Amazon Union Vote Looking Good In Staten Island, Bessemer Not Over Yet!
There are still over 400 ballots that could swing things in Alabama.
Last year, Amazon spent more than $4 million on anti-union "consultants," many of whom were paid $3,200 a day to hang around their plants in Bessemer, Alabama, and Staten Island, New York. There, they discouraged workers from voting to unionize and held "captive audience meetings" in which workers were required to sit and listen to these consultants talk about how bad organized labor is, as if what Amazon is really concerned about is workers having to pay union dues and not having to pay those workers more.
They may soon find out it was all for naught: It's looking as though workers at Amazon's Staten Island warehouse are likely to vote to unionize. Vote tallying started on Wednesday, and they are currently down to the last box of votes — the tally is 2050 in favor and 1574 against, a difference of 476 votes. The margins have been widening with each tally, so it's real tough to see how Amazon could eke out a win here.
The leader of the effort to unionize the Staten Island warehouse is former Amazon worker Chris Smalls, who was fired in 2020 for protesting the company's lack of COVID-19 safety conditions.
Via BBC:
For 11 months, the 33-year-old and his team have staked out a spot opposite his former workplace, the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, intercepting staff on their way home to make the case that they need a union to fight for them in negotiations with the e-commerce giant.
His team are seeking higher pay, longer breaks, more paid time off and paid medical leave, among other changes. They want to convince workers that a union will be a more effective way to raise complaints over rules like one that requires staff to work unscheduled overtime shifts.[...]
Organisers say the stakes are nothing short of the future of the American worker, pointing to Amazon's rank as the second largest employer in the US.
"We need to take down Amazon. We need these workers to organise," says Derrick Palmer, who helped Mr Smalls organise his 2020 protest and was also disciplined (but not fired) by Amazon, which cited social distancing violations. "We need them to know they have the power."
Things have not been so hopeful in Bessemer, Alabama, where about 53 percent of the workforce has voted against unionization. Still, while many outlets have reported that the workers there rejected unionization, there are 416 challenged ballots left to be counted — about 15 percent of the total votes — that could still swing the election in the union's favor.
Even if the union doesn't win in Alabama, it's a big difference from the plant's vote last year, in which workers voted 2 to 1 against unionization. This was likely due to the fact that Amazon pressured the US Postal Service to install a mailbox on Amazon property, controlled by its own security guards, so they could keep an eye on those voting in the election, and engaged in a lot of other shady anti-union activities — which is why the NLRB allowed the workers to hold a second election this year.
However, even just one plant voting to unionize is a huge deal, both as a victory for labor advocates who have been critical of Amazon's labor practices and union-busting activities for years, and for Amazon workers as a whole. Because when one group of workers unionize, other workers see that it can be done and see how well it works for them, and they end up voting in favor of unionization as well.
Amazon is spending that money for a reason. It didn't spend $4.3 million in one year on "anti-union consultants" to prevent one or two warehouses from unionizing — which would obviously cost the company a lot less than $4.3 million. They did it because they knew that those warehouses unionizing will make it really difficult to scare other workers out of unionizing once they see that the sky didn't fall and the workers at the unionized warehouses are getting a better deal than they are.
So here's hoping, for workers everywhere, that Staten Island manages to pull this one off. And hell, Alabama too.
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.
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Who Is GRRR MAD At Joe Biden's Budget Today?
What are they protesting? What have you got?
Now that Joe Biden has released his budget request for fiscal 2023, with its call for new taxes on the super-wealthy, as well as increases in spending for the military and for policing, the reviews are coming in, and they are about what you'd imagine: Progressives wish the budget had included more of their priorities, which they'll try to write into upcoming legislation, and Republicans are griping that Joe Biden is an evil socialist because he didn't come up with a budget written by the Heritage Foundation. (We are joking, of course. The Heritage Foundation is far too liberal for many Republicans these days.)
Wall Street Journal: Joe Biden Now A Red
Predictably, the Wall Street Journal does not care for the proposed "billionaire minimum tax," which would tax the 700 richest Americans 20 percent on income and unrealized investment income over $100 million, because what about the honest hardworking American billionaires? Will no one think of the billionaires? The editorial fulminates,
So much for President Biden’s pivot to the political middle. The fiscal 2023 budget he unveiled Monday re-proposes most of the bad ideas that haven’t passed Congress and adds a new one—a tax on wealth that he refused to endorse as a candidate in 2020. On the economy, he’s pivoting further left—presumably to fire up sullen progressives in November.
The tax Biden proposes gets at one of the chief drivers of economic inequality: The rich make money differently from you and me. Their wealth doesn't come from "income" (i.e., a salary) as it does from investments, which are only taxed when they're sold — and even then, they're taxed as capital gains, and at a much lower rate than the tax on income. (Also, instead of selling them, the rich just borrow against them, for eternity.) And of course, the very rich are experts at avoiding capital gains taxes, even after they die.
SPLAINER: Won't Someone Think Of Our Billionaires Who Pay No Taxes?
Former Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp Now Pushes Tax Breaks For Rich F*ckwads
The Journal is especially mad that the new tax would apply both to regular income and to the increase in value of assets in a tax year, even if the investors don't sell the assets (which would make them subject to capital gains taxes instead). The editors complain this is very tricksy, because the proposed tax is "redefining wealth as income," and that's somehow extremely unfair to the super-wealthy who already avoid most taxes.
A better idea, the Journal suggests, would be to cut the capital gains tax to zero, because just think of all the economic activity that would unleash!
Also too, the editors warn, don't be fooled by the sneaky Democrats' insistence that only the very richest Americans would be affected:
The Administration says the tax would apply only to the top 0.1%—meaning hundreds of successful entrepreneurs and small business owners who accumulated wealth over decades through innovation and hard work. But these new taxes always start out applying to a few and then spread to millions.
Oh gosh, you mean we might start taxing the obscene wealth of even more of the One Percent? Stop threatening us with a good time, guys. We're willing to venture just a little way down that particular slope, which is a lot less slippery than the Journal would have people believe.
Also, perhaps to see whether anyone laughs, the editorial suggests that taxing some of the wealth of the very richest could have horrifying effects, like causing massive inflation and a whole new recession.
We guess we should be content that at least the Journal didn't argue that taxing the increase in value of assets would amount to aborting investors' profits before they could even be borned.
Progressive Caucus Leader Pramila Jayapal: Hey, Good Start!
As we noted yesterday, Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal is not a fan of the budget proposal's calls for additional military spending, a point she reiterated in an interview with NPR yesterday, though she also said of the overall budget plan,
"there are many good things in the budget, from historic increases to antitrust enforcement, money for child care development, block grants, Department of Labor, many other pieces that are very good domestic investments."
Jayapal also noted that while the budget didn't specifically call for passage of all the social services items in the Build Back Better reconciliation bill, the House can still move forward with "investments in child care and housing and many of those pieces," because
"there is a reserve fund in the budget that is essentially being kept there to say we will dedicate a certain amount of money to whatever we can pass legislatively. And that, of course, is the work we're doing right now [...]
"I think that it's clear after the fight we had on Build Back Better, we ran up against a block in the Senate. And so the Reserve Fund is a way to say let's get as much as we can done from those priorities. So I don't believe that all those priorities are dead yet. I just think we're going to still have to do a lot of work to try to get the 50 votes we need in the Senate to be able to pass as much of those priorities as we can."
Jayapal also called on President Biden to use his executive authority to help Americans get a fairer shake, noting that the Progressive Caucus has identified 55 executive actions Biden could take on matters from access to health care to raising wages. Oh, hey, looks like that's another Wonkette policy story for me to write soon!
Congressional Republicans: Why Not Spend Everything On Military?
Roll Call brings us a potpourri of Republican grumbling about the completely inadequate (and record-high) military portion of the budget proposal because at $813 billion (before supplemental aide to Ukraine is added in), it simply isn't enough money for guns and tanks and planes and missiles.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, insisted that the budget “woefully” under-funds defense contractors and that the budget as proposed "will go nowhere as is." Shelby cautioned that when the Senate gets its hands on the defense budget, "We might need some plus-up in defense, because of the world’s situation,” which is, as ever, perilous.
Those worries about the US's wholly inadequate defense spending were shared by Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Mississippi), who noted that Biden's three percent increase in military spending doesn't come anywhere near Republicans' call for a five percent hike in spending on top of inflation. Kelly told Roll Call, "This is a dangerous time, and we need to continue to raise that.”
We certainly understand Kelly's concern, since the US defense budget merely outspends the next 11 countries in the world, combined. We should be outspending way more countries than that!
Also too, while Republicans fret we're not spending enough on things that go boom, they're also very worried the US is spending too much on everything else, and we need to stop that right away because inflation. House Budget Committee ranking member Jason Smith (R-Missouri) was aghast, saying,
"Spending $73 trillion just seems like it's only going to fuel the inflation fire. [...] I'd like to know how you're going to help the people of southern Missouri to be able to afford food on the table, clothes on their backs and gasoline in their cars."
In fact, Rep. Smith was so aghast at the runaway federal spending that he forgot to mention that $73 trillion covers the entire 10-year total of federal spending projected in the budget, which includes stuff like Social Security and Medicare that the government is committed to spending automatically. In mere reality, Roll Call points out,
That's about $1.4 trillion more than "baseline" funding, or projections of spending that would occur without enacting Biden's proposals.
In other words, about $140 billion per year above baseline, which doesn't sound nearly so frightening, so why would a Republican even mention it?
The Roll Call piece also notes that Democrats are still hoping to pass some version of Build Back Better this year, if a way can be found to get Sen. Joe Manchin ("D"-West Virginia) on board for some mix of climate and social policy spending. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called passing a reconciliation bill a "high priority," adding that
"It’s going to be hard. We know that. We’ll try to get as much done as we can that gets 50 votes. That’s where we’re at. There’s a ways to go."
For his part, Manchin is back to being opaque, oracular, and infuriating, telling reporters Monday that
he personally has no deadline for coming to an agreement, although others have talked about trying to reach a deal before the July 4 recess to give both chambers time to process it before all momentum is lost in the height of midterm election season.
But Manchin made no promises. "I'm not saying anything is going to be done," he said.
Well heck, this is certainly no time to be doing anything, now is it?
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Mitch McConnell Kills Year-Round School Meals. Politico Blames 'Congress.' Go F*ck Yourself Politico :)
Go fuck yourself from both sides, for that matter.
When Congress passed the great big omnibus spending bill earlier this month, there was one item that we just barely noticed at the time. The bill funds the US government for the rest of fiscal 2022 — that is, through September — but one item it didn't include was an extension of the federal program that waived eligibility requirements for school meals, so any family that wanted the meals could sign up, year round, regardless of income. Without the extension, the old eligibility requirements will kick back in place on June 30. Yes, while the pandemic is still with us.
That's actually a pretty significant loss for low-income families, since the USDA waiver program, part of the pandemic relief packages going back to the very first one, provided school meals to an additional 10 million kids per day.
Schools and nutrition advocates had been expecting the program to be extended at least a year (and there's a good case to be made that universal school meals should be permanent, like in some kind of civilized country). So what kept that from happening? As Politico reported earlier this month, there's a real simple reason: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was absolutely opposed to the extension. As a "GOP leadership aide" explained to Politico, the idea was to get control of government spending and return schools to "normal." In Republican-speak, that means free school lunches must be a mark of shame, not something families should rely on.
Also, it was absolutely vital to not spend the $11 billion the extension would have cost, because fiscal responsibility starts with hungry kids.
Not that you'd necessarily know that killing off the school meal funding was entirely McConnell's doing, because Politico had to go and muddy the waters. Instead of headlining the piece "Free school meals end due to McConnell opposition," Politico framed it as if there were many people responsible for the elimination of the waiver program: "Finger-pointing ensues after Congress fails to extend universal school meals." As journalist David Roberts tweeted in an excellent thread on the Politico fiasco,
"Finger-pointing ensues." What? McConnell did it! You can argue over his reasons, but everyone acknowledges he did it! Only one finger need point, in one direction, FFS!
There's at least this much of a hint that the article may have originally pointed a single finger, possibly a middle one, at the real culprit: The article URL contains what may have been the working title: "free-school-meals-end-mcconnell-opposition." Yes indeed, that's what happened!
Politico took pains to hide that, however. For all the article's talk of "a fierce political fight ... over who is to blame," you won't find a single Democrat who called for the waivers to be dropped. But you will find this paragraph indicating that the Senate was originally working toward extending the program, at least temporarily.
There are intense disagreements about how and why the waiver extension was not included in the omnibus bill unveiled early Wednesday morning. Half a dozen sources on both sides of the aisle told POLITICO that the Senate Agriculture Committee was negotiating the details of how to extend the waivers with language that would specify how schools would transition back to normal when the issue got taken out of committee by leadership.
"Intense disagreements"? Not exactly. Nobody involved in the process appears to have said anything about anyone other than McConnell calling for the waiver program to be axed. The article does note, however, that
Nutrition and anti-hunger advocates believed McConnell was opposing the waiver extension as a tactic to extract concessions from Democrats on something else in the ongoing omnibus talks over the weekend, but by late Sunday they said it became clear that the minority leader was just a hard “no” on the policy.
The article also quotes Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan), who firmly placed the blame on Republican leadership in a statement to Politico, saying that
Instead of continuing the bipartisan tools and flexibilities to help safely provide meals to students during school and over the summer, which could easily be done in the omnibus, Republican leadership has said NO and decided that they prefer to let our kids go hungry. This is a disgrace!
So where's the intense finger-pointing at Democrats who must be equally responsible here? There isn't any, except from that unidentified "GOP leadership aide" who said that it was time to "clamp down on government spending and get schools back to normal." That aide offered some brilliant retroactive spin that, if you squint really hard through both-sides-colored glasses, attempts to shift the blame from McConnell to Joe Biden, who must surely have wanted the waivers to end. That aide "explained" it was all Joe Biden's fault:
“President Biden submitted a $22 billion Covid supplemental request for the [omnibus spending bill] with not a mention of USDA or nutrition,” the aide said. “So there was no proposal for anyone to block. These were designed as ‘temporary’ Covid measures.”
See? Biden didn't specifically ask "Mitch May I?" so tough luck, kids. Politico notes the aide "repeatedly" suggested the blame was entirely Biden's.
Mind you, if there was never any proposal for McConnell to block, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense that sources from both parties told Politico the Ag Committee was working on an extension until it was suddenly pulled by leadership, apparently in response to an ultimatum from McConnell.
Also, for the hell of it, that anonymous GOP aide added that the USDA waiver programs "were designed to encourage schools to close and go virtual," which Politico makes clear is a lie, although the article doesn't call it a lie. Instead, the lie is reduced to yet another item that people just disagree about:
School nutrition leaders note that the waivers are mostly being used to offer free meals to all students and get schools more money per meal to help cover rising food and labor costs. The waivers do not encourage virtual options, but they allow schools to easily serve grab and go meals when students are not on campus, if they want to.
And there you have political journalism in the age of alternative facts: In an article about how Mitch McConnell decided the buck stops with hungry kids during a pandemic, Politico refused to assign any responsibility, claiming instead that we just can't know the real truth, because look at the aide who came up with a nonsensical accusation that Biden Done It.
Did Republicans block aid to hungry kids during the pandemic? They absolutely did. Politico reports on how they attempted to justify it, but then, as Roberts points out, sacrificed that reporting on the altar of Both Sides:
And I guarantee, this story will pretty much be the last anyone hears of it. 10 million kids will suffer a little more based on Republican sociopathy, and 99.999999% of Americans will never know it. Never know what happened and certainly never know who's to blame.— David Roberts (@David Roberts) 1648323660
So McConnell is yanking lunch out of the mouths of 10 million hungry kids and ***even in the news story about him doing it*** responsibility is smeared all over the place, never attached to him. No accountability. Just more dysfunction from "Congress." [Eye-roll emoji]
And I guarantee, this story will pretty much be the last anyone hears of it. 10 million kids will suffer a little more based on Republican sociopathy, and 99.999999% of Americans will never know it. Never know what happened and certainly never know who's to blame.
As Roberts also points out, Democrats can't rely on the media to report even an outrage like this accurately, because "Both-sides disease, the sick politesse with which we treat this shit, makes it impossible for the vast bulk of the public to suss out what's happening." He argues that if Dems had anything even close to the GOP's "communication machine," they could use it to hammer on this message from now until Mitch McConnell is hounded out of polite society:
"Republicans want to cut off hungry kids from free school lunch during a pandemic. We want to feed the kids." Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Instead, McConnell wanted to deny a win to Biden on a very popular program that fed hungry children, and Politico was happy to let him get away with it. Gosh, in these hyper-partisan times, why can't Congress ever seem to get anything done? It must be all that political polarization, with wild-eyed radicals on both sides causing gridlock. Sorry, kids. "Congress" failed you.
UPDATE from your Editrix:
Politico's reporter is unhappy with Wonkette and Doktor Zoom and cusses and our misleading ways.
Hi! Glad to see Wonkette interested in these issues. Unfortunately, this story is extremely misleading and completely leaves out significant facts. \n\nDavid apologized to me here: https://twitter.com/drvolts/status/1508844109070491655\u00a0\u2026\n\nKey context:https://twitter.com/hbottemiller/status/1508419593244577797\u00a0\u2026— Helena Bottemiller Evich (@Helena Bottemiller Evich) 1648648751
Roberts did indeed apologize to the reporter for inadvertently causing a Twitter pile on — those suck! — and noting that reporter Helena Bottemiller Evich covers policy, which is important and too few people are doing it. Evich also originally broke the story of McConnell being an entire McConnell.
That doesn't make Doktor Zoom's analysis of it "misleading," and Politico really does need to cut the both sides shit. Evich has continued tweeting her displeasure, including with our rude headline which is apparently of a piece with death threats their team has been receiving for days (??), and this summation for why "both sides" is fair and accurate:
Reminder: The four corners of leadership - Dems and GOP - ALL AGREED to this deal *without the meal waiver extension.* \n\nThis was not a big enough sticking point for either party to blow up the sweeping spending bill (you can make your own judgement about this, but it's a fact.)— Helena Bottemiller Evich (@Helena Bottemiller Evich) 1648470233
We will disagree that that somehow both-sideses it. If McConnell's got an ultimatum or the whole thing blows, as Evich herself first reported, it is in no way "both sides" if one side capitulates to keep the entire government running.
Sorry we said Politico should go fuck itself, sort of, I mean not really, maybe it's a BIT much but ehhh. Nobody should death threat over a both sides story though, that's fucking ridiculous.
Doktor Zoom adds: We were not telling the writers to GFY, and of course death threats are never appropriate. We're simply telling Politico as an institution to go fuck itself, as everyone does, at least once a week.
[Politico / David Roberts on Twitter / Crooks and Liars]
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Oh No, Joe Biden's Budget Really Gonna Eat The Rich This Time, Get Ready Rich!
So stringy. A bit gamy as well.
Yr Doktor Zoom is an old man, which means I remember the fairly big news back in the '80s when Democrats announced Ronald Reagan's plan for the federal budget would be "dead on arrival" in Congress. Reagan's administration would write up a budget plan that would include massive cuts to federal spending, and those cuts would never pass, because for some reason Americans seemed to like having Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans were only willing to support the tax cuts and military spending sides of Reagan's agenda.
Then all the supply-siders would say the only reason Reagan's 1981 tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans hadn't "paid for themselves" through enormous gains in prosperity was that government spending still needed to be slashed, forever and for always, and there you have the basics of Republican economic policy going back 40 years, although subsequent GOP tax cuts have generally skipped over the "spending cuts" part, except maybe when said spending might help people Republicans believe need to be hurt.
Read More:
Joe Biden Has A Budget, And It's DELICIOUS
Working Class Hero Joe Manchin MIGHT Not Be Entirely On The Up And Up!
Since then, it's been rare for presidential budgets to be seen as anything more than an annual priority-setting exercise. Sometimes Congress will actually produce legislation that aligns with some of the president's budget requests; Biden's proposed budget last year centered on his two big economic proposals, the American Jobs Plan and the American Family Plan, which all together called for $5 trillion in new spending over 10 years, offset by rollbacks of most of Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts for rich fuckwads. Congress did at least take a shot at turning the proposals into real legislation, in the form of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, which passed, and the Build Back Better reconciliation bill, which kept getting whittled down until it was finally murdered by a coal CEO posing as a Democrat.
Biden's first budget proposal reflected his desires to get government back in the business of doing big things that would materially improve Americans' lives. His 2023 budget is still ambitious, but it also shows the influence of that coal CEO on Biden's agenda. As the Washington Post notes, it's also a budget tailored to the midterm elections, with an eye on fending off GOP criticism of perceived Democratic weaknesses (lots of money for police and the military, lots of talk about reducing debt and inflation), but with substantial spending targeted at Democratic priorities like climate and the environment, too.
Tax The Rich, Yay! Reduce the Deficit, Meh.
The $5.8 trillion budget is aimed at cutting the federal budget deficit, mostly by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. The plan would raise $2.5 trillion in new revenues over 10 years through new taxes on corporations and the top individual earners. Part of that would come from a new "Billionaire Minimum Income Tax" that would affect only households with over $100 million in assets, which is the top hundredth of one percent of all Americans. Those folks, about 700 billionaire families, would have to pay 20 percent of their income over $100 million on both income and "unrealized gains," which is the amount their investments have gained in value, even if they haven't sold stock or property. The new tax, if approved by Congress, would raise some $360 billion over the next decade.
The Associated Press 'splains how that would work:
Biden’s proposal would allow wealthy households to spread some payments on unrealized gains over nine years, and then for five years on new income going forward. Stretching payments over multiple years is meant to smooth yearly variations in investment income, while still ensuring that the wealthiest end up paying a minimum tax rate of 20%. In effect, the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax payments are a prepayment of tax obligations these households will owe when they later realize their gains.
David Gamage, a tax law prof at Indiana University, told the AP that since the tax is on increases in the value of assets, not the assets themselves, it's
"not a wealth tax, it’s an income tax reform.” He says, “This is a minimum income tax that includes the true economic value” of income that can be held for a very long time, he said.
During his press conference announcing the budget proposal yesterday, Biden said the new tax would close some of the tax gap between ordinary taxpayers and the very, very rich, who pay a far smaller portion of their income in taxes than the rest of us. Noting that the top 700 richest Americans increased their wealth by about a trillion dollars last year while paying an effective tax rate of just eight percent, Biden said, "A firefighter and a teacher pay more than double” the rate in taxes billionaires get away with.
Along with other revenue enhancers, like a return of the top individual tax rate to 39.6 percent and an increase in the top corporate rate to 28 percent, Biden's budget would bring in new revenue of $1.4 trillion over a decade, which Biden said would result in a trillion-dollar reduction in the federal deficit over 10 years.
Won't Someone Think Of Our Billionaires Who Pay No Taxes?
Kyrsten Sinema Really Trying Our Patience, Tell You What
Biden PROBABLY Won't Start WWIII When He Announces His 2023 Budget. PROBABLY.
Whether Sen. Kirsten Sinema would be on board with any tax rate increases is debatable; last year, she killed a proposal for the same increases as part of Build Back Better.
Cops And Troops And Midterms
The budget calls for $30 billion in new funding for local policing, as well as a 10 percent increase in defense spending, because no president is going to cut defense spending in an election year, at least not while there's a war in Ukraine.
The spending on police isn't all aimed at heading off GOP claims that Democrats want to "defund the police;" some $17.4 billion is requested to boost federal law enforcement funding for violent crime reduction, but that includes $1.7 billion for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to take on illegal gun trafficking, which is absolutely a good use of money. Another $1 billion would help enforce the just-renewed Violence Against Women Act, including funding to provide services for LGBTQ survivors, and a $72 million increase in funding to process the backlog of rape kits, for a total of $120 million.
Also too, the budget would ramp up Justice Department funding for antitrust prosecutions, as well as money for the Bureau of Prisons to overcome staffing shortages, and more money for immigration courts so they can address a huge backlog in asylum claims — with additional funding to provide attorneys for immigrants who can't afford legal help.
The increased defense spending is getting pushback from progressives, who seem to think America spends too much on its bloated military already, and that, as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) said on Twitter, "We do not need to raise the defense budget by another $31 billion," to over $800 billion for next year. Instead, Jayapal said, the funding would go a lot farther if invested in our communities.
Climate: Far Better Than Trump, Not As Much As The Emergency Demands
As E&E News explains, there's a lot of good stuff for the environment in the budget proposal, a total of $44.9 billion for the climate crisis, which is an increase of $16.7 billion over fiscal 2021 spending. (The proposal doesn't include comparisons to fiscal '22 spending, which was only passed in the Omnibus spending bill earlier this month.) Here's an outline of the major Biden climate budget asks, with '22 figures added in by E&E News:
• EPA’s proposed $11.9 billion budget for fiscal 2023 would be a 25 percent increase over current spending of $9.5 billion. However, Biden made a similar proposal for fiscal 2022 that Congress scaled back to only a 3 percent increase.
• The Energy Department’s proposed $48.2 billion budget for fiscal 2023 would be a 7 percent increase over current spending of $44.9 billion. However, a similar increase proposed for fiscal 2022 was whittled back to about 5 percent by lawmakers.
• The Interior Department’s proposed $17.5 billion request for fiscal 2023 would be a 24 percent hike over current spending of $14.1 billion. But Congress scaled back the request to 5 percent for fiscal 2022.
Grist has more on the details, like increased EPA spending on upgrading drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, hazardous waste cleanup, and cleanup of so-called "forever chemicals," aka polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which are extremely damn nasty.
It would also promote more clean energy investments, reductions in carbon emissions, and funding to weatherize buildings, especially in public housing and low-income homes. On top of that, there'd be increased funding for climate research and clean energy development. Funding for the National Parks Service would increase, and the budget includes $31 million for Biden's Civilian Climate Corps, to get the Youths out there making parks and federal lands more climate resilient. There's also funding requested to help with environmental justice, and to help communities that have depended on fossil fuel jobs transition to clean energy industries.
All very good things, at least until you start looking at all that money going to the military, which is one of the biggest polluters in America and so far hasn't been required to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, because national defense can't possibly include measures that might leave us with a nation worth defending.
As we say, though: Presidential budgets are at most a wish list, and what really matters will be what Congress can be pushed to pass. Let's all yell a lot about climate, and for Crom's sake don't elect Republicans, who are openly committed to fucking us all over again.
[AP / NYT / CNN / Grist / WaPo / E&E News]
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