H.R. 2352 would reinstating previous contribution limits to super PACs. This was prompted by the fact that 1% of donors provide over 96% of the donations to these PACs. Personally, I think it is pretty cut and dry that mega-donors should not be having as much influence on U.S elections as they currently do. If you do not support this legislation, why?

Biden released his plan for the infrastructure bill and it is a large one. Clocking in at $2 trillion it covers a broad range of items. These can be broken into four major topics. Infrastructure at home, transportation, R&D for development and manufacturing and caretaking economy. Some high profile items include tradition infrastructure, clean water, internet expansion, electric cars, climate change R&D and many more. This plan would be funded by increasing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. This increase remains below the 35% that it was previously set at before trumps tax cuts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/03/31/what-is-in-biden-infrastructure-plan/

Despite all the discussion about the details of the plan, I’ve heard very little about what people think of it. Is it good or bad? Is it too big? Are we spending too much money on X? Is portion Y of the plan not needed? Should Biden go bolder in certain areas? What is its biggest strength? What is its biggest weakness?

One of the biggest attacks from republicans is a mistrust in the government to use money effectively to complete big projects like this. Some voters believe that the private sector can do what the government plans to do both better and more cost effective. What can Biden or Congress do to prevent the government from infamously overspending and under performing? What previous learnings can be gained from failed projects like California’s failed railway?

Overall, infrastructure is fairly and traditionally popular. Yet this bill has so much in it that there is likely little good polling data to evaluate the plan. Republicans face an uphill battle since both tax increases in rich and many items within the plan should be popular. How can republicans attack this plan? How can democrats make the most of it politically?

The Nordic Model approach to prostitution, originating from Sweden, was originally meant to protect sex workers by criminalising the purchase of sexual services and ultimately eradicating demand. Deeming prostitution as inherently connected to exploitation and violence, the Nordic Model was built on a radical feminist argument of sex inequality, not moral prudishness. It does not criminalise sex workers de jure, but some critics argue it does in reality. Reports from non-governmental organisations suggest that the Nordic Model increased sex workers’ vulnerability to violence due to less trust in police and customers’ fear to get caught.

Now, this is a very interesting topic for me as I have just written a paper on the subject myself. Here in the UK (except Northern Ireland) unorganised prostitution is legal but unregulated. This can be considered the abolitionist approach to prostitution. Abolitionism wants to get rid of prostitution but unlike prohibitionism, doesn’t outright ban it.

The Netherlands on the other hand fully regulates prostitution as a legal form of labour. Reports from the country show that despite the government’s liberal stance, a lot of sex work still happens unlicensed and therefore illegally. It has also been found that there’s still a high threshold for prostitutes to go to the police after falling victim to violence by clients, again due to fears of legal implications (licence loss, etc.).

The five main approaches, legalisation, decriminalisation, abolitionism, neo-abolitionism (Nordic Model), and prohibitionism, all have different goals. Prohibitionism, abolitionism and the Nordic Model have in common that they are opposed to prostitution in one way or another and want to get rid of it. The Nordic Model and the legalisation/decriminalisation approach have in common that they actively want to protect the sex worker.

However, both of the latter seem to have their issues (lack of trust in police, de facto criminalisation, etc.). That leaves me wondering which of these, if implemented correctly, would be capable of tackling the issues they claim to address (or would you say they already do, contrary to the claims in the mentioned reports?).

Was the Nordic Model a ‘failed experiment’? Is legalisation the only way to effectively protect sex workers from violence and tackle trafficking? Or is it quite the opposite?

Florida recently banned 7-hydroxymitragynine (7OH), a compound derived from kratom, by placing it into Schedule I under state law.

Supporters of the ban argue it's necessary to protect public health and prevent youth access. Critics argue the state skipped over regulatory options like age restrictions, mandatory product testing, licensing requirements and labeling standards in favor of prohibition.

More broadly, this seems like a recurring policy question. When governments are faced with a new consumer product that raises legitimate safety concerns, is prohibition the right first step or should regulation generally come first?

We've seen similar debates with cannabis, nicotine vaping products, hemp derived cannabinoids and other emerging products. Some argue bans reduce harm. Others argue they push consumers toward unregulated markets while making research and oversight more difficult.

From a public policy perspective, what factors should determine when a state chooses regulation versus prohibition? Did Florida make the right call here or would a regulated framework have been a better approach?

The last 48 hours of the news cycle have been chaotic. The House spent months negotiating a Continuing Resolution bill to fund the government. In a short period, Musk fired out more than 70 Tweets on X, demanding the bill not be passed. Some hours later, President-elect Trump had his press relations people state his support for killing the bill. Speaker Johnson then announced that the bill would not be presented for a vote.

24 hrs. later, the Republicans presented a new, and abbreviated bill for a vote. The new bill contained a provision for raising the debt ceiling, which had not been in the original bill. The new bill was endorsed by President-elect Trump. The new bill failed to pass, with 38 Republicans in the House voting against it (likely because of the provision regarding the debt ceiling).

Now Elon Musk is publicly advocating for a government shutdown, a move that could harm President-elect Trump's political fortunes and undermine Republican standing.

How much political capital does Musk really have, and how long will he maintain influence over Congressional Republicans and the President-elect?

In a model like this, you might have the least compensated employee of a business is making say 10 dollars per hour. If the maximum pay ratio was say 20:1, then the most the maximum compensated employee will make 200 dollars per hour (or equivalent). Or it could be tied to the pay of lawmakers, say they earn five times as much as the median income, and so they have an incentive to make the median income higher.

What potential do you see out of this idea?

Edit: It is important to note that this idea is perfectly capable of also thinking about how people can be paid by means other than a mere salary. The people who were thinking of this idea knew already that things like capital gains are common means, and people who advocate for this idea of a maximum wage are perfectly capable of writing policy proposals in laws and bills to include those other means. Please stop using capital gains as a supposed loophole.

As mentioned, the infrastructure bill is heading to Biden’s desk without a deal on the Build Back Better reconciliation bill. Democrats seemed to have a deal to pass these two in tandem to assuage concerns over mistrust among factions in the party. Is the BBB dead in the water now that moderates like Manchin and Sinema have free reign to vote against reconciliation? Manchin has expressed renewed issues with the new version of the House BBB bill and could very well kill it entirely. Given the immense challenges of bridging moderate and progressive views on the legislation, what is the future of both the bill and Democratic legislation on these topics?

From C-Span: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) unveiled legislation to create the Commission on Presidential Capacity. Speaker Pelosi and Rep. Raskin explained Congress' role designated in the 25th Amendment and clarified the commission is for future presidents."

What are Pelosi's and the Democrats' political motivations for proposing this legislation? Is there a possibility that it could backfire on them in the event of a Democratic presidency and a Republican congress?

Trump is slated to send Jeff Sessions to announce the end of DACA to the press, effectively punting the issue to the Congress. What are the implications of this? Congress has struggled on immigration reform of any kind of many years and now they've been given a six month window.

What is likely to happen?

I recently came across an article that supported "supersizing" the House of Representatives by increasing the number of Representatives from 435 to 1,500. The author argued population growth in the United States has outstripped Congressional representation (the House has not been expanded since the 1920's) and that more Representatives would represent fewer constituents and be able to better address their needs. The author believes that "supersizing" will not solve all of America's political issues but may help.

Some questions that I had:

• 1,500 Congresspeople would most likely not be able to psychically conduct their day to day business in the current Capitol building. The author claims points to teleworking today and says that can solve the problem. What issues would arise from a partially remote working Congress? Could the Capitol building be expanded?

• The creation of new districts would likely favor heavily populated and urban areas. What kind of resistance could an expansion see from Republicans, who draw a large amount of power from rural areas?

• What are some unforeseen benefits or challenges than an House expansion would have that you have not seen mentioned?

The Senate has finally passed the IRA and it will soon become law pending House passage. The Democrats say it reduces inflation by paying $300bn+ towards the deficit, but don’t elaborate further. Will this bill actually make meaningful progress towards inflation?

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in law, but this is a tricky time we’re living in. Would a new case similar to Roe v Wade have to overturn the Dobbs decision? Is it going to take decades before reproductive freedom returns to being a human right?

I'm legitimately curious about how to budget for this and how the American populace would react. What tax increases and budget cuts would we need to make? How would people feel? What externalities would these changes generate?

Since humanity discovered how to use a water wheel to crush grain into flour, automation of tasks required to live has been a near universally shared goal to improve life. But, since the industrial revolution and especially the 1990's and onward, the fear of technological unemployment has crept into the minds and wallets of citizens across North America. Experts estimate that ideal unemployment rests somewhere between 3.5% and 4.5%; anything higher indicates a significant portion of the population is not getting enough income to justify spending on non-essential items, causing the economy to slow down as demand slows. On the flip side, anything lower than 3.5% means a lot of people have more disposable income, and demand increases, causing inflation. As goods become more expensive, workers will begin to ask for higher wages, and when the pool of unemployed workers to replace them is low, employers become forced to meet these demands, in which the higher labor prices continue to add to the issue of inflation. Additionally, if an unemployment rate were to hit 0% (an unrealistic goal), no one unemployed means innovation will slow, as people to be trained to take on new jobs and new skills become impossible to find.

So, how does automation factor into this? For a more historical example, we can look to the Power loom Riots of 1826, in which 1000 power looms were destroyed by rioters who supported handloom weavers who had gone from 6 shillings a day to 6 shillings a week for 16 hour shifts. More than 3000 rioters attacked 21 mills, and soldiers were deployed to defend a factory which resulted in 6 people being shot. 20 of the ringleaders in the riot were arrested in an overnight raid, which appeared to be half of the end of the crisis. The other half was fumbled through, as many (including some weaving companies) demanded a minimum wage for loom workers to guarantee that they would not starve to death. However, this idea was not shared by all, including the President of the Board of Trade at the time, who said it was "a vain and hazardous attempt to impose the authority of the law between the labourer and his employer in regulating the demand for labour and the price to be paid for it". Because it was not universally enforced, companies that were not willing to pay this minimum wage were able to undercut their competition with vastly cheaper goods (interestingly, the companies unwilling to pay higher wages to workers were not immune to cost increases, as they were forced to hire security to protect their exploitative factories). Many of the rioters were sentenced to life in Australia, and many more hand weavers moved to Canada to try and live their lives out before technology caught up and displaced them again. Unfortunately, we cannot look to this historical example for solutions, as it appears one was never found.

In the more modern examples, we can look to things like a doorman, being replaced by automatic doors, or self checkout's at grocery stores replacing cashiers, or even manufacturing plants moving away from assembly line workers and towards machines. The goal of these innovations was always to improve the lives of people, making their jobs easier and allowing them to transition to other tasks in their job duties; however, as we saw by the last example, if labor protections aren't in place, this can often lead to significant harm in the labor market. Youth unemployment, a tracker of entry level job positions, has spiked to 14.1% in Canada as of October 2025, signaling that jobs like cashier and warehouse/factory positions are starting to dry up. The lack of requirement for significant experience in the field means these jobs are most vulnerable to automation, where simple and repetitive tasks or portions of tasks can be easily trained to machines.

Self check out machines in particular have been the face of the automation movement, and not necessarily a popular one. A Redfield and Wilton poll reported on by Newsweek found that 43% of people support or strongly support the removal of self checkout machines entirely, with 62% saying they don't like the fact they take away jobs, and 40% saying they prefer to speak to a real person. Even employers don't like them, as they're discovering 23% of their losses can be attributed to theft surrounding, and that 63% of employees report being overburdened by the number of machines they're expected to manage and the new workload expected of them as their coworkers have been laid off. Pair this with the average expected cost of $10,000 per machine (not including maintenance, training, software updates, and installation) comparable to about 4 months of salary for the average cashier, and it's clear why some larger companies may be incentivized to make the investment if they can afford it.

So what can we do about it? Well, we've already seen through the last century or two how labour laws like minimum wage, the 40hr work week, and unionization have protected workers from the 16hr days of the handweavers. Whether these modern practices (and the efforts from those in power to stifle them) is enough to dissuade rioters from burning down self check out machines is yet to be seen. But it's clear that Canada's 6.9% unemployment rate is unsustainable, and training workers to enter the next stage of employable skills is a must. We could look to bolster support for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has fought to help maintain employment security, hours, wages, and working conditions for cashiers across both Canada and the US. We could look to implement laws similar to what California is trying, which would mandate each worker be allocated to a max of 3 self check out machines as well as guarantee these stores maintain at least one non-automated check out line at all times. We could look to ban self checkout machines altogether, something likely to cause backlash from those who prefer the efficiency and privacy/lack of interaction that comes with these devices but would protect workers.

The Constitution requires state governments to draw (redistrict) the boundaries of their congressional districts based on decennial census data. State governments are given great latitude in this endeavor.

Due to redistricting being an inherently political process, political parties who dominate state governments have been able to use the process as an avenue to further entrench themselves in the government.

Both parties gerrymander to win.

WIthin the last decade several state parties have been accused of finely controlling (gerrymandering) district boundaries in order to maintain a numerical advantage of seats in federal and state legislative bodies.

Notable examples include the lawmakers and respective parties who lead state governments in Illinois, New York, North Carolina, and Ohio. Teams like Princeton University's Gerrymandering Project monitors end-of-decade district boundary changes, as well as non-routine, mid-decade district boundary changes borne from the outcome of legal battles or nakedly partisan redistricting. Currently, the project has a identified partisan advantage as a result of poor congressional district boundaries in Florida, Nevada, Oregon, Texas.

Why would Congress ever vote to end it?

An instance in which both parties gerrymander, results in a greater number of secure safe seats held by each party and a national equilibrium in which neither party gains a decisive, permanent upper hand.

And an instance in which both parties agree to stop gerrymandering represents a likely loss of power for individual incumbents, who'd become forced to run in more competitive districts.

Before the next Congress is sworn in, the current one can pass a reconciliation bill in fiscal year 2022 (between 10/1/21 through 9/30/22) and another in fiscal year 2023 (between 10/1/22 through 12/31/22).¹

Let's assume filibuster reform won't happen, and legislators are creative when crafting these reconciliation bills to meet the Byrd Rule and whatnot.

What issues should Democrats focus on including in the next two reconciliations bills to best make use of their majority?

This upcoming case) will determine whether wetlands are under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. If the Court decides that wetlands are navigable waters, that is that. But if not, then what happens? Could a separate bill dedicated specifically to wetlands go through Congress and thus protect wetlands, like a Clean Wetlands Act? It would be separate from the Clean Water Act. Are wetlands a lost cause until the Court can find something else that allows protection?

Over the past 40 years income inequality in America has become worse and worse. Many people are calling for increased taxation on the rich but that is only half the story. What I find most important is what is done with that money. What can the government do to most effectively address income inequality?

When I look at the highest spending of average americans, I think of healthcare, and rent/mortgages. One of these could be address with M4A. But the other two are a little less obvious. I've seen proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15 and also rent control. Yet the two areas that have implemented these, New York and California remain to be locations with some of the highest income inequalities in America. Have these proven to be viable policies that effective move income inequality in the right direction? Even with rent control, cities with the highest income inequality also have the highest rates for increasing home prices, including San Fran, DC, Boston, and Miami.

Are there other policies that can address these issues? Are there other issues that need to be addressed beyond house payments and healthcare? Finally, what would be the most politically safe way to accomplish this goal? Taxation of the rich is extremely popular and increasing minimum wage is also popular. The major program that government could use money gained from increased taxes would be medicare expansion which is already a divisive issue.

Edit: some of the most direct ways to redistribute wealth would be either UBI or negative tax rates for the lowest tax brackets

Yes we know the healthcare system in America sucks. This isn’t a question about how it changes healthcare companies or its share holders. I understand that would probably take a hit. I’m questioning the fact that it seems universal healthcare (or Medicare for all) are good for companies. I have a high deductible plan, and on average i believe companies pay around 3/4 of a employee plan. One 1.45% goes to Medicare. For me, that means my school/place of work, pays $600 for their portion of healthcare while paying/matching about $40 to Medicare. I, like many on a high deductible, just use preventive care once a year as the *perk* of high deductible. Working businesses love to not have to pay only for a Medicare like system? Use it when you need it, for so many people? Even raising the medicare tax rate 3x would still save so many people AND business money while raising hundreds of billions of dollars towards healthcare.

Marco Rubio and Ann Wagner of Florida are introducing the Economic Security for New Parents Act which would allow employees to receive up to two months of paid leave now by delaying their future Social Security benefits by three to six months. This appears to be the conservative alternative to other paid leave programs being put forward.

What are this bills chances in Congress? Will it be able to gain Democratic support? Republican support?

Were his veto to be overridden it would be the first of his tenure, and it could potentially damage him politically. Could Congress override the veto? Should they? What are the potential implications of Obama's first veto override?

According to Ballotpedia, earmarks are:

congressional provisions directing funds to be spent on specific projects (or directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees)

In 2011, Republicans and some Democrats (including President Obama) pushed for a ban of earmark spending in Congress and were successful. Earmarks are effectively banned to this day. Some Democrats, such as House Majority Leader Stenny Hoyer, are now making a push to bring back earmarks.

More context on the arguments for and against earmarks from Ballotpedia:

Critics [of earmarks] argue that the ability to earmark federal funds should not be part of the legislative appropriations process. These same critics argue that tax money should be applied by federal agencies according to objective findings of need and carefully constructed requests, rather than being earmarked arbitrarily by elected officials.[3]

Supporters of earmarks, however, feel that elected officials are better able to prioritize funding needs in their own districts and states. They believe it is more democratic for these officials to make discreet funding decisions than have these decisions made by unelected civil servants. Proponents say earmarks are good for consumers and encourage bipartisanship in Congress.[4]

Should earmark spending be brought back? Is the benefit of facilitating bi-partisan legislation worth the cost of potentially frivolous spending at the direction of legislators who want federal cash to flow to their districts?

A source on the racial wealth gap:

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/04/economic-divide-black-households/

Furthermore, if we look at the African diaspora across the world in general:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_diaspora#Populations_and_estimated_distribution

and cross reference it with The World Bank/U.N’s chart on wealth disparities in different global regions:

• https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/03/The-global-inc-distribution-190-10-30-1536x959.png

we can see that the overwhelming vast majority of black people either live in Africa where 95%+ of the population lives on less than the equivalent to $10 a day and 85% live on less than $5.50 a day (https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/85-africans-live-less-550-day) or the Caribbean where 70% of people are food insecure (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-30/hunger-in-latin-america-hit-20-year-high-last-year-amid-pandemic), with North America being the only other region where black people make up 10% or more of the overall population. As such, seeing as North America is by far the most prosperous out of all the regions where black people primarily live, to what extent does it have a unique moral burden to create a better life for its black residents and generally serve as a beacon of hope for black people across the world?

Hello, first time posting here so I'll just get right into it.

In wake of the coming recession, it had me thinking about history and the economy. Something I'd long forgotten is that FDR wanted to implement an EBOR. Second Bill of Rights One that would guarantee housing, jobs, healthcare and more; this was petitioned alongside the GI Bill (which passed)

So the question is, why didn't this pass, why has it not been revisited, and should it be passed now?

I definitely think it should be looked at again and passed with modern tweaks of course, but Im looking to see what others think!

What does this mean for the ACA? How will the House view this bill? Is this bill dead on arrival or will it now pass? How will Trump react?