Yes, and that circuitous route Dems must take is time-consuming, since Dems (foolishly) didn't include debt limit instructions in their budget resolution. Advancing a revised budget resolution takes serious floor time (15 hrs of debate in Senate & vote-a-rama & House vote)…
…and then putting standalone debt-limit reconciliation bill on the floor would take another 20 hours of debate plus a vote-a-rama.
They could bundle with other reconciliation (safety net + climate) legislation, but that requires sorting out huge differences on that agenda first
No one knows drop-dead date for when the federal government would default absent a debt ceiling hike; there's always some uncertainty on this, even more so today because of pandemic. Latest estimates suggest "X Date" is sometime in October
Given uncertainty about the X Date and substantial floor time required for Dems to raise the limit through reconciliation, Dems must start working on this soon, rather than futilely trying to "shame" McConnell/GOP into supplying votes to raise debt limit through regular order.
GOP has come close to blowing up the global financial system through a debt default before. They've only gotten more nihilistic in the years since. Dems must not wait until the last minute to see if GOP blinks this time.
I know it sucks that Dems always have to be the grownups and do the right thing on this but that's how it goes. Someone needs to protect the Constitution and prevent a financial crisis.
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The answer is complicated and a little bit silly. If Congress acts through "regular order" (i.e., the normal legislative process, requiring 60 Senate votes), they can vote to *raise* debt limit to a specific dollar amount, or they can *suspend* it for some specific period of time
In recent years lawmakers have repeatedly decided to *suspend* it. This avoids bad (misleading) headlines about how Congress raised debt to $30T or whatever -- since voters are confused about what debt limit is and don't realize it's about paying off bills already committed to
If on the other hand Congress deals with the debt limit through reconciliation, their only option is to raise the debt limit to a specific dollar figure, NOT suspend it. Dems are afraid that scary # will show up in attack ads (b/c of voter confusion mentioned in previous tweet)
In August Walgreens had announced a vax requirement just for workers in U.S. support offices; this did not apply to U.S. team members in stores, distribution centers or other facilities — i.e., the people less likely to be vaxed.
Govt leadership matters. pennlive.com/business/2021/…
That is: Last month, Walgreens began requiring vaccines -- but (like Walmart, Uber, etc.) exempted the workers who likely need the most motivation to get vaccinated. Presumably because they feared alienating anti-vax workers at a time when labor is scarce. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
That's why govt mandates are valuable. They give cover to firms that know they'll be better off if employees are protected & customers feel safer. Employers can worry less about losing workers to non-vax-requiring competitors if mandate applies to everyone washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Idea that raising corp tax rate to 26.5% would be the death knell for American business–as GOP now claims– is ridiculous. That's actually about the rate that business community itself was asking for 2017; but GOP decided to slash it even further to 21% (from original rate of 35%)
How do we know this? Architect of the Trump tax cuts, Gary Cohn, told us
Cohn said US could be competitive even with rate of 28%–and that during 2017 TCJA negotiations, biz groups told White House they were fine with a rate in mid-20s
(go to minute 13:40) yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-…
That was in June 2020. Cohn repeated his support for a 28% corp income tax rate again a few months later. (Select Cohn video from right-side menu here, and then go to min 10:14) finance.yahoo.com/live/allmarket…
There aren't enough people w/ "hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars" out there to fund the massive climate & social services programs Dems say they want, and claim they plan to pay for. Dems sometimes point to Sweden or Denmark as examples of generous, successful...
...welfare states. But in those countries, taxes are higher & broader-based. Here, middle-class pays much lower taxes & even received a tax cut in GOP’s 2017 tax overhaul. In the popular imagination, though, middle- and even upper-middle-class Americans are overly tax-burdened.
Dems pretend everything can be funded just by soaking the 0.1%. Argument I wish they'd offer instead: These investments are worth making. The very rich should pay their fair share of the bill. But we should all be financially invested in their success. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
National Assoc of Manufacturers: "Getting all eligible Americans vaccinated will, 1st & foremost, reduce hospitalizations & save lives. But it is also an economic imperative in that our recovery & quality of life depend on our ability to end this pandemic" cnn.com/2021/09/10/bus…
Companies are better off if their workers are vaccinated. Reduces risk of interruptions to operations & makes customers feel safer. But, risky for companies to impose mandates themselves, b/c issue is polarizing.
Better to have government play bad cop. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Even when a raft of companies announced workers/customer vax mandates this summer, the mandates mostly applied to people who were *already* vaccinated. Some corps (Walmart, Uber) even had mandates for white-collar workers, exemptions for blue-collar ones washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
I strongly favor Biden's employer vax mandate. I'm also curious about how vulnerable it might be to legal challenges, whenever it comes out. OSHA legal experts I've spoken to suggest that there's some uncertainty about this question, particularly with a more conservative court🧵
Issue is less whether OSHA has jurisdiction to mandate vaccines -- probably it does, though that'll be challenged too -- and more whether the vax/testing requirement can be done by issuing an "emergency temporary standard" (ETS)
"Emergency temporary standard" means fast-tracking rule so it can be put into effect right away, rather than going through the usual, protracted "notice-and-comment" process. For OSHA, that usual regulatory process can take years or even decades (way too slow for delta)