By Matthew Continetti
Saturday, January 30, 2021
No one can accuse President Biden of easing into office.
His first days have been a blizzard of executive orders, presidential
memorandums, and official proclamations. He says he wants to overturn the worst
policies of the previous administration, and to restore a sense of national
unity and institutional integrity. What gets lost in the details of all these
initiatives is Biden’s partisan goal.
It’s not just that the new president wants to resume the
trajectory America was on when Barack Obama left office in 2017. He also wants
to claw back the gains red states made over blue states during the last four
years. He wants to shift federal resources to Democratic constituencies, and to
save the blue states from the true cost of their misguided policies. And if red
America has to pay a price in lost jobs and tax revenue, well, that’s too bad.
Leave aside, for the purposes of this discussion, the
relative merits of Biden’s executive actions. (I disagree with almost all of
them.) Focus instead on their distributional effects, not on individuals but on
sectors of the economy, on regions of the country, and on the donor bases of
the two parties. The image that comes to mind is of swarms of dollars changing
course mid flight: a mass migration of subsidies, spending, and incentives from
the GOP coalition to the Democratic one.
Start with energy. Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline
at a cost of 1,000
jobs and diplomatic goodwill with Canada. He banned fracking on federal
lands and paused oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife
Reserve. According to a White House fact sheet, he told federal agencies to
“accelerate clean energy and transmission projects.” He is sure to bestow
federal largesse on the sons of Solyndra.
The alternative energy sector overwhelmingly
favors Democrats. Its political investments have paid off. The old-style
extractive industries, mainly based in GOP strongholds, will suffer. In some
cases they are targeted for extinction. The knock-on effects are serious.
“Wyoming state superintendent Jillian Balow notes that her state depends on
some $150 million a year in oil and gas federal royalties to fund K-12
schools,” says
the Wall Street Journal editorial
board.
Other Biden measures resumed the flow of government aid
to the special interests behind his campaign. The second Catholic president has
jumpstarted
federal funding of Planned Parenthood almost two years after President Trump
cut off the nation’s largest abortion provider. Biden also reversed President
Trump’s ban on money for “sanctuary cities” that choose not to enforce federal
immigration law. That decision will help boost the budgets of progressive
municipalities eager to pass off the costs of illegal immigration. Biden’s
codification of the Supreme Court’s Bostock
decision, which made gender identity protected under civil rights law, and his
lifting of the ban on trans soldiers is sure to please a class of donors essential
to Democratic Party finances.
Biden’s proposed American Rescue Plan best captures the
new administration’s intermingling of public policy and greasy-pole
gamesmanship. Take, for example, the $130
billion that Biden wants to spend on K–12 schools. That number is on top of
the $67
billion Congress already has committed to reopening elementary and
secondary schools.
The additional cash is a handout to the teachers’ unions,
who have opposed a return to in-person instruction at every opportunity, and
who are among Biden’s
closest allies. Biden has adopted the unions’ rhetoric, saying that schools
cannot open until they have been renovated. He’s wrong, of course — measures
such as masks, hygiene, and social distancing are enough to stop the spread,
especially among the elementary schoolers who need in-person classes the most
and whose transmission rates are low. But science doesn’t matter. The unions
must get paid.
One year after COVID-19 appeared in America, it is more
than evident that arbitrary, statewide lockdowns are a disaster for small
businesses, which happen to be a
key part of the Republican coalition. The states that have done the most to
reopen have best weathered the economic storm. And these same states tend to be
low-tax, low-minimum-wage, and have a business-friendly regulatory environment,
as well as a warmer climate. The Wall
Street Journal reports
that the South is leading America’s recovery. But, in the heavily Democratic
northeast, “The recovery of jobs has lagged behind.”
What does Biden want? His solution is to make Florida and
Texas more like New York and California. My colleague at the American
Enterprise Institute, Paul H. Kupiec, calculates
that the nationwide $15 minimum wage contained in the American Rescue Plan would
“shift business formation, growth, and employment from red states to blue, as
the higher minimum wage erodes red states’ labor cost advantage in many job
categories.” What’s best for Cuomo, however, is not what’s best for the
country.
A steep minimum-wage hike in the middle of an economic
crisis that disproportionately affects small business is the exact opposite of
what you want to do to spur full employment. But it does make sense if you are
using the crisis to gain leverage for unions and government over free labor and
the private sector.
Blue America began to claw back red America’s earnings
last week. And the next four years (at least) will see the Biden coalition
press its advantage.
Ah, normalcy.
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