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Dear Fellow Patriot,

I hope this email finds you well.

I have received emails from quite a few of you asking about COVID-19 relief legislation and if President Biden will work with the "Gang of 10 Republicans" to broker a bipartisan bill. I have put a short note together with my thoughts. Feel free to email me with you feedback.


Will he or won't he? Biden should follow his predecessor's model of bi-partisanship

For a president who promised unity and healing for a divided nation, President Joe Biden is off to a failing start.

Rather than focusing on the challenges facing Americans during a COVID-suppressed economy, President Biden has rushed through at least 42 Executive Orders according to CNN, on controversial issues like climate change and immigration. Couple this with Democrats’ insistence on moving forward with impeaching the former president and you can see why the 75 million Americans who didn’t vote for Joe Biden would be skeptical of his inaugural speech promising to heal and unite the country.

With a massive COVID stimulus bill on the horizon, and with more relief to follow, yesterday 10 Republican Senators --Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Mitt Romney (UT), Todd Young (IN), Jerry Moran (KS), Bill Cassidy. (LA), Shelley Moore-Capito (WV), Mike Rounds (SD), Rob Portman (OH), and Thom Tillis (NC) -- penned a letter to President Biden hoping to turn his uplifting words from Inauguration Day into meaningful action for the American people.

Specifically, the cabal of Republicans requested a meeting to discuss a narrowly targeted COVID relief bill that includes provisions from the two previous relief measures such as unemployment benefits and vaccine development and distribution. They also seek to scale down the enormous cost of the $1.9 trillion bill after having just spent $4 trillion on COVID relief measures since the start of the pandemic in March. On Fox News Sunday, Senator Bill Cassidy said their counterproposal has a price tag of “about $600 billion” – a significant reduction from the size and scale of President Biden’s bill.

The Republicans’ cuts could come from potential ‘non-starter’ provisions, such as:
- $350 billion in aid to states, like New York where its residents are fleeing because of Governor Cuomo’s refusal to open the economy back up and his handling of the virus.
- $170 billion for schools to “open safely” when President Biden has sided with the unions who refuse to allow teachers to go back to their jobs of teaching our children
- $20 billion for “hard hit” transit agencies, which is virtually a bailout that favors large urban areas whose transit systems have been poorly managed for decades
- $1,400 in aid to couples earning $174,000 jointly and an expansion of these funds to include those who are an undocumented spouse lacking a Social Security number
- $15 Federal minimum wage mandate during an economic downturn, when a record number of businesses have shuttered, and employees are struggling to find work.

For all the talk about former President Donald Trump not working well with Democrats in Congress, he sure was able to achieve bi-partisan legislative victories and on COVID relief bills, he succeeded not once but twice in passing bipartisan bills.

President Biden could adopt President Trump’s philosophy, but he and Senate Democrats are digging in their heels and sharpening their ‘legislative tools’ like budget reconciliation and abolishing the filibuster which allows Democrats to have only a simple majority to ram legislation through Congress. With eliminating the filibuster, Democrats can freely pass non-starter bills like adding seats to the federal bench, better known as “court packing” and giving Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood.

As a lawyer in the Congress in 2009, I advised on the $787 billion stimulus bill that didn’t garner a single Republican vote in the Senate. Former President Barack Obama touted the “shovel ready” infrastructure projects would get Americans back to work, only to state a year after its passage, “There is no such thing as shovel ready projects”. The stimulus law ended up becoming one of the Democrats’ biggest political liabilities in the 2010 mid-term elections, right behind Obamacare.

President Biden is meeting with the group of Senate Republicans this afternoon, but will he include their input in the next COVID relief bill? Failure to do so would be a fatal mistake. One that will immediately position him as a partisan who will go-at-it-alone just to eek out a victory, and one that will ‘poison the well’ with key Republicans he will need as Democrats Joe Manchin (WV), Mark Kelly (AZ) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) demonstrate independence from their Party bosses.

Will President Biden demonstrate he has the chops, like President Trump, to work with the opposing party and hammer out legislation or will he take the easy way out with procedural tools to shut out the minority? Only time will tell, but in his first 100 days President Biden would be wise to score a bi-partisan victory and COVID-19 relief may be the only legislative vehicle he has that gets him there.

You can follow me on:
Facebook: Amanda Makki for Congress
Instagram: amandamakki
Twitter: @amandamakki

Thank you!
Amanda Makki

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