The BIF, Build Back Better, Continuing Resolution and Debt Ceiling omnibus

If a box of imported Lucky Charms at $11 AUS is "cheap," I'd hate to see what expensive looks like!

I'm a big free market guy and I'm on board with you on the short term profit vs reinvesting in your company

However if you're looking at what's happening in the world right now, we are in a supply chain crisis. We're far too reliant on imports from manufacturers (from Asia specifically). The pandemic has caused a massive disruption in the supply chain that it wasn't prepared for and there is a huge shortage of space on vessels. Before the pandemic it cost USD$900 to ship a container from Qingdao to LA. Today it's approaching USD$20,000 for that same ocean route, and that's if you get the space. There are massive delays everywhere both at source and destinations - there are currently over 70 vessels waiting at the port of LA to be unloaded, which smashes the previous record, and some can't even drop anchor because they've been pushed so far out in to the ocean. Prices are way up, availability is way down, store shelves are empty, it's a fucking bloodbath

Makes me think there should be a renewed focus on domestic manufacturing and the government should be doing everything they can to help foster that, so we avoid or mitigate situations like this in the future

Just my $0.02

I heard somebody talking on the radio a while back about the Buy American Act, a law from the tail end of the Hoover administration requiring the government to buy from American vendors unless (a) the thing they need isn't available domestically, or (b) there isn't a domestic version that's within 25% of the cost of the foreign-made version. The host said the law allows presidents to issue waivers, and blanket waivers have been issued by pretty much every president for decades; he was proposing that one way to boost U.S. manufacturing would be to stop issuing waivers.

Anybody have any knowledge of this? I assume it's the kind of thing that would lead to a sharp short-term disruption, but could it be good in the long run?

It’s not just LA and LB. Here’s Savannah at the moment.

No-one here is eating them, that's pretty much just shops trying to swindle money from homesick Americans.

Oh good, I was worried about Australia for a moment there.

You know, besides my general worry about bird eating spiders crawling into your cars and baby-eating dingos out there

Similar issue - the UK's issues have been exacerbated by a CO2 shortage. A lot was being co-opted for dry ice to ship the COVID vaccines, but there was also a decision by a plant owned by a US company to stop CO2 capture because they weren't turning a profit on it. That plant was one of the major producers in the UK. Knock-on effect? Not enough CO2 to refridgerate meat properly in the supermarket supply chain, adding to the "empty shelves" issue already hit by the HGV driver shortage.

UK government had to step in and pay the US company to restart CO2 capture. Point is - why are we letting the individual financial decisions of firms (foreign OR domestic) impact critical supplies? Stuff like this should be a nationalised industry... as should energy supplies and rail. But we sold all that off....

Pfft ... trains are for communists.

So if I go to australia and my stripper name is lucky charms I will get 3 times the money from homesick americans looking to stuff their paycheck into a person's gstring while they dance on a pole? That might be worth trying to survive the bugs from starship troopers.

Yeah, there's stuff there that I can respect.

The "ohhhh, we're spending too much" pearl-clutching is a little eyeroll-inducing, but whatever -- that's kinda what you have to say when you're from any area with a Cook PVI that's redder than D+10.

The idea that social spending should be targeted to the people who need it the most -- yeah, that's fine. You can argue that in some cases means-testing costs more than just making it universal (as with, say, school lunches), but it's not like you can come up with any moral objection to targeting spending where it will do the most good.

(There might, however, be a political argument for more universality, in that people are more likely to support a program that they can see themselves directly benefiting from as opposed to one that they perceive as benefiting an "other.")

I saw a (paywalled) story from the New York Times that pointed out that "moderate" Democrats Manchin, Sinema et al are lining up against proposals that are extremely popular. The article chalked it up to a disconnect between what Washington elites see as "moderate" ideas and how voters perceive them.

I've heard some commentators say that Manchin will probably agree to something that's fairly close to the original package; he just wants to be able to say "see, I saved taxpayers X amount of money by making them cut Y."

Yeah. This is pretty much the exact same thing Manchin said in the lead up to the last COVID bill. It was too expensive and some stuff should be means tested.

So it when from 1.92T to 1.89T.

And then he voted yes.

As I said earlier Sinema is the one I worry about.

And then, inexplicably, a whole bunch of Berners on Twitter started shrieking in outrage on behalf of families making $160,000 a year.

Yep. Manchin needs for the Progressive wing of the party to call him obstructionist. Hopefully on National TV.

He needs ‘Joe Manchin derailing Biden’s Agenda’ headlines.

But he is also a ‘problem solver’ (god I hate that term now) and knows that he hast to bring home the bacon to his state. Remember he is an ex-governor so is acutely aware of the issues and needs.

Sinema's motivations are a little harder to figure out. Best guess I can make is that as a bisexual, non-religious woman, she realized she would have to drop her Green Party-aligned leftism if she wanted to get anywhere during the flag-wavin', Lee Greenwood-playin', Freedom Fries-eatin' early 2000s, so she adopted a centrist persona and now she's so heavily invested in it that she's forgotten she was ever anything else.

The fact that she can't seem to tell Joe Biden what exactly it is she wants, then, comes from the fact that she's less motivated by beliefs than by a need to stick to her brand.

SinemaSins? I think Honest Trailers did a crossover with that channel once.

Honestly, I think she's a paid plant by the GQP at this point and she's o no value to our side.

The fascist she was running against would've motivated the extreme left to drive him out en masse for a n actual progressive.

Sinema is a fucking drag name if I've ever heard one.

This is the third supply chain crisis in the 21st Century that I can remember. The first happened after 9/11, the second happened after the 2011 tsunami that hit Asia. Either one of them should have been a wake-up call to do something about the fact that lots of shit are outsourced to other nations. As we can see, that lesson hasn't sunk in.

What? and let long term success interfere with short term profits? That's just unAmerican.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/...-topline-number-to-schumer-this-summer-514803

Aside from the top line number and tax rates, most everything else he wants seems fine with me. Requiring fed agencies to use up COVID stimulus money first… uh… okay… sure. Any excess revenues raised go to deficit reduction, fine. The Fed should taper Quantitative Easening in order limit possible inflation. I mean they have already said they are going to do that and yeah with this much fiscal stimulus some monetary stimulus should be reduced.

Those give Manchin a lot of wins and buzz words ‘FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY’ (spending prior allocated funds first), ‘DEFICIT’, ‘INFLATION’ for no real cost that I can see.

I like how folks are declaring this a list of ‘Red Lines’ when he specifically says in the document:

“Senator Manchin does not guarantee that he will vote for the final reconciliation legislation if it exceeds the conditions outlined in this agreement,” the paper reads in bold text.

the BBB is fully funded via tax changes - which is, by-the-by, why the oligarchs are bribing the "centrists" to tear it down. They don't give an actual fuck about spending per se, they care that they will be expected to pay something closer to their reasonable tax obligations.

If they cared about spending, they'd be bitching about spending twice that much on the Pentagon (largely deficit spending) but they don't...because a lot of them make bank off THAT government spending.

and that's BEFORE you factor in the positive effects on the economy. Things like universal child care have a positive effect on government growth and thus increase revenues, things like paid family leave and expanding Medicare remove drags on economic growth (statistics show there's a spike in people getting needed care once they qualify for Medicare - which means they are delaying needed care, making it more expensive to treat, in the preceding years). The investment in climate change mitigation is MUCH cheaper than the eventual cost of NOT doing so.

But it's paid for just on basic tax/revenue v. outlay math.

Also, basically no one in the Manchin cabal worried about debt and deficit whispered a word about the Pentagon budget - twice as big on an annual basis - that breezed through Congress this year so no, no one is actually worried about debt.

“The whole shrinking of the pie pits Medicare recipients against poor families against home care workers against victims of climate change," former Sanders aide @fshakir [says].
“It makes the working class of America fight over scraps.”
White House confronts grueling choices as it debates major cuts to Biden economic plan - The Washington Post

some mock the idea of calling the Manchin proposal "scraps". Oh?
the $3.5 trillion BBB proposal would work out to about $1,060 in spending per American per year.
Or $88 a month.
Or $20 a week.
Scraps.

The Manchin counter-proposal - $1.5 trillion - is $454 per American per year.
Not quite $38 a month.
$8.74 per week.
"Scraps" would be a hyperbolic overstatement.

One source guesstimated paid leave, childcare, child tax credit, and climate would cost ~$1.5T.
Get Manchin up to $1.8T & you maybe include Medicare dental/vision
That leaves out:
-- Homelessness/housing
-- Eldercare crisis
-- Prek
-- Free community college
-- ACA & Medicaid
etc
Everyone on the Hill will get mad at these numbers but let’s say the following is roughly $3.3 trillion
Biden has floated a new ceiling of $2.3T — so which $1T from list below do you cut?
And if it’s Manchin’s $1.5T — what do you cut to save ~$1.8T?


NO ONE is asking the oligarchy puppet status-quo sellout what PROGRAM they opposes, the closest account is Manchin mouthing shit about means-testing (which isn't an issue because you just tax back from those who are wealthy) and "culture of dependency" (yet he's ALL about FF companies having been dependent on Federal subsidies since they were building the goddamn railroads)

And I have even ranted about that fucking clown Sinema

The way I see it, Bernie's original framework ask was $6b
They negotiated the fuck out of it and came down to $3.5 - THAT was the compromise.
Then Peacock Manchin struts out and says no, you have to give up over half of THAT too.

So first conclusion, asshole can come up to AT LEAST $2t and he can tell whoever he answers to that it cost Bernie 2/3 of his ask.

Second, the BIF is 1.2 - make Manchin give in to 2.3 and the total is 3.5 ... not the same thing as getting the actual BBB 3.5 but it has some optical resonance. Plus they spent, was it 1.9 earlier? So (and this won't happen) if you ever got it to 2.9 you'd total up to 6 which Progressives count as a win and Manchin still claims he drove the price down.

But honestly, he doesn't ACTUALLY care about the top line costs - he cares about raising taxes.

Yes but you see that's spending that the US constitution likes and luckily those 18th century farmers and slave owners knew enough about 21st century economics that it doesn't count.