Thursday, December 9, 2021

JOE BIDEN - BUILD BACK BETTER WILL MAKE WALL STREET HAPPY AND GENEROUS, HAND ILLEGALS BILLIONS AND TAX CUTS FOR PARASITIC LAWYERS - WE'LL GET HIT MIDDLE AMERICA WITH SOMETHING THE NEXT ROUND OF BAILOUTS

Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents. Migration also curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gapsradicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.

Majority of Americans Don’t Believe Biden’s Claim That ‘Build Back’ Fights Inflation

US President Joe Biden speaks about the Infrastructure Law while visiting the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority in Missouri on December 8, 2021. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images
3:23

Most Americans are not buying the Biden administration’s claims that its Build Back Better social welfare spending bill will combat inflation, a poll released Thursday

Fifty-one percent of Americans say they are pessimistic that the bill would reduce inflation, an NPR/Marist poll showed. Just 35 percent say they are optimistic, with 15 percent undecided.

President Biden has repeatedly claimed that passing the $1.85 trillion Build Back package of tax breaks and spending programs, including a massive tax break for owners of expensive homes in high tax states, would help relieve inflationary pressures. Biden has touted a letter from 17 Nobel Prize-winning economists who indicated that the bill could “ease long-term inflationary pressures.”

The American public, however, is unconvinced. The primary concern is not over long-term inflationary pressures. Over the longterm, inflation is already expected to ease thanks to many of the same factors that kept inflation ultralow in the years following the financial crisis. The concerns about high and accelerating inflation are over the deterioration of household buying power and the rise in the cost of living in the near and medium-term.

Americans may also be turning a skeptical eye at the claim because it seems so opportunistic. The bill was being touted on completely different grounds before inflation became a major political headache for the Biden administration. And now that inflation is seen as the number one economic problem, the Biden administration announces the programs it was already pushing for will also fight inflation.

A few weeks ago, White House press secretary Jen Psaki falsely claimed that no economists were projecting the bill would add to inflation.

“[N]o economist out there is projecting that this will have a negative impact on inflation. And actually, what it will help do is it will help increase economic productivity.  It will help economic growth in this country. That, and the Build Back Better Agenda will help reduce inflation, will help cut costs for the American people over the long term,” Psaki said during a press briefing.

In fact, many economists think the Build Back Better bill will add to inflation in the near term, with any deflationary pressure arising far off into the future, if ever. At a panel last month sponsored by the National Association for Business Economics, three economists—White House favorite Mark Zandi at Moody’s Analytics, Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum and Harvard University professor Doug Elmendorf—said that passing the bill would add to inflation next year, although they disagreed about how much inflationary pressures would increase. That’s largely because much of the spending and tax-breaks front-loaded, while the tax hikes and possibly supply chain relief would take years to kick in.

Republicans are expectedly very downbeat about the prospects that the bill will fight inflation, with 76 percent in the pessimistic column. But a majority of independents—55 percent—say they are pessimistic. Only 56 percent of Democrats say they are optimistic, with 26 percent saying they are pessimistic and 19 percent saying they are unsure.

 

WILL YOU SURVIVE WHEN THE ECONOMIC BUBBLE BUSTS? STOCK BUYBACKS, COMPANIES SURVIVE ON EASY MONEY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQlnm7bnIoU


Exclusive–Mo Brooks: ‘Masters of the Universe’ Want More Immigration to ‘Decrease Incomes of Americans’

 https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/10/exclusive-mo-brooks-masters-universe-want-more-immigration-decrease-incomes-americans/

Pro-Amnesty Democrats Threaten Senate Referee’s Authority

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images
PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images
4:40

Some Democratic Senators are threatening to override the Senate’s debate referee, amid signals that the referee has decided to exclude the Democrats’ parole amnesty from the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better spending plan.

The Los Angeles Times reported December 8:

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime proponent of immigration reform, said he would support overruling the parliamentarian if she rules against their latest proposal.

“I’d vote for that,” Durbin said in a brief interview. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), the successful son of illegal migrants, also suggested he would try to overrule the Senate’s parliamentarian:

“Whatever it takes to get this done,” he said. “For Democrats as a whole, I think as time goes on, as negotiations continue, it’s increasingly clear how important and urgent this is.”

The parliamentarian is expected to decide this week if the Democrats’ amnesty plan is too much of a policy change to be included in a bill that is being processed via the fast-track, no-filibuster “reconciliation” process.

The Democrats are using the reconciliation bill to push their migration expansion plans because they do not have the needed 60 votes needed to overcome the Senate’s minority-protection filibuster rules.

The amnesty proposal would provide at least 6.5 million illegals with a 10-year parole status, including work permits.

But it is not clear if the Democrats can override the parliamentarian.

The Senate’s filibuster rules protect the clout of Senators from small states, and so several Democratic Senators are quietly defending the authority of the parliamentarian to enforce those rules, a Senate source told Breitbart News.

The most prominent supporter of the parliamentarian is likely Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has repeatedly said he would not support an override of the parliamentarian.

“It gets complicated,” Durbin told the Los Angeles Times. “There are a lot of different vectors that you can use in this debate, and I expect to see them all.”

The parole amnesty is being packaged with three other changes that would accelerate the inflow of chain migration, distribute a few hundred thousand extra green cards to migrants imported by U.S. companies, and widen the already-huge pipeline of foreign graduates into the careers needed by U.S. graduates.

“If they lose the parole piece [because of the parliamentarian’s decision], do they keep the green card giveaway in there?” a Hill staffer told Breitbart News. “It would be really bad politics for them to not get their amnesty but be giving this big green card giveaway to businesses.”

“It would be the height of irony that all of our efforts on immigration would be to help business and not help people who are undocumented,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), told Bloomberg News.

But the Democrats’ real intentions are difficult to gauge. For example, even if they quietly decide to accept the parliamentarian’s decision, they likely would also stage an insincere P.R. campaign against the parliamentarian to help soften the blow to their supporters and donors.

The Fortune 500’s lobbyists say they will keep going back to the parliamentarian until she says yes to one of their cheap-labor proposals. “Just remember this process is iterative,” said a December 1 tweet from Alida Garcia, a top lobbyist at Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg’s pro-migration group, FWD.us. “What comes back is refined clarity on what next step is – not the beginning or end.”

The parliamentarian has already shot down two Democratic amnesty plans inserted into the reconciliation bill.

Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents.

Migration also curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gapsradicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.

For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.

This opposition is multiracialcross-sexnon-racistclass-basedbipartisanrationalpersistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

Great Resignation: Quits Remain Near Record High

Rustic sign in restaurant window during time of Covid stating restaurant is understaffed and is hiring in a struggling economy, showing the plight of small businesses in the post-pandemic economy.
Getty images
2:14

Americans quit their jobs in extremely high numbers in October, data from the Labor Department showed Wednesday.

The total number of workers who quit their jobs in October was 4.2 million, the third-highest on record. The record high was the previous month, when 4.4 million quit. In August, 4.3 million Americans quit jobs.

The figures come from the Labor Department’s monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Quits are defined as a worker voluntarily leaving a job. These have been at historically elevated levels since this summer.

Economists are not quite sure why the high quits phenomenon, which has been dubbed the Great Resignation, is taking place. Competition for workers among employers has heated up, making it easier for a worker to quit with confidence that a better job awaits.  Some Americans may also be leaving jobs that require vaccinations or masks or are perceived as posing a higher risk of Covid-infection.

Quits in accommodation and food services fell to 803,000, from 838,000 a month earlier. This is the third-highest level of quits for this sector. The record high was hit in August at 867,000. Six percent of workers in the sector quit their jobs in October, the fourth-highest rate on record and nearly two percentage points above the long-term average.

 

Job openings continued to climb even while hiring remained flat. Openings rose by 431,000 to 11 million, a record high. Openings in restaurants and hotels rose by 254,000 to 1.6 million, the second-highest on record after 1.7 million.

Hires were more or less unchanged at 6.5 million.

The unusually high level of quits may contribute to the renewed sense of urgency among Fed officials to tighten monetary policy. It indicates that the labor market remains tight and could contribute to higher inflation. The high level of quits could also exacerbate shortages in the economy and supply chain problems.


The merger spotlights the close alliance between the stock-market investors who fund advocacy for mass migration, and the hourly-rate professionals who facilitate the population transfer, responded Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Exclusive–Mo Brooks: ‘Masters of the Universe’ Want More Immigration to ‘Decrease Incomes of Americans’

 https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/10/exclusive-mo-brooks-masters-universe-want-more-immigration-decrease-incomes-americans/

 

 Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) says the “Masters of the Universe” want more legal immigration to the United States to further diminish the incomes of American working and middle-class families.

In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, Brooks said recent demands to increase the number of foreign workers coming to the U.S. to compete against American citizens for jobs is merely an effort by corporations to deplete the earnings of Americans.

Brooks said:

I’m not a part of the Masters of the Universe crowd who thinks we ought to be bringing in all this foreign labor and the reason for it is pure economics. This is the chance for Americans and lawful immigrants who are already here who are working in the blue-collar trades, who are working in the places where wages are not as high they ought to be, this is their chance to prosper. [Emphasis added]

And to the extent you import a lot of foreign labor, then you are artificially increasing the labor supply which in turn means that you’re artificially suppressing the wages of American families who are often hard-pressed to make ends meet So I respectfully disagree that we need more foreign labor, to the contrary, I would like to see us reduce the foreign labor that comes into America so that American families who are struggling to make ends meet, particularly those of us who are earning the least amounts, would be better to take care of their own families and less likely to be dependent on the welfare. [Emphasis added]

Brooks said Democrats support for mass legal immigration is centered on the premise that increasing the number of foreign workers in the U.S. will decrease Americans’ wages, thus forcing many into poverty and becoming welfare recipients. This, Brooks said, is how Democrats create a permanent dependent class of Democrat voters.

“Don’t get me wrong, [Democrats] want to decrease the incomes of Americans so that they’re dependent on welfare,” Brooks said.

That makes them in turn likely Democrat voters and the best way to do that is to have a huge surge in the labor supply, particularly illegal aliens, that will depress their wages therefore creating more Democrats who are dependent on welfare at the same time as they bring in illegal aliens who also under Democrat doctrine will be allowed to vote and those types of voters, they’re also dependent on welfare. [Emphasis added]

“About 70 percent of illegal alien households are on welfare … plus this is a bloc of voters that seems unusually susceptible to the racial divisions that the Democrats advance,” Brooks said. “You have to look at the big picture in all of this, and to me, we should not be importing as much foreign labor as we are. We should be helping the least among us earn more and importing foreign labor that suppresses wages is not the way to do that.”

Currently, the U.S. admits more than 1.2 legal immigrants annually, with the vast majority deriving from chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million.

The U.S. is on track to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters in the next two decades should current legal immigration levels continue. Those 15 million new foreign-born voters include about eight million who will arrive in the country through chain migration, where newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country.

Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 9:00 p.m. to Midnight Eastern (6:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. Pacific). 

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

 

Big Tech CEOs Beg Biden: Let Silicon Valley Outsource More American Jobs

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 06: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks about the Build Back Better legislation's new rules around prescription drug prices in the East Room of the White House on December 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. According to the White House, the legislation will lower the costs of …
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/TechNet
4:46

Executives for the largest multinational tech corporations are lobbying President Joe Biden to expand legal immigration levels so they can outsource more American jobs as a fix to the so-called “talent shortage” in the United States.

Silicon Valley, California, executives with the group TechNet issued a report this month in which they call on the Biden administration to “increase high-skilled immigration across the country,” which means increasing the number of foreign workers available to corporations.

The executives claim there are not enough “high-skilled” Americans to take jobs in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields even as hundreds of thousands of American graduates enter the workforce every year while American professionals hunt for high-paying STEM jobs.

Rather than pulling Americans off the sidelines of the labor market, the executives write that Biden ought to open more foreign worker pipelines to corporations, specifically with the often abused H-1B visa program:

Immigration reform is crucial to America’s greater economy, especially as it pertains to the technology sector, an industry that employs a vast plurality of high-skilled immigrants. However, H-1B visa guidelines have not changed in 14 years, despite an exponential increase in the size and scope of the tech industry. [Emphasis added]

For years, Breitbart News has chronicled the abuses against American workers as a result of the H-1B visa program.

There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News.

The executives note their support for a massive green card giveaway scheme, passed in the House in 2019 by 140 Republicans and 224 House Democrats, which would have rewarded the biggest tech corporations for decades of outsourcing American jobs to foreign H-1B visa workers.

The green card giveaway, executives write, should be a “starting point” for Congress to expand legal immigration levels overall:

The bill aimed to increase the per-country cap for family-based immigrant visas and eliminate the per-country cap on employment-based visas, but it ultimately failed as there were issues with reconciling multiple versions of the bill. President Biden’s U.S. Citizenship Actof 2021 includes similar provisions in the larger bill. While the entirety of his immigration agenda may lack bipartisan appeal, eliminating the cap on employment-based visas remains a realistic, important goal and represents a starting point from which bipartisan efforts can work to encourage increased high-skilled immigration. [Emphasis added]

Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) issued a statement in support of TechNet’s wishes to increase legal immigration levels for the benefit of tech corporations, also claiming that there are not enough Americans with high-skilled talents.

“We must work to fix our broken immigration system and connect workers with industries most in need across the country,” Curtis said. “Fixing the talent shortage that exists will help businesses expand and compete globally.”

Curtis was one of the House Republicans who voted for the green card giveaway in 2019.

The push by executives with TechNet comes as Biden and Democrats are hoping to provide Silicon Valley with an unlimited stream of foreign workers, with whom American professionals would be forced to compete, as part of their “Build Back Better Act.”

The plan would allow corporations to utilize an expanded foreign worker pipeline through the employment-based green card system even as hundreds of thousands of American professionals and graduates seek out STEM jobs.

Breitbart News has reviewed lobbying records that detail the lobbying campaign on the part of corporate giants like Amazon, Facebook, Intuit Inc, AT&T, Verizon, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Alphabet, Deloitte, the Microsoft Corporation, IBM, Accenture, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and the Intel Corporation — all of whom would benefit significantly from the expanded foreign worker pipeline.

The corporations, as listed, file thousands of petitions to the federal government every year to secure employment-based green cards for their foreign visa workers who, more often than not, arrive in the U.S. through the H-1B visa program.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here

 In today's election, yours is a choice between freedom and globalism

 

By Mark Christian

I know something about both freedom and globalism.  What I know is that you cannot have both, which is why I immigrated to America, the world's last stronghold of freedom. 

In the way of background, I grew up in a prominent Muslim family in Egypt and became an imam at an early age.  Like Christianity, Islam is a global religion.  Unlike Christianity, Islam imposes an imperial global vision on true believers and denies them freedom of thought and movement.

Progressive globalism does much the same.  Although Islam and progressivism would seem to have nothing in common, they do share one overriding goal: the need to crush traditional American Christianity, the one obstacle to world dominance in either case.  At some point, Islam and progressivism will part ways, but for now, they are content to "coexist."

Progressive leaders turn a blind eye to the slaughter of Christians at a church in France or the shooting of a priest in another church or the beheading of a French teacher for daring to show a picture of Mohammed, the prophet of Islam.  In countries like France, leftists have been responsible for as much church vandalism as Muslims, maybe more.  For now, the left and Islam are allies.  The result of the failed immigration policies and the rabid push of atheism by most European governments has made their combined mayhem possible.

The mayhem has been papered over with lies, which is why Joe Biden makes such a perfect front man for the global elites.  Biden has lied about almost everything in his life.  Where to begin?

Biden lied about his undergraduate degree and his majors, lied about his rank in law school, lied  aboutscholarships and educational aid he had  received, lied about his stance toward the Vietnam  war while in college, lied about his plagiarism of  other politician's writings and speeches, lied about  the circumstances around his first wife's fatal  accident, lied about how he met his second and  current wife, and lied about the affair they were  having when they were both married.

 

Joe Biden is the embodiment of the dark side of American politics.

When the Vietnam war ended, and our troops needed funding to evacuate gracefully, Joe Biden stood in the way.  His obstruction led to Saigon's fall and the disgraceful flight of American troops and personnel off the American embassy's rooftop in Vietnam.

When President Ford pleaded with Congress to help the Vietnamese refugees, the ones who were aiding Americans during the war, Joe Biden stood in the way.  Even though many of these refugees were orphan children, Joe Biden called them criminals and prostitutes on the Senate floor.

Most recently and dramatically, Biden lied about his knowledge of his son's shady dealings,  lied about his own involvement in corruption and bribery, and lied about his current presidential agenda and what he wants to implement in regards to energy, fracking, court-packing, health care, education, and COVID among other issues.

Biden has lied about so much that I am not sure if he ever told the truth or is now even capable of doing so.  Thanks to Big Tech's and Big Media's suppression of his record, he can present himself as a man of character and high morals.  We must feel sorry for the multitude of gullible Americans who believe him.

Do not be a fool and believe for a second that the elites hate Trump because of his tweets or because he is allegedly a sexist, a rapist, a racist, or a foreign agent.  Nor do they hate him because of the pandemic death toll.

In reality, the elites hate Trump because of "YOU," because you elected a man they did not nominate and could not control.  I have never seen global anticipation for an American election like this one.  The world is watching.  The progressive and Islamic elites are pulling for Biden, but lovers of freedom all over the world are quietly cheering for Trump.  If you have yet to vote, be sure to vote today and give them something to cheer about.

Image: Biden the globalist by Andrea Widburg.

Likewise, the Biden-Harris plan for national immigration policy — which seeks to drive up legal and illegal immigration levels to their highest levels in decades — offers a flooded labor market with low wages for U.S. workers and increased bargaining power for big business that has long been supported by Wall Street.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

 

Holiday Bonus: Better.com CEO Vishal Garg Fires 900+ Employees over Zoom

Better.com CEO Vishal Garg
Better.com
2:08

Vishal Garg, the CEO of digital mortgage company Better.com, recently fired more than 900 employees via a single Zoom meeting last week, which is about 15 percent of the company’s workforce. Garg later accused “at least 250” staffers of working just two hours a day.

Business Insider reports that Vishal Garg, the founder and CEO of digital mortgage company Better.com, laid off more than 900 people over Zoom last week. Garg accused “at least 250” of the fired staffers of stealing from the company by working just two hours a day.

According to a post on a site called Blind viewed by Fortune, Garg wrote: “You guys know that at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking in 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system? They were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Get educated.”

Garg has confirmed that he was behind the Blind message, adding: “I think they could have been phrased differently, but honestly the sentiment is there.” Shortly after firing over 900 employees, Garg addressed the company in a live stream in which he laid out a vision of what he referred to as “Better2.0,” with a “leaner, meaner, hungrier workforce.”

Garg stated that he wanted to grow Better Real Estate 10 to 100 times larger than it currently is. He warned that workers could expect stricter deadlines and more attentive management also. “If you felt in the past that people weren’t looking — well, everyone is looking now,” Garg said.

Garg told Fortune in an interview that terminated employees who felt they “actually had great performance,” should reach out to the company as the majority of firings were done on a performance basis.

Read more at Business Insider here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

Bloomberg, Migration Lawyers, Merge Advocacy

michael bloomberg
AFP/Getty Images
5:20

Mike Bloomberg’s pro-migration advocacy group is merging with the advocacy spinoff of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The merger spotlights the close alliance between the stock-market investors who fund advocacy for mass migration, and the hourly-rate professionals who facilitate the population transfer, responded Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Individual immigration lawyers may well rationalize their defense of individual immigrants as being unrelated to the broader push by the wealthy to pry open the borders. But each individual snowflake in an avalanche isn’t intending any harm either … [so] even pro-bono immigration lawyers trying to obstruct the deportation of an illegal immigrant are, objectively speaking, serving the interests of Michael Bloomberg.

‘This is a class issue and the advocates for mass immigration are, objectively speaking, agents of the upper class,” he added.

The merger was announced December 6 by Jeremy Robbins, the long-standing director of Bloomberg’s pro-business New American Economy lobbying group:

I’m Jeremy Robbins, and I’m so pleased to announce that at the end of this year, the American Immigration Council [AIC] and New American Economy will merge. Together, we’ll create something unique and critical for the immigration movement — an organization that will empower newcomers to America. From the moment they arrive to the moment they become American citizens, promoting full belonging for immigrants, and making America as a whole a more successful, more resilient, and more dynamic country.

America’s history is laid clear, investing in newcomers is an investment in America as a whole. There are many obstacles to realizing our vision of a more welcoming country, but together with your support, we’re better prepared than we’ve ever been to make progress on behalf of immigrants on behalf of America as a whole.

Notably, Robbins did not try to argue that immigration is good for individual Americans but instead claims that immigration is good for “America as a whole. ”

That phrase hides the reality that mass migration is good for investors, government, employers, and migrants, but bad for the many sidelined Americans who are pushed into unemployment and homelessness by the flood of imported migrants.

The American Immigration Council is an advocacy group created in 1987 by the immigration lawyers’ association.

Bloomberg founded the NAE group in 2013 to help push the “Gang of Eight” amnesty through Congress. His partners included Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch and a battalion of Democratic and GOP politicians. The group was checkmated by GOP voters in 2014, and put on the defensive by the 2016 election of Donald Trump to the White House.

The group also rallied for Bloomberg when he ran for the Democratic nomination to the presidency in 2020.

Breitbart News has extensively covered Bloomberg’s effort to import more consumers, renters, and workers. “This country needs more immigrants and we should be out looking for immigrants,” regardless of Americans’ needs, Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune on January 5.:

For those who need an oboe player for a symphony, we want the best one. We need a striker for a soccer team, we want to get the best one. We want a farmworker, we want to get the best one. A computer programmer, we want to get the best one. So we should be out looking for more immigrants.

Bloomberg’s group also worked closely with FWD.us, an advocacy group funded by Mark Zuckerberg’s money, which also funds many supposedly grass-roots advocacy groups. Other wealthy investors, such as George Soros, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Microsoft president Brad Smith also spend much of their wealth on advocacy for more migration.

The NAE-AIC merger “takes away the pretense of separate interests” between investors and migration lawyers, Krikorian said, adding:

This is something that the broader public, and specifically lawmakers and media, need to understand — that broadly the [political] left and the corporate right are allied on immigration.

This is not really a right/left issue. This is an up/down issue, and those pushing for high immigration and loose enforcement are servants of [Wall Street] capital.

The federal government’s support for migration is an economic policy. It moves wealth from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to investors, from technology to stoop labor.

The extraction migration pulls young people from poor countries and settles them in the major coastal states. That population shift moves wealth from heartland red states to the coastal blue states, and within large states, it also helps move wealth and status from GOP rural districts to Democrat cities.

Immigration radicalizes Americans’ democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, allows elites to ignore major political dilemmas, and also to forget about despairing Americans at the bottom of society.

 

Surprise! Report Shows Global Elites Got Richer During Coronavirus Pandemic

There's money in misery, a study affirmed Tuesday, as it revealed the share of household wealth owned by global billionaires soared by a record amount during the coronavirus pandemic. Millionaires were not far behind.
Freestocks via Unsplash
3:06

There’s money in misery, a study affirmed Tuesday, as it revealed the share of household wealth owned by billionaires soared by a record amount during the global coronavirus pandemic. Millionaires were not far behind.

Reuters outlines the World Inequality Report produced by a network of social scientists estimated billionaires over the past 12 months collectively own 3.5 percent of global household wealth, up from slightly above two percent at the start of the pandemic in early 2020.

“The COVID crisis has exacerbated inequalities between the very wealthy and the rest of the population,” lead author Lucas Chancel said, noting rich economies used massive fiscal support to mitigate the sharp rises in poverty seen elsewhere.

At the same time the rich got richer, the pandemic pushed about 100 million people into extreme poverty, raising the global total to 711 million in 2021, World Bank estimate quoted in the analysis estimated.

Even more people would have fallen into poverty had many developed nations not enacted relief efforts to shield their residents from the financial fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report tackles a variety of specialist research and public domain data, with a foreword written by U.S.-based economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two of the trio who won a 2019 Nobel Prize for work on poverty.

The findings corroborate a range of existing studies, “rich lists” and other evidence pointing to a rise in health, social, gender and racial inequalities during the pandemic, Reuters reports.

It also confirmed that for most of those who belong on global rich lists, life has gone on pretty much as normal for the past 18 months while everyone else was forced into lockdown as they were lectured over coronavirus and told to stay at home.

The World Inequality Report is based on more than four years of work by more than 100 researchers around the globe.

Meanwhile Forbes’ annual world’s billionaires list this year included a record-breaking 2,755 billionaires with a combined worth of $13.1 trillion, up from $8 trillion last year.

The new report showed a wider group of 520,000 adults who make up the top 0.01 percent richest together saw their share of global wealth hit 11 percent this year, up from ten percent the year before.

A woman takes a selfie as two hostesses walk past yachts at the Hercules Port in Monaco on September 22, 2021, during the 30th edition of the International Monaco Yacht Show. (VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Images)

Analysts say some super-rich have benefited from the shift online of much of the world’s economy during lockdowns, while others simply gained from rising asset prices as financial markets bet on the speed and shape of the global recovery.

The study also found while poverty increased sharply in countries with weaker welfare coverage, massive government support in the U.S. and Europe was able to mitigate at least some of that impact on lower earners there through job subsidies and social support.


Analysis: Biden’s Amnesty to Cost Americans Nearly $500B Over 20 Years

Migrants from Colombia cross the United States and Mexico border to turn themselves over to authorities on May 13, 2021 in Yuma, Arizona. - Apprehensions of undocumented immigrants at the US border with Mexico rose to a fresh 15-year high in April as the Biden administration failed to deter migrants, …
Alex Wong/RINGO CHIU/AFP via Getty Images
2:35

A plan by President Joe Biden to give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens would cost American taxpayers nearly $500 billion over the course of two decades, a new analysis reveals.

Late last month, House Democrats passed the filibuster-proof “Build Back Better” reconciliation package which includes an amnesty for nearly seven million illegal aliens. Effectively, millions of illegal aliens would be able to secure parole through the legislation and thus be shielded from deportation while gaining work permits to compete against working class Americans for jobs.

new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) states that over a 20-year period, the amnesty will cost American taxpayers more than $483 billion, based on figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

CIS

Center for Immigration Studies

CIS Director of Research Steven Camarota writes that much of the cost is a result of the amnesty’s opening a number of federal welfare programs to illegal aliens:

The primary reason a parole amnesty would result in large new expenditures according to the CBO is that amnesty recipients would be able to receive Affordable Care Act subsidies, Medicaid, the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, often called food stamps), Social Security, and Medicare to a much greater extent than they would without legal status. [Emphasis added]

Though providing a look into the fiscal cost of the amnesty plan, the CBO figures do not factor in the millions to billions in lost wages and jobs that such a plan may have as illegal aliens would be legally allowed to compete for jobs against Americans.

Specifically, the amnesty would allow illegal aliens to obtain work permits, driver’s licenses, and documents to travel abroad for at least a decade so long as they can prove that they have been residing in the United States since 2010.

Every year, 1.2 million legal immigrants receive green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. In addition, 1.4 million foreign nationals are given visas to take American jobs. On top of legal immigration levels, federal officials expect that more than two million illegal aliens will have tried to cross into the U.S., many successfully, in the last year.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.

Democrats Wobble on Visa Giveaway to Zuckerberg’s Fortune 500

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 10: Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill April 10, 2018 in Washington, DC. Zuckerberg, 33, was called to testify after it was reported that 87 million …
Alex Wong/Getty Images
6:40

Democratic Senators are suggesting they may block the huge green card giveaway to Fortune 500 investors in the Build Back Better bill, if the Senate’s parliamentarian rejects their parole amnesty for 6.5 million illegal migrants.

Democrats will decide whether or not to push the historic visa giveaway once they get an answer back from the parliamentarian, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) told Bloomberg news. “It all depends on how it’s structured and what else we get,” he said.

The underlying problem is that the parliamentarian might block the parole amnesty — yet also support the visa giveaways. That outcome could leave the Democrats supporting a huge white-collar jobs transfer to the Fortune 500’s imported workers — but without amnestying for blue-collar migrants.

The Associated Press

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., speaks during a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on the CARES Act on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021 in Washington. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP)

That outcome would display the progressive Democrats as shills for Wall Street’s greedy investors — and as too feeble to win the noble-seeming prize of citizenship for poor, non-white migrants.

“If they lose the parole piece, do they keep the green card giveaway in there?” a Hill staffer told Breitbart News. “It would be really bad politics for them to not get their amnesty but be giving this big green card giveaway to businesses.”

“It would be the height of irony that all of our efforts on immigration would be to help business and not help people who are undocumented,” Menendez told Bloomberg.

Early this year, Menendez threatened business groups if they did not support the Democrats’ voter-creating amnesty policies:

We need the high-tech community — who will benefit from the reforms we are proposing — to be advocates of the overall reform movement. We need those who need the H-1B and [H]-2B visas in the business community to be advocates of overall reform. What we cannot have is only being an advocate for the simple niche that takes care of your economic issue, but doesn’t resolve the overall question of the 11 million.

When we join together — those and so much more — we can achieve the [amnesty] goal because then those senators and those members of the House who represent large agricultural interests in their districts and state, those who represent high-tech interests in their state, those who represent some of the [H-2B] critical workers — whether it be in the seafood industry in the meatpacking industry or whatnot — who need that work …  so that people understand that this is something worthy of putting their [political] capital [on].

Amnesties are supported by most business groups. But amnesties do not add to the total number of workers, renters, or consumers in the United States, but do empower the Democrats’ government-before-business coalition.

So the business groups prefer new laws that expand the inflow of cheap, powerless, subordinate, and disposable visa workers — such as F-1 graduates and H-1B workers. They want those workers to replace the progressives’ peers, the free-speaking American graduates in American business.

Business lobbying ensured that the House version of the BBB bill allows the Fortune 500 — and their myriad subcontractors — to import an unlimited number of college F-1 visa workers with dangled offers of green cards and citizenship instead of American-level salaries.  The change would dramatically expand the current rules which allow the companies and their contractors to keep roughly one million visa workers in a wide variety of professional jobs that would otherwise go to Democrat-voting college graduates.

This rivalry between investors and progressives has been recognized by Indian visa workers who work for the Fortune 500 and also are lobbing to get green cards for themselves and their families:

The parliamentarian has already shot down two amnesty plans from the Democrats, on the grounds that policy riders are not allowed in the fast-track, 50-vote, reconciliation spending bill.

But the Fortune 500’s lobbyists say they will keep going back to the parliamentarian until she says yes to one of their proposals.

“Just remember this process is iterative,” said a December 1 tweet from Alida Garcia, a top lobbyist at Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg’s pro-migration group, FWD.us. “What comes back is refined clarity on what next step is – not the beginning or end.”

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 03: (L-R) Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg attend the 2020 Breakthrough Prize Red Carpet at NASA Ames Research Center on November 03, 2019 in Mountain View, California. (Photo by Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize )

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg attend the 2020 Breakthrough Prize Red Carpet at NASA Ames Research Center on November 03, 2019 in Mountain View, California. (Photo by Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize )

The investors at FWD.us are leading the 2021 amnesty push, especially the green card giveaway elements.

But “they’re getting right up against Christmas Day, so they’ve got two real legislative weeks left,” said the Hill source.

The Democrats’ stalled effort to get rid of the Senate’s filibuster rule is also reinforcing their efforts to get an amnesty, the source said:

It really seemed like they were going to try for amnesty, but if they didn’t get their first option, then they were just going to do enough — like a college try — to make it sound like they put their backs into it but couldn’t quite get it through. Then … they would use [the amnesty failure] as fodder for their push to limit the [60-vote] filibuster.

I think they’re realizing that they’re not going to be able to get rid of the filibuster, and so they see this [“iterative” strategy] as their only other option to really get to really get this [amnesty] done.

“They’re very convinced that actually getting an amnesty of some sort is going to be key to them getting a mid-term victory next year,” the source said.

FWD.us and other pro-migration groups are touting push polls to declare that the Democrat’s far-left base will fail to vote in 2022 if they do not get an amnesty.

But many national polls show that few Democrats view amnesty as a top issue, compared to climate, coronavirus, and the economy.  Just four out of 285 Democrats polled in August said “immigration” is a top problem, according to an August 24 statement from Gallup.

Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents. Migration also curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gapsradicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.

For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of  temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracialcross-sexnon-racistclass-basedbipartisanrationalpersistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

OE BIDEN’S OPEN BORDERS: HOUSTON NATION’S BIGGEST MEX SEX TRAFFICKING CAPITAL

 

What's causing the supply chain crisis? | Fox News Rundown

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SqV0DkxGsA

 

Jim Banks Reveals the ‘Mind-Blowingly Corrupt’ Carveouts in $3.5 Trillion Infrastructure Bill

SEAN MORAN

Rep. Jim Banks (R-SC), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), detailed many of the most radical aspects of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill.

Biden has gambled his legislative majority on passing two infrastructure bills, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation infrastructure bill, otherwise known as the Build Back Better Act.

Democrats hope to pass their mammoth, $3.5 trillion legislation through reconciliation, which allows the Senate to pass legislation with only a simple majority.

Although Democrats have not agreed to the final tenets of the legislation, Americans can see the tentative details of the Democrats’ marquee legislation.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), released an exhaustive list of some of the most radical aspects of the Democrats’ “socialist takeover bill.”

Banks’ press release hopes to serve as messaging House Republicans can use to rally against Biden’s marquee bill.

The RSC contended in a press release Tuesday that Democrats plans to hide the bill text to prevent Americans from knowing how radical the bill is.

“They’ve played ‘hide the ball’ with the bill text so as not to tip off the public as to what they’re putting in their bills. Then, they bring it to the floor and tout some poll numbers and scare their members into voting for it,” the RSC wrote.

The RSC noted the bill would:

1. Perpetuates labor shortage: Continues welfare benefits without work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents at a time where there are 10.1 million job openings—more openings than there are people looking for work.

2. Commissions a climate police: Democrats stuffed $8 billion into the bill to commission a cabal of federally funded climate police called the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) who will conduct progressive activism on taxpayers’ dime (pages 821, and 926).

3. Pushes Green New Deal in our public schools: Requires funding for school construction be used largely on enrollment diversity and Green New Deal agenda items (page 55).

4. Pushes Green New Deal in our universities: Democrats include a $10 billion “environmental justice” higher education slush fund to indoctrinate college students and advance Green New Deal policies (page 1,935).

5. Forces faith-based child care providers out: The bill blocks the ability of many faith-based providers from participating in the childcare system and will lead to many of their closures (page 280).

6. Hurts small and in-home daycares: Requires pre-K staff to have a college degree. (page 303)

7. Includes new incentives for illegal immigration: Illegal immigrants will be eligible to take advantage of Democrats’ new ‘free’ college entitlement (page 92) as well be eligible for additional student aid (page 147) and the enhanced child tax credit (page 1,946).

8. Includes legislative hull for Biden’s vaccine mandate: Increases OSHA penalties on businesses that fail to implement the mandate up to $700,000 per violation and includes $2.6 billion in funding for the Department of Labor to increase enforcement of these penalties (page 168).

9. Gives unions near-total control: The bill includes insane prohibitions that would bind employers’ hands in union disputes and dangerously tilt the balance of power, subjecting employers to penalties that exempt union bosses and officials… among other things this bill would prevent employers from permanently replacing striking workers (page 175). It coerces businesses to meet union boss demands by increasing Fair Labor Standards Act penalties by an astronomical 900% (page 168).

10. Makes unions bigger and more powerful: The bill would subsidize union dues that would only serve to strengthen the influence of union bosses and not American workers (page 2323).

11. Pushes Democrats’ wasteful and confusing school lunch agenda: $643 million for, among other things, “procuring…culturally appropriate foods” (page 333).

12. Furthers radical abortion agenda: Does not include the Hyde amendment and would mandate taxpayers pay for abortions (page 198) & (page 336).

13. Drives up costs on Americans’ utility bills: Issues a punitive methane tax (page 367) and includes a tax on natural gas up to $1,500 per ton that could cost the American economy up to $9.1 billion and cost 90,000 Americans their jobs (page 368).

14. Includes dangerous & deadly green energy mandate: Effectively forces Americans to get 40% of their energy from wind, solar and other unreliable forms of energy within 8 years (page 392). Reliance on these energy sources has proven deadly.

15. Includes kickbacks for the Left’s green energy special interest network: $5 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” (page 377) and another $100 billion in green energy special interest subsidies, loans and other carve outs.

16. Gives wealthy Americans tax credits: $222 billion in “green energy” tax credits will be given to those who can afford expensive electric vehicles and other “green” innovative products (page 1832).

17. Furthers Democrats’ social justice agenda: Includes “equity” initiatives throughout the bill and, in one instance, Democrats inserted “equity” language into a title which should have been focusing on the maintenance of the United States’ cyber security efforts (page 897).

18. Grants amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants: House Democrats have included in their reconciliation bill a plan to grant amnesty to around 8 million illegal immigrants at a cost of around $100 billion over ten years that would largely be spent on welfare and other entitlements (page 901). Trillions more would be spent long term on their Social Security and Medicare.

19. Opens border even wider: The bill would waive many grounds for immigration inadmissibility, including infection or lack of vaccination status during a Pandemic, failure to attend removal proceedings in previous immigration cases, and the previous renouncement of American citizenship. DHS may also waive  previous convictions for human trafficking, narcotics violations, and illegal voting (page 903).

20. Increases visa limit: At least 226,000 family-preference visas would be administered each year (page 905).

21. Grants fast-tracked green cards for those seeking middle-class careers in America: Language included in the bill exempts certain aliens from the annual green card statutory limits and has been described as a  “hidden pipeline for U.S. employers to flood more cheap foreign graduates into millions of middle-class careers needed by American graduates” (page 910).

22. Includes pork for Nancy Pelosi: $200 million is earmarked for the Presidio Trust in Speaker Pelosi’s congressional district (page 933).

23. Increases energy dependence on OPEC, Russia and China: The bill prohibits several mineral and energy withdrawals (page 979). It overturns provisions included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that authorized energy production in the Arctic that will result in 130,000 Americans losing their jobs and $440 billion in lost federal revenue (page 983) and the mineral withdrawals it prohibits would, ironically, include minerals necessary for renewable energy sources (pages 934940943).

24. Exacerbates the chip shortage: The bill would mandate the conversion of the entire federal vehicle fleet from internal combustion engines to electric engines at a time when there is a global microchip shortage and crippled supply chains (page 1,043).

25. Democrats’ feckless China bill is included: Concepts from the insanely weak Endless Frontier Act included, including $11 billion in research funding that will likely result in American intellectual property going to China (page 1079 – 1081).

26. Chases green energy pipe dreams: $264 million to the EPA to conduct research with left-wing environmental justice groups on how to transition away from fossil fuels (page 1063).

27. Fixes “racist” roads and bridges: Adds a nearly $4 billion slush fund that would help left-wing grassroots organizations that, among other things, want to tear down and rebuild or otherwise alter infrastructure deemed “racist” (page 1183).

28. Punishes red states for failing to adopt Green New Deal provisions: Mandates “consequences” for conservative states that don’t meet the radical Left’s “green” climate standards while at the same time adding nearly $4 billion for “Community Climate Incentive Grants” for cooperating states (page 1179).

29. Includes new massive, bankrupting entitlement: The new paid leave entitlement would mandate workers get 12 weeks of paid leave and would cost $500 billion over ten years according to the CBO (page 1245). It would apply to those making up to half a million dollars a year (page 1254).

30. Advances a totalitarian and paternalistic view of the federal government: Includes grants for organizations to treat individuals suffering from “loneliness” and “social isolation.”

31. Further detaches individuals from employment and more reliant on government handouts: The bill spends $835 billion on welfare through manipulating the tax code [not including the expansions of Obamacare subsidies] (page 1943).

32. Tax benefits for the top 1%: The bill will possibly lift the SALT deduction cap meaning many of the top 1% wealthiest Americans would pay less in taxes.

33. Tax credit for wealthy donors who give to woke universities: The bill creates a new tax credit program that gives tax credits worth 40% of cash contribution that are made to university research programs (page 2094).

34. Expands worst parts of Obamacare: Obamacare’s job-killing employer mandate will become more severe by adjusting the definition of “affordable coverage” to mean coverage that costs no more than 8.5 percent of income rather than current law’s 9.5 percent of income (page 2041).

35. Increases taxes on Americans at every income level: $2 trillion in tax hikes will fall on those making under $400,000 per year, contrary to what the White House says. Individuals at all income levels will be affected (Ways and Means GOP).

36. Lowers wages for working families: The corporate tax rate will increase by 5.5%, meaning American companies will face one of the highest tax burdens in the world. According to analysis, two-thirds of this tax hike will fall on lower- and middle-income taxpayers (page 2110).

37. Penalizes marriage: The bill would permanently double the EITC’s marriage penalty on childless worker benefits (page 2036).

38. Imposes crushing taxes on small business: Guts the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act small business deductions that reduced pass-through entity taxes to keep them comparable to taxes imposed on corporations (page 2235) as well as hammer small businesses that file as individual tax earners with the 39.6% rate (page 2221) and Obamacare’s 3.8% tax on net investment income.

39. Crushes family businesses and farms: The bill would impose a 25% capital gains rate  (page 2226) and makes alterations to the Death Tax including cutting the Death Tax exemption in half (page 2240).

40. Violates Americans’ financial privacy: $80 billion slush fund to hire an 87,000-IRS-agent army to carry out the Biden administration’s plan to review every account above a $600 balance or with more than $600 of transactions in a year. (page 2283).

41. Increases out of pocket costs for those who rely on prescription drugs: The bill repeals the Trump-era Rebate Rule which passes through rebates directly to consumers at the point of sale (page 2465).

42. Imports policies from countries with socialized medicine: The bill includes healthcare policies imported from systems in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom—all countries that have government-run healthcare systems (page 2349).

The bill also has other lesser-known provisions, including:

· $5 million per year for the Small Business Administration for an entrepreneurial program for formerly incarcerated individuals.

· $2.5 billion for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to award competitive grants or contracts to local governments, community-based organizations, and other groups to support “intervention strategies” to reduce community violence.

“Each of these 42 bullets is enough to vote against the bill. Taken together—it’s mind-blowingly corrupt. We need to loudly oppose it,” Banks charged in the release.

He added, “Democrats are scattered. The Biden agenda is in question. It’s the perfect opportunity to build public sentiment against this bill. The American people need us to be the vanguard against the Left’s radical plans.”

“It’s not an understatement to say this bill, if passed, will fundamentally change our country forever—Americans will wake up in a few years and wonder what happened to their freedom. We can’t let that happen, Banks concluded.

Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

 

 VISUALIZE REVOLUTION! 

THEY WILL NOT GO QUIETLY!

 

The legislation has been shaped entirely by the class interests of the capitalist ruling elite, which demands both a continued supply of cash from the Treasury and a stepped-up supply of low-wage labor in the midst of the pandemic. In the course of these “negotiations,” measures that provide subsidies to businesses or promote the entry of more workers into the labor force have advanced, while measures that cost business money, sustain working people while they are not actively employed, or simply improve their lives, have been killed.

Biden opened the border, flooding our nation with millions of unemployed, unvetted, often terribly sick people who have no knowledge of or respect for our institutions.  Most plan to get the welfare and health care Biden promised.  Nothing stops terrorists and serious criminals, including killers; rapists; pedophiles; and traffickers of women, children, and drugs.  America receives no benefit from opening our border to impoverished, illiterate people from over 120 countries.  To add insult to injury, while Americans are being destroyed over the vaccine mandate, illegal aliens need not be vaccinated.

Biden’s incredible shrinking social “reform” bill

Patrick Martin

13 hours ago

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The “framework” for the “Build Back Better” legislation announced by President Biden Thursday morning and presented to the House Democratic caucus signals the collapse of the reformist pretenses of the Democratic administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress. For all the grandiose rhetoric about sweeping social legislation and “the most consequential piece of legislation for working people” since the New Deal (in the words of Bernie Sanders), the Democratic Party leadership has embraced a watered-down plan whose yearly cost ($175 billion) is less than one-quarter of the military budget.

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., listens to a question from a reporter during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The legislation incorporating the “framework,” a draft budget reconciliation bill, was submitted to the House Rules Committee Thursday and runs to nearly 2,200 pages. Its provisions are complex, and the procedures for its approval are both convoluted and highly precarious. It is entirely possible that the legislative process will lead to a complete political debacle for both the Biden White House and the Democratic Party as a whole, with no significant legislation passed.

But there is a unifying thread to the process of legislative horse-trading with two right-wing Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and a half-dozen right-wing House Democrats, which shrank the initial social spending bill from $6 trillion at the beginning, to the $3.5 trillion bill put forward by the White House, and now to the $1.75 trillion embraced by Biden Thursday—half his original plan, and barely a quarter of the opening bid by Sanders.

All these figures represent expenditures spread out over 10 years. By comparison, the military budget over the same period would be at least $8 trillion, and projected interest payments on the federal debt could be even higher. Every year, the Federal Reserve is pumping close to $1.5 trillion into the markets—nearly as much as the proposed legislation allocates in ten years.

The legislation has been shaped entirely by the class interests of the capitalist ruling elite, which demands both a continued supply of cash from the Treasury and a stepped-up supply of low-wage labor in the midst of the pandemic. In the course of these “negotiations,” measures that provide subsidies to businesses or promote the entry of more workers into the labor force have advanced, while measures that cost business money, sustain working people while they are not actively employed, or simply improve their lives, have been killed.

This rule of thumb explains both what provisions have survived and those which have gone by the wayside. To outline these briefly, based on the descriptions supplied by the White House, the surviving measures include:

· Climate-related spending, for a total of $555 billion. This is the largest single allocation in the much-reduced reconciliation bill, and the lion’s share, $320 billion, is in the form of tax credits to utilities, electric vehicle manufacturers, and companies that build battery-charging stations. Another $110 billion is for direct incentives (subsidies) to producers of “solar, batteries and advanced materials” (of great concern to the Pentagon), as well as “boosting the competitiveness of existing industries, like steel, cement, and aluminum.”

· Universal pre-kindergarten programs for children aged three and four, as well as federally subsidized child care. Despite the glowing rhetoric about expanding the social safety net, the main purpose of this program is to free the mothers of small children to take low-wage jobs.

· Expansion of Medicaid into a dozen states, mainly in the South, all ruled by Republican state governments which refused federal subsidies for expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Since most low-wage employers do not offer health care coverage, workers in those states, including Texas and Florida, have a strong disincentive to take jobs that would raise their incomes only marginally, yet make them ineligible for Medicaid.

· Extension of the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for around 17 million low-wage workers. This is essentially a wage subsidy for low-wage employers, since it allows workers to survive on extremely low wages with a top-off from the federal government, only available if they stay in their jobs for a minimum number of hours per week. It is not payable to workers who quit their jobs, are laid off or are long-term unemployed.

· Creation of a federally funded home health care program for the elderly and disabled. The class purpose is to return to the work force those who might otherwise have to drop out to take care of elderly parents or disabled relatives. This is of particular importance in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has frightened people away from nursing homes that have become death traps.

Those programs that have been largely or entirely eliminated include:

· Two years of free community college. This would obviously have removed large numbers of workers from the labor force, particularly those working and going to school only part-time, who would be encouraged to enroll in full-time education.

· Paid family and medical leave. This was initially set at 12 weeks, then whittled down to four weeks and then eliminated entirely.

· The child tax credit of $250 a month and $300 a month for children aged six or less. The bill extends the credit for only one year, to avoid its expiration in the midst of the campaign for the 2022 congressional elections. Once promised as a new, permanent benefit that would “cut child poverty in half,” the child credit is now set to terminate December 31, 2022.

· Authorization for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices using its enormous buying power to bargain with the pharmaceutical companies.

· Expansion of Medicare to provide dental, vision and hearing coverage. One of the “red lines” of Sanders, the proposal has been shrunk to include only hearing coverage, the cheapest of the three. Besides being costly, this coverage was viewed as undesirable competition for insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage plans (a semi-private version of Medicare).

Alongside the tailoring of social spending proposals to meet the class interests of big business, the latest Biden version of the reconciliation package excludes any significant tax rate increases for either corporations or the wealthy, and it does not include even the “billionaires’ tax” proposed by some Senate Democrats this week, after the provision was challenged by several of the billionaires and threatened with protracted litigation on constitutional grounds.

There are a handful of tax provisions thrown in to sustain the pretense of “fairness” and “equity,” such as a minimum corporate income tax, but these will be easily evaded by giant corporations and their well-funded tax and legal departments. Likewise, the surtax on the incomes of millionaires and billionaires is likely to be eliminated because of the adamant opposition of Senator Sinema to any increase in income tax rates.

These spending and tax measures are combined in the “reconciliation” bill, which requires 50 votes in the Senate for passage. The separate “infrastructure” bill has already passed the Senate with bipartisan support, because it is essentially a $1.2 trillion boondoggle for big construction companies and other corporations, such as trucking, shipping, electric utilities and the like.

In the wake of Biden’s meeting with the House Democrats, the “progressives” have embraced the substance of his much-reduced reconciliation bill. While still insisting on the passage of both bills together, they are not arguing for any significant improvements in the reconciliation bill. Medicare expansion, paid family leave, free community college and other measures are off the table.

The whole rotten process exposes not only the nature of the Democratic Party itself. As Biden declared in his remarks Thursday from the White House, after his meeting with the House, “I am a capitalist.” Or to be more precise, he is a paid servant of the capitalists, like every Democratic and Republican politician.

The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street, the intelligence agencies and the military, resting on privileged sections of the middle class. The role of Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, et al. is to provide this reactionary political organization with the barest fig leaf of social reform.

Moreover, far from “creating space” for social reform, as the pseudo-left promoters of the Democratic Party claimed, the right-wing politics of the Democrats, to the extent that they are not opposed through the independent political mobilization of the working class on a socialist program, only fuel the growth of the far right.

 

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