The Daily Beast
How Joe Biden – in less than two months – turned Ronald Reagan’s decades of conventional wisdom on its head
Bloomberg / Getty “The nine most frightening words in the English language are: ‘I come from the government and I am here to help.’ ‘With the famous rule, uttered by Ronald Reagan on 12 August 1986, during his second term as president, the GOP mantra for the coming decades was born. This philosophy later even found a home in the Democratic Party. President Bill Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union speech stated that, “The era of great government is over,” explaining that, “We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. ” And during a presidential debate in October 2000 between Al Gore and George W. Bush, experts at the time noted that the two seemed to be vying for the title of ‘the candidate of smaller government’. Gore even boasted that his “reinventing government” campaign as vice president under Clinton had reduced the government to its lowest level of employment since 1960. Biden’s revolution does what Obama and Clinton did not do Those days are, fortunately, gone – at least for now. Even a large portion of Republicans realize that the federal government offering to help during this pandemic is not ‘scary’. On the contrary, it could be a lifesaver in terms of health and finances, and moments after President Biden concluded his national speech on Thursday, it was one year since the virus was declared a pandemic, and Trump fans Sean Hannity, Mike Huckabee and others cry that Biden is not thanking Trump for launching “Operation Warp Speed” – the $ 18 billion federal government program designed to “accelerate the testing, supply, development and distribution of safe and effective vaccines.” Even these staunch conservatives implicitly conceded that this federal government program was effective in helping Americans. Another body that can see Reagan’s philosophy that government is inherently bad is in the remarkable support for the massive COVID relief packages. Last March, when the $ 2.2 billion CARES law – the first relief bill – was signed by Trump, it was supported by 77 percent of Americans, including a whopping 76 percent of Republicans. By December 2020, two-thirds of Americans believed the federal government. did not do enough to ‘provide economic relief during the coronavirus pandemic’, including 46 percent of Republicans in a PBS / Marist poll. This was similar to the 70 percent support for Biden’s $ 1.9 billion aid package he signed on Thursday, which will provide direct incentive tests, funds for schools to reopen, extended unemployment benefits, aid to state and local governments, and more – with Texas receiving the second largest state aid worth $ 27 billion in the country. Yes, it’s a unique time for our country to face a deadly pandemic that is still taking nearly 1,500 lives a day; As of last week, more than 20 million Americans are still receiving some form of unemployment benefit. If it were not for the pandemic, we would probably have seen this level of big support for big government spending and new programs – especially among Republicans, but it’s still the perfect time for Democrats to launch more programs that help Americans. on a range of issues from minimum wage to healthcare. In fact, both of these issues see broad support among voters. For example, a majority of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $ 15, and even 51 percent of Republicans support a minimum wage increase of an amount, just not up to $ 15. On the issue of health care, 63 percent of Americans believe in a September poll in Pew that the federal government is “responsible” for ensuring that all Americans have health coverage, slightly higher than 59 percent in 2019. The hard part is how to implement policies supported by a majority of Americans, even with Democrats in control of the House, Senate and White House? It is not only the senate filibuster that stands in the way, but also possibly the ghost of the last major government program enacted by the Democrats, the ACA, which many saw as a reason for the Democrats in the middle of 2010 lost control of the house. in 2014, Chuck Schumer, then the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, blamed the passage of the ACA directly for the hurt of the Democrats in the medium term, saying that the party ‘blew up the opportunity the American people gave them has.’ He then added a rule that may still be in his thought process today: “After the stimulus, the Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class programs and build on the partial success of the stimulus.” Of course, Schumer knows while the ACA was an albatross around the neck of Democrats in 2010 and 2014, and protecting it was one of the main reasons the Democrats won the House in 2018. ACA approval rose from 38 percent in the mid-2010s to the mid-50s today. This can very well be seen as an indication of how public opinion has evolved over the past decade or so, with Americans now viewing the government as useful. The Democrats in Congress know they have to deliver. As Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, explained to me: “People are going to stop trusting us if Democrats do not. Jayapal has promised to pursue a broad progressive agenda, and “I hope the Democrats win where they can, even if it’s a compromise, given the filibuster. The pandemic made it clear that Reagan’s philosophy that the federal government is inherently ‘scary’.” most Americans do not.This is the time for the Democratic Party to boldly address programs that make it a matter for our fellow Americans that the federal government can help them as just times of dire need – because it can. by The Daily Beast.your inbox every day.Register now! Daily membership of The Beast: Beast Inside delves deeper into the stories that matter to you.Learn more.