Democrats In Name Only (DINOs)

As President Biden said, with a 50-50 senate, every senator is a president! And senatorial DINOs Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema certainly seem to be enjoying, even intoxicated by, their presidential day in the sun

By Vijaya Chandrasoma

The Biden presidency has been stalled not by its efficient management in minimising the effects of a devastating pandemic and an economy approaching recession, which has been outstanding in comparison with the criminal incompetence of the previous administration. It has not been stalled in restoring decency and integrity to the White House, not a hard act to follow after the vulgarity and self-serving treason of Trump and his white supremacist cult.

The Biden presidency has been stalled in the effort to implement the economic and social policies the Democratic Party campaigned on in 2020, a policy approved by 82 million people, by two senators of its own party, Senators Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona), senators from traditionally Republican states.

President Biden enjoyed initial months of over 60% of post-inauguration public approval for his management of the virus and the economy. But he has hit a few blank walls in recent months that have brought the numbers down to the low 40%s.

Rigged election lie

One, the continued belief in the Trump manufactured, Republican-led Big Lie of a rigged election, nearly a year after a presidential election described as the most secure in history. Misguided and poisonous propaganda of a stolen election, when 60+ cases of election fraud were dismissed by every court in the land, including the Supreme Court handpicked by Trump himself. A treasonous lie that enabled a defeated and disgraced Lame Duck president and his minions to incite an insurrection against the nation’s cradle of democracy, the Capitol, when lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, were in session, to carry out their constitutional duty of certifying the results of the 3 November election. 

Sadly, Republican lawmakers whose own lives were under threat during the assault on 6 January, including the vice president who was in danger of being lynched by the insurrectionists, now belittle the violent storming of the Capitol, describing it as an orderly protest within First Amendment rights. A lie proved to be so by the evidence of the most violent TV footage seen throughout the world. They all refuse to co-operate with the congressional committee investigating into the worst assault on the Capitol since the British attack during the war of 1812. 

These Republicans keep obeying the orders of a defeated and demented president, who, at best, sympathised with the 6 January insurrectionists, or at worst, and more likely, planned and incited these acts of treason.

Vaccine misinformation

Two, misinformation about the efficacy of the vaccine, which ironically was initiated and developed at a miraculous speed by steps initiated by the Trump administration. 

Politically-motivated distrust in the efficacy of vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has resulted in the refusal of large numbers of Republicans to be vaccinated, on religious and other preposterous grounds. Completely unfounded suspicion against the vaccine is rife mainly in the Red States, where cases and deaths caused by COVID have remained at pandemic levels. This unchecked continuation of the virus is described as “a pandemic of the unvaccinated”, where 99% of current COVID deaths in the nation are among those who had spurned vaccination. 

Of course, Trump and Republican leaders are all fully vaccinated, while they knowingly sacrifice the lives of their own supporters to further their treasonous political agenda, in an effort to undermine and block the efforts of the Biden administration to bring the nation to pre-Trump levels.

Build Back Better Act

Three, President’s Biden’s Build Back Better Act is being dismantled not only by the Republican Party, following Trump’s lead, but Democratic Senators Sinema and Manchin, who seem to be more concerned about winning their next elections than supporting a plan that will greatly benefit the lower, middle and vulnerable classes of the nation.

The original plan, also known as the Budget Reconciliation Bill, was an ambitious program to rebuild the country’s crumbling physical infrastructure; to usher in its obsolete mass transportation systems to the 21st century; and to greatly expand its social safety net. A program being compared to FDR’s New Deal after the Great Depression, which restored a sense of social security in post-war America, as it created jobs and prosperity which endured for four decades. 

A progressive program which would bring the richest country in the world in line with benefits enjoyed by every other developed country. A wildly popular program at home, to be paid for by making the tax codes fairer, enacting legislation to ensure that the wealthiest Americans and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes. 

The first part of the bill, focused on physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, transportation, etc.), at a cost of $1.2 trillion, has already been approved, though in a truncated state, by a bipartisan Senate. 

The original version of this bill addressed not only traditional infrastructure, but included social infrastructure, like, inter alia, caring for aging Americans, free education up to community college level and workforce training, at an estimated cost of $2.2 trillion. An agenda pruned by the Republican senate to include only physical infrastructure, to $1.2 trillion, a compromise agreed to by the Democrats, whose senate majority is merely an illusion, when two Democratic senators have virtually aligned themselves with senate Republicans.

The second part of the Biden agenda was the ambitious $3.5 trillion bill to expand the nation’s social safety net and fight climate change. The Democrats had planned to enact the bill through a budgetary process called “reconciliation”, relying solely on a majority vote of Democrats in the senate. This plan, in its original form, has already been turned out to be a non-starter, because of resistance from the two aforementioned Democratic senators.

The costs of this progressive agenda was to be spread over the next 10 years, paid for by the increase of taxes payable by corporations from 21% to 26%, a rate still lower than the one that existed before Trump’s tax cuts of 2019; and the individual tax rate for Americans earning over $400,000 per year to be raised from the current 37% to 39.6%. 

To bring these numbers into perspective, the current poverty level in America is $14,000 per annum for a family of four, and comprises 11% of the population below this level. The median annual income of all Americans, in 2019, was $34,248. Americans earning anything from $14,000 to $400,000 per annum would not pay one extra cent in income taxes.

The pre-Reagan era corporate taxes, from the implementation of FDR’s social programs to the 1980s, were in excess of 70% (in the 90%s during the Republican Eisenhower administration in the 1950s). These codes, that created a thriving middle class, were completely dismantled by the supply-side voodoo Reaganomics, aka “trickle-down economics” of the 1980s. Taxation favouring the super-rich that has, for nearly three decades, seen American wealth gushing up, not trickling down, making the chasm between the rich and the working poor deeper than it has ever been. The prosperous American middle class has all but disappeared. 

The comprehensive legislation currently in debate include tuition-free education up to community college, assistance for child care and universal pre-K, Medicare expansion, extended child tax credit, reduced prescription drug prices, paid family and sick leave, combating climate change, and a slew of lesser known benefits designed to help the aging, the vulnerable, the lower and middle classes and small businesses. 

In short, social benefits that have existed in every developed nation in the world for decades. The progressives, sane politicians and regular people are asking, begging, that the richest country in the world treat all its citizens with the compassion of a Denmark or a Japan.

Manchin and Sinema

Manchin and Sinema will not approve the bill without major cuts to many of these programs. The current number bandied around for the second phase is in the region of $1.75 trillion, or half the cost of the original plan. Senator Manchin seems close to agreeing to this pruned bill of $1.75 trillion, which seems possible, as Biden has compromised on his figure to around $1.95 million, with the reluctant abandonment of much of his progressive agenda. 

The only current hindrance to a compromise now hinges on Senator Sinema, who opposes any and all increases in taxes, personal and corporate. Believe it or not, she is opposed to Biden’s latest offer of increases in taxes only on companies earning profits more than $1 billion per year. At present, companies like Amazon, which make profits in excess of $50 billion per year, pay zero in taxes. Amazon owner, Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is estimated to be north of $200 billion, pays taxes only on his declared salary of $85,000 per annum! A salary which enables him to fly into outer space with the ease that we mere mortals expend on an occasional evening out.

The progressives of the Democratic Party, led by senators Sanders and Warren, and Washington State congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, are refusing to approve the first physical infrastructure bill unless it is passed in tandem with the second, aimed at combating both climate change and implementing social programs to help the poor and the vulnerable. And unless the final compromise contains major elements of the social safety net the Democrats promised to implement during their campaign in 2020. Damned commies!

No compromise was reached, as hoped for by the Democrats, before President Biden left on his first overseas trip to Europe on Thursday for the G-20 summit in Rome. The final vote has been postponed for yet another week.

Whatever final compromise agreed to by the two DINOs will be regarded as a defeat for the Democratic Party. In other words, the party that controls the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives is stumbling in its familiar state of disarray and disunity, desolate in its accustomed proclivity for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. 

As President Biden said, with a 50-50 senate, every senator is a president! And senatorial DINOs Manchin and Sinema certainly seem to be enjoying, even intoxicated by, their presidential day in the sun.