“He Has Sabotaged the President’s Agenda”: Joe Manchin Left Democrats With Next To Nothing

July 24, 2022 | Author: | Posted in Uncategorized
Penis made of Oil or Coal? I'll suck it - Show me the money!

Penis made of Oil or Coal? I’ll suck it – Show me the money!

Joe Manchin will get his way — again. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Tuesday that he will accept the West Virginia conservative’s reconciliation compromise. It has a provision to lower prescription drug prices, and healthcare subsidies, and — perhaps most importantly for Schumer — the votes to pass. But it’s a crummy deal overall, especially considering what it once was. Gone are the tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, which Manchin said just a few months ago were key to beating back inflation (something he claims to care about). Gone are the environmental measures, the necessity of which has been underscored in recent days by historic heat waves and unprecedented wildfires. Gone is much of the ambition that once characterized the Democrats’ legislative agenda.

Democrats swept into Washington last year on a promise not just to hit the reset button after four years of Donald Trump, but to enact a bold platform. The signature piece of that agenda was the Build Back Better plan, the very bill that Manchin has whittled down from a transformational, $2 trillion package to “rebuild the backbone of the country” to what is now essentially a narrow piece of healthcare legislation. Democrats have little choice but to take it at this point — it’ll improve peoples’ lives, and a win is a win. “We have to be pragmatic in making progress, step by step,” as Congressman Ro Khanna told NBC News. And yet, the scaled-back bill is something of a symbol of the Democrats’ scaled-back legislative ambitions, largely due to hold-outs within their own ranks.

“He has sabotaged the president’s agenda,” progressive Senator Bernie Sanders said of Manchin on Sunday.

It’s not that the party hasn’t notched a number of policy wins. Since Joe Biden took office, they have passed COVID relief, infrastructure, and gun safety legislation; the latter was the first such bill in three decades. They have also confirmed almost 70 judges, including Ketanji Brown Jackson — the first Black woman on the high court. All of that is impressive, and none of it should be taken for granted. But much of that success has been overshadowed by setbacks — on Capitol Hill, where Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and 50 obstructionist Republicans have killed or weakened major parts of the Biden agenda; in state legislatures, which have been petri dishes for extreme conservative policy; and especially at the Supreme Court, where an unaccountable right-wing supermajority has, just in its most recent term, dismantled abortion rights, the administrative state, and the effort to regulate firearms. Democrats are taking action “step by step, as Khanna put it. But it feels as though the Trumpian right is moving its own agenda forward in massive leaps.

Biden is paying for that frustration in the polls, and his party may pay for it in November’s midterms — and it’s true that the Democrats own some of the blame for their own struggles. But perhaps the bigger problem with their legislative agenda is the decay of the legislative process itself, which at this point seems designed to ensure as little as possible makes it through the partisan gridlock. Much of the GOP is plainly uninterested in the actual business of legislating; they’ve outsourced that task to the Supreme Court. Jim Jordan, one of the top Republicans in the House, all but admitted as much Tuesday as he condemned a Democrat-led effort to codify same-sex marriage rights into federal law.

Twitter content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Democrats, meanwhile, have essentially had to rely on agencies and executive action to do much of the work of governance. But in this game of rock-paper-scissors, the conservative court seems to have the advantage, as evidenced in decisions handcuffing the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory authority and preventing the Biden administration from enacting its COVID vaccination and testing requirements.

The president and his party are not powerless, of course. Biden is expected to announce executive action to combat climate change, and is considering declaring a climate emergency, which could broaden his power to unilaterally address the issue. “If the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry,” Biden said in a statement last week, “I will take strong executive action to meet this moment.” Democrats, meanwhile, would have a better opportunity to take up bolder legislation on the climate, reproductive rights, and other issues if they can expand their majority enough to take away Manchin’s leverage. “We’re going to have to get two more Democrats, real Democrats [in the Senate], who will actually help us to implement the president’s agenda, not obstruct it,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal told reporters this week. But that’s a tall task — and unless and until it comes to pass, the soaring ambition Biden and the majority of his party ran on will be weighed down by the far narrower vision of Manchin.

Source

 

Author:

This author has published 54 articles so far. More info about the author is coming soon.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Exit mobile version