The Democrats' Impossible Choice
And an invitation for today's Truth and Consequences Zoom Cast at 12:30 PM
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
First things first, I’ll be hosting a Zoom Cast today at 12:30 to discuss the latest doings in American politics. I have a new MSNBC column coming out this weekend on Joe Biden’s declining poll numbers and why the White House has to shoulder some of the responsibility. So I’ll talk a bit about that, as well as my piece from earlier in the week on the best election strategy for Democrats. What makes these Zoom casts most interesting is your input, so please bring up any questions or issues you’d like me to address in the comment section below. The live Zoom Cast is always available to all subscribers, but only paid subscribers will receive the recorded audio. The link is here.
The Democrat’s Terrible Choice
Greg Sargent has a really important piece this morning that deserves further amplification — and gets to something about the current debate in Congress on the Democrat’s budget package that is simply crazy-making.
A big and morally fraught conflict is shaping up between two major priorities: First, expanding Medicare benefits to include dental, vision and hearing treatment, and second, extending Medicaid coverage to people in 12 Republican states still refusing the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of the program.
… This is presenting brutal choices that could impact tens of millions of Americans. And this is largely a creation of two senators: Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who have demanded a dramatic reduction in the bill’s cost that seems rooted in arbitrary ideological opposition to government spending entirely divorced from the trade-offs this will require.
Manchin and Sinema have insisted that the Democrat’s budget reconciliation package be capped around $1.5 trillion rather than the more extravagant $3.5 trillion figure that the White House and progressive Democrats want. However, the larger number is tied to a specific set of policy proposals — expanded pre-k, paid family and medical leave, a child tax credit, subsidized child care, climate change mitigation, etc. — and is paid for with higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans. There is a specific and verifiable logic to what the White House and Democrats are offering.
Sinema and Manchin’s numbers are pulled out of thin air, completely disconnected from any larger policy objectives. Neither Manchin nor Sinema has clarified what parts of the Build Back Better plan they support, which they prioritize, and which they think should be jettisoned. After weeks of Manchin saying that he was more focused on specific policy needs to be addressed in the bill rather than a topline number … he’s now reduced the debate over the budget bill to a topline number.
The result is that Democrats are now scrambling to decide which group of Americans gets helped and which does not in order to adhere to Manchin and Sinema’s arbitrary fiscal target.
It’s important to remember that $3.5 trillion vs. $1.5 trillion is not simply a debate over math — as Sargent points out, it’s a debate about whether 62 million seniors on Medicare get access to dental, vision, and hearing benefits or 2.2. million Americans receive access to basic health care via Medicaid. It’s a debate about whether young mothers can go back to work because the government provides subsidized child care and universal pre-k or whether they have to stay out of the workforce because they can’t afford to pay someone to look after their children. It’s a debate about whether America forestalls the worst effects of climate change today or whether it pays for that decision later. There are actual Americans behind these numbers, and for reasons that have nothing to go with policy but everything to do with the political machinations of two senators, millions are likely to suffer.
If Manchin and Sinema wanted to argue that the budget package needs to be smaller because $3.5 trillion in spending is fiscally unsustainable, that’s fine. It’s a lousy argument and not really true since higher taxes are subsidizing the bill’s expenditures, but for the moment, let’s give both senators the benefit of the doubt that their views on government spending are sincere. It would, nonetheless, be helpful if both would explain why limiting an increase in fiscal policy is worth depriving millions of Americans of the health care benefits that could save their lives. Likewise, it would be nice to get an explanation as to why millions of children should be prevented from attending pre-kindergarten because $1.5 trillion is more politically palatable than $3.5 trillion. Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll get good answers to either question because they don’t exist.
As I noted above, the president’s budget package is paid for with higher taxes. It’s designed to address specific policy priorities that Democrats, including Manchin and Sinema, have focused on for years. And it addresses issues that Republicans are happy to simply ignore. Without Democrats taking the initiative, these policy matters, which impact the lives of millions of people, will not be tackled. Because of Manchin and Sinema that will continue.
Of course, $1.5 trillion in new spending is nothing to sneeze at. It’s more than likely that something will happen, and trillions in new spending will be appropriated that benefits the American people. But it’s an unforgivable tragedy that Democrats are must decide which group of Americans get a hand up and which group gets nothing.
Oof
There are likely worse ways to lose the deciding game of a playoff series against a hated rival than a blown check swing call with the winning run at home plate, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of one.