Chuck Todd lead off today's "Meet The Press" with the famous Ronald Reagan quote in his 1981 inauguration speech, in which he said that government is not the solutions to your problems. Government is the problem.
Never understood that. If you don't believe in government then why be in government other than to make it ineffective or bring it down? Basically what President Reagan was referring to was that the government taxed it citizens too much and by lowering taxes, less government services and a more pay-your-own-way living.
Forty years later and the result is the great income disparity that we're seeing today. As families expenses go up and wages remain behind the basic standard of living something like having two jobs becomes the norm to make ends meet. What the pandemic has exposed is the staggering number of Americans who live check to check and the loss of just one can throw a family into turmoil, never mind a year of lost income.
So it isn't surprising that 55 percent of Americans want government to do more because too many families are having to choose between food and healthcare or adequate housing and expenses - untenable at this point.
As for the Biden Administration proposing $6 trillion in spending, which would recalibrate the U.S. economy, a younger Joe Biden may have been more conservative in his proposals but with what he's seen with experience, the pandemic, the widening inequality of income he going big because this is the best chance to push these reforms through and he knows he has to utilize all his experience for this last opportunity to do so.
And if you're in favor of government doing for the average American in the form of services and infrastructure, really the only person as president that would be able to get that done at this time is Joe Biden.
In his interview with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mr. Todd posed the notion that Mr. Sanders may have lost the battle for the presidency but won the war of ideas within the Democratic Party. Without question, many of his policy ideas be them amended to appeal to moderates have become more popular. For example, Senator Sanders proposed free four-year college, but the Biden Administration is pushing for two years of community college. So how much influence has he had, a lot but made palatable by Joe Biden - probably why the get on so well. What's clearer is that Senator Sanders was not the right messenger for these policies because practicality was not on the Senator's side. In the form he proposes, they wouldn't pass amongst Democrats, forget Republicans.
In the dueling interviews with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) respectively, one can not help but feel like a juror in a civil case when it comes to these plans and how to pay for them or to choose not paying for them at all. We're judging the credibility of both witnesses, e.g. their expertise.
In terms of credibility on monetary policy, let's face it Senator Portman has none in the face of someone who chaired the Federal Reserve and is now the Treasury Secretary so we're more apt to listen to Secretary Yellen who outlined a number of different ways in which these spending proposals can be paid for.
However, as we all know, and Mr. Portman confirmed this, is that Republicans are a big no on anything that put these two words together - raise and taxes. And because everyone knows this, there are two choices: either the Democrats go it alone and pass these bills through reconciliation without Republicans or they scale it back and not pay for it, using deficit spending which even some Democrats support.
There was a quick clip of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) saying that if he heard Democrats described as moderate one more time, he was going to throw up. Fair enough... (We'd buy a ticket to that.) By the same token, hearing that Republicans are fiscally responsible is an ipecac causing projectiles.
One aspect of note outlined by Secretary Yellen on how to pay for it is to better enforce the existing tax code, cracking down on tax cheats which totals $7 trillion over ten years. The I.R.S. has been cut to the point where there is virtually no enforcement. In other words, there's collection, only receiving. The last significant cut to the I.R.S's budget decimating the agency came during the... wait for it... Trump Administration.
NBC's Kasie Hunt seemed optimistic that there may be some of these proposals passed in a more piecemeal approach, but the counter proposal has to be serious. Senator Portman said he was skeptical of a bipartisan bill because the Democrats decided to go it alone on the Covid package. But he didn't tell you why and that was because their counter laughably fell short of what was needed.
Perhaps the police reform legislation being negotiated could be the start of some bipartisan progress, but the problem remains with Republicans and until they scrape off the sludge of Trumpism and stop legislating according to alternate reality of grievance, it's going to be really difficult to obtain any progress. As mother's always say to their kids, "We'll see."
And poor Lanhee Chen who once advised Senator Mitt Romney said that Republicans should be talking about fiscal responsibility but he's speaking to or about a Republican party that simply doesn't exist anymore. They've ceded legislative credibility with their signature legislative achievement over the last four years was passing a tax cut, ultimately through reconciliation. And as PBS's Yamiche Alcindor noted, they're not going to go back on that.
So can we pay for it? Yes, we could but we choose not to.
No comments:
Post a Comment