The president’s tone and tenor suggested that even if ordinary Americans weren’t in the room, he felt emboldened by polls that suggest his proposals are popular—and that he himself has been buoyed by a largely successful vaccine campaign that’s administered more than 315 million shots and a stimulus program that provided more than 160 million checks to taxpayers.
The president’s approval rating is at 57%, according to a Gallup poll released Friday, matching his post-inauguration high. And seven in 10 Americans favored Biden’s initial $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, with only around a third of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center earlier this month saying it spent too much.
His new $1.8 trillion families plan and the $2.25 trillion infrastructure proposal—which he christened a “blue-collar blueprint to build America”—directly targeted two key constituencies: suburban moms and the White working class of the Rust Belt.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index erased its losses as of 12:00 p.m. in Hong Kong, as traders who were betting on a bigger spending plan from Biden cut back on currency risk positions. Treasury futures were little changed and U.S. equity futures maintained their gains.
Pandemic Disparities
There’s reason for Biden to direct his appeal to those he said “feel left behind and forgotten.”
The pandemic ushered in not only disproportionate health outcomes—a recent study by Ball State University showed a higher death rate among counties with higher poverty levels—but deepened disparate economic trends.
While the richest 1% in the U.S. saw their wealth increase by $4 trillion, the bottom half of Americans shared just a $471 billion increase. Female participation in the labor force has slipped to 57%—the lowest level since 1988—and a half million more women exited the workforce than men during a crisis that saw 10 million jobs disappear.
White House advisers have made no secret about the opening they see.
Chief of Staff Ron Klain has spent recent weeks promoting stories that bluntly describe Biden’s plans to hike taxes on the wealthy in a flurry of social media posts.
Economic adviser Brian Deese declined to publicly address any element of Biden’s families plan ahead of its rollout Wednesday—except a provision to hike capital gains taxes on Americans making over $1 million a year. And political adviser Anita Dunn on Tuesday penned a memo to “interested parties” pointing to recent Fox News polling that showed 56% of respondents backed paying for infrastructure through increased taxes on corporations and 63% supported raising income taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
”We need to make the case, but the American people seem very supportive of the idea that when it comes to longstanding challenges in this country, we need to come together and make the investments we need in order to address them,” said White House economic adviser David Kamin.
Congressional Difficulties
Still, the success of Biden’s effort will hinge on parlaying that popular support into votes in a narrowly divided Congress, where Republicans remain loathe to offer any assistance and without them, moderate Senate Democrats like Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and Manchin can scuttle any piece of legislation single-handedly.
Both have already voiced skepticism about Biden’s proposed tax increases, leaving open the question of how the White House’s proposals can proceed. And Republicans looked to fan that uncertainty, painting the president’s vision as excessive and ineffective.
“Our best future won’t come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams,” Senator Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, said in the GOP rebuttal to Biden’s address. “It will come from you—the American people.”
Biden, for his part, said that big investments in jobs and infrastructure “have often had bipartisan support” and looked to win skeptics by adopting rhetoric more familiar to Republicans and painting his plans as essential to winning a global battle for the future.
“We have to prove democracy still works,” the president said. “That our government still works—and can deliver for the people.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.