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This week, the House of Representatives declared that Steve Bannon was contemptible. Well, that's not strictly legally accurate -- they actually officially held him in contempt of Congress, but it's more fun to say it the other way. Because he so obviously is, of course.
So we're now really down to: "Build Back Smaller." Once again, Democrats have taken what could have been monumentally historic change and watered it down to the point where many Democratic voters are going to actually wind up disappointed, even if a deal is struck and something passes Congress and is signed into law by President Joe Biden. Whatever passes will still be historic legislation, just as Obamacare was (and still is), but a lot of Democratic voters will inevitably be left with a strong sense of "what might have been."
Today's article title is from the song "Time," by Pink Floyd. Here's the whole first verse, for the proper context:
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
This lyrical rock masterpiece sprang to mind this week as we watched the Democrats... um... not get much of anything done. It's as if they had all the time in the world -- which they most assuredly do not. Especially relevant is that line: "Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown," since Congress is once again on vacation all week long. Most people don't even get Columbus/Indigenous Peoples' Day off work, but for Congress it is yet another excuse to blow off an entire week. This isn't that long after they took a month and a half off, mind you. Outdoing the Senate (which just took this week off) was the House, which took an entire two weeks off -- for a minor federal holiday most people have to work on.
There will be no new column today because I have busy been doing my taxes rather than writing. I am (in general) lazy, and therefore usually get an automatic extension, which falls due on October 15th rather than April 15th. Since I've spent all day immersed in tax forms and numbers, I thought I'd revisit taking my rage out at Paul Ryan (and the rest of the usual suspects) for so royally screwing up the tax forms and entire income tax system.
The past two weeks were a prime example of why so many Americans are so disgusted and disillusioned with Washington politics. There were scary deadlines, meaningless drama, pointless partisanship, obstructionism, and ego-boosting all around. And at the end of the day, nothing really happened except we are all right back where we started from. What appeared to be a drama-filled few weeks of politics produced precisely zero result. Which is why so many citizens have just tuned out of the process entirely -- because it is usually frustratingly idiotic and nothing short of a massive waste of time.
President Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party have so far not had much notable success in getting their real message out on the "Build Back Better" budget reconciliation bill. This isn't entirely Biden's fault, of course, since a lot of the blame falls on the media as well. And the Democrats who truly want to see this historic legislation pass are also hamstrung by two realities -- the bill doesn't really exist yet, and the media has kept a singular focus on the overall amount of new spending the bill will contain.
Far too often, I find myself getting irate with the mainstream political press for being intentionally obtuse and refusing to remember what happened only a short time ago. This weekend was one of those times. The chattering classes on the Sunday political shows tried to frame what had just happened at the Capitol as some sort of plot twist -- some unforeseen development that was simply unprecedented and shocking. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. When President Joe Biden went to the Capitol and informed Democrats not only that he wanted to see the budget reconciliation bill pass but also that he would be willing to wait -- and that he didn't care that the infrastructure bill would be delayed -- you would have thought by the reaction that he had somehow changed his mind or "thrown his lot in with the progressives." This was the refrain I heard all Sunday morning, in fact. Biden had surprisingly sided with the progressives, when many people had expected him to join the moderates in their demand that the infrastructure bill be passed before any action was taken on the reconciliation bill. But this is narrative is completely false.
Reconciliation is a truly warm and forgiving word. It means coming back together after a period of being apart or at odds. Couples reconcile after time spent apart (for whatever reason). Friends achieve reconciliation by burying hatchets and shrugging off long-carried grudges. It means coming back together, no matter what the circumstances.
All week long, we've been playing a big waiting game on what is going to happen to President Joe Biden's domestic economic agenda in Congress. His promised "Build Back Better" plan initially had three parts. First, there was the immediate relief needed for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Next, physical infrastructure projects. And finally, human infrastructure investments. The pandemic relief passed soon after Biden took office (back when most Americans hadn't even had the opportunity to get their first vaccine shot). The other two remain undone. The negotiations to get both of them on Biden's desk for his signature are what we've all been seeing play out -- not just this week, but for the past three or four months. We're (hopefully, at least) now in the endgame of the waiting game, to mix a few metaphors with abandon.
Sadly, the public debate over the budget reconciliation bill in Congress has so far usually been reduced to a single number. I say "sadly" because what this means is that while the media (and, also sadly, too many Democratic politicians) obsess over that one number, it means they seldom (if ever) talk about what is actually contained within the bill itself. Perhaps Democrats can pivot to having this discussion if the bill ever actually passes. But for now, I'd like to put that big, scary $3.5 trillion number into some necessary context.