Biden courts votes with pandemic emergency extension

The federal COVID-19 public health emergency will boost voter turnout for Democrats. That’s the unspoken reality of the Biden administration’s mid-August decision to extend the emergency past the midterm elections. It was a strange move, considering the administration recently loosened key pandemic restrictions, from social distancing to quarantines to testing recommendations for schools and offices. Yet while the pandemic is fading, the emergency keeps a temporary welfare expansion flowing, which is a guaranteed vote-getter and potentially even an election-winner.

This conclusion is supported by a poll sponsored by the Opportunity Solutions Project. Conducted by the Center for Excellence in Polling, we asked 2,500 working-class Americans about their voting habits and welfare. Low-income voters who have never been on welfare gave the Republican Party a slight edge on voter affiliation. But when looking at voting decisions, there’s a 30-point swing toward the Democratic candidate for those who receive some form of welfare.

In other words, more welfare means more votes for President Biden’s party, which is vying to keep control of the closely divided House and Senate in the midterms.

These findings put in perspective the dramatic welfare expansion of the past few years. Medicaid rolls have grown by 24 million people during the pandemic, driven by a federal policy that blocks states from disenrolling ineligible individuals. Similarly, Washington has suspended the most common work requirements for food stamps, contributing to a net increase of more than 4 million recipients. (The Biden administration also unilaterally increased the value of food stamps by 25 percent.) The first two policies will expire with the public health emergency, at which point millions of individuals will begin to leave welfare. That won’t start before the election, though, giving Democrats a boost at the ballot box.

How big a boost are we talking about? Potentially in the millions of voters. Based on our findings, for every 100,000 working-class voters who are added to welfare, 30,000 switch their vote from Republican to Democrat. Conversely, for every 100,000 voters who go from welfare to work, 25,000 swing back to Republicans. That means the Democratic Party gets a permanent boost in voter affiliation after expanding welfare, even if that expansion is later repealed. Even so, the obvious incentive is to prevent an expiration, especially before a crucial election.

Third-party research supports our findings. In 2019, University of Chicago and MIT researchers discovered that a state Medicaid expansion increased voter turnout by 7 percent, 96 percent of which occurred in heavily Democratic counties. And when Democrats’ expanded child tax credit expired earlier this year, a Morning Consult poll found that recipients quickly switched from supporting Democrats to supporting Republicans on the generic ballot. The Biden administration and its allies in Congress fought to prevent that expiration until after the midterms, but fell short in the Senate. Yet the White House doesn’t need Congress’s help to keep millions of people on food stamps and Medicaid.

There’s no telling how the greater turnout for Democrats will swing key House and Senate races, though it’s foolish to assume it won’t. What’s clear is that any expected short-term electoral benefit for the left is already doing long-term damage to America. Expanded welfare is directly contributing to soaring inflation, a devastating worker shortage, a massive increase in the national debt, and rapidly growing fiscal pain for states. Most disturbingly, it traps millions of people in welfare, robbing them of their chance at the American Dream. That’s a steep price for an electoral payout.

Government dependency inherently helps Democrats. Yet the independence that comes from rolling back pandemic welfare policies will help America as a whole. It will boost the economy, provide relief from inflation, and prevent the welfare state from spiraling even further out of fiscal control. Americans won’t get that relief until the Biden administration finally ends the public health emergency, hopefully in early 2023.

There’s a very real threat that the White House will keep extending the emergency, despite the fading pandemic and the public’s obvious desire to move on. Just as welfare recipients tend to get hooked on taxpayer handouts, Democrats may get hooked on the electoral benefits.  

Nick Stehle is a visiting fellow at the Opportunity Solutions Project and vice president of communications at the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability. Follow him on Twitter @nstehle.