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April 19, 2021

The Refugee Cap Debate Shows the Left's Role in the Biden Coalition

Also, rolling back the corporate tax increase

 

A refugee camp in Athens, Greece. (Dimitris Lampropoulos/NurPhoto via
AP)

The Chief

**** The news came out on Friday, though it was lingering for weeks.
Joe Biden had dragged his feet

on simply signing a piece of paper that his administration already fully
agreed to and briefed Congress on, which would raise the refugee cap for
the current fiscal year from 15,000 to 62,500. The delay had already
cost thousands of refugees the opportunity to resettle in the United
States, as paperwork went out of date and the protracted screening
process needed to start over. But on Friday, news leaked that the number
would stay at 15,000. (This was purely an executive decision, as the
mid-year change would be done under an emergency declaration.)

This was an appalling decision. Refugees suffering under extremely
vulnerable, miserable conditions would be harmed for months if not
years, seemingly because there was too much fearmongering of the
completely separate situation on the border. As Reva Dhingra writes for
us today, it's also a failure of global leadership
.
There's not a single point of congruence between the two, and refugee
resettlement has traditionally been fully bipartisan. But the political
team was running the show, and frightened by, I don't know, images of
people of color walking off a plane in the U.S.

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**** Mind you, the Biden team hadn't even been moving to
resettle enough refugees to meet that cap; we were on pace for the
lowest number of admittances since the program began. But the
confirmation that the number would not be increased spurred significant
pushback. Members of Congress, advocates, just about everyone not named
Stephen Miller was upset. (Literally; Miller was quoted in several
articles

about this.)

If this were the Clinton administration, howling on the left would be
the desired response. If this were the Obama administration, there might
be an attempt to response the left, but in a way that suggested that
whatever the decision made that angered them was actually righteous and
just. But this is the Biden administration, where the left is a part of
the governing coalition. That doesn't mean that they get what they
want unilaterally, but it means they are listened to. And sometimes,
that listening leads to a change in policy.

In this case, White House Press Secretary Jan Psaki issued a statement

that began "The President's directive today has been the subject of
some confusion." She cited the poor condition of the refugee admissions
program after Trump and the burdens on the Office of Refugee
Resettlement, which places unaccompanied minor children from the border,
to justify the prior announcement. But there was a final line, promising
that "we expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for
the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15."

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That would only leave four and a half months to ramp up resettlement,
but Biden has already announced that the Fiscal Year 2022 cap (starting
in October) would be 125,000, nearly ten times as much as the current
number. Increasing the cap mid-year would help ramp up that
infrastructure to allow for the restored figures; that's why going to
62,500 mid-year was desirable.

Biden was really unable to defend the policy in remarks over the weekend
.
"The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that
ended up on the border with young people," and "we couldn't do two
things at once." But this really isn't true. While it's the same
office, the vetting overseas is a separate process and has already been
completed on 35,000 refugees. The flights are ready to go. If two things
at once were impossible, there wouldn't be a vow to raise the number.

The truth is that there was no defense. They just didn't want to allow
entry to immigrants into the country in the midst of a heavily demonized
"border crisis" (it's not a crisis) happening simultaneously. And
lawmakers and activists in the coalition played their role by loudly
saying it was unacceptable. That didn't lead to the agreed-to 62,500
number getting restored-I imagine the final number will be somewhere
below that-but it will likely save tens of thousands of people from
these refugee camps.

There is an ongoing dialogue within the Democratic Party, for the first
time in two generations. There's a back and forth. It's not going to
lead to a progressive nirvana, but it offers a chance at better policy.

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Speaking of Not Getting Everything

Early on, there was a strain of logic on the Biden infrastructure
package suggesting that Democrats and Republicans could come together
and find common ground on elements of the package, and then the rest
could be reserved for a more one-sided reconciliation bill. Sen. Chris
Coons (D-DE) brought that up again yesterday
,
and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) provided the blueprint for it, with an $800
billion bill that would focus on "core infrastructure."

A smaller package is fine if it's part of a process that eventually
gets to something bigger. Coons and Cornyn seemed to be talking about
two different things, however; Cornyn thinks the compromise is the whole
package, while Coons is repeating that early strategy, with the
bipartisan bill followed by reconciliation from Democrats only (or
multiple reconciliations, though this is not clear
).
But once you bifurcate the process like this, decisions made for the
smaller bill affect the larger one. That's at play with the rollback
of the corporate tax nominal rate, which now appears likely to go to 25
percent

instead of 28 percent.   

This was already a compromise, as restoring the full corporate tax rate
would go to 35 percent. I don't really think it's that important to
offset infrastructure investment with revenue, so this doesn't bother
me too much. But if some Senate Democrats insist on "paying for" the
package, you've just taken away about $500 billion in pay-fors. And
raising the corporate tax by a penny won't bring in Republican
support. Democrats are negotiating with themselves here.

Restoring tax fairness is going to be excruciating. It's easy to
ratchet down and hard to ratchet back up. That's how we have gutted
the tax base over the past 40 years.

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What Day of Biden's Presidency Is It?

Day 87.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* Half of all adults have received at least one COVID vaccine shot
.
I'm getting shot #2 today. (CNBC)

* The Johnson & Johnson shot will likely return on Friday

with a warning label about the remote potential of blood clots. (New
York Magazine)

* McDonald's having to pay $50 for job interviews

is a rare instance of power for workers who have none. It should be
celebrated. (Business Insider)

* Iran sounds optimistic

about nuclear talks. (Associated Press)

* Medicaid work requirements in Texas are dead, as the Biden
administration rescinds support
.
(Washington Post)

* Here's a Big Media follow-up

to our story

on the Shuttered Venue Operator Grants for music clubs and museums
failing to provide a penny of relief so far. (Wall Street Journal)

* Biden breaks limits on fetal tissue research
.
(New York Times)

* Rare earth minerals are part of the restoration of domestic supply
chains
.
(CNBC)

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