The Man of La Manchin averred: “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a no.”
The Democrats were ecstatic after they won those two Senate seats in Georgia, thinking they were in the catbird’s seat, but that was all an illusion. The situation is better for them than if they had lost those seats, but the 50-50 stalemate in the Senate has made Manchin the most powerful person in America. Manchin was sent to Washington by a mere 290,000 voters, yet he now wields more power than Biden, who got 81 million votes. Nobody would be saying a word about Manchin if the Democrats had lost those two Georgia seats. If that had happened, only serious political junkies would even be able to name a senator from West Virginia. (I have no idea who the other one is.) Now everyone who watches TV news or reads a paper will stand a tip-toe when he is named, and rouse him at the name of Manchin. Talk about a guy in the right place at the right time! (Or the opposite, depending on your politics.)
Not a big fan of BBB, but I do support the spending on dealing with climate change. This may be the last chance to do anything about it, since the GOP will probably control at least one branch of government for the foreseeable future, due to redistricting and other factors.
I understand Manchin’s point completely. He thinks that the progressives never negotiated in good faith. They just kept tinkering with the number of years for each program, but Manchin made it clear from the start that there were things he would not support at all.
Manchin also says there are parts he would support wholeheartedly. Why didn’t they just start with those? Last week he made the White House a concrete offer to vote for a $1.8 trillion package that included universal prekindergarten for 10 years, an expansion of Obamacare and hundreds of billions of dollars to combat climate change.
They should have just taken that offer and worked out the rest later. My superficial impression is that by trying to retain all the programs, Biden and the progressives lost them all. That was probably not a smart dice roll. Right now they have bupkes. Let’s face it, for better or worse Manchin holds all the cards, so he doesn’t need to negotiate. The bill is whatever he says it is, so stop whining about it and just write a bill that he supports. It’s better to get some of your programs than to post a goose egg. Of course, that would require common sense, and liberals are not really known for common sense.
1.My understanding is that the whole package had to be voted on together due to the nature of the reconciliation process. They may be able to break this down next year and handle it as part of the normal budget process.
2.Hard to know if Manchin should be believed on the $1.8 trillion. According to the liberals/progressives, Manchin kept ‘moving the goalpost’ with finding new things to be concerned about every time they thought they had reached agreement with him.
This report on the $1.8 trillion came out after Manchin said that he was done. I think most likely he’s lying about this and doesn’t want to be blamed for this failing, so this ‘offer’ that he made to Biden leaked out.
3.If it is the case that this whole process can be restarted next year as part of the normal budgetary process, then Manchin and Sinema and any other Democratic Senators in opposition can be fully smoked out on what they support, what they oppose and how sincere they are.
4.It’s not entirely true that Manchin holds all the cards as long as he is a Democrat. Not only does he has some need to show that Democrats can govern in order to be reelected, if he wants to run for reelection, but he also has to worry about his Democratic voting coalition in West Virginia. There are more than enough liberal/progressive Democrats whose votes he needs for him to lose to a Republican, if they vote for a third party liberal/progressive candidate instead. Manchin, unlike Sinema, seems to be smart enough to realize that Republicans are going to vote for a Republican for the U.S Senate over him, no matter how much he might be their temporary hero.
5.As a person on another board wrote, the most logical explanation is that Manchin and Sinema would rather be in the minority. Of course it’s impossible to know if the Democrats could retain the Senate if this passes, and it’s even less possible to really know what Manchin and Sinema think about this, which is really what matters, but it’s reasonable to conclude that want scuttle Biden’s Presidency so that they can be back in the minority in 2023, and for the next to years, they can support whatever popular legislation is brought up in the Senate while getting to grandstand over unpopular legislation, and expect that this grandstanding will get them reelected in 2024.
This is, of course, if the United States is still an effective democracy by 2024. Certainly the U.S federal government seems to be entirely paralyzed.
So, to that extent, it might be that Manchin and Sinema are really looking to the Republican legislatures in West Virginia and Arizona respectively, to reelect them.
Manchin can switch parties in a heartbeat. But he might lose a GOP primary.
WV voters believe that Manchin should vote against BBB altogether.
70% of West Virginians of both parties agree with this statement: “Senator Joe Manchin is an independent voice who is willing to oppose national politicians of both parties in order to do what is right for West Virginia.”
I don’t think he’s that concerned about re-election. Furthermore, he’s not up for re-election until 2024, at which time he’ll be 77 years old, looking at another six-year term, so he may well be in his last hurrah right now.
Be that as it may, here is the undeniable reality: the bill is whatever he says it is, or it doesn’t exist at all. From the progressive standpoint, it’s better to take what he’s offering than to blow the whole package, which they probably will do because, hey, they’re Democrats.
(Although I feel he hasn’t been honest up to this point. If I had been in his position, I would have been completely candid with Biden from the start. “Here’s what I’ll vote for. Let’s not waste time. No negotiation. Take it or leave it. Spin it any way you want to.”)
Only two reconciliation bills are allowed each session. That’s why everything including the kitchen sink were in this one. As Long as the filibuster exists…your plan is DOA.
Then they better come up with one that Manchin will agree to. Their best plan is just to let him write it. Otherwise, they get bupkes.
Since the Roger Stone taking the 5th thread is closed, I provisionally stand corrected by Scoopy & MMcC re: real estate joint ownership. Thank you for insights into the ins & outs. No doubt that’s still not the whole story. What a lovely mess of a blessing is The Rule of Law.
My understanding is totally superficial. As McC pointed out, there are people who become rich themselves by showing rich people the tricks needed to avoid taxes. According to the Pandora Papers, the entire state of Wyoming functioned as a giant tax scam for years.
Manchin is a Democrat representing a deep red Republican State. The chance that he was going to vote for BBB, essentially a climate change bill his coal-mining constituents would oppose, was almost zero.
He just went from almost zero to absolute zero.
As discussed below, there’s 0 reason to take Manchin’s or Sinema’s excuses as gospel. Less still, our (your) rationalizations on their behalf. That pair are at best, selfish. At worst, on the side of Satan in the Eternal World War Good vs. Evil.
Reminds me of the Junior Soprano trial, after Tony’s crew got to a juror. No matter what logic anyone conveyed to the guy, he refused to change his mind. In that case he feared for his life; in Manchin’s case he’s probably on the take. No one in their right mind would be the sole holdout against their party on a package like this. Either his family has been threatened or he’s made a secret deal. You can tell that just by the bullshit he’s saying, that it’s all about WV voters to him. A laughable lie like that is Trumpian in its ludicrousness. He must feel *very* confident his secret deal won’t be discovered, to splurt out vomit like that.
He and his family have coal interests. He’s partly holding out because of the Green stuff in BBB. He quite regularly talks with oil and coal lobbyists.
However I think he’s just stunting for the people back home. I don’t think he’s the 50th vote. Sinema did have a secret deal with McConnell in return for some GOP donations and she’s the actual hold-up. There’s also a few other centre-right Dems who also might prefer a smaller bill. Manchin will bloviate if he can get away with it and that’s probably all he’s doing.
Please continue to prove my point for me, you impotent MAGA fuckwit. Keep burping up all that Fox News vomit and trying to fool anyone into believing you’re fucking worth something. Your identity as a mediocre troll on a nudey website is probably the most valuable thing you have.
Not a trump supporter. Don’t watch Fox News. Find new stereotypes.
I heard a number of people on the left talking about how 2 senators shouldn’t be allowed to thwart the will of 48. But of course it’s really 52 senators thwarting the 48. Unsurprisingly, I am of the opinion that killing the BBB is for the best as it was too expensive and would have added $3 Trillion to the deficit. That said, I am aware that Republicans only seem to care about deficits during Democratic administrations. But some of us care with Republican presidents too.
Democrats are going to be furious with Manchin, but he is the only reason Chuck Schumer is majority leader. If he had switched to being a Republican, even less of Biden’s agenda would have passed. The thing about being in the majority is that while the party caucus might be controlled by the more ideological members, the majority is usually dependent on moderates. That is especially true in the house where Democrats in swing districts know that supporting AOC’s agenda all but guarantees a Republican will replace them in the next election. It is incredibly frustrating when ideologues insist on nominating candidates too far to the left or right to be elected. Things don’t look very promising for the Democrats in 2022. But they have a secret weapon in the president they impeached twice. Trump is going to do everything he can to make sure Republican candidates don’t pull another Glenn Younkin and try to hold Trump at arms length while they run. If they don’t embrace Trump, Trump will make sure the base doesn’t turn out for them.
Trump does play a lot of golf. I am going to start praying to that God I don’t believe in that Trump is caught in a surprise electrical storm and electrocuted. All I want for Christmas is an act of God creating a fried Cheeto.
Do you know how much money reversing Trump’s tax cut would bring in? Would it be enough to pay for BBB, or some sizable part of it, or is it small change in comparison? I could try to Google it, but I bet I would get a bunch of different answers, none of which I understand.
(I’m just hoping you might have an idea offhand. If I’m too lazy to do the research, I don’t expect you to either.)
I hope you are right about Trump being the Democrat’s ace in the hole.
I don’t know how much revenue reversing the Trump tax cuts would bring in. But I am pretty sure it is nowhere near the $3 Trillion cost of the BBB. Otherwise, that would have been a much more prominent talking point. We can’t afford it? Just reverse the Trump tax cuts!
The Trump tax cuts are part of the reason I’ve become disillusioned about most Republican politicians. The whole process seemed to be about cutting taxes for tax cuttings sake as opposed to it being about improving the economy. The top marginal tax rate affects decisions on savings and investment. Increasing that rate reduces the return a business owner could expect from expanding their business. But we also have to do something about getting our deficits under control. There was a commission during the Obama administration that proposed lowering tax rates while eliminating most deductions and simplifying the tax code. The idea was that it would be revenue neutral. But I thought targeting a slight increase in revenue would have been a good idea, especially if the reforms reduced the cost of complying with the tax code. If a significant percentage of the money businesses pay for regulatory compliance could go to the treasury instead, we could have deficit reduction without negatively affecting GDP. But I just don’t see anything like that getting done no matter which party is in power. It would be far too subtle for cable news to argue about.
One of the most logical, most rational comments ever posted here with regards to politics. Im so used to liberals and big government republicans just hurling insults.
Thanks, Michael. I thought it would be too simple, but hope springs eternal. It ought to be done anyway, but I bet that wouldn’t fly either.
I take Michael’s observations as a mixture of truths & falsehoods. I respect his earnestness. Yet I still concur with Adam’s takedown. On the economic side (deficits), MMcC suffers from a tremendous weight of religious cult beliefs & misconceptions. Which in turn are the direct product of decades of indoctrination into, for the most part, outright lies. There are valid nuggets in there, but they’re mooted by political impossibility. Between those 2 traps, there’s nothing left to take seriously.
Trump’s tax cuts are at least around the same as BBB. They are calculated to cost the Treasury $2.3 trillion over 10 years, while this is projected at $1.8 trillion over 10 years or so (hard to know how long with the budget gimmicks.)
However, since some of the 10 years have already passed, Trump’s tax cuts have less than that left. However, I believe the corporate tax cuts are permanent, while the tax cuts that went to the middle class was only for 10 years, so raising the corporate tax rate back up is viable.
I personally don’t think that is a good idea. As is often said, corporations don’t really pay taxes. It is not true that corporations only respond to higher taxes by raising prices, and it can be true that corporations will just make less profit, but I think in the long run corporations will either raise prices or cut dividends.
My opinion, as heretic as it is, is that corporations should pay no corporate income tax (property taxes are different) but that dividends and capital gains should be taxed at the ‘normal rate.’
In this way, any corporation that reinvests in its business doesn’t pay taxes, but that any corporation that distributes its profits sees that profit taxed.
I appreciate that at least in the short term most of Trump’s corporate tax cuts went to stock buybacks in order to increase shareholder wealth. In the long run, if corporations don’t see new opportunities to invest in, then the United States has bigger problems than corporations spending the money from their tax cuts on share buybacks.
1.In regards to using the slogan ‘just reverse the Trump tax cuts.’ I believe that was actually argued initially but that Senator Sinema said she was not willing to support any tax increases.
2.In regards to small business investment with top rate marginal tax increases, this is the sort of stuff I read anecdotally. Here in British Columbia, a left leaning guy by the name of Bill Barlee was elected to the provincial legislature in the late 1980s. Prior to that, he had been a businessman (he had a partnership in a mining company and published a magazine) and a local historian of the B.C Interior. He hosted a folksy T.V show that had a relatively large viewership called “Gold Trails and Ghost Towns” (the episodes are on Youtube.)
One of his anecdotes was about the owner of a general store, who would keep a daily running tally of his net earnings and would shut the store down the day he reached the highest tax bracket and then reopen it on January 1st. So, I don’t dispute that these things do happen.
However, I think in the long run for small businesses that are looking to expand they’re going to be guided by the notion (which I used to hear frequently) of ‘you grow or you die.’ Meaning, if you let your competitors get bigger than you and get more of the customers, you eventually will go out of business.
Of course, any person who owns a business could presently avoid any higher personal tax rate on that business by incorporating. Only if dividend taxes are also raised to the ‘normal rate’ would the small business owner be in the same situation with or without incorporating.
You’ve got to admit, Steverino has successfully shifted the discussion away from how Manchin is a Democrat in name only, and on to what a jerk Steverino is. That is one of the functions of trolls; it’s why they get paid by Putin.
Anyway, Manchin and Sinema don’t seem to care about anything but themselves. Is there anything to be done until the 2022 elections? Steverino, please do not answer.
I’ve been quoting Curtis Mayfield’s song “People Get Ready” about Joe Manchin since about 2013 when I first saw him using dishonest Republican talking points on some stupid Sunday Morning interview program, that Manchin “would hurt all mankind just to save his own.”
I highly recommend both the Mayfield original and the Jeff Beck/Rod Stewart cover, Beck’s guitar playing is amazing and Steward actually sounds interested for a rare occasion.
Well, after democracy falls to fascism in America in the next two to four years, and we are consumed in civil war and pandemics for the 10+ years after that, maybe, just maybe, a true democracy with rise from the ashes. I’ll be dead, but maybe future generations will learn from our folly.
Fascism? 😂😂😂 Go watch Bidens speech on 90s crime reform and come back to reality. When you bring up fascism, you lose the argument. American conservatives are anti-government. Not pro. Just because Trump is mean on twitter doesn’t make him a fascist. It makes you a sissy.
You’re the king of silly comments…all hail the king.
Say what you want about this fucking idiot – Steverino’s stupidity is elite-level and very consistent.
I am certainly consistent Doc. Why don’t you explain, with your 8 liberal arts degrees, how US conservatives are fascist. Because we enforce the law? We defend our borders? We bully other nations to ensure Americans eat first? We use all leverage at our disposal? We are mean to illegal aliens? We don’t like people on welfare who expect us to pay for their responsibilities? We don’t like people who break windows and steal things that don’t belong to them?
You can make any logical accusation you’d like. I’ll own any of my statements above. But “fascist” is an accusation that shows you really don’t understand the people you live with.
Please continue to prove my point for me, you impotent MAGA fuckwit. Keep burping up all that Fox News vomit and trying to fool anyone into believing you’re fucking worth something. Your identity as a mediocre troll on a nudey website is probably the most valuable thing you have.
It just might be the concerted attempt to reverse engineer a clean election among other things that makes folks correctly think Trump has some fascist in him, not his being an asshole on Twitter. And why do I always get the feeling that rough tough Steverino might actually have one of the most kickable asses in existence?
You are referencing the January 6th DC block party? If you think those people are the enemy, you’re in a lot of trouble.
And you’ll never get to test my ass kickability since you’d never get into a room with me.
Since I try to avoid flaming assholes where possible you’re probably correct there.
😎