Sen. Joe Manchin has published a manifesto in the Wall Street Journal saying that he won't support the Democrats' $3.5 trillion spending bill because he's worried about its effect on inflation. This is nothing new from Manchin, and it's no less crazy than it's ever been. The spending bill amounts to only $350 billion per year and is mostly paid for, which means that its effect on inflation will be negligible.
Part of the problem here is that everyone, including me, keeps referring to this legislation as a "$3.5 trillion bill," as if its size were the main thing that defines it. But it's not meant as a stimulus bill or a recovery bill or anything like that. It's just a bill that funds a bunch of progressive programs. This means the questions we should be asking about it are less about its raw size and more about which of these programs you support.
There are seven sizeable programs funded by the fill, and if you think its price tag is too high then you should fess up about which ones you would prioritize the highest. For example, here's my rough list:
- Makes the increased Obamacare subsidies from January's coronavirus bill permanent.
- Provides universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds.
- Provides funding for long-term care done at home.
- Provides two years of free community college.
- Makes the increased child tax credit permanent.
- Adds dental, hearing, and vision benefits to Medicare.
- Funds various climate initiatives.
This was done off the top of my head in about a minute, so don't take it too seriously. Roughly speaking, though, if I had to cut programs out of this bill, I'd probably choose the climate stuff, the Medicare benefits, and the child tax credit.
Your priorities might be entirely different, and since #1 is the only one firmly on my list I'd probably be willing to negotiate. The same is true of Democratic lawmakers, including Joe Manchin.
Or so I assume. In any case, Democrats should start talking in terms of programs, and skeptics should start talking in terms of programs they think we should hold off on. Constantly talking about nothing but the $3.5 trillion price tag is pointless.
>> Adds dental, hearing, and vision benefits to Medicare.<<
I think this would be wildly popular with older voters. I’d keep it and see who objects.
Not with younger voters.
Older voters actually vote more consistently. I’d worry about pleasing them.
Younger voters swing elections.
An assertion that does not seem supported by actual election data. Reliable swing voters clearly can swing.
Asserting younger voters swing elections is more in the world of wishful or hopeful thinking.
If that were true, Bernie Sanders would be President today.
dausuul nailed it.
The question is whether older Republican voters would like it enough to write to their representative and Senators to pass it. I think that could happen if the issue were more highly publicized. Democrats are really bad at publicizing things like this.
Wrong question.
the question would be do swing-voters (older being more reliable voters, I suppose middle-aged up) like it enough to tip over into voting Democratic? Plus mobilisation of lower-propensity voter (mobilisation effect). The absolute percentages of such swing-voters in many key swing districts need not be large to tip a voting district from an R result to a D result.
Conversion of Republican voters is a third order potential and lower likelihood.
Strategic focus on swing districts and effects on swing voters in those kinds of districts, that will tip your results.
How do you propose -- specifically, mind you -- to get this issue more highly publicized? What power do the Democrats have over the MSM that would force them to devote more air time and column inches to the subject?
Go ahead. I'm listening.
>> How do you propose -- specifically, mind you -- to get this issue more highly publicized? <<
Democratic Party could make an ad and put it on Fox and/or other places that demographic watches/listens.
Your list forgets rural medical infrastructure. Talk about a wedge issue. Democrats need tax hikes of 66% of the total package. They likely don't have it. Repealing the Trump Tax cuts and another slither of the Bush tax cuts. But that only comes to 180b yearly. The total package would be reduced to 250 billion.
While I support Manchin on a few things, he is full of shit here. I would argue this will slightly slow debt expansion........which is his real problem, with his wall street background. It's more than him. Sheehan, Jewstein, Georgia duo, are the most wall street. Biden will get this through by keeping the core package, dumping the Medicare excess.
Thanks for the Jewish slurs.
It's a Nazi troll. Please don't feed the troll.
Constantly talking about nothing but the $3.5 trillion price tag is pointless.
Not just pointless, it validates the wingnut blathering point.
And just why do you think the MSM is constantly talking about nothing but the $3.5 trillion price tag? Is this a big enough clue stick as to which side the MSM is really on?
agreed.
“Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is urging his Democratic colleagues to "hit the pause button" on a $3.5 trillion spending bill, citing more urgent priorities like the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and a spike in COVID-19 cases.”
This is silly. Once again, democrats let their love of the military and obsession with war in Islam derail their domestic agenda. Good grief. This is why they simply have to cut defense in half and give up on being the world’s police.
And what is congress going to do about covid? Manchin should get vaccinated, sit down, and be quiet.
So that’s it. Biden was President for less than 8 months and accomplished nothing. It’s not has fault. The country is broken and ungovernable.
“Centrist” Manchin? He’s “do nothing” Manchin. 😂
So that’s it. Biden was President for less than 8 months and accomplished nothing. It’s not has fault.
It would be a serious political blow if no reconciliation bill passes, but, realistically, something probably will, even if (heaven forbid) it were eviscerated to the tune, of, say, 75%. That would still leave us with a $900 billion piece of legislation. If that passed along with the infrastructure bill, Biden's achievements in his first nine months of office would include:
1) Massive ramp up/roll out of vaccines;
2) Increasing use of vaccine mandates;
3) $1.9 trillion covid relief bill;
4) $1 trillion infrastructure bill;
5) $900 billion reconciliation bill;
6) Ending America's disastrous, two-decade war in Afghanistan and getting 120,000 people evacuated;
7) Prosecution of 100s of Jan 6 insurrectionists.
That's a partial list. And if the reconciliation bill comes in considerably higher (call it $2.5 trillion), Biden's accomplishments will look more solid still.
It's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees, but, honestly, the country's in a lot better shape than it was last year, and there's a perfectly good chance the economy and covid situations will both look a lot better still a year from now. And the assertion that Biden has "accomplished nothing" is simply unserious flimflam.
Right-wing extremists have been re-branded as "conservative." Conservatives have been re-branded as "centrist." Centrists have been re-branded as "liberal." Liberals have been rebranded as "leftists."
+10 "likes".
So they are globalist right wing extremists. Con men of the elite.
This is the expanded demarche, not the Infrastructure bill, no? Or is this both together? Sorry it is a bit confusing from other side of the Atlantic
The topic is the Democrat-only bill (the reconciliation bill). The infrastructure bill is a bipartisan measure that costs a lot less — about $1 trillion.
I like to refer to the thing the Senate compromised its way to as "the bipartisan mini-bill". The real action is in the Infrastructure and Jobs bill, aka the "$3.5T".
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Infrastructure spending explained by som other person. I copy this from them and completely agree with this analysis.
The story of the decay of infrastructure in NYC -- and every other major city in America -- is this:
Almost twenty years ago to this day, after the attacks on 9/11/2001, a group of oil company executives, weapons manufacturers and their representatives in Congress and the White House managed to convince a majority of Americans, through deception, misinformation and outright lying, that the best way to keep Americans safe was to abandon our hard won individual freedoms and instead transmogrify our nation into one which spies on its citizens and as a matter of course engages in expensive preemptive, warfare against other nations.
The idea, hidden inside the manipulative euphemisms of the warmongers, was that if you find a couple countries wearing the wrong "colors" and smash them back to the stone age, it will frighten the bejesus out of everyone else and cause other nations to think twice before crossing America.
And now, the cost of America becoming a national security state oriented politically, economically, psychologically and culturally around organized violence, is obvious.
Since 9/11, as a people --
Politically, we have become divisive and argumentative.
Economically, we have spent $24,000 per person on wars.
Psychologically, we are suspicious of one another. Our government constantly spies on us.
Culturally, we're adrift with no moral or narrative direction.
So that's it. The money was all spent on wars and the subways are flooded. Any questions?
I know West Virginia is blood-red Trump country these days, but does Joe Manchin seriously think the path to his continued political viability lies in telling his voters that he kept a lid on inflation and kept those terrible federal dollars out of their state?
I think it's more generalized than that. I believe Manchin's basic strategy is to generate media coverage depicting him as an ornery, contrarian maverick. This enables him to stress to general election voters that's he's not a "beltway liberal." So he rarely misses an opportunity to be seen publicly and loudly tussling with members of his own party. And when that member happens to be the president, all the better. Such a strategy may also help to reduce the intensity of business elite opposition to his candidacy (nobody's going to mistake his policy preferences for those of Elizabeth Warren).
It's also been said, I should add, that Democrats' inordinate degree of dependence on Manchin advertises in bold neon that he is, in a word, powerful. Which may be an attribute that is appreciated by many West Virginia voters.
Also, this is largely Manchin being Manchin. He has to say something publicly to get Schumer's attention, and feed his ego with publicity, but what he really wants is to be "convinced", and most political "convincing" is pork-based. He'll get something for WVA, something for his corporate friends, and let them know he did it, but much more quietly, and in the end we'll get most of what we wanted. It pisses me off that the expanded Medicare bennies may well be just negotiation-fodder--I mean, can you think of any medical benefits us old people need more than vision, dental, and hearing?--but that may be the case, and if it works, well...that's fucking politics, ain't it?
The absolute LAST thing I would cut from the bill is the environmental, climate change mitigation money. I'm guessing that Mr Drum is elderly enough, with no offspring to worry about, that the fate of human society and the biodiversity of the world don't matter much to him -- he won't be around long enough to care.
I know lots of elderly dudes with this attitude. If they even accept the reality of climate change, they don't think there's anything to be done about it. Even those with doted-upon grandchildren!
Tragically, they also vote. And there seems to be no way to get through to them, because they're "old and full of wisdom." Full of something, I'd say.
@Salamander
Always good to have a scapegoat.
Can we talk about it as a pony?
Snarcasm aside, I am surprised you would drop climate change. As you are someone who seems to have done nothing about it as an individual and has called for silver bullets from government funded initiatives I would have thought you would look to keep that.
Two points, or one point and a question:
1) Dean Baker has talked about this multiple times, but Jeebus, why can't the MSM ever state clearly that things like the 3.5 trillion dollars in question is spending done OVER 10 YEARS:
"This article on the $3.5 trillion budget outline didn’t mention once that the spending would be over ten years. (Hey, ten years, one year, what difference does it make?) This spending comes to a bit more than 1.2 percent of projected GDP over this period. For another comparison, we are projected to spend $8.6 trillion on the military over this period. "
2) Perhaps things don't or can't work this way any more, maybe they never did,
but why can't Biden privately pull Manchin aside and tell him West Virginia will see nothing, nada, from the federal government for the next x years unless Manchin stops the grandstanding and starts working with his own party and not the f..king WSJ ? Isn't this how that old b..stard LBJ got difficult stuff done ?
If our majorities were larger Biden would still have that option. As it is Manchin will call Biden's bluff if he attempts to coerce him. Manchin knows how fragile the majority is and he is using his leverage; mostly to be mentioned in the media I suspect. He neither cares much nor understands much about policy; it is all politics for him, i.e. get reelected every time.
Biden will call him and offer him as small a pound of flesh as he can get away with; so far this has worked with Manchin.
What makes you think Biden has the power to stop the flow of federal money to West Virginia? Also, it's entirely possible the whole thing is a kabuki dance: Democrats wanted a $2.7 trillion bill so they started out with a $3.5 trillion bill, and Joe Manchin will take as much credit as he can get away with for "cutting pork" and "saving" taxpayers $800 billion.
Seriously wrong priorities. Someone putting climate at the end of the priority list today of all days deserves some serious criticism!
The correct priority list is like this:
1. climate
2. climate
3. climate
4. climate
5. climate
6. climate
7. climate
8. everything else in everyone's preferred sequence.
This is not difficult!
Just before reading this KD blog entry I had written a letter to my Senator (Bernie) saying that the top priority item must be the climate provisions. Very surprised to see them at the bottom of Kevin's list! This is the one item where the clock is ticking down fast, and it may be years before we get another shot at the critical changes (especially the clean energy provisions) -- cannot be dumped! I put the Medicare expansion at the bottom -- very expensive, and we can fight those battles in the future.
So don't refer to it as a "$3.5 trillion bill". Refer to it as what it is: a $3.5 trillion investment.
Manchin is just as asshole. Who is he representing? Whose life is he trying to make better? He's not a closet Republican - despite what some people want to believe - he's an asshole. None of his corporate sponsors will suffer any losses from Biden's recover program and some of them will make money off of it. He is just an asshole who loves the attention that rich people give him.
He wants to nationalise the coal industry. The government would then invest the technology so it can compete with NG. It's what the Trump Administration wanted to do in 2018, but the contradictions stopped them. Biden may not care.
Like Kevin I'd keep #1, but I'd also keep #5. That child tax credit is supposedly having a huge mitigating effect on child poverty (long an utterly shameful scandal in a country as rich as America).
It really must remain in the legislation.
This is nothing new from Manchin, and it's no less crazy than it's ever been. The spending bill amounts to only $350 billion per year and is mostly paid for, which means that its effect on inflation will be negligible.
Kevin: rational analysis doesn't buy headlines that paint Senator Manchin as "mavricky" to the good people of West Virginia. Which is his main priority, because it gives him a plausible chance at prevailing in one of the reddest states in America. West Virginia ain't sending an Elizabeth Warren clone to the Senate any time soon.
(If he really does cause the death of this bill — or forces its evisceration — then I do advise Democrats to primary him).
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Thank you for pointing out that the 'MASSIVE $3.5 TRILLION' bill is over 10 years. NONE of the media talking heads seem to be aware of this!
But I almost lost my breakfast, lunch, and dinner when you said you would drop 'the climate stuff.' That. is. insane. Kevin, you obviously have not been paying attention for the last 30 years. If we don't get 'the climate stuff' now, it's going to probably be many years before another opportunity comes, and the consequences will be somewhere between grave and apocalyptic. We are talking about costs of tens of trillions to the global economy PER YEAR, and tens of millions of people who have NO choice but to leave their homelands because the weather will kill them. I wonder where they will want to go? We are talking social disruptions and economic collapse that are simply unimaginable to our feeble 20th-century minds. Of course, you and I will be dead, so screw it.
No, I think 'fixing Obamacare subsidies' sounds a bit trivial compared to that.
Climate change is LAST on your list? WT everloving F? Do you not understand that none of the rest of it matters without that?
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