Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

James Downie discusses the Build Back Better/ Manchin debacle;  here's a long excerpt:

Let’s be clear: Manchin’s excuses for opposing this bill — which would expand child-care and Medicare benefits, fight climate change and provide other supports for low-income Americans — are nonsense. “If I can’t go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” But polls have shown that West Virginians on balance support the BBB, and it would likely help West Virginia more than most states. The idea that Manchin, who’s won statewide election six times, can’t “explain” a popular, useful bill to his constituents is laughable.

The rest of Manchin’s rationalizations aren’t any better. “The inflation that I was concerned about — it’s not transitory, it’s real. It’s harming every West Virginian,” he told Fox News’s Bret Baier. But numerous economists have said the BBB won’t affect inflation. As White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted in an acid statement, the Penn Wharton Budget Model, which Manchin is fond of citing, “issued a report less than 48 hours ago that noted the Build Back Better Act will have virtually no impact on inflation in the short term, and, in the long run, the policies it includes will ease inflationary pressures.” Notably, Manchin did not cite any expert to rebut that view in either his Fox appearance or the statement announcing his stance.  [snip]

Manchin certainly bears much of the responsibility for this debacle, but not all. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) spent much of the year confusing everyone about what she would and wouldn’t support. (Sinema and her staff insisted the White House knew her priorities; somehow they were leak-happy Washington’s best-kept secrets.) House holdouts such as Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) delayed the bill to reinstate the state and local tax deductions for wealthy constituents. And other objectors such as Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) watered down the bill’s attempt to lower prescription drug prices, originally one of its most popular provisions.

Finally, a hefty chunk of the blame must be placed at the feet of the president and congressional leadership. They chose to split the infrastructure and social spending measures into separate bills. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) chose to let other Democrats waste weeks on a spending package in the $3 trillion range, when he and Manchin had signed a letter over the summer saying Manchin wouldn’t go over $1.5 trillion. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the White House chose to ditch the two-track strategy and fatally weaken the BBB’s chances.

No political party operates at perfect efficiency. But there’s a frustratingly common theme to Democratic failures and even some of the party’s muted successes: a refusal to play hardball.

Granted, it's difficult to play hardball when you have a 50/50 Senate and a closely divided House, where the threat to bolt the party is always an option. But the default position during this whole debacle was always to backpedal and cave to the demands of Sinemanchin at the expense of, but with the grudging acquiescence of, Congressional progressives.  It's hard to believe that Maserati Manchin was ever going to vote for the social spending bill, and was rather dragging "negotiations" along until the moment felt right to go on Fox "News" and announce his back- stabbing intentions.

Steve M. has thoughts about the trajectory of the "negotiations" and how his bad faith will play in his dirt poor state and the ramifications for swing-district Dems:

I thought there might still be hope for Build Back Better, in some greatly reduced form, but Joe Manchin just stabbed the president and every swing-district Democrat in the back, as well as every person who would have benefited from the bill, because the people who own him want to keep ordinary people's grubby hands off what they consider their money and want Democrats to lose every election, and Manchin wants whatever they want. [snip]

Presumably he's been planning to do this for months if he couldn't get the White House and the rest of the Democratic Party to give up. I assume he thought he could kill the bill merely by forcing endless negotiations right up until the Democrats' self-imposed deadline, but when they made it clear that they were willing to keep negotiating into 2022, he decided it was time to shiv them. I'm sure his poll numbers will go up in his extremely red home state, particularly among people who would have benefited from this bill the most, because that's the way this country works.

The apparent demise of Build Back Better in its current form had an immediate, negative impact on economic projections:

Senator Joe Manchin's opposition to the Build Back Better Act prompted Goldman Sachs to swiftly dim its US economic outlook.

The Wall Street firm told clients Sunday it no longer assumes President Joe Biden's signature legislation will get through the narrowly divided Congress, citing the West Virginia Democrat's announcement that he's a "no" on the $1.75 trillion bill.

 

"A failure to pass BBB has negative growth implications," Goldman Sachs economists, led by Jan Hatzius, said in the research report.

 

Citing the "apparent demise" of Build Back Better, Goldman Sachs now expects GDP to grow at an annualized pace of 2% in the first quarter, down from 3% previously.

That's enough on the back- stabber for now.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis issued its staff report (which was largely ignored by the corporate media).  It documents what was obvious to all sentient people about the Malignant Loser's deadly botching of the pandemic response, with some new revelations.  Here's part of The Hill's summary:

The Trump administration deliberately undermined the nation's coronavirus response for political purposes, including by weakening testing guidance and championing widespread "herd immunity," according to a new report from the House panel investigating the pandemic response.

The Democratic staff report released Friday was a summation of the year's work investigating political interference in the pandemic response from Trump officials and the former president himself. 

In interviews with officials and from uncovered emails and other documents, the committee found that the former administration failed to heed warnings about supply shortages, blocked public health officials from speaking publicly and neglected the pandemic response in order to focus on the 2020 presidential election and on promoting the lie that the election was "stolen" from Trump through widespread fraud.

New evidence released by the panel Friday highlighted the frustration and anger among senior public health officials with Trump's embrace of the herd immunity strategy.

You can read the subcommittee staff's report here (pdf).

Retiring NIH Director and Nobel laureate Dr. Francis Collins also had something to say in line with the subcommittee's findings:

The outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health said Sunday that he faced political pressure from then-President Donald Trump and other Republicans to endorse unproven Covid-19 remedies such as hydroxychloroquine and to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Francis Collins, whose last day as NIH director is Sunday, told CBS News that he got a "talking to" by Trump, but that he held his ground and would have resigned if Trump made him endorse remedies for Covid-19 that were not based in science.

 

"I have done everything I can to stay out of any kind of political, partisan debates because it is really not a place where medical research belongs," he said. "I was not going to compromise scientific principles to just hold onto the job."  [snip]

 

Collins also said he fought back calls from Republicans for him to fire Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert who now serves as President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser.

 

"Can you imagine a circumstance where the director of the NIH, somebody who believes in science, would submit to political pressures and fire the greatest expert in infectious disease that the world has known, just to satisfy political concerns?" he said. 

 

Well, we can imagine it coming from a narcissistic, sociopathic moron leading an administration of 10th- rate sycophants. 

Lastly, a visit to Infidel 753's link round- up is recommended for his usual, comprehensive array of links to varied posts from around the Internet.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin (when she's right, she's right, k?) points out it's not "polarization" in politics that's the threat to our democracy (as puerile media sometimes claim), it's Republican radicalization:

Only one party conducts fake election audits, habitually relies on conspiracy theories and wants to limit access to the ballot. A recent study from the libertarian think tank R Street found: “In Republican states, legislation tended to scale back the availability of mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes and to provide more uniform, if not shorter, early voting windows. Meanwhile, in Democratic states, legislators sought to increase the availability of early voting not only by expanded voting windows but also by instating universal vote-by-mail.”

Only one party overwhelmingly refused to participate in a bipartisan investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Only one party tolerates and defends House members who resort to violent imagery and harass fellow lawmakers. Talk of “secession” comes from only one party. Only one party is turning a vigilante who killed two people and seriously injured another into a folk hero. Only one party rises in defense of parents publicly threatening school boards. Only one party has taken to defending book-banning and book-burning. Governors of only one party are suing private companies and localities that follow coronavirus guidelines.

Only one party has a media machine that propagates misinformation (from conspiracy theories about the death of a young Democratic National Committee staffer to the blatant lies about Dominion Voting Systems) and foments racism with a steady diet of “replacement theory” rants and hyperventilation about immigrants. Only one party pounds away at the already debunked connection between crime and immigrants solely for the purpose of enraging and scaring voters.

Also, only one party has an "intellectual" structure that promotes extremist, radical views contrary to core American values.  Coup planner John Eastman's Claremont Institute is just one example, as Vox's Zach Beauchamp reveals:

The Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank in California, is dedicated to developing a more highbrow version of Carlson’s worldview — one in which American institutions and even citizens are the right’s enemy. Claremont is undoubtedly the most radically pro-Trump of any major right-wing intellectual institution, its thinkers willing to defend both his presidency and his false claims of a stolen election.

Claremont’s output in the past year or two has been astonishingly radical, all but openly calling for regime change and rebellion.

In a May Claremont podcast, Hillsdale College lecturer and former Trump administration official Michael Anton chatted with entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin — a self-described monarchist who wants to appoint a Silicon Valley CEO king of America — about their shared desire to topple what Anton terms the American “regime,” a government Yarvin characterizes in the podcast as a “theocratic oligarchy” controlled by a cadre of progressive “priests.” 

During the episode, Yarvin muses about how an American strongman — whom he alternatively calls “Caesar” and, more honestly, “Trump” — could seize authoritarian control of the US government by turning the National Guard and FBI into his personal stormtroopers.

The vast majority of Americans, we'd wager, are completely unaware of the Christo- fascist underpinning of the rotted out Republican Party.  But it's right there, out in the open, every day.

The Hill published a piece on President Biden's Build Back Better by four descendants of people involved in crafting and implementing FDR's New Deal: James Roosevelt, Jr., Henry Scott Wallace, June Hopkins and Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall. They say Biden wants and needs to do big things to address big problems, just like FDR:

Candidate Biden couldn’t have been clearer about his New Deal-scale ambitions, and he proceeded to win by seven million votes. Though a few cautious members of his party may now be getting nervous, the fact is, we are still in a New Deal moment. We still have a health crisis and accompanying economic crisis, with a climate crisis and a democracy crisis thrown in for good measure.

The American people didn’t just vote for a bland “return to normalcy” (the campaign slogan of Warren Harding in 1920, whose presidency is memorable only for its corruption). They voted for, and deserve, big bold action that will improve their daily lives.

And history shows, this boldness will be rewarded. FDR’s leadership to rebuild the U.S. economy, create jobs and improve Americans’ economic security earned him victory in his first midterm election, adding seats in both the House and Senate — an extremely rare occurrence.

Democrats have a window that may be closing faster than anyone anticipated.  Doing the right thing -- "getting stuff done" -- may be one way to keep that window open longer and the fascists at bay.

To complete your morning (and then some) reading, check out Infidel 753's link round- up to interesting (largely non- political) posts from around the Internet.

House Passes Build Back Better Act

 

 

As expected (despite Qevin McCarthy's laughably lame efforts), the House just passed the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better human infrastructure bill:

The House of Representatives on Friday passed the largest expansion of the social safety net in decades, a $1.75 trillion bill that funds universal pre-K, Medicare expansion, renewable energy credits, affordable housing, a year of expanded Child Tax Credits and major Obamacare subsidies.

Now that it has cleared the House, President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act goes to the Senate, where it is likely to be revised in the coming weeks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he aims to have the chamber pass the bill before Christmas. The House will need to vote on it again if the bill is altered. 

Here's what the act would accomplish:

• Universal preschool for all 3- and 4-year olds. In addition to helping millions of children prepare better for school, the benefit would enable parents of young children to return to the work force earlier.
• Capping childcare costs at 7% of income for parents earning up to 250% of a state’s median income.
• 4 weeks of federal paid parental, sick or caregiver leave.
• A year of expanded Child Tax Credits. During the past year, these credits have raised households with more than 3 million children out of poverty, and cut overall child poverty in America by 25%.
• Extended pandemic-era Affordable Care Act subsidies. So far this year, these subsidies have increased ACA enrollment by more than 2 million.
• New hearing benefits for Medicare beneficiaries, including coverage for a new hearing aid every five years.
• A $35 per-month limit on the cost of insulin under Medicare, and a cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 per year.
• $500 billion to combat climate change, largely through clean energy tax credits. This represents the largest ever federal investment in clean energy.
• Raising the State and Local Tax deduction limit from $10,000 to $80,000.

The Congressional Budget Office released its scoring of the impact of the bill on the deficit (which no one cares about unless a Democrat is in the White House):

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday released its full cost estimate of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill, projecting the measure would add $160 billion to the national debt over the next decade.

The CBO reported the measure would raise more than $1.2 trillion in the form of increased IRS crackdowns on tax cheats, higher taxes and other increased revenues but that overall spending on a myriad of social and climate priorities would lead to a net cost. Covering the period from 2022 to 2031, the projection concludes that expenses would outweigh revenues by $367 billion but that beefed up IRS enforcement would bring in another $207 billion, leaving a deficit of roughly $160 billion.

The release of the CBO data is important to the House's vote on the measure, a massive package of Democratic social spending priorities, including free preschool, climate change initiatives and  expansion of affordable housing...

That $160 billion amounts to a couple of days of Pentagon waste.

The Senate is expected to make several changes (including eliminating or cutting back on the paid family leave provision -- thanks, Maserati Manchin!), which would then have to be voted on by the House for final passage through reconciliation. 

Analyses: Build Back Better Strengthens Growth, Won't Ignite Inflation

 

Moody's Analytics outlines the economic impacts of the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better social infrastructure bill, expected to be voted on today by the House, along with the $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill:

Lawmakers in Washington DC continue to work feverishly on another massive fiscal plan, including a more than $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal and a $1.75 trillion package of social spending and tax breaks to lower- and middle-income households that the Biden administration and congressional Democrats hope to pass into law via the budget reconciliation process. While the legislation remains in flux, it is similar in spirit to the Build Back Better agenda President Biden proposed earlier this year. If this is close to what becomes law, it will strengthen long-term economic growth, the benefits of which would mostly accrue to lower- and middle-income Americans. The legislation is more-or-less paid for on a static basis and more than paid for on a dynamic basis through higher taxes on multinational corporations and the well-to-do and a range of several other pay-fors. Concerns that the plan will ignite undesirably high inflation and an overheating economy are overdone, as the fiscal support it provides will ensure the economy only returns to full employment from the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Because the package includes a myriad of spending and tax initiatives, some of which are new and uncertain, implementing this legislation as intended and in a timely way will take deft governance. In this white paper, we assess the macroeconomic impact of both the bipartisan infrastructure deal legislation and the reconciliation package of social spending and tax changes.  (our emphasis)

"Concerns" and constantly shifting goalposts of conservaDems notwithstanding, this analysis by a highly respected business and financial services company dovetails with one from the Joint Committee on Taxation, also released yesterday, on the social infrastructure bill's  impact on the deficit:

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation released Thursday its initial analysis of Democrats’ major social spending and climate bill, judging that the “Build Back Better Act” would raise $1.48 trillion in revenue over a decade and be unlikely to add to the deficit long term.

The results are a boon for Democrats, and the report itself clears one of the last remaining hurdles keeping the House from holding a vote on the bill — a demand by moderates to see at least one major nonpartisan analysis of the bill’s effects.

The JCT and the Congressional Budget Office traditionally evaluate the impacts of major legislation on the federal budget, and their assessments carry weight with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. It was not clear Thursday when the CBO would release its report. (our emphasis)

If those conservaDems can't read or face facts, one must assume they're sinking this bill for other reasons, reasons that have become increasingly obvious to most observers. 

Democrats Nearing Agreement On Build Back Better?

 

Are we approaching a deal on the Build Back Better (the "human infrastructure reconciliation bill")?

Scaling down his “build back better” plans, President Joe Biden on Tuesday described a more limited vision to Democratic lawmakers of a $2 trillion government-overhaul package with at least $500 billion to tackle climate change and money for middle-class priorities — child tax credits, paid family leave, health care and free pre-kindergarten.

And he expects negotiations to wrap up as soon as this week.

The president met privately into the evening with nearly 20 centrist and progressive lawmakers in separate groups as Democrats appeared ready to abandon what had been a loftier $3.5 trillion package for a smaller, more workable proposal that can unite the party and win passage in the closely divided Congress.

Likely to be eliminated or seriously shaved back: plans for tuition-free community colleges, a path to legal status for immigrants who are in the U.S. without documentation, and a specific clean energy plan that was the centerpiece of Biden’s strategy for fighting climate change.

The details were shared by those familiar with the conversation and granted anonymity to discuss the private meetings.

Biden felt “more confident” after the day of meetings, said press secretary Jen Psaki. “There was broad agreement that there is urgency in moving forward over the next several days and that the window for finalizing a package is closing,” she said.

On the crucial clean energy plan, 

... Biden focused in his Tuesday meetings on providing at least $500 billion in tax credits, grants and loans to fight climate change, much of it likely coming from a package compiled by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chairman of the the Finance Committee. Those include the tax breaks for energy producers that reach emission-reduction goals.

That clean energy approach could better align with Manchin’s stated goal of keeping a “fuel neutral” approach to federal policy that does not favor renewable energy sources over coal and natural gas that are dominant in his state.

Are we joyous?  Not exactly.  Nor do we expect many Democrats and others who wanted the robust $3.5 trillion package to pass to be happy.  But, if this does pass at roughly the $2 trillion level it will be a huge game- changer for this country.  It would combine with the $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill already passed in the Senate, as well as the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan that Democrats passed in the Spring, which provided families and businesses with financial assistance to help them recover from the economy's pandemic downturn.

Look, Democrats need to focus on what can be achieved in a House with a slim majority and a Senate with two corporate Dems holding progressive legislation hostage.  To flog a cliché, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Focus on what will be funded in a slimmed- down, compromised BBB, including but not limited to:

-- extending the $300 monthly child tax credit for another year;

-- a trimmed down paid family leave program;

-- funding for health care programs, including  new money for home- and community-based health care services;

-- an expansion of Medicare to include dental, hearing and vision benefits;

-- child care subsidies.

Whether or not this passes (and we still believe it will), Democrats have a mission to hold the House in 2020 and add two more seats in the Senate to break the stranglehold of Sens. Manchin and Sinema.  They can then go back and pass the positive, progressive legislation on climate change and social services that's being cut now. 

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Breaking news this morning that COVID has claimed a prominent American:

Colin Powell, the first Black US secretary of state whose leadership in several Republican administrations helped shape American foreign policy in the last years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st, has died from complications from Covid-19, his family said on Facebook. He was 84.

"General Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from Covid 19," the Powell family wrote on Facebook.

He was fully vaccinated according to his family. It's reported Powell had an underlying health condition, having been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which made it harder for his body to fight infections.

Evidence is piling up that vaccine mandates are working very well:

At Houston Methodist — one of the first American health-care institutions to require workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus — the backlash was short-lived.

More than 150 employees were fired. There were legal battles and protests. But President and CEO Marc Boom has no regrets: 98 percent of staff have been vaccinated, and they and patients are safer as a result, he said.

Houston Methodist is not alone in requiring its employees to be vaccinated. About 41 percent of hospitals nationwide — roughly 2,570 facilities — have some sort of vaccine mandate, according to data collected by the American Hospital Association, a trade group. Others are expected to follow after President Biden announced last month that he would require most health-care facilities that accept Medicaid or Medicare funding — many of which also treat immunocompromised people who are at high risk of getting severely ill from covid — to vaccinate their employees.

Most health-care systems that require vaccination have touted widespread compliance. In interviews, administrators at some of the nation’s largest hospital systems said the mandates worked: Officials said that they have very high vaccination rates they attributed to the requirement and that they have seen coronavirus infections — and sick leaves — noticeably drop.

At Novant Health, a 35,000-employee health-care system in four Southeast states, more than 99 percent of workers have complied with a vaccine mandate, spokeswoman Caryn Klebba wrote in an email.

Lots more examples at the link.  There's also this:

 

So we’re starting to get a sense of how many people in big organizations will give up their job when faced with a vaccine mandate. From United Airlines, New York-Presbyterian, and NYU Langone the number is consistent. It’s 0.5%. #VaccineMandates https://t.co/jNJ7rOonMQ

— Jonathan Reiner (@JReinerMD) October 16, 2021

So when you see the media gravitate toward the loud, ignorant, largely- politically- motivated gaggles of anti- mask, anti- vaxxers, just remember the reality of what a tiny, destructive minority they are.

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe had some help on the campaign trail over the weekend:

Voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams on Sunday urged Black churchgoers to turn out for Democrat Terry McAuliffe in next month’s Virginia governor’s election, saying that what happens in the most watched race this year will “show the world who we are” in future contests with even higher stakes.

Abrams has become a leading national voice in the party since narrowly losing the 2018 race for governor in Georgia. With her appearances at three churches in Norfolk, Abrams is joining other political heavyweights in trying to ensure that a state trending increasingly Democratic in recent years does not flip back to the Republican column on Nov. 2.

McAuliffe, governor from 2014 to 2018 and a former Democratic National Committee chairman, visited separate churches and later led a rally with Abrams outside an early voting station. “We gotta get everybody out to vote,” he said.  [snip]

First lady Jill Biden campaigned with him on Friday. Former President Barack Obama is coming this week. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms visited three Black churches in Richmond on Sunday. Vice President Kamala Harris, in a video to be seen at 300 churches statewide for the next two-plus weeks, calls McAuliffe “the leader Virginia needs at this moment.” Biden is planning his own visit.

Meanwhile, Republican weasel Glenn Youngkin is desperate to keep from being seen with his cult leader, the malignant loser, for fear of driving away independent and suburban voters.  But he can't hide from the crazy, and McAuliffe's campaign is there to remind voters.

A simple reminder of what's at stake in Biden's Build Back Better (reconciliation) bill, most of which is supported by a solid majority of the American people (but is being blocked by two corporate Dems in the Senate):

What’s in Build Back Better

ACA subsidies
Fill Medicaid gap
Medicare dental/vision/hearing
Medicare negotiates drug costs
Elder care $
$250-$300/mo child cash
Universal pre-K
Paid family/medical leave
2-yr free community college
Clean energy money
Tax hikes >$400K + corporations

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 16, 2021

 

And a sizable majority of the public is happy to tax the rich to pay for it all.

Finally, be sure to take time to head over to Infidel 753's round-up of links from around the Internet;  as we've noted before, it's not politics- heavy, it's interesting- heavy.