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#46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. 11/20/42 Scorpio & VP Kamala Devi Harris 10/20/64 Libra

Let's get back to normalcy. Does normalcy fit into your schedule?
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#46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. 11/20/42 Scorpio & VP Kamala Devi Harris 10/20/64 Libra

#1

Post by Luke »

FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Increases Lending to Small Businesses in Need, Announces Changes to PPP to Further Promote Equitable Access to Relief

FEBRUARY 22, 2021 • STATEMENTS AND RELEASES

Small businesses account for 44 percent of U.S. GDP, create two-thirds of net new jobs, and employ nearly half of America’s workers. Now, millions of main street small businesses – especially Black- and Brown-owned small businesses – are struggling to make ends meet in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis.

The Biden-Harris administration has made delivering equitable relief to hard-hit small businesses a top priority. The latest round of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding opened just one month ago and it represents a marked improvement on the prior round of the Program last year. Compared to the same point in the Program last year:

The share of funding going to small businesses with fewer than ten employees is up nearly 60 percent
The share of funding going to small businesses in rural areas is up nearly 30 percent
The share of funding distributed through Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions is up more than 40 percent
The Biden-Harris administration is announcing several reforms to build on this success by further targeting the PPP to the smallest businesses and those that have been left behind in previous relief efforts. While these efforts are no substitute for passage of the American Rescue Plan, they will extend much-needed resources to help small businesses survive, reopen, and rebuild. Specifically, the Biden-Harris administration will:

Institute a 14-day period, starting Wednesday, during which only businesses with fewer than 20 employees can apply for relief through the Program. 98 percent of small businesses have fewer than 20 employees. They are Main Street businesses that anchor our neighborhoods and help families build wealth. And while the Biden-Harris administration has directed significantly more relief to these smallest businesses in this round of PPP than in the prior round, these businesses often struggle more than larger businesses to collect the necessary paperwork and secure relief from a lender. The 14-day exclusive application period will allow lenders to focus on serving these smallest businesses. The Biden-Harris administration will also make a sustained effort to work with lenders and small business owners to ensure small businesses take maximum advantage of this two-week window.

Help sole proprietors, independent contractors, and self-employed individuals receive more financial support. These types of businesses, which include home repair contractors, beauticians, and small independent retailers, make up a significant majority of all businesses. Of these businesses, those without employees are 70 percent owned by women and people of color. Yet many are structurally excluded from the PPP or were approved for as little as $1 because of how PPP loans are calculated. To address this problem, the Biden-Harris administration will revise the loan calculation formula for these applicants so that it offers more relief, and establish a $1 billion set aside for businesses in this category without employees located in low- and moderate-income (LMI) areas.

Consistent with a bipartisan bill, eliminate an exclusionary restriction that prevents small business owners with prior non-fraud felony convictions from obtaining relief through the Paycheck Protection Program. Currently, a business is ineligible for PPP if it is at least 20 percent owned by an individual who has either: (1) an arrest or conviction for a felony related to financial assistance fraud within the previous five years; or (2) any other felony within the previous year. To expand access to PPP, the Biden-Harris administration will adopt bipartisan reforms included in the PPP Second Chance Act, co-sponsored by Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD), Rob Portman (R-OH), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and James Lankford (R-OK), which would eliminate the second restriction (the one-year look-back) unless the applicant or owner is incarcerated at the time of the application.

Eliminate an exclusionary restriction that prevents small business owners who are delinquent on their federal student loans from obtaining relief through the Paycheck Protection Program. Currently, the PPP is not available to any business with at least 20 percent ownership by an individual who is currently delinquent or has defaulted within the last seven years on a federal debt, including a student loan. Millions of Americans are delinquent on student loans, including a disproportionate number of Black borrowers. Working with the Departments of the Treasury and Education, the SBA will remove the student loan delinquency restriction to broaden access to the PPP.

Ensure access for non-citizen small business owners who are lawful U.S. residents by clarifying that they may use Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to apply for relief. The PPP statute is clear that all lawful U.S. residents may access the program, but a lack of guidance from the SBA has created inconsistency in access for ITIN holders like Green Card holders or those here on a visa. The SBA will address this unfair inconsistency by issuing clear guidance in the coming days that otherwise eligible applicants cannot be denied access to the PPP because they use ITINs to pay their taxes.

In addition to these five changes, the Biden-Harris administration has taken – and will continue to take – steps to ensure equitable distribution of relief that values each and every taxpayer dollar. These steps include:

Addressing waste, fraud, and abuse across all federal programs. Unlike the previous round of the PPP, loan guaranty approval is now contingent on passing SBA fraud checks, Treasury’s Do Not Pay database, and public records. The SBA now also conducts manual loan reviews for the largest loans in the PPP portfolio and a random sampling of other loans. The SBA has worked, and will continue to work, with its lender partners to create streamlined processes to resolve issues as quickly as possible, while still ensuring taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.

Promoting transparency and accountability by improving the PPP loan application. To encourage self-reporting of demographic data and better illustrate the impact the PPP is having across various population segments, the Biden-Harris administration has revamped the PPP application.

Improving the Emergency Relief Digital Front Door. The Biden-Harris administration is working to update key areas of SBA websites to help more applicants find resources for understanding relief options and completing applications.
Continuing to conduct extensive stakeholder outreach to learn more about challenges and opportunities in the implementation of current emergency relief programs. The President has spoken with several small businesses owners in recent weeks to understand their concerns about relief program. And as part of the Administration’s efforts to support America’s small businesses, especially those in LMI communities, the Vice President spoke last week with the CEOs of major banks, to highlight the critical period ahead, the vital role that lenders have to play during this time, and the Administration’s focus on PPP lending to underserved small businesses. In recent weeks, the Vice President has also met virtually with small business owners and Black Chambers of Commerce to discuss the challenges that small businesses face right now, and how passing the American Rescue Plan will provide critical relief during a difficult period. At all levels and across agencies, the administration will continue to engage with communities to inform the design and delivery of vital programs that meet their needs.

Enhancing the current lender engagement model. As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to further improve access to capital for small businesses, the SBA is launching a new initiative to deepen its relationships with lenders. This model will increase opportunity for lenders to provide recommendations and ask questions about the PPP and drive resolution of open questions and concerns in a more streamlined way.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... to-relief/
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#2

Post by Luke »

Biden shifts his operation to DNC ahead of 2022 midterm elections
By Michael Scherer Feb. 23, 2021 at 10:30 p.m. UTC

President Biden has shifted the remnants of his campaign operation, including the donor and volunteer network that got him elected and several key staff members, over to the Democratic National Committee as part of a broader effort to build up the party before the 2022 midterm elections and a potential 2024 reelection campaign. The decision to house his operation at the national party, and to continue fundraising and organizing efforts there, is intended to signal his commitment to Democratic candidates at all levels, including members of the House and Senate who are supporting his legislative efforts, according to senior White House officials.

Top advisers say Biden is not expected to create a committee for his own reelection until after the midterm elections next year. That means that the money he raises between now and then will go to broader party-building efforts and other candidates, a departure from the precedent-breaking approach taken by President Donald Trump, who filed paperwork to began fundraising for own his reelection on the day he took office in 2017. Advisers to Biden said that committees now associated with the president, including the transition, the DNC and the inauguration committees, have raised about $50 million since the 2020 election.
More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... p_politics
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#3

Post by Foggy »

... a potential 2024 reelection campaign.
:shock:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#4

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

Foggy wrote: Wed Feb 24, 2021 8:53 am
... a potential 2024 reelection campaign.
:shock:
Hey! Americans are living longer if'n they don't get the Covid.
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#5

Post by Luke »

Biden's approval tops 60 percent in new poll
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 03/01/21 02:24 PM EST

President Biden is starting his tenure in White House with the approval of 61 percent of voters, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill on Monday. Biden’s initial approval numbers are markedly higher than those of former President Trump when he first took office. The first Harvard CAPS/Harris poll of Trump’s presidency, conducted in February 2017, showed his approval rating at 48 percent. Only about 39 percent of respondents said they disapprove of the job Biden is doing in the White House, according to the poll.

There’s a relatively wide partisan divide in early perceptions of Biden’s presidency, with an overwhelming majority of Democrats approving of his job performance and most Republicans disapproving. Still, nearly one third of GOP voters – 31 percent – said they approve of Biden’s handling of his job. Biden’s approval rating is accompanied by a rise in approval for his party as a whole. Overall, 55 percent of respondents said they approve of the Democratic Party, marking a 7-point increase since January, when slightly less than half of those surveyed gave the party a positive review.

Approval of the GOP, meanwhile, is trailing that of the Democrats, coming in at 44 percent, according to the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll. “Unlike Trump, president Biden is having a honeymoon along with the Democrats,” Mark Penn, the director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, said. “The country is turning to them and giving them the opportunity to get the country vaccinated and the economy moving. It’s not the biggest of honeymoons but it’s still a real opportunity for the party and presidency to grow.”

There’s also been a positive shift in the overall direction of the country since Biden entered the White house. Forty-seven percent still believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, though that’s down from 63 percent in January. Conversely, the percentage of voters who say the country is on the right track rose from 27 percent last month to 43 percent in late February. Forty percent of voters said that the economy is on the right track, compared to 45 percent who said it’s on the wrong track. That’s still a major improvement over recent months. In January, for instance, only 29 percent said the economy was heading in the right direction, while 58 percent said it was on the wrong track.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris poll of 2,006 registered voters was conducted from Feb. 23-25. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll. Full poll results will be posted online later this week. The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5 ... n-new-poll
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#6

Post by raison de arizona »

Can’t drink much anymore, it seems to trigger my migraines, but I’m still pleased about this.
Scotch whisky tariffs suspended in new US agreement
Scotch whisky tariffs have been suspended after a agreement was reached with the United States.

The United States will now temporarily suspend all retaliatory tariffs on direct exports from the UK after a settlement agreement over the Airbus despite.

It means Scotch whisky will now see its tariffs go from 25 per cent to 0 per cent, as will textiles such as cashmere.
I fear Boris is getting ahead of himself though.
The Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “From Scotch Whisky distillers to Stilton-makers, businesses across the UK will benefit from the US decision today to suspend tariffs in this dispute.

“It shows what the UK can do as an independent trading nation, striking deals that back our businesses and support free and fair trade.”
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/ ... nt-3154414
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#7

Post by Frater I*I »

covfefe wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 9:55 pm
Scotch whisky tariffs suspended in new US agreement
Scotch whisky tariffs have been suspended after a agreement was reached with the United States.

The United States will now temporarily suspend all retaliatory tariffs on direct exports from the UK after a settlement agreement over the Airbus despite.

It means Scotch whisky will now see its tariffs go from 25 per cent to 0 per cent, as will textiles such as cashmere.
Damnit, me and Scotch are too good of friends, now the temptation to buy again has increased...
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He's got the answers to ease my curiosity, He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity"

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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#8

Post by Foggy »

I picked the wrong century to quit drinking. :(
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#9

Post by Luke »

👍 🥳 🇺🇸 Twitter is not America.

OrlyLicious @Orly_licious 17m
While Republicans impotently horse around with irrelevant culture wars (which are actions by private companies, not government), President Biden's approval rating is 60%, far higher than DL2XIT (Disgraced Loser Twice Impeached Trump) ever had. #GOPFail

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/0 ... ent-473849



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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#11

Post by Lani »

pipistrelle wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:20 pm He walks like Pelosi. A boss.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CMDqATNg ... hgh32enu9p
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#12

Post by Frater I*I »

Also, too, needs theme music...
"He sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see, He tries to tell me what I put inside of me
He's got the answers to ease my curiosity, He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity"

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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#13

Post by pipistrelle »

Lani wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:28 pm
pipistrelle wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:20 pm He walks like Pelosi. A boss.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CMDqATNg ... hgh32enu9p
Needs his signature Ray-Ban Aviator.
Need to find one of him drinking from a water bottle.
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

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Post by Frater I*I »

pipistrelle wrote: Sat Mar 06, 2021 1:04 am
Need to find one of him drinking from a water bottle.
I'll bet it'll be with one hand ;)
"He sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see, He tries to tell me what I put inside of me
He's got the answers to ease my curiosity, He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity"

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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#15

Post by Luke »

Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes is the first out of the gate book about the 2020 election. The first 54 pages are free and available here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Lu ... frontcover It covers the prologue and all of Chapter 1: The George HW Bush funeral, Hillary's plans, Biden's intentions on how to run against DL2XIT including a pivotal meeting with Al Sharpton, the earliest part of the campaign (the turning point really was Charlottesville), getting Symone Sanders on board, and both the support and opposition. Also has all of Chapter 2 and part of 3, generous of them. It covers the Lucy Flores matter and the timing of launching the campaign. Elizabeth Warren appears a lot. Jonathan and Arnie are wired in and good writers, worth a read. Overly negative and undersell what Biden accomplished -- we're seeing the amazing results already. He was the man for this moment.

Lucky page.JPG
Lucky page.JPG (179.88 KiB) Viewed 8829 times
Lucky review: how Biden beat Trump – and doubters like Obama and Hillary
Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes deliver a clear-eyed account of an election which could not cure a country’s wounds
Lloyd Green Sun 7 Mar 2021 01.00 EST Last modified on Sun 7 Mar 2021 01.02 EST

Seven million votes more was almost not enough. Had 45,000 gone the other way in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Donald Trump would still be president. Calls to defund the police nearly cost Joe Biden victory and led to a more than a dozen-seat loss for House Democrats. Biden had “separated himself from the orthodoxies of his party’s base” but “had no coattails” to spare, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes write. As always, culture counts – even amid a pandemic. But “Unwoke Joe”, as the authors call him, was the one Democrat whose empathy and instincts matched the demands of the times. Lucky is an apt title for Allen and Parnes’s third book. “In 2016, Trump had needed everything to go wrong for Hillary Clinton to win,” they write. “This time, Biden caught every imaginable break.”

Their joint take on Biden is a prism and scorecard that gives added understanding to the seemingly never-ending war of 2020. Allen is a veteran political writer at NBC News digital, Parnes reports for the Hill. They deliver. Subtitled How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, Lucky is the first full-length campaign postmortem. It makes the silent parts of the conversation audible and reminds the reader the past is always with us. The authors convey the cultural dimensions of Biden’s win. He was an old-time north-eastern pol who repeatedly bore witness to personal tragedy. So long in the Senate, he prided himself on his capacity to compromise and reach across the aisle, a trait that Allen and Parnes report elicited scorn from Elizabeth Warren. Biden also sought to maintain a “close relationship with the police and the civil rights community”, in his own words. It was no accident South Carolina emerged as Biden’s firewall in the primary, or that James Clyburn, a 15-term congressman and the most senior Black member of the House, was pivotal in digging Biden out of a deep hole.

In the election’s aftermath, Clyburn attributed Democratic underperformance to the move to defund the police and the mantras of the left. “I’ve always said that these headlines can kill a political effort,” he told NBC. For good measure, Clyburn added: “Sometimes I have real problems trying to figure out what progressive means.” On the other hand, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama come across as out of sync. We are told that Clinton, the “vampire in the bullpen”, harbored thoughts of another run – until late 2019. The fact Clinton lost in 2008 and 2016 had not totally dulled her capacity to believe she could unify party and country. Lucky captures Biden in 2016, calling the former secretary of state a “horrible candidate” who failed to communicate what she actually stood for.

Unlike Clinton, Biden understood that simply drawing a contrast with Trump would not be sufficient. Yet Clinton did see that the 2020 Democratic nominee, whoever it was, would be in a fight for “the very soul of the nation”. Charlottesville provided that epiphany to Biden. Obama too does not fare too well, a fair-weather friend to his vice-president on several occasions, overly concerned with protecting his own legacy. He got some very important stuff wrong. Biden was more attractive and viable than the 44th president and his coterie thought. In the authors’ telling, Obama was temporarily enamored with Beto O’Rourke. Like Kamala Harris, the former Texas congressman’s candidacy was over before the first primary. For both, stardom did not translate into staying power. Then, at an event with Black corporate leaders in the fall of 2019, Obama amplified Warren’s chances and trash-talked Pete Buttigieg, then mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Obama reportedly said: “He’s the mayor of a small town. He’s gay, and he’s short.” Unlike Buttigieg, Warren never won a primary. She also finished third in Massachusetts – her own state.

As for Biden, one source describes Obama’s support as “tepid at best”. Obama tacitly backed Biden just days before Super Tuesday in March. Months later, he took his time congratulating Biden on his election win. Biden’s so-called “brother” failed to call him “on election day, or the next day, or the next, or the next”, according to Allen and Parnes. Obama waited until Saturday 7 November, “the day the networks had finally called the election”. The audacity of caution. Synchronously, the authors find room for the Biden campaign to unload on Andrew Cuomo and his capacity for fluffing his own ego. The New York governor’s five-minute convention speech devoted only its last eight seconds to the nominee. “They put his speech on our doorstep, lit it on fire, rang the door-bell and then ran away,” a campaign insider says. To think, in December the press reported Cuomo to be a contender for attorney general.

Lucky is nothing if not clear-eyed. Trump roiled the nation’s waters but failed to bring a decisive shift to its politics. He energized and polarized the electorate along lines of class and education. College-educated white suburbanites grew more Democratic while the Republicans, once the party of the John Cheever’s country club set, had become home to white voters without four-year degrees. In other words, 3 November delivered an outcome – not resolution. At Trump’s instigation, our semi-civil civil war turned hot and bloody. It wasn’t antifa but a weaponized segment of Trump’s base that stormed the US Capitol. The 6 January insurrection claimed lives, ruined others and brought the Confederate flag into the halls of Congress: a chilling first. Democracy and process prevailed. The constitutional architecture “held firm”. But for how long? As Allen and Parnes observe: “Luck, it has been said, is the residue of design. It was for Joe Biden, and for the republic.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... nd-hillary

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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#16

Post by Lani »

Good gawd, lefties and rightwingnuts are battling to give the worse "reviews." E.g., "The entire premise of this book is utter garbage. Biden didn't "win" anything. He was installed, pure and simple. Welcome to communism in the USA people."
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#17

Post by Luke »

You are so right dear Lani! Here's the real story:
With No Votes to Spare, Biden Gets a Win Obama and Clinton Would Have Envied
Even with all the compromises—and the agita on the left—the Covid relief bill may be just what the Democrats needed to deliver.
By JEFF GREENFIELD 03/06/2021 04:04 PM EST
Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

The Senate just passed the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill—one of the biggest emergency spending packages in history, targeted to the poor and the middle class. But despite full Democratic control of Congress and the White House, it came with significant omissions from the wish list of Democratic priorities: no $15 minimum wage, lower jobless benefits, a tighter income limit for the checks. With just 50 senators and no Republicans crossing the line, President Joe Biden and his party had to bow to their most conservative members. You can almost hear the lamentations on the left: “If only we’d had another vote or two in the Senate, Biden and Chuck Schumer wouldn’t have had to cut $100 a week from the unemployment benefit to get Joe Manchin’s vote. And then we could keep going: ditch the legislative filibuster, pass that bill to stop voter suppression in the red states …”

And politically, there’s the worry that in two years, that slim majority will have much bigger consequences: The Democrats will take a beating at the polls for being unable to deliver the full package that most of the caucus, and the White House, wanted. Before you join the chorus, you might want to check in with the last two Democratic presidents. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both landed in office with much bigger majorities, and ended up taking it on the chin anyway. Despite the narrowest of majorities to get anything done, Biden, in fact, may be in a much better position.

When Clinton came to power in 1993, he had wide majorities in both houses: 57 Democrats in the Senate, and 258 Democrats in the House. But the resistance to his key economic package was so intense within his own party that his plan passed by just a single vote in both the House and the Senate, and only after important elements of that plan—like a gasoline tax—were thrown over the side to win the votes of suburban Democrats. When Obama was inaugurated in 2009, Democrats and their independent allies held 59 seats in the Senate, and when Al Franken finally claimed his seat months later, they had a supermajority of 60—enough to overcome a filibuster. But in order to hold those votes, the Obama Administration had to keep the cost of its Great Recession stimulus package under $1 trillion—an amount, his team later conceded, was too small to trigger a robust recovery. Similarly, in order to get reluctant Democrats like Joe Lieberman to vote for the Affordable Care Act, the White House had to kill the public health-insurance option, which left progressive Democrats disheartened. (As Obama accounts in his memoir, “A Promised Land,” the handwringing from members of his own party took much of the shine off his signature achievement as president, the biggest expansion of health care since Medicare.)

The two ex-presidents also share a common, painful experience with the political consequences of their battles. Clinton’s tax and budget initiatives were aimed at reducing the then-unacceptable budget deficit of some $250 billion—a deficit that helped propel independent candidate Ross Perot to 19 percent of the vote in 1992. (I hope you realize we’ve become Eisenhower Republicans, Clinton groused to his staff.) The policy ultimately worked—Washington was running a huge surplus by the end of the Clinton years—but in the short term it was a political liability, leading to the loss of both houses of Congress in 1994. For Obama, the slow pace of the recovery and the Republicans’ relentless political attacks on Obamacare led to massive midterm losses in 2010 at every level. The House turned Republican, the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and 18 state legislatures turned red—a political upheaval that is still tormenting Democrats as they watch those legislatures push through voter suppression laws that will shape American elections for years to come.

But this time, Democrats may be able to provide a more upbeat answer to a question the approach of Passover inspires: “Why is this one-vote victory different from the other one-vote victories?” This time, the benefits to tens of millions of Americans will be clear: $1,400 in bank accounts; extended jobless benefits; expanded childcare help. Donald Trump understood the impact of such assistance when he insisted his name be on the checks sent to American households. Joe Biden won’t be as blatant, but the direct aid will be a sharp contrast to what happened under Obama’s stimulus, when most Americans didn’t even realize they were getting a tax cut. It’s a sharp departure as well from the impact of Obamacare, where the benefits did not begin until long after the bill was passed, and after the midterm elections as well.

And this time, the bill that was passed was backed by enormous majorities of the citizenry—polls suggest that as many as 75 percent support the Covid plan, including clear majorities of Republicans. This suggests that the unanimous opposition to the plan by Congressional Republicans may leave the party with a political posture at a polar extreme from where they were in 1994 and 2009. The GOP was able to (inaccurately) pin Clinton with the “largest tax increase in history”; they were able to characterize the Obama stimulus and the Affordable Care Act as a giveaway to “those people.” But if the polls are right, Republican efforts to paint the Covid relief as a “blue state bailout” or a “Pelosi payoff” aren’t working.

More significant, if the impact of $1,400 payments, the vaccination assistance and the other elements of the plan are really felt back home—by voters, who notice the difference in their bank accounts and their health—it is actually conceivable that the line “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” could become something other than the punchline of a joke. It is, of course, possible that all those proposals that fell by the wayside—the $15 minimum wage, higher income limits on the stimulus checks, bigger jobless benefit—will trigger so much grousing from progressives that Biden has trouble keeping his own side of the aisle in line. If they’re thinking about 2022, they should be careful how much complaining they do. With the slimmest possible of majorities, Biden managed to push through something whose potential political payoff his two Democratic predecessors would have envied.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... ied-474022

Jeff Greenfield nailed it. And agree with Jeff on the highlighted section -- this is something to be really proud of. All the GOP has is Speedy Gonzales, Dr. Seuss, Muppets and whatever other nonsense. They are bankrupt and Americans are seeing it.
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#18

Post by Lani »

ICYMI, here's Biden's statement about the Senate vote.


This bill is going to halve the child poverty rate. I wish it was more than half, but it's still wonderful. I'm teary when he speaks about.
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#19

Post by Lani »



Forward to about 35:00 for the President's statement.
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#20

Post by Kendra »

I don't know how he does it. I'm a watering pot during every speech.
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#21

Post by sad-cafe »

because he has lived it


perfect man for this time
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#22

Post by AndyinPA »

It couldn't be any more different from the former guy. I breathe a sigh of relief every morning knowing I won't have all that drama to dread.
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#23

Post by Lani »

sad-cafe wrote: Thu Mar 11, 2021 9:11 pm
perfect man for this time
A dear friend always said similar things from the beginning of the 2020 campaign. No one else can do what's needed. He's the perfect person for the job. He is the only one who can bring the US back from the brink.

Both of you are right. Intelligent, calming, empathetic, and doing a great job of creating a functional, ethical, reality based Administration team.
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#24

Post by sad-cafe »

I wanted him in 2004 and 2008

Obama was great but I wanted Biden.

I guess fate knew we would need him in 2020
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Re: #46 President Joseph "Joe" Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President Kamala Devi Harris

#25

Post by Frater I*I »

AndyinPA wrote: Thu Mar 11, 2021 9:12 pm It couldn't be any more different from the former guy. I breathe a sigh of relief every morning knowing I won't have all that drama to dread.
There was a discussion during our last meet up as to whether Biden should go with the constant press conferences and Nuremberg rallies like Zee Fuhrer did. My answer was no, and I did get up on a soapbox for it, my apologies to my fellow attendees. You don't combat crazy by turning your party into opposite crazy.
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