Name: Joe Biden says his hands are tied on a $15 minimum wage. That's not true | David Sirota
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Joe Biden says his hands are tied on a $15 minimum wage. That's not true | David Sirota

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This article is more than 1 year oldThis article is more than 1 year oldDemocrats argue that it’s impossible to deliver a higher minimum wage, when there are plenty of ways to overcome this impasseLast modified on Tue 22 Jun 2021 04.49 EDTA tale from history proves this latter myth is complete garbage – and that tale is newly relevant in today’s supercharged debate over a $15 minimum wage.In that debate so far, we have seen Democratic senators prepare to surrender the $15 minimum wage their party by insisting they are powerless in the face of a non-binding advisory opinion of a parliamentarian they can or .That explanation is and , so Democratic apologists are starting to further justify the surrender by that even if the party kept a $15 minimum wage in the Covid relief bill, conservative Democrats such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would block it anyway.The White House itself is now falling back on the idea that it have the votes to do much of anything, insinuating that Joe Biden – who occupies the world’s most powerful office – somehow has no power to try to change the legislative dynamic. And this spin is being predictably amplified .To be sure, there is no guarantee that Manchin or Sinema could be moved. Maybe they couldn’t, but maybe they could, considering they have both bills to increase the minimum wage. And we know they may be sensitive to pressure. After all, Manchin recently and whined that “no one called me” when Vice-President Kamala Harris dared to do one straightforward interview with a West Virginia television station.Whether such pressure ultimately works, the point is indisputable: it is laughable and preposterous to argue that a newly elected president has zero power to even try to shift the dynamic.And yet, whether you call this all deliberate deception or learned helplessness, this fantastical myth of the Powerless President will inevitably be used to shield Biden from criticism for abandoning his pledge to fight for a $15 minimum wage.The apologism is particularly absurd because unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, who was a relative newcomer to politics, Biden’s major selling point was that he knows “how to make government work”. The guy explicitly as the best Democratic presidential candidate by suggesting that in an era of gridlock, he knows how to make the Democratic agenda a reality and Get Things Done™, like master of the Senate Lyndon Baines Johnson.That’s where LBJ himself comes in to destroy the narrative that Democratic presidents in general – and Biden specifically – are inherently helpless.In 1964, Johnson was trying to pass Medicare, but two conservative Democratic senators threatened to take down the entire legislation over a tax issue. In a story by economist Stephanie Kelton, the noted that months before that legislation passed: “Opponents proposed a large and popular increase in Social Security benefits (and taxes) which would have made passage of new Medicare taxes almost impossible. At the last minute, Senators George Smathers of Florida and Russell Long of Louisiana, both Democrats but Medicare opponents, switched and voted to save Medicare. ‘Lyndon told me to,’ Senator Smathers explained.”The pivotal story was recounted in more detail in by Harvard University’s David Blumenthal (a former Obama administration official) and Brown University’s James Morone. They noted that presidents can play a particularly unique role in these situations, and they warn against presidents who refuse to leverage their offices to push their agendas:Johnson knew there was an indispensable role that only he could play: he could best publicize the idea, build support, jawbone interest groups into line, and organize (and lobby) the congressional coalition. When reporters asked Senator George Smathers (D-FL) why he had switched his vote and salvaged the administration’s Medicare proposal in 1964, he responded, simply, “Lyndon told me to.” Presidents win complicated reforms by doing what the office of the presidency is uniquely designed for – publicizing and persuading …There is, of course, a danger at the other extreme – that of the disengaged executive. The president chooses his analysts, gives them directions, and decides when the debate is over. The staff always knows when the boss has lost interest – and the issue, no matter how well staffed, is probably doomed.There has been a lot of dishonesty and deception floating around Democratic Washington these days. There was the two months ago that $2,000 checks would be coming “immediately” to a desperate nation struggling through a pandemic. There is the about the parliamentarian supposedly being the reason the $15 minimum wage is stalled. There is once again the of a forthcoming “public option”, which Democrats promised but which is barely being discussed at all, and is not part of the Covid relief legislation.But the LBJ story shows that the mendacious narrative of a helpless Democratic president is the most pernicious lie of all.If this lie about a Powerless President seems familiar, that’s because it was trotted out during the last Democratic presidency, when Barack Obama refused to lift a finger to pressure similarly conservative Democratic senators to support a wildly popular public insurance option or a that he . He had enormous congressional majorities and a huge election mandate, but didn’t bother to go to Democratic states to build Democratic voter pressure against recalcitrant Democratic senators.On the contrary, Obama’s chief of staff progressives trying to pressure conservative Democrats over health care reform and Obama simply . Meanwhile, obsequious liberal pundits scoffed at a so-called “”, mocking those who suggested that the most powerful man on Earth has any power to influence elected officials in his own party. Obama is still he couldn’t do anything.Now we see this same Powerless President narrative in the minimum wage fight – and if you look closely, the is all but admitting it’s a lie.After all, the White House to say it is “” for Neera Tanden’s nomination, even though it might not have enough Senate votes for her confirmation. And yet, the same White House is simultaneously retreating on the minimum wage, seemingly unwilling to force a floor vote on the issue, even though presidential pressure, legislative brinkmanship, and negotiation could change the outcome.In the Tanden situation, in fact, the Biden team is acting like a White House’s power of persuasion and legislative arm twisting can potentially move votes for something a president cares about – in this case, the nomination of a Washington insider to a fancy White House job.The real story, then, is that Biden seems unwilling to use the same influence to push as hard as possible for a minimum wage increase that would boost the pay of millions of Americans during an economic emergency.He has the power to at least try – he just seems unwilling to.

This article is more than 1 year oldThis article is more than 1 year oldDemocrats argue that it’s impossible to deliver a higher minimum wage, when there are plenty of ways to overcome this impasseLast modified on Tue 22 Jun 2021 04.49 EDTA tale from history proves this latter myth is complete garbage – and that tale is newly relevant in today’s supercharged debate over a $15 minimum wage.In that debate so far, we have seen Democratic senators prepare to surrender the $15 minimum wage their party by insisting they are powerless in the face of a non-binding advisory opinion of a...

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David Sirota

TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and Guardian Unlimited, is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service.

Joe Biden says his hands are tied on a $15 minimum wage. That's not true | David Sirota

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