In March, Congress overhauled the U.S. Postal Service, which had been on the brink of insolvency for years.
In June, it passed the first major gun safety legislation in nearly three decades.
In July, it voted to make the most significant investment in American industrial policy in half a century.
A bipartisan group of 16 senators is working to fix the Electoral Count Act of 1887, a step that legal experts say is needed to save our democracy from another Jan. 6-style attack.
If you are progressive you may be disappointed but there is major progress under an evenly divided Senate. Washington is not irreparably broken and that Biden’s first term has gone surprising amount got done.
We are living through a deeply polarized era but as compelling as the intractability narrative is, it might be a bit overblown. Obstructionism has limits.
People who win elected office can get fed up with gridlock, too. Consider what happened when Mitch McConnell tried to hold the CHIPS Act hostage for political reasons. It didn’t work, partly because too many Republicans had worked on it and wanted to pass it.
Biden’s original, sweeping Build Back Better plan failed not because of obstructionism but because the country wasn’t sold on everything in it. When it died a slow death, many Democratic voters grew despondent. Presidential popularity poll numbers sank.
But for the past two years, lawmakers have worked on to a series of bipartisan bills on things that have been on the country’s to-do list for years.
They were quietly hammering out bipartisan deals with the other to expand health care benefits for veterans, secure what has been called the largest investment ever in public transit and protect local and tribal governments from cyberattacks.
A 50-50 Senate meant that much of what passed had to be bipartisan, with at least 10 Republicans in support. It was harder than it used to be, but not impossible. It’s uncool to crow about working with the other side.
It’s causing Americans — and people around the world — to lose faith in democracy as a model of governance.
Many activists who worked hard to elect Democrats began to wonder why they had bothered. But the party kept at it. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, kept reaching out to find a slimmed-down version that Senator Manchin could live with.
Democrats have passed the Inflation Reduction Act contains what Bill Gates described as the “single most important piece of climate legislation in American history.”
It’s a vindication of the approach of both wings of the Democratic Party. Progressives made climate a priority. Moderates patiently struck the deal that got it done.
This Act will also make it possible for the government to negotiate the price of drugs for Medicare patients, a common-sense but maddeningly out-of-reach goal that groups like AARP have been fighting for since at least the early 2000s.
News of these Democratic victories has been quickly drowned out by current events such as the coverage of the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago.
But Biden’s approval rating jumped to its highest level in two months.
These achievements will not rival F.D.R.’s New Deal or L.B.J.’s Great Society programs, Biden’s accomplishments are more on par with J.F.K.’s New Frontier middle gains.
We should fight for all of our values and vote in November.
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