Politics
Opinion | The Political Weapon Biden Didn’t Deploy – POLITICO
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Perhaps the most surprising element of President Joe Biden’s first presidential speech on Thursday night was what it did not include.
A day after the passage of the most far-reaching domestic piece of legislation in decades, Biden spent only the last few minutes in touting his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The lion’s share of his talk was a detailed account of the effort to contain and control the coronavirus pandemic. Apart from a passing reference to the “denial” and “silence” of his unnamed predecessor, politics was not on the agenda.
There may well have been good reason for that decision. His first prime-time speech as president called for a message of unity—the same message he had sounded during his campaign and in his Inaugural. No mention of the unanimous opposition of Republicans to his plan; no attempt to draw partisan lines. The selling of his Rescue Plan is expected to begin any time, but Biden clearly decided it could wait a day or two.
Yet there is no doubt that the political implications of his plan have the potential to be nothing less than radical.
It was 11 years ago, almost to the day, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Obamacare, “we have to pass the bill so that you can know what’s in it.” That notion, which seemed borrowed from the Queen of Hearts’ absurdist “Sentence first! Verdict afterwards!” approach in Alice in Wonderland, turns out to have been even more applicable to this week’s American Rescue Act.
It was after the bill’s approval by the Senate that we learned the full dimensions of the most audaciously ambitious social welfare legislation since the New Deal. Most tellingly, the congressional Republicans, who had voted unanimously against it out of force of habit, never bothered to train the full fury of their fire at a series of provisions that took the nation several steps down the road to social democracy.
There’s the tax credit for children that in effect provides thousands of dollars a year for each child—an idea that’s been debated since Daniel Moynihan proposed it as a member of the Nixon administration. There’s the significant expansion of subsidies to buy into health care, along with months’ worth of free access to health insurance for those who’ve lost their jobs and health insurance—not “socialized medicine,” but a significant step toward more public underwriting of health care. And there’s an $86 billion commitment to protect the pensions of a million retirees whose multi-employer plans were in danger of insolvency—without even a pretense that this is linked to the Covid pandemic. It’s the kind of bailout you might expect in a nation where organized labor is a significant share of the workforce. Now, in a United States where unions represent barely 6 percent of the private sector labor force, that protection is law.
From a policy perspective, the key question is whether these and other provisions lead to a robust economy or one eroded by a spike in inflation. From a political perspective, the potential impact of the rescue plan is hard to overstate; what it represents is the possibility that the Democratic Party has found a tool to reconnect it to a working and middle class whose loyalty has been threatened for well over half a century.
There are a host of centrifugal forces pulling at the Democratic Party coalition: In the early 1960s, clashes over housing, jobs, schools, crime and welfare divided Black and white working-class voters. Cities like Berkeley and Seattle repealed fair housing laws, and in 1964—the high-water mark of postwar Democratic Party strength—voters in California overwhelmingly banned such laws. By 1968, George Wallace’s campaign for president was striking chords beyond the South. The fraying of the New Deal coalition was very much on the mind of Robert F. Kennedy, whose presidential campaign was based on holding it together. In his last weeks, he began talking about an issue he believed had broad appeal: specifically, how many of the wealthiest Americans avoided paying a fair share of taxes. By the end of 1968, divisions over the war in Vietnam, deadly riots in the cities and upheaval on college campuses reduced the Democratic share of the presidential vote from 60 percent in 1964 to 43 percent; Richard Nixon and George Wallace divided the rest.
Little more than a decade later, the twin demons of recession across the industrial heartland and double-digit inflation helped turn millions of voters into “Reagan Democrats,” leading to two landslide victories for the Gipper and 12 consecutive years of GOP presidencies. All through the 1980s, Democrats and their intellectual allies tried to grapple with the fact that voters seemed to prefer Democratic policies (on health care, education, taxes), but voted, at least at the presidential level for Republicans. (I have a vivid memory of House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt assuring a group of journalists that once the American people saw his party’s proposals for lower drug prices and access to college, they would return to the fold.)
It took “a different kind of Democrat” (as Bill Clinton defined himself) to win back, at least temporarily, those defecting Democrats by breaking with his party’s orthodoxies on crime and welfare, and by pledging that “the era of Big Government is over.” And it took an emerging demographic sea change that yielded an increasingly nonwhite electorate, and a more liberal cohort of college-educated whites, to outweigh (at least in popular vote terms), the increasingly Republican tilt of less-educated whites and to put Barack Obama in the White House.
But both Clinton and Obama suffered severe political damage in their first midterms from the fact that their principal battles—for deficit-cutting tax hikes on the part of Clinton, and from a stimulus and a health care plan from Obama—had failed to deliver tangible success. While both were reelected, those midterm failures had severe consequences that endure; in particular, 2010 produced a GOP takeover at the state level that now threatens severe voting limits across the country.
With the American Rescue Plan, Democrats are offering something very different: a package that is in a key sense a throwback to its roots first planted in the days of Andrew Jackson. It is an unapologetic assertion of the power of government to redress a set of grievances without any assertion of identity politics; while the stark facts of the pandemic mean that it has hit with special force in Black and brown communities, the remedial power of government is directed to the victims defined by circumstance, not color.
The political potential here is impressive. Consider a 2022 midterm where the future of the now-temporary child tax credits is on the line, and where every Republican House and Senate incumbent will have to explain to the electorate why they voted against them. Consider the votes of tens of thousands of small-business owners—the entrepreneurial heart of what Republicans rhetorically celebrate—whose enterprises survived because of the law enacted with a clear partisan split. Imagine a Republican arguing that only a small fraction of the law addressed the costs of the pandemic, when there are countless parents of school-age children, restaurant workers, retail shop owners, hotel clerks, freelance consultants, who know exactly what happened to their lives when Covid struck.
This is a possibility that Republicans simply may not have imagined, given their midterm successes in running against the initiatives of the past two Democratic presidents, and inflicting on Clinton and Obama successive political catastrophes.
This time, the benefits of the new law are easy to grasp, and will be—literally—in the hands of Americans within weeks. The scope is broad enough to encompass both the poor and large elements of the middle class, which is why it now enjoys a level of support almost unimaginable for a law passed along such partisan lines. There is a hint that an outbreak of public happiness may be about to begin; when American Airlines tells its workers to “tear up those furlough notices!”, it portends the chance of celebration with every reopened restaurant, with every eviction notice burned. More broadly, it appears to contain provisions that leapfrog a dilemma that has plagued Democratic social programs in the past: When they are perceived as helping one class of voters, they meet with a powerful backlash, (often one infused by racial resentment). When a program reaches broadly—Social Security, Medicare and, increasingly, the Affordable Care Act—it becomes politically potent.
Potential is not prediction. There are plenty of ways that 2022 could be another Democratic disaster; perhaps inflation will accelerate, or the looming issues of an overwhelmed border and rising crime may override good economic news, or the Republican efforts to limit the vote in state after state will prove too formidable.
But what does seem clear is that, unlike past measures that required huge congressional majorities, a radical change in the social fabric of the United States has become a reality—and with it, an opportunity for the Democratic Party no one could have imagined 50 days ago.
Liz Truss has endorsed Donald Trump to win this year’s US presidential election, saying the “world was safer” when he was in the White House.
The former prime minister said the world was “on the cusp of very, very serious conflict” and needed “a strong America more than ever”.
Her comments came as the first of Mr Trump’s four criminal trials began.
Ms Truss was speaking ahead of the publication of her book – her account of her time in Number 10.
Her brief stint in power made her the shortest-serving prime minister in Britain’s history.
The former PM, who recently spoke at a pro-Trump conference in the US, said the West’s “opponents feared the Trump presidency more” than the Democrats under Joe Biden.
Speaking to the BBC, Ms Truss said Mr Trump was more aggressive towards Iran and China. She also praised Mr Trump’s support for Ukraine, approving the sale of anti-tank Javelin missiles, despite his Republican allies’ recent attempts to block military aid to the country.
“I’m not saying that I agree with absolutely everything he’s ever said,” she said.
But she added: “I do agree that under Donald Trump when he was president of the United States, the world was safer.
“I want to work with fellow conservatives to take on what I believe is a real threat of Western society and civilization being undermined by left-wing extreme ideas.”
This includes supporting Nigel Farage “becoming an MP” if he were to re-join the Conservative party, she told the BBC.
Speaking to the Newscast podcast, Ms Truss said the founder of the political parties Ukip and Reform UK “believes in conservative values – I think it’s a shame he’s not in the Conservative Party”.
In her interview, Ms Truss argued she was forced out of office after 49 days by powerful establishment figures.
Ms Truss stood down in October 2022, after Tory MPs revolted against her when a series of U-turns on her economic plan sapped her authority.
She denied her fall from office was humiliating, saying: “It was difficult. Absolutely. Was it humiliating? I wouldn’t use that word actually.”
She said she had gone into the job with the intention of changing things, and hadn’t succeeded.
She added: “But is that really worse than not trying in the first place? Is it worse than being dishonest and claiming I was going to try and do things and then not do them? Is it worse than being in Number 10 and not doing anything? I don’t think so personally, which maybe I think differently from other people.”
Read more about Liz Truss
Economic warnings
Ms Truss said her and Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax-cutting plan to promote growth, was “undermined by organisations” like the Bank of England and the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR).
Civil servants had also failed to warn her “the UK economy was uniquely exposed” to so-called Liability Driven Investments (LDIs) – which invest in government bonds because they are usually so stable.
The Bank of England was forced to start buying back government bonds after these LDIs came close to collapse – which in turn could have forced them to rush to sell other assets.
She said: “I have spent many months getting the blame, people saying it’s all my fault, people criticising me, trashing me.
“Yet the Bank of England had a very, very significant role in what happened. The Office of Budget Responsibility had a very significant role in what happened.
“I haven’t seen them get anything like the level of scrutiny or questions that I’ve got.”
Challenged on whether she was casting about for someone to blame, she said, “I’m not saying I’m perfect”, but argued that she didn’t have the whole picture when making decisions.
A Bank of England spokesperson said: “The Bank has already set out its response to the LDI crisis in full, including to Parliament, and has nothing more to add.”
Ms Truss argued for the removal of institutions such as the OBR, and for Andrew Bailey stepping down as the governor of the Bank of England.
Divesting of power from democratically elected officials has left minsters “impotent”, Ms Truss said, adding: “Politicians have ended up having responsibility without power, and quangocrats have ended up having power without responsibility and more job security – as I found out.”
Ms Truss’s prognosis is a complete overhaul of the political system, including “abolishing quite a lot of things”.
International organisation like the United Nations (UN), which she says no longer has “a purpose”, are also on the chopping block.
“The UN Security Council as it’s currently constituted with both China and Russia on is not keeping the world safe.
“At present, it has been very ineffective at dealing with international situations, in fact, positively damaging.”
And she said that the Conservative party was currently split “between those people like me, who think we need fundamental institutional change in Britain, that our institutions have been captured by leftist ideas” and others “not prepared to go that far”.
She said: “We need a sufficient number of MPs who understand what the problem is, and are prepared to vote to abolish the quangos.”
The full interview is available on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds.
There has been much discussion about South Africa’s landmark case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, accusing it of committing the crime of genocide. When it comes to tangible action, this case has been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise lackluster response from states around the world to the Israeli slaughter of the Palestinian people.
One of the lesser known parts of this story in Western public discourse generally, but more pertinently within activist spaces, is that the US empire is threatening to punish South Africa for bringing this much needed case against Israel.
Republican Representative John James and Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz introduced in early February the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act in the United States House of Representatives. This legislation would require a full review of the relationship between the US and South Africa on the baseless and spurious grounds that South Africa is supporting “terrorism”.
South African International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor recently said on a visit to Turkey: “In terms of responses, unfortunately, there are some legislators in the United States of America that have taken a very negative position against my country.”
Although this story has received little attention and many pro-Palestinian activists in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom and elsewhere have not even heard about it, it is part of the discourse in activist and scholarly circles in South Africa. Among other things, people are concerned about what these threats will mean to their economic wellbeing; funding for the arts; scholarly, community, social and cultural projects and initiatives; and the sustainability of funding models for nongovernmental organisations since many of these are economically dependent on various US institutions.
It is incumbent on activists across the world, but especially in the US, to speak up against the US threat to punish South Africa and demand that their government does not pursue such a path. This should become a protest demand along with the other demands that activists are currently making. South Africa has put its neck on the line for the Palestinian cause, and the least Palestinian supporters can do is to support South Africa against the threats of US imperialism in this moment.
It is also incumbent on middle powers across the world to begin forming a coalition to protect not just South Africa today but also themselves from US imperial power.
It is clear to any honest observer that without direct action from states to isolate the Israeli state economically and politically and place pressure on it legally, it will not depart from the path of genocide – not now, not in the future.
When pressed on the necessity of taking this course of action, one of the common off-the-record responses activists, policy analysts and scholars receive from government officials around the world, including South Africa, is: “We want to pursue more meaningful direct action to help the Palestinian people, but we cannot withstand a punishing reaction from the US.”
I do not see this response as a form of diversion, nor do I consider it cowardly. Government officials cannot so easily dismiss the economic hardships their country would face from a harsh US reaction.
But it is not good enough to end the conversation with this response. Since the US empire is a major obstacle to Palestinian rights, freedom, liberation and sovereignty as well as the sovereignty of middle powers, then middle power states have both a duty and a self-interest to plan and follow a path of action that deals with this problem.
Obviously, the best path forward is for countries around the world to become less dependent on US and Western imperial economic power. Although there are efforts to accomplish this goal, such as BRICS, it remains a long way from changing global economic structures. The Palestinian people cannot afford to wait this long.
Another more immediate path is to make it difficult for the US to respond harshly to states that cut off all diplomatic and economic ties to the Israeli state. The principle of this more immediate path is simple: There is strength and safety in numbers.
If a coalition of middle powers forms and together announces their severing of ties with Israel, then it will be more difficult for the US to punish them all because it would become too costly for the US itself to do so.
What might such a coalition look like? It can start with countries like South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, Norway, Ireland and others. Countries that already don’t claim any diplomatic and economic relations with Israel – such as Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and others – would also join the coalition to offer support and protection from the US. Lesser powers can also join when this momentum builds, adding pressure and making it virtually impossible for the US to target all of them.
Momentum can build, and countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium and others that understand that this is the right course of action but are either too cowardly or too unwilling to pursue it for reasons of economic self-interest and their role in the US imperial alliance might be pressured to join, even if partially, by imposing a full two-way arms embargo on Israel.
None of this will be easy. But it is necessary, and it can work. And here I think that activists should begin to speak to their government’s self-interest to pressure them towards forming such a coalition. Governments will only move so much on the basis of a “name and shame” strategy and electoral politics calculations. State self-interest has to also be addressed; activists, policy analysts and scholars can convince their governments that it is in their best interest to follow this policy path.
Challenging the US empire on the question of Palestine will have tremendous consequences for building a more democratic world order. Although some of the states listed above believe that by simply ignoring the plight of the Palestinian people, they can avoid clashing with the US, this is short-term thinking for two reasons.
First, just because they can avoid the wrath of the US on the question of Palestine does not mean that they will not face it on another issue in the future. It is never in the self-interest of middle powers to live under the subordination of a great superpower. Even if temporarily beneficial, at some point, there will be a price to pay for this subordination. So why challenge it now if they do not have to at this moment?
This is where the second reason comes in. There is currently grassroots momentum around the world to challenge US imperialism. Now is the time to seize the opportunity, draw on this energy and direct it towards a democratic world order that in fact stands up for human rights and freedoms for all.
It is critical to seize this moment and send a message to the US empire that business as usual, where US dominance determines international economic, political and cultural directions, is neither wanted nor tolerated. The US empire will either have to come around or itself become isolated. When we reach that stage, we will reach the end of Israeli settler colonialism. We will reach the end of apartheid and genocide, the two most lethal weapons in the Israeli settler colonial arsenal.
Once Israel is globally isolated, it will be forced to change its behaviour. Israelis will have no choice but to cease their settler colonial project. Palestinians and Israelis can then begin negotiating for true decolonial peace and justice under the banner of a one-state solution, under which all have equal rights and freedoms and the land and sovereignty can be shared between Palestinians and Israelis.
Such an outcome will not only be beneficial for Palestinians and Israelis, but it will also be a real signal that the US empire is no longer the empire that it once was and people from around the world, Americans included, can begin to build a real democratic world order that is no longer under the thumb of one superpower.
A democratic world order will decrease the chances of great wars, imperial wars and settler colonial conquests and help avoid the tremendous human suffering that the Palestinians today are experiencing.
The horrors that the Palestinian people have been facing for more than 100 years did not start with the Palestinians and will not end there. It is in everyone’s self-interest to avoid such suffering, and one way to do that is to build a more democratic world.
The great Nelson Mandela once said: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” It is well past time that the rest of the world came to truly understand what this quote means and take tangible action to advance freedom from empire and colonialism.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
The latest spat between Quebec and Ottawa over immigration is based on politics and not the reality of the labour market, says the head of a major employers group.
“In some ways, it’s deplorable,” said Karl Blackburn, president and CEO of the Conseil du patronat du Québec.
His comments come as Quebec Premier François Legault is threatening to hold a “referendum” on immigration if the federal government doesn’t take rapid action to stem the rising number of temporary immigrants, which include foreign workers, international students and refugee claimants.
“The majority of Quebecers think that 560,000 temporary immigrants is too much,” Legault said last week. “It’s hurting our health-care system. We don’t have enough teachers, we don’t have enough housing.”
Provincial Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette said the province’s demands include stronger French-language requirements in immigration programs managed by the federal government and a reduction in the number of asylum seekers and temporary workers.
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rejected the province’s bid for full control over immigration — currently a shared responsibility — Legault said in March that his federal counterpart had shown openness to some of the province’s demands, and agreed with him on the need to reduce temporary immigrants.
Businesses affected by visa cuts
Blackburn, however, disagrees that there are too many temporary workers, who he said are “working in our businesses producing goods and services.” Their numbers, he added, reflect the needs of the labour market and of an aging society.
He said he supports the Legault government’s call to reduce the number of asylum seekers in the province because Quebec has received a disproportionate share in recent years. But he denounced the federal government’s “improvised” decision to suddenly reimpose visas on some Mexican nationals earlier this year, a measure Quebec had pushed for as a way of reducing asylum claims.
He said that’s already having “direct effects” on businesses by restricting their ability to bring in workers. Any subsequent measures to reduce the number of temporary workers will further hurt Quebec’s economy as well as consumers who will no longer have access to the same goods and services, he said.
“It’s as if our governments knowingly agreed to cause companies to lose contracts for reasons of political partisanship and not based on economic growth, which is nonsensical in a way,” Blackburn said.
Politicians are unfairly blaming immigrants for shortages of housing, daycare spaces and teachers, when the real problem is government failure to invest in those areas, he added.
The long-running debate between Quebec and Ottawa has flared in recent months. Earlier this year, the premier wrote to Trudeau about the influx of asylum seekers entering Quebec, which has welcomed more than 65,000 of the 144,000 would-be refugees who came to Canada last year.
Quebec has demanded Ottawa reimburse the province $1 billion — the amount Quebec says it has cost to care for asylum seekers over the last three years.
Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said this week that no country would ever give up total control over immigration. But he said he and his provincial counterpart are having good discussions and agree on many matters, including limiting visas to Mexicans and protecting French.
While Legault has blamed the federal government for the “exploding” number of newcomers, the director of a research institute and co-author of a recent study on temporary immigrants says both Ottawa and Quebec have brought in measures in recent years to facilitate their arrival.
Multiple factors driving immigration surge
Emna Braham says the surge in temporary immigrants is due to a combination of factors, including a tight labour market, post-secondary institutions recruiting internationally, and programs by both Ottawa and Quebec to allow companies to bring in more workers.
She said numbers have now climbed higher than either level of government expected, likely because temporary immigration is administered through a series of programs that are separate from one another.
“We had a set of measures that could be justified individually, but there was no reflection on what the impact will be of all these cumulative measures on the flow of immigrants that Quebec and Canada accept,” she said in a phone interview.
Both Braham and Blackburn point out that the high number of temporary workers in Quebec is also a result of the province’s decision to cap the number of new permanent residents it accepts each year to around 50,000, creating a bottleneck of people awaiting permanent status.
“If the government of Quebec had set its thresholds at the level they should be to meet the needs of the labour market, we wouldn’t be in this situation where [there] is a significant increase in temporary workers,” Blackburn said.
Braham said the moment is right for provinces and the federal government to develop a co-ordinated approach to immigration, and to ensure a system is put in place to ensure both long- and short-term needs are met.
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