As Chuck Todd said at the top of today's program, there are a myriad of challenges facing the new Biden Administration that is only four days into office. This column contends that the crises facing the country cannot be mitigated without getting the Covid-19 pandemic under control and getting the American people vaccinated. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain stated that this is the metric of which the Biden Administration will be judged. The success of the Biden Administration depends on it, but more importantly, the success of the future of the country depends on. The longer that we're unable to get the pandemic under control, the extent of long term damage to the country's overall well-being with grow.
So how does the United States proceed forward? For the Administration's part, they are putting together a nationalized central response to the pandemic, according to Mr. Klain, enacting the Defense Production Act to ramp up supplies of the vaccine and the equipment needed to administer it. In other words, it is gearing up for a massive response, 'throwing everything at it' as Dr. Fauci was quoted saying this week.
As we're well aware, effective action is going to depend on Congress, its ability to act and whether the Senate can walk and chew gum at the same time because its biggest problem aside from not bringing any legislation to the floor is multitasking.
Apparently, it will be a challenge for the Senate to hold an impeachment trial and legislate at the same time. For insights into the two sides thinking, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) expressed their views on both and the better news is that in terms of a Covid relief bill, both sides feel like they can get to a place of compromise. Impeachment, however, is another story.
On the relief package, The New York Times' David Brooks seemed to agree that a bipartisan agreement can come about reasoning that Democrats put additional measures into the package that can be negotiated out, like a minimum wage increase to 15 dollars an hour. Chuck Todd asked Mr. Klain, Mr. Durbin and Mr. Rounds this, which came off as a bit of agenda journalism that is never received well. That specific example aside, Senator Rounds has a point that all the provisions should have a direct effect on Covid relief. This sounds reasonable and indicates how Republicans in the Senate may proceed on the bill.
However, the Senate as to be expected is stumbling out of the gate because they cannot agree on a power sharing accommodation. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is proposing a filibuster resolution which is a non-starter according to Senator Durbin. Mr. McConnell insists as part of the rules that the filibuster can not be done away with. Mr. Durbin rightly explained that the result would be that Republicans would threaten a filibuster on every piece of legislation, hence maintaining the status quo in the chamber as a place where bills go to die.
Many say that the filibuster is a legislative relic from the Jim Crow era, including President Barack Obama, and that may be so but is the problem with the filibuster or the procedure surrounding it? Here's how it would go: The Senate Democrat would propose legislation and the Republican minority would threaten a filibuster which would essentially kill the bill. Senators are never pushed to back up their words. If they threaten a filibuster then they have to take to the floor and actually stand there speaking for however many days... That's what filibustering is! We say, call the bluff and have those octogenarians Senators stand on the floor for 18 hours, speaking. Force them to do that on successive bills and see how enthusiastic they are about filibustering after that.
In addition to the power sharing dilemma, there is the pending impeachment trial of Mr. Trump. Here's where Senator Rounds while trying to give a moderate answer as to not discount the fairness of the election but at the same time trying not to alienate the base of his party, which is really Trump's party at the moment. He said two things that don't quite add up. One, he said an impeachment trial is a moot point because Donald Trump is not in office, hence it's unconstitutional. However, the impeachment is for actions while Mr. Trump was in office and they were grave enough that consideration of barring him from future office must be brought to a vote. Though we agree with Politico's Tim Alberta that impeachment may put Mr. Trump front and center in the media (where he likes to be) bringing him out of the obscurity where he presently resides, accountability for a insurrection against the people of the United States has to be brought to bear. Not to mention that as the days pass and more information comes out, the attack on the Capitol gets only worse. We can not just let that go without legal consequences or it will almost certainly happen again.
The other thing is that Senator Rounds called for an investigation of the November vote to illustrate to Trump supporters that the vote was fair, which is something Mr. Rounds believes. The problem with this is that the question of fairness doesn't come from evidence to the contrary, just the lies by the president and his allies. An investigation gives credence to those lies. Additionally, if a bipartisan Congressional panel investigates, it just opens the door to political grandstanding which would make matters worse and put retched people like Ted Cruz back into the spotlight. If an outside group conducts the investigation, no one will believe the results and then there are even more conspiratorial lies. Investigation: not the way to go.
So how we proceed depends on the United States Senate. That fact alone is cause for worry.
Panel: Yamiche Alcindor, PBS News Hour; Andrea Mitchell, NBC News; Tim Alberta, Politico; David Brooks, The New York Times
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