President Biden speaking at the Port of Baltimore, November 2021
In his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Joe Biden talked about national unity, and called for bipartisanship between Democrats and Republicans. Biden has been making such appeals for some time. Indeed, Biden and other leading Democrats routinely call the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Biden signed into law last November, the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” as Biden did again in his SOTU address, giving credit to Republicans as well as Democrats for its passage.
Given that Republicans generally are so uncooperative that some of them boycotted President Biden’s State of the Union address, and others even heckled Biden, why is Biden calling for bipartisanship? Several reasons come to mind:
First, by reaching out, Biden might actually achieve Republican support for some initiatives, as was the case with the Infrastructure Act. This makes a president more popular and gives him more clout to achieve even more. Second, when the Republicans refuse to cooperate with President Biden and the Democrats, as they usually do, these bipartisan outreach efforts beforehand marginalize the Republicans as extreme and petulant. Biden can say that he reached out to Republicans, and they slapped his hand away. Such immature behavior by the Republicans might play well with their party base, but such base isn’t big enough to win national elections or achieve national Republican legislative agenda items. In essence, the Democrats can act like the grownups in the room, which really is the better place to be.
Third, note that President Biden’s calls for bipartisanship are usually on his terms, meaning that he calls on Republicans to meet him on the Democratic side of many issues. As illustrated in Biden’s SOTU address, these issues include, for example, not just repairing roads and bridges to help businesses, commuters and travelers, but also:
–bringing more manufacturing, and its associated jobs, back to America
–cutting the cost of prescription drugs, such as Insulin, which Biden wants capped at $35 per monthly prescription, and letting Medicare negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs
–adding investment and tax credits to make homes more energy efficient, doubling investment in renewable energy such as solar and wind power
–cutting the cost of child care
–instituting a 15 percent minimum tax rate for corporations, many of which, even while earning record profits, pay no taxes at all
–raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour
–providing more free COVID tests, and continuing to lead in making COVID vaccines freely available
–investing in crime prevention and community policing. Indeed, President Biden stated in his address:
We should all agree: The answer is not to Defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities.
–passing universal background checks for gun purchases
–providing a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who came to America as children under the DREAM Act
–preserving a woman’s right to choose
–strengthening the Violence Against Women Act
–fighting the opioid epidemic
It’s no coincidence that many of President Biden’s proposals are quite popular across the country. Who wouldn’t want their Insulin price capped at $35 per month, except maybe the big drug companies who sell it? So let the Republicans join in President Biden’s proposals, and share the credit. Or they can try to fight and obstruct every popular one, and hopefully suffer the political consequences.
Photo by Maryland GovPics, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/fufImL
