Friendly Fire: The Biden relief bill, the Montclair kerfuffle, and Dick Zimmer Redux. – NJ.com

Can Americans still have a sensible and friendly political discussion across the partisan divide? The answer is yes, and we intend to prove it. Julie Roginsky, a Democrat, and Mike DuHaime, a Republican, are consultants who have worked on opposite teams for their entire careers yet have remained friends throughout. Here, they discuss the week’s events with Tom Moran, editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger.

Q. President Biden has a choice: Does he shrink his $1.9 trillion relief plan to win Republican support, or try to push it through without them?

Mike: Biden doesn’t have to compromise, but he should. President Obama made a mistake in 2009 by passing the Affordable Care Act with zero Republican votes. It set the tone for the GOP success in 2010 midterms, and the lack of bipartisan cooperation of the next eight years. A popular new president can find compromise, and there’s plenty of room to do so in this package to get a few Republicans on board.

Julie: I profoundly disagree. Democrats compromised on the stimulus in 2009 and as a result, it was too narrowly tailored to avoid a long and deep recession. Republicans then ran on a tanking economy and Democrats received what Obama called a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms. Mitch McConnell’s sole agenda now is what worked so well for him over a decade ago: torpedo a recovery so that he can win the senate back in two years by running against a bad economy. There is no compromise when one side cares more about winning an election than about putting the country back on sound fiscal footing. If they can get Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to side with them – admittedly a tall order – Democrats should go big or go home.

Q. One of the central disputes is on aid to states and cities. Biden wants to send $350 billion, and Republicans propose zero. What are the stakes in that fight for New Jersey?

Mike: I have long supported aid to states, counties and cities, even though most in my party in DC disagree. Maybe New Jersey can pay back the $4 billion it borrowed last year.

Julie: The stakes for New Jersey are enormous, as Governor Murphy has rightly said over and over. It will mean the difference between a faster recovery and potentially a deepening recession that will affect all sorts of services. And it isn’t just Blue State Democrats like Murphy who are banging the drum on this. Among other Republicans, West Virginia’s governor has been echoing his sentiments. If this is not evidence that Republicans want to tank the economy in advance of the midterms, I don’t know what is.

Q. The latest numbers: 27 million Americans have had at least one vaccination shot, and the pace has picked up to 1.5 million a day. Does that impress you? Can we start to exhale?

Mike: The COVID numbers are going in the right direction. In New Jersey, hospitalization are at their lowest point since before Thanksgiving. In Israel where half the population is vaccinated, new cases and all other key metrics are dropping rapidly. We can’t exhale. Bill Clinton didn’t even inhale.

Julie: Let’s not pop the champagne yet. In New Jersey alone, Gov. Murphy has set a goal of vaccinating 4.7 million people within six months. So far, only 146,000 people have been fully vaccinated. As I said last week, my septuagenarian parents have been waiting for a vaccination appointment for weeks on end, to no avail. So if you’re exhaling, please don’t do it around them until they get vaccinated, unless you have medical-grade PPE on.

Q. State Sen. Tom Kean Jr. is stepping down, and the expectation is that he’ll run for Congress next year in a rematch with Rep. Tom Malinowski, the Democratic incumbent. Is the fourth shot at federal office the charm for Kean?

Mike: Tom Kean almost won the race for Congress despite Trump getting trounced in the district. Without Trump on the ticket, the race will look very different. It’s why Malinowski and Democrat State Committee are already attacking Tom. Kean received many crossover votes last year from Democrats and Independents making it a one-point race. Tom hasn’t said he’s running, but if he does and the district doesn’t change much in in redistricting, he’ll win.

Julie: A lot depends on what this district looks like after congressional reapportionment next year. Kean, who has two appointments to the reapportionment commission, will do his best to draw a district that leans more Republican. Democrats may have other ideas.

Mike: If Democrats push too hard trying to make Malinowski’s district safe for him, it would mean that Gottheimer’s, Sherrill’s, and/or Pallone’s districts get much more competitive. And they won’t have Donald Trump boosting their election chances for the next decade.

Julie: We don’t need to start drawing reapportionment maps in this column (although both of us would love to), There are many options to making the 7th more Democratic while protecting other Democrats.

Q. In Montclair, the school district is suing the teachers’ union to force them to return to the classroom. Is a lawsuit the way to go? Is the union being unreasonable?

Mike: The bottom line is parents want their kids back in school. The teachers and administrators should be doing all they can to get kids in school. So many private and Catholic schools have been in person since September. Many New Jersey students will be out of school for an entire year. That’s simply unacceptable. The adults, from the governor on down, need to press to get kids back in school.

Julie: I don’t know the details of what is happening in Montclair, but there is massive asymmetry in how children are being educated during COVID. Your child’s right to a good education — which obviously includes in-person learning — should not depend on whether the district can pay for ventilated facilities. It should not be contingent on whether teachers have access to vaccines or on whether students have access to technology like laptops or iPads. This is a conversation that must happen and I hope it doesn’t get swept up under the rug once COVID is behind us.

Mike: The conversation has been happening for 11 months. Time for action.

Q. Data published in the NY Times this week showed that the economy does much better under Democratic presidents than under Republicans. Since the Depression, the growth rate under Democrats has been twice as robust. The six presidents who showed the fastest job growth have all been Democrats, and the four with the slowest have all been Republicans. Coincidence? Why do more voters trust Republicans on the economy?

Mike: Most voters today aren’t doing a statistical analysis of the economies under Eisenhower, Truman or Kennedy. Voters trust their own experiences instead. Many came of age under the gas lines, high unemployment and double digit inflation of Jimmy Carter followed by an economic boom under Ronald Reagan. That’s shaped more voters in their 40′s and older than a data analysis about Nixon or Kennedy. The 90′s and 2000′s were boom years under Clinton and Bush 43, but candidly most voters of all ages probably credit the rapid technological advances of the time as having a greater impact on the economy, more than either president.

Julie: Funny… the only thing I remember about the Bush 43 economy is that it kicked off the Great Recession. The next time someone pulls their best Art Laffer and tells you trickle-down economics work, pull out the NY Times chart. Putting money in the pockets of working and middle-class people, not the wealthy, is what matters. The empirical evidence proves it.

Q. Finally, Dick Zimmer, a former member of Congress, is running for state Senate at age 76. A former head of Common Cause in New Jersey, he is a Republican who voted for Biden, a thoughtful centrist. Running for a lower office like this is unheard of, and I find myself charmed by it. What’s your take?

Mike: Former Rep. Zimmer is committed to public service. He ran for higher office 25 years ago and has done so multiple times since. It’s not exactly John Quincy Adams winning a seat in Congress after serving as President, but it is a reminder that we have many good people in New Jersey willing to put their names forward to serve in some capacity despite the negativity in politics today.

Julie: I am all for anyone running who is committed to public service but I would argue that it has been a very long time since Dick Zimmer represented any part of the 16th District. He will likely be going up against Andrew Zwicker, who is a teacher and scientist and who won what was once a rock-solid Republican Assembly seat twice. Andrew is one of the most thoughtful legislators I have ever known, in the mold of Rush Holt — who Zimmer tried to defeat in 2000.

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