"At a certain point, we have to trust one another," Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, said Nov. 5 as he left a meeting of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Progressives had just acquiesced to President Joe Biden's pleas that left-leaning House members sign off on the $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill they'd been holding up in order to pressure the chamber's centrists to support their own $1.75 trillion package of social programs.
The progressive bloc extracted a written promise from five key centrists to vote for the Build Back Better bill, assuming that the Congressional Budget Office verifies the math behind the spending.
The question grassroots progressives are asking themselves is: Is trust wise? Will the corporatists deliver? Or are we just rubes who are about to get rolled again?
The immediate electoral viability of the Democratic Party depends on the answer.
Progressive voters and activists who form the ideological base of the party and provide most of its energy believe they have long been taken for granted by the Democrats' dominant, minority, corporatist ruling elite. Their long-simmering resentments boiled into explosive rage after the insulting and, they believe, corrupt manner Bernie Sanders and his supporters were treated by the Democratic National Convention and its blackout-enforcing media allies throughout his 2016 primary challenge to Hillary Clinton and during the DNC.
Clinton's campaign openly courted anti-Trump Republicans in the general election campaign, telling progressive Democrats she didn't need them to win. Millions of them took her at her word, sitting on their hands on Election Day, handing the presidency to Donald Trump.
Then the defeated centrists had the nerve to blame progressives for not voting.
Incited by anti-Trump fever, left populists turned out for Biden in 2020. But they did so reluctantly, doubly so after that year's primary process featured yet another overt DNC operation to derail Sanders. The Vermont senator's early primary surge crashed the night before Super Tuesday, when sleazy Southern party boss James Clyburn orchestrated simultaneous endorsements of Biden by former rivals Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke, an establishment favorite who entered late after being recruited by DNC insiders in order to stop Sanders.
Biden ran as the anti-Trump -- nothing more. He didn't campaign on -- and therefore can't claim a mandate for -- ambitious infrastructure and social spending measures, which were only conceived after taking office in order to heal his rift with his party's progressive wing. As anyone who has been near a news source over the last six months knows, the president has had a difficult time convincing right-leaning Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia to play ball. Separating the spending packages into the relatively easy-to-pass infrastructure and the challenging social program bills is an inelegant, consummately inside-the-Beltway solution that may be about to blow up in the Democrats' faces.
The White House promises that Build Back Better is 100% revenue-neutral and therefore won't increase the deficit. The five moderate holdouts who signed the House letter say their support is contingent on the CBO confirming that claim. But the CBO already determined that the infrastructure bill by itself would increase the deficit by $256 billion. One of the more generous assessments of Build Back Better, by Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, found that it would add $100 billion to the Treasury. That still leaves an overall shortfall big enough for the five congressmen to back out of.
Assuming it survives, Build Back Better goes to the Senate, where the infamous parliamentarian will rule on what bits and pieces of legislation are permitted in the reconciliation process. Will progressives still be happy with what's left? Will Manchin and Sinema drop their long-standing objections?
Then, assuming it gets through the Senate, which seems like a long shot at this point, changes have to be reconciled between the House and Senate versions.
Progressives aren't going to be happy unless the lion's share of what's currently in Build Back Better gets signed into law by Biden. If the results are significantly watered-down or, still worse, nonexistent, hell has no wrath to compare with the rage of progressives who have long had it with the Democratic Party.
Their sense of betrayal will be boundless. They will be furious at themselves for having been so gullible as to have trusted the perfidious centrists who repeatedly screwed them over. And enough of them will be anywhere but at the polls on Election Days 2022 and 2024 to make all the difference.
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of a new graphic novel about a journalist gone bad, "The Stringer." Order one today. You can support Ted's hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.
COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS.COM
9 comments:
Bend over. Your taxes are going up.
Seems it's isn't just Uncle Joe that would be our downfall. New evidence show that Donald signed off on the bio-weapon that they call a vaccine. KNOWINGLY. The elites have spoken folks ! Your life is worthless and not even your own ! The NWO that so many of you called "tinfoil hat" is taking hold and WE THE PEOPLE can do nothing to stop it. We have one last chance but you must ignore the everyday distractions you are being fed and focus on FREEDOM.
We must keep in mind that the true "progressives' really don't care about things like deficits and majorities/minorities. They only care about their elastic principles which are constantly evolving. Social theory not economic fact is their guiding light so it makes no difference what the CBO or the economy itself does in reaction to their cosmic plans. If they are wrong... well they can't be wrong because their intentions are soooo good. The day may come when both political parties announce their true allegiance to the loudmouths on the fringes and a common sense party emerges to save what's left of this country. I hope so.
At 9:59, I do believe those ole nasty "CHEMTRAILS" the NWO is spraying, is turning 2 of your 3 grey cells to mush!
California wants you.
@9:15
New evidence? Trump calls himself “father of the vaccine” on national television. Does “Operation Warp Speed” ring a bell? I agree with what you’re saying, but we don’t need new evidence to tell us that.
At first I thought Trump was using the vaccine as a weapon against the lock downs last year and maybe a lot of the doses were placebo, but he’s STILL pushing the jab! We’ll, at least he’s against mandates.
The sad reality is most Republicans are spineless cowards at best and treasonous at worst. I’ll never vote Dem, but at least they are upfront about their war against white America. No politicians are going to save us and our military only works for a tiny nation in the Middle East.
11:35 : There you are. You may review the evidence yourself. It's on file in the D.C. office if Dr. Martin makes you feel bad.. Truth hurts ? Maybe you need Cali a bit more than me.
11:54 : We didn't have a paper trial for Fauci at that point. I knew from the get go that vavvines don't get made in a year and that something stunk. And for the record...I DID NOT VOTE for Trump. I wrote in Rand Paul twice which i'm now embarrassed by. Seeing as he is also grandstanding while holding proof of these crimes.
@ 12:43 : I hear you on Rand Paul. He was making it sound so good! I get so tired of this puppet theater for the dumbed down masses. There’s only one party in DC and they have that good cop bad cop charade down to a T. I think the reason I can tell a lot of it is scripted is because I grew up watching Rastlin when I was a kid. The way politicians talk to each other on camera isn’t much different than how wrestlers talk to each other. However, I don’t think I’ll ever know if Trump forced his way into the club or it was all in the script.
11:54 AM
Yes. THe CBO report[1] (which isn't the complete CBO report).
TL;DR: Per the CBO, the BBB Act will increase the deficit by $160B over 10 years after including the estimated $207B that increased enforcement funds at the IRS would generate. This bill will not be the final version as some parts of the bill may not be compliant with the Byrd rule, and others are opposed by some members of the Senate. It will be interesting to see how long it will take the Senate to finalize their changes to the bill, but at the rate things have been going, this bill may not reach Biden's desk until 2022.
[1] - https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57627
Post a Comment