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US Politics: Maniac Manchin


A Horse Named Stranger

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1 hour ago, Fez said:

Umm, what? 

AOC is very clearly saying she'll tank the first bill if the reconciliation bill isn't passed beforehand. Which was never the deal. The deal was simply that both bills would be passed.

Sinema is saying if the first bill is tanked then she'll pull the plug on the reconciliation bill.

If anything, AOC's position is the more damaging one; but I'll be magnanimous and say both sides are at fault here and are potentially going to cause the whole thing to collapse.

When weighing whose position is more damaging I think we ought to consider the substance of their positions, not just who is more of an obstacle to getting something-anything-whatever passed. And the person holding up legislation in part due to opposition to a wildly popular proposal like allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices gets my vote for most damaging. Bonus points for being damaging to Sinema because, again, this proposal is wildly popular, and there is no discernible explanation for her opposition except that she's been bought  by big pharma.

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1 hour ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

When weighing whose position is more damaging I think we ought to consider the substance of their positions, not just who is more of an obstacle to getting something-anything-whatever passed. And the person holding up legislation in part due to opposition to a wildly popular proposal like allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices gets my vote for most damaging. Bonus points for being damaging to Sinema because, again, this proposal is wildly popular, and there is no discernible explanation for her opposition except that she's been bought  by big pharma.

So?

I agree with every single thing you said, and I do not see how it helps convince Sinema at all that her position is wrong or that she should vote differently than how she's indicated.

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2 hours ago, DMC said:

That'd also sow division within THEIR party.  The right is going to go after any member supporting the infrastructure bill (and already is) - even if it's a "standalone" bill.  Hard to see more than two dozen of their members supporting it no matter what.  This is still the House Republican Conference we're talking about.

Yeah, I don't think it's likely, but it would probably hurt Democrats more in both the short and long run assuming the move killed the reconciliation bill. 

 

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2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yeah, I don't think it's likely, but it would probably hurt Democrats more in both the short and long run assuming the move killed the reconciliation bill. 

I think you're looking at it exactly wrong from how the right - including McCarthy and Scalise - would look at it.  If it's a "standalone" bill, they'd view it as either giving Biden a victory or not.  If it's still tied to reconciliation, well then they're gonna vote against it anyway.

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Unions squeeze pro-labor priorities into Democrats’ spending bill
Tucked amid the investments in child care, higher education and clean energy are below-the-radar provisions that would make it easier for workers to form unions.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/21/unions-reconciliation-bill-513423

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Unions are lobbying fiercely and spending liberally in support of Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar social spending package — and not just because of the jobs it could create for their members.

Tucked amid the investments in child care, higher education and clean energy are below-the-radar provisions that would make it easier for workers to organize, such as giving the National Labor Relations Board sharper teeth and empowering it to conduct union elections online.


Both of those policies are also included in the Protecting the Right to Organize Act — an overhaul of U.S. labor law Democrats drafted to resuscitate tapering union membership, which is stalled in the Senate.

How much the language in the spending bill could really move the needle on the fortunes of organized labor remains to be seen. It must also survive the Byrd rule, which allows only spending-related legislation to move through the reconciliation process that Democrats intend to use to pass the bill. Democrats have had one of their other top priorities — immigration reform — stymied by the rule already.

Union officials are pouring time, money and energy into making sure the provisions — which they helped shape — make it across the finish line. If they are successful, it could constitute the biggest pro-union shift in U.S. labor law since the National Labor Relations Act was enacted in 1935, labor experts said.

“Labor is not only all over supporting it, it has helped craft it,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in an interview.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Kaligator said:

So?

I agree with every single thing you said, and I do not see how it helps convince Sinema at all that her position is wrong or that she should vote differently than how she's indicated.

Are you under the impression that I wrote that post with the expectation that Kyrsten Sinema would read it?

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1 hour ago, DMC said:

I think you're looking at it exactly wrong from how the right - including McCarthy and Scalise - would look at it.  If it's a "standalone" bill, they'd view it as either giving Biden a victory or not.  If it's still tied to reconciliation, well then they're gonna vote against it anyway.

And that's why I ultimately think they wouldn't do it, but it may be more crafty to do so because it could be the final blow that completely fractures the Democratic caucus, which has been my concern this whole time. I think we're dangerously close from the progressives and moderates being unable to work with one another again going forward.

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6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

but it may be more crafty to do so because it could be the final blow that completely fractures the Democratic caucus, which has been my concern this whole time.

I think you're being overdramatic, and naively thinking either party will be irreparably "fractured" in this day and age.  Moreover, the notion that the middle is going to overcome avid opposition from the left and the right on the floor of the House of Representatives is definitely not a bet I would ever take right now.

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1 hour ago, DMC said:

I think you're being overdramatic, and naively thinking either party will be irreparably "fractured" in this day and age.  Moreover, the notion that the middle is going to overcome avid opposition from the left and the right on the floor of the House of Representatives is definitely not a bet I would ever take right now.

Maybe, maybe not. As of right now the bill is set to hit the floor in less than a week. Pelosi says that's still the plan. If that happens, absent any significant changes, it will fail. Now Pelosi does have an out in that she can claim it needs to be delayed until the CR and debt ceiling issues are resolved. That allows both sides to save face, but you can only punt that but for so long. Regarding the reconciliation bill, right now both sides are miles apart with no resolution in sight. Manchin does not seem like he's going to move by anyone else's timeline but his own. And on the other side I can't see the progressives backing down. They're too dug in. There's a lot of language floating around about excepting a smaller deal, but they can't accept Manchin's cheap ass offer. So that still leaves us at negotiations with a high chance of breaking down, and if they do the other side of that is going to be pretty awful. 

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1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Maybe, maybe not.

You said a lot of things in this post but absolutely none of it was even remotely reasoning for why the House GOP of all people would bail Biden out and give him a victory on the infrastructure bill.

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2 hours ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

Are you under the impression that I wrote that post with the expectation that Kyrsten Sinema would read it?

I was under the impression that you wrote that post with the expectation that it was convincing someone of something. I mean, the same is true about Republicans not voting to increase the debt ceiling and authorize funding of the government. It'll be entirely their fault, AND it doesn't matter in the least. 

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8 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

I mean, the same is true about Republicans not voting to increase the debt ceiling and authorize funding of the government. It'll be entirely their fault, AND it doesn't matter in the least. 

Oh, that's not true.  The past 30 years pretty much entirely show Republicans are blamed for government shutdowns, and the only other real debt ceiling crisis for that matter.

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House leadership looks to jam holdouts on drug pricing
Democrats are counting on the drug policy proposal, which could generate budgetary savings of as much as $700 billion over a decade, to help pay for their other health policy priorities.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/21/house-democrats-centrists-drug-pricing-513466

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Top House Democrats are setting up a showdown vote on drug pricing as early as next week, rolling a leadership-backed plan into the party's sweeping social spending package and daring holdout centrists who previously derailed the plan in committee to vote it down again.

Top Democrats think enough of the four — Reps. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), and Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) — will cave and back the proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate prices for a wide swath of high-cost drugs rather than risk upending the entire $3.5 trillion package.

“I’ve been herding cats for four months,” said House Budget Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), who is leading talks with the Senate and White House on the fate of the bill, and who has been talking to all of the holdouts. “My message to all of them has been: ‘Posture all you want on your priorities. ... But ultimately, you’re going to vote for this. You’re not going to vote against child care and paid family leave and yada yada yada. And, by the way, have you met Nancy?’”

Democrats are counting on the drug policy proposal, which could generate budgetary savings of as much as $700 billion over a decade, to help pay for their other health policy priorities, including proposals to expand the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare benefits.

Yarmuth noted leadership has given rank-and-file Democrats a fairly long leash up until now, but that period of tolerance is drawing to a close.

 

 

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1 hour ago, DMC said:

You said a lot of things in this post but absolutely none of it was even remotely reasoning for why the House GOP of all people would bail Biden out and give him a victory on the infrastructure bill.

Because if you want to go down that road, which again we think is unlikely, it would further divide the two wings of the party and they can paint the progressives as being unreasonable. And they still have the space to let some members vote for it without enough to carry it, which means they can say that progressives nuked a bipartisan deal in both chambers, which would be a big win for them.

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10 minutes ago, DMC said:

Oh, that's not true.  The past 30 years pretty much entirely show Republicans are blamed for government shutdowns, and the only other real debt ceiling crisis for that matter.

Yes, they're blamed, and it doesn't matter. I stand by what I said. 

Their being blamed hasn't changed their behavior about the debt ceiling in the least. It doesn't change the general voting populace or how things work. It doesn't actually matter at all. Whose fault it is seems to not really dent anything as far as making changes goes, and that's my point. 

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10 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And they still have the space to let some members vote for it without enough to carry it, which means they can say that progressives nuked a bipartisan deal in both chambers, which would be a big win for them.

....what the hell are you talking about?  If they can say the progressives nuked the bipartisan deal, that means they didn't help the moderate Dems pass the bipartisan deal.  Which is what you were asserting they would do.

8 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

Their being blamed hasn't changed their behavior about the debt ceiling in the least. It doesn't change the general voting populace or how things work. It doesn't actually matter at all. Whose fault it is seems to not really dent anything as far as making changes goes, and that's my point. 

I agree, generally, that it doesn't matter electorally - although Republicans in 1996 would definitely disagree.  However, that doesn't change the fact that literally every time there's been a protracted government shutdown, it's the Republicans who have been blamed by the public and - most importantly - the Republicans that have had to back down on their policy demands.  Which rather obviously suggests the Dems are in a rather pretty good position in terms of this particular game of chicken.

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25 minutes ago, DMC said:

....what the hell are you talking about?  If they can say the progressives nuked the bipartisan deal, that means they didn't help the moderate Dems pass the bipartisan deal.  Which is what you were asserting they would do.

No I said it was an option, another is to let some members vote for it, but not enough to offset the progressives that didn't, thus allowing them to claim that it was the progressives that upended bipartisan deals in both chambers. Pretty simply, really. 

What's far harder to figure out is how this brinkmanship strategy you still seem to support will actually work, given there's no evidence that it will and also there's no apparent backup plan. 

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Just now, Tywin et al. said:

No I said it was an option, another is to let some members vote for it, but not enough to offset the progressives that didn't, thus allowing them to claim that it was the progressives that upended bipartisan deals in both chambers to fizzle out. Pretty simply, really. 

...Ok.  Of course that's an option, but it wasn't the one I responded to, nor cared about.  Because I've been the one that's been saying the right/House GOP would relish killing the bipartisan deal.  So..thanks for agreeing with me?

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2 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Progressives apparently got the Iron Dome provision stripped out of the CR. Hell yes!

Bill won't pass the senate, though not because of this. It's subject to the filibuster and McConnell already said he'll filibuster it because it raises the debt ceiling and he doesn't want Republicans voting for that. He's already introduced a "clean" CR alternative that doesn't touch the debt ceiling to counter attacks that he wants a shutdown.

Once again, I must reiterate my point from over the summer that Democrats were so fucking stupid for not including the debt ceiling language in the reconciliation bill instead. That would've also had the benefit of jamming Manchin/Sinema, since it would've all of a sudden made reconciliation a must-pass bill.

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7 minutes ago, DMC said:

...Ok.  Of course that's an option, but it wasn't the one I responded to, nor cared about.  Because I've been the one that's been saying the right/House GOP would relish killing the bipartisan deal.  So..thanks for agreeing with me?

Killing the bipartisan deal is not as big of a victory as completely breaking the Democratic caucus, which is a live play, and if they were smart they'd consider it. But they are far from that.

3 minutes ago, Fez said:

Once again, I must reiterate my point from over the summer that Democrats were so fucking stupid for not including the debt ceiling language in the reconciliation bill instead. That would've also had the benefit of jamming Manchin/Sinema, since it would've all of a sudden made reconciliation a must-pass bill.

100%.

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