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WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress are curbing their ambitions for President Biden’s economic agenda, and Jennifer Mount, the home health aide, worries she won’t get the raise, which should pay more than $3,000 in medical bills for blindness in one eye.
Edison Suasnavas, who came to the United States from Ecuador as a child, is concerned about the administration’s efforts to create a pathway to naturalization that he hopes will allow him to continue conducting molecular tests for cancer patients in Utah without fear of deportation.
And Amy Stelly wonders – thanks to Mr. Biden’s winning plans to invest in neighborhoods damaged by previous infrastructure projects. highways damaging communities of color – whether to continue breathe the smoke It’s from a highway in New Orleans that he says keeps his house vibrating all the time. He has a message for the president and Democrats trying to fit his expanding agenda into a dwindling legislative package.
“Come and live next to it,” said Miss Stelly. “You are experiencing this quality of life. While you argue, we suffer.”
Mr. Biden began his presidency with an expensive and far-reaching agenda to reshape the US economy. But under pressure from negotiations and Senate rules, he shelved a number of his most ambitious proposals, some indefinitely.
Upgrade efforts are blocked. federal minimum wage and create a path to citizenship It has reduced investment in the removal of Lead pipes for undocumented immigrants and other efforts to help communities of color. Now, when you try to make president safe vote from moderates In his party, he’s initially slashing $3.5 trillion in tax cuts and spending programs to a package that could be $2 trillion or less.
It’s still an enormous spending package, one that Mr. Biden claims could change the landscape of the economy. But many Americans who trusted in his promises to reshape their jobs and lives had to hope that the programs they trusted would survive the disruption; otherwise, they are likely to wait years, perhaps decades, for another window of opportunity in Washington.
“The problem right now is that this train may be the last train to leave the station for a long time,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard Kennedy School economist and chief economic adviser to President Barack Obama. “It may be five, 10, 20 years before many of these problems are given another chance.”
Mr. Furman and other former Obama administration officials have seen firsthand how quickly a presidential agenda can shrink and how presidential and congressional decisions can leave campaign priorities unaddressed for years. In the early years of his presidency, Mr. Obama prioritized an economic stimulus package and the creation of the Affordable Care Act over sweeping immigration and climate legislation.
Stimulant and health care passed. The other two did not.
A similar fate may befall Mr Biden’s plans for home care workers, paid leave, childcare subsidies, free kindergarten and community college, investments in racial equality, and, once again, immigration and climate change.
John Podesta, a former senior aide to Obama and President Bill Clinton, said that if Mr. Biden can push a compromise bill with massive investments in emissions reductions, he “has an engine he’s working with” to tackle climate change. . “If he doesn’t get that, then I think, you know, we’re really in some kind of soup, facing a huge crisis.”
Republicans have criticized spending and tax increases to help finance it, arguing that the Democratic package will hurt the economy. Democrats “have an insatiable appetite to raise taxes and spend more money,” Louisiana Republican Representative Steve Scalise said on Fox News Sunday this week. “It kills things.”
Threats from Republican crooks thwarted Mr. Biden’s gun and voting rights bill plans.
For now, though, the president’s biggest problem is, own party. It is negotiating with progressives and moderates over the size of the larger tax and spending package. Centrists such as West Virginia Senators Joe Manchin III and Kyrsten Cinema Arizona has pressed for the price tag to drop below $2 trillion. Mr. Manchin said he wanted to limit the availability of some programs to low and middle income earners. Progressive groups they are trying to ensure that their preferred plans are not completely deducted from the bill.
Congress has proposed to invest $190 billion in home health care, less than half the amount Mr. Biden originally wanted, for example. If the price tag continues to drop, Democrats will almost certainly have to choose between two simultaneous goals: expanding access to older Americans who need caregivers or raising the wages of these workers, who are disproportionately composed of women of color.
Another proposal included in Mr. Biden’s original infrastructure bill was a $20 billion investment. infrastructure that breaks up communities of color, but the fund was reduced to $1 billion after a compromise with Republican senators.
Ms Stelly considered funds as well as the president’s comprehensive proposals to address climate change – which could happen. collapsed to appease centrist Democrats – would eventually result in elected officials addressing highway emissions that filled his lungs and darkened his home windows.
An urban designer, Miss Stelly has limited her expectations ever since. He said he hopes the funding will be enough to publish at least another study about the highway claiming dozens of Black-owned businesses and the once-thriving Treme neighborhood.
Some Democrats are eager to get as much into the law as they can, for fear of losing the House, the Senate, or both in next year’s midterm elections. Mr. Podesta urged lawmakers to view the package as a chance to avert those losses by giving the Democratic incumbents a series of popular programs to keep up, while also giving the president policy victories that could define his legacy.
Mr Biden has supported some of his policies as ways to reverse racial inequalities in the economy and lift families struggling in the coronavirus pandemic out of poverty.
Ms. Mount, who immigrated to the United States from Trinidad and Tobago, said she appreciated her job of helping elderly Americans and people with disabilities eat, bathe and help them in their homes. But the salary he receives for his long hours – sometimes working 50 hours a week for $400 – makes it virtually impossible to keep track of payments for basic necessities.
He had hoped that Mr. Biden’s plan to raise the minimum wage or salaries for home health care workers would mean he would no longer have to choose between electricity bills and medical expenses. He said the treatment cured his blindness, but without a salary increase for his field, he was more convinced that he would work for the rest of his life.
“I have to make a choice: Should I go to the grocery store or pay my mortgage? Am I paying my water bill or am I paying my electricity bill?” said Miss Mount, who lives in Philadelphia. “However, retirement looks BLEAK in all caps. What do I have there for retirement?”
Mr. Biden was originally offered two years of free community collegeMs. Mount, 64, was encouraged by the future opportunities of her six grandchildren in the United States. But he fears the effort may also be interrupted.
“This is politics from above,” he said. “Sometimes, they always seem disconnected.”
Some of the measures Democrats had long promised to voters, including a minimum wage increase and a plan to offer citizenship to immigrants, went against Senate rules that dictated what policies the administration should include in bills that used a proprietary process to circumvent the theft. United States as a child.
When Senate rejects parliamentary strategymade Mr. Suasnavas, who has lived in the United States since the age of 13, consider the possibility of deportation; He would have to leave behind his job as a medical technologist and his 6-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.
“We hoped that politicians in Washington – Democrats and Republicans – would see not only the economic impact we can bring to the country, but also the people who still have families,” said Mr. Suasnavas, 35. Hearts have been broken so many times it feels like another wound on your skin.”
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