How the Pandemic Changed Biden’s Politics

Jamelle Bouie: “I would even say that the American Rescue Plan compares favorably with the signature legislation of F.D.R.’s first 100 days, in that its $1.9 trillion price tag dwarfs the mere tens of billions (in inflation-adjusted dollars) spent by Congress during the earliest period of the New Deal. The challenge is very different — a Great Depression and its attendant unemployment and immiseration versus a health crisis and its economic impact — but the ambition is of similar scope.”

“Indeed, the story of this bill may be the story of how Biden has repudiated the austerity politics of much of the last decade, as well as the anti-assistance paradigm he himself helped forge when, as a senator, he warned in 1988 of ‘welfare mothers driving luxury cars’ and voted, in 1996, to make so-called welfare reform a reality.