02-03-2021, 04:47 PM
$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.