US President Joe Biden says the massive covid-19 relief bill now in the Senate plenary is crucial in finally getting ahead of the killer pandemic. It is also a perfect metaphor for American politics in 2021.

The measure contains many billions of dollars in extended unemployment benefits, help for closed small businesses, cash to open schools, and represents a national effort to accelerate vaccines that could ultimately reduce the virus to manageable levels.

The latest government data shows that the country has lost nearly 10 million jobs from where it was a year ago, underscoring the painful human need that the package will address.

But Republicans charge that the measure is fraught with large liberal spending that has nothing to do with the crisis and argue with substantial aid payments to states and cities that they say are suffering less than expected due to better tax revenues to the projected.

Despite a flurry of poisonous amendments expected on Friday, Democrats expect the bill to pass this weekend, likely with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a swing vote in the Senate 50-50, reflecting a razor edge balance of power.

Before that, a theatrical fight in the Senate, featuring stunts by Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and a 628-page, $1.9 billion bill representing a major coup from Democrats operating on partisan lines, is writing the early history of the Biden era in Washington.

The bill’s vital symbolic importance to a new president weighing a high point in his first 100 days, likely with a blocked Republican opposition and a fight by Democratic leaders to corner a troubled caucus, heralds two tumultuous years in Congress.

“If we act now, decisively, quickly and boldly, we can finally get ahead of this virus. We can finally get our economy moving again,” Biden said last week.

The showdown over covid relief also reflects the changing politics of the pandemic, with Biden warning that the crisis is far from over and Republicans arguing that a sudden spike in vaccine distribution and a drop in new cases makes a government aid. greater is superfluous.

The Senate debate on the American Recovery Plan will begin for real Friday after Johnson, who is leading a Republican circus bid to slow the bill, forced Senate secretaries to read the bill aloud, a process that began Thursday afternoon and is expected to be a 10-hour marathon.

For a time, Johnson was the only senator in the chamber Thursday night as hapless Senate secretaries reviewed the monstrous text, reflecting the grandiosity inherent in a tactic that seemed programmed for conservative news shows.

Trying to highlight what he sees as massive overspending with a stagnant effort, Johnson – who was recently seen making delusional claims that the red hat invaders of the US Capitol on January 6 were not Trump supporters. – is focusing attention on a Republican conference apparently committed to the politics of obstruction.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Johnson’s tactics Thursday, saying it would do little more than give secretaries a “sore throat.”

But Democrats can also rest assured that a high-profile Trump supporter prone to wild conspiracy theories has emerged as the most visible Republican opposition to their efforts, allowing them to argue that the Republican Party is in denial and ruthless.

That was a message that helped Biden position himself as the man to end a national crisis in his campaign last year.

“Americans should see the bill,” California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell said on Citizen Free Press “Newsroom” on Thursday. “That is why it is published online.”

“Every hour that stunts like this are performed is an hour when a hungry person is not fed and an unemployed person is not at work and someone who needs a vaccine, like a teacher, does not get it,” he said.

Republicans risk opposing a popular bailout

Although the bill is very popular in the country, Republicans, who have chosen to root their hopes for a rebound in the radical base of former President Donald Trump, seem convinced that they will pay no price for trying to block it.

Democrats, in their aggressive effort to sign the measure into law, are in the meantime showing that they have learned the lessons of the past. While Biden made a show of being open to Republican ideas on the measure, he and Democrats are certainly not expecting a change of mind across the aisle.

The president argues that the pain of the pandemic, with Americans desperate for vaccines and millions out of work, justifies the rush. But memories are still fresh on Capitol Hill of the futile attempts to get Republicans to cooperate in health care reform during the Obama presidency and the failed attempt to accept the Great Recession bailout bills.

Democrats did not unveil the bill until shortly before the Senate voted – with Harris as the swing vote – to open debate on the measure along partisan lines. That’s because last-minute changes were needed to win the support of more moderate Democrats in another sign of the fragile nature of the party’s majority.

These lawmakers, for example, fought to lower the cut-off income thresholds- to $80,000 for individuals and $160,000 for couples- for new stimulus payments.

Moderate Democrats also secured new funding for broadband, rural hospitals and Amtrak. But Dick Durbin of Illinois, of the Senate majority, warned on Citizen Free Press that the final majority for Biden’s top priority was not yet assured.

“There are active discussions going on,” Durbin told Wolf Blitzer in “The Situation Room.” “We should not assume the end result until it happens.”

In another telling sign of the shifting power dynamics in Washington, Democrats were also seeking just one Republican vote: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Murkowski, who suddenly has great power in the sharply divided Senate as a swing vote, joined fellow Republicans in voting against starting debate on the bill on Thursday. But he also suggested that he had not finally made up his mind, as he cleverly pursues the benefits for his status ahead of a re-election race in 2022.

“We already know that there are some things that are clearly not related to covid, but I am looking at some of the things that will provide a level of relief for a state like Alaska,” he said. “So try to make a bad bill work better.”

Johnson is also running for reelection next year in a state won by Biden, after the Wisconsin senator reached a second term in 2016 on Trump’s coattails. The Republican has not said whether he will run again, but his recent behavior shows that if he does, he will count on the former president’s supporters to return him to Washington.

Republicans can’t be sure they have the independent-minded Murkowski, who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment, on their side when it comes to the final vote – a scenario that will likely play out often over the next two years.

Senator John Thune of North Dakota, the second Senate Republican, said he was “hopeful” that his colleague would remain loyal in the face of a show of force that would allow the Republican Party to represent the first major victory for Biden, who campaigned on a platform of uniting Americans, as purely partisan.

The president hedged against such arguments Thursday by hosting a bipartisan meeting with members of the House on infrastructure reform at the White House. The infrastructure will be the litmus test of Biden’s belief that there really is some way to get rivals across the aisle to work together.

It is an issue on which, in theory, all members who wish to channel cash to their districts should be able to agree. But year after year, infrastructure reform perishes on the altar of partisan politics as elections loom and political capital dries up.

McConnell takes credit for easing pandemic

While reading the bill tour de force Johnson exemplifies the performative aspect of politics in a party still dominated by Trump, comments from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pointed to his longer-term strategy.

The Kentucky Republican brazenly claimed that Biden, chosen to replace Trump’s negligence and pandemic denial, was fortunately simply taking advantage of steps taken by the Republican White House and Senate to fight the virus and save the economy.

And he argued that a drop in infections during the Christmas season, albeit to hugely high levels, and increased vaccine supplies meant that large-scale injections of government cash were no longer necessary.

Instead of going into a dark tunnel, we are speeding it up. Amazing shots. A recovering economy, “McConnell said Thursday.

“But Washington Democrats are trying to exploit the last chapters of the crisis to pass what Biden’s White House Secretary calls ‘the most progressive national legislation in a generation.'”

Friday’s Senate action on the aid bill will also underscore another important consideration in Washington’s delicate political balance.

Any large-scale changes Schumer is forced to make to appease moderate Democratic senators like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema will give House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a headache as she tries to convince the Progressives to stay in line with a unified House and Senate measure, which both houses must pass before it reaches Biden’s desk.

The Democratic Party left is already frustrated by a decision by the Senate MP that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour violated the procedural maneuver known as reconciliation, which Democrats are using to try to pass the bill by a majority.

Given how critical the needs of Americans are and how important legislation is to the success of Biden’s first 100 days in office, he will likely be able to keep the Democratic caucus in line. But there is also little room for error in the House, as Democrats saw their majority reduced in the November elections.

And the simmering tensions between liberal lawmakers over Biden’s caution and the limitations of an expendable Democratic majority in the Senate will only grow more intense in an already tense but fascinating run up to next year’s by-elections.

Categorized in: