Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP Photo
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks to reporters alongside fellow Democrats during a press conference on the party’s shift to focus on voting rights, January 18, 2022, at the Capitol in Washington.
A handful of people I know in Washington are adamant that there will be a Build Back Better Act signed by the president in the neighborhood of $1.5 to $1.75 trillion, which was the top level for Joe Manchin all along. I’ve found that trying to discover what underlies this confidence is kind of impenetrable, but if you’re wondering why you’ve seen a flurry of articles lately (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and right here at the Prospect), that’s your answer.
I will admit to having some skepticism about this. It’s not as if Manchin has been unclear about his intentions. While he has expressed a willingness to talk, literally nothing has happened in the month since he rejected the previous bill. Anything new would start from a “clean sheet of paper,” Manchin told reporters last week. Meanwhile, you can find plenty of stories from more pessimistic sources, saying that no process on Build Back Better will bear fruit anytime soon, and that moving on to bipartisan efforts to rack up some wins would be preferable.
So while I appreciate the take industry’s continuing efforts to demand that someone, anyone give Manchin what he wants, I cannot muster up the faith required to enlist in that effort. There’s no harm in assembling some collection of measures that adhere to his red lines and seeing what he says. I imagine it would include some balanced (some would say imbalanced) version of energy incentives, the universal pre-K program Manchin implemented in West Virginia, and maybe an extension of the Obamacare exchange subsidy fix set to expire in 2022, funded by whatever tax increases and prescription drug price curbs he’s comfortable with that can also get by Kyrsten Sinema, and with whatever revenues beyond that going to deficit reduction.
But making BBB the only item under consideration in Congress for the second half of 2021 did the Democrats no favor. To the contrary, it reinforced a perception of Biden and the Democrats’ impotence and a sense that they’re out of touch. A January CBS poll revealed that Biden has failed to make the sale that BBB would reduce burdens on the biggest drivers of cost of living and therefore stands as an inflation-fighting bill. According to the poll, Biden would regain support among those who currently disapprove of him by a nearly 2-to-1 margin if he “gets inflation down,” but passing BBB would barely move the needle at all.
In addition, a package Manchin can support would likely not include the Child Tax Credit enhancement (an absolute tragedy from the perspective of child poverty), Medicare program expansion, paid family and medical leave, or the quietly radical housing measures. So many congressional Democrats are dug in to supporting one or more of these particulars (which is the result of their failure to prioritize particulars at the outset) that it threatens turning future negotiations into yet another merry-go-round that accomplishes nothing. Democrats cannot survive that politically come November’s elections.
Low-level negotiations can go on in the background, and for the sake of the planet’s climate they must, but as a political imperative Democrats need to get on to something else.
In some ways, they’ve already started. Last week’s revelation of a simple website to get COVID test kits delivered for free to homes came too late to help with the omicron wave (though perhaps right in time for the next variant). But it signaled a shift from the Biden administration in two respects: first, a bias toward hassle-free executive actions (at least if you didn’t live in an apartment) that show tangible results, and second, an recognition that getting a handle on the still-raging pandemic, not just a passive belief in vaccination fixing everything, is the only way back to political favorability. That’s been followed up already with the provision of 400 million N95 masks from the national stockpile, being distributed (also for free) at pharmacies and other sites.
This finally puts the U.S. where other industrialized countries have been for a while. The administration could go further by using the Defense Production Act to prioritize manufacturing of these materials, which could increase supply capacities while facilitating these types of easy-to-use programs. This would set a standard for future executive actions (which, as Prospect readers know, are numerous), which would get Manchin off the front page and put the focus on Biden getting things done.
Making Build Back Better the only item under consideration in Congress for the second half of 2021 did the Democrats no favor.
As for a legislative agenda, we’re in an interesting moment when there are a handful of options that are bipartisan but don’t necessarily follow the typical bipartisan pattern of being punitive efforts to slash public benefits or bullying to press the country closer to war. For example, the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021 would for the first time in over two decades re-regulate an ocean carrier cartel that made an astonishing $150 billion in profits last year. It got 364 House votes, and there’s a Senate companion. There’s practically nothing else on the legislative side that would have as much impact on inflation as bringing down shipping rates and getting exports moving.
Second, last week the Senate Judiciary Committee passed with bipartisan support a Big Tech antitrust bill that seeks to end the practice of platform monopolies self-preferencing their own content over that from their rivals on the platform. That bill has also passed House Judiciary and would be a high-impact place to start to look for victories, even if leaders in both parties are lukewarm (the White House supports it, however).
Third, a more long-term bill to improve U.S. production capacities, particularly by reshoring advanced manufacturing in fields like semiconductors, which has already passed the Senate, will reportedly be introduced in the House this week. As my colleague Bob Kuttner reports, the Senate bill had some bad pro-corporate provisions for the sake of bipartisanship (as is the norm), and House progressives are trying to hammer out a compromise. Investments in semiconductor plants across the country suggest that the time is ripe for federal action, though not at the expense of other goals.
There are smaller bills that could get a look. Senators in both parties are discussing reform of the Electoral Count Act, an exceedingly modest advance on vote tabulation that at least cuts off one avenue for Congress to overturn a democratically conducted election (see: January 6th). Congress will surely want to weigh in on the looming crisis situation in Ukraine, perhaps with sanctions on Russia. There are a number of pieces of cannabis legislation that have the votes to pass, particularly a measure that would allow marijuana-based businesses to access financial services, though Senate leadership has been more interested in an unattainable bigger bill.
Finally, the real focus for the next month will likely be on striking a deal on government funding before a February 18 deadline. As Eleanor Eagan wrote in the Prospect, continuing to operate on Donald Trump’s budget baselines is unacceptable, and is strangling the administrative state.
A successful process could allow passage of a handful of appropriations that were weirdly stuck into Build Back Better, like $1 billion in enforcement for the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. This could be the beginning of what “breaking into chunks,” as President Biden said in his press conference last week, looks like: getting a few misplaced BBB measures into the budget deal.
So there really is a path to an incrementally successful second half of the legislative session that puts inflation-fighting first and gets some long-anticipated wins that people will be able to see. If the pandemic comes more under control, that would provide a path to a more level playing field in the midterms, especially if it builds enough trust to sneak through some of Build Back Better’s needed investments.
