Pop quiz: you're the new president of a nation that's experienced decades of wage stagnation, rising inequality, and where many low-paid workers have no choice but go to their jobs in person despite the fact that there's a contagious pandemic that has killed 500,000 people in this country alone. Which of the three options below is NOT a crucial thing to get done right now:
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| (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images via Politico) |
A.) Convince the Senate to overcome their hesitance and confirm your nominee for the director of the OMB, a person who happens to be an bad boss with a history of left-punching (quite literally, in at least one alleged case);
B.) Order airstrikes to be carried out in a country the United States is not at war with, in violation of both the Constitution and international law;or
C.) Raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in over a decade.
If you answered C, congratulations—the sitting president of the United States agrees with you. After the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a $15 an hour minimum wage could not be passed as part of the COVID relief package using budget reconciliation rules, Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated that "President Biden is disappointed in this outcome" but that he "respects the parliamentarian's decision and the Senate's process." To be perfectly clear, as an unelected official the parliamentarian's ruling is purely advisory, and could be completely ignored by Kamala Harris in her role as president of the Senate. But nonetheless, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain had already indicated beforehand that the Biden administration had no intent of exercising this option were the parliamentarian not to rule in its favor. In fact, whether Biden and his crew are actually "disappointed," as Psaki claimed, seems questionable; CNN reports that "far from being a defeat, the ruling is viewed as clearing the way for the bill's passage in the Senate, [according to] a Biden administration official[.]"
Now that the House has passed a version of the COVID relief bill that includes a minimum wage hike, if Kamala Harris did overrule the parliamentarian, the Senate could simply pass that same bill and deliver it to Joe Biden's desk—rather than wasting time by stripping out the minimum wage provision and then sending the modified bill back to the House for its approval. Some of the Democratic caucus's more conservative members may not like the inclusion of the minimum wage hike, but whether they would actually have the gall to sink the entire COVID relief bill because they objected to one (widely popular) provision within it seems at least questionable.
Perhaps the Biden administration's willingness to abandon the minimum wage raise would be a little more forgivable if not for some of its other recent actions. For one thing, there's of course the Neera Tanden saga. Tanden, who Biden nominated to head the Office of Management and Budget, has come under fire for a less-than-charming online persona that's involved attacks on those both to her right and to her left. But mean tweets are pretty far from her worst offense. As a senior aide to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, Tanden assaulted a journalist who asked Clinton about her support for the Iraq War. A 2018 exposé by BuzzFeed News revealed that, based on the accounts of 19 current and former staffers, the Center for American Progress (of which Tanden is the president) had failed to adequately respond to sexual harassment by one of its employees. To make matters worse, in an all-staff meeting after the exposé was published, Tanden named the anonymous victim of sexual harassment the story had centered around, shocking the employees in attendance.
None of this even touches on how fundamentally compromised the Center for American Progress is itself. According to the Washington Post, the think tank "received at least $33 million in donations from firms in the financial sector, private foundations primarily funded by wealth earned on Wall Street and in other investment firms, and current or former executives at financial firms such as Bain Capital, Blackstone and Evercore" between the years 2014 and 2019. Under Tanden's leadership, CAP has aggressively courted these deep-pocketed donors. The organization has also, in recent years, accepted between $1.5 million and $3 million dollars from the dictatorial government of the United Arab Emirates, which has joined Saudi Arabia in its murderous assault on Yemen. Not surprisingly, these large donations seem to have had an effect: CAP declined to support a bipartisan Senate resolution designed to end American involvement in the war in Yemen, and an unsigned essay on the organization's website lauded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The think tank also censored its own report on anti-Muslim bias in the US by removing a chapter on New York City's surveillance of Muslim communities under Michael Bloomberg, who has given handsomely to CAP both before and after the publication of the report.
Nominating someone like this for a cabinet-level position is bad enough, but what's happened since makes it all the more insulting. Not shockingly, Neera Tanden's nomination has run into trouble in the Senate, as both Democrat Joe Manchin and a number of more "moderate" Republicans have expressed their intent to oppose her confirmation. Committee votes have even been postponed to give Senators more time to consider Tanden's nomination, which at this point is hanging by a thread. But rather than doing the obvious thing—withdrawing her nomination and finding a less controversial alternative—Biden has continued to stand by Tanden. Press Secretary Psaki has tweeted support for this "leading policy expert who brings critical qualifications to the table" and Ron Klain told MSNBC's Joy Reid that "[w]e're fighting our guts out to get [Tanden] confirmed."
But getting Tanden confirmed isn't the only thing that's apparently more urgent than raising the minimum wage. Biden also ordered that a "defensive" bombing be carried out on buildings in Syria, killing at least 22 people according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. As Rutgers Law School Professor Adil Ahmad Haque writes, the
airstrikes almost certainly violated international law, for two basic reasons. The airstrikes did not repel an ongoing armed attack, halt an imminent one, or immediately respond to an armed attack that was in fact over but may have appeared ongoing at the time...And the airstrikes were carried out on the territory of another State, without its consent, against a non-State actor...These two reasons, combined, are decisive. It cannot be lawful to use armed force on the territory of another State when it is clear that no armed attack by a non-State actor is ongoing or even imminent.
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The U.S. airstrikes were not defensive. They were expressive. The Pentagon says that the operation "sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel." The operation sends another message: President Biden will violate international law, much like his predecessors.
And even Democratic Senator Tim Kaine (who was the party's 2016 candidate for vice president) noted that "[o]ffensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary circumstances," and demanded to know "the Administration’s rationale for these strikes and its legal justification for acting without coming to Congress."
It's hard to see, in any case, how the strikes serve to draw the seemingly never-ending American military involvement in the Middle East any nearer to a close. The buildings struck by the bombs were, according to the Pentagon, being used by Iranian-backed militias, and the bombing was carried out in response to rocket attacks on American targets in Iraq. The obvious solution, some might say, would be to end the US presence in Iraq as quickly as is practical, rather than further escalating tensions with a significant regional power that already has plenty of reason to be angry with the United States. But that sort of thinking has long been rejected by those in charge of the US government, and that doesn't appear likely to change any time soon.
Such are the twisted priorities of the Biden administration: Neera Tanden's confirmation is worth "fighting [their] guts out" for, and airstrikes in Syria must go ahead without Congressional approval and in violation of international law—but if the Senate parliamentarian says no minimum wage increase, well, that's that. To be fair, Biden has of course found time to take some positive steps: the continued suspension of student loan payments is one I'm personally grateful for, and reentering the Paris climate agreement is a plus. But for anyone still under the illusion Biden will govern as a new FDR, the past couple weeks should be enlightening. Anything that provides long-term help for the working class ranks as one of the least pressing, most disposable elements of the Biden agenda. That's nothing new, but it's certainly not encouraging.
