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      ‘I know how much it hurts’: Biden to release US oil in bid to lower gas prices – as it happened

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      ‘Incontrovertible evidence that this [war] has been a strategic disaster for Russia’ – White House

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      Biden: Putin may be in ‘self-isolation’

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      Romney: $10bn ‘agreement in principle’ over Covid relief

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      Biden confirms draw on oil reserves to lower gas prices

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      Pelosi wants inquiry on Russia’s ‘crimes against children’

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      Oil prices plunge as Biden mulls 180m barrel release

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      Biden confirms draw on oil reserves to lower gas prices

      Joe Biden says his plan to release 1m barrels daily from the US strategic oil reserves will: “Ease the pain families are feeling right now, end this era of dependence and uncertainty and lay a new and new foundation for true and lasting American energy independence.”
      The president is speaking live at the White House to announce the move, which he said would last up to six months and which will represent the largest ever draw ever on the country’s emergency supplies.
      “I know how much it hurts,” he said of rising gas prices that have followed the decision by the Russian president Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
      “Putin’s price hike is hitting Americans at the pump.” More

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      Biden targets America’s wealthiest with proposed minimum tax on billionaires

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      Biden targets America’s wealthiest with proposed minimum tax on billionairesTax on households over $100m aims to ensure wealthiest Americans no longer pay lower rate than teachers and firefighters Joe Biden proposed a new tax on America’s richest households when he unveiled his latest budget on Monday.The Biden administration wants to impose a 20% minimum tax on households worth more than $100m. The proposal would raise more than $360bn over the next decade and “would make sure that the wealthiest Americans no longer pay a tax rate lower than teachers and firefighters”, according to a factsheet released by the White House.‘I make no apologies’: Biden stands by ‘Putin cannot remain in power’ remarkRead moreThe plan – called the “billionaire minimum income tax” – is the administration’s most aggressive move to date to tax the very wealthiest Americans.The tax is part of Biden’s $5.8tn budget proposal for 2023, which also sets aside billions for the police and military as well as investments in affordable housing, plans to tackle the US’s supply chain issues and gun violence.“Budgets are statements of values, and the budget I am releasing today sends a clear message that we value fiscal responsibility, safety and security at home and around the world, and the investments needed to continue our equitable growth and build a better America,” Biden said in a statement.Billionaire wealth grew significantly during the coronavirus pandemic, helped by soaring share prices and a tax regime that charges investors less on their gains than those taxed on their income.“In 2021 alone, America’s more than 700 billionaires saw their wealth increase by $1tn, yet in a typical year, billionaires like these would pay just 8% of their total realized and unrealized income in taxes. A firefighter or teacher can pay double that tax rate,” the White House factsheet notes.Under the plan households worth more than $100m would have to give detailed accounts to the Internal Revenue Service of how their assets had fared over the year. Those who pay less than 20% on those gains would then be subject to an additional tax that would take their rate up to 20%.The Biden administration calculates that the tax would affect only the top 0.01% of American households, those worth over $100m, and that more than half the revenue would come from households worth more than $1bn.The budget also looks set to tackle another issue that some economists have argued contributes to widening income inequality: share buybacks.In recent years cash-rich companies including Apple, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft, have used their funds to buy back huge quantities of their own shares, boosting their share price. Last year companies in the S&P 500 bought back a record $882bn of their own shares and Goldman Sachs estimates that figure will rise to $1tn this year.Critics say that the purchases divert money from hiring new staff, raising wages and research and development.Research by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that there is “clear evidence that a substantial number of corporate executives today use buybacks as a chance to cash out”.The Biden proposal would stop executives from selling their shares for three years after a buyback is announced.Biden attempted to impose a 1% tax on share buybacks last year but the proposal failed in Congress. Both Biden’s billionaire tax and the share buyback proposal will also face tough opposition in Congress.TopicsUS taxationBiden administrationUS politicsUS economyJoe BidenUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Biden’s State of the Union address: a perfect summation of his presidency | Moira Donegan

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      Biden’s State of the Union address: a perfect summation of his presidencyMoira DoneganThe US president has good intentions, with only halting, sporadic, uncreative, and trepidatious efforts to actually enact them There’s always something a bit grim about the State of the Union. A setpiece of American political theater, the annual speech by the president to a joint session of Congress is choreographed to eliminate any chance of accidental sincerity. The president speaks in carefully calibrated spin; every word sounds like it has been focus-grouped. Members of the opposition party make a show of their animosity, vamping for the cameras with either staid, dignified displeasure or ravenous hatred, depending on where they are running for re-election. No one’s mind is changed and little new information is delivered. By its nature, the speech is meant to describe the status quo. It is not meant to change it.State of the Union: Joe Biden pledges to make Putin pay for Ukraine invasionRead moreThis year, President Biden had a particularly grim task. After months and months of negotiations with Senator Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, proved fruitless, his sweeping economic agenda, the Build Back Better Plan, appears to be dead. The two voting rights bills that would have helped secure the franchise for Black Americans and protect the integrity of future elections were killed when Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, declined to support an exemption to the filibuster, meaning that the erosion of voting rights in Republican-controlled states is likely to advance unchallenged. Many economic indicators are strong, but with inflation running rampant, this means little to working families, who see their paychecks covering less and less of what they need. This spring, the US supreme court will hand down opinions that will drastically reshape American government and American lives, including the case from Mississippi, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, that will overturn Roe v Wade. The midterms are coming, and in Europe, a pointless and brutal war of self-aggrandizement has been launched by an erratic and mendacious dictator with a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons.Perhaps it was to be expected, then, that Biden’s speech was wide-ranging in tone, frenziedly ambitious in its agenda, and light on specifics. He opened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, condemning the murderous ambitions of Vladimir Putin and praising the courage of the unexpectedly resilient Ukrainian military and civilian volunteer forces to rapturous applause. The Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, was in attendance as a guest of the first lady, and she received the night’s first standing ovation, her hand placed over her heart from her balcony seat, as lawmakers below fluttered her country’s blue and yellow flag. Homages to the Ukrainian struggle were everywhere in the House chamber, with a number of women lawmakers dressed in blue and yellow ensembles, men and women alike wearing stickers of the Ukrainian flag on their lapels, and others fielding subtler signals of solidarity: when the camera lingered on Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, she had a cloth sunflower, the Ukrainian national symbol, pinned to her collar.Biden boasted of the devastating impact of western economic sanctions on the Russian economy, reaffirmed his support for Nato, and vowed to deploy the justice department to seize yachts belonging to Putin’s friends. Promisingly, it seems as if concerns over growing Russian aggression might spark a renewed interest in energy independence that could help the US and Europe break their addiction to Russian oil and gas. Speaking of the recent return of significant numbers of American troops to Central Europe for the first time in years, Biden reaffirmed his commitment to preventing a direct military confrontation with Russia, and emphasized that the troops would be there not to attack the Russians, but to protect Nato allies. One suspects that Putin will not appreciate the distinction.When Biden moved on to domestic policy, the crowd quickly became divided. As he touted his American Rescue Plan, last year’s Covid relief package, boos erupted from the Republican side when Biden noted that the 2017 Republican tax cuts had primarily benefitted the very rich. It was a theme he maintained as he turned to his bipartisan infrastructure law, the $1tn legislative achievement that provides funds for the maintenance and repair of the nation’s physical infrastructure – roads, bridges, airports, commuter trains, and internet. Biden touted a series of shovel-ready projects he claims will go into effect this year and emphasized the bill’s ability to encourage the return of the American manufacturing sector.Domestic manufacturing was largely his prescription for fighting inflation, too. Biden introduced his broader economic agenda with a call to make more stuff in the US, and to use the federal government’s purchasing power to support those American-made goods. This segue led into a litany of briefly visited agenda items, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices; cutting the cost of childcare for working class families so that more women could return to the paid workforce; establishing a 15% minimum corporate tax rate; and supporting the labor-strengthening Pro Act.Many of these proposals seemed less like Biden was putting forward achievable goals for the next year of his presidency and more like he was shifting through the wreckage of his disastrous Build Back Better negotiations with Manchin, searching for some workable leftovers. Most of the items he proposed had already been presented to Congress; none of them had been able to get through the obstructionism of the Republican party and the Manchin-Sinema block. These things would substantially improve the lives of Americans, but it was clear he had no plan for how to implement any of them.This was true especially for abortion rights. Though reproductive choice advocates had long urged Biden to say the word “abortion” in public – he has never done so as president – he referred tonight only offhandedly to the importance of reproductive rights. There was no mention of the fact that Roe v Wade has been nullified in the state of Texas for six months, as of Tuesday. There was no mention of the fact that the Reproductive Health Act, an attempt to legislatively secure the federal right to an abortion, failed in the Senate this week. There was no mention of the fact that of the five supreme court justices present at the speech, three of them – John Roberts, Brett Kavanagh, and Amy Coney Barrett – will vote to eliminate that right in a few short months. “We have to protect a woman’s right to choose,” said Biden, not offering any ideas as to just how that right might be protected. The camera cut momentarily to Amy Coney Barrett, who pursed her lips as thin as paper.In this way, the speech was a perfect summation of Biden’s presidency: good intentions, with only halting, sporadic, uncreative, and trepidatious pursuit of actually enacting them. Unlike his predecessor, Biden tends to stay on script, but the State of the Union speech featured several ad libs – a product, some suspected, of the multiple revisions the speech was subjected to at the last minute, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine placed new demands on the broadcast. The last of these was probably the most apropos: “Go get him,” Biden told the nation. Him who? Get him how? It didn’t make sense, but so little of this does.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsJoe BidenOpinionUS politicsAbortionUS economyUS domestic policyUS foreign policyUkrainecommentReuse this content More

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      Tackling inflation is ‘top priority’, says Biden in State of the Union address

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      Tackling inflation is ‘top priority’, says Biden in State of the Union addressPresident acknowledges ‘too many families are struggling’ as climbing prices hit him in polls Getting runaway prices in America under control is “my top priority” Joe Biden told Congress on Tuesday in his first State of the Union address.Soaring inflation – now at a 40-year high – has hurt Biden in the polls and the US president bluntly acknowledged “too many families are struggling to keep up with the bills. Inflation is robbing them of the gains they might otherwise feel”.Tell us: how are rising US prices changing the way you shop, work and live ?Read moreThe US has added 6.6m jobs since Biden took office and the unemployment rate has dropped to 4%, down from a pandemic high of 14.8% in April 2020. But soaring inflation has overshadowed his economic successes, rising at an annual rate of 7.5% over the year through January.Biden said he would cut energy costs, the price of prescription drugs, and childcare in the US while ​​increasing competition between companies and making sure “corporations and the wealthiest Americans start paying their fair share”.“Economists call it ‘increasing the productive capacity of our economy’. I call it building a better America,” said Biden.Biden’s plans face heavy headwinds. On Tuesday, oil prices spiked again, passing $100 a barrel again as the war in Ukraine escalated. The rise will further increase costs for US consumers who are already paying high prices at the pump due to Covid 19-related issues. The average gallon of gas in the US was $3.61 as of 1 March, compared with $2.72 a gallon one year ago.Many of Biden’s initiatives will also struggle to pass in a deeply divided Washington as the US heads into midterm elections this November, with polling suggesting Republicans could take control of Congress.TopicsJoe BidenInflationUS politicsEconomicsUS economyDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Why the White House stopped telling the truth about inflation and corporate power | Robert Reich

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      Why the White House stopped telling the truth about inflation and corporate powerRobert ReichStarbucks, McDonald’s, Chipotle, Amazon – all protect profits by making customers pay more. We need the political courage to say they can and should cover rising costs themselves The Biden White House has decided to stop tying inflation to corporate power. That’s a big mistake. I’ll get to the reason for the shift in a moment. First, I want to be clear about the relationship between inflation and corporate power.Share the Profits! Why US business must return to rewarding workers properly | Robert ReichRead moreWhile most of the price increases now affecting the US and global economies have been the result of global supply chain problems, this doesn’t explain why big and hugely profitable corporations are passing these cost increases on to their customers in the form of higher prices.They don’t need to do so. With corporate profits at near record levels, they could easily absorb the cost increases. They’re raising prices because they can – and they can because they don’t face meaningful competition.As the White House National Economic Council put it in a December report: “Businesses that face meaningful competition can’t do that, because they would lose business to a competitor that did not hike its margins.”Starbucks is raising its prices to consumers, blaming the rising costs of supplies. But Starbucks is so profitable it could easily absorb these costs – it just reported a 31% increase in yearly profits. Why didn’t it just swallow the cost increases?Ditto for McDonald’s and Chipotle, whose revenues have soared but who are nonetheless raising prices. And for Procter & Gamble, which continues to rake in record profits but is raising prices. Also for Amazon, Kroger, Costco and Target.All are able to pass cost increases on to consumers in the form of higher prices because they face so little competition. As Chipotle’s chief financial officer said, “Our ultimate goal … is to fully protect our margins.”Worse yet, inflation has given some big corporations cover to increase their prices well above their rising costs.In a recent survey, almost 60% of large retailers say inflation has given them the ability to raise prices beyond what’s required to offset higher costs.Meat prices are soaring because the four giant meat processing corporations that dominate the industry are “using their market power to extract bigger and bigger profit margins for themselves”, according to a recent report from the White House National Economic Council (emphasis added).Not incidentally, that report was dated 10 December. Now, the White House is pulling its punches. Why has the White House stopped explaining this to the public?The Washington Post reports that when the prepared congressional testimony of a senior administration official (Janet Yellen?) was recently circulated inside the White House, it included a passage tying inflation to corporate consolidation and monopoly power. But that language was deleted from the remarks before they were delivered.Apparently, members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers raised objections. I don’t know what their objections were, but some economists argue that since corporations with market power wouldn’t need to wait until the current inflation to raise prices, corporate power can’t be contributing to inflation.This argument ignores the ease by which powerful corporations can pass on their own cost increases to customers in higher prices or use inflation to disguise even higher price increases.It seems likely that the Council of Economic Advisers is being influenced by two Democratic economists from a previous administration. According to the Post, the former Democratic treasury secretary Larry Summers and Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama administration, have been critical of attempts to link corporate market power to inflation.“Business-bashing is terrible economics and not very good politics in my view,” Summers said in an interview.Wrong. Showing the connections between corporate power and inflation is not “business-bashing”. It’s holding powerful corporations accountable.Whether through antitrust enforcement (or the threat of it), a windfall profits tax or price controls, or all three, it’s important for the administration and Congress to do what they can to prevent hugely profitable monopolistic corporations from raising their prices.Otherwise, responsibility for controlling inflation falls entirely to the Federal Reserve, which has only one weapon at its disposal – higher interest rates. Higher interest rates will slow the economy and likely cause millions of lower-wage workers to lose their jobs and forfeit long-overdue wage increases.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at 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
      TopicsBiden administrationOpinionUS domestic policyUS economyUS politicsEconomicsInflationAmazoncommentReuse this content More

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      Beware of this deadly mix: oligarchic economics and racist nationalist populism | Robert Reich

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      Beware of this deadly mix: oligarchic economics and racist, nationalist populismRobert ReichA treacherous alliance is growing that will undermine democratic institutions in the US and elsewhere The United States presents itself as the beacon of democracy in contrast to the autocracies of China and Russia. Yet American democracy is in danger of succumbing to the same sort of oligarchic economics and racist nationalism that thrive in both these powers.After all, it wasn’t long ago that Donald Trump – who openly admired Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin – encouraged racist nationalism in America while delivering much of the US government into the hands of America’s super-rich.Now state-level Republicans are busily suppressing votes of people of color and paving the way for a possible anti-democratic coup, while the national Republican party excuses the attack on the Capitol – calling it “legitimate political discourse” – and censors Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only two congressional Republicans serving on the panel investigating that attack.America’s oligarchic wealth, meanwhile, has reached levels rivaling or exceeding those of Russia and China. During the pandemic, America’s 745 billionaires increased their holdings by 70%, adding $2.1tn to their wealth in just over a year.A portion of this wealth is going into politics. As early as 2012, more than 40% of all money spent in federal elections came from the wealthiest of the wealthiest – not the top 1% or even the top tenth of the 1%, but from the top 1% of the 1%.Now, some of this wealth is supporting Trumpism. Peter Thiel, a staunch Trump supporter whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be $2.6bn, has become one of the Republican party’s largest donors.Last year, Thiel gave $10m each to the campaigns of two protégés – Blake Masters, who is running for the Senate from Arizona, and JD Vance, from Ohio. Thiel is also backing 12 House candidates, three of whom are running primary challenges to Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for the events of January 6.It’s not just Republicans. Last year, at least 13 billionaires who had previously donated to Trump lavished campaign donations on Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records.The combination of oligarchic wealth and racist nationalism is treacherous for democratic institutions in the US and elsewhere. Capitalism is consistent with democracy only if democracy reduces the inequalities, insecurities, joblessness, and poverty that accompany unbridled profit-seeking.For the first three decades after the second world war, democracy did this. The US and war-ravaged western Europe built the largest middle classes the world had ever seen, and the most buoyant democracies.The arrangement was far from perfect, but with the addition of civil rights and voting rights, subsidized healthcare (in the US, Medicare and Medicaid), and a vast expansion of public education, democracy was on the way to making capitalism work for the vast majority.Then came a giant U-turn, courtesy of Ronald Reagan in America and Margaret Thatcher in Europe. Deregulation, privatization, globalization, and the unleashing of finance created the Full Monty: abandoned factories and communities, stagnant wages, widening inequality, a shrinking middle class, political corruption and shredded social support.The result has been widespread anger and cynicism. Even before the pandemic, most people were working harder than ever but couldn’t get ahead, and their children’s prospects weren’t any better. More than one out of every six American children was impoverished and the typical American family was living from paycheck to paycheck. At the same time, a record high share of national wealth was already surging to the top.Starting last July, America did an experiment that might have limited these extremes and reduced the lure of racist nationalism. That’s when 36 million American families began receiving pandemic payments of up to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for each child under six).Presto. Child poverty dropped by at least a third, and the typical family gained some breathing space.But this hugely successful experiment ended abruptly in December when Senator Joe Manchin joined 50 Republican senators in rejecting President Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which would have continued it.They cited concerns over the experiment’s cost – an estimated $100bn per year, or $1.6tn over 10 years. But that’s less than big corporations and the rich will have saved on taxes from the Trump Republican tax cut of 2018. Repeal it, and there would be enough money. The cost is also less than the increase in the wealth of America’s 745 billionaires during the pandemic. Why not a wealth tax?The experiment died because, put simply, the oligarchy didn’t want to pay for it.Oligarchic economics coupled with racist nationalism marks the ultimate failure of progressive politics. Beware. When the people are no longer defended against the powerful, they look elsewhere.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at 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
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansUS economyDonald TrumpJoe BidencommentReuse this content More