Jules Witcover

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s swift enactment of his American Rescue Plan has caught the Republican Party flatfooted, casting its members of Congress as a collection of Scrooges, denying their fellow Americans a huge pot of gold at the end of their rainbow.

In their ideological stand against deficit spending, these Republicans who all solidly opposed the plan have left themselves squarely on the wrong side of the equation in terms of public opinion. Biting the hand that was trying to feed them in this most difficult of economic times was clearly a no-brainer, giving Republican voters ample cause to desert the Grand Old Party in the 2022 midterm elections.

The new president in his first formal televised speech from the White House offered the public a partnership with him to bring the country back to normalcy after the Trump era and the coronavirus pandemic that has plunged it into economic lockdown.

He set May 1 as his date for having all Americans eligible for vaccination, and Independence Day for resuming family backyard celebrations within the safety precautions of the scientific experts.

“f we do our part, if we do this together, by July the 4th there’s a good chance you, your family and friends can gather in your backyard and have a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day,” he said. “After this long, hard year, that will make this Independence Day truly special, where we not only mark our independence as a nation but we begin to mark our independence from this virus.”

At the same time, Biden took the opportunity make the case that his presidency would make a clean break from the Trump years in which truth was a recurring casualty. Without mentioning his predecessor by name, he noted that the pandemic had “spread unchecked” amid “denials for days, weeks, then months” before safe vaccines were developed and administered.

Trump, however, insisted now it was he who championed and delivered the vaccines by three different private providers. He contended “that if I wasn’t president, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful shot for 5 years at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been at odds with Trump for weeks, weighed in by contending that “2021 is set to be an historic year (for Republicans), not because of far-left legislation that was passed after the tide had already turned, but because of the resilience of the American people.”

The Democratic sense of urgency has been bolstered by Biden, who as vice president under Barack Obama for eight years once indicated that insufficient effort had been made to sell a broader agenda of economic relief in the face of an emerging public-health pandemic.

In a video conference with House Democrats last week, the new president said “Barack was so modest, he didn’t want, as he said, a victory lap. I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ “ This time, Biden said, “We don’t have time. He (Obama) said, I’m not going to take a victory lap,’ and we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility. …We have learned from past crises that the risk is not doing too much. The risk is not doing enough.”

At the same time. Biden cautioned: “A lot can happen. Conditions can change. The scientists have made clear that things may get worse as the variants of the virus spread.” The remark underscores his intention that his presidency will be a clean break from the Trump era of serial lying and misrepresentation.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are to travel the country separately this week, peddling the Biden-public partnership to counter the pandemic. Meanwhile. the president has said: “For all of you who asking when things will get back to normal, here is the truth: The only way to get our lives back, to get our economy back on track, is to beat the virus.”

Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcovercomcast.net.

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