-Two centrist Democrats
are blocking the entire Democratic agenda without saying
what they actually want, essentially threatening to
detonate Joe Biden's presidency. Meanwhile, Fox News
is trying unsuccessfully to make all
the super popular stuff in Biden's agenda sound scary. For more on this,
it's time for A Closer Look. ♪♪ It's hard to overstate the stakes of
what's happening right now -- basically the entire
Democratic agenda, the policies Joe Biden ran on and promised voters
he would pass are on the line
in negotiations over the $3.5 trillion
reconciliation bill. And you can tell
how high the stakes are from this shot of
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the annual congressional
baseball game last night. -We have our first
pinch hitter of the day. It was Rodney Davis
at the top of the lineup. -Speaker no doubt
happy about that play, but she is known
as a big sports fan and often after dealing with a lot of really
difficult reporter questions related to what's going on,
she'll say, "Oh, I stayed up
and watched the game last night and I didn't get to bed
at a good time." And then there she is at
7:00 or 8:00 in the morning, back at work, so... That's true for members
of both parties. It's amazing
what all of them do. -Pelosi's working the phones
like the Mets just hired her as a scout. [ As Nancy Pelosi ]
"You're going to love this guy. 60 years old,
throws in the mid-to-low 40s, and we can get him
for league minimum. Yeah, I think we found
our new deGrom." But Pelosi had to work the phone
instead of watching what I'm sure
was a terrible baseball game. You think
regular baseball is slow? Imagine what it's like
with these bozos. Nancy Pelosi looking to make
a pitching change, but not sure she has the votes,
which means they're going to make the hot dogs race
around the outfield yet again. And oh, no.
One of the hot dogs is dead. That's how high the stakes are. Democrats need to deliver
on the promises they made, not just to avoid the political
consequences of failure, which would be massive, but also
to improve people's lives. Now, I could tell you about all the good
this bill would do myself, or you could just listen
to a Fox News host try to make it sound bad. -Free universal
pre-kindergarten. Free community college. Free 12 weeks of family leave. They want to extend
the temporary child care credit with additional taxpayer
subsidies for the rest of time. This is really considered
a foot in the door for a minimum annual income that
the government would pay people. Think about where
we're going with all this. They want to expand Medicare to include
dental, vision, and hearing and lower the age from 65 to 60. What else does this bill do? It funds the Green New Deal,
retrofitting buildings, subsidizing solar, wind, environmental justice
and environmental equity, whatever the hell that means. Electric government vehicles. They want to subsidize
low-income housing. Gee, that's never
been tried before. They want to create sustainable
housing, public transportation. -If you want to know
who Republicans are, just look at
what horrifies them. "They want sustainable
housing, these monsters! And yet not one penny
in the bill for an army of Terminator robots
at the border! They're never going
to learn to hurt us!" He's talking about
free education for children with the same level
of feigned outrage as Nicole Kidman finding out her
husband just murdered someone. He should be walking through
Central Park at 2:00 a.m. in a $5,000 coat. [ As Nicole Kidman] "My husband,
the mysterious British doctor who won't tell me
about his childhood, vanished in the middle
of the night." "Oh, okay, he probably
murdered someone." "He said he's at
a medical convention." "Okay, but I think
he murdered someone." "I found this bloody butcher
knife hidden behind a rock. Maybe it's from a surgery." "Do you have someplace
you can stay tonight?" Fox host Brian Kilmeade
tried the same thing this week in an interview with
Republican Senator John Kennedy. Kilmeade was trying
to ask Kennedy what Republicans would do about the fact
that the Democrats' agenda is likely to be popular
with voters and came so close to realizing
what he was actually admitting. -Senator, here's
what I fear, though. If you tell someone,
I'm giving you a free preschool, if you tell someone, I'm giving
you free junior college, if you tell someone, I'm going
to give you free school lunch, if you tell someone
free elder care -- Issues need to be addressed,
yes, but if you write
all those people a check, you've got their votes,
and we're sitting there and have to balance the books. Doesn't that worry you? -He's like the one employee
at IKEA who's worried that giving out
free meatballs will attract more customers. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. If we give these out,
aren't more people just going to come to the store? Okay. Just don't come to me when
we run out of Fjallbo shelves." The point is,
polling has repeatedly shown that these policies
are popular with voters. They're a big reason
Democrats won the White House and two Senate seats
in Georgia runoffs that gave them
full control of Congress. But now two centrist Democrats
backed by corporate interests, whether it's fossil fuels
or big pharma, are essentially threatening
to blow all that up, and they won't even say why. Just name something in this bill
you don't like -- universal pre-K,
expanded Medicare benefits, child care subsidies. You don't think people
want help with child care? I think if you polled parents
who were stuck at home with their kids
for the last year if they're in favor
of expanded child care programs, the results would be 75% "yes," 25% "my soul has been crushed
into a fine powder and I no longer have the ability
to respond to pollsters." As a parent who was stuck at
home with my kids all year -- and, by the way,
extremely privileged to even have that option --
let me just say, I will sign my life over
to any politician who makes it easier to get them
the hell out of the house. I'm so desperate for
a few minutes of quiet, I started taking them
to the only daycare I could find with any openings, and it was called Igor's House
of Knives and Broken Glass. They have a great Russian
language immersion program. My kids can already
say things like, [ Speaking in Russian ] which is "careful, glass" and [ Speaking in Russian ] which is, "he has a knife." Yet Sinema will not tell anyone
what she wants or doesn't want. In fact, progressives
have been openly begging her to tell them what she wants, as
Congressman Ro Khanna explains. -I've never seen her
do an interview. It's like an oracle, an enigma. I mean, she never comes
on television. She never answers journalism. -What has she said that she
wants, as far as you know? -That's the question. The president keeps begging her,
"Tell us what you want. Put a proposal forward." I have no idea what she wants. I don't think her colleagues
know what she wants. I don't think the president
knows what she wants. I don't think House moderates
knows what she wants. We've said, "Let's get in
a room. Let's negotiate. Let's come up with a deal." And I just don't understand it. -She made three trips
to the White House Tuesday, and people still don't know
what she wants. This is like the time
I took my grandmother to The Cheesecake Factory. Really, Nana? You can't find anything? Because the menu's
a [bleep] book. Oh, watch my language,
she says. Like I haven't seen
her play bridge. I mean, seriously,
Kyrsten Sinema. What are you doing? Everyone wants to know,
what do you want? Explain yourself. You're not LeBron.
This isn't "The Decision." You don't get
to keep it a secret until you announce it live
on ESPN with Jim Gray. And by the way, this routine isn't helping
Sinema politically, either. A recent poll found that
about 56% of Democrats in the state
Ms. Sinema favorably, compared with 80% for Senator Mark Kelly,
a fellow Democrat. People are sick
of these weird mind games. You have the right
to an opinion, but the people who elected you have a right to hear
what that opinion is. You're a United States senator.
You don't get to play coy. No one likes coy anyway,
especially in politics. It's not your job
to be mysterious. This isn't a perfume commercial. No one's like, "Oh, I hope she comes out
from behind her folding fan and tells us her secret." People are just annoyed,
like Congresswoman Katie Porter, who had this to say last night
about Manchin and Sinema. -If they have concerns,
if they have problems, tell us what they are, but we simply
can't negotiate with ourselves and away from what
the American people want if there are no meaningful
competing concerns. I was elected to represent
the people of Orange County and to fight for families, to
stand up to corporate interests. I was not elected to read
the mind of Kyrsten Sinema. Thank goodness, because I have
no idea what she's thinking. -Oh man, you better watch out. If you piss off Katie Porter, you might get
the white board treatment. Biden and Porter
aren't the only ones mystified by what Manchin and Sinema
are doing. After Manchin issued yet another
grandstanding statement last night proclaiming
that he could not support spending
trillions of dollars, again, without explaining what
specifically he was against, Senate Budget Chairman
Bernie Sanders expressed his frustration
to reporters, saying, "Look, you can talk
to Mr. Manchin. I can't speak for Mr. Manchin.
I'm not a psychologist." Although I wish he were, because I think
he'd be great at it. Bernie seems like he'd be
a tough love kind of therapist. [ As Bernie Sanders ] "Oh, you
have a fear of intimacy? Well, that's the first time
I've ever heard that one. Let me write that one down. What a new phenomenon.
You're really special. I'm gonna write you
a prescription for one teddy bear." And yet Sinema
continues to engage in this maddening little shtick where
she refuses to explain herself or make any specific requests. Yesterday, a reporter
finally caught up with her and tried to ask her
to respond to progressives who are frustrated with
her unwillingness to negotiate, and she basically
played word games. -What do you say to progressives
that are frustrated that they don't know
where you are? -I'm in the Senate. -There are progressives
within the Senate that are frustrated that they don't know where you are,
either. -I'm, like, clearly
right in front of the elevator. -Ah, what fun.
A little wordplay. This is Congress,
not vaudeville. No one's interested
in your Abbott & Costello act. Not even Bernie.
He saw them live. His review is even
quoted on the poster. You guys are risking blowing up
the Biden presidency and handing power back
to a movement led by an insane person
who's spent the last year trying to unravel
American democracy and will absolutely
follow through next time he gets the chance. One of his lawyers wrote an
instruction manual for a coup. One of his cronies
at the Justice Department had a plan
to overthrow the election, and on top of that, Trump keeps
going around the country, confessing to new crimes. Like the time he told
a rally crowd he tried to bully
the governor of Georgia into overturning
his state's results. -Sure, we spoke
to Governor Kemp. Sure, he will not do anything
on election integrity. I said, "No, you're kidding.
Just call him again. You know, I mean, maybe
he never got the message." They come back the next day,
"Sir, Governor Kemp won't do anything
on election integrity." Remember, we wanted to call
a special election so that we could go
-- Marjorie -- so we could go into
election integrity? What is wrong with that? So when these guys, they're young and nice guys,
they came back, they said,
"He won't do it, sir." I said, "Let me handle it.
This is easy." You know,
I got this guy elected. One thing has
nothing to do with the other. One thing has nothing --
there's no quid pro quo. I said,
"Brian, listen, you know, you have a big election
integrity problem in Georgia. I hope you can help us out
and call a special election, and let's get to
the bottom of it for the good of the country. Let's get to the bottom of it
for the good of your state. Let's go, election integrity.
What could be better than that?" "Sir, I'm sorry.
I cannot do that." I said, "Whoa." -Why does he scream
the word "integrity" like George Costanza? "Integrity, Jerry! They said
I don't have integrity!" "You think you have integrity?" "Oh, I got integrity, baby. I got integrity up the wazoo." Also, it looks like
the "sir" stories are back, which are even
more ridiculous now that he's no longer president. He's just a retiree shanking
drives at his golf course. "They came to me, tears pouring
out of their eyes and they said, 'Sir,
that was a beautiful shot, sir. That honking
from the parking lot was probably about
something else, sir. Here's a hernia pillow for
your golf cart, sir. Inflated
to your specifications, sir.'" Trump and his cultists on Fox
are trying to make things like universal pre-K
and sustainable housing sound scary because in reality, they know those items
are popular with voters, and even they will
inadvertently admit that. That's why Democrats need to get
on with passing their agenda and why Manchin and Sinema
need to get out of the way. Not only will it do a lot
of good for a lot of people, it will in large part determine the course of
Joe Biden's presidency. If they fail, they could
very well hand power back to Trump and the GOP. If they succeed,
then voters will at least have reason to believe them
when they say they have -- -Integrity! -This has been A Closer Look. ♪♪ God's Love We Deliver
cooks and brings over two million meals a year
to men, women, and children living with HIV/AIDS, cancer,
and other serious illnesses, and they need your help
now more than ever. If you're watching this online,
you can hit the Donate button. Stay safe. Get vaccinated.
We love you.
Sen. Joe Manchin heading to Texas for fundraiser hosted by GOP donors
https://www.salon.com/2021/07/17/sen-joe-manchin-heading-to-texas-for-fundraiser-hosted-by-gop-donors_partner/
Rupert Murdoch-funded Fox Corp. PAC contributes to Democrat Joe Manchin’s campaign
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/15/fox-news-owner-donates-to-joe-manchins-campaign.html
Manchin to Speak At Fundraiser Hosted by Oil Industry Leaders After Defending Fossil Fuels
https://www.newsweek.com/manchin-speak-fundraiser-hosted-oil-industry-leaders-after-defending-fossil-fuels-1610689
Joe Manchin, America’s climate decider-in-chief, is a coal baron
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/30/joe-manchin-climate-coal-baron-stocks
Kyrsten Sinema Is Corporate Lobbies’ Million-Dollar Woman
https://newrepublic.com/article/163745/kyrsten-sinema-corporate-donations-chamber-commerce
The trainwreck of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is the cost of not getting money out of politics
https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/kyrsten-sinema-blocks-biden-agenda-money-politics-20210930.html
As Sinema resists the budget bill, she is set to raise money from business groups that oppose it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/politics/sinema-fund-raiser-social-climate-bill.html
Sinema slammed for taking donations from banks, debt collectors after opposing minimum wage increase
https://www.salon.com/2021/05/09/sinema-slammed-for-taking-donations-from-banks-debt-collectors-after-opposing-minimum-wage-increase_partner/
Does a tainted donation taint Kyrsten Sinema?
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2017/04/23/kyrsten-sinema-backpage-donations/100654122/
Sinema Opposes Drug Bills After Receiving $750K in Donations From Big Pharma
https://truthout.org/articles/sinema-opposes-drug-bills-after-receiving-750k-in-donations-from-big-pharma/
'All About the Money': Kyrsten Sinema, Lone Senate Democrat Opposed to Net Neutrality, Tied to Comcast Lobbyist's Dark Money Super PAC
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/07/all-about-money-kyrsten-sinema-lone-senate-democrat-opposed-net-neutrality-tied
These two scumbags call themselves Democrats, but they're actually working for the very same people that the Republicans work for.
[removed]