FORTY-NINE
Ron Klain had been in his hotel room in Wilmington when the final results came in from Georgia officials on January 6, shortly after 4 p.m. Ossoff and Warnock had both won. Senate Democrats were in control.
Biden, who had been watching television coverage of the Capitol with horror, was cheered when Klain dropped by with the update. This obviously changes things, Biden said. The president-elect soon called Warnock and Ossoff to congratulate them. The two senators-elect had one message: Now we’ve got to get people those checks.
Biden laughed. Yes, we do, he said. The $600 checks had started going out to Americans in December, after Congress passed its spending bill. Now it was time to make sure an additional $1,400 check was sent out. $2,000 total for millions of Americans in need.
The checks would pour much needed cash into the economy but Klain also thought they were a symbol of Democrats having taken control in Washington. The people had given the party enormous power. Go deliver. Georgia erased any hesitation.
Biden convened a senior staff meeting from his home in Wilmington on Friday, January 8.
Before Georgia, his initial rescue plan had a price tag of around $1.4 trillion—a staggering number coming right after December’s $900 billion infusion into the national economy. Biden now wanted to hear from his aides about going even higher.
Klain was the only transition staff member physically present with Biden. The others were on a video conference call.
Deese, slated to be Biden’s National Economic Council director, presented a deck of slides, and Klain started to feel a bigger plan falling into place. He told Biden they would put together a more formal plan for review the next day.
Deese made another presentation that Saturday. Options ranging from the $1.4 trillion to something closer to $2 trillion were floated.
Biden peppered them with questions.
“Do we really think we can get something this big done?” he asked.
Biden had been a Senate lifer and knew a one-vote majority guaranteed little. He did not want to get bogged down for months.
“Is this going to consume my entire first 100 days, my entire first year?” he asked. “How long will this take? 50-50 in the Senate? And with a very narrow margin in the House?”
Biden added, “This is clearly what we need to do to beat this virus and get the economy off its back. But, you know, can we really do this?”
“We really have no choice,” Klain answered.
Klain recalled the Obama experience in 2009, when Republicans opposed the Obama administration’s stimulus plan during a global recession, which had caused Obama to ultimately accept a $787 billion package, a number lower than his economists believed was needed to kick-start the economy. This time around, he said they needed an economic boom.
“Rather than negotiate with ourselves, rather than ask what’s possible, rather than sit here and scope the thing back through some political screen, let’s put on the table what we think we really need,” Klain said. “And if Congress rejects that, well, then that’s just the way it’ll be.”
Democrats should not trim their sails out of some sense of what was politically feasible or what was politically possible, Klain said.
Several Biden advisers raised concerns, making two sharp points in response. First, Anita Dunn said, there is a risk that if we ask too much, we are just kind of dead-on-arrival. You shock the system. “Holy shit,” and even some Democratic lawmakers shut down.
The second point, she said, was if they asked for too much, the Republicans had an easy out, crying out about deficit spending, inflation, and passing on a burden to our grandchildren.
Dunn already had a target on her back with progressives, but she decided Biden needed to hear the risks.
Biden took it all in. The country was in a crisis. Some 4,000 people were now dying every day from the coronavirus, the deadliest month of the pandemic in the United States. The country could be heading toward a million Americans dead by the end of the year, and two years of a devastating pandemic. The economy was sputtering, losing 140,000 jobs in December and earning Trump the distinction of being the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs on his watch.
Biden said the crisis was genuine and had to be treated like one.
Biden finally signed off on a $1.6 trillion package. “We’re going to go in there with our best recommendation to the country, to the Congress, of what we really need.”
Biden had spent decades in the Senate and the vice presidency, stymied by the limits of those roles. He had told his friend and later Delaware senator, Ted Kaufman, he always believed that the presidency, and only that, offered a chance at securing transformational change.
He now had the presidency, and more than enough experience with fate.
“I could get hit by a bus this afternoon and it’d be over. So, I’m going to do as much as I can as fast as I can,” Biden said.
“You guys go try to start to sell it to the Democrats on the Hill and I’ll give a speech to the country, you know, laying this out,” Biden told his advisers.
To underscore the seriousness, Biden advisers discussed the possibility of the president-elect addressing the nation on January 14, just days before his inauguration.
On one level, a pre-inauguration speech seemed to be a serious breach of protocol. Biden was not yet president. Most presidents-elect engaged in ceremonial, pre-inaugural rituals at that point in mid-January. Traditionally, it was a time to bury partisan rancor.
But Trump was still arguing that the election was stolen. Cooperation on the transition was spotty at best, even obstructionist.
Biden was uncertain but did not dismiss the idea. Would a big speech seem tone-deaf? Grasping for power before his time?
His aides looked at the calendar. In the days after the inauguration, the schedule was packed with other events. He could do it on January 14 or January 25. Those were the slots.
Biden eventually came down on the side of urgency. Waiting would send the wrong message, he said. He chose January 14.
Klain deployed everyone—Deese, incoming White House legislative director Louisa Terrell, Ricchetti and Dunn, among others—to go see Pelosi, Schumer and all the other senior Democrats in the House and Senate. Time to listen.
The response was positive but prodding. After scoring the wins in Georgia, Democratic leaders felt they had the political capital to do more. They pushed Biden and his advisers to add in two more central components: another $100 to $200 billion allotted for state and local aid, and a significant increase of the child tax credit.
An expansion of the child tax credit—essentially cash for families with children—was a safety net that could pull millions of kids out of poverty. If passed, nearly 40 million American families would qualify for monthly federal payments—$300 for each child under six years old, and $250 for each child six or older. Right into the family bank account.
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Senator Patty Murray of Washington were two of the biggest Democratic proponents of the program on Capitol Hill. It was transformational, they said, knowing that framing could catch Biden’s interest. Both women also led the all-important appropriation committees in their respective chambers, which direct federal spending.
DeLauro, who had been in Congress for nearly 30 years, representing New Haven, was a founding member of the Progressive Caucus and long an outspoken advocate for children.
“This is the moment,” she said in a call to Klain on January 12. “You have to do this.”
Biden added $100 billion to his proposal.
Now, Biden’s emerging plan was $1.7 trillion, with another $200 billion for state and local aid that Schumer was championing.
The new total: $1.9 trillion.
Biden told his aides that was it. A hair beneath $2 trillion. Bold enough for progressives, but something he felt he could sell broadly. He implored them to stay at it, to keep pushing not just on the legislation but on the virus. One hundred million vaccinations in 100 days and passing the rescue plan—those were his priorities.