This morning, Punchbowl News reported that the Senate Democrats now realize they have to use reconciliation to pass the infrastructure package that the Republicans have vowed to kill and that they have been systematically stalling and trying to run out the clock on. Real geniuses those Democrats, when McConnell never hid his intentions for half a second. This is primarily to please conservative Senate Democrats-- Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Mark Warner, Frackenlooper, Mark Kelly Jon Tester, the two goons from Delaware and the two goons from New Hampshire, all of whom are living in some kind of delusional world that Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney someone hold the keys to a glorious bipartisan Senate-- they don't-- or can at least make voters back him think something is bipartisan when it isn't. These 10 Democrats (+ the conservative former senator who sits in the White House now) have jeopardized the future of the Democratic Party and the future of the country. Everyone who sees one of them-- not Biden; you'd get shot-- walking down the street (if anyone of them ever walks down a street) should spit in their eye.
Anyway, sorry for the tangent. Punchbowl News reported that all this stalling "means the debate over infrastructure could drag well into the fall, which will put it on a collision path with the government funding and debt-limit skirmishes." There is nothing that will change McConnell's mind of raising taxes on corporations and on wealthy Americans. Nothing.
The White House is set to release its budget resolution Friday, and Democrats are targeting mid-June for their own FY 2022 resolution, according to Democratic aides familiar with the issue. Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would only say on Monday that he’s prepared “to move as quickly as possible.”
But Sanders also told Axios: “I think we are reaching the end of the period in which we have not seen serious Republican proposals. And sooner [rather] than later, we've got to make it clear that we are going forward to address the crises facing the market.”
Despite Sanders’ comments, the White House isn’t quite ready to pull the plug on bipartisan talks with Senate Republicans. Biden administration officials say they want to explore all the options presented by the GOP lawmakers, in part because Biden would prefer a bipartisan deal. But there’s another reason it’s worth keeping talks alive with Republicans. Exploring all avenues for compromise would help convince skittish Democrats-- ahem, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia-- to go along with reconciliation, leadership hopes.
Right now, these bipartisan talks seem to be going nowhere fast. A bipartisan group of senators [meaning conservatives] met Monday night in Sen. Rob Portman’s (R-OH) hideaway, yet that didn’t seem to yield any breakthroughs. More talks are expected today. The outlook is poor, though.
Yeah... poor and a complete waste of time... valuable time that is going tick, tick, tick towards the midterms, in which the Republicans will be able to point out that the Democrats, in control of the White House, and both chambers of Congress were unable to get their shit together and accomplish anything. Oh, wait, wait... Biden accomplished something; he removed student loan forgiveness, reducing the cost of prescription drugs and raising the state tax-- all hugely important campaign promises-- from his budget proposal. That should keep millions of Democratic voters from going to the polls next year.
Progressives have been demanding $50,000 as a minimum of student debt cancellation. Biden had promised $10,000. when he negotiates with Republicans he always (100% of the time)moves closer to their position. When he negotiates with progressives... he also moves closer to Republican positions and has now given up on student debt forgiveness totally. Remember the Biden David Brooks interview last week when Brooks wrote that the conservative shithead that has always been and will always be Joe Biden is "suspicious of the generous college debt forgiveness plans that have sprung up on the left?" Biden told Brooks "The idea that you go to Penn and you’re paying a total of 70,000 bucks a year and the public should pay for that? I don’t agree." Neither does anyone else; it isn't the issue, except in GOP talking points. Biden is senile-- stop denying it to yourself.
This morning, writing for Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg noted that America is in deep doo doo. Apparently the Democrats don't have the ability or the will to help. Rothenberg wrote that "things have deteriorated" since the election, even though "the country rejected Donald Trump, along with his narcissism and authoritarianism.
Republican voters continue to be more afraid of Biden than of Trump. They see everything as a false choice between “left-wing socialists” who allegedly want to eliminate police departments and open the border to drug dealers on one hand, and conservatives and defenders of the faith on the other.
Some Democrats seem to think that Trump’s legal problems will render him harmless by the time 2022 or 2024 rolls around. That’s possible, of course, but Trump’s political obituary has been written before, and the legal process tends to be slow.
Trump’s staunchest supporters continue to undermine the public’s confidence in the electoral system and other crucial institutions. Even worse, some seem to be positioning themselves to intervene in the next election if it is close.
Rep. Jody Hice, for example, has entered the 2022 Republican primary for Georgia secretary of state, pitting him against incumbent Brad Raffensperger, who is seeking reelection.
Raffensperger refused to buckle when pressured by Trump, but it is easy to imagine Hice, as secretary of state, using his position in 2024 to help Trump, no matter what Georgia voters want or how they vote.
The former president has already endorsed Hice, a member of the House Freedom Caucus whose views on the intersection of religion and politics are far outside the American mainstream.
So, we have one party, the GOP, that is led by a bully who relies on cheap shots and untruths to keep his critics in check-- and who has no respect for norms established since the birth of the republic.
It’s a party that punishes Cheney but sees no reason to distance itself from the paranoid ramblings of Greene or Trump stalwart Michael Flynn.
Meanwhile, the Democrats head toward the midterms with one of their own in the White House and technical “control” of both chambers of Congress-- even though they really have little control given the 50-50 Senate and the hesitancy of a few Democratic senators to act unilaterally.
In other words, Democrats have the responsibility to deal with a range of crucial issues but lack the ability to do much, which in the past has tended to be a prescription for political defeat.
No, the die is not cast for 2022 or 2024. But instead of laying the ground for a more thoughtful, less partisan discussion of the challenges facing this country, the past six months have raised additional questions about our country’s future and the rule of law.
someone had the epiphany, after only 50-some years: "America is in deep doo doo. Apparently the Democrats don't have the ability or the will to help."
"Apparently"? if you have been kicked in the sack for the past 50+ years, "APPARENTLY" you are being kicked?
no. not a panacea. but the biden/$cummer/pelo$i triumvirate was not ever meant to be. Americans only wanted a bread, for 2 years, from trump and naziism. They'll both be back with a vengeance by november of next year... because the democraps are worthless feckless corrupt warmongering neoliberal fascist pussies that, for over a half-century, have refused to act/help get the shithole out of the deep ... shit.
and americans are too fucking stupid and evil…