Convicted or Not, Trump Is History: It’s Biden Who’s Changing America
Robert Reich / The Guardian UK & Jon Rainwater / Peace Action
(February 16, 2021) — While most of official Washington has been focused on the Senate impeachment trial, another part of Washington is preparing the most far-ranging changes in American social policy in a generation.
Congress is moving ahead with Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which expands healthcare and unemployment benefits and contains one of the most ambitious efforts to reduce child poverty since the New Deal. Right behind it is Biden’s plan for infrastructure and jobs.
The juxtaposition of Trump’s impeachment trial and Biden’s ambitious plans is no coincidence.
Trump has left Republicans badly fractured and on the defensive. The party is imploding. Since the Capitol attack on 6 January, growing numbers of voters have deserted it. State and county committees are becoming wackier by the day. Big business no longer has a home in the crackpot GOP.
This political void is allowing Biden and the Democrats, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, to respond boldly to the largest social and economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Importantly, they are now free to disregard conservative canards that have hobbled America’s ability to respond to public needs ever since Ronald Reagan convinced the nation big government was the problem.
The first is the supposed omnipresent danger of inflation and the accompanying worry that public spending can easily overheat the economy.
Rubbish. Inflation hasn’t reared its head in years, not even during the roaring job market of 2018 and 2019. “Overheating” may no longer even be a problem for globalized, high-tech economies whose goods and services are so easily replaceable.
Biden’s ambitious plans are worth the small risk, in any event. If you hadn’t noticed, the American economy is becoming more unequal by the day. Bringing it to a boil may be the only way to lift the wages of the bottom half. The hope is that record low interest rates and vast public spending generate enough demand that employers will need to raise wages to find the workers they need.
Republican infighting has created a political void into which Democrats are stepping with far-reaching reforms
A few Democratic economists who should know better are sounding the false alarm about inflation, but Biden is wisely ignoring them. So should Democrats in Congress.
Another conservative bromide is that a larger national debt crowds out private investment and slows growth. This view hamstrung the Clinton and Obama administrations as deficit hawks warned against public spending unaccompanied by tax increases to pay for it. (I still have some old injuries inflicted by those hawks.)
Fortunately, Biden isn’t buying this, either.
Four decades of chronic underemployment and stagnant wages have shown how important public spending is for sustained growth. Not incidentally, growth reduces the debt as a share of the overall economy. The real danger is the opposite: fiscal austerity shrinks economies and causes national debts to grow in proportion.
The third canard is that generous safety nets discourage work.
Democratic presidents from Franklin D Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson sought to alleviate poverty and economic insecurity with broad-based relief. But after Reagan tied public assistance to racism — deriding single-mother “welfare queens” — conservatives began demanding stringent work requirements so that only the “truly deserving” received help. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama acquiesced to this nonsense.
Not Biden. His proposal would not only expand jobless benefits but also provide assistance to parents who are not working, thereby extending relief to 27 million children, including about half of all Black and Latino children. Republican senator Mitt Romney of Utah has put forward a similar plan.
This is just common sense. Tens of millions are hurting. A record number of American children are impoverished, according to the most recent census data.
The pandemic has also caused a large number of women to drop out of the labor force in order to care for children. With financial help, some will be able to pay for childcare and move back into paid work. After Canada enacted a national child allowance in 2006, employment rates for mothers increased. A decade later, when Canada increased its annual child allowance, its economy added jobs.
It’s still unclear exactly what form Biden’s final plans will take as they work their way through Congress. He has razor-thin majorities in both chambers. In addition, most of his proposals are designed for the current emergency; they would need to be made permanent.
But the stars are now better aligned for fundamental reform than they have been since Reagan.
It’s no small irony that a half-century after Reagan persuaded Americans big government was the problem, Trump’s demise is finally liberating America from Reaganism — and letting the richest nation on earth give its people the social support they desperately need.
ACTION ALERT: Tell Biden to End Forever Wars
(February 16, 2021) — For two decades now, the US has engaged in ever-expanding, seemingly endless wars around the globe.
The wars have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, including countless civilians. Trillions of dollars have been wasted, and entire regions of the world have been destabilized.
Instead of making us safer, these reckless conflicts have militarized our society, fed xenophobia and hate here in the US, and created more extremism abroad.
Take Afghanistan for example, the US’s longest-ever armed conflict, now entering its twentieth year. Since 2001, the total price tag for the war is estimated at over $1.5 trillion. In return, more than 100,000 Afghan civilians were killed by all sides in the years 2010-2020 alone.
In addition, the Afghan government remains one of the world’s most corrupt and Afghan military and police forces are plagued by human rights violations. Millions of Afghans have also been displaced by the decades of fighting. The truth today is the same as it was on October 7th, 2001, the day the war started. There is simply no military solution.
Together, we have the power to end this. It’s going to take a massive amount of pressure to succeed, so we’ve teamed up with a coalition of organizations and allied members of Congress representing millions of Americans to amplify the pressure on President Biden to end the Forever Wars.
Our message? We need to bring our troops home. We need to stop bombing other countries. We need to spend the trillions of dollars that we’re wasting on the Forever Wars here at home instead, making investments that benefit working Americans like COVID relief, green jobs, racial justice, healthcare, and more.
We’re calling on President Biden to use his power as Commander in Chief to review all military deployments around the world, bring our troops home safely and responsibly as quickly as possible, and finally bring the decades-long Forever Wars to an end.
We have the momentum, but we need you. The only way we’ll be able to convince the Biden Administration to end the Forever Wars is by marshaling as much support as possible from the people of this country. Please sign our petition calling on President Biden to end the Forever Wars now!
Thanks for your help on this critical issue.
P.S. Ending US support for the war in Yemen was a big victory. Now it’s time to focus on the wars the US is a direct combatant in, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and unfortunately likely others.
