Biden Agenda Faces test as relief bill heads to Senate

 By Steve Otto

While reading my Sunday newspaper (The Wichita Eagle)[1] I came across this article: " Biden Agenda Faces test as relief bill heads to Senate." Here is what the article said:

"President Biden’s agenda is facing its most consequential test as Democrats prepare to maneuver his $1.9 trillion stimulus package through the evenly divided Senate, an effort that could strain the fragile alliance between progressives and centrists and the limits of his power in Congress.

An early-morning House vote to pass the sweeping pandemic aid measure only underscored the depth of partisan division over the proposal, which was opposed by every Republican."

A part of this $1.9 trillion stimulus package is about a plan to distribute expanded tax benefits aimed at helping impoverished families. There is also a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025.

Now I  realize that a lot of Republicans are business people and $millionaires and $billionaires. They like the money they have and the money they make. They make more when the rest of us make less. But a lot of working class people have voted to put these Republicans in office. Not all working class voters make more than $15 an hour. Many of  these working class Republicans are unemployed and need stimulus money. So how do these Republicans get into office and how do they stay there.

Let's just look at SOME of the arguments against this stimulus bill. This is from the Cato Institute:

1. The Federal Government Is Broke. The federal government faces a $1 trillion deficit this year and massive red ink down the road from Social Security and Medicare. Rather than increasing subsidies, policymakers should cut the roughly 800 current aid programs for the states. Most of these programs are inefficient and hugely bureaucratic.1 Federal spending on state activities is a failed experiment of the 1960s that should be cut, not expanded.

2. Spending Is the Problem. Rapid spending growth has pushed many state budgets into deficit, repeating the error committed before the last recession in 2001. Figure 1 shows that total state and local spending rose 7.6 percent in 2007 and 7.0 percent in 2008, based on data through the third quarter.2 State policymakers should be cutting their budgets, not asking for federal help to spend more.

Then there is this from Bloomberg:

The issue is whether spending about $600 billion on a one-time tax credit that would be worth $8,000 to a family of four and reach more than 85 percent of taxpayers makes good economic sense. There is the possibility of some overheating, particularly if the economy’s potential supply remains constrained by Covid protection measures. I am all for a far more expansive approach to fiscal policy. But that does not mean indiscriminate support for universal giveaways.

Of course there may be other reasons some of these working class folks voted for these Republican leaders. But there is all of this concern over the money our government actually has vs. the money it can afford to give to people whose lives' may depend on it. The government is probably not going to fall anytime soon. But some working people may lose their homes, families and everything they have.

Of course there is always that common saying: "I have what I want and need. If you don't well....screw you!" And that appears to be a common sentiment among conservatives. There is that common catch phrase "free stuff." They criticize Democrats who want to give things to people and at times, supposedly, some of these people have done nothing to earn that "free stuff."

What fascinates me the most are those poor working class conservatives who almost seem to hate themselves. Why they have such self loathing I don't know. I met one of these people one  time and she almost seem to feel that she (yes it was a woman) and others like her, who have not done well under the system, deserve to be punished. Maybe she felt it was her fault that she has not done well under the system. She seemed to feel the old adage: If I can't make it here, it is my own fault. Again I am reminded of my own quotes: "Liberation is for the masses—not the dumb asses!" And it reminds me of "I hate victims who respect their executioners." - Jean-Paul Sartre.

So  those of us on the left—any left; liberal, Marxist, democratic socialist, all have that one thing in common—we don't hate ourselves.

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[1] Emily Cochrane and Jim Tankersley, "Biden Agenda Faces test as relief bill heads to Senate," The Wichita Eagle, February 28, 2021, Vo. 149 No. 59, p. 3A.

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