Biden, Joseph R Jr
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Biden Misstates How His Son Beau Died in 2nd Verbal Fumble in Florida
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — President Biden verbally fumbled during a campaign swing in Florida on Tuesday, confusing the American war in Iraq with the Russian war in Ukraine, and then he fumbled again while he tried to correct himself, misstating how his son Beau died in 2015.In defending his record on inflation, Mr. Biden was trying to blame rising costs on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for his invasion of Ukraine, which has roiled international energy markets. It’s a point that he makes regularly in public speeches, but this time he mixed up his geography and history.“Inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia is doing,” Mr. Biden told a crowd during a speech at O.B. Johnson Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla., before heading to Miami Gardens for an evening campaign rally with Democratic candidates. He quickly caught his own mistake. “Excuse me,” he said, “the war in Ukraine.”But as he tried to explain how he mixed up the two wars, he told the audience, “I think of Iraq because that’s where my son died.” In fact, Beau Biden, a military lawyer in the Delaware Army National Guard, served for a year in Iraq. He returned home in 2009 and died of brain cancer in the United States in 2015.Mr. Biden, who has made the same mistake before, once again sought to correct himself. “Because, he died,” he said, apparently referring to his belief that Beau’s cancer could have been caused by his service in Iraq, where he may have been exposed to toxic burn pits.Mr. Biden, who at 79 is the oldest president in American history, has a long record of gaffes dating back to when he was a young man. But his misstatements have become more pronounced, and more noticed, now that he has the spotlight of the presidency constantly on him. While Mr. Biden has said he intends to run for a second term, his age ranked at the top of the list for Democratic voters who told pollsters that they want the party to find an alternative, according to a survey by New York Times and Siena College this summer. More
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Elecciones de medio término en EE. UU.: lo que hay que saber
¿Qué está en juego y cómo funciona el proceso? Empecemos por lo básico.Si en general sabes que las elecciones de medio mandato que se aproximan en Estados Unidos tendrán importantes repercusiones a nivel global, pero no estás al tanto de cómo funciona el sistema gubernamental estadounidense o te cuesta trabajo entenderlo, has llegado al lugar indicado.En el sistema bipartidista de Estados Unidos, el control de dos entidades claves de gobierno —el Senado y la Cámara de Representantes— es esencial para aprobar leyes, y se decidirá por votación el 8 de noviembre. Por el momento, los demócratas tienen el control de ambas cámaras y la presidencia, por lo que perder la Cámara de Representantes o el Senado frente a los republicanos reduciría significativamente el poder de los demócratas en los próximos dos años de mandato del presidente Joe Biden.Se celebrarán cientos de elecciones, pero se considera que muchos candidatos ya tienen la victoria asegurada, por lo que el control de las entidades en cuestión probablemente se decida en unas pocas votaciones reñidas.Dame lo básico: ¿Qué se decide con estas elecciones?El Senado, que ahora está en un empate de 50-50 pero está bajo el control de los demócratas porque la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris emite el voto de desempate, tiene 100 integrantes, dos por cada uno de los 50 estados. Hay 34 escaños en juego este noviembre, y los ganadores cumplen periodos de seis años.La Cámara de Representantes, con 435 miembros con derecho a voto, está controlada por los demócratas, con 222 votos frente a 213 en contra. Los 435 escaños están en juego, y los ganadores cumplen mandatos de dos años.Las probabilidades están en contra de los demócratas, pero este año es inusualPor lo general, el partido que ocupa la presidencia —actualmente los demócratas— ha tenido malos resultados en las elecciones de medio mandato. La frustración con el presidente suele propiciar el éxito del otro partido, y Biden tiene índices de aprobación bajos.En la actualidad, los republicanos son favoritos para ganar la Cámara de Representantes mientras que el Senado podría ganarlo cualquiera, según FiveThirtyEight. Los demócratas gozaron de un importante impulso en las encuestas después de que la Corte Suprema fallara una sentencia impopular en junio que eliminó el derecho constitucional al aborto, lo que dio al partido la esperanza de poder desafiar las tendencias históricas, pero en general esa ventaja se ha desvanecido.Aquí encontrarás más información sobre cómo seguir las encuestas y las predicciones, y sobre la amplia gama de resultados posibles.Por qué importa: si los demócratas pierden cualquiera de las cámaras, la agenda de Biden está en problemasEn tiempos tan polarizados, es sumamente difícil aprobar leyes a menos que un partido controle la presidencia, la Cámara de los Representantes y el Senado. Si los republicanos ganan la Cámara Baja o el Senado, tienen la posibilidad de impedir gran parte de lo que Biden y los demócratas esperan conseguir antes de 2024, cuando se celebrarán las próximas elecciones presidenciales. Habrá que despedirse de cualquier legislación demócrata importante.Por otro lado, si los demócratas conservan el control de la cámara baja y aumentan su ventaja en el Senado, tal vez tengan más capacidad para aprobar leyes nuevas. Y, dado que los senadores tienen mandatos de seis años, aumentar la ventaja ahora les daría un respiro en 2024, cuando los analistas dicen que los republicanos probablemente se vean muy favorecidos.Si los republicanos obtienen más poder, es posible que bloqueen los esfuerzos demócratas para codificar el derecho al aborto y tomar medidas sobre el clima, y que cuestionen la ayuda enviada a Ucrania.Históricamente, al partido que controla la presidencia —actualmente los demócratas— le ha ido mal en las elecciones de medio mandato. Sarah Silbiger para The New York TimesLos republicanos podrían obtener facultades para investigar e impugnarSi los republicanos toman una o ambas cámaras, podrían utilizar sus nuevos poderes para crear una avalancha de investigaciones sobre los demócratas, como los partidos de la oposición han hecho durante mucho tiempo en Washington. Con citatorios y audiencias judiciales, podrían poner de relieve supuestas incompetencias o presuntas irregularidades en diversos temas, como el allanamiento al club privado y residencia del expresidente Donald Trump en agosto, la retirada de Afganistán y la respuesta a la pandemia.Los demócratas esperan que Biden y su familia estén entre los objetivos de tales pesquisas, junto con el doctor Anthony Fauci, uno de los principales asesores médicos de los gobiernos de Trump y Biden.Algunos republicanos también se han comprometido a someter al presidente a un juicio político, un complicado proceso que podría obligar a Biden a comparecer ante el Senado, como ocurrió con Trump en los juicios políticos de 2020 y 2021. El senador Ted Cruz, republicano de Texas, dijo el año pasado que habría una “enorme presión” sobre una Cámara Baja republicana para llevar a Biden a juicio, “esté justificado o no”.Un poder importante del Senado: aprobar la designación de juecesEl control del Senado incluye el poder de aprobar a los jueces de los tribunales federales, incluyendo la Corte Suprema. Si los republicanos reclaman el control, existe el riesgo de que usen su poder para bloquear los nombramientos de Biden.Cuando el presidente Barack Obama, un demócrata, tuvo que trabajar con un Senado controlado por los republicanos, estos bloquearon la nominación que hizo para la Corte Suprema en 2016. En cambio, Trump logró acelerar la aprobación de tres nombramientos a la Corte, gracias a un Senado favorable.Aunque no son tan notorios, los nombramientos a tribunales inferiores en ocasiones también son muy influyentes. Como presidentes, tanto Trump como Biden han usado el control del Senado por su propio partido para instalar a decenas de jueces de su agrado en puestos importantes en todo el país.Las elecciones estatales podrían tener gran repercusión en temas como el derecho al aborto y el votoEn 36 estados se elegirá gobernador. Además de las otras facultades que tendrán, podrían ser muy influyentes a la hora de determinar si el aborto sigue siendo legal en varios estados.Las contiendas para la Secretaría de Estado de cada estado no suelen recibir mucha atención, pero este año han atraído un gran interés debido al papel que desempeñan en la supervisión de las elecciones. Podría convertirse en un puesto importante si hay disputas electorales en las elecciones presidenciales de 2024, y algunos de los republicanos postulados en estados clave apoyaron las falsas afirmaciones de Trump de que le robaron las elecciones de 2020.Daniel Victor es un reportero de temas generales residenciado en Londres que antes trabajó en Hong Kong y Nueva York. Se unió al Times en 2012. @bydanielvictor More
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Biden Accuses Oil Companies of ‘War Profiteering’ and Threatens Windfall Tax
The president has been eager to redirect public anger over gas prices as Democrats try to keep power in Congress in the midterm elections.WASHINGTON — President Biden threatened on Monday to seek a new windfall profits tax on major oil and gas companies unless they ramp up production to curb the price of gasoline at the pump, an escalation of his battle with the energy industry just a week before the midterm elections.The president lashed out against the giant firms as several of them reported the latest surge in profits, which he called an “outrageous” bonanza stemming from Russia’s war on Ukraine. He warned them to use the money to expand oil supplies or return it to consumers in the form of price reductions.“If they don’t, they’re going to pay a higher tax on their excess profits and face other restrictions,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House. “My team will work with Congress to look at these options that are available to us and others. It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering, meet their responsibilities to this country, give the American people a break and still do very well.”The president’s embrace of new taxes on the energy industry heartened liberals in his party who have been urging him to take action for months. But it was more of a way to pressure the oil firms than a realistic policy prescription for the short term given that Congress is not even in session and would be even less likely to approve such a measure if Republicans capture one or both houses in next week’s election.Mr. Biden has been eager to redirect public anger over gas prices toward the oil industry and away from himself as Democrats try to overcome historical and popular headwinds to keep power on Capitol Hill. While the price at the pump has fallen significantly since topping out just above $5 a gallon in the summer, it is still much higher than when Mr. Biden took office and contributes to the overall inflation rate, which remains near a four-decade high.The president framed his case against the oil companies in terms that seemed clearly aimed at next week’s vote. “The American people are going to judge who is standing with them and who is only looking out for their own bottom line,” he said. “I know where I stand.”Republicans fired back at the president, faulting him for policies that they say discourage the energy industry from expanding capacity.The State of the WarGrain Deal: After accusing Ukraine of attacking its ships in Crimea, Russia withdrew from an agreement allowing the export of grain from Ukrainian ports. The move jeopardized a rare case of wartime coordination aimed at lowering global food prices and combating hunger.Turning the Tables: With powerful Western weapons and deadly homemade drones, Ukraine now has an artillery advantage over Russia in the southern Kherson region, erasing what had been a critical asset for Moscow.Fears of Escalation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine was preparing to explode a so-called dirty bomb, as concerns rose in the West that the Kremlin was seeking a pretext to escalate the war.A Coalition Under Strain: President Biden is facing new challenges keeping together the bipartisan, multinational coalition supporting Ukraine. The alliance has shown signs of fraying with the approach of the U.S. midterm elections and a cold European winter.“Haven’t American families suffered enough from President Biden’s damaging attack on American-made energy?” asked Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. “Desperately trying to salvage the midterm elections, now he’s proposing another dangerous policy that will increase energy prices and energy poverty while making America more vulnerable to foreign countries for our daily energy needs.”The oil industry accused the president of politicking, noting that gas prices have come down by roughly a quarter since summer. “Rather than taking credit for price declines and shifting blame for price increases,” said Mike Sommers, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, “the Biden administration should get serious about addressing the supply-and-demand imbalance that has caused higher gas prices and created long-term energy challenges.”Mr. Biden’s statement came just days after the oil giants reported another three months of flush coffers. Exxon Mobil brought in a record of nearly $20 billion in profits for the third quarter of the year, 10 percent higher than the previous quarter and its fourth consecutive quarter of robust earnings. Chevron reported $11.2 billion in profits, just below the record it set the quarter before. The European-based Shell and Total Energies companies similarly reported that profits more than doubled from the same period a year ago.The five biggest oil companies generated more than $50 billion in profits in the second quarter, and the International Energy Agency has reported that total net income for the world’s oil and gas producers will double this year from last to a record $4 trillion. “Today’s high fossil fuel prices have generated an unprecedented windfall for producers,” the agency said.A half-dozen of the largest firms earned more in profit over the past six months than in all of last year and more than two and a half times what they earned in the same quarters of 2021, White House officials said. Mr. Biden said if the industry simply earned the same level of profits it has for 20 years, consumers would pay 50 cents less per gallon.The firms have used their profits in some cases for dividend increases and stock buybacks rather than increased production, which could bring down the price of oil and therefore trim their profits. Exxon Mobil raised its dividend on Friday, citing a commitment to “return excess cash” to shareholders.Mr. Biden has been sensitive to gas prices, an important barometer for the public mood. As the price at the pump hit record highs over the summer, the president’s approval rating slid to new lows, but as gas costs came down over the following three months, his own numbers improved. Likewise, according to polls, the rise and fall of gas prices is directly inverse to public feelings about whether the country is heading down the right or wrong track.Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, is so attentive to the fluctuations that he checks the average price every day and often posts messages on Twitter pointing out when it dips further.“If you are filling your gas tank this weekend, you are seeing one of the cheapest Saturdays of the year,” Mr. Klain tweeted on Saturday. “Gas prices continue to drop nationally,” he added on Monday morning.The current national average of $3.76 a gallon is about three pennies less than it was a month ago and about $1.25 below the June peak, but still far above the $2.39 it was when Mr. Biden took office, according to AAA.The issue flared recently when Saudi Arabia led the OPEC Plus cartel to cut production by up to two million barrels of oil a day just before the midterm elections, a move that Biden administration officials considered a betrayal of a private understanding to increase supplies rather than the other way around.A windfall profits tax would impose an excise levy on the output of domestic oil producers. Congress would establish the tax rate, which could differ between independent producers and the biggest companies. It would be the first windfall profits tax in the United States in more than three decades, but since earlier this year, 15 European countries have proposed or enacted such levies, including Britain, Italy and Spain, according to the Tax Foundation.Urged by President Jimmy Carter, Congress imposed a windfall profits tax in 1980 after a sharp increase in oil prices spurred by an OPEC embargo. Lawmakers were trying to offset large industry tax deductions, including a depletion allowance for older wells with exhausting deposits and an array of deductions for drilling.But domestic production fell and dependence on foreign oil increased, while forecasts of revenue from the windfall tax turned out to be overly optimistic. Congress repealed the tax in 1988 after oil prices fell.Industry executives said Mr. Biden’s proposal to revive the tax would not increase supplies. “It’s a horrible idea, small thinking,” said Patrick Montalban, the president of Montalban Oil and Gas, a producer in North Dakota and Montana. “It’s going to take away from exploration and production of domestic oil and gas. It’s that simple. Total politics.”Democrats who have pressed Mr. Biden to consider such a tax applauded his statement. “It’s time for Congress to stand up to Big Oil and bring relief to consumers, instead of corporate stock buybacks and bonuses,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has introduced windfall profits tax legislation.But some liberals were unhappy that Mr. Biden was using the threat to leverage production increases. “Drilling more won’t lower prices for U.S. consumers,” said Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, an advocacy group. “More investment in oil drilling will deepen our dependence on fossil fuels.”Investments in oil and gas exploration remain 17 percent below the 2019 level and half the level in 2014, when the oil business was enjoying a price boom, according to the International Energy Agency. Few new fields have been discovered in recent years, leading to ever-tightening supplies. And Wall Street has shied away from investing in hydrocarbons because of growing concerns about climate change.American oil production this year is averaging 11.87 million barrels a day, an increase of 4 percent from last year despite urging from the administration that companies drill and produce more. The number of rigs deploying has been increasing this year, although increases have slowed since summer.Shale oil production, which has been the engine of growth over the last decade, is expected to grow to roughly the level before the Covid-19 pandemic caused the 2020 economic downturn and collapse of oil prices.Peter Baker More
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The Battle for Blue-Collar White Voters Raging in Biden’s Birthplace
SCRANTON, Pa. — The fate of the Democratic Party in northeastern Pennsylvania lies in the hands of people like Steve Papp.A 30-year veteran carpenter, he describes his job almost poetically as “hanging out with your brothers, building America.” But there has been a harder labor in his life of late: selling his fellow carpenters, iron workers and masons on a Democratic Party that he sees as the protector of a “union way of life” but that they see as being increasingly out of step with their cultural values.“The guys aren’t hearing the message,” Mr. Papp said.Perhaps no place in the nation offers a more symbolic and consequential test of whether Democrats can win back some of the white working-class vote than Pennsylvania — and particularly the state’s northeastern corner, the birthplace of President Biden, where years of economic decline have scarred the coal-rich landscape. This region is where a pivotal Senate race could be decided, where two seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs and where a crucial governorship hangs in the balance.No single constituency, of course, will determine the outcome of these races in a state as big as Pennsylvania, let alone the 2022 midterms. Turning out Black voters in cities is critical for Democrats. Gaining ground in the swingy suburbs is a must for Republicans. But it is among white working-class voters in rural areas and smaller towns — places like Sugarloaf Township, where Mr. Papp lives — where the Democratic Party has, in some ways, both the furthest to fall and the most to gain.A highway sign outside Scranton, Pa.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesSitting in the Scranton carpenters’ union hall, where Democratic lawn signs leaned up against the walls, Mr. Papp said that he often brought stickers to the job site for those he converted, but that he had recently been giving away fewer than he would like. He ticked through what he feels he has been up against. Talk radio. Social media. The Fox News megaphone. “Misinformation and lies,” as he put it, about the Black Lives Matter movement and the L.G.B.T.Q. community.“It’s about cultural issues and social issues,” Mr. Papp lamented. “People don’t even care about their economics. They want to hate.”Republicans counter that Democratic elites are the ones alienating the working class by advocating a “woke” cultural agenda and by treating them as deplorables. And they also argue that the current economy overseen by Democrats has been the issue pushing voters toward the right.The stakes are far higher than one corner of one state in one election.White blue-collar voters are a large and crucial constituency in a number of top Senate battlegrounds this year, including in Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio. And the need for Democrats to lose by less is already an urgent concern for party strategists heading into 2024, when Donald J. Trump, who accelerated the movement of blue-collar voters of all races away from Democrats, has signaled he plans to run again.Lt. Gov. John Fetterman boarding Air Force One after a meeting with President Biden.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesOne study from Pew Research Center showed that as recently as 2007, white voters without a college degree were about evenly divided in their party affiliations. But by 2020, Republicans had opened up an advantage of 59 percent over Democrats’ 35 percent.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.“You can’t get destroyed,” Christopher Borick, the director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania, said of the task in front of Democrats. “Cutting into Republican gains in the Trump era among white working-class voters is essential.”There are, quite simply, a lot of white voters without college degrees in America. Another Pew study found that such voters accounted for 42 percent of all voters in the 2020 presidential election. And, by some estimates, they could make up nearly half the vote in Pennsylvania this year.Luzerne County, just south of Scranton, had been reliably Democratic for years and years. Then, suddenly, in 2016, Mr. Trump won Luzerne in a nearly 20-point landslide. He won it again in 2020, but by 5 points fewer. There are Obama-Trump voters here, and Obama-Trump-Biden voters, too. The region may have tacked to the right politically in recent years, but it is still a place where the phrase “Irish Catholic Democrat” was long treated as almost a single word, and where it might be more possible to nudge at least some ancestral Democrats back toward the party.The Roosevelt Beer Hall in Dunmore, Pa.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesScranton, a former coal town nestled in the scenic Wyoming Valley, has become synonymous with this voting bloc. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who hopes to become the next House speaker, visited the region this fall to unveil the Republican agenda, and both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump traveled to the area for events kicking off the fall campaign.This year, the Pennsylvania Senate race looms especially large.The Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, was seemingly engineered for the task of appealing to the working class. A bald and burly man with a political persona that revolves around Carhartt sweatshirts and tattoos, Mr. Fetterman has vowed from the start to compete in even the reddest corners of Pennsylvania. He is running against Mehmet Oz, a wealthy, out-of-state television celebrity who, according to polls, has been viewed skeptically from the start by the Republican base, and who talked of buying crudités at the grocery in a widely ridiculed video.Yet local Democrats said Mr. Fetterman was still facing an uphill climb among white working-class voters in the region, even before his halting debate performance as he recovers from a stroke. For those Democrats concerned about competing for the state’s biggest voting bloc, the success or failure of Mr. Fetterman’s candidacy has become an almost existential question: If not him and here, then who and where?Mr. Fetterman’s strategy to cut into Republican margins in red counties is displayed on his lawn signs: “Every county. Every vote.” But Republicans have worked relentlessly to undercut the blue-collar image Mr. Fetterman honed as the former mayor of Braddock, a downtrodden former steel town just outside Pittsburgh.Chris Tigue, a self-employed painter.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times“It’s a costume,” Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, said in one segment last month. Republicans have highlighted Mr. Fetterman’s Harvard degree, his middle-class suburban upbringing, the financial support he received from his parents into his 40s and, most recently, a barrage of advertising that has cast him as a soft-on-crime liberal.Both sides are targeting voters like Chris Tigue, a 39-year-old who runs a one-man painting company and lives in Dunmore, a town bordering Scranton known for its enormous landfill. Mr. Tigue, a registered Republican, has gone on a political journey that may seem uncommon in most of the country but is more familiar here.He voted twice for Barack Obama. Then he voted twice for Donald Trump.As Mr. Tigue sat outside Roosevelt Beer Garden, a watering hole where the portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the wall was a reminder of the area’s Democratic heritage, he explained that Mr. Fetterman had won him back, not just because of his working class “curb appeal,” but because of his stances on abortion and medical cannabis.Mr. Tigue said he was voting for Mr. Fetterman knowing that Mr. Fetterman would probably support the president’s economic agenda in the Senate, a prospect he called “a little scary.” But he said he was looking past that fact. “I’m focusing on the person,” he said.Justin Taylor, the mayor of nearby Carbondale, is another Obama-Trump voter. Elected as a 25-year-old Democrat almost two decades ago, he endorsed Mr. Trump in 2020 and grew increasingly more Republican, just like the city he serves.Mayor Justin Taylor of Carbondale, Pa., at the Anthracite Center, a former bank he converted into an event space.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesToday, he is adamantly opposed to Mr. Fetterman, calling him a liberal caricature and the kind of candidate the left thinks will appeal to the people of Carbondale, a shrinking town of under 10,000 people that was founded on anthracite coal. “I think, quite honestly, he is an empty Carhartt sweatshirt and the people who are working class in Pennsylvania see that,” Mr. Taylor said.Mr. Taylor is still technically a registered Democrat, he said, but he feels judged by his own party. “The Democratic Party forces it down your throat,” he said, “and they make you a bigot, they make you a racist, they make you a homophobe if you don’t understand a concept, or you don’t 100 percent agree.”Still, Mr. Taylor said he might not vote in the Senate race at all. Of his fellow Fetterman doubters, and of Oz skeptics, he asked, “Do they stay home? That becomes the big question.”Northeastern Pennsylvania is also home to two bellwether House races with embattled Democratic incumbents.One race features Representative Matt Cartwright, who is the rarest of political survivors — the only House Democrat nationwide running this year who held a district that Mr. Trump carried in both 2016 and 2020. The other includes Representative Susan Wild, who is defending a swing district that contains one of only two Pennsylvania counties that Mr. Biden flipped in 2020.Representative Matt Cartwright, left. Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe union hall of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners Local 445. Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesTo emphasize his cross-partisan appeal, Mr. Cartwright has run an ad this year featuring endorsements from one man in a Trump hat and another in a Biden shirt. In an interview, he said the area’s long-term economic downturn, which he traced to the free-trade deals of the 1990s, had caused many people to work multiple jobs, sapping morale and even affecting the region’s psyche.“When something like that happens, who do you vote for?” Mr. Cartwright said. “You vote for the change candidate. And that’s what we saw a lot of. They voted for Obama twice. They voted for Trump twice. And my own view of it is when they vote that way, it’s a cry for help.”Demographic shifts in politics happen in both directions. As Democrats have hemorrhaged white working-class voters, they have made large gains with college-educated white voters who were once the financial and electoral base of Republicans. In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia suburbs have become strongly Democratic, while the state’s less populated areas have become more Republican.Alexis McFarland Kelly, a 59-year-old former owner of a gourmet market near Scranton, is the kind of voter Democrats are newly winning over. Raised as a Republican, she was often warned by her father, a business owner, and her grandfather, a corporate vice president, of the excesses of labor and the left. But now, she is planning to vote for Mr. Fetterman.Her biggest misgiving is the hoodie-wearing persona that might appeal to the working class. “I just wish he’d put a suit on once in a while,” she said.Last year, she went to the local Department of Motor Vehicles and declared that she wanted to change her party registration to become a Democrat. The clerk was shocked. “She basically dropped her pen and said, ‘What?! A Democrat!’” Ms. Kelly recalled. “‘Everyone is going the other way.’”Nina Feldman More
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We Are Very Far From Turning the Page on Trump
It’s often said that hindsight is 20/20. As far as politics goes, I’ve never believed it. Much punditry relies on what I’ve come to think of as the counterfactual fallacy. It goes like this: The party in power did X rather than Y. X didn’t work out as well as Democrats or Republicans hoped. They clearly should have done Y.We only get to run the tape once. We can never know if different decisions would have nudged us toward a better world or returned yet worse outcomes. But elections force an assessment of how the party in power has performed, despite the unknowability of other paths. And so, with Election Day nearing and voting underway all over America, I’ve been trying to work through my own answer to the question: How well did the Democrats do with the power they had, given the constraints they faced?I find it useful to think back to the three interlocking promises Democrats ran on. First and foremost, they ran on bringing competent, concerned governance to Covid. Second, they ran on a Franklin Roosevelt-size legislative agenda, believing this a Great Depression-like moment of rupture that demanded a new vision of what the state could and must do. And they ran vowing to restore the soul of America, to reestablish a civic promise and communal decency that Donald Trump and the Republican Party never understood and regularly betrayed.The Covid record is more mixed than I wish. Judged by what was promised in 2020, the Biden administration made remarkable strides. About 80 percent of Americans have had at least one vaccination, and anyone, anywhere in the country, can get shots and boosters with little effort and at no cost. Rapid tests rolled out slowly, but they are here now, and for a while the government would send them, free, to your door. The U.S. government bought up more Paxlovid than any other country in the world, and it is now widely available. Masks are cheap and plentiful.But judging by what was possible by 2022, even four of President Biden’s former Covid advisers wrote in The Times that they “are deeply dismayed by what has been left undone.” The shift from emergency response to a new architecture for preparedness never came. At-home testing was never integrated into any kind of collective policy or even data reporting system. The funding for the government to provide tests directly lapsed, with little protest from the White House. Wastewater monitoring “remains limited, uncoordinated and insufficiently standardized for a robust national surveillance system,” Biden’s former advisers wrote. So much more could have been done to improve indoor air quality and to make it clear which buildings meet the higher standards.After I criticized the Biden administration for failing to build on the successes of the Operation Warp Speed program, I heard from its Covid coordinator, Ashish Jha, that the White House was pushing Congress for $8 billion to create a Warp Speed-like program called Covid Shield for next-generation vaccines. But that push was quiet, and the administration committed itself to a bipartisan path that never opened. When Congress failed to provide the money, the administration never went public, much less turned to hardball measures. Biden could have refused to sign spending bills that didn’t include the Covid preparedness money he sought. Democrats should have made this a must-pass provision of the Inflation Reduction Act; as the past few years have proved, little is worse for inflation than a raging pandemic.The White House understands all of this. Jha is out there, even now, raising the alarm that current treatments are losing efficacy and future variants might evade them more easily. “Lack of congressional funding has made it difficult for us to replenish our medicine cabinet,” he said on Wednesday. “Because of a lack of congressional funding, the medicine cabinet has actually shrunk, and that does put vulnerable people at risk.” Republicans deserve scorn for refusing to fund pandemic preparedness. But Democrats deserve blame for letting it sink to one priority among many.To be fair, there’s been much else on the Democrats’ agenda. The central tension of Biden’s legislative strategy is that it paired ambitions of astonishing scale with congressional majorities that barely existed. The Senate, in a technical sense, saw no majority at all: It’s a 50-50 split, and Democrats carry votes only because Vice President Kamala Harris has the constitutional authority to break ties. It is remarkable how much Democrats have done, even so.There were two sides to Biden’s long-term agenda: construction and care. The construction side — decarbonizing the country, building and repairing infrastructure, and investing in semiconductor production and scientific research — largely passed. And much of what passed is thrilling.Trump was much mocked for infrastructure weeks that almost never resulted in new infrastructure. Biden and the Democrats have set the conditions for an infrastructure decade that could transform what America makes and how it’s made. And to my surprise, Biden has put invention at the center of his policymaking, and while we cannot yet know what fruits that will bear, it may prove his most lasting legacy.But the care side of Biden’s agenda — universal pre-K, the expanded child tax credit, subsidies for child and elder care, paid leave — collapsed almost entirely (the sole exception being an increase to the subsidies under Obamacare). Was that inevitable?This is murky territory, given the contradictory accounts that Biden and Senator Joe Manchin have given of their negotiations. Was there truly a $1.8 trillion Build Back Better package that Manchin would have voted for? The Biden team thought they had a deal. Manchin says they never did. And at the end of the day, no one forced Manchin to decide child care wasn’t worth doing and child poverty wasn’t worth reducing. That so many in the Senate care so much for bridges and so little for bodies is a scandal.Still, if you’d told me in 2020 that the next Democratic president would have a 50-50 Senate, with Manchin as the hinge vote, and a House margin of just a handful of members, I would not have predicted that the Democrats could pass more than $400 billion in climate investments or significant corporate tax increases or the most important infusion of cash and capital into scientific research in a generation.Three criticisms are worth airing. One is that Democrats could have gotten more of the care agenda passed by refusing to allow a separate vote on the infrastructure bill. The Biden administration believes now, and believed then, that it didn’t have the votes to tie the two together. That strategy ran an unacceptable risk of nothing passing. Given that Manchin proved perfectly willing to kill huge swaths of Biden’s agenda and let the administration twist in the wind for month after month, I suspect they’re right. But there’s no way to truly know.Another is that the American Rescue Plan was too large, and however well meaning the intentions behind it were, it was a handmaiden to inflation. I think the Biden administration erred on the right side of the ledger here. Unemployment is 3.5 percent. Workers got raises and stimulus checks. Poverty fell — sharply. The unemployed weren’t forced into indigency. All of this is easy to dismiss now, but none of it was guaranteed. And with inflation running at 10 percent in Germany and Britain and 7 percent in Canada, I’m skeptical of explanations that make one piece of legislation passed in one country too central to the story.I think the case is stronger that the Fed should’ve raised interest rates earlier and that Biden and the Democrats should’ve undershot economic support in the teeth of a pandemic that had frozen the global economy. Perhaps the rescue plan should’ve been built with more automatic stabilizers so aid rose as unemployment rose and vanished more quickly if it fell. But that’s true in every economic downturn, and for reasons I don’t fully understand, Congress refuses to learn that lesson.That leaves a criticism that I think is fairer: The Biden administration and congressional Democrats have had a the-more-the-merrier approach to every piece of legislation they’ve pushed. One reason the expanded child tax credit expired quickly was that the rescue plan was stuffed with so many policies, all of which needed funding. One reason Build Back Better was hard to defend was that so much was jammed into the package that the main thing anyone knew about it was its $3.5 trillion price tag. The push for a package of democracy reforms was similarly unfocused. It included virtually everything anyone who was worried about voting rights or campaign financing could think of and yet would have done little to block the kind of electoral subversion that Trump and his supporters attempted in 2020 and appear to be gathering forces to attempt again in 2024.Even when cornered, the Democrats kept trying to resist prioritization: Manchin said at the time that the White House lost his vote on Build Back Better by trying to keep the package intact and simply letting the policies expire earlier, in the hopes that they’d be extended en masse. He saw it as a gimmick that brought down the bill’s price tag without bringing down its long-term cost, and he abandoned the process.Whether that’s truly what motivated Manchin is debatable. What’s not debatable is that Democrats ran a very loose policy process. Compared with past administrations and Congresses I’ve covered, it felt as if Democratic leaders said yes to almost everything. Perhaps Democrats simply did not want to negotiate among themselves, knowing that Manchin or Senator Kyrsten Sinema or the Republicans would cull on their behalf. But the result was many policies that were poorly or opaquely constructed and packages that were hard to explain or defend.Biden always framed 2020 as a fight for America’s soul, not just its steering wheel. This is harder to assess. I’ve never believed he thought he could knit together a divided nation. He’s an optimist but not a fantasist. On a more literal level, he’s done what he promised — he has run a low-drama, low-scandal White House and comported himself with dignity and grace.But Biden has also run a relatively quiet administration. He gives comparatively few interviews, news conferences and speeches. He has filled the office Trump vacated but not the space Trump took up in the national conversation. I have argued that Biden’s laid-back approach is, in some ways, a strategy: By letting Trump and his successors fill the airwaves, Biden and the Democrats remind their voters what’s at stake. But this strategy runs deep risks. Biden’s low-drama approach to leadership leaves room for Trump’s high-drama antics.Politics has not moved on from Trump, in ways that it might have under a president who created new political cleavages and alignments. Biden has not been a strong enough communicator or presence to make Trump seem irrelevant. To make this more concrete: I wonder whether Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could have won in 2020. But if one of them had, I suspect politics would have reorganized around their concerns and conflicts and Trump would seem a more passé figure. I worry that Biden thinks too much about America’s soul and not enough about its attention.What can be said, I think, is this: Biden and the Democrats got a lot done, despite very slim majorities. They rolled out vaccines and therapeutics nationwide but we remain far from finishing the job on pandemic preparedness. They have run the government in a dignified, decent way, but we remain far from turning the page on Trump.Next week, I’ll take a closer look at what Republicans are promising to do if they are given the power to do it. Because these elections are more than just a referendum. They are a choice.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
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Biden’s Agenda Hangs in the Balance if Republicans Take Congress
On a wide array of issues like abortion, taxes, race and judges, President Biden’s opportunities would shrink as Republicans vow to dismantle much of his legislative accomplishments.WASHINGTON — For President Biden, the Dreaming-of-F.D.R. phase of his presidency may end in little more than a week. If Republicans capture one or both houses of Congress in midterm elections, as polling suggests, Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda will suddenly transform from a quest for a New Deal 2.0 to trench warfare defending the accomplishments of his first two years in office.On a wide array of issues like abortion, taxes, race and judges, Mr. Biden’s opportunities would invariably shrink as he focuses less on advancing the expansive policy goals that have animated his administration and more on preserving the newly constructed economic and social welfare architecture that Republicans have vowed to dismantle.While the president and Democratic leaders have not publicly given up on the possibility of hanging onto Congress in the balloting that concludes on Nov. 8, privately they are pessimistic and bracing for two years of grinding partisan conflict.In addition to efforts to block or reverse Mr. Biden’s domestic initiatives, Republican control of either house would result in a flurry of subpoenas and investigations of the administration that would define the relationship between the White House and Congress.Mr. Biden’s aspirations to codify abortion rights, expand access to child care and college, address racial discrimination in policing, install more like-minded judges and guarantee voting rights would all become more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.For their part, Republicans aim to roll back Mr. Biden’s corporate tax increases, climate change spending, student loan forgiveness and I.R.S. expansion targeting wealthy tax cheats.Beyond simply reversing the president’s policies, Republicans promise to advance their own initiatives to further cut taxes and spending, ban transgender women from playing in women’s sports, restrict access to abortion, protect gun rights, crack down on immigration, add more police to the streets and promote energy production, much of which would be hard to pass over a Senate filibuster, much less Mr. Biden’s veto.A change of management on Capitol Hill would represent a marked shift for Mr. Biden, who spent 36 years as a senator and eight years as vice president mastering the arts of legislative maneuvering. Despite razor-thin margins, he has pushed through a raft of far-reaching bills since taking office last year. They include a $1.9 trillion pandemic stimulus package, a $1 trillion plan to upgrade the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure, a $739 billion package to fight climate change and curb prescription drug prices and a $250 billion program to boost the semiconductor industry.A significant number of Republicans supported some of the spending, including for infrastructure and semiconductors, but party leaders have argued that the open checkbook represents the worst of Democratic free-spending proclivities and helped push inflation to its highest rate in 40 years.In past eras, divided government in Washington has at times led to uncomfortable but meaningful compromises, including major tax and Social Security deals under President Ronald Reagan; landmark deficit reduction, clean air and civil rights legislation under President George H.W. Bush; and welfare overhaul and balanced budget measures under President Bill Clinton. No doubt Mr. Biden, who regularly boasts of the bipartisan deals he has forged, would seek areas of common ground.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.But today’s political atmosphere is radically more polarized than it was in the 1980s and 1990s, making it harder to imagine a Democratic president and Republican legislature coming together on areas of major disagreement except in a national crisis. The prospects of accord may be even more distant in case of a comeback campaign by former President Donald J. Trump, who would pressure his party to resist Mr. Biden at every turn.— Peter BakerHere are some major areas where the two sides would clash:TaxesMr. Biden imposed new taxes on corporations, including a new minimum tax on large multinationals like Amazon and a tax on stock buybacks, to help fund the climate and health priorities in the Inflation Reduction Act, which he signed this summer. He also increased spending on the Internal Revenue Service, to raise revenues by cracking down on companies and high earners that cheat on their taxes.Republicans want to repeal all those measures while passing further tax cuts, including extending some of the reductions for businesses and individuals passed in 2017 under Mr. Trump that are set to expire over the next few years.They have promised to reduce federal spending. Some prominent House conservatives want to reduce expenditures on safety-net programs like Medicaid and supplemental nutritional assistance, and to reduce future spending on Medicare and Social Security for some beneficiaries, which Mr. Biden opposes.— Jim TankersleyMr. Biden imposed new taxes on corporations like Amazon and a tax on stock buybacks, to help fund the health and climate bill he signed this summer.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesClimate changeTo curb global warming, Mr. Biden has set an ambitious goal of cutting America’s greenhouse gas emissions roughly in half by 2030.The measure he signed this summer included $370 billion in incentives for electric utilities to increase their reliance on low-emission energy sources like solar and nuclear, for consumers to buy electric vehicles and for businesses to invest in energy efficiency. His Environmental Protection Agency has moved to limit emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and is preparing more regulations of the energy sector.Republicans opposed those climate efforts, and are set to mount congressional investigations into many of them. They could also seek to unwind some of the spending from the newly signed climate law and will likely challenge future regulations. They will also push legislation to speed up fossil fuel development by reducing federal regulation of new drilling projects.— Jim TankersleyHealth CareAfter a decade of elections with health care near the top of voter priorities, the big federal health programs are less central in this election. Republicans are not focused on repealing the Affordable Care Act, sometimes called Obamacare, or making major changes to Medicare and Medicaid in the short term. If Republicans retake majorities, they plan extensive oversight of Mr. Biden’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, however, and much of the spending that accompanied it. They also hope to consider smaller initiatives, such as expanding access to telemedicine in Medicare and improving price transparency in health care, building on Trump administration initiatives that many Democrats also embrace. Without a president who can sign their more conservative-leaning bills or large enough majorities to overcome a veto, Republicans are likely to focus on legislative efforts that at least some Democrats can support..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.If Democrats retain control, they are likely to pursue a similar set of less polarized issues. Mr. Biden already tried and failed to pass major structural changes to Medicare and Medicaid as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the new law meant in part to bring down prescription drug prices.— Margot Sanger-KatzJudgesAfter a record-breaking start at filling vacancies on the federal bench, the Biden administration’s aggressive push to remake the courts would be slowed considerably — if not entirely stalled — by a Republican takeover of the Senate.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the current and likely future Republican leader, has demonstrated his skill at thwarting judicial nominations. “If it did happen, Senator McConnell has made it pretty clear that he would not be very eager to confirm President Biden’s nominees and would do anything he could to delay filling seats until he could get a different president,” said Russ Feingold, a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin and head of the American Constitution Society. “He usually follows through on those statements and threats.”To date, the Senate has confirmed 84 judges nominated by Mr. Biden, including a Supreme Court justice, 25 appeals court judges and 58 district court judges — the most in decades in the first two years of a president’s term. The White House has advanced a diverse set of candidates, focusing on underrepresented ethnicities as well as those with less typical professional backgrounds like public defenders and civil rights lawyers.Even if Republicans make package deals to advance judicial nominees as has been done in the past, nominees who are considered more progressive would encounter extreme difficulties in a Republican-controlled Senate. Bracing for a slowdown, Mr. Feingold’s organization is urging Senate Democrats to confirm at least 30 more judges before the newly elected Congress takes office.— Carl HulseAbortionMr. Biden has promised to enshrine into law the national abortion protections that were repealed when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade if voters increase the Democratic margin in the Senate. “The only way it’s going to happen is if the American people make it happen,” he has said in his appeals to the public.Republicans, who once saw abortion restrictions as a galvanizing issue within the party, are now in open disagreement about how far those should go. Strict or near-total bans on abortions have become unpopular with Republican voters.Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is pushing for a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but his proposal is unpopular even with senior Republicans, including Mr. McConnell, who consider it politically risky and a contradiction to the let-the-states-decide position the party had long articulated. Mr. Biden would certainly veto any stand-alone bill with such a limit even if it did land on his desk.— Katie RogersRepublicans, who once saw abortion restrictions as a galvanizing issue within the party, are now in open disagreement about how far those should go.Callaghan O’Hare for The New York TimesStudent LoansMr. Biden’s order canceling up to $20,000 of student-loan debt for as many as 40 million borrowers has already been targeted in a lawsuit filed by six Republican-led states, which claim the president overstepped his executive authority in issuing the policy on his own.A Republican-controlled Congress could try to halt the policy by including language in a potential spending package declaring that Mr. Biden lacks authority to move forward with the debt relief. But Mike Pierce, the executive director of the student borrower protection center, said other parts of Mr. Biden’s student loan agenda are at greater risk, including a plan to reduce payments on undergraduate loans to 5 percent of discretionary income, down from 10 percent to 15 percent in many existing plans.Implementing the new system would draw money from an appropriated budget that could be targeted by congressional Republicans. “There’s money that goes to the Education Department to administer the student loan programs and you can see that budget being a part of negotiations with Republicans,” Mr. Pierce said.— Zolan Kanno-YoungsRaceMr. Biden has worked to put racial equity at the center of his agenda, ensuring that billions of dollars in government spending are focused on minorities and poor women. Some efforts, including a plan to forgive the debts of Black and other minority farmers, have run into lawsuits filed by white farmers who questioned whether the government could offer debt relief based on race. Republican lawmakers have echoed the criticism. The president directed federal agencies to ensure that 40 percent of investments for clean energy, transit, housing and work force development reach disadvantaged or marginalized communities.Republican lawmakers have signaled they would try to stall the equity agenda through congressional investigations. The policies are also likely to be the focus of legislative battles and political attacks against the administration. Top Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee sent a letter to the administration last month accusing Mr. Biden of misusing his authority “in a broad, crosscutting fashion” by requiring that a portion of federal funding go to minority communities.Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee launched an investigation this month into a Treasury Department committee tasked with reviewing aspects of the economy that have harmed communities of color. The lawmakers said the council “would distract it from its core responsibilities which include ensuring a level playing field for all Americans.”— Zolan Kanno-YoungsI.R.S.The Biden administration is in the midst of an $80 billion bulk-up of the Internal Revenue Service, the tax collection agency that Republicans love to hate.Although the overhaul of the I.R.S. is in its early stages, the Treasury Department, which oversees the agency, has set ambitious goals for improving customer service and responsiveness to taxpayers. They have been trying to ramp up hiring and clear a backlog of millions of unprocessed tax returns.For years, Republicans have made it their mission to neuter the I.R.S. They are expected to use any leverage that they gain in the elections to scale back the agency’s funding.They have suggested that the 87,000 new hires that the I.R.S. plans to make will become a “shadow army” intended to target conservatives, and with Republicans controlling oversight committees there will be an intense spotlight on how the money is being spent. If Republicans retake the Senate, they will also have an opportunity to block Mr. Biden’s eventual nominee to be the next I.R.S. commissioner. (Treasury recently announced that the deputy commissioner would become acting commissioner in November.)— Alan RappeportEntitlementsEager to find an issue that will resonate with voters, Mr. Biden has revived a traditional Democratic campaign attack, arguing that keeping his party in power would protect Social Security and Medicare from Republican cutbacks. In a speech at the White House last month, the president warned that Republicans will put the social safety net programs on the “chopping block” if they take power.Any efforts from Republicans to enact changes to the entitlement programs over the next two years would be subject to Mr. Biden’s veto power.The long-term solvency of the programs is in doubt as the trust funds that support them are facing shortfalls in the next two decades.Republicans have not outlined a unified plan for how to deal with entitlements lately, but some have called for restructuring them or scaling them back. This, they say, would preserve them for the future. The most prominent proposal has come from Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, that would allow Social Security and Medicare to “sunset” if Congress did not pass new legislation to extend them. Mr. McConnell has disavowed aspects of Mr. Scott’s agenda.— Alan RappeportConsumer ProtectionWith legislative options limited, Mr. Biden has been looking to executive branch agencies to help ease the pain that Americans are feeling from inflation. On Thursday, he touted a move by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to crack down on so-called “junk fees” that banks charge to consumers for overdrafting their accounts or depositing checks that bounce.Joined by Rohit Chopra, the director of the C.F.P.B., Mr. Biden said that the agency would be going after a wide range of unnecessary costs that are imposed on Americans by banks.But if Republicans have their way, the agency could see its powers dramatically diminished. A federal appeals court ruling this month said that the bureau’s funding that comes through the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional, calling into question its power to regulate the finance industry.The lawsuit could take years to play out, but House Republicans have already said that they want to bring the independent agency under the congressional appropriations process. The Trump administration tried to zero out the bureau’s budget, so Republican control could eventually mean that it lacks the resources to be a rigorous regulator.— Alan Rappeport More
