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Democrats in Array

 2 years ago
source link: https://micahsifry.medium.com/democrats-in-array-a0c73867356e
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Democrats in Array

Even if the Inflation Reduction Act is filled with compromises, its passage is a huge win for the party that wants to use government to solve big problems

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BIDEN / HARRIS VICTORY CELEBRATIONS at Black Lives Matter Plaza, Washington DC on Saturday afternoon, 7 November 2020 by Elvert Barnes Photography

From 1918 to 2004, the Boston Red Sox led a cursed existence, making it to the World Series just four times and losing each in seven games. On top of that, the team won its division several times but lost again and again in league championship series. Growing up in New York, I was a Mets fan and my kids (who were born in the Bronx) came up as Yankees fans, but because we also had close family in Massachusetts, I could see what losing year after year did to them. My Boston cousins would get especially despondent every summer. Their team might be playing well, but they were sure they’d be disappointed come the end of September. So when their Red Sox took the 2004 World Series, beating their hated Yankees on the way, I was happy for my cousins. It’s hard to root for a team and never win.

That’s how I’m feeling about the Biden Administration at the moment. This past winter, Biden seemed cursed. Despite delivering a trillion dollars in direct aid to millions with the American Rescue Plan and then a similar amount in investment in domestic needs with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, his presidency seemed completely stuck in a ditch. As the New York Times reported last April, few Americans even recognized that the money flowing into their communities for the repair of vital roads and bridges was ultimately Biden’s doing. Instead, his failure to quell Covid (after prematurely declaring victory) drove down his popularity, and a few stubborn U.S. Senators seemed committed to blocking meaningful action on everything from voting rights to climate change.

And even though the main obstacle to Biden’s agenda was a near unanimous Republican resistance in Congress, Democrats in DC as well as back home spent most of their time attacking each other for either being too ambitious or not ambitious enough. Meanwhile, a lot of grassroots Democrats just got more and more demoralized. It’s not for nothing that people started thinking of Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Each time he’d line up hoping to kick it, she’d pull it away at the last minute. Surely that was what was going to happen again this past week, am I right?

Instead, Manchin and Sinema voted along with their other Democratic colleagues for the Inflation Reduction Act this past weekend, and the giant spending bill is expected to pass the House shortly. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the chair of the House Progressive Caucus, put out a statement praising the bill, noting that it, “will cut carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030 through rapidly accelerating the adoption of renewable-energy technologies such as electric vehicles, heat pumps, and solar panels, saving the average family $1,025 a year in energy costs and creating millions of good jobs. It will immediately extend affordable health insurance coverage to 13 million people, cap seniors’ yearly drug costs at $2,000 per year, and cap insulin at $35 per month for seniors on Medicare. It takes on Big Pharma by, for the first time ever, allowing Medicare to begin negotiating prices for a small group of drugs that expands over time. The bill also imposes a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations, taxes corporations that inflate their share values through stock buybacks, and invests in the IRS to go after large corporations that evade taxes.”

Is it perfect? No. It leaves many frontline communities in places like the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska at risk of more harm from increased oil and gas drilling on public lands. And it leaves a lot of needs unaddressed, from funding for lead pipe replacement and PFAS remediation to visionary programs like the Civilian Climate Corps and the Green New Deal for Education, all of which get zero in this bill. (Here’s a detailed breakdown comparing the spending levels in the final bill to earlier versions of the Build Better Act, from which it was drawn, by Ben Beachy of the BlueGreen Alliance.)

But winning is better than losing, as any Boston Red Sox fan will tell you. Especially when the other side’s whole approach to politics and government is to fight only for wealthy special interests and block all other efforts to use government to improve people’s lives. By aiming to actually solve problems, Democrats have had a much harder task than Republicans, who just need to stymie government in order to “win” in their voters’ eyes. So what happened these last few days in Washington is a big deal. It won’t change how Republicans feel about Biden, but it will likely make Democrats feel a lot better. And that may matter a lot come this fall.


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