Tag: GOP back to the party of no

McConnell: No Senate Republicans will back Biden on $4T

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Monday that he expected no Republicans would support President Biden‘s sweeping infrastructure package, indicating GOP lawmakers are open to a roughly $600 billion bill.

“I think it’s worth talking about but I don’t think there will be any Republican support — none, zero — for the $4.1 trillion grab bag which has infrastructure in it but a whole lot of other stuff,” McConnell said in a press conference in Kentucky.

Biden has proposed a sweeping roughly $4 trillion infrastructure package broken up into two pieces: A $2.3 trillion jobs package and a $1.8 trillion families package. While the package includes money for roads, bridges and broadband, it also expands into manufacturing, in-home care, housing, clean energy, public schools and manufacturing. Continue reading.

Biden’s Big History Lesson For Republicans

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Embedded in Joe Biden’s first speech to Congress was a crucial lesson in our nation’s economic history that every American ought to understand. 

Explaining why he proposes to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the construction of new power grids, broadband internet connections and transportation systems, the president reminded us of the public investments that have “transformed America” into a prosperous world power. It is a lesson too often and too easily forgotten amid the incessant propaganda, imbibed by almost all of us from an early age, about the “magic of the free market,” the “dead hand of government” and various equally hoary conservative cliches.

Markets are marvelous, but government has been essential in growing and regulating the economy from the republic’s very beginning. Biden cited the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highway system, the construction of public schools and colleges that enabled universal education, the medical and scientific advances that sprang from the space program and defense industries – but his speech could well have continued for quite a while in that same vein. Political leaders from Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy all have promoted public investment in research, infrastructure and people as the prerequisites of progress, and sometimes even national survival. Continue reading.

Biden’s presidency isn’t splashy, but Republicans still dislike all the ripples

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Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) offered an odd criticism of President Biden this week.

“The president is not doing cable news interviews,” Cornyn said on Twitter. “Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional.”

That latter point is obviously true, particularly when contrasted with his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump. Asked about Cornyn’s remarks, White House press secretary Jen Psaki offered a sharp response: “I can confirm the president of the United States does not spend his time tweeting conspiracy theories.” Continue reading.

‘Stop talking about Dr. Seuss!’: House Democrat rails against the GOP in fiery speech defending workers

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On Tuesday, members of the U.S. House of Representatives debated a union organizing bill. One of the Democratic congressmen speaking out in favor of it was Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who passionately told his colleagues that legislation to “help the damn workers” in the U.S. is long overdue.

Ryan explained, “One of the earlier speakers said this is the most dramatic change in labor law in 80 years. And I say, ‘Thank God! In the late ’70s, a CEO made 35 times the worker. Today, it’s 3 or 400 times the worker. And our friends on the other side (are) running around with their hair on fire.”

Raising his voice even more, Ryan added, “Heaven forbid we should pass something that’s going to help the damn workers in the United States of America! Heaven forbid we tilt the balance that has been going in the wrong direction for 50 years! We talk about pensions, you complain. We talk about the minimum wage increase, you complain. We talk about giving them the right to organize, you complain. But if we were passing a tax cut here, you would all be getting in line to vote yes for it.” Continue reading.