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The House is voting to protect our most fundamental life decisions this week. The Senate must follow [1]
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Date: 2022-07-19
Leadership might be getting how important having these votes is in the Senate. “People should be concerned, based on how the Supreme Court ruled in overturning Roe v. Wade. This is clearly an activist court,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told NBC News. He matters because he’s the chair of the, DSCC, the Democratic Senate campaign arm. Judiciary chair and whip Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told NBC that the vote has to happen. “I’m really sorry to say that, but Clarence Thomas was very clear in his position here. I wish it weren’t necessary but I think it is.” He also said he think both the marriage and birth control bills would get 60 votes. That supposition needs to be put to the test.
Also in the House, work continues on getting a bunch of spending bills for the next fiscal year done, even though it’s all preliminary work. They haven’t come to agreements with Senate appropriators on spending levels for anything yet, and likely won’t as long as Republican there think they’ll get the majority in the midterms and can force lower spending levels. There’s another reason to vote like hell for Democrats this fall.
The Senate Democrats will be having their weekly conference luncheon/yell at West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin session Tuesday, after which there might be some clarity on how they intend to move forward on the reconciliation bill to address prescription drug prices and Affordable Care Act subsidies, and what in the hell they do on climate and taxes—the two parts Manchin had been telling them for months he was willing to do something about until last week when he suddenly wasn’t.
The conventional wisdom at this point is that the White House and leadership are going to cut their losses for the moment and move forward on the former two issues, which Manchin says he’s okay with. They need to do it very quickly, before he can change his mind again. Lowering prescription drug prices and keeping those Affordable Care Act (ACA) premiums from spiking are both important short-term issues and important for the midterms.
That’s where the White House seems to be right now. “If you can help people with prescription drugs, drugs that cost two to three times less in other countries for the same pill; if you can help a 60-year-old couple with a $45,000 income not have to pay another $1,900 dollars to get their insurance coverage, you are accomplishing the president’s goals,” White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein said Monday.
Saving the planet is going to have to happen another way. It’s going to have to happen at the ballot box, by making Manchin irrelevant. When that’s happened, when there’s a big enough Democratic majority to take his power away, his chairmanship of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee has to be yanked as well. Every election for the past decade has been the most important of our lives. The next two are simply existential.
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