McConnell sees 'no realistic path' in Senate for House bill on $2,000 checks

[Jeffr2]

Just now, vandeventer said:

Now I am confused are we talking about Biden?

We've known you were confused....

[malibukid]

lower the eligibility to 40k annual income.

[placeholder]

20 minutes ago, vandeventer said:

Now I am confused are we talking about Biden?

Worse than confused if you can't figure out who Jeffr2 is talking about. Sad.

Edited December 31, 2020 by placeholder

[khunjeff]

3 hours ago, stevenl said:

9 hours ago, sirineou said:

BS, if he did not want it to pass, he did not have to introduce a bill at all. 

This way he averts a big part of the criticism on not passing the bill, and tries to put the blame on the Democrats for not accepting Trump's pet projects, which are supported by many, many Americans, especially those who really need the money.

 

The "pet projects" in this case are investigating nonexistent election fraud and revoking certain legal protections from social media companies. Neither of those provides money to any Americans in need.

[khunjeff]

10 hours ago, webfact said:

McConnell said on the Senate floor that a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, which sought to meet Trump's demands for bigger checks, "has no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate."

 

The bill has no "realistic path" to passage because he won't allow Senators to vote on it. If he did let it go to the floor, it would likely pass - apparently at least four Republicans have said they would support it.

[placeholder]

2 minutes ago, khunjeff said:

 

The bill has no "realistic path" to passage because he won't allow Senators to vote on it. If he did let it go to the floor, it would likely pass - apparently at least four Republicans have said they would support it.

I'm not sure what the rules in the Senate are in this case. In the House it had to pass by a 2/3 majority for some obscure reason. Which it did.

[earlinclaifornia]

Mitch I feel certain your gone for good while the two new Georgia Senators will usher in the new changes.

[earlinclaifornia]

23 minutes ago, placeholder said:

I'm not sure what the rules in the Senate are in this case. In the House it had to pass by a 2/3 majority for some obscure reason. Which it did.

Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who supports sending the $2,000 checks, said Tuesday that there were at least 60 votes in the Senate to pass the measure, though the number of lawmakers who have publicly backed the idea appears to be slightly less than that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/12/30/stimulus-checks-senate/

[newnative]

McConnell's hypocrisy has no bounds.  $2000 is way too expensive, the country can't afford it, he says.  No, I will not even allow a vote on it, he says.   But, wait, he says, the country CAN magically afford it, everything's hunky dory, IF you agree to eliminate the Rule 230 protection he doesn't like.  

[The Theory]

I just lost $1400. ????????
 

 

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by The Theory

[mlmcleod]

There is no percentage in it for the Republicans if they just give American citizens cash!  To them it's welfare. Only corporate welfare appeals to the Republicans.  If there was a way to give twice as much to corporations without political fallout they would do it.

 

Sadly if the Republicans maintain control of the senate they will become deficit hawks for Biden.  All we will ever hear is cut cut cut expenditures.

[Thomas J]

On 12/31/2020 at 1:25 PM, placeholder said:

Because infrastructure plans have to be approved and ready to go before money gets disbursed. The US doesn't have the luxury of time.

Oh and when Obama had 'SHOVEL READY' projects that were part of his stimulus they were also ready and approved.  So you are dead wrong about projects having to be approved and ready.  A typical approach is to allocate funds to specific agencies and let them work out the details. 

 

As you pointed out, Japan has a debt to GDP ratio of twice the USA and it is battling deflation.  So if "stimulus" spending was effective, Japan's economy should be booming.  It is not.  If deficit spending "stimulus" was effective to combat sluggish economies, there would never be a recession.  All governments would ever have to do is some deficit spending and it would re-ignite their economies.  That has not been true.  

It terms of USA debt if debt does not matter, why stop at 2 trillion, why not 10 trillion or 100 trillion.  Why stop at only $2,000 per USA citizen why not $100,000 or $1 million.  The idea that somehow a country can indebt itself to prosperity is ludicrous.  

Numerous sovereign nations including Russia, China, Iran, have eventually just repudiated their debts.  If the USA debt ever reaches the point where it can not service the interest, or the buyers of that debt fear it being devalued the rush to sell US debt and the value of the US dollar will collapse and make the depression look like boom times.  

http://www.cadtm.org/Sovereign-Debt-Repudiations-Stepping-Stones-in-History#:~:text=Over the last two centuries,Cuba%2C Russia or Costa Rica.

[Thomas J]

On 12/31/2020 at 2:08 PM, stevenl said:

Why mention art, that seems to show a bias?

StevenL

 

I have nothing against Art however giving money to one specific center and calling it "stimulus' is bogus.  If you are planning for the future, you "invest" you don't squander.  The USA has a crumbling infrastructure, and the energy grid needs to be massively upgraded.  If money was "invested" in those capital projects it provides a springboard for the future.  Just shoveling money out that will be spent and provide no lasting benefit is like a heroin fix.  It may feel good for awhile but it will eventually just dissipate. 

The idea that somehow deficit spending will spur on an economy is just not proven out.  While I believe that those impacted by Covid deserve some "assistance" It should come in the form that puts them and their companies back to work to earn "sustainable' income.  You want to prime the pump not just give a single glass of water.  

 

[stevenl]

28 minutes ago, Thomas J said:

StevenL

 

I have nothing against Art however giving money to one specific center and calling it "stimulus' is bogus.  If you are planning for the future, you "invest" you don't squander.  The USA has a crumbling infrastructure, and the energy grid needs to be massively upgraded.  If money was "invested" in those capital projects it provides a springboard for the future.  Just shoveling money out that will be spent and provide no lasting benefit is like a heroin fix.  It may feel good for awhile but it will eventually just dissipate. 

The idea that somehow deficit spending will spur on an economy is just not proven out.  While I believe that those impacted by Covid deserve some "assistance" It should come in the form that puts them and their companies back to work to earn "sustainable' income.  You want to prime the pump not just give a single glass of water.  

 

By only quoting one part of my post and not replying to the general intention of the post you  showed bad netiquette.

[placeholder]

36 minutes ago, Thomas J said:

Oh and when Obama had 'SHOVEL READY' projects that were part of his stimulus they were also ready and approved.  So you are dead wrong about projects having to be approved and ready.  A typical approach is to allocate funds to specific agencies and let them work out the details. 

 

As you pointed out, Japan has a debt to GDP ratio of twice the USA and it is battling deflation.  So if "stimulus" spending was effective, Japan's economy should be booming.  It is not.  If deficit spending "stimulus" was effective to combat sluggish economies, there would never be a recession.  All governments would ever have to do is some deficit spending and it would re-ignite their economies.  That has not been true.  

It terms of USA debt if debt does not matter, why stop at 2 trillion, why not 10 trillion or 100 trillion.  Why stop at only $2,000 per USA citizen why not $100,000 or $1 million.  The idea that somehow a country can indebt itself to prosperity is ludicrous.  

Numerous sovereign nations including Russia, China, Iran, have eventually just repudiated their debts.  If the USA debt ever reaches the point where it can not service the interest, or the buyers of that debt fear it being devalued the rush to sell US debt and the value of the US dollar will collapse and make the depression look like boom times.  

http://www.cadtm.org/Sovereign-Debt-Repudiations-Stepping-Stones-in-History#:~:text=Over the last two centuries,Cuba%2C Russia or Costa Rica.

I'm not sure what your point about infrastructure is here. You describe the process but don't seem to understand that is precisely the problem .The problem with the Obama "shovel ready" projects is that they weren't shovel ready. So there was a big lag in their implementation. Yes, typically these projects take time to implement and the money is spent over the course of years.. So maybe not a good idea to count on big infrastructure projects to bail out an economy in danger of collapse. 

 

What makes you think that Japan ever engaged in stimulus spending? There are 2 sources of demand in developed economies: the private sector and the government sector. What happened  in Japan was that a real estate bubble burst. Banks and other traditional sources of financing dried up. With the decline in economic activity demand plummeted, and with that, tax revenues. The Japanese government didn't do what it should have done: countercyclical spending to make up for loss of demand in the private sector. Instead the Bank of Japan kept interest rates high. So, given that the yen was increasing in actual purchasing power and combine that with high interest rates, you have an incentive for disinvestment.

 

As for your wild exaggerations about how much money  debt the government should incur, they're baseless. The amount that should be spent by government is the shortfall in demand from the private sector. If demand takes a 2 trillion dollar hit, then that's how much the government should increase spending by. Provided  that spending will wind up in the pockets of those most negatively affected by the economic situation. The great conservative economist, Milton Friedman, recommended distributing money by helicopter in the event of such a crisis. During the last recession, the Eurozone decided to adopt a course of action of which you might approve. As the economies crumbled, they practiced austerity. It was given the name of "expansionary austerity".  Somehow it was felt that when the markets saw how virtuous the Eurozone was being, confidence would be restored and the economy would be resuscitated. It failed miserably. The US, the UK, Poland, and Hungary, which did not follow that plan, far outpaced the Eurozone's recovery.

 

As for not being able to repay debts. Those countries that have had a problem repaying their debts are those that borrowed in a currency other than their own. So when their currencies became severely devalued, they couldn't repay the debt. The USA borrows in dollars. So, obviously, it's not going to have a problem repaying in dollars.

 

Of course, if you're genuinely concerned about the USA's ability to repay debts, you might want to take a look at how the Republicans have crippled the IRS through underfunding. And the US could return to the taxation schemes of the 50's and 60''s when tax rates on the wealthy were much higher and the economy was growing much faster and the middle and working classes were growing wealthier. As a recent study showed, 50 years of lowering taxes on the rich have not benefited most people in the economy. Oddly enough, the main beneficiaries have been the rich.

 

 

[Thomas J]

50 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Oddly enough, the main beneficiaries have been the rich.

You are as Reagan said knowing so much that is not true. 
The "wealthy" top 1% pay 38.5% of the income taxes in the USA.  
What is crippling is that spending is out of control and that a huge proportion of the US wage earners pay nothing.  

Again, this article was about the spending bill.  If you believe that the US government or any for that matter can spend itself into prosperity,  good luck.   Stimulus bills have been tried and yet countries go into recessions.  I am not sure at what point it will happen but eventually living on borrowed money is like a Ponzi scheme.  Eventually it crashes.  

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/#:~:text=In 2017%2C the top 1,percent of all income taxes.

[Thomas J]

2 hours ago, stevenl said:

By only quoting one part of my post and not replying to the general intention of the post you  showed bad etiquette

Sorry, it was not intentional, it was the only issue that I had with your response that somehow I was anti the Art World.  As mentioned, there are many worthwhile endeavors and some can argue that they require funding.  However to call them integral to stimulus is wrong.  One of the huge things wrong with legislation in the USA is that one bill suddenly gets things tacked onto it that have nothing to do with the original intent of the legislation.  In this case whether you support or are against funding the Kennedy Fine Arts Center, that issue should come as part as an overall bill on funding the arts in the USA and stand or fall on its own merits.  Here, legislators leverage votes by getting people to support the bill even though it has numerous items in it that they don't support.  The Kennedy Art Center may be a fine and worthwhile thing to support but funding it is hardly "stimulus" it is partisan pork. 

[placeholder]

14 minutes ago, Thomas J said:

You are as Reagan said knowing so much that is not true. 
The "wealthy" top 1% pay 38.5% of the income taxes in the USA.  
What is crippling is that spending is out of control and that a huge proportion of the US wage earners pay nothing.  

Again, this article was about the spending bill.  If you believe that the US government or any for that matter can spend itself into prosperity,  good luck.   Stimulus bills have been tried and yet countries go into recessions.  I am not sure at what point it will happen but eventually living on borrowed money is like a Ponzi scheme.  Eventually it crashes.  

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/#:~:text=In 2017%2C the top 1,percent of all income taxes.

First off, almost nothing in what you've written is at all germane to the points you originally raised.

The only remark of yours that does  is this one and it seems confused: "If you believe that the US government or any for that matter can spend itself into prosperity,  good luck.   Stimulus bills have been tried and yet countries go into recessions." Stimulus bills should be legislated in response to recessions, not before them. (Despite which, the Trump administration did exactly that in 2017). So if you mean that stimulus bills are ineffective against recessions, do you have any examples to cite?

As for the issue of taxes. Of course the rich pay an increasingly large share of income taxes. That's because they earn an increasingly large share of income. Over the last 45 years 50 trillion dollars in income has been transferred from the bottom 90% of American workers to the top 10%

 

"According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation, had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month."

America's 1% Has Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% | Time

In addition, when the total amount of taxes paid by Americans is calculated, a smaller percentage is paid by the superwealthy than by Americans below the median income..

 

For the first time in history, U.S. billionaires paid a lower tax rate than the working class last year

"It finds that in 2018, the average effective tax rate paid by the richest 400 families in the country was 23 percent, a full percentage point lower than the 24.2 percent rate paid by the bottom half of American households.

In 1980, by contrast, the 400 richest had an effective tax rate of 47 percent. In 1960, that rate was as high as 56 percent. The effective tax rate paid by the bottom 50 percent, by contrast, has changed little over time."

America's 1% Has Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% | Time

 

And finally there's the issue of wealth:

Top 1% Of U.S. Households Hold 15 Times More Wealth Than Bottom 50% Combined

 

Top 1% Of U.S. Households Hold 15 Times More Wealth Than Bottom 50% Combined (forbes.com)

[placeholder]

5 minutes ago, Thomas J said:

Sorry, it was not intentional, it was the only issue that I had with your response that somehow I was anti the Art World.  As mentioned, there are many worthwhile endeavors and some can argue that they require funding.  However to call them integral to stimulus is wrong.  One of the huge things wrong with legislation in the USA is that one bill suddenly gets things tacked onto it that have nothing to do with the original intent of the legislation.  In this case whether you support or are against funding the Kennedy Fine Arts Center, that issue should come as part as an overall bill on funding the arts in the USA and stand or fall on its own merits.  Here, legislators leverage votes by getting people to support the bill even though it has numerous items in it that they don't support.  The Kennedy Art Center may be a fine and worthwhile thing to support but funding it is hardly "stimulus" it is partisan pork. 

If the money is going to get spent on salaries and other operating expenses, it's stimulus.

[KhunFred]

Always plenty of money for war but never enough for helping the worker. Tories are all alike.

[stevenl]

3 hours ago, Thomas J said:

Sorry, it was not intentional, it was the only issue that I had with your response that somehow I was anti the Art World.  As mentioned, there are many worthwhile endeavors and some can argue that they require funding.  However to call them integral to stimulus is wrong.  One of the huge things wrong with legislation in the USA is that one bill suddenly gets things tacked onto it that have nothing to do with the original intent of the legislation.  In this case whether you support or are against funding the Kennedy Fine Arts Center, that issue should come as part as an overall bill on funding the arts in the USA and stand or fall on its own merits.  Here, legislators leverage votes by getting people to support the bill even though it has numerous items in it that they don't support.  The Kennedy Art Center may be a fine and worthwhile thing to support but funding it is hardly "stimulus" it is partisan pork. 

And doubling down.

[stevenl]

3 hours ago, Thomas J said:

You are as Reagan said knowing so much that is not true. 
The "wealthy" top 1% pay 38.5% of the income taxes in the USA.  
What is crippling is that spending is out of control and that a huge proportion of the US wage earners pay nothing.  

Again, this article was about the spending bill.  If you believe that the US government or any for that matter can spend itself into prosperity,  good luck.   Stimulus bills have been tried and yet countries go into recessions.  I am not sure at what point it will happen but eventually living on borrowed money is like a Ponzi scheme.  Eventually it crashes.  

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/#:~:text=In 2017%2C the top 1,percent of all income taxes.

Is the tax bracket for them 38.5% on the full income, or do you think they are, as you state, paying 38.5% on the full income?

[placeholder]

5 minutes ago, stevenl said:

Is the tax bracket for them 38.5% on the full income, or do you think they are, as you state, paying 38.5% on the full income?

No, he's saying that out of the total of all income taxes paid, 38.5% is paid by the top 1%.