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#bernie sanders chair
vladaustria · 2 years
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[After Tankhun finds out about Kim breaking Chay’s heart]
Announcer: We are LIVE here at Wik’s concert and- wait, what’s this? It’s, it’s, BY GOD IT’S KHUN TANKHUN WITH A STEEL TRAY!
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angelx1992 · 2 years
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mitchipedia · 1 year
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“Too old to be president.” Here we go again. By Ashton Applewhite at This Chair Rocks.
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slushiestbear1993 · 2 years
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batboyblog · 6 days
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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #10
March 15-22 2024
The EPA announced new emission standards with the goal of having more than half of new cars and light trucks sold in the US be low/zero emission by 2032. One of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history, it'll eliminate 7 billion tons of CO2 emissions over the next 30 years. It's part of President Biden's goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 on the road to eliminating them totally by 2050.
President Biden canceled nearly 6 Billion dollars in student loan debt. 78,000 borrowers who work in public sector jobs, teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters etc will have their debt totally forgiven. An additional 380,000 public service workers will be informed that they qualify to have their loans forgiven over the next 2 years. The Biden Administration has now forgiven $143.6 Billion in student loan debt for 4 million Americans since the Supreme Court struck down the original student loan forgiveness plan last year.
Under Pressure from the administration and Democrats in Congress Drugmaker AstraZeneca caps the price of its inhalers at $35. AstraZeneca joins rival Boehringer Ingelheim in capping the price of inhalers at $35, the price the Biden Admin capped the price of insulin for seniors. The move comes as the Federal Trade Commission challenges AstraZeneca’s patents, and Senator Bernie Sanders in his role as Democratic chair of the Senate Health Committee investigates drug pricing.
The Department of Justice sued Apple for being an illegal monopoly in smartphones. The DoJ is joined by 16 state attorneys general. The DoJ accuses Apple of illegally stifling competition with how its apps work and seeking to undermining technologies that compete with its own apps.
The EPA passed a rule banning the final type of asbestos still used in the United States. The banning of chrysotile asbestos (known as white asbestos) marks the first time since 1989 the EPA taken action on asbestos, when it passed a partial ban. 40,000 deaths a year in the US are linked to asbestos
President Biden announced $8.5 billion to help build advanced computer chips in America. Currently America only manufactures 10% of the world's chips and none of the most advanced next generation of chips. The deal with Intel will open 4 factories across 4 states (Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon) and create 30,000 new jobs. The Administration hopes that by 2030 America will make 20% of the world's leading-edge chips.
President Biden signed an Executive Order prioritizing research into women's health. The order will direct $200 million into women's health across the government including comprehensive studies of menopause health by the Department of Defense and new outreach by the Indian Health Service to better meet the needs of American Indian and Alaska Native Women. This comes on top of $100 million secured by First Lady Jill Biden from ARPA-H.
Democratic Senators Bob Casey, Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, and Jacky Rosen (all up for re-election) along with Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Sheldon Whitehouse, introduced the "Shrinkflation Prevention Act" The Bill seeks to stop the practice of companies charging the same amount for products that have been subtly shrunk so consumers pay more for less.
The Department of Transportation will invest $45 million in projects that improve Bicyclist and Pedestrian Connectivity and Safety
The EPA will spend $77 Million to put 180 electric school buses onto the streets of New York City This is part of New York's goal to transition its whole school bus fleet to electric by 2035.
The Senate confirmed President Biden's nomination of Nicole Berner to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Berner has served as the general counsel for America's largest union, SEIU, since 2017 and worked in their legal department since 2006. On behalf of SEIU she's worked on cases supporting the Affordable Care Act, DACA, and against the Defense of Marriage act and was part of the Fight for 15. Before working at SEIU she was a staff attorney at Planned Parenthood. Berner's name was listed by the liberal group Demand Justice as someone they'd like to see on the Supreme Court. Berner becomes one of just 5 LGBT federal appeals court judges, 3 appointed by Biden. The Senate also confirmed Edward Kiel and Eumi Lee to be district judges in New Jersey and Northern California respectively, bring the number of federal judges appointed by Biden to 188.
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On Wednesday, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) reintroduced a proposal to make higher education free at public schools for most Americans — and pay for it by taxing Wall Street.
The College for All Act of 2023 would massively change the higher education landscape in the U.S., taking a step toward Sanders’s long-standing goal of making public college free for all. It would make community college and public vocational schools tuition-free for all students, while making any public college and university free for students from single-parent households making less than $125,000 or couples making less than $250,000 — or, the vast majority of families in the U.S.
The bill would increase federal funding to make tuition free for most students at universities that serve non-white groups, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). It would also double the maximum award to Pell Grant recipients at public or nonprofit private colleges from $7,395 to $14,790.
If passed, the lawmakers say their bill would be the biggest expansion of access to higher education since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Higher Education Act, a bill that would massively increase access to college in the ensuing decades. The proposal would not only increase college access, but also help to tackle the student debt crisis.
“Today, this country tells young people to get the best education they can, and then saddles them for decades with crushing student loan debt. To my mind, that does not make any sense whatsoever,” Sanders said. “In the 21st century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. The time is long overdue to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and debt-free for working families.”
Debt activists expressed support for the bill. “This is the only real solution to the student debt crisis: eliminate tuition and debt by fully funding public colleges and universities,” the Debt Collective wrote on Wednesday. “It’s time for your member of Congress to put up or shut up. Solve the root cause and eliminate tuition and debt.”
These initiatives would be paid for by several new taxes on Wall Street, found in a separate bill reintroduced by Sanders and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) on Wednesday. The Tax on Wall Street Speculation would enact a 0.5% tax on stock trades, a 0.1% tax on bonds and a 0.005% tax on trades on derivatives and other types of assets.
The tax would primarily affect the most frequent, and often the wealthiest, traders and would be less than a typical fee for pension management for working class investors, the lawmakers say. It would raise up to $220 billion in the first year of enactment, and over $2.4 trillion over a decade. The proposal has the support of dozens of progressive organizations as well as a large swath of economists.
“Let us never forget: Back in 2008, middle class taxpayers bailed out Wall Street speculators whose greed, recklessness and illegal behavior caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college,” said Sanders. “Now that giant financial institutions are back to making record-breaking profits while millions of Americans struggle to pay rent and feed their families, it is Wall Street’s turn to rebuild the middle class by paying a modest financial transactions tax.”
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capesandshapes · 1 year
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Chaos appears to have begun on the floor during the speaker of house vote and-- OH MY GOD
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IT'S SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS WITH A STEEL CHAIR
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saywhat-politics · 10 months
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"We don't need to give in to Republican extortion or default," the House progressives asserted. "The Constitution grants the president another option."
After GOP House negotiators bailed on U.S. debt ceiling talks on Friday, around two-thirds of the Congressional Progressive Caucus urged President Joe Biden to "invoke his constitutional authority granted in the 14th Amendment" in order "to end Republican hostage-taking of the economy that could trigger a financial catastrophe."
Led by Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Deputy Chair Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Whip Greg Casar (D-Texas), 66 CPC members sent Biden a letter noting the "unremitting efforts by congressional Republicans to hold the economic health of our nation hostage," and calling on him to "fulfill the executive's constitutional duty to faithfully and impartially administer the funds already enacted by law at the direction of Congress."
The letter—which follows a similar call from some Senate Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—cites Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that "the validity of the public debt of the United States... shall not be questioned."
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radiofreederry · 6 months
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lol the chair of the German SPD canceled a meeting w Bernie Sanders bc his statement on Gaza wasn’t racist enough towards Palestinians
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cogitoergofun · 2 months
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When big pharmaceutical companies are confronted over their exorbitant pricing of prescription drugs in the US, they often retreat to two well-worn arguments: One, that the high drug prices cover costs of researching and developing new drugs, a risky and expensive endeavor, and two, that middle managers—pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), to be specific—are actually the ones price gouging Americans.
Both of these arguments faced substantial blows in a hearing Thursday held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In fact, pharmaceutical companies are spending billions of dollars more on lavish executive compensation, dividends, and stock buyouts than they spend on research and development (R&D) for new drugs, Sanders pointed out. "In other words, these companies are spending more to enrich their own stockholders and CEOs than they are in finding new cures and new treatments," he said.
And, while PBMs certainly contribute to America's uniquely astronomical drug pricing, their profiteering accounts for a small fraction of the massive drug market, Sanders and an expert panelist noted. PBMs work as shadowy middle managers between drugmakers, insurers, and pharmacies, setting drug formularies and consumer prices, and negotiating rebates and discounts behind the scenes. Though PBMs practices contribute to overall costs, they pale compared to pharmaceutical profits.
Rather, the heart of the problem, according to a Senate report released earlier this week, is pharmaceutical greed, patent gaming that allows drug makers to stretch out monopolies, and powerful lobbying.
On Thursday, the Senate committee gathered the CEOs of three behemoth pharmaceutical companies to question them on the drug pricing practices: Robert Davis of Merck, Joaquin Duato of Johnson & Johnson, and Chris Boerner of Bristol Myers Squibb.
"We are aware of the many important lifesaving drugs that your companies have produced, and that's extraordinarily important," Sanders said before questioning the CEOs. "But, I think, as all of you know, those drugs mean nothing to anybody who cannot afford it."
America’s uniquely high prices
Sanders called drug pricing in the US "outrageous," noting that Americans spend by far the most for prescription drugs in the world. A report this month by the US Department of Health and Human Services found that in 2022, US prices across all brand-name and generic drugs were nearly three times as high as prices in 33 other wealthy countries. That means that for every dollar paid in other countries for prescription drugs, Americans paid $2.78. And that gap is widening over time.
Focusing on drugs from the three companies represented at the hearing (J&J, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb), the Senate report looked at how initial prices for new drugs entering the US market have skyrocketed over the past two decades. The analysis found that from 2004 to 2008, the median launch price of innovative prescription drugs sold by J&J, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb was over $14,000. But, over the past five years, the median launch price was over $238,000. Those numbers account for inflation.
The report focused on high-profit drugs from each of the drug makers. Merck's Keytruda, a cancer drug, costs $191,000 a year in the US, but is just $91,000 in France and $44,000 in Japan. J&J's HIV drug, Symtuza, is $56,000 in the US, but only $14,000 in Canada. And Bristol Myers Squibb's Eliquis, used to prevent strokes, costs $7,100 in the US, but $760 in the UK and $900 in Canada.
[...]
While the CEOs defended their pricing at the hearing, Sanders and his committee's report noted that pharmaceutical companies are spending far more on executives and stockholders than R&D. In 2022, J&J made $17.9 billion in profits, and its CEO received $27.6 million in compensation. That year, the company spent $17.8 billion on stock buybacks, dividends, and executive compensation, while the company spent just $14.6 billion on R&D, the report states. "In other words, the company spent $3.2 billion more enriching executives and stockholders than finding new cures," it concludes.
In 2022, Bristol Myers Squibb also spent $3.2 billion more on stock buybacks, dividends, and executive compensation than R&D—$12.7 billion on executives and stockholders compared with $9.5 billion on R&D. That year, the company made $6.3 billion in profits, and its former CEO made $41.4 million in compensation.
[...]
Peter Maybarduk, the director of the Access to Medicines program at Public Citizen, a watchdog organization, who also testified at the hearing, hit back at the main pharmaceutical talking points along with Sanders. That included noting that the makers of the 10 drugs selected for the first round of  Medicare price negotiation spent $10 billion more on self-enriching activities than R&D.
Like Sanders, Maybarduk dismissed the idea that pharmaceutical middle managers were the main problem in US drug pricing.
“We heard some wild stuff up here this morning, including a lot of blaming middlemen for the problem of high prices,” Maybarduk said in a response to a question from Sanders. "Drugmakers’ high prices are the whole reason that we have a middlemen problem. It’s because we have exceedingly high prices at the outset that there’s an attractive market for middlemen to enter. But the fish rots from the head. If you break up the market, if you look at where the revenue is, drug makers capture two-thirds, $323 billion, pharmacy benefit managers are a small slice, $23 billion. You can’t fix the problem of the pharmaceutical industry by going off middlemen who are just trying to skim off the top. You have to get to the root of the problem which is the monopoly power."
The Senate report pointed to patent gaming that allows pharmaceutical companies to hold on to monopolies for extended periods. It highlighted that Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb have accumulated dozens of patents on individual drugs, creating "patent thickets." With the dense protection, pharmaceutical companies can delay low-cost alternatives from entering the market. And, if that isn't enough, pharmaceutical companies also spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political contributions and lobbying to protect their interests.
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beardedmrbean · 3 months
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Sen. John Fetterman could land himself in trouble with voters after he doubled down on his claims that he is not a progressive Democrat, despite comments he made during his election campaign.
"I'm not a progressive, I'm just a regular Democrat," Fetterman said on X, formerly Twitter.
The statement was contradicted by the website's community notes feature, referencing tweets from Fetterman in 2016 and 2020 in which he clearly said he was a progressive.
Despite the contradiction, Fetterman has noticeably shifted away from the position upon which he narrowly defeated Donald Trump-endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz in the 2022 midterms.
Politicians such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent closely aligned with the left of the Democratic Party, have called for a ceasefire in Gaza, whereas Fetterman has said he supports the Israeli response to the attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7 "unequivocally," despite criticism that it has been too strong.
"I just think I'm a Democrat that is very committed to choice and other things. But with Israel, I'm going to be on the right side of that," Fetterman said.
The Pennsylvania senator's stance on Israel is a particular source of ire for many who consider themselves part of the progressive movement, largely younger voters.
A November 2021 poll by Pew Research recorded that 71 percent of the progressive left movement is made up of people aged 18 to 49.
It is young voters that favored Fetterman in his 2022 Senate race against Oz. According to an exit poll taken by Statista, 72 percent of voters aged 18-24 who answered said they voted for the Democrat. The figure was similar for voters aged 25 to 29, at 68 percent.
His position on Israel-Gaza could spell trouble among this voter demographic. According to a New York Times/Siena poll published on Tuesday, 45 percent of people aged 18 to 29 think President Joe Biden is "too supportive" of Israel. In the same age group, 46 percent of people who responded said they were supportive of Palestine, compared to 27 percent favoring Israel.
The same poll said that just 20 percent of all voters aged 18 to 29 believe Biden is handling the conflict well. Asked about the result on CNN on Tuesday, Fetterman said: "If you're getting your perspective on the world on TikTok, it's going to tend to be kinda warped."
He added: "Sometimes you may alienate some voters, but it is really most important to be on the right side on that. That's where I am at."
A total of 16 of his former campaign staffers wrote him an open letter, asking him to change his stance.
"It is not too late to change your stance and stand on the righteous side of history," it said.
An op-ed in news outlet PennLive was published in November by Mireille Rebeiz, Ph.D., chair of Middle East Studies and associate professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in which his position on the issue was labeled "disturbing" and saying he was "unworthy of my trust."
Fetterman has called for humanitarian aid to be sent to Gaza, but criticized pro-Palestinian protesters when they staged a demonstration outside a Jewish-owned store in Philadelphia in December, calling the gathering antisemitic.
Immigration is also a divisive issue in Congress, and Fetterman has made it clear he wants to work with Senate Republicans and says it is a "reasonable conversation" to have. The GOP has pushed for stricter measures along the southern border with Mexico.
"It's a reasonable conversation—until somebody can say there's an explanation on what we can do when 270,000 people are being encountered on the border, not including the ones, of course, that we don't know about," Fetterman said to NBC. "To put that in reference, that is essentially the size of Pittsburgh, the second-largest city in Pennsylvania."
His wife, Gisele Fetterman, arrived undocumented from Brazil as a 7-year-old and was an important part of his Senate campaign. Some accused him of throwing his wife under the bus because of his stance.
Newsweek has reached out to Fetterman via email through his Senate office for comment.
"Fetterman has never been progressive, but endorsing talks for tougher immigration laws when he's married to an incredible woman who was once an illegal immigrant and who kept his campaign alive while he was recovering from a stroke is actually sickening," said Alexandra Hunt, a former Democrat candidate for Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District.
The conversation around Fetterman has some such as left-leaning commentator Mehdi Hasan questioning if he is the "new Kyrsten Sinema," the Arizona senator who became an independent in 2022.
"Fetterman has been a pleasant surprise for his Republican colleagues and a thorn in the side of progressive Democrat," Hasan wrote in British news magazine The Spectator in December. He added: "One still has to wonder if he might follow in Sinema's footsteps and officially extricate himself from the two-party system."
Sinema cited a "deeply broken two-party system" as the reason she left the Democratic Party in 2022.
However, Heath Mayo, a conservative who founded the anti-Trump nonprofit Principles First, praised Fetterman.
"John Fetterman is testing a lot of new boundaries for the Democratic Party right now. Aggressively pro-Israel, pro-border security, anti-corruption in his own party[...]That's principled leadership and Dems should embrace it. He is speaking to a lot of us," Mayo said.
On X, Hasan said Fetterman's comments on him not being aligned with the progressive movement was "a total attack on the people who worked hard to elect him."
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🤦🏾🤦🏽🤦🏼
Netanyahu has a whopping 18% approval rating in Israel. Trump’s going to be a 1000 times worse than Biden concerning Muslims, and CNN along with Tlaib are trying to turn people against Biden.
Right-wing Netanyahu needs to go and Hamas need to go. Hamas are murderous terrorists doing the bidding of Iran and Putin. Trump is already calling for Palestinians to be deported but all these people who are supposedly on the left don’t even mention it but are dragging Biden. Let’s revisit this if Trump wins and see if Tlaib accepts any responsibility for a potential Biden loss and the harm it would bring to Muslim-Americans and Muslims abroad. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the reasons the Republikkkans refused to censure Tlaib is because they so successfully use her as a foil in their bullshit culture war. Fascism works best when you have a foil/scapegoat to generate anger and hatred.
Being cynical here but they love the extreme far-left for making their propaganda campaigns so easy. Those right-wing bastards win so often because they are always in lockstep and on the same page. They use billions in dark money from oligarchs to run a well oiled propaganda machine 24/7/365. They are incredibly cohesive, unified, and prepared. They are doing opposition research on college students that may run for office as Democrats decades into the future while Democrats have always been every person for themselves. It wasn’t until after Kerry lost to “Dubya” Bush (due in large part to RNC brain bug Karl Rove) that DNC chair Howard Dean took the first steps towards organizing the party. He introduced media relations seminars for newly elected Dems, warned them against going on Fox News, and began disseminating information about the “vast right-wing conspiracy” of oligarch created RNC PACs, think tanks, and institutions like ALEC, the Federalist Society, the CATO Institute, the Mackinac Center.
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socialistexan · 2 years
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The Queen died on Bernie Sanders's birthday, beautiful, I love it. Happy Birthday, Bern.
All I can think of is "Looks like the queen is starting to recover... Oh, what's this? IT'S BERNIE SANDERS WITH A STEEL CHAIR!"
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marxman1 · 2 months
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At no point did Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the committee, nor any other member acknowledge the scale of the current mass infection or demand a massive reinvestment in halting the progress of the pandemic and the reinstatement of the emergency measures to fund these efforts. 
In other words, the entire hearing amounted to be window dressing for a horror show for which the federal government and the elected officials have no inclination to acknowledge and no qualms about allowing it to continue unchecked. What was left unsaid was the massive funding that could end the pandemic must be used instead in prosecuting the wars of empire that include continued support for the war against Russia in Ukraine, unquestioned support of Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians, and risking a global military conflagration that would embroil every country across the globe in a bitter conflict that would dwarf the near 30 million death toll from the COVID pandemic.
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Bernie Sanders, US Progressives Meet Lula Ahead of Brazilian President's First White House Visit
The Congressional Progressive Caucus, of which Sanders is a member, said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's election "has given hope to democratic and progressive movements around the world."
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Ahead of his first White House meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met Friday with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, who said topics of discussion included the far-right threat, combatting the climate and environmental emergencies, and supporting workers.
"I enjoyed a productive meeting this morning with President Lula of Brazil and his cabinet," Sanders said in a statement. "Our countries share many challenges, including the threat of right-wing authoritarians who seek to undermine democratic institutions in both countries."
"I am very impressed that in his short visit to the United States, Lula chose to speak to the AFL-CIO," he added. "In that regard, we discussed ways to build an economy that serves all people, not just the wealthy and large corporations. We also discussed ways to advance workers' rights and build strong unions."
Three other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus—Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—also met with da Silva.
Continue reading.
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How Democrats could win more elections
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My fellow Americans…if I may call you that? I’ve only been a US citizen for five weeks, but I think I may have identified a key weakness in the Democrats’ electioneering strategy, and I wanted to bring it to your attention because it would be great if the forced birth/martial law/mass incarceration party didn’t win the next election.
If Democrats want to win more elections, they should try:
Enacting popular policies, preferably ones that materially improve the lives of potential voters;
Making sure those policies take effect before the next election; and
Telling people about them.
As a bonus, they could also publicize when Republicans want to enact policies that:
Aren’t popular; and
Materially worsen the lives of potential voters.
I know, I know. Don’t teach granny to suck eggs! High-paid Democratic Party consultants have forgotten more about this stuff that I’ll ever learn, etc etc. But you guys, I think I could really be onto something.
Take Social Security. Created in 1935 by FDR, Social Security is one of the most popular government programs in US history — and it’s especially popular among old people for some reason, and you know, old people vote a lot!
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[Image ID: A Data for Progress polling data chart entitled ‘Voters Are Very Concerned About the US Government Cutting Social Security Benefits.]
80% of US voters want Social Security expanded. Not 80% of Democrats — 80% of voters, from a June 2022 survey from Data For Progress:
https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2022/6/dfp_ss_june_tabs.pdf
And yet, a July poll found that 70% of voters hadn’t heard that the GOP wants to “sunset” Social Security — that is, get rid of it, over the next five years. 71% of Republicans didn’t know this — and neither did 76% of independents (who might, you know, vote Democrat if they found out), nor did 64% of Democrats.
https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2022/7/dfp_july_ss_tabs.pdf
This is just me spitballing here, but what if someone like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer were to call a press conference and announce that this was the Republicans’ plan? I mean, it’s a long shot, but maybe if they were to tell voters what specific, material, important changes the next election could bring about, voters would find that interesting or even motivating.
I know, I know, I’m not an expert here. But when 81% of all likely voters support indexing Social Security to the cost of living, Democrats could actually do that, and also point out that Republicans won’t?
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[Image ID: A Data For Progress chart entitled ‘Voters Strongly Support Imposing Payroll Taxes on the Wealthy to Expand Social Security Benefits.’]
And while pay-fors are bullshit (the US Treasury is a currency issuer, not a currency user, and it is not monetarily constrained), if the Dems wanted to do pay-fors to fund Social Security expansion, they could tax the rich. 76% of Americans want higher taxes on people earning $400k or more/year, including 76% of independents and 65% of Republicans.
As Jessica Corbett writes for Common Dreams, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is onto this, and is spreading the word, primarily via CPC chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, but the Democratic party leadership is effectively silent on subject:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/08/15/80-us-voters-across-party-lines-support-expanding-social-security
This despite the fact that there is already proposed legislation to enact this extremely popular policy that would hearten Democrats, please independents, and demonstrate to the majority of Republican voters which party has their interests at heart.
Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust is a bill introduced by Rep John Larson, intended to end the 50 year neglect of Social Security:
https://larson.house.gov/issues/social-security-2100-sacred-trust
And then there’s the Social Security Expansion Act, introduced by Bernie Sanders and Rep Peter DeFazio, which increases contributions by the wealthy and expands benefits to match increases in the cost of living:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/06/09/time-scrap-cap-sanders-warren-bill-targets-rich-expand-social-security
But the Dem leadership isn’t pushing for these bills and they’re keeping the GOP’s intention to zero out Social Security very quiet. It’s hard to say why, but maybe it has to do with the corporate wing of the party’s hatred of Social Security, which has found its expression in Biden’s nomination of the anti-Social Security ideologue Andrew Biggs the Social Security Advisory Board:
https://www.levernews.com/biden-taps-anti-social-security-ideologue-to-oversee-program/
Biggs has spent his career advocating for Social Security cuts and privatization — two ideas that are both cruel and wildly unpopular, especially among old people, who, as noted, vote a lot. Biggs is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, an organization whose illustrious career includes a key role in denying climate change and promoting the interests of tobacco companies:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2019/jan/23/free-market-thinktanks-tobacco-control-polices-database#0/?american-enterprise-institute
Biggs says he no longer favors privatizing Social Security — he’s switched to another boondoggle, creating investment accounts for Social Security savers that would let them give their retirement savings to Wall Street to gamble with.
As Matthew Cunningham-Cook writes for The Lever, Biggs’s career includes work on GW Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security and shift its investments from T-bills to “high-fee, high-risk ‘personal accounts.’”
https://www.levernews.com/biden-taps-anti-social-security-ideologue-to-oversee-program/
This wasn’t a temporary lapse: Biggs has spent his career writing editorials and papers calling for Social Security cuts and privatization, claiming, for example, that Social Security privatization would make seniors “not only richer, but also happier, healthier, more familial, smarter, and more active citizens.”
https://www.cato.org/commentary/investings-rich-fringe-benefits
Biggs’s career is a Zelig-like tour of catastrophic privatizations and cuts — for example, in 2016, he became part of the unaccountable board that seized control over Puerto Rico, sidelining its elected leaders with the mission to make sure that Puerto Rico kept paying out to Wall Street bond-holders, irrespective of the human costs:
https://www.aei.org/profile/andrew-g-biggs/
Not only are Biggs’s ideas terrible — they are also wildly, fantastically unpopular among voters. Voters do not want this. Social Security privatization is the pet project of a minuscule minority of fantastically wealthy dilettantes, and if it come to pass, the party responsible for them will be deservedly punished in elections.
Now, the Democrats are, in fact, capable of creating policy that is both popular among voters and the sort of thing that will make material improvements to their lives. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act contains modest, but meaningful, controls on pharmaceutical prices.
Here too, however, the Democrats have managed to absolutely snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The drug price controls in the IRA don’t take effect until 2026 — that is, long after the next two elections.
Writing in The American Prospect, David Ddayen points out that while negotiating prices takes some time, this is an outrageously, pointlessly, self-defeatingly long timeline. Medicare itself was implemented in a single year:
https://prospect.org/health/prescription-drug-price-reforms-wont-happen-for-years/
And at least some parts of the drug price controls could go into effect tomorrow — but are still not going to be implemented until long after the next two elections. The $2000 cap on seniors’ annual out-of-pocket drug spending doesn’t go into effect until 2025.
Again, I’m just a humble Canadian, newly welcomed into America’s bosom, but it seems to me that if you want to win an election, you should do things to make life better for voters before that election rolls around. Implementing the out-of-pocket cap requires “tallying up patient out-of-pocket costs, which are fully transparent, until they hit $2,000, and then stopping them.”
What’s more, as Dayen points out, delaying the Medicare pharma price negotiations actually makes this bill cost more — every dollar that is negotiated down in pharma pricing is a dollar that can be used to offset the out-of-pocket cap (though again, offsets are bullshit).
The Dems are planning to run on these price caps for the midterms, but, as Dayen says, Dems are going to be claiming to have fixed something that is still broken, as in, “Vote for me — I fixed something for you four years from now!”
Dems gain nothing by this delay. Pharma-backed dark money groups are already blitzing out ads that lie shamelessly about the Medicare improvements in the bill, claiming that Dems have “cut Medicare by $300m” (meaning that Dems have told pharma they’re going to cram $300m in savings down their shareholders’ throats and use that money to help patients):
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/11/rope-a-dope/#cowards-and-lies
I realize that I am not a high-paid Democratic Party consultant here, but I remain convinced that the party could improve its election prospects by doing good things in a timely fashion and then telling voters about them — while also letting voters know about the awful things the Republicans are promising to do.
[Image ID: A kicking mule in the colors of the Democratic Party logo; it is wearing a Zorro-style mask. It is standing on a background of radiating, multihued stripes.]
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