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2/23 Deb Haaland’s Hearing for Interior Post; News Roundup & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on February 23, 2021 by BennyFebruary 23, 2021

Deb Haaland’s confirmation hearing is today. She’s appearing before the Energy Committee, in which Joe Manchin is the Chair. Senator Henrich is introducing her. Link to the livestream if you care to watch.
https://www.energy.senate.gov/hearings/2021/2/hearing-to-consider-nomination-of-the-honorable-debra-haaland-to-be-the-secretary-of-the-interior.

GOP Rep Don Young of Alaska is also singing her praises as part of her introduction.

More news, tweets, videos, etc in the comments. See you there!

Posted in Bernie Sanders, News, Open Thread, Video | 129 Replies

2/20 News Roundup & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on February 20, 2021 by BennyFebruary 20, 2021

The sun is finally coming out!

We hit $3.2 MILLION in Texas relief support last night!

One of the places it’s going is the Houston Food Bank. I’m visiting Reps. @JacksonLeeTX18 & @LaCongresista with volunteers to pack meals.

The bank REALLY needs helping hands.

Can you join a shift? https://t.co/93wBfD4YdI pic.twitter.com/62AvCb4CL7

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 20, 2021

Done! 👍

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) February 20, 2021

Pres. Biden, as he said he would yesterday, has granted the request from Texas Gov. Abbott, for a Major Disaster Declaration, per the White House

Some details here: pic.twitter.com/oT5fgsLBri

— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) February 20, 2021

One guy on twitter said Biden delayed relief to punish Texas for voting for Trump. tsk tsk.

More news, tweets, videos, etc in the comments. Fly high birdies!

Posted in Bernie Sanders, News, Open Thread | Tagged Texas Freeze | 59 Replies

2/19 News Roundup & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on February 19, 2021 by BennyFebruary 19, 2021

Gavel in hand, Bernie Sanders lays out an unabashedly liberal economic agenda

After three decades in Congress wielding influence as a left-wing outsider with a grass-roots following, Sen. Bernie Sanders has finally grasped institutional power on Capitol Hill — and he is moving quickly to use it.

As the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders has already played a key role in advancing President Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, and he is now scheduling high-profile hearings on some of the nation’s most pressing challenges.

For the first, set for Thursday, Sanders has summoned the chief executives of some of America’s best-known companies to testify about the wages they pay their employees — speaking alongside some of their own front-line workers.

The hearing’s title — “Why Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large Profitable Corporations?” — reflects how Sanders intends to use his new gavel to promote an unabashedly liberal economic agenda, one that breaks with the Budget Committee’s traditional focus on the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook.

Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, said he sees his panel’s scope as touching on “every aspect of public policy — in fact, on every aspect of American life,” and he plans to focus on the plight of the working class amid growing inequality.

“They are living through an economic desperation the likes of which we have not seen since the Great Depression,” Sanders said in an interview. “So we are going to be a very active and aggressive Budget Committee, which is going to explore what’s going on with the working class and the middle class of this country and how we can successfully address the crises that they face.”

Study: Walmart and McDonald’s have the most workers on food stamps and Medicaid

Other hearings are tentatively on the books: On March 17, Sanders is planning a hearing on income and wealth inequality, followed by a March 24 hearing on “making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes” and an April 14 hearing on the costs of climate change.

As chairman of a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee, he also plans to hold a hearing later this year on prescription drug prices.

It remains unclear whether the McDonald’s and Walmart executives Sanders has invited to next week’s hearing will appear. McDonald’s declined to comment, and representatives for Walmart did not respond to inquiries Thursday.

One top executive who has agreed to testify, according to Sanders’s office, is W. Craig Jelinek of Costco, which is known for paying its workers higher-than-average wages and benefits. Costco also did not respond to a request for comment.

Sanders said no matter who shows up, he is determined to highlight the ever-growing gap between the pay of top executives and their essential employees — and the effect those wages have on federal expenditures.

“Do they really think that the taxpayers of this country have to subsidize their workers in terms of food stamps, in terms of Medicaid or public housing, because they’re paying starvation wages? We are going to raise those issues,” Sanders said. “So I would suggest that they come and they take the opportunity to . . . defend what they’re doing.”

The Budget Committee hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building has rarely been a place of great televised drama. The panel’s gavel for decades has been swapped between chairs who saw their main task as casting a watchful eye on widening deficits and a growing national debt. Republicans have tended to focus on curbing government spending, while Democrats have urged the need to maintain revenue.

While Sanders has declared some concern about a national debt that has soared past $20 trillion, his greater worry is about an American underclass that the federal government is failing to help.

His GOP sparring partner on the panel is Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), who has been more prominent in recent years for his up-and-down relationship with President Donald Trump than for economic policy matters. But Graham has shown a long interest in tackling the nation’s long-term fiscal trajectory, and he recently indicated he relishes the chance to engage in broader debates over thorny issues with Sanders.

“It gives us a chance, I think, to talk about big things, and there’s going to be differences,” Graham said at a hearing last week. “One of my goals is to make sure that all these big things that we’re talking about other people paying for, that we have a sense of, you know, how do you pay for all this stuff?”

Sanders from 2013 to 2015 chaired the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, a panel with limited jurisdiction. Now Sanders’s grasp of true agenda-setting power is being celebrated by fellow lawmakers on the hard left, who are encouraged to have an ally — not a deficit hawk — in a key position.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Thursday that she has been speaking to Sanders multiple times a week about pending legislation — including a minimum wage hike that Sanders is working to shoehorn into the pandemic relief bill.

“It’s just been great to have somebody chairing that committee who’s got power and who’s willing to call it like it is and say exactly why it’s so important that we deliver for people on these bold, populist, popular policies,” she said.

Biden indicates he’s open to negotiation on $15 minimum wage

One task that remains in doubt is whether the Budget Committee under Sanders will write a traditional budget — one that sets out long-term revenue and spending targets for the federal government. “I just don’t know the answer to that at this point,” Sanders said.

That core task is up in the air in part because Biden and Democratic congressional leaders are relying on special rules under the Senate Budget Committee’s purview to skirt a GOP filibuster and pass major legislation over the next two years — starting with the pandemic bill, known as the American Rescue Act.

AD
The Senate earlier this month passed a stripped-down budget resolution that paved the way for that process, known as reconciliation, to move forward. Now, Sanders’s staff and aides from other congressional committees are working to convince the Senate parliamentarian that the wide-ranging proposals Democrats are eyeing comport with strict budget rules.

The process is expected to repeat later this year when Democrats embark on an even larger package that is expected to include trillions in new infrastructure spending.

Sanders declined to discuss how big of an infrastructure bill he is eyeing or how quickly it might move. Both of those parameters are subject to negotiation with more moderate Democrats. But he said he expected the legislation to address “structural problems” facing the country, including addressing student debt, remaking the federal tax regime and “transforming our energy system.”

To lay the groundwork for that effort, Sanders said, he plans to continue holding hearings on big issues and perhaps — pandemic willing — taking his panel on the road.

“I think it would be really interesting to go to communities around the country and hear from working people about what is going on in their lives and how the national priorities that we have now impact them,” he said.

More news, tweets, videos, etc in the comments. TGIF!

Posted in Bernie Sanders, News | 180 Replies

2/16 Fat Tuesday OT & News Roundup

The Progressive Wing Posted on February 16, 2021 by BennyFebruary 16, 2021

News, tweets, videos, etc in the comments section. See you there!

Posted in Activism, News, Open Thread | 117 Replies

2/14 News Roundup and Valentine’s Day OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on February 14, 2021 by BennyFebruary 14, 2021

as the queen of Bernie memes it was my duty to make this valentine pic.twitter.com/auQU2ZuTAT

— believe survivors 💛💛 (@helmsinki) February 7, 2021

More tweets, news, videos, etc in the comments. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Posted in Bernie Sanders, News, Open Thread | 52 Replies

2/13 News Roundup & Open Thread (update)

The Progressive Wing Posted on February 13, 2021 by BennyFebruary 13, 2021

‘A Complete Capitulation’: Outrage as Democrats Abruptly Back Off Push for Witnesses in Trump Trial

Shortly after the Senate voted to pave the way for witnesses in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, Democratic lawmakers and the former president’s defense team reached a deal to merely enter a statement by Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler into evidence instead of having her testify under oath on her knowledge of a call between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The agreement effectively slammed the door on the possibility of witnesses in the trial, potentially clearing a path for a final vote on the impeachment charge on Saturday. After the deal was announced on the Senate floor, Democratic managers moved into closing arguments.

The abrupt change of course by Democrats was met with outrage by progressive observers and analysts who viewed Herrera Beutler’s potential testimony—and that of others who may have been compelled to come forward—as an opportunity to uncover additional information about Trump’s conduct on the day of the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol last month.

“Even if you’re convinced no testimony will change the minds of 40 Republicans—and I think that’s a fair assumption—leaving witnesses on the table is an incredible mistake,” tweeted HuffPost’s Matt Fuller. “After impeachment managers presented a fantastic case, the decision to fold is what will be remembered.”

In the statement that was entered into the record, Herrera Beutler—one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last month—said that “when McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol.”

“McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters,” Herrera Beutler said. “That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said, ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.'”

Judd Legum of Popular Information argued that because Herrera Beutler’s statement had already been released to the public, the agreement to enter it into evidence is “objectively the same as a complete capitulation on witnesses and the Democrats should just own up to that.”

“This is retreat. White flag. Malpractice. Completely unstrategic,” added Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). “They just closed the door on others who may have stepped out, as Herrera Beutler urged last night. Just when we thought Dems were being bold and strategic. This is grabbing lameness out of the jaws of boldness.”

Watching the R's throw sand in the gears of the D's closing arguments gives me great optimism that they want to work with President Biden on all those agenda items that calling witnesses would have delayed.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) February 13, 2021

More news, tweets, videos, etc in comments section.

Posted in Bernie Sanders, News, Open Thread | Tagged Donald Trump | 125 Replies

2/12 TGIF News Roundup & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on February 12, 2021 by BennyFebruary 12, 2021

Greetings Birdies…it’s Friday!
Same Old Third Way

For a moment, it looked like the Democratic Party’s Wall Street-boosting think tanks might stop hawking austerity during the historic, deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

“Clearly, there’s a need,” Jim Kessler, an executive vice president at Third Way, told the Washington Post last month in response to President Joe Biden’s first coronavirus relief proposal.

“The new unemployment numbers are shocking,” Kessler said. “State and local aid has to be part of it. There will be additional stimulus checks. And you have to make sure unemployment benefits continue as well.”

Kessler’s remarks came as a shock to our team at The Daily Poster. We simply never thought we would see Third Way — one of the Beltway’s most reliable purveyors of let-them-eat-cake-ism — making the case for deficit spending, even when people are desperate and dying.

Unfortunately, everything has now gone back to normal: Third Way is boosting a campaign by billionaire-funded economists and millionaire TV pundits to deny $1,400 COVID survival checks to tens of millions of middle-class Americans. Meanwhile, its well-heeled executives are helping Republicans undermine the push to raise the minimum wage to $15.

A few years ago, Third Way admitted that most of its funding comes from finance industry donors. Its corporate donors include PepsiCo, Facebook, and chemical giant Dow, according to company filings.

Building The Case For Rationing Survival Checks

In late January, Third Way’s Kessler gave a ringing endorsement of a shoddy study by Opportunity Insights, a Harvard University think tank, that has been used to try to build the case for limiting direct payments to middle-class families.

3 of the smartest economists around say target stim checks to those <$75k @byHeatherLong writes. https://t.co/u6mwJvYnFK

— Jim Kessler (@ThirdWayKessler) January 26, 2021


Cutting off stimulus checks to Americans earning over $75,000 could be wise, new data suggests
President Biden is debating another round of $1,400 stimulus payments. Some in Congress have urged the president to target aid to lower-income families only.
wapo.st

Opportunity Insights is funded by billionaire foundations, including one that has been a generous donor to Third Way — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2018, the Gates foundation pledged to donate more than $15 million to Harvard University to establish Opportunity Insights. The foundation contributed nearly $1.7 million that year to Third Way’s charitable arm, accounting for about 20 percent of the group’s revenue, according to IRS tax returns.

The Opportunity Insights study found that middle and upper-class families didn’t immediately spend the entire $600 survival checks authorized by Congress in December. The economists used their findings to argue that survival checks should be cut off for individuals earning more than $50,000 per year and couples earning more than $75,000 per year.

By comparison, the first two COVID survival checks of $1,200 and $600 were sent in full to individuals who made less than $75,000 per year and couples who made less than $150,000. The changes they recommended could deny or reduce aid to nearly half of Americans, according to census data.

Thanks to the study and an elite media propaganda campaign, the White House and Democratic lawmakers have considered phasing out direct payments for individuals making more than $50,000 or married couples making more than $100,000 — a change that could deny aid to 40 million Americans.

The Daily Poster interviewed several people who could be impacted by these changes — and they all said they do in fact need the money, no matter what a handful of economists toying with spreadsheets say.

As the American Prospect’s David Dayen and economist Claudia Sahm pointed out earlier this week, the study has massive flaws that were never disclosed in any of the articles hyping its findings.


“Not An Emergency”

After The Intercept’s Ryan Grim said that Third Way wants to see government spending on survival checks become less popular politically, Third Way executive vice president Matt Bennett asserted that the survival checks “have to be means tested,” adding: “All we are debating is the line.”

When a Twitter user pointed out the checks don’t actually have to be means tested, Bennett replied: “You favor giving checks to the Trump kids?”

This is, of course, the same rationale that Democratic technocrats like Pete Buttigieg give to explain why college shouldn’t be free.

Third Way has made similar arguments against student debt forgiveness, claiming it “primarily benefits upper middle-class people who attended elite four-year colleges” — even though canceling student debt would in fact “greatly reduce the burden of student debt more for lower-income indebted households,” according to economist Marshall Steinbaum.

On Thursday, Bennett told Politico thaRelat increasing the minimum wage to $15 — as Biden has proposed doing in his COVID relief bill — isn’t an “emergency.”

“Raising the minimum wage is important but it’s not an emergency,” Bennett said, arguing instead that renewing expanded unemployment insurance “is an emergency.”

Of course, there is no reason that Democrats have to only do one or the other. Pitting these items against each other is a form of austerity.

After his comments generated blowback on Twitter, Bennett responded: “I totally agree that no one should have to work for $8/hr.”

But he questioned whether Democrats in Congress will be able to raise the minimum wage under the budget reconciliation process, and argued again that “we simply must not allow [unemployment insurance] to run out.”

Related:

The most influential Democrat you never hear from

Kyrsten Sinema doesn’t often make big policy pronouncements. But when she does, Democrats had better listen.

Take the $15 hourly minimum wage that Democratic leaders want to add to a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. Sinema, who became the first Democrat to win a Senate race in once deep-red Arizona in 30 years, is crystal clear: She’s against including it.

“What’s important is whether or not it’s directly related to short-term Covid relief. And if it’s not, then I am not going to support it in this legislation,” Sinema said in a telephone interview this week. “The minimum wage provision is not appropriate for the reconciliation process. It is not a budget item. And it shouldn’t be in there.”

Sinema’s opposition is a blow to Democrats’ hopes of bumping up the federal minimum wage through budget reconciliation to avoid a GOP filibuster, complicating follow-through on a campaign promise from Democrats and President Joe Biden. And her defense of the Senate’s age-old rules is likely to frustrate progressives eager to use every tool at their disposal to advance their priorities in a Senate where one wayward Democrat can mean the difference between a policy breakthrough and utter failure.

Her breaks with her liberal colleagues are both a reflection of her state, which she won by a narrow margin in 2018, and her temperament. But the former state legislator, House member and now first-term senator has literally never served in the majority before — so she feels the minority’s pain.

It’s just one of the things that makes the 44-year-old Democrat one of the most quirky and interesting members of the stodgy Senate. She often wears a bright-colored wig to vote, drawing wide eyes from her colleagues. She waits for a single elevator most of the time, once peeking into a jam-packed vessel and declaring it a “Covid elevator.” The walls of her office are a loud purple, accented by leopard patterns.

And though she’s more attentive to Democratic Caucus meetings than she was in the minority, she still keeps Republicans at least as close as members of her own party. She was a pretty lonely Democrat during former President Donald Trump’s last State of the Union speech, standing and applauding at times. Now she talks to President Joe Biden’s team just about every day.

More news, commentary, tweets, videos, in the comments section.

Posted in News, Open Thread | 100 Replies

2/11 News Roundup & OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on February 11, 2021 by BennyFebruary 11, 2021

Senate Budget Committee Interviews Neera Tanden for OMB

From Slate:

Kennedy was the final, and typically showiest, Republican to question her. He suggested that there may be a perception that “if you took Wall Street, turned them upside down, and shook ’em, you’d fall out of their pockets.” When he said that “you called Sen. Sanders everything but an ignorant slut”—Graham, in the background, followed up with “I wouldn’t’ve said ‘ignorant’ ”—Tanden showed her anger for the first time, saying, “That is not true, Senator.”

Kennedy then asked her repeatedly whether she meant the insults she tweeted when she tweeted them.

She tried a few different dodges between reiterations of the question. “I really feel badly about them, Senator.” “Social media is a terrible discourse.” “I feel terribly about them.” “I look back at them, I said them, I feel badly about them, I deleted tweets.”

She finally relented.

“Senator, I must have meant them,” she said. “But I really regret them.”

More news, tweets, videos, etc in the comments. Sure Happy It’s Thursday!

Posted in Bernie Sanders, News, Open Thread, Video | Tagged Neera Tanden, OMB nomination | 99 Replies

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