Senate. House has passed stimulus packages. IMO further delineation is deserved, but contentious, so I'll leave it at that.
https://www.newsweek.com/pelosi-says-she-backs-smaller-stimu...
Oh, except for a hearing pushing hydroxychloroquine in November, months after multiple studies had shown it ineffective, and a hearing promoting an anti-vaxer just last week. And I guess a bunch of hearings a few months ago wherein various GOP senators heaped ignorant abuse on public health officials.
If your favorite small business goes under, if your local hospital collapses, if your town goes bankrupt, etc., the institutional GOP and its donors are to blame.
We can all keep our fingers crossed for Georgia Senate runoffs, and for some real leadership come January.
It was politically driven: Democrats were afraid of giving Trump a win. Perhaps it was good politics, since it seems to have worked.
From Newsweek: "Despite a refusal for roughly the past six months to advance a smaller aid package that she deemed 'half a loaf,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now willing to support a bipartisan stimulus bill worth less than half her previous demand thanks to, in part, Joe Biden's victory.
It didn't pass it, unlike the House and HEROES. The Senate could have acted on the passed House bill. The House had no bill from the Senate to take up, since the Senate bill died in (Republican-led) committee.
The House is the only one on the dance floor.
And Nancy Pelosi may have opposed the Republican position in negotiations, but Nancy Pelosi has no control on what the Senate passes.
Suddenly, after the election, Pelosi is fine passing the same amount she opposed before the election as only half what was necessary.
This isn't some right-wing talking point -- Bernie Sanders has sad as much. This was a political game.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-did-berni...
Actually, its often a significant part of the political process of building popular and, thereby, legislative support for a solution (which will ultimately often be a compromise from the DOA proposal.)
And, in a bicameral legislature, taking up a measure on an issue that is unacceptable in the form the other house passed it in, and amending it to the form that you think is better and sending it back (or to conference to resolve the issues) is a way of moving forward that is generally more effective than sending an alternative bill to die in committee and then ignoring the issue.
To me it looks like a bad-faith effort and a waste of everyone's time.
After the successful repeal vote in the House in May 2017, the GOP threw big celebratory parties. You can see pictures of representatives smiling and laughing about the prospect of significant numbers of their own constituents losing coverage. They really relished the idea of taking away millions of people’s healthcare, and were profoundly disappointed when it didn’t work out.
As for the dozens of repeal votes while Obama was still in office: those were a quite effective partisan posturing effort. GOP-aligned media spent years on false propaganda about the effects of the ACA, trying to trick a public who largely didn’t understand the law or the healthcare system more generally. (To the point that e.g. in Kentucky people like “Kynect” while “Obamacare” is extremely unpopular, even though they are two names for the same thing.) GOP politicians were electorally very successful campaigning against the ACA while trying to sabotage it in every way they could. Much easier than even pretending to come up with a plan of their own.
Since the GOP Congress during Obama’s second term had no constructive agenda, essentially all of their time was spent on stuff like ACA repeal and Benghazi hearings. You are right that it was a bad-faith effort.
I would have said it the first time, at least.
The House didn't pass HEROES dozens of times.
Putting even the milquetoast HEALS act up for a vote would have put some of their members in a conflicted spot trying to both appear to care about the crisis while still appeasing hard-liner donors/supporters.
If the Senate had brought the HEROES Act as passed by the House to the floor, it might well have passed. But McConnell & friends didn’t want to see a relief bill passed, so they were satisfied to leave it off the agenda altogether.
Gee, I wonder what happened in November for her to change her mind...
I'll stop responding now; it's pretty clear a number of folks on HN think that only one party can play political games and this has gotten trite.
It was milquetoast, but not primarily because of the dollar amount (which is, though, inadequate as anything other than a partial stopgap and bridge), but because of substantive provisions.
Nancy Pelosi is surely also upset that we can’t do something more aggressive, but anything at all would be better than nothing (and we might still be stuck with nothing this year). We’re in an extraordinarily severe crisis, and people, small businesses, and state/local governments have been in urgent need of relief for months.
Even jaded political veterans expected some action from the Senate these past 7 months, under the circumstances. But what we have seen again and again in recent years is that even when we lower the bar down to the floor, they still manage to trip over it.
Correction: slither under it. They don't get over it, even by tripping.
> takes two to tango
Indeed, without any action from the Senate, the House is stuck. Again, we should all be hoping for good results in the GA runoffs, or Congress will remain unable to address any of our serious challenges ahead.
The 2 years from 2009–2010 were pretty much the only substantially functional Congress in a generation, and would have accomplished a great deal more if they hadn’t also had to deal with a worldwide economic crisis.
Perhaps because the GOP literally called[0] for that? Just a crazy thought.
[0] https://thehill.com/homenews/news/529195-arizona-gop-asks-if...
How do you see it? Do you think it's impossible to remove the restrictions now?
Let me hear your side.
And then everything will shutdown anyway because nobody will go out. We might get 1-2 months maybe 3 months.
The problem is that the public has been hearing this for almost 9 months now and with the exception of a hospital or two it hasn't happened. You can only cry wolf so many times.
> I mean we are almost at a complete ICU collapse right now already.
Besides a few one off stories could you please provide HN readers with some links?
> And a lot of people will die, not just of covid but of other treatable diseases.
They already are and do you know why? Because hospitals stopped doing "unessential" procedures for months and continue to do so.
> Not to mention we will run out of PPE and medical supplies.
Could you please share an article or three with HN readers where a single hospital has run out of PPE in the USA?
> More doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists will get sick and die.
If Covid is so powerful then why haven't tens of thousands of nurses and doctors died? They are exposed to do multiple times per day.
Look forward to your reply!
You know, because it’s self-evident, that any decision to “end lifestyle restrictions” is a complex one that involves trading off the risk of further COVID deaths versus the economic impact that lockdown causes. This is compounded by the external pressure of funding which constrains the operating parameters of states. None of this is controversial, and is a constant public discussion in every country.
Of course it’s not literally “impossible” for such a decision to be made. If I encounter someone making a good argument that this is the most effective path forward, I’ll listen to it.
Framing it as a rational choice which can just be made, free of consequence, at any point is a bullshit argument, and that’s what you’ve done.
In the absence of any support from the Federal government. many states and localities have re-opened in the face of growing numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths (more than 3,000 people in the US died yesterday from COVID).
Note that states and local governments are forbidden from running deficits, which is why many have reopened and stayed open even though cases/hospitalization/deaths have skyrocketed.
If they want to continue to pay police, fire fighters, EMTs and keep public hospitals open, they need revenue.
Implementing another stimulus as we did last spring, with support for state and local governments would allow us to stabilize the economy while limiting the risk to the populace.
The outside review board for the Pfizer vaccine approved it today. The FDA will likely give emergency approval for it in the next few days.
However, it will take at least six months to vaccinate enough people to limit the carnage.
With a stimulus from the Federal government, we can save lives while we vaccinate as many as will take it.
Not GP, but that's my side.
Edit: Fixed incorrect reference to the Pfizer "virus". That should (and now does) have read Pfizer "vaccine."
I'd love to hear from others who disagree with my take. I think it would be a good discussion. I hope someone who does disagree goes that route rather than other, less expressive ones.