Biden, Schumer and Pelosi to the Rescue — Let’s Celebrate Like We Should
Well, the Dems did it — passed the biggest anti-poverty bill in a generation over the UNIVERSAL opposition of Republicans in the House and Senate. And let’s hear it especially for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer who got it done in the 50-50 Senate without one vote to spare (thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris). Yes, the Democrats had to make a big sacrifice — they were forced for now to give up the $15 minimum wage hike — but the rest of the bill is sweeping in its scope and Schumer managed to make his entire caucus happy, from Manchin to Sanders.
Progressives don’t celebrate their political victories enough — maybe because we have so few of them and our purism prevents us from enjoying the inevitable compromise of politics. But we need to take a big victory lap on the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which will not only put checks in the pockets of every taxpayer but also significantly decrease poverty in America, extend Obamacare, speed up Covid vaccinations, distribute billions in aid to struggling cities, states and school districts, and begin the vital work of improving our failing infrastructure. If you can’t cheer for this, then you’re the hair-shirt type of leftist who always sees the glass half empty. And you need to lighten up. (The Jacobin magazine web page had no mention of the historic legislative achievement this morning.)
Of course, some Republicans are now rushing to embrace the huge rescue bill, which will be signed into law tomorrow by President Biden. Even though not one Republican legislator in Washington voted for the bill, they’re all painfully aware that a whopping 70 percent (!) of Americans were cheering for it — including many of their suffering constituents. Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, had the nerve to merrily tweet about the much-needed relief the bill will give restaurant industry workers — after opposing the legislation in the Senate.
I like Nancy Pelosi’s tart response to this two-faced GOP bullshit: “It’s typical that they vote no and take the dough.”
If millions more voters don’t continue defecting from the Republican Party at this point, it will deepen my despair about the human race. But if Biden, Schumer and Pelosi continue to think big and turn the federal government into an agent for positive change in people’s lives, then I think that Joe Biden will really become the incarnation of the man whose portrait he hung in the Oval Office: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR’s New Deal shifted voter loyalties — even in the South — for generations.
Errata and desiderata and all that… I’ve heard from some quarters that I was far too euphoric about the film Nomadland, which was much more positive about work life in an Amazon warehouse than was the book on which it was based. I plead guilty. As Amazon workers in Alabama and elsewhere battle to unionize — and to receive basic respect from their corporate overlords (read the Guardian’s account today of Amazon truck drivers forced to work overtime with no lunch or even bathroom breaks) — the film’s rosy picture of the Bezos plantation is indeed a false note in an otherwise beautiful film.
