Why Republicans Should Be Excited Biden Is President

or How President Biden’s Policy Shares Many of the Same Goals as Donald Trump’s

Photo by Jon Sailer on Unsplash

As usual, this post is aimed at Republicans and conservatives who seem to think the same ideas that come out of their mouths are anathema in the mouth of Democrats. So in case you missed Biden’s speech and only read conservative news that “Biden’s first big speech to Congress bombs on all counts” (New York Post, which I generally like to read to get a conservative viewpoint that isn’t worded in a way that makes me want to tear out my hair), here’s why you should be excited about what the president said if you are a conservative:

• Since Biden became president, 1,300,000 jobs have been created.

• He wants to create more jobs with the green energy industry. He equates green energy with jobs. He says jobs are the key to this plan. This is not a decadent, idealistic plan. This is a plan to create more jobs and train blue collar Americans to perform them, 90% of which do not require a four-year degree. This includes bringing manufacturing into the U.S. and out of China.

• He is paying for Medicaid and Medicare expansion by allowing them to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to reduce their cost of prescription drugs. This will enable

• He barely mentions racism.

• He is aware of the fact that we are in competition with China, and he wants to bring jobs back into America. Know how he’s going to do that? Removing tax incentives for businesses to take jobs overseas. Spending more on R&D, to match China’s 2%.

• He wants to provide two extra years of preschool and two of community college for Americans who need it. He’s also going to pay for this by taxing these corporations, fifty-five of which paid 0% in federal income tax on over $40 billion in profits in 2020, and closing tax shelters in other countries to bring money back into the American economy. If you still don’t think this is fair, consider that while twenty million Americans lost their jobs during the pandemic, 650 billionaires saw their net worth increase by more than $1 trillion.

• His plan to ban weapons based on magazine capacity and increase background checks is the same ban that was passed in the nineties that reduced gun violence. When this expired in 2000, guess what happened? This is not a new invasion of American gun rights. This is something the country has lived for without gun owners being the worse for the wear.

• He is not imposing tax increases on people making less than $400,000 a year—less than ¾ of 1% of Americans. He’s also making the increase the same as it was during George W. Bush’s Republican presidency: 39.6%. And he identifies that the tax cut of 2017 added $2 trillion to the national deficit.

• He asked God to bless America. He asked God to bless the troops. He promised to end the war in Afghanistan. And he is the only president in recent years who has had a child serve in the military.

What more can Republicans ask for?

Biden also loves America and democracy. He called America “the most unique idea in history.” He said, “I have never been more confident or more optimistic about America.” He makes the very salient point that autocrats in China and Russia are looking at us to see if we can actually get things done with this idea called democracy. He says they think our process is too slow, and we are too divided, and they think their systems are better because they can make things happen with an order. He exhorted Congress to show autocrats, and Americans, that our democracy works, essentially saying, “If you don’t like my idea, pass something we can all agree on. But get legislation passed. Show them democracy works.”

Do you know what extra child care and education feels like to my husband and me? It feels like relief. My husband graduated from a vocational school and has worked a trade his entire adult life. Later on he decided to get a first an associate’s degree and then engineering degree, part of which was paid for by Obama’s back-to-school loans. But we still have $70,000 in student loans that we had to defer payment on during the pandemic. He could have used two free extra years of community college.

We also have two young children. When I was job hunting last year, there was an overlap between when I started looking for work and when I got a job during which I needed my children to be in full-time care. But we couldn’t afford it for the month before my job started or the two weeks after it started that I didn’t get paid. We had to borrow money from my parents. I have friends in Chicago who have been working and completing their dissertations while trading off caring for their son because they cannot afford child care. These people have put themselves through college and graduate school without family money, and they have over a $100,000 in loans. They could use reduced or free child care so they can be productive members of society, not because they are entitled to “free goodies,” as I was astonished to hear a Republican I know and respect call these services.

Senator Tim Scott criticizes this plan by calling it governmental interference in American lives. He immediately followed his criticism by saying we should be “expanding opportunities” for Americans instead. What is education and child care but expanding opportunities? Are Americans being forced to use these services? Do they have the potential to be harmful? Do they encourage laziness or taking advantage? Of course not! These are systems Americans already have access to as part of our citizenship in this country. They are systems that make American great. The education system may be broken, but we need to make sure Americans have access to it, and then work on fixing it.

If you want to reduce it to its most conservative terms, expanded education opportunities make us more competitive in the global arena. President Biden makes the point that we are the country that introduced twelve years of public, free education to the world. With the global economy more competitive than ever, can we stay competitive with just twelve years of public education? Biden thinks not, unless we become the leader in this area again.

This same argument can be applied to health care, by the way. This is a service Americans need and cannot pay for, and regardless of how broken it is, the first step is making sure all citizens can access basic health services in an affordable way. For example, although my husband and I both work full time, neither of us have health insurance through our jobs; we have it through the government. He is a sole proprietor, and my job doesn’t offer insurance. If we didn’t have options through the government marketplace, which believe me we realize is far from a perfect system, we would be at the mercy of insurance companies.

Biden was nothing but positive about Republican involvement and ideas in this speech. He said, “I know the Republicans have their own ideas and are engaged in productive discussions with Democrats.” He said, “Vice President Harris and I meet regularly in the Oval Office with Democrats and Republicans to discuss the American Jobs Plan. And I applaud a group of Republican Senators who just put forward their proposal.”

There are things about Biden’s speech I’m sure Republicans don’t agree with; otherwise they’d be Democrats. Even Democrats don’t think the Biden administration is perfect. But what it comes down to is that regardless of the numbers during Trump’s presidency, the economy has not been growing for many Americans. It’s not enough for the economy to grow; it must grow in a way that helps the middle class and those in poverty. Most Americans have not had an income raise in real dollars in twenty years (Pew Research Center). Most Americans don’t get paid a living wage whether we are working for minimum wage or at a job that requires a college degree. My salary, after taxes, is paid twice monthly; the first check in its entirety pays our mortgage, and the second check pays for our monthly child care with several hundred left over for all our other bills and expenses after that. Fortunately I live in a two-income household. Otherwise our family would be in poverty, even though I earn about $20,000 more than the poverty line, and my husband and I both commute 45 minutes to work each way so we could get a mortgage that is cheaper than what most people pay in rent each month.

Biden is trying to do what Republicans applauded Donald Trump for doing, which is creating jobs and bringing them back to America, weakening China and making America great — for all Americans.

This excerpt from his speech is worth reading. These are the words of someone who is proud of America, who wants to unify America and who wants all Americans to be proud of their country and all it has achieved:

“It’s time we remembered that We the People are the government. You and I.

“Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over.

“It’s us. It’s “We the people.”

“In another era when our democracy was tested, Franklin Roosevelt reminded us—In America: we do our part.

“That’s all I’m asking. That we all do our part.

“And if we do, then we will meet the central challenge of the age by proving that democracy is durable and strong.

“The autocrats will not win the future.

“America will.”