90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, October 31, 2021

The Choices Are Bleak.....

I Have A Full Time Job. I Will Let Them Fire Me Before I Jab.

Desperate Democrats Aren’t Making Sausage, They’re Dropping Live Pigs Into a Woodchipper

Desperate Democrats are either the most comical or the most dangerous or maybe both.

The whiff of desperation surrounding Washington Democrats trying to save Presidentish Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda has become a stench so strong that it’s impossible to mistake from my home on the Front Range.

If you haven’t been following the situation on Capitol Hill — and it’s in so much flux that it’s almost impossible to stay completely up to date — I’ll give you a brief rundown before we get to that odor.

“Build Back Better” is Biden’s slogan for a massive expansion of welfare, spending, regulation, the likes of which we haven’t seen since LBJ’s Not-So-Great Society. Massive change on slender majorities is not a good idea, either politically or for the nation’s social fabric, but Dems gotta Dem.

BBB comes in two parts.

The first is a $1.2 trillion-with-a-T “infrastructure” bill that doesn’t contain much actual infrastructure spending, but is nonetheless supported by enough Republicans to almost guarantee its passage. (We’ll get back to the “almost” momentarily, so stick a pin in that.)

The second is another, even larger bill so absurd that its contents fall under comic sci-fi writer Douglas Adams’ “bistromathics.” There have been several versions of this bill, ranging in price from the current “compromise” bill costing $1.8 trillion (so they say) to the original Bernie Sanders (CPUSA-Vermont Oblast) version weighing in at $3.5 trillion (but actually $5 trillion).

No one knows what any version would actually cost. My friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser heard from a Senate aide on Thursday that the current bill is 2,500 pages, has no table of contents, and we probably won’t know what’s in it even if it does pass.

This brings us to a defining concept of bistromathics, recipriversexclusion, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. So if Democrats claim the bill costs precisely $1,790,238,032,455, then you can be sure it costs some figure exactly not that (but higher).

One problem with the second bill is that Democrats have to pass it via reconciliation in order to dodge the filibuster. The Senate is split 50/50, with alleged Vice President Kamala Harris to break any tie votes, but Democrats can’t afford a single defection.

Another problem is that West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin is opposed to some of the spendings, and Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is opposed to the taxing.

What’s a tax-and-spend party supposed to do?

Right now, they’re trying anything and everything and none of it’s working.

Hence the desperation.

Complicating matters — here’s where we get back to the “almost” part — the House Progressive Caucus is holding the bipartisan bill hostage if they don’t get the Sanders version of the bigger bill.

“Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.”
-Mark Twain

That’s why on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-House of Wax) postponed yet again the vote on the bipartisan bill: