Biden $3.5T plan tests voter appeal of expansive gov't role
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s “build back” agenda is poised to be the most far-reaching federal investment since FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s Great Society — a prodigious effort to tax the rich and shift money into projects and programs touching the lives of nearly every American.
The thousands of pages being drafted and debated in Congress are the template for grand ambitions of the Biden agenda, a full funding of Democratic orthodoxy. The plan envisions the government shoring up U.S. households, setting industrial policy to tackle climate change and confronting the gaping income inequality that was laid bare by the COVID-19 crisis.
As the contours of the $3.5 trillion package come into focus, an undertaking on par with those earlier landmark bills, Americans will have to assess: Is this what they signed up for when Biden won the White House?
Lawmakers on the front lines are about to find out.
“We’re doing hard things,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., the chairman of the House Democrats' campaign committee tasked with maintaining the party's slender majority.
“We’re not perfect,” he said in a conference call Wednesday about the party and its goals, “but we’re responsible adults, and we’re here to fix problems.”
Republicans fundamentally disagree, attempting to label the Biden agenda as “far left” and “socialism" that they will fiercely oppose.
If Biden can pass his plan, it will become a central referendum in the midterm elections in 2022 on whether voters embrace the vision put forth by Democrats who control the White House and Congress.
Among the Democrats' goals are priorities like universal child care and lower prescription drug prices that have been elusive for decades.
Republicans have largely...