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      Clyburn offers Manchin history lesson to clear Senate path for Biden reforms

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      Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, said on Sunday he intends to give Joe Manchin a lesson in US history as he attempts to clear a path for Joe Biden on voting rights and infrastructure.Manchin, a moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia, has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s ambitious proposals by insisting he will not vote to reform or end the Senate filibuster, which demands a super-majority for legislation to pass, to allow key measures passage through the 50-50 chamber on a simple majority basis.His stance has drawn praise from Republicans: Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, hailed Manchin as the politician “almost singlehandedly preserving the Senate”.But Democrats appear to be losing patience – and none more vociferously than Clyburn.“I’m going to remind the senator exactly why the Senate came into being,” Clyburn, from South Carolina, told CNN’s State of the Union, refreshing criticism of Manchin that has included saying he feels “insulted” by his refusal to fully embrace voting rights reform.“The Senate was not always an elective office. The moment we changed and made it an elective office [was because] the people thought a change needed to be made.“The same thing goes for the filibuster. The filibuster was put in place to extend debate and give time to bring people around to a point of view. The filibuster was never put in place to suppress voters … It was there to make sure that minorities in this country have constitutional rights and not be denied.”Clyburn has assailed Manchin for promoting a bipartisan approach to voting rights and refusing to endorse the For the People Act, a measure passed by the US House and intended to counter restrictive voting laws targeting minorities proposed by Republicans in 47 states and passed in Georgia last month.“You’re going to say it’s more important for you to protect 50 Republicans in the Senate than for you to protect your fellow Democrat’s seat in Georgia? That’s a bunch of crap,” Clyburn told Huffpost this month, referring to Senator Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election battle that supporters feel has become much harder due to the new voting laws.On Sunday Clyburn also reached into history to repeat his contention that the Georgia law is “the new Jim Crow”, a claim repeated by Biden but which Republicans say is unfair.“When we first started determining who was eligible to vote and who was not,” Clyburn said, “they were property owners. They knew that people of colour, people coming out of slavery did not own property.“…And then they went from that to having disqualifiers. And they picked those offences that were more apt to be committed by people of colour to disqualify voters.“The whole history in the south of putting together those who are eligible to vote is based upon the practices and the experiences of people based upon their race. So, I would say to anybody, ‘Come on, just look at the history … and you will know that what is taking place today is a new Jim Crow. It’s just that simple.”Despite the urging of Clyburn and others, Manchin remains steadfast in his belief bipartisanship is Biden’s best path to implementing his agenda. In a CNN interview last week, the senator said the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol “changed me”, and said he wanted to use his power as a swing vote in the 50-50 Senate “to make a difference” by working with Republicans and Democrats.“Something told me, ‘Wait a minute. Pause. Hit the pause button.’ Something’s wrong. You can’t have this many people split to where they want to go to war with each other,” he said, of watching a riot mounted by supporters of Donald Trump seeking to overturn his election defeat on the grounds it was caused by voter fraud – a lie without legal standing.Manchin said he had a good relationship with the White House and wanted to meet Warnock and Georgia’s other Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, to discuss voting rights.On Sunday, Clyburn said the riot also had “a tremendous effect” on him.“When I saw that Capitol policeman complain about how many times he was called the N-word by those people, who were insurrectionists out there, when I see [the civil rights leader] John Lewis’s photo torn to pieces and scattered on the floor, that told me everything I need to know about those insurrectionists, and I will remind anybody who reflects on 6 January to think about these issues as well,” he said.Clyburn was among the first major figures to endorse Biden last year, helping nurse him through bleak times after rejections in early primaries.The congressman has Biden’s ear and in an interview with the Guardian in December promised to keep pressure on his friend to fulfill a promise in his victory speech directed to African Americans: “They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”“I think he will,” Clyburn said. “I’m certainly going to work hard to make sure that he remembers that he said it.” More

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      National debt: critics cry hypocrisy as Republicans oppose Biden spending

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      The response was as uniform as it was predictable.When Joe Biden unveiled an audacious $1.9tn coronavirus relief package, Senator Rick Scott of Florida warned: “I think one thing the Biden administration really has to focus on is the risk of what all this debt is going to do to us.”When the president followed up with $2tn for infrastructure, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, made clear his opposition: “If it’s going to have massive tax increases and trillions more added to the national debt, it’s not likely.”Republicans are beating the drum of small government and fiscal responsibility. Critics say they are only doing so because Democrats control the purse strings. They argue that past Republican administrations have shown little regard for the spiralling national debt.The charge of hypocrisy could hamper efforts to stall or pare down Biden’s ambitions. After Donald Trump’s cavalier spending, and tax cuts for the rich, the GOP faces a battle for credibility.“Republicans spent the better part of the Obama presidency talking about ‘tax and spend liberals’ and ‘living within our means’ and balancing budgets and debt and deficits and then, as soon as they got the reins of power, all of that went out the window and they spent money like drunken sailors,” said Kurt Bardella, a former Republican aide, now a Democrat.“…They spent it on the rich, on the wealthy, on corporate interests. The hypocrisy of the Republican party when it comes to spending and deficits is just another example of how almost every facet of traditional conservatism has been abandoned during this Trump era … if Donald Trump released the same plan Joe Biden did, they would be all for it.”Republicans talk a good game on debt but their record tells a different story. Ronald Reagan, worshipped by many as the patron saint of “responsible” spending, left office having almost tripled the national debt and having cut taxes for the rich. George W Bush doubled the debt with military spending after 9/11 – and more tax cuts.In 2016, Trump promised to eliminate the debt within eight years. It was then about $20tn. By October 2020 it had reached $27tn – up almost 36% – thanks in large part to more tax cuts for the rich.This reality, combined with Biden’s plans, has stirred debate over whether the national debt actually matters. Experts disagree over how much debt is too much. Last year the debt exceeded GDP, but interest rates remain low.Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, is most concerned about the need to stimulate recovery. She told Congress: “Right now, short-term, I feel we can afford what it takes to get the economy back on its feet, to get us through the pandemic, and to relieve the burdens that it is placing on households and small businesses.”Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Bank, agrees.“We have been through an unprecedented crisis, it makes sense that we would spend heavily to get out of it and the interest costs are so low right now it makes sense to spend heavily now so that we can return to normal,” he said.The debt does need to be addressed, he said, and hopefully better economic activity will bring it down: “We still need to figure out how to pay for the retirement of the baby boomers over the longer run but that’s a longer issue.”If rates move up quickly or if financial markets grow concerned about ability to pay back the debt “that would be a big concern”, Faucher added. “But I don’t see that on the horizon. I don’t think it’s a crisis right now.”For Maya MacGuineas, president of the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the national debt is a crisis waiting to happen.“Our debt is the highest it has been relative to the economy since the second world war and it is about to be the highest it has been ever,” she said. “It’s growing faster than the economy, that’s the definition of unsustainable.”That leaves the US “dangerously vulnerable” to economic and geopolitical challenges, she added, arguing that spending is not the problem so much as how borrowing is paid for. Washington has increasingly attempted to enact an agenda that is not paid for. Biden’s infrastructure plan is an exception, said MacGuineas, with a plan to pay in part by increasing corporate taxes.But too often the politics of borrowing are “dangerously shortsighted and there is always a political justification not to deal with it because paying for your priorities is much harder than pretending they pay for themselves”.The situation has been exacerbated by polarization that has left Washington “unable to do anything hard … the hypocrisy during the Trump era, where we massively grew the debt, massively grew spending and refused to deal with social security and Medicare challenges, was truly problematic.“Both sides see it so differently and they need to talk to each other. Republicans keep putting in irresponsible tax cuts pretending that they will pay for themselves, which they won’t. On the Democrat side there is a denial that we have a number of programs that are growing faster than the overall economy … for seniors, retirement and healthcare. There is an unwillingness to even acknowledge that those programs have to be fixed.”It is a situation that is unlikely to change in an era when “bipartisan” is a dirty word. “They have completely different stories they tell themselves,” she said.Biden has insisted he is open to talks on infrastructure and will meet Democrats and Republicans. But if Republicans attempt to play the national debt card, they are likely to be given short shrift.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Nobody even takes it seriously. When I see it, and I think there are millions of people like me, I just laugh. Do they really think our memories are that short?” More

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      ‘Putin-style democracy’: how Republicans gerrymander the map

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      Republicans believe they have a great chance to win control of the US House of Representatives in 2022, needing a swing of about six seats to depose Nancy Pelosi as speaker and derail Joe Biden’s agenda.To help themselves over the top, they are advancing voter suppression laws in almost every state, hoping to minimize Democratic turnout.But Republicans are also preparing another, arguably more powerful tool, which experts believe could let them take control of the House without winning a single vote beyond their 2020 tally, or for that matter blocking a single Democratic voter.That tool is redistricting – the redrawing of congressional boundaries, undertaken once every 10 years – and Republicans have unilateral control of it in a critical number of states.“Public sentiment in 2020 favored Democrats, and Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives,” said Samuel Wang, a professor of neuroscience and director of the Princeton gerrymandering project. “[But] because of reapportionment and redistricting, those factors would be enough to cause a change in control of the House even if public opinion were not to change at all.”While redistricting gives politicians in some states the opportunity to redraw political boundaries, reapportionment means there are more districts to play with. After each US census, each of the 50 states is awarded a share of the 435 House seats based on population. States gain or lose seats in the process.The threat of extreme gerrymandering is more acute today than it has ever beenOwing to population growth, Republican states including Texas, Florida and North Carolina are expected to gain seats before 2022, although the breakdown has not been finalized, with the 2020 census delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.Republican-controlled legislatures will have the power to wedge the new districts almost wherever they see fit, with a freedom they would not have enjoyed only 10 years ago, owing to a pair of controversial supreme court rulings.“The threat of extreme gerrymandering is more acute today than it has ever been because of the combination of an abandonment of oversight by the courts and the Department of Justice, combined with new supercomputing powers,” said Josh Silver, director of Represent.us. The non-partisan group issued a report this month warning that dozens of states “have an extreme or high threat of having their election districts rigged for the next decade”.“Frankly,” Silver said, “what we’re seeing around gerrymandering by the authoritarian wing of the Republican party is part of the Putin-style managed democracy they are promoting – that combination of voter suppression and gerrymandering.”Rules for who controls redistricting vary from state to state. The process can involve state legislatures acting alone, governors or independent commissions. Maps are meant to stand for 10 years, although they are subject to legal challenges that can result in their being thrown out.The new Republican gerrymandering efforts are expected to focus on urban areas in southern states that are home to a disproportionate number of voters of color – meaning those voters are more likely to be disenfranchised.In Texas, mapmakers could try to add districts to the growing population centers of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth without increasing representation of the minority and Democratic voters who account for that growth. In Florida they might add Republican voters to a growing Democratic district north of Orlando. In North Carolina, where the Democratic governor is shut out of the process, Republican mapmakers might seek to add a district in the Democratic-leaning Research Triangle, in a way that elects more Republicans.Republicans could also seek to repay voters of colors in Atlanta who boosted Biden to victory and drove the defeat of two Republican senators in special elections in Georgia in January, by cracking and packing those voters into new districts.“Republicans could net pick up one seat by rearranging the lines around Black people and other Democrats in the Atlanta area,” Wang said.Racial gerrymandering – or using race as the central criterion for drawing district lines, as opposed to party identification or some other signifier – remains vulnerable to federal court challenges, unlike gerrymandering along partisan lines, which was declared “beyond the reach of the federal courts” by the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, in 2019.A separate decision by Roberts’s court, in Shelby County v Holder from 2013, is seen as adding to the likelihood of gerrymandering. The ruling released counties with acute histories of racial discrimination against voters from federal oversight imposed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That means that in 2021, some southern legislators will draw district boundaries without such oversight for the first time in 50 years.‘Much more national awareness’Potential legal challenges aside, the success of Republican mapmakers is not a given. Turnout in future elections – higher or lower – could foil expectations based on historic patterns. The partisan mix of voters in any district can change unpredictably. And stretching a map to wring out an extra seat could leave incumbents vulnerable.Public awareness of such anti-democratic efforts has grown, said Wang, since a 2010 Republican effort called Redmap harvested dozens of “extra” seats.“There’s much more national awareness of gerrymandering,” Wang said. “And citizen groups are now much more in the mix than they were 10 years ago.”Silver said the gerrymandering threat has redoubled the urgency of advancing voting rights legislation that passed the US House but has stalled in the Senate.“This is why we have to pass the For the People Act, which is federal legislation that with one pen stroke by the president would create independent commissions in all 50 states, end voter suppression and restore representative democracy in the United States,” he said.“We have to stop gerrymandering, or there will be no representative democracy in America, period – only preordained and symbolic election results.” More

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      The Observer view on Joe Biden’s audacious spending plans | Observer editorial

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      The dramatic scale and ambition of Joe Biden’s public spending and tax plans came into sharper focus last week. The emerging picture is breathtaking. As expected, the US president aims to repair the damage done by the pandemic. But huge, longer-term investments in jobs, education and clean energy, and his new insistence on the social responsibilities of big business, point to something far more momentous: a watershed in American economic policymaking.Comparisons abound with Franklin D Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. Progressive politicians hail an end to the post-2008 age of austerity. Neoliberalism’s divisive grip is at last being broken; free market dogmas are in retreat, they say. Biden is re-legitimising the power of government and the state to equally serve the interests of all its citizens. This revolution, it is claimed, will dent populism’s appeal and may save democracy itself. Such optimism is rare in contemporary politics and is not to be discouraged. The prospect that a leader – any leader – can and will achieve a decisive change for the better in ordinary people’s lives is almost a novel idea these days. The absence of such hope and trust accounts for much that has gone wrong within western democracies in recent years. It has encouraged political extremism and the rise, beyond Europe, of authoritarian regimes.Yet Biden has set himself an enormous task, or series of tasks, which he knows will prove difficult to fulfil. Take, for example, his plan for a global minimum corporate tax rate of 21% that could raise an extra $300bn annually for governments around the world. Setting such a minimum would help curb tax avoidance and profit-shifting, especially by multinationals, and potentially end the controversies over rival national digital taxes.This bold idea has the backing of tax-fairness campaigners and European members of the G20 group of finance ministers. But it is already under attack from corporate lobbyists and Republicans in Washington, who claim it would place American companies at a competitive disadvantage. Countries such as Ireland that benefit from the current system may also object. As with any proposal that requires global adherence, China’s attitude will be crucial.Reversing normal practice, he ran from the centre, yet now he governs from the leftBiden already has one big win under his belt: the $1.9tn Covid recovery stimulus bill passed by Congress last month. This package by itself is mould-breaking, by recent American standards, in facilitating a vast expansion of the country’s social safety net. It extends federal benefits, allocates funds to tackle child poverty and provides help for states, tribal governments and small businesses damaged by the pandemic.Hot on the heels of that landmark success comes his $2.3tn initiative for a longer-term boost for the economy, by creating jobs and repairing and upgrading roads and other infrastructure. Biden calls it a “once in a generation investment in America”. He says the plan will address climate change and pollution through a systemic shift to cleaner energy sources. Beating the climate crisis will henceforth be a “whole of government” endeavour.Yet more plans are in the offing, including substantial new federal spending on healthcare and early years education, and investment in green technologies and scientific research. Some of these proposals were contained in last week’s 2022 federal budget outline. If agreed – and that’s a big “if” – they represent a whopping 16% overall rise in discretionary government spending.And the huge investments required will be paid for from two sources – borrowing and higher taxes on the wealthy. Biden argues these and other programmes are essential to reverse a decade of underinvestment in American society. That’s a criticism of Donald Trump, who consistently tried to slash federal spending, but also of Biden’s cautious old boss, Barack Obama, whose record he has begun to eclipse. Republicans, predictably, are opposed, complaining, for example, that military spending is neglected.Yet like many Americans right across the political spectrum, they appear dumbstruck by Biden’s sheer audacity. Over a long career, he was many things but never a radical. Reversing normal practice, he ran from the centre, yet now he governs from the left. Perhaps, at 78, he feels he has little to lose and the nation much to gain. Biden is a man in a hurry and spurring him is not only an older man’s zeal but a crude calculation. The Democrats’ majority in Congress is wafer-thin and the 2022 midterms loom.If Biden pulls off only half of what he plans, it will be a remarkable achievement. Whatever happens, he has already changed the conversation. Economically, the essential, leading role of the state has been forcefully reasserted. This holds true for the US, and also for Britain and Europe, in the transformative age of Covid. Politically, Biden is in the process of demonstrating that liberal democracies, when ably led, can both reform themselves and outperform authoritarian regimes.Positive US global leadership, based on revived prosperity and multilateralism, is returning. More than Trump ever did, Biden is making America great again. Yet even as they cheer him and urge even grander feats, those on the British left, in particular, should take careful note. If you want to “do a Biden” and enact great change, you must first forge alliances and win an election. More

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      Republican ‘attacks’ on corporations over voting rights bills are a hypocritical sham | Robert Reich

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      For four decades, the basic deal between big American corporations and politicians has been simple. Corporations provide campaign funds. Politicians reciprocate by lowering corporate taxes and doing whatever else corporations need to boost profits.The deal has proven beneficial to both sides, although not to the American public. Campaign spending has soared while corporate taxes have shriveled.In the 1950s, corporations accounted for about 40% of federal revenue. Today, they contribute a meager 7%. Last year, more than 50 of the largest US companies paid no federal income taxes at all. Many haven’t paid taxes for years.Both parties have been in on this deal although the GOP has been the bigger player. Yet since Donald Trump issued his big lie about the fraudulence of the 2020 election, corporate America has had a few qualms about the GOP.After the storming of the Capitol, dozens of giant corporations said they would no longer donate to the 147 Republican members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors on the basis of the big lie.Then came the GOP’s wave of restrictive state voting laws, premised on the same big lie. Georgia’s are among the most egregious. The chief executive of Coca-Cola, headquartered in the peach tree state, calls those laws “wrong” and “a step backward”. The chief executive of Delta Airlines, Georgia’s largest employer, says they’re “unacceptable”. Major League Baseball decided to take its annual All-Star Game away from the home of the Atlanta Braves.The basic deal between the GOP and corporate America is still very much aliveThese criticisms have unleashed a rare firestorm of anti-corporate Republican indignation. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, warns corporations of unspecified “serious consequences” for speaking out. Republicans are moving to revoke MLB’s antitrust status. Georgia Republicans threaten to punish Delta by repealing a state tax credit for jet fuel.“Why are we still listening to these woke corporate hypocrites on taxes, regulations and antitrust?” asks the Florida senator Marco Rubio.Why? For the same reason Willie Sutton gave when asked why he robbed banks: that’s where the money is.McConnell told reporters corporations should “stay out of politics” but then qualified his remark: “I’m not talking about political contributions.” Of course not. Republicans have long championed “corporate speech” when it comes in the form of campaign cash – just not as criticism.Talk about hypocrisy. McConnell was the top recipient of corporate money in the 2020 election cycle and has a long history of battling attempts to limit it. In 2010, he hailed the supreme court’s Citizens United ruling, which struck down limits on corporate political donations, on the dubious grounds that corporations are “people” under the first amendment to the constitution.“For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process,” McConnell said at the time. Hint: he wasn’t referring to poor Black people.It’s hypocrisy squared. The growing tsunami of corporate campaign money suppresses votes indirectly by drowning out all other voices. Republicans are in the grotesque position of calling on corporations to continue bribing politicians as long as they don’t criticize Republicans for suppressing votes directly.The hypocrisy flows in the other direction as well. The Delta chief criticized the GOP’s voter suppression in Georgia but the company continues to bankroll Republicans. Its Pac contributed $1,725,956 in the 2020 election, more than $1m of which went to federal candidates, mostly Republicans. Oh, and Delta hasn’t paid federal taxes for years.Don’t let the spat fool you. The basic deal between the GOP and corporate America is still very much alive.Which is why, despite record-low corporate taxes, congressional Republicans are feigning outrage at Joe Biden’s plan to have corporations pay for his $2tn infrastructure proposal. Biden isn’t even seeking to raise the corporate tax rate as high as it was before the Trump tax cut, yet not a single Republicans will support it.A few Democrats, such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, don’t want to raise corporate taxes as high as Biden does either. Yet almost two-thirds of Americans support the idea.The basic deal between American corporations and American politicians has been a terrible deal for America. Which is why a piece of legislation entitled the For the People Act, passed by the House and co-sponsored in the Senate by every Democratic senator except Manchin, is so important. It would both stop states from suppressing votes and also move the country toward public financing of elections, thereby reducing politicians’ dependence on corporate cash.Corporations can and should bankroll much of what America needs. But they won’t, as long as corporations keep bankrolling American politicians. More

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      Georgia governor claims MLB All-Star voting rights move hurts Black voters

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      The Republican governor of Georgia stepped up his attack on Major League Baseball on Saturday, over its decision to pull its All-Star Game from the state in response to a new voting law.“It’s minority-owned businesses that have been hit harder than most because of an invisible virus, by no fault of their own,” Brian Kemp said. “And these are the same minority businesses that are now being impacted by another decision that is by no fault of their own.”The Fox News host Sean Hannity thundered this week that MLB “has now cost the people of Georgia almost $100m in revenue”.“Every person in Georgia should be furious,” he added.But experts dispute that losing the All-Star game will have so heavy an impact.Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross, told the Guardian this week: “There is some loss, so it’s not zero, but it’s a whole lot closer to zero than the $100m number Atlanta was throwing around.”On Saturday Kemp spoke alongside the Georgia attorney general, Chris Carr, also a Republican, at a seafood restaurant miles from the stadium in the Atlanta suburbs where the game would have been held. He said he didn’t think the business was minority-owned.The game will now be played in Denver. Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, has claimed the city will receive an economic boost of $190m.Matheson said: “There’s no real reason that you should believe economic impact numbers that are commissioned by people who are made to look good by big economic impact numbers.”Kemp noted that Denver has a much smaller percentage of African Americans than Atlanta.Critics say the Georgia voting law will disproportionately affect communities of color. Aklima Khondoker, state director of the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said Kemp’s news conference was an attempt to deflect from that as he gears up to try to win a second term.“He’s pivoting away from all of the malicious things that we understand that this bill represents to people of color in Georgia,” she said.Elsewhere in the state, about two dozen protesters turned out near Augusta National as the Masters golf championship continued, holding signs that said “Let Us Vote” and “Protect Georgia Voting Rights”.The MLB commissioner, Rob Manfred, has said he made the decision to move the All-Star game after discussions with players and the Players Alliance, an organization of Black players formed after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, and that the league opposed restrictions to the ballot box.On Saturday an MLB spokesman said the league had no immediate additional comment.Several groups have filed lawsuits over the Georgia voting measure, which includes strict identification requirements for voting by mail. It expands weekend early voting but limits the use of ballot drop boxes, makes it a crime to hand out food or water to voters waiting in line and gives the state election board new powers to intervene in county election offices and to replace local officials.That has led to concerns the Republican-controlled board could exert more influence over elections, including the certification of county results.The rewrite of Georgia’s election rules – signed by Kemp last month – follows Donald Trump’s repeated lies about electoral fraud after his loss to Joe Biden. The Democratic candidate won Georgia, before two Democrats won Senate runoffs there in January, tipping control of the chamber.Democrats have assailed the Georgia law as an attempt to suppress Black and Latino votes, with Biden calling it “Jim Crow in the 21st century”. Carr and Kemp blasted that comparison.“This made-up narrative that this bill takes us back to Jim Crow – an era when human beings were being killed and who were truly prevented from casting their vote – is preposterous,” Carr said. “It is irresponsible, and it’s fundamentally wrong.” More

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      How Biden's $2tn infrastructure plan seeks to achieve racial justice

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      Joe Biden has said his $2tn plan to rebuild America’s “crumbling” roads, bridges, railways and other infrastructure would rival the space race in its ambition and deliver economic and social change on a scale as grand as the New Deal. The president has also vowed his “once-in-a-generation” investment will reverse long-standing racial disparities exacerbated by past national mobilizations.Embedded in his sprawling infrastructure agenda, the first part of which Biden unveiled this week, are hundreds of billions of dollars dedicated to projects and investments the administration says will advance racial equity in employment, housing, transportation, healthcare and education, while improving economic outcomes for communities of color.“This plan is important, not only for what and how it builds but it’s also important to where we build,” Biden said at a union carpenters’ training facility outside Pittsburgh last week. “It includes everyone, regardless of your race or your zip code.”His proposal would replace lead pipes and service lines that have disproportionately harmed Black children; reduce air pollution that has long harmed Black and Latino neighborhoods near ports and power plants; “reconnect” neighborhoods cut off by previous transportation projects; expand affordable housing options to allow more families of color to buy homes, build wealth and eliminate exclusionary zoning laws; rebuild the public housing system; and prioritize investments in “frontline” communities whose residents are predominantly people of color often first- and worst-affected by climate change and environmental disaster.The plan also allocates $100m in workforce development programs targeting historically underserved communities and $20m for upgrading historically Black college and universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and quadruples funding for the Manufacturing Extensions Partnership to boost investment in “minority owned and rurally located” businesses.Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party (WFP), said it was clear Biden had been listening to activists and understood the interlocking challenges of racial injustice, climate change and economic inequality.“This is not race-neutral – it’s actually pretty aggressive and specific,” he said, noting the coalition of Black voters and women who helped Biden clinch the Democratic nomination and win the White House.Perhaps the boldest pieces of the proposal is a $400bn investment in care for elderly and disabled Americans. In his speech, Biden said his agenda would create jobs and lift wages and benefits for the millions of “unseen, underpaid and undervalued” caregivers, predominantly women of color.Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, called it “one of the single most impactful plans to address racial and gender inequity in our economy”.Poo said the coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately hurt women and people of color, showed just how critical care workers are to the wellbeing of the nation. And yet many of these workers still struggle to care for themselves and their families.Poo believes Biden’s plan can do for caregiving and the economy what past jobs programs did for manufacturing, turning dangerous, low-wage jobs into opportunities for upward mobility and security. Home care workers have been excluded from labor protections – Poo said this effort places them at the forefront.“There’s nothing more fundamental and enabling to our economy than having good care for families,” she said. “Without that, nothing else can function – we can’t even build roads, bridges and tunnels without care.”Biden’s plan also provides for $100bn for high-speed broadband internet alongside provisions to improve access and affordability, which White House officials say will help to close the digital divide between white and Black and Latino families.“The internet is a tool that all of us rely upon,” said Angela Siefer, executive director at National Digital Inclusion Alliance. “And when certain segments of the population, particularly those who have been historically left out, don’t have access to the tools, they fall even further behind.”Biden said his plan would help drive down costs by increasing competition and providing short-term subsidies for low-income households. Siefer said these measures are important, but she was skeptical rates would fall enough to make high-speed internet affordable for low-income families without more permanent subsidies.Improving digital literacy is also critical to confronting racial inequality, Siefer said, adding: “To really achieve equity, we have to get beyond the thinking: let’s just make it available.”The proposal also includes $5bn for community based violence-prevention programs, an investment Black and Latino activists have long argued will help reduce the impact of gun violence.The administration has suggested additional efforts to close the racial wealth gap, like universal pre-kindergarten, affordable higher education and improved family leave, will come in the second piece of what could be a $4tn program.Republicans accuse Biden of delivering a “Trojan Horse” to fund progressive initiatives.“Biden’s plan includes hundreds of billions of spending on leftwing policies and blue-state priorities,” the Republican National Committee said. It singled out parts of the bill that aim to tackle racial and gender inequality, such as “$400bn for an ‘unrelated’ program for home care that ‘was a top demand of some union groups’.”While many senior Democrats welcomed the plan, many progressives have said it doesn’t go far enough. They have called for $10tn over the next decade to confront climate change, including more robust investments in renewable energy and a target of shifting the US to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.Biden has said he is open to negotiation and hopes he can attract Republicans to the plan. The president suggested Republicans would rush to act if they learned the drinking water on Capitol Hill flowed through lead pipes.As Congress begins the process of turning Biden’s blueprint into legislation, progressive groups are mounting a campaign to pressure lawmakers to embrace an even more ambitious agenda. The WFP is part of a coalition of groups staging protests to demand Congress deliver “transformational economic recovery”.“If you’re going to be big and bold, be big and bold and solve the problem fully,” Mitchell said. “We are at a crisis moment and we won’t get another shot.” More

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      Republicans claim Biden $2tn infrastructure plan a partisan tax hike

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      Republicans opposed to Joe Biden’s proposed $2tn infrastructure bill claimed on Sunday that it was effectively a partisan tax hike that allocated too much money to electric vehicles and other environmental initiatives.On CNN’s State of the Union, Mississippi governor Tate Reeves was asked if his state could use some of the $100bn Biden proposes to spend on fixing roads and bridges neglected for decades amid gridlock in Washington and paralyzed public spending.Yes, he said. But.“There’s no doubt that Mississippi could use our fair share of $100bn,” Reeves said. “The problem with this particular plan, though, is although the Biden administration is calling it an infrastructure plan, it looks more like a $2tn tax hike plan, to me. That’s going to lead to significant challenges in our economy, it’s going to lead to a slowing GDP … it’s going to lead to Americans losing significant numbers of jobs.”Biden proposes funding his plan by raising corporate tax rates and making it more difficult for corporations to utilize offshore tax shelters.Reeves had other complaints. While Biden proposes to spend billions on roads and bridges, he said, he also proposes to “spend more than that on the combination of Amtrak [railways] and public transit. And what’s even worse, [Biden’s bill] spends $100bn on clean water, which Mississippi could certainly use, but it spends more than that … to subsidize electric vehicles.“That is a political statement. It’s not a statement on trying to improve our infrastructure in America. And so it looks more like the Green New Deal than it looks like an infrastructure plan.”The Green New Deal is a set of policy priorities championed by prominent progressives including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a way to meet looming environmental challenges while boosting the economy and reducing inequality. It is not enacted law or a formal part of Biden’s policy plans. Nonetheless, Republicans from Donald Trump down have seized on it, claiming it represents a determination to take away gas-guzzling cars and even the right to eat meat.On ABC’s This Week, the Missouri Republican senator Roy Blunt asked: “Why would you pass up the opportunity here to focus on roads, bridges, what’s happening underground, as well as above the ground on infrastructure, broadband, all of which wouldn’t be 40% of this package?“There’s more in the package for charging stations for electric vehicles … than there is for roads, bridges and airports and ports. When people think about infrastructure, they’re thinking about roads, bridges, ports and airports.”The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said this week he would “fight them every step of the way because I think this is the wrong prescription for America. That package that they’re putting together now, as much as we would like to address infrastructure, is not going to get support from our side.”Democrats could attempt to pass the package using budget reconciliation, a procedure that allows for a simple Senate majority rather than 60 votes. But even if successful it would mean abandoning portions of the plan that do not impact taxes and spending.Biden has repeatedly emphasized the need for bipartisanship. Politicians from both sides have claimed willingness to reach across the aisle.Reeves told CNN he “believes we can come up with a plan” but opposes the tax-funded price-tag. Blunt said it was “very unlikely” Republicans would vote to reverse Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cuts, suggesting instead “new funding sources, figuring out how if you’re going to spend all this money on electric vehicles, which I think is part of the future, we need to figure out how electric vehicles pay for using the system just like gas-powered vehicles have always paid for it with a gas tax.”Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary, vowed to work with Republicans.“I’ve got a lot of respect for Senator Blunt,” he told ABC, “but I’m going to work to try to persuade him that electrical vehicle charging infrastructure is absolutely a core part of how Americans are going to need to get around in the future, and not the distant, far off future, but right now.Asked if it was “a realistic prospect to expect Republicans are going to come around”, Buttigieg said: “I think it can be. I’m having a lot of conversations with Republicans in the House and Senate who have been wanting to do something big on infrastructure for years. We may not agree about every piece of it, but this is one area where the American people absolutely want to see us get it done.”The Republican Mississippi senator Roger Wicker told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I’m all for working with the administration on an infrastructure bill. And let me tell you, I think I can work with Pete Buttigieg. I spoke to him the day he was nominated. We’ve been trading phone messages for the last three or four days in an effort to talk about this bill. I think Pete and I could come up with an infrastructure bill.”But Wicker also brought out the stumbling block to such thoughts of progress.“What the president proposed this week is not an infrastructure bill,” he said. “It’s a huge tax increase, for one thing.” More