The only thing that can stop Biden’s domestic agenda is his own party
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Nineteenth-century American tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt knew a thing or two about human nature. His most remembered aphorism, “I am not afraid of my enemies, but by God, you must look out when you get among your friends,” perfectly sums up the situation US President Joe Biden finds himself in.
First, the good news. Biden has managed to get as much bipartisan Republican support for his two massive domestic spending bills — the most ambitious since Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs of the 1960s — as he could possibly have hoped to receive. Just this past week, the first of the two pieces of legislation, the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, passed the full Senate by a resounding vote of 69-30. An impressive 19 Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in voting for it, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. This decisive legislative victory vindicates Biden’s inspiring belief — all recent historical evidence to the contrary — that the two parties could come together and still get serious things done through compromise.
While Biden must be pleased with winning this legislative battle, the outcome of the war remains uncertain. First, that was certainly all the Republican help the president can legitimately hope to receive from the GOP. The Republicans in the House of Representatives, traditionally far more ideological than in the upper chamber, have shown no inclination to lift a finger in support of Biden’s infrastructure plan.
Even more decisively, no Republican in either the House or Congress has the least intention of voting for the second, larger, $3.5 trillion Democratic wish-list bill, designed to significantly expand the scope of federal social programs, transforming the US into something like a garden-variety, social-democratic European state.
Ironically, that leaves the fate of Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda entirely in the lap of his own party. More precisely, the president must heal the internecine conflict, long bubbling just beneath the surface, between Democratic moderates such as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, as she is universally known) of New York. The problem for Biden is his friends, not his enemies.
While Biden must be pleased with winning the legislative battle, the outcome of the war remains uncertain.
John C. Hulsman
With the Senate split down the middle 50-50 and the Democrats holding a working majority of five in the House (the smallest majority either party has had in the modern era), Biden has to somehow keep both wings of his party almost entirely onboard both pieces of legislation, or they will almost certainly go down in defeat. Making his herculean task even harder, the second, more ambitious and partisan bill can only pass through the parliamentary process known as reconciliation, which requires 50 rather than the usual filibuster-proof 60 votes. However, this means every single Senate Democrat has to vote for it, from whichever wing of the party.
Already Manchin and Sinema are saying that they cannot vote for the $3.5 trillion second bill, also known as the “Build Back Better” bill, as it is constituted because it simply costs too much money. The bill, while still to be formally written, would guarantee paid family leave, universal pre-kindergarten education, two years of free community college, new investments in green technology, and an expansion of Medicare. While progressives say that the massive price tag will be offset by an increase in taxes on both corporations and the wealthy (those making more than $400,000 a year), it appears that so far only half the spending seems to be offset. Moderates, worried about recklessly adding to the federal deficit, fueling inflation, and appearing fiscally irresponsible, are sending up warning flares that the second bill amounts to a fiscal bridge too far.
We are left with a situation where moderate Democrats are thrilled with the infrastructure bill but are very wary of the “Build Back Better” legislation. On the other hand, progressives dismiss the infrastructure bill as little more than making up for decades of government neglect, placing all their fervor in passing the second bill, which amounts to a Democratic wish list going back decades.
Under the thumb of AOC and her progressive “squad” of House legislators, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has said she will only consider the two bills in tandem, not passing the Senate-approved infrastructure bill in the House until the Senate passes the larger bill by reconciliation. In other words, AOC and the squad are politically leveraging Manchin and Sinema, saying that if they want the infrastructure bill (which Sinema took the lead in negotiating with Senate Republicans) then they must bite the bullet and pass the “Build Back Better” bill. To quote the great lyricist Johnny Mercer, “Something’s gotta give.”
It is here that Biden’s past history as a Senate “fixer” comes into play. While the stakes are high, and the difficulty of managing both bills is treacherous, it is hard to think of another living American politician with as applicable a CV to make this work. The irony is that Biden’s friends are now his problem. The other historical irony is that it is hard to think of anyone better positioned to thread the Democratic needle.
• John C. Hulsman is the president and managing partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a prominent global political risk consulting firm. He is also a senior columnist for City AM, the newspaper of the City of London. He can be contacted via chartwellspeakers.com.
