President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have scored an impressive list of legislative wins in the less than the two years that he has been in office. The record is all the more remarkable in that they have a majority of about 10 in the 435-member House of Representatives and the Senate is evenly split 50-50. Only a few of the measures had bipartisan support.

Even more astonishing is the fact that the Democrats appear reluctant to spread the word about how much their bills will improve the lives of Americans, while some Republicans who voted against their initiatives have shown no qualms trying to get mileage out of them.

Take the case of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which Congress approved in November. It allocates $550 billion for repairs, upgrades and building of roads, bridges, mass transit, rail systems, airports, ports and waterways; $65 billion to broaden access to the Internet; $65 billion to improve the electric grid and water systems; and $7.5 billion to build a nationwide network of plug-in chargers for electric vehicle.

Nineteen Republican senators voted for the bill but not Florida’s Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. However, Scott, who has taken to calling Democrats “evil,” stated in February that he was “proud that Senator Rubio and I were able to help secure an unprecedented $1 billion for Everglades restoration, the largest single amount ever allocated by the federal government."

“That,” said PolitiFact, the fact-checking news operation, “makes Scott part of another growing political tradition: lawmakers claiming credit for things made possible by legislation they opposed. It’s how some lawmakers navigate the awkward situation when they’ve voted against something that the public broadly supports, especially bills that funnel money to localities and create jobs and economic opportunity.”

It happened also almost a year earlier, after Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act to counter the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the economy and the nation’s health. All Republican House members opposed it but still Rep. Ashley Hinson of Iowa said she helped get more than $800 million for her state, PolitiFact pointed out.

Going back more than a decade ago, after Congress passed the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 under President Barack Obama to revive the economy during the Great Recession, Rep. Don Young of Alaska derided it. "This bill was not a stimulus bill, it was a vehicle for pet projects, and that’s wrong," he maintained. But he issued a press release stating, "Rep. Young Wins Victory For Alaska Small Business." The statement claimed that Young "worked with Members on the other side of the aisle to make the case for these programs… ”

Obama called attention to such hypocrisy during a Jan. 29, 2010, question-and-answer session with House Republicans in Baltimore. He pointed out that some of them “have been at the ribbon-cuttings for some of these important projects in your communities." On Feb. 2, 2010, Obama, speaking at a town hall in New Hampshire, reiterated that “some of the very same folks in Congress who opposed the Recovery Act — and claim that it hasn’t worked — have been all too happy to claim credit for Recovery Act projects and the jobs those projects have produced. They come to the ribbon-cuttings. … They found a way to have their cake and vote against it, too."

There are many more such measures under Biden that Republicans will want to attach themselves to, despite their opposition, because they cannot look their constituents in the eye and announce they had been in the opposition. The bills include, most recently, the Inflation Reduction Act which passed only because Vice President Kamala Harris cast her tie-breaking vote after no Republican senator supported it. And that happened even though the legislation is a slimmed down version of an initial $3 trillion Build Back Better bill which the House passed but which stalled in the Senate because of resistance from two of their own: West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Krysten Sinema. The New York Times said the Build Back Better bill was intended to be “the most significant expansion of the nation’s safety net since the war on poverty in the 1960s, devising legislation that would touch virtually every American’s life, from conception to aged infirmity.”

Still, the Inflation Reduction Act is a major piece of legislation. It provides $369 billion to reduce environmental pollution by 40 percent by 2030; $288 billion towards reducing the cost of prescription drug; $66 billion to subsidize Affordable Care Act enrollees; and $300 billion for deficit reduction. For the first time, Medicare will be able to negotiate the prices of some expensive medicines, Medicare Part D drug plans will be revamped and seniors and persons with disabilities will pay no more than $2,000 a year for medications bought at the pharmacy. Medicare enrollees will also get all vaccines free of charge, not only those for Covid-19, the flu and pneumonia, and Medicare beneficiaries will pay no more than $35 a month for insulin, instead of the current $175 to $300 a vial. It boggles the mind that there are elected officials who voted against such benefits.

Congress also passed other important bills this year which will finally provide health care for veterans exposed to hazardous military burn pits – which Republicans initially rejected – as well as modest gun control, and vastly expanding the manufacturing of essential computer chips locally.

Such achievements provide the background against which Biden and Democrats generally can take to their efforts to retain and even widen their control of Congress — along with the fact that it was Republicans who gave the U.S. Supreme Court the conservative majority that erased the right to an abortion.

Biden is expected to deliver an address around Labor Day on his victories. He will have to translate the legislative jargon into everyday language and have on the stage a representative sampling of the people who will benefit. Such “optics” are essential in today’s politics.

The president must also draw a sharp contrast between what he, in his quiet, civil manner has done with what the Republicans are offering: a petulant former president and an agenda based on European American nativism and grievance reflected in a senseless cultural war that is setting Americans against Americans.


List Of Achievements

Over $1 Trillion for

Roads, Bridges, Airports, Mass Transit, Rail Systems, Environment, Ports, Waterways, Internet Access, Electric Grid, Electric Vehicle charges, Drug Pricing, Simiconductor Chips and more.