Biden Thread

[Montmorency]

Reminder of how the effort to persuade Pence to disregard electoral procedure argued. Not that this would have worked, but it should be noted that John Eastman is one of the most elite conservative law professors in the country and was among those suing on Trump's behalf to overturn state election results last year. He was even a speaker at the January 6 DC rally.

1.VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate Pro TemporeGrassley, if Pence recuses himself), begins to open and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically is required).

2.When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States.This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

3.At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” –the language of the 12th Amendment--is 454.This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe(here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

4.Howls, of course, from the Democrats, who now claim, contrary to Tribe’s prior position, that 270 is required. So Pence says, fine. Pursuant to the12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where the “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote. . . .” Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well.

5.One last piece. Assuming the Electoral Count Act process is followed and, upon getting the objections to the Arizona slates, the two houses break into their separate chambers, we should not allow the Electoral Count Act constraint on debate to control. That would mean that a prior legislature was determining the rules of the present one—a constitutional no-no(as Tribe has forcefully argued). So someone –Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. –should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.

6.The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission –either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position --that these are non-justiciable political questions –thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.

His most 'benign' contribution to the 2020 election was an op-ed that Kamala Harris is not an American citizen, and that the 14th Amendment does not confer citizenship on persons born in American jurisdiction.

Last month he was, pursuant to the allegedly illegitimate and unprecedented federal pandemic measures (such as they even exist) that are constitutive of a "cold civil war," arguing for Republican states' "robust assertion" of state police power to preempt federal authority. Use cases being state border controls, eminent domain, "high-intensity demonstrations" in major cities, displacing the national currency with cryptocoin, and independent enforcement of "individual civil rights."

I hope Democratic politicians take notes, at least some of the time. "Those who have the power take and those hold who can."

[ReluctantSamurai]

I hope Democratic politicians take notes, at least some of the time. "Those who have the power take and those hold who can."

The upcoming votes on the two proposed infrastructure bills will determine who has power, and who doesn't. And I don't mean Republican vs Democrat....

[Montmorency]

Contemporary McCarthyism

The upcoming votes on the two proposed infrastructure bills will determine who has power, and who doesn't. And I don't mean Republican vs Democrat....

I don't like to take time reading much about bills that haven't become law, but to the extent one does it's truly shocking just how many elements - in genuine compromise legislation that costs a fraction of the pandemic stimulus bills enacted so far, 6% of federal spending over a decade - have been sacrificed for the sake of conservative lawmakers who quite likely won't even vote for the final product. Even though it will hurt their country and their party. And in the context of normal politics, this is the last chance Democrats would have at unified government for the next decade at least; at least offer us some brief consolation before, in the context of real politics, the Republicans overthrow the government and we have to hit the streets. I didn't expect any better with such a slim majority, but the proximate agents staking out the insufficiency sure are a disgrace.

When a couple brings a new life into Sweden, they are entitled to 71 weeks of leave, during which time they receive 78 percent of their normal earnings. In the United Kingdom, couples may take up to 41 weeks of combined paid parental leave. Just across our northern border, Canadians may take up to 50 weeks.

America is the only developed country whose citizens are entitled to none. And we aren’t just an outlier within the OECD. A 2014 United Nations report found that, among the 185 countries with relevant data, only three declined to guarantee some form of paid maternity leave to their citizens: Oman, Papua New Guinea, and the United States. Only the latter two nations are still holding out today.

For years, the Democratic Party’s signature paid-leave legislation was Senator Kirsten Gilibrand’s FAMILY Act. That bill would guarantee 12 weeks of publicly financed paid leave, at a minimum of two-thirds of one’s previous wages (up to a limit of $4,000 a month), to workers who are:

• caring for newborn children or seriously ill family members
• battling a serious illness
• coping with the adverse consequences of a loved one’s military deployment
• mourning a lost loved one
• or recovering from an incident of domestic violence or a sexual assault

The bill finances those benefits through a 0.4 percent payroll tax, split between firms and their employees. This is the same funding structure used by Social Security and all state-level paid-leave programs.

Gee, sounds inadequate!

But the Family Act is not the version of paid leave that’s most likely to make it into law. Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a similar but distinct paid-leave proposal. The new legislation, authored by the committee’s chairman, Richard Neal, retains the bulk of the Family Act’s basic design: It guarantees paid leave for the same list of reasons, at roughly the same rate of reimbursement, for the same length of time.

But there are a few critical differences between the two plans. One is that Neal’s proposal lacks a minimum benefit. In order to ensure that part-time workers with low-earnings secure non-negligible leave payments, the FAMILY Act guaranteed all eligible workers at least $580 a month in cash aid, even if they would be entitled to less money under the bill’s wage-replacement formula. The two bills also have different financing mechanisms. Whereas the FAMILY Act is funded through a dedicated payroll tax, Neal’s legislation is paid for out of general tax revenue.

The most significant difference, though, concerns each bill’s mode of administration. The FAMILY Act has the same model as Social Security — a unified federal program. Neal’s bill has a much more complex operating structure. In brief, the proposal subsidizes employer-provided paid-leave insurance plans and state paid-leave programs while reserving direct federal benefits as a backup for Americans who lack access to a state or employer plan. In other words, the legislation is modeled less on Social Security than on the tangled web of public-private and federal-state partnerships that the U.S. health-care system comprises.

This policy design poses some serious administrative hazards. As Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy project argues:

By including private insurance in this way, the bill ensures that we will waste some of our paid leave money on private insurer overhead and profits. It also invites employers and insurers to profit off of benefit denials and cream-skimming of various sorts. An employer who has a workforce that takes a below-average amount of paid leave could conceivably get an insurance contract that charges less than the grant the Treasury pays them and then pocket the difference.

The employer and state plans will also massively complicate the system for individuals trying to take paid leave. Individuals seeking leave have to figure out firstly whether they are covered by an employer plan, secondly whether they are covered by a state plan, and then, if not, apply to the federal government for benefits and, in that process, prove they aren’t covered by an employer or state. What happens to someone who was covered by an employer plan at the beginning of the year but was later fired and is now seeking paid leave? According to the bill text, their name will show up in the Treasury database as being covered by their prior employer even though they no longer are.
Neal’s plan also suffers from shortcomings common to all of the Democrats’ recent paid-leave proposals. The 12-week duration of its individual benefits trails the OECD average of 18 weeks. Further, the duration rules are structured in a manner that disadvantages single parents relative to co-parenting couples. The latter can stagger their respective 12-week leaves, thereby avoiding child-care expenses for a full six months. Single parents are not, generally, more capable of incurring the costs of child care than two-earner couples are. Nor are the children of single parents generally in less need of parental nurturing during their infanthood. A more equitable policy design — common to paid-leave programs in many other countries — would provide all parental units with the same amount of paid time off and allow couples to divide the time between each other as they see fit, while enabling single parents to take the same amount of total leave as couples do.

Separately, the paid leave policy’s eligibility requirements likely render upwards of 30 percent of all new parents ineligible for cash support during their newborns’ first months. This is because parents must show labor-market earnings in the months before their desired leave. This excludes parents who have children while attending high-school or college, those suffering long-term unemployment, and the disabled, among others. If the point of paid leave is to allow parents to bond and nurture their newborn children, it is not obvious why unemployed parents should not be provided with at least a modest 12-week subsidy following their infants’ birth.

Neal’s paid leave proposal has made it out of committee. But now, like virtually every other item on the Democratic agenda — from green investment to universal prekindergarten to child allowances — the fate of a national paid-leave program rests on the success or failure of a single megabill.

Never let way less than the bare minimum be the enemy of Jack Shit.

[ReluctantSamurai]

This article sums up pretty well what I meant by the upcoming votes determining who has the power:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...enda-aoc-adams

Divisions between progressives and moderates in Congress are threatening to scuttle a $3.5tn social spending program, which includes childcare, education and green energy measures, and a $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill that has passed the Senate and is pending in the House of Representatives.

Moderate Democrats back a vote on the $1tn bill for roads, bridges, ports and broadband connections scheduled for the House on Monday. But they have also raised objections to the size of the $3.5tn social spending package, warning against government overreach that will drive up the national debt.

And yet those same corporate Dems (in fact, just about everyone---vote was 420-9 in the House) had no trouble handing over ANOTHER billion dollars to Israel in addition to the $3.3 billion we've already given them (Israel is the top recipient of US foreign aid). So where are the fiscal hawks now? It's all BS political maneuvering...

But I digress:

“If we have certain members of our caucus who want to take money from Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big ‘insert name here’, then we’re never going to have a Democratic majority that’s willing to actually serve real people first.”

And there's the rub---donors for the corporate politicians want the bi-partisan part because it contains a substantial amount of "pork" for said donors (and to be fair, there are measures contained in the bill that will actually benefit the American people).

They are steadfastly against the Reconciliation Bill that contains the core of Biden's agenda because it proposes taxes on the ultra-rich to help pay for it, and it has virtually all of Biden's climate proposals for reducing CO2 emissions (read as bad for Big Energy), and provisions for Social Security to negotiate drug prices (bad for Big Pharma).

So it comes down to this:

She added: “It’s really not Democrat versus Republican. It’s the ultra wealthy and the corporations versus all the rest of us because a bill like this in the midst of a pandemic should be very easy to pass. This is a part of Biden’s agenda. It’s actually already a compromise position because progressives wanted way more.”

Progressives have vowed to tank the Bi-Partisan version if the Reconciliation Bill is not voted on first. What you are going to see from corporate media like CNN and their ilk, is an attempt to frame progressives as the bad guys:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/opini...rop/index.html

While under the Democratic umbrella, she seems to have made it her mission to fight the "Democratic establishment." In particular, she has worked with a group called Justice Democrats, a small, grassroots organization that supports progressive Democratic candidates as part of a larger effort to transform the party in the image of politicians like AOC.

Heaven forbid a Democrat calls out other Democrats for taking huge corporate handouts and then voting in favor of those donors. But hardly a peep from CNN about Joe Manchins' views being influenced by his corporate donors...

And recently:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...e_nothing.html

Note the framing of Keilar's question..."You're saying you're willing to take nothing, because it may come to that," Keilar asked. In other words, "If you progressives tank the bi-partisan bill in order to get your demands for what the American people want (go ahead and check that with your poll of choice), then you will take nothing."

And more BS from CNN (again, note the framing of the questions from Tapper and Keilar):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7r1u0x-nIo

Yep, progressives will be made out as the bad guys for attempting to give the American people what they want and need...

[Montmorency]

It will be challenging to direct liability to the left flank of the party when all roadblocks to the process so far have been submitted by 10 or 20 Democrats in the House and as few as 2 in the Senate. Let it never be dismissed that the vast majority of the federal caucus, including most "moderates," have been vocally supportive of the greater part of Biden's agenda from the outset. Just ask Conor Lamb and Elissa Slotkin.

[ReluctantSamurai]

It will be challenging to direct liability to the left flank of the party...

Don't count on it:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...-sinema-514775

As progressives continue to make the case for dual tracking the two bills, there is fear among some close Biden allies and moderate Democrats that they may be tarnishing the infrastructure component in politically damaging ways. It’s a proposal that the party still plans to run on during the mid-terms, and the fear is it will have less impact if Democratic lawmakers themselves are downplaying it.

“Those are powerful images — the commemorative hard hats and the golden shovels. Those visuals are solid gold. They are great for TV. It may be the only thing that saves our bacon in 2022,” said Colin Strother, a Democratic strategist in Texas who works with moderates and regularly tangles with progressive activists. “A full bowl of rice does wonders for your polling, as a lot of countries will tell you. Biden needs this win. He really, really needs this win.”

The BS is coming fast and heavy against progressives. You see the rhetoric---"we gotta have something or we get crushed in 2022"---"and the jobs back home..."

We need to be in some of these progressive districts talking about the infrastructure bill and what it will do and how many jobs it will create. We need to get them on our program.”

Of course when Manchin, Sinema, or any other conservative (calling them moderates is a joke) drag their feet, or demand changes/deletions/additions to a particular bill, that's ok---"they are fiscally responsible moderates looking out for the best interests of the country." (anyone catch Sinema's recent spreadsheet theatre as reported in this BS account by Axios)

https://www.axios.com/scoop-sinemas-...4775b0bd3.html

Of course noone actually knows what's in those spreadsheets, or even if Sinema can read one...

One thing is certain---she knows how to read a check with her name on it:

https://www.dailyposter.com/sinema-t...-pharma-group/

During her career, Sinema has raked in more than $500,000 from donors in the pharmaceutical and health products industries — and she is now the sixth largest Senate Democratic recipient of campaign cash from those industries this election cycle, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets.

And she's not alone:

https://www.dailyposter.com/follow-the-pharma-money/

The three conservative Democratic lawmakers threatening to kill their party’s drug pricing legislation have raked in roughly $1.6 million of campaign cash from donors in the pharmaceutical and health products industries. One of the lawmakers is the House’s single largest recipient of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash this election cycle, and another lawmaker’s immediate past chief of staff is now lobbying for drugmakers.

BULL...

[Hooahguy]

RS is right here. I think the blame here is squarely on Manchin and Sinema. Is it great that House Progressives are threatening to tank the infrastructure bill? No, since a win is desperately needed, but at the same time they were fed a line about dual tracking the bipartisan bill alongside a bigger reconciliation bill. And then Manchin and Sinema backtracked on that, while being super vague and shady about negotiating something. Last I heard Manchin now wants to add the Hyde Amendment or something. What a headache, I'm extremely glad I'm no longer in partisan politics anymore because I'd have an aneurysm by now.

At least a government shutdown was averted.

[Montmorency]

At least the obstructionist House Dems - by and large - have specific pounds of flesh they're asking for, disagreeable as they may be for any post-Clintonite Democrat.

Manchin and Sinema meanwhile: Read my lips - no new taxes.

That's not even Conservadem, that's Lieberman-tier betrayal (if old-timers remember).

The House and Senate leadership (Chair of the Senate Budget Committee Bernie Sanders!) crafted compromise legislation over months, in which progressives and moderates both had their priorities considered. The deal was always that the reconciliation package go through, if needed alongside a bipartisan package. A handful of wreckers can't just unilaterally Darth Vader the deal and pin the blame on the majority they betrayed. It cannot be overemphasized how radical Manchin, Sinema, et al. are in their play here. We have no real choice but to call their bluff, even if they really are sick or crazy enough to blow it all up.

Imagine the Taliban had suddenly turned the heel mid-August and proclaimed that they would round up and summarily execute every foreigner in the country they could find, unless the US both followed through on its departure and delivered them ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. Of course you have to go to war.

[ReluctantSamurai]

At least ManchSinema are not able to just mosey along with noone questioning their agenda like 8 months ago. Manchin got quite testy with a reporter recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thdfeYzH7kE

Sinema doing her best to be flippant and ignore tough questions:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...165257604.html

[Xantan]

Speaking of topics mentioned above...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/ele...rying-n1280392

WASHINGTON — A group of Arizona Democrats backed by a network of deep-pocketed donors is laying the groundwork for a primary challenge to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, organizers said.

Sinema, a moderate Democrat who is up for re-election in 2024, is at the center of a standoff within the Democratic Party over the future of President Joe Biden's infrastructure agenda, and she has faced strong criticism for holding up the package from more than the usual suspects on the disgruntled left.

The new Primary Sinema PAC does not plan to support a particular primary challenger. Instead, it will fund local groups to pressure Sinema and help build the support and infrastructure for an eventual candidate.

[spmetla]

I just hope they start focusing more on that debt-ceiling than anything else. Getting angry that the Build Back Better (B3) bill might be smaller than ideal in order to get the support to raise the debt ceiling is more of the dangerous brink-man ship that makes our politics a gridlock.

I know you folks have told me time and again how it's better to put lots of items into one giant bill but I still look at the current mess and have to disagree.
How about we pass something to raise the debt ceiling, then the infrastructure, and then perhaps break up the B3 bill into separate ones, yes there will be give and take but if these all or nothing games end up with nothing to show for then perhaps compromise would've been the better option. I support a lot of the progressive items in the B3 bill but there's no need to do it all at once. Put the most important ones in first and save the controversial ones for later. If they are the success we want them to be then the gains in the 2022 elections should be proof of that. The infrastructure bill could have been passed months ago and to see it possibly go to nothing as a victim to the B3 bill is infuriating.
The idea that we'll have another fund the government drama again in December is frustrating and that's assuming we don't default on our debts in October.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Put the most important ones in first and save the controversial ones for later.

Won't ever happen. There might be a reason Republicans favor the bi-partisan bill---there's a lot of pork in there for business and corps, and the most important part is no tax increases for the rich. To be fair, there are definitely good things for the American people in that bill, but the "asset reallocation" provisions (for one) mean higher costs for Americans.

You pass that bill first, you've lost all leverage to get anything else, and the Biden presidency is effectively over...

Dr. No stated earlier this year that the Republican agenda for the remainder of Biden's term is to obstruct anything he tries to do. Unfortunately, there are two Republicans disguised as Democrats that are making McConnell's task that much easier. Dr. No is pretty good at getting what he wants....

[Montmorency]

ManchSinema

Manchinema


You're going to like what Porter has to say.

How about we pass something to raise the debt ceiling

We have to eliminate the debt ceiling. Of course, Biden's agenda would already have been enacted in full by now if the will existed to abolish the filibuster to move on the debt ceiling. But like so many elements of our extant system, the debt ceiling is something that could only be imposed by a hostile occupier in another country. No surprise that debt ceiling brinkmanship originated a generation ago with Republican (Gingrich-era) malice.

I know you folks have told me time and again how it's better to put lots of items into one giant bill but I still look at the current mess and have to disagree.

The fundamental problem remains that if Manchinema won't like green eggs and ham in a stone soup, they won't like it in 12 convenient, easy-to-prepare, weekly home-delivered meals. With an omnibus, compromise is as simple as submitting an amendment - the size of a bill doesn't preclude that, as we have seen amply demonstrated over the summer negotiatons. So it's not even that there is no difference - with your strategy literally nothing passes, except maybe the one exact microbill that Sinemanchin would personally author (such as Manchin's just-released version of a voting rights bill, which can't run through reconciliation anyway).

Put the most important ones in first and save the controversial ones for later.

We don't have 50 years to pass a minimum wage or subsidize community college. Turtledove's lizard race we're not, if that means anything to you.

Put the most important ones in first and save the controversial ones for later. If they are the success we want them to be then the gains in the 2022 elections should be proof of that.

But part of the compromise is that most of the programs fit into the bill won't take effect for years. Take Medicare expansion clauses (as of a month ago): Vision benefits phase in in 2022, hearing in 2023, and dental only in 2028. Now, this is done in part to game the neoliberal-era CBO scoring metrics that measure costs, revenues, and deficit characteristics of a bill out to 10 years, but it's obviously a terrible way to legislate both from the perspective of accomplishing effective, well-designed social reform, and of populist campaigning. It's our only option as of now, however, because of the actors currently installed in Congress. Add 5 Warrens to the Senate and 20 AOCs to the House and this crap wouldn't exist.

Moreover, the terrible truth is that evidence is accumulating that the public, as little as it reportedly cares about policy, may actually not care at all. This year, hundreds of millions of Americans received direct cash infusions from the federal government - virtually all Americans in fact - in the form of economic impact payments, pandemic unemployment insurance, and child tax credits (the permanent expansion of which is one of the key elements of the Build Back Better agenda). A majority of Americans likely directly benefited from at least two of the above. Now, by the theory of "voting oneself the treasury" this should have increased public support for, and the salience of, a functioning government. And yet polling and qualitative evidence so far has seemed to show that not only did Biden, Congress, and the federal government receive minimal credit for immediate and concrete cash benefits, many Americans actually struggle to identify the source or cause of this sudden windfall!!!!! Government action in people's lives veritably can't get more visible than it has this year short of armed troops or Gmen knocking at your door.

Now, this discovery is fucking terrifying for the entire broad Left to the extent it is descriptive, and upends most of our longstanding assumptions of political action: If we can deliver any sort of benefit but gain no political benefit in turn, nor increase public consciousness of politics and policy, then aren't we all just doomed? Maybe all that remains to us is strenuously attempt to implement as much good government as possible, while we can, not because anyone will reward us for it, but because it helps people and it's the right thing to do...



Unrelatedly, Senator Tom Cotton almost got this amendment to the debt ceiling stopgap passed:

Cotton’s amendment sought to cut off housing, food and medical aid, among other assistance, as of March 31, 2023, for Afghans who were granted parole to quickly enter the United States.

[spmetla]

You pass that bill first, you've lost all leverage to get anything else, and the Biden presidency is effectively over...

It would mean that perhaps the ability to pass legislation without republicans may be over. I know the R leadership are dug in as just opposition but surely there's a handful that could be brought over a few issues.

Not passing either bill and possibly defaulting on our debt will certainly end his presidency and who knows what else for the US as a superpower.

The fundamental problem remains that if Manchinema won't like green eggs and ham in a stone soup, they won't like it in 12 convenient, easy-to-prepare, weekly home-delivered meals. With an omnibus, compromise is as simple as submitting an amendment - the size of a bill doesn't preclude that, as we have seen amply demonstrated over the summer negotiatons. So it's not even that there is no difference - with your strategy literally nothing passes, except maybe the one exact microbill that Sinemanchin would personally author (such as Manchin's just-released version of a voting rights bill, which can't run through reconciliation anyway).

Manchin has been a known issue for months and his lack of clarity as to his demands has led us to this point. Letting him hold up the government with two minute to midnight issues is of course ridiculous but if you need his vote then perhaps you'll have to cave to his whims sooner than later. Which is exactly why I'd want the infrastructure bill passed without it being held hostage.

Perhaps if B3 bill was broken up you could win over a vote or two from the few centrist Republicans by trying to make a few of the issues they agree with separate bills.

Yeah, we'll have to have more nonsense pork in whatever passes but if that keeps the government rolling allows for some progress then so be it.

We don't have 50 years to pass a minimum wage or subsidize community college. Turtledove's lizard race we're not, if that means anything to you.

Those being the only two major things in the B3 plan that I'm against that'd be fine with me.

Now, this discovery is fucking terrifying for the entire broad Left to the extent it is descriptive, and upends most of our longstanding assumptions of political action: If we can deliver any sort of benefit but gain no political benefit in turn, nor increase public consciousness of politics and policy, then aren't we all just doomed? Maybe all that remains to us is strenuously attempt to implement as much good government as possible, while we can, not because anyone will reward us for it, but because it helps people and it's the right thing to do...

The the actual policies of the Left aren't winning people over then perhaps that's not the major issue. I think you and I can agree that the Republican Party as it stands now is not a policy based party but really just a mush of reactionary forces in the US from fear of immigration, to fear of 'socialism', to fear of 'woke culture' and political correctness. Half the country support a yahoo like Trump despite his completely incoherent policies and complete disconnect from one day to the next on what he says or does. A third of the country refuses free vaccines for the stupidest of reasons and that's with looniest on both ends of the political spectrum.
As we've seen the stupid radical elements of the right are more frequently resorting to violence too. Perhaps addressing these ridiculous fears somehow might be worth it.

My dad and my brother are both closet-racists yet both voted for Obama because they wanted 'change' even though both could not describe what that was to them specifically. They both also voted for Trump over Hillary somehow. My dad actually watches the news too, he enjoys Rachel Maddow and the Cuomo Report yet somehow was pro-Trump until about a month into his presidency. Same with one of my coffee milling client, he's a anarchist farmer doing the organic thing and selling weed. Yet he too wanted Trump instead of the establishment candidate that was Hillary or Biden.

There's some deep underlying dissatisfaction with the government and woeful ignorance of how the government works at any level from the county to the federal level. Perhaps trying to hold the corrupt in check and make the current government more functional and accountable to the people that fund it would be worth while.
Discounting this weird undefined dissatisfaction as just idiots to be ignored though is probably needed but they need to at least be soothed in some manner, no clue how.

I think you both have good ideas about what the US needs and the Democrats are for the most part working toward that. Perhaps though we should also figure out what the majority of Americans actually want from their government too as the last twenty years has made it far from clear where we're going as a nation and what that means to the average joe.

[Pannonian]

Manchinema


You're going to like what Porter has to say.




We have to eliminate the debt ceiling. Of course, Biden's agenda would already have been enacted in full by now if the will existed to abolish the filibuster to move on the debt ceiling. But like so many elements of our extant system, the debt ceiling is something that could only be imposed by a hostile occupier in another country. No surprise that debt ceiling brinkmanship originated a generation ago with Republican (Gingrich-era) malice.



The fundamental problem remains that if Manchinema won't like green eggs and ham in a stone soup, they won't like it in 12 convenient, easy-to-prepare, weekly home-delivered meals. With an omnibus, compromise is as simple as submitting an amendment - the size of a bill doesn't preclude that, as we have seen amply demonstrated over the summer negotiatons. So it's not even that there is no difference - with your strategy literally nothing passes, except maybe the one exact microbill that Sinemanchin would personally author (such as Manchin's just-released version of a voting rights bill, which can't run through reconciliation anyway).

They are preparing for the Rapture. They believe that, through their obstructionism, they will bring about a state of America that will see the coming of God. In short, they believe in Deus ex Manchinema.

[Montmorency]

Mother of God, this was a bad idea (c. July 2019):

Wait, Dems are going to clear the decks on government funding and debt ceiling for the remainder of Trump's term, forfeiting all leverage, but set up a major crisis point for Republicans in the first summer of a potential Dem presidents' term? This seems like a very bad idea.
A credible threat of debt default, like in 2011, becomes an all-consuming fight and media narrative. And it can trigger a recession. Republicans could easily mount a credible threat if a Dem wins the WH, consuming a *massive* chunk of capital from the first year of a Dem POTUS.
Republicans don't need to control the White House, House or the Senate to threaten default in 2021. They just need 41+ Senate seats, which they will definitely have. The only way the 7/31/21 deadline is good is if it provides the motivation to nuke the legislative filibuster.

It would mean that perhaps the ability to pass legislation without republicans may be over. I know the R leadership are dug in as just opposition but surely there's a handful that could be brought over a few issues.

If Romney and Collins - or any of the Trump-impeaching Republicans, as Robert Kagan has implausibly implored - wanted to form a limited unity government/popular front against the excesses of Trump and the Republican Party, they would have done it by now. There's no reason to believe they care. Unless you can find taxless pork barrel spending of the sort that benefits their offices directly, while being zero-cost with respect to Democrats' (increased) prospects, which counts for close to nothing of the PRO Act, John Lewis/For the People Acts, BBB, or anything else left on the agenda.

There's no reason, no benefit, to capitulate to Manchinema without testing them, then. Either they compromise, or their bet that the majority will survive through 2022 is correct and there's another year to work them. If they're wrong, and the House and/or Senate falls to Republicans before the midterms (due to deaths among the caucus for example), then they can be made to live with their betrayal - it'll be up to the Republicans to decide if they can push the bipartisan bill to Biden (which he certainly wouldn't veto).

In sum, for 250 Democrats to surrender preemptively to a handful would benefit us and the country awfully little, while costing us everything. See also above on Pelosi regaining the House to deliver a favorable compromise to Republicans (even as Trump was attempting to subvert American foreign policy to undermine his domestic opponents).

I think you both have good ideas about what the US needs and the Democrats are for the most part working toward that. Perhaps though we should also figure out what the majority of Americans actually want from their government too as the last twenty years has made it far from clear where we're going as a nation and what that means to the average joe.

Most of Biden's agenda polls with majority support, 60%, 70%, more...

The point I was making above wrt recent polling and analysis of public perceptions is that many people genuinely lack a causal framework for government. They vaguely want things to get better, include supporting some broad ideas like investing against climate change or raising the minimum wage, but they simultaneously have a status quo bias that reacts negatively toward any perception of change (good or bad), which leaves them unable to associate positive change or benefits that they ostensibly like with specific institutions or political actors. To the extent this is the case, it is almost impossible for government to "succeed," in the sense of producing accomplishments that persuade people to support it and award it, or parties under it, with more power.

The workaround would then be to promote various social reforms that one hopes will broadly increase trust and confidence in government over time without necessarily having them attributed to their proponents - more social trust and confidence in government could only redound in liberals' favor. But, again, we're not lizard aliens living in a stable and secure environment, let alone with full unity on the path forward...



In Manchin news, two days ago a purported secret memorandum between him and Schumer was leaked. Eric Levitz believes it should build our confidence in Manchin's position relative to Sinema's, in that Manchin is an honest fool rather than mendacious like Sinema I guess. Here's the purported document, and Levitz' analysis.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

n this context, Politico’s revelation of a secret agreement between Manchin and Schumer from late July — in which the former called for slashing $2 trillion off Biden’s agenda — actually served as a source of hope. Simply put, the West Virginia senator’s opening bid in negotiations over Build Back Better could be a lot worse.

Manchin’s terms for voting to initiate the budget-reconciliation process in July — the first step for passing Build Back Better — did include a lot of reactionary nonsense. The document suggests that the West Virginia senator’s avowed concerns with inflation and the deficit aren’t cynical. Many observers had assumed otherwise, since the idea that Build Back better could spark runaway inflation makes little sense: The package gradually increases federal spending by just 5 percent over a decade and offsets the bulk of that spending with (deflationary) tax increases. Yet in his memo to Schumer, Manchin suggested that he would only support a new spending bill if the Federal Reserve ended quantitative easing (QE), an expansionary monetary policy. Only an earnest inflation crank would make this sort of demand in a private document. (As it happens, the Fed recently signaled that it may soon end QE.)

Manchin also indicates that he would ideally like the reconciliation bill to reduce the federal deficit. You don’t score any political points by playing a deficit hawk in a memo the public can’t see.

Most disconcertingly, in his demands on “families and health” spending, Manchin says something about “targeted spending caps on existing programs” and “no additional handouts or transfer payments.” It is not clear what, exactly, these words mean. If Manchin were calling for de facto cuts to existing entitlement programs (say, by capping overall Medicaid spending), that would obviously be catastrophic. But the West Virginia senator hasn’t proposed anything like that in public. So it seems likely that these phrases refer mostly to his desire for means testing benefits and pairing them with work requirements, which are his public positions on new social-welfare spending. Those demands are cruel, and they would limit the bill’s impact on child poverty. But they are fairly standard for a Democrat of Manchin’s generation and background. And if progressives maintain a united front, they should be able to limit the damage.

If the document reveals Manchin to be a genuine deficit-phobe and welfare skeptic, it also suggests he’s more comfortable with raising taxes on the wealthy than one might have guessed. Unlike some moderate Democrats in the House, Manchin endorses ending the carried-interest loophole, raising the capital gains tax rate to 28 percent, the top personal-income tax rate to 39.6 percent, the corporate rate to 25 percent, and the corporate domestic minimum tax rate to 15 percent. Those measures, combined with more funding for IRS enforcement and savings from allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices — two reforms Manchin has voiced public support for — would likely generate enough revenue to “pay for” a Build Back Better package worth upward of $2 trillion. What’s more, Manchin endorses “dynamic scoring” in the document, which is to say, cost projections that take the future fiscal benefits of public investments in education and green infrastructure into account. Taken together, this gives progressive negotiators a decent amount to work with.

Of course, Manchin does say in the document, as he has previously stated in public, that he doesn’t want the overall package to cost more than $1.5 trillion and would like any excess revenue generated by his preferred tax increases to go toward deficit reduction. Critically, however, the document doesn’t characterize Manchin’s demands as a best and final offer. Rather, it merely says that “Senator Manchin does not guarantee [my emphasis] that he will vote for the final reconciliation legislation if it exceeds the conditions outlined in this agreement.” Schumer, for his part, scribbled, “I will try to dissuade Joe on much of this” below his signature.

In other words, the document seems to constitute a guarantee that Manchin will vote for a reconciliation package that meets all his criteria, not a promise to vote against one that doesn’t.

Finally, Manchin’s demands on climate look surprisingly benign (for a coal baron, anyway). He doesn’t declare his opposition to a clean energy standard, only asking that it be overseen by his Senate committee. He says he won’t support new subsidies for renewable energy unless fossil fuel subsidies are also maintained, but the current legislation already (unfortunately) maintains such subsidies. He wants carbon capture and storage (CCS) included in the bill, which it already is.

All of which is to say: If this is Manchin’s starting point, a deal that secures a lot of green investment and a significant expansion of the American welfare state seems possible. Which shouldn’t be taken for granted, considering that Democrats boast a single-vote Senate majority that hinges on a guy from one of America’s reddest states.

The big question is whether other moderates will march to Manchin’s drum. From the beginning, a key threat to Biden’s agenda has been divisions within his own party’s right wing. Some moderates, like Manchin, are more averse to increasing the deficit than raising taxes on the rich; others evince the opposite preference. If Sinema, Josh Gottheimer, and other tax-allergic moderates get on board with all of Manchin’s revenue raisers, it will be possible to enact a large portion of Biden’s program without increasing the deficit. As of earlier this week, however, Sinema was reportedly opposed to both new progressive tax increases and allowing Medicare to force down drug prices. If Manchin were just posturing about the deficit, then it would be possible to satisfy the pro-plutocracy Democrats’ demands while still enacting a large spending bill. Manchin’s apparent sincerity about the national debt forecloses that option.

[ReluctantSamurai]

...in that Manchin is an honest fool rather than mendacious like Sinema I guess

I don't buy that for one second. He know's exactly what he's doing which is bowing to his donors (which I pointed out in previous posts), making millions from his coal interests (any wonder why he's dead set on tanking the climate action portions of the Reconciliation Bill?), and keeping the minimum federal wage increases as low a possible (he has widespead food service interests in WVa). He's a sneaky snake, talking about fiscal responsibility (where the hell were you Joe when Trump's tax cuts added to the deficit?), while raking in millions on dirty coal:

https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4...gVC4rAZQw5Hkno

Manchin has a vested and longstanding interest in the coal industry as a senator from West Virginia. The state is second in the nation in coal production and coal is part of its identity. Between 2011, the year covered by his first Senate disclosure filing, and 2020, Manchin raked in a total of $5,211,154 in dividend income from Enersystems, a coal and energy resource company he founded in 1988, before entering the public sector, according to annual financial disclosures. The senator earned $491,949 in dividends last year alone, as journalist Alex Kotch reported this summer.

Enersystems represents a staggering 71 percent of Manchin’s investment income, according to FinePrint. It accounts for 30 percent of his net worth. His stake in the company is worth as much as $5 million. Manchin, in other words, has a vested interest in creating policies to keep coal profitable.

Earlier this year, Unearthed, Greenpeace U.K.’s investigative unit, obtained video of now-former Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy discussing 11 senators he called crucial to Exxon’s interests, referring to Manchin in particular as “the kingmaker.” McCoy bragged about speaking with Manchin’s office on a weekly basis.

Then there's this:

https://thejourneyman.substack.com/p...ckballed-neera

When Tanden decided to call out Joe Manchin’s daughter for yet another example of corporate greed, little could she have known that while Joe Manchin can rationalize confirming Bret Kavanaugh, an accused sexual predator, and Jeff Sessions, a renowned racist, her mean tweets about his daughter are where he draws the line.

Now there were other legitimate reasons for rejecting Tanden, but that quote is difficult to call coincidence.

And where was "King Manchin" when this happened?

https://inthesetimes.com/article/wes...chin-democrats

In a statement, Joe Manchin said, ​“For months, I have engaged in conversations with Viatris, Monongalia County, the Morgantown Area Partnership, and local and state leaders to find a solution that protects every single job.” (Since the plant’s 1,500 jobs are set to be eliminated in a week, any conversations he had were apparently fruitless.)

Lots of blah-blah-blah, but no action:

Joe Manchin, he says, gave the union members ​“two minutes of his time” several months ago, and has not done anything meaningful on their behalf.

Ya think a $30 million 'golden parachute' for his beloved daughter had anything to do with his lack of action?

The man spouts nothing but BS, as in this quote:

“Wherever there is one job on the verge of being lost, I will fight to save it. Wherever there is one company looking to grow in West Virginia, I will fight to make that growth a reality.”

Yep, how do you think the fine citzens of WVa feel about seeing their jobs headed overseas? Sorry, "The King Maker" is nothing but a corrupt, money-grubbing politician that is using his office to increase his own personal wealth at the expense of the American public.

Sinema is a different animal...a chameleon. She got elected by running as a "progressive", but has quickly changed her tune (or maybe it was her plan all along) and is now one of the main fronts for BigPharma having accepted close to $1 million in campaign donations from pharmaceuticals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ljgTvvmq4

Compare the "progressive" rhetoric in that interview with the crap she espouses today. LIAR.

Most of Biden's agenda polls with majority support, 60%, 70%, more

It's nearly 80% in Manchin's home state of WVa, and that polling includes nearly 60% of Republicans across the states.

Not passing either bill and possibly defaulting on our debt will certainly end his presidency and who knows what else for the US as a superpower.

Methinks you are getting caught up in the political rhetoric... Republicans are fully aware of what a debt default means, and so does Big Business. It ain't gonna happen in the end, but the GOP wants to milk the fear of debt default to pressure the Democrats into concessions.

We've neglected our infrastructure for decades. What's a few more days or weeks to hammer out negotiations on the Reconciliation Bill. Progressives know full well that as distasteful as certain items in the Bi-partisan bill are, swallowing them without fighting for the $3.5 trillion package, is a serious dereliction of duty, so-to-speak. There will be an infrastructure bill passed...eventually, but surrendering to the conservatives on this issue virtually insures a completely GOP-controlled government by 2024, and then if you have any notions of living in a democracy, best find another country...

[Montmorency]

One way or another, he's going to be forced to make a public commitment. In principle, there's nothing to his personal profit, or the coal industry's prospects, that requires revenue for deficit reduction, a $1.5 trillion topline target, or vehicle and fuel tax credits for hydrogen technology (). If Manchin really will accept the tax increases listed in the memo, he ought to be counted on to vote for some form of BBB. If Sinema really won't accept any such tax increases (nor Medicare price controls), nothing of BBB will ever pass.

We get to find out what the truth is, how exciting!

[ReluctantSamurai]

a $1.5 trillion topline target

This is the part that infuriates progressives. Both Manchin and Sinema voted to proceed on the $3.5 trillion Reconciliation package (at least on the overall amount), in return for bringing the two bills along separately. Now the two want to pretend they never voted as such, approve the bi-partisan bill, and renegotiate the Reconciliation package. And we all know that means that package is DOA.

We get to find out what the truth is...

I think that's already obvious...

[Montmorency]

I think that's already obvious...

If the leaked memo is legit - in the sense of it being an authentic document - then the big question is why wouldn't Manchin mean what he was saying, while he was saying it not to the public but to his own Senate Majority leader alone? Now, it's possible that Manchin is going the full evil and has just being trying to maximally screw with Congress for months by misrepresenting himself to his own colleagues in private, but there's at least as good a case that this is just what Manchin believes.

People can have different opinions than you, even if those opinions suck. You know that perfectly well from life experience.

We'll get to find out, because if Manchin is lying about his position then he will dodge when BBB is modified for his benefit to scrap it anyway. So the puzzle will be solved in the end.


As for Sinema, she's been running and governing as a Conservadem for almost her entire political career. Not that I read too much on her before this year, but mea culpa for buying the lazy mainstream narrative that just because she was once a Green supporter she must be secretly progressive. She told us who she was for more than a decade, we should have listened. Not exactly a good look for the (American) Greens in view of the longstanding criticism that they have no ideology other than running spoiler against Democrats.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog...indy-must-read

Another article on Sinema's perils, that I think hits the nail on a general point, even if I don't agree with everything else he says.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/sinema-menace

That said, I think progressive thinking on money in politics is generally pretty outdated and tends to reverse cause and effect.

In recent cycles, Democratic candidates have had no problem raising money. Indeed, Democrats have had so much money that deep longshot campaigns like Jamie Harrison in South Caroline or Amy McGrath in Kentucky end up showered with cash. Studies show that large-dollar Democratic Party donors are generally to the left of rank-and-file Democratic Party voters and small-dollar donors are even further left. As we saw in the 2020 primary, small-dollar donors love Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Big money loved Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke. The voters loved Joe Biden.

In other words, if Sinema wanted to be a strong progressive ally, she would have plenty of cash for her reelection campaign. I don’t anticipate Mark Kelly will struggle to raise money, for example.

Sinema isn’t blocking popular progressive ideas because she’s getting corporate money; she’s getting corporate money because she’s blocking popular progressive ideas, and businesses want their key ally to succeed and prosper.

Sinema should be ejected from the Democratic Party, not because she's putatively driven by corruption, but because she's a narcissistic climber with a bad and dangerous worldview.

But you can imagine a world where Sinema-ism takes over, and Democrats become an upscale suburban party that supports free trade and balanced budgets. A party that doesn’t rock the boat and taxes and spending. Where everybody reads “Lean In” and “White Fragility” and makes sure the company they work at runs DEI seminars. And, where you are constantly losing elections due to the lopsided nature of the Senate map, but even when you do govern, you’re just a kind of technocratic clean-up crew that doesn’t really try to tackle major social problems. I think you got a flash of what that kind of politics might look like in the final couple years of Bill Clinton’s administration, but then in the 21st century, Democrats broke left on economics rather than right.

But nothing is inevitable in life, and I think there is a plausible world in which Sinema is the future. And to people who actually care about addressing things like America’s sky-high child poverty rate, the tragic persistence of medical bankruptcies, and the inadequacy of our provisions for young children and their parents, that’s a real problem.

I am the furthest thing in the world from a DINO hunter, but I really do think that if Sinema persists in this course, it would be worth mounting a strong primary challenge to her.

[ReluctantSamurai]

...but there's at least as good a case that this is just what Manchin believes.

Yep, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I've certainly been vocal about mine. I don't take seriously what any politician says anymore, privately or publicly. I look at what they actually do. You can say Manchin truly believes in what he says, and that he's just that ignorant to trust that bi-partisanship is still viable, and that he's seriously concerned about the national debt. I think his reasons for voting the way he does have been laid quite bare, and if his recent testy reply to a Bloomberg reporter is any indication, he's getting quite uncomfortable with the press looking into his finances. I think his BS (read as corruption) has never been more on display than letting 1400 high-paying jobs leave his own state for Germany, without so much as a whimper, all so his daughter can profit. He's as corrupt as they come...

Sinema isn’t blocking popular progressive ideas because she’s getting corporate money; she’s getting corporate money because she’s blocking popular progressive ideas, and businesses want their key ally to succeed and prosper.

Does it really matter which came first? The result is the same...a dire threat to President Biden's agenda, an agenda that has widespread popular support even among Republican voters.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg?

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/01/for...ighting-hikes/

A former senior aide to "centrist" Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., worked until recently as one of the top lobbyists for JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank and a leading opponent of President Biden's proposed corporate tax increases — which Sinema also opposes.

Sinema, a former Green Party member who campaigned on lowering drug prices and previously called for big corporations and the rich to "pay their fair share," has also balked at Democrats' plan to lower prescription drug costs and increase taxes on the wealthy and large companies, amid a massive lobbying blitz by corporations and industry groups aiming to torpedo the bill.

JPMorgan Chase has spent more than $1.3 million on lobbying on "corporate tax issues" and other matters between the first and second quarter this year, according to its lobbying disclosures.

Another longtime former Sinema aide, Kate Gonzales, earlier this year joined the high-end lobbying firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which brags that its "political connections deliver results" and that former Capitol Hill staffers are among its principals. Gonzales is a member of the firm's Energy, Environment, and Resources Strategies Group, where she "provides insight into Democratic priorities," according to the company. "She is highly skilled at developing compelling messaging for moderate Democrats and Republicans," her bio says.

Meanwhile, Sinema's current chief of staff, Meg Joseph, used to be a lobbyist at Clark & Weinstock, which has represented Pfizer and other top pharmaceutical companies and trade groups that oppose Biden's proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs.

IMHO, given that Sinema campaigned as a Green Party member, she's blocking progressive policy because she's receiving huge hand-outs from corporations, and not the other way around:

Pharmaceutical companies and medical firms have donated more than $750,000 to Sinema during her career, including more than $466,000 since she was elected in 2018. Sinema has also received more than $920,000 from companies and industry groups leading the lobbying blitz against Biden's proposal, according to an analysis from the progressive government watchdog group Accountable.US.

Some of the embedded links are very informative.

At least Sinema, unlike Joe Manchin, is out in the open about all of this:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kyrste...dont-care-do-u

[Montmorency]

Again on why we need to cancel federal student debt ASAP, this time with more relevance for spmetla maybe:

It's long, so buckle up.

Student debt is a crushing burden on millions of Americans. To help, Congress passed a law in 2007, creating the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, promising that if you're a public servant - a cop, a teacher, a soldier - and you work for 10 years, your debt will be erased.

But maybe it should be called the unforgiveness program: 98% of those who've applied for relief were told they're ineligible. We focused on the military. According to an April report by the GAO – the government's watchdog agency - of nearly 180,000 active-duty service-members with federal student loans, only 124 individuals have managed to navigate the confusing rules of the program and get their debt wiped clean.

We talked with a group you'd assume could figure it out: JAGs – lawyers who work for the military.

Lesley Stahl: What was your student debt when you went into the service?

Heather Tregle: About $90,000.

Brandon Jones: $108,000.

Carson Sprott: $150,000.

Charles Olson: over $150,000.

Charles Olson – a Marine; Carson Sprott – Air Force; and in the Army: Heather Tregle, Jonathan Hirsch and Brandon Jones. They say the rules laid out in the law seemed clear - they had to be employed in a public service job and repay typically small increments of their loans until they reached 120 payments. And whatever remained of their debt at that point would vanish: no matter how much.

Lesley Stahl: How many of you in your own mind think that you have paid up the 120 months and that you deserve to be forgiven? [ALL RAISE HANDS] All of you.

But all of them were told they're mistaken: they were off by years.

Lesley Stahl: Were any of you derelict in making your payments?

ALL: Never. No. No. Never.

Carson Sprott: As military members, if we fail to pay our debts, we're subject to discipline under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Brandon Jones: And our security clearances are on the line. So all this--

Lesley Stahl: If you don't pay, you lose your security clearance?

Brandon Jones: You can. If you default on your loan, you can lose your security clearance.

They all say they were walked through a bureaucratic maze that tripped them up.

Carson Sprott: Nobody ever explained that some of your loans are coded one way. Some of them are coded the other. And some of those don't qualify.

Major Carson Sprott was told he had 41 extra months of payments after he thought he was done. Turns out under the rules of the program only one type of federal student loan is eligible for relief. His type of loans didn't qualify. But he says that wasn't explained to him by the loan servicing companies contracted by the Department of Education to collect his money.

Carson Sprott: Not until I'd been paying on the loans for two and a half years.

Lesley Stahl: Aren't you angry?

Carson Sprott: I'm a little angry. (LAUGHTER) I'm a little angry. I wrote a dozen letters over my first two years to all my lenders. And I got no response other than assurances that everything was fine.

His loan servicer told him his only recourse was to convert to another type of loan and restart the month count from zero. And his other headache? Under the rules, he had to make small monthly repayments. But his repayments were so small – they didn't cover his interest.

Lesley Stahl: Do you actually owe more now than you did when you started this program?

Carson Sprott: Significantly. My initial loans of $150,000 are now at approximately $215,000.

The way this program is set up, many borrowers don't find out there's a problem for years. Army JAG Lt. Colonel Jonathan Hirsch found out after a decade.

Jonathan Hirsch: I got a letter that said I had zero months accumulated towards Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

Lesley Stahl: No!

Jonathan Hirsch: Zero. And I had been paying for ten years.

He had the right type of loans, but the wrong type of repayment plan - so he had another decade to go!

Jonathan Hirsch: All of my kids are going to college. And so I am taking out parent plus loans to help pay for their college--

Lesley Stahl: Oh, no--

Jonathan Hirsch: --at the same time that I am making payments on my loans.

Lesley Stahl: Heather, you were in Afghanistan for a year?

Heather Tregle: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: So did that year count toward your 120 months?

Heather Tregle: Half of it did.

Army JAG Major Heather Tregle, mother of two, doesn't know why those six months didn't count. She always stayed on top of her loan, even when she was in warzones. Like when she was in Kandahar and noticed her loan servicing company suddenly hiked up her payments.

Heather Tregle: So I spent days, because when you're in Afghanistan, you only can call for 20 minutes at a time--

Lesley Stahl: You're calling from over there?

Heather Tregle: Correct. So you had to use a morale line to call. And it cuts off after 20 minutes. So I would wait on hold and try to speak to them-- and get it all sorted out. And then tell them, "I am calling from Afghanistan. Can you please give me a number that I can just call you back-- that I don't have to wait on hold?" And they couldn't do that--

Here's something else that's maddening: as long as they're in a warzone they're allowed to skip their loan payments. But what's not always explained to them – we discovered - is that that brings their monthly count to a grinding halt. In other words: serving in actual combat can set them back years in getting relief

Seth Frotman: Think about what that means. Think about someone who is serving overseas. Think about how many of their kids' birthday parties they missed, only to be told, "None of that time counts."

Seth Frotman heads an advocacy group called the Student Borrower Protection Center. He says borrowers should have started getting relief through the forgiveness program four years ago – a decade after it started – but over 9 out of 10 military members who have applied for debt relief have been turned down.

Seth Frotman: Well, the first thing a 90%-plus denial rate shows you is this isn't one-off borrower's fault. This isn't just individual people who made mistakes.

Lesley Stahl: Right.

Seth Frotman: This is an entire system who let down our men and women in uniform.

Lesley Stahl: We're talking not just about JAGs. We're talking about military doctors, we're talking about cyber experts.

Seth Frotman: The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was created because the country was desperately worried that student debt was going to stop America's best and brightest from entering critical fields like the military.

But the rules drive them crazy - like making them chase after their commanders for their signature to verify that they're even in the military.

Seth Frotman: This is where the system breaks down. Where service members are told "You're not eligible because we don't think you got the right officer to fill out your form." Or, "You may have found the right officer, but they forgot to date the form."

Lesley Stahl: Oh, come on.

Heather Tregle: They make it more difficult than it needs to be.

Major Tregle thought she did everything right to qualify: She had the right loan, right repayment plan. She can follow the fine print, afterall, her title is chief of complex litigation for the Army's prosecutors. So after nine years of paying, she confidently started filing the necessary paperwork.

Heather Tregle: I should have been about 12 payments away from 120 at that point. And they said that I had only paid 12 qualifying payments.

Lesley Stahl: They're telling you that your nine years of monthly payments amounted to one year.

Heather Tregle: Yes. So I obviously called them and said, "I don't understand. I have been in auto-payment the entire time, so you guys take my payment when it's due and the amount that is due." And the woman looked through my account and she says, "You may have an issue that we know is an issue where the auto-debit takes the payment but one penny short of what is actually due so it doesn't count."

Lesley Stahl: Woah, woah, woah. What?

Heather Tregle: So it's a known problem that through the auto-payment, it's not-- it doesn't take the full amount due. It takes one cent shorter than it should.

Nobody's ever told me if that is in fact what was wrong with those payments. That was just something the servicer said on the phone that day of, "Well, this is a known problem."

Lesley Stahl: If it's known - fix it.

Heather Tregle: Right.

And online, borrowers complain that paying a few pennies over the sum can get payments disqualified too.

Heather Tregle: I submitted my case for a review. And it sat in review for three years. And in the interim, I was paying because you're like, "Okay, well, they're reviewing it. They're doing something." But it-- the review never-- three years later, it was still under review.

It's an obstacle course. We found payments often disappear when the student loan is transferred from one servicing company to another, which happened to Marine Judge Advocate Major Charles Olson. When he applied for relief, his new servicer provided him this endless list of why he wasn't getting credit for over six years' worth of payments.

Charles Olson: All those payments don't count for a variety of different reasons. The payment wasn't on the correct due date. The payment wasn't the correct amount. And the frustrating part is I've sent the payment information via mail, via uploading to prove to them that I've-- I've made the payments, the 120 payments.

Lesley Stahl: On time. The right amount?

[CHARLES NODS AFFIRMATIVE]

He figured out that most of his records just hadn't transferred properly between servicers.

Lesley Stahl: I can't imagine that when you saw that, you didn't run out of your house and start screaming!

Charles Olson: If I wasn't a Marine-- yeah, I would have lost my bearing, ma'am.

He's been arguing and appealing for over a year in vain. Army JAG Major Brandon Jones thinks repeated human errors cost him over three years of payments - his arguing and appealing has also proved futile.

Brandon Jones: It seems like they're just trying to wear us down to the point where we either have to hire an attorney or do something else.

Lesley Stahl: Or give it up and continue to pay--

Brandon Jones: Or just give up. Yep.

Carson Sprott: These are three years of my life in the service of my nation that-- as I counted on them to count for this, they don't. And the reason they don't count, in my opinion, is that I was misled.

Seth Frotman: One of the reasons why we are in the mess we are in is because the student loan companies, who have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars to implement these programs, have cheated borrowers. They have deceived borrowers. They have chosen their bottom line over helping our men and women in uniform.

You see this in the lawsuits that have been filed across the country. You see this in the federal regulators who have taken to task the student loan industry.

Regulators like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which recently concluded that loan "servicers regularly provided inaccurate information", accusing them of deception.

Carson Sprott, whose debt has grown, has left the Air Force, but he got a civilian public service job, so he's still counting months. Jonathan Hirsch, after many appeals, just got his debt wiped clean. Heather Tregle heard earlier this year that hers was too.

Heather Tregle: It was absolutely amazing. I believe I cried. (LAUGH)

This problem didn't start under President Biden, but Seth Frotman says he could fix it immediately.

Seth Frotman: So there is a law that Congress passed as the War in Iraq was raging, as the War in Afghanistan was raging, which said, no member of the military should ever be denied a benefit because of bureaucratic red tape or government bureaucracy.

Lesley Stahl: So there is an actual law that could deal with every one of the glitches the JAGs are talking about?

Seth Frotman: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: And the president, you believe, has the power to put that law in over the law that created this law.

Seth Frotman: He could do it tomorrow.

At the end of this past week, the Department of Education told us that the number of military people whose student debt has been forgiven has inched up to 350. It also said it plans to announce a major overhaul of this program as early as this week.

^^^How is that stuff above not outright fraud exactly?

Of the millions of people who could be eligible for public service debt forgiveness, fifty-five hundred have seen the commitment honored over the past - since the Great Recession in other words.

We are putting special focus here on Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which has recently undergone substantial changes to the application process. Over the years, PSLF has spawned much confusion and frustration. Millions of people are employed in public service, including teachers, firefighters, law enforcement, and some nonprofit workers, yet only about 5,500 borrowers have received PSLF discharges thus far, totaling $453 million.

Taking in the bigger picture of student debt during the pandemic:

As of March 31, 2021, the outstanding federal student loan portfolio is $1.59 trillion, representing 42.9 million unduplicated student aid recipients... As a result of special pandemic flexibilities for student loans, the number of borrowers in repayment status has fallen sharply. Only about 500,000 Direct Loan borrowers were in repayment status as of March 31, 2021, compared to 18.1 million borrowers a year ago, which was just a few days after the CARES Act was passed. Only one percent of all outstanding Direct Loan dollar balances are currently in repayment status, consisting largely of customers who have opted out of the CARES Act payment pause. More than 23 million Direct Loan borrowers with outstanding loans of about $938 billion are now in forbearance status, and more than 99% of these balances are in the special CARES Act

So to recap:

1. Federal student debt is now in the trillions
2. A jubilee is within the federal government's authority (admittedly Republican judges will disagree)
3. Student debt is currently crushing the lives of more than 10% of the country, tens of millions of people, virtually all in their 20s and 30s - the so-called future of the nation.
4. It is an economic drag that keeps billions of dollars out of the consumer economy and out of entrepreneurial investment
5. It literally costs the federal government money to hold this nonperforming debt that will never be repaid, adding to the national debt/deficit

What are our options?

A. Try to nullify at least some of the debt, even a mere (as Biden campaigned on) $10K per borrower
B. Sorry, but comprehensive national reform of the entire education sector is not forthcoming, therefore we must permit the perfect to be the enemy of the good, indefinitely
C. If you have the chance to make people eat as much shit as you please for the price of a few dollars, surely it's a moral hazard not to "add more weight"
D. I believe we should execute the young

Hmmmmm....

Yep, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I've certainly been vocal about mine. I don't take seriously what any politician says anymore, privately or publicly. I look at what they actually do.

That's what I'm saying, that his behavior so far is most consistent with the described worldview. And it remains a striking observation that if Manchin needed money, national democrats could get him $10 million in a week compared to a million in a year from oil, gas, and mining PACs or whatever the figure is. Who paid Manchin to ask for hydrogen fuel tax breaks? Who's paying for his demand the bill contain federal abortion restrictions he's always supported (Hyde Amendment)?

Or as Manchin recently proclaimed: "I’ve never been a liberal in any way, shape or form... and all they need to do is, we have to elect more - I guess for them to get theirs - elect more liberals.”

Or: "I believe in my heart, that what we can do, and what needs we have right now, and what we can afford to do, without basically changing our whole society, to an entitlement mentality."

Does it really matter which came first? The result is the same...a dire threat to President Biden's agenda, an agenda that has widespread popular support even among Republican voters.

It matters because the implications are different between someone whose vote is rented by special interests and someone whose vote is bought by their own principle. In a certain sense you can call that corrupt as well - like, 'a politician who convinces themselves of the need to defend an unjust status quo is inherently corrupt' - but it's not going to be the traditional sense.

I broached the story earlier of multiple House members, many of whom are in light-to-solid blue districts, abruptly changing their positions and demanding unpopular redactions from BBB following special interest lobbying and donations. We can bargain with that. If someone is just scared of inflation or taxes or whatever, or would trust their life to Republicans, or isn't a team player, there's less space for negotiation.

At any rate, if the memo represents Manchin's current asks, it is in fact a good sign for the legislation's prospects (compared to the alternatives).

IMHO, given that Sinema campaigned as a Green Party member, she's blocking progressive policy because she's receiving huge hand-outs from corporations, and not the other way around:

If she's been doing this since the second Bush term, when she was AOC's age, then it's probably just who she is. Was Reagan paid off to "become" a conservative?

To make a point, Seamus, what is the opinion of Sinema held in your circles?


Broadening the question again, if the reconciliation bill comes to a vote, and fails, (ignoring the House) whose vote is more likely to sink the agenda between Manchin and Sinema based on what we've seen of them so far?

[ReluctantSamurai]

And it remains a striking observation that if Manchin needed money, national democrats could get him $10 million in a week compared to a million in a year from oil, gas, and mining PACs or whatever the figure is.

Methinks you are overlooking one key difference between PAC funds and money he makes in the fossil fuel industry: the former---in the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. (in theory, at least); the latter---goes directly into his personal bank account. A significant difference, no?

Mark it on your calendar, Manchin will work to scale back the climate related portions of BBB, he will fight against raising taxes on the rich to help pay for it, and he will want to put some kind of restrictions on the portion allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices (thereby securing a significant reduction in drug costs). The first will be because of his heavy investment in coal, the second is because his second biggest donor group include some of the largest law firms in the country, and the Chamber of Commerce, and the third will be because of his daughters significant role involving Big Pharma.

[NEWS FLASH]

Just saw this:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-man...se-11633040698

In comments to reporters and a newly disclosed document from the summer, Mr. Manchin called for shrinking Democrats’ education, healthcare and climate package by more than half, to $1.5 trillion. He also laid out his terms for the climate portion of Mr. Biden’s agenda, insisting on preserving fossil fuel subsidies and avoiding penalties for coal, gas and oil; that position amounts to a break with progressives on the substance of the agenda in addition to the price tag.

In the memo, Mr. Manchin said he would support a 25% corporate tax rate, a 28% capital-gains rate and an enhancement of the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to collect taxes owed. House Democrats have proposed raising the corporate rate to 26.5% from 21% and raising the top capital-gains rate to 28.8%, drafting an additional 3% surtax for those with incomes above $5 million.

So my point about Manchin fighting to continue fossil fuel use is correct, it seems (the rhetoric about H2 production is ridiculous, as his proposed funding is for "blue hydrogen" using natural gas, which creates more emissions than it saves). It's the typical BS a fossil fuel addict uses---"What's the hurry? Let's just keep fossil fuels in the energy mix, and slowly phase in cleaner energy". Jeezus, we're not even going to keep the temp rise below 2 degrees C, let alone 1.5...meanwhile half the world is on fire, and the other half is deluged with flooding...

And how about this as a sad commentary about how fucked-up our government is:

Mr. Manchin’s memo also stipulated a number of demands to help the fossil fuel industry. It said that, in his role as chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, he must have full control over crafting the central climate change provisions of the legislation — all but ensuring that those provisions will be far less ambitious and more fossil-fuel friendly than Mr. Biden had hoped.

So someone who has a vested interest in fossil fuels is demanding to oversee all the the provisions of the climate change provisions in the BBB. Jeezus...

I'm not into figuring out how much of a difference there is between a 25% rate and a 26.5% rate is, nor a 28% rate vs 28.8%, so someone more mathematically inclined can do the math. Suffice to say, I'm correct he'd be against tax rates, but I honestly expected a lower number from him. Yet to see where he weighs in on drug costs....

then it's probably just who she is.

She lied to the people who worked to get her elected, if recent events involving ASU students and others who worked on her campaign. Doesn't make any difference which came first, the money or the greed. It's the result that's important.

Seth Frotman: One of the reasons why we are in the mess we are in is because the student loan companies, who have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars to implement these programs, have cheated borrowers. They have deceived borrowers. They have chosen their bottom line over helping our men and women in uniform.

$70.3 billion. That's the amount of interest the federal government collects on student loans on a yearly basis:

https://slate.com/business/2021/03/s...-payments.html

For a size comparison, $70.3 billion is a little more than one-third what the government took in from capital gains tax receipts in 2019 ($183 billion), or a little less than double what it makes from the federal gas tax ($36 billion). It’s about 3.6 percent the size of the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief effort—probably not enough to take much heat off the economy if payments restart next year.

Too simplistic to say that's the only reason, but it's hard to ignore that $70.3 billion isn't just chump change...

[Montmorency]

Methinks you are overlooking one key difference between PAC funds and money he makes in the fossil fuel industry: the former---in the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. (in theory, at least); the latter---goes directly into his personal bank account. A significant difference, no?

The saying "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" encompasses all forms of bias here. But no one questions, as he has always maintained, that Manchin seeks to defend the coal, gas, and mining industries. That was baked in from the start.

[NEWS FLASH]

Just saw this:

That was in the memo. As the linked article says in the headline, it's no surprise.

And how about this as a sad commentary about how fucked-up our government is:

Don't get me wrong, it's a shame that we are beholden to people like this, whose generational derelictions have cost civilization so many of its opportunities, but they've had a lot of cover from the tens of millions of average Americans eager to believe all the same things about "entitlements" and the power of industry and the evil of big government and so on.

Yet to see where he weighs in on drug costs....

Sinema and a handful of House members are the sticking point here, since IIRC they've already announced total rejection of Medicare price controls. So Manchin doesn't matter too much unless 'double dead' is a thing.

Like so, but I seem to have read of even stronger opposition.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden...ea0da36ac3363a
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...on-plan-512907

I can't access this resource, but lol.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Wednesday (Oct. 6) he isn’t sure where Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) stands on letting Medicare negotiate drug prices, but he has heard she is against it. Lobbyists for government drug price controls say, more than any other lawmaker, they don’t know how big of a barrier Sinema is to drug pricing legislation. Politico recently quoted two background sources as saying she opposes H.R. 3, which takes the most aggressive approach to Medicare price negotiation

$70.3 billion. That's the amount of interest the federal government collects on student loans on a yearly basis:

Too simplistic to say that's the only reason, but it's hard to ignore that $70.3 billion isn't just chump change...

Remember when I said that it costs the government money to hold this debt?

Democratic politicians often claim that the federal government makes a profit on student loans. However, the latest release from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows that the truth of that assertion depends on how you slice the numbers. Using fair-value accounting, which incorporates the big risks that taxpayers take when lending to students, the government is losing money on student loans. And this is no small loss. Over the next ten years, the federal student loan program will come with a $170 billion price tag.

For a more recent source:

Mr. Courtney’s calculation was one of several supporting the disclosure in a Journal article last fall that taxpayers could ultimately be on the hook for roughly a third of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. This could amount to more than $500 billion, exceeding what taxpayers lost on the saving-and-loan crisis 30 years ago.

The assumption that all this student lending would mean growing profits for the federal government and savings for taxpayers has been consistently off the mark.

The federal government extended $1.3 trillion in student loans from 2002 through 2017. On paper, these would earn it a $112 billion in profit.

But student repayment plummeted. In response, the government revised the projected profit down 36%, to $71.5 billion. The revision would have been bigger except for the fall in interest rates that let the U.S. borrow inexpensively to fund loans.

The phenomenon is worsening in recent years. For the fiscal year ended September 2013, the government projected it would earn 20 cents on each dollar of new student loans. For fiscal 2019, it projected it would lose 4 cents on each dollar of new loans, federal records show.

Congress approves the student loan program each year, doing so based on a profit assumption. Then, in subsequent years, it revises those profit estimates based on the repayments that actually arrive.

If repayments come in lower than expectations—as has happened successively in recent years—the Treasury Department fills the gap with cash infusions to the Education Department.

This process takes place outside of the budget review and outside of congressional oversight. Ever-larger cash infusions from the Treasury have been needed.

students who took out federal loans in the 1990s had repaid, on average, 105% of the original balance a decade later, including interest. Since 2006, they had repaid an average of just 73% of their original balance after a decade.

DELEVERAGE THOU FISCAL CONSERVATIVES!!!!!

aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh


Edit: Let me be clear, the government will not lose many billions off student loans - because there is no difference between a book loss from unprofitable loans and simply scratching an equivalent liability (as progressives propose); what it amounts to is the same - no money at all - since in principle the government has unlimited dollars to lend out and is not constrained by an inability to recover them. The real loss to the government is in administration, bureaucracy, which probably does take billions, but only a comparative few. Nevertheless, surely conservatives and moderates wouldn't endorse big government tyranny over the citizenry just because it 'only' costs billions.

[Montmorency]

Nois.






Never go up against a Sinema when an election is on the line!

[Hooahguy]

Ruben Gallego would be a great challenger, I really hope he runs against her. Plus more Latino representation in the Senate never hurt anybody.

[Crandar]

Biden exposed:

[Hooahguy]

Saw this coming.

In recent days, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has told associates that he is considering leaving the Democratic Party if President Joe Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill do not agree to his demand to cut the size of the social infrastructure bill from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion, according to people who have heard Manchin discuss this. Manchin has said that if this were to happen, he would declare himself an “American Independent.” And he has devised a detailed exit strategy for his departure.

What a whiny little baby. I hope he doesnt for obvious reasons but I really hate how the Senate is 50/50. Even if it was 51/49 it would be better so we wouldnt have to kowtow to Manchin. An obligatory Maine for voting for Biden but also reelecting Collins.

Edit: apparently its a bs story but honestly who knows lol

[ReluctantSamurai]

As far as these upcoming bills are concerned, it doesn't matter all that much which side of the isle he's on. The net result either way will be a gutting of all the climate-change policy, high drug prices will remain in effect, and who knows what else will get removed from BBB...

Question...if he switches parties, does he have to return all the PAC money he got from the Democratic Party?

And Uncle Mitch sez he "admires" Joe:

On a visit to Pikeville, in his home state of Kentucky, the minority leader told ABC affiliate WCHS: "I really greatly admire Senator Manchin. "Senator Manchin almost single-handedly is preserving the Senate as we have always known it, which is a body that requires a supermajority to do most things."

If that isn't a tacit acknowledgement from Dr. No that Manchin isn't already doing what the Republicans want, then I don't know what is...

[Crandar]

Wouldn't Manchin leaving the Democratic party be a positive development? Right now, he's sabotaging the most essential proposals, by occupying a seat as a Democratic candidate. I doubt he would prevail in the West Virginia elections as a Republican or independent, because that would require a lot of popularity and clientèle connections. If he quits, then it can be assumed that another Democratic candidate will take his place. Or am I missing something obvious?