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To no-one’s surprise at all, Democrats renege on all promises

Published by marco on

The clown-car, fake-empathy horror-show continues in Washington, as every promise made by the Democrats to the people that elected them to all of their offices are broken. This time, apparently, the Republicans don’t even have to do anything special to torpedo everything—two Democratic senators are torpedoing everything for them. And so it goes.

The article After Paid Leave Plan Gets Chopped, Biden Promises Revamped Spending Proposal by Eric Boehm (Reason) details how the Democrats are axing an expensive part of their plan to pull their social safety net somewhere up within the same time zone as most other OECD countries.

“Democrats appear likely to abandon plans to include an expensive new federal entitlement program—paid family leave—as they try to trim the overall cost of President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan proposal.

“Biden’s plan called for a federal paid leave program that would replace up to 85 percent of a worker’s pay (with that percentage falling for higher-paid workers) for up to 12 weeks per year. Workers could access the paid leave program if they were having a baby, taking care of an elderly or sick relative, or recovering from a serious illness of their own.”

They won’t be able to do it, so American workers continue without protection and without any alternative to just working all the damned time, no matter what life throws at them in an increasingly unstable society. Or, Paid Leave Struck Down By People Who Do Combined 4 Hours Of Work Annually (The Onion).

The article Biden Dumps Free Community College From Spending Bill by Scott Shackford (Reason) describes how the Democrats have also given up on helping anyone pay for any school whatsoever, leaving the poor to fend for themselves in minimum-wage jobs, or take out unpayable loans, or join the military. Enjoy!

“President Joe Biden’s plans for two years of free community college appear to have been scrapped from his “Build Back Better” spending extravaganza.

“In an address to Congress back in April, Biden announced a $109 billion plan to make community college free, resurrecting a plan the Obama era that ultimately went nowhere. Biden’s plan will apparently share that fate, as it was not included in the giant-yet-nevertheless-scaled-back “framework” that the White House released this morning.”

Further, the article Biden’s incredible shrinking social “reform” bill by Patrick Martin (WSWS) notes that, even the watered-down form, is utterly inscrutable and still has only a small chance of passing.

“The legislation incorporating the “framework,” a draft budget reconciliation bill, was submitted to the House Rules Committee Thursday and runs to nearly 2,200 pages. Its provisions are complex, and the procedures for its approval are both convoluted and highly precarious. It is entirely possible that the legislative process will lead to a complete political debacle for both the Biden White House and the Democratic Party as a whole, with no significant legislation passed.”

Not only that, but the budget bill—which encompasses everything useful to the actual day-to-day American—is small, relative to other expenditures.

“By comparison, the military budget over the same period would be at least $8 trillion, and projected interest payments on the federal debt could be even higher. Every year, the Federal Reserve is pumping close to $1.5 trillion into the markets—nearly as much as the proposed legislation allocates in ten years.”

So, not only is the interest on the debt more per year, the military—even just the base figure to which they’re willing to admit—is 4x as high, the free money for Wall Street and corporate America is nearly 10x higher, but the so-called budget bill—that the media is screaming their heads off about containing socialist giveaways for the irredeemably indolent—is actually shedding its social programs while, utterly mysteriously, retaining pro-business aspects.

“In the course of these “negotiations,” measures that provide subsidies to businesses or promote the entry of more workers into the labor force have advanced, while measures that cost business money, sustain working people while they are not actively employed, or simply improve their lives, have been killed.”

See the article for a detailed listing of what’s in and what’s out. Also: no new taxes on the wealthy. No surprise there.

While it’s understandable that the Democrats are losing support for this reprehensible, spineless, and incompetent behavior, it’s just shitty human nature that somehow it’s expected that the Republicans will clean up in the 2022 elections because of it. How? Why? They’re acting like 50 other Manchins and Sinemas[1], refusing to pass anything whatsoever and letting the Democrats destroy themselves. They’re just as in bed with corporations and the military and just as against universal health care and even just making life less miserable for the 99% as the Democrats—probably more. But somehow in this calculus, they’re coming out smelling like roses. Madness.


[1] I honestly don’t care how she spells her name. You know which one I mean.