Daily Archives: October 17, 2021

To get around Republican obstruction, Democrats are using a fast-track process known as reconciliation that shields legislation from a filibuster. That would allow it to pass the 50-50 Senate on a simple majority vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a tiebreaking vote.

But it would still require the support of every Democratic senator and nearly every one of their members in the House. Democratic leaders and White House officials have been haggling behind the scenes to nail down an agreement that could satisfy both Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema, who have been reluctant to publicly detail which proposals they want to see scaled back or jettisoned.

Congressional leaders aim to finish their negotiations in time to act on the reconciliation bill by the end of October, when they also hope to move forward on another of Mr. Bidens top priorities, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that would be the largest investment in roads, bridges, broadband and other physical public works in more than a decade.

As with any bill of such historic proportions, not every member will get everything he or she wants, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, wrote to Democrats in a letter ahead of the chambers return on Monday. I deeply appreciate the sacrifices made by each and every one of you.

It remains unclear which sacrifices will have to be made, with lawmakers still at odds over the best strategy for paring down the plan, let alone how to structure specific programs. The most potent plan to replace coal and gas-fired plants with wind, nuclear and solar energy, for example, is likely to be dropped because of Mr. Manchins opposition, but White House and congressional staff are cobbling together alternatives to cut emissions that could be added to the plan.

Liberals remain insistent that the bill initially conceived as a cradle-to-grave social safety net overhaul on par with the Great Society of the 1960s include as many programs as possible, while more moderate lawmakers have called for large investments in just a few key initiatives.

In the midst of the impasse, rank-and-file lawmakers have been left to return home to their constituents to try to promote a still-unfinished product that is shrouded in the mystery of private negotiations, all while explaining why a Democratic-controlled government has yet to deliver on promises they campaigned on.

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Democrats Work to Sell an Unfinished Bill - The New York Times

WASHINGTON Three Washington lawmakers are at the center of a debate among Democrats that will decide the fate of the ambitious national agenda they campaigned on in 2020 and perhaps the partys fortunes in 2022.

Sen. Patty Murray played a central role in crafting the Build Back Better Act, which would raise taxes on large companies and the richest Americans to pay for a range of social programs aimed at lowering living costs for the rest of the country, including expanded health care, subsidized child care and tuition-free community college.

Its going to be a really big deal, Murray said in an interview. Were going to fundamentally reshape the American economy so we can level the playing field for working families, and we can do it by making sure that the very wealthiest and giant corporations pay their fair share, so that everyone can be successful.

But before they can do that, Democrats have to pare the legislation down from a cost of $3.5 trillion to a figure closer to $2 trillion to appease two centrist senators.

That reality presents them with a tough choice: fund all the programs they promised voters, but for just a few years, or jettison parts of the bill to fund their top priorities for the longer term.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who represents most of Seattle and chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has pushed for the first option. In an interview, she said that because the bills provisions aim to help different groups of people expanding Medicare coverage for seniors, for instance, and cutting costs for college students dropping entire programs would mean breaking promises made to voters.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, whose district stretches from the Seattle suburbs to the Canadian border, heads the moderate New Democrat Coalition and has advocated the fewer, longer approach. If Republicans take control of either the House or Senate next year, she said in an interview, they could let programs with only short-term funding expire before they see their full impact.

The Progressive Caucus and New Democrats each count 95 members in the House, evenly splitting most of the partys slim, 220-seat majority. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has struggled to take a side.

After writing in a letter to all House Democrats on Monday that her members have overwhelmingly advised her to do fewer things well so that we can still have a transformative impact, Pelosi told reporters the next day her party may have to opt for short-term funding and she hoped they wouldnt drop any provisions.

After a late-September standoff between progressives and centrist Democrats forced Pelosi to postpone a vote on the Build Back Better Act, the speaker set an Oct. 31 deadline to vote on both that legislation and the bipartisan infrastructure package the Senate passed in August.

But Murray, the third-ranking Democrat in the upper chamber, shrugged that deadline off as a House-imposed mandate and said shes focused on getting the best package possible, with the strongest investments in the things that I care about.

The challenge Murray, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders face is that each member of their party cares about different priorities.

After Biden presented his sweeping agenda in two sets of proposals last spring the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan lawmakers turned them into two bills. But instead of dividing the issues like the White House did, a group of moderate Democratic and Republican senators carved out provisions that could garner the 10 GOP votes needed to reach the 60-vote majority needed to pass most legislation in the Senate.

That bipartisan bill passed the Senate including $550 billion in new spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure and with just one shot at bypassing a Senate GOP filibuster via special budget rules, Democrats piled the rest of Bidens agenda into the Build Back Better Act.

All 50 Democratic senators need to support a bill to use that once-a-year process, known as budget reconciliation, and opposition to the original $3.5 trillion price tag from Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia has forced the party to compromise on a lower number.

In its original form, the sprawling bill would provide two years of free community college, plus extra college funding through the Pell Grant program. It would guarantee universal pre-kindergarten and subsidies that ensure no family spends more than 7% of their income on child care. It would expand Medicare to cover hearing, vision and dental care and expand Medicaid coverage in states that havent already done so under the Affordable Care Act.

It would extend the monthly child tax credit payments of $250 to $300 per child, set to expire at the end of the year, that Democrats enacted through the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package they passed in March. It would lower prescription drug prices, partly by letting Medicare negotiate prices for the first time, and guarantee 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave each year.

Other parts of the bill aim to combat climate change, including tax incentives to encourage clean energy production and electric vehicle adoption. The sheer number of provisions has posed a messaging challenge for Democrats: How do they explain it, let alone drum up public support for such a wide-ranging piece of legislation?

Murray, who chairs the Senate committee charged with health, education and labor issues, said her must-have priorities are affordable child care, paid family leave, lower health care costs and provisions to counter climate change.

Of course, everyone is advocating for what they feel strongest about now, Murray said, but she emphasized that none of that matters unless they craft a bill all 50 Senate Democrats will vote for.

The New Democrat Coalition has its own four-part set of priorities: Extend the child tax credit, create jobs through economic development grants, go big on climate by cutting carbon emissions, and lower health care costs by expanding Medicaid to cover more people and making health insurance subsidies enacted in the March relief bill permanent.

The Progressive Caucus has put forward a broader set of priorities, including investing in affordable housing and the care economy, combating climate change and lowering drug prices, using the money Medicare saves to expand health care.

The progressives have also sought to include sweeping immigration reform in the bill, but the Senate parliamentarian a sort of congressional referee ruled that those changes fall outside the scope of the reconciliation process, which applies only to budget-related provisions.

Democrats have proposed paying for the new spending by rolling back some of the tax cuts Republicans passed in 2017, when the GOP used the same budget reconciliation process to get around Democratic opposition.

Their plan would raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 26%, still below the 35% rate that applied until 2018, with lower rates for businesses that earn less than $10 million a year. It would tax capital gains at a higher rate, especially for people who earn more than $5 million a year, and raise the income tax rate for those making at least $400,000 a year.

Those proposals would generate about $2 trillion in revenue over 10 years, which means if the Democrats choose to fund programs for just a few years, they would need to find other ways to raise revenue or finance the programs with borrowed money that raises the federal deficit but Jayapal said shes not worried about finding ways to pay for the programs.

We dont suffer from a lack of resources on the revenue side, she said. We suffer from a lack of will to actually tax people fairly.

The other downside to short-term funding, DelBene said, is that if Republicans win control of either the House or Senate in 2022 a scenario polling and precedent suggest is likely Democrats could be forced to watch parts of their bill expire before they have their full impact, leaving a program halfway done.

I think folks want to see governance work, DelBene said. They want to see us make decisions and have policy that is stable, that they can rely on.

To make her point, DelBene cited the child tax credit, which she played a lead role in transforming from a $2,000-per-child benefit available only to those who earn enough to owe that much in federal taxes into monthly payments totaling $3,000 to $3,600 a year for all but the wealthiest parents. A Columbia University study found the first round of payments, sent in July, lifted 3 million children out of poverty, but projected a far greater impact if the payments continue for years.

Meanwhile, Jayapal favors front-loading as many benefits as possible, in hopes that people will understand that government has their back, and we can look at the extension of those programs later.

One of the crises of democracy that were facing is that people dont believe that government is going to stand up for them, she said. The way to counter that is to show them that government really can do those things, and so were building towards a place where voters actually see the utility of government.

While she admitted her approach could let Republicans dismantle her priorities in a few years, Jayapal said she hoped the GOP would run into the same problem they faced when they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a program that proved too popular to undo once Americans saw its benefits.

If Democrats dont do all the things the party campaigned on, Jayapal said, Then people are going to continue to have no faith in us because we promised something (and) we never delivered. They gave us the House, the Senate and the White House, we still didnt deliver.

Despite their different approaches, Jayapal, DelBene and Murray described the same goal: a federal government that more actively transfers wealth from the biggest businesses and the richest Americans to make life easier for the rest of the nation.

I want people to wake up in the morning and feel differently about their lives, their livelihoods and their opportunities, Jayapal said. I mean, to know that governments got their back and they can live a dignified life with opportunity and not suffer every day.

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Three Washington Democrats at center of crafting bill to 'fundamentally reshape the American economy' - The Spokesman Review

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Letter: Sununu should consider joining Democrat Party | Letters to the Editor | unionleader.com - The Union Leader

Democrats are facing a firestorm of criticism over a proposal to increase the amount of bank account information reported to the IRS, posing a challenge as they craft their wide-ranging social spending bill.

The proposal is a top priority of the Biden administration, which argues it will help the IRS go after wealthy tax cheats.

But it has come under a barrage of attacks from banks and Republicans, who say it raises significant privacy concerns. Financial institutions have been mobilizing their customers to speak out against the proposal to lawmakers.

Congressional Democrats are expected to make changes to the administrations initial proposal, but are generally supportive of the idea. The increasing attacks on the proposal has prompted lawmakers and administration officials to go on the defensive.

Ultimately, the Presidents proposal seeks to pare back tax evasion by shedding some light on opaque sources of income that accrue disproportionately to the top 1 percent of earners, Natasha Sarin,deputy assistant secretary for economic policyat the Treasury Department,wrote Thursday in a post on the departments website.

As such, it is unsurprising that substantial resources are being deployed to defeat these efforts, because many tax cheats stand to lose from a fairer tax system, Sarin added.

The Biden administration earlier this year released a proposal that would require banks and other financial institutions to report on existing annual IRS forms the total amount of moneythat cameinto an accountduring a yearand the total amount of moneythat cameout of it.

The presidents budget request proposed imposing the reporting requirement for accounts with flows of at least $600. Congressional Democrats have discussed raising that threshold to $10,000 and exempting payments from payroll processors.

The proposal could be a way to raise revenue that could be used to offset the cost of spending in Democrats social safety net package in areas such as child care, education and climate. Treasury estimated that the administrations proposal would raise about $460 billion over 10 years, and has said that a narrower proposal could raise $200 billion to $250 billion over a decade.

The administration said the proposed reporting requirement would help the IRS better target audits and close the tax gap between the amount of taxes paid and amount owed, whichTreasuryhas estimated to be about $7 trillion over the next decade.

If somebody reports an income of $10,000 and they had $3 million go out of their checking account, that tells the IRS thats an individual you might audit, Treasury Secretary Janet YellenJanet Louise YellenDemocrats face growing storm over IRS reporting provision Hoyer signals House vote on bill to 'remove' debt limit threat Biden's IRS proposal could mark the end of privacy in banking MORE said in aninterview with CBS Newsthis week.

The administration said that it plans to focus enforcement efforts on high-income taxpayers, and that audit rates wouldnt increase for taxpayers with actual income of under $400,000.

But banking groups and Republicans argue that the proposal would lead to the IRS receiving additional financial information about a large swath of taxpayers. Theyve expressed concerns about the IRSs ability to keep the information secure, pointing to past instances where the agency was hacked and where there were unauthorized disclosures of tax information.

The implications of this reporting and data collection scheme are serious and far-reaching, said Sam Whitfield, senior vice president of congressional affairs at the Consumer Bankers Association.

Financial groups said that many non-wealthy Americans would still have their accounts subject to the proposed reporting requirement if the threshold was raised from $600 to $10,000. And they said it would be complicated for them to implement exemptions for wage payments.

We think this is a flawed proposal at any threshold, said Ryan Donovan, chief advocacy officer and executive vice president at theCredit Union National Association (CUNA).

Banks and credit unions have been alerting their customers to the IRS proposal and have been urging their members to contact their members of Congress. Donovan said his group is aware of more than 500,000 emails and other communications from credit union members to Capitol Hill.

Were going to keep it up, he said.

Republican lawmakers, who have a long history of disliking the IRS, have also frequently been criticizing the IRS bank-reporting proposal in congressional hearings, speeches and op-eds.

GOP lawmakers on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee this week introduced a bill to bar Treasury from implementing a proposal along the lines of the administrations plan.

We should not allow the IRS to invade the privacy of Americans by snooping into their bank accounts, Rep. Drew FergusonAnderson (Drew) Drew FergusonDemocrats face growing storm over IRS reporting provision Dental coverage for Medicare recipients divides parties The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Alibaba - Progressives ready to tank infrastructure bill MORE (R-Ga.), lead sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. The Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats have clearly demonstrated their intent to instate a broad financial surveillance regime using Americans private financial information.

Congressional Democrats are still working on the details of any IRS bank-reporting provision for their spending bill. A provision on the topic was not included in the bill the Ways and Means Committee approved in September, with panel Chairman Richard NealRichard Edmund NealDemocrats face growing storm over IRS reporting provision Biden's IRS proposal could mark the end of privacy in banking Overnight Health Care Presented by The National Council for Mental Wellbeing NIH study finds mix-and-match boosters effective MORE (D-Mass.) saying at the time that he was still discussing the issue with the administration.

Still, Democrats have been pushing back against criticisms of the proposal. Provisions to get taxpayers to pay the taxes they already owe could be appealing to Democrats if they face pushback within their caucus on proposals to raise taxes.

Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiDemocrats step up pressure on Biden on student loan forgiveness Climate activists target Manchin Democrats face growing storm over IRS reporting provision MORE (D-Calif.) said during a press conference Tuesday that a version of the IRS proposal would be included in the spending package.

Yes, there are concerns that some people have, but if people are breaking the law and not paying their taxes, one way to track them is through the banking measure,she said.

Democratic lawmakers and administration officials have been emphasizing that the proposal would not direct banks to give the IRS details about specific transactions, after some Republicans have inaccurately suggested that the IRS would receive this type of information.

I think this proposal has been seriously mischaracterized, Yellen told CBS News.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron WydenRonald (Ron) Lee WydenCongress needs to step up on crypto, or Biden might crush it Democrats face growing storm over IRS reporting provision Best shot at narrowing racial homeownership gap at risk, progressives say MORE (D-Ore.) said in a statement that the reason Republicans have latched on to this issue as the one to lie about every day is because they know their tax agenda is a political loser.

Supporters of the proposal are optimistic that a version of it is included in a final social spending package that gets enacted into law.

Seth Hanlon, senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said there is strong support and a strong understanding of how important it is among key congressional Democrats.

Hanlon added that lawmakers and the administration have more work to do countering the false claims about the proposal.

But those who have been critical of the proposed bank-reporting requirement are predicting that a proposal resembling the administrations plan will not be included in the spending bill.

Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, whose former director now works in the Biden administration, said the proposal is too expansive and thinks bank lobbyists have touched a raw nerve with their customers who are concerned about privacy.

I think at the end of the day, this bank proposal will fail, he said.

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Democrats face growing storm over IRS reporting provision - The Hill

Its common now for Democrats to argue that the agenda they are struggling to implement on Capitol Hill represents the partys most ambitious since the Great Society Congress convened in 1965. Thats a reasonable assessmentbut one that the party today should consider as much a warning as an inspiration. Under the relentless prodding of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Democratic-controlled House and Senate passed landmark legislation at a dizzying pace during that legendary 196566 legislative session.

Over those two years, the 89th Congress, finally completing a crusade started by Harry Truman almost two decades earlier, created the massive federal health-care programs of Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. It put a capstone on the civil-rights revolution by approving the Voting Rights Act. It created the first large-scale system of federal aid to elementary and secondary schools and launched the Head Start program. It approved breakthrough legislation to combat pollution in the air and water. It created new Cabinet departments, a new agency to regulate automobile safety, and national endowments to fund the arts and humanities. It transformed the face of America with sweeping immigration legislation that finally undid the restrictive quotas that had virtually eliminated new arrivals since the early 1920s.

It was one of the most productive and impressive Congresses that weve had, says Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University and the author of The Fierce Urgency of Now, a book about Johnsons push for his Great Society agenda. Today, its unimaginable.

Then, suddenly, when the work of the 89th Congress was finally finished, Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and three in the Senate during the midterm election of 1966. The Democrats bitter disappointment is a cautionary tale for their party descendants hoping to materially improve their odds in next years midterm contest by reaching agreement on the sweeping economic bills that have divided the party for months.

The lesson of history is that it is extremely difficult for presidents to translate legislative success in their first year into political success in the midterm elections of their second year. Those early achievements can boost presidents in their reelection bids, but in almost all cases they have not proved an antidote to the other midterm factors that cause the presidents party to lose ground in Congress.

Failing to pass their agenda could compound the Democrats problems by disillusioning their base and sending a message of dysfunction to swing voters. But completing the agenda isnt likely to save them from the presidents partys usual midterm losses unless voters also grow more optimistic about contemporary conditions in the countryparticularly the fight against COVID-19 and the economic instability flowing from the persistent pandemic.

Democrats must recognize that the potential upside of [their economic] bills [is] limited for next year, regardless of how virtuous they are in the policy, says Simon Rosenberg, the president of NDN, a Democratic research and advocacy group. Joe Biden was elected to do one thing, which was to defeat COVID. And when he was defeating it, his numbers went way up, and when COVID started defeating him, his numbers went way down. The key to him getting his numbers going back up is he has to defeat COVID and get credit for it. This has to be the central governing and political priority for the Biden administration.

Sarah Longwell, the founder of the Republican Accountability Project, an organization of Republicans critical of former President Donald Trump, likewise says that in recent focus groups shes conducted in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, few voters were following the legislative maneuvering over the Democrats huge agenda. The thing that people care about right now is getting COVID under control, and all of the attending economic consequences relating to COVID, Longwell told me. Not all analysts agree that the Democrats legislative agenda is unlikely to affect the midterms. Many campaign aides and operatives at the Democratic House and Senate campaign committees are eagerly anticipating that if the party reaches agreement on its big economic proposals, candidates next year can run on the trinity of creating jobs (through the infrastructure bill), bolstering families (mostly by extending the Child Tax Credit) and reducing health-care costs (through increasing federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and authorizing Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices). They are especially keen to highlight the lockstep Republican opposition to all of those measures.

The Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who was one of Bidens lead polling advisers during the 2020 campaign, told me that many voters will view passing legislation that helps stabilize family budgets as an integral part of an effective COVID response. I dont think its a dichotomy, she said. We have got to deliver something to working- and middle-class families. The emergence of the Delta variant, Lake said, surprised and dismayed many Americans who thought the country was on a steady path to recoveryone focus-group participant called it a kick in the gutand now they worry that more unpleasant surprises will threaten their familys health and finances. For women in particular, we have to deliver something to their family, to their kitchen tables, she said.

Read: Transforming America with a one-vote majority

Yet, in the past, delivering on legislative promises has rarely been enough to prevent the presidents party from losing House seats in his first midterm election. (Senate results have varied more.) Thats been true for presidents in both parties.

Like the Great Society Congress, the 191314 Democratic Congress under President Woodrow Wilson was among the most productive ever; it created the federal income tax, the Federal Reserve Bank to stabilize the economy, and the Federal Trade Commission to monitor fraud in the marketplace. When it was over, Democrats lost 61 House seats in the 1914 election.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan pushed his signature tax cuts through Congress, arguably the most significant conservative policy achievement of the past half century; the next year, Republicans lost 26 House seats. Republicans lost 42 seats in 2018 after Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress passed their massive tax cut in 2017.

Bill Clinton lost 54 House seats in 1994 after passing a sweeping budget bill, a substantial crime bill, and the most significant gun-control legislation Congress has ever approved. The losses were even greater in 2010 after Barack Obama passed his stimulus plan, expansive financial-reform legislation, and, above all, the Affordable Care Act, extending health insurance to more of the uninsured than any other federal initiative had since Medicare and Medicaid. Despite, or perhaps because of, all that, Democrats lost 63 House seats in 2010, the biggest midterm loss for either party in more than 70 years.

Why hasnt legislative success in year one produced more political success in year two? Sometimes the answer is that legislative victories for one party provoke an intense backlash from voters in the other. It stimulates your opponents, and it could very well cost you because a lot of people dont like what you do, Zelizer says.

That certainly seemed the case in 2010, when the backlash to the ACA helped ignite the conservative Tea Party movement that powered the GOP gains; and in 1994, when a backlash from gun owners helped doom Democrats in southern and rural seats; and in 2018, when many more voters opposed than approved of Trumps tax cut, according to surveys. (The failed GOP attempt to repeal Obamas health-care law in Trumps first year was also unpopular.) But presidents have suffered midterm losses even after advancing popular ideas: A majority of Americans, for instance, supported Reagans 1981 tax cut, and lopsided majorities backed the creation of Medicare in 1965, polls at the time showed.

A more common problem is that whether or not new programs are popular in theory, in practice, their benefits are rarely fully felt by voters as soon as the first midterm. (That dynamic was a particular problem for Democrats with the Affordable Care Act in 2010.) Another common issue is that no matter how popular a new program might be, opponents can usually pull out one element of it that strikes many voters as illogical or wasteful. A prime example of homing in on a seeming weak link was evident in 1994, when Republicans highlighted a midnight basketball program for young people to portray Clintons crime billwhich many liberals viewed as too punitive because it showered money on police and prisonsas permissive and wasteful.

Democrats point to polls and say everybody wants these bills, but as soon as it passes, Republicans dig up midnight basketball and run on those sorts of things, the Republican pollster Glen Bolger says. And I know that this may shock you, but there is usually waste in these billsand stupid stuff, too.

The clearest modern exception to this pattern of first-year legislative gains and second-year electoral losses occurred in 1934, when Democrats gained nine House seats after the Democratic Congress frenetically approved the initial iteration of President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal. Republicans also gained eight House seats in 2002, after President George W. Bush passed his tax-cut and education-reform bills over the previous two years.

Those might be the exceptions, though, that illuminate a larger rule. Few in either party believe that the GOP gained in 2002 because of Bushs legislation; what lifted Republicans was the public sense that he had responded effectively to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Even in 1934, though the Depression still exacted a terrible price, unemployment was lower and economic growth much higher than they had been when FDR took office.

No single cause explains all of these results, positive and negative, for the presidents party. But from these cases, the clearest rule might be that midterm elections turn less on assessments of legislation that may eventually affect peoples lives than on verdicts about the countrys condition in the here and now. Medicare and Medicaid didnt cause the Democratic losses in 1966, but they werent enough to overcome discontent over inflation, urban turmoil after the Watts Riots of 1965, and Vietnam. Reagans tax cuts didnt trigger the GOP losses in 1982, but they werent enough to overcome discontent over high interest rates and double-digit unemployment. An old political adage holds that presidential elections are always about the future; midterms seem to be more about today. As Bolger put it to me, voters step outside and feel how the weather is, and if I feel uncomfortable with it, I take it out on the incumbent party.

Maybe the most remarkable proof that current conditions outweigh legislative achievements in midterm elections is a data point that the Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz calculated for me from the University of Michigans National Election Studies covering the 1964 and 1966 elections. According to Abramowitzs analysis of the results, those surveys found that even after Democrats created Medicare, the partys share of the vote among seniors in House elections fell slightly from 1964 to 66, giving the GOP a slight majority among them.

What does all of this mean for Democrats now?

Longwell said her focus groups with Democratic-leaning voters in Pennsylvania and independents in Wisconsin signal that Democrats should expect very limited benefits even if they pass the immense economic agenda now stalled amid resistance from Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Bidens theory of the case seems to be: If you can take these big swings and push a lot of money at people, they will reward you by voting for you. And I do not think that is correct, Longwell said. As best I can tell, not only do these voters not have a strong sense its benefiting them; they have a much stronger sense its benefiting people they dont think it should be.

However popular individual elements of the Democratic plan might be, Zelizer says, the 1966 precedent offers a blueprint for how Republicans can neutralize them, at least while voters have not yet fully felt their effects. The attack message back then, he says, wasnt specific to the programs. It was about Skyrocketing prices are on the way; spending is out of control, and that is the trap Biden is potentially falling into. (A political action committee associated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is already launching ads targeting the cumulative cost of the Democratic program.)

Lake, like officials at the Democratic campaign committees, is more optimistic that even if voters havent fully benefited from any programs Democrats might create, the party can point to them as evidence that it is attempting to alleviate voters COVID and economic strains in a way Republicans are not. People dont blame us for the economy, but they will blame us for doing nothing about it, particularly when we are in the majority, she said. When we get things done, we lift up a very vivid contrast and we pull out of this space were in right now, where voters are thinking, A pox on both your housesyou both are fighting; you both dont pass anything. I dont see how we get a contrast with Republicans if we dont get something passed.

Where Lake converges the most with Longwell, Rosenberg, and other like-minded analysts is in believing that the surest way for Biden to improve his standingand thus for congressional Democrats to improve their odds in 2022is to wrap up the contentious wrangling and reach a deal on the economic plan as soon as possible. Longwell similarly said that although Bidens problems are fixable, voters are impatient for faster progress against COVID-19, even if that means more mandates or other tough measures for the unvaccinated. It is much riskier for him to do less and let COVID persist as a problem, rather than looking like he is taking charge, she said.

Read: Why Biden bet it all on mandates

The biggest midterm losses have typically come after elections (like those in 1912, 1964, and 2008) in which the majority party secured significant gainsforcing it to defend seats deep in the other partys territory. House Democrats already surrendered in 2020 many of the most Republican-leaning seats they had captured two years before. You always have to view midterms in the context of what happened in the previous presidential election, Abramowitz said.

Still, the pattern of first-term midterm losses for the presidents party is so entrenched that escaping it will be difficult for Democratseven with fewer inherently vulnerable House incumbents, and even if Biden can notch more headway against the virus. And yet that gloomy prospect, paradoxically, might help the party break the congressional stalemate over its economic plan. Bolger noted that the near certainty of a disappointing midtermwhether a president achieves much legislatively or not, and whether that agenda is popular or notshould serve as a source of liberation for the party controlling Washington. The counterargument is you might as well pass the stuff you want anyway, he said. Because the odds are, in the first midterm, if you are the party in power, you are going to pay a price no matter what you do.

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The Curse of a President's Second Year - The Atlantic

India Walton. (Courtesy of India Walton for Mayor)

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The race for governor of New York wont be decided for more than a year, but potential contenders for the Democratic nomination are lining up on different sides of the question of whether their partys leaders should back the Democratic nominee for mayor of the second-largest city in the state. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is all in for India Walton, the choice of Democratic primary voters for mayor of Buffalo. But another prospective contender, US Representative Tom Suozzi, swooped into Buffalo last weekend to endorse the candidate Walton beat in the primary, incumbent Mayor Bryon Brown, who is mounting a sore-loser write-in campaign with substantial support from Republicans. Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul, who hails from the Buffalo region, is taking hits for refusing to endorse Walton. What gives?

Walton won the Democratic nomination for mayor of Buffalo on June 22, prevailing over Brown by more than 1,000 ballots in one of the most widely noted election results of the 2021 election cycle. The upset win for a newcomer over a four-term incumbent with close ties to the administration of ousted Governor Andrew Cuomo, and to Hochul, who served as Cuomos lieutenant governor, gained national attention for lots of reasons. Its not often that sitting mayors are beaten in their own party primaries. And Walton was a candidate with a compelling story of overcoming hardship and achieving big things: A mother at 14 who dropped out of high school but went on to earn her GED while pregnant with twins, she eventually achieved a nursing degree, became a prominent union activist, and served as executive director of the Fruit Belt Community Land Trust, a nonprofit organization that has fought to keep housing affordable in gentrifying neighborhoods of Buffalo.

But most of the attention focused on the fact that Walton would be the first democratic socialist to serve as the mayor of a major American city since Milwaukee Mayor Frank Zeidler left office in 1960. Like other democratic socialists who have run for and been elected to top posts as Democratsincluding US Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)Walton is bringing a new generation of young activists into the party.

That dynamic was in evidence in the primary election campaign, which saw Walton and her supporters build a grassroots movement to upend politics as usual in an election where she would be the only candidate on the November ballotas there were no Republican or independent contenders.

So, of course, state Democratic Party leaders would be excited to support her campaign, which promises to make Buffalo a national leader in the struggle to provide affordable housing, reform policing, and address economic, racial, and social injustice, right?

Wrong.

Jay Jacobs, the chair of the New York State Democratic Committee, signaled in mid-September that the party was not planning to make an endorsement in the race of either Walton, whose name is on the ballot, or Brown, who tried and failed to get on the fall ballot as a third-party candidate. Why? One way or another, a Democrat is going to be elected mayor of Buffalo, asserted Jacobs, who replaced Brown as state party chair in 2019. Both men have long histories as allies of Cuomo, who blamed low voter turnout for Waltons primary win and announced, I have nothing but good things to say about Mayor Brown. Current Issue

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Brown definitely has a long history as a Democratic insider. But hes now running a relentlessly negative campaign against the Democratic nominee for a major post in New York state, a campaign that is relying on big-money support from Republican-aligned landlords and developers.

If a party primary means anything, it ought to secure support for the nominee from the party machinery and its most prominent elected officials. Yet, on Saturday, Suozzi appeared at Browns Buffalo headquarters to deliver a robust endorsement of the write-in candidate. The eyes of the country are going to be focused on Buffalo, declared the Long Island Democrat, who would like to run to Hochuls right in a primary. We dont want to wake up on Nov. 3, and people say, Buffalo just elected the first socialist mayor in the past 50 years. We cant make that happen in Buffalo! MORE FROM John Nichols

Im here to say very, very clearly that we need to elect Byron Brown and defeat the socialists! shouted Suozzi.

The governor, a native of Buffalo who has known Brown for decades, has refused to endorse in the race. When Hochul appeared in Buffalo on Labor Day, Walton was standing nearby. But the Buffalo News reported, Walton was asked to leave the area because the event was an official government event a bill signingand the spots were reserved for elected officials and labor leaders, according to the governors office. Brown remained for the photo-opand got a shout-out from the governor.

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Hochuls approach drew a rebuke last week from Williams, who said, This should be a race where the governor is stumping for the first female mayor of Buffalo. Williams, who challenged Hochul for the lieutenant governorship nomination in 2018 and who has not been shy about suggesting that he might bid for the partys 2022 gubernatorial nomination, has also called out Jacobs and the state Democratic committee with regards to the Buffalo race.

After Jacobs announced a personal endorsement of Hochuls reelection bid last week, Williams declared:

Jay Jacobs efforts to shield the current powerbrokers and power structures from a challenge arent remotely surprising. His role, and that of the highest ranking Democratic officials in our state, should be to uplift Democratic candidates, Democratic voters, and democratic values. Instead, he is clinging to the systems that have empowered him, in the same way he and many others in Albany clung to Governor Cuomountil it was politically impossible to do so, but long after it was in any way justifiable.

Governor Hochul should be using this moment to demonstrate a new direction of leadership for the state party, not continuing the practices of Andrew Cuomos Albany. If she, Jay Jacobs, or any other Democratic state leaders are more interested in supporting Democratic candidates than cynical incumbency protection, they would be focused less on avoiding a 2022 primary, where Jacobs should be impartial, and more on the 2021 general election where they still refuse to endorse the young Black female Democratic nominee for Mayor in New Yorks second largest city as she battles against a Republican-backed opponent.

That description of Brown as Republican-backed wasnt hyperbole. When Brown mounted an unsuccessful effort to get on the ballot as a third-party candidate, Republican Party leaders and prominent conservatives helped gather the signatures. Hes openly taking the support of Republicans, and working with them, said Jeremy Zellner, the chairman of the Erie County Democratic Committee, which has backed Walton. Last week, Buffalos Investigative Post reported that a number of prominent Republicans were among the big donors who have helped Brown raise about $851,000 since he lost the June 22 Democratic primary. In September, the Post reported that Carl Paladino, the 2010 Republican nominee for governor of New York and a close ally of Donald Trump, had circulated an email invitation to a fundraiser for Brown hosted by the owners of a restaurant in a building Paladino owns.

After Walton won the Democratic nomination in June, Paladino announced, I will do everything I can to destroy her candidacy.

Paladino said he was upset with Walton and others who called him a racist after he wrote in 2016 that he hoped President Barack Obama would die of mad cow disease and that first lady Michelle Obama would be sent to Zimbabwe to live in a cave. The Buffalo School Board, on which Paladino sat, voted to condemn his remarks as unambiguously racist, morally repugnant, flagrantly disrespectful, inflammatory and inexcusable. In 2017, the New York State Education Department ordered Paladinos removal from the board after he disclosed confidential information from an executive session.

Buffalos mayoral election takes place November 2. Browns well-funded campaign is flooding the airwaves with ads making false and unsubstantiated claims about Walton. Waltons not quite as well funded, but she has an ad up that says. Im running to make the government work for us, and not just the big money crowd. It concludes with the words

India WaltonThe Democrat for Change

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Why Wont New Yorks Top Democrats Back the Democratic Nominee for Mayor of Buffalo? - The Nation

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, answers a reporters question. Boards behind showed that shots fired have more than doubled from 2019 in New Haven and that car thefts increased by 42.5 percent between 2019 and 2020 in Connecticut.

With sensational stories about carjackings dominating headlines and nightly news coverage, Gov. Ned Lamont sought last week to assuage public fears that crime is running rampant across Connecticut.

The data shows that we are one of the safest states in the country, he told reporters on Oct. 13. Were one of the lowest levels of violent crime in the country.

That isnt the picture that Senate Republicans painted a few hours later, when they held a press conference presenting a different set of data.

Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, ticked off the statistics on the boards behind him 2021 figures, to date, he compiled from city police department reports and compared to the previous year. A 61% increase in murders in Hartford. A 37.5% increase in New Haven. And in Waterbury, a 28.6% uptick in homicides and 23% increase in car thefts.

To some degree, the dramatic percentage increases in murders Kelly cited are explained by the fact that even small upticks among small numbers can register large percentage changes. But Republicans still see cause for concern in the data.

Were having and experiencing more crime and more violent crime, Kelly said. This is the true emergency that I think is facing Connecticut.

This weeks public commentswere the latest round in an ongoing debate about crime rates in Connecticut,whether those rates warrant some kind of legislative response and, if so, what (and when) that response should be. Republicans would prefer to convene a special legislative session, but in a Zoom pressconference held in response to theSenate Republicans proposals, Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven and chair of the Judiciary Committee, reiteratedthat motor vehicle thefts were at historic lows in Connecticut in 2019, and that state policies have led to areduction, not asurge, in crime in recent years.

That doesnt mean the message is an easy sell to voters, he said, especially given the frequency in which dramatic stories about individual crimes show up in the media.

Data is not sexy, Winfield said. But I think my job is to not just be responsive to the fact that people are feeling something but be responsive to the facts.

But what do the data actually show?

That both parties are right.

Data recently released by the FBI back up Kellys claim that murders and car thefts rose in 2020. Homicides increased from 77 in 2019 to 108 in 2020 as they did across the country, but they comprise such a small percentage of overall violent crime that Connecticuts violent crime rate remained low. Connecticut had the fourth-lowest number of violent crimes of any state in the U.S. Overall, violent crime in Connecticut decreased in 2020; nationally, it increased by about 4.5%.

The report did, however, show a marked increase in auto thefts and property crime overall. Car thefts rose across the country during 2020 but not as much as they did in Connecticut. They rose by around 11% nationally and by about 40% in Connecticut.

Kellys numbers on murders and cart thefts were accurate, too, but the spikes sounded larger than they are.

Small numbers can have large percentage increases. The 61% percent increase in murder in Hartford referred to an increase from 18 such cases to 29. Similarly, the 37.5% increase in New Haven murders starts from a baseline of 16 murders last year to 22 so far. And the 28.6% increase in murders in Waterbury is an increase from 7 to 9; the 23% increase in car thefts reflects an increase from 391 cases to 481.

Republicans are focused on what the data say about Connecticut, not how Connecticut stacks up to other states.

It calls for a response. We shouldnt be playing this numbers game, Well, I think it went down, or it went up,' Kelly said afterSenate Republicans released their own response for dealing with crime, a three-part plan focusing on reforms to the juvenile and adult justice systems, creating job opportunities and making changes to Section 8 housing and rolling back what they see as overreaches in a landmark police accountability bill passed in the summer following the murder of George Floyd.

The Senate Republicans plan proposes around-the-clock GPS monitoring of young people arrested for violent crimes or repeat offenses while they are awaiting trial for a prior charge. It lowers the age at which cases can be transferred to the adult system, allowing 14-year-olds to be tried in adult court, and expands the list of crimes that result in an automatic transfer to the adult system. It also suggests revising a ban on consent searches which state data show Black and Hispanic drivers are more likely to be subjected to, and rarely yield contraband to permit them in certain situations.

Not all of the Republicans plan was focused on punishing those who commit crimes they also suggested making funding available for community programs that address youth trauma, truancy and mentorship needs, and broadening young peoples professional pathways so theyre made aware of the benefits of going to trade school and allowing those schools to participate in certain need-based scholarship funds.

But the parts that do focus on punishment run the risk of exacerbating existing racial disparities in the states justice system, saidIliana Pujols, the policy director of the Connecticut Justice Alliance, given that people of color are already overrepresented in Connecticuts correctional system.

A report released by The Sentencing Project over the summer found that Black youths in Connecticut are more than 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts. And another report published by The Sentencing Project this week found that Connecticut had the fourth-highest disparity between Black and white prisoners in its prison system of all U.S. states.

These are kids of color, and I think one of the things thats very obvious is a lot of the Republican press conferences have lacked diversity, Pujols said. Theres really nobody with them thats representing the communities theyre talking about.

Kelly said the goal of the Republican proposals is to reduce crime by addressing its root causes, which includes improving Connecticuts economy so it doesnt just benefit the wealthy. It isnt just to lock people up.

Thats why we focus so much on the prevention and opportunity, is that so that we dont have more individuals being confined, but less, he said. Were not looking to just arrest people and put them in jail; were looking to actually reduce that and to make sure they have the proper supports and services.

Winfield was unwilling to say whether there is a growing coalition of suburban Democrats who believe they need to respond to crime.

"This is a policy and a political issue, and the solution put forward is both, as well," he said. As Republicans call these press conferences on crime, the fear of which is frequently reinforced in media reports, Democrats' constituents could start to think Democrats need to respond to the problem framed by Republicans, that they're in danger, as Kelly said,"even just cooking dinner in your kitchen"

It's hard to say to a constituent, 'Well, the data says thats not going to happen,'" Winfield said. "So, the easier thing to do, or the more immediate thing to get people off your back, is to respond in the way they want you to respond, which may be to respond in ways that might be more punitive.

But he cautioned against repeating the sins of decades past, when punitive policies resulted in an overfilled prison system and created entire communities often under-resourced and populated by Black or brown residents filled with citizens unable to get a fair shot at housing or employment because of the scarlet letter of a criminal record.

"I don't think the policies that we have had in the past are smart policies, and what I see us doing here, whether it's by intention or not, is walking ourselves back to that place," Winfield said, referring to policies like the 1994 Crime Bill, a sweeping law that still hurts communities of color.Were responding out of emotion and not really getting a clear picture, and I think thats how you pass laws you might not want to pass, that lead to increases in incarceration.

But at the same time, he acknowledged that sobering statistics and national context on crime rates can be little solace for survivors of crime.

"It's a real experience for somebody."

CT Mirror Reporter Mark Pazniokas contributed to this story.

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Republicans and Democrats disagree on crime. What do the data show? - The CT Mirror