Manchin Will Not Eliminate The Filibuster, Major Setback For Liberal Democrats

[bbsam]

lol

Have you seen inflation in the last 20 years?

 

[bbsam]

I remember in 1975 having a bank account making 13% interest. My mortgage is locked in at 3.x%.
I think I like the sound of inflation right about now.

 

[It will be fine]

Have you seen inflation in the last 20 years?

It’s been between .1 and 3% since the last big federal spending spree in 2009. The fears of hyperinflation never came to pass. Republicans crying about the debt are chicken little.

 

[Box Ox]

It’s been between .1 and 3% since the last big federal spending spree in 2009. The fears of hyperinflation never came to pass. Republicans crying about the debt are chicken little.

I doubt anyone really had much reason to fear inflation due to government intervention at the time because the underlying structure of the economy had taken a big hit that would take years to fully recover from. The pre-COVID economy was the best in 50 years and had pretty solid fundamentals, right? The pandemic shut downs and lock downs created an artificial slowdown that didn't have to do with the Country's actual economic condition.

This won't be another years-long recovery and all that extra money on top of people running out of their homes and spending like it's the Roaring Twenties after over a year indoors could be an issue, no?

 

[It will be fine]

I doubt anyone really had much reason to fear inflation due to government intervention at the time because the underlying structure of the economy had taken a big hit that would take years to fully recover from. The pre-COVID economy was the best in 50 years and had pretty solid fundamentals, right? The pandemic shut downs and lock downs created an artificial slowdown that didn't have to do with the Country's actual economic condition.

This won't be another years-long recovery and all that extra money on top of people running out of their homes and spending like it's the Roaring Twenties after over a year indoors could be an issue, no?

Nah

 

[El Correcto]

I doubt anyone really had much reason to fear inflation due to government intervention at the time because the underlying structure of the economy had taken a big hit that would take years to fully recover from. The pre-COVID economy was the best in 50 years and had pretty solid fundamentals, right? The pandemic shut downs and lock downs created an artificial slowdown that didn't have to do with the Country's actual economic condition.

This won't be another years-long recovery and all that extra money on top of people running out of their homes and spending like it's the Roaring Twenties after over a year indoors could be an issue, no?

It honestly not even worth bitching about with these people. They are deranged in the head with their spending proposals and trying to compare it to anything that has happened in the last 20 years.

 

[It will be fine]

It honestly not even worth bitching about with these people. They are deranged in the head with their spending proposals and trying to compare it to anything that has happened in the last 20 years.

When you can borrow at less than 2% it’s irresponsible not to.

 

[El Correcto]

When you can borrow at less than 2% it’s irresponsible not to.

What do you plan to do? Borrow at 2% and set the money you would of spent aside to invest for higher returns? Or do you plan on blowing it on unfunded liabilities that will begin spiraling along with the rest of the socialist garbage?

 

[El Correcto]

Borrowing money is never a good thing if you are financially irresponsible leftists setting out to make people wards of the state and enshrining destructive financial incentives for people to vote against tax paying Americans.

Just my opinion and I’m only a truck driver what do I know.

 

[bbsam]

What do you plan to do? Borrow at 2% and set the money you would of spent aside to invest for higher returns? Or do you plan on blowing it on unfunded liabilities that will begin spiraling along with the rest of the socialist garbage?

Conservatives are so cute when they remember they are conservatives and not spending like drunken liberals.

 

[It will be fine]

What do you plan to do? Borrow at 2% and set the money you would of spent aside to invest for higher returns? Or do you plan on blowing it on unfunded liabilities that will begin spiraling along with the rest of the socialist garbage?

I believe the current plan is to tax the rich to pay for stuff. There’ll be some low interest borrowing too. It will repair our outdated roads and bridges, that saves money long term. It will expand broadband access to rural and low income communities bringing all that currently wasted capacity into the modern economy. Borrowing at 2% to rebuild a nation crippled by right wing neglect will have returns that far exceed the cost.

 

[DriveInDriveOut]

It will repair our outdated roads and bridges, that saves money long term. It will expand broadband access to rural and low income communities bringing all that currently wasted capacity into the modern economy.

And then it will blow the other 90% on pork and wasteful spending. You people don't even believe money is real so your entire argument is disingenuous.

 

[Box Ox]

It will repair our outdated roads and bridges, that saves money long term.

I hope so. Fareed Zakaria outlined some of his concerns regarding such an effort on his TV show Sunday and in The Washington Post last Thursday. Here's part of the latter:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...7af1e0-9321-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html

"Where the spirit of the New Deal is sorely needed today is in the cost, efficiency and transparency of these kinds of projects. The United States used to be able to build things with astonishing speed. The George Washington Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge when it opened in 1931 across the Hudson River from Manhattan to New Jersey, was built in four years, ahead of schedule and under budget. By contrast, just adding two miles of new subway lines and three new stations in Manhattan took, depending on when you start counting, 10 to 100 years and ended up costing $4.5 billion by the time it opened in 2017.

Building infrastructure in the United States is insanely expensive. The New York Times found that another project in New York, an expansion of the Long Island Rail Road, was the most expensive subway track on Earth, coming in at seven times the world average. New York is particularly bad — in a league of its own — but U.S. infrastructure often costs several times more than it does in Europe. Paris, Rome and Madrid have managed to build subway extensions for less. Yet those cities are hundreds of years older than any in the United States, and they have many unions and tons of regulations. So none of the usual excuses will do.

One recent study found that the cost of building U.S. interstate highways quadrupled from the 1960s to the 1990s, though material and labor costs have barely budged (after accounting for inflation). There are lots of reasons: multiple authorities (each with a veto), endless rules and reviews, and likely corruption. New York University scholar Alon Levy did a detailed analysis of the country’s crazy costs and concluded that there were at least eight reasons for them. Fundamentally, though, they concluded that the costs were so high because Americans were unwilling or unable to look around the world and try to learn from other countries. American exceptionalism has led to an exceptional, uniquely bad system for building infrastructure.

By contrast, the New Deal was surprisingly well-run. The WPA employed 3 million people at its peak, more than any private company. In today’s workforce that would be about 10 million people. The entire enterprise was skillfully managed by Harry Hopkins, a social worker-turned-bureaucrat who was one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest aides. The vast Tennessee Valley Authority — spanning seven states and eventually comprising about 30 hydroelectric dams — was devotedly led by David Lilienthal, a crusading lawyer. Most of the funds appropriated for the New Deal were administered scrupulously by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, another confidant of FDR. Each of these men developed a reputation for honesty, efficiency and reliability, which in turn made people believe that government could do big things and do them well.

For the Biden administration to truly be transformative, it needs to rival not only the ambition of the New Deal but also its impressive execution."

 

[bbsam]

Borrowing money is never a good thing if you are financially irresponsible leftists setting out to make people wards of the state and enshrining destructive financial incentives for people to vote against tax paying Americans.

Just my opinion and I’m only a truck driver what do I know.

You don’t expect businesses to pay for all that infrastructure, do you?

 

[Box Ox]

You don’t expect businesses to pay for all that infrastructure, do you?

Toll roads, baby! LOL

 

[El Correcto]

I believe the current plan is to tax the rich to pay for stuff. There’ll be some low interest borrowing too. It will repair our outdated roads and bridges, that saves money long term. It will expand broadband access to rural and low income communities bringing all that currently wasted capacity into the modern economy. Borrowing at 2% to rebuild a nation crippled by right wing neglect will have returns that far exceed the cost.

From what I understand only 5% of the infrastructure bill is geared towards doing that.
Where’s the rest of this borrowed money going?
What you say seems reasonable.

 

[El Correcto]

Also right wing neglect? Trump ran on infrastructure and won. Who were the ones neglecting it for the past 2 or so years?

 

[Box Ox]

Where’s the rest of this borrowed money going?

Here's exactly how Biden's $2 trillion of infrastructure spending breaks down

Transportation​

• $621 billion for transportation includes:
  • $115 billion for modernizing roads, highways, and bridges
  • $20 billion for road safety
  • $85 billion for public transit
  • $80 billion for Amtrak and freight rail service
  • $174 billion for electric vehicles
  • $25 billion for airports
  • $17 billion for ports
  • $20 billion for neighborhoods historically excluded from transportation investments
  • $25 billion to fund new projects
  • $50 billion for infrastructure resilience, with a special emphasis on more vulnerable areas

Water​

• $111 billion for water infrastructure includes:
  • $45 billion towards fully eliminating lead pipes through various programs
  • $56 billion in loans and grants to help modernize water systems around the country
  • $10 billion for monitoring and fixing substances in drinking water

Broadband and power​

• $100 billion for broadband
  • This would build out infrastructure for 100% coverage and would specifically allocate funds for tribal lands
  • It would also seek to reduce broadband pricing
• $100 billion for power infrastructure includes:
  • $16 billion towards plugging old wells and cleaning up abandoned mines
  • $5 billion towards revamping former industrial and energy sites
  • $10 billion for the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps

Housing and education​

• $213 billion for creating and retrofitting over 2 million housing units, with a $40 billion investment in public housing infrastructure
• $100 billion for upgrading and building public schools
• $12 billion for community college infrastructure
• $25 billion for upgrading childcare facilities and making it more widely accessible
  • This is accompanied by a tax credit to incentivize building childcare at Americans' places of work
• $18 billion to modernize Veterans Affairs hospitals, as well as $10 billion for federal buildings
• $400 billion towards home/community care for the elderly and disabled
  • This would expand access, and seek to improve wages, benefits, and unionization for workers in the industry.

Research and development​

• $180 billion towards R&D includes:
  • $50 billion for the National Science Foundation
  • $30 billion for innovation and job creation R&D
  • $40 billion in upgrading research infrastructure, with half allocated to Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) as well as "Minority Serving Institutions" (MSIs)
  • $10 billion for those HBCUs and MSIs, as well as $15 billion to create over 200 centers at them to serve as research incubators
  • $35 billion in climate research and development

Manufacturing and labor​

• $300 billion for American manufacturing and small business
  • $50 billion for a new office focused on domestic industry
  • $50 billion for research and manufacturing for semiconductors
  • $30 billion to create new jobs and fend off losses during future pandemics
  • $46 billion for federal buying, with an emphasis on various clean technologies
  • $20 billion for regional innovation hubs
  • $14 billion towards increasing competitiveness through technological advances
  • $52 billion to domestic manufacturers
  • $31 billion for programs providing credit, R&D funding, and venture capital to small businesses
  • $5 billion to create a new "Rural Partnership Program," aimed at supporting local rural efforts
• $100 billion for workforce development includes:
  • $40 billion towards career services and training for workers who have lost jobs
  • $12 billion in targeted funding towards "workers facing some of the greatest challenges," prioritizing underserved and hard hit communities, with $5 billion towards "evidence-based community violence prevention programs"
  • $48 billion towards worker protection and development infrastructure, including an expansion of apprenticeships, with a particular emphasis on women and people of color

 

[It will be fine]

From what I understand only 5% of the infrastructure bill is geared towards doing that.
Where’s the rest of this borrowed money going?
What you say seems reasonable.

The 5% figure is made up right wing propaganda. There’s plenty of pork in the proposal and I haven’t looked that closely but it’s mostly a redefinition of the term infrastructure. And what Box Ox just posted.

 

[El Correcto]

The 5% figure is made up right wing propaganda. There’s plenty of pork in the proposal and I haven’t looked that closely but it’s mostly a redefinition of the term infrastructure. And what Box Ox just posted.

I don’t think it is. I think if you followed the money which I don’t have time to, you would see rampant corruption and cronyism with the American tax payer lining democrat donors up and down this boondoggle. You know it’s bad when they can’t even hide a large portion of it to lie to us.