Jimmy Dore: Bernie’s Defense Of Biden’s Stimulus Shocks Progressives

Any “progressive” Dem who tweets about $15 min wage or Medicare for All but doesn’t force a vote on it is just as much an enemy of the working class as Nancy Pelosi, Joe Manchin and the Republicans are.

Time to tear this two-party system down to the ground. Forever.

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) April 1, 2021

Time to destroy the Democratic Party before it destroys us.

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) April 1, 2021

It is really 0 out of 10 now.

• No $2,000 checks and the eligibility level was cut
• No $50,000 in student loan debt relief
• No $15 minimum wage
• No public option in health care
• No wealth tax
• No raising the capital gains tax
• No getting rid of the carried interest loophole
• No raising the corporate tax rate back to the pre-Trump level
• No raising taxes on most Red Dog upper middle class suburbanites (only +$400,000 level households now)
• Almost certainly getting rid of the SALT deduction cap to pass infrastructure

The PRO Act isn’t officially dead yet.

The Democratic House has passed a bunch of things which are going nowhere in a 50/50 Senate.

This isn’t to say that everything is bad. $1,400 checks was better than nothing. The temporary child tax credit is better than nothing. There will be a lot of good coming out of Joe’s infrastructure plan because when you spend $2 trillion dollars you can’t help but improve … something.

It is difficult to escape the overall impression though that this is just neoliberals spending a bunch of money with abandon to try to buy political support. They aren’t really doing anything except driving the national debt way up and trying to get through the next election cycle. The $1,400 stimulus and the child tax credit are only temporary programs. They aren’t willing to pay for this by making real structural changes like taxing Wall Street and their upper middle class base in the wealthy suburbs. They aren’t even talking about getting rid of the Trump tax cuts. They want to get rid of the SALT deduction cap.