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      The real lesson of the election results? Democrats must go big and bold | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      OpinionUS politicsThe real lesson of the election results? Democrats must go big and boldAndrew GawthorpeCentrist Democrats may use electoral setbacks to try to water down the party’s legislative plans. That would be a big mistake Fri 5 Nov 2021 06.23 EDTLast modified on Fri 5 Nov 2021 15.56 EDTDemocrats this week suffered a stinging rebuke in elections up and down the country. The damage was most notable in Virginia, where Republican Glenn Youngkin won a state that Joe Biden carried by 10 points just a year ago. But there were warning signs elsewhere, too – from the party’s eroding support in the southern suburbs of New Jersey to its still-declining fortunes in Hispanic areas of south Texas, where Republican John Lujan flipped a heavily Hispanic state legislative district which Biden won by 14 points last year.Although depressing, these results are not entirely surprising. Even as Biden triumphed in the 2020 presidential election, there were ample signs that the suburban voters who propelled him to victory were keeping their options open. Democrats won the presidency, but declining suburban support nearly cost them the House of Representatives. In the Senate, they fought Republicans heroically but unsatisfyingly to a standstill, splitting the chamber 50/50. Voters rejected Trump, but they seemed not to want to pass complete control of government to his opponents, either.These latest results confirm that not much has changed since, and Democrats have only themselves to blame. They have enjoyed unified control of the federal government for a year, but have spent their time trapped in negotiations with one another over a pair of legislative packages covering infrastructure, climate and social welfare. Even seasoned pundits find the process confusing and opaque and, for the busy ordinary voter, the problem is multiplied tenfold. At a time when the coronavirus and its associated scourges – inflation, joblessness and parental panic over their children’s education – are still stalking the land, the party is struggling to break through because it’s too busy talking to itself.There’s a risk that Democrats – or, more precisely, one faction of them – react to this week’s results in a way that makes the problem even worse. Already, “moderate” senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have been the main roadblock to Democrats passing large, popular social welfare bills. They are backed, though more quietly, by other senators and House members who fear that the party will be punished if its agenda becomes too bold and too progressive. If moderates decide that this week’s results represent the beginning of just such a backlash, they may force the party to abandon its plans and retreat into a defensive crouch.This would be an enormous mistake. If Democrats are to reverse their fortunes, they have to be bold and rack up big accomplishments. Rather than backing off expansive legislation, they should double down on it. If Democrats pass an ambitious package to fight poverty, expand healthcare, assist families with childcare expenses, and introduce paid family and medical leave, there will be no mistaking what they stand for. Republicans, meanwhile, will be left arguing against programs that are standard throughout the developed world and – more importantly – popular in the United States as well.Nor is there much reason to believe that Democrats’ recent electoral setbacks resulted from being too progressive. Although a socialist candidate for Buffalo mayor lost out to her moderate rival and a police reform measure failed in Minneapolis, these results reveal nothing about the popularity of the party’s mainstream economic agenda. Democrats struggled not because they appear too progressive, but because, after months of infighting, they don’t appear to stand for anything.The need to move quickly and boldly is underlined by looking at the other factors that are draining the party’s support. The first is inflation, where the party’s plans to expand the social safety net in the future don’t do much to help voters struggling with rising prices right now. Although economic policymakers expect this period to pass relatively quickly, there is little the White House can do to address the fastest price increases in a generation. Even worse, the policymakers might be wrong, leaving Americans still struggling as the midterms approach. Their inability to do much about inflation increases the party’s need to act elsewhere if it is to demonstrate that it can deliver concrete improvements in people’s economic situation.Finally, the outsized role played in the Virginia election by concerns about the teaching of so-called critical race theory in schools is another reason Democrats badly need to change the conversation. As the party has retreated into bickering among itself, the political debate has become increasingly dominated by hyped-up culture war issues to which Democrats struggle to respond.It may be true that concerns about critical race theory are mainly a form of manufactured outrage designed to activate white grievance, but describing them as such doesn’t seem to be a winning political strategy. Even as the party crafts a new message about school curricula which disassociates it from the warped image put forward by the right, it also needs a more concrete response – one that emphasizes how the party is investing in the nation’s schools and families, including through improved access to childcare and paid family leave.But to do that, they need to actually pass the legislation that will create these programs. The painful truth Democrats have to face is that, to many voters, even imaginary claims about critical race theory feel more real right now than the social welfare programs being debated in Congress. To flip that calculus and show that Democratic governance can benefit the country while the culture war is designed to hold it back, Democrats have to be big and bold. Otherwise, they – and, given the Republican party’s extremist turn, the country – are in serious trouble.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University, and host of the podcast America Explained
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      If Americans can’t have basic things like childcare, our democracy is a sham | David Sirota and Andrew Perez

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      OpinionUS politicsIf Americans can’t have basic things like childcare, our democracy is a shamDavid Sirota and Andrew PerezCorporate influence and corruption defines American politics. No wonder most think the country is headed in the wrong direction Fri 5 Nov 2021 06.22 EDTLast modified on Fri 5 Nov 2021 13.28 EDTIn 2014, Northwestern and Princeton researchers published a report statistically documenting how lawmakers do not listen or care about what most voters want, and instead mostly care about serving their big donors. Coupled with additional research documenting the discrepancy between donor and voter preferences, they bluntly concluded that the “preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy”.Seven years later, America is witnessing a very public and explicit illustration of this situation in real time – and the country seems pretty ticked off about it, in the lead-up to Tuesday’s off-year elections and in advance of the upcoming midterms next year.Over the last few weeks, Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers have been making headlines agreeing to whittle down their social spending reconciliation bill at the demand of corporate donors and their congressional puppets.The specific initiatives being cut or watered down in the Biden agenda bill share two traits: 1) They would require the wealthy and powerful to sacrifice a bit of their wealth and power and 2) They are quite literally the most popular proposals among rank-and-file voters.New polling demonstrates the silencing effect that systemic corruption is having on voter preferences:
      82% of registered voters support adding dental and vision benefits to Medicare – and this is voters’ “top priority” for Democrats’ social spending bill, according to survey data from Morning Consult. Conservative Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have pushed to keep these benefits out of the bill, following an aggressive lobbying campaign by health insurers who enjoy massive profits from the privatized Medicare Advantage program.
      Another top priority for voters is allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, with 72% saying they support the idea, according to Morning Consult. Sinema and a few House Democrats backed by the pharmaceutical industry managed to block the party’s original drug pricing measure from being put into the reconciliation bill. On Tuesday, Democrats announced they had reached a deal on a drug pricing plan, which Politico described as “far weaker” than Democrats’ promised legislation. One industry analyst said the deal “seems designed to let legislators claim an achievement while granting pharma protection”.
      The poll also found that 70% of voters support including paid family and medical leave for new parents in Democrats’ spending bill. Manchin has demanded this item be cut.
      After railing against the Republicans’ 2017 tax law for years, Democrats have largely refused to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and their final bill may even end up being a net tax cut for the rich. This, even though Biden’s own pollsters found that raising taxing on the wealthy was “the most popular of more than 30 economic proposals” they tested during the 2020 presidential campaign.
      The flip side of all this also appears to be true – Democrats have protected initiatives to enrich powerful corporations, even though some of those measures aren’t very popular. One example: subsidies for health insurance plans purchased on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace that shower money on for-profit insurers. Morning Consult reports that extending new ACA premium tax credits passed by Democrats in March “is the lowest-ranking of all the health measures included in the poll”.The results of this latest middle finger to voter preferences? New polling data shows that almost three-quarters of Americans now think the country is headed in the wrong direction.Taken together, this is the democracy crisis thrumming underneath all the media noise – the day-to-day erosion of democracy by corporations that use a system of legalized bribery to buy public policy, which then erodes Americans’ faith in their government. And yet this erosion does not get discussed in a media-directed democracy discourse that focuses almost exclusively on the 6 January insurrection or Republican efforts to deny election results and limit voting.This is what my 2006 book called the “hostile takeover”: the conquest of democratic institutions by moneyed interests, to the point where “the world’s greatest democracy” routinely rejects the commonsense policies that the vast majority of voters want and that every other high-income country has already adopted.The hostile takeover is not just the rejection of the most popular policies – it is also the media discourse itself. The Washington press is constantly portraying industry-sponsored opponents of majoritarian policies as “moderates” or “centrists” and depicting supporters of those policies as fringe lunatics who refuse to be reasonable and compromise.Meanwhile, there is a pervasive omertà that silences most media discussion of the corporate influence and corruption that so obviously defines American politics – and there is scant mention that the “moderate” obstructionists are bankrolled by the industries lobbying to kill the popular policies that Americans want.There is some encouraging proof that more and more Americans innately understand the kleptocratic nature of their government, and want explicit accountability journalism to uncover it. Also mildly encouraging is the impact of that reporting in the reconciliation bill battle: Democrats tried to get rid of all the drug pricing provisions, but were successfully shamed into adding at least a few of the (pathetically weak) provisions back in after independent media aggressively exposed the pharma ties of key lawmakers.It’s not a huge victory and not worthy of some effusive celebration of Democrats because the provisions are watered down and a betrayal of the party’s promise to do something a lot better. But it’s a minimal proof-of-concept win.It may at least get the idea of Medicare negotiating drug prices into law for the first time. And as important, it shows that when there is a robust press willing to challenge power, the government can be forced – kicking and screaming – to respond, or at least pretend to respond.It’s going to take a whole lot more of that kind of reporting and a whole lot more movement pressure to secure real wins and beat back the hostile takeover.The silver lining here is that at least that takeover is now explicit. The polls showing what people want compared to what’s being excised from the reconciliation bill make this part of the democracy crisis impossible to deny – and ending that denial is a prerequisite for achieving something better.
      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor-at-large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
      Andrew Perez is a senior editor at the Daily Poster and a co-founder of the Democratic Policy Center
      This article was originally published in the Daily Poster, a grassroots-funded investigative news outlet
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      Body blow for Biden as voters in Virginia and New Jersey desert Democrats

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      US politicsBody blow for Biden as voters in Virginia and New Jersey desert DemocratsGovernor’s races bring more bad news for president whose domestic agenda hangs in the balance Lauren Gambino in Washington@laurenegambinoWed 3 Nov 2021 12.04 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 15.33 EDTLess than a year after taking control of the White House and Congress, Democrats were reeling on Wednesday from a shocking defeat in Virginia and a too-close-to-call governor’s race in New Jersey as Joe Biden’s popularity sinks and his domestic agenda hangs in the balance.Democrats suffer disastrous night in Virginia and a tight race in New Jersey – liveRead moreIn Virginia, a state that had shifted sharply left over the past decade and that Biden won by 10 points in 2020, Republican Glenn Youngkin, a political newcomer, defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the state’s former governor. And in New Jersey, the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, was struggling to turn back a challenge from Republican Jack Ciattarelli, an unexpected turn of events in a state that is even more reliably Democratic.“Together, we will change the trajectory of this commonwealth and, friends, we are going to start that transformation on day one. There is no time to waste,” Youngkin said, addressing jubilant supporters in the early hours of Wednesday.Republicans’ resurgence after five years of stinging defeats during the Donald Trump era offers a stark warning for Democrats already wary of next year’s midterm elections. Their wins have echoes of 2009, when Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey presaged their stunning takeover of the House in the 2010 midterms.“In a cycle like this, no Democrat is safe,” said Tom Emmer, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. On Wednesday, the group announced it was expanding its list of Democratic targets for the 2022 midterms following Youngkin’s victory.The final weeks of the governor’s race in Virginia were dominated by education, as Youngkin, a 54-year-old former business executive, sought to harness parents’ frustration over school closures, mask mandates and anti-racism curriculum.Exploiting the nation’s culture wars over race and education, Youngkin repeatedly promised to outlaw “critical race theory”, an academic concept about the effects of systemic racism that is not taught in Virginia schools but has nevertheless galvanized conservatives across the country.McAuliffe, 64, worked relentlessly to tie his opponent to Trump in an attempt to revive the backlash to Trump that powered Democratic gains in recent years. But the effort was in vain.Exit polls showed Biden was nearly as unpopular as Trump in Virginia, with Youngkin outperforming the former president in counties across the commonwealth. His success offered Republicans a strategy for how to mobilize Trump’s most ardent supporters while appealing to moderate voters in the suburbs who felt alienated by the former president.Tuesday’s elections were the first major test of the national mood since Biden took office in January, and the results were deeply disappointing for the president and his party as they try to keep control of wafer-thin majorities in Congress.Democrats were not well served by Biden’s sagging poll numbers, which have slumped to near-historic lows after months of infighting among Democrats over his nearly $3tn legislative agenda on Capitol Hill, a devastating evacuation from Afghanistan and the ever-present threat of the coronavirus.“This election is a warning for all Democrats,” Guy Cecil, chair of the Democratic political group Priorities USA, said in a statement. “While DC Democrats spent weeks fighting each other, Republicans were focused on mobilizing their base and peeling away voters from the Biden coalition using deceptive, divisive tactics.”It remains unclear whether the defeat in Virginia will spur Democratic lawmakers to action on a shrunken version of Biden’s agenda – or if it will cause them to retreat from the sweeping plans.On Wednesday, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, signalled that Democrats were prepared to charge ahead as planned. She announced that the rules committee would hold a hearing on the $1.75tn domestic policy and climate mitigation bill, paving the way for a vote on the legislation and a companion $1tn infrastructure measure.“Today is another momentous day in our historic effort to make the future better for the American people, for the children, to Build Back Better with women, to save the planet,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democrats on Wednesday.Arriving at the Capitol on Wednesday morning, Pelosi brushed off any suggestion that McAuliffe’s loss changed the outlook for their agenda. “No, no,” she told reporters.But in the wake of Tuesday’s elections, some Democrats expressed fresh doubt about the party’s resolve to enact both pieces of Biden’s agenda. Centrist lawmakers said the defeat was reason to swiftly pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, regardless of what happens with the larger spending measure, amid concern that the effort would further alienate moderate and suburban voters who were critical to Biden’s victory in 2020 but shifted back toward Republicans in Virginia on Tuesday.But progressives argued that abandoning their ambitious policy proposals would only spell further doom for their party, in desperate need of an economic message.“The lesson going into 2022 is that Democrats need to use power to get big things done for working people and then run on those accomplishments. Period,” the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said in a statement.“Democrats won’t win simply by branding one opponent after another as a Trump clone, and then hoping to squeak out a razor-thin win. When Democrats fail to run on big ideas or fulfill bold campaign promises, we depress our base while allowing Republicans to use culture wars to hide their real agenda.”Democrats have only a five-vote margin in the House and are tied in the Senate, relying on the vice-president’s casting vote. Historically, the party in power in the White House almost always loses seats in Congress.Elsewhere across the US, it was a night of historic firsts for Asian American candidates, a sign of the growing political strength of the AAPI community amid a rise in anti-Asian hate.Michelle Wu became the first woman and person of color elected to be mayor of Boston in the city’s 200-year history. Wu, a progressive Democrat endorsed by her former Harvard law professor, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, defeated fellow city councilor Annissa Essaibi George, who ran as a pragmatist with the backing of the city’s traditional power players.In Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, the son of immigrants from Tibet and India, defeated the former Democratic congressman David Mann. In Dearborn, Michigan, voters elected Abdullah Hammoud, a state lawmaker, as its first Arab American mayor.In New York City, Democrat Eric Adams, a former NYPD police captain, was elected mayor of the nation’s largest city. He will be the second Black mayor in the city’s history.TopicsUS politicsVirginiaDemocratsJoe BidenUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats’ stinging Virginia defeat raises stark questions for Biden’s tenure

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      US politicsDemocrats’ stinging Virginia defeat raises stark questions for Biden’s tenureAnalysis: Glenn Youngkin’s victory comes as the president’s agenda has stalled and danger looms for the party in Congress David Smith in Tysons, Virginia@smithinamericaWed 3 Nov 2021 01.02 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 02.42 EDTJoe Biden exuded confidence. “We’re going to win,” the US president told reporters before departing Cop26 in Glasgow. “I think we’re going to win in Virginia.”But as Biden returns to Washington, he faces questions about why his prediction was so wrong – and whether Democrats’ loss in the most important election of the year will send his presidency into a downward spiral.Republican Glenn Youngkin poised to win Virginia governor’s race in blow to BidenRead moreThe Republican Glenn Youngkin’s surprise victory over the Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race for governor of Virginia is a brutal rebuke for Biden, who had personally invested in the race, twice making the short trip from Washington to campaign for McAuliffe at rallies.It will particularly sting because Donald Trump, whom he defeated in Virginia by 10 percentage points in last year’s presidential election, will doubtless seek to claim credit for the result and savor his revenge.But the truth is that this election was more about the current president than the spectre of the last one.Biden’s ambitious agenda has stalled in Congress. By his own admission, the inertia has sucked oxygen away from priorities such as a police reform and voting rights, disillusioning the activists who fuel Democratic turnout. Inflation and gasoline prices are up. Global supply chains are buckling. And Biden’s sunny predictions for post-withdrawal Afghanistan were as off the mark as his predictions for Virginia.The president’s sagging approval rating of 42% combined with historical headwinds to drag McAuliffe down. Nothing energizes a political movement like opposition: the president’s party has lost every election for governor of Virginia over almost half a century – the exception was McAuliffe himself in 2013.But this time McAuliffe failed to inspire. The chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential primary campaign had a distinct whiff of Clinton 2016: a career politician imbued with a sense of entitlement who constantly found himself on the defensive against an upstart candidate drawing bigger crowds.Like Hillary Clinton’s reference to “deplorables”, McAuliffe made a perceived gaffe – “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” – which was replayed endlessly in Youngkin attack ads.McAuliffe’s central argument – that Youngkin is an acolyte of Trump – was about the past. Youngkin’s central argument – that schools are under attack from culture warriors on race and gender – was about the future, even if it was riddled with falsehoods. To many voters, the future tends to be more persuasive.Enough of them did not seem to know or care that Youngkin’s arguments on schools were based on a lie. He stoked fears about critical race theory being taught in schools – it isn’t – with a caricature of Black children learning to think they are victims and white children learning to self-hate.It cut through and proved effective in a febrile, pandemic-era atmosphere where parents shout and even turn violent at school board meetings debating issues such as gender identity and mask mandates. Whereas McAuliffe wanted to nationalize the election, Youngkin managed to keep it local, albeit by tapping into Fox News talking points following last year’s Black Lives Matter protests.Expect this incendiary mix of children and racism to be chapter one of the Republican playbook in next year’s midterm elections for Congress. Expect chapter two to be How to Deal with a Problem Called Donald Trump.The 45th president will still be welcome in the safe districts of the Make America Great Again nation, sure to draw fanatical crowds and turn out the vote. But in swing states, Youngkin has shown Republicans the way to have their cake and eat it too.In the Republican primary, he praised Trump and fanned his false claims of voter fraud by raising concerns about “election integrity”. In the general election, he was willing to tacitly pat Trump on the back without ever embracing him – he eschewed mentions of the former president in campaign speeches and must have been tremendously relieved that Trump never turned up in person.Youngkin squared the circle that many Republicans have struggled with, creating a template for how to win over moderates and independents without alienating the Trump base, or vice versa. Call it the Goldilocks principle of strategic ambiguity: neither too hot nor too cold, but just the right temperature.Democrats knew exactly what he was doing. McAuliffe relentlessly tried to conflate Youngkin with Trump. At a rally last week, Biden warned: “Extremism can come in many forms. It can come in the rage of a mob driven to assault the Capitol. It can come in a smile and a fleece vest. Either way, the big lie is still a big lie.”But it was all in vain.Youngkin, like Trump, might have emphasized his status as a businessman and political outsider but otherwise came over as a suburban dad, more polished and less profane: the acceptable face of Trumpism. Yet his tactics were just as dark, dishonest and divisive.Democrats will now need to find a counter-strategy fast. Some commentators have suggested that members of the House and Senate could desert Biden and rush to the exits, retiring rather than facing a bloodbath in the midterms, so weakening the president’s hand at a crucial moment for his agenda. Virginia is a warning cry that the party needs strong leadership to get it done before things fall apart.Wednesday marks the first anniversary of Biden’s defeat of Trump in a presidential election like no other. But the pandemic of Trumpism rages in new and unexpected ways – and the Youngkin variant may prove among the most dangerous.TopicsUS politicsVirginiaJoe BidenDemocratsRepublicansUS CongressanalysisReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden dismisses bad polling and says domestic agenda set to pass

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      Joe BidenJoe Biden dismisses bad polling and says domestic agenda set to pass
      President speaks to reporters at end of G20 summit in Rome
      Progressives Sanders and Khanna optimistic on spending plan
      Virginia: governor race becomes referendum on Biden
      Victoria Bekiempis and Martin PengellySun 31 Oct 2021 16.35 EDTFirst published on Sun 31 Oct 2021 11.53 EDTJoe Biden sought to brush off concerns about bad polling on Sunday, telling reporters he expected Democrats to overcome internal differences and pass both his domestic spending plan and a bipartisan infrastructure deal in the week to come.Republican Adam Kinzinger: I’ll fight Trumpism ‘cancer’ outside CongressRead moreEarlier, an NBC News poll found that 54% of US adults disapproved of Biden’s performance, down six points since August, a period in which the president’s domestic agenda has stalled amid intra-party division.Biden spoke to reporters in Rome at the end of the G20, before traveling to Glasgow for the Cop26 climate summit.He said: “I didn’t run to determine how well I’m going to do in the polls. I ran to make sure that I follow through on what I said I would do as president of the United States.“I said that I would make sure that we were in a position where we dealt with climate change, where we moved in a direction that would significantly improve the prospects of American workers having good jobs and good pay. And further that I would make sure that we dealt with the crisis that was caused by Covid.“… I believe we will pass my Build Back Better plan. I believe we will pass the infrastructure bill. Combined, they have $900bn in dealing with climate resilience, the largest investment in the history of the world that’s ever occurred. And it’s going to pass in my view, but we’ll see. We’ll see.”Biden has staked his presidency on his spending plans but Democrats in Congress have been split between progressives and moderates led by two senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Biden delayed his departure to Rome to plead with Democrats to pass his spending agenda.“We are at an inflection point,” he reportedly told House members. “The rest of the world wonders whether we can function.”Whether Democrats can deliver could also have significant implications for the midterm elections next year. Historically, parties holding the presidency fail to keep the House.Top Democrats reportedly want a final version of Biden’s $1.75tn spending plan drafted by Sunday and passed by Tuesday. The price tag has come down dramatically, from $3.5tn, with concessions to Manchin and Sinema. The infrastructure deal is valued at $1tn.Discussions continued throughout the weekend. Bernie Sanders, the chair of the Senate budget committee, told CNN’s State of the Union: “I can tell you, we are working right now. I spent all of yesterday on the telephone … as soon as I leave the studio, I’m going to be going back home to get on the phone.”Sanders said he was optimistic and added: “This is not easy stuff, but what we are trying to do is put together the most consequential piece of legislation in the modern history of this country, which will transform the role of government in protecting the needs of working families.”Sanders said he was fighting for action on prescription drugs costs to be included in the spending bill, an issue on which he and Sinema are in very evident opposition.In a 50-50 Senate, and with no Republican support on spending, Manchin and Sinema are key. Democrats must use reconciliation, a way to pass budgetary initiatives via a simple majority rather than 60 votes. The vice-president, Kamala Harris, has the decisive vote.The Senate did pass the infrastructure bill in August via a bipartisan vote but House progressives stymied it in an attempt to win concessions on the spending plan. On Sunday Ro Khanna of California, a prominent House progressive, told CBS’s Face the Nation he expected success.“We are working to add things in,” he said. “The negotiations are taking place. I’m going to be a yes. I think we can have the vote by Tuesday … I’m yes on the framework.”Cabinet members also expressed optimism. The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told Fox News Sunday: “We are teed up for major action soon.”Asked if Congress would pass both pieces of legislation this week, he said: “We are the closest we have ever been.”Buttigieg also made a point sure to surface in the midterms if Biden is successful, telling ABC’s This Week he “wouldn’t let Republicans off the hook on voting for the family provisions too.“I know they probably won’t but it’s not too late for some of them to join Democrats who are united in believing that the time has come for us to actually put our money where our mouth is [and] support American families.”A Republican senator, Rick Scott of Florida, told Fox News Sunday Biden’s spending had “to end” as it was “causing inflation” and “hurting the poor families”.“We gotta live within our means like every family does,” Scott said.Huma Abedin says kiss from unnamed senator was not sexual assaultRead moreAsked if that meant Republicans should support repeal of tax cuts they passed under Donald Trump which are projected to add $2tn to the national debt, Scott said both taxes and spending should be cut.On NBC’s Meet the Press the energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, suggested Biden’s polling would be boosted when Americans see his spending bill.“They’ll see that they’re going to get a continuation of that child tax credit,” Granholm said. “They’ll see people being put to work in clean energy all across this country.“They’re going to see the ability to have senior citizens and people with disabilities being cared for in their homes. They’ll see their costs of living come down as a result of having children. This bill and the real impacts that people will see will have an impact on those ratings.”In Rome, Biden told reporters: “You know, you all believed [the spending bill] wouldn’t happen from the very beginning, the moment I announced it, and you always seem amazed when it’s alive again. Maybe it won’t work. But I believe we’ll see by the end of next week at home that the bills have passed.”
      The Associated Press contributed to this report
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