{"id":13843,"date":"2021-04-29T17:46:12","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T00:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=13843"},"modified":"2021-04-29T18:17:41","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T01:17:41","slug":"with-reaganesque-optimism-bidens-address-signals-end-of-reagan-era-bradcast-4292021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=13843","title":{"rendered":"With Reaganesque Optimism, Biden’s Address Signals End of Reagan Era: ‘BradCast’ 4\/29\/2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month on The BradCast<\/i><\/a>, after Joe Biden signed his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan<\/a> with emergency COVID relief and stimulus for the poor and middle class, we suggested<\/a> that passage of that bill would likely be seen in history as the beginning of the end of the Reagan Era. Now, it appears, we’re hardly<\/a> the only<\/a> ones<\/a>. [Audio link to full show is posted below.<\/i>]\n

Since that wildly popular<\/a> landmark measure was adopted (without a single Republican vote), Biden has proposed a $2.25 trillion infrastructure package called the American Jobs Plan<\/a>. And, on Wednesday night, he officially introduced his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan<\/a> proposal for perhaps the nation’s largest-ever investment in human infrastructure, including free access to pre-school, two years of community college, subsidies for child care, paid family leave, expanded health care subsidies and child tax credits and much more.<\/p>\n

With Reaganesque optimism during his first address to a joint session of Congress, citing a statistic published in a report by one of our guests earlier this year (Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies<\/a>) finding that just 650 billionaires in America saw their own net worth increase by a trillion<\/i> dollars as 20 million Americans lost jobs during the pandemic, the President pounded what could become a final nail in the Reagan Era coffin, declaring<\/a>: “My fellow Americans, trickle down economics has never worked and it’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out.”<\/p>\n

We’re joined today, on Biden’s 100th day as President, by HEATHER DIGBY PARTON<\/b> of Salon<\/a> and Hullabaloo<\/a>, and by ‘DRIFTGLASS’<\/b> of the The Professional Left Podcast<\/i><\/a>, for analysis of his stunningly-well received<\/a> remarks (even by Republicans<\/a>) on Wednesday night and his pitch for an extraordinarily bold and long-overdue government investment in the American people. <\/p>\n

Says Digby, on how we arrived at this moment: “We’ve just been reminded that we need<\/i> government, because look what happened. We had this pandemic and having the freak show that had been sort of entertaining like a horror show for the last four years, it suddenly became pretty clear what the problem was with that. Because when you really need government, it wasn’t there. They were completely out to lunch. For a lot of people in this country, they’re out their floundering under this trickle-down, rugged individualism. This is what it’s like when you’re left completely on your own.”<\/p>\n

Says Driftglass, mocking GOP rhetoric of the past forty years: “If you’re not rich, it’s your own fault, and the only thing standing in the way of being the best you is this evil government. [But] suddenly, a whole bunch of people absolutely have to have assistance from the government or their going to die, or go broke, or they’re going to go out of business.\u00a0 And the only thing Republicans had to offer was a sneer…So, there’s this literally once-in-a-hundred years crisis, where the actual effect of good government is so visible, right now, that you can now make the case credibly that there are other large problems that we have ignored and disinvested in for decades that we need to fix.”<\/p>\n

Even for longtime, cynical, old-school progressive bloggers like us — none of whom had supported Biden during last year’s primaries — we are all pleasantly taken aback at his remarkably ambitious plans and expansive proposed agenda. We discuss, dissect and debate all of that, how it should or shouldn’t be “paid for”, and whether any of it can possibly be adopted into law with the exceedingly narrow majorities Democrats currently hold in Congress on today’s special coverage edition of The BradCast<\/i>…<\/p>\n

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* * *<\/b><\/center>While we post <\/i>The BradCast<\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they’re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes<\/a>, Pandora<\/a>, TuneIn<\/a>, Google<\/a>, Amazon<\/a> or our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, The BradCast<\/em> and Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span>Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month on The BradCast, after Joe Biden signed his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan with emergency COVID relief and stimulus for the poor and middle class, we suggested that passage of that bill would likely be seen in history as the beginning of the end of the Reagan Era. Now, it appears, we’re hardly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,675,1456,299,390,220,818,288,1112,613,320,477,1628,300,415,1025,198,233],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-13843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-coronavirus","category-democrats","category-economy","category-education","category-fdr","category-health-care","category-infrastructure","category-irs","category-joe-biden","category-kpfk","category-labor-unions","category-republicans","category-ronald-reagan","category-tim-scott","category-us-house","category-us-senate"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13843"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=13843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}