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Has Tim even acknowledged the pork?You'll congratulate Republicans when they go along with your side? How about removing all the pork from the bill and trying again?
This seems extremely unlikely to me. The much more likely answer is the Democrats never had the votes a $15 minimum wage to begin with, and were prepared to drop it from the outset.
This is the answer. It is not strictly a Covid relief bill, it is intended to stimulate the economy. Now you can argue whether or not it will do that effectively but people saying "just cut out the stuff that doesn't provide Covid relief" are missing the point of the bill.
Either they didn't have the votes for the minimum wage hike or they didn't have the votes for nuking the filibuster. (Or both.)
Lmao. Please explain why this economy that is "on fire" needs stimulus.
Of course not. None of the liberals can explain how $700 billion being spent in 2022 and beyond is "stimulus."
It is great that the economy is recovering but it is far from "on fire". The reason for the nearly double digit growth is because of the decimation caused by Covid. Unemployment is still way too high and many industries and small businesses are still hurting big time.
Nope.
I don't disagree with this part...but that is why the bill as it stands should be rejected. Move forward with better targeted stimmy checks and vaccine support only at this time.
the poll's show support - I think reality is most people see this close to 2 Trillion dollar package as NOT Covid relief at all but furthering agendatimschochet said:
There is a long history of bills given deceptive names by both parties. In this case at least it actually helps people that are hurting rather than give tax breaks to the rich or pet projects to oil companies.
Yes. Please refer to the first page of this thread.
No argument ever holds because whataboutism.
This is the time for the rolling emoji. It's only Republicans who have done this? And in the past four years?
If you think Democrats are going to be hurt by this I don’t think you’re reading the tea leaves correctly. But let’s remember this conversation and discuss it in two years.
This is just horrible. You can't defend the actual contents of the bill (e.g. $700 billion CBO analysis) so just revert to whataboutism. So weak.
I reject that answer. It’s bogus.
I did defend the actual contents of the bill on the first page. What I wrote is that it’s an overall positive to spend this money despite the pork. That’s my defense.
They’re being ridiculously cocky here for sure. But that’s what happens when you have 75% of the public on your side. They know it.
Sure, but I'm not putting any money on electoral wins by the crazy party. That's on Team Red. My point is that the public is going to look at 1.9 trillion and wonder why more of it isn't in their pockets instead of building tunnels in Silicon Valley. That won't play well in small towns and in the service industries. That check should be about 2,500 dollars for each citizen, never mind pork projects that benefit the already wealthy.
My guess is that due to Donald Trump’s rhetoric the base of the Republican Party firmly believes that Democrats are not just wrong but evil, not just the opposition but the enemy. And thus Republicans in office don’t dare support anything that Democrats sponsored, even if a majority of Republicans overall are in favor.
I don’t think they’re ever going to consider this. They’ll get the money, and the vaccine, COVID will be over and the economy will boom. The Republicans will try to pretend they never opposed this bill, and complain about cancel culture. And in 2022 the Democrats are going to win big. That’s my prediction, take it with the appropriate grain of salt.
It's probably Occam's razor. There's a lot of pork in it and they've done their polling and have found out what plays with their base. They're not going to suffer politically from it. Your original conclusion, in my estimation, is unsound.
Depends how crazy the Dems get with their agenda, actually, and what seats are up in what districts, etc. That'll be the most important thing. If reparations start creeping into the foreground, that'll be a hot button issue. And there's too much noise around the word in political circles for it not to be creeping into the discussion (I'm not talking on this board. A quick Google search will lead one to stories in the past few days about it.)
were those bills passed with pork spending labeled Covid relief ?
Perhaps I'm not quite as cynical. I would hardly call Romney, Collins, Murkowski and the rest of the "Group of Ten" GOP senators as Trump supporters.
Yes. But I don’t think it will be pushed. We’ll see.
I don't think so, either. It looks like Biden is passing off the more radically liberal suggestions off to committees and commissions that will find facts and make recommendations that are likely milquetoast compared to what we think of as the more drastic and weirdly, appropriate solutions, in this case direct cash payments to blacks by virtue of skin color. But the fact that he entertains it in this way proves something more about the tendencies and proclivities of his base of support. It'll surely come up again, no matter how conservatively he tries to handle it (and he is handling it conservatively by shunting it off to committee).
It will come up again, and there will be some criticism of Biden by the Squad types, and right wing talk shows and Fox will jump on it to aggravate the base, and over the next few years we will no doubt hear more about reparations along with cancel culture and defund police.
So then are you going to be the first to actually explain why $700 billion of the so-called emergency relief is being spent in 2022 and beyond, as per the CBO?
Let's not chalk this up to right-wing fear mongering when you have the White House volunteering they're sending this to a commission as the result of a House resolution. Please let's not go there just yet.
I'd be careful lumping fatguy in there. He's nothing if not transparently honest and very rational.
Because these are all policies that Democrats support. And because Senate procedure only allows reconciliation once a year (I think), so they have very limited opportunities to enact them if they don’t do so here.
Exactly. If they don't get it now they won't be able to. You have the votes so do it. The Republicans would.
Ok. So now we get to the truth (which I have no problem with).
I'm not a parlimentarian, but here's what wikipedia says:
So whether it's three times a year or one, Democrats only have a small number of chances to pass legislation and they don't want this one to go to waste.
It's not bogus. You asked why, and they've told us why.
Fine. But the issue is that it's only legislation directly related to spending on specific budget line items.
