4674

I feel like if they can get to the $2T number then Jayapal better fucking fall in line. So much posturing going on right now, though, that it’s impossible to tell where the actual lines in the sand are.

4675

Has Jayapal ever sponsored and gotten passed a significant piece of legislation?

4676

Seems to me that will happen. She’s going to continue to use what leverage she has until she gets as much as she can get. That’s her job, really. The wild card is not Manchin or any progressive in the House; they will, sooner rather than later (because of the debt ceiling) make a deal. The wild card is Sinema.

She’s doing her job, fighting for things you probably think should be done, too. Let her do it.

4677

Who is this Jayapal person and what do they think they’re doing, negotiating on behalf of their constituents and their beliefs?

Scandal!

4678

Stopping to consider the sheer amount of dollars we’re discussing here – and what is and isn’t “enough” – just reminded me of:

4679

I’m just asking whether he’s actually ever successfully conducted such negotiations.

4680

The shame of it is that Manchin is making it all about the price tag, when:

  1. there is no price tag if you pay for it all with taxes, and
  2. this ignores the question of what the programs envisioned in the bill are, and what they’ll do, and which we can / should do without

He should be pointing at things and saying “I don’t think we need to do that thing, but I do think we need to do this thing” and then seeing what the resulting price tag is of what he’s proposing. Maybe he’s done that, but nobody is conveying it that way.

4681

What has that to with whether she’s ever sponsored and passed her own bill? More directly, what is it you think she’s doing wrong?

4682

Well, if someone sponsors and passes their own bill, presumably the would have to effectively negotiate with other legislators to achieve broad enough support to pass it. That’s the job, right?

In terms of what she’s doing “wrong”, it may be too soon to judge whether her actions are right or wrong. My question was more about whether she had any prior track record suggesting that she knew what she was doing.

For instance, many people criticized Pelosi at various points in the past few years, but Pelosi had a long track record of getting shit done, and in those more recent cases, she actually did in fact seem to know what was going on and things played out reasonably well.

Your reaction here seems to suggest that Jayapal does not have this track record, as presumably you would have just pointed it out if it had existed.

But hey, maybe this is just the beginning of such a track record.

4683

Manchin and Sinema are currently negotiating a bill, of which neither are sponsors. You don’t have to be a sponsor to be involved in negotiating content.

4684

It’s stressful when all this smoky backroom negotiation gets aired out in newspaper op eds and Sunday morning shows and whatnot. What looks like disarray/looming catastrophe could just be congress people doing their jobs. Has intra-party negotiation always been this public?

4685

Oh, sure. Sponsoring the bill just means that you’re a key driving force behind those negotiations, I’d think.

Certainly you could be involved in some kind of negotations aside from that. Has Jayapal done that? Up until recently, she wasn’t that important a vote for a lot of things, was she?

It was somewhat public within the GOP with the lunatic fringe fighting with the rest of the party when Ryan was the Speaker, I believe… also prior to that with Bolton, I seem to recall?

It seems to be most visible when one party has a narrow majority, and needs every single vote, because then the fringe elements on both sides end up having a lot of power, since they can sink stuff.

4686

Allow me to introduce you to Congresswoman Jayapal:

https://admin-jayapal.house.gov/about-me/committees-and-caucuses/

4687

That link appears to be dead, I think you meant to link to this?

But that doesn’t really say that much about what she’s done.

But I’m getting the angle that this is going to involve me just looking stuff up on my own, so that’s cool.

4688

Yes, people on the House Budget Committee have no role in negotiating what resolutions come out of the committee, or what the resulting bills contain. Mostly they just play Words with Friends.

4689

Well, there are 22 Democrats and 14 Republicans on that committee. Not every one of them is a key player in everything that the house does.

4690

Even then, I think Sinema would be pressured if a default was really on the table. If she defaults, she loses her internships and rich sponsor grifting, they’d turn on her because she would have cost them a lot of money. They’ll tell her to sit down and color, and I suspect because she craves the attention she’ll at least do that for long enough to get this through.

4691

I also think Biden & team should be talking about this less as a matter of costs and more as a matter of content. “X, Y, and Z are important reforms in this bill. If you want to lower the cost by $1T that means dropping or cutting Y and Z in a/b/c ways. (By the way, dropping X is unacceptable.)” A lot of these programs are popular. Put pressure on the heel-draggers by making them call out programs they don’t want. I’ve seen very little of that kind of context in the media coverage.

4692

A useful strategy for the democrats would be this:

Instead of cutting programs to save cost, cut the duration of those programs. Make it so that they sunset in 5 years.

That cuts the budgetary cost in half.

Then, you run on those programs to get reelected.
“You like that child tax cut? Well it’s going to be gone in 5 years in the GOP gets reelected. Vote for me and I’ll extend it further.”

4693

Make it 7 years so it’s 2029. The Republicans set up some of their tax grift so the stuff that benefitted regular folks expired in 2021.