Democrats need to act like they won. They have power and should use it.
We don’t need Eugene Robinson to tell us that, but let’s let him confirm our bias. We’re due:
Republican calls for President Biden and the Democratic majorities in Congress to settle for half-measures in the name of “unity” would be laughable if they weren’t so insulting. The GOP’s definition of unity would require not doing anything the GOP opposes. To accept that would be a betrayal of the citizens who voted in record numbers — some of them braving a deadly pandemic in the process — to put the Democratic Party in charge.
A better way to seek unity is to vigorously pursue policies that have broad public support — and that begin to clean up the shambles the Biden administration inherits. Democrats may have slim majorities, but they have been given a mandate to lead. They need to remember the past four years when Republicans controlled the White House and Senate. The GOP grandly pronounced that “elections have consequences” and treated the Democratic minority like a doormat.
Robinson is not calling for payback, but if Democrats expect to retain control of the House and Senate after November 2022, they had better deliver an improved standard of living for Americans and not be shy about shouting it from sea to shining sea.
Don’t worry. Be spendy.
Robinson cautions:
The most urgent matter of business is passing a new covid-19 relief package, providing desperately needed help for individuals, small businesses and state and local governments. Republicans who hardly batted an eye at Trump’s free-spending ways, and who blew a huge hole in the budget with a massive tax cut for the wealthy, have suddenly — and predictably — rediscovered their deep concern about the national debt.
Wall Street is not wringing its hands in harmony with Republicans this time (Politico):
Senior U.S. lawmakers are stressing out about mounting government debt as they resist President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan to boost the economy through more direct checks to Americans and aid to states and cities.
But investors in the federal debt, a wide range of market-focused economists and officials in the Biden administration have a firm response: Don’t worry about it right now.
The debt poses no imminent danger to U.S. finances, they say, so the more pressing concern should be jump-starting the economy to avoid the type of sluggish recovery that persisted for years following the Great Recession.
“Without further action, we risk a longer, more painful recession now — and long-term scarring of the economy later,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told senators last week at her confirmation hearing.
Go big
Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in an interview Monday night let MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow know that, yes, Democrats have learned not to negotiate with themselves. They would no longer squander precious legislative time catering to Republicans’ bad-faith demands for compromise. The ten years of “sluggish recovery” that resulted from the Obama administration’s failure to “go big” in its recovery plan left a lasting impression. Schumer promises to avoid a repeat now.
“Our north star has to be the legislation itself. It has to be big and bold and strong,” Schumer said. Of the drawn-out negotiations over the Affordable Care Act that both weakened the 2008 bill and foreclosed passage of other Democratic priorities, he said, “We will not repeat that mistake.”
That mistake led to historic losses for Democrats nationwide in the 2010 elections. Which led to Republican control of redistricting in many state legislatures. Which led to gerrymandering targeting “African-Americans with almost surgical precision” where I live and a decade of court fights to secure proportional representation in Congress for Democrats.
North Carolina is bracing for another decade of the same. Their 2011 gerrymandering efforts helped Republicans in 2020 retain control of the legislature and redistricting for another ten years. They will keep running the same play again and again as long as it works, here and everywhere else. Without bold actions by Democrats in Congress to improve Americans’ lives in President Joe Biden’s first two years, Republicans will regain control of Congress in 2023. Their efforts to secure minority rule will continue to work.
“Watch what they do, not what they say,” Maddow said of Republicans throughout the Trump administration. Schumer says Democrats in Congress have learned their lesson. Don’t listen to what he says either. Watch what Democrats do.