- cross-posted to:
- us_news
- cross-posted to:
- us_news
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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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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I don’t think elections hold a lot of promise of fixing anything. I think Manchin and Sinema are exactly where their party wants them. I don’t think that this legislation failing is something that the Biden Admin or the DNC are against.
I think they’re happy about it, and thats why there’s no discipline exerted on either of them. That’s what i meant by you making an extraordinary claim about party discipline. Theres no party discilple or reprisals because the party doesn’t care about this legislation. They like having these scapegoats. The Democratic Party leadership does not share your view, that these people shouldn’t be there. That’s why elections in this system will not fix it
That ain’t a democracy chief
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.
There’s literally positions in Congress for party members called a whip for enforcing party discipline
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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idk but the GOP seems to have no problem getting their entire party to vote as a single bloc so it can’t be that hard.
Sure. Democrats just have to become a party of rigid ideological purity instead of the big tent party they’ve been for a hundred years.
If you think Republicans can sustain that behavior, I invite you to pay attention to the way they’re eating each other in the House right now.
I guess it’s good that Biden didn’t really try to get leverage on manchin then. Its good that Biden saw all the damage manchin was doing and said “well I guess I gotta give up now”
People who really care will try everything even if it might not work. Biden didn’t try shit because he doesn’t care
So Democrats should turn into Republicans. Yup, that’ll really fix the problem! Clearly I was mistaken that the goal here was good governance instead of seizing and holding power.
Good governance is when you let your country fall apart because you’re too scared of getting your hands dirty to reign in rogue senators who are putting your country’s population at risk of starvation
Having different ideas of what constitutes being a good public servant and how to do the job doesn’t make them the enemy. Neither is following the rule of law. We can agree that more needs to be done and Biden’s not doing everything right, but not that he’s the bad guy because he’s not doing everything we want him to do.
Republicans get things done and Democrats don’t. I don’t want dems to pick up Republican social ideals but I do want them to pick up Republican political strategies that actually produce results. Why do you want the party of the “good guys” to be so feckless? Isn’t it a HUGE problem when the “good guys” are weak and the bad guys are strong?
I don’t think that would work because republicans are bankrolled by billionaires who gain by Republican governance. Good democratic governance wouldn’t be making anyone bank so there is no reason billionaires would fund a massive propaganda network to achieve that goal.
“Not funding the very same fascists you use to scare people into voting for you” = “rigid ideological purity”
I for one do not find it difficult or stringent to not work with fascist parties
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You sound like you want a Mafia family, not a government…
We are talking about the US state, aren’t we?
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You asked and he answered, sometimes AuThoRiTaRiAnIsM is how you actually get things done.
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Enjoy your democratic child poverty 👍
Also the US is not a democracy
Because authoritarian governments aren’t known for poverty 👍
I guess at least when you complain about it, you can just die instead of having to live with it.
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You live in a democracy? When is the last time you and everyone else in your workplace got together to make a decision democratically instead of that decision being made unilaterally?
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You live in the US which has the world’s largest prison population by both total numbers and percent of the population. Is this the non-authoritarian democracy you’re talking about here? We have so many people in a cycle of poverty, bad health, and prison because we all got together and decided that this is how we want to allocate resources? Billionaires, private prisons, private healthcare, unaffordable housing, and child poverty?
Okay so address the point without latching onto the most extreme conceit they made. God forbid anything happen to a coal baron senator.
With all of the power of the executive branch, the democratic party apparatus, and the leadership of the body they are members of, you can excuse zero attempts to coerce their votes?
You’ve just described grounds for impeachment and removal of the president. The full House and Senate would turn on them at that point.
We had a president literally try to overturn an election in his favor and the Senate still failed to convict him. 43 Republicans had their lives put in danger by his actions but still voted him not guilty. If that’s not enough to remove a president from office then what makes you think this would?
Because they voted that way for tribal reasons. They refused to hold one of their own accountable. Democrats have before and will again. We don’t cover for someone’s crimes just because they belong to the right party.
lmao remind me again the last time a president was tried for war crimes? Obama literally bombed hospitals and the Dems still haven’t done a damn thing about it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+hospital+bombing&newwindow=1
Just in case your fingers were broken.
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No thanks. You claim to speak for the people, but really you only want power for your fringe ideology.
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Our “fringe ideology” has the largest political party on the planet.
Only because other parties are banned. Can’t stand real competition.
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.