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      Democrats’ tax plan to pay for Biden agenda would affect 700 of America’s super-rich

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      US SenateDemocrats’ tax plan to pay for Biden agenda would affect 700 of America’s super-richProposed tax on wealthiest people in the US would include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Charles Koch Lauren Aratani and agenciesWed 27 Oct 2021 15.05 EDTFirst published on Wed 27 Oct 2021 08.13 EDTSenate Democrats on Wednesday unveiled a new billionaires tax proposal, an entirely new entry in the tax code, designed to help pay for Joe Biden’s sweeping domestic policy package and edge his party closer to an overall agreement on a shrunken version of the administration’s $3.5tn flagship legislation.‘If we had a deal we would tell you’: disagreements rage over Biden agenda despite White House assurances – liveRead moreThe proposed tax would affect those with more than $1bn in assets or incomes of more than $100m a year, and it could begin to shore up the ambitious social services and climate plan Biden is racing to finish before departing this week for the global climate summit, Cop26, in Scotland.Democrats behind the proposal say that about 700 of America’s super-rich taxpayers would be affected by the new tax proposal.The wealthiest people in the US include household names such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who is worth almost a quarter of a trillion dollars. Also included are Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, investor Warren Buffett, the Walton family members behind Walmart, and the industrialist and libertarian activist Charles Koch.Reports show that the wealthiest Americans became even richer during the pandemic, with the 400 richest seeing a 40% rise in their wealth as the pandemic shuttered large parts of the US economy.“The Billionaires Income Tax would ensure billionaires pay tax every year, just like working Americans,” said the Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the chairman of the Senate finance committee who authored the new billionaire tax proposal. “No working person in America thinks it’s right that they pay their taxes and billionaires don’t.”However, the proposal drew doubts and criticisms from Republicans and some Democrats, including Joe Manchin, a centrist who has been central to efforts to slim down the reconciliation bill.Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, the West Virginia senator said wealthy Americans should pay a “patriotic tax” of 15% to ensure that all citizens are giving something back to their country.But when it comes to the billionaire tax, Manchin said: “I don’t like it. I don’t like the connotation that we’re targeting different people.”Wyden’s House of Representatives counterpart, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, said the billionaire tax “will be very difficult because of its complexity.”Later, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked whether the administration was confident that Democrats’ plan would withstand legal scrutiny.“We’re not going to support anything we don’t think is legal,” she said. “But I will tell you the president supports the billionaire tax. He looks forward to working with Congress and Chairman Wyden to make sure the highest-income Americans pay their fair share.”At the heart of the proposal is a change in what the federal government considers income for the wealthiest individuals. Rather than just basing tax on the paycheck a billionaire receives from a company, the tax would target the unrealized gains of billionaires, which includes the billions of dollars of shares they hold in their companies.Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, for example, makes a salary of about $80,000 a year, though his Amazon stock holdings increase in value over $10bn a year.“If Mr Bezos does not sell any of his Amazon shares in a given year, the income tax ignores the $10bn gain, and effectively he is taxed like a middle-class person making $80,000 a year,” wrote Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities thinktank, in a Twitter thread explaining the Democrats’ proposal.This happens, Marr said, because the federal government does not treat gains made on stocks as income until the stock is sold. What billionaires do to get money is take out huge personal loans, using their shares as collateral. ProPublica revealed that Tesla’s Elon Musk pledged 92m shares of Tesla stock, currently worth over $1,000 a share, as collateral for personal loans.“Why do wealthy people take out these loans? A big reason is to avoid paying taxes they would have to pay if they sold some of their assets,” Marr wrote. “With this proposal, policymakers, in effect, are acknowledging that this is a glaring loophole in the income tax that needs to be closed.”Musk took a dig at the plan on Twitter, responding to a user who expressed concern that the proposal, if passed, would open the door to future tax hikes that would cover a wider range of middle-class Americans with investments.“Exactly. Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you,” tweeted Musk, who could owe as much as $50bn in taxes under the proposal.Coupled with a new 15% corporate minimum tax, the proposal would provide alternative revenue sources that Biden needs to win over one key Democrat, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who had rejected the party’s earlier idea of reversing the Trump-era tax breaks on corporations and the wealthy to raise revenue.Biden met late on Tuesday evening with Sinema and Manchin at the White House.With the US Senate split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, Biden needs every Democratic senator on board to pass the budget bill with the allowable simple majority, using the so-called reconciliation process – with Vice-President Kamala Harris the casting vote in the traditional role of president of the Senate.“No senator wants to stand up and say, ‘Gee, I think it’s just fine for billionaires to pay little or no taxes for years on end’,” said Wyden.Biden and his party are homing in on at least $1.75tn in healthcare, childcare and climate change programs, scaling back what had been outlined as a $3.5tn plan, as they try to wrap up negotiations.Taken together, the new tax on billionaires and the 15% corporate minimum tax are designed to fulfill Biden’s promise that no new taxes hit those earning less than $400,000 a year, or $450,000 for couples. Biden insists all the new spending will be fully paid for and not added to the national debt.TopicsUS SenateUS CongressDemocratsJoe BidenUS taxationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Manchin pushes for climate cuts as West Virginia battered by crisis

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      West VirginiaJoe Manchin pushes for climate cuts as West Virginia battered by crisis The conservative Democrat is busy trying to strip out many of the policies to tackle the problems his home state is facingKyle Vass in West VirginiaWed 27 Oct 2021 03.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 27 Oct 2021 03.02 EDTThe rise of Joe Manchin as a key power player for Democratic policymaking in 2021 is the result of a perfect storm for the US senator from West Virginia.Spies next door? The suburban US couple accused of espionageRead moreHis position as the Senate’s most conservative Democrat means he often has final say in what his party is able to push through, especially when it comes to Joe Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda on infrastructure, far-reaching social policies and a powerful attempt to tackle the climate crisis.A drive through West Virginia’s countryside – which is still enthusiastically Donald Trump country – reveals a patchwork of communities battered by the climate crisis and barely held together by deteriorating infrastructure. Yet Manchin – balking at a $3.5tn price tag of Biden’s reconciliation bill – is busy trying to strip out many of the policies that would try to tackle these crises that are so seriously affecting many of his fellow West Virginians.West Virginia, a landlocked state, leads the nation in the number of the infrastructure facilities – hospitals, fire stations, water treatment plants, power stations – located on land prone to severe flooding. It even beats out Louisiana and Florida. Of course, the climate crisis is seeing flood events hit record levels across the US.Beyond the inspiration for John Denver’s hit song, West Virginia’s country roads are actually a source of fear and frustration for residents. Nearly half of the roads in the state are routinely battered by severe flooding.When power outages – some of the longest and most frequent in the nation – hit the state, they are often lethal, a reality made clear when a single flood event in 2016 took out power for over half of the state’s homes and killed 23 people in 12 hours.Earlier this year, tens of thousands of people were left without power for more than two weeks in freezing temperatures when ice storms felled trees on to power lines across the state and closed roads.But, for many West Virginians the reality of flooding and infrastructure failure are more insidious than isolated events.For Jill Hess, it’s trying to make it back to Fairmont, her home town and the birthplace of Joe Manchin, every time there’s talk of a storm. For the past five years, Hess made it a priority to see to it that her mother, Sue Hess, who was surviving on oxygen concentrators, wasn’t stranded powerless and alone.“Every time it would rain or snow she would really go into panic mode.”Jill said that growing up, outages weren’t frequent. But as her mother grew older and weaker, so has the power grid.Despite spending over a billion dollars trying to prevent the grid from failing, the frequency and duration of outages have steadily increased as the temperature of the Earth has risen, causing places like West Virginia to experience increased storm activity.“I can’t tell you how many times she would say, ‘I need you to be ready and available if anything happens because we have a severe thunderstorm warning coming through.’”Jill would hop in her car to drive towards her mother, dependent on oxygen machines, in Fairmont. But with storms in West Virginia come road closures, shutting down the most direct route to any given place. Adding 15 minutes to be rerouted around a mountain felt like 15 hours to Jill knowing her mother was running out of oxygen.For Jill, there’s a cruel irony to how her mother spent her final years. Sue had been a home health nurse, traveling across the county to help people who couldn’t make it to hospital. In 1968, she traveled to nearby Farmington, the 375-person town, to take care of wounded survivors of the Farmington mine disaster. In the floods of 1985 that killed 38 people across the state, Sue had gone from house to house helping provide medical assistance and supplies to families whose livelihoods had been devastated by flooding.Now, despite having retired in a nice home less than a mile away from the same hospital at which she had completed her nursing program, Sue found herself helpless. She relied on a combination of asking her daughter to drive in and calling 911 for ambulance rides to take to her somewhere she could breathe.Before she died, Sue racked up a four-figure ambulance bill nearly every time the power went out.“They would just literally park her in the waiting room of the ER, on oxygen until it was clear that the power came on.” The average power outage in the state lasts for 11.4 hours – the second highest in the nation.The five years of needless suffering her mother was put through before she died in December comes down to infrastructure for Jill. What she finds especially frustrating is that Manchin isn’t detached from this reality – it’s the one he grew up in. Before he was a politician, the Hess family used to get Christmas cards from the Manchins.Jill has no doubt that Manchin knows exactly how hard climate change is making life for the people he grew up around.National news outlets have been quick to connect the financial dots on Manchin. Clean energy initiatives could affect his bottom line in multiple ways because that bottom line is joined at the hip to one of the biggest drivers of climate change in the world: the fossil fuel industry.Put simply, the US senator is blocking legislation that would demand better of the dirty energy companies that make up his investment portfolio and his 2022 election cycle contributors list. And, he’s doing so to the environmental, social and economic detriment of his state.According to a report by the West Virginia Climate Alliance, efforts at addressing climate change such as the Green New Deal, which Manchin has opposed, would create 10m jobs across the nation and introduce regulations that could clean West Virginia’s notoriously polluted waterways – a byproduct of the state’s reliance on coal.Manchin’s own coal company, which he formed before assuming public office, has earned him $5.2m in dividends over the past 10 years. Manchin also has received more money from oil and gas companies than any other senator in next year’s election.As Manchin has gotten richer, his state has gotten warmer. The decrease in cold snaps through the year could, according to the Climate Alliance report, bring about a proliferation of invasive plant species and a significant increase in ticks which transmit Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.But, putting personal profits over his own party and its environmental initiatives is hardly new for Manchin. In fact, it’s a fundamental part of the story behind his rise to power.Before he was the single greatest source of frustration for Democrats in America, he showed West Virginia he would rather work with Republicans against his own party than support anything that resembled environmentalism.In 1996, Charlotte Pritt beat Manchin in the Democratic primary for governor – the only person, to this day, to hand him a defeat in an election. But Pritt ran as an environmentalist, urging West Virginia to develop industries that weren’t centered on polluting the earth and creating deplorable working conditions.Shortly after losing to Pritt, Manchin sent 900 letters to top Democrats around the state saying he wouldn’t support Pritt because she wasn’t “interested in the concerns of moderate and conservative Democrats”. Instead, Manchin’s letter added he would be supporting the Republican candidate, Cecil Underwood. Underwood won.But, two decades later, economists and climate scientists have sided with Pritt, not Manchin, on what’s best for the state.A 2019 report from the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy emphasized the dangers of the state continuing to depend on its “rich non-renewable depleting natural resources”, because it made terrible financial sense. Failures to diversify the economy, the author wrote, only perpetuates the boom and bust economies that have plagued the state and put it on a “collision course with efforts to combat climate change.”Nicolas Zégre, a hydrologist at West Virginia University, agrees that there is a false dichotomy where economic progress is wrongly pitted against combating climate change. Zégre, who researches flood risk vulnerability in West Virginia, said in fact it’s the opposite: the state and its already struggling economy can’t afford to continue to be battered by climate change.Pelosi ‘very confident’ Democrats will reach deal to salvage Biden agendaRead more“What are our elected representatives doing to protect West Virginians? The answer is very little.”For Zégre, the way forward for Manchin and anyone claiming to represent the interest of West Virginians is to invest in a sustainable and clean version of what this state could be, adding “none of that is going to happen until our decision makers, first of all, acknowledge that climate change is happening”.One example of how Zégre sees the state positioning itself for both economic diversification and a shift towards alleviating climate change is by cleaning up its waterways – 70% of which are too dirty to “support natural biological function”.A shift towards clean water, according to Zégre, would create a pathway for West Virginia to provision even more water than it does for surrounding states, a practice that’s only going to increase in value as climate change causes unprecedented droughts.Zégre urges West Virginia’s politicians, especially Manchin, to realize how vulnerable their state is to the reality of climate change.“We have so much opportunity, yet many of our leaders look backwards for a model of what the future should be.”TopicsWest VirginiaClimate crisisDemocratsUS CongressUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Pelosi ‘very confident’ Democrats will reach deal to salvage Biden agenda

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      Joe BidenPelosi ‘very confident’ Democrats will reach deal to salvage Biden agendaDemocratic infighting has threatened to upend Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda less than a year after taking office Richard Luscombe@richluscSun 24 Oct 2021 15.44 EDTLast modified on Sun 24 Oct 2021 15.45 EDTHouse speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed confidence on Sunday that a deal between Democrats to salvage Joe Biden’s ambitious social agenda was “pretty much there”, paving the way for a possible vote in Congress later this week.Her upbeat words came as the president was meeting in Delaware with the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic holdout Joe Manchin to put the finishing touches on what has become a scaled-back package central to Biden’s Build Back Better initiative.Manchin, of West Virginia, was one of two moderate Senate Democrats, along with Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, resisting the original $3.5tn cost of the social spending bill. Manchin had indicated he would be more comfortable with something closer to $1.5tn, and raised objections over Biden’s flagship clean power plan (CPP) that would have imposed emission controls on power companies.“We will have something that will meet the president’s goals, I feel very confident about that,” Pelosi said on CNN’s State of the Union.“We’re almost certain [we have a deal], it’s just the language of it. It will not offend, shall we say, the concern that Senator Manchin had about the CPP. The point is to reach your goals, and the president’s goals of reaching the emissions, the pollution and all the rest … there are other ways to reach the goal.”The Democratic infighting had threatened to upend Biden’s domestic agenda less than a year after taking office. The votes of both Manchin and Sinema, who has insisted she would oppose any effort to reverse Trump-era tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations, are crucial in a divided 50-50 Senate.Adding to the administration’s frustration has been the blocking by Democratic House progressives of a parallel $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill until the Senate approves the massive social spending package touted by those on the left of the party, particularly the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.Pelosi, who had set a 31 October deadline for the infrastructure bill to pass, did not disclose what elements of the original social safety net bill would have to be compromised or dropped to meet the lower price tag acceptable to the moderates. But she indicated that welfare components such as expanded healthcare and the child tax credit would likely survive.Possibly on the chopping block, however, were long-held Democratic goals such as paid family leave and expanding Medicare for hearing, vision and dental. Pressed on whether those elements would survive, Pelosi was non-committal, using phrases including: “That’s our hope,” and “That’s what we’re fighting for.”“Right now Senate leader Schumer, Senator Manchin and the president are having the meeting on some of the particulars that need to be finalized, and I’m optimistic that we can do that,” Pelosi said. “One basket was climate, the jobs bill, a bill for the children, for the future of healthcare, strengthening the affordable care act, expanding Medicaid and Medicare.”Pelosi also insisted that the administration had “an array” of alternative options to “probably more than pay for the plan” even if Sinema’s opposition ruled out a reversal of the Trump tax cuts.“We had the rescue package at $1.9tn, we have the infrastructure bill over a trillion dollars, [so] that’s around $3tn. And we’ll have this in at $2tn,” she said. “Nobody has done anything that remarkable. So while it isn’t everything that was put out originally, it takes us down a path where we can continue investments.”Pelosi was asked if she supported the prosecution and jailing of those who resisted congressional subpoenas to testify before the House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection. Last week the House held Trump ally and former adviser Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for ignoring a subpoena.“I do,” she said. “People said well, this hasn’t happened before, [but] we haven’t had an insurrection incited by the president of the United States and [with] one of his toadies having advanced knowledge.“It’s important for us to find the truth about what happened on 6 January and the assault on the constitution, our congress and our capital, but it’s also important in terms of the separation of power and the checks and balances of the constitution.”TopicsJoe BidenNancy PelosiUS politicsUS CongressDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Finally doing right’: Democrats’ big bill offers Sanders chance to deliver

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      Bernie Sanders‘Finally doing right’: Democrats’ big bill offers Sanders chance to deliver The progressive senator is close to realizing many of his policy goals – but can he unite the party behind Biden’s plan?Lauren Gambino in Washington@laurenegambinoSun 24 Oct 2021 03.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 24 Oct 2021 03.01 EDTWhen making the case for progressive policy, the veteran leftwing senator Bernie Sanders often cites public opinion. “Poll after poll,” he’ll say, before running through a list of ambitious initiatives that the “vast majority of the American people want”, from lowering the cost of prescription drug prices to expanding Medicare, establishing paid family and medical leave and confronting the climate crisis.Versions of these programs – initiatives once considered nothing more than liberal pipe dreams – are at the heart of Joe Biden’s sprawling domestic policy bill pending before Congress. But despite the popularity of the specific proposals, the legislation has a polling problem. Poll after poll shows that most Americans have no idea what’s actually in the bill.Furious, Sanders livestreamed a panel discussion on Wednesday titled What’s in the Damn Bill?. To the thousands of viewers who joined the broadcast, Sanders said the Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar spending package was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild the American economy in fairer and more equitable way.“This is not radical stuff,” he said. “This is finally doing right by the American working class and having the courage to stand up to big-money interests.”After decades of furious speech-making from the political fringe, followed by two popular but ultimately unsuccessful bids for the presidency, the democratic socialist from Vermont is – against all the odds – the closest he’s ever been to delivering on the policy ideas that have defined his political career.Whether Sanders succeeds in his quest for a legislative legacy could determine the fate of Democrats in next year’s midterm elections – and of Biden’s presidency.“He has the most power and influence that he’s had at any point in his political career,” said Faiz Shakir, his chief political adviser. “He’s at the apex here. But as he’s acquired more power, so, too, has he acquired more responsibility.”Shakir said Sanders’ approach had changed because the environment had changed. Whereas before Sanders was pushing against the system, now he is at the center of the policy decisions, working within a Democratic party that has embraced much of his expansive platform.As chair of the powerful Senate budget committee and a member of the Democratic leadership, Sanders has been deeply involved in negotiations over the size and scope of the spending package. If and when an agreement is reached, he will play a lead role in drafting the legislation, which Democrats plan to steer through Congress over the unified opposition of Republicans.“In many ways he’s the author of this,” Shakir said. “And that’s one of the many reasons I think you see him rising to the occasion, rolling up his sleeves and making sure he is putting in all of his legislative efforts to get this across the finish line.”Initially Sanders proposed a $6tn budget blueprint, then settled for a framework that was nearly half that. Now he is working closely with Democrats in Congress and at the White House to reach a deal even smaller in scope that will satisfy the objections of the party’s centrists without sacrificing progressive priorities.Sanders knew his opening bid was unrealistic, given the dynamics of the Senate. But he hoped it would widen the parameters of the debate and ultimately what was possible. Progressives have repeatedly cited their willingness to accept a $3.5tn plan, and continue to negotiate downward, as proof of their commitment to dealing in good faith, compared with the centrists in their party, who they argue have not been forthcoming.As Democrats scramble to cobble together a deal, it’s the holdout senators Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, who hold effective veto power over which policies will survive and which must be dropped. Their objections have potentially imperiled plans for free community college, raising taxes on the wealthy and a climate program that would help the US meet its ambitious emissions goal.But every concession made to accommodate them moves the bill further and further from Sanders’ initial vision, leaving progressives deeply worried that Democrats will squander what they view as their best chance in decades to transform the American economy and confront the climate crisis.The California congressman Ro Khanna, who was among a group of progressives summoned to the White House for an Oval Office meeting this week, was optimistic that Democrats were close to a deal that progressives could accept, if not celebrate.“We’ve finally broken through,” he said. “And we will take the win because it establishes the principle that investments in people are needed in a democracy.”Republicans, however, view the imprimatur of a self-described socialist as a political gift.Progressives are now heavy-weights in the Democratic party | Gary GerstleRead moreUnified in their opposition to the spending bill, they have warned that the legislation is an attempt to fundamentally remake the American government in the image of a European-style social democracy while claiming the additional spending will stoke inflation and hurt economic dynamics.“This bill represents Bernie Sanders’ socialist dream,” the Republican senator John Barrasso said during a press conference, raising a 2,000-page draft of the Democrats’ spending package. “It is a nightmare for American taxpayers.”With no room for error, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Democrats. To pass, the bill will require the support of every Democrat in the Senate, a caucus that ranges the ideological spectrum from the democratic socialist Sanders to the conservative centrist Manchin.The senators have competing world views. Whereas Sanders believes the bill has the potential to be “one of the most important pieces of legislation since the New Deal”, Manchin has warned that the scale of it risks “changing our whole society to an entitlement mentality”.Sanders has publicly and privately sought to persuade Manchin and Sinema to support Biden’s agenda. It hasn’t always been diplomatic.Tensions escalated dramatically last week, when Sanders placed an op-ed in Manchin’s home state newspaper detailing how an expansion of the social safety net would help the people of West Virginia, which has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country. In a statement, Manchin fired back that “no op-ed from a self-declared independent socialist” would sway him.Behind closed doors, Manchin and Sanders continued to tangle, with the West Virginian reportedly making clear that he was comfortable passing nothing.Publicly, the senators have signaled that they are making progress. When they ran into each other outside the Capitol last week, Manchin threw his arm around Sanders and asked reporters to take a picture of them.As they returned to their cars to leave, Manchin shouted: “Never give up, Bernie.”Sanders hardly needed the encouragement.Sanders has become a ubiquitous presence on the Sunday political talkshows. He traveled to Indiana and Iowa in an effort to drum up support for the bill, intentionally visiting parts of the country that voted for Donald Trump. When he’s not selling the budget bill, he’s working to craft it, aides say.The planet is in peril. We’re building Congress’s strongest-ever climate bill | Bernie SandersRead moreSanders successfully lobbied the White House to back a plan to extend new dental, vision and hearing benefits to the tens of millions of American seniors on Medicare, a measure initially left out of the proposal. The senator’s healthcare push put him at odds with House leadership, who would prefer to permanently strengthen the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, or to expand Medicaid services to poor adults in mostly Republican-led states that refused to do so under the healthcare law.Biden said on Thursday that including all three benefits would be a “reach” but suggested a voucher program for dental coverage was possible. Though greatly pared back, it would nevertheless be a victory for Sanders, who has long sought to make Medicare the foundation for a national health insurance program, which he calls Medicare for all.As part of negotiations, Sanders has worked closely with the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, especially the chairwoman, Pramila Jayapal, the Washington congresswoman who has emerged as a leader in negotiations over the president’s agenda.In a showdown last month, House progressives threatened to derail a vote on a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill championed by centrists as a way to maintain leverage over the much larger spending bill.The Senate had already passed the public works bill, with the support of all 50 Democrats and 19 Republicans, so it fell to House progressives to, in their parlance, “hold the line”. Sanders offered his vocal support for the blockade, which Khanna, a deputy whip of the progressive caucus, said was “critical” to keeping progressives unified.On the day of the promised vote, Biden ventured to Capitol Hill to meet with the bitterly divided House Democrats. But instead of rallying support for an immediate vote, the president effectively agreed with progressives that the two pillars of his agenda were inextricably linked. The vote was delayed and the infrastructure bill remains stalled, bound up in the bigger battle over the spending package.The maneuver was hailed as a major tactical victory by progressive activists, who have long lamented the tendency of liberal lawmakers to cave to pressure from Democratic leaders during heated policy fights.But Biden’s position frustrated a number of centrist Democrats, particularly those from swing districts who had hoped the president would sign the infrastructure bill into law, allowing them to start campaigning on new funding for roads, bridges and expanded broadband.Progressives, meanwhile, argue that a failure to deliver on their campaign promises would also be politically perilous.Anna Bahr, who served as Sanders’ national deputy campaign secretary in 2020 and is the co-founder of the new consultancy firm Left Flank Strategies, said the debate over Biden’s agenda had helped elevate new progressive leaders. The effect has been a show of force by progressives that she believes will motivate voters and candidates next year.“There’s a family in Congress of like-minded people – there’s a voting bloc,” she said. “The possibility – the likelihood – of moving on some of the issues that Sanders had for so many years been the lonely voice on is absolutely inspiring for a lot of people, especially young people.”On Wednesday night, Sanders was joined by a panel of progressives to help lay out the proposals in the Democrats’ bill. It was a messaging mission, but the forum also provided an occasion to celebrate the ascendancy of the progressive movement in American politics.Introducing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders hailed the New York congresswoman as “one of the outstanding, in my view, political leaders in this country”.Beaming on screen, Ocasio-Cortez thanked him for the introduction. “That’s very kind coming from the OG leader.”TopicsBernie SandersUS politicsJoe BidenDemocratsUS CongressUS SenateUS domestic policyfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Facebook boss ‘not willing to protect public from harm’

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      The ObserverFacebookFacebook boss ‘not willing to protect public from harm’ Frances Haugen says chief executive has not shown any desire to shield users from the consequences of harmful content Dan MilmoSat 23 Oct 2021 21.02 EDTLast modified on Sun 24 Oct 2021 04.23 EDTThe Facebook whistleblower whose revelations have tipped the social media giant into crisis has launched a stinging new criticism of Mark Zuckerberg, saying he has not shown any readiness to protect the public from the harm his company is causing.Frances Haugen told the Observer that Facebook’s founder and chief executive had not displayed a desire to run the company in a way that shields the public from the consequences of harmful content.Her intervention came as pressure mounted on the near-$1tn (£730bn) business following a fresh wave of revelations based on documents leaked by Haugen, a former Facebook employee. The New York Times reported that workers had repeatedly warned that Facebook was being flooded with false claims about the 2020 presidential election result being fraudulent and believed the company should have done more to tackle it.Frances Haugen: ‘I never wanted to be a whistleblower. But lives were in danger’Read moreHaugen, who appears before MPs and peers in Westminster on Monday, said Zuckerberg, who controls the business via a majority of its voting shares, has not shown any willingness to protect the public.“Right now, Mark is unaccountable. He has all the control. He has no oversight, and he has not demonstrated that he is willing to govern the company at the level that is necessary for public safety.”She added that giving all shareholders an equal say in the running of the company would result in changes at the top. “I believe in shareholder rights and the shareholders, or shareholders minus Mark, have been asking for years for one share one vote. And the reason for that is, I am pretty sure the shareholders would choose other leadership if they had an option.”Haugen, who quit as a Facebook product manager in May, said she had leaked tens of thousand of documents to the Wall Street Journal and to Congress because she had realised that the company would not change otherwise.She said: “There are great companies that have done major cultural changes. Apple did a major cultural change; Microsoft did a major cultural change. Facebook can change too. They just have to get the will.”This weekend, a consortium of US news organisations released a fresh wave of stories based on the Haugen documents. The New York Times reported that internal research showed how, at one point after the US presidential election last year, 10% of all US views of political material on Facebook – a very high proportion for Facebook – were of posts falsely alleging that Joe Biden’s victory was fraudulent. One internal review criticised attempts to tackle Stop the Steal groups spreading claims on the platform that the election was rigged. “Enforcement was piecemeal,” said the research.The revelations have reignited concerns about Facebook’s role in the 6 January riots, in which a mob seeking to overturn the election result stormed the Capitol in Washington. The New York Times added that some of the reporting for the story was based on documents not released by Haugen.A Facebook spokesperson said: “At the heart of these stories is a premise which is false. Yes, we’re a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our commercial interests lie. The truth is we’ve invested $13bn and have over 40,000 people to do one job: keep people safe on Facebook.”Facebook’s vice-president of integrity, Guy Rosen, said the company had put in place multiple measures to protect the public during and after the election and that “responsibility for the [6 January] insurrection lies with those who broke the law during the attack and those who incited them”.It was also reported on Friday that a new Facebook whistleblower had come forward and, like Haugen, had filed a complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US financial regulator, alleging that the company declined to enforce safety rules for fear of angering Donald Trump or impacting Facebook’s growth.Haugen will testify in person on Monday to the joint committee scrutinising the draft online safety bill, which would impose a duty of care on social media companies to protect users from harmful content, and allow the communications regulator, Ofcom, to fine those who breach this. The maximum fine is 10% of global turnover, so in the case of Facebook, this could run into billions of pounds. Facebook, whose services also include Instagram and WhatsApp, has 2.8 billion daily users and generated an income last year of $86bn.As well as issuing detailed rebuttals of Haugen’s revelations, Facebook is reportedly planning a major change that would attempt to put some distance between the company and its main platform. Zuckerberg could announce a rebranding of Facebook’s corporate identity on Thursday, according to a report that said the company is keen to emphasise its future as a player in the “metaverse”, a digital world in which people interact and lead their social and professional lives virtually.Haugen said Facebook must be compelled by all regulators to be more transparent with the information at its disposal internally, as detailed in her document leaks. She said one key reform would be to set up a formal structure whereby regulators could demand reports from Facebook on any problem that they identify.“Let’s imagine there was a brand of car that was having five times as many car accidents as other cars. We wouldn’t accept that car company saying, ‘this is really hard, we are trying our best, we are sorry, we are trying to do better in the future’. We would never accept that as an answer and we are hearing that from Facebook all the time. There needs to be an avenue where we can escalate a concern and they actually have to give us a response.”TopicsFacebookThe ObserverSocial networkingMark ZuckerbergUS elections 2020US CongressUS politicsReuse this content More

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      Biden gives strongest signal he’s ready to move to end Senate filibuster

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      Joe BidenBiden gives strongest signal he’s ready to move to end Senate filibusterAfter voting rights defeat, president expresses mounting frustration over rule that allows 41 senators to block legislation Ed Pilkington@edpilkingtonFri 22 Oct 2021 09.21 EDTLast modified on Fri 22 Oct 2021 14.08 EDTJoe Biden has given the strongest indication yet that he is willing to end or whittle down the Senate filibuster as a means of overcoming Republican intransigence and moving ahead with reforms to voting rights, the debt ceiling and possibly more.Speaking in Baltimore a day after Senate Republicans yet again blocked legislation designed to secure access to the ballot box for all Americans, Biden expressed mounting frustration at the filibuster, which effectively gives the conservative minority a stranglehold over large swaths of policy.Twitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outletsRead more“We’re going to have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter the filibuster,” the president said.At a CNN town hall in Baltimore on Thursday night, Biden hedged on how far any reform would go. “That remains to be seen,” he said, “in terms of fundamentally altering it or whether or not we just end the filibuster straight up.”Asked by the moderator Anderson Cooper whether he would consider ending the filibuster on the issue of voting rights alone, Biden replied: “And maybe more.”The filibuster has emerged as the rock upon which the ship of the Biden presidency could founder. The Senate mechanism locks in minority rule by allowing just 41 senators out of the 100 who sit in the chamber to block legislation.The present Senate has a 50:50 split between Democrats and Republicans, though the Democrats hold the majority by dint of Kamala Harris, the vice-president’s, tie-breaking vote. Yet the Democratic agenda is still stymied across important areas of public policy by the filibuster, which requires Democratic whips to find 60 votes to pass legislation.On Wednesday the Republican group led by Mitch McConnell applied the filibuster once more to hold back the Freedom to Vote Act. The bill would be the most significant overhaul in US election procedures in a generation, countering the wave of voter suppression measures that have been championed by Republicans across the states this year.Progressive Democrats have been increasingly pressuring Biden to be more aggressive on the filibuster in order to secure fundamental reforms. But the president is in a tight spot given the resistance to change from within his own ranks.Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, have both said they would oppose limiting the filibuster. Given universal Republican opposition to change, it would take a unanimous vote of all 50 Democrats to push this through.Biden told the CNN town hall that entering into the hornet’s nest of the filibuster at this moment could make it harder for him to pass other pieces of signature legislation. “I lose at least three votes right now to get what I have to get done on the economic side of the equation, the foreign policy side of the equation.”The president did not stipulate which three senators he had in mind.Earlier this month the Democrats began focusing on the idea of scrapping the filibuster in the critical area of the debt ceiling. Republican opposition pushed the nation to the brink of defaulting on its debt, though McConnell backed down at the last minute.Biden told the town hall that “the idea that, for example, my Republican friends say that we’re going to default on the national debt because they’re going to filibuster that and we need 10 Republicans to support us is the most bizarre thing I ever heard.”He said that if a similar clash reoccurred, “you’ll see an awful lot of Democrats being ready to say, ‘not me. I’m not doing that again. We’re going to end the filibuster.’ But it still is difficult to end the filibuster beyond that.”TopicsJoe BidenUS SenateUS politicsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Are lobbyists trying to gut Biden’s budget? No one knows – and that’s the problem | David Litt

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      OpinionUS politicsAre lobbyists trying to gut Biden’s budget? No one knows – and that’s the problemDavid LittOur campaign finance system makes it nearly impossible to track money in politics or hold our representatives accountable Fri 22 Oct 2021 06.27 EDTLast modified on Fri 22 Oct 2021 06.32 EDTJoe Biden’s Build Back Better reconciliation bill has been stuck in limbo – and conservative Democrats are in fundraising heaven.West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who raised more than $400,000 from the oil and gas industry while the bill was being negotiated, is now poised to gut Biden’s clean-energy plan. Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema spent the summer and fall collecting checks from corporate groups and Trump donors who oppose the Biden agenda, then helped cut the size of the reconciliation package by approximately half.Biden’s budget could transform life for working women. Don’t let Manchin gut it | Moira DoneganRead morePolitical horse-trading is nothing new, and the version of Build Back Better that seems likely to pass would improve tens of millions of American lives. But there’s still something unseemly about the way this bill has been negotiated. Were the Senate’s holdouts demanding a principled compromise? Acting out of genuine concern for their constituents’ interests? Or were they trading favors for campaign cash?It’s impossible to know for certain which provisions, if any, were cut because of wealthy campaign donors. But that’s precisely the problem, and it goes far beyond one bill and two senators. Our campaign finance system – one that has existed for barely more than a decade – makes it nearly impossible to distinguish between politics-as-usual, influence peddling and outright bribery. That’s not just a threat to individual policies or pieces of legislation. It’s a threat to public trust in our system of government, and by extension, to democracy itself.For most of the last half-century, it was widely understood that democracy depends upon voters’ trust that their representatives will represent them. That’s why, in 1976, the supreme court ruled that the public interest was served not just by preventing corruption, but by preventing “the appearance of corruption”. The court’s decision made both legal and intuitive sense: if voters decide that the political process is corrupt, they’ll stop engaging with the political process, thus reducing public accountability and opening the door to more corruption.But in 2010, a new, far more conservative supreme court took a completely different view. “We now conclude,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in Citizens United, “that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” In a series of follow-on decisions, the court’s rightwing majority expanded on this idea: not that the appearance of corruption was good, but that no amount of money in politics could possibly appear corrupt.In the real world, the court’s assertion was almost immediately proven false. In a divided country, one thing Americans can agree on is that rich people and corporations have way too much political power. According to the Pew Research Center, for example, 90% of Americans think it’s important for society that wealthy donors have no more influence than other people – but just 26% of people think that is now the case. A handful of justices chose to ignore the “appearance of corruption”, but it hasn’t gone away just because a conservative supreme court closed its eyes.Fortunately, even in the Citizens United era, there are ways to reduce the political influence of corporate donors and wealthy individuals – and to restore Americans’ faith that government can work for the people.First, we can make it more difficult for lawmakers and wealthy interests to engage in outright, quid-pro-quo corruption. Just this week, a grand jury indicted Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican, for allegedly lying to federal investigators about $180,000 in illegal campaign contributions. This development was remarkable precisely because it was so rare. It’s an open secret that even the campaign finance laws that remain post-Citizens United are broken with impunity. (Two years into his presidency, Donald Trump himself tweeted that campaign finance violations “are not a crime”.) If law enforcement investigated and prosecuted corruption more aggressively, lawmakers might become more careful about crossing, or merely approaching, legal lines.Second, we can do what election law expert Rick Hasen calls “leveling up”. Rather than limiting the amount of corporate money in politics – an impossibility so long as conservatives control the court – we can give ordinary Americans more influence. So-called “democracy vouchers” could give voters tax credits for small-dollar donations to causes they believe in. We could also increase the amount of public funds available for candidates who agree not to take private donations. (Lest anyone try to paint this as some kind of socialist plot, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and George W Bush all accepted taxpayer dollars to fund their campaigns.)Finally, we can limit the influence of the other side of the influence-peddling equation: lobbying. In the Citizens United era, corporations and wealthy individuals can spend unlimited sums of money on politicians’ campaigns, then spend unlimited sums of money on lobbyists who ask those same politicians for highly specific favors. It’s hard to imagine a system better suited to erode Americans’ trust in their elected officials. But imagine a sliding-scale tax on registered lobbying, far stricter disclosure requirements on corporate political spending, or perhaps even an Office of Public Lobbying to advocate for groups well-represented in America but poorly funded on Capitol Hill.These changes won’t undo all the damage caused by conservative justices’ Citizen United ruling. But they will help stem the tide. They would give candidates without access to deep-pocketed donors a more level playing field. They would give lawmakers like Manchin and Sinema an alternative to funding their campaigns via wealthy interests – and no excuse not to take it. Most of all, they would give Americans more confidence that the legislative process, while never straightforward or without compromise, is designed to benefit all the people, and not just a privileged few.Democracy is not just under attack from insurrectionists who would commit political violence or would-be autocrats who would overturn an election. It’s under attack from those who seek to undermine its central promise – that representative government can make a positive difference in people’s lives.Ultimately, reducing the influence of corporate and megadonor money isn’t about smoothing the next reconciliation bill’s passage, or even fixing a broken campaign-finance system. It’s about bolstering the American republic as it faces its toughest test in decades.
      David Litt is an American political speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author of Thanks Obama, and Democracy in One Book or Less. He edits How Democracy Lives, a newsletter on democracy reform
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDemocratsJoe BidenUS SenateUS CongressBiden administrationcommentReuse this content More