This is the way legislation should be done: small bills that are focused on one thing, not behemoths that encompass a massive amount of issues, melding them together, making it very hard to understand what’s really going on
Biden’s $2 trillion spending bill will get done but ‘it’ll look different’: Cabinet official
The White House plans to restart negotiations on its $2 trillion spending bill, just days after pivoting to a long shot push for voting rights reform and two weeks after key moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) abandoned talks on the spending measure, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
In a new interview, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo expressed certainty that the bill, known as Build Back Better, would succeed but acknowledged that the final version would “look different” from the expansive measure proposed by the White House and passed by the Democrat-controlled House.
“It has to get done. It will get done,” Raimondo told Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer on Thursday. “It’ll look different, whatever the president signs. This is a prediction I’m willing to make.” (snip)
The revised measure planned by the White House will exceed $1 trillion but could shrink or remove provisions like home health care, universal pre-K, and paid family leave, Reuters reported.
And Brandon had this to say
During his first press briefing of the year on Wednesday, President Biden acknowledged for the first time that the Build Back Better package will likely have to be divided up or downsized due to moderate Senator Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s ongoing opposition to its current scope.
“It’s clear to me that we’re gonna have to probably break it up,” he said. “It’s clear that we would be able to get support for the 500 plus billion dollars for energy and environment issues, number one. Number two, I know the two people who’ve opposed on the Democratic side support a number of things that are in there. For example, Joe Manchin strongly supports early education.” (snip)
While Biden said Wednesday that he believes Congress will be able to pass the energy and environment “chunks,” Manchin, whose vote is pivotal in an evenly-split Senate, cited them as part of the reason why he walked away from the debate. While Manchin considers fighting climate change a major priority, he noted that the rapid escalation toward adopting clean energy in Build Back Better would come at a steep cost for the economy.
However, even breaking it up, will Democrats be able to stop the filibuster? Because neither Manchin nor Sinema are willing to dump it, and many other Dems are against it/leery of dumping. He might get a few things through that could be bipartisan, but, still mostly a Quixotic misadventure, when he should be focusing on the economic issues that matter to America. His approval rating has crashed even further
A new poll has found that more than a third of Americans (37 percent) give President Biden’s first year in the White House a failing grade as his administration continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues and the ongoing border crisis a year after taking office.
Only 11 percent of registered voters gave the president an “A” grade, according to the survey conducted by Politico and Morning Consult. Twenty percent gave him a “B,” 18 percent graded him with a “C” and 12 percent gave him a “D.”
Turning to specific issues, Biden got the highest percentage of “A” grades (18 percent) for his handling of COVID-19, though a plurality of respondents (31 percent) still gave him an “F” on that issue. The highest percentage of “F” grades was for Biden’s handling of the national debt (41 percent), followed closely by the issues of immigration and “restoring unity” (40 percent each).
And poll after poll after poll show that he’s ignoring the economy and the things that matter to citizens.
