Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to test Republicans by bringing up, as early as Thursday, a House bill that would create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Even Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the most outspoken Democratic defenders of the filibuster, are impatient with GOP opposition to the inquiry. If Republicans kill the commission, they will only hasten filibuster reform.
Equally consequential are ongoing negotiations over Biden’s big infrastructure proposal. A group of moderate conservatives, led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), has been in discussions with Biden over whether part of his plan might be passed with some Republican votes.
Biden has already lopped $500 billion off his $2.25 trillion proposal, but the GOP senators say this isn’t enough, and they continue to oppose Biden’s tax increases on corporations and the wealthy. Last month, reflecting the view inside the White House, Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), set a Memorial Day deadline for establishing whether a bipartisan deal could be achieved.
There are glimmerings of possibility. A Democratic aide close to the negotiations expressed guarded optimism Wednesday that a deal running close to $1 trillion, with about $600 billion in actual new spending, could be reached early next month.
The theory is that the more money that’s approved on a bipartisan basis, the smaller a second, Democrats-only bill to cover many of Biden’s remaining priorities (including some of his tax proposals) would have to be — making it an easier sell to Democratic moderates such as Manchin.
Promised deals can evaporate of course, but the discussion raises a larger question: Are voters primarily interested in a better process, or better outcomes?
A study set to be released Thursday by the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank, suggests that citizens are frustrated with political acrimony but that a substantial majority wants a government active in producing a better economy.
Based on a poll conducted by the Center for American Progress and GBAO Strategies, the report concludes: “Americans desperately want less fighting in politics and more cooperation.” This is why Biden’s calls for unity go over well.
But so do his actual achievements. His $1.9 trillion rescue bill passed in March without a single Republican vote, yet wins endorsement from 66 percent of Americans and even 41 percent of Republicans.
And bipartisan longings confront deep differences between the parties right down to their grass roots. For Democrats, the study found, the top two issue priorities are controlling the pandemic and increasing access to health care. For Republicans, limiting immigration and securing the border is by far the most important priority, followed by reducing government spending. And you wonder why they fight?
Still, one priority matters to both sides: “creating jobs and improving wages.” On this core aspiration, the country is philosophically inclined to share the Democrats’ view on how to make it happen.
Fifty-eight percent of voters agreed with the statement: “The government should help drive public and private investments into the sources of good jobs such as technology, infrastructure, health care, higher education, and domestic manufacturing.” Only 35 percent picked the Reagan-era alternative: “The government should stay out of the economy and allow the private sector and open markets to determine what to invest in and where to allocate resources.”
When offering respondents a list of 20 priorities, the Center for American Progress found that “spend less time fighting . . . on social media and in politics” ranked No. 2.
And what was No. 1? “We need to clean up all levels of government to make sure politicians are paying attention to the needs of American voters and not just corporations, campaign donors, and the wealthiest few.”
The upshot: Walking away from political reform, even if Republicans oppose it, would be foolish.
John Halpin, a Center for American Progress senior fellow and principal author of the report, told me that while Biden is wise in light of his promises “to try to find common ground with at least some people on the other side,” he would be “better off not to focus on elite bipartisanship but to promote consensus ideas for national economic renewal.”
So, yes, Democrats, visibly trying to reduce the level of rancor in politics has an upside. But not at the cost of throwing your core commitments overboard.
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