A Tale Of Two Crises. What Learning Looks Like

Let’s be honest. Right now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is making Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy look like a day care center class president, Chuck Schumer is brushing McConnell’s obstruction like a guy with a bug on his sleeve, and Joe Biden is orchestrating this masterpiece like Leonard Bernstein.

A couple of weeks ago, when the House was just completing the writing of their version, and opening debate, Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman appeared on MSNBC and was asked about his opinion of the crafting of the bill. Krugman said that he was literally stunned, that he had never before seen such a narrow, targeted bill, that got right down to the issues. He went on to say that even if Biden only got $1.2-1.4 trillion of the bill through, it would have a game changing effect on the speed and nature of the recovery.

And guess what? It looks highly likely that with the exception of the $15 an hour minimum wage, always highly problematic, Biden is going to sign a bill next week into law that gives him almost every penny of his $1.9 trillion. And I think I know why.

Cast your mind back 12 years. In January of 2009, another Democratic President took the oath of office with an economy in free fall. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? A GOP nitwit with the IQ of a can of cream of celery soup wrecks, the economy, and a Democrat sweeps in to clean up the mess. This situation was so bad that outgoing President Bush invited members of the incoming Obama economic team into his meetings, hoping to ease the transition as much as possible.

Like Biden, Obama’s first priority was to at least stop the economic free fall. And like Biden, Obama went bold, with the American Recovery And Reinvestment Act, or IRRA. For it’s time, it was a mammoth bill, weighing in at some $787 billion. And like Biden’s bill, it was a targeted, all including approach, coordinating putting money where it would do the most good, rather than just throwing wads of cash around.

At that time, like Biden today, Obama had majorities in both the House, as well as the Senate, but in larger numbers. And just as today, budget reconciliation was an available option for the Democrats, in fact, it’s how they eventually passed the bill. But  because this was a national crisis, Obama desperately wanted bipartisan support in passing the legislation. So he negotiated.

And got his head handed to him by the GOP. They delayed, obstructed, pulled parliamentary tricks, responded to serious proposals with ridiculous counter proposals, all the time delaying the bill. And for some unknown reason, the Democrats started making concessions. The bill finally passed by reconciliation, and the final bill that Obama signed was wholly inadequate for what he needed it to do.

And guess who had a ringside seat for that entire debacle? None other than then Vice President Joe Biden. Biden even made repeated trips to the Hill, to try to use his decades long relationships in the Senate, and his good will to forge compromises. And they laughed him off. And don’t think he forgot it.

Now compare that sad story to the way that these negotiations went, from start to finish. Biden practically begged the GOP to negotiate in good faith, even inviting almost a dozen moderate GOP Senators to the Oval Office for a skull session with no Democratic Senators present. And when Susan Collins finally handed him a counter proposal that looked something like trying to use a band aid to staunch a severed artery, Biden politely thanked them for their time, ushered them out, picked up the phone, and told Pelosi and Schumer to Get this bad boy done. Soonest! And now Biden is going to get what he wanted and needed, and look like a national hero for doing it.

This is the fundamental difference between Biden and McConnell. Biden learns from mistakes, whether his own, or others. Biden saw Obama get taken to the cleaners with GOP obstruction, and swore he would never let it happen again. McConnell tried to use pure, unadulterated obstruction from 2009-2012 to make Obama a one term President. It didn’t work. But now McConnell is going to try pure obstruction as the path to retake the House and Senate in 2022. That won’t work either, and I’ll explain why in my next article.

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