I got an interesting question from a Democratic Senate staffer a few weeks ago that I’ve been pondering, even daydreaming about, since: What were my top three agenda items for a new Democratic Senate, assuming a flip and a Biden win? Three? Are you kidding? How do you even begin with three when there’s so much destruction that has to be undone? I gamely tried to answer (even though I got the question on a Friday afternoon, which was just cruel).
I went with immediate needs and practical ones. My number one priority was, and still is, a massive response to the coronavirus. Money is cheap right now for the feds to get. With the Congressional Budget Office forecasting a GDP loss over the next decade of $16 trillion—and that was back in June, before even more damage was done—the government should be spending along the lines of another $10 trillion, minimum, to save us all. By January, it could be even worse. The abdication by Mitch McConnell’s Senate is going to leave so many more people unemployed, so many more infected, and so many more business are going to fail. So there’s that.
Priority No. 1 for progressives this fall is beating Donald Trump, but priority No. 1A is taking back the Senate. Donate now to help make that happen.
My next priority is kind of an unknown—responding to whatever the Supreme Court decides to hand us on the Affordable Care Act, on the assumption that Chief Justice John Roberts is going to find some way to split the baby again and further erode the law, if he doesn’t just decide to chuck the whole thing. At any rate, the ongoing needs of COVID-19 are going to mean that something health care-related is going to have to be done to expand coverage and access.
The next priority for me was immigration—family reunification, reestablishing DACA, and comprehensive immigration reform. Trump started his racist, white supremacist tenure by attacking immigrants and so it has to be one of the first things undone by Democrats, for the health of our society, for our standing in the world, and for the simple reason of humanity.
But there’s so, so much more to be done. Rooting out every Trumper in the government and reversing pretty much every policy he put in place. Rescinding Trump’s tax cuts. Defunding the police and rebuilding law enforcement from the ground up. Saving the U.S. Postal Service. Expanding Social Security. At least moving toward Medicare for All so the next Democratic president is committed to it and makes it happen. Court reform, in whatever creative ways we can come up with—expanding the courts, impeaching the worst of Trump’s judges, whatever it takes to dilute the presence of the extremists he and McConnell have installed.
Speaking of McConnell: nuking the filibuster. He might be subsumed in a blue tsunami and toppled, but it’s not too likely—as unpopular as he’s always been in Kentucky, he always wins reelection. He can’t be allowed to continue to destroy the institution of the Senate.
There’s just so much more: infrastructure, including universal high-speed internet in every corner of the country, and along with it net neutrality; a massive reinvestment in government so that agencies like Social Security and the IRS, which have been undermined for decades by shrinking budgets, can do their jobs again; statehood for Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico; new investments in elections for the states; and on and on and on. If I had a magic wand and could take us forward four months with a Democratic triumvirate—House, Senate, White House—that’s what I would do.
What about you? What are your top priorities, short-, medium-, and long-term? Assuming that the new Democratic Senate is elected because we help put them there, what are you going to demand in return?