While congressional Democrats negotiate within their ranks over the “Build Back Better” plan, the public is more likely to have heard about what it would cost than about the specific policies that would be in it. Despite the popularity, in principle, of these program ideas, some of the very popular […] Read more »
Beating up on Manchin and Sinema won’t fix the Biden agenda
… When your political strategy isn’t working, the answer isn’t to dig in and double down but to rethink your strategy and the policies driving it. But our current president and his Democratic Congress don’t seem capable of rethinking much of anything, much less considering the possibility that the extreme […] Read more »
What will it take for Biden to bring fractured Democrats together?
… There are now many cooks in the kitchen as Democrats seek consensus and compromise between the $3.5 trillion proposed and a $1.5 trillion ceiling Manchin is calling for. Ultimately, however, this is Biden’s agenda and the political judgments will fall most heavily on him, while the rest of his […] Read more »
Biden Throws In With Left, Leaving His Agenda in Doubt
For well over a year now, President Biden’s vaunted negotiating style largely boiled down to this: I’m with you. After he vanquished Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary, he brought the liberal icon’s ardent supporters into the fold by embracing much of the senator’s platform even as […] Read more »
Drug price negotiation is Americans’ top priority in spending bills
Americans support letting the government negotiate drug prices above all the other major priorities in the infrastructure and social spending packages now before Congress, according to a new POLITICO-Harvard poll that suggests health care is at the top of most respondents’ minds. But the drug pricing plan could be in […] Read more »
Democrats Could Be Damned if They Do, Damned if They Don’t
… Democrats are correct when they say that many of the individual elements in the pair of spending packages—the more traditional, physical-infrastructure bill, and the expansion of the social safety net via reconciliation—score well when tested in polls. If enacted, they’ll surely prove as popular as Obamacare. After all, while […] Read more »