Very. Had the GOP won the senate in 2022, this would have probably been cut already. Depending on how this November goes the policy could definitely be reversed.
> Something like this, in order to be permanent, needs congressional approval.
This program did come from Congress. It was apart of the inflation reduction act.
It's a huge problem that when the opposition comes into power, they immediately try to revert and undermine what the previous party did. Not because of merit, but just because of partisanship. So you end up with a lot of programs that get started and after a while get repealed or maintained badly. This costs the country a lot of money.
The ACA is a classical example. Instead of improving it or proposing a real replacement, they campaign for repealing it and some incantations of "free market" without explaining how patients won't get screwed over even more than now.
That's not how the opposition is undoes something. The opposition reduces funding and scope and passes legislation that effectively nullifies previous laws.
The reason Republicans are mentioned above is that they have a well documented public history of endorsing and carrying out these kinds of shenanigans. Democrats, though cut from the same cloth, somehow manage to be one step above on an imaginary decency scale.
I was mostly focused on the policy part of their comment. A lot of the changes come based on a level or two removed. You generally don't see laws fully flip flopping. Instead it's quite common for someone to get appointed and then their decisions are the ones that change policies (especially internal policies at various agencies). SCOTUS, both now and in the past is a good example of the external law/policies changing based on interpretation. But yeah, actual repeal of laws is very rare.
Which ones specifically? I haven't followed how the individual elements have played out. Many of the elements seem minor, but I don't remember if the CBO broke down which portions would create the deficit. I assume it's the corporate pieces, but don't know which ones.
We didn't even allow the 2001 Bush tax cuts to automatically expire at the end of 2010, despite control of the House, Senate, and White House passing from the Republicans to the Democrats during the intervening years.
I would give the example of the 2001 Bush tax cuts.
Since the Republicans lacked 60 votes in the Senate and zero Democrats supported the Bush tax cuts, The law enacting them was passed using budget reconciliation rules.
> Budget reconciliation is a special parliamentary procedure of the United States Congress set up to expedite the passage of certain federal budget legislation in the Senate. The procedure overrides the Senate's filibuster rules, which may otherwise require a 60-vote supermajority for passage. Bills described as reconciliation bills can pass the Senate by a simple majority of 51 votes or 50 votes plus the vice president's as the tie-breaker
Using budget reconciliation rules automatically set a sunset date for the tax cuts, after which they would automatically expire.
When the tax cuts should have automatically expired at the end of 2010, the Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House. Despite frequent claims over the decade that tax cuts for the rich were morally reprehensible, the Democrats did not allow the tax cuts to automatically expire, extending them for two years in the lame duck session of Congress, and then most were made permanent two years later before they should have expired again.
Despite frequent claims over the decade that tax cuts for the rich were morally reprehensible, the Democrats did not allow the tax cuts to automatically expire, extending them for two years in the lame duck session of Congress, and then most were made permanent two years later before they should have expired again.
The great increase in illegal entry into the country through the southern border is a good recent example. Though, I suppose this is predicated upon it being "good policy" that illegal immigration be slowed.
I would love to see your sources; everything I've seen across the partisan spectrum shows a large increase from the 2010-2020 period to 2020 and onwards.
But the Democrats haven't made an¥ significant changes to immigration policy. In fact, they offered an bipartisan immigration bill that tilted significantly toward the Republicans' wishlist and the GOP rejected because Trump wants to run on immigration and giving Biden a political win in that area was unacceptable to thim (even though many on the left found the proposed legislation very disagreeable).
The main change at the border is a larger number of migrants. Migration trends are up globally, for a variety of reasons including climate change.
Sorry but the elected leader of a party openly stating his objectives is not "partisan propaganda." So free of Koolaid you think simply citing the actual words that a grown adult said of his own free will and cognizance is "partisan propaganda."
Care to explain what happened during the Trump Administration then?
It's so easy for people to hyper-focus on "my side good" that they lose sight of the overall picture. Resisting an administration's agenda is pretty normal and expected... the people who voted for Mitch simply do not agree with the Biden agenda. Mitch (and other R's) are there to enact the agenda their constituents want. What a shocker...
Why is this surprising to you? Have you pondered, even for a few moments, what Democrats do when there's a Republican administration in office?
Surely you can find examples of Schumer saying that his party is fully committed to obstructing the Trump administration, right? Or Harry Reid saying it during the Bush administration?
No, it's not normal. That's exactly my point. If it's normal, cite it.
Believing it's normal for one party to have as an explicit goal to simply obstruct everything the administration is doing is a symptom of drinking too much Koolaid.
> "One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration"
Actual words stated by Mitch McConnell. His goal is not to pass policy that's good for the American people, not to prevent the administration from overstepping or making mistakes, not to do anything except simply "stopping this new administration."
The purpose of our government is to collaborate and compromise to find solutions that are good for the country.
Consider two children tasked with collaborating on a problem. One of them walks up and says "One-hundred percent of my focus is on stopping you."
Are you similarly confused about who's the asshole? Is that "partisan propaganda" to say that the child who states that is an asshole? Are you really so smart that this becomes a tricky situation to understand?
> The purpose of our government is to collaborate and compromise to find solutions that are good for the country.
> Consider two children tasked with collaborating on a problem. One of them walks up and says "One-hundred percent of my focus is on stopping you."
The purpose of our government is clearly lined out in the Constitution. A lot of people happen to think that the federal government has stepped way outside of the bounds prescribed therein[0], and that this causing harm to the country. If you take that view, then being 100% obstructionist at the federal level is in fact acting for the good of the country.
[0]: To be clear, this has been going on for nearly a century. It's not a recent thing, nor is it specific to the parties or presidents involved at any given time.
Clearly by "collaborate and compromise" you actually mean "so long as my side gets their way". This is the negative result of buying into entirely one-sided propaganda - it limits your perspective to, frankly, bullshit.
I do not see a point in continuing since you seem unwilling to actually contemplate the entire environment. Not only do you have absolutely no response to obvious intellecual hypocrisy, but you are indeed one of "those" people who links to propaganda to support their deliberately narrow and naïve perspective of the world - and demands others participate in this alternative reality.
It's not fun, nor intellectually stimulating to engage in this type of debate.
No, that's actually not what I mean. Note that I'm not taking issue with any GOP policies, because I don't have a problem with GOP policies. I have a problem with stated goals of simply obstructing the people they are supposed to be collaborating with, thus I am directly quoting statements made that explicitly state their goal of obstructing their collaborators.
Again, citing someone's own words cannot possibly be considered "propaganda" against them, lol. They said it, and to my knowledge they weren't even held at gunpoint!
I mean you haven't even given me an analogous example of the problem I'm pointing out, so I'm not sure what "clear hypocrisy" I'm exhibiting. Give me an example case and I'll tell you what I think and then you can decide whether I'm hypocritical.
There was oodles of collaboration during the Trump Administration - how did I ever forget how willing to compromise and collaborate Democrats were back then! It was an amazing time for our Congress - so much collaboration was done that we got sick and tired of collaborating!
This is a feature of the US constitutional system, not a bug. It's designed such that things move very, very slowly. If Congress isn't able to pass laws, it probably reflects a division in how the voting populace feels about the subject of such laws.
The president may be all we have, but he is constitutionally forbidden from acting like a king. Though, of course, that hasn't stopped presidents from trying.
100% Correct. People all too often look at Congress and say "gee, they aren't passing all the things I want them to do, therefore Congress must be broken!"
This fails to realize Congress works entirely the way it was designed. As you said, inaction == lack of consensus.
Imaging running a country where significant ways of life (influenced by laws) change willy-nilly depending on the flavor of the day? The legal whiplash would be absurd.
So, people often look to the president as some sort of king analog, and demand action via Executive Order - then cry foul when the next president undoes the previous one's EO's... it's lunacy and not a good way to run a society.
> This fails to realize Congress works entirely the way it was designed.
Don't really think so.
The 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act subverted the intentions of the founders and clearly swayed the power balance back towards rural areas, even though they have equal representation in the senate.
Oh man this and the 17th Amendment I think created a serious flaw to the framers' original designs. But people look at me crazy when I say that the 17th Amendment probably was a mistake and the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act a serious mistake to our democracy.
Posting this demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of how the US government works - and a gross misunderstanding of the founding of the US and the framer's intentions.
The "And?" was a prompt for the poster to elaborate on their uninformed view. You apparently saw fit to double-down on expressing your lack of understanding as well...
Perhaps you would like to take a swing at explaining how Congress passing a law somehow "subverts" Congress?
“ it probably reflects a division in how the voting populace feels about the subject of such laws.”
I don’t think that’s correct. There is way too much propaganda coming from the parties to think that voters have made up their minds based on the facts. It’s actually quite hard to get the facts because the media is mostly reporting politics like they report a football match.
I'm actually curious on the reverse. What programs did the GOP start that were cancelled by the Dems? Note I'm a biased liberal, so potentially the reversals might've been propagandized to me as lifting restrictions or some other such political language and I might be unaware of the actual policies.
A couple of examples would be reduction of some of the Reagan-era defense spending under the Clinton administration, and partial rollback of some of the Reagan-era tax cuts under the Clinton administration.
Of course these were not complete elimination of programs, but adjustments. And you could argue that there were other reasons besides partisanship, like the end of the Cold War and budgetary issues.
You're totally right that it's especially bad with e-branch stuff, but it's not necessarily limited to that. Most programs established by congress will be given an expiration date beyond which it would require another act of congress to reauthorize. I think it's mandatory for anything that costs money, basically. I can see the basic rationale that if something is not popular enough to be reauthorized, why keep doing it, but it sure does contribute to instability not knowing if you can depend on something important continuing to exist.
In 1991 the ACA was the conservative proposal, but in 2010 when it was passed under the Obama administration it suddenly became communist marxism. Sigh.
You have a pretty loose definition of talking point. It was pretty widely televised that McCain broke ranks with the party to prevent an ACA repeal [1] but ignoring that event there were many attempts over the course of 7 months [2] to replace it. That time could've been invested into literally anything else.
But yeah a lot of things end up being campaign talking points. Like Obama saying they'd enshrine abortion rights into law and uh didn't.
> This program did come from Congress. It was apart of the inflation reduction act.
The inflation reduction act directed the IRS to perform a study on Direct eFile. Implementing an actual pilot and then expanding to a permanent tool was based solely on executive authority, so either congress or the president could choose to scrap the program in the future.
> Inflation Reduction Act §10301(1)(B) TASK FORCE TO DESIGN AN IRS-RUN FREE ‘‘DIRECT EFILE’’ TAX RETURN SYSTEM.—For necessary expenses of
the Internal Revenue Service to deliver to Congress, within
nine months following the date of the enactment of this
Act, a report on (I) the cost (including options for differen-
tial coverage based on taxpayer adjusted gross income and
return complexity) of developing and running a free direct
efile tax return system, including costs to build and admin-
ister each release, with a focus on multi-lingual and mobile-
friendly features and safeguards for taxpayer data; (II)
taxpayer opinions, expectations, and level of trust, based
on surveys, for such a free direct efile system; and (III)
the opinions of an independent third-party on the overall
feasibility, approach, schedule, cost, organizational design,
and Internal Revenue Service capacity to deliver such a
direct efile tax return system, $15,000,000, to remain avail-
able until September 30, 2023: Provided, That these
amounts shall be in addition to amounts otherwise avail-
able for such purposes
Very. Had the GOP won the senate in 2022, this would have probably been cut already. Depending on how this November goes the policy could definitely be reversed.
> Something like this, in order to be permanent, needs congressional approval.
This program did come from Congress. It was apart of the inflation reduction act.