That agenda never materialized, and the government instead cut off the temporary aid programs — leaving many millions of Americans struggling to stay afloat.
Didn’t the Republicans manufacture a debt ceiling crisis and demand the above aid cuts under threat of sending us into default? Am I remembering correctly?
Apparently now it was Biden the whole time?
It’s always baffling to me how easily the republicans can do bad things and then just say “the Democrats did it.” I’m always reminded of when Mitch McConnell filibustered his own bill because the Democrats got behind it.
Remember the tax cuts passed under Trump? Businesses got it forever. Guess whose tax cuts are about to expire, and guess who is going to get blamed for “raising taxes“ afterwards? 
I think it was complete bluff, and Biden probably knew that but the reality is he’s pro-austerity. He can’t say it outright since it’s unpopular, but he’s still quite conservative and believer in the economic/corporate status quo. It might be deliberate, or it might be that he’s literally just not imsginative enough to see outside his own bubble.
i don’t see how you can make this argument when he’s presided over the largest expansion in social spending since the Great Society and has approved something in the ballpark of 4 or 5 trillion dollars in new spending between stimulus bills and his political priorities. a serious debate in the Democratic caucus was over whether to spend “just” 1.75 trillion or go for 2.2 trillion in spending. if this is austerity the word has absolutely no meaning at this point.
I’m a progressive, and nothing pisses me off more than other progressives being useful idiots for the right wing agenda.
What’s the point of whining like this if you’re not willing to understand the political realities of the US government and the current Democratic and Republican parties? Biden didn’t WANT to give up most of his social agenda, but he was forced to give it up in order to get ANYTHING done at all. Manchin and Sinema (may she step on legos barefoot every day for the rest of her life) blocked any attempts to get the social programs through the reconciliation process, and that doomed them because they certainly couldn’t pass the filibuster. Do people think Biden WANTED his social programs to be blocked?
The fact is, because of fifth columnists like Manchin and Sinema, the social programs will be blocked by united GOP obstruction until the Democrats have enough votes to overcome them. If a greater number of dissatisfied progressives actually came out to vote for progress instead of staying home wishing for perfection, we might have had a 52-48 senate majority and the BBB plan might have been passed nearly in its entirety. Instead we had a coal baron and a future Fox News correspondent block all the environmental and social programs that came up for vote and Biden was forced to compromise his vision.
I’m halfway convinced that people like the author of this article don’t really want progress, they want revolution. They don’t actually care about people getting hurt, they just want to see the utopian future they dream of being directly implemented. Newsflash, revolutions are usually a bad thing for the poor. The people who have the most capability to generate and apply force usually come out on top in a revolution. Those people aren’t the poor, they’re usually elites who currently aren’t in power. If the US had a general revolution right now, the new power structure would likely consist of the “good” billionaires and their military leaders, who would eventually coopt the power structure to make certain they stayed on top as usual. Society would be disrupted, millions would suffer, and fundamentally very little would change except the titles of the people exploiting labor.
If you don’t attempt to understand history and the structure of the systems that govern you, you will be continuously taken advantage of by those that do.
NO GOOD. ONLY PERFECT. THE CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD WILL CONTINUE UNTIL WE ARE PURE.
I’m not mad Biden couldn’t do more, I’m disappointed that our system still works like this. A few thousand people in flyover country can stop needed change in its tracks.
Voting more in blue areas might make the Democratic Party more progressive, but it won’t solve the problem of our government giving waaaaaaaay too much power to North Dakota.
I’m politically hopeless but I’ll keep voting D as much as I can because you say it helps.
Oh it’s bidens fault that two of the democrat caucusing senators blocked the social programs he tried to pass? Tell me you don’t understand anything about politics in 2023 without telling me you don’t understand anything
That’s cause he’s still basically a 90s Republican.
… But at least he’s not a straight up nazi
I know it’s hip to call Biden a 90’s R because he didn’t pass every policy the left wants with a slim majority, but do you even know what a 90’s Republican is / stood for? Because that’s when the party turned to Newt and I don’t see him doing ANYTHING close to that.
One of the weird things that sticks out to me from the Gingrich era is a David Letterman top 10 list. Top ten ways to mis-pronounce “Newt Gingrich”. One of them was “Neutered Lungfish”.
So every time Gingrich gets brought up, that’s what goes through my head. “Neutered Lungfish.”
Can we please have a rule for extreme partisan hackery on both sides to be banned? Leave this nonsense on Twitter (or whatever it’s called).
