The Economist - USA (2021-07-17)

22 United States The Economist July 17th 2021

Both legislative tracks are fraughtwith

hazards  and  obstruction,  but Mr Biden

needs both trains to arrive simultaneously.

Progressives  are  threatening  toblockthe

compromise  measure  unless  the Senate

passes  the  maximalist  bill.  Andonthis

point  they  have  an  unlikely  andpowerful

ally in Nancy Pelosi, the Democraticspeak­

er of the House, who said: “Let mebereally

clear  on  this:  We  will  not  take  upa billin

the  House  until  the  Senate  passesthebi­

partisan bill and a reconciliationbill.”Re­

publicans  who  agreed  to  the  compromise

legislation,  meanwhile,  fear  lookinglike

patsies.  Lindsey  Graham,  a  Republican

senator from South Carolina, angrilybroke

away from the deal after news ofthetwo­

track approach emerged, tellinga reporter

that “There’s no way. You look likea fuck­

ing idiot now.”

Mr Biden’s initial attempt todriveboth

trains  was  more  Buster  KeatonthanLyn­

don  Johnson.  “If  they  don’t  come,I’mnot

signing,” he threatened. That nearlykilled

the  compromise  deal  entirely;MrBiden

walked  back  those  words,  admittingthat

“my  comments  also  created  theimpres­

sion that I was issuing a veto threatonthe

very  plan  I  had  just  agreed  to,  whichwas

certainly not my intent,” He thenpromised

to sign an unpaired bill if it weretheonly

one to pass the House and Senate.

For  now  the  plans  remain  abstract.No

legislative  text  has  yet  emergedfromthe

bipartisan  framework  agreed to by the

president  and  a  contingent  of  senators.A

separate  surface­transport  billpassed by

the  House,  costing  $715bn,  maygivethe

Senate  a  starting  point—though despite

spending  on  hard  rather  thansoftinfra­

structure,  and  earmarks  to  sweeten the

deal for Republicans, only two membersof

the opposition actually voted forit.

Announcing  that  $3.5trn  headlinefig­

ure of a reconciliation bill is onlythefirst

in  a  sequence  of  technical legislative

manoeuvres.  “Reconciliation instruc­

tions”  on  total  spending  mustbeagreed

and  disseminated  to  the  variouscommit­

tees.  Europeans  will  not  be  surprisedto

learn that trains, literal and metaphorical,

run  slow  in  America.  The  lengthyparlia­

mentary procedure may not yieldanactual

package until the autumn.

This  tortuous,  incrementalprocedure

may  give  Mr  Biden  flashbacks:hispresi­

dency  is  starting  to  resemble  BarackOba­

ma’s.  Momentum  from  passing a large,

hasty stimulus package is grindingtoa halt

as  partisanship  places  obstacles on the

track.  The  main  achievement  ofMrOba­

ma’s  day,  the  Affordable  Care Act, took

more than a year of shunting toandfro.A

landmark climate­change bill, meanwhile,

went down to defeat. Perhaps onetrainwill

arrive  many  months  from  now.Butthat

would  still  be  shy  of  Biden’s  hugepolicy

ambitions when he came to office.n

Lone-Starpolitics

Texodus

S

taterepresentativeArmandoWalle,

a  Democrat  from  Houston,  brought  an

unusually big suitcase when he travelled to

Washington,  dc,  this  week.  For  several

months Democrats in the Texas legislature

have been fighting an uphill battle against

an  “election  integrity”  bill  touted  by  Re­

publicans,  including  Governor  Greg  Ab­

bott. The flight of the Democratic caucus to

the  capital  temporarily  halts  a  measure

that would have been controversial at any

time. Now, when so many Republicans are

still  repeating  the  former  president’s  lie

that  the  last  election  was  fraudulent,  the

struggle has assumed Texan proportions.

In  May,  on  the  final  day  of  this  year’s

regular  legislative  session,  Democrats

walked out of the Texas House, denying Re­

publicans the quorum they needed to pass

the bill, or any other (the Texas House has a

rule  stating  that  two­thirds  of  members

need to be present for the chamber to pass

laws).  Mr  Abbott  responded  by  vowing  to

summon  the  legislators  back  for  a  special

session  to  tackle  the  issue,  and  to  veto

funding  for  the  legislative  branch  of  state

government in the meantime. He followed

through, calling legislators back to Austin

for a special session which began July 8th,

triggering the events that led to Democrat­

ic  lawmakers  leaving  the  state  by  private

planes,  and  could,  perhaps,  end  with  an

outright constitutional crisis in Texas.

Republicans  control  both  chambers  of

the state legislature by healthy margins. If

Congress remains unmoved by the pleas of

the  refugees  to  pass  a  new  federal  voting

law,  the  Democratic  state  lawmakers  will

soon  find  themselves  in  an  awkward  lim­

bo, counting down the days until the spe­

cial  session  ends  on  August  7th,  with  no

clear  plan  after  that  point.  “We  are  living

on borrowed time,” a group of Democratic

leaders said in a statement. 

Meanwhile, in Austin, Republicans are

fuming. “As soon as they come back in the

state of Texas, they will be arrested,” Mr Ab­

bott  declared  on  a  local  news  station

(thereby  rather  undermining  his  claim  to

be  upholding  democratic  standards).

“They will be cabined inside the Texas Cap­

itol  until  they  get  their  job  done.”  He  also

vowed  to  call  as  many  special  sessions  as

necessary until the end of next year to en­

sure that the legislation is passed.

Stopping  the  state  legislature  from

functioning in the name of saving democ­

racy puts Mr Walle and his Democratic col­

leagues  on  tricky  ground.  There  is  prece­

dent  for  quorom­breaking  flights,  but

breaking one norm to save another one re­

quires a weighing of relative damage. The

Democrats  argue,  fairly,  that  the  Republi­

can bill is motivated by the Trump­boosted

myth about a stolen election and, perhaps

less  fairly,  that  Republicans  cannot  win

Texas  without  suppressing  the  votes  of

non­white  Texans,  who  lean  Democratic.

That  the  first  version  of  the  elections  bill

targeted  early  voting  on  Sundays,  when

many African­Americans go to the polling

station after church, was the tell.

The current version of the bill is better.

A  couple  of  provisions  would  bar  innova­

tions  that  Houston’s  Harris  County  pio­

neered  last  year  (such  as  24­hour  and

drive­through voting). These proved popu­

lar  and  worked  well,  but  banning  them

would be failing to encourage voting rather

than suppressing it. However the bill also

seeks to expand the power of partisan poll

watchers,  which  could  facilitate  voter  ha­

rassment  and  intimidation.  In  the  2020

election  some  local  Republican  officials

tried  to  recruit  poll  watchers  to  volunteer

in heavily black and Hispanic precincts. 

“I’m okhaving a battle of ideas and los­

ing; that happens to me, as a Democrat, all

the  time,”  says  Diego  Bernal,  a  Democrat

representing  San  Antonio.  “This  is  about

rigging  the  system  to  produce  a  certain

outcome.”  This  view  is  so  widely  held  by

Texas  Democrats  that  they  will  happily

take  a  stance  that  looks  doomed.  “We  live

on  these  ideals  of  freedom—well,  not

everybody was free in this country when it

was  created,”  says  Mr  Walle.  “Not  every­

body  had  the  right  to  vote.  We  had  a  civil

war;  we  had  Reconstruction;  we  had  Jim

Crow, we had state­sanctioned discrimina­

tion.”  His  grandfather,  born  in  1930,  lived

through someofthose experiences, and is

now, at age91,still a Texas voter. Hence the

big suitcase.n

H OUSTON

Texas Democrats suspend democracy in

the name of upholding it

Quorum blimey