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| credit: KAL, Baltimore Sun |
Update: The Senate ground its way to passing the COVID relief bill early Saturday morning after 27 hours of mind numbing rhetoric, but not without some additional, last minute histrionics by a conservative Democrat from West Virginia. A new enemy of the people was uncovered in the form of millionaire Senator Joe Manchin who forced significant concessions from the rest of his party before he assented to voting for the bill. (50-49) He trimmed the weekly federal unemployment supplement down from $400 to $300, cut it off after Labor Day when a previous compromise had it running through October, and lowered the eligibility level for the $1400 one-time grant. His fellow senator from West Virginia said she had "no idea" what he was trying to accomplish, especially since the state's governor announced his support for the bill in its original form. Manchin has emerged as a petty tyrant of the Senate--unless his colleagues can convince him to tow the party line in future votes against unanimous POS opposition. Such obstruction is certain to occur when the Senate takes up HR 1, and HR 4 the John R. Lewis voting rights bill. Power, in all its forms, corrupts.
Killer gave another deranged speech at the conservative conclave (CPAC) in Washington on Monday. The Big Lie featured prominently. Some POS adherents are having second thoughts about following him into fascist absurdity, expressed in a Wall Street Journal editorial calling him the most famous resident of Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach fortress of solitude.
On an active front, progressives lost the procedural battle to include a $15 minimum wage hike in the COVID relief package, as expected. Democrats have to pass the relief bill using the cumbersome budget reconciliation process to avoid a POS filibuster. Eight Democrats voted with a solid Repugnant front to defeat socialist Senator Sander's (I-VT) amendment. He vowed to keep raising the issue in the Senate, where there appears to be some moderate support for increasing the wage, but not to the level progressives want. AOC called the Repugnant counter-offer of $10/hr, "legislative poverty". Corporate Democrats, led by Joe Biden, refused to overrule the unelected Senate parliamentarian who advised that the minimum wage measure violated the Byrd Rule despite Congressional Budget Office figures supporting a significant federal budget impact within ten years, a condition required by the rule.
Sanders called the ruling, "an absurd process". A 2021 CBO report says a wage increase could lead to 1.4 million job cuts by 2025, but it also would lift 900,000 people out of poverty and raise incomes for 17 million people, or roughly 10 per cent of the US workforce who pay taxes. Another 10 million workers who earn slightly more than $15 per hour would also see pay raises. Frustration with the filibuster rule is growing in the Democratic caucus as more senators come to realize that President Biden's modestly progressive agenda will not receive any POS support. The bottom line is: the filibuster rule in its current form must go to insure passage of legislation and a Democratic majority in Congress during Biden's first term in office.
