Family Time

Mitch McConnell warned of a “nightmare” for “American families” as Democrats moved ahead with one of the most ambitious social spending initiatives in the nation’s history on Wednesday.

At around 4 AM, less than a day after a historic infrastructure bill won overwhelming bipartisan support (including McConnell’s blessing), Democrats’ budget blueprint passed on a party-line, 50-49 vote, setting the stage for a massive expansion of the social safety net.

McConnell’s characterization of the plan was cynical to the point of being a contradiction in terms. Democrats are aiming to enshrine key parts of Joe Biden’s American Families Plan into law. McConnell would have voters believe that a plan tailor-made and named for families is a “nightmare” for — wait for it — families.

Of course, just because you name a plan after something (in this case families) doesn’t mean the proposal will actually benefit its namesake. But in this case, it does. It provides for free prekindergarten and community college, an extension of the temporary change to the child tax credit, paid family leave and new benefits for Medicare beneficiaries, among a host of other initiatives, including steps to combat climate change, which the UN this week warned can’t be ignored for much longer without putting future generations (i.e., families) in serious jeopardy.

In the simplest terms I can possibly muster, the only way to suggest the $3.5 trillion plan will somehow end up being a “nightmare” for families is to make dire predictions about inflation, which is just what McConnell did Wednesday, cautioning Democrats that “inflation and tax hikes [will] be their legacy.”

It’s important to note that the plan amounts to tax cuts for regular people. It’s corporations and the wealthy who would be subject to higher taxes. Inflation is effectively a tax too, but it’s disingenuous for the GOP to cite the last few months’ CPI reports as evidence that Democratic proposals are destined to stoke inflation. No serious observer of the economy — liberal, conservative, Keynesian, Austrian or any other ideological bent — would suggest the incoming data represents anything like a “clean” read.

Ask two-dozen people with some claim on expertise whether they think inflation is “transitory” and you’ll get a diversity of views, some of them alarmist. But none of those people would suggest we can draw definitive conclusions from US inflation data covering April, May, June and July. Maybe it will be a “nightmare,” as McConnell put it. Maybe it won’t. But no matter how much we torture the numbers, we can’t discern the answer from data covering the last four months.

Lindsey Graham was even more caustic. He called Democrats “drunken sailors” on the way to claiming that Biden’s families plan “put[s] in motion… the demise of America as we know it.”

As a reminder, that would be the same Lindsey Graham who famously said of Biden,

The bottom line is, if you can’t admire Joe Biden as a person, then you got a problem. You need to do some self evaluation. ‘Cause what’s not to like?

Graham was (literally) crying when he delivered that assessment. Now, Graham reckons, Biden is set to bring about “the demise of America” by, among other things, guaranteeing the nation’s three- and four-year-olds can go to school and providing dental, vision and hearing benefits for the country’s elderly. Perhaps Graham needs to “do some self evaluation.”

It’s also important to note that all GOP attempts to equate Biden with Progressives aside, Biden is no Progressive. He’s just not. The White House and the Democratic leadership have hardly checked every box on the Progressive wish list. Bernie Sanders initially wanted a $6.5 trillion budget framework, for example.

Speaking of Bernie, he’s pleased. Well, as pleased as Bernie can be, which means instead of outright screaming, he’s merely yelling.

“This legislation will not only provide enormous support to the kids of this country, to the parents of this country, to the elderly people of this country, it will also, I hope, restore the belief that in America we can have a government that works for all, not just the few,” he said.

McConnell inadvertently underscored the bill’s transformational potential. “People want to pretend this is just business as usual — just liberals doing liberal things using Senate procedure,” he droned, in his trademark monotone, before telling voters this isn’t business as usual. “This reckless taxing and spending spree is like nothing we’ve seen.”

It’s true. We usually don’t see higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy or big spending aimed at pulling millions of families back from the brink before they cross predatory capitalism’s event horizon and disappear into a black hole, never to be heard from again.

And last I checked, Americans weren’t exactly enamored with “business as usual” in Washington. “Business as usual” is gridlock. If you look up “gridlock” in the dictionary, you’ll find McConnell’s picture next to it.

But, as he conceded on Wednesday, “Republicans do not currently have the votes.” Elections have consequences, Mitch. And might I suggest that had you voted to impeach the first time, you might not be in this position in the first place. I don’t know if President Mike Pence could have won the White House in November. But my guess is he wouldn’t have lost the Senate.