Biden's Victory Lap Speech Will Be Just The Start
President Joe Biden is going to take a victory lap Thursday, with a primetime Oval Office address to the American people. He deserves to. As he said to Barack Obama when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed, this is a big [expletive gerund deleted] deal. By some measures, it is the biggest such big deal in history. And even though it is already wildly popular with the public, Biden learned the lesson of Obama's first big emergency stimulus bill and will be touting the American Rescue Plan Act's accomplishments to the skies, while encouraging others to do the same. This is doubtlessly going to pay off politically for him. Which he and his fellow Democrats also deserve.
As with any large bill -- and most especially with large budget bills that only require a Senate majority vote -- a whole lot of different things made it into the final bill. It is not merely $1,400 checks and money for vaccine distribution, which are the two top-line items the media has mostly zeroed in on. There are plenty of other benefits which will continue to make people's lives easier, long after the initial check is cashed. And if Democrats do a good job of pointing it out, they'll get the credit for making people's lives better.
Here's a stunning statistic, to show just how momentous this bill could be. It may reduce poverty in America by one-third, and child poverty by a stunning one-half. One bill will be responsible for millions of people being lifted out of poverty. That's pretty astounding when you consider the limited effect most of these spending bills have on regular people's kitchen table budgets.
There will be a lot of different groups positively affected by the American Rescue Plan Act. Parents are the most obvious, since the child tax credit changes will be simply astounding. Rather than just reducing a parent's income taxes at the end of the year, monthly checks will now go out to parents (except for the wealthiest). That is a big difference, and it will change lives. One estimate predicts that over four million children will be lifted out of poverty by this alone.
Here is just a quick rundown of some of the other provisions of the American Rescue Plan Act (taken from a Washington Post article that goes into each in more detail):
The Earned Income Tax Credit will be boosted for childless low-income workers (17 million of them).
Pension funds of 185 multi-employer Unions will be boosted, so they don't fail and leave truck drivers, retail clerks and many others out in the cold.
Student loan debt tax laws will change, so that forgiven student loan debt will no longer be treated as taxable income.
A loophole will be close for student loans to veterans under the G.I. Bill, to avoid veterans being ripped off by for-profit "colleges."
Disadvantaged farmers (many of them Black) will get billions in assistance. This will help millions of them pay off debt or buy additional land.
Obamacare subsidies will increase, which will lower the cost of health insurance for millions.
The Medicaid expansion under Obamacare was sweetened to entice the 12 remaining holdout states to join. Expanding Medicaid will now mean states not only don't have to pay a thing for it, but that they'll actually make money by doing so.
Mass transit systems hit hard by the pandemic will get $30 billion.
Child care gets funded, to help working parents.
Rental assistance will mean people on the brink of becoming homeless will be able to stay housed.
State and local governments will get money they desperately need to cope with the economic fallout from the pandemic.
Hospitals will get money to help them cope with the pandemic and the vaccination efforts, as well.
Even all of that is not a complete list, but you can see how truly breathtaking this bill is going to be to tens of millions of Americans. Noticeably absent from the bill, though, are huge bailouts for Wall Street, for banks, for corporate America, and for the ultra-wealthy. Nothing shows the priorities of the two major political parties clearer than that, really.
This is all why the bill is going to be such an easy sell, both for Biden and the rest of the Democrats. With even the little that the public knows about the bill now (mostly confined to the $1,400 checks and direct pandemic aid), it is already extremely popular. When people find out about all the other programs contained within the American Rescue Plan, those programs and aid will also be wildly popular. This is why a massive public education effort -- led by Biden himself -- is going to be so important.
This is what was missing in two of the largest pieces of legislation Barack Obama got through Congress -- the initial American Recovery Act bailout, and the Affordable Care Act. Obama, unlike Donald Trump, is not a total egomaniac (or megalomaniac) and therefore he does not have Trump's overwhelming and pressing need for self-aggrandizement. But Obama erred a bit too much in the other direction, by not touting his accomplishments enough.
I think Joe Biden has realized this, and I think he's got a different plan in mind. First he'll get his victory lap, Thursday night. Then, within a few weeks, he will hold his first full press conference and also deliver a primetime speech to a joint session of Congress. In both of these, Biden can be expected to once again remind everyone of what he's already accomplished. He will also likely begin his push for the rest of his agenda as well. Around the same time, those checks will start arriving in everyone's mailbox (or directly in their bank accounts).
Over 60 million Americans have gotten at least the first shot of the COVID-19 vaccines. This summer is shaping up to be a real return to normalcy. As the economy expands with all the spending of the American Rescue Act and this return to normalcy, jobs will be coming back by the millions. Throughout all of it, Biden and the Democrats need to keep beating the drum of how successful the American Rescue Plan Act has been.
One telling note as to how popular this is going to be is that the Republicans still haven't quite figured out their storyline for their resistance to it all. They know they're against it (because it was a Democratic bill and will help a Democratic president), but unlike other partisan issues (such as immigration), there simply is no one to effectively scapegoat in this bill. What are Republicans going to do? Tell their home state governors to just refuse all those billions of dollars, to maintain partisan and ideological purity? Tell people to just rip up and refuse to cash those checks from the government? That's not going to be very popular, to put it mildly.
Republicans gambled that this bill would somehow fail. So they voted in lockstep against it, confident that doing so was going to be a political winner for them. Even though Donald Trump was the one initially pushing for the $1,400 payments. So far, this is looking like a pretty self-destructive stance. Now they've now painted themselves into this particular corner, floundering around trying to come up with some even remotely believable reason why it's all a bad idea. So far, without much noticeable success.
Joe Biden and the Democrats have a much easier hand to play. Because it is such a big [insert your own modifier, if you so choose] deal. And by fiercely opposing it, Republicans have left all of the credit on the table for the Democrats to claim. Biden will begin to do so, Thursday night. All Democrats should start doing so immediately thereafter, and ride this all the way through the 2022 midterm campaign -- "You elected us to get stuff done. We are doing so, even though Republicans are fighting us tooth and nail. It would help if you elected a few more Democrats to Congress to make it even easier to get more good stuff done." That's a winning message, these days.
[Correction: Errata in the time of COVID -- this article originally said Biden would be speaking "tomorrow" but this has been corrected to "Thursday." We can't even claim it was a typo, we honestly walked around all day thinking it was Wednesday. In the pandemic, every day just kind of seems like all the others, and it's eaasier to lose track. In any case, we apologize for the error.]
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
I'm gonna go ahead and enjoy this while it lasts ... still in seventh heaven.
I hope Biden is able to take the Republicans right out of the bipartisan equation and go straight to the people.
Actually, he could take a page ... er, a paragraph or long sentence out of Trump's playbook in that regard.
Who could possibly be against "free money"? It appears that many Republicans could be, but I suspect it's a political loser for them to oppose it.
Believe it or not, there actually ARE some rational and legitimate reasons for being against free money (or I'd prefer to say, some reasons to question the wisdom of the idea) but they are likely beyond the interest level of the vast majority of people, particularly liberal people.
The immutable laws of economics will ensure that at some point, there will be consequences for substituting the creation of massive amounts of new money as an alternative to conventional taxation as the means of financing the gov't. The timing and the nature of the consequences will depend upon the volume of new money created, and the means by which it becomes injected into the economy. Only time will tell.
OK, major correction. I used "tomorrow" throughout this article, because I honestly thought it was Wednesday. I blame the COVID.
It has been corrected to "Thursday"...
-CW
@don,
1987 called...
JL
CRS2-
Which "immutable" laws? References? Something more recent than the 18th century. No microeconomics if you please...this is a macroeconomics problem.
CRS2-
Or did you mean to say "in my immutable opinion, at some point there will be...."
I would have no problem with that.
CW-
I hope you are right....but Republican are soooo good at the art of monkey wrenching...and dog whistling..while they pretend to work. Biden is savvy, but so are the opposition.
Stig
The value (purchasing power) of money is a direct function of the ratio of money in circulation to GDP (physical production of goods and services). Simple as that. And the natural operation of the "law"/principle or whatever is not a function of when somebody first got around to pointing out its existence.
Stucki-
One word: Bitcoin...
But beyond that, your economic explanations always seem like the econ 101 version and I'm waiting for econ 201 where they start to explain how it really works. It's like you are explaining Newtonian physics when the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics are closer to it actually works...
Very nice kudos to Uncle Joe and the gang on Capitol Hill. I agree this is a big funny deal.
And I know the point of victory laps is not to think ahead for just a minute.
Waiting ... waiting ... waiting ... OK, minute's up.
What about the filibuster? Get rid of it ASAP. It's just not going to work to wait until the 2022 campaign to beg America to vote for more Democrats in Congress to "get more stuff done", entirely on the basis of one large gift package passed in the first two months of the administration.
BB
Bitcoin is not money, it's more nearly equivalent to a precious metal, in its ability to function as a medium of exchange. however I claim no knowledge of it.
The laws/principles of economics are not equivalent to the 'perceived' laws/principles of physics, subject to revision. Far as I'm aware, nobody has ever proven to have an update or revision on the principles of economics, the old "101" version pretty much still obtains/endures, and always will. The MMT guys may claim that "deficits no longer matter", and similar ideas, but those kind of things are always far more a matter of sociology than of economics.
The laws/principles of economics are not equivalent to the 'perceived' laws/principles of physics, subject to revision.
A bold statement considering the soft nature of economics as a science and the lack of the ability to prove by experiment in any meaningful way. I would have the subjects reversed in your quote above...
As evidence of how the Biden Stimulus will help the country, I plan to use that money towards a remodel of my house. We have an atrium in the middle of our 40-year-old house that is terribly insulated with 4 massive, single-paned windows and an old sliding door, which makes it near impossible to cool the house during the summer even while running the AC 24/7. We are replacing the windows with double panes and the sliding door with an insulated wall and plain exterior door. This will give some work to a local contractor who otherwise would not be getting it, and will go towards improving our energy efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint. How's that for a win/win?
I didn't understand the stimulus money was to be used for things like improving the isulation of atriums. Atriums?
I mean, this is a COVID-19 relief bill, no?
Bleyd [16]
I am sure that ya’ll will be so much happier getting that taken care of... and it helps stimulate the local economy while helping you to save money in the future! Win - Win without a doubt!
Liz [17 & 18]
People have every right to spend their money as they see fit. Hiring local companies that might be desperate for work seems like a good way to help out!
Liz [17&18]
The stimulus part is meant to give people some spending money that they may have been missing out on due to covid so that they can afford to spend more in the local economy. For instance, while I didn't get laid off, I did have to forego my yearly Christmas bonus because my company couldn't afford to give them out due to the dramatic drop in business. The stimulus check is going towards a project I likely would have been using that Christmas bonus to fund in a normal year.
CRS-10
You are dabbling at a very simple level in the domain of Purchasing Power Parity Theory/Modeling. That approach is extremely sensitive to how you set up market baskets, how many players you have, and how much information the players are assumed to have at any point in time...etc etc. The devil is in the details. You aren't giving any details to back up your conclusions. Political parties in or out of power are going to favor models that help their constituents. Oh my, oh my!
Russ,
People have every right to spend their money as they see fit.
Of course, they do! That wasn't my point, such as it was.
Bleyd[20],
Understood. And, that makes very good sense. Hopefully, the relief part gets where it needs to go, too.