Biden's extraordinarily ambitious philosophy of governing

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The era of small government, or at least a long chapter in it, ended last year when the economy started sliding into a coma in the midst of the worst health crisis in a century and the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

With millions infected with the coronavirus and millions more unemployed, there was no question the magnitude of the problem required the government to step in boldly, and it did. Now, President Joe Biden is leveraging the crisis to correct problems that existed before the pandemic but became more visible during the disaster.

Big spending had already started under former President Donald Trump. Biden is doubling down and making a sharp turn. His budget proposal, revealed Friday, presses the accelerator to speed away from most of Trump's policies.

Watching Biden over the past 10 weeks, Americans may have wondered what happened to the centrist candidate who won the election. Until now his raft of economic and social programs had little in common with traditional middle-of-the road positions. This budget shows that, despite his aggressive push to leverage the power of the federal government to shape economic and social change, Biden still has enough areas of disagreement with the left wing of the Democratic Party to make decisions that can also bring their blood to a boil.

In a budget filled with hundreds of millions of dollars for education, housing, and poverty alleviation, Biden also fortified the country's already robust defense budget, even expanding it to 1.7% more than the previous year, to a massive $753 billion, a sharp divergence from the 10% cut recommended by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.The defense request, which officials defended as necessary to lead the Western alliance and out-compete China, is smaller than Trump had requested, and less than Republicans insist the Pentagon needs.

Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican in the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the spending "signals weakness to China and Russia." But California Rep. Ro Khana, of the Progressive Caucus, accused Biden of "pouring more money into price gouging defense contractors & wasteful projects."

Beyond the defense request, Biden's budget shows a President eager to undo not just the wounds from the pandemic but also the damage of the Trump years at home and abroad.

These are plans meant to have a potent impact at home, but also keeping a sharp focus on America's global position, aiming to fortify its diplomatic muscle without weakening its military one. In that combination, there's something for the left and for the right to dislike.

Biden is trying to reclaim and redefine his centrist credentials. He wants the United States to remain a global power, a global leader. But his principal focus is a domestic transformation that will cost an eye-popping amount of money.
The discretionary budget request, $769 billion for non-defense items in addition to the $715 billion for defense, does not include the $1.9 trillion Covid relief already approved, or the more than $2 trillion infrastructure plan Biden is proposing.

A full budget will come later. But we now have a clear look at what Biden wants to do.

Biden wants to boost diplomacy, proposing a 12% increase for the State Department. Recall that Trump tried every year he was in office to decimate State's budget, announcing sharp cuts. An already-reenergized State Department said in a statement that the new funds will help work with allies and partners to tackle the pandemic and climate change "as well as the growing ambitions of China and global threats to democracy."

The numbers also confirm a new approach to dealing with the border. Gone is any money for Trump's border wall (the one he said Mexico would pay for) with the emphasis shifting drastically. Money for the Department of Homeland Security stays little changed, but funding is elsewhere, with a long-term effort to change the conditions that lead people to leave their homes.

As promised earlier, Biden is proposing an initial $861 million to improve conditions in Central America, combating corruption and violence, and seeking to strengthen the economies of the countries from where most asylum seekers come to the United States.

The budget gives a massive 23% boost to the Department of Health and Human Services, including $8.7 billion more for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's another U-turn from Trump's disastrous slashing of HHS funding. His 2019 budget was bemoaned by the American Public Health Association as "devastating," to public health in keeping with the practice every year he was in office.

Another favorite target of Trump cuts, now slated to receive support, is the Department of Education. Trump slashed its budget, Biden proposes to boost it sharply, by 41%, with most of the new funds going to help the schools where the poorest children are getting their education with inadequate resources.

The discretionary request includes money to fight climate change, improve energy efficiency, combat homelessness, poverty and inequality. In keeping with what we have since Biden came to office, it shows an extraordinarily ambitious presidency, with a whole new philosophy of governing. It's not just because there's a new man in the Oval Office. It's because that man was elected during a time when the country discovered that, while there's much that free markets can achieve on their own, some problems are so big that only the government can solve them.

Frida Ghitis
https://us.cnn.com/.html

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Biden’s poll numbers on the economy rival Trump’s for the first time

A majority of Americans support President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, marking the first time his approval numbers have been on par with those enjoyed by Donald Trump in an area where the former president consistently received high marks from the public and on which he staked his political career.

According to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, 54 percent of U.S. adults approved of Biden’s handling of the economy, including 94 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of independents. Another 38 percent of Americans disapproved of Biden’s economic leadership, including 82 percent of Republicans.

Trump’s handling of the economy topped out at 53 percent of Americans at its highpoint in July 2019, according to Marist polling data. In the most recent nationally representative poll, 1,266 U.S. adults were interviewed from April 7-13 and the margin of error is 3.3 percentage points.

Biden’s economic numbers are in line with his overall approval rating, with 53 percent of Americans saying they support the president’s job performance in his first few months in office. Another 39 percent disapprove of Biden’s performance.

While most Americans approve of the steps Biden has taken so far, many are still struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic, which drained much of the economic gain that Trump touted during his time in office. Millions of Americans remain out of work, and the jobless rate is still higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

To jumpstart the economy, the Biden administration unveiled the American Jobs Plan on March 31. The $2.3 trillion proposal would invest money in the nation’s infrastructure, such as roads and airports, the electrical grid and water systems, and the White House estimates it would create millions of jobs.

A majority of Americans — 56 percent — support Biden’s plan to invest in the nation’s infrastructure, but he will still struggle to push the ambitious plan through a politically divided Congress, where Democrats have lean majorities in both the House and the Senate. Republicans are already putting up roadblocks, largely because of the scope of the plan and how Biden plans to fund it.

Biden has referred to the plan as a “once-in-a-generation investment in America,” comparing it in scale and impact to the creation of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and winning the Space Race a decade later. He called the American Jobs Plan “the single largest investment in American jobs since World War II.”

“Infrastructure is about meeting the needs of a nation and putting Americans to work,” he said. “Fifty years from now, when people look back, they’ll say this was the moment, together, that we won America’s future.”

In many places, the nation’s infrastructure has reached catastrophic levels of disrepair. Years after the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, first gained national attention, many residents still rely on bottled water because tap water is still dangerous to drink. And unsafe drinking water is a problem all across the country where lead pipes are still in use.

The pandemic has served to further highlight other national infrastructure issues. When schools were forced to close and teachers to launch remote learning, many children struggled to connect to virtual classrooms because they did not have adequate internet access.

A historic winter storm in February exposed deficiencies in the electrical grid for millions of residents in Texas and Mississippi, which left many without power for days and was linked to a number of deaths.

“Our infrastructure is lacking and holds us back from competing in the global economy,” said Stephanie Aaronson, vice president and director of the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution.

The Biden plan seeks to address all of the problems above. But it also expands upon how infrastructure has traditionally been defined, bringing under its umbrella essential home care workers and improving the resilience of infrastructure to the effects of climate change, which disproportionately hurt communities of color. The pandemic raised awareness that these changes are necessary, Aaronson said.

In this latest poll, 40 percent of Americans said the Biden plan “is about right,” and another 20 percent said it “does not go far enough.” But 23 percent said it goes too far.

The plan the president set before Congress is “just so expansive,” said Michael Strain, an economist with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Removing lead pipes is one thing, he said, but including in-home care for the elderly and people with disabilities is another.

“There are things the president is proposing that I think are great, and would be good to do. And there’s a lot in there that we need to take a harder and more critical look at,” he said.

The question of how to pay for these improvements has fueled much of the debate around infrastructure. Roughly two-thirds of Americans support increasing taxes on people who earn more than $400,000 a year, according to the Marist poll. That includes 90 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of independents and 32 percent of Republicans. Most U.S. adults — 63 percent — also approve of taxing at least 21 percent of earnings that American companies make in other countries.

But Americans were far more reluctant to voice their support for measures that would have them footing the bill for some of Biden’s proposed improvements. Only 28 percent of U.S. adults backed increasing the gas tax to help pay for the infrastructure plan — nearly 30 years have passed since the country last increased the gas tax — and 30 percent supported increasing usage fees, such as highway tolls. And 20 percent supported raising taxes on all Americans.

Americans often bristle at these taxes because they seem to violate a sense of fairness, especially in light of what is often perceived as generous corporate tax cuts, said Barbara Carvalho, who directs the Marist poll.

A large part of the debate among legislators in Congress is over how to pay for Biden’s ambitious plan, or whether to pay for all of it. But Republicans and Democrats alike recognize that the nation’s infrastructure is increasingly demanding attention and action, both for the immediate needs of Americans but also for the country’s ability to compete on the global stage.

Laura Santhanam
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politic...the-first-time