Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (2017)

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    Biden Looks to Raise Taxes on Wealthy and Corporations to Shave Deficit

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    Lael Brainard, the director of the National Economic Council, said lawmakers should raise taxes on companies and the wealthiest while extending the 2017 cuts for those making less than $400,000.President Biden’s top economic adviser said on Friday that lawmakers should take advantage of a looming tax debate next year to try to reduce budget deficits by sharply raising taxes on corporations and the rich.Under that plan, Mr. Biden would more than offset the cost of maintaining tax cuts for people earning $400,000 a year or less.In a speech to the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Lael Brainard, who directs the White House National Economic Council, gave the most detailed explanation yet of how Mr. Biden would seek to shape what promises to be a multitrillion-dollar tax debate.A batch of tax cuts signed into law in 2017 by former President Donald J. Trump, who is facing Mr. Biden in a rematch this fall, is set to expire at the end of next year. It includes cuts for individuals at all income levels. Republicans built that expiration into the tax bill to reduce its projected cost to deficits and comply with congressional rules.Ms. Brainard’s speech renewed Mr. Biden’s commitment to reducing taxes for middle-class Americans and for raising them on high earners. But her remarks expressed more concern about growing debt and deficits than the president and his aides had previously demonstrated when discussing the looming tax debate.“At minimum, we should avoid making the fiscal hole created by Republican tax cuts deeper, by fully paying for any tax cuts that are extended,” Ms. Brainard said, in remarks released by the White House. “And we should use the 2025 tax debate as an opportunity to meet our national needs by raising revenue overall by asking the wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share.”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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      Trump Is Flirting With Quack Economics

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      More than 30 years ago, the economists Rudiger Dornbusch (one of my mentors) and Sebastian Edwards wrote a classic paper on what they called “macroeconomic populism.” Their motivating examples were inflationary outbreaks under left-wing regimes in Latin America, but it seemed clear that the key issue wasn’t left-wing governance per se; it was, instead, what happens when governments engage in magical thinking. Indeed, even at the time they could have included the experience of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, which killed or “disappeared” thousands of leftists but also pursued irresponsible economic policies that led to a balance-of-payments crisis and soaring inflation.Modern examples of the syndrome include leftist governments like that of Venezuela, but also right-wing nationalist governments like that of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who insisted that he could fight inflation by cutting interest rates.Will the United States be next?I wish people would stop calling Donald Trump a populist. He has, after all, never demonstrated any inclination to help working Americans, and his economic policies really didn’t help — his 2017 tax cut, in particular, was a giveaway to the wealthy. But his behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that he’s as addicted to magical thinking and denial of reality as any petty strongman or dictator, which makes it all too likely that he might preside over the type of problems that result when policies are based on quack economics.Now, destructive economic policy isn’t the thing that alarms me the most about Trump’s potential return to power. Prospects for retaliation against his political opponents, huge detention camps for undocumented immigrants and more loom much larger in my mind. Still, it does seem worth noting that even as Republicans denounce President Biden for the inflation that occurred on his watch, Trump’s advisers have been floating policy ideas that could be far more inflationary than anything that has happened so far.It’s true that inflation surged in 2021 and 2022 before subsiding, and there’s a vigorous debate about how much of a role Biden’s economic policies played. I’m skeptical, among other things because inflation in the United States since the beginning of the Covid pandemic has closely tracked with that of other advanced economies. What’s notable, however, is what the Biden administration didn’t do when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to fight inflation. There was a clear risk that rate hikes would cause a politically disastrous recession, although this hasn’t happened so far. But Biden and company didn’t pressure the Fed to hold off; they respected the Fed’s independence, letting it do what it thought was necessary to bring inflation under control.Does anyone imagine that Trump — who in 2019 insisted that the Fed should cut interest rates to zero or below — would have exercised comparable restraint?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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      Trump’s Tax Cut Fueled Investment but Did Not Pay for Itself, Study Finds

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      The most detailed research yet on corporate response to the 2017 Republican tax law shows modest gains for workers and high cost to the federal debt.The corporate tax cuts that President Donald J. Trump signed into law in 2017 have boosted investment in the U.S. economy and delivered a modest pay bump for workers, according to the most rigorous and detailed study yet of the law’s effects.Those benefits are less than Republicans promised, though, and they have come at a high cost to the federal budget. The corporate tax cuts came nowhere close to paying for themselves, as conservatives insisted they would. Instead, they are adding more than $100 billion a year to America’s $34 trillion-and-growing national debt, according to the quartet of researchers from Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Treasury Department.The researchers found the cuts delivered wage gains that were “an order of magnitude below” what Trump officials predicted: about $750 per worker per year on average over the long run, compared to promises of $4,000 to $9,000 per worker.The study is the first to use vast data from corporate tax filings to draw conclusions about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which passed with only Republican support. Its findings could help shape debate on renewing parts of the law that are set to expire or have begun to phase out.That includes a key provision targeting investment, which the authors identify as the most cost-effective corporate cut. That benefit, which allowed companies to immediately deduct investment spending from their income taxes, would be renewed as part of a bipartisan tax bill that passed the House in January.It also challenges narratives about the bill on both sides of the aisle. Democrats have claimed the tax cuts only rewarded shareholders and did not help the economy. Republicans have called them a cost-free boon to the middle class. Both appear to have been wrong.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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      Brainard Pitches Biden’s Economic Efforts In Hard-Hit Regions

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      Lael Brainard, the National Economic Council director, contends the administration deserves credit for recent gains in areas battered by past job losses.President Biden’s top economic adviser will argue on Monday that the administration is engineering a revival of economically disadvantaged communities across the nation, largely relying on anecdotal evidence and patterns of new federal spending in places like Eastern Pennsylvania and Milwaukee, Wis.Lael Brainard, who heads Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, will use a speech to the Brookings Institution in Washington to lay out a detailed blueprint of the administration’s efforts to bring jobs, investment and innovation to areas hobbled by the loss of jobs and industries.Those “place-based” policies are often directed at former industrial strongholds that were battered by automation and foreign competition. They are a cornerstone of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda across several major pieces of legislation he has signed and a big part of his re-election pitch. Whether voters perceive them as successful could affect Mr. Biden’s chances in November, particularly in industrial swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Mr. Biden “came to office determined to invest in all of America, to leave no community behind. It is working,” Ms. Brainard plans to say, according to a copy of her prepared remarks. “Communities that had been left behind are making a comeback.”Place-based efforts were included in several laws that Mr. Biden signed, including those aimed at infrastructure, climate change and clean-energy production and semiconductors and other advanced manufacturing, all of which Ms. Brainard plans to spotlight on Monday afternoon. The Commerce and Transportation Departments have launched pilot programs to support neighborhoods that have historically been cut off from opportunity.Ms. Brainard will make case studies of two areas in particular: Allentown, Pa., and Milwaukee, both of which Mr. Biden visited recently.After his Allentown visit, Mr. Biden told reporters that he was “really reassured that what we’ve done has had an impact not just here in Eastern Pennsylvania and — but — in the Northeast, but throughout the country. And we’re going to do more.”Ms. Brainard does not plan to offer comprehensive national statistics to support the administration’s revival claims, other than a Treasury Department analysis that finds low-emission energy investments spurred by Mr. Biden’s climate law have disproportionately boosted lower-income areas and communities that have been historically reliant on fossil fuels. Ms. Brainard will say that the Allentown area, for example, has experienced a “boom” in job creation and small business formation under Mr. Biden, after listing investments the administration has steered to the region’s roads, airports and more. But she does not explicitly link that spending and those trends.Administration officials acknowledge that many of Mr. Biden’s programs to help hard-hit communities are still in their infancy, and that it may be difficult to assess their effects yet. But Ms. Brainard, in an interview ahead of the speech, said it was fair for Mr. Biden to claim credit for gains in areas like Allentown and Milwaukee.“In many left-behind communities, unemployment rates have been well above the national average for years,” she said. “And what you’re seeing in those communities now is that unemployment rates have actually moved down below 4 percent, which are, in some cases, a level they haven’t seen in a very long time.”The unemployment rate in the Allentown area was 3.9 percent in November, according to the Labor Department. That’s down from nearly 9.5 percent after the 2008 financial crisis and 4.2 percent on the eve of the pandemic in February 2020, when Donald J. Trump was president. In November, unemployment was 3.1 percent in the Milwaukee area, the same rate as it was in February 2020, and down from 10 percent after the 2008 recession.Mr. Trump has long promised on the campaign trail and in the White House to revitalize hard-hit American communities. He is making similar promises as he attempts to defeat Mr. Biden this fall, a counterpoint that looms over the president’s place-based effort.While Ms. Brainard will not mention Mr. Trump by name, she plans to cast Mr. Biden’s place-based policies as the antidote to what the administration calls the failed promises of “trickle-down economics,” including those practiced by the previous administration. That term has long been associated with Republican tax policies. By cutting rates on high earners and corporations, conservative economists have long contended, policymakers would stoke fast economic growth that would lift incomes for all workers.The Biden administration has attempted to broaden that trickle-down phrase to include the outsourcing of jobs and factories to foreign shores.Mr. Trump’s signature 2017 tax-cut law included deep cuts to corporate and individual tax rates, but it also featured a place-based program: a tax-based incentive called Opportunity Zones that sought to entice investors to put money into designated lower-income areas. The program has continued under Mr. Biden, even as his aides have debated whether to attempt to change it. Asked whether the administration judged that program to be succeeding, Ms. Brainard did not answer directly.“I’ve been very focused on making sure the president’s policies are implemented and are having the effect of lifting up these communities,” Ms. Brainard said. “That’s been my focus.” More

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      The Powerful Lobbyist Behind Kevin McCarthy: Jeff Miller

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      Jeff Miller is the new House speaker’s top fund-raiser and closest confidant. He is also one of Washington’s most prominent corporate lobbyists, an arrangement that is drawing scrutiny.WASHINGTON — As he waged his messy campaign to become House speaker, Representative Kevin McCarthy turned to a longtime friend, Jeff Miller, to serve as a kind of field general.Mr. Miller, his closest confidant, top fund-raiser and sometimes enforcer, hosted a pasta dinner and strategy session for the McCarthy political team at his luxury condominium in Washington. He then set up shop in the speaker’s office in the Capitol for the week of the vote, working the phones to persuade holdouts, tamping down conservative criticism on social media and urging some donors to press for “yes” votes from members they had funded.When Mr. McCarthy won, so did Mr. Miller, who in addition to his wide-ranging volunteer roles for his friend is one of Washington’s most prominent Republican lobbyists, representing a spectrum of blue-chip corporate clients with issues at stake in Washington.Rarely has a lobbyist enjoyed the access to a House speaker that Mr. Miller has with Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican. As Mr. McCarthy has gained power, Mr. Miller’s prominent place in his orbit has drawn increased scrutiny from watchdog groups that track political influence as well as from conservatives who see him as an unaccountable power behind the throne whose presence is starkly at odds with their increasingly populist, anti-corporate message.Mr. Miller’s clients include Apple, Anheuser-Busch, Dow Chemical, General Electric, the Wall Street giant Blackstone, Occidental Petroleum, the drugmaker trade group PhRMA, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and other companies, some of them girding for scrutiny from Republicans eager to take on what they see as anti-conservative bias among “woke” corporations.Responding to a post on Twitter from a reporter who had spotted Mr. Miller headed into Mr. McCarthy’s office during the early rounds of the vote for speaker, when Mr. McCarthy was coming up short, Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who was a leader of the opposition, tweeted, “McCarthy isn’t even speaker and the lobbyists are moving in!”Mr. Miller worked alongside Mr. McCarthy in his office during the speaker vote last month in the Capitol.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesAfter Mr. McCarthy became speaker, Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida, confronted Mr. McCarthy on the House floor. He was furious, according to an ally of Mr. Buchanan, because he felt that Mr. Miller and Mr. McCarthy had quietly thrown their weight behind the successful rival bid for the chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee by Representative Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican with whom Mr. Miller is friendly.An associate of Mr. Miller’s said he did not play any role in the battle over the Ways and Means chairmanship. But the perception among Republicans that he is already shaping the operations of Mr. McCarthy’s House majority is a telling indication of how Mr. Miller’s place at the intersection of power, money, influence and access has made him one of the most important behind-the-scenes figures in Washington.Mr. Miller declined to be interviewed. But he said in a statement that he “worked hard with Speaker McCarthy’s team during the speaker’s race because he’s my friend” and because Mr. McCarthy “knows how to build consensus around an agenda and then how to implement it.”Mr. Miller added, “I just want to be known as a guy who works hard for my clients and does right by my friends,” adding that “everything else is just noise.”Mr. McCarthy also declined to be interviewed. In a statement, Drew Florio, a spokesman for him, said the speaker and Mr. Miller are “lifelong friends,” and credited the lobbyist with playing “a key role in aiding Speaker McCarthy’s political fund-raising operation,” while stressing that his efforts were “on a volunteer basis.”But the blurriness of the lines between Mr. Miller’s lobbying and his support for Mr. McCarthy was underscored in the days after the speaker election.Mr. Miller helped organize three days of festivities to celebrate, including a gala dinner at which Mr. Miller took the stage to introduce Mr. McCarthy. “Man, Kevin, I have waited a long time to say this: Ladies and gentlemen, the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Miller told the audience of donors, corporate executives, members of Congress and other prominent Republicans, according to an attendee.The following morning featured a breakfast for donors and freshman House Republicans held at the Washington offices of one of Mr. Miller’s lobbying clients — Altria, the tobacco and e-cigarette company. Since July 2017, Altria has donated nearly $1.4 million to a super PAC associated with Mr. McCarthy and paid $1.3 million to Mr. Miller’s firm.Building InfluenceMr. Miller, 48, met Mr. McCarthy, 58, in the early 1990s. Mr. Miller was a high school student, and Mr. McCarthy was a district staff member for the Bakersfield, Calif., area’s congressman.After joining the Naval Reserves, Mr. Miller took a job with the county Republican Party, where he worked with Mr. McCarthy and began ascending the party ladder in California. He became a lobbyist, developing connections to major donors and politicians around the country, including Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.Mr. Miller moved to Austin and helped Mr. Perry build out a political operation that became the foundation for a 2016 White House bid; Mr. Miller served as campaign manager. When Mr. Perry bowed out of the race, he and Mr. Miller threw their support to Mr. Trump. After the election, Mr. Miller moved quickly to break into a Washington lobbying world that had been dominated by powerful firms with long track records and big names, but few connections to the incoming Trump administration.Mr. Miller served as the campaign manager for Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign in 2016.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMr. Miller was a finance vice chair for Mr. Trump’s inauguration and helped guide Mr. Perry through the Senate confirmation process to become Mr. Trump’s energy secretary. Within 13 months of Mr. Perry being sworn into office, Mr. Miller’s new firm, Miller Strategies, had registered to lobby for 24 clients — including energy interests for which he facilitated meetings with Mr. Perry — and collected nearly $3.4 million in lobbying fees. It was an impressive amount for a small new firm, but it was only the start.Mr. Miller, who spends much of his time with his family in Austin, paid nearly $3 million for a two-bedroom condominium at City Center, a location favored by the Trump set, that he would turn into the nerve center of what would become one of the leading influence operations in town.He began hosting fund-raisers, donor dinners and gatherings that drew a rotating cast of Trump world operatives, McCarthy allies, journalists and other prominent figures, with a well-stocked bar inside and guests smoking cigars on an expansive private outdoor deck. Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Perry were among his guests.According to Federal Election Commission records, Mr. Miller helped raise about $15 million for Mr. Trump’s unsuccessful re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee in the run-up to the 2020 election. But he raised far more than that for other campaigns and committees, including those associated with Mr. Trump and Mr. McCarthy, according to people familiar with his efforts.Mr. Miller said in a statement that he spends about half of his time making fund-raising calls for various Republican candidates and groups “that I’m passionate about.”Leveraging ConnectionsIn the fall of 2017, the microchip maker Broadcom, which was exploring major acquisitions that would need U.S. government approval, hired Miller Strategies to lobby the Trump White House and Congress.Two days after Mr. Miller registered to represent the company, its chief executive, Hock E. Tan, who until then had only made a single federal political donation, gave $65,000 to political committees linked to Mr. McCarthy, according to Federal Election Commission records.Two weeks later, thanks to Mr. Miller and his connections to Mr. Trump’s team, Mr. Tan was in the Oval Office, standing between Mr. Trump and Mr. McCarthy as cameras rolled, praising the president’s proposed corporate tax cuts and announcing Broadcom’s plan to return operations from Singapore to the United States. The relocation was seen partly as an effort to minimize potential U.S. government concerns about its planned acquisitions..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“Thanks to you, Mr. President, business conditions have steadily improved,” Mr. Tan said, as Mr. Miller stood unnoticed at the back of the room.After journalists left the room, Mr. Trump thanked Mr. Miller for his fund-raising assistance.“I hear you’re doing great work for us,” Mr. Trump said, according to a person who attended the event. “They say nobody raises money like you.”In 2017, Hock E. Tan, the chief executive of Broadcom, made an appearance with Mr. McCarthy at the White House after Mr. Miller had registered to represent the company.Tom Brenner/The New York TimesAbout two weeks after the Oval Office event, Broadcom announced that it had finalized one of the acquisitions, having won approval from the U.S. government with assistance from Mr. Miller and his team. Broadcom’s larger acquisition — of the rival chip maker Qualcomm — was subsequently blocked by Mr. Trump, who cited national security concerns.Still, at the time, the Oval Office appearance was a victory for Broadcom and Mr. Tan. And it had benefits for the Trump White House, which used the event to sell the tax cut proposal that Mr. McCarthy, then House majority leader, helped shepherd through Congress and onto the president’s desk for signing weeks later.“That event was a perfect example of what makes Jeff so effective,” said Cliff Sims, the Trump White House aide who worked with Mr. Miller to arrange it. “He came with an idea that was helpful to what we were trying to accomplish, and his client ultimately benefited from it as well.”Even as Mr. Miller established himself as one of the go-to lobbyists for influencing the Trump administration, he retained his close ties to Mr. McCarthy, with the congressman’s political and government roles sometimes intersecting with the lobbyist’s work.Mr. Musk, the billionaire technology entrepreneur, has been a donor to Mr. McCarthy for more than a decade, and one of his companies, the rocket manufacturer and NASA contractor SpaceX, has operations in Mr. McCarthy’s hometown, Bakersfield, Calif.In 2020, Miller Strategies registered to lobby for SpaceX and has been paid more than $300,000 by the company since then, according to lobbying filings. One of Mr. Miller’s lead lobbyists on the account, George Caram, had worked for Mr. McCarthy as a congressional aide partly on space travel issues.Mr. Musk, who had been interviewed by Mr. McCarthy during a donor retreat organized by Mr. Miller in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last summer, and months later would acquire Twitter, declared his support last month for Mr. McCarthy’s bid to become speaker.Mr. Miller has also taken on hardball political tasks for Mr. McCarthy.As relations turned frosty last year between Mr. McCarthy and Representative Liz Cheney over her criticism of Mr. Trump, Mr. Miller quietly warned Republican political consultants to stop working for her re-election campaign in Wyoming or risk losing lucrative business from committees affiliated with Mr. McCarthy.Last year, Mr. Miller warned Republican political consultants to stop working for Representative Liz Cheney’s re-election campaign in Wyoming after her criticism of former President Donald J. Trump.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesMr. McCarthy would later officially endorse Ms. Cheney’s challenger in the Republican primary for her seat, Harriet Hageman, an unusual move for a congressional leader. It was followed weeks later by a fund-raiser for Ms. Hageman at Mr. Miller’s Washington condo touting Mr. McCarthy as a “special guest,” according to an invitation obtained by Politico.Tech TensionsBy the final year of the Trump administration, Miller Strategies’ lobbying revenues had grown to nearly $14 million. In 2021, with President Biden in office, the firm’s revenues dropped to less than $8 million.But Mr. Miller’s connections to Mr. McCarthy’s conference remained valuable for some of the world’s biggest companies.In June 2021, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a package of antitrust legislation targeting tech giants including Amazon and Apple, which had retained Miller Strategies in 2019.One bill was intended to loosen the control over the app marketplaces operated by Apple and Google. Another would have barred those platforms, as well as Amazon and Facebook, from giving preferential treatment to their products and services over those offered by competitors.Mr. Miller lobbied House Republicans against the bills, using the access he had built through fund-raising to urge lawmakers to take their names off the bills as co-sponsors — a bold ask.At a lunch at the private Capitol Hill Club, Mr. Miller pulled aside one Republican co-sponsor for whom he had raised money, Representative Lance Gooden of Texas.“He and I got into it, but, I mean, we weren’t fighting or anything — we were just disagreeing,” said Mr. Gooden.Mr. Gooden did not back down. But he said Mr. Miller is an effective lobbyist because “he’s a hustler” and “he was able to raise huge amounts of money for the Trump campaign, for House Republicans.” Mr. Miller “is constantly on the phone working to get Republicans elected. And if he’s not doing that, he’s working for his clients,” Mr. Gooden said.During the fight over the antitrust bills, Mr. Miller sometimes seemed to be doing both things at once.A few days after the bills were introduced, he stopped by a retreat he had organized for major donors to Mr. McCarthy’s political operation at the Hay-Adams Hotel, which featured a panel on the “growing threat of Big Tech censorship.” Mr. Miller had conversations there with at least two members of Congress in which he described the bills as government overreach that would empower Biden administration regulators and do nothing to mitigate the tech platforms’ stifling of conservatives, according to one attendee.Less than two weeks after the retreat, Mr. McCarthy offered what his office called a “framework to stop the bias and check Big Tech,” which echoed Mr. Miller’s arguments.But Mr. McCarthy’s efforts were not seen as a much of a threat to the tech companies.Mr. Florio, the spokesman for Mr. McCarthy, said in a statement that the framework was “the result of months of work between leaders of the conference, the House Judiciary Committee and the countless Americans whose free speech was silenced by Big Tech.”Critics thought they detected Mr. Miller’s fingerprints. The Fox News host Tucker Carlson asserted on his show, which is influential on the anti-corporate populist right, that Mr. Miller’s lobbying for Amazon and Apple was “one potential explanation” for Mr. McCarthy’s opposition to the antitrust bills.Mr. Carlson said that Mr. Miller was “Kevin McCarthy’s closest adviser.”“Are you shocked that Kevin McCarthy is doing what his corporate clients want him to do?” he added. “Maybe you shouldn’t be.”The two bills considered most aggressive toward Mr. Miller’s clients were never brought up for votes on the floor of the House, as technology companies lobbied furiously against them across party lines in both the House and the Senate.An employee at the Amazon Fulfillment center in Robbinsville Township, N.J. Mr. Miller’s role as a lobbyist for Big Tech is showing signs of becoming a flash point in a Republican Party.Julio Cortez/Associated PressAbout two weeks before the midterm elections, Miller Strategies terminated its contract with Amazon’s cloud computing arm before it was set to expire. Mr. Miller, a person familiar with his thinking said, did not like that his work for the company, a frequent target of tech critics across the political spectrum, was being wielded by detractors as a cudgel against Mr. McCarthy. Days later, Miller Strategies registered to lobby for more money for Oracle, which competes with Amazon’s cloud computing products and has top executives with ties to Republicans.But Mr. Miller’s role as a lobbyist for Big Tech is showing signs of becoming a flash point in a Republican Party increasingly split between a traditional pro-business wing and a populist right that is especially eager to rein in the big social media platforms and other corporations perceived as being sympathetic to the left.Last week, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, who had joined Mr. Gooden among the co-sponsors of the antitrust bills in 2021, was passed over as chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, where he had been the top Republican last Congress. Instead, the subcommittee will be chaired by Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who opposes government spending and intervention in the economy, while the full committee is chaired by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close McCarthy ally.“Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan pretend like they’re conservative warriors against Big Tech, when in reality they’re doing Big Tech’s bidding by stopping bipartisan antitrust reforms that would hold Big Tech accountable,” said Mike Davis, a former Republican congressional lawyer who started a nonprofit group that pushes for antitrust enforcement.Mr. McCarthy “cares about keeping the lobbyists in Washington happy,” Mr. Davis said last month on a podcast, highlighting Mr. Miller’s work for Amazon and Apple and calling him “the campaign manager for Kevin McCarthy’s race for speaker.”But there is no sign that the criticism is hobbling Mr. Miller.Mr. Miller’s firm has signed six new clients since the month before the midterm elections, including the Federation of American Hospitals and the PGA Tour.Miller Strategies announced last month that it had hired three new employees — including Mr. McCarthy’s political director, Stephen Ruppel — in anticipation of a surge in business.And shortly thereafter, an invitation was sent out for a fund-raising dinner next week honoring Mr. McCarthy, with ticket prices starting at $50,000 and proceeds going to his political operation. On the invitation, obtained by Punchbowl News, Mr. Miller’s name is listed above those of a raft of top Republican congressional leaders. More

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      Republicans Denounce Inflation, but Few Economists Expect Their Plans to Help

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      WASHINGTON — Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture the House and the Senate this fall, hammering Democrats on President Biden’s economic policies, which they say have fueled the fastest price gains in 40 years.Republican candidates have centered their economic agenda on promises to help Americans cope with everyday price increases and to increase growth. They have pledged to reduce government spending and to make permanent parts of the 2017 Republican tax cuts that are set to expire over the next three years — including incentives for corporate investment and tax reductions for individuals.And they have vowed to repeal the corporate tax increases that Mr. Biden signed into law in August while gutting funding for the Internal Revenue Service, which was given more money to help the United States go after high-earning and corporate tax cheats.“The very fact that Republicans are poised to take back majorities in both chambers is an indictment of the policies of this administration,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, noting that “if you look at the spending that they did on a partisan basis, we certainly would be able to stop that.”But while Republicans insist they will be better stewards of the economy, few economists on either end of the ideological spectrum expect the party’s proposals to meaningfully reduce inflation in the short term. Instead, many say some of what Republicans are proposing — including tax cuts for high earners and businesses — could actually make price pressures worse by pumping more money into the economy.“It is unlikely that any of the policies proposed by Republicans would meaningfully reduce inflation in 2023, when rapidly rising prices will still be a major problem for the economy and for consumers,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.As they position themselves for the midterm elections, Republicans have also indicated that they might try to hold the nation’s borrowing limit hostage to achieve spending cuts. The debt ceiling, which caps how much the federal government can borrow, has increasingly become a fraught arena for political brinkmanship.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.Multiple top Republicans have signaled that unless Mr. Biden agrees to reduce future government spending, they will refuse to lift the borrowing cap. That would effectively bar the federal government from issuing new bonds to finance its deficit spending, potentially jeopardizing on-time payments for military salaries and safety-net benefits, and roiling bond markets.Mr. Biden has tried to push back against the Republicans and cast the election not as a referendum on his economic policies, but as a choice between Democratic policies to reduce costs on health care and electricity and Republican efforts to repeal those policies. He has accused Republicans of stoking further price increases with tax cuts that could add to the federal budget deficit, and of risking financial calamity by refusing to raise the debt limit.“We, the Democrats, are the ones that are fiscally responsible. Let’s get that straight now, OK?” Mr. Biden said during remarks on Monday to workers at the Democratic National Committee. “We’re investing in all of America, reducing everyday costs while also lowering the deficit at the same time. Republicans are fiscally reckless, pushing tax cuts for the very wealthy that aren’t paid for, and exploiting the deficit that is making inflation worse.”The challenge for Mr. Biden is that voters do not seem to be demanding details from Republicans and are instead putting their trust in them to turn around an economy that voters believe is headed in the wrong direction. Polls suggest Americans trust Republicans by a wide margin to handle inflation and other economic issues.In a nationwide deluge of campaign ads and in public remarks, Republicans have pinned much of their inflation-fighting agenda on halting a stimulus spending spree that began under President Donald J. Trump and continued under Mr. Biden, in an effort to help people and businesses survive the pandemic recession. Those efforts have largely ended, and Mr. Biden has shown no desire to pass further stimulus legislation at a time of rapid price growth.Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement that “the first step in combating inflation is to stop the historically reckless spending spree occurring under one-party Democrat rule in Washington, and that will only happen with a Republican majority in Congress.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“Republicans,” he added, “will fight to bring down the cost of living and impose fiscal restraint in Washington, and that begins by ensuring Democrats are not able to impose round after round of new inflationary spending.”Economists largely agree that the Federal Reserve is most responsible for fighting inflation, which policymakers are trying to do with rapid interest rates increases. But they say Congress could plausibly help the Fed by reducing budget deficits, in order to slow the amount of consumer spending power in the economy.One way to do that would be to significantly and quickly reduce federal spending. Such a move could result in widespread government layoffs and reduced support for low-income individuals — who would be less able to afford increasingly expensive food and other staples — and could prompt a recession. “The amount of cuts you’d have to do to move the needle on inflation are completely off the table,” said Jon Lieber, a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who is now the Eurasia Group’s managing director for the United States.Still, Mr. Lieber said that likelihood would not sully the Republican pitch to voters this fall. “Midterm votes are a referendum on the party in power,” he said, “and the party in power has responsibility for inflation.”“The very fact that Republicans are poised to take back majorities in both chambers is an indictment of the policies of this administration,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesBiden administration officials contend that the Republican plans, rather than curbing inflation, could worsen America’s fiscal situation.Administration economists estimate that two policies favored by Republicans — repealing a new minimum tax on large corporations included in the Inflation Reduction Act and extending some business tax cuts from Mr. Trump’s 2017 legislation — could collectively increase the federal budget deficit by about $90 billion next year.Such an increase could cause the Federal Reserve to raise rates even faster than it already is, further choking economic growth. Or, alternatively, it could add a small amount to the annual inflation rate — perhaps as much as 0.2 percentage points. Fully repealing the Inflation Reduction Act would also mean raising future costs for prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare, including for insulin, and potentially raising future electricity costs.“Their plan to repeal the I.R.A. and double down on the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy will worsen inflation,” said Jared Bernstein, a member of Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. “On top of that, they’re also explicit that they’re coming for Social Security and Medicare, making this a terribly destructive agenda that starts by fighting the Fed and moves on to devastating vulnerable seniors.”Conservative economists say the inflation impact of extending Mr. Trump’s tax cuts could be much smaller, because those extensions could lead businesses to invest more, people to work more and growth to increase across the economy. They also say Republicans could help relieve price pressures, particularly for electricity and gasoline, by following through on their proposals to reduce federal regulations governing new energy development.“Those things are going to be positive for investment, job creation and capacity” in the economy, said Donald Schneider, a former chief economist for Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee and the deputy head of U.S. policy at Piper Sandler.A budget proposal unveiled this year by the Republican Study Committee, a conservative policy group within the House Republican conference, included plans to permanently extend the Trump tax cuts and to impose work requirements on federal benefits programs, in hopes of reducing federal spending on the programs and increasing the number of workers in the economy.“We know for a fact that federal spending continues to keep inflation high, which is why a top priority in next year’s Republican majority will be to root out waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money,” Representative Kevin Hern, Republican of Oklahoma, said in a statement. Mr. Hern, who helped devise the budget, called it “one of many proposals to address the dire situation we’re in.”As they eye the majority, top Republicans have suggested that they will consider an economically risky strategy to potentially force Mr. Biden to agree to spending cuts, including for safety-net programs. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who is the minority leader and is seen as the clear pick to be speaker should Republicans win control of the House, suggested to Punchbowl News this month that he would be open to withholding Republican votes to raise the federal borrowing limit unless Mr. Biden and Democrats agreed to policy changes that curb spending.How to use that leverage has divided Republicans. Some, like Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who fended off a Trump-backed primary challenger, are supportive of that option.But other Republicans — particularly candidates laboring to present a more centrist platform in swing districts held by Democrats — have shied away from openly supporting cuts to safety-net programs.“Absolutely not,” Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican and former mayor running in Oregon’s Fifth Congressional District, said when asked if she would support cuts to Medicare and Social Security as a way to rein in federal spending. “Cutting those programs is not where I, as a Republican, see myself. I want to make sure that we can fill those coffers.” More

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      The Ohio Primary and the Return of the Republican Civil War

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      Why has the Ohio Republican Senate primary, which reaches its conclusion Tuesday, been so interesting (if not always edifying) to watch? In part, because it’s the first time the divides of the party’s 2016 primary campaign have risen fully to the surface again.Six years ago, under the pressure of Donald Trump’s insurgency, the G.O.P. split into three factions. First was the party establishment, trying to sustain a business-friendly and internationalist agenda and an institutionalist approach to governance. This was the faction of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, much the party’s Washington D.C. leadership — but fewer of its media organs and activists.Those groups mostly supported the more movement-driven, True Conservative faction — the faction of Ted Cruz, the Tea Party, the House Freedom Caucus, talk radio. This faction was more libertarian and combative, and richer in grassroots support — but not as rich as it thought.That’s because Trump himself forged a third faction, pulling together a mixture of populists and paleoconservatives, disaffected voters who didn’t share True Conservatism’s litmus tests and pugilists who just wanted someone to fight liberal cultural dominance, with no agenda beyond the fight itself.When Trump, astonishingly, won the presidency, you might have expected these factions to feud openly throughout his chaotic administration. But that’s not exactly what happened. Part of the establishment faction — mostly strategists and pundits — broke from the party entirely. The larger part, the Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and Nikki Haley camp, essentially ran policy in the early Trump era — passing tax reform, running the national security bureaucracy, bemoaning Trump’s tweets while setting much of his agenda.The movement faction, Tea Partyers and TrueCons, was given personnel appointments, the chance to write irrelevant budget proposals, and eventually a degree of personal power, through figures like Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. (Trump clearly just liked the Freedom Caucus guys, whatever their ideological differences.) The populists, meanwhile, won some victories on immigration policy and trade, while complaining about the “deep state” on almost every other front.But because both the TrueCons and the populists delighted in Trump’s pugilism — even unto his election-overturning efforts in 2020 — it could be hard to see where one faction ended and the next began. And this pattern often held in Trump-era Republican primary battles, in which candidates with TrueCon or establishment backgrounds recast themselves as Trumpists by endorsing his grievances and paranoias.But in the Ohio Senate primary, finally, you can see the divisions clearly once again. First you have a candidate, Matt Dolan, who is fully in the establishment lane, explicitly refusing to court Trumpian favor and trying to use the Russian invasion of Ukraine to peel Republicans away from the America First banner.You have a candidate in the TrueCon lane, the adaptable Josh Mandel, who tried to hug Trump personally but who draws his support from the old powers of movement conservatism — from the Club for Growth to talk radio’s Mark Levin to the political consultancy that runs Ted Cruz’s campaigns.And you have J.D. Vance, who is very clear about trying to be a populist in full — taking the Trump-in-2016 line on trade and immigration and foreign policy, allying himself with thinkers and funders who want a full break with the pre-Trump G.O.P.Given this division, it’s significant that Trump decided to endorse Vance, and that his most politically active scion, Donald Jr., is enthusiastic for the “Hillbilly Elegy” author. It’s also significant that Trump’s endorsement hasn’t prevented the Club for Growth from continuing to throw money against Vance, prompting blowback from Trump himself. For the first time since 2016, there’s a clear line not just between Trump and the establishment but between Trumpian populism and movement conservatism.That line will blur again once the primary is settled. But the battle for Ohio suggests things to look for in 2022 and beyond. First, expect a Trump revival to be more like his 2016 insurgent-populist campaign than his incumbent run in 2020. Second, expect populism writ large to gain some strength and substance but still remain bound to Trump’s obsessions (and appetite for constitutional crisis).Third, expect many of the movement and TrueCon figures who made their peace with Trump six years ago to be all-in for Ron DeSantis should he seem remotely viable. Fourth, expect the remains of the establishment to divide over whether to rally around a candidate of anti-Trump principle — from Liz Cheney to certain incarnations of Mike Pence — or to make their peace with a harder-edged figure like DeSantis.Finally, expect a potential second Trump presidency to resemble the scramble for his endorsement in Ohio: the establishment left out in the cold, no Reince Priebus running the White House or McConnell setting its agenda, but just constant policy battles between movement conservatives and populists, each claiming to embody the true and only Trumpism and hoping that the boss agrees.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Biden and the Democrats Are on the Verge of … Something

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      A Secret Service agent gestures as Marine One takes off.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesGail Collins: Hey, Bret, the holiday season is almost upon us — if you presume we start off with Halloween, which is one of my favorites. Are you going to be dressing up as any famous person for parties?Bret Stephens: Well, I once went to a Halloween bash dressed as Picasso’s Blue Period — I’ll leave the details of the costume to your imagination — but that was in high school. I guess I could go as Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” assuming you showed up as Kevin McCarthy.I’m referring, of course, to the House minority leader’s latest effort to make Liz Cheney’s life as unpleasant as possible.Gail: Yeah, the House Republicans are certainly going out of their way to try to torture her. I guess they’re shocked by her desire to actually investigate the folks who tried to attack the nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6. Who’d have thought a member of their party would be so picky?Now she’s got a Trump-backed primary challenger. What do you think her prospects for political survival are at this point?Bret: My knowledge of Wyoming politics is, um, not great. But I’m guessing that Cheney’s re-election chances aren’t great, either. I think that, at best, she can lay down a marker for the future, proving that at least some Republicans refused to participate in the cult of Il Duce wannabes. Good for her, but what America really needs is another party that stands for classically liberal values like free speech, free markets and free societies.Gail: Bret, are you talking about a … third party? That would certainly give us opportunities for a lot of vigorous arguing.Bret: Well, the third party I have in mind would probably do more to split Republicans than Democrats, so maybe you might warm to it. I just want to wrest a remnant of thoughtful conservatism out of the maw of Trumpism. The alternative is that Donald Trump and his minions become the default every time Democrats stumble.Gail: People need to feel they’re voting for the best real option, not just registering their alienation. The problem with third parties is that terrible accidents can happen. Ralph Nader’s run in 2000 took the election away from Al Gore and gave it to George W. Bush. Which was not his intention, although possibly something you appreciated.Bret: Just as you no doubt appreciated Ross Perot taking a few million votes from George H.W. Bush in 1992.In the meantime, Gail, how are you feeling about the leaner Joe Biden — the one who looks like he went on the budgetary equivalent of the Jenny Craig diet by shedding about $1.6 trillion?Gail: About Bidenism-lite — you mean the new Sinema-Manchin version? I can see how Biden had to do something to get those two onboard, but the idea that Joe Manchin, servant of the coal industry, was dictating compromises on climate change, and the utterly compromised Kyrsten Sinema was torpedoing tax rate increases for corporations and the wealthy, is deeply depressing.Bret: The good news from your point of view is that the downsized plan appears to keep universal preschool education and national child care. The good news from my point of view is that it costs less and corporate taxes may not be raised. Democrats may also come to appreciate that getting rid of some of the climate provisions to force companies to move to clean energy sources may not be the worst thing, politically speaking, when energy prices are already going up, up, up.Gail: Well, politically speaking, you do have a point about the climate provisions’ chances. We’ll survive, but it’s going to leave future generations stuck with the weather that comes with global warming.Bret: There’s no good climate solution unless China and India step up. The best thing the United States can probably do right now is invest more in natural gas, which is much cleaner than coal and much more reliable than wind or solar.On the whole, I think the slimmed-down Biden package thing could be a winner all around. Here I return to my basic principle that the No. 1 priority is to keep Trump from ever returning to the White House, which first requires some legislative victories that are popular with the public.Gail: It’s a wonder what Trump has done to rational Republicans. If I’d showed you the Biden agenda 10 years ago, don’t imagine you’d have seen it as something you’d be rooting for in 2021.Bret: The things I never imagined a decade ago that I’d someday be rooting for could probably fill a book, starting with my vote for Hillary Clinton. Also didn’t imagine I’d be agreeing with a dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor while worrying about a Supreme Court over-dominated by conservative justices.Gail: Do you think that Texas abortion law is going to last long? I’m hoping the Supreme Court, even in its current conservative condition, is going to be appalled by the part that has the general public doing the enforcement. Via do-it-yourself lawsuits against the abortion providers and anyone who helps them, down to drivers who bring the patients to clinics.I hear this kind of thing is a new conservative trend. Care to explain?Bret: There are two abortion laws at issue here. There’s the case out of Texas, regarding Senate Bill 8, which bans virtually all abortions after six weeks or so and delegates enforcement to private citizens rather than state officials. The bill was written that way because it was an attempt to get around judicial review, which typically requires a state official to be a defendant.Gail: I keep envisioning folks running into family planning clinics screaming “citizen’s arrest!”Bret: The court made a bad mistake by failing twice to enjoin the Texas law. But I’m betting it will still overturn it because the alternative is a license to vigilantes everywhere to deny people their constitutional rights, which could also include “conservative” rights like the right to bear arms — in a blue state.But then there’s another abortion case out of Mississippi, based on a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks. That’s a more clear challenge to Roe v. Wade, and it’s the one we should be really thinking about.Gail: You know, Texas politicians are great at doing spectacularly awful things that make headlines. But meanwhile, Mississippi always seems to be able to be much worse without anybody noticing.Bret: The conservatives on the court will do themselves and their cause irreparable harm if they uphold the Mississippi law and overturn Roe. There will be a renewed push to pack the court with new justices. It will turn access to abortion into a real force for Democrats in purple states and help them in the midterms. It will probably push Stephen Breyer to retire now to ensure he can be succeeded by a liberal justice. It will do a lot to help the Democratic ticket in 2024. And it will push Congress to seek legislative means to curb the court’s authority.Overturning Roe might wind up being conservatism’s biggest Pyrrhic victory since Richard Nixon’s re-election.Gail: Hey, we’ve been agreeing for a while now. Let’s get back to Biden. How did you like his town hall the other night?Bret: I felt like I was holding my breath half the time, hoping he’d be able to complete his sentences. Most of the time he did. But some of the lapses — like declaring that it was U.S. policy to come to Taiwan’s defense in case of attack, when it isn’t — were disturbing because they’re potentially so consequential.Gail: He did seem a bit lost toward the beginning, standing there with his fists clenched — he looked as if he was holding invisible ski poles. And he’s never going to be a wowser as a public speaker.But for the most part his answers all made sense, he was personable with the crowd, and, given the crazy scene he’s dealing with in Washington, I thought overall he made a good impression.Bret: The line that I keep hearing from people who have known Biden over the years is that he’s “lost a step.” The same could probably have been said about Ronald Reagan in his second term, and he still managed to have real successes, like comprehensive immigration reform, a major tax reform, better ties with the Soviet Union and the “Tear Down This Wall” speech in 1987, just two years before the Berlin Wall fell.Biden’s performance is still much preferable to Trump’s, who kept his step but lost his mind. Even so, it worries me. Voters notice, even if much of the press is too polite to mention it.Gail: Reagan’s second term was really scary. If Biden runs again, we’ll all have good reason to debate whether he’s too age-limited. But right now, he seems to be well in control, even if you don’t like all his policy choices.Love your Trump line, by the way.Bret: Thank you. And that reminds me: Please be sure to read The Times’s Book Review section celebrating its 125 birthday. My favorite feature is a sampling of letters to the editor, including one reader’s criticism of Henry James’s prose: “By bad,” the reader wrote, “I mean unnatural, impossible, overdrawn as to the characters, and written in a style which is positively irritating.”Gives me hope, Gail.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      I’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s Hypocrisy

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyI’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s HypocrisyTo make his case for the filibuster, he has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate.Opinion ColumnistJan. 29, 2021Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOn Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, now the Senate minority leader, spoke in defense of the legislative filibuster.“When it comes to lawmaking, the framers’ vision and our history are clear. The Senate exists to require deliberation and cooperation,” McConnell declared. “James Madison said the Senate’s job was to provide a ‘complicated check’ against ‘improper acts of legislation.’ We ensure that laws earn enough buy-in to receive the lasting consent of the governed. We stop bad ideas, improve good ideas and keep laws from swinging wildly with every election.”He went on: “More than any other feature, it is the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to end debate on legislation that achieves this.”It’s hard to take any of this seriously. None of McConnell’s stated concern for the “lasting consent of the governed” was on display when Senate Republicans, under his leadership, tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act by majority vote. Nor was there any interest in “deliberation and cooperation” when Republicans wanted a new round of corporate and upper-income tax cuts.If anything, the filibuster stymies that deliberation and cooperation by destroying the will to legislate at all. It makes bipartisanship less likely by erasing any incentive to build novel coalitions for particular issues. If, under the filibuster, there’s no difference between 51 votes for immigration reform and 56 votes (or even 59), then what’s the point of even trying? Why reach out to the other side if there’s almost no way you’ll reach the threshold to take action? And on the other side, why tinker with legislation if you know it’s not going to pass? When there’s no reason to do otherwise, why not act as a rigid, unyielding partisan?It’s obvious that McConnell’s commitment to the filibuster is instrumental. The filibuster on executive branch nominations of appointees and federal judges was sacred — he condemned the Democrats’ use of the “nuclear option” to get rid of it in 2013 — until President Trump needed Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and then it was bye-bye to the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees that McConnell’s predecessor as Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, had left intact. If the reconciliation process didn’t exist, and Republicans needed 60 votes for upper-income tax cuts, there’s almost no doubt McConnell would have killed the legislative filibuster in 2017, for the sake of his party’s signature priority.I’m not actually that interested in McConnell’s hypocrisy. I’m interested in his history. To make his case for the indispensable importance of the legislative filibuster, McConnell has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate. He has to create a new narrative to serve his current interests.The truth is that the filibuster was an accident; an extra-constitutional innovation that lay dormant for a generation after its unintentional creation during the Jefferson administration. For most of the Senate’s history after the Civil War, filibusters were rare, deployed as the Southern weapon of choice against civil rights legislation, and an occasional tool of partisan obstruction.Far from necessary, the filibuster is extraneous. Everything it is said to encourage — debate, deliberation, consensus building — is already accomplished by the structure of the chamber itself, insofar as it happens at all.In the form it takes today, the filibuster doesn’t make the Senate work the way the framers intended. Instead, it makes the Senate a nearly insurmountable obstacle to most legislative business. And that, in turn, has made Congress inert and dysfunctional to the point of disrupting the constitutional balance of power. Legislation that deserves a debate never reaches the floor; coalitions that could form never get off the ground.In quoting Madison, McConnell frames the filibuster as part of our constitutional inheritance. It is not. The filibuster isn’t in the Constitution. The Senate, like the House of Representatives, was meant to run on majority rule.Remember, the framers had direct experience with supermajority government. Under the Articles of Confederation, each state had equal representation and it took a two-thirds vote of the states for Congress to exercise its enumerated powers. Without the consent of nine states (out of 13), Congress could not enter treaties, appropriate funds or borrow money. And the bar to amendment, unanimity, was even higher. The articles were such a disaster that, rather than try to amend them, a group of influential elites decided to scrap them altogether.For a taste of this frustration, read Alexander Hamilton in Federalist no. 22, which contains a fierce condemnation of supermajority rule as it was under the articles:The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching toward it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.Hamilton is especially angry with the effect of the supermajority requirement on governance.In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.Delegates to the constitutional convention considered and rejected supermajority requirements for navigation acts (concerning ships and shipping), regulation of interstate commerce and the raising of armies. Majorities would have the final say everywhere except for treaties, amendments and conviction in an impeachment trial.To make the Senate slow-moving and deliberative, the framers would not raise barriers to action so much as they would insulate the body from short-term democratic accountability. That meant indirect election by state legislatures, staggered terms of six years and a small membership of two senators per state. And at ratification, that is where the Senate stood: a self-consciously aristocratic body meant to check the House of Representatives and oversee the executive branch, confirming its appointments and ratifying its foreign agreements.The filibuster doesn’t enter the picture until years later, as an accident of parliamentary bookkeeping. In 1806, on the advice of Vice President Aaron Burr (who thought it redundant), the Senate dropped the “previous question” — a motion to end debate and bring an item up for immediate vote — from its rules. Without a motion to call the previous question, however, an individual senator could, in theory, hold the floor indefinitely.It took 31 years for someone to actually do it. The first known filibuster took place in 1837, when several Whig senators tried unsuccessfully to block a Democratic bill to reverse an 1834 censure of President Andrew Jackson and expunge it from the congressional record. Even then, the filibuster was not widely used until the second half of the 19th century, as the parties, and thus the Senate, grew more polarized along party lines.The filibuster as we understand it developed in the 20th century. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called on Senate Democrats to reform the filibuster as a war measure after Republicans successfully filibustered a bill to arm merchant ships. Democrats obliged and created a “cloture” rule to end debate with a two-thirds vote of the chamber. In 1975, the Senate reduced that threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths, or 60 votes in a 100-member body.Throughout this time, filibusters were uncommon. It was perfectly possible for the Senate to debate, deliberate and come to consensus without the supermajority requirement McConnell and the Republican caucus have imposed on virtually all legislation since 2009.The point of comparison for the Senate as McConnell has shaped it is the middle of the 20th century, when a conservative coalition of Republicans and Dixiecrats made the chamber a graveyard of liberal legislation and social reform. Consensus didn’t matter. Power did. And it wasn’t until liberals wrested power from this coalition — in the House as well as the Senate — that they could take the initiative and begin work on an otherwise popular agenda.There is no question the Senate is supposed to be slow, even sluggish. But it’s not supposed to be an endless bottleneck. The framers wanted stability in government, not stagnation. What we have now, with the filibuster intact, is a Senate that can barely move.This isn’t just a problem for President Biden and the Democratic Party; it’s a problem for the entire constitutional order. Our system is built around Congress; Congress makes laws, Congress holds the purse strings, Congress hands out mandates, Congress checks the president and makes sure the judiciary stays in its lane.When Congress doesn’t act, other actors take up the slack. The story of our democracy these last 10 years is, in part, the story of how a listless, sclerotic Senate broke Congress and pushed the other branches to govern in its stead, with the president and the courts making as much policy as they can without congressional input, with all the capriciousness, whiplash and uncertainty that can come from that.If you don’t like presidents governing through executive order, then you should want an active, energetic Congress that embraces its constitutional mandate to rule over the whole country and direct its government. If you want that, you should oppose the filibuster.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More