Senate Dems vote to do COVID relief via reconciliation. No Repubs on board.

[Bill in NC]

Steve G. wrote:
They had their chance. Now the GOP can explain why they voted against your $1400 check.

Needs to be $2000, including adult dependents.

Every month for the next year.

[deckeda]

Bill in NC wrote:
[quote=Steve G.]
They had their chance. Now the GOP can explain why they voted against your $1400 check.

Needs to be $2000, including adult dependents.

Every month for the next year.
Seriously. This is a simple tickmark done by Treasury, not something that’s going to takedown the economy from debt.

What takes down the economy isn’t lockdowns, it’s the effing VIRUS.

Give Republicans a choice between Covid and sustainability. Keep people home. PAY them to stay home so that vaccinations have a fighting chance. Anything else is just more of a circlejerk, little different than 1917-1918.

[rjmacs]

sekker wrote:
Biden is playing hard ball.

Needed the vote BEFORE the Impeachment.

Agreed - he isn't going to fail to deliver on his first and biggest promise. Will he have to compromise? Yes. The $15 min wage will be reduced, and the threshold for $1400 checks will be lowered (prob by about 15%), but states and local governments, the unemployed, and schools will be covered. It's so far past time. Will he try to include changes to the tax code this year? Let's see.....

[Ca Bob]

$tevie wrote:
I love Mitch on TV whining that the bill was totally partisan and the Democrats were not playing fair. Does he think nobody can remember the last four years? I'm so tired of the BS the GOP slings around.

Exactly. It's important that the Democrats remember this every day they come to work.

I think the point that Biden was making was that he would give the Republicans a chance to talk to him and he would listen. That's as far as it goes. The more serious negotiation is with Joe Manchin, but let's hope that he understands that this is a historic opportunity and quite possibly one that won't last too long. If he wants to quibble over the size of the minimum wage increase, and take it to $11, but support the rest of the two trillion dollar legislation, that is OK at the moment. If the Democrats pick up seats in both houses in 2022 (admittedly a bit of a long shot, but consider

The Democrats will go into the 2022 election cycle with the economy stimulated to the point that we are not in a serious recession, and with the pandemic largely knocked down via mass vaccination. There is a year's time to get this done and the momentary glitches in getting vaccine out to pharmacies et al will long since be surmounted.

It's critically important to make use of this opportunity to bolster the Affordable Care Act and, to the extent possible, create some sort of Medicare for Everybody Who Wants It. The only real question is how much people have to pay, and whether it would be a way to wean the country off of employer-mediated health insurance.

[Ca Bob]

$tevie wrote:
I love Mitch on TV whining that the bill was totally partisan and the Democrats were not playing fair. Does he think nobody can remember the last four years? I'm so tired of the BS the GOP slings around.

Exactly. It's important that the Democrats remember this every day they come to work.

I think the point that Biden was making was that he would give the Republicans a chance to talk to him and he would listen. That's as far as it goes. The more serious negotiation is with Joe Manchin, but let's hope that he understands that this is a historic opportunity and quite possibly one that won't last too long. If he wants to quibble over the size of the minimum wage increase, and take it to $11, but support the rest of the two trillion dollar legislation, that is OK at the moment. If the Democrats pick up seats in both houses in 2022 -- admittedly a bit of a long shot, but consider

The Democrats will go into the 2022 election cycle with the economy stimulated to the point that we are not in a serious recession, and with the pandemic largely knocked down via mass vaccination. There is a year's time to get this done and the momentary glitches in getting vaccine out to pharmacies et al will long since be surmounted.

It's critically important to make use of this opportunity to bolster the Affordable Care Act and, to the extent possible, create some sort of Medicare for Everybody Who Wants It. The only real question is how much people have to pay, and whether it would be a way to wean the country off of employer-mediated health insurance.

[Ted King]

Ca Bob wrote:
The more serious negotiation is with Joe Manchin, but let's hope that he understands that this is a historic opportunity and quite possibly one that won't last too long.

Hopefully this will help:

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch...-19-relief

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, on Monday argued that fiscal concerns should be set aside as the nation struggles to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, putting pressure on centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to support a large COVID-19 relief bill.

“We need to understand that trying to be, per se, fiscally responsible at this point in time, with what we’ve got going on in this country — if we actually throw away some money right now, so what?” Justice told CNN in an interview.

“We have really got to move and get people taken care of,” he said.

Justice doubled down on his statement in a follow-up interview with MSNBC in which he urged Congress to “go big.”

[Speedy]

Once the Democrats clean up the mess left by the Republicans, voters will put Republicans back in charge. Always have, always will.