It’s not a blank check, but it’s a start.
Senate Democrats took a significant step down the road to pushing Joe Biden’s economic agenda through the legislative process late Tuesday, when lawmakers agreed on a blueprint that effectively aims to address what was left out of the bipartisan infrastructure plan, unveiled late last month.
The bill, endorsed by Democrats on the Budget Committee including its chair, Bernie Sanders, would expand Medicare and address climate change, among other priorities. The price tag is $3.5 trillion. It’ll be “fully paid for,” according to Virginia Democrat Mark Warner.
The idea, apparently, is to suggest that when you add the $600 billion in new spending included in the infrastructure plan, the grand total (more than $4 trillion) is close to what Biden initially proposed while pitching what the White House is keen to characterize as a transformational plan to modernize the US economy.
$3.5 trillion is well short of the $6 trillion Sanders wanted, but he nevertheless praised the bill, calling it “the most significant piece of legislation since the Great Depression.” “I’m delighted to be a part of it,” he added. Chuck Schumer said Democrats are “very proud” of the plan, which does include vision, dental and hearing benefits for Medicare recipients. Last week, I not-so-gently suggested we stop pretending that healthy teeth and working ears for the elderly are somehow “far-left” agenda items.
Biden will discuss the plan with Democrats on Wednesday. As for funding (and remember, no top Democrat publicly embraces the reality of federal government finance, where that means just telling voters that, in fact, no spending needs to be “funded” because “funded” is a misnomer when the expenditures are denominated in a currency that we have the authority to issue), the resolution will explicitly prohibit higher taxes on Americans making less than $400,000 per year. According to reports, it’ll also prohibit tax increases on small businesses.
Obviously, the plan will have no Republican support. Democrats will push the package through Congress using reconciliation. As The New York Times dryly noted Wednesday, this effectively means Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will once again have veto power over their own party’s agenda. “Democrats will have to hold together every member of their party and the independents aligned with them over what promises to be unified Republican opposition,” the Times wrote, adding that it wasn’t “clear if all 50 lawmakers in the Democratic caucus, which includes centrists unafraid to break with their party like Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, had signed off the blueprint.”
Late last month, in remarks to ABC, Manchin indicated he’s prepared to put up a fight. “If they think, in reconciliation, I’m going to throw caution to the wind and go to $5 trillion or $6 trillion when we can only afford $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion or maybe $2 trillion and what we can pay for, then I can’t be there,” he said. Note the reference to “they.” Manchin accidentally refers to Democrats as a group of lawmakers separate and distinct from himself. Or maybe that’s not an accident.
More broadly, this again underscores a point I attempted to drive home last month with varying degrees of success. Biden’s agenda (all of it) was always going to be pushed through Congress. Maybe not to the letter, but close. That is: There was always going to be a reconciliation bill. It’s just a matter of cajoling Manchin and Sinema.
Everyone understands this is going to be a fight, but once the details of the plan are unveiled over the coming days, voters will once again have an opportunity to see exactly what it is that Republicans are steadfastly opposing. I emphasize “opportunity” because most voters won’t avail themselves. Donald Trump’s base — the vast majority of whom would benefit from Democrats’ social programs — won’t read the details. They’re too busy “investigating” whether the Italians altered votes in last year’s election using satellites or whether the eight-years-dead Hugo Chávez posthumously stole Georgia.
As for traditional Republican voters, they will read the details and they’ll oppose the plan because, frankly, they’re fine with turning the clock back to a time when African Americans had to sit at the back of the bus and a woman’s “place” was at home, doing dishes and laundry. Sorry, not sorry.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll continue to say it: The GOP no longer has a place in modern politics. It stands in open opposition to progress on almost every front, and its state-level representatives are now engaged in a sweeping effort to prevent Americans from voting. The party is a Frankenstein monster, stitched together from misogyny, racism, warmongering, willful ignorance, xenophobia, white privilege, televangelism and, now, an open revolt against participatory democracy.
And you know, it’s unfortunate. I mean, that state of affairs is unfortunate in itself, but what’s especially vexing is the number of intelligent people who refuse to admit the reality of the situation. Nothing I just said about the modern GOP is an opinion. It’s just facts. But somebody (some reader, I mean) will be irritated with me for saying it. If that’s you, look inward, my friend. This isn’t a debate. It just is what it is.
“We know we have a long road to go,” Schumer said, of the arduous weeks ahead, adding that one way or another, Democrats will “get it done.” It’s time, he said, to focus on “making average Americans’ lives a whole lot better.”
The current GOP has no place in modern society and yet, somewhere around 40% of the country supports all of those vile and disgusting things that you laid out. It is by no accident that this Frankenstein’s monster has recently embraced Fascism over Democracy to pair with their gun obsession and tree of liberty rhetoric. The now commonplace right wing propaganda networks keep these millions of viewers ramped up to 11 on the pissed off chart because I think the plan is an outright revolt.
As I’m working from home, my place is AT HOME, but not in Republican sense. I hate washing dishes and prefer reading the Heisenbergreport 😉 !
I hand-wash my dishes now. When you live in total isolation, you only use one plate, one bowl, a coffee mug and maybe two forks and a spoon each day. It was taking two weeks to fill up the dishwasher which isn’t tenable (you don’t want your dishes to be dirty that long). Now, I find the 7 minutes per day I spend hand-washing dishes to be oddly calming. But maybe that’s just the view from the kitchen window
But somebody (some reader, I mean) will be irritated with me for saying it. If that’s you, look inward, my friend. This isn’t a debate. It just is what it is.
That’s me. I take great umbrage at your assertion, sir.
What president Biden said yesterday did not enter into my ears; and even if it somehow might have miraculously entered my ears, most assuredly none of it traveled to my brain for processing.
People value households chores very differently. I too find dishwashing soothing… but I cannot stand ironing… Hoovering is meh. So yeah nice if you can split things with others who have different preferences… 🙂
You can do it every 4 days and use speed wash (60 minute cycle) – you will probably save water that way!
From the guerilla war trenches : The RepubliCons are vulnerable on one important point. They do not even see it as attack to point out that politics is dominated by wealth. The wealthy pay no taxes whilst they get Q.E., tax cuts, socialism for farmers and socialism for developers. This attack is agreeable to the RepubliCon base, with no pushback.
Once Boomers and beyond are an even more dwindling group, I do believe our politics will become less divisive and more representative of what the majority of our people want and need.
Younger generations are much less siloed in their lives – in terms of race and backgrounds than older generations.
I do not think my adult children are the exception to the rule.
I agree and hope we are both right.
Please let me know when the Heisenberg Shop has added a t-shirt emblazoned with this on-the-nose quote:
The GOP no longer has a place in modern politics. It stands in open opposition to progress on almost every front, and its state-level representatives are now engaged in a sweeping effort to prevent Americans from voting. The party is a Frankenstein monster, stitched together from misogyny, racism, warmongering, willful ignorance, xenophobia, white privilege, televangelism and, now, an open revolt against participatory democracy.
I would prefer it the quote could be printed on both sides of the shirt. If possible, also the sides.
I’m not sure that’s the direction I want to be going with the apparel line. 🙂 I would note, though, that the shirts and prints coming out on August 1 are going to be great. They’re inspired by Edward Hopper’s classic “Room In New York” and were designed in Brooklyn.
Of course I was being faceiious given your apolitical allegiances, but if you change your mind … it’s a great quote. For now, I will make it bulletin board material.
But the shirts look great and really unique in this Age of the T-snhirt.
Dems – please join together to pass a federal voting rights bill that undoes the damage from the various Republican state actions…
“The party is a Frankenstein monster, stitched together from misogyny, racism, warmongering, willful ignorance, xenophobia, white privilege, televangelism and, now, an open revolt against participatory democracy.”
The only thing missing from this description are the names of the men responsible for doing the stitching — i.e., Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch.
yeah, you can highlight the last one. Got his Covid shot even before the Queen of England and the President of the US but still has his anchors spouting nonsense about imaginary “dangers” of vaccination.
P.S.: when it comes to household chores there is nothing more relaxing than cooking imho 😉