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A discernible, long-simmering tension among some generally like-minded Democrats has spilled into public view in the past few weeks. Its about two health care initiatives in President Joe Bidens Build Back Better legislation and the likelihood that there wont be enough money to fully fund both.

One is a proposal to insure as many as 2.2 million Americans living below the poverty line, or just above it, in a dozen, mostly Southern states. These people are supposed to get coverage through an expanded version of Medicaid, the government program for low-income populations, thanks to extra federal funding that the Affordable Care Act has made available. But the GOP officials who run those states have refused to take the money.

Now Democrats are talking about having the federal government fill this Medicaid gap by somehow covering these people directly. And nobody is pushing for that approach more visibly than House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who has promoted it as a way both to reach some of Americas most vulnerable people and to address long-standing racial disparities in health status.

This is a moral issue for all Americans, Clyburn wrote in an op-ed for Black Press USA this week. I dont want this President and this Congress to ignore existing racial inequities.

The other proposal would bolster Medicare, the federal insurance program for the elderly, by adding vision, hearing and dental benefits. The lack of these features means extra costs for seniors, and puts the program at a disadvantage relative to privately run Medicare Advantage plans that have been drawing away more enrollees.

Bill Clark via Getty Images

The most high-profile advocate for this initiative is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), partly because he sees it as a step toward his ultimate goal: creating a Medicare for All program that would seamlessly and generously cover people of all ages. But he has also emphasized the chance to help seniors who currently cant pay for their dental care. Many live in pain and ultimately require tooth removals. Some end up with even more serious medical problems.

This, to me, is non-negotiable, Sanders said at a press conference this week.

Sanders wasnt directly addressing Clyburn with those remarks, just as Clyburn wasnt addressing Sanders. The two are allies, broadly speaking, long dedicated to the cause of guaranteeing health care as a basic human right.

But fully funding the two programs, alongside yet another provision to shore up the Affordable Care Act, would cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. That would be a lot even in the context of the $3.5 trillion legislation Democratic leaders initially envisioned, let alone something closer to $1.5 trillion, which is what holdout Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have been demanding.

The dilemmas Biden and Democratic leaders face over which health care programs to fund are the same ones they face as they contemplate what to do with other Build Back Better initiatives, like those that would underwrite early childhood programs, housing assistance and alternative energy. Is it better to fund fewer programs at higher levels, or more programs at lower levels? To target scarce funds toward those who need the most help, or to invest in universal programs that might be simpler and touch more people directly?

There are no easy answers to these questions, because every Build Back Better proposal has powerful supporters and sound political logic. And every one addresses a real need.

A Glimpse Into The Medicaid Gap

For Clyburn, and many of his allies in Congress, filling the Medicaid gap isnt simply a matter of principle. Its also a way to help constituents.

Roughly 13% of South Carolinas non-elderly population had no health insurance as of 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That figure was several points higher than the national average, and it probably underestimated the number of uninsured in Clyburns district, which includes some of Columbia and Charlestons poorest neighborhoods.

Studies over the years have documented the hardships people face when they have no insurance. Stuart Hamilton, a South Carolina pediatrician and founder of the Columbia-based Eau Care Cooperative Health system, has seen them firsthand often when treating people who are in the advanced or even fatal stages of a disease because they never got basic care.

Heart attacks go up, strokes really go up, especially in the near-elderly with untreated blood pressure, said Hamilton, who retired from active practice three years ago. And its all preventable.

Lack of insurance also affects peoples finances, by saddling the uninsured with crushing medical bills or making it difficult for them to hold down jobs as Jeff Yungman, a staff attorney with a Charleston-based homeless organization called One80Place, explained in an interview.

So many of the people we see here in the shelter, its not because of drug abuse or mental illness, he said. Its because they havent had appropriate health care and they have health issues that have forced them not to be able to work and not to be able to pay their rent.

Heart attacks go up, strokes really go up, especially in the near-elderly with untreated blood pressure. And its all preventable.

- Stuart Hamilton, Columbia-based pediatrician, on people living in the "Medicaid gap"

In theory, many of these people are eligible for disability payments. In reality, Yungman says, many struggle to get those payments because they dont have the documented medical history that applications require.

If you say you have a bad back, you have to show that youve been seeing a doctor for a bad back, Yungman said. And a very high percentage of these folks ... they cant afford a doctor, they cant afford to go to the clinics, they cant afford to buy the medication. So were hamstrung trying to get them approved for benefits.

Its not hard to imagine what a difference Medicaid would make for such people.

Researchers have repeatedly found that people who get Medicaid are healthier, end up more financially secure and get more access to care, relative to people with no insurance. One especially definitive paper found that Medicaid expansion saved one life for every 200 to 300 adults who got coverage which means, in theory, that bringing expanded Medicaid to states that dont have it could save a few thousand lives every year.

Its hard to imagine a health policy that would do more good dollar-for-dollar than ensuring people below the poverty line can go to the doctor without worrying about how theyre going to pay for it, Matthew Fiedler, a fellow from the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, told HuffPost.

Two Causes, Two Iconic Champions

Strengthening Medicaids life-saving potential, plus the allure of extra federal funding, has been enough to entice GOP leaders in states like Arizona and Michigan to expand the program. But the resistance among South Carolina state officials remains strong, to the great frustration of Sue Berkowitz, director of the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center.

We are constantly hearing from people who reach out to our office and say, I cant get health care, what do I do, I applied for Medicaid and I got turned down, Berkowitz said.

But if the prospects for action from officials in states like South Carolina havent changed, the possibility of federal action has and not simply because Democrats finally control both the presidency and Congress for the first time in a decade. They owe their Senate majority to the wins in Georgia by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both of whom made health care a focus of their campaigns. Warnock has become the Senates most vocal advocate for filling the Medicaid gap.

SAUL LOEB via Getty Images

But the critical push has really come from the House. And Clyburn is as responsible for that as anybody, casting a Medicaid gap plan as a way to help poor people gain wealth, to shore up the finances of struggling rural hospitals and especially to promote racial equity. Of the 2.2 million uninsured people who would be eligible for Medicaid if their states expanded, nearly 60% are Black or Latino, according to estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Clyburns moral authority as a longtime civil rights advocate and the second ever African-American to serve as whip goes a long way toward explaining how the Medicaid gap is still in the policy mix for Build Back Better. So does Clyburns clout with the White House, where everybody remembers the pivotal role his endorsement played in helping Biden win his partys South Carolina 2020 primary and, eventually, the Democratic nomination.

But Sanders has his own kind of authority, as a progressive champion whose persistence and organizing success has forced Washington to take his ideas seriously. He also has his own sway with the White House in part, again, because of his role in the 2020 primaries, when he passed up opportunities to beat up on Biden as too moderate. Later, Sanders worked with Biden on a joint agenda. It didnt insist upon Medicare for All, but included several proposals related to Medicare.

The most well-known of these, a proposal to lower the eligibility age, has basically fallen out of the legislative conversation in part because lawmakers struggled to deal with politically fraught topics like how to avoid undermining existing employer insurance for people who like it. In response, Sanders and his top allies, like Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), have pushed even harder for adding benefits, especially dental.

Last time I checked, your teeth are part of your body and should absolutely be covered by Medicare, Jayapal tweeted in late August. Lets get this done.

Teeth, Health And Politics

Advocates and policy experts have been warning for months that, given the likely fiscal constraints on a spending bill, funding both Medicare dental and a Medicaid gap plan was likely to be difficult. And as the possibility has become more real, Clyburn has presented the trade-offs in increasingly stark terms seizing on the fact that a Medicare dental benefit would cover all recipients, even wealthy ones, and warning of its racial implications.

What is the life expectancy of Black people compared to white people? he told Axios Caitlin Owens earlier this month. I could make the argument all day that expanding Medicare at the expense of Medicaid is a racial issue, because Black people do not live as long as white people ... If we took care of Medicaid, maybe Black people would live longer.

By and large, supporters of Medicare dental have refrained from publicly responding to such statements. Nor have they downplayed the importance of reaching people in the Medicaid gap partly because they, too, feel strongly about insuring low-income people in places like South Carolina.

At the same time, they bristle at the idea that the dental benefit has less value, given widely documented problems with dental care among the elderly.

Almost half of Medicare beneficiaries have no dental coverage at all, according to estimates from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and the proportions are even higher for Black (68%) and Hispanic (61%) Medicare beneficiaries. Even those with policies frequently have co-pays, yearly caps on coverage or both.

Win McNamee via Getty Images

As a result, poorer seniors end up going without dental care until problems become acute, requiring extractions or creating dangers in other parts in the body, since an infection in a tooth can spread via the bloodstream. It happens that way all over the country, and it happens that way in South Carolina.

We definitely have quite a few people from an older population, people with Medicare but no dental insurance, who come in, said Dallaslee Ruquet-Emrich, senior manager of health services at East Cooper Community Outreach, a social services organization that serves low-income communities to the east of downtown Charleston. A lot of times they didnt know they had such serious problems, until its too late.

Its pretty woeful, the discrepancy between what older people need and what they can afford, said Mark Barry, who manages the East Cooper dental clinic. You see people at the end of the game ... they have periodontal disease or they have abscess teeth or they have broken-down teeth that need to be taken out. And so many of those things could have been prevented.

The reality is that most Democrats working on health care, and most advocates working with them, would vastly prefer to take both steps, filling in the gaps of Medicaid and Medicare alike, as Eliot Fishman, senior director of health policy at Families USA, recently told HuffPost.

The same low-income communities where women are dying or getting hospitalized after childbirth, and children are losing Medicaid due to eligibility paperwork, are the communities where adults have no access to health care in non-expansion states, Fishman said. And they are the same communities where a third of seniors are losing all of their natural teeth.

Thats one reason Democratic leaders have discussed downsizing the initiatives somehow, so there would be enough funding in Build Back Better for both. That could mean funding the Medicaid expansion for only a few years or scaling back the dental benefit (by, for example, charging higher premiums, leaving higher out-of-pocket costs and limiting it to prevention at least for the initial years).

A lot of times they didnt know they had such serious problems, until its too late.

- Dallaslee Ruquet-Emrich, East Cooper Community Outreach, on dental problems among the elderly in Charleston.

There are also some policy tweaks that could make things a lot easier. Fiedler, from USC-Brookings, proposed a change to the dental policy formula that could dramatically reduce its cost without affecting benefits.

These are the same sorts of options that Democrats are contemplating as they figure out how to fund other programs in Build Back Better, despite all the pressure to spend less. But every option has serious drawbacks.

Sunsetting the Medicaid expansion after, say, five years could mean the programs renewal would depend on approval from a future Republican Congress or Republican president neither of which feels like it could be counted upon, given recent history. And reducing the dental benefit could leave seniors with such high costs that they would get frustrated with the coverage, or at least find it underwhelming.

The Big Questions About Build Back Better

Lurking behind this is a question that applies to everything under consideration in Build Back Better: whether it even makes sense to try and fund so many options, rather than focusing on a small handful and doing them well.

Theres an argument that spreading the money too thinly will create a bunch of unsatisfactory initiatives that simply fuel cynicism about government, without actually making a big impact on any problems. Theres also a counterargument that change in the U.S. is always incremental and that scaling up existing initiatives is easier than launching new ones.

Politics is a big consideration, too, and thats by necessity. Democratic leaders want to create programs that will survive future, almost inevitable attempts at defunding or repeal by Republicans and, ideally, restore the faith in the public sector that has waned over the past few decades. Democrats would also like something they can show voters in 2022 and 2024, as proof they can govern.

But figuring out which policies would best accomplish those goals is complex, as The Washington Posts Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent noted recently. A dental benefit for Medicare would reach many more people, targeting benefits at older Americans who vote in high numbers and many of whom might not otherwise vote Democratic. Filling the Medicaid gap would matter in states where Democrats have struggled, and let the partys newly elected Georgia senators deliver on a signature promise.

And all of that assumes the policies work as well as advocates hope. Creating new benefits for Medicare would be complex under the best of circumstances, as would devising a federal stand-in for Medicaid. If lawmakers are crafting these policies on the cheap, they may try to save money in ways that ultimately undermine program effectiveness.

The one clear thing is that the choices would be a lot easier if Build Back Better had more funding which is precisely what Manchin and Sinema are arguing against.

Those two (and a handful of other Democrats quietly agreeing with them) object to some of the specific policies in the legislation. They also argue that the cost of all these new programs is more than the government, and by extension the taxpayers, can afford.

Those are fair arguments, with which plenty of Americans agree. But when it comes to basic health care for the poor, dental care for the elderly or any of the other items in Build Back Better, inaction can have costs of its own.

Original post:
The Real-Life Costs Of Shrinking The Democrats Big Spending Plan - HuffPost

Welcome to Mondays Overnight Energy & Environment, your source for the latest news focused on energy, the environment and beyond. Subscribe here: thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

Today were looking at the possible doom of a key clean energy program, the Biden administrations forever chemicals plans and what the latest round of appropriations bills mean for the environment.

For The Hill, were Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk. Write to us with tips: rfrazin@thehill.com and zbudryk@thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @RachelFrazin and @BudrykZack.

Lets jump in.

Reports that clean energy program cut riles Capitol Hill

The Clean Electricity Performance Programs place in the reconciliation bill was cast in doubt late Friday amid reports that it would likely be cut amid opposition from Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinOvernight Energy & Environment Presented by the American Petroleum Institute Democrats address reports that clean energy program will be axed Overnight Health Care Presented by Carequest Colin Powell's death highlights risks for immunocompromised Progressive coalition unveils ad to pressure Manchin on Biden spending plan MORE.

This was met with pushback from a number of Democrats.

It is a moral imperative for humanity and our planets future to reduce and eventually eliminate emissions, tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezAlexandria Ocasio-CortezOvernight Energy & Environment Presented by the American Petroleum Institute Democrats address reports that clean energy program will be axed Democratic retirements could make a tough midterm year even worse Sinema's no Manchin, no McCain and no maverick MORE (D-N.Y.). There are many ways to do it, but we cant afford to give up. Biden admin is already backing too many pipelines - we need clean energy.

Meanwhile, others touted the reconciliation bills other measures, with Sen. Ron WydenRonald (Ron) Lee WydenOvernight Energy & Environment Presented by the American Petroleum Institute Democrats address reports that clean energy program will be axed America can end poverty among its elderly citizens Congress needs to step up on crypto, or Biden might crush it MORE (D-Ore.) highlighting clean energy tax credits.

While I strongly support the Clean Energy Payment Program, its important to note that the overwhelming majority of emissions reductions come from the energy tax overhaul, Wyden said in a statement over the weekend.

Wyden also discussed a carbon price with reporters on Monday.

"I'm working very closely with my colleagues on a carbon pricing issue," he told reporters, adding that moderate senators are interested in working on carbon pricing, particularly in light of recent climate-related events.

A MESSAGE FROM API

Europes ongoing energy crisis should make U.S. policymakers rethink pushing for a future where Americans daily lives and the U.S. economy will be virtually dependent on intermittent energy sources.Read more.

EPA to regulate certain types of 'forever chemicals' in drinking water in 2023

The Clean Electricity Performance Programs place in the reconciliation bill was cast in doubt late Friday amid reports that it would likely be cut amid opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)

The EPA on Monday released its strategy for addressing a type of cancer-linked chemicals called PFAS, including its plans to finish a rule to regulate certain types of PFAS in drinking water in 2023.

PFAS stands for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and these substances are a group of man-made chemicals that have been linked to health problems such as kidney and testicular cancer.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, exposure rates can be difficult to assess, but one 2015 study found PFAS to be in the blood of 97 percent of Americans.

The EPAs overall strategy is focused on researching PFAS, restricting their release into the air, land and water and broadening cleanup efforts.

What are the specifics?: The agencys drinking water limit pertains to certain types of PFAS called PFOA and PFOS, saying it hopes to propose an enforceable drinking water limit for them in fall 2022 and finalize it in fall 2023.

The Trump administration also eyed regulating PFOA and PFOS, proposing its own regulation on the substances last year.

The drinking water standard is a long-awaited milestone for environmental advocates, but some have called for PFAS to be regulated as an entire group instead of on an individual basis because there are hundreds of them and they can occur in mixtures.

The EPA is also developing a new testing strategy for the substances.

As part of that strategy, the agency is expected to require manufacturers to conduct and fund studies, and could issue testing orders by the end of this year.

Read more about the announcement here

Democratic appropriations bills would increase environmental funding by $6B

The 2022 bill would include discretionary funding of $44.6 billion, as well as $2.4 billion for the Wildfire Suppression Operations Reserve Fund.

The bills provisions also include advanced appropriations for the Indian Health Service for the first time. The appropriations include $7.6 billion for Indian Health Service, $1.38 billion more compared to the level enacted in fiscal 2021.

It would also increase funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by $1.3 billion compared to fiscal year 2021, for a total of $10.54 billion. This increase, according to committee leadership, would enable the agency to hire nearly 1,000 staffers shed over the last decade.

The appropriations bill would also increase funding for environmental justice, a major stated priority of Administrator Michael Regan, from $12 million to more than $200 million.

After an unprecedented wildfire season in the western and northwestern U.S., the bill would also provide $3.845 billion for wildfire suppression, $2.45 billion of which would go to the Wildfire Suppression Operations Reserve Fund.

Read more about the appropriations bills here

ON TAP TOMORROW

A MESSAGE FROM API

Europes ongoing energy crisis should make U.S. policymakers rethink pushing for a future where Americans daily lives and the U.S. economy will be virtually dependent on intermittent energy sources.Read more.

WHAT WERE READING

Coast Guard designates cargo vessel as party in interest in oil spill, The Los Angeles Times reports

The Biomass Industry Expands Across the South, Thanks in Part to UK Subsidies. Critics Say its Not Carbon Neutral, Inside Climate News reports

OPEC+ misses target again, as some members struggle to raise oil output, Reuters reports

Judge orders revised Mexican gray wolf recovery plan, E&E News reports

ICYMI

And finally, something offbeat and off-beat: Just right

Thats it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hills energy & environment page for the latest news and coverage. Well see you tomorrow.

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Overnight Energy & Environment Presented by the American Petroleum Institute Democrats address reports that clean energy program will be axed |...

The number of U.S. representatives not seeking reelection is now up to 19. Since our last update, GOP Rep. Anthony Gonzalez bowed out in the face of a Republican revolt in his district over his vote to impeach former President Donald Trump, and Democratic Rep. Karen Bass announced her intention to run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022. And just on Tuesday, Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth announced he would retire from elected office as well.

House retirements are one metric were watching to give us a clue as to how the 2022 midterms will unfold, but on the surface at least, it doesnt look like either party has an advantage in this regard: 10 Democrats are retiring compared with nine Republicans. However, when you dig into the specific reasons that are likely behind each retirement, it does look like Democrats are more worried than Republicans.

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives not running for reelection in 2022, as of Oct. 12, 2021

District numbers and partisan leans are for current districts, which are not necessarily the ones that will be in use during the 2022 midterms.

Partisan lean is the average margin difference between how a state or district votes and how the country votes overall. This version of partisan lean, meant to be used for congressional and gubernatorial elections, is calculated as 50 percent the state or districts lean relative to the nation in the most recent presidential election, 25 percent its relative lean in the second-most-recent presidential election and 25 percent a custom state-legislative lean.

Sources: Daily Kos Elections, news reports

At this stage, six of the Republicans are leaving the House to run for another office. Of the other three, Gonzalez is probably leaving because he would have a hard time winning his Republican primary, Rep. Tom Reed appeared to retire in response to his sexual harassment scandal, and Rep. Kevin Brady said he is leaving partly because he is term-limited out of his position as top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. Arguably, Reed and Rep. Lee Zeldin, who is running for governor, also decided to retire given Democrats control of redistricting in their home state of New York (which means they could be running on bluer turf next year). But considering they also had other factors playing into their retirements, one can argue at this point that no Republicans are retiring primarily out of fear of losing their general election next year.

Retiring Democrats, however, appear to be more motivated by electoral concerns. Only five of the 10 retiring Democrats are running for another office, while four currently represent swing seats: Reps. Filemon Vela, Ann Kirkpatrick, Cheri Bustos and Ron Kind. And only Velas seat is likely to be made safely Democratic in redistricting, although he didnt know that when he announced he was retiring. Its reasonable, therefore, to theorize that fear of losing reelection was a key factor in their decisions to retire.

The 10th retiring Democrat is Yarmuth, who currently represents a safely blue seat anchored by Louisville, Kentucky. But he may be retiring out of fear of losing reelection, too. Thats because Republicans, who control the redistricting process in Kentucky, could eliminate his seat by giving slices of his dark-blue 3rd District to neighboring red districts that can absorb more Democratic voters without becoming competitive a gerrymandering technique known as cracking.

Kentucky hasnt begun the redistricting process yet (at least publicly), so we dont yet know with certainty what its new map will look like. Yarmuths retirement, though, could suggest that he expected Republicans to force him out. But even if they hadnt and the 3rd District remained intact, Yarmuth may have still retired for political reasons: He is currently chair of the House Budget Committee, but he stands to lose that considerable power if Republicans take back control of the House in 2022. His retirement may indicate that hes not optimistic about Democrats chances next year. Political science research has found that politicians are more likely to retire when they see a bad political environment for their party on the horizon.

The good news for Democrats is that politicians make bad pundits: There has historically been a weak relationship between which party sees the most retirements and which party does poorly the subsequent election. But the bad news for Democrats is that, whatever the specific motivation of Yarmuths retirement, history is clearly on the side of Republicans having a strong performance in the 2022 midterms.

Continue reading here:
It Looks Like House Democrats Are Worried About The 2022 Midterms - FiveThirtyEight

WASHINGTONIn their latest effort to bring the centrist lawmaker aboard for the partys signature legislation, Democrats reportedly attempted to woo Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) Monday by taping a single Hersheys Kiss to the reconciliation bills latest draft. Although we understand Joe wont budge on certain issues, we thought a sweet little treat might be just the thing to help move the needle, said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) of the foil-wrapped chocolate candy, which the majority leader had taped to the 329th page of the $2 trillion bills provision for a Child Tax Credit next to a smiley face and the words For You, Joe! Frankly, anything that helps inch us closer to a Clean Energy Standard is worth trying, and if that means sweetening the pot with a tasty morsel to brighten up Senator Manchins day, then so be it. Just making him smile is worth the effort, either way. At press time, Schumer added that should Manchin find the confection to his liking, there could be several more Hersheys Kisses coming his way.

View post:
Democrats Attempt To Woo Joe Manchin For Reconciliation Bill By Taping Single Hersheys Kiss To Latest Draft - The Onion

President Joe Biden speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Conn., October 15, 2021. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

Welcome to the Tuesday, a weekly newsletter about language, culture, and politics. To subscribe to the Tuesday and, please do! follow this link.

The Two Democratic Parties

Gather round, progressive friends, sit down here with the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, and let us speak the truth to one another, for at least a moment: Take a look, if you will, into President Bidens eyes those flat, terrified, watery, senescent eyes that could very well have been plucked from the skull of Robert Byrd or Strom Thurmond, those dull cow eyes that have been misapprehending the comings and goings of life on this earth since the Andrews Sisters were topping the charts with Pennsylvania Polka, those filmy orbs going blank as they fix absently upon the backend of everything from the first-class compartment on Amtrak and tell me: Are you looking into the eyes of a man who gives even one half of a rats furry patootie about your pronouns?

No. Whatever he pretends, no.

There are two Democratic parties, and Joe Biden belongs to the older one: the Pillage Party. Thank God for small favors.

The Pillage Party goes all the way back to Andrew Jackson, and its platform has always been precisely the same: transfer as much money as possible to constituents from non-constituents. Old Hickory and Lyndon Johnson would tell you that was all about helping out the poor folks down on the farm and in the forgotten corners of America, but you and I know that is pure bullsh**. Democrats are perfectly happy to run with something you might think of as a more naturally Republican position if it puts money in the pockets of their partisans: Removing the cap on state and local tax deductions is a Democratic issue, not a Republican one, even though it means tax cuts for the rich, and especially for rich people with expensive houses in expensive neighborhoods. Silicon Valley and Wall Street may vote for Democrats for largely cultural reasons, but Elizabeth Warrens nice progressive neighbors up in Cambridge are feeling the pinch of paying for all that progressivism out of their own progressive pockets. College-loan forgiveness is not exactly No. 1 on the agenda of desperately poor Americans in Democrat-run cities such as St. Louis or Cleveland, where the put-upon proletariat is worried about keeping the heat on this winter, not paying off the tab at Oberlin. Social Security, that epitome of the New Deal, transfers wealth from African Americans and Latinos to whites and, especially, from unmarried African Americans and Latinos to married whites because Ward and June always get theirs.

Franklin Roosevelt very cannily ensured that his New Deal was heavy on middle-class and upper-middle-class benefits, funded through payroll taxes that would remove the stigma of the relief attitude, as he told Luther Gulick of the American Society for Public Administration. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my Social Security program, Roosevelt said. Those taxes arent a matter of economics, theyre straight politics.

Understanding the character of the Pillage Party makes some aspects of our contemporary politics more comprehensible.

On the matter of the social-spending bill, the Biden administration and its congressional allies have followed a very old negotiating strategy: Demand the redonkulous and accept the merely ridiculous as a compromise, trimming a trillion or so off the top. But they will fight for those dollars and that spending, just as Barack Obama was willing to throw away much of the rest of his presidency in order to sign new health-care benefits into law. We should expect like-minded Democrats to be relatively energetic in the pursuit of middle-class benefits such as child-care subsidies and free college educations.

At the same time, the Biden administration has chosen to punt on certain progressive priorities, such as the court-packing scheme that has fueled so many left-wing daydreams. Left-wingers in Congress introduced a bill to expand the Supreme Court from nine to 13 members in order to provide the administration an opportunity to pack the court with politically reliable progressives, but the Biden administration handed the question over to one of those goofy presidential commissions, which will produce recommendations that will be hotly debated and fought over two conservatives recently resigned from the commission in protest but which will produce, in all likelihood, squat in terms of actual change. An administration that wanted to overturn the constitutional order in the pursuit of abortion or gun-control goals would not have handed this off to a blue-ribbon committee. We should not misread what that means: It isnt that the Biden administration gives a fig about the constitutional order; its just that it doesnt care nearly as much about the so-called social issues or gun control as it does about moving money from Smith (R) to Jones (D), and chose not to invest very much political capital in the proposal.

The main political function of the commission is giving conservatives another squirrel to chase, and one suspects that the Biden administration would much prefer to have a culture-war battle over the Supreme Court than to have conservatives instead bothering the president about his involvement in any of his sons shady shenanigans or discovering what personal benefit he may have derived from them. If you are Joe Biden, you dont want to see Hunter on the news not if you could instead have Ted Cruz on there trying to explain originalism to Americans.

Joe Biden belongs to the Pillage Party. And he does not have to negotiate with Republicans nearly as carefully as he must deal with the other Democratic Party: the Freakshow Party. The Freakshow Party has been on the progressive scene for a long time, and if the Pillage Party is The Grapes of Wrath, the Freakshow Party is Last Exit to Brooklyn. Its the Shout Your Abortion and Show Me Your Pronouns! party. The three legs of that wobbly stool are the Jew-Hating Weirdo Left (Sharpton, Farrakhan, Omar, Occupy types, etc.), the Loopy White People Left (NPR, vegan bakeries, college towns everywhere you see a Subaru covered in bumper stickers), and 2SLGTBQIA+ (which I really hope is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs email password). Its natural occupation is that of hall monitor.

Consider this from one of Slates increasingly pornographic (and, apparently, fictitious) advice columns:

We do not allow our children to have their own computers to prevent the risk of them being radicalized by alt-right websites, so our kids share a laptop that we monitor and control access to. We found an excel spreadsheet in Jacks folder that listed the names of all of his classmates, as well as dates and descriptions of their problematic behavior. Some of the descriptions I saw include has a mom who is a cop, no pronouns in insta bio, laughed at a fat joke, lists problematic show as one of their favorites, mimicked a foreign accent, and used cis-normative language.

Maybe thats the work of some right-wing satirist sneaking one in on Slate. But, in any case, the spectacle of some progressive punk kid making a list of pronoun transgressions while getting ready to go all We Need to Talk about Kevin on his classmates thats a pretty good window into the soul of the Freakshow Party. You will never see so much intolerance in the service of tolerance, so much hatred in the service of love, so much ruthlessly enforced conformism in the service of diversity.

They are vicious and petty, but they do not actually matter all that much. What they are is useful. Have you ever used a fan or a loud air conditioner to help you sleep in a noisy environment? The constant, regular, low drone isnt enough to keep you awake, but it is enough to drown out the noises that might keep you up: a dripping faucet, a hotel elevator located a little too close to your room, raccoons on the roof of the cabin, whatever. Thats what the Kulturkampf stuff really is: noise, just enough to keep us from being awakened by the things going bump in the night. This is not to say that culture doesnt matter it does. In fact, it certainly matters more than any other single factor. But the outrage-of-the-day stuff on Twitter and talk radio doesnt really touch or move the culture all that much. Its just churn, white political noise. Partisan-outrage media on the left and partisan-outrage media on the right traffic in the same commodity: disgust. Disgust is the easiest way to produce emotional engagement, slightly edging out fear. But the so-called culture warriors who spend their days advertising new reasons for their audiences to hate people they already hate are at best self-deluding. They arent fighting any kind of culture war in that war, they are not the soldiers but profiteers.

In the context of Texas, I have often said that I worry about Houston more than I worry about Austin. Thats another way of saying that I worry more about the Pillage Party than the Freakshow Party. Freakshow politics is, by its nature, less serious. Its interests are less enduring, its attention span is shorter, and its adolescent motives wear out pretty quickly. That is why you see so many Freakshow partisans graduate to the Pillage Party once they have secured real power. Bill Clinton spent about 10 minutes in the 1960s counterculture before he figured out what real power looks like. Barack Obama could not have been more pleased to move on from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to Warren Buffet. Hillary Rodham did not grow up to join the Marxist vanguard she joined the board of Walmart. The demands of wokeness change from day to day: One day, its engaging in Maoist self-criticism sessions and denouncing ourselves for our privilege, the next day, its pretending to believe that Bruce Jenner is a woman named Caitlyn. That sort of thing has been keeping conservatives hopping from one foot to the other since about 1968, but the Left was never really able to build a stable political movement on top of that: 1968 gave us Richard Nixon, the radicalism of the 1970s gave us Ronald Reagan, the 1990s gave us Newt Gingrich and the real beginnings of what would later become Tea Party Republicanism, and the turn of the century was dominated by George W. Bush and the foreign-policy agenda he never wanted to be the centerpiece of his presidency.

It wasnt until Barack Obama that the American Left started to figure out how to make it work: While Donald Trump and other jibbering jackasses of that kidney were going nuts about Obamas birth certificate and the Freakshow Party was pitching a circus tent in lower Manhattan, Obama was busy pillaging: creating expensive new health-care benefits that served to entrench his own personal power even as it decimated (more than decimated, in fact) his party in the states, working through green energy programs and the like to help ensure that Wall Street and Silicon Valley saw their financial interests aligned with the Democrats as much as their cultural interests are, etc. As a candidate, Obama fumed to his New York City moneymen buddies that he was fed up with the teachers unions and their cynical rent-seeking, which was a message very much tailored for an audience whose own children would never see the inside of a public school; once he had their money and their votes, he forgot all about that, because the teachers unions are, in fact, the textbook case of Pillage Party politics: You get a few million people relying on you for oversized salaries and generous benefits, and they volunteer as your foot soldiers.

Obama was, of course, Freakshow-adjacent, and he surely is a freak at heart, but he didnt actually practice very much in the way of Freakshow politics: sharp words for the Cambridge, Mass., police, that sort of thing, most of it pretty low-cost for him, politically. But his opponents wanted to chase the Freakshow, and he was clever to let them, and to occasionally goad them. Meanwhile, it was pillage, pillage, pillage.

Biden may have learned a little something from that. Hes got trillions going out the door, and his colleagues moderate position is giving a trillion or two back in negotiations. The Right, meanwhile, is chasing its tail: Masks! Mandates! Iodine! Ivermectin!

You might think that Republicans could make that strategy work, too. For years, the Left offered much the same analysis of the GOP that I offer of Democrats: that the social conservatives were basically running interference for the tax-cutters and business-deregulators. And there may have been something to that, once. But while we still have two Democratic parties, theres only the one Republican Party still standing: the Putz Party.

The GOP Gaggle of Putzes.

Which Brings Us To . . .

There has been some interesting back-and-forth and some positively tedious back-and-forth! about the proposal from various anti-Trump/anti-Trumpism conservatives to set up a new political party so that Reaganite ideas might have a political home. I dont think very much of the idea of a new party, because I do not think that there are enough anti-Trump conservatives to make much difference as an electoral matter, even as spoilers, though some of my more psephologically inclined colleagues believe otherwise.

But, if youll allow me, I think I can clarify the terms of the debate: On one side, we have people who think that the most important thing for the long-term good of the country is to keep Democrats from holding power for the next ten or 20 years, and, on the other side, we have people who believe that the most important thing for the long-term good of the country is to keep Trumpists from holding power for the next ten or 20 years. I think there are good-faith arguments for both positions, and I have even seen one or two of those increasingly rare specimens.

What conservatives are likely to end up with, in any case, is a worst-of-both-worlds outcome: Trumpists do not have the necessary attention span to hold power nationally on anything but a sporadic basis, and they lack the kind of positive policy agenda that would help them to organize themselves into a genuine political movement instead of the personality cult that they are today. At the same time, the economic incentives of right-wing media more or less ensure that Trumpism will remain enough of a force within the Republican Party for long enough to cripple it for a generation. Donald Trump was for many years a generous donor to Democratic campaigns, from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Chuck Schumer, but his deformation of the GOP will be his lasting gift to the Democrats.

I wouldnt be at all surprised to see the Republicans have a very good midterm election. But there is a difference between having power and deserving power and an even vaster gap between having power and knowing what to do with it. Still, there may be some electoral victory, but I do not think that that will change the fact that the GOP is now simply too damaged and disreputable to provide a useful channel for the conservative electoral project. There are a few good men left in the Republican Party, but they mostly are there out of mere sloth. And, if theres an argument for a new party, thats really it: Conservative ideas and policies need some electoral instrument, and the Republican Party is no longer that.

In a sense, conservatives are still struggling with the question of 2016: Who deserves to lose more?

You may as well ask whether its better to have testicular cancer on the left side or on the right side. Cancer is cancer.

Words About Words

Pronouns matter. A reader shares this from a news report: A driver has died after striking two deer in the road, which caused them to veer and roll into an oncoming vehicle. What the sentence says is that the deer swerved into the path of an oncoming vehicle; what it means is that the driver swerved into the path of an oncoming vehicle.

A New York Times headline reads, badly: It Wasnt Just My Life on That Stage. So Was My Purpose. There are a couple of ways to write that to avoid the awkwardness: My Life Was on That Stage So Was My Purpose, or, It Wasnt Just My Life on That Stage It Was My Purpose. You want the parallel construction rather than the train wreck. One of the things that I noticed when teaching writing is that inexperienced writers often forget what they have just written once they move on to a new sentence. For that reason, they dont do certain things that would improve their prose, such as varying the length and structure of sentences within a paragraph or building toward a conclusion. There isnt anything grammatically wrong with either of those sentences, in the same way that there isnt anything wrong with either Irish Spring Deodorant Soap or a blueberry pie. The trouble comes from trying to combine them.

A couple of readers write to share that they have gone through life thinking the opening line of that Fugazi song is not ahistorical but hey, sorta cool.

Rampant Prescriptivism

What about people who use try and when they mean try to? Should we send them all to go live in a colony somewhere?

There isnt anything necessarily wrong with try and. This is a matter of writing what you mean: The most likely outcome is that we will try and fail to pass the bill, or, We will try and hope for the best. These do not mean the same thing as: We will try to fail to pass the bill, or We will try to hope for the best.

The best way to avoid trouble is to think about what the words you are writing actually mean, not what it is that you are trying to say. If you do that, you will try and write what you mean.

Send your language questions to TheTuesday@NationalReview.Com

Home and Away

Inflation causes higher Social Security spending, and higher Social Security spending causes inflation. Welcome to the vicious circle. More in the New York Post, which is, as far as I know, the only newspaper to have an entire Public Enemy song dedicated to denouncing it.

The Marquis de Sade wrote about La philosophie dans leboudoir politics in the bedroom. In our time, its straight to the toilet. More from National Review, which is, as some of you apparently need to be reminded, a fortnightly magazine, which means that it comes out every two weeks.

You can buy my latest book, Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Wooly Wilds of the Real America, here. Its the sort of thing that gets you called an elitist by people who think this is a put-down even though they are fully aware that you work at a magazine founded by a guy who installed a harpsichord on his yacht.

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Recommended

Last week I mentioned, but hardly did justice to, Mark Leonards new book, The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict. From trade to immigration to social media, the book covers a lot of ground, but covers it very intelligently.

In Closing

Part of me hopes that my friend Kathryn Lopez will write a novel. Her observations about medical waste are the sort of thing that a modern American Dickens might make something of.

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The Pillage Party and the Freakshow Party - National Review