{"id":3717,"date":"2005-03-11T10:22:42","date_gmt":"2005-03-11T15:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3717.html"},"modified":"2005-03-11T10:22:42","modified_gmt":"2005-03-11T15:22:42","slug":"its-been-three-months-and-its-already-a-long-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-been-three-months-and-its-already-a-long-year\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s been three months, and it’s already a long year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum noted<\/a> some of the recent activities on the Hill to explain why he’s been feeling grouchy.<\/p>\n

* Passed: A tort reform bill that makes it harder for ordinary citizens to sue corporations who harm them.<\/p>\n

* Coming soon: A bankruptcy bill that will make it harder for distressed workers to declare bankruptcy and<\/i> will increase credit card company profits by an estimated $1 billion.<\/p>\n

* Coming soon: A transportation bill that adds two unpaid hours onto the work days of short-haul and long-haul truckers.<\/p>\n

* In progress: Changes to Social Security that will almost certainly include benefit cuts for current workers.<\/p>\n

* In progress: Making permanent a set of tax cuts that primarily helps the upper class.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It prompted Kevin to ask, “Can anyone name even one thing the Bush administration has done this year — or is proposing to do — that would benefit ordinary workers?” The answer, of course, is no. Moreover, I think Kevin missed a couple of points.<\/p>\n

In addition to the items he listed, a few other regressive policies come to mind from just the past couple of months.<\/p>\n

* Rejected: A measure to increase the $5.15 hourly minimum wage<\/a> by $2 over two years. <\/p>\n

* In progress: A federal budget that offers more tax cuts for millionaires, while cutting funds<\/a> for job training, Medicaid, first responders, education, veterans’ benefits, programs to reduce and alleviate poverty, and the Earned Income Tax Credit.<\/p>\n

No, Republicans don’t even pretend to care anymore. Their “accountability moment” has come and gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum noted some of the recent activities on the Hill to explain why he’s been feeling grouchy. * Passed: A tort reform bill that makes it harder for ordinary citizens to sue corporations who harm them. * Coming soon: A bankruptcy bill that will make it harder for distressed workers to declare bankruptcy and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}