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      The Guardian view on Biden’s bipartisan bill: one battle won, many more to go

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      OpinionJoe BidenThe Guardian view on Biden’s bipartisan bill: one battle won, many more to goEditorialTo emerge truly victorious the US president will have to win over the right of the Democratic party and push for big, bold change Wed 11 Aug 2021 14.09 EDTLast modified on Wed 11 Aug 2021 15.47 EDTOn Tuesday, 19 Republican senators, including minority leader Mitch McConnell, joined with Democrats to pass Joe Biden’s $550bn infrastructure bill. In a polarised age, this act of bipartisan politics seems miraculous. To vote for the bill, Senate Republicans had to go against the wishes of Donald Trump, who had warned against handing Mr Biden a victory before midterm polls in 2022. They also U-turned on a core Republican principle: that private investment is superior to government intervention.Yet the Republicans’ vote was rooted in self-interest. Only four will face the voters next year and the spending was popular, even with Republicans. Crucially Mr McConnell had protected the filibuster. Unless Republicans relented, Mr Biden might have done away with legislative tool that preserves the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for legislative success. Instead Mr Biden thanked his opponents for their courage in backing his proposal. This moment represents a test of Biden’s faith that Congress, and democracy, can still work and get things done.In many ways this looks like a defining battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic party. The infrastructure bill now goes to the House of Representatives, which has a Democratic majority and a bigger progressive bloc. The House Democratic leadership has said it will only move after the Senate passes a $3.5tn ​​spending bill to reduce poverty, improve elderly and childcare as well as protect the environment. The biggest expansion of the US’s social safety net since the Great Society of the 1960s is needed to help flatten the inequalities wrought by decades of pro-market policies. The same can be said for rolling back the tax cuts for corporations and wealthy households that were Mr Trump’s signature legislative achievement.It is important to note that leftwing Democrats have had to trim their demand for a $6tn package. But some on the right of the party appear more in tune with Republican arguments that characterise the $3.5tn bill as “reckless”. After agreeing to vote for the bill’s framework, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin said he had “grave concerns” about such a price tag. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona last month made it clear she could not support a bill that size. They are not the only ones: in the House moderate Democrats would rather take an easy win and dump any attempt to enact big, bold social change.The criticism the US cannot afford the spending is wrong. The economist Stephanie Kelton wrote that Mr Trump’s tax cuts added $1.9tn to the country’s fiscal deficit with little effect on the country’s ability to spend. The other concern is inflation. Prof Kelton noted many experts thought “Congress could enact both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the proposed $3.5tn reconciliation bill without exacerbating inflation”.Perhaps the greatest obstacle to Mr Biden’s ambition is not the politicians, but the ideological orientation of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which scores the spending and revenues. Under reconciliation rules, measures cannot add to the deficit after a decade. In a sign of what lies ahead, Mr Biden’s treasury team has already claimed that tax enforcement will raise more cash than the CBO projects. The president knows that the New Deal and Great Society programmes passed into law without a CBO score. Mr Biden would like to change America on a such a scale. But transformations like that cannot be bought. They must be fought for.TopicsJoe BidenOpinionUS SenateUS politicsDemocratsRepublicanseditorialsReuse this content More

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      Senate Democrats poised for voting rights push to counter Republican restrictions

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      US voting rightsSenate Democrats poised for voting rights push to counter Republican restrictionsSenate expected to reintroduce Democrats’ marquee election reform bill known as the For the People Act before summer recess Hugo Lowell in Washington DCTue 10 Aug 2021 13.46 EDTLast modified on Tue 10 Aug 2021 14.40 EDTTop Democrats in the Senate are poised to make another attempt to push through voting rights legislation before the chamber leaves Washington for a summer recess, in a sign of their determination to counter a wave of Republican-led ballot restrictions across the nation.The Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is expected to reintroduce Democrats’ marquee election reform bill known as the For the People Act, with additional votes on one measure to end partisan gerrymandering and another measure to tighten campaign spending, sources said.None of the measures, for which Schumer hopes to schedule votes immediately after the Senate takes up the $3.5tn budget blueprint for infrastructure, is expected to garner any Republican support and will thus likely follow the demise of the For the People Act in June.The move by Senate Democrats will encourage voting rights activists, who have watched with alarm that the issue appeared to have taken a back seat as protracted negotiations over the $1tn bipartisan infrastructure package consumed the Senate.Yet in the face of united Republican opposition, the endgame for Democrats – even as they scramble to enact voting rights legislation to roll back a wave of GOP ballot restrictions in time for the 2022 midterm elections – remains unclear.The only conceivable path for Democrats to ensure passage of the voting rights bills would require reforming the Senate’s filibuster rule, an option not currently available to party leaders after holdouts last week reiterated their opposition.Senator Kyrsten Sinema on Friday told ABC that she continued to support the 60-vote requirement for the filibuster, days after senator Joe Manchin said anew that he would not acquiesce to carving out a voting rights exemption from the rule.Democrats face a time crunch as they prepare for the 2022 midterms, when they hope to mitigate Republican gains after House district lines are redrawn on the results of last year’s census.Democrats are particularly determined to curb partisan redistricting, which could allow Republicans to gain enough seats to reclaim the House majority and thwart their ambitions of enacting Joe Biden’s legislative agenda in the second half of his first term.And with some Republican-led states racing to redraw lines once the Census Bureau releases detailed population data on 12 August, advocates for stronger federal voting rights laws have warned that Congress needs to act before mid-September in order to affect 2022 balloting.To that end, a group of Democrats led by Senate rules chair Amy Klobuchar and Senator Jeff Merkley have continued to work on voting rights legislation in an attempt to keep up momentum against GOP ballot restrictions based on Trump’s lies about a stolen election.Some Democrats involved in the effort were optimistic that they could introduce this week a For the People Act version 2.0 that incorporated elements from a three-page, scaled-down version of the bill proposed by Manchin two months ago, the sources said.But the legislation was not complete as of Tuesday, and Democrats crafting the voting rights legislation now expect Schumer to try to again advance the For the People Act after the Senate completes a set of marathon rapid fire votes on the $3.5tn budget blueprint.The group, which also includes Senators Alex Padilla and Raphael Warnock, anticipate Schumer will then schedule votes on two measures from Manchin’s proposal: one that aims to counter partisan gerrymandering, and another to combat so-called dark money in politics.The stakes are significant both for Warnock, who is on the ballot next year, as well as for the Democratic caucus more widely, since the loss of his seat in the battleground state of Georgia could shunt the party back into the minority in the 50-50 Senate.And Warnock faces an uphill struggle in seeking re-election as he prepares to run in a state where Republicans have moved decisively to limit mail-in-ballots, curb early voting and shift electoral power towards the Republican-led state house.After Republicans blocked the For the People Act, the most far-reaching election reform legislation to come before Congress in a generation, the Senate majority leader vowed to redouble his efforts.“In the fight for voting rights, this vote was the starting gun, not the finish line,” Schumer said. “We will not let it go. We will not let it die. This voter suppression cannot stand.”But some Democrats have signalled skepticism about forcing an almost certainly futile votes measure now, in a rushed move they say could erode potential Republican support should they try to enact bipartisan voting rights bills in the future.Before the vote on S1, Democrats reached out across the aisle to encourage centrists such as Lisa Murkowski to back the legislation. In a sign of the pessimism about the passage of the two new bills, there has been no such effort this time, the sources said.TopicsUS voting rightsUS SenateUS politicsDemocratsBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More