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      Biden to outline optimistic vision for US’s future in State of Union address

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      Biden to outline optimistic vision for US’s future in State of Union addressPresident hopes to combat widespread sense of pessimism and to tout his accomplishments from first two years in office Joe Biden will outline an optimistic vision for the future of America in his second State of the Union address on Tuesday, White House officials said, hoping to combat the widespread sense of pessimism that surveys and polls have captured across the country.As he marks the halfway point of his first term, Biden is expected to tout his legislative accomplishments from his first two years in office – including the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Chips Act.“This president is focused on delivering results for the American people, and we’ve seen him do that over and over and over again,” Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, said. “We look forward to continuing to talk to the American people about the work that we are doing and the results that we’re delivering.”But polls show most Americans have not yet felt the impact of Biden’s policies in their everyday lives, particularly when it comes to their personal finances. Although inflation has started to cool after peaking at an alarming rate of 9.1% last summer, only 21% of Americans rate current economic conditions as positive, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.Even the jobs market, which has been a bright spot for the US economy in recent months, does not inspire much confidence among the American public. The country’s unemployment rate hit a 53-year low of 3.4% last month, but just 34% of Americans say Biden has made progress on creating more good jobs for their communities, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll found.Brian Deese, the outgoing director of the National Economic Council, said Biden would acknowledge these challenges in his State of the Union speech.“The core message is: we have to make more progress, but people should feel optimism that because of what we have seen and because of the progress that we’ve made, that we know how to keep making progress,” Deese said Monday.Progress will now be even more difficult for Biden to achieve, however. With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, Biden faces significant hurdles in advancing his legislative agenda. Previewing the president’s Tuesday speech, White House officials said he would work with the new House Republican majority to find areas of common ground.“We are going to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis to make progress on the issues that we’re talking about today,” Bedingfield said.But the relationship between Biden and the new House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has gotten off to a rocky start. McCarthy has demanded government spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, but Biden has insisted on a “clean” bill to raise the nation’s borrowing limit with no strings attached. The treasury has warned that the US could be at risk of default unless the debt ceiling is raised by June.In an address Monday, McCarthy defended the Republican strategy of using the debt limit as a bargaining chip to extract spending cuts.“The debt limit is one of the most important opportunities Congress has to change course,” McCarthy argued.But the Republican’s speech was scant on details about exactly which programs his party would target. McCarthy said cuts to Medicare and social security – the largest federal spending programs – were “off the table” and told reporters Republicans would not raise taxes, leaving it unclear how his party plans to shrink the federal budget.Deese said Biden would explicitly make the case in his Tuesday speech that raising the federal borrowing limit was “Congress’s constitutional obligation” and the responsibility of all elected officials to ensure the United States does not default on its debt.Biden is prepared to hold separate talks with Republicans about fiscal discipline, Deese noted, but he has made clear he will not allow them to leverage the full faith and credit of the United States to force spending cuts.“You will hear an openness and, in fact, an eagerness to have a real serious conversation about the fiscal and economic priorities of the country and where we can find common ground,” Deese said. “That’s the kind of conversation you have in a normal budget process, and that’s the appropriate way to approach these things.”Biden will likely reiterate that message as he delivers his State of the Union speech, which he and his team have been crafting for weeks. Biden spent the weekend huddled at Camp David with advisers and his chief speechwriter, Vinay Reddy, fine-tuning the address. True to form, the president was “heavily engaged” in the drafting process, said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.“When you hear the speech there’ll be no question that this is a Joe Biden State of the Union speech.” she said.TopicsState of the Union addressJoe BidenBiden administrationDemocratsUS politicsUS economynewsReuse this content More

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      Biden has revived democratic capitalism – and changed the economic paradigm

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      Biden has revived democratic capitalism – and changed the economic paradigmRobert ReichThe president’s domestic successes offer a rebuke to disciples of Reagan: the ‘free market’ has never existed How can inflation be dropping at the same time job creation is soaring?Schools and universities are ground zero for America’s culture war | Moira DoneganRead moreIt has taken one of the oldest presidents in American history, who has been in politics for over half a century, to return the nation to an economic paradigm that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980, and is far superior to the one that has dominated it since.Call it democratic capitalism.The Great Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression taught the nation a crucial lesson that we forgot after Ronald Reagan’s presidency: the so-called “free market” does not exist. Markets are always and inevitably human creations. They reflect decisions by judges, legislators and government agencies as to how the market should be organized and enforced – and for whom.The economy that collapsed in 1929 was the consequence of decisions that organized the market for a monied elite, allowing nearly unlimited borrowing, encouraging people to gamble on Wall Street, suppressing labor unions, holding down wages, and permitting the Street to take huge risks with other people’s money.Franklin D Roosevelt and his administration reversed this. They reorganized the market to serve public purposes – stopping excessive borrowing and Wall Street gambling, encouraging labor unions, establishing social security and creating unemployment insurance, disability insurance and a 40-hour workweek. They used government spending to create more jobs. During the second world war, they controlled prices and put almost every American to work.Democratic and Republican administrations enlarged and extended democratic capitalism. Wall Street was regulated, as were television networks, airlines, railroads, and other common carriers. CEO pay was modest. Taxes on the highest earners financed public investments in infrastructure (such as the national highway system) and higher education.America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense developed satellite communications, container ships and the Internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA and infectious diseases.Public spending rose during economic downturns to encourage hiring. Even Richard Nixon admitted “we’re all Keynesians”. Antitrust enforcers broke up AT&T and other monopolies. Small businesses were protected from giant chain stores. By the 1960s, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized.Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders – not just shareholders but employees, consumers, the communities where they produced goods and services, and the nation as a whole.Then came a giant U-turn. The Opec oil embargo of the 1970s brought double-digit inflation followed by the Fed chair Paul Volcker’s effort to “break the back” of inflation by raising interest rates so high the economy fell into deep recession.All of which prepared the ground for Reagan’s war on democratic capitalism.From 1981, a new bipartisan orthodoxy emerged that the so-called “free market” functioned well only if the government got out of the way (conveniently forgetting that the market required government). The goal of economic policy thereby shifted from public welfare to economic growth. And the means shifted from public oversight of the market to deregulation, free trade, privatization, “trickle-down” tax cuts, and deficit-reduction – all of which helped the monied interests make more money.What happened next? For 40 years, the economy grew but median wages stagnated. Inequalities of income and wealth ballooned. Wall Street reverted to the betting parlor it had been in the 1920s. Finance once again ruled the economy. Spurred by hostile takeovers, corporations began focusing solely on maximizing shareholder returns – which led them to fight unions, suppress wages, abandon their communities and outsource abroad.Corporations and the super-rich used their increasing wealth to corrupt politics with campaign donations – buying tax cuts, tax loopholes, government subsidies, bailouts, loan guarantees, non-bid government contracts and government forbearance from antitrust enforcement, allowing them to monopolize markets.Democratic capitalism, organized to serve public purposes, all but disappeared. It was replaced by corporate capitalism, organized to serve the monied interests.Joe Biden is reviving democratic capitalism.From the Obama administration’s mistake of spending too little to pull the economy out of the Great Recession, he learned that the pandemic required substantially greater spending, which would also give working families a cushion against adversity. So he pushed for the giant $1.9tn American Rescue Plan.This was followed by a $550bn initiative to rebuild bridges, roads, public transit, broadband, water and energy systems. And in 2022, the biggest investment in clean energy in American history – expanding wind and solar power, electric vehicles, carbon capture and sequestration, and hydrogen and small nuclear reactors. This was followed by the largest public investment ever in semiconductors, the building blocks of the next economy.Notably, these initiatives are targeted to companies that employ American workers.Biden has also embarked on altering the balance of power between capital and labor, as did FDR. Biden has put trustbusters at the head of the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the justice department. And he has remade the National Labor Relations Board into a strong advocate of labor unions.Unlike his Democratic predecessors, Biden has not sought to reduce trade barriers. In fact, he has retained several from the Trump administration. But unlike Trump, he has not given a huge tax cut to corporations and the wealthy. It’s also worth noting that in contrast with every president since Reagan, Biden has not filled his White House with former Wall Street executives. Not one of his economic advisers – not even his treasury secretary – is from the Street.I don’t want to overstate Biden’s accomplishments. His ambitions for childcare, eldercare, paid family and medical leave were thwarted by senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. And now he has to contend with a Republican House.Biden’s larger achievement has been to change the economic paradigm that has reigned since Reagan. He is teaching America a lesson we once knew but have forgotten: that the “free market” does not exist. It is designed. It either advances public purposes or it serves the monied interests.Biden’s democratic capitalism is neither socialism nor “big government”. It is, rather, a return to an era when government organized the market for the greater good.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsState of the Union addressOpinionJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsDemocratsUS domestic policyUS economycommentReuse this content More

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      Fed announces smallest interest hike in a year as inflation ‘eases somewhat’

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      Fed announces smallest interest hike in a year as inflation ‘eases somewhat’Quarter-point increase to a range of 4.5% to 4.75% signals a slowdown in Fed’s fight against soaring inflation The US Federal Reserve signaled a slowdown in its fight against soaring inflation on Wednesday, announcing its smallest hike in interest rates in almost a year.After its latest meeting, the Fed announced a quarter-point increase in its benchmark interest rate to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%, the smallest increase since March last year. “Inflation has eased somewhat but remains elevated,” the Fed said in a statement adding that “ongoing increases” will be appropriate as it seeks to bring prices down.“We covered a lot of ground, and the full effects of our rapid tightening so far are yet to be felt. Even so, we have more work to do,” said Fed chair Jerome Powell.Inflation in the US has been running at levels unseen since the 1980s, triggering a cost of living crisis as the price of everything from eggs to gas and rent has shot up.In order to tamp down inflation the Fed has aggressively hiked rates as it seeks to cool the economy and bring prices back under control.A year ago the Fed rate – which affects the interest rates on everything from business and personal loans to mortgages and credit card rates – was close to zero. After the most rapid series of rises since the 1980s, it is now at a level last seen in 2007.There are signs that prices are coming down. In December, the annual rate of inflation fell to6.5% from 7.1% in the previous month, the sixth straight month of yearly declines and well below the peak of 9.1% it hit in June, its highest rate since 1982.Consumer spending – the largest driver of the economy – fell 0.2% from November to December. The housing market has slowed and many of the major tech companies have announced large job cuts as they have moved to rein in spending.But inflation remains well above the Fed’s annual target rate of 2% and the central bank has said it will keep rates high until price stability is achieved. The Fed also continues to worry about the jobs market. The unemployment rate was 3.5% in December, a 50-year low and on Wednesday the labor department announced there were 11m job openings in the US in December – almost two available jobs for every person looking for one and an increase from November.The tight labor market has driven up wages and Powell, has made clear that the central bank believes rising wages threaten to spur on inflation – a so-called wage-price spiral. “You don’t see that yet, but the whole point is, once you see it, you have a serious problem. That means that effectively in people’s decision-making, inflation has become a real salient issue,” said Powell. “That is what we can’t allow to happen.”TopicsFederal ReserveUS economyJerome PowellEconomicsUS politicsInflationnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans aren’t going to tell Americans the real cause of our $31tn debt | Robert Reich

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      Republicans aren’t going to tell Americans the real cause of our $31.4tn debtRobert ReichThe rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for The dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.They’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.It’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!When they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).Then when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.Not only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.This backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.A half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.Tax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.Since then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.Not only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.Even as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.Trump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.By 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.Middle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and social security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.One of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.Meanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.As the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.The biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.Hence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.This means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.So, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.Both are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.What should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsRepublicansOpinionUS politicsDemocratsUS economyEconomicscommentReuse this content More

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      US heads for debt-ceiling standoff as House Republicans refuse to budge

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      AnalysisUS heads for debt-ceiling standoff as House Republicans refuse to budgeJoan E GreveHard-right Republicans say no to ‘clean’ debt ceiling increase, raising dire possibility of US defaulting on financial obligations The US economy could be headed for a crisis manufactured by a handful of House Republicans.The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, informed congressional leaders on Thursday that the US has hit its debt ceiling, which limits the amount of money that the government can borrow to pay all of its bills. Yellen urged Congress to work as quickly as possible to raise the debt ceiling and prevent the US from defaulting on any of its financial obligations, which would have catastrophic consequences.What is the US debt ceiling and what happens if it isn’t raised?Read more“It is therefore critical that Congress act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit,” Yellen warned in a letter sent last week. “Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability.”The dire language from the nation’s top economic official underscored the urgency of Congress’s task and appeared to represent an attempt to deter any lawmaker from toying with the idea of a default. Some House Republicans have chosen to do so anyway.Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have already promised to oppose a “clean” debt ceiling increase, meaning a bill that raises the national borrowing limit without any other policy concessions.“We cannot raise the debt ceiling,” the Arizona congressman Andy Biggs said on Tuesday. “Democrats have carelessly spent our taxpayer money and devalued our currency. They’ve made their bed, so they must lie in it.”Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, from Georgia, echoed that sentiment on Wednesday, telling Fox News: “I for one will not sign a clean bill raising the debt limit.”Setting aside the fact that individual members of Congress do not sign bills, the comments from lawmakers like Greene have intensified concerns over a potential default this summer. As of now, the treasury is deploying “extraordinary” measures to keep paying its bills, but those options may be exhausted as early as June.The US has never failed to raise or suspend its debt ceiling, so most Americans are probably unfamiliar with the potential consequences of a default. Experts fear that the crisis would force the treasury to essentially choose which of its creditors to pay, and those decisions would carry legal ramifications while financially harming any number of institutions that rely on government funding.“Doctors in hospitals who provide services to Medicare beneficiaries wouldn’t be getting paid what they’re owed,” said Paul van de Water, senior fellow at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive thinktank. “Defense contractors wouldn’t be getting paid in their full amounts. Veterans wouldn’t receive the full benefits to which they’re entitled and on and on and on.”A failure to address the debt ceiling would simultaneously cause irreparable damage to the reputation of the US treasury, and that recalculation would trickle down to consumers.If Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, it would trigger a “risk premium” for any financial transaction benchmarked to the treasury, said Gordon Gray, director of fiscal policy at the center-right thinktank American Action Forum. “And what’s benchmarked to the treasury? Pretty much every financial instrument that consumers have: your credit card, your mortgage,” Gray said. “Any number of interactions that the public has with financial markets would be affected by this.”For many economic experts, the looming crisis has sparked grim flashbacks to the 2011 standoff over the debt ceiling. At the time, Republicans had just regained control of the House and found themselves going toe to toe with Barack Obama over the debt ceiling. Republicans were demanding cuts in government spending in exchange for supporting a debt ceiling increase, leading to Democrats’ accusations that they were recklessly endangering the US economy to advance their own political agenda.The standoff ended with the passage of the Budget Control Act, which raised the debt ceiling and outlined significant cuts in government spending. Some House Republicans now appear to be hoping for similar spending cuts in exchange for a debt ceiling hike, escalating the risk of a default.Gray was as a policy adviser to former Republican senator Rob Portman when the 2011 crisis unfolded, and he expressed concern that the next debt ceiling fight could bring the US economy even closer to calamity.“I believe that the risks are heightened now in a way that they have not been certainly since 2011, and very possibly the risks are greater now than they were then,” he said.The protracted fight over the House speakership earlier this month only heightened Gray’s fears. Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker on the 15th ballot, following a days-long revolt from 20 members of the House Republican conference.“They couldn’t agree that the sky was blue for a week,” Gray said.“The individuals involved in that episode are the same folks who are signaling a disinclination to increase the debt limit.”McCarthy has indicated his interest in negotiating with the White House over a debt ceiling bill, downplaying concerns over a potential default.“We don’t want to put any fiscal problems on our economy and we won’t,” he said last week. “But fiscal problems would be continuing to do business as usual.”So far, Joe Biden has shown no willingness to entertain the idea of cutting government spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.“We are not going to be negotiating over the debt ceiling,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said on Tuesday. “This should not be a political football. And we should do it without conditions.”The demands from House Republicans strike Democrats as particularly outrageous because of their own bipartisan approach to the debt ceiling in the past. During Donald Trump’s presidency, Democrats worked with Republicans to suspend the debt ceiling three times. At the time, congressional Republicans made no attempt to lower government spending while addressing the debt ceiling.During Trump’s presidency, Republicans took a seemingly cavalier attitude when it came to reducing government debt. In 2017, Republicans passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, even after the Congressional Budget Office projected that the legislation would increase the federal deficit by nearly $1.5tn over the following decade.“Clearly the approach that is taken seems to vary depending upon the political climate of the moment,” Van de Water said. As of now, it remains unclear how the latest debt ceiling standoff will resolve itself. The White House and the holdout Republican lawmakers have only reiterated their demands, and the clock is ticking to avoid severe economic tumult that could be felt worldwide.“Something’s got to give. Something’s going to give,” Gray said. “My hope is that it’s not the financial markets first.”TopicsUS CongressUS economyUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US hits borrowing limit, kicking off fight between Republicans and Democrats – as it happened

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      The US government has hit the legal limit on how much money it can borrow, and Congress must approve an increase to avoid a debt default in the coming months, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said this morning.In a letter to congressional leaders, Yellen announced the Treasury would begin taking “extraordinary measures” to make the government’s cash on hand last until Congress acts. These include a “debt issuance suspension period” lasting from today till 5 June, as well as suspending investments into two government employee retirement funds.“As I stated in my January 13 letter, the period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the US government months into the future. I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” Yellen wrote.The latest standoff over the debt ceiling kicked off today, when the US government officially hit its legal borrowing limit. The clock is now ticking for Congress to reach an agreement to raise it, otherwise the country will default for the first time in its history, perhaps as soon as June. The White House is demanding Republicans controlling the House raise the limit without conditions, but several moderate GOP lawmakers say the Biden administration needs to compromise. Separately, the supreme court released a report into the leak of its draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, and said they could not figure out who did it.Here’s what else happened today:
      Joe Biden remains unpopular, a new poll found, but the president still reportedly plans to announce his re-election campaign soon.
      The debt ceiling gets the New Yorker treatment, for better or worse.
      The top Senate Democrat and the head of America’s largest bank both warned of the consequences of breaching the borrowing limit, while the Senate Republican leader sounded optimistic a deal would be reached.
      As eager as some in Washington may be to fight over the debt ceiling, Edward Helmore reports that the head of America’s largest bank has warned of the consequences of a protracted standoff: The US should not be “playing games” with the debt ceiling, the JP Morgan chief executive, Jamie Dimon, warned warring US political factions on Thursday as a heated row over the federal borrowing limit reached a crisis point.“We should never question the creditworthiness of the US government. That is sacrosanct and it should never happen,” Dimon said on Thursday in an interview on CNBC. “This is not something we should be playing games with at all.”​Dimon’s comments came as the US treasury department announced later Thursday it would take steps to keep paying the federal government’s bills as the US hit its $31.4tn debt limit as expected.JP Morgan chief says US should not be ‘playing games’ with debt ceilingRead moreThe White House is maintaining its no-negotiations stance on the debt ceiling, the Associated Press reports:White House principal deputy press secretary @ODalton46 on the debt limit, during her first AF1 gaggle: “Our posture on this hasn’t changed. There will be no negotiations on the debt ceiling.”— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) January 19, 2023
      This report could be the last word from the investigation into who leaked the draft of the Dobbs opinion to Politico.The supreme court marshal’s investigators “continue to review and process some electronic data that has been collected and a few other inquiries remain pending. To the extent that additional investigation yields new evidence or leads, the investigators will pursue them,” the report said.But to underscore that the marshal had truly pursued all leads in its investigation into what the report calls “one of the worst breaches of trust in its history”, the supreme court asked former homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff to review the investigation and see if there was anything they missed.“At this time, I cannot identify any additional useful investigative measures,” Chertoff concluded. This investigation must have made the lives of supreme court employees stressful.The report details all the ways in which about 100 employees were questioned and scrutinized, as well as how the court examined its electronic equipment for clues.The electronic leads the court pursued turned up nothing, according to the report. Analysts could not determine if the court’s systems were hacked, though “the investigators did not find any logs or IT artifacts indicating that the draft opinion was downloaded to removable media, but it is impossible to rule out,” the document states. While some of the court’s printers kept logs of who was duplicating what, others did not, or kept records that were incomplete. And there was “no relevant information” on any of the court-owned electronic devices the investigators retrieved from staff, nor on any of the personal cellphones and other gear they examined.Besides the justices, 82 people had access to either physical or electronic copies of the Dobbs opinion. The investigators conducted a total of 126 interviews with 97 people, according to the report, but these, too, were fruitless. All staff agreed to be interviewed, but the report notes no leads came from these conversations. The court also checked legal research history requests from staff, and found nothing suspicious. Finally, they asked each employee interviewed to sign and swear to an affidavit saying they didn’t disclose the opinion. All they got out of this was “a few” admissions from staff that they’d told their spouse about the opinion or vote count, and some other violations of court rules that did not reveal the leaker.“Some individuals admitted to investigators that they told their spouse or partner about the draft Dobbs opinion and the vote count, in violation of the Court’s confidentiality rules. Several personnel told investigators they had shared confidential details about their work more generally with their spouses and some indicated they thought it permissible to provide such information to their spouses. Some personnel handled the Dobbs draft in ways that deviated from their standard process for handling draft opinions,” the report said.Finally, the investigators looked into connections between the court and reporters, especially Politico, the website that published the draft, but found nothing. Nor did anything come out of a forensic examination of the draft digital opinion posted on Politico’s website, an analysis of an employee’s home printer, or fingerprint analysis of “an item relevant to the investigation.”There is one group of supreme court staff that the document makes no mention of investigators interviewing – the justices themselves.In a nutshell, here is what the supreme court’s investigation into the May leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization found:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}At this time, based on a preponderance of the evidence standard, it is not possible to determine the identity of any individual who may have disclosed the document or how the draft opinion ended up with Politico. No one confessed to publicly disclosing the document and none of the available forensic and other evidence provided a basis for identifying any individual as the source of the document. While investigators and the Court’s IT experts cannot absolutely rule out a hack, the evidence to date reveals no suggestion of improper outside access. Investigators also cannot eliminate the possibility that the draft opinion was inadvertently or negligently disclosed – for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building.The Dobbs case was so controversial because it overturned the precedent allowing abortion access nationwide established in Roe v Wade.The case is not completely closed, the report notes, saying “continued investigation and analysis may produce additional leads that could identify the source of the disclosure.”Supreme court investigators could not determine who leaked the draft opinion of conservative justices’ June ruling overturning the right to abortion established in Roe v Wade, according to a report released by the court this afternoon.A team composed of the supreme court’s marshal and her staff “has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence,” the report said.Follow this blog for more on this developing story.Joe Biden still plans to announce his re-election campaign relatively soon despite the investigation into classified documents found at his former private office and home in Delaware, CNN reports, quoting anonymous members of the president’s inner circle.The article asserts that the president’s inner circle sees the document case ensnaring Biden as little more than “DC noise” from members of the elite within the nation’s capital. Biden, therefore, intends to stick to a timeline that would see him make a re-election announcement sometime after his state of the union speech scheduled for 7 February, the article adds. Supporters of Biden’s Oval Office predecessor Donald Trump – who is running for the White House again in 2024 – have hoped that the documents case undermines the president’s re-election chances. But Biden and his fellow Democrats argue that there are differences between the president’s case and the one involving government secrets found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.An FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last year uncovered more than 11,000 documents, including about 300 marked classified or top secret, from Trump’s time as president. Meanwhile, the documents involved in Biden’s case reportedly number fewer than 12 and date back to his time as Barack Obama’s vice-president.The US “will pay the price” if it stops paying off debts now that the nation has hit the legal limit on how much money it can borrow, the Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has said. Schumer’s statement backed up the Joe Biden White House’s demands that Republicans controlling the US House agree to raise the country’s so-called debt ceiling without conditions, though several GOP lawmakers have said the president’s staff must be willing to compromise. “This is not complicated: if the Maga GOP stops paying our nation’s bills, Americans will be the ones to pay the price,” Schumer’s statement Thursday argued. “Political brinkmanship with the debt limit would be a massive hit to local economies, American families and would be nothing less than an economic crisis at the hands of the Republicans.”The statement continued, “From rising home costs, interest rates, cuts to social security, Medicare and more, it’s clear who will actually pay the price for gratuitous partisan politics: American families.”For the US to avoid a debt default in the coming months, both chambers of Congress must approve an increase to the limit on how much money the federal government can borrow, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has said. Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate, and the same is true of Republicans in the House, setting up a fight over the issue between the two parties.So it begins. The US government has hit its legal borrowing limit, and the clock is now ticking for Congress to reach an agreement to raise it, or for the country to default for the first time in its history, sometime in the coming months. The White House is demanding Republicans controlling the House agree to raise the debt ceiling without conditions, but several moderate GOP lawmakers say the Biden administration needs to compromise at the bargaining table. Meanwhile, top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell thinks everyone needs to chill out.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Joe Biden is still pretty unpopular, a new poll finds.
      Donald Trump plans to speak in response to comments that his latest presidential campaign just doesn’t have that 2016 vigor.
      The debt ceiling gets the New Yorker treatment, for better or worse.
      There are many factors dragging down Joe Biden’s popularity, and the recent discovery of classified documents in his possession has probably not helped matters.The president is now facing a scandal similar to the one that Donald Trump was caught up in starting in August of last year, but there are importance differences between the two men’s situations. Here’s a breakdown:Two presidents, many classified documents.Joe Biden remains an unpopular president, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released today finds, though voters don’t seem to like other Washington power players much either.Biden’s approval rating was 40% in the poll conducted over three days till Sunday, just a smidgen higher than the 39% reported a month ago and remaining near the lowest level ever recorded of his presidency.However, Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s approval was a dismal 20% in the poll, while only 35% said they had a positive view of the House and 38% said the same of the Senate.Moderate House Republicans who represent districts Joe Biden won are frustrated with the White House’s refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling, CNN reports.The Biden administration is currently pushing Congress to agree to a “clean” debt limit increase, without the conditions sought by the GOP leadership in the House. These moderate lawmakers could be crucial to bridging the narrow gap with Democrats in the lower chamber to make that happen, but several have told CNN that some kind of agreement needs to be reached on addressing America’s budget deficit.“I don’t think that a clean debt ceiling is in order, and I certainly don’t think that a default is in order,” Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick said.Don Bacon of Nebraska said, “I’m not in favor of Biden’s no-negotiating strategy, and I’m not inclined to help,” adding, “The GOP can’t demand the moon, and Biden can’t refuse to negotiate. There needs to be give-and-take on both sides.”Mike Lawler, a New York Republican newly arrived in the House, said the Biden administration can’t ignore the GOP’s demands. “They need to come to a realization pretty quickly they are no longer in a one-party controlled government, and it requires negotiation.”The debt ceiling is the talk of the town in Washington DC, but in New York, it is merely a cartoon:A cartoon by @adamdouglasthom. #NewYorkerCartoons pic.twitter.com/Fhbe0IqaBc— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) January 19, 2023
      It is not even a particularly scrutable New Yorker cartoon, as this Washington Post reporter notes:?? What’s the joke lol pic.twitter.com/S9Th6bI2xM— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) January 19, 2023
      Brian Riedl is an economist who has advised a number of Republican politicians in the past, and shared some thoughts on Twitter about why the GOP is so eager to throw down over raising the debt ceiling:Democrats assert that the debt limit is the wrong place/time to address soaring deficits. Fine. But with 70% of spending and nearly all taxes on autopilot – untouchable in the annual budget process – perhaps they can tell us when they *would* be willing to address the issue?— Brian Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 (@Brian_Riedl) January 17, 2023
      Deficit hawks would be happy to move the negotiations out of the debt limit debate. Just give us an alternative time and place and we’ll be there. If the answer is “never,” well, this is why – rightly or wrongly – critics will grab the only (admittedly bad) tool they have.— Brian Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 (@Brian_Riedl) January 17, 2023 More

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      US government hits debt ceiling as Biden and House Republicans face off

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      US government hits debt ceiling as Biden and House Republicans face offTreasury secretary says department will take ‘extraordinary measures’ to skirt default while also urging Congress to act The US government has hit the ceiling on its debt, brushing up against its legal limit of $38.381tn and piling pressure on Congress to approve an increase to avoid a debt default in the coming months that would send a shock wave through the global economy.In a letter to congressional leaders, the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said it would begin taking “extraordinary measures” to make the government’s cash on hand last until Congress acts. These include a “debt issuance suspension period” lasting from today until 5 June, as well as suspending investments into two government employee retirement funds.JP Morgan chief says US should not be ‘playing games’ with debt ceilingRead more“As I stated in my January 13 letter, the period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the US government months into the future. I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” Yellen wrote.The countdown toward a possible US government default puts the spotlight on frictions between President Joe Biden and House Republicans, raising alarms about whether the US can sidestep a potential economic crisis.An artificially imposed cap, the debt ceiling has been increased roughly 80 times since the 1960s. The government can temporarily rely on accounting tweaks to stay open. Any major threats to the economy would be several months away.But with the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, presiding over a restive Republican caucus, there are concerns that the government could default on its obligations for political reasons.Biden insists on a “clean” increase to the debt limit so that existing financial commitments can be sustained and is refusing to even start talks with Republicans. McCarthy is calling for negotiations that he believes will lead to spending cuts. It’s unclear whether enough fellow Republicans would support any deal after a testy start to the new Congress that required 15 rounds of voting to elect McCarthy as speaker.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said it was the “constitutional responsibility” of Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.McCarthy said Biden needs to recognize the political realities that come with a divided government. The speaker has called for spending cuts of a kind that did not occur under President Donald Trump, a Republican who in 2019 signed a bipartisan suspension of the debt ceiling.The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Thursday in Louisville, Kentucky, that he was unconcerned about the situation because debt ceiling increases are “always a rather contentious effort”.“America must never default on its debt,” McConnell said. “We’ll end up in some kind of negotiation with the administration over what are the circumstances or conditions under which the debts are going to be raised.”Any deal would need to pass the Democratic-run Senate. “There should be no political brinkmanship with the debt limit,” said the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York. “It’s reckless for Speaker McCarthy and Maga Republicans to try and use the full faith and credit of the United States as a political bargaining chip.”In order to keep the government open, the treasury department on Thursday was making a series of accounting maneuvers that would put a hold on contributions and investment redemptions for government workers’ retirement and healthcare funds, giving the government enough financial space to handle its day-to-day expenses until roughly June.What happens if these measures are exhausted without a debt limit deal is unknown. A prolonged default could be devastating, with crashing markets and panic-driven layoffs if confidence evaporates in a cornerstone of the global economy, the US treasury notes.The government would have to balance its books on a daily basis if it lacks the ability to issue debt, and it would have to impose cuts equal in size on an annual basis to 5% of the total US economy.Analysts at Bank of America cautioned in a report last week that “there is a high degree of uncertainty about the speed and magnitude of the damage the US economy would incur”.Markets so far remain relatively calm, given that the government can temporarily rely on accounting tweaks to stay open and any threats to the economy would be several months away. Even many worried analysts assume there will be a deal.TopicsUS economyJanet YellenEconomicsUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      JP Morgan chief says US should not be ‘playing games’ with debt ceiling

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      JP Morgan chief says US should not be ‘playing games’ with debt ceilingJamie Dimon warns that US creditworthiness should be ‘sacrosanct’ as country’s debt races toward $31.4tn limit The US should not be “playing games” with the debt ceiling, the JP Morgan chief executive, Jamie Dimon, warned warring US political factions on Thursday as a heated row over the federal borrowing limit reached a crisis point.“We should never question the creditworthiness of the US government. That is sacrosanct and it should never happen,” Dimon said on Thursday in an interview on CNBC. “This is not something we should be playing games with at all.”​Dimon’s comments came as the US treasury department announced later Thursday it would take steps to keep paying the federal government’s bills as the US hit its $31.4tn debt limit as expected.In a letter addressed to the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said the department will suspend new investments in the civil service retirement and disability fund, as well as the postal service retiree health benefits fund until June.Yellen warned that moves were subject to “considerable uncertainty” if Congress does not pass a bill to increase the borrowing limit. Last week, she had sought to head off an impasse over the US’s borrowing that if breached could begin to seize up debt repayments and send shock waves throughout the US and global economies.What is the US debt ceiling and what happens if it isn’t raised?Read more“Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans and global financial stability,” Yellen told Congress.She said that the Biden administration would try to keep the country under that debt cap and able to finance its operations as long as possible by using “extraordinary measures” that involves shifting money and suspending investments in savings plans for government workers.In theory that could give lawmakers until June to come up with a solution, but Yellen also warned that the US treasury “is not currently able to provide an estimate of how long extraordinary measures will enable us to continue to pay the government’s obligations”.Political wrangling over US treasury debt, which has doubled in a decade, is a traditional battlefield for political parties. Since 1960, politicians have moved to raise, extend or revise the debt limit 78 times.The White House maintains that the ceiling should be increased without conditions and will not negotiate on the issue. Republicans are urging a “debt prioritization” plan that would seek to avert default.“We’re not going to default on the debt. We have the ability to manage servicing and paying our interest. But we similarly should not blindly increase the debt ceiling,” Representative Chip Roy, a leading conservative Republican, told Reuters.But Dimon, regarded as America’s most powerful and most forthright banker, warned against playing political football with the issue.“Of course Democrats will blame the Republicans and Republicans will blame the Democrats,” Dimon told CNBC. “I don’t care who blames who. Even questioning it is the wrong thing to do … That is just a part of the financial structure of the world. This is not something you should be playing games with at all.”TopicsUS economyJamie DimonEconomicsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More