House Democratic leaders are placing an early emphasis on healthcare as they discuss their immediate priorities upon the swearing-in of the new Congress on Jan. 3.

Early votes in the House next year are expected to focus on boosting Medicaid and restoring an enhanced tax subsidy that is designed to lower the cost of Affordable Care Act health plans for millions of enrollees. Democrats are also promising swift action on legislation to stop the war with Iran and to reverse some of Donald Trump’strade tariffs.

Passing those bills should not be a problem with such a large Democratic House majority. Getting them signed into law most certainly could be. 

A 60-vote threshold in the Senate looms for the legislation, as does a potential presidential veto. Trump on election night posted a photo on his social media site of a red hat with a simple message on it: “VETO”.

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[–] 43 points 2 days ago (1 child)

I know El-Sayed said it as a joke but it’s been stuck in my head ever since. He really should introduce a Medicare for All plan and find someway to call it Trumpcare. I mean we’d all start calling it something else pretty quickly but fuckstick really wants a legacy and you know he’d sign anything with his name on it.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 day ago

    Someone just needs to say it a couple times so that fox news ends up running a banner that says:

    Polling shows "Trumpcare" popular with Americans

    He'll see that and it'll be Trumpcare to him forever. It doesn't matter what it's actually called.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 days ago

    So, the enhanced credits were first born during Covid, during a budget reconciliation requiring a simple majority. They expired and weren’t renewed with the Big Beautiful Bill, also during a budget reconciliation requiring a simple majority. It would take at least four republican senators, counting our eggs MS and AK. We have like no midline republicans anymore, so divergence is highly unlikely. So we will probably have to wait till the next budget reconciliation.

    Republicans really just spent two years doing nothing but tearing down what was painstakingly built in the previous administration.

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  • [–] 55 points 2 days ago* (4 children)

    Only the DNC can fumble this fucking hard.

    Let's take the overwhelming goodwill and massive success and throw it in the dumpster by promising to return the exact conditions that got us here to begin with....

    The voters didnt say medicare/medicaid subsidies. They said universal healthcare.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Reinstating the ACA subsidies and expanding Medicaid coverage could be done immediately if enough Republicans and/or Trump get on board with it, which would have immediate effect on the sustainability of all hospitals that are at risk of closing right now (and there are a lot of them). Medicare for all would take time, even Bernie's plan calls for phasing it in over like 5 years.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    All of that is understandable, but it should at least be communicated as the ultimate goal. "Hey we're doing this to help people immediately until we can pass and install medicare for all"

    Schumer/Jefferies dont want to acknowledge it or make any promises. Either because they dont want to (because they're bought and sold by corpo pharma). Or because they dont think they can do it (because theyre fucking weak).

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago*

    I think it's way too early to know how it's going to go. They're not even in power yet. I def don't trust Jeffries or Schumer, but the political winds are blowing and it'll be interesting to see where they land

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  • [–] 19 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    Yes, that’s what everyone wanted, a return to unaffordable for profit healthcare that only the upper class can access. Everyone douse your torches and cap your pitchforks, we can’t afford any accidents, and no one call for an ambulance, looks like we’re doubling down on wealth disparity because dem leadership is bought and paid for as usual.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago

    Anyone who writes a story on this bullshit as a straight forward "dems fighting for you" puff piece is just as much of a public enemy as chuck and hakeem

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    uh huh. Sure they will. They will aim as low as they can and then fail to deliver on even that, with a small bit of theater. Thats all they are good for.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    Notice how nobody talk about returning to the mou, the only thing that will end the war

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  • 35 comments in c/news@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 15 points 1 day ago

    Gridlock is better than the shit we have right now.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 day ago

    First thing the Dems need to do is bring in new leadership for House and Senate.

    Hakeem and Chuck have long outlived their usefulness and will do more harm than good when it comes to pushing for what needs to be done in the future.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 day ago (12 children)

    …and prosecuting the pedophile regime?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (11 children)

    As much as I agree that criminals and corrupt politicians have no business being in government, prosecution is unlikely to be successful in the next 2 years. Congress only has the authority to investigate then makes a referral to the DOJ, but the president controls the DOJ.

    The recourse after a referral like that falls flat would be to impeach and remove (until someone is in place that will honor an independent DOJ) but they'd need the opposing party to cooperate and reach the 2/3 threshold needed for removal. Prosecution may need to wait for the next president to unblock the DOJ and empower them to do their job.

    Some of the ideas being floated might be more attainable in the short term, especially in the cases of regaining control over responsibilities enumerated in the Constitution as belonging to Congress, such as passing budgets and declarations of war.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Referring to the DOJ is a meaningless act of theatre. Even If the DOJ didn't have a long standing policy to not prosecute sitting presidents

    SCOTUS made the president immune to regular prosecution

    The only path forward is impeachment. That is the only way to hold him accountable.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    Whether it is referred to the DOJ or not is not my point. What I describe is how this process works. Congress having a simple majority of one party with an adversarial president is unlikely to result in prosecution or impeachment/removal by the Senate because of the systems in play.

    For the president, what you say is true. But there are others who are not the president and have participated in illegal activities. This is also being blocked currently by the DOJ or by pardons.

    Democrats alone do not have the ability for removal via impeachment. They'd need Republicans to cross the aisle on it and recent history has shown that this is unlikely.

    Voters want accountability but there are more obstacles to overcome within our existing legal framework before that is realistically possible. This is why there may be a focus on other more easily altered areas in the short term.

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  • [–] 1 point 22 hours ago (8 children)

    Certainly, but the goal is to start those investigations, collect and catalogue all the receipts, so when the DOJ is not compromised, something can be done to hold these corrupt assholes accountable.

    The issue I am having is that the Democratic leadership are already, very clearly, steering away from anything that may look like accountability

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  • [–] 1 point 21 hours ago (7 children)

    The incoming head of the oversight committee told them to start finding lawyers and made a statement about how there will be investigations. That doesn't seem like steering away from accountability at all.

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  • [–] 1 point 21 hours ago (6 children)
  • [–] 1 point 21 hours ago (5 children)

    I know you were. Doesn't change what I said.

    You seemed to agree with me that prosecution in this environment isn't realistic and that you wanted investigations for when it can be. I shared a website highlighting that there is a commitment by the incoming head of the oversight committee to perform those investigations. It's going to happen.

    I don't see why you're concerned with a politician politicking and trying to give soundbytes saying that he wants to focus on something with broader appeal across both parties to the media. This guy wants to be speaker and needs both parties to support him right now. Has no bearing on what the oversight committee will do.

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  • [–] 1 point 21 hours ago (4 children)

    I know you were. Doesn’t change what I said.

    I am not trying to change your mind here; I am simply pointing that there are conflicting "announcements" and I have no trust the Democrats will hold anyone accountable.

    ...It’s going to happen.

    It did not happen with Obama after Bush Jr nor with Biden after Orange Turd 1.0, why are you so sure it will happen this time?

    I don’t see why you’re concerned with a politician politicking and trying to give soundbytes saying that he wants to focus on something with broader appeal across both parties to the media.

    Again because that scenario has been in play before and they never hold anyone accountable. Obama may have just been "politicking" when he said "let bygones be bygones" but that ended up being the policy of his admin re ALL of the Bush era corruption and now here we are

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  • [–] 1 point 20 hours ago (3 children)

    Not having trust is warranted, I've said elsewhere that they've not done anything to earn it.

    However you seem to be ignoring that investigations did happen during both of those Presidencies and there were criminal charges brought as a result. There is proof of people involved being held accountable that you could go and read about if you cared to. Corruption scandals involving Halliburton and Blackwater during the Bush era also did result in prosecution, as did various investigations during Biden's term. Both Epstein and Maxwell were arrested, with the latter being tried and convicted.

    I'll concede that I can't be certain that an investigation will actually take place and shouldn't have said that, however history has shown that these investigations do routinely happen by this committee.

    I'll also concede that minor politicians, staffers, and private sector participants were primarily the ones that had charges brought against them, not Presidents. But you're exaggerating when you say there is never accountability and that AGs during Democratic Presidencies don't prosecute criminal charges around corruption.

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  • [–] 1 point 18 hours ago (2 children)

    Yes, of course I am exaggerating; but surely you can see my point. There is nowhere near enough accountability for all the corruption that goes around.

    Pretending jailing George Santos while letting trump go without any punishment after 34 convictions is just laughable.

    If we need 100 gallons of rain today and we get 10 drops, you would not blame me for saying "it has not rained at all"... it is an exaggeration, it is technically incorrect, but it carries the idea that we are nowhere near close to what we need.

    I would argue that we are at a point now where, giving credit for charging a minor staffer while letting anyone of importance go completely unscathed is akin to trying take credit for putting a bandaid on someone that fell face first into a wood chipper

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  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago (1 child)

    I hope you know I'm agreeing with you. I want to see change too and it's why I advocate for people to reach out to their representatives right now. We are already hearing reporting of hundreds if not thousands of calls per day asking reps to not back current Dem leaders.

    Change can't happen if we refuse to acknowledge the the systems in play and how different parts of the government function, which is where I started with all this.

    More than anything I want engaged people to continue to be engaged but meaningfully and with purpose. Simply being upset over lack of progress or the speed of it happening aren't enough, despite our desire for that to be true.

    There are millions of dollars and hundreds of legal experts involved in plans to dismantle the parts of government they don't agree with and they talk about it loudly. They celebrate their wins, regardless of how small or even true they are, loudly, and the uninformed notice. By refusing to acknowledge the small wins or even the path to this being realistic, you build no message of support to chase bigger wins. It actually does the opposite - you crush interest in change and in action, both because it builds a perception that there is no political win large enough to satisfy and because others will also hear this lack of celebration as a lack of outcome.

    This is why I've spent all this time replying. We agree on it not being enough and that something must be done. We agree that this group of leaders hasn't earned trust. Where we disagree is in how it is being framed. Change of this magnitude needs to snowball. Win people over with quick wins within their political control and continue to press forward for more, with renewed support from the electorate.

    Change of this magnitude will require sustained support over time to be successful and it doesn't happen if we won't even acknowledge when things did go right, however small it may be to start.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 child)

    I doubt they’ll get anything past Trump.

    It’s just gridlock for the next two years.

    I think that there's a lot of potential routes to alter tariffs, if they want to make court fights out of things. Tariff setting is an enumerated power of Congress, not the President, and I think that there are good odds that SCOTUS will generally defer to Congress in a number of scenarios if there is a disagreement.

    And more-broadly, a lot of what Trump has done has been in a situation where there is real question over whether he can do something without Congressional approval, but Congress hasn't actively objected to it. There are areas where even the Republican-controlled Congress hasn't signed off on things, like his ballroom, arch, AUMF in Iran, etc, but they haven't acted as a majority and taken issue with it.

    You look at something like Goldwater v. Carter. There, Carter terminated a treaty when it was very questionable


    though as yet unsettled in American constitutional case law


    whether the President has the power to do so. Congress declined to take issue with it, and so it was essentially allowed to slide.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater_v._Carter

    A majority of six Justices ruled that the case should be dismissed without hearing an oral argument. Justices Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist issued two separate concurring opinions on the case. Rehnquist claimed that the issue concerned how foreign affairs were conducted between Congress and the President, and was essentially political, not judicial; therefore, it was not eligible to be heard by the court. Powell, while agreeing that the case did not merit judicial review, believed that the issue itself, the powers of the President to break treaties without congressional approval, would have been arguable had Congress issued a formal opposition through a resolution to the termination of the treaty. (The Senate had drafted such a resolution, but had not voted upon it.[2]) This would have turned the case into a constitutional debate between the executive powers granted to the President and the legislative powers granted to Congress. As the case stood, however, it was simply a dispute among unsettled, competing political forces within the legislative and executive branches of government, and hence still political in nature due to the lack of majority or supermajority vote in the Senate speaking officially as a constitutional institution.

    If Democrats want to establish case law establishing precedent limiting the Executive


    and they may not, as in a non-Trump-in-the-White-House scenario, they might favor a strong Executive Branch


    I'd guess that there are good arguments that in a number of cases, such as whether the President is using delegated tariff authority in the sense that Congress desires, a majority resolution from Congress of the sort that never happened in Goldwater v. Carter might change things.

    Congress has the power to declare war; that's also an enumerated Congressional power. We haven't declared war as such since World War II, yet we have certainly engaged in things that would be considered war. But a lot of that is Congress being generally willing to let the President do something and just not object to it, or to attach themselves as little as possible to it. If Congress actually feels that the President is acting outside his authority on war without a declaration of war and doesn't like it and wants it to stop and is actively willing to take issue with it, I suspect that SCOTUS is also going to tend to grant discretion to Congress on the matter.

    Trump's gotten a lot of mileage out of a Republican Congress simply being willing to let him do a number of things, or at least not actively oppose them. But to the extent that that window closes January 3, I think that he'll have to deal with some changes.

    There are things that a Democratic Congress probably can't do. The President pretty much owns most foreign affairs, and if Trump wants to, he can keep calling Canada a 51st state or their prime minister a governor or threatening Greenland. That's pretty clearly in his scope of authority. There's nothing that a Democratic Congress can do about that, aside from applying indirect pressure using unrelated powers.

    And if Trump wants to, he can veto laws unless Democrats can get some Republican legislators onboard. Generally, the US system is structured to favor maintaining the status quo.

    But I think that there are a lot of things that a Democratic Congress can do or explore doing if it decides it wants to do so.

    I think that a lot of what the Democratic Party is actually going to want to do is to stage-manage the next two years for a Democratic federal trifecta in 2028, which would let them do all sorts of things. But on policy over the next two years...I think that real things can happen there too.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 day ago*

    And if Trump wants to, he can veto laws unless Democrats can get some Republican legislators onboard.

    I think it is very likely for Democrats to get enough Republican votes to sustain a veto on specific issues, particularly on the war and on tariffs. Both bills would have to be crafted with Republican input, and be focused more on asserting Congress's authority than on punishing past actions. But they should reinforce firm bounds that the President can't sneak around.

    But, conveniently enough, the threshold for overriding a veto is also more than sufficient for impeachment. So if Trump has constraints placed on him via a veto override, and he ignores them, the next logical step would be to impeach him over it. When drafting the bill, in exchange for the weaker language that Republicans would insist on, Democrats should insist that if Trump ignores even that, that Republicans should support ousting him. At that point, it's not a matter of party anymore, it's a matter of whether Congress has any power at all.

    Democrats won't get this courtesy from Republicans on anything else, so they should make sure to work together on this, as long as I am right and there are enough Republicans now willing to buck the President on this.

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  • Whoa what monumental goals! Restoring tax credits for healthcare to what they were a couple of years ago when healthcare was equally expensive and ending a war that's comprised of two sides occasionally lobbing bombs at one another every few weeks.

    Nevermind all the corruption and crime coming out of the white house or all those people being illegally rounded up and locked in cages for being brown. Let's ignore the epstein files too. Let's also ignore the warrantless surveillance being conducted by Flock and Axon along with all the AI data centers going up along with them that siphon all our energy reserves away. Nope! Renewing tax credits to funnel tax dollars toward the medical industry is definitely our most pressing issue.

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  • [–] 8 points 21 hours ago (1 child)

    Don’t drag me into this!

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  • [–] 6 points 23 hours ago

    About time the Dems should put in place more militant leadership instead of those two dimwits pandering to corpos and giving AIPAC the velvet glove treatment.

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  • [–] 3 points 23 hours ago

    Just pass Medicare for All legislation and call it the Trump Saves America Act and the idiot won't be able to resist signing it no matter what is in it. Just give every bill a name that will appeal to our naked emperor. It's not like he actually reads any of the bills he signs.

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  • [–] 3 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

    House and Senate can override his vetos.

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  • So prosecuting corrupt officials and eliminating the electoral college are what? Second? Just more of the same bullshit (I hope I am wrong, but I have seen the Democrats go from "radical change" to "now is not the time for radical change" too many times).

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago

    If they can send legislation which is popular to Trump for him to veto it, that sets the stage for a democratic president in 2 years to pass it then.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago

    Love how the AP just pretends Hakeem Jeffries speaks for the Democratic party at this point without even questioning it a little bit

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    I'll hold my breath.

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  • [–] 1 point 16 hours ago

    Or we could do those, release the files, start the trials, impeach the cabinet, expand SCOTUS, and kill the electoral college. Then start another list for week 2.

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago

    Raise income taxes on the top 1% to pay for it. Make it a minimum, mandatory tax.

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago

    I see them having lots of gridlock. Trump will veto everything they put forward and they don't have the supermajority to override his vetos.

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  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago

    I'm sorry but the gestapo are killing people in the streets, that war needs to take precedence.

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  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago

    So they’re not going to reverse project 2025, prosecute the Epstein pedophiles and jail all these criminals in the White House? Sign the petition to remove this clown Remove this traitor clown

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  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago

    Fuck all that. Trump/Epstein files before anything else complete and unredacted! Every branch and every party has promised these and the entire govement has failed!

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