The Biden Presidency is underway.

[Thrag]

You make a strong case. I laughed so hard at that I teared up a little.

[Papageno]

@Thrag

Manchin has a real high opinion of his constituents. Sorry folks, you’re all a bunch of lazy drug addicts, no help for you!

Remember when we had noble notions like “better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisioned”. America now is all “better millions of children live in poverty than a single person misuse benefits!”

Yep, that’s pretty much the prevailing attitude now, especially if that single person is of a “duskier” skin hue and/or speaks something other than English at home.

[KevinC]

@Gordon_Cameron

But consider this:

That was a work of art, haha!

[Dave47]

@CLWheeljack

The excessive detail of “hunting trips” is hilarious and telling.

Nah. It’s a lie, and you fell for it.

Joe Manchin doesn’t believe that his constituents don’t need health care, and would just use is as an excuse to play hooky from work. He knows what’s at stake, and what health care means to people.

But Joe Manchin also knows that health care coverage is expensive and that acknowledging the link between coal power and bad health outcomes is inconvenient.

In the end, what Joe Manchin does believe is that “I think my constituents love hunting too much!” plays better with voters than “I want my constituents to hurry up and die!”

[vinraith]

Jeff Tiedrich

[Scuzz]

You sick, sick man.

[Calelari]

+1, Like, Follow, ❤️, 📌, all the things

[138]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/liberals-manchin-build-back-better/2021/12/21/0b9f246a-61b8-11ec-8ce3-9454d0b46d42_story.html

“No one should think that we are going to be satisfied with an even smaller package that leaves people behind or refuses to tackle critical issues like climate change. That is why it is now incumbent on President Biden to keep his promise to us and to the American people by using the ultimate tool in his toolbox: the tool of executive actions in every arena immediately,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a call with reporters Monday.

Honest question: Penis jokes aside, what can Biden’s “ultimate tool” accomplish? And why wouldn’t a GOP President simply use his or her ultimate tool to nullify what Biden’s ultimate tool done tooled?

[Alstein]

You can’t uncancel debt. But you gotta do what you can.

For example, a lot of trans veterans were overjoyed at Biden allowing them to serve again and restoring benefits/upgrading discharges. He’s done a lot already. Also the self-identification on passports is huge.

He could do a lot more, and it would be popular stuff to do. Debt forgiveness would be huge, though I’d want until shortly before midterms. (and yes, it’s buying votes- but gotta fight fire with fire)

[KevinC]

@138

And why wouldn’t a GOP President simply use his or her ultimate tool to nullify what Biden’s ultimate tool done tooled?

That seems to be the way we govern. I swear I think Trump’s only agenda was to undo everything Obama did. And then Biden had to undo a lot of heinous Trump EOs. So that’s exactly what’s going to happen with the next GOP administration.

I guess that’s what happens when you have what feels like near constant deadlock on Congress, due largely to the filibuster. The country still needs to be governed and with Congress unable to legislate effectively, it means more and more reliance on executive orders which just erodes the importance of the legislative branch further. Look at contempt of Congress (descriptively and legally) by the Trumpalos.

I’ve wondered if that’s something historians will look back on when the republic falls. Americans don’t even understand how our government is structured, I wouldn’t be surprised if they shrug and wonder what the point of Congress is when the next GOP authoritarian completely ignores it.

EDIT: Sorry, apparently I’m in a dour mood this morning.

[Matt_W]

$1.75 trillion is plenty of money to write a good Build Back Better bill

Unlike in Arizona where you plausibly could do better than Kyrsten Sinema, any other person who represents West Virginia in the Senate will be worse than Manchin. Indeed, we’re actually lucky that Shelley Moore Capito is a relatively moderate member.

Democrats and progressives are lucky to have Manchin in that job. It is not his fault that progressives couldn’t persuade the voters of Maine or Florida or North Carolina that their agenda was worth supporting in a way that would have made him irrelevant.

I also think that Manchin’s stated objections to the House Build Back Better draft are perfectly consistent with the Senate passing an excellent piece of legislation. The back-and-forth between him and the White House suggests some deeper and more profound breakdown, but that is a problem for a psychotherapist. All I can really do at this point is take everyone at their word. So here’s how I see it:

• Months ago, Democratic leaders (over what we now know to have been Joe Manchin’s explicit wishes) unveiled a $3.5 trillion package chock full of all kinds of stuff.
• Moderates balked, and the White House (trying to come closer to Manchin) announced support for a framework closer to $1.75 trillion.
• House leadership, not wanting to actually cut half the stuff from the $3.5 trillion package, instead brought the headline price down largely by scheduling lots of programs to phase-in and phase-out on a weird schedule.

The recent breakdown is that Manchin said no to that idea. He will back $1.75 trillion in spending, which is a lot. But he wants it to actually be $1.75 trillion in spending.

Progressives can be mad about this, but the fact is that $1.75 trillion in spending without phase-out gimmicks is better on the merits than what House leadership put together. Manchin is not ruining anything by pointing this out. He is making life harder for his colleagues in the sense that they will have to pick winners and losers. But it’s much better to do six good programs than to half-ass a dozen of them. And the reality is that $1.75 trillion is a lot of money; you can do a lot of good stuff for $1.75 trillion.

[138]

More on that from the tail-end of the article:

The details matter, of course, but $1.75 trillion over 10 years is a lot of money. Progressives have glass-half-emptied themselves into a world where it sucks that Joe Manchin is not giving them the budgetary headroom they need to accomplish all their dreams. And it’s true, that does suck.

But it’s still a lot of money. And it comes on top of a $1.8 trillion rescue plan and an infrastructure bill that was worth nearly a trillion bucks. People also seem to have forgotten that an ambitious bipartisan science funding and industrial policy bill passed the Senate and is awaiting action in the House.

If you can get that passed and then add to it a bill that contains a massive investment in emissions reductions, a significant reduction in child poverty, some help for the elderly and insulin users, and something off the menu of other programs here, that’s a nice set of accomplishments.

[Rock8man]

That link was interesting to read, regarding that bipartisan science funding and industrial policy bill. At the beginning of the article it sounded like a great bill! Then with all the changes, by the end of that article it sounded like a small watered down bill.

But that article is from May. It’s a shame that even that watered down bill hasn’t passed yet.

[scottagibson]

I agree with the general thrust of that article. The problem as I see it is that the best anti-poverty measure in the proposal is making the fully refundable child tax credit permanent, and Manchin seems to be unalterably opposed to that. One of the most popular measures is the family leave measure, and he’s opposed to that. He’s taking some very high-impact things that voters will love off the table. To me, that seems like the cause of the impasse.

I still think something can be done and probably something will. I’m a bit hopeful that Manchin will come back to the table when he sees that it isn’t a backlash-free position he’s staked out. I see that the largest coal mining union in the country is weighing in in favor of the Dem bill now.

[Gordon_Cameron]

Biden said ‘Spocktile’ instead of ‘Stockpile.’ Just a spoonerism, but kinda funny.

[Papageno]

Manchin is firmly in the FYIGM crowd. Those Maserati SUVs don’t buy themselves. And WRT climate change, I guess he figures his rich descendants can live in mountaintop compounds when everything really hits the fan.

[Alstein]

Ultimately, there’s only one group of folks who can enforce party discipline, and that’s WV Dem primary voters.

[Nightgaunt]

@scottagibson

The problem as I see it is that the best anti-poverty measure in the proposal is making the fully refundable child tax credit permanent, and Manchin seems to be unalterably opposed to that.

Senator Mitt Romney

Romney re-upped his CTC proposal after things fell apart with Manchin. I don’t know how many Republicans are on board with it. And I don’t know how many Progressives would be. But it is way better than letting it lapse, and it doesn’t start phasing out until $200,000 ($400,000 for joint filers). I do know that the biggest pay-for Romney identifies is repealing the SALT deduction, which Schumer and Pelosi presumably won’t abide since they fought to get that back more than they fought for any actual benefit of the Infrastructure/BBB.

Details:

family%20security%20act_one%20pager.pdf

Where do y’all think the hang-ups will be on a one-off bill like this? Many Republicans will oppose it to keep Biden from getting credit for something that puts money in pockets. Are there downsides to Romney’s plan from a progressive perspective?

[Strollen]

@scottagibson

I don’t care whether you believe the poll or not. I think it’s hardly a surprising result in that we’ve seen for years that lots of Republican voters like progressive policy when they’re polled on the policy itself rather than simply polled on partisan generalities. Poor West Virginians want help from the government, just as every poor person everywhere does. Duh!

I’m done arguing with you on this.

But i came across this tweet from Nate Silver, which is my final comment.

Nate Silver

[inactive_user]

Speaking for myself, removing the SALT deduction is both terrible policy and a nakedly obvious “fuck you” to largely Democratic constituencies. Pass.