Fresh after the Virginia losses, Joe Biden got the "victory" he was looking for, winning House passage on his pork-filled $1.3-trillion "infrastructure" bill.
According to the Washington Examiner:
S
peaker Nancy Pelosi wrestled her reluctant liberal faction into voting to pass a bipartisan infrastructure package, providing President Joe Biden with a desperately needed legislative victory. The House passed the bill late on Friday, 228-206, with 13 GOP votes, just enough to give Democrats the bare majority needed to pass the bill. Six Democrats voted against the bill.
The $1.2 trillion measure passed the Senate on Aug. 10 and had been languishing in the House, where liberals had refused to help pass it unless a $1.75 trillion social welfare bill was approved along with it.
The infrastructure measure was pushed over the finish line in the House after last-minute lobbying from the president, who called reluctant liberals huddled in a committee room to assure them the social welfare measure bill, which he named the Build Back Better Act, would not be left behind.
He issued a statement during debate on the bill, pledging, "I am confident that during the week of November 15, the House will pass the Build Back Better Act."
Now that the House has passed the infrastructure bill, Biden can sign it into law.
This is pretty disgusting, given that if this bill is like all the other infrastructure bills passed in the past 20 years, nobody's road is going to get fixed, and nobody's bridge is going to get upgraded, and the broadband thing will be something leftists continue to tout and talk about. The cash will fall into the hands of politically connected cronies and their greenie contracts or else be used to bail out spendthrift blue states, if not wind up in bloated leftist public employee union pension funds with wokester investment requirements that somehow always end up underfunded. The bill for the mess will add $300 billion to the deficit, which the taxpayers will in the end have to "pay for." Hellooo, tax hikes.
For anyone normal, it's a rotten thing. For any Republican who's normal, it's frustrating as heck to see that 13 gullibles from their own party actually voted "yes" on the scam.
But to be fair and objective about this, it's not as bad as it could have been. And to look at the silver lining, it's the congressional leftists who now have the most to worry about in the wake of this passage. It's not the conservatives.
Three reasons stand out for this argument:
One, the decision to hold the vote at all was an override of the congressional left's bid to hold the whole thing hostage to their Bernie Sanders–crafted "reconciliation" bill of social spending. The congressional progressive caucus and its "Squad" fanatics had demanded either a vote on both bills or else a vote first on their social spending bill (not even possible, given the reconciliation rules) before they'd consent to voting on the infrastructure bill. For about three months, they'd held the matter hostage, forcing Pelosi to halt the votes, and ensured that nothing got done. It was their porkulus way or the highway, and, for a while, they were successful.
Pelosi broke through that gambit by recruiting 13 moderate and RINO Republicans to vote for the infrastructure bill and somehow got the broader congressional progressive caucus to agree to vote on that much, too, in exchange for passage of a rule to put the social spending porkulus part of the bill upfront for the next vote. That was a bitter pill for the left, but Nancy has a way of getting her way with them, which probably includes threats of some kind. Nevertheless, six Squadsters, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, stuck to their guns and voted against passage of the infrastructure bill on the high-chair grounds that they didn't get their Bernie-crafted bill passed alongside it. On that matter alone, they're now irrelevant, because the bill's passage sends its own message: that Nancy doesn't need their votes for passage, because she's now got the moderate Republicans.
How does it feel to be irrelevant, Alex?
Two, the bill wasn't all that bad as far as I can tell. I read the long CNN description of it here — roads, bridges, broadband, bullet trains, cash to favored black communities (that vote Democrat) divided by ugly highways and tram lines, Amtrak bailout, electric vehicle chargers (fueled by coal and natural gas), electric school buses, oink, oink, oink. Three hundred billion dollars will be added to the national debt from this, and that is bad stuff, but not as bad as it could have been. As far as I can tell, I don't see any of the sick stuff that has been bruited around in past months — tens of thousands of new IRS agents, power to spy on all U.S. bank accounts with $600 transactions, illegal alien amnesty, green news deal, gas taxes, tax hikes galore, the stuff of nightmares. All of that is found in the porkulus "reconciliation" bill, which the progs pine for. The Examiner noted that some creepy greenie passages were thrown out of the infrastructure bill, too, making it a little less horrible.
Three, the bill passed is kind of emblematic of the message to Democrats from the voters in Virginia: either govern moderately or get thrown out. This bill did pass because it was moderate, so by the same logic, the other one, the extremist one, is very unlikely to pass. The moderate Republicans probably won't be on board with Nancy for that, while the Squad will find itself roadblocked when it comes time for a Senate vote. Don't think Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are suddenly going be interested in voting for Bernie Sanders's porkulus after Bernie demonized Manchin in a West Virginia newspaper and his neighboring blue state of Virginia just elected a Republican governor as well as numerous other Republicans up and down the political pecking order.
As evil and out of touch as Pelosi seems, it must always be remembered that she's a power-monger. She likes legislative victories. If she can get them the progressive way, fine and dandy' if she can get them without the crazies of the Squad who hate her anyway, then even finer and dandier. The old pol is on her way out and wants to leave on a high note.
What we are seeing with the passage of this bill is a return to incrementalism in the Democrats. They aren't going for leftist lunacy at this point because they know that voters can't stand it, and now it's too close to election time to sneak it through. What's more, the Virginia voters have advised them what's coming down the pike as their extremism remains naked to the voters. These Democrats know that their only hope now is to govern moderately, and apparently, the process has started. We saw this when Newt Gingrich and his congressional Republicans in the 1990s instilled discipline in Bill Clinton by forcing him to sign a big welfare reform bill and let him have his host of small rather than large pork projects. Remember how Bill touted his "midnight basketball" programs? I suspect this is what is coming next for the Democrats, which is...very bad news for the Squad.
The trend now is toward "moderate" in a bid to head off the oncoming truly conservative takeover, which should happen by 2022. Democrats know they'd better straighten up to something recognizable to voters to survive the coming tsunami. It probably won't work, given that the ball is rolling. But above all, the trend is not the Squad's friend.
That renders the Squad and all its green-red power dreams of taking over the country...kind of irrelevant. It's actually the Squad that has more to worry about from the passage of this porky infrastructure bill than Republicans. And come to think of it, Joe Biden, who threw in his lot with them.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/beneath_the_infrastructure_passage_celebration_progs_have_plenty_to_worry_about.html
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GOP betrays its base — again! 13 GOP members help pass Biden's porky $1.2-trillion 'infrastructure'
Yesterday, thirteen House Republicans bailed out Joe Biden's and Nancy Pelosi's agenda by voting to pass their $1.2-trillion "infrastructure" bill.
This list of defectors includes Reps. John Katko (R-N.Y.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Jefferson Van Drew (D-N.J.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Don Young (R-Alaska), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) who voted "yes" on the bill.
The bill advances the following items promoted by the woke and far-left:
- "Gender identity" as a protected class
- "Digital equity" grants partly based on racial or ethnic minority status
- State-mandated carbon reduction programs
- Funding for "zero-emission vehicles"
- "Over-the-road bus tolling equity"
- Roughly $2.5 billion to expand U.S. border-processing stations for migrants from impoverished Central American nations and other regions around the world claiming asylum.
It seems likely after the elections in Virginia and New Jersey that the Democrats are going to suffer a series of defeats during the midterm elections in 2022. Hence, they are going to use this period to push their agenda as far as they can.
The Democrats know they can count on certain Republicans to enable them to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Before we pass judgment on these 13 Republicans, let's go back to 2016, when Donald Trump won the presidency.
It was a rude awakening for Democrats and a time to look inward and take remedial action to win back voters.
Instead, the Democrats behaved like the jilted lover who cannot accept rejection. They refused to concede that the public had voted against them. The voters were blamed for being ignorant and bigoted.
In time, they launched their most audacious disinformation campaign of Russia-Trump Collusion.
There was not an iota of evidence, but it was endorsed by Democrats on the Hill, rogue intelligence personnel, and liberals beyond Washington. It passed through the cacophonous echo chambers of the legacy media.
Such was the impact of the campaign that Republicans on the Hill, members of Trump's Cabinet, and even pro-Trump voices in the media were shamed into conceding that there was Russian interference — i.e., the election was rigged.
It caused the appointment of a special counsel to investigate. The "investigation" cost the taxpayers $32 million and more than two years of uncertainty.
What is amazing is that this occurred when the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House.
Trump was obviously exonerated, but Democrats insisted they were right. They blamed then-Attorney General Bill Barr for concealing the report and the White House for destroying the evidence.
Even now, they will continue with their lie despite the Durham probe now exposing their falsehood.
It has been almost a year since Biden occupied the White House, and his record has been a disaster.
Inflation is out of control; gasoline prices have risen; the supply chain crisis means that essential items may not reach shopping centers; the IRS wants to monitor bank transactions; and the border is open, leading to a historic surge of illegal aliens. They are considering $450,000 payments to illegal migrants separated from their families at the border. Vaccine mandates are hampering essential services and causing unemployment. Afghanistan was a total disaster of chaos, defeat, and instability, while China is emboldened.
Hunter Biden brokered shady deals in Ukraine and China that earned him millions when Joe was vice president, and now, when he is president, Hunter's paintings fetch a price higher than works of Claude Monet and Edgar Degas at anonymous art auctions, pointing to likely bribery and influence-peddling. This merits the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the conflict of interest and to know if Biden is compromised or is susceptible to blackmail.
How do the Republicans react?
A majority remain silent. The Senate and House minority leaders are missing.
Some Republicans appear on Fox News to condemn the Democrats. Others have "testy" exchanges with Biden officials during Senate and congressional hearings.
But beyond the theatrics, nothing is done to block or remedy the missteps of the Biden administration.
If challenged, these Republicans in name only helplessly say the Democrats control Congress, the Senate, and the White House. They urge you to vote for them in 2022 for change to occur.
However, in 2016, the Democrats were in an identical position that the Republicans are in today but managed to wreak havoc.
It's the result of Republican inaction that the Democrats are behaving like monarchs who do as they please.
We focus on the Democrat-led Washington establishment, which is the root cause of this problem. Members of the establishment include government officials, leadership in the armed forces and intelligence services, members of the legacy media, showbiz, foundations, most billionaires, and academia.
The establishment subscribes to "groupthink," and anybody such as President Trump who challenges this status quo is treated with extreme ferocity.
The establishment funds the political campaigns of its members. If any member were to lose an election, the establishment ensures that the members get lucrative jobs as lobbyists or media pundits.
The establishment helps family members secure positions in prestigious places of employment. The establishment specializes in legalized corruption to ensure that its members live well.
The establishment has ceaseless contempt for the working class, middle America, conservatives, and above all MAGA-supporters.
Owing to the myriad benefits of the establishment, everybody in Washington, including Republicans, is desperate to be accepted.
Most Republicans are also fearful of vicious attacks from the establishment-run legacy media, hence they endorse climate change, identity politics, BLM, and more.
It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the Republicans may have devised a strategy to placate both the establishment and their voter base.
They put on a performance on Fox News or during hearings. The voter watches videos of his representative or senator excoriating the behemoths of the establishment, conflating words with action. The deception is complete.
The trick is to offer the voter an illusion that they are different. But irrespective of who controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, it is the establishment that runs the show.
Perhaps these Republicans have a tacit understanding with the establishment. They will put on a show for their voters, but when it is time to vote — i.e., when real change has to occur — they side with the establishment, for which they will be handsomely rewarded later.
An ineffective ally is worse than an enemy. The enemy is doing what is expected by attacking you. But the real betrayal is when the ally becomes either a passive bystander or a covert supporter of the attacker.
The rapidly changing news cycle often causes us to forget the past and focus on the present. This is exactly what the 13 Republican defectors are hoping for.
It is time for voters to wake up.
It is time to thoroughly evaluate candidates by their actions and not by empty words.
It is essential to primary out all the pretenders and defectors. Replace them with brave, confident, and ideologically committed candidates in their place.
Merely electing Republicans is not enough if their loyalty lies with the establishment.
The likes of President Trump, Glenn Youngkin, Ron DeSantis, Rand Paul, Devin Nunes, and a few others have shown how they can be effective, fearless, and independent.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/gop_betrays_its_base__again_13_gop_members_vote_for_bidens_porky_12_trillion_infrastructure.html
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/11/06/dem-rep-jacobs-passing-reconciliation-bill-is-most-fiscally-responsible-thing-we-can-do/
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/11/06/buttigieg-wed-be-closer-to-wealthy-paying-fair-share-with-50-top-tax-rate/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/11/06/13-republicans-save-the-squad-from-voting-for-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill/
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/11/06/gabbard-claims-of-dog-whistle-politics-in-youngkin-win-shows-dems-think-were-stupid-were-dogs/
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