A Vision of Division
This so-called “middle of the road” Democrat has managed to launch an agenda that almost none of the country supports.
Sir Isaac Newton wasn’t thinking about politics when he stumbled on the laws of motion. But physics, like politics, is about nature. And right now, Americans are responding to the liberal whiplash in a way that even science could predict: For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Joe Biden is pushing — and America is pushing back.
The voters who elected Barack Obama’s vice president, expecting a moderate, have had 15 days to wonder what hit them. After a blizzard of executive orders that rivaled this week’s Nor'easter, a good portion of the country is still shellshocked. On almost every issue — whether it’s open borders, Victor Davis Hansen writes, blanket amnesties, radical transgenderism, the Keystone pipeline, or his team of hard-Left idealogues — this so-called “middle of the road” Democrat has managed to launch an agenda that almost none of the country supports.
“When Biden made a Faustian bargain with the far-Left Democratic wing of Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to win the election,” Hansen argues, “he took on the commitment to absorb some of their [manifesto] and to appoint their ideologues.” Now, incredibly, after a year and a half of pretending these weren’t his values, the president seems almost as sincere as they are! In just two weeks, “Biden is now unapologetically leading the most radical Left-wing movement in the nation’s history.” But he’s also sparked one heck of a counter-movement in the process.
Conservatives, who are sick of playing the Left’s January 6th shame game, have started speaking out even louder. When Biden opened the dam to overseas abortion funding, Republicans fought back, flooding the House and Senate floors with more than 20 pro-life bills in response. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), one of the dozen members who joined a special order Wednesday night, understands that under Joe Biden, her party will have to work even harder. But, she insisted, “We must stand up for the unborn who cannot stand up for themselves. I am hopeful that the next generation will fight for life, and I am proud to lead this fight here in Congress.”
But Biden’s war on normalcy is also emboldening some otherwise skittish Republicans. Now that they know the cancel culture will come for them no matter what, maybe more leaders feel freer to tackle the most outrageous parts of the president’s plan — things like: forcing our daughters to shower with biological boys, ordering federal buildings to let men into our wives’ bathrooms, and erasing the future of millions of athletes so that Biden can realize his dream of being “the most pro-transgender president” in history.
Wednesday, the uproar that’s been building in the states finally spilled into the Senate, where Biden’s pick for Education secretary, Miguel Cardona, locked horns with Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — who was dumbfounded over the administration’s wildly unpopular obliteration of girls’ sports. The doctor asked if Cardona thought allowing biological boys to compete in girls’ sports was “fair.” “I think it is appropriate,” he replied. “It’s the legal responsibility of schools to provide opportunities for students to participate in activities and this includes students who are transgender.” What did Cardona think, Paul pressed, about the teenage boys stealing titles and scholarships away from girls in Connecticut?
“Does it bother you,” Senator Paul asked, “that like the top 20 percent of boys running in track meets beat all of the girls in the state, that… it would… completely destroy girls’ athletics, that girls are being pushed out? They don’t make the finals in the state meet, they don’t get college scholarships, that it’s really detrimental to girls’ sports. Do you worry about having boys run in girls’ track meets?”
“I recognize and appreciate the concerns,” Biden’s nominee replied, “and the frustrations that are expressed. As commissioner of education, I have had conversations with families who have felt the way you just described it, and families of students who are transgender.” Paul asked him to answer the question — was it fair? Cardona went back to his talking points. “I believe schools should offer the opportunity for students to engage in extracurricular activities, even if they’re transgender. I think that’s their right.”
So you think it’s their “right,” Paul went on, to pursue a policy that ends girls’ sports? Frankly, the senator fired back, “I think most people in the country think that’s bizarre — that is just completely bizarre and unfair that people — and you’re going to run the Department of Education — you’ve got no problem with it. That concerns me, and I think it’s this kind of thing [that’s going to] lead to really just the vast majority of America just wondering, ‘Who are these people that think it’s okay? What planet are you from?’ …I wonder where feminists are on this?” Paul wondered. “I wonder where the people who supported women’s sports are on this. I mean are we all gonna be okay with hulking six-foot-four guys wrestling against girls?”
Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kans.) certainly isn’t. He spoke up and demanded alternatives to the Biden order. Cardona refused to offer one. This just shows, Paul said, what “a real problem we have — and [what] a disconnect [this administration has] with Middle America. I even think most Democrats don’t believe girls should run in a boys’ track meet.” And he’s right. They don’t. In the battleground states, the opposition to mixed-gender sports is overwhelming — as high as 75 percent. Nationally, it’s just as unpopular. Rasmussen could only find 28 percent of American adults who agree with Cardona’s position. And in Hawaii, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee, voters have a chance to do something about it. Email your state legislature and tell them to support the movement to protect girls from the Biden administration.
“Will there be a reaction to this extremism?” Victor Davis Hanson asked. If these last two weeks are an indication, it has only just begun.
Originally published here.
Battle of the Bulging Budgets
“Go big!” says Joe Biden on COVID relief. Or is it “Go broke?” Americans are about to find out. In the meantime, the Wall Street Journal warns, this isn’t about the pandemic at all. It’s about turning a big crisis into even bigger government.
Biden doesn’t want to find compromise, the WSJ warns. He wants to create new programs that will plague us long after the virus. “He was cordial,” Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told me after his meeting at the White House. “He was polite.” But at the end of the day, Rounds sighed, the president “didn’t [back] down from any of his [plans].” And those plans, Republicans worry, could spell disaster for the future of this country. “It might make this president the first one to see $30 trillion dollars in U.S. debt. That’s trillion with a ‘T,’” Rounds emphasized. “And it’s not going down from there.”
The group of 10 Republicans made the short trip to the White House in hopes of finding some common ground, maybe even talking the president down on his price. At $600 billion dollars, the GOP package is a far cry from the gluttonous $1.9 trillion dollar package Biden would throw at the states, public schools, food stamps, a 100,000-man health corps, people in the country illegally. Both parties want stimulus checks, but under Biden’s plan, “two-earner couples with lots of children making up to $300,000 a year can get Biden checks, as can college students, spouses who are illegal aliens, and other adult dependents excluded from previous rounds of checks.”
Senator Rounds thinks the Left has lost sight of who they should actually be helping. “I shared with them that as a member of the United States Senate, I was very surprised when I got home to find out that because of my adjusted gross income, I qualified for a stimulus check! … And I don’t think that’s what most Americans thought was someone with the salary of a United States senator should somehow then be eligible for a stimulus check.”
Another major difference between the Biden proposal and the GOP counter-offer is the aid for the states and big cities. “The president wants $350 billion, Republicans none. The administration would reward big-spending blue states by pushing much of the aid through Medicaid with a formula that gives states that spend more per capita on the program a bigger slice of the aid.” America shouldn’t have to bail out blue states that have mishandled the crisis and shut down their economies. What incentive would there be for state leaders to open businesses back up if the government’s going to reward them for their lockdowns? None.
Like a lot of Americans, Senator Rounds and I were both on board with the Paycheck Protection Program that helped to keep the U.S. economy going during the worst wave of the virus. But at some point, we have to make the states responsible for the policies they’re putting in place. Our government can’t bear the weight of these mismanaged states forever.
What’s worse, Senator Rounds pointed out, America is on track for four-percent growth in the economy this year. “That’s a pretty good growth cycle.” It shouldn’t take $1.9 trillion, experts say, to fill a “$400-$800 billion dollar hole.” Besides, Rounds said, “most of the $900 billion we just passed in December — the vast majority of it hasn’t even hit the economy yet.” So why are we racing to spend trillions of dollars that might not even be used? It’s not like Democrats will put the money back, the senator warned. They’ll just turn it into a multi-billion dollar slush fund.
“Let me put this $1.9 trillion dollars into perspective,” he said. “If you look at what Congress normally votes on for the defense budget and what we call the nondefense discretionary — which [operates] the rest of the traditional part of government — we would spend perhaps $1.4 trillion dollars in a year. This supplemental is $1.9 trillion — a half a trillion dollars or more [than we spend to run the government] just for pandemic relief!”
It was a good step to see Biden at least agree to meet with Republicans. But the real test will be if he listens to them. “I think part of this,” Senator Rounds said, not optimistically, “is an exercise in force.” They want to remind us they won the presidency and the majorities Congress. But Barack Obama tried that in 2009 with Obamacare, and he learned just how far a “show of force” could get him in the 2010 elections. If this administration doesn’t learn from history, they will almost certainly be next.
Originally published here.
Fencing out Freedom?
What does a 10-foot barricade around the Capitol communicate to the world? Wednesday night on our Pray Vote Stand broadcast, Congressman Ken Buck (R-Colo.) joined me to talk about the history of democracy’s greatest building and what walling off the public would say about America. Later, Dr. Jim Garlow joined me to pray over the dangerous times our nation is facing — and unpack what this fast erosion of freedom means for the church. Don’t miss either conversation, available on demand below.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
