some plague rats posted:

Getting covid is also really lovely for elementary aged kids, what's your point.

evilweasel posted:

I use it as an example because the claim is it is politically bad to means-test and the very people claiming that turning around and getting mad at it is very good evidence the political claim is wrong. I was very clear on my view: it would be political malpractice not to means test handing out $10k when many people will not get it (again, because they didn't even go to college).

cat botherer posted:

The impulse to means-test wastes money and limits the appeal of programs. Student loan forgiveness is popular, and it is very easy to figure out if someone has student loan debt.

If only this kind of scrutiny were applied to the PPP loans that were handed out like candy, but of course businesses play by different rules than the working class.

evilweasel posted:

I use it as an example because the claim is it is politically bad to means-test and the very people claiming that turning around and getting mad at it is very good evidence the political claim is wrong. I was very clear on my view: it would be political malpractice not to means test handing out $10k when many people will not get it (again, because they didn't even go to college).

mastershakeman posted:

I'm against the debt forgiveness in general

some plague rats posted:

I disagree with this argument completely, and I don't find your counter-argument of some nameless poster being an rear end in a top hat at some previous point to be all that persuasive. Student loan forgiveness is such an easy win, and the difference in messaging between "we've forgiven 10k of your student debt, it's already done, vote for me" and "you get 10k forgiven if you jump through these arbitrary hoops we've set up for no good reason to gently caress you up, just like everything else in life when you deal with the government" is a mile wide. Doesn't matter how accurate that second message actually is, that's how it'll sound. Do you honestly think that "everyone with student debt got 10k forgiven" and "some people with student debt got 10k forgiven" is actually going to make a blind bit of difference to the kind of hideous spite elemental that will get mad because someone in need got help and they didn't?

some plague rats posted:

I disagree with this argument completely, and I don't find your counter-argument of some nameless poster being an rear end in a top hat at some previous point to be all that persuasive. Student loan forgiveness is such an easy win, and the difference in messaging between "we've forgiven 10k of your student debt, it's already done, vote for me" and "you get 10k forgiven if you jump through these arbitrary hoops we've set up for no good reason to gently caress you up, just like everything else in life when you deal with the government" is a mile wide. Doesn't matter how accurate that second message actually is, that's how it'll sound. Do you honestly think that "everyone with student debt got 10k forgiven" and "some people with student debt got 10k forgiven" is actually going to make a blind bit of difference to the kind of hideous spite elemental that will get mad because someone in need got help and they didn't?

silence_kit posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8hYrNsRoTs

evilweasel posted:

Even self-proclaimed leftists who proclaim they are against means testing hate when they think the wealthy are benefiting from a handout and they're not. We had that happen in this thread when someone (incorrectly) thought the child tax credit was not means-tested. Giving money to wealthy people and not to other people (for example: poor people who didn't go to college) is insanely unpopular and it would be political malpractice to do it.

Zophar posted:

If they can forgive 10k they can forgive all of it, and everyone's attention will turn to that fact forever onward.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

"some people making over $125k with student loans might get mad that they didn't get anything"

evilweasel posted:

I use it as an example because the claim is it is politically bad to means-test and the very people claiming that turning around and getting mad at it is very good evidence the political claim is wrong. I was very clear on my view: it would be political malpractice not to means test handing out $10k when many people will not get it (again, because they didn't even go to college).

evilweasel posted:

Here's the problem: at no point do you consider the precise person I am pointing to: the person who doesn't get $10k because they didn't go to college. I mentioned it twice! I have no doubt that when you don't consider the whole reason that it's politically beneficial to means test at all you arrive at the wrong conclusion.

some plague rats posted:

Why?

some plague rats posted:

That's not who I was referring to, there. I meant the people EW was talking about with no student loans who are mad at the idea of people who do getting help. Sorry if I wasn't clear

Jarmak posted:

I'm not sure I agree with your premise. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of high-earning software engineers role-playing as working class leftists that will abandon the Democratic party they've vowed to never vote for.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Only a single-digit percentage of people make over $125k and only a even smaller slice of that group has student loans. So, you're right that it doesn't make much difference. But, they weighed the "people getting mad about forgiving rich doctors and lawyers debts" vs. "some people making over $125k with student loans might get mad that they didn't get anything" and decided that the safer move politically was the first one.

Jarmak posted:

I'm not sure I agree with your premise. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of high-earning software engineers role-playing as working class leftists that will abandon the Democratic party they've vowed to never vote for.

some plague rats posted:

fuuuuuck offffffff

virtualboyCOLOR posted:

“Less damaging” is not implicitly:

Nor is it somehow stating Trump has no fault or minimal fault to the US covid response.

Please do better when formulating your arguments instead of putting words in my posts I didn’t write. Thank you.

mastershakeman posted:

I think it's horrendous policy if not park of a package completely revamping public undergrad/grad school. A one time forgiveness is a cynical election ploy and nothing more. It doesn't help anyone on ibr, anyone on paye, barely helps those with private loans (especially those who paid off their higher interest public debt , still have private, and now get nothing), and it will only drive up costs further in the future. And most importantly, it doesn't help anyone who didn't go to college and doesn't help anyone who went to a cheaper but worse school to avoid debt.

mastershakeman posted:

I think it's horrendous policy if not park of a package completely revamping public undergrad/grad school. A one time forgiveness is a cynical election ploy and nothing more. It doesn't help anyone on ibr, anyone on paye, barely helps those with private loans (especially those who paid off their higher interest public debt , still have private, and now get nothing), and it will only drive up costs further in the future. And most importantly, it doesn't help anyone who didn't go to college and doesn't help anyone who went to a cheaper but worse school to avoid debt.

IBR and PAYE were already mistakes that drove costs even higher, but at least they helped people at the end of the 25/20 year forgiveness.

This doesn't do anything but try to win a few Congressional house seats , but even doing blanket forgiveness is still bad when it doesn't help anyone going forward.

I guess if you just want Dems to win it's a good move since it will potentially drive turnout with a 'vote for us to get money" every few years.

some plague rats posted:

That's an absolutely meaningless argument though. Should we stop funding AIDS research because most people don't have AIDS? Should we stop funding needle exchanges because most people don't do heroin? It's the job of the government to help people who need it and if some people who don't really need it get helped along the way that's a better outcome to me than vice versa.

evilweasel posted:

So again, you're just not actually wrestling with the issue. Here's the issue. There are tons of people who didn't go to college, and their life is, well, not great. They need more help. They do not look at college grads as people who are more deserving of help than they are. It's already kind of politically dicey to do student loan relief on that basis - but the Democratic Party is doing it anyway. What will turn that annoyance from the people not getting help to rage is when it's pointed out that, say, a first-year lawyer making $180k a year got the $10k in loan forgiveness.

Your counter-argument here makes no sense at all. Remember, what we are discussing is if you should cut student loan relief off for the people who do not need it. Your claim is that it is politically beneficial to not means-test. Basically, that the annoyance from people who have to jump through hoops (that you appear to have made up whole cloth in your mind) to get the $10-$20k will outweigh the political damage from it being advertised you gave wealthy young first-year lawyers making $180k a year that $10k they definitely didn't need. If you want to argue that it is a moral imperative to give those lawyers the $10k too akin to funding AIDS research, sure, go ahead I guess. I think I'd just let you make that argument and view it as self-refuting. But that's not the discussion we are having.

As Leon has been posting, the Biden admin has had plenty of time to think about how to implement this and implement it well, and it looks like they've done that. You do not appear to have considered, at all, the political blowback (aside from just dismissing it as from "spite elementals") from not means-testing it. There's a reason this stuff is consistently means-tested. It's not because nobody has ever thought of "hey, what if it's politically popular to give money to rich people?" The republican party tries that with every tax cut. It stopped working.

evilweasel posted:

So again, you're just not actually wrestling with the issue. Here's the issue. There are tons of people who didn't go to college, and their life is, well, not great. They need more help. They do not look at college grads as people who are more deserving of help than they are. It's already kind of politically dicey to do student loan relief on that basis - but the Democratic Party is doing it anyway. What will turn that annoyance from the people not getting help to rage is when it's pointed out that, say, a first-year lawyer making $180k a year got the $10k in loan forgiveness.

evilweasel posted:

Your counter-argument here makes no sense at all. Remember, what we are discussing is if you should cut student loan relief off for the people who do not need it. Your claim is that it is politically beneficial to not means-test. Basically, that the annoyance from people who have to jump through hoops (that you appear to have made up whole cloth in your mind) to get the $10-$20k will outweigh the political damage from it being advertised you gave wealthy young first-year lawyers making $180k a year that $10k they definitely didn't need. If you want to argue that it is a moral imperative to give those lawyers the $10k too akin to funding AIDS research, sure, go ahead I guess. I think I'd just let you make that argument and view it as self-refuting. But that's not the discussion we are having.

As Leon has been posting, the Biden admin has had plenty of time to think about how to implement this and implement it well, and it looks like they've done that. You do not appear to have considered, at all, the political blowback (aside from just dismissing it as from "spite elementals") from not means-testing it. There's a reason this stuff is consistently means-tested. It's not because nobody has ever thought of "hey, what if it's politically popular to give money to rich people?" The republican party tries that with every tax cut. It stopped working.

mastershakeman posted:

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

I think one of the points Some Plague Rats is making that is probably true is that what you have written is largely accurate, but we don't know how motivated people will be to actually express it via voting. If you're doing it for a political reason and it doesn't make a difference in votes, then it was probably unnecessary.

The biggest example of this is the 70+% of people who want stricter gun laws and don't like the GOP's gun policy, but a large chunk of them are still going to vote for the GOP regardless of if they are upset about that aspect. Almost nobody was making that issue their deciding vote, even if they didn't agree with it.

quote:

When the Supreme Court restricted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to fight climate change this year, the reason it gave was that Congress had never granted the agency the broad authority to shift America away from burning fossil fuels.

Now it has.

Throughout the landmark climate law, passed this month, is language written specifically to address the Supreme Court’s justification for reining in the E.P.A., a ruling that was one of the court’s most consequential of the term. The new law amends the Clean Air Act, the country’s bedrock air-quality legislation, to define the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels as an “air pollutant.”

That language, according to legal experts as well as the Democrats who worked it into the legislation, explicitly gives the E.P.A. the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to use its power to push the adoption of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

“The language, we think, makes pretty clear that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act,” said Senator Tom Carper, the Delaware Democrat who led the movement to revise the law. With the new law, he added, there are “no ifs, ands or buts” that Congress has told federal agencies to tackle carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping emissions from power plants, automobiles and oil wells.

This month, in the hours before the bill passed the Senate, Republicans waged a last-minute, mostly unsuccessful predawn battle to remove the language from the legislation. Later that day, the Senate approved the climate-and-tax bill by a vote of 51 to 50, along party lines, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote.

Republicans objected to the language, and to the fact that it appeared in a budget bill, a category of legislation focused on government spending and revenue.

“It’s buried in there,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said on Fox News Business ahead of the Senate vote. “The Democrats are trying to overturn the Supreme Court’s West Virginia vs. E.P.A. victory,” he added, referring to the ruling that curbed the E.P.A.’s ability to tackle global warming. Mr. Cruz did not respond to requests to discuss his opposition.

Conservative organizations that have challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority in the past said the new law would not stop future lawsuits. Robert Henneke, executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative nonprofit group, said “sneaking in this verbiage” into the new law “is probably just going to set up future regulatory fights.”

Legal experts, on the other hand, said those fights would almost certainly be harder to win.

Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on the Clean Air Act, said the language cemented E.P.A.’s authority and would be “a powerful disincentive” to new lawsuits.

The new law includes about $370 billion over 10 years to expand the use of electric vehicles, jump-start renewable energy such as solar and wind power, and develop newer energy sources like clean hydrogen. It is the largest investment in climate-change solutions in United States history, and it is expected to help cut emissions about 40 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade.

That gets close to Mr. Biden’s goal of cutting emissions roughly in half during that time period, but White House officials have said they intend to pursue new regulations through the Environmental Protection Agency to close the gap.

Among other things, the law provides billions of dollars to the E.P.A. to reduce emissions from power plants and helps to fund the development of wind, solar and power sources that don’t emit carbon dioxide. The law also encourages states to adopt California’s aggressive plan to phase out gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

Republican attorneys general and conservative allies in states that rely heavily on fossil fuels are pursuing legal efforts to limit the federal government’s power to cut emissions, in part by challenging the legal doctrine by which Congress has delegated authority to federal agencies to regulate the environment.

Mr. Henneke of the Texas Public Policy Foundation called the billions of dollars in the climate law “a total end run” around the Supreme Court decision limiting the E.P.A. He described it as a continuation of what he called “the war on coal, the war on energy, the war on fossil fuels.”

The Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970, at the birth of the environmental movement, and is the primary law defining the E.P.A.’s responsibilities for protecting and regulating air quality. It was significantly expanded in 1990 to curb other major environmental threats like acid rain and urban smog.

The act does define greenhouse gases in some sections, but does not explicitly direct the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide. Rather, it more broadly asks the agency to regulate pollutants that “endanger human health.” In 2007, the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts vs. E.P.A., No. 05-1120, ordered the agency to determine whether carbon dioxide fit that description. In 2009, the E.P.A. concluded that it did.

That conclusion meant carbon dioxide could be legally defined as a pollutant and regulated. The Obama and Biden administrations used that finding to justify regulations on gasoline-powered vehicles and coal and gas-burning power plants, and several Supreme Court cases subsequently upheld that authority.

Yet, because Congress had never before directly addressed the issue, challenges have continued. In West Virginia vs. E.P.A., No. 20-1530, the landmark ruling this year, conservative Supreme Court justices made clear that if lawmakers really wanted the government to move away from fossil fuels, they should say so.

“One threshold assumption in the ruling was that Congress had not made it abundantly clear that E.P.A. had a responsibility to address climate pollution from the power sector,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. “Well, it is now abundantly clear,” she said.

Some experts played down the effect of the provisions. Jeff Holmstead, an energy lawyer who served in the E.P.A. during both Bush administrations, said there was a near-zero chance that legal efforts by some conservative groups to eliminate the government’s ability to regulate climate pollution would have prevailed anyway.

“I don’t think it changes anything,” Mr. Holmstead said of the law’s effect on the Supreme Court ruling. But he called the clean energy incentives in the bill “very significant,” saying, “those tax credits certainly will make it easier for companies to transition away from fossil fuels.”

The E.P.A. didn’t respond to a request for comment on what effect the law might have on agency regulations.

In the hours before the legislation passed the Senate, Republicans fiercely fought the language behind closed doors, according to three Senate aides who were involved in the discussions.

Environmental advocates noted that the language had appeared in an early version of the climate and tax package that passed the House in November. It didn’t change when two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, announced in mid-July that they had reached a new deal, which they called the Inflation Reduction Act.

Republicans first tried to persuade the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, the nonpartisan referee whose job it was to check the bill against the intricate rules for passing budget bills, that there should be no explicit references to greenhouse gases as pollutants.

Seated around a long table in the ornate Lyndon Baines Johnson room, just off the Senate floor, on Aug. 5, top Republican and Democratic aides faced off for more than three hours. Ultimately Ms. MacDonough allowed that language and other provisions amending the Clean Air Act to go through.

Later, on the Senate Floor, Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, successfully cut from the package $45 million that she argued would have expanded E.P.A.’s authority and did not meet the complex rules for passing a budget bill. But Democrats and legal experts said the fundamental changes to Clean Air Act and amendments to it remained intact.

evilweasel posted:

Your claims about Fauci are, as I have said, reskinned right-wing propaganda. They are reskinnned - not exactly the same - but they derive from the same source and follow the same beats, of creating Other Enemies to try to diminish the magnitude of how much damage Trump did to the COVID response and is still doing.

some plague rats posted:

Didn't say either of these things and if you think I did I can only encourage you to reread my posts.

quote:

When replying, respond only to what the poster said. Doing otherwise leads to posters talking past each other.

mastershakeman posted:

I think it's horrendous policy if not park of a package completely revamping public undergrad/grad school. A one time forgiveness is a cynical election ploy and nothing more. It doesn't help anyone on ibr, anyone on paye, barely helps those with private loans (especially those who paid off their higher interest public debt , still have private, and now get nothing), and it will only drive up costs further in the future. And most importantly, it doesn't help anyone who didn't go to college and doesn't help anyone who went to a cheaper but worse school to avoid debt.

IBR and PAYE were already mistakes that drove costs even higher, but at least they helped people at the end of the 25/20 year forgiveness.

This doesn't do anything but try to win a few Congressional house seats , but even doing blanket forgiveness is still bad when it doesn't help anyone going forward.

I guess if you just want Dems to win it's a good move since it will potentially drive turnout with a 'vote for us to get money" every few years.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Please try to contribute something or be funnier if you're going to do a single sentence white noise post. Even appending something snarky like that to the end of a post that contributed something would be fine.

I know it was in response to him, but this also isn't super useful.

some plague rats posted:

If you want to make the argument that other people also need help, they should be getting it, and the fact that student loan forgiveness is basically the only proposal the Biden admin is putting forward to help people in need is a colossal moral and political failure then sure, we agree entirely. But we're talking specifically about the mechanics of student loan forgiveness, not the wider failings of Biden as a leader and a person. Not sure about this distinction between annoyance and rage you're making either, it seems entirely arbitrary and made up to be honest.

some plague rats posted:

Didn't say either of these things and if you think I did I can only encourage you to reread my posts.

Jarmak posted:

125k represents the top 90% percentile of income in the United States. Less than 40% of Americans have undergrad degrees. The barrier of entry we're discussing is the top third of educational attainment in the richest country in the world logging on to a website to click a button affirming they're not a member of the global elite.

some plague rats posted:

Getting covid is also really lovely for elementary aged kids, what's your point.

evilweasel posted:

Even self-proclaimed leftists who proclaim they are against means testing hate when they think the wealthy are benefiting from a handout and they're not. We had that happen in this thread when someone (incorrectly) thought the child tax credit was not means-tested. Giving money to wealthy people and not to other people (for example: poor people who didn't go to college) is insanely unpopular and it would be political malpractice to do it.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

CNN says that Biden is going to announce $10,000 in student loan debt forgiveness as a baseline, with additional forgiveness above $10,000 "for specific subsets of the population."

No info on what those subsets will be or how much extra money it will be.

Plan is to announce it on Wednesday in conjunction with an announcement about the student loan pause, but they say "11th hour changes or rescheduling could still happen."

The only requirements will be an income cap of $125k for single people and $250k for people filing jointly.

https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/1561851347900710920

evilweasel posted:

In other news, I had no loving idea this was in the IRA and I am still puzzled how in the blazes Democrats slipped this past the parliamentarian - Congress reversed the recent Supreme Court decision that gutted the EPA's ability to regulate carbon dioxide by claiming Congress hadn't spoken clearly enough.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/climate/epa-supreme-court-pollution.html

Bar Ran Dun posted:

A large percentage of parents having had / done both will tell you the school closures were definitely worse and directly more harmful to their kids.

But society thought Applebee’s was more important and the center / left didn’t want to hear it. Even though the first thing the Chinese opened up was schools. So now the right gets to turn that parent anger into more racism and fascism.

Rigel posted:

Wait, what? How in the gently caress did the Democrats reverse WV v EPA in a reconciliation bill. That is amazing, and I can't imagine what argument they could have put forward to get the parliamentarian to OK this. It seems to be clearly a policy change unrelated to the budget.

mastershakeman posted:

I think it's horrendous policy if not park of a package completely revamping public undergrad/grad school. snip

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

This is a totally fair criticism. Forgiveness was originally paired with Biden's "convert all loans to income-based that are automatically forgiven after X years" and "make 2 years of college/community college free," but those died. A one-time blanket forgiveness isn't the best idea for dealing with student loan problems from a public policy perspective and I think you're right that the motivation for it is largely political, but I would be more charitable and say it is trying to salvage the one thing they can do executively rather than just doing nothing. It will help a good chunk of people and it is not the best way to handle it (and you are correct that it just sets up a future repeat of the situation down the road if they don't fix the costs and loans themselves), but it is probably better overall than nothing.

Rigel posted:

Wait, what? How in the gently caress did the Democrats reverse WV v EPA in a reconciliation bill. That is amazing, and I can't imagine what argument they could have put forward to get the parliamentarian to OK this. It seems to be clearly a policy change unrelated to the budget.

Rigel posted:

Wait, what? How in the gently caress did the Democrats reverse WV v EPA in a reconciliation bill. That is amazing, and I can't imagine what argument they could have put forward to get the parliamentarian to OK this. It seems to be clearly a policy change unrelated to the budget.

-Blackadder- posted:

Curious, why did the additional "income-based loan conversion" and "2 years of free community college" changes that were originally part of Forgiveness "die"? And would their inclusion have satisfied the bar for a complete revamp of the public university system required to avoid being a "horrendous policy" that would inevitably drive up costs?

Keyser_Soze posted:

The $10k is only for the Fed subsidized loans right? and not the evil private loans - which I would guess would make up the worst balances out there.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/22/biden-admin-is-talking-daily-about-student-loan-forgiveness.html