Investment in American Infrastructure

[LFC]

The Biden administration and Congressional Democrats are actually pushing for seriously needed infrastructure spending, something Trump gave lip service to and then never bothered pursuing. (That frankly shocks me. There was so much room for grift in an infrastructure bill that I'm shocked he could resist. Maybe he just wasn't bright enough to figure that one out.) Of course since Democrats are proposing it Republicans will be against it because it's all they know how to do.

The infrastructure plan that President Biden is set to announce in a speech in Pittsburgh on Wednesday aims to transform the country at its roots, renovating its transportation network while committing the U.S. to providing universal access to broadband internet and clean water.

The plan, if passed, will see the U.S. government spend $2 trillion over the next eight years, targeted at what a senior White House official described as reversing “decades of disinvestment” in roads, bridges, water systems, and other infrastructure essentials.

The senior White House official likened the bill to the creation of the Interstate Highway System under President Dwight Eisenhower and the space race of the 1960s, casting it both as a push to address the generational issue of climate change and to put the U.S. on a footing to challenge a rising China.

“This is an important moment to demonstrate that the U.S. and democracies can deliver for the people they serve,” the official said.

[LFC]

As if her statements about and handling of the pandemic weren't idiotic enough Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota proves she's worthy of a Trump University degree. I wonder if this paragon of intellect is considering a presidential run. She's dumb enough to compete as a Republican.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a rising Republican star and potential 2024 presidential candidate, appeared flummoxed on Wednesday night over the fact that much of the spending in the Biden administration’s proposed infrastructure bill goes to, well, infrastructure.

“I was on a call with the White House today with all of the governors talking about the specifics of this package and I was shocked by how much doesn’t go into infrastructure,” Noem declared on Fox News’ Hannity. “It goes into research and development. It goes into housing and pipes and different initiatives, green energy.”

Just as a quick refresher, the definition of infrastructure, per Oxford, is “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.”

Perhaps it’s been Infrastructure Week for so long that Republicans have now forgotten what infrastructure actually means.

[goldenvalley]

Maybe they should call this a Jobs Bill, not an Infrastructure Bill.  People like the good governor in the post above have a limited understanding of what infrastructure is.  To them people are not infrastructure, so paying them to build it, educating them so they can build it, or making sure people are healthy doesn't count.  Building for the future requires more than heavy earthmoving equipment.

[LFC]

Apr 6, 2021 15:40:09 GMT goldenvalley said:

Maybe they should call this a Jobs Bill, not an Infrastructure Bill.  People like the good governor in the post above have a limited understanding of what infrastructure is.  To them people are not infrastructure, so paying them to build it, educating them so they can build it, or making sure people are healthy doesn't count.  Building for the future requires more than heavy earthmoving equipment.

I could see adding in the jobs factor, like the American Infrastructure & Jobs Act, but the infrastructure part actually polls very well already.

Economists at Georgetown University estimate a $1.5 trillion infrastructure investment could create 15 million jobs.

The poll found:
  - 79% of Americans supported a government overhaul of American roadways, railroads, bridges, and ports.
  - 71% supported a plan to extend high-speed internet to all Americans.
  - 68% supported an initiative to replace every lead pipe in the country.
  - 66% supported tax credits for renewable energy.

Americans also were largely supportive of ways that Biden has proposed to pay for his massive infrastructure bill. According to the poll, 64% of U.S adults supported a tax hike on corporations and large businesses, and 56% supported ending tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry.

The sad but hardly unexpected reality is that Republicans generally favor the major provisions of what President Biden is proposing but approval falls when it's polled as a Democratic package. Unfortunately so-called independents fall into that too far as well. In other words it's the ACA all over again. Their own party refuses to provide solutions they want but they don't want the Democrats to do it.

Only 45% of Americans said they would support a jobs and infrastructure plan that was “recently released by the Biden administration.” Another 27% said they were opposed and the remaining 28% said they were not sure.

The decline in support appears to be mostly a partisan reaction: only about two in 10 Republicans and three in 10 independents said they supported a Biden infrastructure plan, compared with seven out of 10 Democrats.

Republicans and independents also have expressed very little trust this year in the Democratic-led Congress.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll in February found that 57% of Republicans and 53% of independents said they had “hardly any confidence at all” in the legislative branch.

In short, while Americans generally want road repairs and other improvements, many are skeptical of Congress’ ability to put a good infrastructure plan together, and most Republicans are opposed to a reform that was written by Democrats.

This is why the Democrats need legislative achievements and need them NOW. They have to prove that Congress runs differently and benefits the people when they're in charge. It's already blindingly obvious that the Republicans are incapable of coherent policy.

[LFC]

The GOP is taking Frank Luntz's advice to heart and instead of producing a policy that explains their vision of infrastructure investment for America they're instead chirping over the definition of "infrastructure." They're doing a lot of bitching but producing nothing of substance. It's Obamacare all over again. It's the Republican Party in a nutshell ... emphasis on "nut."

Republicans have taken a philosophical turn when talking about President Joe Biden’s $2 million-plus infrastructure plan.

Creating a distinction between what counts as “real infrastructure” and what doesn’t, some have framed their opposition around the fact that much of the package deals with things other than roads and bridges.

“You look at this bill, the $2 trillion in the bill that, only about 5 to 7 percent of it is actual roads and bridges and ports and things that you and I would say is real infrastructure and that we tried to get passed under the last administration with President Trump,” former Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said recently on Fox News radio.

That statistic is particularly misleading, as it doesn’t count even things like rail and water systems — improvements that fall into the traditional infrastructure bucket.

But it’s a dry run of what now seems to be the official GOP line of attack, based on an internal memo within the Senate Republican conference circulated Sunday. The memo was first obtained by Politico.

I'll pick one particular piece off that link to WaPo. Once again the Democrats show more fiscal responsibility than the Republicans who must create their own math to magically show tax cuts paying for themselves, which they never do of course.

“Over the traditional 10-year budget window, we estimate the net increase in the deficit would be approximately $900 billion,” according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), which published a detailed breakdown of the costs. “The plan appears deficit-neutral over 15 years and it would reduce deficits over the long-term.”

[LFC]

Biden is giving Republicans a chance to help our nation after failing for the 4 years they held the White House and at least one house in Congress. Fortunately, as we've already seen, he refuses to get sucked into bad faith stalling tactics that have been Moscow Mitch's bread and butter for years.

President Joe Biden is slated to meet with Democratic and Republican lawmakers from both chambers of Congress at the White House on Monday afternoon to discuss his sweeping infrastructure proposal.

The meeting will be held in the Oval Office at 1:15 p.m. ET, according to the White House press schedule.

Per Punchbowl, the senators in the bipartisan group include Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Mitt Romney (R-UT), John Hoeven (R-ND) and Angus King (I-ME).

They will be joined by Reps. Charlie Crist (D-FL), Norma Torres (D-CA), Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), Kay Granger (R-TX) and Carlos Gimenez (R-FL).

The meeting comes as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) lays the groundwork for passing Biden’s multi-trillion plan through budget reconciliation, the only way Democratic senators can pass legislation by a simple majority without getting stonewalled by Republican use of the filibuster.

And GOP obstruction against Biden’s proposal as it stands now is virtually guaranteed: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) vowed in early April to fight Democrats “every step of the way,” and Republicans have been trying to argue that the plan doesn’t fit their definition of “real infrastructure.”

[jackd]

The real question is what will Manchin and Synema do if Biden has to resort to reconciliation?

[LFC]

Apr 19, 2021 17:49:03 GMT jackd said:

The real question is what will Manchin and Synema do if Biden has to resort to reconciliation?

True dat. I can't imagine them getting a single Republican vote for several reasons, not the least of which because any Democratic bill will include provisions that will at least partially pay for the new expenditures. Republicans aren't down with that shit. They like it when everything goes on the country's credit card ... but only when they're in power.

[LFC]

Biden proves himself to be willing to reach out across the aisle and listen BUT he clearly isn't going to allow the Republicans use the same old delaying techniques. When it came to the relief package where there offer was less than a third he determined that it was so low there was no point in trying to find a middle ground and the Dems pushed forward alone. Now some Republicans want to talk about infrastructure spending and he's listened to them but rather than trying to work around general demands he's given them a mid-May deadline for their proposal. Good.

Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and John Hoeven (R-ND) told President Joe Biden on Monday night that they are opposed to increasing the corporate tax rate to pay for his proposed $2 trillion infrastructure package as the President calls on Republicans to put forward an alternative plan by the middle of next month.

People familiar with the matter told Axios that the two Republican senators had expressed their opposition to an element of the proposal that suggested raising the corporate rate to 28 percent, during a bipartisan Oval Office meeting with the President on Monday.

“I am prepared to compromise,” Biden had said at the start of the more than an hourlong session with a group of Republican and Democratic senators and House members who previously served as mayors and governors.

Romney told The New York Times that during the meeting he had raised the possibility of letting state and local governments use money from the pandemic relief package to pay for infrastructure projects.

“He was in listening mode and was gracious to solicit our respective points of view,” Romney said of Biden. “I think they would like to work on a bipartisan basis. I think there’s a great deal of interest on the part of Republicans to improve our infrastructure, and the challenge is going to be how it’s paid for.”

Well "how it's paid for" is certainly the challenge for Republicans. They don't have any recebt history of paying for anything! If they want to be taken seriously again then bring serious proposals to the table. Their demand to keep taxes at the current historic low rates that created enormous deficits, the same deficits their party started complaining about once Trump was gone, is not a good way to go about that.

Biden needs to demand something that can be scored by the CBO. The Republicans' supposed ACA alternative (that never really existed) showed us that the GOP is the party of no ideas and bad faith. It don't mean shit if it's not a clear, specific stake in the ground. And if it comes in at a $600B investment for the next 10 years then Biden and the Dems will walk again.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 20, 2021 20:29:20 GMT LFC said:

Biden proves himself to be willing to reach out across the aisle and listen BUT he clearly isn't going to allow the Republicans use the same old delaying techniques. When it came to the relief package where there offer was less than a third he determined that it was so low there was no point in trying to find a middle ground and the Dems pushed forward alone. Now some Republicans want to talk about infrastructure spending and he's listened to them but rather than trying to work around general demands he's given them a mid-May deadline for their proposal. Good.

Setting a deadline is good. If enforced it will avoid the endless negotiations that drag out on vague indications that the Republicans will agree to something.  

It troubles me that Sen Romney and crew had nothing to say about possible ways to pay for infrastructure.  I suppose they'll trot out the "cut entitlement" ideas that have been floating around for years.   Perhaps they'll want to send block grants to the states for building the "real infrastructure" with the proviso that states can only access them upon passing massive bond issues to match the federal money.  The latter would doom the odds of some states ever seeing any infrastructure money.

[baw1064]

Apr 20, 2021 21:57:46 GMT goldenvalley said:

Apr 20, 2021 20:29:20 GMT LFC said:

  Perhaps they'll want to send block grants to the states for building the "real infrastructure" with the proviso that states can only access them upon passing massive bond issues to match the federal money.  The latter would doom the odds of some states ever seeing any infrastructure money.

Of course most of those would be red states anyway.

[LFC]

Apr 20, 2021 21:57:46 GMT goldenvalley said:

It troubles me that Sen Romney and crew had nothing to say about possible ways to pay for infrastructure.  I suppose they'll trot out the "cut entitlement" ideas that have been floating around for years.   Perhaps they'll want to send block grants to the states for building the "real infrastructure" with the proviso that states can only access them upon passing massive bond issues to match the federal money.  The latter would doom the odds of some states ever seeing any infrastructure money.

This from Romney.

Romney told The New York Times that during the meeting he had raised the possibility of letting state and local governments use money from the pandemic relief package to pay for infrastructure projects.

That doesn't bode well. They want funds the Dems provided for relief to be diverted thus cutting the Democratic initiative while desperately clinging to the Republican tax cuts. Once again Republicans refuse to actually figure out how to pay for ANYTHING.

[goldenvalley]

Romney told The New York Times that during the meeting he had raised the possibility of letting state and local governments use money from the pandemic relief package to pay for infrastructure projects.

I guess this is from the perspective that money is fungible...and the reason for authorizes the appropriation of funds is unimportant.  And hey states' rights...they can use the money however they wish.  

[LFC]

So the Republicans came out with their infrastructure bill ... plan ... talking points package. It's as pathetic as expected. It's short on details and does not contain a single proposal for how to pay for any of it. It does however state that the 100% unpaid for Republican tax cuts must be preserved. Once again Republicans prove that they are completely unfit to govern. They have no real policies, just political strategies.

The document a group of Republican senators released Thursday was not much more detailed than what they’d already previewed to reporters, though it did specify the monetary breakdown.

The bulk of it, $299 billion, would go to roads and bridges. Then there’s a precipitous drop to the next tier of spending, $65 billion for broadband and $61 billion for public transit.

The rest of it is doled out as follows:

- $44 billion for airports
- $35 billion for drinking water and wastewater systems
- $20 billion for railways
- $17 billion for ports and inland waterways
- $14 billion for water storage
- $13 billion for safety measures

The Republican outline omits any “human infrastructure” planks the Democrats plan to introduce — including an extension of the child tax credit and free community college tuition for all — but also bypasses Democratic priorities like investment in green energy.

“I think we fully expect when we get to the negotiating phase that climate will be part of the discussion,” Capito said Thursday.

Here's the funding part. It's classic modern day Republicanism.

The counterproposal echoes previous Republican efforts by taking any way to pay for infrastructure spending off the table.

The section of the document devoted to pay-fors is skimpy on details, but GOP senators commit themselves to two principles:

- The cost of infrastructure legislation must be covered to avoid “increasing the debt.”
- Trump’s tax cuts must be preserved, specifically the state and local tax deduction.

Those two commitments foreclose virtually any way to pay for the legislation.

In the first one, Republicans say that they will reject any attempt to deficit-finance infrastructure. Therefore, the government must find new revenue sources to pay for the proposal.

But in the second, GOP senators say they’re against changing revisions to the tax code signed into law during the Trump.

The only way out, then, is to “repurpose unused federal spending,” or a tax on electric vehicle usage that is mentioned in the document.

They haven't come close to a real counter proposal and certainly not one anybody but a Republican can take seriously but they'll squawk about it much like they squawked about their completely non-existent, literal blank paper health care proposal when the ACA was being passed.

[LFC]

Another view of the Republican infrastructure talking points document from TPM (in  full due to paywall).

A group of Republican senators unveiled a thin outline of their infrastructure counter-proposal Thursday, an attempt to give their members something to support rather than just opposing President Joe Biden’s expansive infrastructure package outright.

After introducing the plan in a press briefing — $568 billion for narrowly-defined “roads and bridges”-type infrastructure — Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), the effort’s leader, was candid with reporters about the pressure her conference was under to put some plan forward, even a vague one that seems to ensure its own failure by taking most payment methods off the table.

The White House, she said, wanted to see a proposal encompassing the points of Republican dissension and their own proposals “sooner than later,” she said.

“That’s why I went ahead and insisted that we go ahead and put something out that our members can talk about, because if we don’t put any ideas on the table — shame on us,” she said.

That pressure seems to stem directly from the Republican defeat on the American Rescue Plan, Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that Democrats passed unilaterally in March. Then, Republicans flailed in searching for a concrete reason to oppose the package, ultimately getting steamrolled by Democrats who had the votes to go it alone and were less than sympathetic to the GOP’s obstruction for obstruction’s sake.

This time, at least some Republicans want to have their own legislation to point to as a reason for objecting to the Democrats’ plan, rather than just a bare refusal to help deliver Biden another legislative victory.

Lessons From COVID Relief
While Democrats were shepherding the American Relief Plan through Congress, Republicans were all over the map on the reasons they opposed it. It was a task made more difficult by their recent history of “yes” votes on sprawling pandemic relief packages under former President Donald Trump, and the speed with which Democrats ushered the multi-faceted package through.

Nevertheless, they persisted.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) had a swing and a miss on Fox News, when he said the package, specifically targeted at helping low-income people, would “hurt poor families.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) defaulted to the tried-and-true “socialist” attack, adding that the package was a “laundry list of left-wing priorities.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — who recently distinguished herself by being one of two members in the entire House to vote against reauthorizing a national bone marrow donor program — called the package a “massive woke progressive Democrat wishlist.” And Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), taking the more traditional GOP opposition route, dismissed it as wasteful spending.

Their ultimate attempts to stymie the bill were as scattershot as their opposition to its contents.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) had grand plans of an achingly drawn-out vote-a-rama, with a rotating schedule of amendments to make it as painful as possible for Democrats to pass the bill. While he did force the poor Senate clerks to read the entire 630-page tome, he let Democrats slip in during the early hours of the morning to curtail debate. The Senate passed the bill the next day.

As Democrats crowed in victory, holding constant press conferences and blasting out emailed releases to tout the win, McCarthy was reduced to publicly hoping that the law wouldn’t end up being very effective and would slowly leak popularity like the 2009 stimulus bill.

In the end, Democrats got a major win; Republicans tried to take credit for the package they voted against without anyone noticing.

How It Applies Now
It’s all a fitting lead-up to what Capito said on Thursday.

But in the context of Republican failures to counter-message on the ARP, it reads less like a strategy and more as an admission that something, somewhere, went deeply wrong with the Republican response to Democratic legislative wins in the recent past.

The infrastructure counterproposal, as we wrote today, skimps on the details. What it does not skimp on, however, is messaging.

Replete with statements of principle like that the bill should raise neither taxes nor the national debt (call us if you can figure out how that would work), the GOP “plan” does exactly what Capito said: provide talking points against the Biden proposal.

Part of this is theater, making a show of the pains they’re taking to compromise while flaunting the thought and effort that went into the counterproposal. It conveys the message that they’re hardworking legislators just like everyone else, and why can’t we all just roll up our sleeves and compromise?

But the lack of substance speaks not only to earlier failures to define an alternative to Democratic legislation, but to a broader point: when your party has spent the last 12 years on obstruction and then repealing whatever President Obama was able to pass, there’s not much of a positive legislative agenda to push.

[LFC]

GAWD these people are just f***ing brain dead. This certainly isn't the first case of a Republican being completely incapable of explaining what they're so righteously outraged about. They're nothing more than wind-up toys.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) did a Fox News interview Sunday where he struggled to identify which specific parts of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plans he objects to, encapsulating the greater Republican difficulty in campaigning against the legislation.

Fox News host Chris Wallace put up some major planks of the proposals — the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan — and asked Cassidy which pieces his state didn’t need. The list included $100 billion for workforce development and $225 billion for child care.

“Every one of those programs should be evaluated, and if it’s important, it should be advanced,” Cassidy said. “It’s not infrastructure,” he added, returning to one of the primary Republican talking points in opposition to the plan: that Biden’s “infrastructure” umbrella is a misnomer.

He added that spending on roads and bridges — $115 billion in Biden’s proposal goes to repairing and modernizing roads and bridges — is “so low” and “not gonna get you a road and bridge, and that’s what my state would really like to see.”

Wallace pressed further, pointing out to Cassidy that a full 25 percent of children in Louisiana live in poverty, and that 42 percent of residents there do not have access to child care.

“Forget whether it’s infrastructure or not — wouldn’t they benefit from these government programs?” Wallace asked.

Cassidy then pulled a sharp pivot, saying that he “doesn’t know” if the programs would help, then claiming that teachers unions kept schools closed during the pandemic when the CDC said they could be opened safely.

[Deleted]

Q: "Which magazines and books do you read, Madam Governor?" A: "All of 'em". Q: "But, which specific ones though? Could you name some?" A: "I can see Russia from my house. Did you know that?"

Your post reminded me of the good 'ol days when we could laugh out of innocent ignorance.

[LFC]

Biden is giving Republicans a chance to negotiate on infrastructure in good faith. That has Josh Marshall worried (paywalled) and Bernie being Bernie as they wring their hands. [sigh] After watching Biden give bad faith Republicans the back of his hand over COVID relief in a hot minute I'm less worried.

The part of this whole piece that drives me nuts is the Bloomberg Editorial Board which STILL doesn't recognize the Republican bad faith obstruction agenda even after virtually 100% obstruction of Obama's presidency and the fact that Moscow Mitch literally just told us he is "100% focused" on doing the same to Biden. This is beyond stupid or clueless and crosses firmly into journalistic malpractice. AFAIC they proved that they have no business writing anything about politics and should have stuck to the financial portions of their article.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has signaled an increasing unease at the way the Biden White House is negotiating with Republicans about the size and scope of a major national infrastructure plan – now going under the heading of the American Jobs Plan (hard infrastructure) and the American Family Plan (caring economy). I’m inclined to agree with Sanders, though this is one of those difficult cases in which it’s hard to know really what is happening because real negotiations are behind closed doors and difficult to interpret. Do Biden and his top aides really think they can get to a good bill with Republicans or are they working through a process, which they assume will fail, to put a 50 vote Democratic bill on the best footing?

I also noticed this equivocal editorial this morning from Bloomberg News. Bloomberg is far less reflexively reactionary than most of the business news press. And this editorial isn’t opposed to these transformative proposed pieces of legislation in general. But they are increasingly scrutinizing the details: warning about the challenge of spending this much money without a lot going to fraud and waste (a real issue), expressing skepticism that the proposed tax changes won’t lead the super rich to find other loopholes, etc. But it’s the part down at the bottom on this issue of bipartisanship that got my attention.

Biden’s incautious ambition has one further drawback. It abandons hope of reaching consensus on aspects of fiscal policy where, even now, it might still be possible. Many Democrats think that seeking agreement with Republicans is pointless, merely a formula for delay and paralysis. But they ignore that modest-seeming steps sustained from one administration to the next are more supportive of growth and innovation than a policy pendulum that swings from one extreme to the other every four years. Instability breeds uncertainty, suppressing investment and growth. It’s much too soon to give up on bipartisanship — and it’s a shame to see Biden, of all people, throw in the towel.

To me this was the most worrisome part of the editorial.

I actually think bipartisanship is important. In our system there are a lot of pluses to passing major legislation with at least some buy-in from both parties. But something’s being important doesn’t mean you should pretend you can get it when you can’t. Nor is it a reason to settle for 1/4 of X when the full X is what’s necessary. By and large, voters only care about what you do. If what you do doesn’t work or backfires then you’re screwed in political terms. If voters like it, you’re rewarded. There’s almost no case where voters like something and punish you because you got it on a party line vote. The greatest source of popular disaffection and declining trust in government is that the federal government struggles to do anything at all.

In 2021 there is simply no reason to assume that congressional Republicans are entering negotiations in good faith. Indeed, all evidence suggests the contrary. We’ve all seen this movie before in 2009 and 2010. It’s unfortunate that the editorial writers at Bloomberg don’t get that. But whatever …

There are a lot of different moving parts to how Biden’s proposed legislation could get passed. He could pass it all through reconciliation. He could find a package that gets Republican buy-in, pass it through regular order and then pass everything else later through reconciliation. Biden also has to keep in mind Joe Manchin and a handful of other less vocal Senate Democrats. If he loses any of them he can’t do anything.

Biden’s team has earned a lot of credibility from me by how he has managed things for the first three months. I think many Democrats feel the same way. But it’s not too soon to remind ourselves that nothing good comes from negotiating with bad faith actors. The question is what is necessary and the clearest path to getting what is necessary passed. Democrats have just a short window to do a lot. They’d be crazy if they chewed up time indulging Republican antics.

[goldenvalley]

May 11, 2021 14:41:55 GMT LFC said:

Biden is giving Republicans a chance to negotiate on infrastructure in good faith. That has Josh Marshall worried (paywalled) and Bernie being Bernie as they wring their hands. [sigh] After watching Biden give bad faith Republicans the back of his hand over COVID relief in a hot minute I'm less worried.

The part of this whole piece that drives me nuts is the Bloomberg Editorial Board which STILL doesn't recognize the Republican bad faith obstruction agenda even after virtually 100% obstruction of Obama's presidency and the fact that Moscow Mitch literally just told us he is "100% focused" on doing the same to Biden. This is beyond stupid or clueless and crosses firmly into journalistic malpractice. AFAIC they proved that they have no business writing anything about politics and should have stuck to the financial portions of their article.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has signaled an increasing unease at the way the Biden White House is negotiating with Republicans about the size and scope of a major national infrastructure plan – now going under the heading of the American Jobs Plan (hard infrastructure) and the American Family Plan (caring economy). I’m inclined to agree with Sanders, though this is one of those difficult cases in which it’s hard to know really what is happening because real negotiations are behind closed doors and difficult to interpret. Do Biden and his top aides really think they can get to a good bill with Republicans or are they working through a process, which they assume will fail, to put a 50 vote Democratic bill on the best footing?

I also noticed this equivocal editorial this morning from Bloomberg News. Bloomberg is far less reflexively reactionary than most of the business news press. And this editorial isn’t opposed to these transformative proposed pieces of legislation in general. But they are increasingly scrutinizing the details: warning about the challenge of spending this much money without a lot going to fraud and waste (a real issue), expressing skepticism that the proposed tax changes won’t lead the super rich to find other loopholes, etc. But it’s the part down at the bottom on this issue of bipartisanship that got my attention.


To me this was the most worrisome part of the editorial.

I actually think bipartisanship is important. In our system there are a lot of pluses to passing major legislation with at least some buy-in from both parties. But something’s being important doesn’t mean you should pretend you can get it when you can’t. Nor is it a reason to settle for 1/4 of X when the full X is what’s necessary. By and large, voters only care about what you do. If what you do doesn’t work or backfires then you’re screwed in political terms. If voters like it, you’re rewarded. There’s almost no case where voters like something and punish you because you got it on a party line vote. The greatest source of popular disaffection and declining trust in government is that the federal government struggles to do anything at all.

In 2021 there is simply no reason to assume that congressional Republicans are entering negotiations in good faith. Indeed, all evidence suggests the contrary. We’ve all seen this movie before in 2009 and 2010. It’s unfortunate that the editorial writers at Bloomberg don’t get that. But whatever …

There are a lot of different moving parts to how Biden’s proposed legislation could get passed. He could pass it all through reconciliation. He could find a package that gets Republican buy-in, pass it through regular order and then pass everything else later through reconciliation. Biden also has to keep in mind Joe Manchin and a handful of other less vocal Senate Democrats. If he loses any of them he can’t do anything.

Biden’s team has earned a lot of credibility from me by how he has managed things for the first three months. I think many Democrats feel the same way. But it’s not too soon to remind ourselves that nothing good comes from negotiating with bad faith actors. The question is what is necessary and the clearest path to getting what is necessary passed. Democrats have just a short window to do a lot. They’d be crazy if they chewed up time indulging Republican antics.

We know what is being said publicly; we don't know what else might be going on.  Will the Biden Admin break the bill into discrete parts and then force the Rep Senators to vote on them? McConnell shielded the Rep Senators by ditching bills so they never had to vote on them but that won't happen with Schumer as Majority Leader. When re-election time comes around in 2022 the Reps will have a record to run against.  

[LFC]

May 11, 2021 15:11:46 GMT goldenvalley said:

We know what is being said publicly; we don't know what else might be going on.  Will the Biden Admin break the bill into discrete parts and then force the Rep Senators to vote on them? McConnell shielded the Rep Senators by ditching bills so they never had to vote on them but that won't happen with Schumer as Majority Leader. When re-election time comes around in 2022 the Reps will have a record to run against.  

Separate bills certainly make for good politics. The Republicans get a choice; support at least some of Biden's agenda or make pathetic excuses why they couldn't vote for a bill that gave them 95% of what they said they wanted. I can't imagine any more than one or two backing anything from the Democrats. That gives the Dems a fig leaf of "bipartisan" while being able to bash on the majority of Republicans running for reelection.

[AnBr]

May 11, 2021 14:41:55 GMT LFC said:

Biden is giving Republicans a chance to negotiate on infrastructure in good faith. That has Josh Marshall worried (paywalled) and Bernie being Bernie as they wring their hands. [sigh] After watching Biden give bad faith Republicans the back of his hand over COVID relief in a hot minute I'm less worried.

The part of this whole piece that drives me nuts is the Bloomberg Editorial Board which STILL doesn't recognize the Republican bad faith obstruction agenda even after virtually 100% obstruction of Obama's presidency and the fact that Moscow Mitch literally just told us he is "100% focused" on doing the same to Biden. This is beyond stupid or clueless and crosses firmly into journalistic malpractice. AFAIC they proved that they have no business writing anything about politics and should have stuck to the financial portions of their article.

This is what so many on the extreme left, and apparently much of the media, do not get. They are so politically naïve they do not seem to be able to distinguish intent or mistakes from political maneuvering. If Biden were to ignore Republicans from the start it would give the right fodder to accuse him of acting like a dictator or being undemocratic. They would use it as justification to be obstructionists. At least giving the appearance of being bipartisan while knowing that the Republicans will still try to undermine his efforts will play better to the electorate and press when he is  forced to go around the obstructionists.

[goldenvalley]

May 11, 2021 16:17:06 GMT AnBr said:

May 11, 2021 14:41:55 GMT LFC said:

Biden is giving Republicans a chance to negotiate on infrastructure in good faith. That has Josh Marshall worried (paywalled) and Bernie being Bernie as they wring their hands. [sigh] After watching Biden give bad faith Republicans the back of his hand over COVID relief in a hot minute I'm less worried.

The part of this whole piece that drives me nuts is the Bloomberg Editorial Board which STILL doesn't recognize the Republican bad faith obstruction agenda even after virtually 100% obstruction of Obama's presidency and the fact that Moscow Mitch literally just told us he is "100% focused" on doing the same to Biden. This is beyond stupid or clueless and crosses firmly into journalistic malpractice. AFAIC they proved that they have no business writing anything about politics and should have stuck to the financial portions of their article.

This is what so many on the extreme left, and apparently much of the media, do not get. They are so politically naïve they do not seem to be able to distinguish intent or mistakes from political maneuvering. If Biden were to ignore Republicans from the start it would give the right fodder to accuse him of acting like a dictator or being undemocratic. They would use it as justification to be obstructionists. At least giving the appearance of being bipartisan while knowing that the Republicans will still try to undermine his efforts will play better to the electorate and press when he is  forced to go around the obstructionists.

What lesson, if any, did the extreme left and media learn from the Tea Party behavior from 2010 onward?  The Tea Party was elected to vote against anything the Democrats offered and to lie about what happened during the legislative journey of Obamacare.  That was an extreme position and it worked.  Somehow the left learned that you pick a position and stick with it no matter what plus decry anyone that suggested getting half a loaf was not getting half a loaf as craven sell outs.  What the extreme left didn't seem to learn was that you have to have a majority of the legislature to do anything at all.  And they'd rather be pure and accomplish nothing.

[pnwguy]

May 11, 2021 15:51:31 GMT LFC said:

May 11, 2021 15:11:46 GMT goldenvalley said:

Separate bills certainly make for good politics. The Republicans get a choice; support at least some of Biden's agenda or make pathetic excuses why they couldn't vote for a bill that gave them 95% of what they said they wanted. I can't imagine any more than one or two backing anything from the Democrats. That gives the Dems a fig leaf of "bipartisan" while being able to bash on the majority of Republicans running for reelection.

I beg to differ.  Republicans don't need a record to run on.  By virtue of the (R) behind their name, their base gives them absolution.  They could all be co-sponsors of the National Kitten Execution Act, and their base would just shrug ("damn shame about those cute kittens").

The old Edwin Edwards line about "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy." doesn't apply to MAGA voters.  Matt Gaetz isn't having any trouble about his legislative record.  Dumpster could still be re-elected from a jail cell, which I hope he sees the inside of in the next year or two.

[LFC]

May 11, 2021 18:28:21 GMT pnwguy said:

I beg to differ.  Republicans don't need a record to run on.  By virtue of the (R) behind their name, their base gives them absolution.  They could all be co-sponsors of the National Kitten Execution Act, and their base would just shrug ("damn shame about those cute kittens").

The old Edwin Edwards line about "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy." doesn't apply to MAGA voters.  Matt Gaetz isn't having any trouble about his legislative record.  Dumpster could still be re-elected from a jail cell, which I hope he sees the inside of in the next year or two.

Of course you're discussing the MAGAt base and are totally correct about them but I wrote them off for all serious consideration long ago. I'm discussing the impacts of getting Democrats turned out and getting a bigger chunk of that small slice that still would be willing to vote for either party. That's who the Democrats have to play to if they're going to win elections. If they can figure out a way to get the MAGAts dispirited then that's a bonus but there's definitely no political play to the MAGAts that involve a positive pitch about Dems.

[pnwguy]

May 11, 2021 18:42:34 GMT LFC said:

May 11, 2021 18:28:21 GMT pnwguy said:

Of course you're discussing the MAGAt base and are totally correct about them but I wrote them off for all serious consideration long ago. I'm discussing the impacts of getting Democrats turned out and getting a bigger chunk of that small slice that still would be willing to vote for either party. That's who the Democrats have to play to if they're going to win elections. If they can figure out a way to get the MAGAts dispirited then that's a bonus but there's definitely no political play to the MAGAts that involve a positive pitch about Dems.

That's assuming those persuadable voters are allowed to vote or aren't buried in safe GOP districts or states.  That's the plan now.  Look what could happen to PA, if your cretins get their way.