Senate Santas Bringing a Lump of Coal and Bucket of Sand
The months-long standoff in Washington DC enabled by the US Senate’s segregation leftover, featuring Joe Manchin of West Virginia And Krysten Sinema of Arizona isn’t going to end this year, according to reports coming out of Washington.
The racist legacy of Sen. Jesse Helms looms large over the upper house of congress, as Democrats seeking modification of the filibuster rule have been unable to craft a compromise.
Sen. Manchin’s negotiations with President Biden haven’t gone well, and Politico reports that it’s getting personal, reportedly because of disagreements over the child care provisions of the Build Back Better Act, even though 93% of children in the Senator’s home state benefit from the soon-to-be-gone Child Tax Credit.
Massive compromises given to gain the Democratic institutionalists’ support have apparently been for nothing, as massive campaign donations from corporate interests have filled his coffers.
An attempt to pivot toward getting passage of voting rights died as Sen. Sinema reiterated that she’s against any change to Senate rules that effectively weaken the filibuster. Her opposition is premised on a fear of Republicans using any change to weaken voting should they take power.
Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer’s move late Wednesday to instead have votes on 22 Biden nominees means action on other legislation won’t be happening this year.
The one piece of legislation the Senate agreed upon this week was the $768 billion defense spending bill, packed with enough pork to emerge $24 billion greater than the administration requested. Left by the wayside was a provision repealing the authorization for military action against Iraq that has been used in recent years to justify a plethora of military actions around the world.
Via David Starr at Daily Kos:
For almost 75 years, there have been defeats, stalemates and false victories in the process of utilizing the military. President Dwight Eisenhower's warning in 1961 of the dangers of the military-industrial complex have not been heeded. Quite the contrary, Congress continues to pile on the money for reckless, imperial debacles.
In an article published in Counterpunch, David Rosen wrote that after Eisenhower's warning, "both Democratic and Republican regimes," under the military-industrial complex, "squandered trillions of dollars and and lives of thousands of U.S. military personnel–to say nothing of the lives of untold number of innocent civilians in war zones..." "[T]he U.S. has engaged in in innumerable wars, skirmishes, stalemates or clandestine military engagements throughout the world." The U.S. transformed "from a global hero defending 'democracy' and 'freedom' to a superpower enforcing the imperialist demands of a corporatist state."
Rosen also wrote that "Total Cold War (1948-1991) military spending (in 1996 dollars) is estimated to have been $13.1 trillion. This is an enormous drain on U.S. resources, monies that could be better spent on other aspects of social life such as education, infrastructure and healthcare."
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