The New York Times Rejected My Op-Ed
from yesterday; evidently I dangled a fucking participle
Links are at the end, exhausted.
I was very upset yesterday.1
If this yere newsletter has a guiding principle, it’s that societies are measured by how well they care for the least of us.
For Republicans, a society which cares well for the bottom-of-the-heapers is a failed society.
For Democrats, a patchwork, means-tested, bargaining-chipped social welfare state represents if not a successful society, then the best we can hope for, although, unlike Republicans with their measure, you won’t catch many Democrats saying so explicitly.
(“We’re better than this,” in the face of clear evidence that we are not better than this, could be the mating call of Democrats.)
Everybody alive, with the possible exception of some senior House and Senate members, knows how Republicans view the welfare state and the beneficiaries of it. They despise social welfare programs and they despise anybody who benefits from or supports those programs.
I was upset with Biden yesterday because he had made the decision to enter into a debt ceiling bargain with Republicans, and any agreement with Republicans will be necessarily be bad for the lower classes, and a chunk of the rest of the population, regardless whether explicitly punishing the poor is under consideration.
Once President Biden made the unfortunate decision to negotiate on the debt ceiling with the House hostage takers, the work requirements were on the table, and the president has not been clear about his intentions. On Sunday he told reporters that he had voted for work requirements currently in the law, apparently referring to cash welfare, and was waiting to see what the Republican proposals were. That was not exactly a comforting sign, particularly because the proposals are quite clear, though he did suggest that Medicaid changes were off the table. After progressives raised concerns, he issued a tweet on Monday condemning the harsher requirements for food benefits.
That’s not me (no swears is the tip-off); it’s NY Times editorial board member David Firestone writing in his own pages today.2
Any bargain Biden makes will necessarily be a bad one, because everything Republicans want is bad.
The only positive result I can imagine—which doesn’t necessarily mean much, as I’m a bad imaginer—would involve Biden putting his hands in the air like he just don’t care, and walking away with the observation that his bargaining partners are bargaining irresponsibly and in bad faith.
Which, again, is the premise of any negotiation with them.
At best, should a bargain be struck, it’ll impose spending caps on future budgets, which is to say that Biden will be hamstringing his own budgets at least for next year and, if he gets reelected, for as long as he’s in office.
Huzzah?
Given Biden’s history as a deficit hawk, his recent failure to win any substantial new taxes, his past predilection for beating up the poor folk, and what happened the last time he negotiated a debt ceiling bargain, for Obama in 2011, maybe he’s hoping to hamstring himself.
Oh noes, the briar patch.
We’re really bad at this social welfare thing, and getting worse. How can we be getting worse?
Well. I don’t know. I mean, I do know how we’re getting worse; I just don’t know.
Music . . .
The Slits, “Cut;”3 Warpaint, “Radiate Like This.”4
That, Comrades, is all I got
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Take care, be well.
While I largely agree with your criticisms, it seems only fair to acknowledge Biden's limited options. A Republican controlled House means that budget negotiations were going to be extremely difficult no matter what. The House could, without reference to the debt limit, send the government finances into a tailspin by refusing to fund administration programs, either new or preexisting. Appropriations must be initiated in the House and without House approval, no budget can pass. Added to that is the thinnest of all possible majorities in the Senate (Manchin and Sinema, Inc.). I think the voters deserve most of the blame. Progressives have not demonstrated an ability to get support at the polls.