Eric Levitz, writing for New York Magazine, gives us the details of most progressive legislative accomplishment, with the exception of the Affordable Care Act, in over fifty years, in marked contrast to the nightmare scenarios painted by pundits far and wide:
Biden’s COVID-Relief Bill Is a Big F**king Deal
MAR. 9, 2021
Joe Biden won, but progressives lost.
For weeks after the 2020 election, this was the conventional wisdom about its outcome. As Politico wrote on November 5, “During Barack Obama’s presidency, Biden’s propensity for cutting deals with Mitch McConnell became a running source of aggravation for liberals. Now it will be the key to getting anything done at all.”…
Liberals scarcely disagreed. Some histrionic progressive commentators went so far as to declare the election results a “catastrophe” for the U.S. left. Sure, Biden had evicted an authoritarian ignoramus from the White House, but his coattails had proven unrideable. The Democrats saw their House majority shrink and their hopes of taking the Senate all but collapse. Now McConnell would enjoy veto power over Biden’s entire agenda, which meant the new Democratic president would be incapable of appointing Supreme Court justices or passing any major legislation. Dreams of mining durable progressive change from the COVID crisis were dead...
The reality of the bill’s provisions is simply breathtaking in its scope, but also in its embrace of a politics that addresses the intersecting crises that have bedeviled the nation for generations, in a consciously intersectional (meaning expertly informed) manner:
To appreciate the concrete significance of the ARP for ordinary Americans — and, by extension, the significance of having 50 Democratic votes in the Senate versus 49 — here are a few of the ways life in the U.S. is about to change as a result of a unified Democratic government coming to power:
• The average household in the bottom quintile of America’s economic ladder will see its annual income rise by more than 20 percent.
• A family of four with one working parent and one unemployed one will have $12,460 more in government benefits to help them make ends meet.
• The poorest single mothers in America will receive at least $3,000 more per child in government support, along with $1,400 for themselves and additional funds for nutritional assistance and rental aid.
• Child poverty in the U.S. will drop by half.
• More than 1 million unionized workers who were poised to lose their pensions will now receive 100 percent of their promised retirement benefits for at least the next 30 years.
• America’s Indigenous communities will receive $31.2 billion in aid, the largest investment the federal government has ever made in the country’s Native people.
• Black farmers will receive $5 billion in recompense for a century of discrimination and dispossession, a miniature reparation that will have huge consequences for individual African-American agriculturalists, many of whom will escape from debt and retain their land as a direct result of the legislation.
The aims of the legislation go beyond providing short term financial relief (although it does that); it looks upon closer scrutiny to be an effort to dismantle the institutional framework of bias and discrimination, to redress their legacy through smart policy:
Social Justice=Environmental Justice=Economic Justice
Interior Department Celebrates Passage of the American Rescue Plan
Relief package will benefit families, Tribal governments, and wildlife-related pandemic initiatives
Dept. of Interior
3/11/2021
WASHINGTON – The Department of the Interior today applauded the passage of the American Rescue Plan (ARP), a bold legislative package that will help address the public health and economic crises that continue to impact the American people. The ARP contains several provisions that fund Interior initiatives and benefit the communities we directly serve, including Tribal governments and schools.
“One year into the pandemic, the challenges we face are still significant – and continue to disproportionately impact American Indian and Alaska Native communities, people of color, and rural Americans. The Biden-Harris American Rescue Plan will deliver immediate relief to families, businesses, and schools across the country,” said Acting Secretary Scott de la Vega. “Interior stands ready to implement this historic relief package and get help out to the American people as quickly as possible.”
COVID-19 has exacted an especially high toll in Indian Country. People living on reservations are four times more likely to have COVID-19 and American Indians and Alaska Natives are nearly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than white Americans. Native American families and small businesses also face severe economic challenges associated with the pandemic. And the loss of Native elders threatens the sacred preservation of language, tradition, and culture. This bill makes a historic $31.2 billion investment in Tribal communities, the largest single investment the United States has ever made in Indian country. At Interior, this includes:
- $900 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which will include direct aid payments to Tribal governments and funding to address concerns related to housing and potable water, and
- $850 million for the Bureau of Indian Education, which will benefit BIE-funded schools and Tribal colleges and universities.
The ARP also makes an unprecedented investment in addressing wildlife-related pandemic concerns, including:
- $105 million for the Fish and Wildlife Service to address wildlife trafficking, wildlife disease outbreaks, and wildlife inspections, and for research to strengthen early detection, rapid response, and science-based management to address wildlife disease outbreaks before they become pandemics and strengthen capacity for wildlife health monitoring.