If Democrats must shrink President Biden’s agenda, enacting a small number of expansive, permanent programs is the least-bad way to do so. EricLevitz writes
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Over the coming decade, the United States is projected to produce $288 trillion worth of goods and services. In that same time period, our country is also poised to:• remain the only high-income country that does not guarantee paid leave to its new parents and affordable health insurance to all its citizens.
The Democrats have a single-vote majority in the Senate, and can’t afford more than three defections in the House. So Biden and his progressive allies have been forced to appease their party’s recalcitrant right-wingers. Now, the progressive position is that we should spend 0.8 percent of GDP on mitigating our nation’s various crises, while the “moderate” view is that we should spend 0.52 percent — at most — on such trifling matters.
Alternatively, Biden & Co. could nix the means tests, and just implement the president’s full agenda for a very limited period of time: Give Americans a child allowance, long-term care benefits, paid leave — the whole works — for just three years. Then run for reelection in 2024 as the party that opposes making virtually every American family poorer by allowing automatic safety-net cuts to take effect.
Unfortunately, there are two problems with this gambit. The first, and most fundamental, is that it does not actually satisfy the moderate holdouts’ demands. If Joe Manchin just wanted to gain symbolic distance from progressives and avoid associating himself with a large-sounding number, then a three-year, $1.5 trillion bill might be a unifying proposition. But Manchin is a genuine fiscal conservative who has a limited tolerance for both increasing the deficit and taxing the rich.
A second, smaller problem with the “do everything temporarily” strategy is that it’s quite high risk. Republicans are heavily favored to take the House in next year’s midterm elections. In 2020, the GOP had about a four-point advantage in the Electoral College . There is little sign that the major-party coalitions are changing substantially. Which means that the GOP is likely to have a big handicap in 2024. Setting up a giant welfare-benefits cliff might help Democrats win that election anyway.
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