Joe Biden Is Stealthily Transforming America
Politics these days might seem boring, but that's hardly the case. We're on the cusp of generational, practically unimaginable, change.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If someone sent you this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
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Politics these days is boring.
I hear this recurrent refrain from both friends and sources. The melodramas we’re arguing over now - whether it’s Liz Cheney’s political future or the president’s latest rantings about the election he lost - are not unimportant. Still, they seemingly pale in comparison to the issues we dealt with the past four years. This disinterest is reflected in diminished cable news viewership and fewer clicks for political stories.
I get it. After Hurricane Trump and the global pandemic, we could all use a break. But, political exhaustion masks what may end up being the single most important political and policy story of our lifetime: Joe Biden’s efforts to transform American society for decades to come.
No, I’m Not Kidding
Let’s start with what Biden and congressional Democrats have done - the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The ARP is one of the largest spending bills in American history - more than double the size of the stimulus plan passed in 2009 during the Great Recession.
Aside from reviving the US economy and spearheading a national vaccination campaign, the ARP is an enormous boon for poor and working-class families. By one estimate, the poorest Americans will see a 20 percent increase in income. Poor single mothers will receive a significant boost in government support, and the bill spends $31 billion on helping Native communities, the biggest such investment in US history.
The bill’s expanded child tax credit is projected to cut child poverty by more than half this year alone. More than 5 million children could be lifted out of poverty. If the tax credit becomes permanent, and congressional Democrats are now pushing for such a legislative fix, those Americans who are married and making less than $150,000 a year will annually receive $3,600 per child under the age of 6 and $3,000 for each child between 6 and 17.
That would represent an enormous boost for working families that would go a long way toward lessening economic insecurity, which has been a nagging feature of American life for decades.
The measures in the ARP would, on their own, be a singular legislative accomplishment. But, amazingly, they are only the first step in Biden’s plans.
It’s Finally Infrastructure Week!
In late March, President Biden unveiled the American Jobs Plan, which would spend a whopping $2.6 trillion over eight years. It would invest more than $600 billion in new roads, highways, rail lines, and transit systems. It will spend hundreds of billions to ensure that Americans have access to clean water, high-speed broadband, and upgrade the electrical grid. Biden would spend more than $170 billion on electric vehicles and create 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. It proposes more than $200 billion for building and retrofitting millions of new homes and school buildings. The plan would also spend $400 billion to expand access to long-term and home-based care services. These are almost unfathomable numbers. In 2015. Congress passed a major infrastructure bill that spent $305 billion over five years. Biden’s infrastructure price tag would be more than eight times larger - and decidedly more ambitious.
Perhaps most amazing, the president proposes paying for it with higher taxes on the wealthy, a genuine populist endeavor.
Biden’s plan is not some pie-in-the-sky notion. It has broad support among Democrats in Congress, can be passed via the budget reconciliation process, and seems likely to be enacted.
Again, if that were all Biden trying to do, it would be a herculean policy achievement.
But wait, there’s more!
Families First
Last month Biden proposed the American Families Plan, a $1.8 trillion plan that would create a free universal pre-school program for three and four-year-olds and a national paid family leave plan that would allow for 12 weeks of paid leave. It would also ensure every American has access to two years of free community college and spend billions on expanding access to Pell Grants. That amounts to four years of free education. The bill would also make Obamacare subsidies more generous and aims to ensure that “families pay no more than 7 percent of their income on high-quality child care for children under five years old.” According to the White House, this would save the average family $14,800 per year. The benefit that would accrue to middle-class families is stratospheric. In effect, it would directly take on the most significant causes of income insecurity in America - health care, child care, and paying for college. Like the American Jobs Plan, this legislation has broad support among Democrats and can be passed in the Senate, with a majority vote, via the budget reconciliation process.
When taken together, what Biden has already accomplished and is still proposing to do, would represent the largest expansion of the social safety net since the Great Society. It would reverse years of national decline on everything from infrastructure and education to child care and preparing the country for global warming. It would fundamentally alter the relationship between American citizens and their government, creating new social insurance programs that are de riguer in much of the developed world but have been ignored in the United States. And, it would be the first serious effort in modern American history (aside from perhaps Obamacare) to reduce income inequality.
This is NOT boring. It represents what is perhaps the most concerted legislative effort since the New Deal to, from an economic perspective, fundamentally transform American society. Biden isn’t just endeavoring to reverse 40 years of Reaganeconomics; he’s actually on the cusp of creating a fully functional welfare state in America for the 21st century.
A couple of years ago, I co-wrote a book with Micah Zenko that asserted America’s most significant national security problem is that it is rotting from the inside, with crumbling infrastructure, poor health care access and outcomes, an education system that wasn’t preparing kids for 21st-century jobs, and a political system too dysfunctional to get anything done. We argued that unless America tackled these challenges, it would no longer be a great power and would no longer compete as effectively against other peer economies. Never in my wildest imagination could I have imagined that America would have a president intent on solving these problems two years after publishing that book. Granted, what Biden is proposing doesn’t fix everything wrong with America. We still need better gun laws. We still need to make a concerted effort to fight childhood and adult obesity. We still need to spend less on our military. But what Biden is trying to do is more than a first step; it’s a massive leap.
Again, I get that people are exhausted by politics, but it’s worth taking a peek at what’s happening in Washington these days. To quote Joe Biden, “it’s a big fucking deal.”
This Day In History
I knew that May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. What I did know, until today, is that the reason it’s in May is, in part, to commemorate the arrival of Manjiro, a Japanese immigrant, to the United States. Manjiro is the first Japanese immigrant in US history - and he arrived on this day in 1843.
Tomorrow is V-E Day, the end of World War II in Europe. Here’s a great gallery of pictures of the celebrations that day, courtesy of the History Channel. When I was a boy, I remember asking my Dad if he remembered the day the war ended (he was 13 at the time) and, if so, how he celebrated. He said his father let him have a Coke!
Musical Interlude
Here’s the Grateful Dead performing “Deal” from one of my favorite late Dead tours - Summer ‘89.
Here’s really nice version of the song, performed by Dead and Company in the summer of 2019.
Biden has a great strategy and the Republicans can’t handle it. The strategy is keep punching with these great big proposals that American people love. The Republicans can’t handle it. I think it’s hit them like a gut punch and that’s why in the past month we’ve seen the Republicans go even more crazy and belligerent.