Biden’s Bet on Big Government

By Yuval Rosenberg

Biden’s Bet on Big Government

With the passage of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the
federal government has now provided more than $5 trillion in relief
and stimulus spending in response to the Covid-19 pandemic over the
last year, leading some to wonder if we are witnessing the start of
a new era of big government.

Gallup’s Frank Newport tackles that issue Friday,
noting that the “new legislation once again brings
into sharp focus conflicting opinions on the appropriate role of
the federal government in Americans' daily lives — at the center of
controversy and dispute since the drafting of the U.S. Constitution
230 years ago.”

Americans clearly approve of Biden’s spending plan, Newport
says, and have supported all kinds of stimulus spending since the
beginning of the pandemic. More broadly, the latest Gallup poll
shows that a majority of Americans — 54% — want to see the
government do more to solve problems, the highest reading on that
question since the polling organization began asking about it in
1992.

Opposition remains: On the other hand, a substantial
minority — 41% — say that the government is already doing too much
and should allow individuals and businesses to solve their own
problems. Those who oppose an expanded role for government
sometimes say they are worried about deficits and the debt,
although those worries don’t appear in recent poll data, Newport
says. “Indeed, if the deficit is a concern, Americans appear to be
willing to increase government income with elevated taxes on
high-income families and with a wealth tax on ‘ultra-millionaires,’
as proposed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders,” he
writes.

A
new poll from The Hill and HarrisX backs up
Newport’s view, with 56% of respondents in a survey taken from
March 5 to March 8 saying that inequality is a problem in the U.S.
and a wealth tax is part of the solution. The other 44% said that a
wealth tax is unfair and a penalty on successful people. The
partisan differences were pronounced in the poll, though, with
about 80% of Democrats supporting a wealth tax, and 64% of
Republicans and 51% of independents opposing it.

The fight continues: The lack of bipartisan agreement on
future spending programs, such as the still-developing
infrastructure plan Biden wants to pass, may mean that a new era of
big government will have trouble getting started. “If the economy
and jobs situation improve markedly, there could in turn be a
backlash of sorts to continuing increases in government spending,”
Newport says. “And the razor-thin margins of Democratic control of
the House and Senate could shift in 2022 or 2024, allowing
Republicans to again press their emphasis on curtailing major
government spending programs.”

The bottom line: In the long run,
crises like the Great Depression and World War II have generated
some of the most significant changes in the size and function of
government, leaving legacies such as Social Security and the GI
Bill in their wake. It’s not clear yet whether the Covid crisis
will generate the same kind of legacy. “Big government ... has
clearly been a fact of life in the U.S. before the stimulus plans
of the past year,” Newport writes. “The question going forward is
more about the trajectory of the continuation of this long-term
trend, and less about the sudden arrival of a new era of government
involvement in our lives.”

3 Takeaways From Biden’s First Primetime
Address to the Nation

In his first primetime address to the nation, President Biden on
Thursday night presented an optimistic case that the worst of the
Covid pandemic might soon be over. Hours after signing his $1.9
trillion coronavirus rescue plan into law, Biden marked the
one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a
pandemic by
mourning the losses the nation has suffered and
outlining the path to brighter days ahead.

Some takeaways from the speech:

Hope for a return to normalcy: Biden said that the nation
was on track to meet his administration’s goal of 100 million shots
in arms by his 60th day in office and that he was directing all
states, tribes and territories to make sure that all U.S. adults
would be eligible for Covid vaccination by May 1. He held out hope
that, if Americans got vaccinated and did not ease up prematurely
on masking and other measures to prevent the spread of the virus,
small July 4th gatherings with family or friends could be possible.
"After this long hard year, that will make this Independence Day
something truly special where we not only mark our Independence as
a nation but begin to mark our independence from this virus," he
said.

Biden paired that optimism with a heavy dose of caution, though.
“Just as we were emerging from a dark winter into a hopeful spring
and summer is not the time to not stick with the rules,” he said.
“This is not the time to let up.” The White House made clear Friday
that Biden wasn’t promising a return to “total normalcy” by
summertime — so maybe think about the July 4th goal sort of in the
way Bill
Pullman’s president character put it in the movie
“Independence Day”: As a declaration that, "We will not go quietly
into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to
live on! We're going to survive!”

We, not me: Biden didn’t mention former President Donald
Trump by name, but he criticized the early response to the
pandemic, saying that the initial spread of the virus was met with
silence and long denials “that led to more deaths, more infections,
more stress, and more loneliness." And he drew stark contrasts with
Trump in other ways, saying that the path out of the pandemic was
to “tell the truth” and “follow the scientists and the
science.”

He also urged Americans to put their trust in government. “We
need to remember the government isn't some foreign force in a
distant capital. No, it's us. All of us. We, the people,” he said,
later adding, “I need you, the American people. I need you. I need
every American to do their part. And that's not hyperbole. I need
you. I need you to get vaccinated when it's your turn and when you
can find an opportunity. And to help your family, your friends,
your neighbors get vaccinated as well.”

That call to collective action was another dramatic difference
from Trump, as The Washington Post’s Dan Balz
writes: “Instead of a president saying, ‘I alone
can fix it,’ Biden said he can only succeed with the help of
others.”

The stimulus sales pitch will come later:
“A day after the passage of the most far-reaching domestic
piece of legislation in decades, Biden spent only the last few
minutes in touting his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan,” Jeff
Greenfield writes at
Politico. “The selling of his Rescue Plan is
expected to begin any time, but Biden clearly decided it could wait
a day or two.”

Chart of the Day

From
The New York Times:

Quote of the Day

“We’re still not yet at the phase of the recovery where we’re
seeing the floodgates open up. I don’t think it’s quite fair to
call what we’ve done so far ‘reopening’ because there’s still a lot
of people who are out of work and a lot of businesses that are
closed.”

– Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, quoted in a
New York Times
article on the condition of the labor market. The
latest jobs report from the Labor Department showed that while
there are some signs of improvement, more than 1 million people
filed new unemployment claims last week in state and federal
systems.

Number of the Day: $521 Million

The National Guard troops deployed to Washington following the
attack on the Capitol by a mob of supporters of then-President
Donald Trump on January 6 will cost $521 million through May, the
Department of Defense said Thursday.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced this week that the
troops would remain in Washington until May 23, extending their
mission beyond the scheduled departure date of Friday. The
extension will cost an estimated $111 million, in addition to the
estimated $410 million spent on the deployment so far.

About 26,000 Guard members were called to the Capitol in
the wake of the attack. That number has been reduced to roughly
2,300 as of this week, and defense officials expect to further
reduce the size of the force as conditions allow.

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