Say what you like about Congress’ squabbling and eternally disarrayed Democrats; they’ve showed in the last few weeks that they deserve to be recognized as the party of ideas.
And not just a few ideas; many, many ideas — maybe too many for one piece of legislation: universal prekindergarten, federally subsidized child care, clean-energy tax credits, even a Civilian Climate Corps, paid for by a newly invented surtax on millionaires.
It’s a good thing they had so many ideas available; in a 50-50 Senate, where any one member can block any proposal, they’ve needed a bagful of backups.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona won’t agree to raise tax rates on the wealthy? Fine, let’s try a levy on the untaxed capital gains of 700 billionaires.
Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia doesn’t love that one? OK, let’s settle for a “patriotic tax” aimed at mere millionaires instead.
That doesn’t sound like the way legislating is supposed to happen. The world’s greatest deliberative body has turned into the world’s least deliberative body, with senators rummaging through the closets for ideas progressives and moderates can live with.
The product is what aficionados call a “Frankenbill,” an awkward creation stitched together from scraps of this and that. (The term refers to the gothic monster, not the former senator from Minnesota.)
It isn’t a thing of beauty. The version unveiled by President Biden on Thursday abruptly abandoned some of his most cherished campaign promises: lower prescription drug prices, free community college, paid family leave.
And, of course, it hasn’t passed yet.
But it’s undeniably big; $1.85 trillion over 10 years is only half of what Biden asked for, but still gigantic. And it’s undeniably ambitious; it includes the biggest spending package on climate change in history and significant expansions of federal support for child care and early education.
One problem with legislating in haste, though, is that the authors may be left to repent at leisure. Whatever version of this bill survives will include provisions few voters have ever heard of. That will make those programs easy for the GOP to attack, especially if any run into start-up problems. Anybody remember the disastrous launch of Obamacare in 2013?
To be fair, Democratic leaders believed they didn’t have much choice. Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky made it clear that he did not want to give Biden any help; his 49 fellow GOP senators have remained impressively unified as the party of no.
So the Democrats needed every last one of their 50 votes — and that meant whatever Manchin and Sinema said, goes.
For all that, the bill isn’t as bad as it sounds, as a 19th century humorist once said of Wagner’s music.
Despite the appearance of being slapped together in a few weeks of frantic negotiation, parts of the bill have been sitting on Democrats’ shelves for years, waiting for the moment when they can be written into law.
