Transformational Change, Or Not?

The American Rescue Plan will cut child poverty in half for a year. Democrats want to make that cut permanent. To prevent that — and much more — Republicans are trying to destroy democracy

By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor

On March 11, President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the most consequential and most popular rescue package since the New Deal. Economists project it could double GDP growth this year, from around 3.5 to 7%. It passed narrowly with no Republican votes in Congress, but is so overwhelmingly popular — in the 70 to 80% range — that even a majority of Republican voters approve of it. 

The plan could be the harbinger of a new era —just like the New Deal was in the 1930s — in which Americans see government playing a crucial role in bettering their lives, thus restoring faith in our democracy. And, the House has already passed a string of bills to do just that, with more on the way. But if Republicans have their way — relying on the Senate filibuster and a wave of over 250 voter-suppression bills in 43 states — that faith could be strangled, rather than restored. We could be headed the way of India or Brazil.

“The sheer number of repressive voting bills that have been introduced just in the last few weeks are terrifying,” said Harbor Commissioner Diane Middleton, citing it as a response to the progressive agenda pushed by the Bernie Sanders campaign, which substantially informed the plan. 

Even before that, in early February, there were four times as many such bills as there were at the same time last year, according to the Brennan Center. Millions could be blocked from voting.

The worst that Republican Senators could say about the American Rescue Plan was that it represented a “liberal wish-list” — otherwise known as an agenda. As Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent remarked:

[T]he way representative democracy is supposed to work is that the voting public elects a party, that party enacts as much of its agenda as it can, and then voters judge the results. Only in a system where inaction is the norm is there something untoward about the party in power putting a wish list into legislation.

The problem for Republicans is that liberal policies are popular: Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection, minimum wage laws, the list goes on and on. A 1967 book,  The Political Beliefs of Americans first uncovered this pattern: while a plurality of Americans called themselves conservatives and preferred free market solutions to government action in the abstract, a two-thirds supermajority was “operationally liberal,” meaning that they supported specific government programs, like the ones just cited, to solve specific problems.

And that’s exactly what the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan does. It includes $1,400 direct checks for 85% of Americans, $300 per week in extended unemployment, up to $3,600 per child tax credit, $350 billion in aid for state and local governments (reaching every state and county), $130 billion for schools, $34 billion in health care subsidies, $28.6 billion aid for restaurants and $37.5 billion aid for other small business, $25 billion in rental assistance, $14 billion for vaccines, and $8 billion for food assistance.

The child tax credit is refundable — meaning it even goes to families who don’t owe income taxes, making it more of a European-style child allowance, which is far more effective in reducing child poverty — 90% more effective according to one study. Along with the $1,400 checks, the extended unemployment and expanded food assistance, it’s projected to cut child poverty in half — at least for this year. That’s comparable to the drop in senior citizen poverty when Medicare was enacted in 1965. The provision expires after a year, because it is specifically designed to respond to the pandemic. But there will be a strong push to make it permanent, especially once it’s had a chance to prove itself. And that’s what Republicans are really afraid of: Democrats reminding people what a functioning government can do to dramatically improve their lives — and making it permanent.

Putting Working People First

Biden honed in on this the next day in his Rose Garden speech, after discussing some of the key highlights in the bill.

“The bill does one more thing which I think is really important, it changes the paradigm,” Biden said. “For the first time in a long time, this bill puts working people in this nation first. It’s not hyperbole; it’s a fact. We’ve seen time and time again that trickle down does not work. … All it’s done is make those at the top richer in the past and everyone else fallen behind. This time, it’s time that we build an economy that grows from the bottom up and the middle out.”

If Biden sounds more like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than the Joe Biden of old, that’s because decades of trickle-down failure has finally taken its toll politically as well as economically. A decade ago, the establishment basically ignored Occupy Wall Street. But that’s now the distant past.

“You won’t find this in the mainstream media coverage,” political scientist Thea Riofrancos tweeted, “but it’s literally impossible to imagine this $1.9 trillion dollar relief package without the past year of organizing by Black Lives Matter, tenant orgs, DSA, Sunrise; essential workers going on strike; and the Bernie campaign.”

“Everything that Bernie espouses from taxing the billionaires and ending corporate welfare to universal health care, cancelling student debt, ending the school to prison pipeline, addressing climate change,  etc. has overwhelming voter support,” Middleton said. “That is what motivated people to go to the polls.  We want transformational change.  That is how Bernie has described the American Rescue Plan — the most transformational change in decades.

“And it must be stopped — if capital is to remain in total control. Thus — task # 1 — keep people from voting.”

Peter Warren, with Indivisible San Pedro, sees a three-sided blockage of democracy: repressing voting rights, the Senate’s filibuster, and rightwing court packing.

“The GQP — the Grand [QAnon] Party — is cooking bills to increase voter suppression and pack the House via partisan redistricting,” Warren said. “The GQP, with massive amounts of funding and the Federalist Society picking young judges — all ideologues and many unqualified — will support these fascist victories to entrench the white vote in GQP states and even purple states.

“To fight back, we must pass The For The People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which means overhauling or killing the filibuster. We are doing that work now.”

Middleton agreed.

“Anything that secures national and fair voting rights is necessary,” she said. “If that means millions marching à la Black Lives Matter mobilizations, it must be done. If that means abolishing the filibuster, it must be done. And these laws must be written to pass the possibility of reversal by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

It’s not just activist advocates saying this. America’s already declined on several measures of democratic robustness tracked internationally by the V Dem Institute — a process of erosion that voter suppression could significantly intensify. 

“Democrats have a very short window to protect and expand voting rights in this country,” Princeton historian Kevin Kruse said on Twitter. “Everything else depends on that effort.”

“We have so little time,” said Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works.