(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
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The Shadow of Ronald Reagan Is Costing Us Dearly - The New York Times [1]
['Claire Bond Potter']
Date: 2021-11-11
With Build Back Better, President Biden has attempted to revive a New Deal ethic that entwines human and physical infrastructure. No one likes taxes, but building a nation where Americans know that their families are safe and cared for is popular across party lines. It shouldn’t have been a hard sell.
But here we are. The reconciliation package has shrunk to about $2 trillion. And something else is gone: a chance to change the American narrative of what good government does. The legislation was once billed as a plan for sweeping once-in-a-generation social change, but aspects of it that warranted that hyperbole, like dental and vision coverage for Medicare recipients and free community college, have disappeared. Paid family and medical leave have been sharply reduced.
Other industrialized nations provide a far more robust safety net than the one we have and even the one Mr. Biden proposed. Yet Republicans and at least one Democrat insist that such social welfare spending endangers the nation’s fiscal and moral health.
How did we get to a point that doing less for Americans is a virtue, and comprehensive social welfare a privilege?
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/11/opinion/reagan-social-welfare.html
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