Editor’s Note: Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and CNN political commentator, was a political consultant for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992 and served as a counselor to Clinton in the White House. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. View more opinion articles on CNN.
The Trump non-reality show has been canceled. I want to see it replaced with a very different show: “Let’s Make a Deal,” starring soon-to-be President Biden. Starting with an emergency Covid-19 relief package.
Here’s a principle we seem to have forgotten: Something is better than nothing. Our diverse, divided nation requires compromise in order to survive. Blessed are the dealmakers.
Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has been at the center of the Covid-19 compromise talks. A gregarious former governor from a state where Trump carried 55 counties (there is not a 56th), Manchin is comfortable hanging out in the GOP cloakroom, eating peanuts and swapping stories with Republican senators. He is just as comfortable in the weekly Democratic Senate lunches, where his ability to win in the reddest of states is deeply admired. After the election, with no progress in moving Covid-19 relief, Manchin sounded the alarm.
“What motivated me,” he told me, “was looking at all the aid that’s set to expire at the end of this month. Extra unemployment compensation: gone. Eviction moratorium: over. Mortgage forbearance: through. State and local support: dead. Suspension of small business disaster loan repayment: ending. Same with student loan support. And lots more.”
All this assistance is ending, Manchin notes, when the pandemic is worsening. “We are going to have the worst quarter ever with the pandemic,” he said. “This is an emergency.”
The so-called “skinny bill” favored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky was a nonstarter for even the Democrat most favorably predisposed to working with the GOP. “Nothing for nursing homes,” Manchin said. “Nothing for rural hospitals. Nothing for nutrition assistance, or opioids, or broadband or state and local government.”
So, Manchin reached out. Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were ready to deal. So were Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Mitt Romney of Utah. Democrats like Mark Warner of Virginia, New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan were at the table, as well as Independent Angus King of Maine. The group formed a critical mass for compromise.
To be sure, their compromise Covid stimulus package does not include the $1,200 stimulus checks Democrats want. And it does include a provision to insulate employers from liability if their employees contract Covid-19 – something Republicans support but Democrats fear could encourage employers to put their employees at risk. The compromise bill’s $1,200 monthly unemployment benefits does not meet what Democrats think folks need after they have lost their job through no fault of their own. The emergency funding for cash-strapped state, local, and tribal governments is, in the eyes of progressives, inadequate.
Congress should pass it anyway. Now. Why? I can’t believe I have to say this: Over 2,800 Americans died of Covid-19 on Wednesday. That’s nearly two deaths every minute. People’s lives are at stake. Their homes, their jobs are at risk. Their teachers and firefighters and frontline health care workers could be laid off. You think things are bad now? Imagine fighting this pandemic without the emergency aid.
This should be easy. But we seem to have forgotten that in a democracy compromise is not just a noble ideal; it is the practical, realistic way to make progress.
Bill Clinton knew that. He spent the majority of his presidency working with a Republican Congress. Compromise was essential. He didn’t compromise with the GOP because he liked them. He compromised with them because he felt it was his duty. In 1997, the Republican House and the Republican Senate passed – and Clinton signed – the Children’s Health Insurance Program, at the time the greatest expansion of Medicaid in decades. Why would Republicans expand government health care, a cherished Democratic goal? Because in exchange they got a reduction in the capital gains tax rate, one of their highest priorities.
George W. Bush also knew how to make a deal. From his earliest days as president, he reached out to liberal lion Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts to forge a bipartisan consensus on education reform. No Child Left Behind passed the Senate 87-10, and the House 381-41.
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Barack Obama knew the importance of compromise too. He named Rahm Emanuel, a dealmaker’s dealmaker, his chief of staff. Job One was to build a bipartisan consensus to rescue the economy from the Great Recession. The Republicans were recalcitrant, and it came down to maverick Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter to provide the final crucial vote.
“Specter wanted $10 billion for NIH (National Institutes of Health),” Emanuel recalls. “Done. Trouble is, he also wanted to cap the total cost, so we had to cut some of our priorities. President Obama gave up two-thirds of the funding for his top education priority, Race to the Top, in order to get Specter’s support to save the economy. Obama didn’t flinch. He cut his own priorities to fund Specter’s. He refused to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. And we jump started the recovery.”
Here’s to hoping Democrats and Republicans can come together again, that the muscle memory has not atrophied, that the dealmakers – God bless ‘em – can make a deal.
