Or do they?
Why Mitch McConnell and his party have, once again, taken the posture of block everything Democrat, no matter who gets hurt, is a question only he and they can answer.
ONCE AGAIN
As it was with Obama, the challenge of knowing whether Republicans are interested in governing or obstructing is, once again, something only they can answer. Because, once again, the signs all say obstruction of any Democrat agenda, even ones both parties have in common, is in fact the GOP agenda. If limiting the president's accomplishments is, once again the name of the game, it’s time for Democrats to place all options on the table, including the filibuster. It's also time to put pressure on their own obstructers- Senators Joe Manchin (WV), and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)- to get them to stop helping McConnell and the GOP, and start doing what’s right for U.S. by not publicly negotiating against your own party, once again.
Like they did with ObamaCare, some Democrats are blocking their own party's agenda by pursuing the bare minimum they can pass despite already failing in the bipartisanship efforts that warranted bare minimum thinking to begin with. If Republicans' insist on making Democrats go it alone, and are not putting forth the time it takes to draft a reasonable alternative, doing anything less than everything WE the People need seems silly to me.
Because I don't want to leave anyone lost over this very important subject, let me say this another way. If you are negotiating with a good faith partner, you both simply ask for what you want, and nothing more. However, if you have no faith in who you are negotiating with, you double, maybe even triple what you ask for so that, despite the give and take process of negotiating, you are still likely to arrive somewhere close to what you actually wanted originally.
Truth be told, some of you would negotiate with your own parents in that same manner, and personally, I'm not mad at you for it. But I digress.
In this situation, are Republicans actually saying they are not pushing a better alternative, so they want no credit or blame for whatever happens to their own constituents in this time of need? If Republicans are truly willing to do nothing but wait the generally accepted timeline of two years for jobs to recover to pre-pandemic levels while trusting tenants and landlords in their voting district will figure it out but not hold any of them accountable, there is no way in hell I would get in their way.
Additionally, there is also no way I would continue to think so small or in such a conciliatory manner on a "go it alone" piece of legislation. After all, 1.9 trillion is almost the exact number Republicans gave to rich people and corporations with their "go it alone" tax cut in the height of an economic boom no less. Taking the risk of this bill not being enough and having to try and do it all over again could prove to be the same political mistake Obama made with the Affordable Care Act, more affectionately known as ObamaCare. In that scenario, strategically withheld support from Republicans and the insurance industry itself kept Obama from making healthcare more affordable even if he was able to make it much more accessible to millions.
Although Obama was able to win a second term despite the foolishness of using the GOP plan exclusively without getting any GOP votes to pass it, it's worth considering if he might have done the same thing if he had a do-over? Or, maybe he would have opted to call his plan the Accessible Care Act instead of the Affordable Care Act knowing what he knows about the strategic attacks against the laws affordability and its' name?
If Obama would have thought in advance to focus the name of his healthcare plan on the only achievable goal he had an actual chance to pull off by himself, accessibility, we might still be calling it the ACA instead of ObamaCare, the name Republicans forced on us all when they were convinced they could demonize the name to help kill the law.
The accessibility of a cheaper, single-payer option (aka., Medicaid) along with the strict enforcement of payments that limits the value of certain procedures, will eventually drive down prices creating affordability over time. Relative to medical costs, this had been the case for years until recent years when the healthcare costs started to rise again. The increase in use of things such as requiring referrals before covering payments, Duo billing, double billing and even fraudulent billing all seem to me like the healthcare industry's somewhat recent responses to previous years in which we witnessed medical costs in the United States actually going down.
Like a batter that swings but misses, even if Biden doesn't intend to run for reelection, he'll be handing the embarrassment over to his VP in waiting or his party nominee if he signs a go it alone bill into law but it fails to do enough soon enough. Desperation has many U.S. citizens sounding like starving college kids, saying, 'send whatever you can, quickly', but prudence should be saying to Biden and the Democrats, do what's right the first time because doing too little, too late was already tried by Trump and it barely helped the people who needed it the most.
What only a few Senators are mentioning thus far is, under our current scenario; a one-time check of $1400 or $2000 that takes too god-damn long to arrive, will be gobbled up in late fees alone. The only segment of America that these late arriving stimulus checks could possibly benefit is the segment of America not teetering to close to the edge the late-fee abyss that every poor person knows about oh too well. For way too many struggling Americans, two or even three insufficient and delayed stimulus checks are not at all what the doctor ordered for our current health and economic crisis, which essentially are one and the same.
Without question, millions of Americans have increased their personal savings during the pandemic, many whether they wanted to or not. The challenge of not being able to go to movies or eat food at someone else's dinner table as readily as we used to has proven to be a financial benefit most never expected or had the discipline to try out. As a result, the notion that everyone is suffering the same is totally wrong. In reality, targeting does have merit, but it's difficult in the middle of a crisis to do it, and, as we learned from this pandemic, if even one percent of 330 million people get missed by the targeting approach, it means a lot of people will suffer who probably didn't have to.
Many are doing well right now, but for million of others, the pandemic has forced them to survive off of unemployment level wages (which vary state to state) subsidized by stimulus checks mostly talked about and not actually received. In our effort to focus on economic stimulus and bailouts for so many, how is it we are invoking moratoriums while excluding support for landlords, the people most negatively impacted by that word?
While a handful of landlords are regretting the decision to get into the business right about now, all of them need to be considered as a significant focus of how we deal with the worst of this pandemic. Said another way, if we are not focusing on landlords we are ignoring them and the desperate constituents the moratorium is forcing them to house. a half of million dead people and counting is a tragedy. Millions upon millions of evictions without a plan to mitigate it from happening will be a travesty.
I envision the time- similar to the moment when Democrats looked back on Obama care and wish they’d pushed for the single-payer option sooner, not later- when Democrats will wish they’d gone even bigger than 1.9 trillion to fix this mess as well. Although they have mentioned this bill as step one in a multi-step process, step one resulted in 11 hours of bipartisan Senate aids reading 600 pages of a bill way too many people needed yesterday, not tomorrow. If they don't see a clear enough sign of what to expect from the GOP in steps two, three and four, Democrats will have already failed during step one.
Because courthouses are finally opening all across the land, there is a
day soon to arrive in which, by legal necessity, the word moratorium will be laughed out of the
courthouse. Unless Congress moves to save landlords in particular by paying them the back-dated rent and late fees that so many of US can't right now, there may
not be any way to target support to save the beneficiaries or the victims of the moratoriums.
The best case scenario for everyone involved is the House rejects the Senate changes, (especially the change that lowers the eligibility threshold to $80k per year income) and all of the Democrats decide to go big or go home realizing they look dumb has hell right now continuing to reach across the isle to make this bill fair when no one is standing on the other side to shake their hand.
No, I'm not over here closing my eyes and holding my breath hoping Democrats suddenly wake up and realize they are negotiating all alone. This particular motionless, lying down, eyes closed thing I'm doing right now is apparently called dreaming.
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