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Voting reform bill will likely be blocked, but still a key issue for Democrats
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, discusses the Democrats voting bill.
What is the status on the Democrats voting bill?
The Democrats are pushing a bill that would largely nationalize voting rules, which today are largely determined at the state level. The bill would make Election Day a national holiday. It would attempt to end partisan gerrymandering. It would create a uniform number of early voting days and make other reforms that are designed to standardize voting rules and increase access to voting across the country. This matters to Democrats because they think they face an existential risk to their party's political prospects. They're very likely to lose at least the House and probably the Senate this year. And they see voting changes that are being pushed by Republicans at the state level that they say are designed to make it harder to vote, particularly for minorities, a key Democratic constituency.
Republicans see this as a power grab. They argue that the changes happening at the state level are reverting back to the pre-pandemic baseline. And during the pandemic, voting laws were expanded nationally. And they argue that the laws in states like Georgia, which Democrats are calling Jim Crow 2.0, are actually no more restrictive than the voting laws in a state like Delaware or New York, where two of the nation's most prominent Democrats come from. Regardless, this voting legislation is going nowhere. Republicans are uniformly opposed. And while Democrats are united in support of the voting reform changes, there are not enough votes in order to change the Senate rules to overcome a Republican filibuster.
As long as the filibuster exists, it will be nearly impossible to pass any kind of electoral reforms that could help Democrats push back on the tide of a system that largely benefits Republicans today. The US political system is structured in favor to benefit the more rural areas, and Republicans largely dominate in rural areas.
So knowing this bill will be blocked, why hold the vote at all? Well, this is a hugely important issue for the Democratic base and for the Democratic Party who worried about being locked out of power for the next 10 years. By holding the vote, Majority Leader Schumer hopes to pressure two moderate democratic holdouts and draw a contrast between them and the rest of the party. And he wants to send a message to the activist base that they support them, even though the Democrats are not united. The end result will probably be a failure to act and also further alienation of the two moderate holdouts, who Biden also needs their support on his fiscal policy bill, the Build Back Better bill, which is currently stalled until least March and probably beyond that.
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Why election reform laws are deadlocked on Capitol Hill
Get insights on the latest news in US politics from Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington:
With the For the People Act not passed in the Senate, what's the outlook on Democrats' election reform?
Well, the thing about election laws is that they're really all about power, how to get it, how to maintain it once you have it. And the Republicans and the Democrats are unlikely to agree on even the basics of what's wrong with our election system today, and they were definitely unlikely to agree on how to reform those things. So there's really no consensus on Capitol Hill on what's broken about the current election law. You've got Republicans at the state level who are pushing, rolling back some of the more generous rules that were laid out during coronavirus. You also have some that are trying to combat President Trump's allegations of widespread fraud during the 2020 election cycle. Democrats, on the other hand, are doing everything they can to make it easier to vote, to expand access to the vote. And that's part of what was in the federal legislation that Republicans voted down.
There's really no next steps for this law now that Republicans have said they're not going to go for it. There never really was a path to get this passed into law this year without changing the Senate's filibuster rules, and there's enough moderate Democrats who have ruled that out. That's not on the table. So election reform is going to continue to move on probably at the state level and at the federal level, you're going to be deadlocked at least as long as neither party in the Senate has a supermajority.
Amid criticism, Vice President Harris is traveling to the Southern border, what is the Biden administration's border security strategy?
Well, a big part of the border security strategy has been telling migrants to stay at home. Vice President Harris was very explicit in this message in her tour of Central America a few weeks ago. Otherwise, the Biden ministration is consistent with law, rehousing minors that arrive in the US until their claims can be processed and also sending back unaccompanied adults. What they're not doing is adopting many of the more harsh strategies of the Trump administration, including building a border wall and separating families. What eventually they're probably going to have to try to do is come up with a deal with Mexico and try to deal with immigration at its root source in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, three of the countries that are going through a hard time and sending a lot of migrants north right now.
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US President Biden holds infrastructure event at Carpenters Pittsburgh Training Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Joe Biden’s plan to remake America
Well, after years of endless "infrastructure weeks" to nowhere, Joe Biden is now aiming for the moon.
On Wednesday, the US president unveiled a $2 trillion dollar plan that would rebuild tens of thousands of miles of dilapidated roads and rails, modernize ports and airports, boost employment and housing, expand broadband access, and accelerate the transition to a more climate-friendly economy. By the time it's all over, the total spending could rise to $4 trillion over a decade.
This is the most ambitious US infrastructure agenda in many decades. It vastly exceeds anything that Biden's two predecessors attempted. In fact, nothing of this scale has been tried at least since the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s. In some ways it invites comparison with the public works programs of FDR's New Deal or with the social aims of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs.
That's because Biden's proposal is about more than just building rails, bridges, electric cars, and the like. It's a bold attempt to revive a once-powerful idea in America: that the government can and should act expansively to reshape and improve society at large. Critics of that idea either object on philosophical grounds (arguing that more government means less liberty) or financial ones (running up the national debt is bad.)
Getting Biden's plan through Congress would upend a nearly 40-year trend of governments under both parties largely rolling back the federal government's presence in American life. Barack Obama's expansion of healthcare was the only major exception to that and it was, as a result, hugely contentious.
In principle, Biden's plan is a political winner. Three-quarters of Americans support a makeover for the country's crumbling infrastructure. Despite being the world's wealthiest country, the US ranks just 13th in overall infrastructure quality.
But as always, there are stark partisan differences here too. A majority of Democrats and independents support hiking taxes on the wealthy to pay for infrastructure, while a majority of Republicans either oppose new infrastructure spending altogether or think it should be paid for without tax increases. For the record, Biden's plan at the moment claims it would pay for itself over the course of 15 years via tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations.
In Congress, Republican leaders won't get on board with a plan of this size, not least because it envisions a sizable increase in the corporate tax rate, and because it contains more green initiatives than the current GOP is comfortable with.
But Democrats are at least as much of an obstacle here as the GOP. There's already a battle brewing within the Democratic caucus about the spending plans. Progressives, led informally by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are already up in arms because they think the proposal is too small. Rather than spending $2 trillion over a decade, they want to spend five times as much over the same period. But moderate Dems — including the crucial Democratic swing voters of the Senate, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — are already balking at the cost and potential tax hikes.
And whereas the urgency of averting mass death smoothed party divisions when it came to the $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus bill, this one will spark a much fiercer battle for the soul of the Democratic party.
So, how are they going to pass this thing? There's virtually no chance of getting 10 Republican votes, which means that either Dems have to take the plunge and scrap the filibuster (which in effect forces lawmakers to get 60 Senate votes to pass most major pieces of legislation), or try to pass the measure through a simple-majority process called "budget reconciliation", which applies for bills that affect taxation and spending. Another question is whether the Biden administration decides to break up elements of the plan into smaller bills, or go for one massive history-making shot on goal.
Whatever Dems are gonna do, they have to do it fast. As the 2022 elections loom, Democrats know they have to use the moment or (potentially) lose it — midterms are historically unkind to the party in power, and the Democrats are working with a razor thin majority to begin with.- Biden takes his shot - GZERO Media ›
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Biden's first press conference reaffirms his working man approach
Get insights on the latest news in US politics from Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington:
Joe Biden gave the first press conference of his presidency today, a much-anticipated event that a lot of political reporters were pretty excited about, that didn't really move the needle on any messaging aspects of the administration.
He kind of stuck to the party line on the filibuster, saying that it's a relic of Jim Crow era. And clearly, you know, he's already said he supports eliminating it, but he's not going to push Congress to get it done because that's not really his job. That's their job.
On the border, he talked about sending Kamala Harris down to negotiate a solution with Mexico and other Central American countries so they can deal with the problem where it starts. And he kind of took credit for being a compassionate guy, that immigrants believe when they come here, he's going to take care of them, which is consistent with the administration's message so far. A group of Senate Republicans are headed down to the border today in order to make some political theater out of the surge in migrants that's happening down there, and this is going to be an increasing political problem for Biden going forward because of the fact his party is somewhat out of step with the mainstream American view on immigration.
On the vaccine, there was a little bit of news, that he thinks he's going to be able to accelerate the timeline that people can get the vaccination. However, for the most part, this is really a non-event. Biden has stayed out of the spotlight and he hasn't really dominated headlines the way his predecessor, former President Trump, did. This is a purposeful strategy, to kind of have a working man approach to the White House, not make the story about him, and in the meantime, accomplish an awful lot, which the Democrats are likely to do this year between a $1.9 trillion stimulus they've already passed, and what looks like it's going to be potentially a $3 trillion long-term infrastructure spending bill that likely gets done before the end of the year.
Senator Murphy on abolishing the filibuster, a Senate tool he has famously employed
One of the most heated debates happening on Capitol Hill right now is whether Democrats should push to eliminate the Senate filibuster in order to overcome Republican opposition to their legislative agenda. Bremmer posed this question to Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, a man who famously launched a 15-hour long filibuster of his own on gun control in 2016.
"I would certainly support reforming it, allowing for more measures to be passed by 50 vote majorities rather than 60 vote majorities," Murphy told Ian Bremmer on GZERO World. "Maybe that's a first step before we eliminate it entirely." The hedged reply by Senator Murphy indicates that eliminating the procedural rule may be harder than many progressives may have hoped. This episode of GZERO Worldalso features an interview with Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace.
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GameStop stock rally gives policymakers opportunity for legislation
Jon Lieber, who leads Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, offers insights on US politics:
First question. Stonks! Will the GameStop stock rally result in new regulation on Wall Street?
The answer is probably, but the interesting thing is, we have no idea what form that regulation might take. The interesting thing about this storyline around GameStop is that the run-up in prices, driven by social media chatter on Reddit, against hedge funds who had shorted the stock, opens up a whole can of worms for how you want to solve the issue, and is most likely going to be an outlet for members of Congress preexisting biases. If you want to regulate hedge funds, well, here's an excuse to do so. If you want to implement a financial transaction tax, this is your opportunity. If you're concerned about consumer protection, data privacy, this could be a hook to get into those issues as well. So, this is a headline grabbing event that's probably going to fade out of the news in a week or so, but it's going to stay relevant to policymakers for several more months, could potentially result in new legislation, or new regulation from the SEC based around investor protection and market structure. So, stay tuned. We're going to be hearing about GameStop for a long time.
Second question. What is the future for the legislative filibuster?
Well, as part of the Senate's organizing resolutions, two Democratic senators made public commitments that they were not going to vote to change the legislative filibuster. This is the 60-vote threshold in the Senate to pass legislation. With 50 Democratic members in the Senate, you need all 50 to agree to change the rules. They only have 48 votes right now at the most. This means it's probably not going to happen. Now, these two senators could change their mind down the road, Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, Joe Manchin, from West Virginia. There's probably a handful of other senators who also oppose changing the rules but haven't done so publicly. The other thing they could do is pass legislation using the reconciliation process, which has guard rails around it that limited to only budget and tax legislation, but change the rules of the reconciliation process, to supercharge their ability to pass legislation with only 50 votes without changing the legislative filibuster. Something to keep an eye on, we expect at least two big pieces of legislation this year to pass through the reconciliation process, giving multiple opportunities to try to change those rules and erode the norms around reconciliation.
Ending the filibuster: Senator Chris Coons' changed views & a Biden administration
In a new interview with Ian Bremmer for GZERO World, Delaware Senator Chris Coons, once an ardent defender of the filibuster, explains why he's had a change of heart on the procedural policy. The filibuster prevents a simple majority from passing legislation in the Senate, and has been a tool that Coons says allowed Sen. Mitch McConnell, then Minority Leader, to "use the power of the minority to thwart the Obama Administration's agenda." Coons says, should VP Biden win the 2020 election, "I'm not willing to sit by for four years and watch an entire administration lose the opportunity to make real change."