Biden infrastructure/tax increase megathread

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No quarter for Gottheimer's goons. Of course Gottheimer is a goon too.

No quarter!

Hold a formal vote and evict them from the party then, although Pelosi would no longer hold a majority of the House.

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https://twitter.com/rachaelmbade/status/1441006114523557889

I read the Playbook this morning and wow that's a one-sided slanted take of what was in there.



There's a lot of similarity between this and Republican attempts in the House to do a reform/outright cancellation of ACA. They started with a goal but in the end could not get all of their caucus to agree on anything. The difference here is the potential for Republican support vs. there was no Democratic support for the ACA reform efforts in 2017.

My gut feel here is the moderates win. Reasons why:

1.) The Progressives have no Republican votes in their favor to carry toward a majority while the moderates will have some.
2.) Like the Playbook stated yesterday, the Progressive Caucus is 95 members but how many are actually willing to vote against when rubber meets the road?

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I mean the notion that a bipartisan agreement is held hostage by a partisan Bill is insane.

If Ds scuttle their own legislation they agreed to with Rs that kind of kills Biden’s only significant accomplishment since taking office. Everything else about his presidency has been more or less a disaster outside of a few executive orders reversing Trump’s prior odious ones.

AUKUS is a giant success, although it's geopolitics-focused so no one on this board gives a sh**t. Per the French being royally pissed off though, this was in the making for 15 months, meaning like with the Afghanistan withdrawal it was something started by the Trump administration that Biden chose to continue with following transfer of power.

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So the "vote on infrastructure bill with a deadline September 27th" was agreed on by Pelosi about a month ago.

The progressives wanted to tie the reconciliation bill into the bipartisan bill, they did not want to vote on them separately.

It's Friday, September 24th, 3 days from aforementioned deadline, and in that month, no one finished writing the reconciliation bill? For it to be voted on this coming week requires markup to be held Saturday. The Progressives are going to lose here because of majority party legislative malfunction, either due to deliberately shafting them or due to incompetence.

Charcolt:

Mind, I don't expect any Democratic majority post-2024 because of gerrymandering, suppression, and the crazy "overturn elections we lose" fascists, but once Manchin, Sinema, and their supplicants in the House are gone, we're left with Democrats we've successfully bullied into ending the filibuster and supporting wealth redistribution.

If you believe Democrats in the Senate are going to vote to end the filibuster when they become the minority party following the 2022 election, I have a house on the Moon to sell you.

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Schumer needs to have a reconciliation bill written and voted on by September 27.

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https://www.politico.com/playbook

WHERE’S THE URGENCY? — Congress is three days out from a vote on a key plank of the president’s agenda — a massive $1.2 trillion infrastructure package (BIF) — and President JOE BIDEN and House Democratic leaders haven’t even started the whipping process, we’re told from sources across the Democratic spectrum.

Our colleagues Natasha Korecki and Laura Barrón-López reported Sunday night that the president was making calls and doing Zoom sessions from Camp David over the weekend on BIF and the larger reconciliation package. But the seeming lack of urgency so far — given the sheer scale of the task and mere days to complete it — is alarming some House Democrats going into a critical week, multiple people involved told us Sunday night.

“I don’t understand why the president isn’t whipping his own historic bill,” said one moderate House Democrat.

THE VIEW FROM LEADERSHIP: Speaker NANCY PELOSI has been trying to project an air of confidence. She announced Sunday night that she plans to start the House debate on BIF today, with a vote Thursday.

The hope is that leaders can announce an agreement or “framework” on reconciliation with Sens. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.) and JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) by then, freeing progressives to vote for BIF.

The problem: Almost everyone we spoke to Sunday said that timing is unlikely at best. One senior Democratic aide called it flat-out “fiction.” “There [are] literally no negotiations with anyone,” another House moderate said.

Yes, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER and the White House are in regular touch with Manchema trying to make progress on the larger reconciliation package. We also hear there’s an effort underway to get Manchin to walk back his demand for a “pause” on reconciliation. But that’s a far cry from a “framework.”

FRUSTRATION WITH BIDEN: Moderate Democrats expected Biden to start twisting House progressives’ arms during their White House meeting last week. But we’re told by sources in the progressive camp and another senior Democratic aide that the president has neither asked progressives to drop their demand that the reconciliation bill pass in tandem with BIF, nor pressed them to accept a stand-alone vote on BIF this week — at least not yet. This has infuriated moderates.

“The president needs to pick up the phone and call people,” the moderate source close to the talks told us. The person argued that the White House has been in “listening mode” for too long and needs to bang heads to get this vote over the finish line this week.

It’s not just moderates who are dismayed. “There are a lot of mistakes happening here,” the senior Democratic aide said Sunday night, acknowledging the lack of a game plan going into such a critical week. “There is no whip effort on the BIF yet. Everything is hanging by a thread. Biden needs to be more engaged.”

THE PROGRESSIVE VIEW: They firmly believe that Biden and Pelosi agree with them that both bills should move together. “No one has made a case to progressives or lobbied for them to change their position and vote for it before the Build Back Better Act,” one senior House progressive source told us. “And in fact the White House, when we were there on Wednesday, was very much in the same position: There was agreement that we need both bills.”

SO WHAT WILL PELOSI DO if Schumer and the White House don’t get a reconciliation deal hashed out with Manchema by Thursday? Your guess is as good as ours. Some Pelosi watchers are predicting she’ll turn to progressives and say: I tried, it’s not ready, you have to vote for this, and try to whip them in line. Others think she could just put a $3.5 trillion bill on the floor without an agreement with the Senate, though it could fail amid moderate opposition. Or, as some progressives believe this is heading, she could break her promise to moderates to vote on BIF this week while assuring them she’s pushing hard on a reconciliation deal and just needs more time.

Pelosi was equally cryptic on ABC’s “This Week”: “Let me just say we’re going to pass the bill this week,” she said of BIF. But she also had this warning: “I’m never bringing a bill to the floor that doesn’t have the votes.”

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So let’s just remember where we are, because I think it’s helpful and certain posters are forgetting or being dishonest about it.

Biden rolled out an omnibus infrastructure package. Republicans being Republicans, immediately rallied to oppose it out reflex. The argument they came up with is ‘infrastructure is only road and bridges’, one of the all time dumbest takes I’ve seen in a sea of them. Meanwhile, Manchin and Sinema, being Manchin and Sinema, wanted to publicly be obstacles to President Biden. What they came up with they don’t think reconciliation should be used and wanted a bill through regular order. That their instance on keeping archaic procedures that have made regular order impossible is the whole reason that we need giant omnibus reconciliation packages was quietly sidestepped. What they did was went to the GOP to negotiate a package from the starting point of the GOP’s nonsensical stand that only roads count, hacking off the other 75-80% of the program. The rest of the caucus agreed to let them go forward on their compromise bill in exchange for beginning the reconciliation process, with both bills, comprising a single package, being slated for a house vote at the same time.

My main point here is that it’s not reconciliation and infrastructure, it’s a single package split out into two bills at the demand of two Senators, and calling the BIF ‘the infrastructure bill’ give an incorrect impression.
The other thing that is important to note is the sequence of events, because it’s of what comes next.

Immediately after the Sinema portion passed the Senate, Manchin and Sinema immediately balked at bringing up a reconciliation bill and began demanding that the smaller end of the package be passed before they would do anything. I’m not exaggerating when I say immediately here, literally the same day that the agreement was reached between them and the 48 Senate Dems, they began saying either that their bill wasn’t linked and insisting that it be decoupled from reconciliation. 9 (of 220) house reps then forced Pelosi to schedule a vote on the Sinema bill by threatening to kill reconciliation before it started. These same 9 (down to about four now as best I can tell) and a larger group of house Dems are refusing to approve the BIB until a reconciliation package is brought forward.

Pelosi pushed the vote back to Thursday and that’s where they are at. This isn’t about the merits of either bill, we are watching a power play from 11 congressmen attempting to drive the entire agenda.

This post ignores a simple reality; the reconciliation bill in its current form cannot pass Congress. The votes aren't there. This would still be true even if it were combined with the infrastructure bill. It's actually a work of genius to split the two bills, so that there is a chance that something got done even in the likely event that the reconciliation negotiations collapse.

Let's put it this way, if Manchin switches parties tomorrow, then the reconciliation vanishes, and what will Democrats do? They'll vote for BIF or they'll get nothing. Progressives can acknowledge this reality or they'll get nothing in the end, just like the Freedom Caucus got nothing in their quest to repeal Obamacare.

Silence, Republican!

Haha.

The ultimate measure of competence when it comes to politics is knowing how to count. There's a lot of people in this thread that don't know how to count.

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So what time is the vote scheduled for?

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Democrats are NOT in array!


To recap "requirements" from this/last week.

Manchin:

• Yes to Hyde.
• No to vision, dental etc.
• No to expansion of social programs?
• Defends coal?
• Only "partial" roll-out of Trump's tax cuts.
• Postpone RB?

Sinema, the Queen:

• No to tax hikes
• Own the libs
• Make libs mad.
• Drag the libs.

But then again, who wants to be the next Millard Fillmore?

A lot of people based on how many politicians run for president at least briefly every 4 years.

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Democrats are NOT in array!


To recap "requirements" from this/last week.

Manchin:

• Yes to Hyde.
• No to vision, dental etc.
• No to expansion of social programs?
• Defends coal?
• Only "partial" roll-out of Trump's tax cuts.
• Postpone RB?

Sinema, the Queen:

• No to tax hikes
• Own the libs
• Make libs mad.
• Drag the libs.

But then again, who wants to be the next Millard Fillmore?

A lot of people based on how many politicians run for president at least briefly every 4 years.

What I meant is someone who runs on cleaning up the last president’s massive sh**t show, barely wins, and goes on to not do anything and ends up clearing the way for the party he ran against to have uncontested rule by breaking his own party into smaller 3rd parties.

Boy, that post is wrong on so many levels to show complete ignorance about history of Millard Fillmore.

1. Millard Fillmore did not run for president in 1848. He was a vice president for Zachary Taylor that took office as president in 1850 following Taylor's death, finishing his term.
2. He was not chosen by the Whigs to run in 1852.
3. Following leaving the presidency, he left U.S. political life entirely including a long tour of Europe. While in Europe, he was surprised to find out that he had been nominated by the American Party (Know-Nothings) in 1856 after not seeking the nomination at all. The Whigs by 1856 had already disintegrated, thus why there was a Republican Party and a Know Nothing Party to start with. Fillmore accepted the nomination, but running for president did not espouse the nativist views of the Know Nothings when campaigning.
4. The major political event of Fillmore's presidency was the Missouri Compromise of 1850. Fillmore genuinely believed he was helping pass something to safeguard the long-term sanctity of the Union. This of course failed as we all know and the Whigs disintegrated in the aftermath. We have the benefit of hindsight to aid us. All the antebellum politicians of the time that worked in Congress and were president did not. It's a problem of historical analysis of ignoring the pressures and events of the time as they were happening because we know how everything ends up.
5. He's a guy that tried to do well but things didn't end up well. I don't think it's his fault as far as competence (I'd rate him more competent than Taylor), more just a function of the era he was in. Some presidents like Clinton get lucky and have nothing in their terms existentially major to worry about. Others like Fillmore are put in the verge of the country being torn apart by Civil War. Who's to say Fillmore if transplanted into 1992 couldn't do just as good a job as Clinton or Clinton if transplanted into 1850 could do worse a job than Fillmore?

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I also think we need to move away from the progressives vs moderates framing.
This progressives, the Biden administration, House leaders, Senate leaders, moderates, and anonymous backbenchers vs 9 congressmen and 2 Senators.

I agree. Frankly, this is the Democrats versus less than a dozen individuals rejecting Biden's agenda.

Okay. But remove said dozen people and Democrats no longer command a majority in either house on this subject.

If the Democrats had a 51-47-2 Senate majority and a 228-203 House majority, these bills would've passed - the moderates would've voted against but it wouldn't have mattered.

I'm not sure why this isn't clear to some, but the votes don't exist currently to pass either package.

1. Sinema-Portman Bill: A significant number of House Democrats will not support if Sinema and Manchin break their deal and do not support the Democratic Party platform. House Republicans will not support because any major bill passing will strengthen Democrats in 2022 and 2024.

I don't believe there are 0 votes from the House Republicans. My gut is they'll make up the required difference of progressives that vote against. Chamber of Commerce-style folks and Portman are lobbying them hard. The House right now is 220-212. Assuming everyone votes and no one says "present", the number of Republicans voting for the bill for it to pass has to be no more than 4 less than the number of progressive Democrats voting against. I think you'll see a few progressives not vote/vote present to say they're not voting against the bill but not supporting it either, but that lowers the threshold of crossover Republicans voting.

This is the fundamental weakness of the progressives' position compared to the moderates is the progressives can't count on any Republican support for what they want to do, while I'm sure the moderates have talked around and know they have some, thus why they've reliably held their position. If the Progressive Caucus voted en masse against, that's one thing, but I don't believe anyone thinks they have that level of unity to kill their own president's agenda.

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I don't believe there are 0 votes from the House Republicans. My gut is they'll make up the required difference of progressives that vote against. Chamber of Commerce-style folks and Portman are lobbying them hard.

I don't doubt there will be some. I know Upton and four others had committed to it as of a week ago, but House Republicans are more ideological than Senate Republicans by a country mile. If a fourth of the progressives withhold their votes over a broken deal, that's ~24 votes to make up. Can Portman find 19+ Republicans willing to vote for government spending and helping Biden? There are only ~80 who didn't try to overturn the election and those who aren't ideologically opposed fear a primary.

Yeah, really it goes to the level of how many progressives say "nay", but I think most of them fold unless they want to become no different than the Freedom Caucus.

If you had say 10 Republicans voting for this, would not surprise me at all. That's 5% of the caucus. That requires 14 Democrats to vote against to kill the bill, presuming 100% yea/nay votes.

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At this moment, Pelosi in all likelyhood delays the vote. I'd be really surprised otherwise.

She stated in a press conference 10 minutes ago they're having a vote today.

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Vote tonight.

Multiple Democrats said part of the plan would be to hold the vote open until Pelosi can corral enough members for passage, whether that be from the progressive wing of the caucus or from Republicans who support the infrastructure bill. One member described it as a "staredown" strategy.

Pelosi has also called in reinforcements from labor groups, who are sending letters to members of Congress urging them to support the bill.

-Politico

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Great point from Bernie.

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1443740455737430017

How is that any different from how Congress normally does business?

Being flippant here, but really, that's how they always do business. Neither party in power is ever transparent.

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KILL THE BILL!!!

House DEMs should vote against if it comes to floor Tomorrow.

Manchin flips DEM > PUB, so be it....

Manchin is no Doug Jones....

A deal is in sight, right now for around $2T. Assuming there is one, then your choice is the reduced bill + infrastructure or nothing. You'll take nothing from that, just because you didn't get a pony? If Manchin really switches parties, then reconciliation is totally dead, and your choice is infrastructure or nothing. You'll take nothing from that? This is seriously irrational decision making and behavior of a spoiled child. Progressives really are becoming the mirror image of the Freedom Caucus.

Manchin is not going to the GOP. He can win never win a GOP primary, he is too liberal for that & has attack ads written all over him - From tax credits for green energy (which he said he will vote), ACA, Tax & spend many provisions & he is too conservative for the Dems.

Manchin is probably too pragmatic for this, but if he has political ambitions post-2024, he could setup a party that's between the Republicans and Democrats that operates in West Virginia only. It'd escape the national baggage that Democrats are dealing with there and could probably save any remaining Democratic officeholders outside of naturally more liberal places like Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown. The Democratic rump remaining in the state would then go further left, but electorally would be the Liberal Democrats of the UK, getting 5% of the vote. Remove Manchin and what is the West Virginia Democratic Party, Paula Jean Swearingen? (Who left the party and is now running the People's Party in the state.)

If he stays Democrat and runs again in 2024, I think he could turn away anyone in a primary, but in his primary it's going to be FDR 1938 Purge for national activists and whoever they are backing.

Already Immigration Reform, Voting rights, Min Wage (which should be easy) are off. If Reconciliations goes on, Biden becomes the worst President in history & has 0 accomplishments except some moderate hard infra (nowhere near as required) & some COVID emegerncy $. It will be a mid-term bloodbath.

Grow up.

[StateBoiler]

KILL THE BILL!!!

House DEMs should vote against if it comes to floor Tomorrow.

Manchin flips DEM > PUB, so be it....

Manchin is no Doug Jones....

A deal is in sight, right now for around $2T. Assuming there is one, then your choice is the reduced bill + infrastructure or nothing. You'll take nothing from that, just because you didn't get a pony? If Manchin really switches parties, then reconciliation is totally dead, and your choice is infrastructure or nothing. You'll take nothing from that? This is seriously irrational decision making and behavior of a spoiled child. Progressives really are becoming the mirror image of the Freedom Caucus.

Manchin is not going to the GOP. He can win never win a GOP primary, he is too liberal for that & has attack ads written all over him - From tax credits for green energy (which he said he will vote), ACA, Tax & spend many provisions & he is too conservative for the Dems.

Manchin is probably too pragmatic for this, but if he has political ambitions post-2024, he could setup a party that's between the Republicans and Democrats that operates in West Virginia only. It'd escape the national baggage that Democrats are dealing with there and could probably save any remaining Democratic officeholders outside of naturally more liberal places like Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown. The Democratic rump remaining in the state would then go further left, but electorally would be the Liberal Democrats of the UK, getting 5% of the vote. Remove Manchin and what is the West Virginia Democratic Party, Paula Jean Swearingen? (Who left the party and is now running the People's Party in the state.)

If he stays Democrat and runs again in 2024, I think he could turn away anyone in a primary, but in his primary it's going to be FDR 1938 Purge for national activists and whoever they are backing.

Already Immigration Reform, Voting rights, Min Wage (which should be easy) are off. If Reconciliations goes on, Biden becomes the worst President in history & has 0 accomplishments except some moderate hard infra (nowhere near as required) & some COVID emegerncy $. It will be a mid-term bloodbath.

Grow up.

The hostility towards Manchin by many on this forum seems to lose sight of the fact that if it weren't for him, that seat would be in Republican hands, and the Senate would possess a Republican majority. That means there would be absolutely no chance of either the reconciliation package or the bipartisan infrastructure bill passing.

The problem with many on this forum is they're damn idiots. They think that we have democratic institutions but as long as your side has the most votes, everything the party has a majority for should pass, and that any member of the party that does not back it is a traitor. No, everyone has a vote, and anything that does not get a majority of votes does not pass. That means in a very tightly held majority, nay votes from the majority matter and yea votes from the minority matter. The state of the House and Senate is that the Democratic caucus has to have unanimity (Senate) or close to it (House)  to get anything passed without Republican support. That was the election result provided by the American people last November. They don't have unanimity. So they either have to achieve unanimity or crossover and get some Republican support for what they want to pass. That is their only 2 options. If you don't/can't/won't understand that, bye, go find another forum to post on because legislative practice and governance is too difficult a subject for you to understand and grasp, and says something negatively about whatever institution you received your education at.

If you don't want Manchin and Sinema to have any power or leverage in what's going on, great, go find 2 Republican Senators to support your legislation as written!

[StateBoiler]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/01/pelosi-pledges-friday-infrastructure-vote-biden-agenda-hangs-balance/

Pelosi's press releases on this topic have proven to have a value about equal to value of the lowest coin in the realm.

Reading one Congress watcher journalist she said in a tweet "for those of you new to Pelosi's Dear Colleague letters, they are quite numerous but state little information".

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Biden meeting Democratic House Caucus this afternoon. Phones removed.

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From earlier today but pretty funny:

Jake Sherman

@JakeSherman

“I have no idea,” @WhipClyburn said when he was asked if there would be an infrastructure vote today. He is the whip. Like, in charge of vote counting. And in the leadership.

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From earlier today but pretty funny:

Jake Sherman

@JakeSherman

“I have no idea,” @WhipClyburn said when he was asked if there would be an infrastructure vote today. He is the whip. Like, in charge of vote counting. And in the leadership.

He don't got the votes, read between the lines.

That's his job to go get them.

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The Chamber of Commerce have apparently been frozen out of Republican legislative strategy sessions.

They've taken a pro-infrastructure bill, anti-reconciliation bill stance trying to argue the two are separate, which the Democrats via Biden Friday tried to quash inside the caucus. So the Chamber's position is represented by maybe 20 people in the House? (10 Democratic moderates plus the 10 or so Republicans that were going to vote for the infrastructure bill if they have a free vote.)

[StateBoiler]

Truly low students that are not intended to go on to the trades, professions, or the tallest ivory towers can be sent into community based instruction to work in the simplest jobs whether they are typical D and F students that flunked out of 8th grade or have severe intellectual disabilities.

Agreed with UniverseMan. Whether we like it or not the vast majority of those in the bottom 25 percent of the IQ distribution land up in simple repetitive labor jobs. From a cost benefit perspective why should taxpayers be footing the bill for such students to "further" their education when they get little to nothing out of it, and can instead be earning and investing money at an earlier age?

I agree with everything you said except the bolded part

Why do Americans need to invest? That is gambling. Most Americans retirments are in 401k, which could collpase tomorrow. Than what?

We should make sure employors offer good pension plans and raise benefits to social security.

Allright, stop.

Pension plans - what do you think the pension plans do when they receive that money? THEY INVEST IT. Pension plans are 401k's on the best steroids you can find. If pension plans did not invest, no way in hell would they be able to meet their future liabilities. I read once most pension plans have to get something like 8% return EVERY YEAR in order to stay above board meeting future liabilities.

Social Security - the government itself says it's running out of money in 2034. It will no longer be able to meet costs and we'll get partial payments from that point forward unless the government takes actions to become more solvent (excuse me, I'm laughing). And that is at present levels before your hypothetical increase. I was born in 1982 and most in my generation never thought we would get our Social Security money back. I sure as hell am not counting on it.  Second, not that I like sharing too many things I read on Facebook, but tell me how the following math is wrong.

By the time I am 67, over $600,000 will be paid into Social Security on my behalf. That money would have been worth $1.9 million if I had gotten a 5% return. My annual interest would be $95,000.

The Government promises me $3,075/month at 67, which is $37,000/year.

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[quote author=ChineseConservative link=topic=437077.msg82The decisions made through the Asset Liability Management process are critically important to the governments in our system. They will determine how billions of dollars are invested, how much risk is taken and how much required contributions are likely to vary from year to year.
By the end of the Asset Liability Management process in November, the CalPERS board will decide on its investment strategy and discount rate assumption. Before then, we’re asking our stakeholders, including government agencies, employees and retirees, for their thoughts and priorities. In addition to regular public board meetings, we’re also holding webinars and posting to a dedicated ALM webpage to give everyone an opportunity to stay informed.
While no one can accurately pinpoint how different types of investments will perform over the next couple of decades, the Asset Liability Management process uses experts’ best projections in building the CalPERS investment strategy. We do, however, already know two things. First, for the same types of investments, expected performance is lower than it was four years ago. Second, over the long term, riskier types of investments tend to yield higher returns than safer ones.
These factors both lead to a similar conclusion – CalPERS can’t keep counting on a 7% return target without taking on more risk. Whether we can even achieve 7% return without taking on excessive risk will be the major question in this year’s Asset Liability Management process. 80646#msg8280646 date=1633397751 uid=32842]

Truly low students that are not intended to go on to the trades, professions, or the tallest ivory towers can be sent into community based instruction to work in the simplest jobs whether they are typical D and F students that flunked out of 8th grade or have severe intellectual disabilities.

Agreed with UniverseMan. Whether we like it or not the vast majority of those in the bottom 25 percent of the IQ distribution land up in simple repetitive labor jobs. From a cost benefit perspective why should taxpayers be footing the bill for such students to "further" their education when they get little to nothing out of it, and can instead be earning and investing money at an earlier age?

I agree with everything you said except the bolded part

Why do Americans need to invest? That is gambling. Most Americans retirments are in 401k, which could collpase tomorrow. Than what?

We should make sure employors offer good pension plans and raise benefits to social security.

Allright, stop.

Pension plans - what do you think the pension plans do when they receive that money? THEY INVEST IT. Pension plans are 401k's on the best steroids you can find. If pension plans did not invest, no way in hell would they be able to meet their future liabilities. I read once most pension plans have to get something like 8% return EVERY YEAR in order to stay above board meeting future liabilities.

Social Security - the government itself says it's running out of money in 2034. It will no longer be able to meet costs and we'll get partial payments from that point forward unless the government takes actions to become more solvent (excuse me, I'm laughing). And that is at present levels before your hypothetical increase. I was born in 1982 and most in my generation never thought we would get our Social Security money back. I sure as hell am not counting on it.  Second, not that I like sharing too many things I read on Facebook, but tell me how the following math is wrong.

By the time I am 67, over $600,000 will be paid into Social Security on my behalf. That money would have been worth $1.9 million if I had gotten a 5% return. My annual interest would be $95,000.

The Government promises me $3,075/month at 67, which is $37,000/year.

The point of social security is not to be an investment to make the rich richer, it's to provide a safety net so that old people don't have to live on the streets.

No one should be expecting to come out ahead from it, especially people who contribute a lot of money to the pot and support the people who don't.

So if the money runs out in 2034 and we start have to doing partial payments based on money in=money out every year, is the federal government planning on practicing widespread deflation to keep that safety net for old people in place at the same level?

The issue is not what you say. The issue is Social Security from its start was a giant lie from the government. Starting with Franklin Roosevelt, Americans were told you pay into Social Security from your labor and will receive that money back in your retirement. That's not true. It's never been true. There's no account sitting at the Social Security Administration individualized for each taxpayer. You pay in, it goes into a slush fund, and what is removed is not being kept in a ledger on your behalf. It's the young working to subsidize the old that once worked but no longer do. Which look, fine. The problem is the proportions are changing so that proportionally we have more old not working than ever and less young working than ever.

My assumption is that the only pension plans that offer a guaranteed payout based on an assumed 8% return (that is way, way excessive at the moment), are government ones. When their plans go insolvent they just raise taxes or something to bail them out. If private companies do that, they are cooking their books, and risking insolvency.

https://calmatters.org/commentary/my-turn/2021/04/calpers-review-of-its-investment-strategy-and-actuarial-assumptions/

Pension systems invest money and use the earnings to pay for future costs. For instance, 55 cents of every dollar CalPERS pays today in benefits comes from investment earnings. The remainder comes from employees and governments – school districts, cities, counties, special districts and the state.

The decisions made through the Asset Liability Management process are critically important to the governments in our system. They will determine how billions of dollars are invested, how much risk is taken and how much required contributions are likely to vary from year to year.

By the end of the Asset Liability Management process in November, the CalPERS board will decide on its investment strategy and discount rate assumption. Before then, we’re asking our stakeholders, including government agencies, employees and retirees, for their thoughts and priorities. In addition to regular public board meetings, we’re also holding webinars and posting to a dedicated ALM webpage to give everyone an opportunity to stay informed.

While no one can accurately pinpoint how different types of investments will perform over the next couple of decades, the Asset Liability Management process uses experts’ best projections in building the CalPERS investment strategy. We do, however, already know two things. First, for the same types of investments, expected performance is lower than it was four years ago. Second, over the long term, riskier types of investments tend to yield higher returns than safer ones.

These factors both lead to a similar conclusion – CalPERS can’t keep counting on a 7% return target without taking on more risk. Whether we can even achieve 7% return without taking on excessive risk will be the major question in this year’s Asset Liability Management process.

I have a private pension from my 8 years working for Cummins and compared to my 401k, it's not going to be anything. It goes up in value about a thousand bucks a year and for cash value it's in the mid-to-high 30s, so by the time I'm in my mid-60s it may be somewhere in the mid-60s. I'm going to probably live off it for a year and change and zero it out before I touch the 401k. I can't say for certain because the government's only way to pay for anything is to inflate away debt.

[StateBoiler]

Prime Minister Manchin (R-WV) once again killing an extremely popular policy that most of his own constituents support.

Actually, House Ways and Means Committee Democrats don't like this provision at all. Struggling to figure out the why unless the Democrats think it'll be easy to game. Wyden's office supposedly was working on it for 2 years but had no legislative text in all that time. The question comes down to 16th Amendment and what qualifies as income.