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    Tax Preparers Charged in Scheme to Defraud Covid Relief of $65 Million

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    The preparers filed for pandemic-related tax credits on behalf of ineligible clients and then netted hefty filing fees, officials said.Two Mississippi tax preparers used multiple schemes to defraud $65 million from programs that had been designed to help businesses stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic, federal prosecutors said this week.The preparers, Renata Walton, 44, and Nicole Jones, 36, both of Olive Branch, Miss., were indicted on more than 50 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, preparing false tax returns and obstruction of justice, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee said on Wednesday.They both pleaded not guilty and were each released on $100,000 bond, court documents show.Ms. Walton owned R&B Tax Express in Moscow, Tenn., where she and Ms. Jones prepared tax returns.Federal prosecutors said that the two women contacted small-business clients and asked if they were interested in pandemic-related grant money, according to court records. The women would then file for pandemic-related tax credits on behalf of the clients even though they were ineligible for those funds, officials said.The money came mostly from the Employee Retention Credit and the Sick and Family Leave Credit programs, court documents show.The Employee Retention Credit program offered companies thousands of dollars per employee if they could show that the pandemic was hurting their businesses, but that they were continuing to pay workers. Sick and Family Leave Credit offered tax breaks to employers who voluntarily gave their workers paid sick and family leave if they needed to take time off because of the pandemic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Sunak, Like Biden, Dullness Could Be a Secret Weapon

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      For all their differences, President Biden and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain share a challenge: operating in the wake of a larger-than-life predecessor. They have tactics in common, too.LONDON — For years, Boris Johnson and Donald J. Trump were viewed as populist twins — flamboyant, scandal-scarred, norm-busting figures, acting in a trans-Atlantic political drama. With both out of office, at least for now, a more timely and intriguing comparison is between Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Biden.Though they differ by obvious metrics — young vs. old, conservative vs. liberal — Mr. Sunak and Mr. Biden are using strikingly similar methods to govern in the wake of their larger-than-life predecessors. Both have tried to let the steam out of their countries’ hothouse politics by making a virtue of being, well, a little boring.The similarities are more than stylistic: Both lead parties that are divided between centrist and more extreme forces, whether to the right, for Mr. Sunak, or the left, for the American president. And both are dogged by poor poll numbers, in part because of economic ills but also because their pragmatic, undramatic style can seem ill-suited to the polarized politics of post-Brexit Britain and post-Trump America.For Mr. Sunak, who took office in October amid an economic crisis and after months of political upheaval that left his Conservative Party exhausted and unpopular, Mr. Biden might offer a blueprint for political rehabilitation.Two years into his term, Mr. Biden has confounded the skeptics, with the Democratic Party performing unexpectedly well in the midterm elections, in defiance of historical trends that typically punish the party in power.“Boris and Trump were generalists, short on details and ideologically flexible, but the sheer force of their personality brought them to the top, and eventually led to their downfalls,” said Frank Luntz, an American political strategist and pollster who was a classmate of Mr. Johnson’s at Oxford University.“Rishi and Biden are the exact opposite,” Mr. Luntz continued. “Not particularly great communicators, quite often trapped in the weeds of details, but able to move their governments forward because of their detailed knowledge and experience.”President Biden and Jill Biden after returning from Camp David on Sunday.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesCircumstances forced both leaders to press for emergency legislation right off the bat: Mr. Biden, to cushion the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic; Mr. Sunak, to counter the disastrous foray into trickle-down tax policy engineered by his immediate predecessor, Liz Truss. That spooked financial markets, sent the British pound into a tailspin and drove up interest rates.After passing his Covid relief bill, Mr. Biden managed to push through ambitious legislation to combat climate change. With narrow majorities in the House and especially in the Senate, he had to fend off progressives in his party and win over centrists like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who held up that bill until he negotiated compromises with the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine — and its effects on global markets —  in the months and years to come could determine President Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Mr. Sunak, who has a more than 70-seat majority in Parliament, may not face as much legislative needle-threading in passing his package of tax increases and spending cuts. But he does have to contend with an increasingly unruly Tory Party, which is making it difficult for him to settle a trade dispute with the European Union over Northern Ireland, overhaul Britain’s cumbersome planning rules for home building, or even construct onshore windmills.“He’s being pushed around by various factions in the Tory Party,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to the United States. “Biden, by contrast, is quite resolute about his moderate, centrist principles.”While Mr. Sunak’s allies make no explicit comparisons between him and Mr. Biden, several have claimed his quiet, unflashy competence is restoring stability after the political roller-coaster of the last three months. On returning to the cabinet as a senior minister, Michael Gove declared “boring is back,” and joked that it was the government’s “utter determination to try to be as dull as possible.”Asked in an interview whether the motif of Mr. Sunak’s leadership was that “boring is the new sexy,” Mark Harper, the transport secretary, smiled and replied: “What he’s about is a government that’s grown up, that grips the issues that people are concerned about and gets on with governing.”Mr. Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, returning to 10 Downing Street last month after visiting a food and drinks market promoting British small businesses.Pool photo by Toby MelvilleUnlike Mr. Biden, 80, whose aides still periodically find themselves having to clean up unguarded statements, Mr. Sunak, 42, rarely commits a gaffe. His cautious persona and stilted speaking style have drawn comparisons to John Major, who in 1990 succeeded a more forceful prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.Mr. Major’s electoral record was mixed: He surprised many by winning a modest majority of 21 in the general election in 1992. But that victory was followed swiftly by a financial crisis that sapped his reputation and paved the way for a landslide victory five years later by the Labour Party leader, Tony Blair.This time, the crisis struck before Mr. Sunak took office. But it leaves him with no more than two years to rescue his party before the next election, and he faces the headwinds of soaring inflation, rising interest rates, labor unrest and a recession. Depending on when Mr. Sunak chooses to call that vote, there is a chance that American voters could be electing a president around the same time.Will Mr. Biden be in that race? The chances of his running again rose after the midterms, not to mention the president’s proposal to rearrange the Democratic Party’s primary calendar, so that South Carolina, which resurrected his presidential fortunes in 2020, will now vote first, ahead of the Iowa caucus.There is no evidence that Mr. Biden and Mr. Sunak talked politics in their first face-to-face meeting as leaders at a summit in Indonesia last month. Indeed, given their disparity in age, background and politics, there is little indication they will develop the kind of rapport enjoyed by, say, Mr. Blair and President Bill Clinton. When the Tories elected Mr. Sunak as leader, Mr. Biden hailed it as a “groundbreaking milestone,” though he added, “As my brother would say, ‘Go figure.’”At the moment, the oddsmakers are betting against Mr. Sunak. There is even speculation that if the Conservatives get thrashed in local elections next May, his enemies might move against him and try to reinstall Mr. Johnson. But Mr. Sunak’s allies hope for a Biden-like surprise, which could give him a solid base for the next general election (it must take place by January 2025).Given Labour’s formidable lead in opinion polls — and a Labour leader, Keir Starmer, who rivals Mr. Sunak in competence over charisma — few analysts see a path for Mr. Sunak to a convincing victory. But some think the outcome could be much closer than some of Labour’s supporters now expect. For one thing, Mr. Sunak’s poll ratings exceed those of his battered party, which is the reverse of Mr. Biden and the Democrats before the midterm elections.“There is a big difference between what voters think of the Conservative Party and what voters think of Sunak,” said Peter Kellner, a polling expert. “The big question now is whether the Tory Party drags Sunak’s ratings down, or Sunak drags the Tory Party’s ratings up.”Those are the same questions handicappers were asking about Mr. Biden in the anxious days leading up to the midterms. If both he and Mr. Sunak are in still office in 2025, it will be proof that boring is not only back, but political gold. More

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      Fact-Checking a GOP Attack Ad That Blames a Democrat for Inflation

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      In a Nevada tossup race that could help decide whether Republicans gain control of the House, a super PAC aligned with congressional G.O.P. leaders recently mounted an economically driven attack against Representative Dina Titus.In a 30-second ad released on Saturday, the Congressional Leadership Fund accused Ms. Titus, a Democrat who represents Las Vegas, of supporting runaway spending that has exacerbated inflation.Here’s a fact check.WHAT WAS SAID“Economists said excessive spending would lead to inflation, but she didn’t listen. Titus recklessly spent trillions of taxpayer dollars,” the ad’s narrator says, and, later: “Now we’re paying the price. Higher prices on everything. Economy in recession. Dina Titus. She spent big … and we got burned.”This lacks context. The implication here is that Democrats’ policies led to inflation. We recently put this question to our economics correspondent, Ben Casselman, who said: “True, although we can argue all day about how much.”He explains: “Here’s what I think we can say with confidence: Inflation soared last year, primarily for a bunch of pandemic-related reasons — snarled supply chains, shifts in consumer demand — but also at least in part because of all the stimulus money that we poured into the economy. Then, just when most forecasters expected inflation to start falling, it took off again because of the jump in oil prices tied to the war in Ukraine.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.“Now, inflation is falling again. Overall consumer prices were up just 0.1 percent in August, and a separate measure showed prices falling in July. But a lot of that is because of the recent drop in gas prices, which we all know could reverse at any time. So-called core inflation, which sets aside volatile food and energy prices, actually accelerated in August.“All of which means we don’t know how long the recent pause in inflation will last, and we definitely don’t know whether Biden will get credit for it if it does.”Backing up a bit, it’s worth noting that not all of the stimulus spending was at the direction of President Biden and Democrats. The first two rounds were approved during the Trump administration. And, economists were not united in warning about inflation.As for the economy being in recession? “Most economists still don’t think the United States meets the formal definition,” Mr. Casselman wrote in July, and he said that remained true as we head into October. But such calls are only made in retrospect. “Even if we are already in a recession, we might not know it — or, at least, might not have official confirmation of it — until next year,” Mr. Casselman said.What was said“Tax breaks for luxury electric cars.”This is true. The Inflation Reduction Act contains a tax credit for electric vehicles. Their final assembly must be completed in North America to be eligible for the credit, which, indeed, extends to several luxury automakers. The list includes Audi, BMW, Lincoln and Mercedes, but also non-luxury models like the Ford Escape and Nissan Leaf. What about Tesla? It made the list of 2022 models, but it has already reached a federal cap of the number of vehicles eligible for the credit, according to the Energy Department.What was said“Even a billion dollars to prisoners, including the Boston Bomber.”This is exaggerated. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of helping carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, received a $1,400 Covid-19 stimulus rebate from the federal government in June 2021. The money was part of the American Rescue Plan Act, which President Biden signed into law after it passed the House on a mostly party-line vote, with Ms. Titus supporting it.But what the Republican attack ad failed to disclose was that Mr. Tsarnaev was required by a federal judge to return the money as part of restitution payments to his victims. Another glaring omission was the fact that inmates were previously eligible for Covid-19 relief payments when former President Donald J. Trump was in office, though the Internal Revenue Service and some Republicans had later tried to rescind the payments. A federal judge thwarted those efforts, ruling that inmates could keep the payments.Those nuances haven’t stopped Republicans from latching onto the issue of inmates receiving Covid-19 payments against Democrats in key races across the nation, including Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. More

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      Biden Courts Democrats and Republican Leaders on Infrastructure

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      The meeting produced little progress, underscoring the political challenge for President Biden as he seeks to exploit the narrowest of majorities in Congress to revive the country’s economy.WASHINGTON — To hear the participants tell it, President Biden’s first-ever meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders from both houses of Congress was 90 minutes of productive conversation. It was cordial. There were no explosions of anger. More

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      Democrats, Pushing Stimulus, Admit to Regrets on Obama’s 2009 Response

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

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      Gov. Phil Murphy Unveils N.J. Budget Plan With No New Taxes

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow New Jersey Averted a Pandemic Financial CalamityA $44.8 billion spending plan unveiled Tuesday by Gov. Phil Murphy calls for no new taxes and fully funds the state pension program for the first time since 1996.Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey released a $44.8 billion budget on Tuesday that shows better-than-expected revenue projections.Credit…Pool photo by Anne-Marie CarusoFeb. 23, 2021Updated 3:07 p.m. ETIt has been five months since New Jersey officials issued warnings about a coronavirus-related financial calamity. The dire outlook contributed to lawmakers’ decisions to increase taxes on income over $1 million and to become one of the first states to borrow billions to cover operating costs.But the doomsday forecast has since brightened considerably, officials said, enabling the Democratic governor, Philip D. Murphy, to unveil a $44.8 billion spending plan on Tuesday that calls for no new taxes, few cuts and tackles head-on a chronic problem — the state’s underfunded pension program — for the first time in 25 years.The governor also said there would be no increase in New Jersey Transit fares.“The news is less bad,” the state’s treasurer, Elizabeth Maher Muoio, said. “I wouldn’t say it’s good, but it’s less bad.”The governor’s election-year financial blueprint relies on better-than-expected revenue from retail sales and high-earners, who have lost fewer jobs during the pandemic than low-income workers and are reaping the benefits of a prolonged Wall Street rally.The $38 billion that New Jersey and its residents have received in federal stimulus funding, a short-term extension of a corporate tax and a $504 million windfall from the so-called millionaire’s tax also helped, Ms. Muoio said.The release of New Jersey’s proposed 2022 fiscal year budget comes as Congress continues to debate President Biden’s $1.9 trillion virus relief package. The proposed package includes considerable funds for states and municipalities as well as grant and loan programs for small businesses.Other states have seen similarly strong signs of an economic rebound even as cases of the virus have spiked nationwide over the last several months and the nation’s death toll surpassed 500,000 on Monday.Earlier this month, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that large sectors of the economy were adapting to the pandemic better than originally expected and that December’s economic aid package had helped.Mr. Murphy, who is running for re-election in November, said the spending plan was designed to not only enable the state to scrape through the pandemic, but to help it emerge stronger.“This is the time for us to lean into the policies that can fix our decades-old — or in some cases centuries-old — inequities,” the governor said Tuesday in a budget address, which he delivered virtually.A key pillar of the budget is a proposal to fully fund the state’s public sector pension obligations for the first time since 1996.The state has not set aside the full amount of its pension obligation for 25 years, leading $4 billion in extra debt to accrue over time, Ms. Muoio said. Under a deal brokered with the Legislature, Mr. Murphy had been on track to fully fund the state’s share by the 2023 fiscal year. But the spending plan released on Tuesday sets aside $6.4 billion for the pension system, accelerating full funding by a year.“New Jersey is done kicking problems down the road,” the governor said. “We are solving them.”Under the plan, the state’s surplus, which proved to be a vital resource during the first wave of the pandemic, would not grow, officials said, but would remain at about the same level it was at the end of 2020.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Watchdogs Appointed by Trump Pose Dilemma for Biden

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWatchdogs Appointed by Trump Pose Dilemma for BidenRemoving inspectors general installed by the former president under a political cloud could have the consequence of further eroding good-government norms.Only one Democrat in the Senate voted to confirm Brian D. Miller, who had been a White House lawyer for President Donald J. Trump, as an inspector general hunting for abuses in pandemic spending.Credit…Pool photo by Salwan GeorgesFeb. 1, 2021Updated 8:08 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Even as the Biden administration has moved aggressively to undo Donald J. Trump’s policies and dislodge his loyalists from positions on boards and civil-service jobs, it has hesitated on a related choice: whether to remove two inspectors general appointed by Mr. Trump under a storm of partisan controversy.At issue is whether the new administration will keep Eric Soskin, who was confirmed as the Transportation Department’s inspector general in December, and Brian D. Miller, a former Trump White House lawyer who was named earlier in 2020 to hunt for abuses in pandemic spending.Both were confirmed over intense Democratic opposition after Mr. Trump fired or demoted a number of inspectors general last year, saying he had been treated “very unfairly” by them.By ousting or sidelining inspectors general who were seen as investigating his administration aggressively, Mr. Trump set off a partisan backlash that undercut a tradition under which nearly all inspectors general since Congress created the independent anti-corruption watchdog positions in 1978 were confirmed unanimously or by voice vote without recorded opposition.The Biden team wants to repair what it sees as damage to the government wrought by Mr. Trump through his many violations of norms. It also wants to restore and reinforce those norms, according to people briefed on its internal deliberations about inspectors general dating back to the campaign and transition.But in the case of inspectors general like Mr. Soskin, those two goals are seen as conflicting, those people said. To remove him would itself be another violation of the norm of respecting such officials’ independence and not firing them without a specific cause, like misconduct.“It’s very possible — and it would be a real mistake — for the Biden people to remove those I.G.’s because they were appointed by Trump,” said Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a government watchdog group. “That would be essentially exacerbating the problems he created in the first place.”Ms. Brian in December was one of the few outside observers to call attention to a little-noticed push by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then the majority leader, to get Mr. Soskin confirmed as the Transportation Department inspector general. The 48-to-47 vote to confirm Mr. Soskin made him the first such official to take office on a purely party-line clash.The office Mr. Soskin now controls has been investigating whether Mr. Trump’s Transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, improperly steered grants to Kentucky as her husband, Mr. McConnell, was seeking re-election there. During the lame-duck session, Mr. McConnell used his power to prioritize getting Mr. Soskin confirmed over four other inspector general nominees who had been waiting for floor votes longer, raising the question of why he was trying to ensure that a Republican appointee would control that post even after Mr. Biden took office.“Hmm why would Majority Leader McConnell be pushing this nomination for Dept of Transportation IG today?” Ms. Brian wrote on Twitter on Dec. 18, a day after he filed a so-called cloture motion to end debate and hold an up-or-down vote on Mr. Soskin. “Perhaps it has something to do with the allegation of wrongdoing that office is reportedly handling against his wife, the Sec of Transportation?”Elaine Chao, then the transportation secretary, and her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell, in the Capitol last month.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMr. McConnell had on the same day also filed a cloture motion for a second inspector nominee, but not enough Republicans were in town when the clotures votes were held on Dec. 19 to constitute a majority, and both votes to end debate failed. He then successfully tried again for Mr. Soskin on Dec. 21 and got him confirmed, while abandoning the other nominee without explanation.Earlier in the year, only one Democrat voted to confirm Mr. Miller, who had worked in the Trump White House, with others rejecting him on the grounds that he was seen as too close to the Trump administration to aggressively hunt for waste or fraud in pandemic spending during an election year.Amid competing priorities, the Biden team appears not to have reached any decision about what, if anything, to do about Mr. Soskin and Mr. Miller. In a statement, a White House spokesman, Michael Gwin, extolled the general virtue of keeping politics away from such positions.“President Biden believes strongly in the role of inspectors general in keeping government honest and protecting taxpayer dollars, and he’s committed to protecting their independent role in his administration,” Mr. Gwin said in a statement. “Any politicization of the inspector general community is highly inappropriate and has no place in government.”Scrutiny of Mr. Miller has stemmed partially from the fact that he produced scant public sign of activity in his first eight months on the job.But his office delivered a report to Congress on Monday describing some investigative work, including developing 69 leads about suspected fraud that were referred to law-enforcement partners and opening five new preliminary investigations. A person familiar with his office said he had hired 34 staff members by the end of January.“I try to be bipartisan and nonpartisan — certainly as an inspector general and in everything that I do,” Mr. Miller said in an interview.During Mr. Soskin’s confirmation hearing last summer, he also pledged to do his job impartially. Through a spokesman, he declined to comment about the status of the Chao-McConnell investigation.A spokesman for Mr. McConnell, while not directly responding to a question about whether he prioritized Mr. Soskin because of that inquiry, pointed to a 2019 statement in which Mr. McConnell had made no apology for using his position “to advance Kentucky’s priorities” after Politico reported on arrangements under Ms. Chao favoring grants to Kentucky.At a time when the Senate is narrowly divided and the Biden team is trying to get major legislation passed, ousting Mr. Soskin would most likely anger other Republicans as well — particularly Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a champion of inspectors general.Mr. Grassley scolded Mr. Trump last year over his failure to articulate a concrete reason for his removal of one such official, Michael Atkinson, who had sought to bring to Congress’s attention the whistle-blower complaint that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. He also chastised President Barack Obama in 2009 for initially giving little explanation for removing the AmeriCorps inspector general.“It’s hard to imagine how President Biden could have a good reason to fire an I.G. who’s only been on the job less than a month,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement. “If he chooses to fire any I.G., he’d better have a darn good reason to do it, and he’d better notify Congress well in advance, as the law requires. If he doesn’t, he’ll get the same earful from me that Presidents Obama and Trump got.”Mr. Trump nominated Mr. Soskin in May, around the time he was moving against numerous independent inspectors general. The purge included firing some Senate-confirmed officials on the vague basis that he purportedly lacked confidence in them. He also appointed outsiders to serve as new acting heads of offices whose top positions were vacant — layering over the career deputy inspectors general who had been temporarily in control.Mr. Biden sharply criticized the purge at the time during a Yahoo News town hall and pledged to act differently.Some of the targeted officials had attracted Mr. Trump’s personal ire, such as Mr. Atkinson. Others were leading investigations that threatened Trump allies and other Republicans; he removed Steve A. Linick as the State Department’s watchdog, for example, at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was facing several potentially damaging investigations. (A subordinate to Mr. Pompeo later did accuse Mr. Linick of specific misconduct, but an inspector general council investigated and found that the evidence refuted his accusations.)Filling the Transportation Department inspector general post last year had political sensitivities for both Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell, then the two most powerful Republicans in Washington. In 2019, Politico reported that the department’s longtime inspector general, Calvin L. Scovel III, was overseeing an investigation into whether the department under Ms. Chao was improperly favoring grants to Kentucky as her husband sought re-election there.In January 2020, Mr. Scovel retired for health reasons, and his deputy, Mitch Behm, took over as acting head. But in May, Mr. Trump installed a different acting head: Howard Elliott, a political appointee known as Skip who, in an unorthodox arrangement, remained subordinate to Ms. Chao. Mr. Trump also nominated Mr. Soskin, then a Justice Department lawyer, for the role.Under Mr. Elliott’s tenure, the election came and went, and the office issued no report about grants to Kentucky. Mr. McConnell won re-election, but Mr. Trump lost, meaning political appointees like Mr. Elliott were set to leave by the inauguration. Had Mr. McConnell not pushed Mr. Soskin through, the office would have reverted to Mr. Behm’s control until Mr. Biden nominated and the Senate confirmed a new inspector general.Still, Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who co-wrote a book proposing post-Trump reforms to government, said that no matter how well Mr. Biden might couch a justification to remove such an inspector general, it would further damage the notion that presidents ought not remove them without cause.“If Biden refrains from firing Senate-confirmed but disfavored inspectors general, that will buck up the norm of independence,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “The ostensible norm is not an actual norm if it doesn’t constrain the president in painful ways.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The First Post-Reagan Presidency

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      Credit…Timo LenzenSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionThe First Post-Reagan PresidencySo far, Joe Biden has been surprisingly progressive.Credit…Timo LenzenSupported byContinue reading the main storyOpinion ColumnistJan. 28, 2021, 8:50 p.m. ETDuring Donald Trump’s presidency, I sometimes took comfort in the Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek’s concept of “political time.”In Skowronek’s formulation, presidential history moves in 40- to 60-year cycles, or “regimes.” Each is inaugurated by transformative, “reconstructive” leaders who define the boundaries of political possibility for their successors.Franklin Delano Roosevelt was such a figure. For decades following his presidency, Republicans and Democrats alike accepted many of the basic assumptions of the New Deal. Ronald Reagan was another. After him, even Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama feared deficit spending, inflation and anything that smacked of “big government.”I found Skowronek’s schema reassuring because of where Trump seemed to fit into it. Skowronek thought Trump was a “late regime affiliate” — a category that includes Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover. Such figures, he’s written, are outsiders from the party of a dominant but decrepit regime.They use the “internal disarray and festering weakness of the establishment” to “seize the initiative.” Promising to save a faltering political order, they end up imploding and bringing the old regime down with them. No such leader, he wrote, has ever been re-elected.During Trump’s reign, Skowronek’s ideas gained some popular currency, offering a way to make sense of a presidency that seemed anomalous and bizarre. “We are still in the middle of Trump’s rendition of the type,” he wrote in an updated edition of his book “Presidential Leadership in Political Time,” “but we have seen this movie before, and it has always ended the same way.”Skowronek doesn’t present his theory as a skeleton key to history. It’s a way of understanding historical dynamics, not predicting the future. Still, if Trump represented the last gasps of Reaganism instead of the birth of something new, then after him, Skowronek suggests, a fresh regime could begin.When Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee, it seemed that the coming of a new era had been delayed. Reconstructive leaders, in Skowronek’s formulation, repudiate the doctrines of an establishment that no longer has answers for the existential challenges the country faces. Biden, Skowronek told me, is “a guy who’s made his way up through establishment Democratic politics.” Nothing about him seemed trailblazing.Yet as Biden’s administration begins, there are signs that a new politics is coalescing. When, in his inauguration speech, Biden touted “unity,” he framed it as a national rejection of the dark forces unleashed by his discredited predecessor, not stale Gang of Eight bipartisanship. He takes power at a time when what was once conventional wisdom about deficits, inflation and the proper size of government has fallen apart. That means Biden, who has been in national office since before Reagan’s presidency, has the potential to be our first truly post-Reagan president.“Biden has a huge opportunity to finally get our nation past the Reagan narrative that has still lingered,” said Representative Ro Khanna, who was a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. “And the opportunity is to show that government, by getting the shots in every person’s arm of the vaccines, and building infrastructure, and helping working families, is going to be a force for good.” More