Joe Biden’s POTUS twitter feed on Mar 28, 2022 had this quote “My father had an expression: Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget — and I’ll tell you what you value.”
So first I raise the question, what does Joe Biden care about? I refer of course to politics, assuming he cares deeply about his family, his dog and the welfare of credit card companies all through Delaware.
I will tell you what I thought Dems needed to care about after the Trump apocalypse. Packing the Supreme Court with non Christian nationalist judges. Ending the filibuster. Forgiving student loans. Washington D.C. statehood. Puerto Rico statehood.
Giving statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. would have immediately given 4 extra senators to the Dems and increased their power to do other things. Ending the filibuster would have taken a powerful obstructionist tool out of the Republican hands.
That’s what I thought Biden should care about. In August 2021 Biden told us what he supposedly cared about. A giant infrastructure bill that embodied his campaign slogan (such as it was) Build Back Better.
This was actually two infrastructure bills as Joe Manchin was still chasing the dream (ie. political cover) of bipartisanship. One of the bills was actually called the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. And these bills would be passed in tandem. So Biden promised us. So Manchin promised us. So Pelosi promised us. They were not passed in tandem. The Build Back Better Bill that was so important to Biden (supposedly) didn’t pass at all and likely never will. So what happened?
On Aug 10, 2021 60 Senators passed the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.” Since that is more than the 50 Dems it had enough goodies for corporate America that Biden was able to persuade not just nemesis Manchin but 10 Republicans to join him.
In June 2021 Pelosi said that she would not take up the ‘bipartisan infrastructure bill’ without the ‘Build Back Better’ Reconciliation bill. A June 24, 2021 CNN article quoted her as saying
“As I said, there won’t be an infrastructure bill, unless we have a reconciliation bill. Plain and simple. In fact, I use the word ain’t. There ain’t going to be an infrastructure bill, unless we have the…
