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Scuba

(53,475 posts)
Wed Mar 26, 2014, 10:00 AM Mar 2014

Democrats, as Part of Midterm Strategy, to Schedule Votes on Pocketbook Issues

Sounds like Schumer is afraid to run on the ACA's benefits, and there are no groundbreakers here, but at least our Party is doing something that might help us win.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/us/politics/democrats-as-part-of-midterm-strategy-to-schedule-votes-on-pocketbook-issues.html

WASHINGTON — The White House and congressional Democrats are preparing to step up attacks on Republicans over pocketbook issues like the minimum wage in the most aggressive and coordinated move yet to try to reverse the Republican momentum that threatens their control of the Senate in the final two years of the Obama presidency.

The effort is set to begin within the next two weeks in the Senate when Democrats will call a vote on their proposal to increase the minimum wage to $10.10, and it will continue through spring and summer with additional legislation to eliminate the pay gap between men and women, lower interest rates on college loans and close tax loopholes that benefit corporations with business overseas.

The votes will be timed to coincide with campaign-style trips by President Obama, with the first planned around the time of the minimum-wage vote. The proposals have little chance of passing. But Democrats concede that making new laws is not really the point. Rather, they are trying to force Republicans to vote against them.

...

“These are poll-tested political messages that they want to put on the floor to get Republicans on the record voting against seniors and children and every other group you can think of,” said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the head of the Republicans’ policy arm. “It’s noise.” Where Democrats hope voters will see a Republican Party that favors the privileged at the expense of the middle class, Republicans want voters instead to see a Democratic Party that has put the country’s prosperity at risk through government overreach and bad policy.



Putting aside Schumer's
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