A short while ago, the House of Representatives passed the $1.9 trillion relief bill known as the American Relief Plan. It now heads to the president who will sign it into law. The relief package is going to help many people.
We project that key elements of the American Rescue Plan would reduce that annual poverty rate to 8.7 percent. The policies would reduce poverty by more than half for children and for people in households experiencing job loss. Poverty would fall about 42 percent for Black, non-Hispanic people, 39 percent for Hispanic people, and 34 percent for white, non-Hispanic people, reducing the disparities in poverty rates for Black, non-Hispanic people and Hispanic people relative to white, non-Hispanic people.
Not a single Republican in either the House nor the Senate voted for the bill. Only one Democrat, House member Jared Golden from Maine, voted against it. So this law is as partisan as they come. Good! While the minimum wage increase to $15/hour did not survive, I think that this bill will still be wildly popular because of its huge impact on a wide swathe of people, improving their lives considerably.
Some popular provisions will expire just before the 2022 mid-term elections which will make renewal a major issue in those races.
Democrats are betting they already have the key to success in the 2022 midterm elections: the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill that President Joe Biden is poised to sign into law.
…Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said selling the Covid-19 aid bill will be “a big piece of the puzzle” to hold the House majority.
“Anytime you’re delivering for the American people, you’re strengthening your position politically. So this is going to strengthen us because it’s good policy,” he said in an interview. “We should shout it from the rooftops that we are passing historic legislation that will reboot the economy and end the pandemic.”
The legislation includes a per-child cash payment of at least $3,000 for one year and an expansion of “Obamacare” subsidies for two years. The 2022 elections will directly affect the fate of those provisions: Democrats want to extend them, but Republicans may have other ideas if they seize control of Congress.
“They’re always ready to help a big corporation or a rich person, but when a working family needs help, the Republicans tell them to drop dead,” Maloney said, accusing the GOP of showing “a callous disregard for the urgency of this crisis.”
…A Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday found that 70 percent of U.S. adults favor Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid bill, including 41 percent of self-identified Republicans.
I hope Democrats hammer the Republicans on their unanimous opposition to the bill, saying that while the debate over the passage of this bill was going on, Republicans seemed to care more about the welfare of Dr. Seuss characters, the Muppets, and Mr. Potato Head than the lives of real people.
Better than nothing, but still important to understand we need a lot more than this….
(1) It’s temporary.
(2) Pulling the federal government’s big “no poverty” lever for less than half of people in poverty is obviously worse than pulling it for all of them. If this were a trolley car problem, what they did was let it run over the others for no reason whatsoever, and that’s just fucked up. Or for another analogy, I guess we’re supposed to be like those “grateful” survivors of some disaster who treat it like a miracle and thank the gods, seemingly oblivious to all of the death and destruction around them … only in this case, we’re doing it to ourselves.
(3) Making it so a person is temporarily and just barely above the official “poverty line” is not what people should be demanding with respect to a reduction in poverty and inequality. This is cheesing a buggy game mechanic, to rack up a higher score so you can show it off to all of your friends, which is different from actually playing the game well. Needless to say, the purpose in this case is not supposed to be to impress our friends, making ourselves feel good, to get critics to stop complaining about how bad we are at this game, etc.
(4) Even if we just take it for what it is and leave aside what I said above, these types of projections are generally inflated, because many people fall through the cracks one way or another. If it’s not actually the case that everyone who is in theory qualified will actually use some program (or tax credit, etc.), quite possibly through no fault of their own, then of course you don’t actually get the promised results. One can try to factor some things like that into such projections, but proponents of a measure may have a conflict of interest in doing so, when things are fueled more by optimism (or worse) than plain old honesty.
There are Republicans who voted against it that are now shamelessly touting benefits from it.
https://twitter.com/SenatorWicker/status/1369770036982915084
CR, the tax bill Trump’s administration forced through cost pretty much the same to the budget, but is distributed rather differently.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/pandemic-bill-would-cut-taxes-average-3000-most-relief-going-low-and-middle-income-households
(So, not merely better than nothing, but better than the previous administration)
This isn’t relevant to anything that I said.
I can’t say I’m surprised that a relief bill during a pandemic doesn’t resemble a generic rich-person-tax-cuts law from 2017. Did you need anyone to tell you this? Did I need to hear it? What is the point?
And what does it “cost to the budget”? I don’t care. I want them to give much less to the military-industrial complex, for example, so they can start there if they really want to find ways to decrease spending. Or they can increase taxes on the rich. Or boring old deficit spending. I just don’t give a shit. I want results and not a never-ending list of excuses.
So? The election is over. Trump lost. I have zero decisions or judgements to make which are based somehow on what the previous administration did or failed to do. It has no relevance to me. It does not set a standard which I ever used, am not using now, and will never use.
Go tell a Trump voter…. Do they have “What Would Trump Do” bracelets? *just googled it* Yep. So talk to those people. They can pray to their god for more guidance, give you a theodicy, or who the fuck knows what.
Stupid double negatives…. And the “and” should be an “or.” You know what I mean.
CR:
It shows this administration is doing better than the previous one, though if you can’t even grudgingly admit it. This is an improvement, no?
A relief bill opposed by every single Republican in the Senate.
Huh. And yet, before the election, you were indulging in whataboutism, to the effect that the Democratic Party was no better.
Here, you get results rather than excuses, but you still complain.
Your mob is on a constant election cycle; 2022 isn’t that far away.
So you’re saying that, at the time of the next election, you’ll still care not one whit about the comparative merits of the two parties, based on what they’ve done during their respective administrations.
… OK.
Yes, it is an improvement. My claim is that there is much more to do. Can you not even grudgingly admit that there’s a difference?
A strawman. Maybe not one that you constructed at the time, unless I’ve already forgotten, but others certainly did. Evidently, you listened only to them.
Yes I do. I complain because, despite such results, there is stuff remaining that warrants a complaint. This is not complicated, John.
Examples: Leaving about half of the impoverished population below the poverty line. Not making at least some of the changes permanent. The fact that being just above the poverty line (and that for just one year) is still an extremely shitty place to be. The fact that they cut out the (already inadequate) $15 minimum wage. And so forth.
It’s not like I need that comparison, given that the bill was “opposed by every single Republican in the Senate” (as you yourself said) in addition being opposed by every single Republican in the House (which you didn’t say). That happened with this administration and this Congress, not the previous one. And I’m sure it won’t be the end of the story. The Republicans have plenty more opportunities to get on everyone’s bad side.