As you can see from the Twitter poll (and you can still vote in it here, by the way), DWT followers are too smart to go for all that Matt Gaetz clickbait. Reward: the Robert Reich video above about fair taxation which talks about, among other things, Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax, a proposal that includes about 75,000 U.S. households and would tax wealth over $50 million at 2% and wealth over a billion dollars at 3%. It seems way to modest but at least it's a step in the right direction. It would raise $2.75 trillion. Maybe Biden could use the extra cash to beef up his skinny infrastructure, jobs and Climate proposal.
The White House and the Democrats might as well go big for any number of reasons, not the least of which being that the obstructionist Senate Republicans will be wailing and rending their clothes over the bill no matter what. $10 trillion, $5 trillion, $2 trillion, $1 trillion... to them it's the worst thing that ever happened and it's socialism!!!! and communism and the hill to die on.
Lindsay Wise, reporting for the Wall Street Journal this morning wrote that "Republicans are publicly airing a wish list of bills they could pass in a future GOP-controlled Senate free of the filibuster, a warning shot intended to curb Democrats’ growing enthusiasm for abolishing the 60-vote threshold to advance most legislation." McConnell hissed to a media gaggle, "How would they feel about a Republican Senate operating with 51 votes majority deciding that they need to have a national right-to-work law?" Haven't they been chipping away at union rights for decades already? McConnell-- who called himself "the Grim Reaper" in a discussion of stopping every single Democratic policy initiative also threatened "anti-abortion bills, tighter election and immigration laws, loosening of environmental regulations, concealed-carry gun reciprocity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and defunding cities that have adopted so-called sanctuary policies to limit cooperation with immigration authorities," all GOP priorities they have been passing incrementally for years. Ironically, Democratic Party unwillingness to definitively stopped them has a lot to do with discouraging millions of voters from participating in elections.
McConnell crony and right wing freak John Barrasso (R-WY) who represents fewer people than an L.A. city council member added that he "would just remind the Democrats, no majority is forever. There’s really no going back from this. If they do it, they have some short-term political, partisan gain, but it’s going to come at a heavy price." He said if the Democrats abolish the filibuster, Republicans will complete the southern border wall, expedite energy and mineral production on federal lands and waters, and reinstate the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Republicans, threatened Barrasso, could also change the way Medicaid is paid for by converting open-ended federal funding matches to block grants that limit funding. Notice that all these Republican threats are things that would a- hurt ordinary Americans and b- are things that they have already been working on implementing incrementally.
And remember, McConnell and his Senate Republicans "face less grass-roots pressure to kill off the filibuster. Many of their top priorities, such as confirming judges, repealing the Affordable Care Act or cutting taxes, already can be pursued with just 51 votes, since a simple majority is sufficient to confirm nominees, and... reconciliation exempts budget-related bills from the 60-vote threshold." McConnell has out-played the Democratic leadership again and again and again.
In her Washington Post column this morning, Jennifer Rubin laid the GOP obstructionism bare and noted that Jen Psaki gave a preview of how the White House and presumably congressional Dems will confront so-called conservatives predictable objections to the infrastructure bill and its funding plan, primarily corporate tax increases. She said the Biden Administration is looking for GOP proposals of alternatives.
"In other words," wrote Rubin, "the White House is fully aware that Republicans are in a box. Having declared themselves in favor of infrastructure for years, they either have to come up with a tax scheme that will fall far more heavily on ordinary taxpayers or give up their phony deficit mania (which does not apply to tax cuts, apparently). This puts Democrats in both the roles of being fiscal conservatives (pay as you go!) and defenders of working-class Americans. Republicans have the choice between embracing fiscal irresponsibility or giving up their laughable claim to be the party of working people... The question really is in the Republicans’ court: Do they want to run in 2022 on a platform of defending corporate greed and opposing infrastructure?"
