Rep. Carbajal Releases Reports Showing the Inflation Reduction Act Will Lower Health Care Costs for Local Families

@Pit - let's settle this debate with some facts.

"In his second year in office, Joe Biden receives generally positive ratings in the countries surveyed by the Center. In most of these places, Biden’s ratings are higher than those of his predecessor in the White House, Donald Trump, but lower than his own ratings in 2021."

"A median of 58% of adults across 18 countries say they have confidence in Joe Biden to do the right thing regarding world affairs."

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/07/25/international-opinion-of-joe-biden-in-6-charts/

PITLOCAL - lol you mean like "lEtS gO bRanDon!"? Yeah nope. Making fun of an elderly man for his speech impediment or other elderly gaffes, is hardly a "deep dig" nor are they made by our allies and people around the world. The childish, low-brow, ageist and ableist Biden "jokes" are only spouted by spiteful conservatives. We, as a nation, are hardly the same target of humor and disdain as we were under the last guy. Nice try though.

"Big Labor (large unions) is just as detrimental to the average citizen as Big Business and Big Government. "

You lie by rote.

That top 1% have as much wealth as the bottom 50% is just fine because they are both "groups of people".

"Corporations are made up of employees (including union workers) and the corporation has interests that benefit the group."

That's a complete lie. Corporations are fictitious entities. By law they have a fiduciary responsibility to their owners or stockholders, not their employees.

Big Labor (large unions) is just as detrimental to the average citizen as Big Business and Big Government. Many small businesses (rather than one or few large ones) combined with a small government will yield the best results for average citizen.

A Honeybee doesn't waste their time trying to teach a fly that flowers are sweeter than poop. Instead, they create honey and build hives, all while flies attract, gather, procreate and die on a pile of feces or rotting flesh...

Another swoop in with a one liner and some buzzwords they heard on TV yet unable to articulate the thought or provide an example. As much as people didn’t like the SC Roe ruling, it gave more power to the states and their voters, the exact opposite of a “Putin-style kleptocracy”. Also completely ignores Dems receive significantly more Dark Money than conservatives and just recently refused to take up legislation limiting it even though they have the power/votes to pass it.

The Citizens United ruling was just one more indication of how detached from reality the cons on the Supreme Court have become in their pursuit of a Putin-style kleptocracy.

The reason health care (health insurance) is so freaking expensive is that if you have insurance, you are paying for all those WITHOUT any insurance... The hospitals are a business. There ain't any free rides for those who "play by the rules", in fact you are penalized for it... The hospital will GO AFTER YOU to pay your deductible RELENTLESSLY....Those who walk in the ER or are stabbed, shot, victims of car accidents, etc that don't have insurance, DON'T PAY A DIME...! That is a fact.

VOICE at 3:41 - agree 100%

and I don't like it one bit Chillin.

Here is the citizens United ruling for those who are interested

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

VOR: The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, ruled 5-4 in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) that limiting corporate contributions to political campaigns somehow violates their free speech rights, given the legal fiction that corporations have the same legal standing as people. Conservative SCOTUS justices put into precedent what we all already knew: that wealthy companies and individuals have a far larger say in policy decisions than average citizens.

To much money in health care and health insurance to do that in the US. Get money out of health care and politics and the results would be truly amazing.

No new wars (normally that's considered a positive thing), but there was this thing called COVID that states throughout are nation irrationally overreacted to and forced people to close their businesses and stay at home completely destroying our economy. It was only a few years ago, do you remember?

*private sector solutions

BasicInfo: The glaring difference is that one policy makes economic sense, the other doesn't. "Trickle down economics" and tax breaks for the wealthy have an abysmal record of creating jobs and improving the overall economy. This checks out, given that tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations benefit very few people, who will turn around and likely spend the money on luxury goods, vacations, stock buybacks, or as extra zeroes in an offshore bank account. Improvements in the social safety net and public benefit programs help far more people, who turn around and use the money on food, shelter, and essential goods, with that spending having more of an overall beneficial impact on the economy. Sure, borrowing and spending is bad policy regardless, but if we're going to do it, it should have the widest public benefit possible and address broad issues that have little to no public sector solutions (i.e. child poverty, climate change, better healthcare).

Another point. The drug price feature is only a plus for most people if one of their drugs is included. . When will we know?

Examples of "suppression?" Easy to downvote and walk away, but what are specific examples of this?

Not expecting much from the person who, after me explaining the government's definition of terrorism as opposed to other criminal acts, proclaimed that I was "literally defending" the cartels......

"forcible suppression of opposition" - how/when/where/who? Did any liberal leader stand by and allow the violent attempt to overthrow our democracy?

If we got into it, not the room here, the current Democratic party exudes way more fascists traits [centralized autocracy, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation] than the prior president ever did. Being an A-Hole (with a capital A) doesn't make someone a fascist.

VOICE - I think there were MANY examples that are easily cited of fascist-like tendencies in the past administration, it's not that we just "disagree." Some examples: discrediting and delegitimizing elections, rallies against immigrants, proposing banning all Muslims, emphasizing with white supremacists (and even hiring some), doing NOTHING for 3 hours as thousands of his supporters violently attack the Capitol and attempt to stop democracy while hunting for the Vice President because he didn't support the illegal demands of his "boss," etc etc etc

By attacking our democracy at every turn and espousing clearly racist beliefs and even attempting to implement them into policy, one could very easily argue he had fascist tendencies.

Of course, I don't expect to change your mind and you'll likely rebut out of pure spite, as there is no honest way to explain the things he did that I listed above.

Like what? Please explain or provide an example rather than swoop in with a seemingly witty one linear and leave.

If anybody should know the definition of fascism, it's those who constantly raise their voices in support of its basic tenets.

You keep using that word ‘fascism’ but I don’t think you know what It means. You use it as if it describes anyone who disagrees with your point of view, and therefor you can dismiss, insult, and try to silence them, which is much closer to the actual definition of fascism.

I broke my rule of not responding to VOR. I'm going back to that rule. Impossible to debate with someone who defends fascism and corruption at every turn - A 100 percent non-patriot.

Spot on VOR. Perhaps too much factual detail though for the mainstream posters here. They will be told how to think by CNN/MSNBC tonight and respond accordingly. One thing for sure is America needs to wake up. Appreciate the effort.

Trump was asked about this risk during a virtual discussion with the Economic Club of New York October 2021. “If we have another stimulus bill out of Congress, are you worried that the entire amount of federal debt will be too large for us to pay off in a sensible way?” asked David Rubenstein, a private equity executive.

Trump answered by falsely claiming that the U.S. was starting to pay off the national debt before the pandemic, and he claimed that future economic growth would let it do so. “I think you’re going to see tremendous growth, David, and the growth is going to get it done,” Trump said.

Two months later, when Congress finally approved $900 billion of economic stimulus that is being financed with debt, Trump challenged Congress to spend — and borrow — even more. Then he went golfing.

By the end of 2019, the debt had risen to $23.2 trillion and more federal officials were sounding the alarm. “Not since World War II has the country seen deficits during times of low unemployment that are as large as those that we project — nor, in the past century, has it experienced large deficits for as long as we project,” Phillip Swagel, director of the CBO, said in January 2020.

The tariffs did bring in additional revenue. In fiscal 2019, they netted about $71 billion, up about $36 billion from President Barack Obama’s last year in office. But although $36 billion is a lot of money, it’s less than 1/750th of the national debt. That $36 billion could have covered a bit more than three weeks of interest on the national debt — that is, had Trump not unilaterally decided to send a chunk of the tariff revenue to farmers affected by his trade wars. Businesses that struggled as a result of the tariffs also paid fewer taxes, offsetting some of the increased tariff revenue. By the end of 2019, the debt had risen to $23.2 trillion and more federal officials were sounding the alarm. “Not since World War II has the country seen deficits during times of low unemployment that are as large as those that we project — nor, in the past century, has it experienced large deficits for as long as we project,” Phillip Swagel, director of the CBO, said in January 2020.

Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It’ll Weigh Down the Economy for Years
The “King of Debt” promised to reduce the national debt — then his tax cuts made it surge. Add in the pandemic, and he oversaw the third-biggest deficit increase of any president. The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war. The combination of Trump’s 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. So when the once-in-a-lifetime viral disaster slammed our country and we threw more than $3 trillion into COVID-19-related stimulus, there was no longer any margin for error.
When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. Instead, the deficit reached nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019.

There were multiple culprits. Trump’s tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.

Repeal and replace - you must have missed that as well.

But okay, I'll give you that: $2.4T for the Republicans but 40% of $32T = $12.8T in the 8 years Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House.

You mean the $2.4 trillion dollar tax reform bill that benefited low and middle income earners significantly more than the "rich". That one? _______ "Filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $15,000 to $50,000 enjoyed an average tax cut of 16 percent to 26 percent in 2018, the first year Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect and the most recent year for which data is available.

Filers who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break of about 15 percent to 17 percent, and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw their personal income taxes cut by around 11 percent to 13 percent.

By comparison, no income group with an AGI of at least $500,000 received an average tax cut exceeding 9 percent, and the average tax cut for brackets starting at $1 million was less than 6 percent. "

Republicans blew a 2 trillion dollar hole into the deficit with their tax cuts for the rich. Now they are ringing alarm bells about how big the deficit is.

Thanks, Obama.

Because you're a genius. That must be why you are so very successful. LOL

In his first year in office, President Donald Trump signed 117 bills into law, but few represented major legislative achievements.