Manchin Throws Another Wrench Into Biden Agenda

By Yuval Rosenberg

Manchin Throws Another Wrench Into Biden
Agenda

Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has emerged as
a power center in the evenly divided Senate, made clear in an

op-ed for The Washington Post Wednesday night that
he opposes eliminating or weakening the filibuster and is concerned
about the repeated use of a maneuver known as budget reconciliation
as a way to pass legislation by simple majority.

Together, those comments could represent an obstacle for
Democrats as they look to pass a massive infrastructure package
that has yet to garner any Republican support.

“If the filibuster is eliminated or budget reconciliation
becomes the norm, a new and dangerous precedent will be set to pass
sweeping, partisan legislation that changes the direction of our
nation every time there is a change in political control. The
consequences will be profound — our nation may never see stable
governing again,” Manchin wrote.

Senate Democrats passed a $1.9 trillion Covid rescue package via
the reconciliation process and are looking at using the same
maneuver to push through Biden’s infrastructure package without the
threat of a Republican filibuster. Doing so, however, would require
the support of all 50 Senate Democrats, given the unlikelihood of
any Republican backing.

“I simply do not believe budget reconciliation should replace
regular order in the Senate. How is that good for the future of
this nation?” Manchin wrote. “Senate Democrats must avoid the
temptation to abandon our Republican colleagues on important
national issues. Republicans, however, have a responsibility to
stop saying no, and participate in finding real compromise with
Democrats.”

White House officials told CNN that they were not alarmed by
Manchin's article and that they expect the infrastructure package
will be subject to months of negotiations, including talks with
Manchin. "There is a lot of conversation between not only Senator
Manchin's office and the White House but members all across the
Hill," White House communications director Kate Bedingfield told
CNN.

Manchin may have just burst liberals’ hopes: “With just
15 words,” CNN’s Chris Cillizza writes, “Joe Manchin ended the
possibility that Joe Biden's first term would live up to the hopes
that liberals had for it on everything from gun control to voting
rights to even, possibly, the size and scope of the President's $2
trillion infrastructure bill.”

Manchin’s yearning for “a new era of bipartisanship,” the Post’s
Paul Waldman
writes, “is kind of like me saying, ‘The time has
come to make me the starting point guard for the Washington
Wizards, where I’ll average 35 points and 15 assists per game.’ I
might like that to happen, but there are some pretty good reasons
it won’t.” But given the current state of political debate around
the filibuster and budget reconciliation, Waldman says, the outlook
for the next couple of years of legislating boils down to this:
“Either Joe Manchin gets to decide what bills pass, or Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) does.”

A Quick Guide to ‘Bidenomics’

President Joe Biden is proposing an array of policies that mark
a dramatic shift away from decades of conventional wisdom about
economics and politics in the U.S., Greg Ip of The Wall Street
Journal
wrote this week.

Known as the “Washington consensus” or “neoliberalism,” the
conventional wisdom holds that private markets provide the best
solutions to most problems, and that governments should avoid
interfering in the economy as much as possible – a prohibition that
includes a strong aversion to deficit spending and running up the
national debt. With some variations in emphasis, that consensus
basically held from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, a roughly
forty-year reign of free-market liberalism tempered by moderate
redistribution and regulation.

But Biden is offering something new, Ip says. In the wake of
Donald Trump, who ignored the conventional wisdom by attacking free
trade and failing to pay even lip service to the virtues of fiscal
constraint, Biden has turned to a new generation of advisors who
believe that neoliberalism has run its course.

What does that mean for economic policy in the Biden
administration? Here’s a summary of Ip’s brief but insightful
analysis:

* Growth: Grounded in scarcity, the old economic model is
more concerned with supply than demand, focusing on incentives to
produce more work and investment to drive growth. The new
‘Bidenomic’ model, grounded in the work of John Maynard Keynes
during the Great Depression, assumes that insufficient demand is a
constant drag on the modern economy, and extensive government
intervention is required to push growth closer to its
potential.

* Fiscal policy: Inflation is a defining problem for
neoliberal policymakers and worries about sparking an inflationary
spiral serve as a brake on running the economy “hot,” which would
require the Federal Reserve to slow things down by raising interest
rates. Influenced by years of disappointing growth, Biden’s
advisers are far less concerned about inflation and see increased
government spending as a crucial tool for boosting growth rates,
reducing unemployment and raising wages.

* Deficit spending: Conventional economic models assume
excess government spending “crowds out” private investment, pushing
interest rates higher while reducing investment and long-term
growth. The new view is that low interest rates betray no shortage
of investment capital, so deficits have little effect on rates and
are not necessarily harmful – and may even be necessary.

* Social programs: Tightly linked with conservative
social views, the old economic model sees government-funded aid as
inherently problematic and links most public assistance to
participation in the labor market. Biden’s economic policies move
toward universal assistance regardless of employment status, with
an emphasis on essential activities such as caregiving that are
undersupplied by the private economy.

The bottom line: Although he is concerned that
“Bidenomics is more a political movement than a school of economic
thought,” Ip says that the new view simply “reflects what
economists have observed in the past 20 years: government debt rose
sharply while interest rates fell and unemployment hit historic
lows without unleashing inflation.” The main question is whether
those conditions will continue to hold, boosting Biden’s attempt to
rework the American political economy, or if the problems predicted
by the old models reemerge, forcing yet another course change for
Biden and his successors.

Treasury Races to Distribute Nearly $50 Billion
in Rental Aid and Avoid an Eviction Crisis: Report

The United States faces a race to avoid an eviction crisis, The
Washington Post’s Jonathan O’Connell
reports.

The Biden administration last week extended a federal moratorium
on evictions through June 30, “but conflicting court rulings on
whether the ban is legal, plus the difficulty of rolling out nearly
$50 billion in federal aid, means the country’s reckoning with its
eviction crisis may come sooner than expected,” O’Connell
writes.

More than 7 million renters, or nearly 14%, were behind on their
payments as of last month, according to a Census Bureau
survey. Treasury officials are rushing to get some
$46.5 billion in aid delivered through state, local and tribal
housing agencies before courts start processing evictions again.
But many of those agencies reportedly have yet to create programs
for disbursing the aid money, and some landlords have refused to
participate. The Treasury Department is working to build confidence
among landlords, one official told O’Connell.


Read the full piece at The Washington Post.

Department of Transportation Lists $621 Billion
in Potential Projects

In an effort to build support for President Biden’s $2.3
trillion infrastructure plan, the Department of Transportation has
circulated a spreadsheet for lawmakers that defines specific
projects worth $621 billion.

According to
Roll Call, the list includes:

  • $174 billion to support electric vehicles, including $15
    billion to build charging stations;
  • $115 billion for roads and bridges;
  • $85 billion for transit, mostly rail;
  • $50 billion to boost infrastructure resilience in the
    face of extreme weather events;
  • $44 billion to accelerate shovel-ready
    projects;
  • $25 billion to make transportation more equitable for
    minority populations;
  • $25 billion for aviation projects;
  • $17 billion for ports and waterways.

In a note to lawmakers, Edward McGlone, deputy assistant
secretary for congressional affairs at Transportation, said “it is
important to us to share this level of detail so that you can get a
sense of how we arrived at the numbers that the President is
proposing.” McGlone added that ‘we want to stress that we fully
anticipate these numbers and proposals to go through revision as
Congress deliberates on this.”

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