Biden’s New Deal-like Actions for Working Families

History sometimes repeats itself. 

By the 1950’s Americans generally liked the basic social net, infrastructure, and business regulations of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, initially launched to combat the Great Depression. To regain the presidency, and return America to more corporate control, Senator Joseph McCarthy and anti–New Deal Republicans spewed unfounded, traitorous, character-smearing accusations at opponents. Senator Margaret Chase Smith and a few other Republicans vociferously believed these hate attacks were tools of totalitarians. Smith was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and McCarthy was censured and disgraced. 

Today, the Biden-Harris administration is championing many New Deal-like actions for working families. These include negating medical debt in calculating credit scores; canceling billions in student-loan debt to millions of borrowers, including 1650 Nevadans; providing $5.5 billion in grants to address the housing shortage; enhancing the nation’s transportation, broadband internet, drinking-water and power-grid infrastructure; expanding healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act; and supporting workers organizing unions. The Inflation Reduction Act (2022), which passed Congress with no Republican support, reduced the cost of insulin for seniors to $35 per month, capped prescription drugs to $2,000 per month, and gave Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug prices. 

A goal in a second Biden-Harris term is to provide paid family leave, federal subsidies for child-care, and universal preschool access. 

Biden’s anti-monopoly team is investigating corporate marketing control and mergers in the AI sector, agriculture, airlines, hi-tech (e.g., Google, Apple), and banking to protect American consumers and small business. The non-profit Groundwork Collaborative recently reported that corporate profits, which have skyrocketed to 70-year highs, drove over 50% of inflation in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2023.  

Still, for most of 2023, consumers’ paychecks hadn’t caught up to run-ups in prices from the previous two years. Consequently, their overall purchasing power was less than it was before the pandemic-era price spike. 

The good news now is that wage growth is outpacing inflation, and many families are feeling some improvement in their household finances. Plus, job growth continues to boom. 

The GOP has threatened to sunset Social Security and Medicare, which would particularly hurt older Americans. In contrast, President Biden wants to bolster the solvency of Social Security and Medicare by increasing taxes on earners making above $400K per year and on corporations. Donald Trump, if elected, has stated he would gut regulations and further cut taxes for corporations and the rich, which would continue to widen the wealth gap between the rich and poor, further shrink the middle class, and likely re-spike inflation. Moreover, he recently proposed implementing a 10% across-the-board tariff paid by consumers on all imported goods and abolishing income taxes; a policy Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize Winner in Economics) and other economists say would be catastrophic for ordinary Americans and be a gift for the ultrawealthy. 

Wealth inequality, in part, has fueled the replacement of ambition and tolerance for anger and frustration in many Americans. Telsa is laying off over 7000 workers in the US through August, of which 700 are Nevadans, and yet shareholders just granted Elon Musk a $45 billion pay package. In the 1970’s CEOs made 60 times the pay of an average employee; today it is 350 times. The top 1% has 30% of the wealth in America, which translates into influential political say.  

Biden’s policies, which are now gaining popularity, are largely designed to improve workers’ lives. In contrast, Trump told attendees at his 9 June rally in Las Vegas that, “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote.” Who will be the next Senator Smith to course-correct today’s GOP forum of denialism and disillusionment for the needs of average American families? 

Joe Holomuzki, Carson City Nevada.

 To be published as a Guest Commentary in the Reno News & Review in July 2024