538: Five Things The COVID-19 Bill Revealed About How Washington Will Work In The Biden Era

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

President Biden will soon sign into law a $1.9 trillion bill intended to boost the economy and help the U.S. deal with the effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic. It’s only the second bill Biden has signed into law and likely to be one of the most significant. So let’s look at what we learned from the process of enacting this legislation:

The Biden-led Democratic Party is more liberal and populist than the Obama or Clinton versions.

In 2009, Barack Obama was in the White House and Democrats controlled both the U.S. House and Senate. The Great Recession was still in full force, and one of the first things the party did was propose a stimulus bill. But many Democrats, particularly more moderate members of Congress, were wary of being cast as supporting too much spending. So Democrats made sure the bill cost less than $1 trillion, eventually landing at a figure of $787 billion.

Twelve years later, Democrats passed a bill with about double the spending of the 2009 bill.1 The economic challenges caused by COVID-19 are much different than those caused by the banking and housing-bubble crash of 2008, so it’s hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison and say whether the 2009 stimulus or this one is closer to the optimal range of spending to boost the economy. But in my view, the higher spending in the 2021 stimulus bill compared to 2009 isn’t just about the underlying economic conditions. Today’s Democratic Party is further to the left than its 2009 version — in particular, it is more open to spending and much less worried about being cast as big-government liberals. So while this bill is about boosting the economy in the short term because of COVID-19, it also includes a number of liberal policies that Democrats probably would have tried to adopt even if there was no coronavirus-induced shutdown, such as increasing the child tax credit to $3,000 per school-aged child and increasing subsidies for people buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

Indeed, the party’s left wing is delighted with this legislation.

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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/five-things-the-covid-19-bill-revealed-about-how-washington-will-work-in-the-biden-era/

[mzmolly]

1. Biden is old school

Dem. I here for it!

[Irish_Dem]

2. He is FDR and JFK combined.

The kind of Dems I fell in love with.
And why I have been a staunch Dem.

[mzmolly]

6. I agree.

[Irish_Dem]

7. Hi!

[yellowdogintexas]

9. YES! Same here. My mother would have loved Biden

I am glad she did not have to live through the former administration

[Irish_Dem]

10. Yes I am very glad my father was not alive to see the insurrection.

Or the last four years.

[Johnny2X2X]

3. Good article

Liberals should be ecstatic with this bill.

[Azathoth]

4. It's more liberal because the GOP has gone full white nationalist

Both Clinton and Obama viewed the GOP as an opposition party that drew support from serious moderate voters. Neither president wanted to cede the pragmatic middle ground to the GOP, especially considering that something like 75% of the country identified as either conservative or moderate.

The past ten years, culminating in the catastrophic Trump dumpster fire, has shattered the image of the GOP as a serious political party. They aren't even pretending anymore to draw voters based on serious policy positions, so there's no point in us pursuing policy triangulation to checkmate them. And frankly, the GOP has become so morally reprehensible, the idea of handing them any unearned win is now physically sickening for most reality-based Americans.

[demtenjeep]

5. marking for later

Love Biden

[DENVERPOPS]

8. Thx YMBL !!!! nc

[ancianita]

11. Believe it or not, Biden is following a 21st Century distributive model of economic growth.

Last edited Mon Mar 15, 2021, 01:24 PM - Edit history (1)

There's a lot for the left to like and take credit for. But this bill is also about the future.

I get what he's doing by reading Doughnut Economics (Kate Raworth), which was highly recommended to me by PATRUS when we were swapping reads. It's a gift, really. Without even mentioning them, the author shows how and who is ending the 1%'s hold on the economy, and how to create new economic designs in line with the biosphere.

Biden's forcing central banks (the Treasury being a subsidiary) to tackle deep recessions by issuing new money directly to every household as windfall cash used for paying down individual debt. It's called "People's QE."

When infrastructure comes up, watch to see if the Biden-Yellen team gets central banks to channel new money into national investment banks for 'green' and social infrastructural projects like community-based renewable energy systems, as the start of long-term infrastructure transformation known as "Green QE."

His old school moral values are driving this progressive agenda to save ourselves from the point of no return with climate disasters we've caused. imo, of course