Democrats try and go it alone. McConnell makes them pay.
It all started around 2:30 PM Thursday and ended at 6AM this morning. The democrats, who want to get their relief bill passed intact, with all the progressive pork attached, before their faux impeachment trial begins, worked all night on a budget resolution that would produce a final bill/vote under reconciliation rules. The Senate adopted a budget resolution for coronavirus relief 51-50 with Vice President Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.
It did come at a heavy political cost.
Mitch McConnell forced them to vote on every piece of the progressive policy agenda by taking advantage of a Senate procedure that allows him to propose a number of amendments to the budget resolution, forcing senators to take a stand on a number of issues. The Senate took 41 votes between Thursday and Friday.
A sampling of the votes:
The Senate voted 97-3 to support keeping the U.S. Embassy in Israel in Jerusalem; 50-50 on a failed amendment to support the border wall; 50-50 on a failed amendment supporting the free exercise of religion; 100-0 to oppose the defunding of police; 50-50 on a failed amendment to oppose packing the Supreme Court; 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing stimulus checks for people in prison; 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing the Biden administration's move to restrict oil and gas leasing on federal lands; 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing a federal carbon tax; 53-47 in favor of an amendment supporting the expansion of health savings accounts.
Democrats are now on record and these votes will be part of the campaign against them in 2022.
The House is expected to move on the "concurrent" budget resolution later Friday.
To get covid relief to Americans, the nation will be saddled with the progressive wish list. Democrats will pay handsomely for it within 2 years. Our grandchildren pay in the future.
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Give them credit - the dems are single handedly moving a radical agenda.
Donald Trump is clearly off topic
What is so radical in here? The $15 fed wage & money for undocumented people got voted down and Several of the Republican wants like no tax raises on small businesses and a special fund for food & drink businesses got voted in.
Well, you mentioned the $15 fed minimum wage. First that has zero to do with covid relief and more importantly it is a huge job killer for many parts of the country. It is also the last nail in the coffin for struggling small businesses.
How about more money for teachers & schools?
On top of the current funding:
Even with that the teachers union has demonstrated that they don't want to go back to work even as they are being paid.
The package is loaded with progressive policies that are radical. Republicans are on board with the pandemic relief.
No tessylo, they're at home hiding from their students
Was voted down and is dead in the Senate as I expected it would be. The Dems won't give it up, but for this conversation it doesn't apply.
The Republican amendment to block funds for school openings to some schools was also voted down.
They are working remotely like many of my co-workers (for the record I am not and don't want to).
Just typing that out doesn't make it true. It still needs to go through reconciliation with the House bill. We'll see what goes to President Biden for signature.
As a side note, you haven't taken into consideration that those presently with a $15 per hour job are going to want an increase commensurate with the boost in the lower paying jobs. This isn't just about bringing lower incomes up. It is also going to affect other areas within a company driving more than just direct labor costs up. Your claim that no one would notice is pure speculative bullshit. If you worked in a production environment, you may understand better.
Decisions have consequences.
Meh, it will likely be passed as part of reconciliation so whatever.
I doubt it. Conservatives kept saying that every time an area ups their minimum wage and it never pans out. There is short adjustment period but then everything equals out and life keeps on keepin on. The city where I live recently raised the minimum to $15, and what do ya know, no major job losses, no mass closing of small businesses etc. Generally when people have more money to spend, they spend it. Even McDonalds has come out and said "yeah, the $15 an hour thing will have no real effect on our business so whatever." And they are some the greediest, penny pinching sons a bitches out there.
If they are struggling that badly already the pandemic has likely put them down, and if not they weren't going to last much longer anyhow.
They are working. I see my daughter's teachers holding classes everyday, grading homework etc. Do I, and most teachers, want the schools to reopen ASAP, absolutely, hence why teachers need to be among the first to be vaccinated so that it can be done in a way that puts them at as little risk as possible. But to say they aren't working is the typical teacher bashing bullshit I hear all the time from people who have no idea what teachers actually do and put up with on a regular basis.
Name them then Vic. Name the policies that are oh so "radical".
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My daughters see their teachers every day, my wife and I receive messages and updates from their teachers if not daily then 2-3 times a week. They are not hiding at all.
Around 11PM pelosi sent a message that the House would have no objection to modifying or dropping the $15
min wage if it were a deal breaker.
I haven't. I am sure prices went up a little bit, but they do every year anyways.
In reading all that I'm wondering what you do for a living. Do you care to share that with us?
The deal breaker is the $350 Billion for states. It doesn't matter. The dems are using reconciliation, just like they planned from the minute Joe Biden took the oath of office.
Mostly entry level jobs. As always happens, few people will be hired, current employee hours will be cut.
Automation kiosks will further reduce jobs.
I'm talking about the pampered and spoiled teachers unions nationwide who remain scared of person to person teaching in the classromm, even though they are not likely to be infected with Covid from the kids, even after receiving the shots!
Catholic and charter schools for the most part have been having in class learning since the pandemic started. What's up with the supposedly brightest and best educators?
Of course it isn't. The fact is that the minimum wage in 1968 (when adjusted for inflation) would have equaled $10.69 so todays $7.25 is 47% less than the minimum wage of 1968. Personally I think an increase to $11 (a 51% increase) and tying it to inflation would be a more reasonable step than jumping straight to $15 an hour (a 106% increase) and would give companies that hire mostly minimum wage workers an opportunity to adjust over time, but leaving it at $7.25 is just idiotic as the purchasing value of those dollars continues to shrink.
Please make sure you tell that to diner/restaurant/bar/hospitality employees whose wages are based on TIPS rather than minimum wage. They make $30-$40/hour or MORE in TIPS and do NOT want a mandated $15/hr "living wage".
The current federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 or a combined cash wage & tip of $7.25. The new suggested minimum wage of $15 would not require employers to pay a cash wage of $15 an hour and then have workers getting tips on top of that but a combined $15 an hour of both cash wage + tip.
If you're making $30 an hour in tips then your employer only has to pay a cash wage of $2.13 an hour right now. That's $17.04 for an 8 hour shift + $240 (if $30 an hour in tips) so a total of $257.04 for an 8 hour shift where the employer only chips in $17.04 in cash wages.
$2.13 is 29% of the current $7.25 minimum wage so if the same percent is kept for the $15 minimum wage the employer cash wage for tipped employees would rise to $4.35 an hour. So for an 8 hour shift the employer would pay $34.80 instead making the total take home of the tipped employee (assuming $30 per hour in tips) $274.80 instead of the former $257.04 under the current minimum wage, a total of an extra $17.76 over an 8 hour shift.
This is false according to the CBO CBO report on the effect of $15 minimum wage
"Real income would fall slightly for all households
precisely because employers would pass some of their
higher costs on to consumers through higher prices. In
CBO’s analysis, the share of the cost increases absorbed
by consumers would rise over time, starting at 50 percent
in 2020 and increasing to 75 percent by 2025. Thus,
by 2025 under the $15 option, the real income of all
households would decrease by $48 billion"
Sorry but that is what the CBO report states. The increase in the minimum wage will be eroded over time by the increase in cost of goods and services to consumers.
Very good points. People who don't have HRT experience don't understand how the industry works.
Oh no, greedy companies will charge more...
Maybe we should just do away with any minimum wage and let them pay two dollars an hour.
Maybe then they would keep prices low....
Greedy companies? Have you studied the net profit margin per industry? Across all industries, according to the data from NYU Sterns the median net profit margin is 5.05%.
But if we look at a general retail store the median net profit margin is 2.79% so out of every $100.00 in sales that equates to $2.79 in profit. So if you are a modest company and do one million in sales your net profit is $27,900.00. The average salary for retail associate in the US is $26,000.00 per year. The industry as a whole makes less profit than what they pay 50% of there employees.
So the average CEO salary is about 200k a year.
Imo that is on the low end.
CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978 Typical worker compensation has risen only 12% during that time
The way you word it, if they hired just one person at 30k a year, everyone would go bankrupt.
That would be profit after expenses and capital improvements made specifically to avoid paying Federal and Sate corporate taxes.
It's all manipulated to protect the owner's/CEO's incomes.
I admit I don't quite get those charts. I know it is a generalization and not individual stores.
Going by that, all the clothing outlets should be out of business. One cannot run on negative equity.
I don't believe those numbers. If one goes by them, every industry is on the verge of collapse.
As of 2008 most recent data I have on hand there are 27,281,452 business's, of these businesses 27,262,983 employ less than 500 people, or are considered Small businesses by the SBA. That leaves 18,586 large corporate businesses operating in the US that employ more than 500 people. These corporations are the ones who are over compensating CEO's by the opinion of some people, that is a far cry from the 27+ million that are not overcompensating the CEO.
If they hire new employees without increasing revenues, they will go bankrupt.
These are median numbers, so 1/2 of the companies are making more, and 1/2 are making less total profit margin.
Sorry, not my experience. I was Fixed Ops for a company that was much more successful than anyone could have imagined and the owner was determined not to pay federal taxes. We plowed money unnecessarily into drainage, parking lots and new lighting. When we exhausted that we bought companies that were on the rocks, made them successful and improved them physically until we needed another "project" to work on.
Ended up with multiple new and used car dealerships, marinas, boat sales, repairs, restaurants and a golf course.
Name them then Vic. Name the policies that are oh so "radical".
The ones in the bill?
Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour
$130 billion to help schools reopen
$350 billion for state and local governments
Already noted that it was a prefaabricated concession that Joni Earnst thinks she won.
Radical?
He who shall not be named transferred the distribution of the vaccine to the states and local governments.
We all can see how that worked out...
Yup. How much are we supposed to give the dysfunctional public schools to do what Catholic schools are able to do?
transferred the distribution of the vaccine to the states and local governments.
You mean we are bailing out states to give vaccines? Are they invalids? West Virginia could do it.
What we are really doing is bailing out blue state pensions.
Before another $130B is freely handed to school districts and their unions, taxpayers should question where the previous $68B+ (CARES Act etc) is -- because records show that much of that earlier Covid school "improvement" money to reopen hasn't been used yet.
Correct. We just keep giving them money.
The "president" was just on saying we need to pass the entire thing because experts say we should be paying more attention to relief than deficits.
When in the past 20 years have we payed attention to deficits?
Chicago received more than $100 MILLION to make their K-12 public schools safe. Their teachers have been vaccinated. But the teacher union chiefs are still holding the children hostage because those greedy thieves want MORE money in their pockets. The same has happened in other blue cities and states. They don't care about what they've done the students they claim to "protect".
They make demands and the Mayor keeps giving in, yet it's never enough.
Do you ever get the idea that the Teacher's Union has no intention of going back?
Typical. I don't see how more money makes it all better.
But I'm not a democrat so there is that. Five most dangerous word in the English language. "Maybe it will go away".
Hat tip to the American Cancer Society.
Prove it.
I've believed this for months, because the CDC and many reputable physicians have stated facts regarding the safety and necessity of schools' in-person re-openings. I don't blame all teachers. Many have been indoctrinated by their left-wing union leaders and believe the propaganda they've been fed.
I would, but without a military background what I say doesn't really count!
Yup, That's Joe Biden rejecting the Science!
They put kids last
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This is not to Tessy
I have removed all the nasty personal remarks. I will not do this again without giving points.
Yeah......a radical agenda to help the people and what the majority of the people support. It's shocking that Biden wants to GIVE BACK money to the citizens that NEED IT rather than giving it to the top earners of the country. Anyone who doesn't support returning tax payer money to the tax payers is an idiot.
What give back are you talking about? Is Biden cutting taxes?
My taxes went up because my income went up but guess what....... I'm okay with paying more to help those who are no longer working and do not have enough income for food and housing for their families because someone didn't take the pandemic serious enough to protect the citizens and our economy.
Don't worry, as history has shown time after time the democrats will clean up the mess republicans have left the country in due to their sole desire to cater to the wealthy and privileged.
Taxes will be realigned so that it will benefit the working class. It's called trickle UP not the republican's fizzle down and putter out economics.
None of that answers my question. You claimed Biden is going to give back money to the citizens that need it. When did he propose a tax cut.?
The "relief" plan does a lot more that that!
There's more than one way to give back. I can't help you understand how that works. It requires common sense. You either have it or you don't.......
what's up with the title under our pics?
I think you meant 2022 as there are very few federal spots on this year's ballot. The Republicans have to run on their votes too. That exodus of liberals from urban areas during the summer last year could impact conservative districts more than liberal.
Thank you for that.
The Republicans have to run on their votes too. That exodus of liberals from urban areas during the summer last year could impact conservative districts more than liberal.
I have a little theory on that. IMHO most of the democratic party's voters are comprised of elements that are not progressives. Of the 80 Million who voted for Biden, I saw a lot of independents, moderate democrats, minority party line voters and public union employees. Maybe 25% of that vote were hard core progressives voting for policy. I'm convinced that most of the people who are voting democrats don't want to defund the police (as the Senate vote proved) or want the teachers union keeping schools closed while the Chicago mayor submits to every demand. I just don't see democrats winning when progressive policies are all that's on the ballot.
I can assure you the whole spending package isn't a bag of progressive only policies as several of the amendments got bi-partisan votes in both chambers of Congress. Neither Dems nor Repubs do well when they are run by the fringes. Dems do have to be careful not to repeat the mistakes repubs made under the last admin. I really dislike that this passed on party lines - not because of what was in the package, but because partisian politics is the only game in town. It sucks and I don't support it.
That is probably right, hence why we haven't seen, and won't see any extremely progressive legislation. Sure, the progressive wing will get some of the things they want, but you are not going to see something like the Green New Deal, the best you will get is a watered down patch-work version of it. Which I am okay with. Of course I would like to see a lot more swift action on a lot of issues, but I will take some progress over none at all.
And here is your problem, poll after poll, and the most recent election shows that the majority of public are actually onboard with many "progressive" ideas and proposals. Of course it helps when the GOP doesn't actually have ANY legislative ideas beyond reduce rich people's taxes and screaming about how mean people are to them. The Democrats, even in Georgia, won by running on "progressive" policies, they will lose by not pursuing them.
Frankly, until the GOP can detail for me what they actually want to accomplish legislatively should they regain power, why should I vote for them?
That is not what the most recent election showed. Biden ran as a moderate. The election was a consensus on Donald Trump or should I say all the noise surrounding him. All we heard from democrats concerned voting rules changes.
Of course it helps when the GOP doesn't actually have ANY legislative ideas beyond reduce rich people's taxes and screaming about how mean people are to them
Oh, I think they have plenty to play with starting with restoring law & order, border security, full employment and protecting the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
The Democrats, even in Georgia, won by running on "progressive" policies, they will lose by not pursuing them.
They won in Georgia via Stacey Abrams getting a lot of new, young voters out to the polls and her sister (a judge) allowing people who moved to still vote.
Frankly, until the GOP can detail for me what they actually want to accomplish legislatively should they regain power, why should I vote for them?
That would include a lot of reforms that I am sure you would be 100% against.
Exactly. Notice how I put the word progressive in quotations, because what the Dems had proposed and are looking to pass isn't really all that progressive, it is much more moderate and in many cases supported by a clear majority of voters.
Then obviously you weren't listening. I heard much more about COVID relief, immigration reform, student debt relief etc. than I did about voting reform (which is also an issue).
So the same old bullshit platitudes? What legislation do they actually HAVE or are crafting to address these issues? What have the actually pushed?
Restoring law and order? You mean the same law and order that apparently broke down while they were in charge? Why in the fuck should I trust them to "restore law and order"? What does that even mean lol?
Border Security? Their policy apparently is build an expensive ass wall that won't do much and ban immigration from the southern border. Neither of which is much of a plan, and neither of which I support.
full employment?
Oh god, let me in on THAT magical pill. Neither party has advocated any position other than wanting as many people to have jobs as possible. Saying full employment doesn't mean anything. What specific policies are they advocating to encourage job growth?
Sigh, yeah sure. God, guns, and gays or whatever. I don't think you guys even know what you mean when you say that.
Yep, voters who clearly share the views of the Democratic parry, so good for her.
Gonna have to fill me in on this one.
Quite possibly, but I can't say if I don't know what they are. So please, enlighten me.
That's not what the election was about.
So the same old bullshit platitudes?
I just gave you an answer. Sorry if you don't like those policies. You see, that is what really divides us.
What specific policies are they advocating to encourage job growth?
The ones that gave us full employment before China destroyed it all.
Yep, voters who clearly share the views of the Democratic parry, so good for her.
In Mom's basement.
Gonna have to fill me in on this one.
Haven't heard?
I am good with those votes, but more than that I want the Dems to PASS their legislation. Fuck McConnell.
The Dems are only going to be in trouble in 2022 if they go into the midterms with absolutely nothing to show for the last 2 years. Vote for your policies and priorities and then DEFEND them, don't worry about Trump and his supporters, the majority of Americans like you and your ideas more than them so roll with it.
Talk about campaign ads writing themselves.
So I guess we can end this one by concluding that Joe Biden only wanted the appearance of bipartisanship. It was always take it or leave it and we are going to use reconciliation.