Over the summer, Biden resisted the calls of demonstrators and progressive organizers to defund police departments and shift funding to social services, though his website promises to “reform our criminal justice system.”

“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police,” Biden said on Tuesday, referring to down-ballot races last month, according to audio obtained by The Intercept. “We’re not. We’re talking about holding them accountable.”

Biden this week argued that the rallying cry to “defund the police” was a political third rail, saying in a private call with leaders of civil rights groups that it could hurt the Democratic candidates in Georgia’s two Senate runoffs next month.

The seams in the Democratic Party have been showing this week, with progressives and moderates fixing their attention on President-elect Joe Biden ’s major staff choices. All the while, eyes are locked on Georgia, where the Senate majority — and with it the Democrats’ legislative agenda, no matter how centrist or progressive — hangs in the balance.

A separate, intraparty battle is brewing on another issue: student loan debt. Biden has endorsed canceling up to $10,000 per person in federal student debt, but Democrats in Congress are pushing him to multiply that number by five. Both sides of the debate acknowledge that tackling the $1.7 trillion in student debt nationwide, which is spread among more than 43 million borrowers, would go far toward jump-starting the economy.

“There are a lot of people who came out to vote in this election who frankly did it as their last shot at seeing whether the government can really work for them,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “If we don’t deliver quick relief, it’s going to be very difficult to get them back.”

But economists also argue that above a certain point, most student loan debt is held by relatively affluent borrowers, given who tends to attend costly colleges and universities without being covered by financial aid. The fundamental problem, they say, is the high cost of tuition — something that debt forgiveness may not do much to combat.

Progressives are expressing concern over Biden’s pick to head the Agriculture Department, Tom Vilsack, since news emerged this week that Biden plans to bring him back to run the agency he’d led throughout President Barack Obama’s two terms.

His appointment was met with some disappointment from progressives, Black farmers and some farm groups that had pushed for an appointee who would bring a fresher perspective and shift the department’s focus more firmly toward confronting poverty and food scarcity.

Vilsack drew some criticism during the Obama years for hiring people with ties to Monsanto, and for his relative leniency on labeling genetically engineered food. Since 2017, Vilsack has led the U.S. Dairy Export Council, which pushes the dairy industry’s interests abroad.

Many progressives had aligned themselves with Representative Marcia Fudge, Democrat of Ohio, who represents an urban district and has made food access and equity a major theme of her work. Biden instead named Fudge as his pick for secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Biden also announced yesterday that Denis McDonough, who was Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, will be his nominee for the secretary of Veterans Affairs. Susan Rice, who was national security adviser when Mr. Biden was vice president, will become the director of his Domestic Policy Council, overseeing a large part of the new president’s agenda.

Source: New York Times

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