[Whats in the damn bill? Bernie has a short answer: "This is
finally doing right by the American working class and having the
courage to stand up to big-money interests."] [[link removed]]

DEMOCRATS’ BIG BILL OFFERS SANDERS CHANCE TO DELIVER  
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Lauren Gambino
October 24, 2021
Guardian
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_ What's in the damn bill? Bernie has a short answer: "This is
finally doing right by the American working class and having the
courage to stand up to big-money interests." _

Bernie Sanders 2016 by photogism, licensed under CC BY 2.0

 

When making the case for progressive policy, the veteran leftwing
senator Bernie Sanders
[[link removed]] often cites
public opinion. “Poll after poll,” he’ll say, before running
through a list of ambitious initiatives that the “vast majority of
the American people want”, from lowering the cost of prescription
drug prices to expanding Medicare, establishing paid family and
medical leave and confronting the climate crisis.

Versions of these programs – initiatives once considered nothing
more than liberal pipe dreams – are at the heart of Joe Biden’s
sprawling domestic policy bill pending before Congress. But despite
the popularity of the specific proposals, the legislation has
a polling problem
[[link removed]]. Poll
[[link removed]] after
poll shows that most Americans have no idea what’s actually in the
bill.

Rankled, Sanders convened a live panel discussion on Wednesday
titled What’s in the Damn Bill?
[[link removed]]. To the tens of
thousands of viewers who joined the broadcast, Sanders described the
Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar spending package as a
once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild the American economy
in A fairer and more equitable way.

“This is not radical stuff,” he said. “This is finally doing
right by the American working class and having the courage to stand up
to big-money interests.”

This is not radical stuff. This is finally doing right by the American
working class
Bernie Sanders

After decades of furious speech-making from the political fringe, and
two popular but ultimately unsuccessful bids for the presidency, the
democratic socialist from Vermont is – against all the odds – the
closest he’s ever been to delivering on the policy ideas that have
defined his political career.

Whether Sanders succeeds in his quest for a legislative legacy could
determine the fate of Democrats
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midterm elections – and of Biden’s presidency.

“He has the most power and influence that he’s had at any point in
his political career,” said Faiz Shakir, his chief political
adviser. “He’s at the apex here. But as he’s acquired more
power, so, too, has he acquired more responsibility.”

As chair of the powerful Senate budget committee and a member of the
Democratic leadership, Sanders has been deeply involved in
negotiations over the size and scope of the spending package. If and
when an agreement is reached, he will oversee the drafting the
legislation, which Democrats plan to steer through Congress over the
unified opposition of Republicans.

In this new role, Sanders has embraced both compromise and teamwork
– that Democrats accused the independent senator of lacking during
his presidential run.

Shakir said Sanders’ approach to policymaking had changed because
the environment had changed. Whereas before Sanders was pushing
against the system, now he is at the center of the policy decisions,
working within a Democratic party that has embraced much of his
expansive platform.

“In many ways he’s the author of this,” Shakir said. “And
that’s one of the many reasons I think you see him rising to the
occasion, rolling up his sleeves and making sure he is putting in all
of his legislative efforts to get this across the finish line.”

Initially Sanders proposed a $6tn budget blueprint, then settled for a
framework that was nearly half that. Now he is working closely with
Democrats in Congress and at the White House to reach a deal even
smaller in scope that will satisfy the objections of the party’s
centrists without sacrificing progressive priorities.

Sanders knew his opening bid was unrealistic, given the dynamics of
the Senate. But he hoped it would widen the parameters of the debate
and ultimately what was possible. Progressives have repeatedly cited
their willingness to accept a $3.5tn plan, and continue to negotiate
downward, as proof of their commitment to dealing in good faith,
compared with the centrists in their party, who they argue have not
been forthcoming.

Sanders discusses Democrats’ plans at a news conference last
week. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

As Democrats scramble to cobble together a deal, it’s the holdout
senators Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of
Arizona, who hold effective veto power over which policies will
survive and which must be dropped. Their objections have potentially
imperiled plans for free community college, raising taxes on the
wealthy and a climate program that would help the US meet its
ambitious emissions goal.

But every concession made to accommodate them moves the bill further
and further from Sanders’ initial vision, leaving progressives
deeply worried that Democrats will squander what they view as their
best chance in decades to transform the American economy and confront
the climate crisis.

The California congressman Ro Khanna, who was among a group of
progressives summoned to the White House for an Oval Office meeting
this week, was optimistic that Democrats were close to a deal that
progressives could accept, if not celebrate.

“We’ve finally broken through,” he said. “And we will take the
win because it establishes the principle that investments in people
are needed in a democracy.”

Republicans, however, view the imprimatur of a self-described
socialist as a political gift.

Progressives are now heavyweights in the Democratic party / Gary
Gerstle
Read more

Unified in their opposition to the spending bill, they have warned
that the legislation is an attempt to fundamentally remake the
American government in the image of a European-style social democracy
while claiming the additional spending will stoke inflation and hurt
economic dynamics.

“This bill represents Bernie Sanders’ socialist dream,” the
Republican senator John Barrasso said during a press conference,
raising a 2,000-page draft of the Democrats’ spending package. “It
is a nightmare for American taxpayers.”

With no room for error, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Democrats.
To pass, the bill will require the support of every Democrat in the
Senate, a caucus that ranges the ideological spectrum from the
democratic socialist Sanders to the conservative centrist Manchin.

The senators have competing world views. Whereas Sanders believes the
bill has the potential to be “one of the most important pieces of
legislation since the New Deal”, Manchin has warned that the scale
of it risks “changing our whole society to an entitlement
mentality”.

Sanders has publicly and privately sought to persuade Manchin and
Sinema to support Biden’s agenda. It hasn’t always been
diplomatic.

Tensions escalated dramatically last week, when Sanders placed an
op-ed in Manchin’s home state newspaper detailing how an expansion
of the social safety net would help the people of West Virginia, which
has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country. In a
statement, Manchin fired back that “no op-ed from a self-declared
independent socialist” would sway him.

Behind closed doors, Manchin and Sanders continued to tangle, with the
West Virginian reportedly making clear
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he was comfortable passing nothing.

Publicly, the senators have signaled that they are making progress.
When they ran into each other outside the Capitol last week, Manchin
threw his arm around Sanders and asked reporters to take a picture of
them.

As they returned to their cars to leave, Manchin shouted: “Never
give up, Bernie.”

Sanders hardly needed the encouragement.

Sanders has become a ubiquitous presence on the Sunday political
talkshows. He traveled to Indiana and Iowa in an effort to drum up
support for the bill, intentionally visiting parts of the country that
voted for Donald Trump. When he’s not selling the budget bill,
he’s working to craft it, aides say.

Sanders successfully lobbied the White House to back a plan to extend
new dental, vision and hearing benefits to the tens of millions of
American seniors on Medicare, a measure initially left out of the
proposal. The senator’s healthcare push put him at odds with House
leadership, who would prefer to permanently strengthen the Affordable
Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, or to expand Medicaid services
to poor adults in mostly Republican-led states that refused to do so
under the healthcare law.

Biden said on Thursday that including all three benefits would be a
“reach” but suggested a voucher program for dental coverage was
possible. Though greatly pared back, it would nevertheless be a
victory for Sanders, who has long sought to make Medicare the
foundation for a national health insurance program, which he calls
Medicare for all.

As part of negotiations, Sanders has worked closely with the leaders
of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, especially the chairwoman,
Pramila Jayapal, the Washington congresswoman who has emerged as a
leader in negotiations over the president’s agenda.

In a showdown last month, House progressives threatened to derail a
vote on a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill championed by centrists
as a way to maintain leverage over the much larger spending bill.

The Senate had already passed the public works bill, with the support
of all 50 Democrats and 19 Republicans, so it fell to House
progressives to, in their parlance, “hold the line”. Sanders
offered his vocal support for the blockade, which Khanna, a deputy
whip of the progressive caucus, said was “critical” to keeping
progressives unified.

On the day of the promised vote, Biden ventured to Capitol Hill to
meet with the bitterly divided House Democrats. But instead of
rallying support for an immediate vote, the president effectively
agreed with progressives that the two pillars of his agenda were
inextricably linked. The vote was delayed and the infrastructure bill
remains stalled, bound up in the bigger battle over the spending
package.

The maneuver was hailed as a major tactical victory by progressive
activists, who have long lamented the tendency of liberal lawmakers to
cave to pressure from Democratic leaders during heated policy fights.

But Biden’s position frustrated a number of centrist Democrats,
particularly those from swing districts who had hoped the president
would sign the infrastructure bill into law, allowing them to start
campaigning on new funding for roads, bridges and expanded broadband.

Progressives, meanwhile, argue that a failure to deliver on their
campaign promises would also be politically perilous.

Anna Bahr, who served as Sanders’ national deputy campaign secretary
in 2020 and is the co-founder of the new consultancy firm Left Flank
Strategies, said the debate over Biden’s agenda had helped elevate
new progressive leaders. The effect has been a show of force by
progressives that she believes will motivate voters and candidates
next year.

“There’s a family in Congress of like-minded people – there’s
a voting bloc,” she said. “The possibility – the likelihood –
of moving on some of the issues that Sanders had for so many years
been the lonely voice on is absolutely inspiring for a lot of people,
especially young people.”

On Wednesday night, Sanders invited a panel of progressive leaders to
help him lay out the proposals in the Democrats’ bill. It was a
messaging mission, but the forum also provided an occasion to mark the
ascendancy of the progressive movement since Sanders first arrived in
Washington in 1991.

Introducing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders hailed the New York
congresswoman as “one of the outstanding, in my view, political
leaders in this country”.

Beaming on screen, Ocasio-Cortez thanked him for the introduction.
“That’s very kind coming from the OG leader.”

_Lauren Gambino is political correspondent for Guardian US, based in
Washington DC. Twitter @laurenegambino
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