The Biden Era’s First Critical Period

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FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | February 4, 2021

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“President Biden has been a leader throughout his career in challenging corrupting political money and in promoting public financing of elections. His public leadership in support of H.R. 1 and S. 1 will be important to winning the battle for this transformational democracy reform legislation.”

We are entering the first critical period of the Biden era.

The COVID-19 relief package is on a path to be considered in Congress during the coming weeks using a process called reconciliation, which will prevent a filibuster in the Senate. The package is desperately needed by millions of Americans.

Congressional Republicans, however, do not like the price tag. These same Republicans have for the past four years been profligate spenders, cooperating with former President Trump to run up historic debt and deficits – nearly $7.8 trillion in additional national debt and almost $4 trillion in additional deficits. Now with Trump mercifully gone, congressional Republicans have shockingly discovered the debt and deficit they created and are back to being fiscal hawks.

Meanwhile, the impeachment trial of Trump begins next week. The seditious insurrection created and unleashed by Trump, for which the House impeached him, resulted in the first invasion of the Capitol since the British set it on fire in 1814 and the first serious civil uprising since the Civil War. While most Republican Senators are not expected to vote to convict Trump, every Senator will have to cast a public vote and be accountable to his or her constituents and to history.

These events have pushed back House floor consideration of H.R. 1, the For the People Act, to March. Senate consideration of its companion bill, S. 1, will come later.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are committed to making the legislation a top priority. Most Democrats in the House and Senate have already signed on as cosponsors of the bill.

President Biden and his top White House staff, however, have been strangely silent about this essential democracy reform legislation.

One of President Biden’s top goals is to restore the nation to a place of preeminent leadership in the world. But the President will have to join and lead in the effort to revitalize our own democracy before we will have the credibility necessary to again lead the free world.

President Biden has been a leader throughout his career in challenging corrupting political money and in promoting public financing of elections. His public leadership in support of H.R. 1 and S. 1 will be important to winning the battle for this transformational democracy reform legislation.

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