Biden administration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Blinken visit seeks to ease fraught US relationship with China

      by

      In a long-awaited visit, the US secretary of state is due to arrive in China this week, where he is expected to meet with senior officials in an attempt to stabilise the fraught relationship between the two superpowers.The buildup to Antony Blinken’s China visit has been marred by a series of tense exchanges. On Wednesday Qin Gang, China’s foreign minister, told Blinken in a phone call that the US should stop interfering in China’s internal affairs. Qin also said that the US should respect China’s concerns on the “Taiwan issue”.Daniel Kritenbrink, the US state department’s top diplomat for east Asia, later told reporters that he did not expect “some sort of breakthrough or transformation” in the US-China relationship, according to Reuters.Kritenbrink added: “We’re coming to Beijing with a realistic, confident approach and a sincere desire to manage our competition in the most responsible way possible.”Last week the US conceded that China had been spying on the US from Cuba since at least 2019. The White House had initially denied reports that China had struck a multibillion-dollar deal with Cuba to eavesdrop on the US.News of the eavesdropping unit had threatened to derail Blinken’s visit –which had already been postponed from February, when an alleged Chinese spy balloon was shot down in US air space, bursting hopes for a rapprochement building on President Xi Jinping’s face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden in November.Blinken, who will be in China on 18-19 June, will be the highest ranking US official to visit the country since Biden took office.The visit comes at a low point in US-China relations. Beijing has repeatedly accused the US of engaging in double standards and a “new cold war mentality” when it comes to trade sanctions and export controls.In recent days Chinese state media has published several articles throwing cold water on the prospects of dialogue. On Tuesday, one commentator for the state broadcaster CCTV wrote: “Since the start of the year, America has been a bit vicious with regards to China.“Every time they say they want to meet, the US is keen to play tricks on China, creating the illusion that the US is eager to communicate. At the same time, it has repeatedly tested and provoked China’s bottom line,” wrote Yuyuan Tantian, the CCTV-affiliated blogger.Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China and Asia-Pacific studies at Cornell University, said that she didn’t expect “major breakthroughs” from the visit. “Given the current levels of mistrust and tension in the relationship, a good outcome would be a better understanding of each side’s concerns and red lines as well as modest progress on areas of overlapping interest,” such as the economy, climate change and “the resumption of people-to-people interactions post-Covid”.Jonathan Ward, author of The Decisive Decade, a book about US competition with China, said that the state of US-China relations pointed to a “dangerous future ahead”.“I don’t think any particular meeting is going to change the structural problem in the US-China relationship,” Ward said. “The broader picture is that the Chinese Communist party has a clear strategy to become a leading economic power, and the US has only woken up to this very recently.”Outside of formal diplomacy, Beijing has opened the door to western businesspeople. In May, Elon Musk visited China, meeting foreign minister Qin and other senior officials. And Bill Gates, who tweeted on Wednesday that he had arrived in Beijing, is reported to be meeting Xi on Friday.It has not yet been confirmed if Blinken will also meet with the Chinese president. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      White House pushes for renewal of electronic surveillance law provision

      by

      The White House is stepping up pressure on lawmakers to renew a section of electronic surveillance law which permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the US.The provision, known as section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), is set to expire at the end of the year. But its renewal is facing pushback from privacy advocates and lawmakers, some citing examples in which law enforcement search requests were misused to conduct illegal surveillance on US citizens.On Monday, Joe Biden’s administration circulated examples showing the US had used electronic surveillance under section 702 to catch fentanyl smugglers as well as the ransomware hackers who temporarily shut down the Colonial Pipeline Company in a 2021 cyber-attack that led to gas shortages along the eastern seaboard.The public campaign to build support for the provision comes as a poll released last week showed that the public is growing more skeptical of the need to sacrifice civil liberties for security.The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released last week found that 28% of adults support the government listening to phone calls and emails made outside the US without a warrant while 44% oppose the practice.More broadly, 48% of Americans said they believe it is necessary to sacrifice their rights and freedoms to prevent terrorism, down from 54% in 2021 and nearly two-thirds in 2011, a decade after the 9/11 attacks.The decline in support for foreign surveillance was notably sharp among Republicans, with just 44% saying that it is sometimes necessary compared with 69% in 2011. Among Democrats, support remained relatively constant, dropping to 55% from 59% in 2011.Republican opposition to the renewal of section 702 in some cases has responded to the failure of the FBI to clearly identify the Steele dossier – also known as the Trump–Russia dossier – as a political opposition research report without merit.Ahead of a Senate hearing into the issue on Tuesday, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham – the top Republican on the judiciary committee – said the FBI’s mistakes had damaged its reputation with Congress and the public. Nonetheless, Graham insisted that section 702 should be reauthorized.“What I’m trying to tell my constituents back home [is] the threats to the country are growing – they’re not lessening,” Graham said. “Bottom line is: let’s reauthorize this program and build in some safeguards.”Illinois’s Democratic US senator Dick Durbin, the panel’s chairman, said he’d need to “see more” of the FBI’s current reforms to support the provision’s renewal.But civil liberties groups have come out strongly against reauthorization, which is required every five years.“Although purportedly targeted at foreigners, section 702 has become a rich source of warrantless government access to Americans’ phone calls, texts, and emails,” the Brennan Center for Justice, one of 21 civil liberties groups, said in a letter on Monday opposing the renewal of section 702.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe groups said they opposed the reauthorization of the surveillance provisions the government “is using to gain warrantless access to Americans’ communications, without significant and wide-ranging surveillance reforms”.In 2022 alone, the groups said, “the FBI conducted more than 200,000 warrantless searches of section 702 communications to find Americans’ information” and that, in turn, had converted section 702 “into something Congress never intended: a domestic spying tool”.On Monday, Biden administration officials said they opposed proposals to require the FBI to get a warrant every time it searches for an American’s information.“We must not forget the lessons of 9/11,” said Matthew Olsen, the assistant attorney general for national security. “Unduly limiting the FBI’s ability to access lawfully collected information and imposing artificial barriers between foreign intelligence and criminal investigations will set us back decades. It will put our nation at grave risk.”In its effort to turn around opinion, the White House offered examples of when the provision had been used effectively, including learning of Beijing’s efforts to track and repatriate Chinese dissidents and to warn an American who was the target of foreign spies seeking information about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.The FBI said it has instituted better training and new rules that have sharply reduced the number of searches for American citizens after agents were found to have wrongly run queries for the names of a congressman on the House intelligence committee, people linked to the January 6 Capitol attack and participants in the 2020 protests after a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd.The bureau said it would now immediately suspend any employee’s access to section 702 databases for any incident involving “negligence”. More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Rish! talks up his hectic schedule in bilat with Biden | John Crace

      by

      Rishi Sunak: Good morning, Mr President.Joe Biden: Er … good morning … er … I’m sorry, who are you?Sunak: It’s…Biden: No, don’t tell me … It’s on the tip of my tongue. I’m sure I recognise you. I never forget a face. You’re that guy who bought me that coffee in Belfast when I was over in Ireland.Sunak: That’s right, your excellency. We also met in San Diego and HiroshimaBiden: Are you stalking me?Sunak: No. I’m just a bit needy. We have a special relationship, remember?Biden: Do we? News to me … No. It’s no good. You’ll have to jog my memory.Sunak: I’m the prime minister of the United Kingdom …Biden: Of course you are. Good to see you again, Rashi Sanook.Sunak: It’s Rishi. Rishi Sunak.Biden: Whatever. So what brings you over to Washington?Sunak: I’m not sure really. A combination of things. Nothing’s going well at home. My polls are rubbish, I can’t do anything about inflation, hospital waiting lists are up, you know the kind of thing …Biden: Not really.Sunak: Anyway, I just fancied a break. Plus I had loads of free air miles after my brilliant ‘Take Your Helicopter to Work’ scheme. And I wanted to catch a ball game. Go, Nationals! High five!Biden: Glad, you’re having a nice time.Sunak: So, what have you been up to since I last saw you, your highness?Biden: Not a lot … Just a $1tn infrastructure act, fixing a two-year debt ceiling deal, fighting off the Republican crazies and a host of other minor stuff …Sunak: Gosh!Biden: So how about you? What have you been doing?Sunak: I’ve been rushed off my feet … I don’t really know where to start, but here goes. First and foremost, I have been working on my five priorities. To halve inflation, grow the economy-Biden: Sure. But what have you actually been doing?Sunak: As I said, I have been working on my five priorities for the British people which I have promised to deliver on. Let me tell you what my five priorities are. They are the five priorities on which I want the British people to judge me-Biden: So, you haven’t really been doing that much.Sunak: As I said, my five priorities-Biden: But what else?Sunak: Apart from my five priorities? Well, let me see … I’m taking the Covid inquiry my government set up to court because it keeps asking for information that I want to keep secret. And I’m just about to OK Boris Johnson’s honours list.Biden: So a disgraced prime minister still gets to do the honours?Sunak: Sure.Biden: You Brits crack me up. What else shall we talk about?Sunak: How about a US-UK trade deal? Back in 2016 I and the Vote Leave team promised that an improved trade deal would be a Brexit bonus.Biden: No.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSunak: What do you mean, ‘no’?Biden: I mean it’s not happening. There is no trade deal to be had any time soon. The UK is just not that big a deal for us since you left the EU.Sunak: Not even a little deal? We’ll take the chlorinated chicken …Biden: No. Not a chance. Maybe in five or 10 years. If then.Sunak: OK. I get the message. But can we at least say that we agreed not to talk about a trade deal? Or maybe we could just sign something vague and meaningless.Biden: If you like …Sunak: It would look good for my end-of-visit communique to the British media. Make it look like we had in fact talked about a trade deal a bit. Even though we haven’t. By the way, have I told you about my five priorities?Biden: I don’t have a lot of time, is there anything else you want to say?Sunak: There is. I want to talk about artificial intelligence.Biden: What about it?Sunak: That I’m very worried about it. Apart from AI that is obviously beneficial. Did I mention my five priorities?Biden: Sounds like you could do with an AI upgrade yourself. Unless you really are a halfwit. But what are you suggesting?Sunak: Well, seeing as I’m a world leader in AI …Biden: Since when? You had scarcely mentioned it until a few AI experts raised their concerns a few weeks ago.Sunak: But I am the expert! I had read something about it on my MBA at Stanford. Did you know I had an MBA from the States?Biden: You may have mentioned it before …Sunak: So here’s the thing. Because I know more about AI than anyone else and also have a lot of spare time on my hands, I am proposing the UK takes a leading role in regulating the industry.Biden: But you know that since you left the EU, the UK is no longer a member of the US-EU council that regulates AI-related policies …Sunak: Really? Never mind. What I mostly want is a PR exercise. We won’t actually regulate anything. We’ll just have a conference to talk about regulating AI. It will all be pointless as by the time anything happens, AI will have evolved to take over the world. So we’ll all just meet a few times, have a nice jolly and then forget about it. But we need the US to come. We’ll pay your air fares and hotels. It’s just that without you no one else will come. So please say you will.Biden: If we must …Sunak: Just a couple more things: Ukraine. Can we agree that we are both still committed?Biden: You didn’t need to come to Washington for that…Sunak: And, my green card … Is there any chance it can be renewed? I might need it again in a year or so.Biden: Is that the time? Must be getting on. More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Negotiators edge closer to debt ceiling deal as Yellen extends deadline to 5 June

      by

      Democratic and Republican negotiators struggled on Friday to reach a deal to raise the US government $31.4tn debt ceiling, as a key Republican cited disagreements over work requirements for some benefit programs for low-income Americans.On Friday, the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said the US would run out of money to pay its bills by 5 June, a slight extension of her earlier 1 June prediction.Talks had been reported to be close to conclusion, as lawmakers sought to avoid a disastrous and unprecedented default. Wall Street and European shares rose as the White House and congressional Republicans worked on the final touches of a package to present to Congress.Negotiators appeared to be nearing a deal to lift the limit for two years and cap spending, with agreement on funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the military, Reuters quoted a US official as saying. But a White House official told the same outlet talks could easily slip into the weekend.Lawmakers were placed on call after leaving Washington for the Memorial Day holiday.“We have made progress,” the lead Republican negotiator, Garret Graves, told reporters. “I said two days ago, we had some progress that was made on some key issues, but I want to be clear, we continue to have major issues that we have not bridged the gap on, chief among them work requirements.”The Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, told reporters at the Capitol: “We know it’s crunch time. We’re not just trying to get an agreement, we’re trying to get something that’s worthy of the American people, that changes the trajectory.”Democrats indicated Joe Biden was willing to consider spending cuts, including to planned extra funding for the IRS, a target of rightwing attacks, the Washington Post reported. Citing an anonymous official, Reuters said the deal would raise the ceiling for two years “while capping spending on everything but military and veterans”.On Thursday night, the North Carolina congressman Patrick McHenry, a Republican negotiator, said: “I think there’s a sense of understanding from both teams that we have serious issues still to work out and come to terms with, and that’s going to take some time. That’s all there is to it.”Any deal would have to pass the House and Senate, which typically takes days to complete.Yellen has warned for months that failing to raise the debt ceiling would be a “catastrophe”. In a letter to Congress released on Friday, she said the federal government was due to make more than $130bn in payments in the first few days of June, including payments to veterans and social Security and Medicare recipients, and leaving the treasury with “an extremely low level of resources”.Raising the debt ceiling is usually a formality, if subject to political grandstanding. Republicans raised the ceiling without preconditions three times under Donald Trump, while adding to the debt with tax cuts and spending rises.But McCarthy has only a five-seat majority and is beholden to the far right of his party, which is demanding stringent cuts.On Thursday the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters: “We’re fighting against Republicans’ extreme, devastating proposal that would slash … law enforcement, education, food assistance, all of these things are critical to American families who are just trying to make ends meet.”Most analysts say a default would cast the global economy into market chaos and probable recession. This week, the US treasury cash balance dropped to $49.5bn, prompting Bloomberg TV to report: “There are 24 individuals on the Bloomberg Billionaires list who have more money than the treasury does right now.”Reuters spoke to David Beers, a former head of sovereign ratings for Standard & Poor’s, which in 2011 reacted to a similar Republican-fueled debt standoff by downgrading its US credit rating, a move that stoked market instability.“We thought that the political polarisation in the country was likely to endure, and secondly, we were also concerned about the rising trajectory of debt,” Beers said. “On both of our counts, our expectations, if anything … have been exceeded. I have no doubt in my mind that was the right call.”Now, some on the Republican right, including Trump, the former president and current presidential frontrunner, say the party should let the US default if Biden refuses to cave.The deputy treasury secretary, Wally Adeyemo, told CNN the government did not have the capability to “triage” payments if the debt ceiling is not raised. Adeyamo also said invoking the 14th amendment – which says public debt “shall not be questioned” – would not solve the problem.Adeyemo said: “I don’t have any confidence that we have the ability to be able to do a type of prioritisation that will mean that all seniors, all veterans, all Americans get paid.”Some House Democrats are upset at being kept out of negotiations, and at how Biden has fielded advisers rather than consistently getting involved himself. Democrats have also bemoaned how Republicans seem to be winning the messaging war, public polling showing support for spending cuts – and a ceiling raise.Rosa DeLauro, from Connecticut, told Politico: “The scale of the cuts [demanded by Republicans] is staggering, which really the public knows very little about. The president should be out there.”Biden was due to meet winning basketball teams at the White House on Friday, then travel to the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland.Steven Horsford of Nevada, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said: “They need to use the power of the presidency … I need the American people to know that Democrats are here fighting, working, prepared to reach an agreement to avoid a default and only the White House, the president, can explain that in this moment.”Biden has not been silent. On Thursday, at the White House, he said Republicans wanted “huge cuts” that would hurt ordinary Americans.“It’s time for Congress to act, now,” he said, adding: “Under my administration, we’ve already cut the deficit by $1.7tn in our first three years. But Speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order.“I don’t believe the whole burden should fall on the backs of middle-class and working-class Americans. My House Republican friends disagree.”
      Reuters contributed reporting More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘I feel safe here’: the people leaving everything behind to seek refuge in US

      by

      The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has a message for migrants that he has been repeating loudly and frequently: “Our border is not open … don’t risk your life and your life savings” to come to the US seeking refuge without invitation.But for millions, hunger, violence and fear ring out louder. Political dysfunction and economic calamity are pushing people from many nations in the western hemisphere in what Joe Biden has called the “largest migration in human history”, exacerbated in Latin America and beyond by the coronavirus pandemic.People with tenacity but few means make a hopeful journey mostly across land towards the US-Mexico border. If they beat the odds to reach American soil they may find harbor – or more heartbreak.Yesi Ortega choked up when talking to the Guardian at a shelter in El Paso, west Texas, earlier this month, as she recounted the odyssey she, her husband Raphael López and their five-year-old son, Matías, had spent six months making.The family had reached a tipping point in their native Venezuela and followed more than 7 million other citizens who have fled the country’s economic collapse and pervasive hunger when their choice came down to food or clothing, Ortega, 24, said.“We had no option. We needed to take the risk,” she said. Like almost a third of this exodus, they first tried nextdoor Colombia, itself unstable and contributing amid the post-pandemic hardship to the latest rise in migration towards the US.Ortega found work in a restaurant kitchen and López labored in a plastics factory in Medellín. But they were paid less, as migrants, the equivalent of $35 a week between them, when a staple such as milk was $3 a liter and the rent was crippling, she said.When they failed to get legal status and couldn’t access the healthcare system or school for Matías, like many others they left Colombia for the US.They survived the slog and danger of walking through the hellish Darién Gap jungle into Panama and trudged through Central America and Mexico, fraught with risk, especially for foreigners migrating on a shoestring.The family didn’t use human smugglers, Ortega said. She recounted how, along the way, they were mugged twice at gunpoint, slept under torrential rains and endured cold nights, leapt on to freight trains when they could, worked temporary jobs and begged for money to buy food, water and bus tickets to relieve the trek whenever possible.Eventually, they reached Ciudad Juárez, across the Mexican border from El Paso. After all that, Matías then broke his right arm while playing. But the family pressed on and went to Door 40 in the towering border barrier to turn themselves in to federal border patrol agents.At first they were separated. Ortega and Matías were taken and held in New Mexico while López, 27, was sent to a detention center 85 miles away in Tornillo, which became known in the Trump administration for holding unaccompanied migrant children in detention camps.They were released after about a week of what they described as cold, uncomfortable conditions and managed to reunite and find a shelter in El Paso. Last week the three traveled to Chicago, where they had a contact address, to await their interview with the immigration authorities in June to find out if they will be allowed to go through the full asylum system in the US – or be deported.The family entered the US before the Title 42 pandemic-related rule was lifted on 11 May, which had blocked many from requesting asylum while allowing some families with young children to do so. After that block ended, the Biden administration nevertheless brought in a “presumption of ineligibility” for asylum for people who simply turn themselves in at the border. This has enraged immigration advocates, who call the new restriction an asylum ban. No matter what, the dice are loaded against Ortega and her family if the authorities conclude they are economic migrants.Around the corner from the shelter, fellow Venezuelan José Ocando, 28, was sleeping on the ground in an alley on a thin mat with some blankets.He had also been living in Colombia, with his wife, but was tracked down by members of a gang who told him his impoverished mother back in Venezuela had a debt outstanding and said they would kill them both if they didn’t pay up.“We left everything from one day to another. There was no time to figure out why these people wanted me to pay a debt I didn’t even know about,” he told the Guardian.They fled and took buses to Monterrey in northern Mexico. There they were within geofencing range to access the US government’s app, CBP One on a smartphone, to request a US asylum appointment.They tried every day for a month but couldn’t get an appointment, Ocando said. So they went to Matamoros, where the Rio Grande infamously claims lives and on 11 May produced scenes of frightened young children, some roped together and with little inflatable rings to stop them from drowning, clinging to their parents on the muddy riverbank as others waited up to their necks in the river, all on the wrong side of razor wire with gun-toting US troops beyond.Ocando and his wife made it across safely, although he was detained and expelled back to Mexico, while his wife was allowed in. She traveled to Utah to join an uncle – as those claiming asylum must give an address to the authorities – and after Ocando traveled the length of the Texas-Mexico border, he was allowed into El Paso.Now he’s found a part-time job carrying blocks on a construction site and is saving for a bus ticket to join his wife as they also await an asylum interview.“It’s been difficult, but I feel safe here,” he told the Guardian.Meanwhile, Fabiola Cometán, 45, also felt protected on US soil after decades of physical abuse by her two former partners, she said.The last straw was receiving a death threat from one of her sisters in their native Peru recently over a debt, going to police and being ignored and then threatened by three men who came to her door demanding the money be paid, she said.Before leaving Lima to join a small group of mostly Venezuelan migrants traveling together for safety overland to the US, she had to decide which of her children to take with her.She thought of the hazards of the Darién and the danger of extortion and sexual assault in Mexico, she said.She sobbed as she said she took her six-year-old son and left her nine-year-old daughter behind with another sister, to protect her from the greater risk of being raped or kidnapped.“My heart broke into pieces, but I had to leave her to come here and find a better opportunity for all of us,” she said.She plans to make her way to New York and go through the asylum process there. Her son, Luis, talked excitedly of going to school and one day seeing snow.
      Joanna Walters contributed reporting More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      US House adjourns for holiday weekend without debt ceiling deal

      by

      The US House adjourned on Thursday for the Memorial Day holiday weekend without any deal reached on the debt ceiling, as America creeps closer to a potential default that could wreak havoc on the economy and global markets.Lawmakers left Washington for their home districts as advisers to the House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, and members of the Biden administration continued to haggle over the details of a deal to raise the debt ceiling and limit government spending.“Speaker McCarthy and I have had several productive conversations, and our staffs continue to meet – as we speak, as a matter of fact – and they’re making progress,” Biden said on Thursday at the White House. “There will be no default, and it’s time for Congress to act now.”Emphasizing that default was not an option, Biden said the negotiations have focused on creating the outlines of a budget that can win bipartisan support, as the president and McCarthy have clashed over their “competing visions for America”.“Speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order,” Biden said. “I don’t believe the whole burden should fall on the backs of middle-class and working-class Americans. My House Republican friends disagree.”With just one week left before the potential default deadline of 1 June, negotiators plan to continue their efforts to reach an agreement over the holiday weekend. Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday, McCarthy said the previous day’s talks continued well past midnight, and negotiators were meeting around the clock until a deal is reached.“I thought we made some progress,” McCarthy said. “There’s still some outstanding issues, and I’ve directed our teams to work 24/7.”Congressman Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, one of the chief Republican negotiators in the talks, said he did not expect a deal to be announced on Thursday.“Everything’s sensitive at this moment,” McHenry told reporters. “There’s a balance that has to be struck, and there’s a lot more work that has to be done. But the work that we’re doing centers in on a shorter and shorter array of issues.”Defense spending has emerged as a key point of tension in the talks, as congressional Republicans have pushed to exempt the Pentagon from potential budget cuts. Democrats have flatly rejected that proposal, insisting they will not allow non-defense priorities like education and healthcare to bear all of the proposed cuts.According to the Associated Press, Republicans have expressed openness to the idea of keeping defense spending at the levels proposed by the Biden administration while redirecting some of the funding previously allocated to the Internal Revenue Service.As negotiators edged closer to a deal, some hard-right lawmakers complicated matters for McCarthy by adding additional demands to their budgetary wishlist.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMembers of the House Freedom Caucus sent a letter to McCarthy on Thursday calling on him to add border security provisions to the debt ceiling bill while cutting funding to build a new headquarters for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.They also demanded that the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, provide evidence to substantiate the threat of a default as early as 1 June.“The power of an undivided Republican party guided by conservative principles cannot be overstated,” the Republican members wrote to McCarthy. “As you navigate the debt limit debate, you are the steward of this unity and will determine whether it continues to strengthen and places a historic stamp on this Congress or evaporates.”The letter underscored that McCarthy will probably need some Democratic support to get a debt ceiling compromise through the House, but his colleagues on the other side of the aisle voiced sharp criticism of Republicans’ proposed spending cuts and their decision to leave Washington without a deal.“Republicans have decided to skip town,” the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said in a floor speech on Thursday. “They are accusing Democrats, saying we spend too much. For anyone that wants to entertain that thought, I ask you to think about the last time a person has said in this country that the government does too much for them, that their social security check was too high, that teachers are paid too much. When was the last time anyone has heard or seen that?” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Debt ceiling talks suspended as US lurches towards default deadline

      by

      Negotiations for a deal to raise the US debt ceiling and thereby avoid a default with potentially catastrophic consequences for the world economy reached a worrying impasse on Friday.“We’re not there,” Garret Graves of Louisiana, the lead negotiator for House Republicans in talks with the Biden White House, told reporters at the Capitol.“We’ve decided to press pause, because it’s just not productive.”The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has said that without action the US government will cease to be able to pay its debts on or around 1 June.Joe Biden is away at the G7 summit in Japan. White House officials were leading talks for Democrats.One told the Guardian: “There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult. The president’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate.”For decades after 1917, when the federal debt was capped, raising that limit, or ceiling, was usually a routine procedure, if subject to political grandstanding.In 2006, the Illinois Democratic senator Barack Obama voted against a raise under a Republican president, George W Bush.But Republicans have increasingly and effectively employed threats to refuse to raise the ceiling as a bargaining tool and in 2011, as president, Obama was forced to say he regretted his vote of five years before.In the 2011 standoff, the House GOP extracted trillions of dollars in spending cuts which Obama was forced to sell to his party. Now, under Biden, the same dynamic is in play.With the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, beholden to far-right members who made him endure 15 votes before gaining the position, the GOP is demanding hefty cuts to spending, on Democratic priorities including healthcare and climate, in return for a debt ceiling raise.Democrats say Republicans should agree a clean raise – meaning without preconditions – as they did repeatedly under Donald Trump. Democrats also demand that Biden does not blink.At the Capitol on Friday, Graves said: “Until people are willing to have reasonable conversations about how you can actually move forward and do the right thing, then we’re not going to sit here and talk to ourselves.”Republican leaders outside the talks sought to apply pressure. Not long before Graves spoke to reporters, Trump said his party should not give ground.Republicans, the presidential frontrunner wrote on his Truth Social platform, “should not make a deal on the debt ceiling unless they get everything they want (including the ‘kitchen sink’). That’s the way the Democrats have always dealt with us. Do not fold!”Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, aimed fire at Biden, accusing the president of “wait[ing] months before agreeing to negotiate with Speaker McCarthy on a spending deal.“They are the only two who can reach an agreement,” McConnell said. “It is past time for the White House to get serious. Time is of the essence.”Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, countered: “We are in a crisis, for ONE REASON – House Republicans threat to burn down the entire economy if they don’t get their way.”In a recent column for the New York Times, the Harvard law professor Laurence A Tribe, an expert in constitutional law, accused Republicans of playing “chicken or, maybe more accurately, Russian roulette” with the US debt.Tribe went on to outline his theory of how Biden has the authority to raise the ceiling on his own, under the 14th amendment, which says the US national debt “shall not be questioned”.Tribe wrote: “Mr Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms – and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis – that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the treasury department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.”Such a step has support from prominent Democrats.In a letter earlier this week, a group of senators including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders (an independent who caucuses with the party), said: “Using this authority would allow the United States to continue to pay its bills on-time, without delay, preventing a global economic catastrophe.”But Biden has resisted so far.On Friday, an unnamed official told the Washington Post the Biden White House still believed “a path to a reasonable bipartisan budget agreement” was possible, “as long as both sides recognise that they won’t get everything they want and compromise is necessary”.The Post also said the two sides had not agreed when to meet again. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden cancels Australian visit amid US domestic debt deadlock

      by

      President Joe Biden has cancelled a visit to Australia, the second leg of his upcoming Asia trip, due to the slow-motion crisis building in Washington over the US debt ceiling.Biden is to attend a three-day summit of G7 leaders that starts on Friday in Hiroshima, Japan, and will return to the US on Sunday.He had been scheduled to make a brief, historic stop in Papua New Guinea, then travel to Australia for a meeting of the Japan, Australia, India and US grouping known as the Quad countries.Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Biden had called him on Wednesday morning with the news.“The president apologised that he would now have to postpone this visit because of the unfolding difficulties he is facing in his negotiations with the US Congress over the US Government debt ceiling,” he said.“These negotiations are scheduled to enter their critical and concluding phase during the last week of May. Regrettably, this conflicts with the President’s visits to Sydney and Canberra – including the Quad Summit scheduled for 24 May.”They would reschedule his visit to Australia at the earliest opportunity, Albanese said. “I also look forward to visiting Washington later this year for a state visit to the United States.”Australia was talking to the leaders of Japan and India about their travel plans, he said. “In the meantime, I look forward to meeting with both prime ministers and the president at the G7 Summit in Hiroshima on 20-21 May.”John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, told reporters earlier on Tuesday that Australian stop was being re-evaluated.Biden had been due to address the Australian parliament, as the first US president in nearly 10 years to speak to a joint session of MPs and senators in Canberra.Officials had previously confirmed that Biden would make the speech on Tuesday 23 May, the day before he attended the Quad summit in Sydney.“These leaders, all leaders of democracies … they know that our ability to pay our debts is a key part of US credibility and leadership around the world,” Kirby said. “And so they understand that the president also has to focus on making sure that we don’t default.”The treasury department has estimated that the US will go into a crippling default as early as 1 June if Congress does not lift the debt ceiling. More