Timex
3483
Trying to hold votes hostage with other votes is a bad move.
If they couldn’t get 50 votes from their own party for the bill, then it was a bad bill. They’d need to change it to get those votes.
Ya, that’s why I think they should have passed that first… and then all they’d have to do was get their own shit together.
The GOP was always going to come up with some kind of excuse if that bill ever came near actually passing. “Democrats are being too partisan! Waaaa”
Turns out legislation is hard. =/
And this is a bad response. :)
Yeah! The Democrats are always in lockstep with one another and never disagree, right??
They could put more stuff in there to get Manchin on board by adding lots of fossil fuel stuff. I’m sure the smart faction of the house and senate that rightly care about the environment would go for that.
Or they could strip all that out and put in more environmental controls and reusable energy subsidies in there. And then you can say goodbye to Manchin and Sinema.
The reconciliation bill is a decent bill. No one gets all their ponies in it, but there are enough ponies that it seems to have a decent chance to thread the needle.
Yes, God forbid we enable the agency that might help us reduce the deficit (which we’re always screaming about but only when there’s a Democratic President) somewhat by cracking down on tax cheats. Instead let’s blame poor people for needing to eat and be housed and begrudge them the pittance we spend on them for that.
Timex
3489
But that’s the thing… that’s what governance is.
If the Democrats can’t even get a consensus among their own party, then they’re useless.
I mean, I think they can… so saying that they couldn’t pass the reconciliation bill because they couldn’t get their crap together seems weird.
And I’m not sure why having the reconciliation bill would make it less likely, unless the idea is to hold them hostage by saying, “Well, with nothing in place, it’ll be so bad that you HAVE to vote for this!” which, like I said, is bad.
If you can’t get consensus to vote for things on their merits, then those things shouldn’t be laws.
I think you just suggested that the Democrats do pretty much just what they just did.
Also:
That unanimity might be what governance is somewhere. It’s really never been what governance in the US has been, and much to our credit as a nation, frankly.
And unanimous party lock-stepping certainly isn’t typically good governance or something to aspire to in a representative democracy or republic.
In Canada MPs are expected to vote along with their party unless the party leadership frees them to vote their conscience (which is done usually only with issues that are perceived to be socially contentious)
Of course MPs can always vote against the wishes of the party but this is usually punished and is extremely rare.
Weirdly Canada does not have particularly bad governance, esp when compared to our neighbors to the south. It’s also a representative democracy.
KevinC
3492
That would make more sense if the Democrats were a little more of a unified bloc like the GOP is. For the Democrats, we’re talking about a tent that holds both Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders (effectively). You’re not going to get consensus between those without a lot of politicking and horse trading.
anyone who sees AOC as wacky severely understimates her. She is probably one of the smartest women in Congress , just look at how she handles questionining folks- she’s incredibly good at it.
AOC and Pressley are by far the savviest members of the Squad. (Pressley has the best shot at landing a higher office)
Yeah, so much for the idea that people like AOC will reject this reconciliation bill.
Menzo
3495
That’s great to see. Now I assume the bipartisan bill dies and they just add it to this one?
Assuming everything in the bipartisan bill meets the criteria for reconciliation, sure, that’s the smart thing to do.
Schumer’s going to try to get the bipartisan bill to conference next week. That’s the most likely inflection point for it to be filibustered into the sun.
But maybe it gets there.
Either way, that’s the next step to watch.
“Into the sun” no less! ☀️
More than likely, alas.
Re: the filibuster, at the very least the two stumbling block Senators ought to agree to shifting the burden to the minority. Make them keep 41 people from their side on the Senate floor at all times to stop the cloture motion.
Watching Jen beat up on Peter Doocy is fun.
Menzo
3500
Huh-oh, everyone, this looks serious.
RichVR
3501
Dear god I’m so damned tired of her.
Good follow up story in WaPo about how stupid, lazy unprofessional Peter Doocy is.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/16/fox-newss-embarrassing-blunder-white-house-briefing-room/
I, like Doocy, was intrigued by where this number came from Thursday. I, unlike Doocy apparently, actually did 30 seconds of research on it. That’s all the time it took to find the publicly available study — which even has the number Psaki cited in its title, “The Disinformation Dozen” — from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The study was picked up by the likes of NPR and others in May.
It’s like my new favorite thing.
