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Catherine Rampell Profile picture
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5 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
School boards are asking for federal help as they face threats and violence npr.org/sections/back-…
Unhinged, violent mobs have come for local public officials who work on elections; public health; courts; and now, school boards.
It has long been difficult to recruit good, talented people to become civil servants. I fear current trends may soon make it impossible
Not unrelated: "Once lauded as heroes, health care workers are now spit on and ‘threatened every day at work.’
Some doctors and nurses wear panic buttons because of violent patients" michiganadvance.com/2021/10/05/onc…
It has become cliche to mourn the loss of civility and norms and so on. But wtaf? How did things get this bad?

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More from @crampell

Catherine Rampell Profile picture
5 Oct
Dems are reluctant to lift debt limit on their own, thru reconciliation, b/c they don't want to (1) raise it to a specific number (as opposed to suspending it altogether for a period of time) or (2) do that on their own
They worry the # would appear in misleading GOP attack ads
But even without a specific new debt limit # to play up - R's will STILL call D's big spenders.
So fears about painful optics of a party-line vote for a specific debt limit # always seemed overblown to me, especially relative to the *actual* pain that would be caused by default.
Apparently even Manchin -- who among all D lawmakers is probably most sensitive to accusations of running up deficits -- thinks this political-optics worry is overblown too
Read 5 tweets
Catherine Rampell Profile picture
4 Oct
As expected: Refugee admissions hit record low in the fiscal year that just ended. apnews.com/article/joe-bi…
We admitted only 11,445, below cap set by Trump (15k) and then raised, after months of unexplained delays, by Biden (62.5k). Part of the reason we undershot even initial Trump-announced level is that Biden initially delayed removing even Trump’s discriminatory admissions criteria
Biden has announced a cap for the new FY of 125k — but State Department is initially budgeting for only 65,000 refugees to be resettled in FY22, albeit with the expressed hope to reevaluate midway through the year and aim for a higher level of admissions. state.gov/wp-content/upl…
Read 4 tweets
Catherine Rampell Profile picture
4 Oct
These two quotes are, in a nutshell, why I am worried.
It will likely take 2+ weeks for Dems to go through the reconciliation process on their own. Treasury has said it is likely to run out of cash around 2 weeks from now. washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021…
The option I think D's are holding out for is that while maybe no R's vote for the debt limit suspension/increase per se, they also don't *block* it from happening under regular order.
(Regular order = the normal, non-reconciliation process.)
Several times in 2000s, there were fewer than 60 senators supporting final passage for a debt limit hike. Senate still got "unanimous consent" to have a vote on debt limit measure anyway
This meant no cloture vote w/ 60-vote threshold. Debt limit could be raised w simple majority
Read 10 tweets
Catherine Rampell Profile picture
29 Sep
Dems right now have WAY too much in their reconciliation bill -- not only too much to please Manchin/Sinema, but also too much to conform to original parameters the party set for itself ($3.5T in new spending/tax cuts). washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Gross cost is prob closer to $4.5T-$5T, when you include all the stuff lawmakers want to add to Biden's original plan, such as Medicare expansion & SALT repeal. (Dems also chickened out on some of Biden's pay-fors, so achieving promised deficit impact of $0 is even harder)
Dems have a few options to get (gross) costs down. They could decide to prioritize the things they most want to do, and leave some programs on the cutting room floor. They could also keep ~everything and do an across-the-board haircut of some kind, so each program is smaller
Read 8 tweets
Catherine Rampell Profile picture
29 Sep
Oy. They could do it. It is just very time-consuming, with lots of steps required. Which is why they should get started ASAP rather than continue this futile attempt to shame R's into behaving responsibly
D's seem to assume R's will be blamed if we default on our debt and the s*** hits the fan, because R's have childishly obstructed attempts to suspend the debt limit through regular order. But...
A) s*** hitting fan would REALLY bad, whoever takes the blame
B) not clear that public would actually assign blame to R's, especially since
C) D's control govt and do have power to avert calamity w/o R help
Read 4 tweets
Catherine Rampell Profile picture
27 Sep
Are these people willfully stupid?
We don't have simple Senate majority rule anymore because GOP filibuster abuse means every bill requires 60 votes to pass
Everything *except* reconciliation bills. So every remotely budget-adjacent priority ends up in a huge reconciliation bill
Our legislative system is ludicrously convoluted. It makes no sense. So I understand why the general public might not know the ins & outs of something this byzantine.
But people who pretend to be journalists? Isn't it your job to understand how this stuff works?
I genuinely cannot tell if these people are too lazy to learn how our convoluted legislative & budgetary process works, or if they understand, but are choosing to exploit public confusion because they know the system is so hard to follow.
Complexity rewards the demagogue
Read 4 tweets

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