During his first two months in office, U.S. President Joe Biden’s pitch-perfect pronunciations on the COVID-19 pandemic and his plan to end it, his paradigm-shifting US$1.9-trillion stimulus bill and his efforts to tone down the rancour of U.S. politics have been a balm on the frayed nerves of the American people. As political honeymoons go, Mr. Biden’s has been well deserved.
It cannot last, of course. The fundamental promise of Mr. Biden’s presidency – the idea that he can not only unite the progressive and centrist wings of his own party, but also persuade enough moderate Republicans to join them to enact bipartisan legislation – was always going to be tough to deliver on. But it is already proving tougher than the optimists had imagined. Progressive Democrats are uninterested in compromise. And centrist Republicans still fear the wrath of former president Donald Trump if they consent to unwinding his legacy.
Hence, Mr. Biden’s move this week to reluctantly endorse changes to procedural rules in the U.S. Senate that would make it easier to pass legislation with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes typically needed under long-standing conventions, effectively amounts to a recognition that his goal of forging a new era of bipartisanship is a pipe dream. Indeed, Mr. Biden will be lucky if he can prevent his own party members from going to war with each other.
Mr. Biden paid a hefty price (literally) to unite his party on the stimulus bill by offering US$1,400 cheques for most Americans, on top of the US$600 cheques that went out in December under Mr. Trump’s final stimulus bill. He agreed to extend supplemental federal benefits of US$300 a week to unemployed Americans, enabling them to collect (including state benefits) about US$620 a week for up to 18 months. Many economists believe the stimulus is far more than what is needed and could unleash inflationary pressures that could be hard to tame once out of the bottle.
Not a single Republican senator voted for the stimulus bill, and Mr. Biden even had to twist the arms of two moderate Democrats – Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – to get the legislation over the finish line using a procedure known as budget reconciliation. That allowed him to get the bill through with only 50 Senate votes, with Vice-President Kamala Harris casting the deciding ballot. But reconciliation will not be an option in most circumstances going forward, forcing Mr. Biden to abandon his long-standing opposition to ending the Senate filibuster that has effectively required a 60-vote threshold to pass bills.
Mr. Biden has virtually no hope of making good on his promise to pass immigration reform as long as the filibuster remains intact and only mixed odds of doing so if it is abolished. He has vowed to provide a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States before the end of 2020. He unveiled legislation to do so on his first day in office. But moving forward with the bill risks splintering his own party and handing Republicans a gift in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections.
“Why would you legalize anybody, sending another incentive to keep [migrants] coming, until you stop the flow?” South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham said this week, referring to the surge of migrants seeking to cross the U.S. southern border since Mr. Biden took office.
The number of people who attempt to cross the border illegally is on track to hit a 20-year high in 2021. Illegal crossings were already rising during the final months of Mr. Trump’s presidency. But Republicans say Mr. Biden encouraged the flow by promising to make it easier to apply for asylum and repeal a Trump-era rule that forced asylum-seekers to await a ruling on their applications from the Mexican side of the border.
Mr. Biden has so far maintained a Trump executive order that allows border officials to turn back adult asylum seekers at the border as a pandemic-control measure. But that has not stopped hundreds of unaccompanied minors from arriving at the border daily, presenting Mr. Biden with the first serious domestic-policy crisis (besides the pandemic, of course) of his presidency. The left wing of the Democratic Party largely favours an open-border policy, but moderate Democrats are terrified the migrant surge and Mr. Biden’s failure to control it could cost them their seats in 2022.
How Mr. Biden deals with the surge, which is likely to accelerate in coming months, could well determine the course of his presidency. His hopes of striking a bipartisan deal on immigration reform were always slim. He will now be lucky just to keep a lid on the pot.
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Konrad Yakabuski