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Dont call it an ideology. Call it an idiot-ology, Steve Forbes says ofPresident Joe Bidens defeated Build Back Better economic plan, which Democrats in the Senate are now trying to revive.

Build Back Better is a multitrillion-dollar legislative packageproposed by Biden consisting of massive spending onsocial, infrastructure, and environmental programs.

Forbes, the CEO of Forbes Media, spoke out against Build Back Better ata discussion of his newbook Inflation: What It Is, Why Its Bad, and How to Fix It in Washingtonon June 7.

Forbes addressed the Biden administration proposal, which includesraising marginal tax rates on corporations and other businesses. Hecompared the presidents logic to that of an 18th-century doctor: To cure you, they bleed you, which got rid of pain and sufferingbecause it got rid of you.

Preston Brashers, a senior analyst for tax policy at The Heritage Foundation, concurs, describing theBuild Back Better bill as a $3.5 trillion patchwork oftaxes,mandates, job-killingregulations, and social welfare entitlements that will only exacerbate the supply-side issues plaguing the economy. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Forbes alsospoke out againstthe Biden administrations [electric vehicle]charging action plan, which includes $7.5 billion in federal spending for a national EV charging network and a community grant program. He noted that governments around the world have spent$5 trillion on renewable energy over the past 20 years, but that has reduced the shareof global energy supplies coming from fossil fuels by only 2 percentage points.

Imagine what those resources could have done for fighting disease, hesaid.

Forbes concludedthat Republicans [in the Senate] did Biden a favor by blocking the Build Back Better bill, which had passed the Democrat-controlled House inNovember on a straight party-line vote.

If the bill had passed, you would have a far worse [economic] situation, he said.

But now, Senate Democrats areattempting to craft a pared-downversion of Build Back Better that they hope topass through the reconciliation process with onlyDemocratic senators votes.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please emailletters@DailySignal.comand well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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Forbes Bludgeons Build Back Better Bill as Democrats Seek to Revive It - Daily Signal

If you want a sense of what separates much of the leadership of the Democratic Party from many of its supporters of what illustrates their profound disconnect from younger cohorts of liberal and progressive voters you could do much worse than to read this recent statement from Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.

Some things take longer than others, and you can only do what you can do at a given time, she said in an interview with Rebecca Traister of New York magazine. That does not mean you cant do it at another time, she continued, and so one of the things you develop is a certain kind of memory for progress: when you can do something in terms of legislation and have a chance of getting it through, and when the odds are against it, meaning the votes and that kind of thing.

So, Feinstein concluded, Im very optimistic about the future of our country.

This entire comment was, in Traisters analysis, a damning example of the sanguine complacency that seems to mark much of the gerontocratic leadership of the Democratic Party.

I agree.

Whats missing from party leaders, an absence that is endlessly frustrating to younger liberals, is any sense of urgency and crisis any sense that our system is on the brink. Despite mounting threats to the right to vote, the right to an abortion and the ability of the federal government to act proactively in the public interest, senior Democrats continue to act as if American politics is back to business as usual.

Earlier this year at the National Prayer Breakfast, to give another example, President Biden praised Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, as a man of your word and a man of honor.

Thank you for being my friend, Biden said to a man who is almost singularly responsible for the destruction of the Senate as a functional lawmaking body and whose chief accomplishment in public life is the creation of a far-right Supreme Court majority that is now poised to roll American jurisprudence back to the 19th century.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is similarly enamored of this rhetoric of bipartisan comity in the face of a Republican Party whose members are caught in the grip of a cult of personality marked by conspiratorial thinking and an open contempt for electoral democracy.

It might come as a surprise to some of you that the president I quote most often is President Reagan, Pelosi said at the ribbon-cutting for the Washington branch of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. The good humor of our president was really a tonic for the nation, the gentleman that he was.

And last month, she told an audience in Miami that she wants a strong Republican Party that can return to where it was when it cared about a womans right to choose and cared about the environment. Of course, the ideologically moderate Republican Party that Pelosi seems to want resurrected was largely dead by the time she entered national politics in the late 1970s, bludgeoned into submission with the notable help of Ronald Reagan, among other figures.

As I reflect on this attitude among Democratic leaders, Im reminded of the historian Jefferson Cowies argument about the New Deals relationship to the American political order. In The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics, Cowie argues for an interpretation of the United States in the 20th century that treats the New Deal era, from the administration of Franklin Roosevelt to the 1970s, as a sustained deviation from some of the main contours of American political practice, economic structure, and cultural outlook.

The Great Depression and World War II may have forced clear realignments of American politics and class relations, Cowie writes, but those changes were less the linear triumph of the welfare state than the product of very specific, and short-lived, historical circumstances.

If this is true if the New Deal was the product of highly contingent circumstances unlikely to be repeated either now or in the future then the challenge for those committed to the notion of a government that protects and expands the collective economic rights of the American people is to forge a new vision for what that might be. The path forward is not clear, Cowie writes, but whatever successful incarnation of a liberal social imaginary might follow will not look like the New Deal, and it might be best to free ourselves from the notion that it will.

I think you can apply a similar great exception analysis to the decades of institutional stability and orderly partisan competition that shaped the current generation of Democratic leaders, including the president and many of his closest allies.

They came into national politics in an age of bipartisan consensus and centrist policymaking, at a time when the parties and their coalitions were less ideological and more geographically varied. But this, too, was a historical aberration, the result of political and social dynamics such as the broad prosperity of the industrial economic order at home that were already well in decline by the time that Biden, Pelosi, Feinstein and others first took office.

American politics since then has reverted to an earlier state of heightened division, partisanship and fierce electoral competition. Even the authoritarianism on display in the Republican Party has antecedents in the behavior of Southern political elites at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.

Millions of Democratic voters can see and feel that American politics has changed in profound ways since at least the 1990s, and they want their leaders to act, and react, accordingly.

Standing in the way of this demand, unfortunately, is the stubborn and ultimately ruinous optimism of some of the most powerful people in the Democratic Party.

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Opinion | The Gerontocracy of the Democratic Party Doesnt Understand That Were at the Brink - The New York Times

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe ManchinDrew Angerer/Getty Images

Centrist House Dems are raising pressure on party leaders to defuse an Obamacare timebomb soon.

The New Democrat Coalition is urging Schumer and Pelosi to revive a reconciliation bill with a key health program.

Democrats are at risk of setting off a premium hike just before the November midterms.

A large group of House Democrats are stepping up pressure on party leaders to revive their stalled economic agenda and avoid hitting voters with huge healthcare bills only weeks before the November midterms.

Fifty-seven members of the centrist New Democrat coalition led by Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington signed a letter meant to highlight the steep health insurance premium increases that many people would face if a pandemic-era financial assistance program expires in December. The cohort included many Democratic lawmakers locked in tight re-election races this fall.

Under the stimulus law last year, Democrats bulked up federal subsidies to cut monthly premiums for millions of Americans purchasing individual health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The move led to many lower-income Americans paying little or nothing for health coverage. Many middle-class families qualified for generous federal assistance for the first time.

If Democrats fail to revive a reconciliation bill extending the enhanced subsidies past year's end, major price hikes often totaling hundreds of dollars will hit 13 million Americans during a punishing stretch of inflation. Three million people would also lose their health insurance, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

"With prices rising broadly, our constituents cannot afford these increased health insurance costs," the group wrote in a letter to Schumer and Pelosi shared with Insider. "This cannot happen on our watch."

Signatories included DelBene; Rep. Cindy Axne of Iowa; Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey; Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey; and Rep. Bill Foster of Indiana. NBC News first reported the letter.

Story continues

Experts say Congress must act by midsummer to ensure states and private insurers have enough time to set up their enrollment periods, which can take months.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is negotiating with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to strike a deal on a smaller spending bill that may extend the healthcare program. Since Republicans are staunchly against strengthening the ACA, Democrats can only renew the initiative using their own votes in budget reconciliation.

The House-approved Build Back Better legislation extended the program for four years and limited premium bills to 8.5% of an individual's income. Manchin sank the bill last year, citing its potential to grow the national debt and worsen inflation. That measure has withered in the 50-50 Senate ever since.

Schumer and Manchin have met four times in the past two months to cut a deal on a smaller bill, which senior Democrats hope to advance in the Senate by August 1.

The pair have not publicly shared details of those negotiations and it's unclear if the conservative West Virginia Democrat backs an extension of the program. "Manchin and I keep the details to ourselves," Schumer told Insider last week. "But it was a good meeting, getting into some degree of detail. We've got a ways to go."

Read the original article on Business Insider

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57 moderate House Democrats pressure Pelosi and Schumer to disable the Obamacare time-bomb set to go off before the midterms - Yahoo News

Groups linked to Democrats appear to be trying to use pricey television ads and mailers to boost the profiles of three conservative and controversial candidates in Colorado running in important Republican primaries this year.

The effort seems to be aimed at giving Democrats a leg up in the general election. Its not the first time Democrats have deployed such tactics in Colorado, and in the past theyve been successful.

The ad spending in the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate contests alone is at least $1.5 million, according to contracts filed with the Federal Communications Commission through Tuesday that were analyzed by The Colorado Sun. The ads, which are running statewide, began airing Tuesday and some are scheduled to last through June 28, Election Day. Its likely the spending is even higher, as many TV stations dont file contracts immediately.

The ads are positioned to support Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Lopez, a former mayor of Parker. He has made controversial statements on the campaign trail and in 2020 settled a lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors alleging that after he left the Small Business Administration, where he was the Colorado district director from 2008 to 2014, he violated federal law by attempting to improperly influence the agency.

They also seem geared toward supporting state Rep. Ron Hanks, a Fremont County Republican running for U.S. Senate who attended the rally preceding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and baselessly asserts the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Hanks says Republicans should be unapologetically conservative in order to beat incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in November.

Meanwhile, mailers sent to voters in Colorados new, highly competitive 8th Congressional District appear to support Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine, one of four GOP primary candidates. Saine has called herself the most far-right/conservative/America First Republican candidate running in the race and has advocated for the impeachment of President Joe Biden.

While it isnt clear who sent the mailers they didnt include a disclosure, possibly in violation of federal election law the postal permit used on them has been used in the past by the firm Plumb Marketing to distribute mailings by Democratic interests.

The ads arrive during an election cycle that has seen relatively little TV advertising compared with past years. Thats in part because Republican candidates in competitive primaries are raising so little money, and Democratic incumbents are saving their cash for the general election.

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Democratic Colorado, a recently formed federal super PAC, is airing at least $780,000 worth of TV ads statewide in the next week that purport to oppose Hanks in the U.S. Senate contest. But they also highlight his conservative positions on issues including abortion and the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Hanks faces construction company owner Joe ODea in the June 28 GOP primary. ODea, a wealthy self-funding candidate, has more moderate views on issues including abortion, and he also has far more money to spend than Hanks, who has yet to air TV or radio ads.

ODea plans to spend more than $300,000 in the coming weeks on TV ads in a race where polling shows voters dont really know either candidate. Additionally, American Policy Fund, a super PAC funded in part by contractors with ties to ODea, has reported spending $600,000 on digital, radio and TV ads supporting ODea.

Hanks praised the publicity about his conservative views.

Unaffiliated voters and Democrats fully recognize this economy is in shambles, and (President) Joe Biden caused it, Hanks told The Sun. I welcome their support, and I am pleased they recognize my straightforward policies and professional experience make me the only choice on the Republican side.

MORE: 6 big areas where the two Republicans running for U.S. Senate in Colorado disagree

ODeas campaign slammed the attempt to hijack the Republican primary.

And the NRSC, which supports GOP Senate candidates, issued a news release calling the ads a sign of Democratic panic.

In supposedly blue Colorado, Democrats are reportedly dumping 7-figures into the REPUBLICAN Senate primary to try and stir up drama, the release said. Just goes to show you how vulnerable Michael Bennet is in a state that Joe Biden won by more than 13 points.

Democrats have been signaling for months that they would prefer Bennet face Hanks than ODea, including by calling Hanks the GOP primary frontrunner despite there has been very little public polling in the race. Nevertheless, a spokeswoman for Democratic Colorado maintained that the ads are aimed at opposing Hanks, even though its not clear he will win the primary.

We are an organization committed to ensuring that Colorado does not elect a Republican to the U.S. Senate and giving voters the facts about whos running to represent them, the spokeswoman, Democratic operative Alvina Vasquez, wrote in an email. Ron Hanks is simply too conservative for Colorado and voters deserve to know the truth about him: At every opportunity, Hanks has consistently put conservative values ahead of our interests from denying the results of the 2020 election to fighting to ban all abortions and increase access to guns.

In the governors race, the Colorado Information Network, a state-level super PAC, is spending at least $688,000 on TV ads about Lopez that similarly highlight his conservative bona fides on abortion, gay marriage and former President Donald Trump though they end by criticizing the candidate for being too far right. Those ads are scheduled through the end of the month.

Colorado Information Network spent more than $300,000 supporting Democratic candidates in the 2018 general election.

Lopez faces University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl in the GOP primary. Ganahl is far and away the fundraising leader in the race, which will decide who faces Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in November.

Ganahl spokeswoman Lexi Swearingen criticized the ads.

Democrats outside Colorado are dumping millions of dollars into this race in an attempt to pick the candidate, a former Democrat himself, that they feel they can easily beat in November, Swearingen said in a statement to The Sun. Democrats know that Heidi Ganahl is a formidable opponent with a message that resonates with not only Republicans but also the 45% of unaffiliated voters in our state.

But Lopez sees the ad differently. He denied that the ad is meant to boost his campaign calling it an attack thats proof hes a real threat to Polis.

Ganahls campaign booked about $32,000 in cable TV ads in recent days, based on contracts filed with the FCC. But Lopez has yet to go on the air and had only about $17,000 in his campaign bank account as of May 25.

In the 8th Congressional District, an unidentified group sent three mailers contrasting the views of Saine with those of state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, the Democratic nominee in the district.

The mailers dont suggest people should vote for or against either candidate and they dont include a disclosure of who sent them. FEC rules require reporting of electioneering spending within 30 days of a primary election, and two of the mailers fall within that window.

The question Republican voters need to ask themselves before they vote is why is there a secret Democratic group sending out illegal mailers to try and help Lori Saine win the nomination, said Alan Philp, a spokesman for state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, one of the other 8th District Republican candidates.

Saine argued that the mailers actually support Caraveo.

By not listing Yadira Caraveos support for abortion up to the day (of) birth, that she opposes voter photo ID and wants to take away ALL your guns, these ads are boosting Caraveo, covering up her outrageous extremism and support for the failed Biden agenda, Saine told The Sun.

MORE: Where the four Republicans running to represent the 8th Congressional District stand on the big issues

The Sun asked Plumb Marketing about who is responsible for the mailers, but didnt hear back.

Kelly Maher, a Republican political consultant and 8th District resident, said she may file a complaint with the FEC about the mailers.

You dont know where the source of this information is coming from, she said. The question is whether the average Republican primary voter will be able to discern that.

Three of the four candidates in the 8th District GOP primary are spending on TV ads, but none have booked more than $100,000.

The big spending will come in the fall, when Democratic and Republican groups are poised to spend big trying to win the toss-up seat that may determine which party controls Congress.

The House Majority PAC, which supports Democrats, has booked more than $4.4 million in fall ads focused at least in part on the 8th District, while the Congressional Leadership Fund, which supports Republicans, has booked $4.1 million worth of TV time aimed at least in part at winning the same district.

Democratic involvement in Republican primaries in Colorado isnt new.

In 2010, for instance, a group called Colorado Freedom Fund spent more than $500,000 airing ads attacking former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis in his GOP gubernatorial primary contest against political newcomer Dan Maes. The ads aired in the days before the primary, after the last campaign finance filing deadline for outside spenders, so it wasnt until after the contest, which Maes won by 5,150 votes, that Coloradans learned the Democratic Governors Association and unions were behind the Colorado Freedom Fund.

Sign up here to get The Unaffiliated, our twice-weekly newsletter on Colorado politics and policy.

Each edition is filled with exclusive news, analysis and other behind-the-scenes information you wont find anywhere else. Subscribe today to see what all the buzz is about.

In 2014, Protect Colorado Values aired ads attacking former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez and praising former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo in the Republican gubernatorial primary. That group spent $567,000 on TV, radio and digital ads, but Beauprez still won the nomination.

Protect Colorado Values money also came from the Democratic Governors Association and other groups traditionally aligned with Democrats.

Both Beauprez and Maes went on to lose to former Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat.

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Democrats tied to ads boosting controversial GOP candidates - The Colorado Sun

WASHINGTON The bipartisan gun safety deal announced Sunday is far from what Democrats would have preferred in the aftermath of the racist gun massacre in Buffalo and the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, but it is considerably more than they hoped for initially.

The proposal, which still has a long way to go before becoming law, focuses less on the gun part of gun control and more on other factors, such as a buyers mental health or violent tendencies, in a concession to Republican hesitation and the hard political reality that tough limits on sales, let alone outright bans on firearms, are far out of reach.

Though it would not raise the age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21, the plan would enhance background checks on those under 21 before they could take possession of a gun perhaps the most significant element of the emerging measure. Republicans say enough sentiment exists for a direct age increase, but perhaps not enough to forestall a filibuster.

Democrats would much rather ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, impose universal background checks and take other stringent steps to limit access to guns. But they will accept the agreement as a step in the right direction.

We cannot let the congressional perfect be the enemy of the good, said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, who said he would have preferred to bar military assault weapons. Though this agreement falls short in this and other respects, it can and will make our nation safer.

In interviews over the past two weeks, multiple Senate Democrats made it clear they were ready to embrace almost anything the bipartisan talks could produce, rather than engage in another fruitless standoff on the Senate floor and ending up with nothing.

That outcome might have allowed them to make a potent political point, pummeling Republicans for standing in the way of popular gun control initiatives, but it would not have answered the public outcry for action. Stymied on multiple legislative fronts, Democrats are also eager to claim a win for a change.

While more is needed, this package will take steps to save lives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday in a statement, indicating she will back it even though the House last week passed much more sweeping measures.

As the talks got underway two weeks ago, it appeared more likely that the effort would collapse, as so many had before it, once the initial outrage of the most recent mass shootings had died down. And the designation of Senator John Cornyn of Texas as the lead Republican negotiator limited the possibilities from the start, since Mr. Cornyn quickly declared that he would not be backing an assault weapons ban or other steps to make weapons harder to obtain.

But as the talks continued, Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, the lead Democratic negotiator, said steady progress was being made, and that the talks had a different feel from the failed efforts of the past. On Sunday, he said on Twitter that he thought Americans would be surprised at the scope of the legislative framework, which included more substantial measures than the ones initially on the table.

The more extensive background check for buyers aged 18 to 21 is a narrower version of a change Democrats have been promoting for years, which would allow more time to vet potential gun buyers who are flagged by an initial instant check. And for the first time, juvenile and mental health records will be allowed as part of that review.

The deal includes federal incentives for states to enact so-called red flag laws to seize guns temporarily from those deemed a threat to themselves and others. And in a long-sought change that has been opposed by Republicans in the past, it would also make it harder for those accused of domestic violence to obtain guns, adding dating partners to a prohibition that currently applies only to spouses.

Any one of those provisions is likely to draw significant opposition from Republicans who believe in giving no ground whatsoever on gun safety measures, which are seen as intolerable infringements on Second Amendment rights. But the Republicans engaged in the talks believe they have made worthwhile concessions without treading on the gun rights so many Republican voters see as sacrosanct.

Even this proposal could be achieved only because the potential political backlash for the Republicans directly involved is limited. Four of the 10 Republicans who are backing the proposal Senators Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania are retiring, and may never face voters again. None of the other six Republicans who signed on to the compromise is on the ballot in November.

But the fact that Republicans engaged to the level that they did showed that they were hearing from voters at home about the epidemic of mass shootings after the horrific episode in Uvalde, Texas, to a greater extent than they have in the past.

They are all asking that Congress act, said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and one of the lawmakers behind the compromise, after her Memorial Day travels around her state. They are not sure what should be done, but there are things that Congress can do that will make a difference. There is more of a sense of urgency that something has to be made into law.

Some Democrats said they were worried that they were handing Republicans a face-saving win that would allow G.O.P. lawmakers to claim they were acting on guns despite an unwillingness to take more significant steps, including gun control measures that polls have shown are backed by large majorities of Americans. But they said they were willing to set those reservations aside in the interest of getting an agreement with both substantive and political wins for each side.

The agreement still has to be turned into legislation, and failure to agree on the terminology and the exact reach of some of the provisions could prove difficult and still imperil the deal. Gun rights groups and legislative opponents are also certain to raise the alarm and attempt to build opposition to it.

I will vote against the Biden-Schumer gun confiscation legislation, which includes red flag gun confiscation that violates the Second Amendment rights of my constituents, Representative Mary Miller, Republican of Illinois, declared in on Twitter on Sunday, soon after the framework was disclosed.

Representative Lauren Boebert, the right-wing Republican from Colorado who has made gun rights her calling card, circulated the names of the 10 G.O.P. senators backing the deal on Twitter, calling it a list of Senate RINOS, using the acronym for Republican in name only.

Though gun safety proponents on Sunday said they hoped the proposal was the beginning of a new era of compromise, this is considered likely to be the best opportunity on gun safety for some time.

Given rising public alarm over the mass shootings and crime in general, both parties were ready to act and give some ground. Enough Republicans were also in a position to take the political leap required, and negotiators in both parties had the backing of their leadership to try to make something happen. But with Republicans poised to win the House and threatening to take the Senate in November, the outlook for more expansive changes sought by Democrats in the months ahead is not bright.

Still, both sides saw what they could agree on as worthwhile, and as evidence that Congress, in light of unspeakable gun violence, could for once offer more than thoughts and prayers.

When we put our partisan differences aside and focus on whats best for the American people, the Senate is capable of making a substantial, positive impact in our society, said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware. This is a step forward for the Senate, and if this proposal becomes law, will be a much bigger step forward for gun violence prevention and our nation.

Link:
Gun Deal Is Less Than Democrats Wanted, but More Than They Expected - The New York Times