Democrats Have A $3.5 Trillion Plan To Actually Help The American People

With infrastructure talks still ongoing but not making much headway, Democrats have decided that the best way to fulfill their agenda is to just go it alone. They have come up with a $3.5 trillion budget that would allow them to make the investments this country desperately needs, but were taken out of the infrastructure package. In order for this to work, they have to get every single Democrat on their side, and that is easier said than done. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Democrats have decided that since the infrastructure negotiations have basically cut out most of the good stuff that the American public wanted, to hell with it, they're just going to put all of those good proposals in a separate budget bill and they're going to attempt to pass this bill through the reconciliation process. Now here's the thing, this new piece of legislation that they're working on is going to be three and a half trillion dollar proposal. And again, most of what it is is all those good things that were in the infrastructure package that have since been taken out through the negotiation process. Things like expanding Medicare coverage to people age 60, I believe it is, along with covering vision, dental and hearing. That would be a massive expansion of the Medicare program here in the United States. Millions more people would be eligible for it. They could get on this government run healthcare, and it would be a very good thing. It also includes the improvements in our national energy grid to be able to handle renewable energy more efficiently. So there you've got your, you know, green new deal, essentially part of it and a whole host of other things that this country desperately needs.

And that, believe it or not, majority of people In this country want, because above all else, this isn't a budget bill. It's not an infrastructure bill. It is a jobs bill. That's what all of this amounts to. It amounts to us jobs. And yeah, the three and a half trillion dollars is a hefty price tag. Bernie Sanders wanted it to be $6 trillion, which honestly would have been even better. But here's the thing. The Democrats are doing this because they know they can probably get Republicans to go with them or at least enough Republicans to go with them on an infrastructure compromise. Now, right now that actually does not seem possible because even the Republicans who are at the negotiating table are saying we're still not going to support it. So they've got their work cut out for them there. But they do know that if they have these items in the infrastructure package, Republicans will never go for it at all. So that's why they came up with a separate package. But in order for this to pass, they have to, to have 100% of Democrats in the House and the Senate on board. And that Is a Herculean task. That is almost just as difficult as getting Republicans to sign on to it because of you guessed it, people like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Jon Tester and a few others.

But Manchin is the biggest obstacle. Manchin came out yesterday and said, listen, we want to do this, which I'm a on the fence about, we gotta be able to pay for it. It's gotta be paid for upfront. Okay. Big talk from a guy who doesn't want to raise taxes on corporations in order to pay for it. Even though a majority of people left, right and center actually do want to raise taxes on corporations and millionaires and billionaires to pay for these things. But here's the thing that Manchin is forgetting. This is a jobs package. Jobs packages do end up paying for themselves. Okay. This isn't like a military budget say, which by the way, you don't demand they pay for upfront either Joe, just to point out your hypocrisy there. But when you have a military budget of more than $700 billion every year that money's gone.