WASHINGTON – In an attempt to align his unity speech with his quest for a bold agenda, President Joe Biden has been selling his $ 1.9 trillion Covid-19 package as a bipartisan.
But that message fell into a harsh reality on Saturday morning, when the House passed the bill – without a single Republican vote.
In recent weeks, Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, has mobilized the White House messaging device to defend the argument that the president’s aid package is bipartisan, not because some Republican lawmaker signed it, but because the polls show that it has the support of a large majority of the public, and because some Republicans mayors and officials outside Washington supported him.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where it also lacks support from the Republican Party.
Klain repeatedly cited the polls in the face of criticism for taking a partisan approach.
Rob Flaherty, digital director of the White House said Wednesday that Covid’s plan is “extremely bipartisan”, citing a Morning Consult poll that showed 76 percent of public support, including 60 percent of Republicans who identified themselves.
Although Democrats can approve it without Republicans if they remain united, the dynamic points to a bigger fight for Biden: the Republican Party “epiphany” that he predicted shows no signs of materializing. and his agenda is likely to face the kind of full-fledged party opposition that has plagued Barack Obama as president.
Asked in a recent CNN city hall how he will heal a divided nation, Biden cited polls that found significant support among Republican voters for his Covid-19 plan. He said that they show that the United States “is not as divided as we appear”.
But these appeals did not move Republican lawmakers. His task is complicated by the fact that a large number of Republican voters falsely claim that he lost the 2020 election and, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, want their leaders to face him instead of closing deals.
“This is an interesting approach,” said former Republican Senate budget official Bill Hoagland. “What they are saying is that the Republicans who are here do not represent their constituents at home and therefore we must listen to the constituents.”
Hoagland, now at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that bipartisanship in Washington has historically meant winning votes from the other party. He said he never saw it defined by polls during his 25 years of working on Capitol Hill, calling Biden’s version “an interesting turn in the legislative and democratic process”.
But many progressives like the new approach, including those who criticized Biden’s unity speech.
“I think he’s super smart,” said Adam Jentleson, a former aide to Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid. “If you let Mitch McConnell define what is bipartisan, nothing will be. Defining it based on public opinion is necessary and opens the door to great things ”,
‘You can’t have it both ways’
Frustration extended to Republicans on Capitol Hill, who expected Biden to cut his $ 1.9 trillion package to win his support, but those negotiations were dissolved after Biden decided his $ 618 billion plan was too small to face. the crisis.
“No matter how many times they tweet about it, unelected White House officials cannot change the definition of ‘unity’ on their own. At some point, just have the courage to admit what you are doing: push a party project through a party process, ”said a Republican aide familiar with the Covid-19 bipartisan bailout negotiations. “You can’t have it both ways.”
Matt Gorman, a Republican Party consultant and campaign agent, called Biden’s approach “very clever in half.”
As a candidate, Biden was often nostalgic about cooperation between parties during his time in the Senate and said he would be a president who would work to revive that spirit. His mandate dates from the 1970s and 1980s, an era when the two parties each had a wide mix of liberals and conservatives in their ranks, which paved the way for bipartisan coalitions. That is not the case today.
“President Biden has promised unity, but Democrats are handing over a one-party government,” said House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Before two Democrats joined his caucus in voting against the bill.
In his inaugural speech last month, Biden used the word “unity” eight times and said, “We never, ever, fail in America when we act together.”
On February 2, Klain quoted a Yahoo News / YouGov survey showing that more than two-thirds of Americans support the policies of their American Rescue Plan. “This IS a bipartisan agenda,” he tweeted.
On Monday, Klain wrote that the plan “has bipartisan support among voters; state / local leaders; business and work” and that it “must get the same in Congress.”
At a recent meeting with union leaders in the Oval Office, Biden said that “based on the survey data,” Americans “want everything in the plan – it’s not a joke”.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has been peppered with questions from reporters at her daily meetings about whether Biden’s promise to pursue a Covid-19 bill in a party vote breaks his promise to find common ground.
“He did not keep his promise to unite the Democratic and Republican parties into one party in Washington,” said Psaki on February 5. “This package has the vast majority of support from the American public.”
