The Republicans’ problem in attacking Biden: They helped pass his economic bills
President Biden is not alone in embracing federal spending on infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing all summer, as are some Republicans seeking to remove him from office next year.
The White House has labeled the president’s new economic campaign Bidenomics, a contraction that has so far been a pejorative used by Republicans and conservative news outlets primarily to underline inflation.
But in a speech on the economy on Wednesday in Chicago, Mr. Biden persisted, with a renewed focus on the two most significant bipartisan legislative achievements of his term, the Infrastructure Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. He hopes these measures will help brand him as the dealmaker he sold to voters in 2020, appeal to political moderates who formed the core of his winning electoral coalition, and impress voters with what he has in store. function has done.
A key benefit for Mr. Biden: Republicans helped pass those bills.
As GOP presidential candidates and the Republican National Committee continue to portray Mr Biden’s economic stewardship as a rolling disaster, Republican senators who helped shape the legislation say they expected those achievements to add to Mr Biden’s political advantage – and also to their own benefit. .
Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican who helped write the massive bill to revive the domestic semiconductor industry, said work had begun on a bill he called “off-the-charts popular” with Senator New York Democrat Chuck Schumer during the administration of President Donald J. Trump.
“The Biden administration is to be commended for bringing the proposal forward and, regardless of when it came about, for helping it become law,” said Mr. Young.
Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy more reluctantly acknowledged the president’s role in securing a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that had eluded the past two administrations.
“If senators from different parties come together to work on solutions to our country’s problems and then the president jumps in front of the parade, it doesn’t mean he’s the grand marshal,” Mr. Cassidy said.
Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill won votes from 19 Republican senators and 13 members of the Republican House. Sixteen Senate Republicans and 24 House Republicans voted in favor of the semiconductor bill.
It will be hard for Republicans to be criticized when they take credit for the same achievements themselves. The White House praised the Biden administration’s broadband spending on Wednesday Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers from Washington and Gus Bilirakis from FloridaRepublicans who both voted against the infrastructure bill it funded along with Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
But perhaps no Republican backing for the infrastructure bill brought more joy to Mr. Biden than a tweet from Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville that said it was “great to see Alabama receive crucial funds.”
“It should come as no surprise to anyone that it brings some converts,” Biden said of his bipartisan legislation on Wednesday. “There is a man named Tuberville from Alabama, an Alabama senator, who has announced his strong opposition to the legislation. Now he applauds the passage.’ Mr Biden then dryly drew the sign of the cross on his chest.
Steven Stafford, a spokesman for Mr Tuberville, said Mr Biden and his allies had “twisted” the senator’s words. “Now that the law is the law of the land, the people of Alabama deserve their fair share,” he said.
And even as Mr. Biden played the $42 billion in broadband spending into the infrastructure bill on Monday, another Republican senator who did vote for it, Susan Collins of Maine, was trumpeting the $272 million from there it goes to her state.
Of course, the White House’s celebration of Republican accolades for the legislation Mr Biden signed into law will matter little unless the president can convince voters that these achievements improve their material well-being.
Mr. Biden’s defenders have long maintained that the economic policies he is highlighting in the Bidenomics rebrand are very popular with voters. The problem, these allies say, is that few people associate them with Mr. Biden.
And Wednesday’s speech came at a time when Mr Biden’s approval ratings for the economy are in dangerous territory.
An Associated Press/NORC poll released Wednesday found that only 34 percent of adults agreed with Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy. Among Democrats, only 60 percent — and only 47 percent of those age 45 or younger — approved of his economic stewardship.
The millstone is inflation, which has moderated sharply since last year’s peak, but remains above normal. Whether inflation is 9 percent or 4 percent, prices remain high, which may be why the president speaks less about the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan, which was passed early in his term and even passed by the Federal Reserve. Reserve was blamed for part of the rise in inflation. It’s also why Republicans continue to mock what they call the inappropriately named Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022 on strictly Democratic votes.
“It makes sense for him to emphasize the bipartisan bills that have been passed that are supposed to have economic impacts, as opposed to the full-partisan bills that have fueled inflation,” said former Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who before his retirement voted for both the infrastructure and semiconductor bills. early this year.
Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, made it clear that his party intended to lump all achievements promoted by Mr. Biden into the inflationary maw, including infrastructure and semiconductor legislation.
“Both bills created inflation, which is Biden’s biggest albatross in the upcoming election,” he said, “so I don’t think they did him any favors,” referring to Republicans who helped pass the measures.
In his speech on Wednesday, Mr Biden said the emergency plan for the pandemic had reduced unemployment from more than 6 percent to less than 4 percent. He suggested that his economic leadership would achieve an even broader goal that he put at the center of his 2020 campaign: restoring America’s soul.
“It will help reduce divisions in this country by bringing us back together,” Biden said. “It makes it terribly difficult to demagogueize something if it works.”
The Republicans who wanted to impeach Mr Biden did not buy economic Kumbaya. The Trump campaign said Wednesday that “Bidenomics has caused the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in a Fox News appearancesaid Mr Biden’s policy that “everyone pays more for the basic necessities of life”.
Republicans are reluctant to admit that the passage of two major bills makes Mr Biden a bipartisan statesman. Those bills are “not just not emblematic, they’re the exception,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime political adviser to Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, who voted for the infrastructure bill.
In reality, more bills have been passed than those that passed with bipartisan support in the last Congress. Mr Biden enters the 2024 election cycle as the beneficiary of an extraordinary wave of productivity, including a modest gun control bill, a legal codification of same-sex marriage and an overhaul of the Electoral College’s vote counting procedures after Mr Trump attempted to hijack that obscure process.
Senators from both parties put aside their inclination to push only for the legislation they want or pocket the issue before the next election.
“We can’t get into a country where you don’t vote for something you think should be passed because you think it might help the other side,” Mr Blunt said.
Democrats are pointing to the circumstances Mr Biden inherited in 2021 — the attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters determined to overturn the election result.
“There was a sizable group of Senate Republicans who faced the death of democracy on January 6 and decided to show people that democracy could still work,” said Connecticut Democrat Senator Chris Murphy.
But Mr. Murphy also praised Mr. Biden’s legislative skills, which he had honed over 36 years in the Senate.
“Many of my progressive friends were angry that he didn’t slam Republicans as much,” Murphy said, “but he kept the door open for Republicans to work with us on infrastructure, guns and industrial policy.”
Cecilia Kang reporting contributed.