After months of negotiations among Democrats over the fate of President Biden’s historic $3.5 trillion proposal, a compromise seems to have been reached (although nothing is certain). At the insistence of Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema, the size of the ambitious plan has been cut in half. Many of its parts were cut away, including two years of free community college and 12 weeks of paid family leave for medical reasons (the U.S. is the only major nation that doesn’t provide it). Three Democratic members of the House killed the provision to lower prescription drugs. And of course the Republicans opposed everything.
This is how Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect described it.
World’s Biggest Half-Full, Half-Empty Glass
Biden’s bill is historically great and bitterly disappointing.
Well—had we not anticipated, had it never seemed, that the Democrats, having won control of Congress and the White House, would proceed to enact paid family leave, expansions of Medicare, a permanent Child Tax Credit, disincentives to fossil fuel use, the ability to negotiate down drug prices, and such—had we not counted on that, then today would be a day of unmitigated celebration. Instead, celebration of the groundbreaking social provisions that actually are in the bill President Biden outlined today—universal pre-K, child care subsidies, incentives for clean energy, commonsense tax reforms that will compel corporations to pay some taxes, and the like—has to be mitigated by the fate of the even more commonsense provisions that now lie on the cutting-room floor.
For me, the most absurd relegation to that floor has been killing the proposal to give Medicare the ability to bring down drug prices. Seldom is a serious change to social and economic policy backed by more than three-fourths of the public, but this one surely was. Reportedly, President Biden has persuaded Kyrsten Sinema to accept a deal so preposterously weak—one that enables Medicare to negotiate down the price of drugs whose patents have expired (that is, after the big drug companies have wrung out the lion’s share of profits on those drugs, and which simply incentivizes those companies to extend their patents)—that few Democrats on the Hill seem inclined to vote for it. (Its merits are so nonexistent that the provision was omitted from Biden’s bill.)
By opposing giving Medicare the capacity to stop Big Pharma from charging Americans vastly more for their medications than they charge the citizens of any other nation, Sinema and three House Democrats effectively killed the one provision of the proposed $3.5 trillion package that would have most reduced the cost of living, significantly slowed the pace of inflation, and quite possibly moved more swing votes into the Democrats’ column than any other.
Leading the resistance to this measure in the House was Scott Peters, the California Democrat whose North San Diego County district includes many of the biotech companies that reap fortunes from high drug prices. While Sinema and the two other House Democrats who joined with Peters can likely be successfully primaried, the economy of Peters’s district is so dependent on high drug prices that he might well survive such a challenge…
One provision of the PRO Act—which, taken as a whole, would have been a new Magna Carta for American workers—has made it into Biden’s bill. The provision requires employers to pay fines ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 when they commit unfair labor practices, such as firing employees for their pro-union activities. Under current law, there are effectively no penalties assessed on employers when they’re found guilty of such practices. By excluding the more fundamental provisions of the PRO Act from Biden’s bill, chiefly because they don’t fit under rules of reconciliation, the employer-employee playing field remains steeply tilted toward employers, but if these fines pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian (an open question), they do reduce that tilt by a decidedly modest margin.
As befits a half-empty, if also half-full, glass.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
The generation that supports the extremists in the GOP (mostly Trumpists) and the few in the Democratic Party that vote primarily to support corporations and the wealthiest one percent while ignoring the rest of us, must all die off and be replaced with rational working-class people before there will be any chance to something to fix everything that is turning the United States into poverty riddled 3rd world nation with great health care for the few and little or nothing for the many.
Our public schools are under assault. Many of our police forces are being legislated into thugs or being castrated. Our airports, our roads, our bridges, our electric grid, et al, are all aging and falling apart and the do-nothings in state legislatures and Congress only support corporate profits and the wealthiest one percent.
What’s left to love about this country when the working class is drowning in all this crap from the top down?
The self-styled “progressives” are greatly increasing the odds of no bills and a Republican sweep of Congress in 22 .. ultimate hubris…
I don’t know if I agree. I’m more of the notion that we ought to pull the proverbial Band Aid, see what happens and live with the consequences for better or worse. On the one hand, we have become ungovernable as a nation. If the fascist Right does not create an authoritarian state, it will, as we now see over and over and over again, always have allies who value selling their souls more than governing effectively, especially when the margins are thin and they can exact even more power and wealth.
It’s time to give the American people a do-or-die choice. Take nothing now, no Phyrric victories that will be overturned because impatient, unrealistic voters are too wishy-washy to understand how government works. Run against Republicans, make the election national, make it about the existential event it is. The message: vote for Democrats to achieve what Republicans and their allies are preventing what an overwhelming majority of Americans want.
It’s that simple. Either win or lose and let the reactionaries loose. That’s what the rest of the world, especially our allies, want most of all. They want to know what they’re dealing with. Is it time to cut with the U.S. on strategic and trade issues an deal on an ad hoc basis? After all, right now they can’t plan. It’s easier to do so with a reliably unreliable partner than it is as it is now: an unreliable partner that purports to be reliable.
Give the voters an existential choice. If they pick wrongly, then they’ll likely have gotten what they (we) deserve. At least this way they’ll have one more chance to get it right.
Peter Goodman
So 48 US Senators (okay probably a few less who are hiding behind the two. ) sign on to Biden’s agenda,. Including programs very popular with the American people like expanding Medicare , reigning in the Government enforced monopoly of the Pharmaceuticals , paid family leave, free Public Community college and making billionaires pay some taxes for a change.
The Bill gets cut in half from 3.5 trillion to 1.75 trillion . The hard infrastructure bill had already been cut by another trillion trying to get a few Republican votes.
You say that the fault lies with the progressives . Talk about “hubris”
The Blame Game
Everyone’s to blame
Except the ones who are
The finger pointing game
Will really get you far
There are no progressives in this Congress.
Nonsense. Ever hear of Bernie Sanders, AOC or the squad.
But I bet you can’t name a Republican in Congress who doesn’t support the far right wing agenda.
In America “big lobbying” carries more weight than millions of citizens’ needs. Even though the bill has been trimmed to $1.75 billion, it does more for average people than any other legislation that I can think of in many years other than the ACA. Even this smaller glass half full is not a reality until the votes are in.
cx: trillion
That ability for Medicare to negotiate down the price of drugs whose patents have expired may have some teeth. I don’t know enough about the wording, but I think that being able to negotiate for lower prices in that case is not worthless. I am watching the price of a drug I take slowly creep up even though its patent has expired. I’m guessing that they are paying someone to not make a generic. Pretty soon I may have to go back to an older drug that requires much closer supervision but is “dirt cheap.” The multiple medical appointments will be a pain but they are covered by Medicare. Go figure.
I suggest that you go to the drug manufacturers website and search for information to get the drug at a reduced rate or even for free. It requires financial paperwork from you AND documentation from your physician. I was a medical secretary and had to do this for many of our aging patients to get the drugs that they needed. When my mother was alive, I kept up the yearly paperwork for her and made sure it was reordered on time (the drugs come from the manufacturer)…..she had a Rx that went from $10 for a 3 months supply to $375 monthly because it was a rebrand/rename of an existing old drug ( Cholcicine > Cholcrys). Pharmacists are not supposed to tell “customers” about this, but some of them will. It’s knowing how to play their game.
Rx that went from $10 for a 3 months supply to $375 monthly because it was a rebrand/rename of an existing old drug ( Cholcicine > Cholcrys).
What’s in a name? That which we call Cholcicine by any other name would $mell much $weeter?
It has to do with Orphan drug laws and drugs developed prior to 1960(?). The small Pharma companies that had rights to these inexpensive meds have been eaten by the big fish. The drug is pulled from the market, subjected to a “clinical study” which it never had before and then is renamed/rebranded and given a new price. Many of the “new” drugs seen on the TV ads are such drugs. Back in the day, these drugs were developed for a certain condition, but the drug worked better for another condition and did not under go “clinical trials” for that condition. Another example : Viagra was developed many years ago to treat high blood pressure….but it didn’t work for that purpose. Big Pharma is such a sleazy business.
may have some teeth
But Americans won’t have because Manchin managed to eliminate all dental care from the bill.
Whose gnomes these are
I think I know
His job is in big Pharma though
lol
Meanwhile, in other news, McDonalds is replacing order takers with AI, in a partnership with IBM, because somehow customers without jobs should be able to afford to eat.
The broad approach of this bill seems to me to run counter to successful political outcomes in our time. Perhaps the most successful movement in modern American politics in our time has been the effort to convince a large segment of the population that they should support the Republican Party despite the reality that that many of the policies Republicans support are detrimental to the majority of voters. Republicans did this with a very few social issues. Abortion was the first, perhaps the most successful. How many Americans vote Republican today because that party gave them the anti-abortion judges?
History suggests that this is not too strange. Unity seems to come over a few issues, not the whole of more complex policy. Perhaps Democrats should concentrate on one issue at a time. They could demonize big Pharma and go after reforms that would bring down the costs of drugs. I bet LisaM above would go for that one. I am sure there are other, perhaps better single issues to attack. The thing is, going at things one at a time is more manageable. That way fewer people are apt to oppose you.
Perhaps Biden’s proposal was originally too big, bound to get some opposition. Not that I oppose specific aspects of it. Far from it. But the longest journey begins with a step.
The biggest issue–the one that makes or breaks a state (Rome, the Soviet Union)–is just starting to hit. Food prices are skyrocketing.
People will ignore economic issues for hot-topic religion-related ones to an extent, but when they get hungry, look out.
OK. And now a chorus of “When will they ever learn?”
Rome, The Ancien Régime in France, the Soviet Union
Relax all sorts of reasons for some food prices going up. Most due to supply chain issues. Almost all of those issues due to increased demand elsewhere in the world economy .
Labor is not the issue in the supply chain although we are being told it is.
By 2019 we were very proud of the efficiencies of the on demand supply chain. Freight companies complained of a shortage of drivers at the same time as wages and working conditions for the drivers fell and the shelves remained full.
Adam Smith would say that does not compute.
That ended when demand increased to the point that the system could not keep up. Far better we should be looking at a steep recession and full shelves than sold out shelves. (not!!!)
“You don’t build a church for Easter and Christmas only” as you don’t build the supply chain for a worldwide pandemic recovery. Covid closed down factories in Asia . Panicked retailers all scrambled to bring inventories over while still available . The system is clogged , the big screen TV competing for a truck with the tomato farmer. Or what ever two examples you like .
Like the gas lines of the 70s this too shall pass when the panic subsides. Then the price of tomatoes will drop.
Yes, I know about the supply chain issue. A friend of mine who is a hotshot marketing exec predicted that way back at the very beginning of the pandemic. But after these are cleared up, food prices will not return to pre-supply-chain issue levels. Not when the retail chains see an opportunity to keep at higher levels their small margins (between 1 and 3 percent; they depend on volume).
Bob Shepherd
When the supply chain issues ease the market will once again put pressure on prices as consumers can once again leverage their buying powers between retailers . Food prices were taken out of core inflation because they were always subject to volatile price swings due to weather’s affect on crop yields . The same should happen here
as pressures ease. Or these prices will stagnate as the rest of the economy grows.
Look I am not defending corporate America. There have been some dangerous narratives circulating in the media. As the not being able to see the housing bubble” group thinkers” take over.
We were told that workers stayed home because of the unemployment supplements. Those states who cut the supplements first are precisely the ones who have the labor shortages and the lowest wages. Then we are told that the lowest wrung of labor market some how saved enough during the pandemic to sit home now. Seriously!!! The same corporations who complain, have seen their profits grow 2% as they cry about labor costs last quarter. . Does that sound like they are being squeezed.
The latest we are told, this is Striketober. Except the number of strikes and strikers is lower than in 2018 and 2019 . The entire narrative heading to a harmful rejection of progressive economic policy. Using inflation as the bludgeon.
A strong, strong analysis, Joel. Thank you! I hope you are right about food prices, but I have my doubts. Given the history on this, the spike is extremely troubling. Your concluding paragraphs are profound, insightful. Thank you.
The missives of striketober:
dangerous narratives circulating in the media”
–workers stayed home because of the unemployment supplements.
— the lowest wrung of labor market some how saved enough during the pandemic to sit home now. Seriously
–this is Striketober