The corporate media appears loathe to give Joe Biden credit for substantial accomplishments during his first year as president.
Working with a Senate deadlocked 50-50, and relying on Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties, Biden has managed to pass two major spending bills and came within two votes of passing a third major spending bill to provide more assistance to working families and the climate and two major voting rights bills. And Biden only has 50 senators on a good day, as long as he can keep Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in line.
Biden got off to a quick start with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, also known as the COVID relief plan, which passed the Senate March 6, 2021, and the House March 10, 2021 (without Republican support in either chamber). Among its features:
• A family of four with one working parent and one unemployed parent would have $12,460 more in government benefits to help them make ends meet.
• The poorest single mothers in America received $250 to $300 per child monthly in government support, along with $1,400 for themselves and additional funds for nutritional assistance and rental aid.
• The family assistance was projected to reduce child poverty in the US by half.
• More than 1 million unionized workers who were expected to lose their pensions will now receive 100% of their promised retirement benefits for at least the next 30 years.
• America’s Indigenous communities were to receive $31.2 billion in the largest investment the federal government has ever made in the country’s Native people.
• Black farmers were to receive $5 billion in recompense for a century of discrimination and dispossession, a miniature reparation that will have huge consequences for individual African-American agriculturalists, many of whom escaped from debt and retained their land as a direct result of the legislation.
• The large majority of Americans who earn less than $75,000 as individuals or less than $150,000 as couples received a $1,400 stimulus check for themselves and another for each child or adult dependent in their care.
• America’s child-care centers did not go into bankruptcy en masse, thanks to a $39 billion investment in the nation’s care infrastructure.
• Virtually all states and municipalities in America exited the pandemic in better fiscal health than pre-COVID, in an effort to avert layoffs of public employees and cutbacks in public services.
• No one in the US will have to devote more than 8.5% of their income to paying for health insurance for at least the next two years, while Affordle Care Act plans will become premium-free for a large number of low-income workers.
The American Rescue Plan helped to stimulate the economy and pulled it out of Trump's recession. Biden’s approval ratings were well above 50% in the FiveThirtyEight average of polls until early August, when corporate media became hysterical about the evacuation of US diplomats, allies and troops from Afghanistan. Trump had surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban and left Biden with 2,500 American troops to conduct the withdrawal. When the Taliban started an offensive May 1, the Afghan national army collapsed, surprising US military and intelligence officials. Baden was blamed for the chaos that was inevitable under the terms he inherited from Trump. The Taliban surrounded the Kabul airport while ISIL-K, an enemy of the US and the Taliban, conducted attacks on the airport that included a suicide bomber who killed 170, including 13 US military who were conducting security screenings. When ISIL-K started firing missiles at the airport, US military forces concluded the evacuation a day early, on Aug. 30, but they had airlifted more than 122,000 US citizens, NATO allies and Afghan allies from Kabul, which we mark as a success, given the circumstances.
Biden’s bipartisan (but mainly Democratic) $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Law will help create safe, efficient, and climate-friendly transportation alternatives for people and freight, including the largest investment in passenger rail service since Amtrak was created. In addition to the road, bridge and transportation projects, the bill includes funding for broadband access, clean water, electric grid renewal and replacement of lead pipes on water lines. It passed the Senate 69-30 on Aug. 10 and 228-206 in the House Nov. 5. Some Republicans who voted for the bill got death threats from Republican extremists after Trump blasted the cooperation with Dems.
Under Biden’s watch, a record 6.4 million jobs were created in 2021 and the unemployment rate dropped from 6.2% to 3.9%.
Biden and the Democrats also protected Americans from foreclosure and eviction until the economy could recover, extending moratoriums on putting people out of their homes.
Biden has been blamed for inflation and supply chain problems as the nation began to emerge from the pandemic. There is little the president can do about inflation, other than directing the federal government to enforce anti-trust laws against monopoly businesses that have hiked up their prices. Biden’s Department of Agriculture is working to increase competition among meat producers and in October he got the Port of Los Angeles to begin operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to clear supply chain disruptions that threatened the holiday shopping season and economic recovery from the pandemic.
Biden has cracked down on big tech monopolies, encouraging federal agencies to crack down on major tech companies that grow through mergers and leverage consumer data, as part of a larger executive order in July 2021 aimed at dispersing corporate consolidation throughout the economy.
Biden has worked to strengthen unions, issuing an executive order to protect federal workers and contractors, in part by restoring collective bargaining power and worker protections by revoking measures that Trump had signed to strip many federal civil service employees of job protections. Biden asked agencies to bring wages of all federal employees and federal contractors to at least $15 per hour.
Biden has been frustrated in his hopes to pass the Build Back Better Bill, which he had negotiated for months with Manchin and Sinema and apparently thought he had a deal before Manchin in December abruptly said he could not support the bill. Manchin and Sinema also joined Republicans to block bills to protect voting rights in states that have adopted voter suppression bills. That prompts some Democrats to wonder what good Manchin and Sinema do.
The simple answer is Manchin and Sinema as nominal Democrats keep Mitch McConnell from setting the agenda. As of Jan. 21, the Senate has confirmed 42 federal judges, including 13 for the US courts of appeals and 29 judges for district courts. Another 36 are awaiting Senate action, including six for courts of appeals and 33 for district courts. There are 16 vacancies on courts of appeals and 18 vacancies for district courts. If for no other reason than to fill those 34 vacancies, Democrats should not give Manchin and Sinema an excuse to switch parties. If Dems pick up two or more seats in the midterm election, they can tell Manchin and Sinema to pound sand, end the filibuster and pass Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders’ version of Build Back Better next year. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2022
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