Lacking Infrastructural Integrity
More than a dozen Republicans seemed determined to give the desperate president a victory.
It was shaping up to be one of Joe Biden’s worst weeks yet. Humiliated in Virginia and nearly so in New Jersey, Democrats woke up Wednesday morning reeling from rejection. Then came the news that the president’s approval rating had collapsed (with a good share of his own voters saying he’s done a “worse job” than expected and another two-thirds hoping he doesn’t run again). By all rights, Biden’s radical agenda was done — kaput. Until late Friday night, when — for reasons no one can fathom — 13 Republicans decided to give the sinking party a life raft.
To most people watching the evening unfold, it was baffling. After finally putting the Left on the run, more than a dozen Republicans seemed determined to give the desperate president a victory by saving his radical agenda. Just when it seemed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was on the verge of a stinging setback, the GOP came to her rescue — voting in favor of another bill America can’t afford: Biden’s $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill.
As late as Thursday, even Pelosi didn’t know if she had enough votes to put the legislation on the floor. The slow-burning feud between radicals and moderates had been threatening to tank the bill for weeks. Then, in a move that some are calling everything from betrayal to “political malpractice,” members of the GOP inexplicably decided to bail Pelosi out — opening the door to debate on Biden’s disastrous Build Back Better plan.
Inside the Republican Party, conservatives were furious. Not only was the bill awash in reckless environmental pork and “anti-white racism,” it also carved out some extreme new ground on gender and sexuality. Buried deep in the text, FRC warned in our score letter, were several instances where the Left tried to achieve one of the Equality Act’s goals — a total overhaul of our federal civil rights framework to mandate special SOGI privileges. On those grounds alone, Republicans should have voted no.
And yet, Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) fumed, “Only three days after voters rejected Biden’s failed policies in deep blue Virginia and New Jersey, 13 spineless ‘Republicans’ decided to tag-team with Democrats,” warning that the $3.5 trillion dollar “social” infrastructure plan will be on deck now that this fight is out of the way. “Pelosi didn’t have the votes in her party to pass this garbage,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) argued. “That 13 House Republicans provided the votes needed to pass this is absurd,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) agreed.
While the members in question — largely from deep blue states — are insisting the bill was about real infrastructure (roads, bridges, and broadband), others saw it as much more. “The infrastructure bill was but a chit, a chess piece, in forcing through passage of the larger, hotly partisan reconciliation legislation. Their fates were linked,” the Federalist’s Rachel Bovard wrote. “One would not pass without the other.” As recently as October, Pelosi herself vowed, “There ain’t gonna be no bipartisan [infrastructure] bill,” Pelosi vowed, “unless we have a reconciliation bill…”
Even if Republicans do support traditional infrastructure (and there’s plenty of proof that this was not that), is today really the right time to spend $1.2 trillion dollars on it? “The federal government already spends more than enough on infrastructure to meet our needs,” Philip Klein argues, “and the COVID-19 bailout money left many states awash in cash. Despite promises, only a small portion of the bill focuses on traditional infrastructure… and the legislation (soon to be law) will add $256 billion to deficits.”
Honestly, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said, we can’t afford it. “The $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure today is roughly 12 times the new spending on roads and bridges. So they’re selling it as roads and bridges, but the bill is 12 times bigger… We can’t responsibly be spending another trillion dollars.” Maybe, he conceded, if this were being offered “in exchange for the Democrats’ massive $3.5 trillion dollar reckless tax-and-spend-bill… I could understand the logic of doing the smaller bill. But it’s not what’s being offered in exchange. The Democrats have made it clear that they’re going to… take every penny of [this] spending, and then turn around and try to ram through their massive $3.5 trillion tax and spend bill on top of this — which means we’re looking at $5 trillion dollars in just these two bills.” It’s a trap, he warned.
Unfortunately, some Republicans weren’t listening. Now what’s at stake is a takeover of our health care, child care, education and a massive expansion of taxes, the welfare state, amnesty, abortion funding, and crippling federal mandates. This is the radical agenda the GOP helped facilitate — an agenda, Pelosi warns, that the House will feast on before Thanksgiving.
At least for now, not everyone on the Left is convinced that Biden’s sweeping socialist overhaul is the next best step. When even the New York Times is warning that Democrats “deny political reality at their own peril,” it’s obvious that at least some of the party’s apologists see the writing on the wall.
“Many in the president’s party point to Tuesday as proof that congressional Democrats need to stop their squabbling and clock some legislative wins ASAP by passing both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a robust version of the Build Back Better plan…” But, the editors continue, “Tuesday’s results are a sign that significant parts of the electorate are feeling leery of a sharp Leftward push in the party, including on priorities like Build Back Better… The concerns of more centrist Americans about a rush to spend taxpayer money, a rush to grow the government, should not be dismissed… Time to focus on — and pass — policies with broad support. Or risk getting run out of office.”
The odds of the Democrats heeding any part of that advice are slim. But if they do plow ahead on this reckless path, let’s hope Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have more resolve than Republicans just showed.
Originally published here.
A Mandate by Any Other Name Is Just as Bad
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful,” wrote George Orwell, “and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Sadly, Orwell’s comment is much too often true. And were he alive today, you have to wonder what he would say about President Biden’s efforts to require up to 100 million American workers to get a COVID vaccine. That’s because Biden is calling his vaccine proposal a “requirement.” Why? Well, “mandate” has such an oppressive sound. “Requirement” sounds more like a homework assignment than a demand that, under penalty of losing your job, you must have a very specific kind of medical treatment.
Thankfully, the federal courts are not being swayed by an artful language dodge. On Saturday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, after reviewing legal challenges to the mandate by Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah, said that the state petitions “give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate.” So, said the Court, the mandate cannot go forward.
In total, 26 states filed suit against the Biden mandate. The reason has less to do with the wisdom of getting vaccinated against COVID than the reality that there is no constitutional authority for the executive branch of the federal government to essentially eliminate the ability of states to have any say in the governance of their citizens.
Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) put it simply: The Biden mandate is “unconstitutional slop.” Sasse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, explained, “We’re not going to beat this awful virus with extreme partisanship or unconstitutional executive orders.”
The senator’s argument about the Constitution is vital. That wonderful document makes clear that the federal government has limited powers. That’s why the Constitution has an amendment, the Tenth, that says whatever isn’t delegated to Uncle Sam specifically belongs to the authority of the states and their citizens. It also includes a provision for its own amendment – its meaning is clear, so if we want to alter it, we can do so. But what we can’t do is force a written text into political elastic, twisting it into meanings it doesn’t contain.
So, what was Biden’s pretext for issuing a mandate that is obviously unconstitutional? The “emergency” created by COVID.
Emergency? Late last month, NBC News reported that “new cases have fallen 57 percent since early September.” Dr. Shaun Truelove of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “attributes the drop in cases to a combination of immunity from vaccination and people who have already had a COVID infection.” According to Truelove, “We think that’s happening because of the amount of immunity that’s built up in the population.” In a word, there’s no reason for panic. There is, contrary to the president’s claim, no emergency.
On Friday last week, FRC’s Joseph Backholm hosted legal scholar Roger Severino of the Ethics and Public Policy Center on “Washington Watch.” Severino noted that the president simply ordered the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue the mandate. The order to issue the mandate, said Severino, was “arbitrary and capricious and contrary,” an effort to “run around the regulatory process.” What’s worse, he observed, the Biden administration is “not going to listen to the American people (but) they may listen to a federal judge.”
There is another underlying danger to what Biden is trying to do with his vaccination mandate. It’s this: If any president can order the American people to do anything, we no longer need a Congress, a judiciary, or even laws. This kind of dictatorial behavior, even if intended well, imposes a grave danger to the liberty of the American people to live not as subjects but as citizens. Free men and women who can decide for themselves how they want to live — including what medications, vaccines, and treatments they receive.
As George Orwell argued, when government starts using language as a political tool, people need to beware. Good intentions are no excuse for damaging and dangerous policy.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
