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Biden urges Republicans to back $2tn infrastructure plan: ‘Inaction is not an option’
Joe Biden has made a heartfelt plea for Republicans to work with him on a $2tn infrastructure plan, casting it as essential to preserving America’s superpower status and warning: “Inaction simply is not an option.”The US president signalled that he is open to negotiating his proposed corporate tax rate of 28% to fund the package. It represents a sharp increase from the 21% levy set by his predecessor Donald Trump’s tax bill in 2017, though is lower than the 35% rate under Barack Obama.But Biden also became fiery as he sounded the alarm about a nation in decline, investing less in infrastructure now than it did 25 years ago and in danger of losing an existential struggle with China.Biden’s promise as a candidate to seek bipartisanship has run into a wall of Republican opposition so far, first to his $1.9tn coronavirus relief package and now to his $2tn infrastructure investment – though opinion polls suggest both are popular with Republican voters.On Wednesday, with Kamala Harris, the vice-president, at his side at the Eisenhower Office Building in Washington, he continued to walk the line of trying to appeal across the aisle while bluntly making clear that he will push ahead if necessary.Promising that he and Harris will meet both Democrats and Republicans in the next few weeks, Biden said: “Debate is welcome. Compromise is inevitable. Changes are certain … We’ll be listening. We’ll be open to good ideas and good faith negotiations but here’s what we won’t be open to. We will not be open to doing nothing. Inaction simply is not an option.”Republican opposition to the American Jobs Plan has focused on the tax hikes and what they contend is an overly broad definition of infrastructure. The president sought to neutralise that argument.“Two hundred years ago, trains weren’t traditional infrastructure either, until America made a choice to lay down tracks across the country,” he said. “Highways weren’t traditional infrastructure until we allowed ourselves to imagine that roads could connect our nation across state lines.“The idea of infrastructure has always evolved to meet the aspirations of the American people and their needs, and it’s evolving again today. We need to start seeing infrastructure through its effect on the lives of working people in America.”High-speed internet, an electric grid that will not collapse in a winter storm, investing in “Made in America” goods from every community, pipes that provide clean drinking water, clean energy and facilities for military veterans are all part of the foundation of 21st-century living, Biden continued.The job creation potential is immense, he said, including for a people without a college degree – a demographic that has backed Donald Trump in presidential elections. “This is a blue-collar blueprint for increasing opportunity for the American people.”Biden attempted to draw a line from the personal – “How many of you know when you send your child to school the fountain they’re drinking out of is not fed by lead pipe?” – to the geopolitical, suggesting that in coming months much will be written about how China and the rest of the world is racing ahead of the US in investing in the future.“It used to be we invested almost 2.7% of our GDP in infrastructure. Now it’s about 0.7%. When we were investing it, we were the leader in the world. I don’t know why we don’t get this. One of the few major economies in the world whose public investment in research and development has declined as a percentage of GDP over the last 25 years.”These aren’t Republican bridges, Democratic airports, Republican hospitals or a Democratic power gridVisibly angry, he boomed: “Declined! The United States of America, that led the world!”As in previous speeches, Biden framed the imperative as in the context of competition with China and a fundamental battle for the future between democracies and autocracies.Beijing is not waiting to invest in digital infrastructure, research and development, he said. “But they’re counting on American democracy to be too slow, too limited and too divided to keep pace.“We have to show the world and, much more important, we have to show ourselves that democracy works, that we can come together on the big things. It’s the United States of America, for God’s sake.”Partisan divisions should not stop America doing the right thing for the future, Biden added. “These aren’t Republican bridges, Democratic airports, Republican hospitals or a Democratic power grid … We’re at an inflection point in American democracy. This is a moment where we prove whether or not democracy can deliver.”Biden insisted he is open to ideas on how to pay for the plan but again ruled out tax increases on people making less than $400,000 a year. The corporate tax rate used to be 35%, he noted, but Trump reduced it to 21%. “What I’m proposing is we meet in the middle: 28%.”Later, questioned by reporters, he said he might accept a rate below 28% so long as the projects are financed. “I’m willing to listen to that. I’m wide open, but we gotta pay for this. We gotta pay for this.“There’s many other ways we can do it. But I am willing to negotiate that. I’ve come forward with the best, most rational way, in my view the fairest way, to pay for it, but there are many other ways as well. And I’m open.”But a Twitter exchange on Wednesday made clear the steep climb Biden faces to work with Republicans, many of whom remain in thrall to Trump.Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democratic senator, tweeted: “Paid leave is infrastructure. Child care is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.”Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, replied: “So what ISN’T infrastructure?” More
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Alcee Hastings, congressman who was impeached as a judge, dies aged 84
Alcee Hastings, a fiercely liberal Florida congressman who was dogged by an impeachment that ended his career as a federal judge, died on Tuesday. He was 84.
Hastings’ death was confirmed by his chief of staff, Lale Morrison. The Democrat announced two years ago that he had pancreatic cancer.
Hastings was known as an advocate for minorities, a defender of Israel and a voice for gays, migrants, women and the elderly. He held senior posts on the House rules committee and the Helsinki Commission, which works on multinational issues.
But his impeachment remained a nagging footnote. It was repeatedly invoked in news accounts and seen as derailing his ambitions for a greater leadership role.
“That seems to be the only thing of significance to people who write,” Hastings said in 2013, predicting that the impeachment would be in the lead paragraph of his obituary.
Hastings was passed over for chairmanship of the House intelligence committee when the Democrats took Congress in 2006.
“Sorry, haters,” he said then. “God is not finished with me yet.”
Under Florida law, Governor Ron DeSantis will now call a special election to fill the vacant seat.
Hastings’ district is overwhelmingly Democratic – he received 80% of the vote in November. But his death lowers the Democrats’ majority to 218-211. The narrow margin is forcing the party to muster nearly unanimous votes to push legislation and bolstering Republican hopes for 2022. There are six vacancies, four from seats that were held by Democrats, two by Republicans.
Hastings was born on 5 September 1936 in Altamonte Springs, Florida, a largely black Orlando suburb, the son of a maid and a butler. He attended Fisk University and Florida A&M. After a law degree he went into private practice, taking on civil rights cases. He made a bid for the US Senate in 1970, then earned a state judgeship.
In 1979, Jimmy Carter named him to the federal bench. He was the first Black person to hold a federal judgeship in Florida since Reconstruction.
His career was marked by controversy. His harsh criticism of Ronald Reagan, his appearance at a rally in 1984 for the then presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and other moves raised questions about his impartiality. He insisted he was doing nothing wrong.
“Outside the courtroom, I speak out because I’m a citizen and I have the interests of a great number people of this country at heart,” he said. “I think it’s better to have public officials express themselves. I don’t think being a judge means I’m neutered.”
It wasn’t long before he became the first sitting US judge tried on criminal charges. Along with the Washington lawyer William Borders Jr, Hastings was accused of soliciting a $150,000 bribe from two racketeers seeking to shorten their sentences.
Borders was convicted and sentenced to five years. Hastings contended Borders acted without his knowledge and was acquitted but a judicial panel accused him of fabricating his defense. The House impeached him in 1988 and the Senate convicted him in 1989.
A federal judge reversed the impeachment, saying Hastings was improperly tried by a 12-member panel instead of the full Senate, but his exoneration was short-lived. Ruling in the case of another ousted judge, the US supreme court decided 7-2 that courts could not second-guess the Senate’s power to remove federal officials.
By then, Hastings had won a seat in Congress. He won the seat after two bitter runoffs fueled by accusations of racism in the largely Black district. At one point, in his heated race against Lois Frankel, he snapped to a reporter: “The bitch is a racist.” He went on to win and was re-elected time after time.
Frankel earned her own ticket to Congress 20 years later, as a Democratic colleague.
Hastings remained no stranger to controversy. In 2011, a former aide filed a sexual harassment lawsuit, claiming he hugged her against her will and suggested they go to his hotel room. Hastings called the accusations “ridiculous, bizarre, frivolous”. The House ethics committee cleared him.
“I’ve enjoyed some of the fights, and even the process of being indicted and removed from the bench,” he said in 2013. “All of those are extraordinary types of circumstances that would cause lesser people to buckle. I did not and I have not.” More - in US Politics
Katie Hill: Matt Gaetz backed me but he must quit if nude-photo reports are true
The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz insisted on Monday he would not resign, amid a scandal over alleged sex trafficking.
At the same time, the former Democratic congresswoman Katie Hill, who resigned amid a scandal over the non-consensual sharing of explicit images, said she and Gaetz formed an “unlikely friendship”, when he was “one of the few colleagues who came to my defense”.
Gaetz is reported to have shared nude pictures of women with colleagues. Hill’s pictures were shared and published without her consent.
Though she paid tribute to Gaetz for supporting her, Hill wrote: “If recent reports are true, he engaged in the very practice he defended me from – and should resign immediately.”
Federal prosecutors are reportedly examining whether Gaetz and an ally paid or offered gifts in exchange for sex with underaged girls. Part of the investigation is reportedly examining whether Gaetz, 38, had sex with a 17-year-old and violated federal sex trafficking laws.
The investigation was first reported by the New York Times, which also said Gaetz took ecstasy, an illegal drug. CNN has reported that Gaetz allegedly showed nude photos of women he slept with to colleagues in the House.
Gaetz denies wrongdoing. He also claims to be the victim of attempted extortion.
On Monday, he wrote for the Washington Examiner. Saying he wanted to “remind everyone I am a representative in Congress, not a monk, and certainly not a criminal”, he added: “This is how DC works. The guilty and wrong point fingers at the innocent and right … And no, I am absolutely not resigning.”
He also wrote that his “lifestyle of yesteryear may be different from how I live now, but it was not and is not illegal. I defended Katie Hill’s ‘throuple’ when her own Democratic colleagues wouldn’t. I just didn’t think it was anyone’s business.”
Hill resigned from Congress in October 2019, amid fallout from an acrimonious divorce and a relationship with a member of staff.
“Matt was the first member of Congress who publicly and unapologetically defended me,” she wrote for Vanity Fair, “saying that while I might have made mistakes, I was a victim in this circumstance. At one of the darkest moments of my life, when I was feeling more alone than I ever had, Matt stood up for me – and that really mattered.”
She also said she argued with Gaetz after he spoke about Andrew Gillum, another Florida politician embroiled in scandal, in a way she said was “bi-phobic and bullshit”.
“We didn’t talk much after that,” Hill said.
Of Gaetz’s alleged sharing of nude pictures, Hill wrote: “Sharing intimate images or videos of someone without their consent should be illegal, plain and simple. It shouldn’t matter if it was done to hurt someone, as with revenge porn, or to brag about your sexual conquests, like Matt has been accused of doing.
“In fact, I’ve spent the last few months advocating for a bill called the Shield Act to be included as part of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which just passed the House and is headed to the Senate. If enacted, it will become a federal crime to knowingly distribute an intimate visual depiction of someone without their permission.
“While we don’t know enough to determine whether what Matt allegedly did would constitute distribution, this legislation clarifies that it’s a crime whether you intend to hurt someone or not by sharing their images. Even if he was just showing off and meant no harm to those women, it’s still unacceptable.
“Unfortunately, Matt voted against the bill.”
Hill has said she considered suicide, telling the Guardian: “I felt that if I just checked out entirely I could never … show that you can make a mistake and recover from it or that you can go through a horrible experience and then rise again.”
She has published a book, started a podcast and remained active in Democratic politics.
Gaetz is a prominent Trump ally but he has eagerly attacked Republicans disloyal to the former president. He has received scant support from his own party.
Last week, Barry Bennett, a former Trump adviser, told the Daily Beast: “For something like this, a 10ft pole is not long enough.” More - in US Politics
How Biden's $2tn infrastructure plan seeks to achieve racial justice
Joe Biden has said his $2tn plan to rebuild America’s “crumbling” roads, bridges, railways and other infrastructure would rival the space race in its ambition and deliver economic and social change on a scale as grand as the New Deal. The president has also vowed his “once-in-a-generation” investment will reverse long-standing racial disparities exacerbated by past national mobilizations.Embedded in his sprawling infrastructure agenda, the first part of which Biden unveiled this week, are hundreds of billions of dollars dedicated to projects and investments the administration says will advance racial equity in employment, housing, transportation, healthcare and education, while improving economic outcomes for communities of color.“This plan is important, not only for what and how it builds but it’s also important to where we build,” Biden said at a union carpenters’ training facility outside Pittsburgh last week. “It includes everyone, regardless of your race or your zip code.”His proposal would replace lead pipes and service lines that have disproportionately harmed Black children; reduce air pollution that has long harmed Black and Latino neighborhoods near ports and power plants; “reconnect” neighborhoods cut off by previous transportation projects; expand affordable housing options to allow more families of color to buy homes, build wealth and eliminate exclusionary zoning laws; rebuild the public housing system; and prioritize investments in “frontline” communities whose residents are predominantly people of color often first- and worst-affected by climate change and environmental disaster.The plan also allocates $100m in workforce development programs targeting historically underserved communities and $20m for upgrading historically Black college and universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and quadruples funding for the Manufacturing Extensions Partnership to boost investment in “minority owned and rurally located” businesses.Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party (WFP), said it was clear Biden had been listening to activists and understood the interlocking challenges of racial injustice, climate change and economic inequality.“This is not race-neutral – it’s actually pretty aggressive and specific,” he said, noting the coalition of Black voters and women who helped Biden clinch the Democratic nomination and win the White House.Perhaps the boldest pieces of the proposal is a $400bn investment in care for elderly and disabled Americans. In his speech, Biden said his agenda would create jobs and lift wages and benefits for the millions of “unseen, underpaid and undervalued” caregivers, predominantly women of color.Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, called it “one of the single most impactful plans to address racial and gender inequity in our economy”.Poo said the coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately hurt women and people of color, showed just how critical care workers are to the wellbeing of the nation. And yet many of these workers still struggle to care for themselves and their families.Poo believes Biden’s plan can do for caregiving and the economy what past jobs programs did for manufacturing, turning dangerous, low-wage jobs into opportunities for upward mobility and security. Home care workers have been excluded from labor protections – Poo said this effort places them at the forefront.“There’s nothing more fundamental and enabling to our economy than having good care for families,” she said. “Without that, nothing else can function – we can’t even build roads, bridges and tunnels without care.”Biden’s plan also provides for $100bn for high-speed broadband internet alongside provisions to improve access and affordability, which White House officials say will help to close the digital divide between white and Black and Latino families.“The internet is a tool that all of us rely upon,” said Angela Siefer, executive director at National Digital Inclusion Alliance. “And when certain segments of the population, particularly those who have been historically left out, don’t have access to the tools, they fall even further behind.”Biden said his plan would help drive down costs by increasing competition and providing short-term subsidies for low-income households. Siefer said these measures are important, but she was skeptical rates would fall enough to make high-speed internet affordable for low-income families without more permanent subsidies.Improving digital literacy is also critical to confronting racial inequality, Siefer said, adding: “To really achieve equity, we have to get beyond the thinking: let’s just make it available.”The proposal also includes $5bn for community based violence-prevention programs, an investment Black and Latino activists have long argued will help reduce the impact of gun violence.The administration has suggested additional efforts to close the racial wealth gap, like universal pre-kindergarten, affordable higher education and improved family leave, will come in the second piece of what could be a $4tn program.Republicans accuse Biden of delivering a “Trojan Horse” to fund progressive initiatives.“Biden’s plan includes hundreds of billions of spending on leftwing policies and blue-state priorities,” the Republican National Committee said. It singled out parts of the bill that aim to tackle racial and gender inequality, such as “$400bn for an ‘unrelated’ program for home care that ‘was a top demand of some union groups’.”While many senior Democrats welcomed the plan, many progressives have said it doesn’t go far enough. They have called for $10tn over the next decade to confront climate change, including more robust investments in renewable energy and a target of shifting the US to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.Biden has said he is open to negotiation and hopes he can attract Republicans to the plan. The president suggested Republicans would rush to act if they learned the drinking water on Capitol Hill flowed through lead pipes.As Congress begins the process of turning Biden’s blueprint into legislation, progressive groups are mounting a campaign to pressure lawmakers to embrace an even more ambitious agenda. The WFP is part of a coalition of groups staging protests to demand Congress deliver “transformational economic recovery”.“If you’re going to be big and bold, be big and bold and solve the problem fully,” Mitchell said. “We are at a crisis moment and we won’t get another shot.” More
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Republicans claim Biden $2tn infrastructure plan a partisan tax hike
Republicans opposed to Joe Biden’s proposed $2tn infrastructure bill claimed on Sunday that it was effectively a partisan tax hike that allocated too much money to electric vehicles and other environmental initiatives.On CNN’s State of the Union, Mississippi governor Tate Reeves was asked if his state could use some of the $100bn Biden proposes to spend on fixing roads and bridges neglected for decades amid gridlock in Washington and paralyzed public spending.Yes, he said. But.“There’s no doubt that Mississippi could use our fair share of $100bn,” Reeves said. “The problem with this particular plan, though, is although the Biden administration is calling it an infrastructure plan, it looks more like a $2tn tax hike plan, to me. That’s going to lead to significant challenges in our economy, it’s going to lead to a slowing GDP … it’s going to lead to Americans losing significant numbers of jobs.”Biden proposes funding his plan by raising corporate tax rates and making it more difficult for corporations to utilize offshore tax shelters.Reeves had other complaints. While Biden proposes to spend billions on roads and bridges, he said, he also proposes to “spend more than that on the combination of Amtrak [railways] and public transit. And what’s even worse, [Biden’s bill] spends $100bn on clean water, which Mississippi could certainly use, but it spends more than that … to subsidize electric vehicles.“That is a political statement. It’s not a statement on trying to improve our infrastructure in America. And so it looks more like the Green New Deal than it looks like an infrastructure plan.”The Green New Deal is a set of policy priorities championed by prominent progressives including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a way to meet looming environmental challenges while boosting the economy and reducing inequality. It is not enacted law or a formal part of Biden’s policy plans. Nonetheless, Republicans from Donald Trump down have seized on it, claiming it represents a determination to take away gas-guzzling cars and even the right to eat meat.On ABC’s This Week, the Missouri Republican senator Roy Blunt asked: “Why would you pass up the opportunity here to focus on roads, bridges, what’s happening underground, as well as above the ground on infrastructure, broadband, all of which wouldn’t be 40% of this package?“There’s more in the package for charging stations for electric vehicles … than there is for roads, bridges and airports and ports. When people think about infrastructure, they’re thinking about roads, bridges, ports and airports.”The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said this week he would “fight them every step of the way because I think this is the wrong prescription for America. That package that they’re putting together now, as much as we would like to address infrastructure, is not going to get support from our side.”Democrats could attempt to pass the package using budget reconciliation, a procedure that allows for a simple Senate majority rather than 60 votes. But even if successful it would mean abandoning portions of the plan that do not impact taxes and spending.Biden has repeatedly emphasized the need for bipartisanship. Politicians from both sides have claimed willingness to reach across the aisle.Reeves told CNN he “believes we can come up with a plan” but opposes the tax-funded price-tag. Blunt said it was “very unlikely” Republicans would vote to reverse Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cuts, suggesting instead “new funding sources, figuring out how if you’re going to spend all this money on electric vehicles, which I think is part of the future, we need to figure out how electric vehicles pay for using the system just like gas-powered vehicles have always paid for it with a gas tax.”Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary, vowed to work with Republicans.“I’ve got a lot of respect for Senator Blunt,” he told ABC, “but I’m going to work to try to persuade him that electrical vehicle charging infrastructure is absolutely a core part of how Americans are going to need to get around in the future, and not the distant, far off future, but right now.Asked if it was “a realistic prospect to expect Republicans are going to come around”, Buttigieg said: “I think it can be. I’m having a lot of conversations with Republicans in the House and Senate who have been wanting to do something big on infrastructure for years. We may not agree about every piece of it, but this is one area where the American people absolutely want to see us get it done.”The Republican Mississippi senator Roger Wicker told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I’m all for working with the administration on an infrastructure bill. And let me tell you, I think I can work with Pete Buttigieg. I spoke to him the day he was nominated. We’ve been trading phone messages for the last three or four days in an effort to talk about this bill. I think Pete and I could come up with an infrastructure bill.”But Wicker also brought out the stumbling block to such thoughts of progress.“What the president proposed this week is not an infrastructure bill,” he said. “It’s a huge tax increase, for one thing.” More
