Quick Takes (v57): What Just Happened Here?

In a world where everyone has their own definition of 'unity' and 'bipartisan' and 'what government should do' and 'who elected officials should listen to,' something interesting just happened.

On January 21st, President Biden released what he calls the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9T COVID package. The major provisions? $160B for vaccines, testing and the like; $170B for getting schools reopened; extended unemployment benefits through September; and stepped increases in the federal minimum wage to $15/hour. There would also be direct stimulus payments of $1400 to Americans earning up to $75K.

Ten days later, group of GOP Senators introduced a $600B counter-proposal. It keeps intact the vaccine money, but slashed money for schools, decreased the time and amount of extended unemployment, and dropped the minimum wage increase. It also recommends a smaller direct payment, and recommends giving it to a smaller group of people, excluding individuals earning over $50K a year.

The very next day, the senators met with Biden, VP Kamala Harris, and other members of the administration. They talked for a couple of hours, and ended with Biden reiterating the need to 'meet the moment', but that he was amenable to his folks getting together with the GOP team to talk things over.

Three days later, on February 4th, guess what? The White House has released an updated proposal which keeps the direct stimulus at $1400, but drops the income level down to $50K a year. In terms of overall impact, Biden dropped from about 85% of Americans getting full payments down to just over 71% getting full payment and another 17% getting partial payments.

Biden and the Dems also wanted to see payments of $3600 for kids under age six, and $3000 for kids six to 17. Senator Mitt Romney is working on a proposal that would provide $3000 for all kids, in another effort to garner bipartisan support.

What's going on here? The president meeting, in person, with people from the other party? And adjusting his proposal to try and come up with something that might be amenable to folks on both sides of the aisle? That's heresy! 

That's not how this is supposed to work, right? Aren't they supposed to just be shouting at each other, calling each other names, and refusing to even meet with people from the other side? That's what we're used to, and frankly that's what some folks seem to be selling.

Maybe we should be paying more attention to the people doing the work, and giving lots less time to the people babbling in front of the microphones.