This week we look at the obstructionist agenda of the Republican and what it means for advancing President Biden’s legislative agenda. We will look at how the dysfunction of the filibuster inhibits the advancement of the Democratic agenda and the options for breaking through the inertia. We will look at the implications for a number of policy reforms from policing to infrastructure to voting rights reform. We will look at some of the key players public positions and the potential next steps for both Republicans and Democrats.
It would appear the Republican party is confused about the meaning of the word bipartisanship. Typically, a bipartisan agreement rests upon a belief that both parties negotiate in good faith. You start from a position that the opposition is honest and sincere. Unfortunately, the Republican party does not negotiate in good faith. Rather, negotiations are an attempt to run out the clock as they continue to be the party of “No”. No progress on infrastructure, no progress on police reform, no progress on immigration, no progress on voting rights. I suppose that when you are party that didn’t even bother to adopt a platform in the 2020 Presidential election, that you have no North Star or policy that is guiding you, except for standing in opposition to anything that either Democrats or President Biden’s Administration wish to accomplish.
The GOP cries out that President Biden is failing to seek bipartisan solutions when it is clear that President Biden and his team have taken great care to seek out and listen to the Republican party, however as President Biden has stated, inaction is not an option. The Republicans seem to toss every barrier and blockade in front of the Administration to derail their agenda. Minority Leader McConnell has on multiple occasions indicated that similar to his platform during President Obama’s Administration, he intends to block every substantive piece of legislation that the Democrats and President Biden advance.
Let’s look at Infrastructure, The American Jobs plan targets over $2 Trillion in investment spending on American infrastructure which will get Americans back to work in good paying construction jobs across multiple sectors and industries. Senator McConnell has refused to revisit the 2017 Tax Cuts which benefitted wealthy donors and corporations therefore he is expecting the infrastructure bill to be paid for by things like usage taxes which hit average Americans the hardest. The whole “trickle down” concept of economics which Republicans have clung to since Ronald Reagan and has been debunked over the last 40 years, has been disproven. Companies when offered lower taxes don’t move jobs back to the U.S., they don’t hire more workers, they don’t increase investing in R&D, instead, they increase dividends, engage in massive stock buy backs and increase senior executive pay. McConnell’s refusal to engage in an honest debate is really a ruse to drag out the timing as close to the mid-term 2022 elections so that he has a platform to run on calling Democrats “Socialists.” It’s disingenuous and a game we have seen too many times before.
The Grim Reaper, or Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky has relished his role as being the leader of the Great Obstructionist Party (GOP). It’s clear that without a legislative platform or a moral center, Senator McConnell sees his role as solely pushing conservative jurists on the bench and blocking all Democratic legislative progress. Headed into the 2022 mid-terms Democrats need to be pounding the message that the GOP is the Party of No – no progress, no jobs, no relief, no helping hand. They have no legislative agenda accepting holding power and pursuing culture war, wedge issues that make no tangible improvement in the day to day lives of everyday Americans. The GOP’s pursuit of an obstructionist agenda allows Democrats to box Republicans in and portray them as being unsympathetic to the plight of average Americans. Case in point when GOP Governors ended the $300 unemployment benefit supplement claiming that $300 was incentivizing Americans to stay at home. What the GOP ignores is the real damage they are causing families who may have young children who can’t be vaccinated or families who may not have access to adequate, affordable daycare.
Without an actual legislative agenda, the Republicans and Senate McConnell want to ensure that they strangle government as much as they can so that they can point to its inefficiency and either privatize certain sectors or sell off assets to be exploited by their rich donors. Democrats on the other hand have a positive vision of the future that focuses on helping American families return to work at good paying jobs, providing adequate child and elder care which are significant barriers for working mothers seeking to rejoin the workforce. The financial investments in America’s middle class frighten the GOP who offers their voters little in the way of economic support instead looking to fill that policy void with a legislative agenda that can be called little more than grievance politics. Their continued pushing of “The Big Lie” and pursuit of electoral recounts in key battleground states undermines faith in the legitimacy of the electoral process and risks a GOP voter base who has no faith in the integrity of voting which might lead to voter apathy or worse continued political violence as extreme right-wing voters turn on the Republican party as they perceive all elections as illegitimate. It’s a looming danger and one compounded by a lack of a clear policy platform for the Republican party.
What should Democrats do given this lack of bipartisanship?
Given Senator Mitch McConnell’s obstruction agenda, Democrats must make the case to the American people that they will go it alone because they are fighting for average Americans. American understand how investments in infrastructure benefit American companies and bring good paying American jobs back to the US. Given these jobs created by the American Jobs plan, can’t be outsourced they will offer employment with benefits to American workers. President Biden has made it a priority that the infrastructure bill will ensure that we purchase American supplies and contract with American companies to rebuild America’s aging infrastructure. Democrats need to continue to make the case to the American public that only one party is delivering for average Americans. The Democratic party. By painting Republicans as out of touch and unsympathetic to the plight of the average American workers Democrats can show the ways in which their legislative agenda is buoying the American economy in ways that help to rebuild the American families’ budgets. This “kitchen table” diplomacy is critical to the Democratic mid- term strategy.
Beyond an aggressive campaign to articulate the value of the American Jobs Plan, Democrats need to understand that call for bipartisanship are little more than a smoke screen. The GOP are not acting in good faith particularly in regard to, infrastructure. Their 1950’s definition of infrastructure doesn’t recognize the need to transform the nature of work to provide working Moms and families with more support so that they can participate in our economy. Included in the legislation is both child and elder care provisions which can help address the caregiving gap that largely falls on the shoulders of working moms.
Democrats have an opportunity to push forward an expansive long-term investment in the American economy and to characterize GOP inaction as the behavior of a party that is uninterested in the needs of average American families. This is a potent message that is appealing to Americans as investing in American jobs and American industries can’t be characterized as a socialist agenda when high paying American jobs are at stake and are precisely what the Republican party seeks to block with their obstruction.
Beyond just the American Jobs Plan, the Democratic party and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer must embrace the concept of “busting the filibuster”. The filibuster, an anachronistic, relic of the antebellum pre-Civil War South needs to be done away with in order to enact sweeping change. What Democrats needs to embrace is that bipartisanship needs to go beyond the beltway outside of the corridors of the Capitol, taking into account the broad support for President Biden’s agenda on infrastructure, police reform, voting rights, climate policy, child and elder care. All of these policies are supported by the vast majority of American voters and that is what makes them bipartisan. It’s not what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants it is what the majority of American’s want – the future America they want to live in and the future America that they endorsed and voted for in President Joe Biden’s Administration to pursue.