The pandemic turning point the Joe Biden did not want

President Joe Biden is tired of wearing a mask, Stepping into the East Room on Thursday, his face covered in black surgical fabric for the first time in weeks, the President made no attempt to disguise his disappointment at returning to the most charged symbol of the pandemic era.

“In a significant part of the country, you wouldn’t have to take one of these off because you don’t have to put one on,” he said, brandishing his mask in his right hand as a case-in-point of how things, in a matter of weeks, have gone astray.

Biden was understating where his administration’s new mask guidelines apply; more than 80% of the US population — about 274 million people — live in a county considered to have “high” or “substantial” Covid-19 transmission, where the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now suggests even vaccinated people wear masks indoors.

The pandemic turning point the Joe Biden and White House did not want

Yet Biden’s essential sentiment — that the country has backslid into conditions many once hoped had permanently passed — amounted to a stark turnabout for a President eager to move on. A CDC slide presentation, leaked on Thursday evening, only underscored the unwelcome direction the pandemic has taken six months into Biden’s presidency: the predominant Delta strain is highly contagious and can be transmitted even by people who are vaccinated.

As he left the White House for Camp David on Friday evening, the President was asked if he thought that even tougher guidelines and restrictions would have to be implemented to combat the summer Covid surge.

“In all probability,” he told reporters before walking, maskless, across the South Lawn to board Marine One.

A surge in Covid-19 cases driven by the contagious Delta variant has forced Biden to drastically rethink his approach to the pandemic, three weeks after he told the country on Independence Day the virus “no longer controls our lives.” In doing so, he is testing the nation’s forbearance amid changing rules and sometimes-confusing messages.

“I think you’re going to find the patience of businesses and the patience of a lot of other people running thin,” Biden acknowledged Thursday, a description his aides said could also apply to him. He has vented in meetings about a stalled effort to vaccinate the nation and grown frustrated at hitting what one described as a “brick wall.”

In a sign of the White House’s desire to control the messaging, top officials fanned out across cable news after Biden spoke Thursday, including his chief of staff Ron Klain and senior coronavirus adviser Jeff Zients, neither of whom regularly appear on weekday television shows.

The 25 days that transpired between Biden’s Fourth of July party, where 1,000 invited guests listened to the President declare near-independence from the virus, and Thursday, when he offered stern “straight talk” about the tragedy of vaccine holdouts, were marked by intensifying debate inside the administration over taking more urgent action to prevent the virus from again taking hold, according to people familiar with the matter.

What appeared like a dramatic shift over the course of days had, in fact, been slowly building within health agencies and the White House for weeks as officials sought more information about the Delta variant spreading across the country.

While Biden had been reluctant to take the step of mandating vaccines, he and his aides sought legal advice from the Justice Department earlier this summer on whether employers could require their workers to be vaccinated — including in the federal government. A legal memo sent to the White House on July 6 — two days after Biden’s Independence Day party — stated federal law doesn’t prohibit public agencies and private businesses from requiring Covid-19 vaccines, even if the vaccines have only emergency use authorization.

A disappointing turning point

The month of July could well be a turning point, but not in the way the White House had hoped. August is set to open awash in new uncertainty about the pandemic, his handling of which has earned him some of the most favorable marks of his presidency. A mix of frustration and exhaustion is palpable inside the West Wing, where advisers suddenly are wearing masks once again and no longer as confident about putting coronavirus in the rear view mirror.

As case counts rise in states where hesitancy remains pervasive, officials fear a scenario where schools are again forced online and work-from-home continues into another season. The worry extends to the economy, where a labor shortage already complicating the recovery could become even more troubling if the pandemic worsens. Tensions have been high inside the West Wing in recent days as officials have sought to confront a new challenge: their first significant backslide in progress against the virus.

Steps Biden had avoided for months are now suddenly in play, like vaccine requirements and mandates. A return to masks, viewed internally as politically perilous, was ultimately deemed unavoidable — though the administration stopped short of the “universal masking” the CDC recommended in the internal document made public this week.

Officials said they were persuaded to change the guidelines after seeing the grim assessments about the transmissibility of the Delta variant and its ability to be spread even by people who have been vaccinated, an alarming finding that led the agency to warn in internal documents that the “war has changed” against the virus.

“I think people need to understand that we’re not crying wolf here. This is serious,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told CNN on Thursday. “The measures we need to get this under control — they’re extreme. The measures you need are extreme.”

After receiving that Justice Department memo, Biden held off on announcing a vaccine requirement for federal personnel for another three weeks as health agencies gathered more information about the spread of the virus and the new Delta strain. Without firm data on the science of the variant, it was difficult for officials to recommend a course of action to the President, who has been adamant that science lead his Covid-19 response but remains highly attuned to the politics of his decisions.

Disturbing new data
That all changed with the alarming data CDC officials presented to the White House this week detailing the Delta variant’s ability to cause severe illness and spread as easily as chickenpox. The document, which was made public on Friday, also cites studies showing even vaccinated individuals could transmit the virus as easily as those who haven’t gotten shots — though are still far less likely to be hospitalized or die.

That information wasn’t initially presented when the CDC changed its mask guidelines on Tuesday, drawing accusations of muddled messaging from some medical experts. Though Walensky conducted a telebriefing on the new guidelines, the White House did not convene its usual weekly press conference with public health officials.

“Mostly the right policy, terrible communication,” former Baltimore Health Commissioner and CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen said on Wednesday. “I’m confused and I think many people are very confused about what exactly happened and why.”

That frustration is also present inside the administration, where officials have struggled to explain why the CDC held off on publishing data behind the changes in masking and testing for fully vaccinated people for over 48 hours. Several officials, who spoke to CNN anonymously, argued it should have been released when Walensky announced the policy change Tuesday. While there is consensus on stricter measures, officials lamented the poor communication to an understandably confused American public.

On Friday, as the CDC was releasing its data publicly, the White House said the agency had prioritized changing its mask guidance as quickly as possible once learning of the new science.

“The CDC’s first and foremost priority is getting the American people information as quickly as possible. And so that’s what they did on Tuesday. They got it as quickly as they can,” deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a daily briefing. “It was clear that vaccinated people have the ability to transmit and action needed to be taken quickly. And that’s why they did it ahead of releasing the data.”

A constant distraction

After seeking to shift the spotlight away from the pandemic in favor of his other agenda priorities, the new information about the Delta variant has forced Biden to return focus to the still-raging pandemic. Even the welcome news inside the White House that lawmakers had struck an elusive bipartisan deal on infrastructure was obscured by the renewed focus on coronavirus.

Biden hasn’t been shy in airing his annoyance.

“I’m talking about Made in America today. That’s all I’m talking about,” Biden said over the roar of Air Force One when he arrived in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, shrugging off a barrage of shouted questions about whether he’d require vaccines for the military. “Tomorrow I’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about, including Covid.”

A day later, Biden lashed out again when asked why he said in May that fully vaccinated people no longer had to wear masks.

“I thought there were people who were going to understand that getting vaccinated made a gigantic difference. And what happened was: A new variant came along, they didn’t get vaccinated, it was spread more rapidly, and more people were getting sick,” he said as he walked out of the East Room.

Behind the scenes, Biden has become increasingly frustrated and feels as if the nation has hit “a brick wall” when it comes to getting shots in arms, according to people familiar with his thinking. In private meetings with top aides, Biden has raised one question repeatedly: “What’s the problem?”

The President gets daily updates on vaccination rates, hospitalizations and deaths. His briefings have focused lately on the formidable Delta variant, but advisers have also warned that if the stalled vaccination campaign doesn’t improve soon, another — and potentially worse — variant could surface, further derailing progress the US has made.

As of Friday, the pace of new vaccinations was the highest it’s been since July 5, according to CDC data, but half the country still remains unvaccinated.

The White House has long resisted getting involved in coronavirus vaccine mandates and credentialing systems, fearing doing so would only feed right-wing accusations of government overreach and undermine efforts to convince hesitant conservatives to get vaccinated.

But stalled vaccination rates — particularly in southern, conservative states — propelled the White House in a different direction.

“You don’t pursue routes that we announced today until you’ve gone through and given people the opportunity to get vaccinated,” one source close to the White House said, pointing to the importance of giving Americans the choice to get vaccinated before turning to harder-line tactics.

Biden asked the Pentagon this week to develop a plan for making the vaccine mandatory for military personnel, something aides once feared could set off a firestorm of opposition. And the President says it is still an open question whether the federal government can mandate vaccines for the whole country; the White House insists that option is not being considered.

Biden administration health officials increasingly believe that making vaccination mandatory or unavoidable is the only way to break stalled vaccination rates that are keeping the US from reaching herd immunity. Officials hope requirements within the federal government could encourage the private sector and local governments to follow suit.

About 6% of adults said they would only get vaccinated if required, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s most recent monthly survey. Another 10% said they will “wait and see” before getting vaccinated.

Ahead of Biden’s announcement that he was requiring all federal employees attest to being vaccinated against Covid-19 or face strict protocols, the White House reached out to key union representatives to lay the groundwork for the decision, people familiar with the discussions said.

The conversations with both public and private sector union officials weren’t seamless, the people said. Some representatives raised concerns about the speed with which the White House was moving toward a position they previously hadn’t endorsed, as well as potential pushback from union members.

There was immediately blowback from some federal workers, including the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which said requiring vaccines infringed on civil rights.

Still, significant levels of public pushback from national labor groups before and after the announcement was scarce — something one official attributed to the decisive nature of the groups’ conversations with the White House.

“It was less of a ‘what do you think about this’ conversation and more of a ‘here’s what we’re doing’ conversation,” one of the people said.

Frustration as Biden, Congress allow eviction ban to expire

Anger and frustration mounted as President Joe Biden showed no signs of reversing plans to allow a nationwide eviction moratorium to expire at midnight Saturday — one Democratic lawmaker even camping outside the Capitol in protest as millions of Americans were about to be forced from their homes.

Biden’s decision announced days before the eviction deadline stunned many in Congress and exposed a rare divide between the president and his party, with potential lasting political ramifications. Lawmakers said they were blindsided by Biden’s inaction, some furious that he called on Congress to provide a last-minute solution to protect renters that they were unable to deliver.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the chair of the Financial Services Committee, said Saturday on CNN: “We thought that the White House was in charge.”

One lawmaker, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., camped overnight at the Capitol in protest. “I don’t plan to leave before some type of change happens,” Bush said.

“We are only hours away from a fully preventable housing crisis,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., during a floor speech in a rare Saturday session as senators labored over an infrastructure package.

“We have the tools and we have the funding,” Warren said. “What we need is the time.”

More than 3.6 million Americans are at risk of eviction, some in a matter of days, as a moratorium comes to an end. It was put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of the COVID-19 crisis when jobs shifted and many workers lost income.

The eviction ban was intended to prevent further virus spread by people put out on the streets and into shelters. Congress approved nearly $47 billion in federal housing aid to the states during the pandemic, but it been slow to make it into the hands of renters and landlords owed payments.

The day before the ban was set to expire, Biden called on local governments to “take all possible steps” to immediately disburse the funds.

“There can be no excuse for any state or locality not accelerating funds to landlords and tenants that have been hurt during this pandemic,” he said in a statement late Friday.

Biden set off the scramble by announcing Thursday he would allow the eviction ban to expire instead of challenging a recent Supreme Court ruling signaling this would be the last deadline.

The White House has been clear that Biden would have liked to extend the federal eviction moratorium because of the spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. But there were also concerns that challenging the court could lead to a ruling restricting the administration’s ability to respond to future public health crises.

On a 5-4 vote in late June, the Supreme Court allowed the broad eviction ban to continue through the end of July. One of those in the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, made clear he would block any additional extensions unless there was “clear and specific congressional authorization.”

Biden, heeding the court’s warning, called on Congress on Thursday to swiftly pass legislation to extend the date.

Racing to respond, Democrats strained to draft a bill and rally the votes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi implored colleagues to pass legislation extending the deadline, calling it a “moral imperative,” to protect renters and also the landlords who are owed compensation.

Waters quickly produced a draft of a bill that would require the CDC to continue the ban through Dec. 31. At a hastily arranged hearing Friday morning to consider the bill she urged her colleagues to act.

But Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the top Republican on another panel handling the issue, said the Democrats’ bill was rushed.

“This is not the way to legislate,” she said.

Landlords, who have opposed the moratorium and challenged it repeatedly in court, are against any extension. They, too, are arguing for speeding up the distribution of rental assistance.

The National Apartment Association and several others this week filed a federal lawsuit asking for $26 billion in damages because of the impact of the moratorium.

Despite behind-the-scenes wrangling throughout the day, Democratic lawmakers had questions and concerns and could not muster support to extend the ban.

Revising the emergency legislation to shorten the eviction deadline to Oct. 18, in line with federal COVID-19 guidelines, drew a few more lawmakers in support — but still not enough for passage.

House Democrats, leaders tried to simply approve an extension by consent, without a formal vote, but House Republicans objected.

Democratic lawmakers were livid at the prospect of evictions in the middle of a surging pandemic.

Bush, who experienced homelessness as a young mother of two in her 20s, said that, at the time, she was working in a low-wage job.

“I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I went through, ever,” said Bush, now 45, wiping away tears during an interview at the Capitol, where dozens had joined her protest. “I don’t care what the circumstances are and so I’m going to fight now that I’m in a position to be able to do something about it.”

Waters said House leaders should have forced a vote and Biden should not have let the warnings form one justice on the Supreme Court prevent him from taking executive action to prevent evictions.

“The president should have moved on it,” Waters said. She vowed to try to pass the bill again when lawmakers return from a recess.

By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

Some places are likely to see spikes in evictions starting Monday, while other jurisdictions will see an increase in court filings that will lead to evictions over several months.

The administration is trying to keep renters in place through other means. It released more than $1.5 billion in rental assistance in June, which helped nearly 300,000 households. The departments of Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs extended their foreclosure-related eviction moratoriums through the end of September on households living in federally insured, single-family homes late Friday, after Biden had asked them to do so.

Aides to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the chair of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said the two were working on legislation to extend the moratorium and were asking Republicans not to block it.

Democrats risk their majority with partisan, big spending agenda

Infrastructure week may be nearing a merciful end. Let’s hope so. No one wants to hear about interminable infrastructure negotiations ad nauseam.

America desperately needs to address its creaky, crumbling physical infrastructure to strengthen our economy, create jobs, improve traffic flow, enhance water systems, expand rural broadband and more. Now that a bipartisan infrastructure deal has been reached in the Senate, there is real momentum to propel this yet to be written legislation through the Senate with a strong bipartisan vote.

Many members desperately want an agreement with real deliverables so they can demonstrate to their constituents that government can indeed function when people of good faith seek consensus and compromise. Don’t get me wrong; this legislative train could easily derail in the House, but I remain optimistic.

The question now is what this means to the separate $3.5 trillion budget resolution and subsequent reconciliation package that includes spending for President Joe Biden’s sweeping social agenda — and which Democrats hope to pass along party lines, knowing Republicans won’t back it. Will the progressive Democrats who support the reconciliation package also be willing to vote for the Senate-negotiated bipartisan infrastructure legislation?

House Democrats would be smart to take this deal. Of course, they will seek to have their fingerprints all over whatever bill becomes law. In my experience, whenever the Senate reaches a bipartisan agreement on a must pass, major piece of legislation with a strong vote, the House will swallow hard and eat it every single time. Yes, House members will engage in histrionics, screaming and yelling about being jammed by the Senate — before relenting and capitulating to the upper chamber. In the end, the House might make a few minor tweaks to the Senate legislation, but make no mistake, the Senate’s basic framework will prevail.

A bipartisan agreement in the Senate with presidential support puts enormous pressure on the House to take up the measure as is. The left wing of the Democratic Party will scream loudest and they may try to kill the deal. They’ll say the bill isn’t big enough, doesn’t go far enough and fails to meet the needs of millions of Americans.

If, in fact, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party were to reject this agreement, there will be consequences: The first being the mammoth $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, which is on shaky ground to begin with. Why would Sens. Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema and moderate House Democrats in competitive districts vote for a partisan, bloated reconciliation bill after having a delicately negotiated, well-targeted physical infrastructure measure sacked by the far left?

With margins as thin as they are in the House and Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have no margin for error. If progressive House Democrats want to go big, blowing up this deal will get them nothing. In the end, the left will likely surrender to the bipartisan Senate infrastructure package.

All this makes the admonition of Congressional Democrats by former President Barack Obama’s pollster, Joel Benenson, compelling. Benenson contends that the bigger these massive bills grow, the more likely swing voters will reject the final product. He’s right. President Biden would be wise to spend less time listening to Sen. Bernie Sanders and the left wing of his party and more time heeding calls from moderate Democratic Sens. Manchin and Sinema and Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who spearheaded bipartisan negotiations on the infrastructure package in their respective chambers, and who are urging restraint on the budget-busting $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill waiting in the wings.

Manchin, Sinema and Gottheimer dwell in the real world where simply accommodating the Democratic base will, most assuredly, not be rewarded by their voters. They clearly understand this basic reality and know that the sustainability and durability of meaningful public policy requires bipartisan consensus and compromise.

History tells us Democrats face especially daunting headwinds to maintain their narrow House majority in the 2022 midterm elections, and the evenly divided Senate could flip as well. That’s why Democrats would be wise to significantly scale down their $3.5 trillion spending blow out, as “policies under consideration could cost between $5 trillion and $5.5 trillion over a decade,” according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Labeling a massive increase in social and human services funding as “infrastructure” is disingenuous. The American people are not that gullible. It has become fashionable in recent years to suggest that “deficits don’t matter.” In truth, how the nation’s leaders manage deficits does matter.

While the brutal effects of the pandemic certainly justified massive spending to support and stabilize the lives and livelihoods of our fellow citizens and the broader economy, using the public health crisis as a pretext to go big on expanding the federal footprint in our lives completely misreads President Biden’s mandate. As Benenson and other successful elected officials like me who represented competitive swing districts instinctively understand, elections are won in the middle, not the fringes.
President Biden won many centrists, moderate Democrats, persuadable Republicans and independents during the 2020 campaign by conveying a sense of maturity to stabilize and normalize the basic functioning of government after four years of exhausting Trumpian chaos. These voters much prefer incrementalism rather than fundamental change.

Ramming a partisan reconciliation spending package through on a massive scale is not the bipartisan style of governance that Biden promised. It’s what Bernie Sanders promised, and his candidacy was rejected by Democratic primary voters for the more moderate Biden.

Swing voters rewarded Biden and supported down ballot Republican candidates in 2020 to check, not enable, the excesses of the left wing of the Democratic Party. Democrats would be well advised to embrace the regular order appropriations process (requiring 60 votes in the Senate) for their spending priorities while using the partisan reconciliation process (requiring 51 votes in the Senate) for their tax priorities, such as they are.

The Delta variant notwithstanding, pent-up demand for goods and services is growing the economy and driving up prices. Consequently, the question of whether the resulting inflation is transitory or chronic is unknown. With all this demand and money in circulation, it sure feels like the classical definition of inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods. Why take unnecessary risks with an economy poised to bounce back organically? The enormous, mind-blowing political risk Democrats are taking should not be understated.

If Democrats pass this partisan $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, they will be handing Republicans a huge gift that will be weaponized in the 2022 midterms. History is not kind to the party of the incumbent President during congressional midterm elections. Democrats know all this which indicates they believe their House majority is likely lost, so why not jam as much progressive policy through Congress while they can?

With Republicans struggling to deal with the Trump hangover and continuing trauma over the January 6 insurrection, one would think Democrats would restrain themselves to avoid antagonizing the very swing voters who put Biden over the top in 2020.

If you don’t believe me, just ask President Obama’s insightful pollster.