WASHINGTON— “So this is a process,” President Joe Biden said Friday morning at the White House, speaking about the convoluted high-stakes developments in Congress right now. “We are reaching the difficult point here,” he said. “We are at this impasse right now,” he said.
“At the end of the day,” he said he was sure that what was necessary would be done. “I think it’s going to take some time.”
The thing is, time seems to be running short.
Oh, it is a process it’s okay. One with more overlapping plot lines than any binge-worthy broadcast series, and they all seem to converge on decisive conclusions within the next week or so.
On the one hand, the US government. could shutting down amid a pandemic, defaulting on its debt payments and seeing the two major infrastructure bills that Biden has attributed his legacy to failure, even as his party controls the entire elected government.
On the other hand, the US government. could Continue as usual, and Congress could cement America’s biggest reshuffle of spending and social policy since shortly after the Great Depression.
About half of what is happening illustrates the cynical partisan warfare the Republican Party resorts to, indifferent to the consequences for people’s lives. The other half vividly demonstrates how what prevents Biden from implementing much of his core agenda is unofficial opposition within his own party.
You could be forgiven if you are confused. Even in the best of cases, deciphering the pomp, posture, political intrigue, and policy content on Capitol Hill can be difficult. This is not the best time. So let’s try unzipping it.
First, there is the double whammy of an impending government shutdown and possible default. This is because, periodically, the United States Congress votes to continue funding the government; otherwise it literally shuts down – your employees are not paid, checks are not mailed, services are suspended. And also periodically, Congress must vote to increase (or suspend) a self-imposed “debt ceiling” that limits the amount of money the government can borrow.
Both votes must take place soon. The government cannot operate after October 1 unless Congress votes to fund it, and it is on track to reach the current debt ceiling sometime in mid-October.
The US government previously closed due to clashes between the president and Congress, most recently in 2018. But it has never happened as a pandemic claimed thousands of American lives per day, and disaster relief efforts they were in the balance.
The US government has never exceeded the debt ceiling, which would prevent it from borrowing money to finance already approved expenses, including servicing its debt, and thus leaving it in default. Everyone agrees that it would be disastrous, which is why Democrats voted with Republicans to raise the limit even when Donald Trump was president.
The current Republicans are not willing to do that. They threaten to obstruct both continued government funding and a suspension of the debt ceiling in a Senate vote scheduled for Monday. They do it because they want the Democrats to be the sole policy makers of the debt, even though much of that borrowed money would pay for things proposed during the Trump administration. It is a brazen partisan political maneuver.
There are ways Democrats could take both actions on their own, although it would be tricky, and the chairman of the House Budget Committee has said There probably won’t be time to do it before the US Treasury defaults and the economy collapses.
Separately, but on the same short schedule, another pair of bills essential to Biden’s agenda are compromised not only by the Republican opposition but by struggles within his own party. Together they comprise your infrastructure, climate change, and social services proposals, which you may recall splitting into two bills that Biden always characterized as a package, saying he wouldn’t sign one without the other. Together, they would be transformative and would be among the largest spending packages in American history. They are the core of your government program.
The “one,” the bipartisan infrastructure bill negotiated by Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to gain some support from the Republican Senate, is scheduled for a vote on Monday. The “other,” the $ 3.9 trillion “reconciliation” bill intended to pass without Republican support, is up for a vote Wednesday.
Both are in danger, because neither has enough Democratic party still support.
A bloc of Democrats in the House of Representatives has said they will not approve the first if they do not have a firm agreement to do the other as well. There is no such agreement yet, because Manchin and Sinema say they will not vote on the reconciliation bill in the way that Biden and the rest of his caucus envision.
When Biden spoke about the deadlock on Friday, he was describing negotiations with members of his own party in his office this week. Democrats are playing chicken with the entire Biden program for the country: if no one blinks, the entire Democratic government agenda is sunk. Meanwhile, Republicans are willing to sink the entire economy rather than cooperate on something they agree must be done.
I don’t want to give the impression that the only thing at stake here is partisan political fortunes. People’s lives could change. At stake is the life-and-death ability to cope with the pandemic, as is the program that has dramatically reduced child poverty and those aimed at addressing climate change and providing massive new investments in child care and education.
Biden says he’s confident that everything will work out. It could be right. But it is not yet clear how that can happen in the next week.
And if you’re wrong, both your own management and the people you serve are in a world of trouble.
Reference-www.thestar.com