Consider This from NPR - What Makes President Biden's Massive Spending Pitch So Historic

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Any one of President Biden's multi-trillion-dollar spending packages would be among the largest ever enacted by Congress. He has passed one — the American Recuse Plan — and proposed two others in his first 100 days. NPR Congressional correspondent Susan Davis explains his latest proposal — the American Families Plan.Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells NPR that in times of crisis, past Presidents have had success enacting ambitious agendas. In participating regions, you'll also hear from local journalists about what's happening in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. Madam Speaker, the President of the United States. states. The American Families Plan, $1.8 trillion. The American Jobs Plan, $2.5 trillion. The American Rescue Plan, already signed into law, that was $1.9 trillion. Now, any one of these, on their own, would rank among the biggest legislative proposals ever adopted by Congress. All three packages have been proposed by President Joe Biden in his first 100 days. Throughout our history, if you think about it,

public investment in infrastructure has literally transformed America. In the president's sales pitch for that investment during his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, he invoked the space race, public schools, the transcontinental railroad, the interstate, and the internet. These are investments we made together as one country, and investments that only the government was in a position to make. That's what the president's spending proposals boil down to. Investments in infrastructure and an expanded social safety net that are so big, only the government could make them. So yes, there is a role for government. Susan Rice directs the White House Domestic Policy Council.

In supporting research and development, in supporting job creation, in helping us transform into an economy that defeats climate change and creates thousands and millions of new jobs. Consider this. That plan, if enacted, would represent an historic expansion in the role of government in American life. And Joe Biden may have a unique opportunity as president to get it done. From NPR, I'm Adi Kornish. It's Thursday, April 29th. This message comes from NPR sponsor Sotva, the comfort company. Sotva luxury mattresses are sold online and priced at about 50% less than mattress stores. Sotva has a 4.8 out of 5 user rating on Google and was New York Magazine's choice for best all-around mattress. Visit s-double-a-t-v-a-dot-com-slash-npr

today. Sattva, the comfort company. I'm Yo-Ai Shaw. I'm Kia Miyakunatis. We're the hosts of the NPR podcast, Invisibilia. You can think of Invisibilia kind of like a sonic blacklight. When you switch us on, you will hear surprising and intimate stories. Stories that help you notice things in your world that maybe you didn't see before. Listen to the Invisibilia podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. If any major elements of Joe Biden's proposals become reality, it will probably happen without any Republican support. He's spending like crazy. He's proposed in his first hundred days six trillion dollars of new spending. The president must realize he does not have a mandate for his partisan big spending policies. Even more taxing, even more spending to put Washington even more in

the middle of your life. GOP Senators Mitt Romney and John Thune and Tim Scott, who spoke immediately after Biden's speech, making an argument Republicans have repeated over the decades whenever Democrats propose new government spending, basically that the numbers are too big. They're big numbers, but relative to our economy and relative to the need, they are, you know, quite frankly, just what is absolutely necessary. Heather Boucher sits on the White House Council of Economic Advisors. I asked her if Democrats were determined to pass the president's proposals using special Senate procedure without Republican support? The president has been very, very clear on this, that he really has the door open to folks on both sides of the aisle to come to him with good ideas. He's also been very clear that what is not

acceptable is inaction. So it sounds like the answer is yes. Like it sounds like that is the plan. And is that like kind of a lesson that this president learned after Obamacare? Well, what he learned is that you need to you need to act with intention and you need to make sure that you do what's important for the American people. And so he's committed to acting. Even if there's a big political cost to that? Well, if it's a proposal, a set of proposals that are popular with the American people, it's not clear what that political cost might be. At least that's what Democrats are banking on. With a very narrow majority in Congress, they can't afford to be divided.

Our congressional correspondent Sue Davis spoke about that and what's in Biden's American Families Plan with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. All right, so let's look at this new plan. What is in the American Families Plan? Who would it affect the most? I mean, Biden is trying to rewrite the social contract. It aims to reduce poverty in the country and provide more of a safety net for the middle class. It would guarantee that low and middle income families pay no more than 7% of their income on child care for their kids under five. Administration says this would save the average

family about $15,000 a year on child care. It would also mandate more free education for all Americans on the front and back end. So there would be universal pre-K education for three and four-year-olds, and then two years of free community college after high school. It would also guarantee to all workers over the course of about a decade, 12 weeks of paid family leave to deal with things like the birth of a child or taking care of a sick parent. So just to remind, this plan is in addition to Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure proposal, and it comes just weeks after he signed into law the $1.9 trillion COVID-related stimulus bill. This is, I mean, it's staggering. It's so much money. Does Congress believe it's necessary? Well, I think two things to keep in mind when you're looking at this Democratic embrace of

spending. And one is the former Trump administration, under which, you know, when Republicans were in control, they cut taxes, they raised spending, and they added significantly to the deficit, which I think in this moment has weakened the Republicans' political standing to be seen as deficit hawks here. And then on the other side, you have the pandemic, obviously. I mean, Democrats have been really clear for all along that the pandemic has exposed these inequities in basically every aspect of American life. And as we've seen with all of the earlier COVID relief measures that have been passed and have been really popular, the public seems to have more support of a bigger government role in their lives right now. It's really a striking contrast if you think back to where the Democratic Party was during the Clinton era. In 1996, when Clinton was addressing Congress,

he had this famous moment where he declared the era of big government over. President Biden is essentially saying to Congress, big government is back. So how hard is this going to be to get through Congress? I think it's going to be incredibly hard. You know, Biden is unlikely to get much, if any, Republican support for this. His administration, I would say, is continuing to have talks with Senate Republicans, at least on the infrastructure component. But Democrats are prepared to go it alone if they have to. There's still a lot of disagreement among Democrats over what else should be in this package. One thing,

one example that we're watching is some Democrats want to expand Medicare by lowering the eligibility age to 55 or 60. NPR's Sue Davis. Of course, the debates we're about to watch unfold in Washington have been happening for a long time. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. For much of the last 40 years, Republicans have carried the mantle of Ronald Reagan, working to turn back programs championed by their Democratic predecessors. Wednesday night, Joe Biden argued Reagan was wrong. Trickle-down economics has never worked.

It's time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out. Now, this constant push and pull over the size and scope of government, well, it's defined the American presidency for decades. But in times of crisis, American presidents trying to expand government have had a particular opportunity to do so. There's no question that what a crisis does is to create an opportunity for a president to mobilize the full resources of the nation to meet it. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin spoke about that, also with Mary Louise Kelly. You saw that with FDR. You saw it with LBJ. And I think that's what we're seeing with Mr. Biden right now.

He has a window of opportunity, I think in some ways, because he was able to handle the crisis that was dealt to him right away in terms of vaccines, so that maybe he's him right away in terms of vaccines, so that maybe he's created a trust in government. He needs to use that opportunity, he feels, right now to take those next more systemic steps. And that's exactly what FDR did. He moved systemically from the banking crisis to jobs and then regulation of the stock market so that he moved step-by-step strategically. And I think that's why Biden is moving from the 100 days now to the systemic reforms that he's suggesting. Although, where does Ronald Reagan fit in here? He also inherited economic crisis, awful inflation,

awful unemployment. And then, of course, the Iranian hostage crisis was playing out. And he decided to go in a very different direction. Why? So interesting. I mean, Ronald Reagan comes to his first joint session, just as Biden came to his first joint session. The economy is in deep trouble, as it is for President Biden as well. But indeed, he said, government is the problem, not the solution. And he called for ending the New Deal consensus, essentially, massive tax cuts. But yes, he used the crisis in a very different way for his belief that if they could let government get out of the way and have tax cuts, the economy would splurge and that that would be the means to go forward.

So that continuing kaleidoscope has been part of our history for a long, long time. Well, and to land us back in the current moment and talk about coming to office in a moment of crisis, Joe Biden arrives in the middle of pandemic, economic crisis, racial justice reckoning, disputed election where a whole lot of Americans don't even believe he won. To what extent do you think that is what is propelling him? Is he seeing a moment of huge crisis and thinking, okay, this requires a huge governmental response? I think that's right. I mean, I think without the crisis, it's hard to know that he would have gone as deep as he has in the systemic changes that he wants to bring about. And I think there's a sense of urgency.

He looks back on previous, or he should from history look back on previous moments of crises, and they provide that window, but they don't always last that long. And you have that sense of urgency. He's also at a stage in his life where you're not planning for the future. You're not being cautious because you wonder what your next step is going to be. This is his moment. And he does seem in some ways to be the man for the moment. And how radical is what he is proposing? The American Families Plan coming on top of pandemic relief, coming on top of his infrastructure pitch, it's, you know,

$2 trillion here, $2 trillion there. This level of spending, this scale of proposed expansion of government services, how radical is it? I mean, I think this scale definitely was only met by Lyndon Johnson's Great Society or the New Deal of FDR in relative terms. I mean, it's bigger now, but in terms of how enormous it allows the government to really become not just a safety net, but a propeller of economic reform. Child care will allow more people into the jobs market, the bridges and the airports. I mean, FDR did infrastructure as well as jobs, but this is on a much larger scale. But more importantly, it's really saying that government needs to become the propeller of the economic engine and to make sure that people are sharing

fairly in the prosperity of the country. And that hasn't happened in a long period of time. Last question. To what extent does the success of a president in getting his agenda through, whether that is expanding government, pruning back government, to what extent does that almost predict, dictate what the response will be in the next election and what his successor may do? I'm thinking, you know, if Joe Biden manages to get some of this agenda through, and it's a big if with this Congress, is that in a way playing right into Republican electoral ambitions in the next election cycle? Well, what we do know from history is that whether or not a president who's confronted with a crisis is able to handle that crisis will determine not only what happens in the next election,

but what happens in his historical judgment. When you think about President Hoover, unable to handle the crisis of the Depression, considered one of the worst presidents, FDR able to do it, one of the best. Buchanan, unable to handle the growing secession of the states and the growing divisions between the North and the South, considered one of the worst of American presidents. Abraham Lincoln coming in and becoming one of the best. So I think the idea of a crisis facing a president and whether or not that president is able to meet that crisis has a great deal to do with both the next election and with their sense of how history is going to judge them in the future.

Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Kornish.