Corporatist politicians have what’s known as a “love-hate” relationship with the deficit. They love to use the deficit as an excuse for why they can’t enact widely popular social programs but they act like they hate that the deficit prevents them from enacting widely popular social programs. Joe Biden is nothing if not a corporatist politician, so it should come as no surprise that his administration has begun making the usual murmurings of concern about not launching any new spending initiatives that might increase the deficit.
The problem, as Cenk and Ana discuss in this clip, is that Biden’s fellow corporatist Democrats like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Warner, have made it clear that they will not tolerate substantial tax increases on the wealthy to pay for Biden’s infrastructure plan and other initiatives that carry hefty initial price tags. As a result, Biden’s agenda is essentially dead in the water, Cenk says. Cenk also points out that no one - not Democrats, not Republicans, not the media - were saying anything about deficits when Donald Trump was slashing taxes and running up more and more unpaid bills. But now that there’s talk of an agenda that even mildly helps average Americans? Time for everyone to scream about the deficit!
Watch the full clip for additional points like:
- Whether Biden has any idea what he’s doing or if he’s politically oblivious
- How the Biden people are buying into and using Republican framing
- Why spending on infrastructure and other items is an investment that pays major dividends in the future
- How the likely next step is to strip the most important provisions out of these bills
- How running deficits is what homeowners do when they buy a house
- How an actually functioning media would discuss the deficit