It's been a while since Americans heard anything about the ongoing
negotiations in regard to Biden's build back better agenda.
The legislation that would actually include provisions that
would improve American's lives,
do things like provide universal child care, I'm sorry, Universal pre k.
Some help with childcare, maybe a little bit of time off,
that would be mandatory paid family leave.
Those provisions that would really improve people's lives.
Now it turns out, according to an NBC News reporter,
Jessi Rodriguez, that Senate Democrats have decided to move on.
In fact, they're shelving the build back better agenda and
instead allegedly focusing aggressively, aggressively, on voting rights.
So Democrats apparently don't know how to win.
They know how to pressure the American people over and
over again in one election cycle after the next to vote for them.
They know how to shame voters if they don't go to the polls and vote for
them because they might feel uninspired by the lack of representation they get from
Democratic lawmakers.
They know how to shame, they know how to fear monger about the other side,
they know how to campaign about what a monumental threat someone like
Donald Trump is.
But once they hold the levers of power, once they're in charge of Congress,
once they take control of the executive branch,
they then turn around and give you all these pathetic excuses for
why they can't accomplish a damn thing to improve your life.
Now let's take a little step back, okay?
Cuz I wanna give the full context for what really happened and
why it is that I'm as salty as I am in this given moment, okay?
Biden's agenda initially was one piece of legislation,
a multi trillion dollar piece of legislation that included both physical
infrastructure and what he referred to as human infrastructure.
Now the human infrastructure was basically all of those provisions
that I mentioned earlier, okay?
Help with Elder Care, Universal pre K, paid family leave,
all of these things that would actually help ordinary Americans.
At some point in order to give this illusion that bipartisanship is still
possible in Congress, Biden decided and
agreed to essentially split that piece of legislation up into two parts, okay?
And one of them ended up being the physical infrastructure bill that
corporations love because there's room for them to benefit off of it.
And then all the human infrastructure,
all of the important provisions that corporate America is not in favor of.
The GOP lawmakers certainly aren't in favor of, and
corporate Democrats are paid to be against ends up going in a separate bill.
The build back better agenda ends up essentially being separated from physical
infrastructure.
And why would you look at that?
The corporate handout bill otherwise known as the bipartisan infrastructure bill,
breezes on through, okay?
We got that done, Nancy Pelosi House leadership, okay?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at first promised that there would be no passage
of the bipartisan infrastructure bill until there was passage of the build
back better agenda, the social spending bill.
She reneged on that promise after she received light pressure from
moderate Democrats in the house.
So she lied, let's just keep it real.
She lied, she reneged, call it whatever you want.
She didn't end up fulfilling what she promised to do as house speaker.
And then you have corporate media giving her a massive pat on the back,
as if she's a master legislator who accomplished something so incredible.
Let me just say, accomplishing legislation on behalf of corporate
donors is not really much of an accomplishment.
That is the easiest thing to do as a lawmaker in this country where
legalized bribery has led to complete corporate rule.
The real question is what would happen to the build back better agenda?
What happened to the social spending?
Are they shelving it now?
And for all the progressive lawmakers in the House who ended up reneging
themselves by voting in favor of the bipartisan infrastructure bill,
they're garbage lawmakers.
Harsh words but it's true, they turn their backs on the American people.
They turn their backs on their voters.
And sure, they're gonna give you all of these cutesy little fantasy stories about
how the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which allocates a measly $550
billion in new spending, is gonna do amazing things for the American people.
It's gonna do incredible things for our infrastructure.
They leave out that it's also gonna privatize public infrastructure,
which means that corporations will be in charge of roads and bridges and
parts of the infrastructure that we get to use right now for free.
But once corporations take over,
they're gonna implement those tolls, they're gonna implement fees.
It's gonna be a little more expensive to just get to and from work.
So that's what they accomplished with the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
The fact that you had Republican lawmakers also vote in favor of that
bill tells you quite a bit, means that their donors wanted it.
Corporate America was salivating over it.
If Biden was genuine in wanting to pass his full agenda,
he wouldn't have split his legislation into two bills.
And if Democratic leadership in Congress was genuine in wanting
to pass that bill, in passing Biden's full agenda,
they wouldn't allow that one piece of legislation to be split into two.
And they certainly wouldn't have passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill without
having first passed the social spending bill.
This was their play all along.
Now that's speculation, but how could you not think that?
I mean, these are lawmakers they know to some extent what they're doing,
I don't think that they're all stupid.
They know that if they split the bill into two different parts,
one being favored by corporate America and
the other not being favored by their donors, I wonder what's gonna happen.
And after the leader of the Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal,
decided to fold and play ball with Nancy Pelosi and
corporate Democrats, what does she get in return?
You know what she got in return?
Nancy Pelosi throwing a fit, not taking her seriously,
not speaking to her for some number of days according to a CNN article that
we talked about on the show recently.
What does she get in return?
It's just so incredibly pathetic.
Now let's go back to the claim that the Senate will now aggressively focus
on voting rights.
No they won't.
In order to pass a voting rights bill, whether it's the original voting rights
bill that's more robust or Senator Joe Manchin's pared back voting rights bill,
which does away with any provisions that would reform campaign finance,
they would need to reform the filibuster.
They would need to either do away with or
reform the legislative filibuster, which requires 60 senators
to vote in favor of any piece of legislation in order for it to pass.
You think you're gonna get 60 senators to vote in favor of a voting rights bill in
a 50 50 split senate?
That ain't gonna happen.
You think they're going to reform the filibuster?
That ain't gonna happen.
You have at least, at least two vociferous corporate Democrats in
the Senate who refused to do a damn thing about the legislative filibuster.
And they have the audacity to now turn around and tell you the American people,
yeah, we're gonna shelve build back better for
now because we want to aggressively focus on voting rights.
They're lying to you, and they're insulting your intelligence.
And so when the Democratic Party experiences the slacking that they
deserve in the midterm elections,
don't let them tell you that they lost because of voter apathy.
Don't let them tell you that they lost because people wouldn't get out the vote.
Don't let them tell you that they lost because progressives like me wanna hold
them accountable for their gross, feckless behavior.
They're the ones who failed,
they're the ones who turned their backs on the American people.
They're the ones who used the same games over and
over again in every single election cycle.
The thing that is incredibly unfair about all of this is that while they deserve to
lose, there's no question that they deserve to lose.
We don't deserve the Republican Party, we don't deserve these vicious
lawmakers who essentially just focus on their hatred of people of color.
Their hatred of anyone who doesn't conform to their lifestyle and
what they deem acceptable.
I mean, the Republican Party is nothing more than manufactured culture wars
day in, day out, we don't deserve that.
They're not gonna do anything better for us.
But Democrats, they lose and they lose on purpose.
They're paid to lose by their donors.
And really, the only thing that gave me a little sliver of hope during the Biden
administration, was that progressives would really hold the line.
That progressives would do what needed to be done and
use whatever leverage they have to get provision that Americans desperately need.
But even some of those progressives, not all of them, but
some of those progressives let us down as well.
And as negative as I sound right now, and as black pilled as I might
sound right now, I'm not experiencing this sense of hopelessness,
because there are good things happening in the country.
We're seeing labor movement that we have not seen in this country for
decades, and really, that's our only hope at this point.
I've given up on Congress.
I'm gonna vote strategically, I'm not a nihilist but
to only focus on electoral politics is a massive mistake.
Because if workers don't have power, if the people are not organized,
then Congress really doesn't feel like they need to answer to us.
They certainly do feel like they need to answer to their corporate donors and
the corporate overlords who actually rule this country.
But if workers aren't organized and if they don't flex their power,
we're gonna keep running into the same issue over and over and over again.
Take a look at this country's history.
The only time ordinary Americans received policies that they deserved,
worker protections that they deserved, was when they got together,
they organized their workplaces and they applied pressure.
That's the only thing that works, period.
I'm done with Congress.
Vote strategically, vote however you feel you need to vote.
But I'm done with all of these games and all of these ridiculous campaigns
about how these lawmakers are gonna really represent the working American.
How they're gonna change things around and speak truth to power.
They're not gonna do any of it,
because all of the incentives right now are in the wrong place.
Under the system of legalized bribery, the incentives are in the wrong place, period.