Biden Thread

[a completely inoffensive name]

Dangerous and unproductive mindset in more than the mildest form, as it promises to squander the 2-year window we have in exchange for reducing the probability of securing further such windows.

And why is it, by the way, that no one tells centrists about not letting perfect be the enemy of good? It sure seems like their vision of perfect tends to get priority...

YOu yourself said it is a waste to be doing performative votes that accomplish nothing. So what is it Monty, pass Manchin approved bills or nothing? You can't act as if the ability to make $15/hr happen is actually there.

Centrists get priority cause the system is built to give them and conservative voices an oversized voice in the system. it is what it is for the moment, we can both acknowledge it is wrong and work with it for the time being until we get a 63+ Dem Senate.

[Montmorency]

On voting rights today:

At issue in the Supreme Court today was whether restrictive voting laws in Arizona violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And a Republican Party lawyer defending the restrictions couldn’t have made his intentions clearer.

Tuesday’s oral arguments in two cases—Brnovich v. DNC and Arizona Republican Party v. DNC—concerned the legality of “ballot harvesting,” a practice in which community activists collect ballots to boost voter turnout. The arguments also discussed an Arizona law that disqualified ballots cast in the wrong precinct. There’s no evidence of the voting fraud that these laws purport to limit, and voting rights activists say that the laws disproportionately limit Black, Latino, and Native American voters’ access to the polls.

So Justice Amy Coney Barrett had a simple question for the lawyer defending the GOP-backed laws: “What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC here in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?”

“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” the lawyer, Michael Carvin, responded. “Politics is a zero-sum game.”

2030 GOP: When the social inferiors refuse to make themselves available for slave labor it inflicts economic and moral damages to the virtuous classes. All laws thus unresponsive to our natural, God-given rights are therefore inapplicable.

An oldie on the reactionary Evangelical/neo-Calvinist mindset that came to dominate the Republican Party:

Maeve Reston reminds me of a conversation from 1993, reconstructed and reimagined from my memory, after an OEOB Ira Magaziner health care reform meeting:

Another Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary: "You've lived in California; Washington, DC; and Massachusetts. You don't really understand the rest of the country--you don't understand the South; you don't understand Texas."

Me: Half my extended family lives in Florida...

ATDAS: "That's not the South..."

Me: Three of my four grandparents come from Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri...

ATDAS: "The Midwest is not the South, or Texas..."

Me: One of my great-great-great grandfathers is buried in Wichita...

ATDAS: "And Wichita is not Texas.

Me: True...

ATDAS: "You don't understand the Republicans we have in the South, and in Texas. You know of Northeastern and Left Coast Republicans. Even Midwestern Republicans--especially Bob Dole--actually think that sick and disabled people, even if they are poor, should be able to get the health care that is good for them, without having to beg. That's not the case with Republicans down in Texas. Republicans in Texas think that if you can't pay the doctor out of what is in your pocket and from the insurance policy you bought, then you need to go beg at your church. And only after you have begged at your church, and begged sincerely and abjectly enough, might your church find itself paying for you out of Christian charity--the benefit of which is to save their souls, not your body!"

Me: But...

ATDAS: "They don't like Medicaid. They don't like Medicaid because it short-circuits this process. You get treated but you don't have to beg for it. The only reason they vote for Medicaid--and Texas only votes for grinchy Medicaid--is that the rich doctors of Dallas and Houston who contribute so much to the Republican Party think that Medicaid means that they don't have to dig into the pockets of their practices to support charity care."

Me: But what if you don't have a church!

ATDAS: "Then you should go join one, shouldn't you? That's a benefit..."

YOu yourself said it is a waste to be doing performative votes that accomplish nothing. So what is it Monty, pass Manchin approved bills or nothing? You can't act as if the ability to make $15/hr happen is actually there.

The idea being to try to get as much out of him as possible, not allow him to unilaterally set the agenda as he pleases. To use your discussion of inflation as an analogy, we're trying to find an optimal price point for the buyer (Manchin et al.), not just selling 25c patties because that's what Manchin would like to see.

What there is an ability to make happen is something that the leadership can discover, it's not something to be presumed in either direction. If, within limits of methods, Manchin will never ever budge on $15 minimum wage (and I'm not even sure that is the case), then we've found it out through the process.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The idea being to try to get as much out of him as possible, not allow him to unilaterally set the agenda as he pleases. To use your discussion of inflation as an analogy, we're trying to find an optimal price point for the buyer (Manchin et al.), not just selling 25c patties because that's what Manchin would like to see.

What there is an ability to make happen is something that the leadership can discover, it's not something to be presumed in either direction. If, within limits of methods, Manchin will never ever budge on $15 minimum wage (and I'm not even sure that is the case), then we've found it out through the process.

Political power doesn't work like that Monty. 'Getting as much out' of someone involves applying available leverage to a situation as part of bargaining. What leverage does the party have over a Blue Dog Dem who happens to be Dem #50 in a 50/50 Senate and has a very tenuous position in a ruby red state?

Have you read the bio's on the guy? He has a staffer text him the national debt every morning when he goes to work. What's there to do other than ask him what number he feels comfortable voting for?

[ReluctantSamurai]

So it sounds like they are being very pragmatic in their political choices and not at all idealistic or ideological.

Which was precisely my point in making the statement you mocked. I don't know how black voters in other areas of the country feel, but after the corruption and scandal during the terms of several of the past mayors who were black, African-American residents of Detroit have become very pragmatic. Trust me, when 10,000 Detroit families (and I'm just picking a random # here) receive less than, or no Covid relief checks, and have their UI reduced, than what they got under the Trump Administration, they are going to be asking themselves what the hell they voted for last November...

Have you read the bio's on the guy? He has a staffer text him the national debt every morning when he goes to work. What's there to do other than ask him what number he feels comfortable voting for?

So what!?! You get the man into a meeting and discuss how to get him on board with the Democratic agenda. You don't just run up the white flag every time he objects to something. If Biden is such a good negotiator as he claims, find some common ground where Manchin gives whats good for the administration, and can get what's good for him. Otherwise, Manchin will almost single-handedly be responsible for the GOP reclaiming both Houses of the Senate in 2022, and the presidency in 2024.

[Montmorency]

LBJ did a pretty good job of arm-twisting to get his Civil Rights Bill passed, no?

FDR was trying to pull off a "Roosevelt Purge", as characterised by media at the time. That's not what's being advocated here...

LBJ and FDR weren't as successful in pursuing their priorities as you think, which was why a lot of legislation either had to be watered down and passed on a bipartisan basis (Southern Yellow Dog Democrats really sucked! even though they gave Democrats supermajorities). Which is not to say that the acronymic leadership was below replacement level compared to what we might have got instead. Black people only even got a proper minimum wage in 1967 (1966 Fair Labor Standards Act amendment), practically speaking, and that contained many limitations that we recognize today such as the separate tipped minimum or even deprecated provisions (?**) such as the student subminimum. (There's an interesting narrative to be derived here about how leftist-favored "universal" programs rarely actually start universal but have to be built up...) But it's important to note that to the extent individual legislators could be cajoled or threatened back in the day*, it is because loyalties, priorities, and commitments were more fluid within and between factions and parties. Nowadays it's possible to more or less pin down every legislator (or at least Senator) 'where they are', which wasn't the case until the past decade. It's hard to understate how much of a change to the process it is for votes to almost be a mathematical function rather than a very personal and impressionistic area of judgement. The "uncommitted" member is a critically endangered species.

*A lot of the action involved simply bypassing roadblocks created by ranking Southern committee members using procedural methods, rather than convincing them of anything. The hurdle today is less with procedure than with the aggregate vote

**One apparent remnant of the 1966 amendment is "a minimum of not less than $4.25 per hour for employees under 20 years of age during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer."

If money ever moves to my nonretired friends in the form of increased wages, I doubt it will be $15/hr. Of course anything above the current rate is "better", but I don't need to point out to you that in many states, even $15/hr won't be keeping up with the cost of living. Manchin is like the proverbial petulant child...if you keep cow-towing to their belligerent behavior, they keep pushing the limits of what they think they can get away with.

Well, we don't know anything, that I am aware of, about the private process. That is, I could understand faulting Biden with giving up too easily if this is how his interactions with Manchin unfolded:

Biden: So, minimum wage in the package
Manchin: Nah
Biden: I've done all I can

But I don't see why we should assume such a low level of commitment on Biden's part (though this is bad, albeit itself offset by 100% COBRA subsidy).

Under the plan passed by the House, individuals earning up to $75,000 per year and couples making up to $150,000 per year would qualify for the full $1,400 stimulus payment. The size of the payments then begins to scale down before zeroing out for individuals making $100,000 per year and couples making $200,000.

Under the changes agreed to by Biden and Senate Democratic leadership, individuals earning $75,000 per year and couples earning $150,000 would still receive the full $1,400-per-person benefit. However, the benefit would disappear for individuals earning more than $80,000 annually and couples earning more than $160,000.

That means singles making between $80,000 and $100,000 and couples earning between $160,000 and $200,000 would be newly excluded from a partial benefit under the revised structure Biden agreed to.

Theoretically there are some genuine hardball measures that might be used to drive Manchin to cooperation, such as threatening federal defunding of West Virginia in the form of highways or military bases. Going really below the belt, the President could threaten to have Manchin's family investigated for dirty dealings. I do doubt Biden would ever go so far as to consider either of these tactics. I wouldn't advocate for them either, except in service of meta-political legislation such as voting rights, new states, or even judicial reform, because this isn't the sort of winch one can apply continually before the rope breaks; Manchin would soon get angry enough to call the bluff.

Political power doesn't work like that Monty. 'Getting as much out' of someone involves applying available leverage to a situation as part of bargaining. What leverage does the party have over a Blue Dog Dem who happens to be Dem #50 in a 50/50 Senate and has a very tenuous position in a ruby red state?

Have you read the bio's on the guy? He has a staffer text him the national debt every morning when he goes to work. What's there to do other than ask him what number he feels comfortable voting for?

Other than the hardball tactics I mentioned above, the basis of negotiation in the barest sense would be to ask Manchin what he's comfortable with and try to work him up as much as you can with persuasion (arguing the case) and blandishment (constituent, personal, political, or partisan benefit distinct from the policy under negotiation). We literally discussed avoiding pre-compromise like 3 years ago.

I understand your point. That IS one of the countervailing arguments regarding small businesses.

I wonder at the inflationary component of such a wage increase. Businesses, to pay the higher labor costs, must either cut costs elsewhere, raise prices, or reduce profits (or some mix thereof). Is there a viable balance point that does not create an endless loop of rising prices mandating higher living wages etc.? There are mixed views as to such a balance point in the stuff I have read.

I doubt such inflationary pressures obtain in practice. If you mean the perpetual inflationary growth of the entire economy/currency, AFAIK it has to do with the comprehensive monetary policy in the developed world since WW2 - prior to which used to be both inflationary and deflationary cycles - not regulations such as minimum wage.

Wage push pressures of the sort the Fed tried to crush in the 70s and 80s may have some influence over inflation, but the concept of the wage push is that workers broadly speaking have enough power to bargain from management higher wages and benefits, a situation that doesn't exist but should. We evidently have better mechanisms for controlling inflation (what the targets ought to be is a whole other question) than suppressing labor. Anyway, a low government-set minimum wage doesn't do that much to increase worker bargaining power on its own because it only establishes a level playing field (in theory; removing the carveouts for agriculture and tipped occupations would make it more so). We can settle the issue by indexing the minimum wage to inflation, which creates predictability and stability in all normal circumstances.

Indeed, I'm surprised the UK members haven't mentioned their minimum wage (though it may have undesirable features, such as the age tiering, and I'm not convinced about linking to median wages). Another point of comparison may be to UK state pensions and their triple lock, which generously raise the state pension by the highest of three measures: annual growth in average earnings, CPI inflation, or 2.5%. Triple-locking the minimum wage, and perhaps a whole spread of financial entitlements (e.g. SNAP, Section 8, Social Security), could be conclusive for a generation, opening more space for other political goals.

Also, important question about the US economy: What is the distribution of low-wage (<$15/hr) workers among firms by size?

Finally, another one of those telling historical graphs:

[Montmorency]

Recent updates:

Wicker reports the “talk in the cloak room” currently is that Manchin has finished talking with the White House and that he isn’t going to fold

NEW: Dems have reached an agreement, per an aide. They will now offer an amendment to extend the enhanced UI benefits through September 6 at $300/week — a month less than Carper amendment.

The agreement will still make the first $10,200 of UI benefits non-taxable but ONLY to households with incomes under $150k.

Manchin is on board with this one, for the record:

“The President has made it clear we will have enough vaccines for every American by the end of May and I am confident the economic recovery will follow. We have reached a compromise that enables the economy to rebound quickly”

This deal took about 9 hours to put together. The Senate is still only on the first vote of vote-a-drama. Long night ahead.

The deliberations:

The two parties spent Friday afternoon battling for Manchin's support on changes to federal unemployment benefits, showcasing how a 50-50 Senate can instantly swing power to one holdout. Senate Democrats struck a deal on Friday over the boosted unemployment benefits in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, shortly before debate on the bill reached its peak. But Manchin (D-W.Va.) hasn't agreed to go along.

An amendment readied by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) would change the bill’s boosted weekly federal unemployment payments from $400, as approved by the House, to $300. That benefit would be extended through September instead of August, and the first $10,200 of unemployment insurance would be non-taxable income to help laid off workers avoid surprise tax bills.

But Manchin is also intrigued by a proposal from Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), which would extend the $300 unemployment benefits until July 18 — and amounts to a cut from both the Carper proposal and the House bill. Manchin spoke by telephone with Portman on Friday afternoon as the intrigue grew and the Senate stalled.

"There's bipartisan support for what Rob's trying to do. And Manchin's getting beat up by his side. They're trying to get him in line, so to speak. And he's trying to do the right thing," said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). "He knows that the Portman amendment saves a lot of money and is better policy. But Democrats in his caucus obviously don’t want to give Republicans a bipartisan win on this."

Thune said he believed the Portman proposal could pass despite skepticism among some conservatives about any additional federal unemployment payments. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he didn’t know where Manchin’s vote was. He said Democrats “don’t want” Portman’s amendment: “We want to get this wrapped up.”

The Carper proposal, hatched by both moderate and progressive Democrats, also links up the expiration of unemployment benefits with the current lapse of government funding at the end of September. But a vote on the measure was delayed as Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) held an animated discussion with Manchin on the Senate floor.

Sinema indicated to Manchin that he could theoretically vote for both Carper's Democratic amendment and Portman's GOP amendment in an attempt to end the stalemate. The two parties are fighting over which order to hold the amendment votes in.

Yeah, tbh he's more disappointing than I factored in. He's being outright arbitrary, you can't even glean the principle (it's not to save money, since the total package size isn't really affected).

[ReluctantSamurai]

Yeah, tbh he's more disappointing than I factored in. He's being outright arbitrary, you can't even glean the principle (it's not to save money, since the total package size isn't really affected).

Can you imagine watching this crap on tv---provided you don't live in Texas where you still haven't had electricity restored, or had it shut off 'cuz you can't pay the outrageous new bill---sipping on bottled water (which the local food donation center was gracious enough to give you)---because if you live in Cleveland or maybe Baltimore you're water's been shut off 'cuz you can't pay the last several inflated bills---and eating beans out of a can (which you also got from the food donation center) and wondering what world these people live in??

I guarrantee if this was about a bailout for Boeing Aircraft, or Chase Manhattan, the deal would've been done and signed into law weeks ago.....

God I effing hate politics......

[ReluctantSamurai]

One has to wonder how a lawmaker could conceive of this when arguing against a bill so desperately needed by millions of Americans:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-j...b6829715055f8e

Sen. Ron Johnson: "That is what we are debating, spending a stack of dollar bills that extends more than halfway the distance to the moon. And this is at a point in time when we're about $28 trillion in debt."

The suddenly fiscally responsible Senator Johnson had no trouble voting for $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy back in 2017. Perhaps voters impacted by all of his delays should buy him a ticket aboard the Space X SN10 and send him halfway to the moon....

Sen. Johnson, an ex-polyester and plastics exec, has a current net worth of nearly $40 million:

https://www.salon.com/2021/03/05/sen...-covid-relief/

[a completely inoffensive name]

Very happy the bill passed the Senate today. There is a lot of good stuff that the suburbs will appreciate and I think it will only hurt the GOP to be the party that unanimously voted against it.

"92% non-COVID related" bullshit will fall apart when the family of four gets their 12k.

[Hooahguy]

Plus the whole "voted against Covid relief" likely won't play very well for 2022...