U.S. Politics, November 2024: GARBAGE DAY!!

it's a description of what happened - it doesn't mean biden is personally to blame for it all but he is going to get the blame from a lot of the public regardless, and he did very much pivot to focusing on the deficit over anything progressive as the next sentence describes.

High level that is correct, as ufo says, but the details (now that I am looking at the specific things they mention) are worded weirdly or are wrong.

The child tax credit was not removed ever. There had been relief payments to people with children during covid. There had also been an increase in the amount of untaxed dependent care benefits during covid that got brought back down to pre-covid levels. Thus, there were government benefits for lower income parents with kids that got taken away after the initial pandemic ended, but the child tax credit was not negatively affected. Why not describe the actual facts which still support the argument they are making?

A lot of the increase in Medicaid recipients was a result of the expansion of unemployment benefits during covid. A lot of people got automatically enrolled in Medicaid (or the state program that was Medicaid funded) when they qualified for unemployment. When the unemployment benefits ended, some people got kicked off Medicaid. But, why not say the truth… the government ended unemployment benefits too soon including Medicaid coverage?

"Instead of raising one trillion dollars to run ads trying to persuade the 17 Republican women who dislike Trump to secretly defy their husbands and vote for a Democrat, just go on podcasts that men and anti-feminist women listen to and tell them that your republican opponents want to defund zoos, force American workers to adopt and raise orangutans instead of human babies, and are giving the orangutans free healthcare and voting rights."

https://daisybrain.medium.com/what-the-democrats-got-wrong-68219f682bff

Ryan O'Donnell

looking at some unweighted dfp data by how much attention voters pay to political news

-a great deal: harris +8
-a lot: harris +5
-a moderate amount: trump +1
-a little: trump +8
-none at all: trump +15

https://bsky.app/profile/rodonnell.bsky.social/post/3lahq5z6xrc2q

But, why not say the truth… the government ended unemployment benefits too soon including Medicaid coverage?

― sarahell, Sunday, 10 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Is this the better version of the truth?

But, why not say the truth… the government ended unemployment benefits too soon including Medicaid coverage?

― sarahell, Sunday, 10 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Is this the better version of the truth?

*better version of the truth.

Someone could take issue with “de facto austerity president” by arguing that benefits weren’t reduced to less than what people received pre-covid, though I think that considering what other countries have (as calzino recently pointed out), that qualifies as austerity.

Tooze says flatly in the LRB that “What​ America has avoided under Biden is austerity.”

But he goes on to say “But that doesn’t mean that America’s huge fiscal capacity is available for constructive governance. On the contrary, constructive spending proposals like Build Back Better were swept off the table as ‘unaffordable’. The tax credits that halved child poverty during the pandemic were revoked for being too expensive. Imaginative proposals to provide the World Bank and the IMF with new capital – among other things to compete with Chinese lending – were reduced to trivialities by Congressional in-fighting.

The US has thus found itself with a government budget defined on the expenditure side by defence and non-discretionary programmes such as Medicare, on the revenue side by an undersized tax base concentrated heavily on higher income households, and an overall balance that is stuck in deficit. It is constraining to government, light touch when it comes to taxation and generates a huge flow of new debt for financial markets to digest. In 2024, with the economy humming along close to full employment, the deficit stands at an unprecedented 6 per cent of GDP. The signature programmes of Bidenomics – IRA, CHIPS and infrastructure – are minor adornments to this basic picture. Although the new era of industrial policy has excited think tanks around the world, and although it has real consequences on the ground, it barely figures in the budget balance and is largely unknown to the American public.”

"The tax credits that halved child poverty during the pandemic were revoked for being too expensive."

The public will not care, and in a flawed system they will vote for a criminal if the people in charge aren't delivering better outcomes.

I am thinking if that NY judge has any wit, she will sentence him jail time, but that he will start the sentence on 21.01.2028.

Well I think people cared about the credits being revoked! Or have I misunderstood.

xpost

Sorry can see why that could've been misread. Yes the public care about these things, hence maybe why we see these outcomes now.

Right right

Good morning!

"The tax credits that halved child poverty during the pandemic were revoked for being too expensive."

they weren’t revoked, they were made temporary to get manchin to sign, and both biden and harris ran on making it permanent

it seems insane to describe a president who added 4-5 trillion dollars to the deficit as an austerity president. even the 2023 fiscal reduction act that he passed through a republican house didn’t include any of the cuts to social spending programs republicans were pushing for. to the extent that biden and harris’ platforms talked about deficit reduction it was through higher taxes on the rich and corporations (which btw polls really well). biden was also proposing big ticket spending items like a low income housing credit (to the horror or center and center-right policy people) in march 2024 and most recently canceled 4.5 billion (out of 200 billion canceled his whole term) in student debt in october 2024

i think some of the ppl itt are addicted to intra left factionalism like this dissent piece and it’s distorting your views of economic policy and the economy

Well I think people cared about the credits being revoked! Or have I misunderstood.

xpost

Xp - flopson, there already is a low income housing credit … for developers of low income housing. Presumably this new credit had a different name?

That/This Fucking Guy.

― guillotine vogue (suzy), Saturday, November 9, 2024 6:14 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lol I asked because Resistance Libs calling Trump “The Former Guy” (TFG for short) was the cringiest thing imaginable

i’m talking about credit for home buyers not the supply side credits for developers of low income housing

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/03/07/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-plan-to-lower-housing-costs-for-working-families/

xp sarahel

briefly popping into this thread I just can't face right now to say:

Now the Rick Perlstein books I bought will remain unfinished on the shelf for a few more years…

a million times this. Got Reaganland for Xmas the year it came out and haven't had the stomach for it. Was hoping I'd be able to tackle it after Trump was definiitely for sure this time defeated, but no.

Bit of advice tho Raymond, wouldn't leave them on the shelf because they each weigh about a ton and can also double as load-bearing objects.

There were multiple additional payments/credits for kids that happened in 2020/21:

1. Stimulus payments to parents that were reported in the media as having helped reduce child poverty — this was a pandemic thing that didn’t get continued
2. An increase in the existing child tax credit that did get renewed
3. An increase in non-taxable dependent care benefits that was a pandemic thing that didn’t get renewed

Xp flopson, that’s what i thought! I think they also should develop a credit for low-income renters … modeled on those in NJ, NYC, and Minnesota

And an expansion of the “supply side” credit would also be really valuable tbh … the way it is structured is not super effective at getting low-income housing built

centre-right pols are addicted to avoiding universal benefits in the name of some fictional notion of fairness

According to a recent long article in the NYT, so are a lot of swing voters

But the thing is … sentiment seems to change when people get used to these benefits existing… like social security and unemployment and now obamacare …

funny how that works, it’s almost like the centre right pols are lying to us

and most recently canceled 4.5 billion (out of 200 billion canceled his whole term) in student debt in october 2024

i think some of the ppl itt are addicted to intra left factionalism like this dissent piece and it’s distorting your views of economic policy and the economy

― flopson, Sunday, 10 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

The student debt reduction was scaled back.

I'll also say Adam Tooze isn't some hard left guy.

And that also you are v much coming from an 'apolitical' economics background that is frankly shortsighted and busted politically, especially after people have said -- on here, as elsewhere -- that they are facing hardship, that economically it's a struggle and from that you can deduce the government aren't doing enough.

yeah people are never really wrong about their experience of struggling to economically survive so any time you quote numbers at them you really should be thing about whether your numbers are in some way bullshit

should be "thinking" sorry lazy fingers

Are we sure this guy is a Democrat?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GcCKDg7XIAAQCmO?format=jpg&name=medium

IF he'd written "The party" instead of "The left" it would've made more sense.

yeah people are never really wrong about their experience of struggling to economically survive so any time you quote numbers at them you really should be thing about whether your numbers are in some way bullshit

― badder living thru Kemistry (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 10 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

If you were a recipient of a benefit that was scaled back you are not going to be happy.

People will also get mad if inflation went up, full stop. Even if wages later on kept up with it or the increases eased. So politically you need to be seen to do something about it (even if flopson disagrees with the economist I cited on targeted price controls politically you need to look at your options), but Democrats don't care enough about this.

xp What's the confusion? Murphy has always struck me as thoughtful and perceptive about stuff like this.

That's why the comment stood out for me.

Prices go up consistently under capitalism. I am one of those “I remember when gas was $1 a gallon” people… though at the time, I was making $5/hr. If income rose to meet inflation, it wouldn’t be as big a thing … idk where this price controls thing is coming from but it doesn’t seem realistic here, outside of things like prescription drugs and home energy costs.

And by “rose” I don’t mean “eventually”

I don’t blame food prices on governments, I blame them on suppliers.

Stevie, good point.

I started reading Reaganland soon after it came out and after 20-30 pages realized it was too raw to continue, in that moment.

Murphy has been talking about the failures of neoliberalism for a while. See, e.g., thus from 2022: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/democrats-should-reject-neoliberalism/671850/

See your first mistake was thinking I’d read the fucking Atlantic

the key to that dissent paragraph is "de facto" - even if the end of a benefit isn't "Biden's fault" it happened on his watch and that is the only thing that matters. Arguments like "well see we had to appease two Democratic Senators (who are no longer Senators)(and maybe were acting as cover for a half dozen more Democratic Senators) and structurally it's impossible to do the things that we said we'd do" fall on deaf ears.

yep, but also it is their fault because they make political decisions and trying to pretend shit is out of your control is transparently dishonest, which is why people stop voting for you

Exactly— this is why all arguments about Biden’s “hands being tied” regarding Gaza are utter bullshit, he could stop sending weapons and likely affect a real slowdown and ceasefire if he wanted to, but he obviously doesn’t want to because he is a fucking pig who should be on trial for war crimes

“oh the most powerful person in the world has his hands tied” like please, this is not actually nuanced thinking but apologia

There used to be much more cynicism directed over "survival" decisions, aka moves made that don't help anybody but help you keep your job.

Once we started framing every election as a fight for the soul of the nation, it became easier for voters to excuse it. And that didn't start with Trump - the "now is not the time" shit also occurred in 2012.

For people like us, we know the work doesn't stop even when "our guy" is in office. I didn't become politically motivated w/ Trump, I already was for years, which is why I was so scared of him. But even with Kamala, there would have been a huge cesspool of issues to clean up.

Lesser engaged voters, many would have started disengaging the moment Trump lost and likely ended any chance of him returning. These are often the voters who make the excuses.

We failed Gaza, the world failed Gaza, and that should be how the history books portray it...but they won't

I posted about the soccer incident because I was hopeful that if people couldn't recognize the bias in Western reporting and the nonsense rhetoric blaming every Palestinian civilian death on Hamas (as if even that would make that ok), they could perhaps much more easily recognize it in a video of Maccabi fans that directly contradicts what the mainstream press have reported.

But nope. Fell on Deaf ears

(Posted to my friends, not here obv)