News India Times

www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know Photo :Twitter N early a year ago, President Joe Biden laid out his Build Back Better agenda: a broad vision to meet the individual and collective challenges Ameri- cans face, necessarily ambitious to address crises both created and exposed by the pandemic. For most of 2021, Democrats worked to pass legislation that realizes that vision. The president negotiated with Congress, including Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., directly. Manchin committed to the president - who relayed that commitment to House members - that he would support the legislative frame- work unveiled on Oct. 28. But on Dec. 20, Manchin went back on his commit- ment to the president and seemingly killed the bill on national television. In a town where your word is ev- erything, this was a stunning rebuke of his own party’s president. Despite that, we must move forward. The president’s agenda is even more urgent today. The omicron variant is surging as covid-19 has once again disrupted people’s ability to work, care for children and elders, access medi- cal care and make ends meet. We simply cannot abandon our vision. To craft a path forward, it’s important to look at how we got here. Last spring, the Congressional Progres- sive Caucus (CPC) called for one comprehensive bill to deliver the president’s agenda. But seeking a show of bipartisanship, the White House, at the urging of con- servative Democratic senators, split the legislation into two vehicles: what eventually became the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Build Back Better Act. The latter contained 85 percent of the president’s domes- tic agenda. This decision’s effect was to push Build Back Bet- ter - and the communities it would uniquely benefit - to the back of the line. People of color, women and young people helped deliver the White House and Congress to Democrats, but their needs were consistently delayed in search of bipartisanship. Low-hanging bipartisan provisions were prioritized over the transformational: child care to allow women to return to the workplace, assistance for caregiving jobs primarily held by immigrant women of color, climate action, lower drug prices, a road map to citizenship for immigrants, and tax reforms taking on special interests. Dividing the president’s agenda gave corporate America a chance to dedicate itself to killing Build Back Better. When Senate Democrats passed the infrastructure bill without a commitment of support for Build Back Better, the CPC was left to protect the latter - often in the face of remarkable pressure. Yet a majority of our caucus twice held the line, refus- ing to pass infrastructure until serious negotiations took place on Build Back Better. Biden worked with the two senators and the House to craft the Oct. 28 framework agreement. The CPC held the line again to translate the framework into legislation, inking an agreement with six remaining holdouts among House Democrats to ensure our chamber passed both bills. A majority of our mem- bers relied on the president’s word that he had a com- mitment fromManchin to support the framework. We believed we had reached our point of maximum leverage - and if we held up infrastructure again, Manchin would walk away from Build Back Better entirely and possibly even both proposals. The Progressive Caucus will continue to work toward legislation for Build Back Better, focused on keeping it as close to the agreed-upon framework as possible. At the same time, we are calling on the president to use execu- tive action to immediately improve people’s lives. Taking executive action will also make clear to those who hinder Build Back Better that the White House and Democrats will deliver for Americans. The CPC will soon release a plan for these actions, including lowering costs, protect- ing the health of every family, and showing the world that the United States is serious about our leadership on climate action. We can’t be naive about the difficulty of once again negotiating with someone who has not kept his com- mitments. But legislation remains the best path for delivering enduring relief. Nor can we underestimate the urgency to act, especially as covid is surging and so many constituencies - seniors, people of color, working and young people - are disillusioned. Democrats must prove that their voices and their votes matter, and that we can produce tangible economic assistance. The Progressive Caucus has always believed in leaving no one behind. We call on our governing partners to join us in advancing that philosophy, guided by racial, gender and economic justice - not corporations’ bottom lines. This moment for the Biden administration and Congress can either lead to our greatest failure or our greatest success. If we use every tool at our disposal to redouble our efforts to deliver for our communities, with the most urgent needs of the American people as our guide, suc- cess is possible. T he success or failure of President Joe Biden’s leg- islative agenda could depend on a single senator from a mountainous state who has idiosyncratic views and is not especially popular in his own party. That’s right: Biden’s future may lie in the hands of Mitt Romney. The Utah senator introduced a bill last February that would take a key component of the president’s social policy - the child tax credit, which was part of this year’s American Rescue Plan and would be extended by the moribund Build Back Better legislation - permanent. The president should enthusiastically support Rom- ney’s bill. Yes, this would require a level of boldness uncharacteristic of this White House, and passage would still be a long shot. But it just might work. Call it the au- dacity of the last best hope. Since the beginning of the year, it has been clear that Sen. Joe Manchin was one of the key votes (if not the key vote) in passing Build Back Better. Yet even now the latest version of the bill is at odds not just with his stated legis- lative goals, but with his fundamental philosophy. Manchin wants a streamlined bill focused on giving a hand up to the most vulnerable - without discouraging work, driving up inflation or adding to the deficit. Build Back Better is packed full of gimmicks designed to win validation from the Congressional Budget Office, devotes hundreds of billions to reinstating tax loopholes for upper-income Americans, and provides no permanent funding for its hodgepodge of programs nominally de- signed to help the poor but structured to serve long-term Democratic constituencies. Fortunately, however, there is a bill that fits Manchin’s requirements. It also expands and permanently funds the primary poverty reduction initiative in Build Back Better. Romney’s Family Security Act, in a rare feat in today’s hy- perpartisan environment, has won accolades from across the political spectrum. It accomplishes this by integrating competing visions from the very start. It offers child allowance benefits to expecting parents four months before their child is due, for example - managing to be both pro-life and pro- choice. It both offers government support for the unborn and expands the options available to working single mothers. In addition, by tying benefits directly to children through the Social Security Administration - rather than to taxpayers through the Internal Revenue Service - the plan supports both one-income families with a dedicated stay-at-home parent and families on the margins of the economy, striving to make ends meet. Romney’s plan would also would provide a flat, universal benefit to all families. That’s different from the current structure of the child tax credit, which is a classic trapezoid with both a phase-in (designed to encourage work) and a phase-out (designed to add progressivity). To allay liberal concerns about progressivity and conser- vative worries about disincentives, Romney’s proposal would reform the earned income tax credit, which would become a pure subsidy for lower-income workers regard- less of how many dependents they claim. Romney would pay for these reforms largely by ending both the state and local deduction and the Temporary Aid to Needy Families program, the successor to what used to be known as welfare. Both of these programs - one for the rich, one for the poor - sound good on paper but in practice are simultaneously inefficient (economi- cally) and ineffective (policywise). Unlike those programs, a universal child benefit wouldn’t discourage poor parents from working for fear of losing their benefits. Nor would it encourage affluent parents to move to more economically segregated mu- nicipalities in order to maximize their deductions. This integration of alternative values - rather than the pursuit of an ideological extreme or the construction of a centrism equally unsatisfying to all parties - is why Romney’s plan has such wide support in the policy com- munity. As 2021 comes to a close, the president is facing crises on multiple fronts - a resurgent virus, persistent inflation, a fractious party, to name just a few. Granted, embracing the idea of a Republican senator won’t solve any of these directly. But it’s a genuinely good idea. And if the two sides are ever going to work together, which is something Biden has promised to try to do, then they need to focus more on good-faith efforts such as Romney’s Family Security Act. - - - This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Karl W. Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was formerly vice president for federal policy at the Tax Foundation and assistant professor of economics at the University of North Carolina. He is also co-founder of the economics blog Modeled Behavior. By Pramila Jayapal Special to TheWashington Post By KarlW. Smith, Bloomberg Opinion Broken Promises Cannot Deter The Path To Build Back Better The Senator Who Could Rescue Biden’s Agenda Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat, represents Washington’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House and is chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Opinion News India Times January 07, 2022 4