MODERN SLAVER JEFF BEZOS IS A BIG BIDEN CRONY. ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS FOR OPEN BORDERS AND THE STEADY FLOW OF 'CHEAP' LABOR INTO OUR JOBS, HOUSING AND WELFARE OFFICE. IN AMERICA, THE ONLY GOD IS CORPORAT PROFITS!
Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post summed up the position of the ruling elite on the use of obstructionist tactics for partisan political gain, editorializing: “This may be fair legislative play in many other realms of congressional business, but it should be off-limits when it comes to raising the debt limit.” The Democrats, the Post demanded, should choose either the budget reconciliation process or a change in the filibuster rule to push through a debt limit hike, and “get on with it.
Wall Street cracks the whip and Senate passes short-term extension of debt ceiling
Late Thursday evening, the US Senate passed a bill by a 50–48 party-line vote extending the government debt ceiling into early December. While all voting Republicans opposed the debt extension, passage of the legislation was virtually assured when 11 Republican senators joined all 50 Democrats to supply the necessary super-majority needed to end a filibuster.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell set the stage for the compromise bill on Wednesday when he bowed to immense pressure from Wall Street and offered to avert a looming government default by allowing passage of a $480 billion extension of the debt limit. This was a retreat from his previous insistence that any extension would have to be passed by Democratic votes alone under the complicated and potentially lengthy budget reconciliation process, which averts a filibuster and permits passage of certain measures in the Senate by a simple majority.
Treasury Secretary and former Fed chair Janet Yellen, who had been warning of a collapse of the financial markets and damage to the dollar, estimated that the $480 billion increase in the debt ceiling would allow the government to meet its obligations until December 3. That is the same day that a temporary extension of funding for federal government operations is set to expire, posing the possibility of a simultaneous debt default and partial government shut-down.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, known as the “senator from Wall Street,” announced his acceptance of McConnell’s offer on Thursday morning. The plan of McConnell and his leadership team in the Senate was to forego a filibuster and simply allow the Democrats to pass the measure, using their 50 votes in the 100-member chamber plus the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.
However, during a closed-door meeting of the Republican caucus prior to the Thursday night floor vote, far-right Trump acolytes Rand Paul and Ted Cruz rejected that approach and insisted on mounting a filibuster, requiring McConnell and his allies to come up with at least 10 Republican votes to break the filibuster.
Republicans who voted to end the filibuster and allow the Democrats to pass the short-term debt extension included McConnell (Kentucky), John Thune (South Dakota), John Cornyn (Texas), Roy Blunt (Missouri), Mike Rounds (South Dakota), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John Barrasso (Wyoming), Susan Collins (Maine), Richard Shelby (Alabama), John Portman (Ohio) and Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia).
Following the Senate vote, Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced that the House would be recalled from its recess on Tuesday to vote on the bill and send it to President Biden for his signature on Tuesday, just days ahead of the October 18 date when, according to Yellen, the US would no longer be able to pay its debts.
While the debt limit extension provides only a short reprieve, the process by which it is being enacted is an object lesson on who rules America. When it comes to the basic financial interests of the corporate-financial oligarchy, and Wall Street cracks the whip, partisan gridlock in Congress suddenly dissipates.
McConnell’s shift coincided with a White House event Wednesday morning in which Biden met with the CEOs of Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Nasdaq to denounce the Senate Republicans’ blockade of a debt extension. Biden warned that the approaching debt limit deadline risked a default that would act like a “meteor” in crushing the US economy and undermining the position of the US internationally.
He berated his Senate Republican “friends” for actions that “risk the market tanking.”
The White House did not shoot down reports that Democrats were considering carving out an exception for bills to raise the debt ceiling from the Senate filibuster rule, allowing all such measures to pass by a simple majority. When it comes to amending or scrapping the anti-democratic filibuster rule to pass legislation defending voting rights and abortion rights, or to enact measures to address the catastrophic social crisis and raise taxes on the rich, Biden and the Democratic Party resist any change. But it is a different story when it comes to protecting the markets and the wealth of the ruling elite.
McConnell reportedly told his Republican caucus on Wednesday that increasing pressure among Democrats to weaken the filibuster was a major factor in his decision to propose a stop-gap extension of the debt ceiling. Prior to his announcement on Wednesday, he met with the two most prominent right-wing Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have staunchly opposed any change in the filibuster rule. They presumably advised him that they might have to change their position on the filibuster in relation to the debt limit unless the logjam was broken.
The Senate deal was all the more politically significant given the ferocious intervention of Donald Trump against the agreement and its author, McConnell. The Senate minority leader has gone out of his way to appease the fascist ex-president, and the Republican Party as a whole has promoted his lie of a stolen election and worked to block any investigation of the January 6 coup attempt.
“Looks like Mitch McConnell is folding to the Democrats, again,” Trump said in a statement issued through his Save America PAC. “He’s got all of the cards with the debt ceiling, it’s time to play the hand. Don’t let them destroy our Country!” Less than an hour before the scheduled Senate vote, Trump again urged Republicans not to vote for “this terrible deal.”
Trump’s co-conspirator and former White House adviser Stephen Bannon titled his Wednesday podcast, “McConnell’s Betrayal of America Will Create Debt Slaves.” The openly fascist wing of the Republican Party headed by Trump, following the Hitler playbook, considers a financial crash a potential boon to its ongoing plot to establish a dictatorship.
Bernie Sanders, who as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee is playing a key role in drastically downsizing Biden’s social spending and climate bill to accommodate the most right-wing Democrats, hailed the debt ceiling deal, calling McConnell’s offer “very good news.” The self-styled scourge of the “billionaire class” spoke unabashedly as a supporter of the “wealthiest nation on earth” and its need to “pay its debts.”
Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post summed up the position of the ruling elite on the use of obstructionist tactics for partisan political gain, editorializing: “This may be fair legislative play in many other realms of congressional business, but it should be off-limits when it comes to raising the debt limit.” The Democrats, the Post demanded, should choose either the budget reconciliation process or a change in the filibuster rule to push through a debt limit hike, and “get on with it.”
Right-wing Democrats dictate cuts in Biden social policy
The Biden administration has responded to pressure from a right-wing minority among House and Senate Democrats by slashing its proposed social spending increase nearly in half.
Biden delivered the news to a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic caucus Friday afternoon, telling them the overall cost of the reconciliation bill would come down from the $3.5 trillion proposed by the White House to between $1.9 trillion and $2.3 trillion, far closer to the $1.5 trillion ceiling backed by West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.
Manchin and Arizona Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema have opposed passage of the social spending legislation by means of the reconciliation procedure, which allows the Democrats to bypass a Republican filibuster in the closely divided Senate. The procedure can only be used on a spending bill, and only once in a fiscal year.
The House Progressive Caucus, which comprises nearly half the 220 Democrats in the House of Representatives, has blocked passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, approved in August by the Senate, until the two right-wing Senate Democrats reach agreement with the White House on the reconciliation package.
Their opposition forced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to push back a planned September 27 vote on the infrastructure bill, agreed to with another small right-wing faction of Democrats in the House, first until October 1, and then until October 31, a decision she announced in a letter made public Saturday.
Biden made his in-person visit to the Capitol, his first since delivering a nationally televised address last April, to discuss the deadlock with the Democratic caucus. He brought something for both factions: a fig-leaf concession on procedure to the “progressives” and a near-total victory on substance to the right-wing.
Biden endorsed Pelosi’s delay in the infrastructure vote, despite grumbling from some of the House right-wingers, explaining that it was necessary to reach a deal with Manchin and Sinema on the reconciliation bill so the two pieces of legislation could be passed “in tandem.” But he went much more than halfway towards Manchin on substance, giving him an effective veto over the top-line number.
This cave-in to a small minority—two out of 50 Democrats in the Senate, eight out of 220 in the House—cannot be explained by parliamentary arithmetic in a closely divided Congress. The power of Manchin, Sinema and their counterparts in the House is explained by their voicing most clearly the demands of corporate America, particularly in their opposition to tax increases on the wealthy and big business, as well as any significant expansion of the social safety net.
The decision by the White House to accept a much lower price tag for the social spending bill now sets in motion a Hunger Games-style competition between the various social programs that were components of the reconciliation bill: making the child tax credit permanent; adding vision, hearing and dental care to Medicare; expanding Medicaid in states where Republican governors have blocked it; providing paid home health care for the elderly; expanding Head Start through universal pre-kindergarten for three- and four-year-olds; one week of paid family and medical leave; initiating a policy of free tuition for community colleges; and spending on a number of programs to combat climate change.
There is reportedly now debate in the White House and among congressional Democrats involving whether to fully fund some of these programs and eliminate others, or to fund some of the programs for less than the full 10 years provided in the original bill, or some combination of the two methods. Manchin has proposed means-testing some of the programs, although this is supposedly not under consideration.
“The whole shrinking of the pie pits Medicare recipients against poor families against home care workers against victims of climate change,” Faiz Shakir, former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders, told the Washington Post. “It makes the working class of America fight over the scraps.”
Shakir’s former boss, however, was enthusiastic about Biden’s intervention and praised it to the skies in several appearances on the Sunday television interview programs. Interviewed on “Meet the Press” on NBC in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Sanders said that he did not believe Biden had given any specific number in his remarks to the House Democrats.
“What he said is there’s going to have to be give and take on both sides,” Sanders said. “I’m not clear that he did bring forth a specific number. But what the president also said, and what all of us are saying, is that maybe the time is now for us to stand up to powerful special interests who are currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prevent us from doing what the American people want.”
On the ABC program “This Week” Sanders said, “Three and a half trillion should be a minimum, but I accept that there’s gonna have to be give and take.” He then went on to make an extraordinary tribute to the Democratic leadership, headed by Biden: “We are not just taking on or dealing with Senators Manchin or Senator Sinema. We’re taking on the entire ruling class of this country. Right now the drug companies, the health care—the health insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry are spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent us from doing what the American people want. And this really is a test of whether or not American democracy can work.”
One would think that the red flag had been raised above the White House! Joe Biden was a six-term senator who protected the interests of the credit card industry and the corporations headquartered in Delaware, while Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has long been known as the “Senator from Wall Street” for his close ties to the stock exchange and major banks. To claim that they are “taking on the entire ruling class” is to lie without scruple or remorse.
The former co-chair of the Sanders campaign, Representative Ro Khanna of California, was equally effusive in his embrace of Biden. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” he said he relied on the White House to sort out which social policy proposals would survive the reduction from $3.5 trillion to $2 trillion or even less. “Ultimately the president is an honest broker,” he said. “He’s going to bring all of the stakeholders together. And I trust his judgment to get a compromise.”
Asked whether blocking the infrastructure bill constituted opposition to the White House, he replied, “I would not have contradicted the president’s vision. What I have said—consistently what most progressives have said is we want to do what the president wants.”
Perhaps the most abject display came from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who told CBS that the Democrats were already beginning to sort out how to implement the cuts in proposed social spending needed to meet the demands of senators Manchin and Sinema. “I think it’s unfortunate that we have to compromise with ourselves for an ambitious agenda for working people,” she said, then urged people to “reach out to their elected officials to let them know what programs they want to make sure are kept.”
Asked about her statement last year that in any other country she and Biden would be in different parties, she said, “I think that President Biden has been a good faith partner to the entire Democratic Party. He is in fact a moderate and we disagree on certain issues. But he reaches out and he actually tries to understand our perspective, and that is why I am fighting for his agenda with the Build Back Better Act.”
The contempt with which the real powers in the Democratic Party regard their left-talking colleagues was expressed in another comment on “Meet the Press,” by Jeh Johnson, former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, the enforcer of mass deportations and counter-terrorism policies.
Host Chuck Todd asked him about the headline on the Democratic Party crisis in Sunday’s edition of the New York Times, “Biden Throws In With Left, Leaving His Agenda in Doubt.” Johnson dismissed the newspaper’s claim that Biden siding with the progressives. “Let’s not forget that the bill the progressives are pushing for is Biden's bill,” he said. “It’s his domestic agenda.”
Johnson continued, “It’s not as if it’s some wild-eyed far-left socialist piece of legislation. This is Joe Biden’s Build Back Better domestic agenda. And the progressives are carrying his water on Capitol Hill and appear to be doing it rather effectively right now.”
Water boys (and girls) for Biden and the Democratic Party: A fitting political epitaph for Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and their DSA and pseudo-left cheerleaders.
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