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'It Should Be Easier to Raise Minimum Wage Than to Drop Bombs on Syria': Progressives Fume at Biden

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#65

Everyone here is missing the point about the reconciliation process. It distorts legislation and the result is a bill that loses half of what was intended.

An article in The New York Times by Ezra Klein titled “The Senate Has Become a Dadaist Nightmare” (Feb 4, 2021), explains well the problems with reconciliation. The article states the following in part:

Massive chunks of our tax code are just set to disappear at an arbitrary point in the future, and what happens then is anybody’s guess.

The distortions don’t end there. Budget reconciliation warps policy design by pushing away from regulation and toward direct spending and taxation.

You can pass $1,400 checks through budget reconciliation, but you can’t pass emergency paid leave. When Congress writes laws through budget reconciliation, it writes them with one arm tied behind its back.

Even worse is the way budget reconciliation quietly decides which kinds of problems the Senate addresses, and which it ignores, years after year. Both House and Senate Democrats have said that their first bill will be the “For The People Act,” a package making it easier and safer to vote, and weakening the power big donors wield in politics by matching small donor donations at a 6:1 rate. But the “For The People Act” can’t pass through the budget reconciliation process, so it’s a dead letter.

So the only answer to this is, get rid of the filibuster!

3 Likes
#66

Hi allamarcia:

LOL----oh but wait. Don’t those wresters wear very little except forweird and small pieces of material that show more than anyone would want to see of the body of either man? : 0

#67

Yes! Sort of like a very skimpy diaper.

Then there’s the grunting, the groaning, and the sweat. So there would be elements of disgust, lurid fascination, hilarity, and relief that it’s the two of them, not us. Not the Syrian people, and not the North Koreans, both of whom are suffering enough because of some people’s avarice.

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#68

See the thing is?Biden?HAD NO CREDIBILITY…with anyone!who knew his record. Thats a fact. A fact that I tried to voice with NO success leading up to the election. A fact!that got me banned!from of all places The Daily Kos. Oh yes, there was to be NO TRUTH about Biden allowed. The fact that he LIED during his own campaign, about being arrested in SA?Shhhh. The fact that he said he would never support Medicare4All and said so!Again in the summer of 2020! Shhhh.The fact that he is and always was an ACTUAL WAR HAWK and that there are news items, articles and reports to prove those facts?Shhhh. No way, no discussion and especially no critique!was allowed of old Joe. The warm and fuzzy feels eh? As he poses in jeans and a leather jacket on the lawn of the WH. Oh yeah, hes one of the peeps!PFFT. He was the appointed one, and most important, he had the right genitalia. His corporatist leanings, his cruel support of horrible legislation that only affected POC, his support of predatory credit card companies…all of that! and more, was effectively buried. Just over one month in and we see the REAL creature that he is. He’s a barely lucid old man who was never anything more than a puppet for GE, Boeing and Haliburton and he has been?Well rewarded. I just want to say here, that Common Dreams is one of the few places where a realistic assessment of Biden was and is possible. The Democratic party is anything but democratic, I actually believe that he was selected long before the nominations circus was rolled out. In reality, it was all just political theatre. He is the candidate that suits our Corporate/Military rulers, that is all. For pointing that out?I got banned. “Free speech”!Hoot!Yet another delusion, like the notion that the US is a democracy rather than a fascist dictatorship. Sorry not sorry, but it so late in the day. The DoomsDay clock moved forward upon the inauguration of drumpf, and now with these latest awful bombing murders, its midnight for America and the world. The President of the United States is a murderer. Gee folks, what a “nice” guy eh?Look! he’s got his cool shades on and he’s smirking. Hey Joe!Do you think the American public are stupid?You betcha! Do you give a flying F about the so-called “law” in America or breaking international “law”?Theres your answer folks…its all in that smirk.

2 Likes
#69

Well, it’s #backtonormal … we’re dropping bombs and the federal minimum wage will likely stay at $7.25 per hour. Same as it ever was; except that the minimum wage earner has effectively lost about 22% of their earnings since the last increase 12 years ago. But hey, that doesn’t matter to those who call the shots…as long as the Military-Industrial Complex is happy and the revolving door between the Pentagon and Industry board rooms continues to function smoothly.

So the new Administration can pretend that a Parliamentary rule (which it can overrule) prevents it from allowing a vote on a $15 minimum wage while they take a loose reading of the AUMF to escalate war.

Aren’t we all so glad that we’re back to normal?
Or maybe, Bruce Cockburn was right when he sang,

“The Trouble With Normal (Is It Always Gets Worse)”.

2 Likes
#70

l am actually ashamed that Common Dreams published this apparently unfinished article. I have no problem with an article about anyone “fuming”. Nor with articles about raising the minimum wage (which I do consider a very important thing to do). But … to slant THIS article such that it appears the Parlimentarian was wrong to exclude the minimum wage proposal from a budgetary bill? To imply that President Biden doesn’t want a minimum wage raise because he doesn’t reprimand the Parlimentarian? THAT is not doing “due diligence”. That is not explaining to your readers that there is a Rule to keep items that don’t DIRECTLY affect the Budget from being included in Budgetary bills. After all, EVERYTHING indirectly affects our government’s budget, so if indirect items are allowed into every Budgetary bill, they would be too unwieldy to ever pass any budget.

President Biden seems a man who respects laws and rules. He knows the Parlimentarian was simply doing their job correctly. He hopes, I expect, that Democratic bill writers will get their act together and propose the minimum wage change in a bill for which it is a right and proper consideration.

Asking whether one thing should be easier than another is an apples-and-oranges request, unless one thinks that all the rules and laws that direct our government should be tossed into a fruit-basket-upset game and be re-designed willy-nilly. I’m even thinking that such redesign is something Congress should consider. The last 4 years, at least, have shown us that there are a lot of intentions and assumptions of our nations Founders that CAN be set aside or rampaged over by various government officials who don’t seem to believe in beneficial government by and for The People. But a government that abides by the Rule of Law as the USA claims to be should take its own rules seriously, and change them with serious deliberation. If you want to do a journalistic emotional “slant”, don’t directed it at the wrong things. If you do, as this article does, you add to the morass of misinformation America has wallowed in for at least 4 years.

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#71

No, the two parties aren’t the same. One wants to be the dictatorship party, and one wants to be lead by the dictatorship party.

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#72

I’m progressive. I knew Biden was shit, day one. Took me two years to wake up to Obama’s charade.

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#73

Which progressives are you speaking about?

#74

From NAFTA to the TPP, “lunch box Joe” never had any credibility as a voice for the working class. That horse left the barn decades ago.

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#75

People who claim to be progressives yet remain war monger democratic party members or voters while mumbling about reform from within the party.

#76

Hi HelenB:
It’s like the Black Plague has struck the world as it did centuries ago as people are once again wearing masks , but not realizing------( or refusing to believe)---- that thousands are dying all around the world. But then , that plague did bring down the rich, and as so many died, that the workers did better.

#77

Re: turning the tables

I think Russia and China do in fact do this every time a new administration comes in. Saying, “ok, this is what will happen if you do that.”