Biden blasted for bombing Syria, while letting stimulus checks, minimum wage slide at home

RT
Fri, 26 Feb 2021 18:25 UTC

© Reuters / Jim Young

A demonstrator demands a $15-an-hour nationwide minimum wage in downtown Chicago, Illinois, April 14, 2016

Progressives are feeling shafted by Joe Biden, after the president shied away from fighting the Senate for a minimum wage hike, but launched missiles at Syria.

The Democrats' proposed $15 national minimum wage increase cannot be included in President Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus bill, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled on Thursday. MacDonough, a Democrat who serves as a referee of sorts in the upper house, declared that the bill does not fall under budget rules, and as such cannot be passed with a simple majority, unlike the rest of the stimulus package.

Biden could, through Vice President Kamala Harris, overrule the parliamentarian. However, he has opted not to. "President Biden is disappointed in this outcome," Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters afterwards, but added, "he respects the parliamentarian's decision and the Senate's process."

The decision pleased Republicans, who argue that a raised minimum wage would kill jobs and penalize small businesses, and angered progressives, for whom a $15 minimum wage has been a long-time policy goal. When Biden ordered an airstrike on Iranian-backed forces in Syria later on Thursday evening, these progressives fumed at the Democratic president's priorities.

"So, @JoeBiden bombs Syria and kills the minimum wage hike, confirming every fear progressives had," pundit Cenk Uygur tweeted. "The establishment is back! And it absolutely sucks."

Overruling the Senate parliamentarian is a rare move, but not unprecedented. Gerald Ford's vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, overruled then-parliamentarian Floyd Riddick in 1975 to change the Senate's filibuster rules. However, there is more precedence for bombing Syria. Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump launched strikes on Syria during their tenure in office, with Obama waging a full-on air campaign. Both presidents, and Biden, drew authority for the strikes from an Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed shortly after 9/11, a decade before Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) existed.

Aside from the minimum wage debate, Biden has angered progressives by capping stimulus checks at $1,400 instead of the $2,000 he promised on the campaign trail, and by reneging on his promise to push the Covid-19 relief act through Congress the moment he took office.

Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran for the White House promising a $15 minimum wage and now chairs the Senate Budget Committee, said that he is undeterred by the parliamentarian's ruling, and will continue trying to force the wage hike into Biden's Covid-19 bill.

"In the coming days, I will be working with my colleagues in the Senate to move forward with an amendment to take tax deductions away from large, profitable corporations that don't pay workers at least $15 an hour and to provide small businesses with the incentives they need to raise wages," he said in a statement.

Comment: The warmongers are cheering the latest Syrian bombing:

The Pentagon said that the attack was launched at 6 pm eastern time on Biden's order, and resulted in the destruction of "multiple facilities" believed to be run by Iranian-backed militias in eastern Syria. The Pentagon spun the assault as a "defensive precision strike," saying it was in retaliation to rocket attacks on the US and coalition troops in Iraq.

However, it appears not everybody bought that narrative. People online were quick to remind Biden and his staffers of previous statements denouncing such incursions as dangerous escalations that encroach on Syrian sovereignty.

Online sleuths dug up a tweet by Biden's current spokesperson Jen Psaki, denouncing the Trump administration's missile strike on Syria in April 2017 as illegal.

"Also what is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country," Psaki tweeted at the time.

In January last year, Biden also chided Trump's decision to assassinate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, calling it "a hugely escalatory move in an already dangerous region."

Some observers pointed out the irony in the Pentagon's claim that the bombing raid somehow aimed to "de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq."

For some, the airstrike poured cold water on expectations that the Biden administration was poised to rejoin the landmark nuclear accord in the near future, though prominent 'Never Trumper' Jennifer Rubin suggested that the attack is compatible with the Biden's administration declared interest in the JCPOA.

The BBC's Suzanne Kianpour also praised the bombing raid, arguing it is part of the Biden administration's negotiating tactics.

The move also drew accolades from Mark Dubowitz, the head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), described as a hawkish neo-conservative think tank set up after 9/11 to push the War on Terror.

"Credit to the Biden administration for responding. Turning a blind eye to regional aggression and offering economic relief will only encourage more destructive behavior by the regime in Iran and their proxies," he wrote.

While Washington claimed that the strikes were in retaliation to recent attacks on American and coalition personnel in Iraq, it did not specify which one. Tehran denied any involvement in the recent rocket attack near a US military base in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan that killed one non-American civilian contractor and left nine others injured, including one US service member, on February 15.

The attack was claimed by a Shia group calling itself Saraya Awliya al-Dam at the time.