(New York) The day the House of Representatives voted for Barack Obama’s health care reform, Joe Biden slipped into the president’s ear a compliment containing a vulgar word that an open microphone picked up: It’s a big f… ing deal.
Saturday morning, the day after the House vote on a $ 1.2 trillion US infrastructure bill, the president and his vice-president refrained from any discrepancies during an intervention at the White House in front of journalists. But they may have privately repeated the words to the 44e president on March 21, 2010.
“I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that we’ve taken a monumental step forward as a nation,” said Joe Biden, flanked by Kamala Harris. “We did something that should have been done a long time ago, that was talked about for a long time in Washington, but that was never actually done. ”
PHOTO JONATHAN ERNST, REUTERS
President Joe Biden accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday at the White House
The 46e President asserted that the measures passed by both houses of Congress included the largest investment in roads and bridges in 70 years, the largest investment in passenger trains in 50 years and the most important in public transport history.
“For anyone back home who feels left behind and forgotten in an economy that changes so rapidly, this bill is for you,” Biden said.
The vast majority of the thousands of jobs that will be created do not require a university degree. It is a blue collar plan to rebuild America, and it is long overdue.
Joe Biden, President of the United States
The president specified that he would promulgate “soon” the text of some 2000 pages on the occasion of a ceremony to which will be invited those who have contributed to materialize one of his most important electoral promises, including Republican senators.
Milestone day and week
The House’s passage of the infrastructure bill has ended a day and a week that is likely to mark Joe Biden’s presidency.
Last Tuesday, Democrats suffered defeats or setbacks in several states and towns, from Virginia to New Jersey to Seattle and Long Island. The president’s unpopularity contributed to these results, as did inflation, the pandemic, and voter frustration with congressional inaction.
And while the media called the evening’s election verdicts “catastrophic” or “disastrous” for Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, they recognized that they had to overcome their differences and pass their big reforms.
Which brings us to Friday. Day whose beginning seemed to want to contradict the gloom of the country. At 8:30 am, the Labor Department announced that the economy had added 531,000 jobs in October. At the same time, he revised upwards the employment figures for August and September, which had contributed to negative speeches by the media and Republicans on the economy.
During a morning speech at the White House, Joe Biden was not content to rejoice over these data. He was also careful to congratulate himself on another piece of good news, namely the promising results of a drug from Pfizer to treat COVID-19.
It was then that he called on “every member of the House to vote yes” on his two major reforms. He was referring not only to the infrastructure bill, but also to a US $ 1,750 billion social and climate program, the most concrete benefits of which he summed up in these terms: “The Build Back Better plan cuts your energy bills. health care, child care, prescription drugs and early childhood education. And families get a tax cut. ”
A compromise
Joe Biden almost lost everything on that day, including his credibility. At one point, 20 progressive Democrats were prepared to ignore his calls and vote against the infrastructure bill. They threatened to rebel in this way because of the refusal of five moderate Democrats to approve the social and ecological program before obtaining an independent estimate of its impact on the deficit.
Throughout the day, the president spoke with one or the other faction to push them, around 10 p.m., to agree to a compromise. Compromise that paves the way for a vote in mid-November in the House on the most ambitious of the president’s programs.
Joe Biden hasn’t won everything yet. Several obstacles remain to the passage of the law called the Build Back Better Act, both in the House and the Senate. But he has already achieved what Barack Obama and Donald Trump have tried in vain to accomplish. Let us recall the latter’s promise on the evening of his electoral victory:
“We will repair our downtown areas and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools and hospitals. We will rebuild the infrastructure, which will become, by the way, the best there is. And we will put millions of our fellow citizens to work as we rebuild. ”
What Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and other presidents wished or promised, Joe Biden will achieve, with invaluable help from Nancy Pelosi, who also played a key role in the adoption of Obamacare. And he may not be finished yet.
None of this, it must be admitted, guarantees Joe Biden and his party victories in the midterm elections in November 2022. Barack Obama has certainly not forgotten the thaw suffered by his Democratic allies during the elections of mid-term 2010 after the adoption of its flagship reform.
But he might not have failed to slip in the ear of his former right arm, after the House vote on infrastructure on Friday night: It’s a big f… ing deal.