The Daily Beast
How Joe Biden – in less than two months – changed the conventional wisdom of Ronald Reagan for decades in his head
Bloomberg / Getty “The nine most terrible words in the English language are: ‘I am from the government and I am here to help.’” With that famous phrase, spoken by Ronald Reagan on August 12, 1986, during his second term as president , the Republican Party mantra for the following decades was born. In fact, this philosophy later found a home in the Democratic Party. President Bill Clinton, in his State of the Union address in 1996, declared that “the era of great government is over”, explaining that “we work to give the American people a smaller and less bureaucratic government in Washington”. And during a presidential debate in October 2000 between Al Gore and George W. Bush, experts at the time noted that the two appeared to be competing for the title of “the candidate for a lesser government”. Gore even boasted that his campaign to “reinvent the government” as Clinton’s vice president had reduced the government to the lowest level in terms of jobs since 1960. The Maiden’s revolution is doing what Obama and Clinton did not do. Fortunately, those days are over – at least for now. Even a good number of Republicans recognize that, during this pandemic, the federal government’s offer to help is not “terrifying”. Instead, it can save lives in terms of health and finances. In fact, moments after President Biden ended his national speech on Thursday, marking a year since the virus was declared a pandemic, Trump lovers Sean Hannity, Mike Huckabee and others complained that Biden did not thank Trump for launching “Operation Warp Speed” – the $ 18 billion federal government program designed to “speed up the testing, supply, development and distribution of safe and effective vaccines”. Even these staunch conservatives were implicitly admitting that this federal government program was effective in helping Americans. Another violent blow to Reagan’s philosophy that the government is inherently bad can be seen in the remarkable level of support for COVID’s massive humanitarian aid packages. Last March, when the $ 2.2 trillion CARES Act – the first relief bill – was signed by Trump, it was supported by 77% of Americans, including an impressive 76% of Republicans. In December 2020, two-thirds of Americans believed the federal government did not do enough to “provide economic relief during the coronavirus pandemic”, including 46% of Republicans according to a PBS / Marist poll. This was similar to the 70 percent support for Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion aid package he signed on Thursday that will provide direct stimulus checks, funds for schools to reopen, extended unemployment benefits, assistance to state governments and local and more – with Texas receiving the country’s second largest state aid, at $ 27 billion. Yes, this is a unique moment for our country to face a deadly pandemic that still claims almost 1,500 lives a day; as of last week, more than 20 million Americans are still receiving some form of unemployment insurance. If it weren’t for the pandemic, it is unlikely that we would see this level of broad support for big government spending and new programs – especially among Republicans. But this is still the perfect time for Democrats to introduce more programs that help Americans on a range of issues, from the minimum wage to health care. In fact, these two issues have broad support among voters. For example, most Americans support raising the minimum wage to $ 15, and even 51% of Republicans support raising the minimum wage by some amount, but not to $ 15. On the health issue, 63 percent percent of Americans in a September Pew poll believe the federal government is “responsible” for ensuring that all Americans have health coverage, just over 59 percent in 2019. The difficult part is how to enact policies that are supported by a majority of Americans, even with Democrats in control of the House, Senate and White House? It is not just the Senate obstruction that is in the way, but also possibly the ghost of the last major government program enacted by Democrats, the ACA, which many saw as a reason for Democrats to lose control of the House in the 2010 elections. , in 2014, Chuck Schumer, then the third Democrat in the Senate, directly blamed the ACA’s approval for harming Democrats mid-term, saying the party “spoiled the opportunity the American people gave them”. He added a line that may still be in his thinking process today: “After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose programs aimed at the middle class and built on the partial success of the stimulus.” The ACA was an albatross around the Democrats’ neck in mid-2010 and 2014, protecting it was one of the main reasons why Democrats won the House in 2018. In fact, ACA approval increased by 38 percent in the middle from 2010 to the mid 50s today. This could very well be seen as an indicator of how public opinion has evolved over the past decade, with Americans now viewing the government as an aid. Democrats in Congress know they have to comply. As Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), president of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, explained to me, if Democrats don’t stick to issues like the minimum wage, “people will stop trusting us.” Jayapal promised to push for a broad progressive agenda, and my hope is that Democrats take victories where they can, even if it means compromising, given the obstruction. The pandemic made it clear that Reagan’s federal government philosophy is inherently “terrifying” It no longer resonates with most Americans. This is the moment for the Democratic Party to boldly defend programs that show our American citizens that the federal government can help them beyond moments of extreme need – because it can. 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