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These Things the Conservative Democrats Want Out of the Bill Are Popular and Needed?

Photo credit: Anna Moneymaker - Getty Images
Photo credit: Anna Moneymaker - Getty Images

It certainly seems like conservative Democrats are opposed to some of the best parts of their own party's budget. We've reached day infinity of the Dem-on-Dem haggling over what was once a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, a sprawling testament to the modern progressive vision of governance originally penned in large part by Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont. But conservadems Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have taken the lead on—and nearly all the flak for—whittling down the proposal, even if there are surely other, more camouflaged flies in the ointment. We're reportedly now looking at $1.5 trillion or $1.75 trillion or maybe a bit more, as the Senate holdouts exercise the de facto veto power offered them by the undemocratic structure of the upper chamber, bolstered by ridiculous innovations like ritualized filibuster abuse and the reconciliation process now in vogue to get around it.

Somehow, Manchin and Sinema seem to have arranged themselves in opposition to many of the most popular parts of the bill. Politico Playbook offered one look at their top priorities in terms of things in the bill they wish to kill, or have succeeded in killing.

(1) a prescription drug pricing plan that would raise hundreds of billions of dollars, (2) adding comprehensive vision, dental and hearing coverage to Medicare, (3) climate provisions that would aggressively force utilities to switch to clean energy, (4) a federal program to provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, and (5) significant tax hikes on corporations and wealthy Americans.

It's an almost psychedelic experience looking at these and digesting that they are the things that two elected politicians have decreed must be removed.

Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices may be the most popular item in the bill. The Kaiser Family Foundation found about 9 in 10 Americans support it, possibly because, according to a RAND study, Americans on average currently pay upwards of 250% what people in other rich nations pay for prescription drugs.

Similarly, KFF found 90 percent of Americans consider adding vision, dental, and hearing to Medicare a top or important priority for Congress. Again, the current situation is outlier stuff from the United States among comparable countries.

What can you even say about opposing a Clean Energy Standard in 2021? No one who knows anything about the climate crisis would say we are currently doing enough to respond to a genuine threat to human civilization as we know it. We are not on track to avoid the worst consequences. In most polls, federal intervention to speed the move to clean energy enjoys strong support.

The United States is currently one of just six countries in the world—and the only rich country—that does not mandate paid family and medical leave. The four weeks reportedly under discussion, down from the original 12 proposed in the bill, would still leave the U.S. as an extreme outlier among peer nations. This is also a popular initiative.

Also, most Americans want corporations and the rich to pay more in taxes. It looks like there will be some sort of hike, but Sinema is reportedly trying to keep the rates down. There's talk a billionaire tax could somehow make it in here—Manchin reportedly supports it—but that's up in the air.

In general, it sure seems like popular and needed provisions are among the first on the "moderate" Democrat chopping block.

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