Pope Francis received this Friday the president of the United States, Joe Biden, and his wife, Jill, in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican.
The struggles to negotiate the infrastructure plan delay their vote and with it investments for the climate fight
The plan was to show the world what the United States is capable of, by passing a historic investment package that will shine a light on the middle class, return leadership to the country and show its commitment in the fight against climate change. The result has been another kind of lesson: democracy is complicated.
Joe Biden appeared this Friday in Europe without the moral authority that he had asked his party, after begging his co-religionists to approve his historic package to ‘Build Back Better’. Donald Trump would have solved it with a blow on the table, he would have called them one by one to his office, threatened to destroy their political careers and would have withdrawn federal funds from their states, until fear was translated into votes. Would Europe have been more satisfied with the former president’s techniques?
The paradox is that the world hates the bully, but admires the heavy hand and the ability to get results, while despising the conciliatory disposition of Biden, whom it calls weak for having given up almost half of his aspirations in exchange for a vote. that has not occurred.
For three months, two conservative senators – Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – have twisted his arm to fight Senator Bernie Sanders’ plan to levels unacceptable to the progressive wing of the party and many sectors of society. Now it is Sanders and others on his line who refuse to vote for him until some of the retired games are included back.
“We were promised twelve weeks of paid leave and we settled for four, but now it turns out there are none,” complained Congresswoman Barbara Lee. Your vote may be expendable because the Democratic Party has a margin of eight seats in the Lower House, but in the Senate it cannot lose a single one. Voters divided it 50-50 in the last election, and since there is no possibility of understanding with the opposition, neither can any Democrat be lost. Without the party discipline that exists in Spain, each senator responds only before his voters -and donors-, becoming a little tyrant to be pleased.
Lee has no doubt that the landmark law that will put Biden on the books and modernize America will pass, the question is when. And, of course, it will not be in time for him to appear in Glasgow with the aura of a winner.
Each American president puts aside his promises during the first year to carry out the most difficult legislative project that defines his presidency before losing legislative force in the mid-term elections. If you get it right and in time for voters to experience the benefits firsthand, you will cushion the debacle of the November election. Only the inability of the Democrats to vote en bloc makes it very difficult.
Reasons for disappointment
Obama, another pragmatic negotiator, decided to pledge his first-year political capital on health care reform, which ended up so devalued with concessions that by the time it became law, no one was happy. Biden’s ‘Build Back America’ is going the same way.
There are reasons for disappointment in every sector: students will not have free universities, women will be left without maternity leave, the elderly without dental coverage, and workers without social housing. Behind so many frustrated expectations will remain a law “unprecedented for an unprecedented time,” said Sanders when he introduced the 3.5 trillion package, polished to 1.85. Even with these reductions, it will be the largest social investment since the New Deal, which, added to the Rescue Plan of last March, turns the response to the pandemic into an economic shock.
According to his defenders, Biden has shown enormous patience with the conservative Democrats of his party, but the time has come for him to hit the table and force them to take a photo in the vote, before nature sinks his thin majority forever. , as happened to Obama with the death of Ted Kennedy. His presidency, he confessed before leaving, is at stake, and the future of the United States as well.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/the-democratic-party-weakens-bidens-position-vis-a-vis-his-european-partners/
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