Al Franken wants Democrats to get as tough as Republicans and describe the infrastructure bill for what it does.
Al Franken is right
Al Franken appeared on the Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams where he had several prescient statements that Democrats should heed. He first pointed out the reality that Mitch McConnell has filibustered more than any other combined for the last several decades.
“I have confidence that we will step in there,” Al Franken said. “And Mitch will do exactly what he says. But we have to start being as ruthless as him. For example, the Freedom to Vote Act which was negotiated by Amy Klobuchar and Joe Manchin and others is a great bill but we need to pass it.”
Brian Williams asserted that Democrats usually go to a fight ill-armed. Franken had an answer for that too.
“Well, we have to stop it,” Franken said. “We have to be stone-cold killers on the voting rights. This is an existential threat to our democracy. We lose our democracy, it’s we lose everything. So we have to pass this bill and you can carve out and say, for you know elections, this is our democracy. We can carve that out and pass it with 51 votes or you can do what I’m talking about which would restore the filibuster to what it was which was something that was rare when a minority cared about something.”
But most importantly Franken made an important statement about marketing the human infrastructure bill.
“There are so many great things in this package,” Al Franken said. “There’s Medicare negotiating for pharmaceuticals. We pay three times as much for the same pharmaceuticals as Europe. And that’s because the biggest purchaser of pharmaceuticals in our country can’t negotiate. All their governments negotiate. That’s ridiculous. The child tax credit, reduced childhood poverty by half, the biggest middle-class working-class tax cut, the lowest income tax cut in the history of the country. People like the elements: We got to start talking about what the elements are, not called the reconciliation package.”
Enough said.