Biden’s historic moment

Good for President Joe Biden for touting the significant accomplishments of his administration’s first 100 days before a Joint Session of Congress. And good for him for pushing a bold, progressive agenda.

Biden’s $4 trillion in federal spending contained in two proposals — the American Jobs Plan and the American Family Plan — represent, as the New York Times put it, “a fundamental reorientation of government not seen since the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.”

It’s about time.

Biden’s vision of a government that helps people is a welcome relief after the nihilism of the Trump era. Americans are ready for change. We have lived through a pandemic that exposed the weakness of the go-it-alone, live-and-let-die Republican philosophy, and we are ready for a better, more optimistic, more humane approach.

During hearings last week in which Wisconsin Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee expressed outrage and dismay over the $800 million coming to help low-income children in Milwaukee Chris Thiel, the legislative specialist for the Milwaukee Public Schools, told me, “This is what help looks like. And people like it.”

The Republicans, in Wisconsin as in other states around the country, have become the party of not helping. 

They’ve rejected the federal Medicaid expansion, they’ve tried to turn away money for schools and businesses and infrastructure. They have worked to overturn common-sense public health measures to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. They’ve spread doubt about everything from masks to vaccines to the idea that giving people unemployment insurance will benefit society, arguing instead it just discourages them from going to work.

The insanity of the individualistic approach to the pandemic, loudly championed by Wisconsin’s Trump-enabling conspiracy theorist Sen. Ron Johnson, has too many adherents. 

As Terry Falk reported this week, parents are demanding that masks be made optional in school, as if whether or not to spread disease were a matter of individual choice. 

Last weekend, at the drive-up vaccine site at Madison’s Alliant Energy Center, a group of protesters gathered outside holding signs denouncing vaccination and spreading fear and doubt:  “You are not their experiment” “When is the next pause?” “Defund the media”

This is the fruit of the GOP’s decline into Trumpism and alternate realities.

Most of the Republican Party’s energy these days seems to be spent on spreading lies about the 2020 presidential election being stolen and going down Q-Anon conspiracy theory rabbit holes. They’ve basically ceded reality, and the whole discussion of people’s real needs, to the Democrats.

Biden is seizing this unique historical moment to highlight the contrast between this GOP vision and his vision that, as he put it, “Democracy still works. Our government still works and can deliver for the people.”

Watching as Republican members of Congress sat on their hands as Biden celebrated progress toward the goal of cutting child poverty in half and called for getting lead out of Americans’ drinking water this year pretty much said it all. 

Cultural appeals to racism, fear and insecurity cannot forever trump constructive efforts to address peoples’ real needs. No wonder the Republican Party is spending so much energy trying to make it harder for people to vote. 

It’s the right time for Biden’s bold progressive program. Progressives, centrists and the entire reality-based community, should embrace it.