The Great Democratic Panic
Byron York
Posted: Sep 22, 2021 12:01 AMPresident Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer have based the future of the entire Democratic agenda on a trick. And now many Democrats are increasingly concerned -- terrified, actually -- that the trick won't work.
Democrats have huge New Deal- and Great Society-style ambitions to pass hyper-expensive, sprawling legislation that would "fundamentally change" life in the United States, as then-President-elect Biden said last December. But unlike Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson, who had enormous majorities on Capitol Hill -- around 300 seats in the House and between 65 and 75 seats in the Senate -- today's Democrats have a tiny, single-digit majority in the House and no majority at all in a Senate tied at 50-50. The only way they can pass legislation on a partisan basis, without Republican help, is to corral all 50 of their votes in the Senate and call on Vice President Kamala Harris to break a tie.
There's no way Democrats could break a Republican filibuster and gather the 60 votes needed to pass highly consequential legislation like the party's $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" bill that would, in the words of The New York Times, "touch virtually every American's life, from conception to aged infirmity." There's also no way Democrats could eliminate the filibuster entirely with just 50 senators, since not all of them are on board for doing it.
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https://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2021/09/22/the-great-democratic-panic-n2596267
