To analyse
It is this only vote that Joe Biden urgently needs to pass his second major reform package – but Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat of all people, denies him. The USA is sinking increasingly into political long-term patters.
The year 2021 will end as turbulent for the USA as it began. There is not only the never-ending corona pandemic and the ongoing dispute over the Capitol Tower on January 6th – a few days before Christmas, of all people, a party friend of Joe Biden is ruining his reform agenda and possibly even the entire presidency. After less than a year in office. And by the way, the inner-opposition Democrat Joe Manchin shows the country the limits of the two-party system and the ability to govern.
Announcement on Fox News of all places
To drop his bomb, the senator from the right-wing state of West Virginia chose the Fox News stage of all things. For years, the TV station has been firing against anything that smells like democratic politics – and Joe Biden’s $ 1.75 trillion social and climate package – called “Build back better”, definitely does. So Joe Manchin said in front of the cameras that he could not approve this project in the Senate. That’s as good as done. Because there is a 50-50-vote stalemate in the second chamber of the US Parliament, which can only be resolved by Vice President and Senate Chairwoman Kamala Harris. That means: the Democrats cannot allow themselves deviants like Joe Manchin.
It’s not that the conservative Democrat has ever particularly welcomed the president’s core project. On the contrary. Some people fear that the planned tax relief and the expansion of health services could put too much strain on the US household budget, which is already on the edge. He therefore announced his no to the project on Fox News. When asked whether his decision was final, the senator replied, “This is a no to this legislation. I’ve tried everything I can.” If you read it carefully, this formulation still leaves a back door open – the revision of the legal text – but the tablecloth between him and the moderates as well as the left wing of the party should finally be cut with his TV appearance.
Because it was Joe Manchin, whose blockade had almost brought down Joe Biden’s other major project – the infrastructure package, also a billion dollar project. The funds from this flow, among other things, into the renovation of ailing traffic routes and the construction of new electricity and internet lines. Left-wing democrats shared the gigantic expenditure on the premise that the moderate and conservative wing of the party would agree to the social and climate protection package. The White House is said to have wrested a yes from the reluctant Manchin. The President’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki reacted all the more indignantly to the now publicly declared rejection.
Bad air among the Democrats
Manchin have promised to find a compromise, said Psaki. Should this now mean an end to these efforts, it would be “a sudden and inexplicable U-turn and a breach of his obligations to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate,” she said. The White House will continue to press him to see “if he changes his position again to keep his earlier promises and keep his word”. The package is too important. They will “find a way to continue next year”. How, left them open.
There is also a bad atmosphere within the democratic party. Moderate and liberal MPs accused Manchin of preventing social improvements for the country and sabotaging the president’s agenda. Incidentally, his no should also intensify the smoldering, internal wing battles. Because of their content, the Democrats are more like a rallying movement than a party. One of her best known progressive MPs, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from New York, once said that she and Joe Biden were not in a party in any other country in the world. If the democrats were to be placed thematically and personally over the German party landscape, it would cover areas from the Left Party through the SPD to the Union.
The fact that the middle candidate, Joe Biden, first got the votes of party members and then of the Americans last year, was also due to the fact that the left wing had held back in the election campaign in favor of the lowest common denominator: the deselection of Donald Trump. After the project was successfully completed, Ocasio-Cortez promptly spoke up again and complained that Joe Biden’s team was ignoring the progressives’ agenda. This includes, for example, the introduction of general health insurance. The left’s hope lay in Biden’s social and climate package, which was originally supposed to be worth $ 3.5 trillion. Under pressure from conservative Democrats, it was cut to just under half. This sum is too little for the party left, which is why they should reject further cuts. So the project is as good as dead.
The fact that a single word from a single representative can destroy almost the entire political agenda of a US president has, of course, to do with the narrow majority. And with the fact that such rebellion increases Manchin’s chances of re-election in its conservative home country. But it is also an expression of the increasing ungovernability of the USA. Under the former President Barack Obama, the Republicans with their parliamentary majorities still refused to accept any concessions. But even now that the Democrats control both the White House and Congress, their own majorities are insufficient to conduct government policy.
USA in political permanence
In any case, Joe Biden is now embarrassed because he couldn’t keep his ambitious promises. The Democrats are embarrassed because they apparently cannot close their ranks or, worse, do not want to. Other ambitious projects such as the hoped-for reforms of electoral law and the criminal justice system are finally disappearing behind the horizon. The opposition Republicans can now hope to win one or maybe even both chambers of parliament in the mid-term election in November 2022 – but they too will not get beyond the role of blockers. The US is stuck in a permanent political patters.
Sources: , , , “”
Source From: Stern
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
