This is the one-two punch that Republicans use to kill social programs.
1. Drag their feet until Democrats reluctantly agree to include something guaranteed to cause dysfunction (uneconomic means testing, perverse incentive cliffs, adverse selection, etc).
2. Point at the dysfunction they created as a reason to kill the program.
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to #2 if I didn't see so much #1.
I mean, I get it that the Republicans like to destroy this shit.
But according to TFA, this $2000 policy limit has been in place since 1989. What have the Democrats done? Have they not been in any position of power in the last 30 years?
Probably they have just also sat around and blamed the other party too. Sick of this passing the buck bullshit that literally gets nothing done.
Democrats have had the power to pass legislation without Republican support during the following periods:
* The 1993 - 1994 congressional term[1], during which they tried and failed to do healthcare reform, but succeeded in passing bills for medical leave, NAFTA, gun control, violent crime, taxes, and education.
* June 30, 2009 - February 4, 2010 (72 working days total)[2], during which they passed a major healthcare reform bill, the Affordable Care Act.
From 1981 - 1992, 1995 - 2008, and 2011 - 2020, Republicans have held the presidency or at least one house of Congress. During 2009-2010 and 2021-present, they have also abused the Senate filibuster to obstruct almost the entire Democratic agenda, with the goal of making the public perceive Democrats as ineffective. (As you have seen for yourself, it worked!) In the current term, the Democrats have a bare 50%+1 majority, which means that the most conservative Democrat (usually Joe Manchin of West Virginia) effectively has a veto.
On top of that, the Supreme Court has been controlled by Republican partisans since 2006, when Samuel Alito was appointed. Currently there is a 5-vote majority of extreme Republican partisans. This creates an additional Republican veto point for effectively any Democratic legislation.
One can (and should) criticize the Democrats for not ending the filibuster when they had the chance. But the reality is that the American legislative process involves a lot of veto points, and it only takes control of one to kill a bill.
> the 1993 - 1994 congressional term[1], during which they tried and failed to do healthcare reform, but succeeded in passing bills for medical leave, NAFTA, gun control, violent crime, taxes, and education.
NAFTA doesn't really count here since it was passed over strong (but not unanimous) Democratic resistance with almost unanimous Republican support.
Or maybe it does, since while it was a break from the existing and prior policy orientation of the party, it was a Clinton policy which presaged the emergent dominance of the anti-worker neoliberal capitalist wing of the party that dominated the party from after it's defeat in the 1994 midterms until now (weakening a bit in the last several years.)
Even amongst the left, the narrative of the welfare queen is strong. Eliminating means testing is so easily attacked that it is a challenging policy to propose.
This isn't to let the Democrats off the hook, only to explain that Democratic voters are not uniformly behind improving these policies.
By the standards of the rest of the world, the US Democrats are centre-right and American politics have no left. It’s really astonishing how different the Overton window is (and concerning how much my home country is importing US politics.
The democrats in office simply do not represent their constituents. The democrat-voting population is farther left than the democrat politicians. However, outside of the more radical democrats like Sanders and AOC, most democrats have been bought by the wealthy just like the republicans.
> The democrat-voting population is farther left than the democrat politicians.
That is your opinion, and based on your experience in your cohort, and additionally does not really address what "more left" actually means. There are many different types of people that vote Democrat at many different stages of life, in many different industries and in different states/areas where certain things have more support than others. And that's before we even start breaking things out to being "left" socially or fiscally.
I don't think the answer is "quite simple" at all, at least not in the way you explained it.
I feel like this is a popular cop out answer, that while likely having some degree of truth, over-simplifies the issues in government.
Couldn't it also just be that there's a lot to keep track of for our current government (of laws and making/updating/enforcing them)? As society grows, you inevitably will have issues that fall through the cracks if administration doesn't also grow accordingly. Maybe they haven't gotten to updating this $2,000 thing because they're focused on other more important things? Hell, I doubt there's a single politician, that knows at the top of their head, all the laws and policies we as a government have in effect, along with all their nuances...
And then the other problem is that the majority has to come to agreement for things to actually change. This is often a slow process. Sometimes you have politicians trying to change stuff like this, but they alone don't quite have enough power, and it takes time for them to convince others that it needs addressing, let alone the proper way to address it.
How exactly does someone like Jeff Bezos benefit from a welfare system that is both inefficient and costly? If politicians are really so easily "bought" by the wealthy, then we'd see more legislation that wealthy people care about, but we don't even see that either. Oracle v. Google and net neutrality end up being decided by the unelected officials because Congress refuses to do anything, but virtue signal all day. Bernie actually tries to pass real legislation, but all this new wave of politicians including AOC cares about is seeking more political power. Every bill she sponsors looks like they're designed to not get passed but rile up her base.
If the Democratic Party-voting population was really that much farther left than the Democratic Party politicians, then you'd really expect that farther left candidates would be winning primaries, wouldn't you?
I notice we have not had Bernie Sanders on the Presidential ticket, despite two runs; and there is surely some reason for that.
Possibly the voters have identified that those candidates will not gain sufficient independent or Republican support to actual win in general elections.
In any case, it seems likely to be a lot more nuanced than you're suggesting.
This isn't really the gotcha moment you think it is. Primaries are, well, mostly a farce and the people that show up for the primaries are the ones that often have the most free time or ability to do so. Retirees, wealthier individuals and so forth. There's no better evidence of this fact than candidates like Bernie Sanders having extremely high popularity among the younger generation which tapers off the older people get. There's a massive and growing generational divide that's only going to get better once the voting block that enables them starts dying off.
Assuming that the primaries represent who will actually win a presidential election is as much of a mistake as assuming that polls are accurate when it comes to election day.
OK; but no-one's even slightly suggesting that (insert any Democratic candidate's name here) is in danger of losing a race for a NY Senate seat, and that particular post has given us Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.
> This is the one-two punch that Republicans use to kill social programs.
While there is that, welfare traps are not limited to the US, and through countries with very different levels of “social democratic” focus, so they are clearly a broader and more compelling thing somehow.
And yet, when the Democrats control Congress and the presidency (like they do now, like they did in 2010), they do absolutely nothing to show us how wonderful their programs could be -- if only they had control!
Government programs don't need Republicans to add the dysfunction.
They don't actually have the ability to pass general bills without Republican support though. Outside of budget reconciliation, neither party has had the power to pass legislation without at least some bipartisan support since Ted Kennedy was replaced in 2010.
They do have the ability to pass general bills without Republican support, actually. They can pass a separate bill to suspend the filibuster on another bill, and suspending the filibuster only requires the 50 Democrat Senators and the VP.
They tried to do so in January but Manchin and Sinema voted against it.
There's nothing stopping the single party wealthy states like CA and NY implementing whatever they want. Just raise taxes on the rich and do whatever you want with their money, right?
1. Drag their feet until Democrats reluctantly agree to include something guaranteed to cause dysfunction (uneconomic means testing, perverse incentive cliffs, adverse selection, etc).
2. Point at the dysfunction they created as a reason to kill the program.
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to #2 if I didn't see so much #1.