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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow the Democrats Can Pass the Entire Reconciliation Bill
The American Prospect
How the Democrats Can Pass the Entire Reconciliation Bill
It just requires enacting it for four years.
by Harold Meyerson
September 28, 2021
This week, Democrats face some excruciating choices. They have to find a consensus across almost their entire caucus to pass the most comprehensive and long-overdue provision of socially and economically necessary public programs since the New Deal. Senators like Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have balked at the topline spending number of $3.5 trillion, though progressives have called this the bare minimum needed for their constituents on health care, climate, education, child poverty, affordable housing, and a host of other priorities that have been delayed for far too long.
Its a choice that my colleague David Dayen has labeled a Sophies Choice: In order to reduce a $3.5 trillion package to, say, $2 trillion (or whatever the negotiations between the party and its center-right outliers yield), should Democrats preserve every program at a half-funded level, or fully fund some programs while dumping the others? The former option leaves open the possibility that they could more adequately fund all those programs, once established, in future Congresses, though the public benefits of those half-fundees may be so scattershot that they dont gain much public support. The latter option will produce some programs that do indeed satisfy public needs, while putting the rest on indefinite, perhaps decades-long, hold.
But at least in theory, theres a third option: Fully funding every program in the $3.5 trillion packagenot for the next decade, as the package proposes, but just for the next four years, at a considerable reduction in price.
The advantages that accrue to this course are social, economic, and, most pointedly, political. It would make the 2024 election a referendum on whether the public wishes to continue those programs by further funding them, or prefers to end them. Democrats would run on preserving the programs and re-upping their funding. That would compel Republicans to run against what should be widely popular policies, whether or not they nominate Donald Trump for president (but especially if they did, as Trump, even more than his GOP underlings, opposes everything Joe Biden supports).
The point here is that, once the public receives steady and reliable services to meet their individual needsaffordable child care, universal pre-K, Medicare coverage of vision and hearing and dental care, paid sick leave, child tax credits, tuition-free community college, significant climate mitigationit wont want to have them terminated.
more...
https://prospect.org/infrastructure/building-back-america/how-democrats-can-pass-entire-reconciliation-bill/
OnDoutside
(19,953 posts)How about sticking to what they agreed.
babylonsister
(171,056 posts)GOPers complain about the high price tag. This would remove that from the equation.
WHITT
(2,868 posts)Their opposition has nothing to do with the size, as it's paid for. They oppose raising taxes on the Rich & Corporate. They're protecting millionaires and billionaires. Of course, they also oppose allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
Therefore, limiting the legislation to four years instead of ten won't stem the opposition.
OnDoutside
(19,953 posts)Wouldn't blame them for bringing it all down.
scipan
(2,341 posts)Im very much a progressive.
calimary
(81,220 posts)Hello! We compromised with you AGAIN, people. Just look at the NUMBERS.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)provide a motivation for voters to renew Dem majorities and White House, to protect their newfound prosperity.
wryter2000
(46,037 posts)Jayapal says it works for her
Budi
(15,325 posts)wryter2000
(46,037 posts)I heard her say directly that if the progressives get all the good programs there will be pressure to continue them. The way things are going, they get nothing.
Budi
(15,325 posts)Deal is off or will they build on from what is passed?
I wish we could have all the good programs Biden thoughtfully put in his original plan too, but conditions as they are, the path to get there may have to be re-routed since someone sabatoged the bridge to the quickest destination.
calimary
(81,220 posts)You cant win over voters if you have NOTHING to show for it.
brush
(53,764 posts)Last edited Tue Sep 28, 2021, 10:25 AM - Edit history (1)
IMO we will do well in '22 and '24 if we get both infrastructure bills passed.
babylonsister
(171,056 posts)wryter2000
(46,037 posts)With Republicans threatening people's SS checks, and with all the stimulus and benefits, it should be easy to run as a Democrat.
Bettie
(16,089 posts)it is WAY harder to take benefits away from people once they have them.
Haggard Celine
(16,844 posts)It would tie the Democrats to policies that help people instead of letting the GOP scare people with bullshit that they claim the Democrats support. Give people an incentive to go to the polls in 2024. I think that's a good compromise and good strategy for moving forward.
berni_mccoy
(23,018 posts)Manchin changed his tune from too much $ to its too socialistic. It isnt going to happen.
paleotn
(17,911 posts)I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Oval Office.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)and end up as a fly splat on the wall.
Budi
(15,325 posts)$5.99Free Shipping
I didn't know that!
Rebl2
(13,492 posts)with you. Manchin wont go for it.
KPN
(15,642 posts)deficit to "we won't vote for anything that destroys our economy or makes us socialist" basically.
Biden, Schumer and Pelosi need to find a club they can use against Manchin -- and then use it.
jimfields33
(15,769 posts)Id break up each part of the bill into six or so bills. Same result.
Celerity
(43,317 posts)jimfields33
(15,769 posts)Everything is difficult. Im glad Im not in congress.
Celerity
(43,317 posts)https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/filibuster-hurts-only-senate-democrats-mitch-mcconnell-knows-n1255787
snip
Cutting off debate in the Senate so legislation can be voted on is done through a procedure called "cloture," which requires three-fifths of the Senate or 60 votes to pass. I went through the Senate's cloture votes for the last dozen years from the 109th Congress until now, tracking how many of them failed because they didn't hit 60 votes. It's not a perfect method of tracking filibusters, but it's as close as we can get. It's clear that Republicans have been much more willing and able to tangle up the Senate's proceedings than Democrats. More important, the filibuster was almost no impediment to Republican goals in the Senate during the Trump administration. Until 2007, the number of cloture votes taken every year was relatively low, as the Senate's use of unanimous consent agreements skipped the need to round up supporters. While a lot of the cloture motions did fail, it was still rare to jump that hurdle at all and even then, a lot of the motions were still agreed to through unanimous consent. That changed when Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and McConnell first became minority leader. The number of cloture motions filed doubled compared to the previous year, from 68 to 139.
Things only got more dire as the Obama administration kicked off in 2009, with Democrats in control of the House, the Senate and the White House. Of the 91 cloture votes taken during the first two years of President Barack Obama's first term, 28 or 30 percent failed. All but three failed despite having majority support. The next Congress was much worse after the GOP took control of the House: McConnell's minority blocked 43 percent of all cloture votes taken from passing. Things were looking to be on the same course at the start of Obama's second term. By November 2013, 27 percent of cloture votes had failed even though they had majority support. After months of simmering outrage over blocked nominees grew, Senate Democrats triggered the so-called nuclear option, dropping the number of votes needed for cloture to a majority for most presidential nominees, including Cabinet positions and judgeships. The next year, Republicans took over the Senate with Obama still in office. By pure numbers, the use of the filibuster rules skyrocketed under the Democratic minority: 63 of 123 cloture votes failed, or 51 percent. But there's a catch: Nothing that was being voted on was covered by the new filibuster rules. McConnell had almost entirely stopped bringing Obama's judicial nominees to the floor, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
McConnell defended the filibuster on the Senate floor last week, reminding his counterparts of their dependence on it during President Donald Trump's term. "Democrats used it constantly, as they had every right to," he said. "They were happy to insist on a 60-vote threshold for practically every measure or bill I took up." Except, if anything, use of the filibuster plummeted those four years. There are two main reasons: First, and foremost, the amount of in-party squabbling during the Trump years prevented any sort of coordinated legislative push from materializing. Second, there wasn't actually all that much the Republicans wanted that needed to get past the filibuster in its reduced state after the 2013 rule change. McConnell's strategy of withholding federal judgeships from Obama nominees paid off in spades, letting him spend four years stuffing the courts with conservatives. And when Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was filibustered, McConnell didn't hesitate to change the rules again. Trump's more controversial nominees also sailed to confirmation without any Democratic votes. Legislatively, there were only two things Republicans really wanted: tax cuts and repeal of Obamacare. The Trump tax cuts they managed through budget reconciliation, a process that allows budget bills to pass through the Senate with just a majority vote.
Republicans tried to do the same for health care in 2017 to avoid the filibuster, failing only during the final vote, when Sen. John McCain's "no" vote denied them a majority. The repeal wouldn't have gone through even if the filibuster had already been in the grave. As a result, the number of successful filibusters plummeted: Over the last four years, an average of 7 percent of all cloture motions failed. In the last Congress, 298 cloture votes were taken, a record. Only 26 failed. Almost all of the votes that passed were on nominees to the federal bench or the executive branch. In fact, if you stripped out the nominations considered in the first two years of Trump's term, the rate of failure would be closer to 15 percent but on only 70 total votes. There just wasn't all that much for Democrats to get in the way of with the filibuster, which is why we didn't hear much complaining from Republicans. Today's Democrats aren't in the same boat. Almost all of the big-ticket items President Joe Biden wants to move forward require both houses of Congress to agree. And given McConnell's previous success in smothering Obama's agenda for political gain, his warnings about the lack of "concern and comity" that Democrats are trying to usher in ring hollow. In actuality, his warnings of "wait until you're in the minority again" shouldn't inspire concern from Democrats. So long as it applies only to legislation, the filibuster is a Republicans-only weapon. There's nothing left, it seems, for the GOP to fear from it aside from its eventual demise.
snip
Senate Filibuster Was Created By Mistake (in 1805/1806)
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2013/11/20/senate-filibuster-was-created-by-mistake/
In 2010, Brookings Senior Fellow Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress and congressional history, testified to the Senate that the filibuster was created by mistake. We have many received wisdoms about the filibuster. However, most of them are not true. The most persistent myth is that the filibuster was part of the founding fathers constitutional vision for the Senate: It is said that the upper chamber was designed to be a slow-moving, deliberative body that cherished minority rights. In this version of history, the filibuster was a critical part of the framers Senate.
However, when we dig into the history of Congress, it seems that the filibuster was created by mistake. Let me explain. The House and Senate rulebooks in 1789 were nearly identical. Both rulebooks included what is known as the previous question motion. The House kept their motion, and today it empowers a simple majority to cut off debate. The Senate no longer has that rule on its books.
What happened to the Senates rule? In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr was presiding over the Senate (freshly indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton), and he offered this advice. He said something like this. You are a great deliberative body. But a truly great Senate would have a cleaner rule book. Yours is a mess. You have lots of rules that do the same thing. And he singles out the previous question motion. Now, today, we know that a simple majority in the House can use the rule to cut off debate. But in 1805, neither chamber used the rule that way. Majorities were still experimenting with it. And so when Aaron Burr said, get rid of the previous question motion, the Senate didnt think twice. When they met in 1806, they dropped the motion from the Senate rule book.
Why? Not because senators in 1806 sought to protect minority rights and extended debate. They got rid of the rule by mistake: Because Aaron Burr told them to. Once the rule was gone, senators still did not filibuster. Deletion of the rule made possible the filibuster because the Senate no longer had a rule that could have empowered a simple majority to cut off debate. It took several decades until the minority exploited the lax limits on debate, leading to the first real-live filibuster in 1837.
snip
KPN
(15,642 posts)Security, Medicare/Medcaid, and the ACA are non-starters even with their own constituency, including much of the far right. They have nothing much to lose with the filibuster as it is.
paleotn
(17,911 posts)It would look like Dems are "negotiating" and "working across the aisle" when really they're not giving up much at all. If, god forbid, the GQP wins in 2024, 2025 onward would get scrapped anyway, so why even go there. There's also the added risk of what Congress will look like in 2025 when it comes time to reup everything, but I think that's a manageable risk for a well defined gain. I'm convinced, if..and this is a big IF....whatever passes in 2021 includes the funding mechanisms. We can't defer that or we'll be accused of "running up the credit card" which in fact would be true.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)KPN
(15,642 posts)reconciliation package as "we won't vote for anything that destroys our economy and creates socialism" or similar language. They've amplified that message over the "running up the credit card" message. Doing what they do best, create hysteria to overwhelm rational thought -- better to control the minions with.
paleotn
(17,911 posts)I don't give a shit about the GQP. They can all go fuck themselves. There's only two votes I care about in reconciliation, and ostensibly, they're Democrats. I don't give a shit about GQP followers who fall for the "socialist" shit either. I wrote off that whole 30% of the electorate a long time ago. They're dead to me and they are not who this is directed towards.
Lastly, why the negativity? Realism is one thing, and I'm as much a realist as anyone. But sitting on our hands lamenting what we "can't do" only means we don't accomplish anything. Nothing ventured, absolutely NOTHING gained. Sorry, but I'll die on my feet, not crying about what's "not possible."
Scrivener7
(50,949 posts)seems plausible.)
brooklynite
(94,502 posts)rather than place my faith in a political journal.
Budi
(15,325 posts)I'll trust our most skilled & long experienced Dems, who wrote the magificent forward thinking policy for America's future to find the path that makes it a reality for generations to build upon.
scipan
(2,341 posts)But I wonder what startup costs would be.
Lets get a lot of eyeballs on this. Tweeted and retweeted others tweets linking to the same article.
Harold Meyerson is one of my favorite columnists. He has been around forever and is always worth reading.
Peacetrain
(22,875 posts)Get it established and then fight it out.. your a genius!!