Joe Biden seems to realize that the coronavirus crisis requires a huge fiscal response, but he doesn't seem to have a legislative strategy that would make any such legislation plausible. jonathanchait writes
Photo: Matt Rourke/AP/Shutterstock Recovering from the economic devastation from the coronavirus pandemic is likely to require a fiscal response on the order of magnitude of the aftermath of World War II. The good news is that Joe Biden seems to understand this. The bad news is that he does not seem to have a legislative strategy that would make any such legislation remotely plausible.
The problem is that Biden’s willingness to support, or even push for, liberal ideas is not the important constraint. The Senate is. And there is very little reason to believe Biden is thinking strategically about this impediment. Third, the Obama administration underestimated the degree to which deficit panic would build and complicate any additional stimulus. They mistakenly believed that if they undershot, they could just come back for more spending, since congressmen love to lavish money on their constituents. And fourth, they needed Republican Senate votes.
The difference is that this time, there won’t be 58 Democrats and a handful of Republican moderates to negotiate with. Biden might have 50 or more Democrats. Getting even to that number will require defeating the chamber’s last economically moderate Republican. There is no chance Biden would be able to amass 60 votes for any major fiscal legislation.
I asked two people in Biden’s campaign, both of whom have previously been accessible, if they knew of anybody who was thinking about a legislative strategy. Neither had an answer. Debenedetti’s story has a quote from Delaware senator Chris Coons, a Biden ally and fellow senatorial romantic.
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