The Joe Biden Way

CHAPTER 2Execute Strategically

If we act now, decisively, quickly, and boldly, we can finally get ahead of this virus; we can finally get our economy moving again.

—Joe Biden

Before either chamber of Congress voted on the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill, Biden knew that his two biggest hurdles involved two senators—Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. He and everyone else knew they had problems with certain parts of the package.

Biden also knew that if the minimum wage provision were not removed from the bill in the Senate version, it could likely sink the entire bill. The minimum wage provision was one of the main attractions of the relief package for Democrats, particularly those nearly one hundred progressives who made up the left flank of the party. (Since the dawn of time, the minimum wage has been a divisive issue for every faction of both major political parties.)

This time, there were both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who felt strongly that the minimum wage provision did not belong in a Covid-19 relief bill—that it should have been in a separate piece of legislation. In fact, in the weeks leading up to the House vote on the plan, Biden signaled—no, stated outright—that he did not believe that the wage provision would make it to the final bill. He believed in the wage hike, but he was a realist and pragmatist. He was also evolving in his role as president.

One of the real advantages of being in political life for five decades was that Biden was afforded the long ...