White House moves to sharper, populist message to keep Democrats together in make-or-break agenda moment
"The real choice right now is whether you're going to lower costs for people in this country on elder care, childcare, cost of college or whether you're going to allow the wealthiest Americans and corporations to continue to pay the tax rates that are hardly fair moving forward," Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday.
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...the White House grapples with no margin for error in the Senate, where Democrats can't afford to lose a single vote and already face a call for a pause in the process from moderate Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat.
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Republicans are unified in their opposition to the package and have moved to sharply attack its scale, particularly in a moment of elevated inflation, over the course of the last several months.
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...White House officials are keen on framing things as a binary -- and more populist -- choice.
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..."President Biden believes this comes down to a simple proposition: Scranton, PA v. Park Avenue," Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, wrote...
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There are many people in this country who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the difference between populism and Trumpism.
There are some who say that we need a "pause" in spending on the lives and the jobs and the families of the working people of this country...As if the "pause" of a generation of spending on the 1% who own 99% wasn't pause enough!
There are those who say that we need a "pause" in repairing and replacing and rebuilding the crumbling roads and bridges, the fouled streams and rivers, and the decrepit airports of this country. Let them come to West Virginia!
There are even a few who say that it is true, that Trumpism is evil, but that work with them Let them go work at Mar-a-Lago!
I know of no people who work harder and who live with the vitality and the force, and the determination of the people of West Virginia.
You live in a state of such beauty that it is Almost Heaven, but which has been abused and abandoned by the 1% . Your state and your lives are part of all of us, too. So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the evils of false populism, to the promise of true populism, beyond Trumpism to the advance of economic democracy, beyond walls that separate us to walls that embrace us with warmth, with security from want and uncertainty, with dignity.
Let's Gooo Mountaineers!
