Why would Republicans bother? They can motivate their base with culture war stuff and their donors don’t want to pay for infrastructure to make other people’s lives better.
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What is the “bipartisan” bill? I assume it is total dogshit? Maybe putting the confederate statues back up in exchange for nothing? Infrastructure!
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Do you remember Mitch filibustering his own bill under Obama?
The point isn’t the bills, the point is to prevent Biden and the democrats from getting any " bi-partisan " wins. That helps dems get elected, they finally made bi-partisanship work. They’re actually bringing the country together. Won’t matter how shit the bill is, it’s still a win.
Even if they put up the 300 billion dollar GOP bill it will fail, maybe 6 votes. The game is to prevent democrats from getting wins, and a bi-partisan bill passing is a huge win for democrats, especially when they can just go and get the rest in reconciliation.
They will get enough votes to show bi-partisanship is still alive and the filibuster is still good, but they won’t get a win.
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I mean maybe they pass it if they get an absolute guarantee from Manchin/Cinema that they won’t pass any more under reconciliation. Maybe such a bad pathetic bill would hurt the dems more than they’d gain from a bi-partisanship win.
Plus honestly each individual senator has to worry about re-election if they voted with the dems. Their primary opponent will hammer them for being socialists, Trump will hammer the bill as a terrible bill, and those people will be putting themselves at a huge risk.
It’s only been 5 months these things take time
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I can’t even tell how they’re doing because HHS hasn’t published any daily unaccompanied minors reports since May for some reason. Maybe they’ve started doing monthly reports instead.
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What if the squad went on talk shows and to WV & AZ and just praised Manchin and Cinema a ton. It would be obvious bullshit but the right is dumb and won’t get it, they’d just see Manchin doing what the squad wants.
My understanding is that it’s basically what you’d expect from “moderates”
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$ mostly goes to roads and bridges with a skew towards car-centric stuff over mass transit.
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Some funding for broadband in underserved communities (mostly rural areas).
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Little if any funding for investments in broader “Green New Deal” type stuff, or the things that progressives were trying to define as infrastructure earlier in the year (“childcare is infrastructure”, “healthcare is infrastructure”, “free college is infrastructure” etc)
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The scope of the whole thing is probably too small even for the areas it tries to fund.
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Don’t raise income taxes to pay for it. Either add to the debt, move money from other areas, or increase user fees (tolls, ticket prices, etc).
Not sure if paywalled but if it is feds are giving Minneapolis and St Paul a bunch of money to combat crime (aka cops get $$$).
White House chooses Minneapolis, St. Paul for violence prevention strategy. http://strib.mn/2T3Xqyq
Does it even actually add money or does it just change “COVID relief spending” to “infrastructure spending”
Biden’s gun plan looks like a combo of closing gun sale loopholes (good!) and giving cops more money for “training” (not good!).
They haven’t even written the actual legislative language, but seems like there is some genuinely new funding. (But if you read something that talks about a “$1.2 trillion” infrastructure bill or whatever, that $1.2 number is probably not all new funding)
“But GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said it’s fully paid for and offsets the new spending. The total cost is $1.2 trillion over eight years, with $559 billion in new spending, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.”
“Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the minority whip, also told reporters earlier this week that the White House and Republicans were not in agreement about how much money in unused Covid relief funds were left on the table and could be used to finance parts of infrastructure.”
There will be some magical reason the GOP “can’t” support the so-called bipartisan plan. They aren’t going to vote for it. Period. Just successfully running out the clock.
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SA killing it
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The Rs would support no-strings-attached handouts to oil and gas companies to subsidize “green energy” initiatives that are not defined or monitored by the government. But even on that, they could just wait until they have Congress back after the Dems go in circles for two years negotiating with themselves.
They will just use “the deficit”. Its a perfectly convenient excuse to block any spending. They can never approve Dem expenditures because “the deficit”. They can always approve tax cuts for the wealthy because “the economy”.
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This also explains why Dems really, really want something bipartisan to pass. It fits their instincts for what will get them elected, which wouldn’t have been wrong before Republicans glommed onto a strategy of denying everything.
I saw headline on infrastructure deal.
I am going to guess on agreement.
100 million for a border wall and a significant tax cut for the top two tiers and removal of capital gains tax.
Am I close?
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