Senate

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Officials Point to Outreach on Tariffs in a Bid to Calm Markets

      by

      President Trump’s top trade official defended the administration’s aggressive tariff moves on Tuesday, arguing before a Senate committee that the U.S. economy is facing “a moment of drastic, overdue change” after decades of being propped up by the financial sector and government spending.The remarks by Jamieson Greer, the United States trade representative, came as the Trump administration faced blowback from trading partners, businesses and investors over Mr. Trump’s approach. The president’s moves this month to impose a 10 percent global tariff and steep “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries have already triggered a trade war with China and caused other countries to draw up their own retaliation plans. Economists now consider a recession increasingly likely.Mr. Trump has dismissed those concerns and said he will not back away from his trade agenda, which he says is necessary to return manufacturing and industrial production to the United States. He and his economic advisers have claimed that countries are clamoring to make new trade agreements with the United States and to lower their tariffs and other trade barriers.In a social media post on Tuesday, Mr. Trump described a call with South Korea’s acting president, Han Duck-soo, about trade and tariffs and that South Korean officials were heading to the United States for talks. He also expressed optimism that a trade war with China could be averted.“China also wants to make a deal, badly, but they don’t know how to get it started,” Mr. Trump wrote. “We are waiting for their call. It will happen!”Mr. Greer said in his prepared remarks that nearly 50 countries have approached him to discuss how to “achieve reciprocity on trade.”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

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Republicans Plan to Skirt Senate Rules to Push Through More Tax Cuts

      by

      G.O.P. leaders are planning to use the “nuclear option” to steer around the Senate’s in-house referee and allow the use of a gimmick that makes trillions of dollars in tax cuts appear to be free.For decades, senators looking to push major budget and tax legislation through Congress on a simple majority vote have had to win the blessing of a single unelected figure on Capitol Hill.The Senate parliamentarian, a civil servant who acts as the arbiter and enforcer of the chamber’s byzantine rules, has traditionally been in a position to make or break entire presidential agendas. That includes determining whether budget and tax legislation can be fast-tracked through Congress and shielded from a filibuster, allowing it to pass along party lines through a process known as reconciliation.Now, in their zeal to deliver President Trump’s domestic policy agenda in “one big beautiful bill” of spending and tax cuts, Senate Republicans are trying to steer around the parliamentarian, busting a substantial congressional norm in the process.The strategy would allow them to avoid getting a formal thumbs up or thumbs down on their claim that extending the tax cuts that Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017 would cost nothing — a gimmick that would make it easier for them cram as many tax reductions as possible into their bill without appearing to balloon the deficit.In recent days, all eyes have been on Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian, to see whether she would bless the trick, smoothing the path for the G.O.P. bill. But on Wednesday, Republicans signaled that they planned to take extraordinary action to go around her altogether.Rather than have Ms. MacDonough weigh in, they asserted that Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as chairman of the Budget Committee, could unilaterally decide the cost of the legislation, citing a 1974 budget law. Senate Republicans on Wednesday unveiled a new budget resolution they planned to put to a vote as early as this week. And Mr. Graham declared in a statement that he considered an extension of the 2017 tax cuts to be cost-free.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

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Frank Bisignano, Trump’s Pick to Lead Social Security Administration, Faces Senators

      by

      Frank Bisignano, the Wall Street veteran being considered to lead the Social Security Administration, will go before the Senate on Tuesday morning, where lawmakers will demand answers about his plans for an agency recently thrown into tumult.The plans being laid by the Trump administration for the typically staid agency — long viewed as a third rail of government — have prompted widespread outcry given its crucial work: It delivers billions of dollars in retirement, survivor and disability payments to 73 million people each month. The agency typically evolves slowly, aware that missteps could potentially cut off cash to people who rely on it.But in the month or so since a team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency arrived at the agency, it has taken a series of rapid fire actions, including significant job cuts and policy changes that have rattled many advocates and employees, who fear the changes could make it difficult for vulnerable people to access benefits.Some concerned Democratic lawmakers recently sent a letter to Mr. Bisignano asking him to promise not to privatize any of the agency’s components.“We are gravely concerned about the current trajectory of the S.S.A. and more specifically, that those charged with leading it might profit off its destruction,” Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote.Mr. Bisignano, who described himself in an interview on CNBC as “fundamentally a DOGE person,” has spent much of his career as a fixer for major financial institutions hoping to improve their back-end processes. He said he planned to bring the same approach to Social Security.“The objective is not to touch benefits,” he said in the interview. “The objective is to figure out, there could be fraud, waste and abuse in there. And we build A.I. to find fraud, waste and abuse for a living. It’s going to be a tech story.” More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Signs Spending Bill to Fund Government

      by

      President Trump on Saturday signed the government funding bill passed by the Senate on Friday. The bill was passed just hours before a midnight deadline to avoid a lapse in funding, which would have shut down the government.The signing of the bill ended a week of drama on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, the House passed the legislation, which funds the government through Sept. 30, in a mostly party-line vote that reflected how Republican fiscal hawks have swallowed their concerns about spending in deference to Mr. Trump. The vote was 217 to 213, with only one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voting against the legislation. One Democrat, Representative Jared Golden of Maine, voted yes.That sent the measure to the Senate, which spent the rest of the week deliberating whether to accept the Republican bill from the House, or send it back and shut down the government at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.The key vote came on Friday afternoon, after days of Democratic agonizing that divided the party. That procedural vote, which ended debate and moved the bill to a final vote, needed the support of some Democrats. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, and nine other members of his caucus supplied the votes needed to effectively thwart a filibuster by their own party and prevent a shutdown.The final vote to pass the spending measure and send it to Mr. Trump to sign was 54 to 46, nearly along party lines.Carl Hulse More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      What Thom Tillis’s Surrender to Trump Says About the Trump G.O.P.

      by

      Few Republican senators give a better floor speech than Thom Tillis of North Carolina does. He’s the Daniel Day-Lewis of moral outrage. He delivered a doozy last month, challenging President Trump’s revisionist history of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and calling Vladimir Putin “a liar, a murderer” and “the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”But Tulsi Gabbard is apparently no threat at all. Although she has been something of a Putin apologist, Tillis fell in line with 51 of his Republican colleagues in the Senate and voted to confirm her as director of national intelligence. Afterward, on Facebook, he proclaimed his pride in supporting her.He made impassioned remarks in the Senate about his disagreement with Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 rioters who bloodied law enforcement officers.But the following month, he voted to confirm Kash Patel, who has peddled the kinds of fictions that fueled that violence, as director of the F.B.I.Courage, capitulation — Tillis pinballs dizzyingly between the two. As he gears up for a 2026 campaign for a third term in the Senate, he seems to be at war with himself. And perhaps more poignantly than any other Republican on Capitol Hill, Tillis, 64, illustrates how hard it is to be principled, independent or any of those other bygone adjectives in Trump’s Republican Party.That’s a compliment. For most Republicans in Congress, there’s no battle between conscience and supplication. They dropped to their knees years ago. There’s no tension between what they say and what they do. They praise Trump with their every word, including the conjunctions.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

    • 188 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Chuck Schumer: Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One.

      by

      Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: The federal government has been taken over by a nihilist.President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground.Now, Republicans’ nihilism has brought us to a new brink of disaster: Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down Friday at midnight.As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer.This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal.Why? Because Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.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

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Former Defense Secretaries Call Trump’s Firing of Military Leaders ‘Reckless’

      by

      Five former defense secretaries condemned President Trump’s firing last week of senior military leaders as “reckless” and urged Congress not to confirm their successors.In an extraordinary letter to lawmakers on Thursday, the five men — including one who served under Mr. Trump during his first term — asked that the House and the Senate hold “immediate hearings to assess the national security implications of Mr. Trump’s dismissals.”The letter is signed by defense secretaries who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents since 1994: William J. Perry, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, Lloyd J. Austin III and Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s first defense secretary.In a purge of the military’s senior ranks last Friday, Mr. Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a four-star fighter pilot who was only the second African American to be the Joint Chiefs chairman, saying he would be replaced by a little-known, retired three-star Air Force general, Dan Caine. In all, six Pentagon officials were fired, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of Naval Operations, and Gen. James Slife, the vice chief of the Air Force; and top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.“Mr. Trump’s dismissals raise troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military and to remove legal constraints on the president’s power,” they said in the letter. “Talented Americans may be far less likely to choose a life of military service if they believe they will be held to a political standard.”Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the firings are within the president’s right to choose who he wants in these positions.The five former defense secretaries urged Congress to “hold Mr. Trump to account for these reckless actions and to exercise fully its constitutional oversight responsibilities.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Senate G.O.P. Passes Budget Resolution, and Punts on Tough Questions

      by

      The budget plan that Republicans pushed through the Senate early Friday was a necessary first step toward enacting President Trump’s ambitious domestic goals, but it punted the most difficult and divisive questions about how Congress will do so.On a largely party-line vote, 52-48, Senate Republicans won adoption of a blueprint that calls for a $150 billion increase in military spending and $175 billion more for border security over the next decade.How will they pay for it? That’s a question for another day. What about the huge tax cuts they and Mr. Trump have promised? We’ll figure that out later, senators say.Over in the House, Republicans have been agonizing to come up with at least $2 trillion in spending cuts to pay for Mr. Trump’s fiscal agenda and placate their most conservative members. Their plan, which G.O.P. leaders hope to put to a vote as early as next week, loads vast tax cuts and policy changes into one huge package and calls for slashing government programs deeply to finance it all. But it faces a perilous road through the closely divided House, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority.Republicans in the Senate have essentially delayed any decision on those thorny details, focusing instead on delivering an early win to Mr. Trump in the form of money for his hard-line anti-immigration agenda. They said they would address questions of spending and tax cuts later in a separate bill.“We’ve decided to front-end load security,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chairman of the Budget Committee. “We want to make the tax cuts permanent. We’re going to work with our House colleagues to do that. They expire at the end of the year, but we have time to do that. It is the view of the Republican Senate that when it comes to border security, we need not fail. We should have the money now to keep that momentum going.”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