Presidents are not issued a magic wand when they take their jobs, as anyone in the Oval Office can tell you. Certainly as he nears the end of a difficult first year, President Biden could testify.
But let’s imagine he might have a magic wand for one day, and use it to save what he wants from his larger Build Back Better package of social and climate-change programs. What would he choose?
The question is relevant because the president, his staff and his party in Congress badly need to choose priorities as 2021 draws to a close. He doesn’t have the votes in the Senate to pass the presidential plan, certainly not after West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin publicly declared his opposition, robbing Democrats of the 50th vote they would need to squeeze it into law.
Mr Manchin objected to the overall cost and funding of Build Back Better, as it is currently structured—and specifically to replace the House that added to the price tag of the $1.75 trillion framework that President Biden put in West Virginia. was proposed after consultation with Democrats. It has now become clear, as perhaps always should have been, that Mr Biden cannot please everyone within his party.
So if he just wants to please himself, here’s what he might choose to defend:
– Federal assistance for child care. Mr Biden talks lovingly about the idea, as it punches up two of his hot-button themes: helping to maintain the “dignity of work” for working-class families and making America more competitive. .
The Build Back Better Framework called for ensuring that families of four earning less than $300,000 annually would pay no more than 7% of their income on care for children under the age of six. Working parents would receive funding for child care on a sliding scale basis, and states would receive funding to increase access to child care programs.
Why does this matter so much to Mr Biden? Everyone’s views are shaped by their own experiences, and Biden personally faced the costs of child care when, as a new senator, his wife died in a tragic car accident. He was dropped from his Delaware home to move to Washington every day – and leaned on his family to provide full-time child care for his sons. Now they talk about how difficult it would have been for them to handle their new job in Congress if they didn’t have that family help, and instead had to pay for professional child care.
In addition, aid for child care enables Mr Biden to cite a phrase he still uses to describe his plans, but that other Democrats seem to have forgotten: giving America more make competitive. In Biden’s original buildup from his presidential campaign, a major justification for his social agenda was to provide government aid that would make American businesses as well as workers more competitive in their struggles with global competitors in China and elsewhere. receive a lot. Government help.
The idea has largely been lost as Democratic progressives frame their proposals as attempts to extort money from corporations rather than work with them, but Mr. Biden still embraces the idea. And at a time when the business sector is suffering from labor shortage, making it easier for parents, especially working mothers, is an idea that it can formulate as a competitive initiative.
-Reducing the cost of prescription drugs. Build Back Better would allow the federal government to negotiate prices for some high-cost drugs covered by Medicare, a provision against which the drug industry is fighting, tough.
The bill will also limit the rapidly rising prices paid for insulin, especially by diabetics. This provision will be especially beneficial for the more than 30 million senior citizens who receive insulin through Medicare’s Part D program.
Build Back Better has other measures designed to reduce drug costs, which are controversial because the drug companies charge will reduce drug availability and the like. But Mr Biden speaks about them with gusto.
Fighting climate change. It’s fair to say that Mr Biden has arrived late in his party’s quest for government programs to fight climate change, but he appears to have arrived with the gusto of being a convert.
It is impossible to know whether this is due to genuine faith or merely a feeling of prevailing winds within his party. But in any case, it’s worth mentioning that, before things came to a halt, Mr. Biden and Mr. Manchin actually worked out a deal on climate-change provisions at Build Back Better, despite Mr. Manchin’s roots in coal. The state of mining and its relations with the coal industry.
Having reached that agreement in 2021, it is reasonable to assume that Mr Biden would not want to leave it in 2022.
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