The United States’ poverty rate experienced its largest one-year jump on record last year, with the rate among children more than doubling from 2021’s historic low of 5.2 percent to 12.4 percent according to new numbers from the US Census Bureau out today. They’re the latest data to reflect the devastating effects following the expiration of nearly all pandemic-era relief programs. That includes the end of Medicaid rules that protected recipients from getting kicked off because of administrative errors, an end to rental assistance policies, and the restart of student loan payments.
These policies might seem like a distant memory at this point. But they’re worth recalling with the arrival of every new report. Each demonstrates what happens when politicians long hostile to caregivers, universal health care, and the welfare state, for a brief moment, acted to create powerful, federally-backed safety net programs aimed at helping everyday Americans. One of the most effective programs to emerge was the expansion of the child tax credit, which provided families monthly checks of up to $300 per child and broadened eligibility rules for qualifying families. In turn, child poverty rates plummeted; the extra income allowed caregivers to quit grueling second and third jobs; parents were able to buy their kids decent clothes and help stop taunting at school. The Census Bureau previously reported that food insecurity dropped dramatically after just the first extended payment, from 10.7 million households reporting they didn’t have enough food to 7.4 million.
But as the pandemic receded, Republicans with the help of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who in private remarks reportedly warned that families were using the extra income to buy drugs, appeared to remember the country’s longstanding pre-pandemic hostility. Their opposition ultimately tanked President Biden’s agenda, and along with it, the brief life of the expanded child tax credit. That’s something worth remembering today as the predictable crowd is likely to cry about Democratic-engineered inflation.
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If Joe Biden can be given credit for the actions of legislators, surely he must also take the blame. Biden’s total inability to enforce any kind of party discipline is on him and the rest of the Democratic leadership.
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Withdraw any party support from them, kick them from the party, and fund their opposition. The Democratic party can absolutely do this when they need to try and stamp out anyone to the left of the blue dogs.
Before Shelley Capito got elected in 2015, the last time West Virginia had a republican senator was during the eisenhower administration. And if Manchin votes as a republican anyway why does it matter? Like he’s straight up come out and said he won’t vote for a Joe Biden pick for the supreme court.
what the hell is the point of holding a seat if the guy holding it does whatever he wants.
West Virginia has gotten more and more conservative over time. It used to be more of a blue state. In 2020, Trump got double the votes that Biden did. Manchin is going to struggle to hold the seat if he runs again, let alone some left wing upstart without name recognition who is poorly matched to the state’s politics.
Again, if Joe Manchin is functionally a republican why does it matter if he loses? And Joe Manchin is unpopular in his own state, he’s not a person who is uniquely equipped to hold the state. Like you’re just gaslighting yourself into supporting a Republican.
Joe Manchin is conservative for a Democrat, but he is no Republican. Any replacement will be a right wing Republican that the Democratic Party has no influence over. Manchin highlights his independence from either party. A replacement would highlight their mindless opposition to any proposal by the left or Democrats.
What functional difference is there between Joe Manchin and a republican
WV was a blue state because unions. When Dems started attacking the largest union industries in the state, and started emphasizing identity politics over labor that was pretty much it.
yes. the democrats are so good at protecting marginalized peoples. that is clearly where their effort goes. just ask anyone trans who lives in joe biden’s america how much fun they’re having~
Never said they were successful at that. What I’m getting at is that there’s a shift in Dem rhetoric that happened about 20 years ago where the emphasis stopped being on labor, and started being on identity groups. This is very convenient for their corporate sponsorship, as silly things like worker’s rights and labor unions are not things said sponsors want to support, for obvious reasons. By comparison, something like which bathroom trans people shit in is a perfectly fine topic from the perspective of the corporate masterminds, because it doesn’t impact their cash flow.
This is the same reason why the Dems are comically bad at getting anything done - half their policies are pro-worker ones kept eternally on the back burner only to be brought out in a pre-compromised form and then compromised further on when the calls from the base get too loud, and the rest are ones where they try to keep various minority groups on the edge of existential terror by suggesting that if you don’t vote for them then you’ll be one step closer to being marched off to the death camps.
actually I disagree with the existence of stupidpol and patsoc types
By not conrinuing to support and fund them.
By doing literally anything.
But anytime anybody says that we get a lecture on how dems have to keep supporting him otherwise he’d do the exact same things as a republican.
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Joe Manchin has openly said he will not vote for a Biden nominated SCOTUS candidate. What’s left? What does he contribute to the Democratic party?
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Because they’re nonsense dude. The senate majority only matters if the party in the senate actually votes as a unit and they don’t.
Not only would it have passed without his vote, he was the reason/excuse for the infrastructure bill to be watered down as much as it was.
He contributes NOTHING to the Democratic party except an excuse to not fulfill their party platform.
maybe they should dral with Manchin the way they deal with the socdems: by funding their primary opponents.
Speaking as a non-american, the only way to avoid burgerlands nosedive into fascism would take so much more work and would definitely involve losing the senate. To me, you have to completely remake the Supreme Court and senate, and part of that is to always attack them and their legitimacy. Every democratic spokesperson should be bring up how corrupt and unaccountable these institutions are
Like, open up criminal cases against Clarence Thomas and Alito over their corruption. Same with manchin. Every one of these ghouls have done criminal acts. Even if you don’t win the court cases (and you won’t), you’ve dragged these peoples names into the mud and will help expose the flaws in both Congress and the courts. Get a majority of people mad enough that they shut down the country through strikes and demonstrations and you’ll suddenly find the remaining judges and congresspeople a lot more amenable.
Now, you’ll have thought up a ton of reasons why this won’t work. So have I, and the major reason to me is that most of the democrats are the same kind of garbage as the republicans, along with Americans being incredibly docile except when they’re murdering each other plus a million other reasons. So fuck both parties, vote or don’t, I don’t really care, but don’t expect me to be impressed by joe Biden
Ok here’s some actual examples.
Take him off all committees stop giving him any money or support for relecrions and start closing military bases in his state.
Why are Democrats giving money to “Democrats” who won’t support their agenda? Why did the DNC support Manchin and Sinema financially, but actually give money to Republicans over Progressive Democrats? You can’t be against Fascists, but still financially support them over Social Democrats…An unemotional look at the DNC’s behaviour shows that even if you got 70 Senators, the things we want would not get done. The Democrats are closer to the Republicans than any Socialist/ Communist/Anarchist in here…
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Did Biden fight tooth and nail to push through his agenda? Nope.
So it’s completely reasonable to say that Biden allowed childhood poverty to double under his watch.
What can we do Jack, if we had to change the rules of the senate to allow majority votes then we might be able to do something
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make those 2 people vote the way you want?
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Actually political parties can and should enforce political discipline on their members, and there should be reprisals for going against the party and its leadership.
But the reality is, letting Manchin trash this legislation is probably more the plan than an opposition to it
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If they can’t control him then they’ve already functionally lost a seat (unless of course, they actually like having him block legislation they don’t actually want to pass)
Parties exert control on their members in this country, they always have, and generally not through violence or torture. Usually its through taking away party support from them and their personal agenda. It could be attacking political pork to West Virginia, close military or other government facilities there, and support challengers/kick him out of the party so he can’t run on their ticket. It could possibly include more strong-arm tactics, not violence, not even anything necessarily illegal, that’s speculative but possible.
What you’re asking people to explain, is something that is the norm. You’re the one actually making an outrageous claim of how do we expect a political party to control and discipline its members. And pretending that the Democratic Party or the President just have no power in this situation is ludicrous
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There’s literally positions in Congress for party members called a whip for enforcing party discipline
I’m gonna put on my political scientist hat, and point out that almost every political party on this planet enforces internal discipline in a multitilude of ways, a handful of which have been mentioned in this discussion thread already.
The idea that parties are these big tents where you can’t possibly enforce any kind of internal discipline is both a uniquely America-brained take, and also not entirely true.
Like, there are literally people called “Party Whips” who’s job it is to pressure the party members vote along party lines.
What difference would that make when the guy is already voting like a republican?
what would change?
He’d be using republican money for re-election instead of taking money from potential progressive politicians before getting elected and voting against the dems entire platform.
I think they’re supposed to argue against their democratic/republican nominations in their states or something for future elections, but I honestly could be wrong because It’s not something I often think about. Just that there has to be some sort of repercussion for consistently voting against your party…
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you bring them into your office and say hey, you vote the way I want to or I’m going to destroy your fuckin life. direct the IRS to find any discrepancy in their taxes, direct the DOJ to find any thing they’ve ever done wrong in their life, have the NSA leak their texts, charge them with one of those bullshit charges like wire fraud. these people are absolute cowards, they don’t care about anything other than protecting their wealth - make that slightly inconvenient for them and they’ll buckle. or honestly just have the CIA kill them, who cares? the CIA is off killing civil rights leaders and foreign politicians anyway, may as well kill some of our own that are holding good things up.
You sound like you want a Mafia family, not a government…
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You asked and he answered, sometimes AuThoRiTaRiAnIsM is how you actually get things done.
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You’ve just described grounds for impeachment and removal of the president. The full House and Senate would turn on them at that point.
at which point I would have the military arrest all of them and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat
No thanks. You claim to speak for the people, but really you only want power for your fringe ideology.
LBJ certainly found a way
Easy. Threaten them. Remove them from committees. Cut their funding from DNC. Many many things could have been done.
You would learn more if instead of asking “what could they have done” but instead asking “why didn’t they do anything”.
They didn’t do anything.
you can tell how little attention Democratic Party apologists like this pay attention to the Democrats, because they never seem to see any of the absolutely dirty tricks they pull against popular progressives to enforce discipline, that are somehow never ever deployed against these sineating right-wing assholes like Sinema and Manchin.