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Biden’s Plans Raise Questions About What U.S. Can or Cannot Afford to Do
Democrats are debating whether doing nothing will cost more than doing something to deal with climate change, education, child care, prescription drugs and more.
As lawmakers debate how much to spend on President Biden’s sprawling domestic agenda, they are really arguing about a seemingly simple issue: affordability.
Can a country already running huge deficits afford the scope of spending that the president envisions? Or, conversely, can it afford to wait to address large social, environmental and economic problems that will accrue costs for years to come?
It is a stealth battle over the fiscal future at a time when few lawmakers in either party have prioritized addressing debt and deficits. Each side believes its approach would put the nation’s finances on a more sustainable path by generating the strongest, most durable economic growth possible.
EJ Dionne/WaPo:
Our system is biased against reform. Get used to it, Democrats.
Manchin himself helped craft it, so he wouldn’t want it to die in a filibuster — would he?
But it’s important to acknowledge another reality that goes beyond Manchin, Sinema and the Democratic Party as a whole: Severe structural problems in our politics and institutions are making it far harder to solve problems — and to have productive debates over how to do so.
Peter M Sandman and Jody Lanard:
“Even-Though Risk Communication”: Mandatory COVID Vaccination
Whichever side of this argument you are on, if you think it’s a no-brainer you’re not in the argument at all. And if you claim to think it’s a no-brainer, you are sacrificing any shot at persuading anyone on the other side.
If you acknowledge that your opponents’ case is strong, some of them just might be open to the argument that your case is even stronger. If you claim they have no case, you have no shot.
We call this “even-though risk communication”:
- “Even though vaccine mandates are a huge blow to personal freedom, what’s more important right now, sadly, is that they are also a huge and essential step toward ending the pandemic.”
- “Even though vaccine mandates are a huge step toward ending the pandemic, what’s more important right now, sadly, is that they are also a huge and unacceptable blow to personal freedom.”
Concede the merits of the other side’s case before you build your argument that on balance – not 100% but on balance – your case is even stronger. And build your argument sadly, not triumphantly, taking full cognizance of the sacrifice you are asking of your opponents.
Persuasion isn’t just for politics (NYT link).
Vaccine mandates stoked fears of labor shortages. But hospitals say they’re working.
At Houston Methodist — one of the first American health-care institutions to require workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus — the backlash was short-lived.
More than 150 employees were fired. There were legal battles and protests. But President and CEO Marc Boom has no regrets: 98 percent of staff have been vaccinated, and they and patients are safer as a result, he said.
“I can unequivocally say [it was] the best decision we ever made,” Boom said in an interview.
Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:
A Jan. 6 ‘blood flag’ and a Bond villain in the Senate — it’s no time to go back to brunch
If only the banality of evil in the real world was as interesting as the Hollywood brand. In 2021, the monster who is actually threatening Planet Earth with untimely demise is a Bond villain barely worthy of the title. His potential for a mountaintop lair in his home state of West Virginia has been flattened and stripped by a century of Big Coal, so his evil abode is instead a houseboat floating lazily in the Potomac River. His goon squad consists of oil company lobbyists and “Morning Joe” sycophants, and his only scar comes from repairing a sink aboard the “Almost Heaven.”
And yet make no mistake: West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has positioned himself to destroy the globe in a way that Auric Goldfinger, Ernst Starvo Blofeld, or Lyutsifer Safin could have only dreamed of. This Friday night’s news dump that Manchin will exercise his veto power as the most conservative Democrat in the 50-50 Senate to kill the lynchpin of President Biden’s climate change agenda — $150 billion to help utilities transition into clean energy and away from dirty fossil fuels including coal, from which Manchin and his family have earned millions — is a gut punch to the world’s environment. Manchin’s move means that the United States will limp into the looming Scotland climate summit without a credible plan to reduce greenhouse gases before global temperatures pass the tipping point.
These Republicans torpedoed vaccine edicts — then slipped in the polls
New research shows governors in states without vaccine mandates — or where they’ve outright prohibited such a requirement — have “significantly lower” approval ratings for their handling of the coronavirus.
From Florida to Texas to South Dakota, GOP governors have been on the front lines of the war against vaccine mandates, barring immunization requirements in their states and threatening to fight President Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandate in court. Just last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott flat-out banned vaccine requirements, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis followed up by vowing to sue the Biden administration.
But new research shows governors in states without vaccine mandates — or where they’ve outright prohibited such a requirement — have “significantly lower” approval ratings for their handling of Covid-19. While many of these governors remain popular, some have seen dips in their overall approval ratings in recent months as their states faced the latest wave of coronavirus.
CBC:
Still worried about getting a vaccine for COVID-19? Here’s how to understand the rare, but real, risks
Our emotional reactions to negative vaccination stories, whether they’re misinformation or accurate instances of adverse reactions, can feel a bit like our response to airplane crashes.
All the evidence shows that your risk of dying in a plane crash is extremely low, particularly when you compare it to getting behind the wheel of a car. But spotting one headline about a rare-but-tragic air accident might bring up fears that no amount of data can sway.
“There are lots of studies that show that, as humans, we do a really bad job at assessing statistics and relative risk when it comes to things that impact us,” said Matthew Miller, an infectious diseases researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton.
“It’s the same reason why people feel, in general, that they are more likely to win the lottery than someone else, despite the fact that the chances are extremely small — and the odds of them winning, versus someone else winning, are exactly the same.”
So what do we actually know about the risk profile of leading COVID-19 vaccines?
Poor People’s Campaign study says 34% of Texas voters in 2020 elections were low-income
Though former President Donald Trump won the state, his margin of victory was just under 6%, the organization found.Key takeaways from the campaign’s study, which charted voter turnout in the 2020 general election and focused on battleground states in particular, included a staggering figure: A full third of the electorate are poor and low-income voters with an estimated household income of less than $50,000, the organization said.
“This report is clear proof that Republicans and Democrats, liberals, moderates, conservatives… none of them can afford to ignore poor and low-wealth people anymore,” said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
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