Sunday, April 28, 2019

Biden's Better Than Trump-- But Biden's The Worst Democrat Running Against Trump

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I recall-- vividly-- Trump's flat-out lies about not accepting SuperPAC money. While he was doing everything he could to scrounge it up, he was making fun of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton and all the other 2016 presidential candidates for being puppets of the Big Money donors. He was too, of course, but he swore up and down he was self-financing his campaign. He lied from day one; and he never stopped lying. He still hasn't. You noticed that right?

The other day, Status Quo Joe Biden, who would cut off a limb to get Obama's endorsement might have thought he was fooling someone when he claimed that he asked Obama not to endorse him. If that were true, Obama would be the only Democrat alive ever elected to office-- and office--who Biden hasn't asked!



But that isn't the only bullshit Biden was flinging during his first hours as an official candidate. Biden says he doesn't want any money raised for him by BidenPAC (which has now changed its name to either For The People PAC or G Street, depending where you look ). All the other credible Democratic candidates had already publicly rejected the idea of accepting money from lobbyists or from Super PACs during the primary. Biden quickly realized he had no choice but to follow along, at least with the Super PACs. (His first fundraiser was hosted by a Comcast lobbyist and the mansion was lousy with lobbyists, each of whom had given Biden a check.) Kate Bedingfield is Biden's Deputy Campaign Manager for Communications:



No one looks like a liar compared to Trump, of course, but take him out of the equation and Biden looks bad-- really bad. Branko Marcetic pointed out on Friday that for all his posturing about being the guy who fights for organized labor, "an episode from the not-so-distant past cuts against this 'friend of the working man' image: Biden's leading role in the Obama administration's 2011 efforts to slash the deficit by offering Republicans spending cuts to Medicare and Social Security-- the so-called Grand Bargain that, luckily for the country, was killed by Tea Party extremism and overreach.

Biden's always been a completely worthless piece of shit. A proud neoliberal, he was calling for a spending freeze on Social Security and a higher Social Security retirement age since the 1980s. He always embraced GOP bullshit about balancing the budget, something Republicans are only for while Democrats are in power. Biden's one of the morons who has always fallen for the trap and has always been the first Democrat in any circumstance to advocate raising the retirement age. The Joe Biden I remember has always been the guy who could not wait to screw working families with Austerity, which is just what anyone supporting his presidential race should be ready for if he wins. Sacrificing people dependent on Medicare and Social Security was something Biden seemed as enthusiastic about as Paul Ryan was.

The crappy deal Biden negotiated with the Republicans for the Obama administration "extended the Bush tax cuts, cut payroll taxes by $112 billion and met a host of other Republican demands: a lower estate tax with a higher exemption, new tax write-offs for businesses, and a maximum 15 percent capital gains tax rate locked in for two years. In return, unemployment insurance was extended for 13 months and the Opportunity Tax Credit for two years.
House Democrats were furious at both the estate tax provision and the Bush tax cut extension, partly because, according to Woodward, Biden had failed to mention the extension was on the table when he briefed Democratic leaders during the talks. Even conservative Democrats like House Whip Steny Hoyer had strongly opposed the extension, and the deal drew consternation from across the party. Dianne Feinstein balked at its size, and Bernie Sanders and two other senators interrupted Biden's presentation of the package. Sanders later vowed to “do everything I can to defeat this proposal,” including filibuster it. However, enough Democrats eventually capitulated, with some grumbling, for the deal to pass, overcoming an eight-hour filibuster by Sanders.

Biden subsequently led the debt negotiations with then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Sen. Jon Kyl and other Republicans. Biden's “opening bid” was cutting $4 trillion in spending over ten years, with a 3 to 1 proportion of cuts to revenue. Biden later proposed $2 trillion in cuts to general spending, federal retirement funds, Medicare and Medicaid, and, at Cantor's urging, food stamps.

At one point, Biden suddenly called for $200 billion more in cuts that had never been discussed, which, according to Woodward, led then-Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen-- also involved in the negotiations-- to believe Biden had gone over to the Cantor-Kyl side. Biden again crossed Van Hollen when he offered to take revenue-raising out of the “trigger”-- a combination of revenue raising and spending cuts meant to be equally unpalatable to both parties, which would automatically kick in if a deal failed to be reached.


Later in the negotiations, Biden dangled the possibility of Medicare cuts in return for more revenue-- meaning higher taxes. Soon after, he suggested Democrats might be comfortable raising the eligibility age for entitlements, imposing means testing and changing the consumer price index calculation, known as CPI. (Means testing is often seen a Trojan horse for chipping away at these programs, because their universality is one of the reasons they've remained virtually untouchable for almost a century. It’s also been criticized for imposing an unnecessary and discouraging layer of bureaucracy.)

At one point, Biden reportedly called the Medicare provider tax a “scam.” “For a moment, Biden sounded like a Republican,” Woodward notes. Biden’s team was forced to remind him that such a move would force states to cut services to the poor, to which he replied, “We're going to do lots of hard things,” and so “we might as well do this.”

As Woodward writes, “this was a huge deal” for Cantor (“Biden had caved”), and showed the administration had adopted the Republican view on the matter of the Medicare provider tax. Despite this giveaway, the Republicans continued their stubborn opposition to any revenue increases in the proposed deal.

The negotiations were ultimately scuttled by Cantor, after Biden inadvertently revealed to him that then-Speaker of the House John Boehner was secretly holding his own “grand bargain” talks with Obama. But the Biden portrayed in Woodward's book continued this pattern of bending over backwards to achieve the Republicans' cooperation in subsequent negotiations.

...[T]here are indications that another “grand bargain” may be in the cards should Biden win the presidency. In a speech last year at a joint event held by the Brookings Institution and the Biden Foundation, Biden said, “Paul Ryan was correct when he did the tax code. What’s the first thing he decided we needed to go after? Social Security and Medicare. We need to do something about Social Security and Medicare.” At the event, Biden suggested the programs should be means tested, and would require “adjustments.”

Biden’s willingness to go after the last remnants of the New Deal may well win him points from the political establishment, which has long treated such an approach as a mark of seriousness. Whether it wins him points among voters, who are overwhelmingly supportive of such programs, is another story altogether.

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7 Comments:

At 1:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

biden is NOT necessarily better than trump. he won't even lie less. He just won't be an asshole in public as much.

the same way obamanation was not better than cheney or W. He was just less of an asshole about it. I could argue with facts and data that obamanation was worse.

and on or before July 17, 2020 (the day after the DNC rigged coronation of biden as their nom), you'll tell us all to hold our noses and vote for the stench anyway.

 
At 2:24 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

We get it, Howie. The people who don't understand this are the democraptic Party leaders who keep pushing this kind of candidate on us. They clearly need to be informed that We the People are more attuned to modern realities than they give us credit for.

Certainly, enough fools out there will believe the BS being dumped on them about Biden to encourage Party leaders that their gaslighting will work. But if there was a way to measure this statistic, I suggest that the numbers would be reduced every year. It might explain why there are so many eligible voters who refuse to participate at all.

The Party has certainly lost me as a constant supporter, but I still vote. I believe that more people should vote Green or Libertarian to drive the reality that the voters do really seek change. To not vote at all allows both right-wings of the Corporatist Party to continue to drag this nation to the edge of the cliff without a murmur of protest.

 
At 3:15 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Biden's Better Than Trump-- But Biden's The Worst Democrat Running Against Trump

Again, Trump hatred is causing DWT to not see clearly what the situation is. Actually, today the GOP and its pols have become the lesser evil.

 
At 8:20 PM, Anonymous Mark said...

Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972. The median age of Americans is 38. Biden was serving the second year of his second term in 1980. Half of us were not alive then. He served continuously from 1972 - 1980. He personifies a professional politician. It is impossible, even thru his bullshit of joe from Scranton, to be a common man. It is impossible for him to relate to the other 330 million of us. He is dangerous to all but the most rarified among us.

 
At 8:23 PM, Anonymous Mark said...

Sorry. Biden served continousely from 1972 - 2016.

 
At 10:17 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If only that service was behind bars.

 
At 1:05 PM, Anonymous Mark said...

There are thousands of black and brown people serving 50 year stints for low level drug 'crimes' due to Joe from Scranton.

 

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