Elections

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Biden’s Stimulus PlanBiden’s AddressWhat to Know About the BillAnalysis: Economic RescueBenefits for Middle ClassAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats, Pushing Stimulus, Admit to Regrets on Obama’s 2009 ResponseIn pitching President Biden’s relief package, Democrats have said their 2009 stimulus efforts under Barack Obama were insufficient. Those close to Mr. Obama have noticed.President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus bill during a ceremony in Denver in February 2009.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMarch 16, 2021Updated 11:00 a.m. ETAs Democrats pushed this month to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, they were eager to rebuke Republicans for opposing en masse a measure filled with aid to struggling Americans. But they had another target as well: the core policy of President Barack Obama’s first-term agenda.Party leaders from President Biden on down are citing Mr. Obama’s strategy on his most urgent policy initiative — an $800 billion financial rescue plan in 2009 in the midst of a crippling recession — as too cautious and too deferential to Republicans, mistakes they were determined not to repeat.The pointed assessments of Mr. Obama’s handling of the 2009 stimulus effort are the closest Democrats have come to grappling with a highly delicate matter in the party: the shortcomings in the legacy of Mr. Obama, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party and a powerful voice for bipartisanship in a deeply divided country.The re-examination has irked some of the former president’s allies but thrilled the party’s progressive wing, which sees Mr. Biden’s more expansive plan as a down payment on his ambitious agenda. And it has sent an early signal that Mr. Biden’s administration does not intend to be a carbon copy of his Democratic predecessor’s. Times, all concede, have changed.“This time, the feeling was, ‘We’re not very willing to negotiate what we think is needed,’” said former Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota who retired ahead of the 2010 midterm elections. “In 2009, I think the feeling was, ‘Oh we wanted more, but we didn’t get what we wanted.’”The careful dance around Mr. Obama and his accomplishments continues a dynamic from the Democratic presidential primary. While taking care not to disparage his administration, several candidates stressed the need for the party to embrace a more take-no-prisoners political approach with Republicans; others criticized Mr. Obama’s policies on immigration: though he used an executive order to aid the Dreamers, he also pushed deportations and border detentions.It also highlights the rapid change in Washington over a decade of partisan brawling. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden came into office on promises of unity and bipartisanship in the face of an economic crisis, but Mr. Biden is the beneficiary of a changed landscape in the party. Democrats are now more cognizant of Republican obstruction, less deferential to the deficit hawks and energized by a growing progressive wing that has pulled the party’s ideological midpoint to the left.A decade ago, Mr. Obama’s strategy reflected the Democratic Party’s mainstream, an insistence on negotiating with Republicans, keeping the Senate filibuster and trimming his own ambitions for a nation that he and others worried could handle only so much change after electing its first Black president. Now, the progressive criticism of that posture has become party canon.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading progressive voice, said the changes should be attributed partly to the growth of the left, but partly to an inadequate Democratic response to the Great Recession, which she said “created so much damage economically, for people, but it also created a lot of political damage for the party” by not being larger in scope.“I came of age watching Democratic governance fail me and fail my family,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said.President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel the country next week to promote the benefits of the American Rescue Plan.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Obama is himself a person who carefully takes stock of his presidential legacy and his place in Democratic Party politics. He has not publicly responded to the recent criticism of his stimulus strategy, and through a spokesman he declined a request to comment for this article.But for friends and allies who are close to him, the characterizations of Mr. Obama’s 2009 efforts sting.Some describe it as an attempt, in a different political era, to act as Monday-morning quarterback, and bristle that figures who were involved in the 2009 negotiations — like Senator Chuck Schumer or Mr. Biden — have now publicly expressed regret over them. Others describe it as the natural course of politics: past actions being used as a baseline for improvement.Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s former senior adviser, said the administration was acting on the evidence and the political possibilities of the time.“This was the worst economic recession since the Great Depression,” she said. “And therefore, there wasn’t a body of evidence about the size of the package and the impact it would have.” She also mentioned a political incentive: “It was important to show the country early in President Obama’s time in office, he was willing to work with Republicans.”Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who served as Mr. Obama’s first chief of staff, said Democrats would do well to compare themselves with their Republican presidential counterparts, and not with other Democrats.“It’s really about Obama versus Bush, and Biden versus Trump, not the other way around,” Mr. Emanuel said. “We built long-lasting, robust economic growth. And I think comparing one to the other is, is historically not accurate. And also, more importantly, it’s strategically not advantageous.”David Axelrod, who served as a chief strategist to Mr. Obama, said he believed the current criticism was born of a desire to avoid a midterm shellacking similar to the one Democrats suffered in 2010.“It is irksome only in the sense that it was an entirely different situation,” Mr. Axelrod said. “If the Obama economic record were deficient, I’m pretty sure Joe Biden wouldn’t have run on it.”In many ways, the maneuvering is a stand-in for larger tensions within the party. Mr. Obama’s close-knit circle is keenly devoted to protecting his policy legacy. A growing left wing wants more investments in health care and combating climate change, and a break from hard-line policy on immigration. Mr. Biden’s administration is seeking to chart its own path.In a recent address to House Democrats, Mr. Biden argued that it was Mr. Obama’s “humility” that cost Democrats at the time, because the president didn’t spend enough time explaining the benefits of his stimulus package to the American people.“Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap,’” Mr. Biden said. “I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time, I’m not going to take a victory lap,’ and we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York linked her own ascension to Congress to the failings of the Democratic response the recession in 2009.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe White House recently announced that Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and some key administration figures would travel the country.In the former president’s recently released memoir, he often returns to a familiar argument: that the ambitions of his legislation were hamstrung by an obstructionist Republican Party and moderate Democrats who were unwilling to go it alone without any bipartisan support..css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus PackageThe stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read moreThis credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more.There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more.The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more.Options like budget reconciliation, the parliamentary tactic Mr. Biden used to pass the coronavirus relief plan by a simple majority vote, were not even proposed by most progressives, former aides to Mr. Obama said. That meant that any legislation would need a filibuster-proof 60 votes.“Between Republican attacks and Democratic complaints I was reminded of the Yeats poem ‘Second Coming,’” Mr. Obama wrote in the book. “My supporters lacked all conviction, and my opponents were full of passionate intensity.”But Mr. Obama’s own public comments since his presidency hint at a changing worldview. At the funeral for Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died in 2020, Mr. Obama seemed to endorse ending the Senate filibuster as a way to expand voting rights — a move he had long avoided. He said during the Democratic primary that while he was proud of his presidential campaigns, the landscape had changed and required more expansive policy proposals.“I want candidates now to propose beyond what we were able to get done then, because the politics have changed,” he said at a 2019 fund-raiser.That task is now left to Mr. Biden, who lacks the cult of personality that surrounded his former boss but is also less interested in cultivating one. In passing his first piece of signature legislation without a Republican vote, the president has subtly rejected the way Ms. Jarrett framed unity — he will pursue it not by endlessly wooing Republicans but by passing legislation that most Americans support.Mr. Obama at a news conference the day after Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesSenator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who backed Mr. Obama’s stimulus measure after it was pared back, said the Democrats’ approach on the stimulus bill passed last week was a reversion on the president’s campaign promise to be a unifying figure.She recently told reporters that Mr. Schumer, the majority leader who led the negotiations on Mr. Biden’s bill, “showed that he had absolutely no interest in trying to negotiate a bipartisan agreement.”Progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez say the willingness to forgo Republican buy-in is proof the entire party now agrees on the need for structural reform, and the hardball tactics that may be required.“Schumer spoke to the very real pain of delaying decisive action, which is a self-inflicted wound, I would say, for the party,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “Where you delay and you water down, and you just kind of hand Susan Collins a pen, to have her diminish legislation for months, just for her to not even vote for it in the end.”But Mr. Emanuel advised Democrats to remember the lessons of the presidential primary. After one debate in Detroit, when candidates repeatedly remarked on the failures of Mr. Obama’s tenure and how they would do better, voters rushed to defend the nation’s first Black president, and the running mate who stood with him.“When the Democrats were criticizing President Obama, it was Biden that said: ‘What are you guys doing? He’s our president,’” Mr. Emanuel said. “So I’m with Joe Biden on that analysis.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyCan Anything End the Voting Wars?As battles over voting rules burn hotter, the stakes are still lower than both sides seem to think.Opinion ColumnistMarch 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Illustration by Arsh Raziuddin, Photos, via Getty More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?5 TakeawaysCandidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the RaceAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCourting Unions and Latino Voters: 5 Takeaways From the N.Y.C. Mayor’s RaceEric Adams won three big labor union endorsements, confirming his status as a top contender, and Loree Sutton dropped out of the race.Eric Adams is lining up coveted labor union endorsements.Credit…Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesEmma G. Fitzsimmons, Dana Rubinstein, Andy Newman and March 15, 2021Updated 10:56 a.m. ETLabor leaders are throwing their weight behind Eric Adams in the New York City mayoral race.Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has won three major labor endorsements in the past two weeks, cementing his status as one of the top candidates in the crowded Democratic primary field.As Mr. Adams rose, Loree Sutton, one of the first women to join the race, dropped out, and the campaigns pushed to qualify for public matching funds. Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, announced over the weekend that he had raised an impressive fund-raising haul.Here is what you need to know:Adams wins key labor endorsements.Mr. Adams is making the case that he is the candidate for working-class New Yorkers.“We are building a blue-collar coalition that will deliver results for the New Yorkers who need them the most,” Mr. Adams said last week.He has received support from three unions: Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 85,000 building workers in New York; the Hotel Trades Council, which has nearly 40,000 members in the hotel and gaming industry; and the District Council 37 Executive Board, the city’s largest public employees union, representing 150,000 members and 50,000 retirees.The string of endorsements shows that some Democrats believe Mr. Adams has the best chance of beating Mr. Yang, who has been leading the field in recent polls.While Mr. Adams has secured some of the city’s most coveted labor endorsements, Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was recently endorsed by another major union, Local 1199 of the S.E.I.U. The powerful United Federation of Teachers has not yet picked a candidate.Scott Stringer, the New York City comptroller, had been a contender for the 32BJ endorsement, according to the union president, Kyle Bragg.“But this is more than just about friendships,” Mr. Bragg said, adding that the union had to consider who had “the strongest path to victory.”Sutton’s long-shot bid comes to an end.Loree Sutton, left, has left the mayoral race.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesFor Loree Sutton, the retired Army brigadier general who withdrew from the mayor’s race on Wednesday, the turning point came in late February when a state judge rejected a lawsuit seeking to limit in-person petition-gathering during the coronavirus pandemic.Candidates must gather a certain number of signatures in person in order to get their names on the ballot.“I just would not go out and do in-person petition-gathering under these circumstances,” Ms. Sutton said. It was, she said, a matter of “public health principle.”Her mayoral bid was always a long shot. The former commissioner for the city’s Department of Veterans’ Services, she had little in the way of political experience or name recognition. She was running as a law-and-order moderate in a Democratic primary that tilts left.Some advisers had encouraged her to run as a Republican, but doing so would have felt inauthentic, she said. Centrism, she argues, remains an essential part of the Democratic Party.But early on there were signs that her brand of moderation would be unwelcome.She was excluded from an early Democratic forum because she had argued that protesters should be required to obtain city permits.She campaigned on the importance of public safety and rejected calls to defund the police, a posture that seemed out of step with many of her competitors.“Some of the worst atrocities in human history have taken place under the misconception that somehow we can create a utopian society,” she said.In the end, Ms. Sutton pulled out of the race, having raised only $200,000.She has yet to decide whom she will endorse, but she was complimentary of Kathryn Garcia, the former Sanitation Department commissioner, who is running as a pragmatist. And she has not ruled out running for office again someday.“It’s the journey of a lifetime,” she said.Candidates debate how to fix public housing.Kathryn Garcia argues that private management of some buildings in the city’s public housing system can be effective.Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersAt a mayoral forum on housing on Thursday, a tenant leader at a city public-housing complex, Damaris Reyes, challenged the candidates: “I want to know if you will commit to preservation of public housing, and how you will repair trust and empower resident decision making.”The 175,000 apartments in the city’s public housing system have been sliding into disrepair for decades, with the price tag for replacing leaky roofs, old heating systems, broken elevators and other problems now estimated at $30 billion to $40 billion.But the city’s proposal to fund the repairs by using a program that would hand over management of tens of thousands of apartments to private developers has been greeted with skepticism. Many New York City Housing Authority residents fear their apartments would be privatized, leading to rent increases and evictions.At the housing forum, hosted by the local news channel NY1, two candidates with experience running housing systems said the city’s plans provided a realistic platform.Ms. Garcia, who served as interim commissioner of NYCHA in 2019, said the blueprint would let the city leverage federal money that was already available. She said she could win over skeptics by taking them on tours of the Ocean Bay complex in Queens, where a private landlord has been making repairs. “You know who the best spokespeople are?” she asked. “The people who have actually had their apartments renovated.”Shaun Donovan, who ran the city’s department of housing preservation under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and who served as President Barack Obama’s commissioner of housing and urban development, said that partnering with the federal government provided “the only pathway where we can truly get to scale.”Mr. Donovan’s plan also calls for the city to kick in $2 billion a year and includes job-training programs for NYCHA residents who would be hired to do much of the work, he said. Mr. Yang has promoted his own $48 billion — and entirely federally funded — “green new deal” for NYCHA. To combat NYCHA residents’ “massive trust deficit,” the city should “make NYCHA residents the majority of the board of NYCHA itself,” he has said.Public money comes rolling in.Andrew Yang has been a potent fund-raiser.Credit…Mark Lennihan/Associated PressSix candidates now say they have qualified for public matching funds, and a seventh may qualify soon.At the latest donation deadline last week, Mr. Yang proved that he is a strong fund-raiser. He reported that he had met the matching-funds threshold by raising more than $2.1 million from 15,600 individual donors in the 57 days that he has been in the race. Mr. Yang’s campaign said it expects to have raised $6.5 million once public dollars are received.“With 100 days left, we have built the foundation and energy to win,” Mr. Yang’s campaign managers said in a statement.To qualify for public matching funds, a candidate must raise $250,000 from at least 1,000 New York City residents. Those donations are matched at either an $8 to $1 rate or $6 to $1 rate, depending on which plan the campaign chose for a maximum of $1,400 to $2,000 per contributor.Mr. Donovan reported meeting the threshold, which would bring his total raised to $4 million. Ms. Garcia reported meeting the threshold by raising over $300,000 in matchable contributions. Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said Monday she had qualified for matching funds as well, raising about $320,000 in matchable contributions.The fund-raising leaders have also continued to rake in public dollars. Mr. Adams and Mr. Stringer, the only two candidates who have received matching funds so far, reported having raised a total of more than $9 million each once matching funds were factored in. Ms. Wiley, who announced that she had met the threshold last period before an audit from the Campaign Finance Board determined that she had not, declined to release fund-raising figures. Her campaign was waiting on a ruling Monday from the board.Raymond J. McGuire, a former banking executive who shook up the race when he raised $5 million in three months, is not participating in the public funds program. His campaign said he had raised another $2.6 million since the last filing period.According to campaign finance rules, if a nonparticipating candidate raises or spends more than half of the $7.3 million spending limit, the spending cap could be increased by 50 percent. Matthew Sollars, a spokesman for the board, said a determination on an increased spending cap would be made late next month.A candidate looks for the Latino vote.Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, has a Puerto Rican stepfather.Credit…Richard Drew/Associated PressLittle known fact about Scott Stringer, who is white and Jewish: His stepfather moved to New York from Puerto Rico as a toddler, his stepfamily is Latino and, partly on that basis, he hopes to win over Latino voters in the mayoral election.“Buenos días a todos,” Mr. Stringer said on Sunday in Upper Manhattan, as he formally kicked off his “Latino agenda,” not far from the Washington Heights neighborhood where he grew up. His stepfamily joined him and lauded his record, character and intelligence. “Scott is simpático,” said Carlos Cuevas, Mr. Stringer’s stepbrother, a lawyer.Mr. Stringer’s effort to highlight his family to identify with a particular constituency is not a novel one. Mr. de Blasio relied heavily on his African-American wife and biracial children in his 2013 run for mayor. At a forum about Jewish issues, Ms. Wiley, whose father was African-American and mother was white, made a point of noting that her partner is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors.The Latino vote — which is far from monolithic — is coveted, representing about 20 percent of the New York City electorate.The mayor’s race has several candidates of Latino descent: Ms. Morales and Carlos Menchaca, a councilman from Brooklyn, both of whom are Democrats, and Fernando Mateo, a Republican. None responded to requests for comment on Mr. Stringer’s Latino voter push.The same day Mr. Stringer was rolling out his agenda, his competitor Mr. Yang made his pitch to Spanish-language viewers of Telemundo.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFor Voting Rights Advocates, a ‘Once in a Generation Moment’ LoomsOpposition to restrictive Republican voting laws — and support for a sweeping Democratic bill — fuels a movement like none in decades. But can it succeed?Protesters demonstrating against proposed changes to Georgia’s voting laws, this month in Atlanta.Credit…Ben Gray/Associated PressNicholas Fandos and March 15, 2021Updated 9:53 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — State and national voting-rights advocates are waging the most consequential political struggle over access to the ballot since the civil rights era, a fight increasingly focused on a far-reaching federal overhaul of election rules in a last-ditch bid to offset a wave of voting restrictions sweeping Republican-controlled state legislatures.The federal voting bill, which passed in the House this month with only Democratic support, includes a landmark national expansion of voting rights, an end to partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts and new transparency requirements on the flood of dark money financing elections that would override the rash of new state laws.The energy in support for it radiates from well-financed veteran organizers to unpaid volunteers, many who were called to political activism after former President Donald J. Trump’s upset win in 2016. It is engaging Democrats in Washington and voting rights activists in crucial states from Georgia to Iowa to West Virginia to Arizona — some facing rollbacks in access to the ballot, some with senators who will play pivotal roles and some with both.But after approval of the Democratic bill in the House, the campaign to pass the For the People Act, designated Senate Bill 1, increasingly appears to be on a collision course with the filibuster. The rule requires 60 votes for passage of most legislation in a bitterly divided Senate, meaning that Republicans can kill the voting bill and scores of other liberal priorities despite unified Democratic control of Washington.To succeed, Democrats will have to convince a handful of moderate holdouts to change the rules, at least for this legislation, with the likelihood that a single defection in their own party would doom their efforts. It is a daunting path with no margin for error, but activists believe the costs for failure, given the Republican limits on voting, would be so high that some accommodation on the filibuster could become inevitable.Two left-leaning elections groups, the advocacy arm of End Citizens United and Let America Vote along with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, plan this week to announce an infusion of $30 million to try to hasten the groundswell. The money will fund paid advertising in at least a dozen states and finance organizers to target Democratic and Republican swing senators in six of them.“We are at a once-in-a-generation moment,” said Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote. “We either are going to see one of the most massive rollbacks of our democracy in generations, or we have an opportunity to say: ‘No, that is not what America stands for. We are going to strengthen democracy and make sure everyone has an equal voice.’”The sense of a pivotal moment is the one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on. Republicans are still inflamed by Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and the party’s unified message that voting restrictions, many of which fall most heavily on minorities and Democratic-leaning voters, are needed to prevent fraud, which studies have repeatedly shown to barely exist.“This bill is the opposite of good governance — it’s a cynical attempt by the left to put their thumb on the scales of democracy and engineer our laws to help them win elections,” said Dan Conston, president of the Republican-aligned American Action Network. “They want to limit free speech, funnel public funds into their campaign accounts, seize from states the ability to run their own free and fair elections, and then spin it like this is really all about protecting voting rights.”Ms. Muller and others are ostensibly focused on winning support for election legislation from 10 moderate Republican senators, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan M. Collins of Maine.But with Republican leaders promising near-unanimous opposition in the Senate, Democrats and their allies are positioning voting rights as the most persuasive case for scrapping or changing the filibuster that would limit much of Democrats’ legislative agenda.Voting rights groups are hoping to sway moderate senators like Lisa Murkowski, left, and Susan Collins toward supporting the federal voting bill. Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times“It is too important an issue and we are facing too big a crisis to let an arcane procedural motion hold back the passage of this bill,” Ms. Muller said. She argued that the rollback of voting rights was an existential threat to the democracy on which all other liberal causes, from gun control to health care reform, depend.The urgency for federal action has mounted not just among Washington lobbyists and Democratic lawmakers, but grass roots groups that normally fight battles in state legislatures and city councils. Many spent the winter opposing the Republican voting agenda that included curbs on mail-in and early voting and stiffer voter ID requirements.Lawmakers in Republican-controlled states have largely rebuffed those groups, leaving Democrats to see federal action as the only possible brake on widespread voting restrictions. At the same time, a handful of crucial Republican-led states are preparing to draw new state and congressional district maps in the fall that could further tilt power in their direction and lock Democrats out of a House majority for years.Voting-rights proponents say they have not given up on stopping restrictive laws in states. The Arizona group Civic Engagement Beyond Voting, has already registered 2,000 people this year to testify remotely on proposed state legislation, with voting rights as a priority.“People are up in arms,” said Cathy Kouts Sigmon, the group’s founder. “They’re relating these bills to how they vote and how members of their family vote.”Voting-rights advocates in Georgia, who claim to have slowed or killed some restrictive bills, are aiming at local companies that have supported the bills’ sponsors, including Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines and UPS. An advertising campaign led by voting and civil rights groups demands that the firms use their lobbying muscle in the Georgia statehouse to stop repressive voting bills instead of contributing to their Republican authors.“They spent most of Black History Month peppering us with Martin Luther King quotes, but now that Blacks’ future is in jeopardy, they’re silent,” Nsé Ufot, the chief executive of one participant, the New Georgia Project, said last week. “We’re using digital ads, billboards, direct action at warehouses and call centers — we’re serious. This is urgent.”One possible sign of some success: On Sunday, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, whose members include those companies, expressed “concern and opposition” to restrictive clauses in two Republican bills.Nsé Ufot, chief executive of the New Georgia Project, speaking in Atlanta in November.Credit…Marcus Ingram/Getty Images for MoveonIncreasingly, though, the focus is on federal legislation. Ms. Sigmon’s group is recruiting Arizonans to lobby their senators on the elections bill. So are local chapters of Indivisible, a movement founded in response to Mr. Trump’s election, in Georgia and Arizona.And so have national advocacy groups. Common Cause runs weeknight phone banks recruiting backers for the bill, and says it has generated 700,000 text messages supporting it. “It’s been a pretty incredible outpouring of support, because we all know what this moment means,” said Izzy Bronstein, the group’s national campaigns manager. In Phoenix, the advocacy group Progress Arizona coordinates a statewide campaign to persuade Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a first-term Democrat, to drop her support of the filibuster. Among its tactics: billboards projected at night onto buildings and other spots, calling for an end to the filibuster and displaying the senator’s Capitol Hill phone number.In Charleston, W. Va., Takeiya Smith of the advocacy group For West Virginia’s Future works with some 70 students at six state colleges to generate calls on Senate Bill 1 to Senators Shelley Capito, a Republican, and particularly Joe Manchin III, a Democrat whose support for the filibuster is a liberal target. The group plans daily campus events this week highlighting different parts of the measure. It is in turn allied with a national coalition, the Declaration for American Democracy, that has enrolled 190 organizations to push for its passage.In Atlanta, the Black Voters Matter Fund is preparing with other groups a national campaign for Senate Bill 1 aimed at both senators and President Biden, who has expressed hope for the bill’s passage but has not actively worked for it.“He’s got to have his Lyndon B. Johnson moment,” said Cliff Albright, the group’s executive director, referring to the former president’s arm-twisting on Capitol Hill for the Voting Rights Act in 1965. “You’re president of the United States. You need to do more than hope that it passes,” he said of Mr. Biden. “He needs to use everything he’s learned over 47 years in Washington, D.C., to get this bill passed.”Democrats first introduced the elections bill in 2019 as a catchall measure to address growing public disillusionment with dark money and corporate interests in politics. But as Republican state officials have raced to target voter participation, the bill’s voting provisions have increasingly been viewed by many on the left as essential protections to American democracy — and to the ability of Democratic voters to cast ballots.If it became law, the bill would drastically expand early and mail-in voting, neuter restrictive state voter ID laws, make it harder to purge voter rolls while automatically registering all eligible voters and restoring voting rights to former felons. Those and other changes would most likely increase voter participation, especially by minority voters who disproportionately lean Democratic.Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic caucus promoted the party’s legislation on voting this month.Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressSenators plan to reintroduce the bill this week and Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the Senate committee that will advance it, has promised a hearing on March 24.But what happens next is a matter of hot political and strategic debate centered on Democrats’ fight over the filibuster, where a handful of moderates so far appear unwilling to change or drop the tactic. All 50 Democrats probably would have to agree to alter the rules.In an interview, Ms. Klobuchar suggested that if senators could not agree to scrap the filibuster altogether, they could try to find a compromise, potentially allowing measures on voting and elections like Senate Bill 1 to pass with a simple majority, but not other bills.“It is so fundamental to everything else, it has to get done,” she said.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has been less definitive but indicated last week that he, too, may view voting rights as a unique case. “If we can get some bipartisan support, great, but if not, our caucus will meet and we will figure out how to get it done,” he said in a radio interview. “Failure is not an option.”End Citizens United, Let America Vote and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee plan to run television and digital ads in Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Maine and Pennsylvania, homes to several key swing senators. A later phase will target up to 15 red and blue states. The groups will also dispatch 50 paid staff members to states, including Mr. Manchin’s West Virginia.“We almost don’t have a choice,” said Kelly Ward Burton, president of the Democratic redistricting group. “Because of what’s happening in the states, it’s not theoretical. It’s happening right before our eyes. It would be irresponsible not to do anything about this.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyJustice Breyer Should Retire Right NowIf he doesn’t, Democrats run the very real risk that they would be unable to replace him.Mr. Campos is a law professor who writes extensively about politics and the Constitution.March 15, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Simone NoronhaJustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was widely, and deservedly, criticized for her refusal to retire from the Supreme Court at a time when a Democratic president could have chosen her replacement.Justice Stephen Breyer is making a similar and arguably even more egregious mistake.The evident indifference on the part of Democrats regarding the failure of Justice Breyer, 82, to announce his retirement is apparently a product of the assumption that he will do so at some point during the current Congress and that therefore whether he does so anytime soon is not particularly important.This is a grave mistake.Consider that because of the extremely thin nature of their Democratic Senate control, the shift of a single seat from the Democrats to the Republicans or even one vacancy in the 50 seats now controlled by the Democratic caucus would probably result in the swift reinstallation of Mitch McConnell as the majority leader.What are the odds that something like this — a senator’s death, disabling health crisis or departure from office for other reasons — will happen sometime in this Congress’s remaining 22 months?Alarmingly for Democrats, if history is any guide, the odds are quite high. Since the end of World War II, 27 of the 38 Congresses have featured a change in the party composition of the Senate during a session.The probability that such a shift may occur during this particular Congress may well be even higher than that. At the moment, no fewer than six Democratic senators over the age of 70 represent states where a Republican governor would be free to replace them with a Republican, should a vacancy occur.Five other Democratic senators represent states for which a vacancy would go unfilled for months, until a special election to fill the seat was held — which would hand the G.O.P. control of the Senate at least until that election and likely for the rest of the current Congress if a Republican wins that contest. (In the case of Wisconsin, such a vacancy might not be filled until 2023.)All things considered, the odds that Democrats will lose control of the Senate in the next 22 months are probably close to a coin flip.Under the circumstances, for Democrats to run the very real risk that they would be unable to replace Justice Breyer is unacceptable. Of course, the only person who is in a position to ensure that this does not happen is Justice Breyer himself.It is true that, under normal circumstances, a Supreme Court justice planning to retire generally waits until the end of a court term to do so. But these are not normal circumstances.Nothing illustrates the anti-democratic dysfunction of our political system more clearly than the current makeup of the Supreme Court. Two-thirds of the sitting justices were nominated by Republican presidents, even though Republican presidential candidates have lost the popular vote in seven of the nine elections, which determined who nominated these justices.And these justices were confirmed by a Senate that has become skewed so radically in favor of electing Republicans that the 50 senators who caucus with the Democrats represent about 41.5 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators do.Under the circumstances, it would be a travesty if the Supreme Court seat occupied by Justice Breyer was not filled by a replacement chosen by Democrats.He should announce his retirement immediately, effective upon the confirmation of his successor. For him to continue to make the same gamble that Justice Ginsburg made and lost runs the risk of tainting his legacy as a justice and has the potential to be an anti-democratic disaster for the nation as a whole.Paul F. Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and writes about law and politics at Lawyers, Guns & Money.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Biden’s Stimulus PlanBiden’s AddressWhat to Know About the BillBenefits for Middle ClassChild Tax CreditAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStimulus Bill as a Political Weapon? Democrats Are Counting on It.The $1.9 trillion package is a big bet by the party that it will restore a sense of normalcy by the 2022 elections and that voters will defy history and reward Democrats with more seats in Congress.Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, signed the stimulus bill this week while surrounded by Democratic members of Congress.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMarch 15, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — Triumphant over the signing of their far-reaching $1.9 trillion stimulus package, Democrats are now starting to angle for a major political payoff that would defy history: Picking up House and Senate seats in the 2022 midterm elections, even though the party in power usually loses in the midterms.Democratic leaders are making one of the biggest electoral bets in years — that the stimulus will be so transformational for Americans across party lines and demographic groups that Democrats will be able to wield it as a political weapon next year in elections against Republicans, who voted en masse against the package.Republicans need to gain only one seat in the Senate and just five in the House in 2022 to take back control, a likely result in a normal midterm election, but perhaps a trickier one if voters credit their rivals for a strong American rebound.Yet as Democrats prepare to start selling voters on the package, they remain haunted by what happened in 2010, the last time they were in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress and pursued an ambitious agenda: They lost 63 House seats, and the majority, and were unable to fulfill President Barack Obama’s goals on issues ranging from gun control to immigration.It has become an article of faith in the party that Mr. Obama’s presidency was diminished because his two signature accomplishments, the stimulus bill and the Affordable Care Act, were not expansive enough and their pitch to the public on the benefits of both measures was lacking. By this logic, Democrats began losing elections and the full control of the government, until now, because of their initial compromises with Republicans and insufficient salesmanship.“We didn’t adequately explain what we had done,” President Biden told House Democrats this month about the 2009 Recovery Act. “Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap.’”Now they are determined to exorcise those old ghosts by aggressively promoting a measure they believe meets the moment and has broader appeal than the $787 billion bill they trimmed and laced with tax cuts to win a handful of Republican votes in Mr. Obama’s first months in office.Republicans say the Democratic bet is a foolhardy one, both because of how little of the spending is directly related to the coronavirus pandemic and because of fleeting voter attention spans. But Democrats say they intend to run on the bill — and press Republicans over their opposition to it.“This is absolutely something I will campaign on next year,” said Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who may be the most vulnerable incumbent Senate Democrat in the country on the ballot in 2022. Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who heads the Democratic Senate campaign arm, said he would go on “offense” against Republicans who opposed the bill and sketched out their attack: “Every Republican said no in a time of need.”Party lawmakers point out that the measure Mr. Biden signed on Thursday is more popular than the 2009 bill, according to polling; contains more tangible benefits, like the $1,400 direct payments and unemployment benefits; and comes at a time when the pandemic and former President Donald Trump’s continued appetite for big spending have blunted Republican attacks.President Biden will travel the country next week to highlight the passage of the stimulus legislation.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times“People are going to feel it right away, to me that’s the biggest thing,” said Representative Conor Lamb, a Pennsylvania Democrat whose 2018 special election victory presaged the party’s revival. “Politics is confusing, it’s image-based, everyone calls everyone else a liar — but people are going to get the money in their bank accounts.”And, Representative Sara Jacobs of California said, Democrats have “learned the lessons from 2009, we made sure we went back to our districts this weekend to tell people how much help they were going to get from this bill.”Mr. Obama’s aides are quick to note that they did promote their stimulus and the health care law but ran into much more fervent, and unified, opposition on the right as the Tea Party blossomed and portrayed the measures as wasteful and ill-conceived.At the end of last week, with the House’s first extended recess looming at month’s end, Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed House Democrats to seize the moment.Ms. Pelosi’s office sent an email to colleagues, forwarded to The Times, brimming with talking points the speaker hopes they’ll use in town halls and news conferences. “During the upcoming district work period, members are encouraged to give visibility to how the American Rescue Plan meets the needs of their communities: putting vaccines in arms, money in pockets, workers back on the job and children back in the classroom safely,” it said.For their part, White House officials said they would deploy “the whole of government,” as one aide put it, to market the plan, send cabinet officers on the road and focus on different components of the bill each day to highlight its expanse.Democrats’ hopes for avoiding the losses typical in a president’s first midterm election will depend largely on whether Americans feel life is back to normal next year — and whether they credit the party in power for thwarting the disease, despair and dysfunction that characterized the end of Mr. Trump’s term.If voters are to believe the Democrats are delivering on an American rebound, of course, it’s essential the country is roaring back to prepandemic strength in a way it was not at the end of 2009, when unemployment reached 10 percent.“You could be looking at an extraordinary growth spurt in the third and fourth quarters, and that takes you into the year when candidates make their way,” said Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, where much of the bill was crafted.The politics of the legislation, in other words, will be clear enough by this time next year. “If all the sudden you got high inflation and things are hitting the fan, Republicans are going to run on it,” said Representative Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat. “If things are going well they’re going to run on something else.”For now, Republicans are expressing little appetite to contest a measure that has the support of 70 percent of voters, according to a Pew survey released last week.Part of their challenge stems from Mr. Trump’s aggressive advocacy for $2,000 direct payments in the previous stimulus package late last year, a drumbeat he’s kept up in his political afterlife as he argues Republicans lost the two Georgia Senate runoffs because they did not embrace the proposal.It’s difficult for congressional Republicans to portray one of the main elements of the Democrats’ bill as socialism when the de facto leader of their party is an enthusiastic supporter of wealth redistribution. Moreover, right-wing media outlets have been more focused on culture war issues that are more animating to many conservatives than size-of-government questions.Asked if they would run against the bill next year, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, said, “There’s going to be a lot of things we run against.”Republicans in Congress hope to change the subject to a surge of migrants along the Southern border.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesAt the weekly news conference of House Republican leaders, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming spoke about the stimulus for 45 seconds before changing the subject to the rising number of migrants at the Southern border..css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus PackageThe stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read moreThis credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more.There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more.The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more.And by the end of the week, Mr. McCarthy announced he and a group of House Republicans would travel to the border on Monday in a bid to highlight the problem there — and change the subject.After spending the campaign vowing to find common ground with Republicans and make Washington work again, Mr. Biden, in his first major act as president, prioritized speed and scale over bipartisanship.He and his top aides believe in legislative momentum, that success begets success and that they’ll be able to push through another pricey bill — this one to build roads, bridges and broadband — because of their early win on Covid-19 relief.“The fact that we could do it without Republicans forces them to the table,” said a senior White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the nitty-gritty of lawmaking.Yet to the G.O.P. lawmakers who have signaled a willingness to work with the new administration, Mr. Biden’s determination to push through the stimulus without G.O.P. votes will imperil the rest of his agenda.“What I would be worried about if I were them is what does this do to jeopardize bipartisan cooperation on other things you want to do — you can’t do everything by reconciliation,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, alluding to the parliamentary procedure by which the Senate can approve legislation by a simple majority. “I’ve heard some of our members say that, ‘If you’re going to waste all this money on unrelated matters, I’m really not interested in spending a bunch more money on infrastructure.’”To Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who was one of the Senate Republicans who went to the White House last month pitching a slimmed-down stimulus, it’s downright bizarre to hear Democrats claiming their 2010 difficulties stemmed from not going big.“I would argue it was too big, it was unfocused, it was wasted money,” Ms. Capito said.To Democrats, though, they are avoiding, not repeating, their past mistakes.“The public didn’t know about the Affordable Care Act and the administration was not exactly advertising,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters last week.Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, was just as blunt, singling out the Maine moderate who was wooed by Mr. Obama to ensure bipartisan support for the 2009 Recovery Act but whose appeals for a far-smaller compromise bill were ignored last month.“We made a big mistake in 2009 and ’10, Susan Collins was part of that mistake,” Mr. Schumer said on CNN. “We cut back on the stimulus dramatically and we stayed in recession for five years.”And, he could have noted, his party would not have full control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for another decade.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin faced charges of racism and calls for his resignation after he told a radio host that he did not feel threatened by the pro-Donald Trump mob that raided the Capitol in January, but he would have been concerned if the invaders were “antifa” or Black Lives Matter activists.“I never really felt threatened,” Johnson told Wisconsin radio host Jay Weber. He said the insurrectionists were mostly “people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break a law”.“Had the tables been turned and President Donald Trump won the election and those were thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters I would have been concerned,” Johnson continued.Five people died in the 6 January riot at the Capitol, including one police officer, and dozens were injured. Prosecutors have charged more than 300 people with crimes and nearly that many had been arrested. Forty people have been arrested for assault on law enforcement officers.“This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me,” Johnson tole the radio host. “I mean ‘armed,’ when you hear ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called on Johnson to resign in an editorial. “If he runs again, Johnson must be opposed in both the primary and general elections by people who care enough about democracy to support and defend it,” the paper said.“No, Senator Ron Johnson,” tweeted Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, “the truth is that the January 6 insurrectionists did break the law, they hurt and killed law enforcement officers, and they were trying to overturn the elected government of the United States.“To say that the opposite is true about this group of insurrectionists, but that you would have been worried if they had been Black Lives Matters protesters, is racist, dangerous and unbecoming a United States senator.”Former Democratic senator Barbara Boxer agreed.“Everybody in the country and the world saw the insurrectionists beat up, injure and kill law-enforcement at the Capitol and they saw them break the law over and over as they smashed windows and soiled the citadel of democracy,” she tweeted. “Everybody except Sen. Ron Johnson. He needs to go.”A two-term senator, Johnson would be up for re-election in 2022. He was one of Donald Trump’s most vocal defenders through the former president’s two impeachment trials and supported Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.Days before the Capitol invasion, Johnson spread lies about voter fraud on national TV and called for a “full investigatory and fact-finding authority” to audit the election. The Trump justice department found no evidence of election fraud and dozens of courts rejected allegations of fraud by Trump lawyers as groundless. More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutGuidelines After VaccinationAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyElection Year in Germany Kicks Off With Voting in Two StatesRegional governments will be chosen in two southwestern states months before a national vote that is considered wide open after 16 years under Chancellor Angela MerkelPosters for the Rhineland-Palatinate state election, including the incumbent governor, Malu Dreyer of the Social Democrats, right, and Christian Baldauf of the Christian Democratic Union, top left, in Frankenthal, Germany, on Wednesday.Credit…Michael Probst/Associated PressMarch 14, 2021, 5:33 a.m. ETBERLIN — Voters in two southwestern German states are kicking off an election year on Sunday that could change the course of Europe’s largest economy after 16 years under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will be stepping down after a new government is sworn in.The elections in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate are the first in a year that will see voting for new legislators in four more states, and for the country’s Parliament, which will be elected in September.Sunday’s voting is taking place after largely muted election campaigns that were overshadowed by the threat of the coronavirus and by lockdowns. While neither race will serve as a clear bellwether for the fall election, the outcomes could indicate how voters are feeling about the two leading parties, the conservatives and the Greens, and help focus the contest for Ms. Merkel’s replacement.“It is an unbelievably exciting election year,” said Thorsten Faas, a professor of political science at Berlin’s Free University. “A lot is still open, creating the possibility for movement in various directions.”A vaccine rollout stymied by shortages of doses and hampered by bureaucracy is leading many to question the competence of the chancellor’s conservative bloc. Over the past week, revelations have emerged that several conservative lawmakers earned tens of thousands of euros in exchange for arranging the sale of medical-grade masks to municipalities early in the pandemic, when supplies were very tight.Three lawmakers have resigned over the scandal, including a member of the Christian Democratic Union representing a district in Baden-Württemberg. Another lawmaker from the state of Thuringia, as well as a member of the Christian Social Union, the conservative party in the state of Bavaria, also resigned. After the payouts came to light, party leaders required all 240 conservative lawmakers to sign a declaration pledging they hadn’t used their position for financial gain in connection with fighting the pandemic.Even before the scandal broke, the conservatives were struggling in the race in Baden-Württemberg, where a popular incumbent governor for the Greens is seeking a third term in office.For the past five years, Winfried Kretschmann, 72, has led the state through a coalition of his environmental party with the conservative Christian Democrats, and voters are expected to return him to office. Polls in the weeks running up to the vote showed the Greens with the strongest support, between 33 to 35 percent. Mr. Kretschmann campaigned on his personality, under the slogan “You know me,” and promised a continuation of his party’s consensus-seeking policies of the past five years.Winfried Kretschmann, the incumbent governor of Baden-Württemberg state, left, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Heidelberg in 2019.Credit…Daniel Roland/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPolls suggest the Christian Democrats in Baden-Württemberg appear poised to take second place, setting the stage for a possible continuation of the current coalition, a combination that many observers consider a possibility for the makeup of the national Parliament.The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is expected to hold onto the roughly 15 percent support that it won in Baden-Württemberg in 2016. Although the regional party has been plagued by internal divisions and strife among its members, it is expected to retain voters who are attracted to its nationalistic, anti-establishment stance.The Coronavirus Outbreak More