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President-elect Joe Biden (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)
Joe Biden’s job just got a little easier, as news broke that everyone has been waiting for: an apparent breakthrough on Covid-19.
Monday’s announcement that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and its German-based partner, BioNTech SE, have a vaccine in development that’s more than 90% effective in trials came the same day Biden rolled out a much-touted coronavirus task force. President Trump, while disputing the outcome of the election, called the vaccine announcement “great news.”
The drug companies plan to ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization (EUA) that could allow it to manufacture by year’s end enough doses to immunize 15 million to 20 million people.
Biden made Trump’s handling of the coronavirus a key issue in his campaign. If the pandemic can be halted, it would surely boost consumer confidence and lift battered sectors such as airlines, hotels, restaurants and the cruise industry. Any subsequent gain in gross domestic product would come on his watch. To the victor, as the saying goes, go the spoils.
Even so, and taking the pandemic out of the equation — and it’s still too early for that — Biden is like the dog that finally caught the car. Now what?
What’s awaiting Biden
The fact is, the president-elect is inheriting a mess. An estimated 30 million to 40 million Americans who rent their homes are at risk of eviction. Millions of homeowners are struggling with mortgage payments, even though forbearance levels appear to have eased in recent weeks. This has been aided by a jobs rebound, but Friday’s Labor Department data still showed some 11.1 million Americans unemployed — twice as many as in February.
Restaurants and bars have accounted for about a third of the jobs recovery since spring. But the onset of winter, and with it the end of outdoor dining, could mean a new nosedive. A vaccine likely won’t be widely available to keep a new round of establishments from going under over the next several months.
But perhaps the biggest problem Biden will face is one that he has minimal control over: the massive budget shortfalls that are hitting most states. Moody’s Analytics estimates a $434 billion gap through 2022, more than the 2019 K-12 education budget for every state combined. It’s also more than twice the amount spent that year on state roads and other transportation infrastructure, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Unlike the federal government, 49 states are required to balance their budgets each year. (Vermont is the exception.) States are already raising taxes and cutting jobs.
These shortfalls assume no further fiscal stimulus from the federal government. Biden would like to prevent further economic pain. But he’s boxed in. Thanks to pandemic spending, and yes, Trump’s tax cuts, the federal deficit is at record levels. All this red ink has been tacked on to the national debt, which stands at $27.2 trillion. And with the effective fed funds rate at 0.09%, it’s not like the economy can be boosted by slashing interest rates.
Politically boxed in
The long-serving former senator is also politically boxed in. Unless Democrats win both Senate runoffs in Georgia, scheduled for Jan. 5, Republicans will once again control the Senate. This means that whatever Biden and Nancy Pelosi (who may face a challenge as House speaker) want to do will have to pass muster with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who’s likely to block large spending bills.
Biden wasn’t counting on this. Pollsters — a pox on them — were sure Democrats would flip the Senate. That hasn’t happened. Nor did they pick up seats in the House. This, combined with the fact that Trump, even in defeat, racked up 71 million votes — 47.7% of the popular vote — means Biden lacks a mandate for the big things he spoke about during the campaign.
Senate Republicans aren’t going to approve higher taxes on corporations and individuals making at least $400,000. They’re not going to back tougher gun-control measures. They’re probably not going to back big spending on renewable energy, unless Biden can show them how many jobs that wind and solar energy produce.
An elusive ‘mandate’
Even Biden himself, in his speech Saturday night, seemed to define his “mandate” in narrow terms. “Americans have called on us to marshal the forces of decency and the forces of fairness,” he said. “To marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time.”
A mandate for decency and civility is one thing — here’s to more civility on both sides. But a political mandate? I hate to break it to all the weekend partiers in New York and Los Angeles, but there are 71 million reasons why this doesn’t exist.
