Good morning. Biden has a plan to reshape the American economy.
Windmills in Wyoming.Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York Times
Breaking the pattern
A new president needs to make choices. Recent history suggests that an administration has only about a year to push major legislation through Congress before attention turns to the midterm elections (which rarely go well for the party in power). Any bill not at the very top of the president’s list is unlikely to happen.
For the past few decades, new presidents have focused on two issues above all others: taxes and health care. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both made expanding access to health insurance their top long-term priority, with Clinton failing and Obama succeeding. George W. Bush focused on cutting taxes, and Donald Trump tried to cut taxes and repeal Obamacare.
President Biden will break this pattern.
His advisers are preparing a set of proposals intended to reshape the U.S. economy and other parts of American life. If they pass, they will almost certainly have a more lasting effect on people’s lives than the virus-relief bill that Biden signed two weeks ago. And while the proposals include measures on health care and taxes, they are broader — more diffuse, a critic might say — than the top priorities of other recent presidents.
During last year’s campaign, Biden described the package with the phrase “build back better.” It is an attempt to create a more prosperous, equal and sustainable economy. It’s the Democratic Party’s answer to decades of rising inequality and growing damage from climate change.
The virus-relief bill was “an emergency response,” as Senator Bernie Sanders says on the latest episode of Ezra Klein’s Times podcast. “Now we have to deal with the long-term structural problems facing our country that have long, long been neglected, way before the pandemic. And that is the need to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure, the need to address the existential threat of climate change, the need to create many millions of jobs, decent-paying jobs.”
The White House has not yet released all of the details, and they will probably change as the package moves through Congress. But here’s an overview of what we know about the major pieces.
An electric vehicle charging station in Baker, Calif. Philip Cheung for The New York Times
What Biden would do
Infrastructure. The centerpiece of the package is a set of proposals to improve the country’s infrastructure, including money for roads, bridges, broadband access and energy-efficient houses and electric cars. Many of the infrastructure provisions are “directly related to the fight against climate change,” our colleague Jim Tankersley told us. “Administration officials essentially see those two goals — building out 21st century infrastructure and transitioning to a low-carbon future — as inseparable.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told The Times’s Lisa Friedman that she was encouraged by what she had heard about the infrastructure policies and likened them to her Green New Deal plan. “One of the big goals we had when we introduced the Green New Deal was to show how people thought about climate change from being a billion dollar problem to a trillion-dollar opportunity,” she said. “This infrastructure package generally seems to be shaping up in that kind of framework.”
Education. Biden wants to expand public education on both ends of the age spectrum. His plan is likely to make pre-K universal for both 3- and 4-year-olds, through federal funding of local programs, and would increase funding for community colleges. The ultimate goal is to move the public-education system from its current K-12 system to something that starts at age 3 and extends through two years of college.
Child payments and paid leave. The virus-relief bill included a few large items to help middle-class and poor families — but they all expire in the next year or so. This new package would extend a monthly child payment that starts at $250 per child for most families, as well as a big expansion of paid family leave. These provision would significantly reduce both economic and racial inequalities.
Health care. Biden’s plan would expand Obamacare by extending several two-year provisions in the virus-relief bill, The Times’s Margot Sanger-Katz says. It would cut costs for nearly every family that receives coverage through the law and expand subsidies to some making more than $100,000 a year.
The package may also include a measure to limit how much pharmaceutical companies can charge Medicare for prescription drugs, which could lead to lower prices for private insurance plans.
The plan does not appear to include another idea Biden has said he favors — expanding access to government insurance plans, through a public option or allowing younger people to buy into Medicare.
Paying for it
Lower prescription-drug costs would cover some of the package’s $3 trillion to $4 trillion in new spending over 10 years. But a bigger source of money would be higher taxes on the affluent — people making at least $400,000 a year — and on corporations.
Republicans are unlikely to support any such tax increases, which means Democrats would need to pass major parts of the package through a Senate mechanism known as reconciliation. Bills that go through reconciliation need only 51 votes in the Senate, rather than 60, to pass.
What’s next: Biden’s advisers are leaning toward splitting the package into two different bills, partly in the hope of securing Republican support for some of them.
That won’t be easy. Congressional Republicans have almost uniformly opposed the top legislative priorities of each new Democratic president over the past three decades.
THE LATEST NEWS
The Virus
U.S. health officials are questioning AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial results, saying that the company may have released outdated information that “may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.”
A demonstration outside Parliament in London last week.Mary Turner for The New York Times
Protesters have rallied across Britain in opposition to a bill that would give the police more power to crack down on nonviolent demonstrations.
The U.S. Supreme Court will review a case considering the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers.
Since Ellen DeGeneres apologized over accusations of workplace misconduct, her talk show has lost about one million viewers, more than 40 percent of its audience.
Opinions
“My small personal hell has an expiration date,” Michelle Goldberg, a Times columnist, writes about receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
By providing subpar weight rooms and less reliable virus testing, the N.C.A.A. is treating its women’s basketball tournament like “some kind of cheap subsidized junior varsity,” The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins argues.
Lives Lived: Elgin Baylor played above the rim in a Hall of Fame career with the Lakers. His acrobatic brilliance foreshadowed the freewheeling shows put on by future N.B.A. stars. Baylor died at 86.
Mireille Lee, 15, left, and her sister Elodie, 13, started the TikTok account @alifeofliterature in February.Peter Flude for The New York Times
Welcome to BookTok
TikTok’s influence is selling thousands of books. Some enthusiastic readers — mostly women in their teens and 20s — are posting videos of themselves reading or recommending novels. Occasionally, they sob into the camera after a particularly devastating ending.
“It becomes this very emotional 45-second video that people immediately connect with,” the director of books at Barnes & Noble told The Times. “We haven’t seen these types of crazy sales — I mean tens of thousands of copies a month — with other social media formats.”
One example: “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller. Sales spiked after a popular TikTok video last year, and the book is now selling roughly nine times as many copies a week as it was in 2012, when it won a prestigious fiction award. The book is currently third on the New York Times best-seller list for paperback fiction.
Seeing the potential, some publishers have begun paying — or sending free books to — users with large followings. The fees range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per post. For now, though, the majority of these videos remain unsponsored, happening organically.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to Cook
Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Susan Spungen.
Lana Del Rey’s sixth major-label album, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club,” finds the singer “scaling back, seeking more insular insight,” Lindsay Zoladz writes in a review.
Virtual Travel
See the Meroe pyramids — around 200 in total, many of them in ruins — in Sudan.
The Morning Briefing newsletter is now The Morning newsletter. You received this email because you signed up for the newsletter from The New York Times, or as part of your New York Times account.
Welcome back to my Week in Review newsletter. In addition to these weekly updates, you can sign up to receive other issue-specific newsletters here. Also, please remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube for regular updates on how I am serving the people of South Carolina!
Serving Seniors Amidst the Pandemic
Last week, I held my first hearing as Ranking Member of the Senate Aging Committee. Throughout the hearing, Chairman Bob Casey (D-PA) and I discussed the ongoing health care needs of older Americans during the pandemic. We heard from several witnesses, including South Carolina’s own Anthony Jackson, the chief operating officer at Roper St. Francis Healthcare in Charleston.
Protecting and serving our older population has never been more crucial. By 2034, seniors will outnumber children for the first time in our nation’s history. We have so much to thank our seniors for, and I am committed to fighting for their financial security, health care, and more. You can read more about the hearing here, or click the video below to watch my opening statement.
Protecting Your Tax Dollars
It’s no secret that Democrats think they know better than you how your money should be spent. In previous newsletters, I’ve discussed their so-called “COVID relief” bill, which spends billions of dollars enacting liberal policies that could damage our economy and very little on actual relief for those impacted by the pandemic. One provision in the bill actually prevents states from cutting taxes for the next four years. This is unconstitutional, unjustifiable, and completely unacceptable.
In response, my Republican colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee and I introduced the State Fiscal Flexibility Act to prevent the federal government from banning state tax cuts.
When we keep the federal government out of our wallets, taxpayers are left with more choices and greater chances to live out their American Dream. You can read more about the bill here.
Creating Economic Opportunity
Last Tuesday, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and I introduced legislation to expand access to lending options for millions of hardworking Americans. From students to agricultural workers, this bill will help credit unions offer more options and better payment plans for folks working to achieve their goals across all sectors. You can learn more about the Expanding Access to Lending Options Act here.
Creating economic opportunity for all Americans has been a priority throughout my time in Congress, and this bill is just one small part of my efforts. A few days ago, I released another installment of my newsletter dedicated specifically to ways in which I am working to expand opportunity, create jobs, and protect the tax dollars of South Carolinians and people across the country. Be sure to sign up here to receive my next newsletter on economic opportunity.
Have a great week!
Sincerely,
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Back in December, Joe Biden reiterated his call for most schools to reopen within his first 100 days in office. "I'm going to ask, and I know it's going to be controversial with some of you, but I'm going to ask that we're going to be able to open schools at the end of one hundred days," Biden said to a group of 30 governors during a virtual call. "That's going to take a lot of money, but we know how to do it." Biden asked Congress earlier that month to provide the funding advocates of public education believe is necessary for schools to secure equipment and enact their safety plans. In order to meet his goal, most schools would have to resume in-person learning by the end of April.
According to the most current data from Burbio's School Opening Tracker, 64 percent of elementary- and middle-school students are already seeing some in-person instruction, and there are 21 states that opened all or almost all of their schools for five-day-a-week in-person learning. Still, there are nearly 19 million students where that is not the case.
Got Money?
Congress listened to Biden, and produced the $1.9 billion COVID relief package, known as American Rescue Plan of 2021 (H.R. 1319). Yet for many American schoolchildren and their parents, the "a lot of money" that Biden claimed is so crucial for school reopening accounts for only five percent of the funding. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed the legislation when its initial version passed the House, which included $128.5 billion for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund. While all of that funding would be available during fiscal year 2021, only $6.4 billion would actually be spent in FY2021. Back in June 2020, when educators and leftist politicians tried to figure out the price of the "safe school reopening," it was decided to be somewhere between $158.1 billion and $244.6 billion. During the previous year, the school system got $113 billion thanks to the Trump administration, and those funds are still not fully used. Biden's plan gives schools just $6.4 billion this year. In the eyes of the teachers' unions that were so outraged with Trump, Biden's crumbs are welcome, but far from enough.
Teachers' Unions' Opposition
Putting a fiscal issue aside, let's first turn to s-c-i-e-n-c-e. The highest authority on that matter belongs to the CDC, which has become a sacred oracle for many Americans even though its predictions are as random as they are inconsistent. The prophecies of Dr. Fauci — his recommendations — often have more weight and importance for the Democrats than anything else. At least, it was like that during the Trump era. But times have changed.
Just recently, the CDC suggested that schools aren't drivers of coronavirus infection, resonating with conclusions of the numerous studies conducted by their foreign colleagues: Britons, French, Germans, Australians, Canadians, and even Chinese. "There has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission," the CDC announced. Despite that, the two largest and most influential teachers' unions — the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA), which together comprise of 4.7 million members nationwide — still oppose immediate reopening, stating that the most important step to safety would be a complete vaccination of all teachers.
The AFT and NEA, which both endorsed Joe Biden during his 2020 presidential campaign, applauded the president's executive order on school reopening, which required the Department of Education to provide "evidence-based guidance" to assist school reopening. The order said mitigation measures including cleaning, masking, proper ventilation, and testing were necessary. However, the order didn't make a single mention of vaccinations. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky confirmed that schools can reopen safely before educators are vaccinated, but the unions decided to ignore the CDC again.
The teachers' unions have been opposing the school reopening all along, making more and more demands — often not even associated with COVID safety, such as defunding the police or providing Medicare for all — while suing those governors, usually Republican, who dared to reopen their schools. This comes as no surprise, as the teachers' unions are close allies of the Democrats, and they promote the liberal agenda and support the Democrats every step of the way no matter how many times they theatrically cry that they "understand the importance of in-person education." According to campaign watchdog Open Secrets, teachers' unions have steadily amped up their political involvement: From 2004 to 2020, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $50 million. Even more than most labor unions, they are giving Democrats at least 98 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties.
"Science is not the obstacle. Federal money is not the obstacle. The obstacle is a lack of willpower," Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said when speaking of reopening schools. "Not among students. Not among parents. Just among the rich, powerful unions that donate huge sums to Democrats and get a stranglehold over education in many communities."
Just on Monday, Dr. Jill Biden seemed to echo her husband's sponsors' stance: "I'm here to tell you with the American Rescue Plan, help is here.… Even with your best efforts, students can't come — they can't come in every day, which means that their parents are still having to take time off work or figure out childcare solutions." Of course, many parents have already lost their savings and businesses.
The Damage
While working families are struggling, teachers' unions and the Democrats are steadily destroying not just children's social and emotional well being, but also the economy for generations to come. Economists warn that COVID-19 school closures and the disruptions in education will cost children future income — about $55,000 over their lifetimes. Likewise, CNBC reports there is evidence that school closures will have a devastating impact on the economy for decades, as this generation of school children hit their prime earning years. The damage will be felt most acutely by the poorest in the land, further widening the gap of income inequality in the United States, something Democrats profess to care about. In 2045, when these students hit ages 29 to 39, their peak time for earning potential, those losses could reach nearly $150 billion, adjusted for inflation.
It seems as if, in setting up all sorts of obstacles to regular in-person education, Democrats are creating the basis for a fearful, obedient, dependable, and unintelligent society — their perfect electoral base. Those, who, perhaps, one day will gladly agree to cancel supposedly outdated institutions such as the Electoral College, or maybe do away with elections altogether.
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