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      Democratic leaders want House votes on Biden domestic agenda by Tuesday

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      Biden administrationDemocratic leaders want House votes on Biden domestic agenda by TuesdayAnonymous sources outline ambitious timetable for spending plan so far stymied by centrist senators Associated Press in WashingtonSat 30 Oct 2021 16.01 EDTDemocratic leaders are hoping for House votes as soon as Tuesday on the two pillars of Joe Biden’s domestic spending agenda, two Democrats said Saturday, as the party mounted its latest push to get the long-delayed legislation through Congress.Joe Manchin single-handedly denied US families paid leave. That’s just cruel | Jill FilipovicRead moreTop Democrats would like a final House-Senate compromise on Biden’s now $1.75tn, 10-year social and environment plan to be written by Sunday, the Democrats said.Talks among White House, House and Senate officials were being held over the weekend, said the Democrats, who described the plans on condition of anonymity.An accord could clear the way for House passage of that bill and a separate $1tn measure funding road, rail and other infrastructure projects, the Democrats said.It remains unclear whether the ambitious timetable can be met. To clear the Senate, any agreement will need the backing of centrist Democrats Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona.The two senators have forced Biden to retreat from his plan for a $3.5tn social and environment bill and to remove some initiatives from the measure.Republican opposition to the social and environmental bill is unanimous. Democrats hold the House and Senate but in the latter are 10 votes short of the necessary super-majority to pass legislation.They must therefore use reconciliation, a process for budgetary measures which allows for a simple majority. As the Senate is split 50-50 and controlled via the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris, Manchin and Sinema have a tremendous amount of power.The Senate approved the infrastructure bill in August on a bipartisan vote. House progressives have since sidetracked that bill, in an effort to pressure moderates to back the larger social and environment bill.TopicsBiden administrationJoe BidenUS domestic policyUS politicsDemocratsJoe ManchinUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Senate’s 50-50 split lets Manchin and Sinema revel in outsize influence

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      DemocratsSenate’s 50-50 split lets Manchin and Sinema revel in outsize influence Joe Biden, whose Build Back Better bill has been slashed by the two holdouts, said with ‘50 Democrats, every one is a president’David Smith in Washington@smithinamericaFri 29 Oct 2021 14.46 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 Oct 2021 15.11 EDTJoe Biden recently summed up his problems getting things done.In an America where the US Senate is split 50-50, then effectively any single senator can hold a veto over the president’s entire agenda. “Look,” laughed Biden at a CNN town hall, “you have 50 Democrats, every one is a president. Every single one. So, you got to work things out.”Joe Manchin single-handedly denied US families paid leave. That’s just cruel | Jill FilipovicRead moreIt explains why the most powerful man in the world is currently struggling to get his way in Washington – and why two members of his own party, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, are standing in his way.Such is the distribution of power that American presidents can only impose their will up to a point if Congress refuses to yield. While the White House can do much with executive orders and actions, major legislation must gain a majority of votes in the House of Representatives and Senate.Democrats do currently control both chambers – but only just. The Senate is evenly divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, meaning that Vice-President Kamala Harris must cast the tie-breaking vote. That means all 50 Democratic senators must be on board in the face of united Republican opposition – an increasingly safe (and bleak) assumption in polarised era.By contrast, President Franklin Roosevelt’s Democrats reached 59 seats in the then 96-member Senate, while President Lyndon Johnson’s Democrats had 68 in what by then was a 100-seat chamber. Biden is trying to match the scale of both men’s ambition with no room for error.This is why his agenda – huge investments in infrastructure and expanding the social safety net – depends on the blessing of Manchin and Sinema in what might seem to the watching world as a case of the tail wagging the dog.Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont defeated by Biden in last year’s Democratic primary, tweeted earlier this month: “2 senators cannot be allowed to defeat what 48 senators and 210 House members want.”But the cold reality is that, after months of painful wrangling and concessions, Manchin and Sinema have almost single-handedly narrowed the scale and scope of Biden’s grand vision.This week it emerged that Build Back Better plan would be halved from $3.5tn to $1.75tn, axing plans for paid family leave, lower prescription drug pricing and free community college. Sanders’s dream of including dental and vision care also failed to make the cut.Biden insists that the framework still represents the biggest ever investment in climate change and the greatest improvement to the nation’s healthcare system in more than a decade.He said at the White House on Friday: “No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on. I’ve long said compromise and consensus are the only way to get big things done in a democracy, important things for the country.”But what makes it especially galling for many is that opinion polls show the eliminated measures are highly popular. Manchin and Sinema have ensured that the US is destined to remain one of seven countries – along with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga – without paid leave for new mothers, according to UCLA’s World Policy Analysis Center.Biden met late on Tuesday evening with both senators at the White House. Countless newspaper columns and hours of airtime have been expended trying to understand the motives of the two holdouts, who can effectively decide whether Democrats keep their campaign promises – with huge implications for next year’s midterm elections.Manchin is not so mysterious. He hails from coal-rich West Virginia, a conservative state that Donald Trump won twice in a landslide, and once ran a campaign ad in which he shot a rifle at a legislative bill. He owns about $1m in shares in his son’s coal brokerage company and has raised campaign funds from oil and gas interests.Critics accuse him of putting personal and local concerns ahead of his party, the nation and the world. The USA Today newspaper wrote in an editorial: “It’s no stretch to conclude that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is risking the planet’s future to protect a dwindling pool of 14,000 coal mining jobs in his home state of West Virginia.”Sinema, however, has been described as enigmatic, sphinx-like and whimsical. In 2018 she became Arizona’s first Democratic senator for more than two decades and, despite progressive credentials and a flair for fashion statements, has taken conservative positions on several issues.She also provokes the left with stunts such as a thumbs-down gesture on the Senate floor when she voted against raising the federal minimum wage and, on Thursday, a parody of the TV comedy Ted Lasso with the Republican senator Mitt Romney. Perhaps tellingly, Sinema raised $1.1m in campaign funds in the last quarter with significant donations from the pharmaceutical and financial industries.In a divided Senate, where Republicans are consumed by Trump’s election lies, this duo holds the fate of Biden’s presidency in their hands. The haggling could go on for weeks more, granting Manchin and Sinema continued outsized influence and guaranteeing that their every move and word will be avidly scrutinised.Joe Lockhart, a former White House press secretary, tweeted: “My dream? Democrats pick up a few more Senate seats in 2022 and when Joe Manchin holds a press conference to declare what he can live with and what he can’t, nobody shows up.”TopicsDemocratsUS politicsUS SenateJoe BidenUS domestic policyUS CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The man who sued Trump for incitement: Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

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      In the aftermath of the 6 January attack on the Capitol, Donald Trump was impeached and acquitted for a second time. Jonathan Freedland talks to Congressman Eric Swalwell who talks about what a special select committee is doing to hold those deemed responsible for inciting the mob accountable

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Listen to the latest episode of Comfort Eating with Grace Dent. Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts. More

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      Exxon CEO accused of lying about climate science to congressional panel

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      Climate crimesEnvironmentExxon CEO accused of lying about climate science to congressional panelCongresswoman Carolyn Maloney likens oil company bosses’ responses to those of tobacco industry at historic hearing Supported byAbout this contentChris McGrealThu 28 Oct 2021 17.05 EDTFirst published on Thu 28 Oct 2021 16.33 EDTThe chief executive of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, was accused of lying to Congress on Thursday after he denied that the company covered up its own research about oil’s contribution to the climate crisis.For the first time, Woods and the heads of three other major petroleum companies were questioned under oath at a congressional hearing into the industry’s long campaign to discredit and deny the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating. When pressed to make specific pledges or to stop lobbying against climate initiatives, all four executives declined.Joe Manchin leads opposition to Biden’s climate bill, backed by support from oil, gas and coalRead moreThe chair of the House oversight committee, Representative Carolyn Maloney, pressed Woods about statements by his predecessor, Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, who in the 1990s said the scientific evidence for climate change was “inconclusive” and that “the case for global warming is far from air tight”. In 2002, Exxon ran advertisements in the New York Times calling climate science “unsettled”.Malone put it to Woods that Exxon’s own scientists had repeatedly warned the company about the threat from burning fossil fuels as far back as the 1970s.“There is a clear conflict between what Exxon CEO told the public and what Exxon scientists were warning privately for years,” she said.Woods denied that Raymond or Exxon misled anyone.“I do not agree that there was an inconsistency,” he said.Maloney said the response reminded her of “another hearing that we had with the tobacco industry”.“They said they did not believe that nicotine was addictive. Well, it came out that they lied. Tobacco nicotine was very addictive. And now I’m hearing from you that the science that was reported publicly, where your executives were denying climate change, we know that your scientists internally were saying that it’s a reality,” she said.“So I was hoping that you would not be like the tobacco industry was and lie about this.”The heads of the American operations of the other oil companies – Shell, Chevron and BP – were also firm in resisting pressure to admit they misrepresented climate science or deceived the public.They each said that they recognised global heating was a reality and a major challenge. But the executives did not accept that their companies had failed to take it seriously or that they were undermining attempts to cut greenhouse gases by funding trade groups pouring millions of dollars into lobbying Congress against tighter environmental laws.“We accept the scientific consensus,” said Michael Wirth, the CEO of Chevron. “Climate change is real. Any suggestion that Chevron is engaged in disinformation and to mislead the public on these complex issues is simply wrong.”But Maloney accused the oil companies of continuing the cover-up, including by hiding documents. She said she would take the unusual step of issuing subpoenas to force the firms to reveal what they knew.“We need to get to the bottom of the oil industry’s disinformation campaign and with these subpoenas we will,” she said.The oil and gas industry, which spent about $100m on political lobbying last year, was strongly backed by a number of Republicans on the committee who sought to distract by denouncing Joe Biden’s energy policies.Republicans called their own witness, Neal Crabtree, who said he lost his job as a welder within three hours of Biden being sworn in as president because the Keystone pipeline was cancelled. Crabtree was used to portray Biden as colluding with China and Russia against America’s oil industry.The highest-ranking Republican on the committee, Representative James Comer, questioned the legitimacy of the investigation. He said the committee would be better off spending its time investigating the White House’s handling of inflation, illegal immigration and the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan.In a hearing meant to focus on climate misinformation, several Republican members openly questioned the urgency of the climate crisis. Representative Clay Higgins called the hearing “a threat from within” because the American way of life was built on oil.Another Republican member said Maloney owed the oil executives an apology for intruding on their right to free speech by pressing them to make a commitment that their firms will “no longer spend any money, either directly or indirectly, to oppose efforts to reduce emissions and address climate change”.None of the executives would make a direct commitment.Maloney showed the hearing a video secretly recorded by Greenpeace earlier this year of an Exxon lobbyist describing the oil giant’s backing for a carbon tax as a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures to combat the climate crisis.“How did Exxon respond?” asked Maloney. “Did they come clean about this shocking conduct? No. Mr Woods called Mr McCoy’s comments inaccurate and then they fired him. And they are obviously lying like the tobacco executives were.”While the oil executives largely maintained a united front, Representative Ro Khanna, a leading critic of the petroleum industry on the committee, drew out testimony that showed the European companies, Shell and BP, were working to cut production while the US firms, Exxon and Chevron, intended to increase drilling in the coming years.Wirth said that his company would raise oil production while cutting carbon admissions.The hearing also questioned the leaders of two powerful lobby groups accused of acting as front organisations for big oil, the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce.Khanna noted that API was heavily funded by oil company money as it resisted the expansion of infrastructure for electric vehicles and opposed a methane fee backed by Biden, including flooding Facebook with advertisements in recent months.Khanna challenged each of the oil executives in turn to resign from API over its position on electric vehicles or to tell it to stop its opposition to a methane fee. All of them declined to do so.TopicsEnvironmentClimate crimesExxonMobilBPRoyal Dutch ShellChevronOil and gas companiesOilnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden urges Democrats to unite around ‘historic’ $1.75tn investment package

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      Joe BidenBiden urges Democrats to unite around ‘historic’ $1.75tn investment package President’s visit to Capitol Hill prompts flurry of activity as Pelosi ramps up pressure on progressives to accept Biden’s frameworkLauren Gambino in Washington@laurenegambinoThu 28 Oct 2021 15.48 EDTFirst published on Thu 28 Oct 2021 08.11 EDTJoe Biden on Thursday unveiled a “historic economic framework” that he said would make the US more competitive and resilient, touting the $1.75tn plan to expand the nation’s social safety net and confront the climate crisis as a victory for consensus and compromise even as the path forward remained uncertain.‘We’re on the path to get this done’: Pelosi pushes infrastructure vote as progressives balk – liveRead moreThe president, who delayed his departure to Europe to finalize the proposal, cast the emerging deal as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restore American leadership and show the world that democracies can still deliver in the 21st century.His remarks at the White House followed a visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday morning, where he pleaded with House Democrats to unite behind the agreement, saying that his presidency – and their political futures – depended on the passage of his domestic agenda.“I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week,” he said, according to a source familiar with his private remarks to the caucus.The visit set in motion a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill, as Democratic leaders, eager to deliver Biden a legislative victory, ramped up pressure on progressives to accept the “framework” as a done deal, paving the way for them to join moderates in passing a related $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill. With Republicans mostly aligned against the plan, Pelosi only has a handful of votes to spare.“When the president gets off that plane, we want him to have a vote of confidence from this Congress,” she told her fractious caucus on Thursday morning. “In order for us to have success, we must succeed today.”Twice during the course of the hour-long meeting, Democratic lawmakers rose to their feed and began to chant: “Vote, vote, vote.” But their enthusiasm was quickly tempered as her caucus’s most liberal members dug in.Leaving the meeting on Thursday, the Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the House Progressive Caucus, said the deal was a sign of “tremendous momentum” but that her position remained unchanged: the bills must move in tandem.“I feel a bit bamboozled because this was not what I thought was coming today,” said congresswoman Cori Bush, a progressive from Missouri. Speaking personally about working a low-wage job and struggling to afford housing and childcare, Bush said she wasn’t ready to give up on fighting for policies that would lift her constituents from similar circumstances.Putting it more bluntly, congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, said she was a “hell no” on the infrastructure bill if there was not a simultaneous vote on the larger spending plan.During a press conference, Pelosi did not commit to holding the vote on Thursday, saying only that the party was “on a path to get this all done”. Working franticly to advance the legislation, the framework was swiftly translated into a 1,684-page bill released shortly before a House rules committee hearing on the measure.“This is not the end of the process,” said congressman Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts and the chair of the committee, affirming multiple times during the hearing that the social policy package would not be ready for a vote on Thursday. “This bill will continue to be perfected.”Complicating negotiations for Democratic leaders was a lack of certainty from the key holdouts, Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Both sounded hopeful that a deal was within reach, but stopped short of offering their firm support.“After months of productive, good-faith negotiations with Biden and the White House, we have made significant progress on the proposed budget reconciliation package,” Sinema said, adding: “I look forward to getting this done.”Manchin also did not commit to supporting the legislation he played a significant role in shaping. Asked whether he would vote for the plan, he said only that its fate was presently “in the hands of the House”.After months of prolonged negotiations, the proposed framework is far smaller in size and scope than the $3.5tn package Biden initially envisioned. Even so, the president claimed a pre-emptive legislative achievement on par with those enacted by Franklin D Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.“Any single element of this framework would be viewed as a fundamental change in America. Taken together they’re truly consequential,” Biden said during remarks from the East Room at the White House, pointing to new spending on childcare and climate mitigation.“If we make these investments, we will own the future,” he added.The package would make substantial new investments in childcare and caregiving as well as transitioning the US economy away from fossil fuels. According to the White House, the framework would put the US on track to meet the president’s pledge to slash planet-warming emissions by 2030.Among the other provisions in the bill are free preschool for every three- and four-year-old, expanded health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and what the White House is calling the largest “effort to combat climate change in American history”.Stripped from the package were plans to provide 12 weeks of federal paid family leave and two years of free community college; ambitious climate initiatives and efforts to lower prescription drug prices. A proposal to expand Medicare to cover vision, dental and hearing was pared back to just hearing.Democrats spent the last several weeks haggling over plans to pay for their agenda, amid opposition from both Manchin and Sinema to various revenue-raising proposals. On Wednesday, a novel plan to tax billionaires’ assets was tossed aside after Manchin said the plan carried “the connotation that we’re targeting different people”.To offset their spending, Democrats said they would raise an estimated $2tn by increasing taxes on corporations and the highest earning Americans, and by rolling back some of the Trump administration’s tax cuts passed in 2017. It honors Biden’s campaign pledge that he would not raise taxes on Americans earning less than $400,000 a year, according to the White House.After weeks of frenetic negotiations, Democrats were scrambling to cobble together a deal that the president could tout when he travels to Rome, the Vatican, and then to the United Nations climate conference, known as Cop26, in Glasgow, Scotland, where he hopes to point to the accord as evidence of the US’s commitment to confronting the climate crisis.“We are at an inflection point,” Biden told House lawmakers. “The rest of the world wonders whether we can function.”Internal disputes over the bill delayed its passage for weeks, as Democrats blew past self-imposed deadlines in an effort to find a compromise that could satisfy the broad ideological expanse of their party.The result is a bill that reflected the limits of their governing coalition, Biden said, indicating that this was the best deal Democrats could hope to achieve with paper-thin majorities and unified Republican opposition.“No one got everything they wanted, including me,” he said. “But that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on.”The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the powerful budget committee, called the framework a “major step forward” but warned that there were also “major gaps” in the legislation. He cited the lack of paid family and medical leave for workers and the failure to expand Medicare benefits to include dental and vision as well as herding, a major priority for the senator.Without all 50 senators, the legislation will not pass.TopicsJoe BidenUS CongressUS politicsDemocratsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

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      $555bn in climate action but no new tax on billionaires: what’s in Biden’s plan?

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      Joe Biden$555bn in climate action but no new tax on billionaires: what’s in Biden’s plan?President’s $1.75tn spending framework includes investments in childcare and healthcare, but 12 weeks of paid family leave is out Lauren ArataniThu 28 Oct 2021 12.15 EDTLast modified on Thu 28 Oct 2021 12.39 EDTJoe Biden on Thursday released the framework of a $1.75tn social and climate spending proposal after weeks of fraught negotiations with congressional Democrats.Biden makes $1.75tn pitch: ‘My presidency will be determined by what happens next’ – liveRead moreThe framework includes investments in childcare, climate change mitigation and an expansion of healthcare, but it is a significantly pared-down version of the original $3.5tn agenda Biden had proposed.In a statement, the White House said the president is confident this framework of the bill would be able to pass the House and Senate, although it appears negotiations on the proposal’s specific details will continue.Here is what we know so far:What’s in the bill?The bill includes substantial investment in young children, specifically funding for childcare and early childhood education. Under the proposal, most American families will save more than half of their spending on childcare, with bolstered benefits to working and low-income parents. It also includes universal pre-school for children aged three and four.A hallmark of the proposal’s climate mitigation plan is $555bn to reduce climate pollution and invest in clean energy. The proposal includes consumer rebates for Americans who invest in renewable energy, for example installing rooftop solar panels or buying an electric vehicle.The bill also includes incentives to expand renewable energy in the domestic supply chain, an accelerator program that will fund sustainability projects and funding for restoration and conservation efforts.The framework includes some provisions to bolster healthcare, including reducing healthcare premiums and tax credits to people who have been locked out of Medicaid because their state refused to expand Medicaid access. It will also include investments in affordable housing and an extension of the child tax credit.What was taken out?A few provisions that some Democrats were heavily advocating for were left out of the framework.Most notably, the proposal does not include 12 weeks of paid family leave. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia was the primary holdout for the provision. Manchin has indicated that he believes a reconciliation bill – which would require only the support of Democrats in the Senate – is “not the place” for “a major policy”.Significant expansions to healthcare were cut out of the framework, including provisions to have Medicaid cover dental and vision costs, a plan to expand Medicaid to Americans in states that have refused to expand it themselves under the Affordable Care Act, and a proposal to empower Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.Biden’s plan for free tuition at community colleges was also left out.The framework notably does not include the “billionaire tax” that was floated by some Democrats on Wednesday before it was swiftly killed by centrist holdouts.The billionaire tax would have seen a complete shift in the way Americans worth more than $1bn would pay taxes, targeting the billions of dollars in shares they own in their companies. Hours after the proposal was unveiled, Manchin said he would not support such a provision.How are Democrats planning to pay for it?Biden estimates the framework will cost about $1.75tn, and the White House says the bill will be funded “by asking more from the very largest corporations and the wealthiest Americans”.A central provision in the bill’s payment plan is shifting the corporate tax rate to 15% for corporations with more than $1bn in profits. While the current corporate tax rate is 21%, Democrats have agreed that loopholes allowed corporations to report lower profits to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) while boasting lofty profits to shareholders. The next tax rate will apply to the profit that is reported to shareholders.The bill also includes a surtax on the 0.02% wealthiest Americans and investments in IRS auditing enforcements.What’s next?The framework released by Biden on Thursday represents a broad outline of what will end up in the final bill. Congressional Democrats will need to get to work at drafting the actual legislation if everyone, particularly the party’s most progressive and conservative members, can agree on the basic framework. When that will happen will depend on how quickly everyone says they are on board.TopicsJoe BidenUS domestic policyUS CongressUS politicsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More