Joe Biden's domestic agenda is going down in flames
Joe Biden has already trashed his presidency through his disastrous Afghanistan pullout and unprecedented border meltdown. Voters won't forgive these failures, and Democrats will pay in 2022 and 2024.
But the emerging collapse of his domestic agenda in Congress — the $1-trillion stimulus, with its $3.5-trillion "reconciliation" rider, is just as notable.
According to Politico:
Internal Democratic discord has wounded President Joe Biden's massive social spending plan, raising the prospect that the package could stall out, shrink dramatically — or even fail altogether.
Myriad problems have arisen. Moderate Senate Democrats Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) continue to be a major headache for party leadership's $3.5 trillion target. The Senate parliamentarian just nixed the party's yearslong push to enact broad immigration reform. House members may tank the prescription drugs overhaul the party has run on for years. And a fight continues to brew over Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) push to expand Medicare.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has an excellent analysis here.
Politico points out that the ruling Democrats are squabbling among themselves about how to go about the vote.
Moderates, if we can call them that, such as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have sought a vote on the $1-trillion infrastructure bill, with, as Manchin asks, a "pause" until 2022 on the Bernie Sanders–crafted $3.5-trillion reconciliation, which includes monster tax hikes on "the rich," a full Green New Deal, amnesty and citizenship for tens of millions of illegals (apparently quashed by the Senate parliamentarian as out of the scope of a budget bill), and a gargantuan expansion of government welfare programs to ensure full citizen dependency on the whims of government spending. Of course it's too much. The $1-trillion "infrastructure" is too much, but at this point, Democrats have lost track of how much money they are splashing out. Sinema and Manchin know this and are calling for just a vote on the spare tril for "infrastructure," which could get through, given that RINOs such as Sen. Mitt Romney are all in for it.
Over in the House, the Squad Democrats are having none of it. House members such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow communistic Democrats know very well that the $3.5-trillion Bernie bill is a non-starter, so they're holding the $1-trillion package hostage with a demand that it also include a vote on the $3.5-trillion Bernie spend-a-thon. They won't take half a loaf and at least get that $1 trillion out there wasted. It's all or nothing for them; they've never heard of compromise or even "salami tactics." They want their full revolution upfront, and that's where the stalemate is. At least one of them called the $3.5-trillion price tag "a floor."
That means...the Joe Biden domestic agenda probably isn't going to happen. Sure, a lot of muscle is going to be applied from both directions from characters such as House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, both of whom want the largely unread monstrosity of a bill.
But against their muscling is the knowledge of purple- or red-state pols, including many who are less visible in the House, that the voters don't want this and are going to take it out on their representatives who vote for that. This is concentrating many minds.
Politico's report is irritating in that it seems to be pinning Manchin and Sinema as the monkey-wrench obstructionists here. In reality, it's the crazed leftists of the Squad and the Bernie Sanders socialists who are the obstructionists. Offered half a loaf, they vow to take the whole thing down rather than work some more on getting the whole. What's more, Pelosi has repeatedly shown herself to be afraid of them, unable to control them, and essentially just joining them.
For Biden, it's all a disaster. We all know he's not up to the job of the presidency based on stamina alone, given that he can only work a 30-hour week before he poops out and heads for the beach. But it's also significant that he's not in control of his party, and now the crazies are taking over. They couldn't care less if he goes down in flames; they know he's just a shell of a president, put in there by fraud, not popularity.
Now that Biden's popularity has tanked in polls, he's got even less power and influence, while key Democrats are looking to the voters, not him, to ensure their own survival.
It all adds up to a welcome sinking of a Titanic-sized spend-a-thon bill, a big bludgeony bill that just shovels money in place of introducing new ideas and efficiencies. Biden lacks the imagination of the Clintonites and the political muscle of the Obamatons. So now he's twisting in the wind, and likely to be done in by his own Democrats.
Couldn't happen to a nicer fraudster. If fraud can't be exposed at the voting booth, it still comes out in the political pudding.
Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.
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