After weeks of negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the floor on Sunday night by gleefully quipping: “I call up the Sinema-Portman substitute amendment!”
“McConnell, in a move that’s hard to interpret as anything other than trolling…”
That’s all that Menshevik Mitch has left to offer.
I really don’t care what happens with this bill, so long as the reconciliation bill happens. Frankly, I think it was dumb giving R’s a ‘win’ on this, but whatever. If that’s the price of doing business with Manchin and Sinema, so be it. But if they tank reconciliation, this better die in the House.
The Chinese and the Russians are doubtless watching how this turns out. Ungovernability works in their favor.
Paying people not to fire people when they’re complaining they can’t hire people.
“The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anticommunism.” Adlai Stevenson
— David (@ahzoov) August 2, 2021
This isn’t a win for Republicans…they anger their base, and Trump, by working with Democrats. If they didn’t do this, they would anger a bigger number of people, so it’s just political maneuvering…which they may undo by blocking the debt ceiling raise.
This is a win for Biden and Democrats, they have shown the leadership it making this happen and will get most of the credit for it (since a majority of Republicans will vote against it.). The reconciliation bill will make a bigger impact on people’s lives, and both will help Democrats in 2022 and 2024.
More like Trotsky. And we know what happened to him.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the floor …
Oh, that’s what the Senate does!
I thought they just sat around talking about how to murder Democrats.
I suggest that Democrats insert this sort of language into reconciliation: automatically raise the debt ceiling unless Congress votes to not do it… just like their salaries.
Conversely, they could insert language to automatically raise the debt ceiling unless a Republican is President.
The debt ceiling is a leftover from WWI. It was a way of tracking the amount owed on the Liberty Loans that financed the war effort.
It is just an acknowledgement that the US will pay the debts it already owes.
It has nothing at all to do with borrowing or future debt.
Congressional salaries only increase if the formula for increasing Social Security increase.
Congress has voted to refuse all but one of the last nine salary increases.
All he has is stunts like this.
Again, symbolism rules in our public discourse, which disguises and makes drivel sound like governance:
Although McConnell is behaving like a seventh grader, he is dressed in a business suit and talks Senate-ese (which is a Second Language, like E.S.L.). For too many people, this makes the Huckleberry Hound logic of fucking with the debt ceiling sound like grown up talk.
I would rather make McConnell dressed to reflect what he wants for America.
Peaked Caps, Jackboots and Field Jackets…or
Like a Middle-Schooler
Oh, for real-time streaming of Dotard screaming.
OT?
The bill, at $550 Billion, resembles and elephant giving birth to a mouse. But, I guess if it gives all the Kool Kids in the Senate a chance to strut around telling each other how great they all are, maybe this bill and the Reconciliation Bill will work to the nation’s advantage. Let’s hope the Kool Kids remain so full of themselves that they will pass the damn Reconciliation package and then strut home.
Which has really started to fuck with career government employees, who, by law, are not allowed to have salaries which are greater than congresscritters.
Law of unintended consequences and all that.
Logic left the GOP and TrumpWorld long ago…but this is good to know.
Some historical context:
This is probably in current rather than constant dollars so it’s somewhat misleading. Regardless, debt took off in the Reagan/Bush the Elder years, leveled off under Clinton, then really blossomed under Bush the Lesser and the structural defects of GOP fiscal policies.
Not really. The highest level of government pay is well below Congressional salaries.
Starting salary for a GS-15 employee is $109,366.00 per year at Step 1, with a maximum possible base pay of $142,180.00 per year at Step 10. The hourly base pay of a Step 1 GS-15 employee is $52.40 per hour.
You have to adjust for locality, then consider who’s located there.
D.C. area, for example, with all the different headquarters, heavily steeped towards high folks like the GS-15s. Now they max out at Step 7 in pay. Leads to more and more people considering jumps to the private sector for a follow-on career at earlier and earlier ages.
