Biden administration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden's $1.9tn Covid relief bill marks an end to four decades of Reaganism | Analysis

      by

      Joe Biden reflected recently on the last time a Democratic administration had to rescue an economy left in tatters by a Republican president.“The economists told us we literally saved America from a depression,” Biden told the House Democratic Caucus last week. “But we didn’t adequately explain what we had done. Barack was so modest; he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap’. 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.”The 46th US president is often lauded for his humility but don’t expect him to repeat Obama’s mistake. Once his $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill is signed, he is set to take an extended victory lap by travelling the country to promote it.Biden will have short and long sales pitches. First, that help is on the way after the hellish year of a pandemic that has killed more than 528,000 people in the US and put many millions out of work.The stimulus, among the biggest in history, includes $400bn to fund $1,400 direct payments to most Americans (unlike Donald Trump, Biden’s signature will not appear on the cheques), $350bn in aid to state and local governments and increased funding for vaccine distribution.Politically, it is an open goal. The risks of inaction were immense; the risks of action are modest. Opinion polls show that three in four Americans support the stimulus, making congressional Republicans’ implacable opposition all the more jarring. But given that voters tend to have short memories – academic research and midterm election results suggest that Obama got little credit for the 2009 rescue – Biden is wise to press home his advantage.Second, he will also be on a mission to restore faith in government. Confidence in it “has been plummeting since the late 60s to what it is now”, Biden noted in his remarks last week. His legislation, called the American Rescue Plan, can correct that with the biggest expansion of the welfare state in decades.Advocates say it will cut the number of Americans living in poverty by a third and reduce child poverty by nearly half. It contains, at $31bn, the biggest federal investment in Native American programmes in history. It also delivers the most important legislation for Black farmers in half a century, allocating $5bn through debt relief, grants, education and training.Jim McGovern, the Democratic congressman who chairs the House rules committee, has said: “This bill attacks inequality and poverty in ways we haven’t seen in a generation.”The White House has called it “the most progressive piece of legislation in history”. Biden knows better than anyone what that means.When he was born, in 1942, the president was Franklin Roosevelt, architect of the New Deal, an epic set of programmes, public work projects and financial reforms to provide relief from the Great Depression. When Biden was a student at the University of Delaware, Lyndon Johnson embarked on his project of the “Great Society”, flexing the muscles of government for poverty alleviation, civil rights and environmental protections.But then came the monumental pushback. As a senator, Biden witnessed the Watergate scandal tarnish the political class as Richard Nixon became the first president to resign. Then came Ronald Reagan and his famous quip: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”Reagan oversaw a major tax overhaul in 1986, resulting in cavernous inequality and a massive budget deficit. He described Johnson’s “Great Society” as a fundamental wrong turn and set about dismantling it. Reagan was so successful in making the political weather that Biden himself bought into the ideology.In 1988 he wrote in a newspaper column: “We are all too familiar with the stories of welfare mothers driving luxury cars and leading lifestyles that mirror the rich and famous. Whether they are exaggerated or not, these stories underlie a broad social concern that the welfare system has broken down – that it only parcels out welfare checks and does nothing to help the poor find productive jobs.”This orthodoxy held and dominated the political centre ground. In 2017, Trump followed Reagan’s lead with a $1.5tn bill that slashed taxes for corporations and the wealthy, including himself and his allies. That was his first big legislative win; Biden’s could hardly be more of a polar opposite.The American Rescue Plan is not without disappointments for progressives, notably the lack of a $15-per-hour minimum wage, a harbinger of how difficult an evenly divided Senate will be for Biden to handle. All the more reason to enjoy his victory lap and celebrate that four decades of Reaganism and “trickle down” economics are at an end. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Biden pledges to combat sexual assault in US military – video

      by

      Joe Biden pledged to combat sexual assault in the US military as he announced the nomination of two female officers, Gen Jacqueline Van Ovost and Lt Gen Laura Richardson, to become four-star commanders. The president, who spoke on International Women’s Day, said: “Sexual assault is abhorrent and wrong at any time. And in our military, so much of unit cohesion is built on trusting your fellow service members to have your back – there’s nothing less than a threat to our national security”
      Biden pledges to tackle ‘scourge’ of sexual assault in US military More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden officials visit US-Mexico border to monitor increase in crossings

      by

      The new US secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, led a visit by Biden administration officials to the border with Mexico on Saturday, amid a growing number of border crossings and criticism by Republicans that a crisis is brewing.Joe Biden has sought to reverse rigid immigration polices set up by his predecessor as president, Donald Trump, whose presidency was dominated by efforts to build a border wall and reduce the number of legal and illegal migrants.Biden has faced criticism from immigration activists who say unaccompanied children and families are being held too long in detention centers instead of being released while asylum applications are considered.The White House said last week Biden had asked senior members of his staff to travel to the border and report back about the influx of unaccompanied minors. It declined at the time to release details about the trip, citing security and privacy concerns.Mayorkas and officials including domestic policy adviser Susan Rice visited a border patrol facility and a refugee resettlement facility, the White House said on Sunday.“They discussed capacity needs given the number of unaccompanied children and families arriving at our border,” a statement said, “the complex challenges with rebuilding our gutted border infrastructure and immigration system, as well as improvements that must be made in order to restore safe and efficient procedures to process, shelter, and place unaccompanied children with family or sponsors.“Officials also discussed ways to ensure the fair and humane treatment of immigrants, the safety of the workforce, and the wellbeing of communities nearby in the face of a global pandemic.”An influx of people seeking to cross the border is likely to be a big issue in the 2022 midterm elections. Trump may use it to rally his base against Biden and lay the groundwork for a potential return as a presidential candidate in 2024 or as a way to boost a successor.“The border is breaking down as I speak,” Republican South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, told Fox News on Sunday. “Immigration in 2022 will be a bigger issue than it was in 2016.” More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Manchin's stimulus stand exposes dangerous fissures in Democratic ranks

      by

      Seeking to explain his part in dramatically prolonging marathon Senate proceedings before the passage of Joe Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill, Joe Manchin may only have succeeded in exposing a dangerous fissure in Democratic ranks.In winning controversial modifications to benefits for struggling Americans, the West Virginia senator said, he had tried to “make sure we were targeting where the help was needed” and to do “everything I could to bring us together”.The latter remark, on Sunday to ABC’s This Week, might have provoked hollow laughter on the left. As Manchin, a powerful centrist in a Senate divided 50-50, toured the talk shows, he also faced up to fierce criticism from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez over his opposition to a $15 minimum wage, a measure dropped from the stimulus bill.The progressive congresswoman from New York has attacked Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another opponent of the $15 wage, as “two people in this entire country that are holding back a complete transformation in working people’s lives”.“The $15 minimum wage never fit in this piece of reconciliation,” Manchin told CNN’s State of the Union. “Those are the rules of the Senate.” He also said he was in favour of raising the wage to $11 – a figure unacceptable to progressives and indeed the Republicans with whom Manchin insists he is willing to work.On Friday, Manchin mounted a late push to scale back unemployment benefits in the stimulus package, a huge and historic piece of legislation meant to help Americans struggling amid a pandemic which has cratered the US economy. His move prompted hours of negotiations, followed by a compromise and voting through the night.But Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, refused to criticise Manchin, the senator slapping his podium and emphasising the need for “unity, unity, unity”, particularly as every Republican present voted agains the relief bill.Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont attempted to include the minimum wage rise in the stimulus bill under budget reconciliation, requiring a simple majority rather than the 60-vote threshold which applies to most major legislation. But the Senate parliamentarian ruled against Sanders – much to progressives’ anger.“I know they made a big issue about this,” Manchin told CNN, “and I understand. Everyone has their right. I respect where [Ocasio-Cortez] is coming from, I respect her input, we have a little different approach.“We come from two different areas of the country that have different social and cultural needs. One was that you have to respect everybody.”The stimulus bill now goes back to the House before heading to Biden’s desk. House leaders have promised smooth passage but five defections would sink the bill. On Sunday Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, was asked if she thought progressives would support it.She told CNN the “historic and transformational piece of legislation … is going to cut child poverty and half” and said the White House hoped the left would “make that judgment” based on “what their constituents need”.It seems clear a $15 minimum wage has no hope of clearing 60 votes in the Senate. That super-majority, known as the filibuster, is said by champions including Manchin to protect minority rights – though it came to prominence largely as a way for southern segregationists to oppose civil rights reform.The House has passed HR1, a sweeping voting rights bill meant to counter efforts by Republicans in the states to dramatically restrict voting by groups that favour Democrats. But HR1 seems doomed unless Senate Democrats scrap the filibuster.Even if they did, centrists like Manchin would enjoy immense power. Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, the senator cited his own stand on the relief bill.“If what you saw happen with that 50-vote swing and one vote, no matter who, it maybe can make a big difference in a tied Senate, can you imagine doing day-to-day operations this way? Can you imagine not having to sit down … with your colleagues on both sides and have their input?“…I’m willing to look at any way we can. But I’m not willing to take away the involvement of the minority.”He also said he did not favour using reconciliation for voting rights legislation.“I’m not going to change my mind on the filibuster,” he said, “[and] I’m not going to go [to reconciliation] until my Republican friends have the ability to have their say also.”On Fox News Sunday, Manchin said he did support making the filibuster “painful” again, meaning a return to the requirement senators physically hold the floor of the Senate in order to block legislation, a process famously depicted in the James Stewart movie Mr Smith Goes To Washington.Bedingfield confirmed that Biden is also against scrapping the filibuster.Manchin’s power in the Senate was the talk of Washington even before the drama of Friday and Saturday.“I didn’t lobby for this position,” he told ABC. “I’ve never changed. I’m the same person I have been all my life and since I’ve been in the public offices. I’ve been voting the same way for the last 10 years. I look for that moderate middle. The common sense that comes with the moderate middle is who I am. That’s what people expect.“…You’ve got to work a little bit harder when we have this toxic atmosphere and the divisions that we have and the tribal mentality. That’s not to be acceptable. You’ve got to work hard and fight that. Fight against those urges just to cloister in with your group and say, ‘Well, this is where I am.’”Progressives disagree. On Friday Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey tweeted: “I’m frankly disgusted … and question whether I can support this bill.” She also told USA Today she was “thinking very hard about making a statement” in the House.“As progressives,” she said, “we’re going to have to figure out where the line in the sand is.” More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Top House Democrat Jim Clyburn: 'No way we'd let filibuster deny voting rights'

      by

      One of the most powerful Democrats in Washington has issued a frank warning to members of his own party, saying they need to find a way to pass major voting rights legislation or they will lose control of Congress.The comments from Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, came days after the House of Representatives approved a sweeping voting rights bill that would enact some of the most dramatic expansions of the right to vote since the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Even though Democrats also control the US Senate, the bill is unlikely to pass the chamber because of a procedural rule, the filibuster, that requires 60 votes to advance legislation.In an interview with the Guardian this week, Clyburn called out two moderate Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have opposed getting rid of the filibuster. Republicans across the country are advancing sweeping measures to curtail voting rights and letting expansive voting rights legislation die would harm Democrats, Clyburn said.“There’s no way under the sun that in 2021 that we are going to allow the filibuster to be used to deny voting rights. That just ain’t gonna happen. That would be catastrophic,” he said. “If Manchin and Sinema enjoy being in the majority, they had better figure out a way to get around the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rights.”If Manchin and Sinema enjoy being in the majority, they had better figure out a way to get around the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rightsClyburn issued that warning ahead of the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day in 1965 when law enforcement officers brutally beat voting rights activists in Selma, Alabama.Clyburn and other House Democrats have been hoping the early days of Joe Biden’s administration will be marked by passage of a bill named after the late congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights hero who was nearly killed on Bloody Sunday. That measure would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, gutted by the supreme court in 2013, that required places with a history of voting discrimination to get election changes cleared by the federal government before they took effect.“Here we are talking about the Voting Rights Act he worked so hard for and that’s named in his honor and they’re going to filibuster it to death? That ain’t gonna happen,” Clyburn said.But the likelihood of that bill becoming law is doubtful under current procedures. Democrats expect Republicans to find a reason to filibuster it after its expected passage through the House of Representatives and consideration in the Senate. Thus Clyburn is calling for some kind of workaround of the filibuster in the current legislative climate, in which the Senate is split 50-50 and use of the legislative obstructing mechanism is all too common.“I’m not going to say that you must get rid of the filibuster. I would say you would do well to develop a Manchin-Sinema rule on getting around the filibuster as it relates to race and civil rights,” Clyburn said.Clyburn said he has not discussed changing the filibuster with Biden, who has expressed support for keeping the filibuster in place.The reality of their slim majority and the regularity of legislation dying through filibuster has caused Democrats to opt to pass the Biden administration’s Covid relief package through a budgetary process called reconciliation, which is not subject to the filibuster-proof 60-vote threshold. Clyburn wants to see the same thing with civil rights.“You can’t filibuster the budget,” Clyburn said. “That’s why we have reconciliation rules. We need to have civil and voting rights reconciliation. That should have had reconciliation permission a long, long time ago.”He noted: “If the headlines were to read that the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act was filibustered to death it would be catastrophic.”Clyburn’s comments underscore the difficulty the federal government has in moving any bill because of arcane legislative roadblocks. Broadly popular proposals like a minimum wage increase or a voting rights bill seem dead on arrival. And that has left veteran Senate Democrats skeptical that even a bill protecting Americans’ rights to vote has a chance. First, the filibuster would have to go, and that seems unlikely at the moment.“The short-term prospects of doing away with the filibuster seem remote just because there aren’t the votes to do that,” said Luke Albee, a former chief of staff to the Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Pat Leahy of Vermont. “My gut is it will take six months, eight months, a year of total obstructionism on the Republican side for senators who are skeptical now of getting rid of the filibuster to at least have a more open mind about it.”Albee also said it was possible that a Voting Rights Act could face strong Republican opposition, despite Clyburn’s confidence.“There’s no one that hopes it passes more than me but I just worry it’s a toxic environment,” Albee added. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Lucky review: how Biden beat Trump – and doubters like Obama and Hillary

      by

      Seven million votes more was almost not enough. Had 45,000 gone the other way in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Donald Trump would still be president. Calls to defund the police nearly cost Joe Biden victory and led to a more than a dozen-seat loss for House Democrats.
      Biden had “separated himself from the orthodoxies of his party’s base” but “had no coattails” to spare, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes write. As always, culture counts – even amid a pandemic.
      But “Unwoke Joe”, as the authors call him, was the one Democrat whose empathy and instincts matched the demands of the times. Lucky is an apt title for Allen and Parnes’s third book.
      “In 2016, Trump had needed everything to go wrong for Hillary Clinton to win,” they write. “This time, Biden caught every imaginable break.”
      Their joint take on Biden is a prism and scorecard that gives added understanding to the seemingly never-ending war of 2020. Allen is a veteran political writer at NBC News digital, Parnes reports for the Hill. They deliver.
      Subtitled How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, Lucky is the first full-length campaign postmortem. It makes the silent parts of the conversation audible and reminds the reader the past is always with us.
      The authors convey the cultural dimensions of Biden’s win. He was an old-time north-eastern pol who repeatedly bore witness to personal tragedy. So long in the Senate, he prided himself on his capacity to compromise and reach across the aisle, a trait that Allen and Parnes report elicited scorn from Elizabeth Warren.
      Biden also sought to maintain a “close relationship with the police and the civil rights community”, in his own words. It was no accident South Carolina emerged as Biden’s firewall in the primary, or that James Clyburn, a 15-term congressman and the most senior Black member of the House, was pivotal in digging Biden out of a deep hole.
      In the election’s aftermath, Clyburn attributed Democratic underperformance to the move to defund the police and the mantras of the left.
      “I’ve always said that these headlines can kill a political effort,” he told NBC. For good measure, Clyburn added: “Sometimes I have real problems trying to figure out what progressive means.”
      On the other hand, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama come across as out of sync. We are told that Clinton, the “vampire in the bullpen”, harbored thoughts of another run – until late 2019.
      Embed
      The fact Clinton lost in 2008 and 2016 had not totally dulled her capacity to believe she could unify party and country. Lucky captures Biden in 2016, calling the former secretary of state a “horrible candidate” who failed to communicate what she actually stood for.
      Unlike Clinton, Biden understood that simply drawing a contrast with Trump would not be sufficient. Yet Clinton did see that the 2020 Democratic nominee, whoever it was, would be in a fight for “the very soul of the nation”. Charlottesville provided that epiphany to Biden.
      Obama too does not fare too well, a fair-weather friend to his vice-president on several occasions, overly concerned with protecting his own legacy. He got some very important stuff wrong. Biden was more attractive and viable than the 44th president and his coterie thought.
      In the authors’ telling, Obama was temporarily enamored with Beto O’Rourke. Like Kamala Harris, the former Texas congressman’s candidacy was over before the first primary. For both, stardom did not translate into staying power.
      Then, at an event with Black corporate leaders in the fall of 2019, Obama amplified Warren’s chances and trash-talked Pete Buttigieg, then mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Obama reportedly said: “He’s the mayor of a small town. He’s gay, and he’s short.” Unlike Buttigieg, Warren never won a primary. She also finished third in Massachusetts – her own state.
      As for Biden, one source describes Obama’s support as “tepid at best”. Obama tacitly backed Biden just days before Super Tuesday in March. Months later, he took his time congratulating Biden on his election win.
      Biden’s so-called “brother” failed to call him “on election day, or the next day, or the next, or the next”, according to Allen and Parnes. Obama waited until Saturday 7 November, “the day the networks had finally called the election”. The audacity of caution. More

    • 225 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden's no LBJ but he must protect voting rights. What else is the presidency for? | Robert Reich

      by

      In 1963, when the newly sworn in Lyndon Baines Johnson was advised against using his limited political capital on the controversial issue of civil and voting rights for Black Americans, he responded: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”The US is again approaching a crucial decision point on the most fundamental right of all in a democracy: the right to vote. The result will either be the biggest advance since LBJ’s landmark civil rights and voting rights acts of 1964 and 1965, or the biggest setback since the end of Reconstruction and start of Jim Crow in the 1870s.The decisive factor will be President Joe Biden.On one side are Republicans, who control most state legislatures and are using false claims of election fraud to enact an avalanche of voting restrictions on everything from early voting and voting by mail to voter IDs. They also plan to gerrymander their way back to a US House of Representatives majority.After losing the Senate and the presidency, they’re determined to win back power by rigging the rules against Democrats, disproportionately Black and brown voters. As a lawyer for the Arizona Republican party put it baldly before the supreme court, without such restrictions Republicans are “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats”.On the other side are congressional Democrats, advancing the most significant democracy reform legislation since LBJ – a sprawling 791-page For the People Act, establishing national standards for federal elections.The proposed law mandates automatic registration of new voters, voting by mail and at least 15 days of early voting. It bans restrictive voter ID laws and purges of voter rolls, changes studies suggest would increase voter participation, especially by racial minorities. It also requires that congressional redistricting be done by independent commissions and creates a system of public financing for congressional campaigns.The legislation sailed through the House last week, on a party line vote. The showdown will occur in the Senate, where Republicans are determined to kill it. Although Democrats possess a razor-thin majority, the bill doesn’t stand a chance unless Democrats can overcome two big obstacles.The first is the filibuster, requiring 60 votes to pass regular legislation. Notably, the filibuster is not in the constitution and not even in law. It’s a rule that has historically been used against civil rights and voting rights bills, as it was in the 1960s when LBJ narrowly overcame it.Democrats can – and must – finally end the filibuster now, with their 51-vote majority.But if they try, they face a second obstacle. Two Democrats – Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – have said they won’t vote to end the filibuster, presumably because they want to preserve their centrist image and appeal to Republicans in their states. A few other Democrats are lukewarm to the idea.Well, I’m sorry. The stakes are too high. If Democrats fail to enact the For the People Act, Republicans will send voting rights into retreat for decades. There’s no excuse for Manchin and Sinema or any other Senate Democrat letting Republicans pull America backwards towards Jim Crow.And no reason Biden should let them. It’s time for him to assert the kind of leadership LBJ asserted more than a half-century ago on civil and voting rights.Johnson used every tool at his disposal, described by the journalist Mary McGrory as “an incredible, potent mixture of persuasion, badgering, flattery, threats, reminders of past favors and future advantages”.He warned the Georgia senator Richard Russell, a dedicated segregationist: “Dick, I love you and I owe you. But … I’m going to run over you if you challenge me on this civil rights bill.” He demanded his allies join him in pressuring holdouts. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, later Johnson’s vice-president, recalled: “The president grabbed me by my shoulder and damn near broke my arm.”Historians say Johnson’s importuning, bribing and threatening may have shifted the votes of close to a dozen senators, breaking the longest filibuster in history and clearing the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.We are once again at a crucial juncture for civil rights and voting rights that could shape America for a half-century or more. Joe Biden is not LBJ, and the times are different from the mid-1960s. But the stakes are as high.Biden must wield the power of the presidency to make senators fall in line with the larger goals of the nation. Otherwise, as LBJ asked, “what the hell’s the presidency for?” More