors in domestic politics. Given that these changes are slow-moving and incremental, disorganized voters are not able to vote for a higher taxation of income-concentrating elites. Of course, other mechanisms are likely at play: political elites trick voters to vote on identity issues that do not concern socio-economic redistribution.In the end, much of the dynamism that powers today’s political competition comes back to — or down to — racial and cultural conflict. Can Biden find a redistributive workaround — and protect voting rights at the same time? The fate of the Democratic Party depends on it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      In New Hampshire, Maggie Hassan May Face a High-Profile Fight

      by

      Senator Maggie Hassan, a former governor of her state, is working to burnish her centrist image without making political waves.MEREDITH, N.H. — At the Twin Barns Brewing Co., perched near the shoreline of Lake Winnipesaukee, Senator Maggie Hassan sampled some of the signature product on a recent afternoon, then chased it with a promise to fight for more reliable internet service, which the owners said they needed to maintain their customer base.“If you are a young professional and you’ve discovered over the 18 months of the pandemic that you don’t actually have to be in the office — you can work remotely — this is a perfect work-life balance,” said Dave Picarillo, co-owner of the brewery and restaurant, which has seen an uptick in business as people have decamped to New Hampshire’s Lakes Region during the pandemic. “But without broadband and cellular, that will never happen.”As she tried a tasty blonde ale, Ms. Hassan assured Mr. Picarillo and his partner, Bruce Walton, that she was on the case. She was part of a bipartisan group of senators who were working to speed a compromise infrastructure plan that included new broadband funding to President Biden’s desk — whether or not her party was able to push through a second, broader package of Democratic initiatives.“I think you’ve got to get things done when you have the opportunity,” said Ms. Hassan, a former two-term governor seeking a second Senate term.Ms. Hassan is the moderate Senate Democrat and potential swing vote who few people in Washington talk about. She does not make waves or grab headlines like Joe Manchin III or Kyrsten Sinema, her colleagues from West Virginia and Arizona who draw much of the attention as the centrists most likely to defect from their party. Her every utterance is not parsed for significance about what it means for legislative progress. Reporters don’t throng around her.And that’s no accident, she said: “I just like to keep my head down and get work done.”Yet while she tries to fly under the radar, what happens in Congress in the next few months as Democrats and Mr. Biden try to enact their ambitious agenda will probably do more to determine her future than either Mr. Manchin’s or Ms. Sinema’s. Unlike those two Democrats, Ms. Hassan will be on the ballot in a swing state next year, during a midterm cycle that is traditionally unkind to members of the president’s party.“I think she will, to a large extent next year, rise or fall with Joe Biden, his numbers and how New Hampshire voters will feel about the economy,” said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire.Even more than those factors, her political future could turn on whether Chris Sununu, the popular Republican governor and a member of one of the state’s most prominent political families, decides to answer the call from his party to jump into the race. He would be a formidable opponent and immediately transform the New Hampshire race into a marquee contest, placing Ms. Hassan among the most threatened incumbents as Democrats try to retain their extremely fragile hold on the Senate.“If the race is with Sununu — and I don’t know if it is Sununu — it is going to be a tough one,” said Thomas D. Rath, a former state attorney general in New Hampshire and a longtime Republican force in the state.Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican and a member of a prominent New Hampshire political family, could challenge Ms. Hassan for her Senate seat in 2022.Pool photo by David LaneMr. Sununu, whose father was a former governor and White House chief of staff and whose brother was a U.S. senator, has not tipped his hand on whether he will run despite entreaties from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and others who believe he gives them by far the best chance of taking the seat as they battle for the majority. He has expressed some qualms about jumping into the Washington maelstrom, including losing the executive power that comes with being a governor to join a legislative body.“I’m a manager, I’m an executive,” Governor Sununu said last week on the New Hampshire Journal podcast. “There are very few of those in Washington,” he said, adding that he also has to determine, “is it the right path for my family? I have kids to put through college, and all that kind of stuff.”Still, the betting in both New Hampshire and Washington is that the governor, whose office declined an interview request, will make the race, finding it too hard to resist the opportunity.As for Mr. Hassan, she said the governor’s plans were not a factor in her own.“I don’t know, and it doesn’t really change my work,” she said last week when asked whether she thought Mr. Sununu would run. “I’m proud of what I’ve done and I will make my case to the people of New Hampshire.”While she may be low-key in Washington, Ms. Hassan has been a fixture in New Hampshire politics for almost two decades, serving in the State Senate as majority leader and twice winning races for governor before toppling Kelly Ayotte, the incumbent Republican senator, by just over 1,000 votes in 2016. Her allies say that Republicans have consistently underestimated Ms. Hassan, and will likely do so again.“She has got chops when it comes to winning tough races, and it has not just been one tough race,” said Kathy Sullivan, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. “She works very hard at it.”Republicans are already trying to paint Ms. Hassan as a loyal acolyte of Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader. They say her low profile — one called her “invisible” — is a sign of ineffectiveness.“We think with the way things are trending with the Democratic Party moving hard to the left, the outlook for 2022 and potentially a very strong challenger that this is a very winnable race for us,” said T.W. Arrighi, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Ms. Hassan has been a fixture in New Hampshire politics for two decades.John Tully for The New York TimesAs she prepares for a likely onslaught, Ms. Hassan is emphasizing her bipartisan record, hoping it resonates with the famously independent voters of New Hampshire. As governor, Ms. Hassan found ways to work with Republican-controlled legislatures to approve state budgets and expand Medicaid coverage. She said she was now trying to apply that same approach in the Senate.She has teamed up with Republicans on a variety of issues, including tax assistance for small businesses, money for rural broadband and a crackdown on surprise medical billing included in a major funding bill last year. Now she is part of the group negotiating a bipartisan public works bill that Mr. Biden has hailed as a breakthrough.“We think it is really important for the country to see where we have common ground and see us really trying to work across party lines,” she said.But the bipartisan package is just one piece of the equation facing Congress. Democrats also want to force through a much larger measure that includes an expansive array of costly proposals, using a special budget maneuver known as reconciliation to shield it from a Republican filibuster. Many top Democrats believe the two bills should be linked and approved only in tandem to assure that both pass.But Ms. Hassan appears ready to push forward with the public works bill even as the reconciliation plan takes shape — a stance that could put her at odds with some colleagues. She says Congress needs to strike while it can.“I think it’s important that when you do have agreement on something as major as this level of infrastructure, which we need so desperately, that when there’s common ground, you come together,” she said at the brewery.Ms. Hassan is generally supportive of a second bill to advance other elements of Mr. Biden’s plan, some of which she said would be “critical to building a foundation for a modern 21st-century leading economy,” but first she wanted to see what was in it. She has balked in the past at using reconciliation to accomplish far-reaching progressive priorities. She was one of seven Democratic senators who voted against including a $15-an-hour minimum wage in the nearly $1.9 trillion pandemic aid bill passed under reconciliation with solely Democratic votes and enacted in March.Despite the legislative difficulties ahead, Ms. Hassan said she and her colleagues were in position to get much of what they sought, with a bipartisan imprint on some of it as a bonus.“You know, there are always some white-knuckle moments,” said Ms. Hassan about the coming legislative drama. “But I’m feeling optimistic.” More