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nrashkind

Trump Broke The Law In Freezing Ukraine Funds, Watchdog Report Concludes : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...unds-watchdog-report-concludes

shared by nrashkind on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • A federal watchdog concluded that President Trump broke the law when he froze assistance funds for Ukraine last year, according to a report unveiled on Thursday.
  • The White House has said that it believed Trump was acting within his legal authority.
  • Trump's decision to freeze military aid appropriated by Congress is at the heart of impeachment proceedings against the president
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  • Democratic lawmakers have accused Trump of abusing his office by withholding hundreds of millions in assistance in order to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
  • The Office of Management and Budget blocked the Defense Department from spending money designated by Congress on July 25,
  • a 1974 law that governs budget procedure within the government "does not permit OMB to withhold funds for policy reasons,"
  • Documents and testimony released during and after House impeachment hearings revealed some administration officials had raised concerns that the Ukraine hold might have violated the law known as the Impoundment Control Act.
  • If the White House wants to delay or deny funds, it must first alert Congress.
  • Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, asked the GAO to assess Trump's decisions to freeze the Ukraine aid.
  • Van Hollen said he thought the report vindicated Congress' decision to impeach Trump.
  • Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., opposes the introduction of fresh witnesses or evidence into a Senate trial, arguing the Senate's role is to assess the House's fact-finding, not to do new investigations on its own.
  • After release of the GAO report, the OMB said it disagrees with the findings.
  • "OMB uses its apportionment authority to ensure taxpayer dollars are properly spent consistent with the president's priorities and with the law," said OMB spokeswoman Rachel Semmel.
  • in early January that Defense Department emails showed repeated warnings from the department to OMB that the delays put its ability to distribute the aid at risk.
  • Back in 2016, as she campaigned for Hillary Clinton, Laura Hubka could feel her county converting.
  • "People were chasing me out the door, slamming the door in my face, calling Hillary names," Hubka recalled.
  • In 2012, Howard County voted for then-President Barack Obama by 21 percentage points. In 2016, it voted for candidate Donald Trump by 20 points.
  • Of Iowa's 99 counties, 31 swung from voting for the Democrat Obama in 2008 and 2012 to the Republican Trump in 2016,
  • oward County, with its 41-point shift, saw the biggest swin
  • National reporters have descended on the county, trying to understand the massive shift
  • Whatever the reason, local Democrats want to make sure they can win back some voters.
  • they're torn on how to do that.
  • Hubka is not supporting the former vice president. Instead, she's backing Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind. So is Dale Ernst.
  • "I think he's just kind of a calm voice in the middle of the chaos, which is what we're in the middle of now,
  • "I just don't think it's reasonable," he said. "I just really don't. I think for people younger than 65, they see this more free than, really, the cost of it."
  • The 66-year-old is skeptical of "Medicare for All."
  • "Amy Klobuchar is kind of right in the middle," Godwin said. "I like what she has to say."
  • "I will do my best to try to get this county back," said Hubka, the party chair. "I don't have high hopes. ... I don't know in November that it'll flip completely. I hope that I can get at least 10 of the points back or, you know, 15."
  • "Coming to a place like here, where the swing was 20 [for Obama] to 20 [for Trump], I think it steers the ship," he said. "It gives a good idea of where we should go."
  • The last time the county went for a Republican prior to Trump was in 1984 for Ronald Reagan. Four years later, it turned blue again.
Javier E

Trump's OMB pick seems poised to ignite a worldwide financial crisis - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html

financial crisis trump OMB

shared by Javier E on 20 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • He also publicly questioned whether failing to raise the ceiling would be such a bad thing, and whether it would necessitate defaulting on our debt.
  • Raising the debt ceiling is about enabling the federal government to make payments that have already been promised, not new spending. Refusing to increase this limit would call into question the country’s creditworthiness.
  • Set aside the fact that this flippancy about making full and timely payments on our debt would likely violate Section 4 of the 14th Amendment. That’s the part of the Constitution that says that the “validity of the public debt of the United States . . . shall not be questioned.”
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  • U.S. Treasurys, currently considered risk-free, are the benchmark of the global financial system. They enjoy safest-of-safe status precisely because creditors believe they’ll be paid back in full. Rattling the public’s faith in our creditworthiness would set off a crisis throughout the world. 
  • Mulvaney will probably be the most ideological and least-qualified OMB director in decades. (Mulvaney didn’t even serve on the House Budget Committee, which might help explain his superficial understanding of the debt ceiling.)
aidenborst

Opinion: Biden's economic picks show that we are in good hands - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Politics US trump policy pandemic economics gop Biden democratic-party rebuild economy

shared by aidenborst on 04 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • You are in good hands. No, this isn't an insurance commercial. It is a full-throated endorsement of President-elect Biden's economic team — a diverse group with deep experience making economic policy during the financial crisis that rocked the global economy just over a decade ago. This team is well-suited to do the same now as the devastated economy struggles with the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • The diversity of the economic policy team is consistent with Biden's stated desire that his administration reflect the people it will serve.
  • Janet Yellen, the senior member of the team, will be the nation's first female Treasury secretary.
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  • The president-elect has said the $900 billion fiscal rescue package proposed by a bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic senators is a good start. It probably isn't what his economic team would have designed if given carte blanche — that package probably would have included another round of stimulus checks to individuals, for example — but they understand that the priority is speed, and not necessarily size, as millions of Americans face eviction and the loss of unemployment insurance benefits in just a few weeks.
  • Powell has said more than once that lawmakers need to provide additional help to the economy, and that the risks of overdoing it are much lower than not doing enough.
  • Once the pandemic is over, it will take deft policymaking to get all the unemployed back to work anytime soon. Given the possibility of the Senate being under Republican control, the Biden administration could be engulfed in budget wars like those with which the Obama administration grappled
  • From the trenches, Neera Tanden, who Biden wants as his director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is well-suited to lead the charge. The OMB controls the government purse strings and thus policy priorities across the executive branch. Unless the OMB is on board with a government agency's plan, it won't get done.
  • A Republican-controlled Senate would make legislative wins tough to come by when Biden is president, and he will surely turn to executive orders to accomplish his goals.
  • Biden will use executive orders as aggressively as Trump, in part to unwind much of what Trump did, and his economic team has the experience to do it efficiently.
  • President-elect Biden's most important long-term economic challenge will be to lift the financial fortunes of hard-pressed lower-income and minority households. Things were tough for these groups before the pandemic given the decades-long skewing of income and wealth distribution, and the virus has further undermined their finances.
  • If there is a gap in Biden's economic team it is that it lacks someone who has started or managed a business. Getting the economy back to a place in which all Americans benefit requires businesses to do well. This means economic policies also need to be considered from a businessperson's perspective. The new administration is sure to solicit many outside business voices, but policymaking would benefit from an experienced voice on the team.
  • The Covid-19 pandemic is sure to have long-lasting economic fallout. Just how long will depend in large part on the new president's economic policies. Judging by the economic team he has assembled, we are in good hands.
katherineharron

Imperiled Tanden nomination expected to face key Senate committee votes - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Tanden

shared by katherineharron on 24 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • Neera Tanden's imperiled nomination to be President Joe Biden's budget director faces a major test Wednesday to see if she has enough support to win Senate confirmation amid bipartisan opposition.
  • Two Senate committees are expected to vote on whether to advance her nomination to the floor as Tanden faces resistance from Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist from West Virginia, and a wide array of Republicans, who have said they will not back her because of her past partisan criticisms
  • If Tanden's nomination stalls out, it would be the first defeat of a high-profile Biden pick subject to Senate approval
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  • The embattled nominee stands a chance of winning confirmation if she wins the support of moderate Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, but it is far from clear that will happen.
  • Asked if he believes all Democrats on his panel will support the nominee, Sen. Gary Peters, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Homeland Security committee, told CNN on Tuesday, "I haven't talked to all of them but I believe we will."
  • The Senate Budget Committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is also expected to vote on the nomination on Wednesday. The Vermont senator -- who has clashed with Tanden in the past -- would not say Tuesday if he planned to support her for the position
  • Tanden apologized and expressed regret over her past tweets during Senate confirmation hearings earlier this month.
  • Manchin said that Tanden's comments on Twitter about Sanders and Republican colleagues, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, had led him to doubt she was the right fit.
  • "I have carefully reviewed Neera Tanden's public statements and tweets that were personally directed towards my colleagues on both sides of the aisle from Senator Sanders to Senator McConnell and others. I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget," Manchin said in a statement.
  • "Congress has to be able to trust the OMB director to make countless decisions in an impartial manner, carrying out the letter of the law and congressional intent," Collins said. "Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency. Her past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend."
  • "My friendly advice to President Biden is to withdraw Neera Tanden's nomination and select someone who at the very least has not ... openly bashed people on both sides of the aisle that she happens to disagree with," he said.
Javier E

Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile - Th... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-aa80-c2470c6b2034_story.html

equipment medical states desperate pandemic

shared by Javier E on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • HHS officials have sparred for more than a year with White House budget officials over money to buy more stockpile supplies.In February 2019, the White House was planning for a presidential executive order on preparing for a potential flu pandemic. HHS requested a more than $11 billion investment over 10 years for ASPR, including $2.7 billion for “treatment and control,” according to a document read by a Washington Post reporter that said some of those funds would go toward “better protective devices, manufactured faster.”
  • But the executive order issued by Trump in September 2019 did not include that money.
  • In late January, Azar began telling OMB about the need for a supplemental budget request for stockpile supplies — and was rebuffed at a time when the White House did not yet acknowledge any supplemental money would be needed, according to several individuals familiar with the situation
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  • Then came the Feb. 5 argument.
  • In mid-March, Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency. As a result, control of the stockpile shifted again — from HHS to FEMA.Since then, FEMA’s administrator, Peter Gaynor, has been asked frequently how many supplies have been shipped to states and how allocation decisions are being made.
Javier E

Warnings Ignored: A Timeline of Trump's COVID-19 Response - The Bulwark - 0 views

thebulwark.com/ne-of-trumps-covid-19-response

timeline trump response pandemic history policy politics

shared by Javier E on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • the White House is trying to establish an alternate reality in which Trump was a competent, focused leader who saved American people from the coronavirus.
  • it highlights just how asleep Trump was at the switch, despite warnings from experts within his own government and from former Trump administration officials pleading with him from the outside.
  • Most prominent among them were former Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb, and Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council Dr. Luciana Borio who beginning in early January used op-eds, television appearances, social media posts, and private entreaties to try to spur the administration into action.
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  • what the administration should have been doing in January to prepare us for today.
  • She cites the delay on tests, without which “cases go undetected and people continue to circulate” as a leading issue along with other missed federal government responses—many of which are still not fully operational
  • The prescient recommendations from experts across disciplines in the period before COVID-19 reached American shores—about testing, equipment, and distancing—make clear that more than any single factor, it was Trump’s squandering of out lead-time which should have been used to prepare for the pandemic that has exacerbated this crisis.
  • What follows is an annotated timeline revealing the warning signs the administration received and showing how slow the administration was to act on these recommendations.
  • The Early Years: Warnings Ignored
  • 2017: Trump administrations officials are briefed on an intelligence document titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.” That’s right. The administration literally had an actual playbook for what to do in the early stages of a pandemic
  • February 2018: The Washington Post writes “CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak.” The meat of the story is “Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo.”
  • May 2018: At an event marking the 100 year anniversary of the 1918 pandemic, Borio says “pandemic flu” is the “number 1 health security issue” and that the U.S. is not ready to respond.
  • One day later her boss, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer is pushed out of the administration and the global health security team is disbanded
  • Beth Cameron, former senior director for global health security on the National Security Council adds: “It is unclear in his absence who at the White House would be in charge of a pandemic,” Cameron said, calling it “a situation that should be immediately rectified.” Note: It was not
  • January 2019: The director of National Intelligence issues the U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment of threats to national security. Among its findings:
  • A novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat, with pathogens such as H5N1 and H7N9 influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus having pandemic potential if they were to acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility.”
  • Page 21: “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”
  • September, 2019: The Trump Administration ended the pandemic early warning program, PREDICT, which trained scientists in China and other countries to identify viruses that had the potential to turn into pandemics. According to the Los Angeles Times, “field work ceased when funding ran out in September,” two months before COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan Province, China.
  • 2020: COVID-19 Arrives
  • anuary 3, 2020: The CDC is first alerted to a public health event in Wuhan, China
  • January 6, 2020: The CDC issues a travel notice for Wuhan due to the spreading coronavirus
  • Note: The Trump campaign claims that this marks the beginning of the federal government disease control experts becoming aware of the virus. It was 10 weeks from this point until the week of March 16 when Trump began to change his tone on the threat.
  • January 10, 2020: Former Trump Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert warns that we shouldn’t “jerk around with ego politics” because “we face a global health threat…Coordinate!”
  • January 18, 2020: After two weeks of attempts, HHS Secretary Alex Azar finally gets the chance to speak to Trump about the virus. The president redirects the conversation to vaping, according to the Washington Post. 
  • January 21, 2020: Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease at the CDC tells reporters, “We do expect additional cases in the United States.”
  • January 27, 2020: Top White House aides meet with Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to encourage greater focus on the threat from the virus. Joe Grogan, head of the White House Domestic Policy Council warns that “dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.”
  • January 28, 2020: Two former Trump administration officials—Gottlieb and Borio—publish an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal imploring the president to “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic.” They advocate a 4-point plan to address the coming crisis:
  • (1) Expand testing to identify and isolate cases. Note: This did not happen for many weeks. The first time more than 2,000 tests were deployed in a single day was not until almost six weeks later, on March 11.
  • (3) Prepare hospital units for isolation with more gowns and masks. Note: There was no dramatic ramp-up in the production of critical supplies undertaken. As a result, many hospitals quickly experienced shortages of critical PPE materials. Federal agencies waited until Mid-March to begin bulk orders of N95 masks.
  • January 29, 2020: Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro circulates an internal memo warning that America is “defenseless” in the face of an outbreak which “elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
  • January 30, 2020: Dr. James Hamblin publishes another warning about critical PPE materials in the Atlantic, titled “We Don’t Have Enough Masks.”
  • January 29, 2020: Republican Senator Tom Cotton reaches out to President Trump in private to encourage him to take the virus seriously.
  • Late January, 2020:  HHS sends a letter asking to use its transfer authority to shift $136 million of department funds into pools that could be tapped for combating the coronavirus. White House budget hawks argued that appropriating too much money at once when there were only a few U.S. cases would be viewed as alarmist.
  • Trump’s Chinese travel ban only banned “foreign nationals who had been in China in the last 14 days.” This wording did not—at all—stop people from arriving in America from China. In fact, for much of the crisis, flights from China landed in America almost daily filled with people who had been in China, but did not fit the category as Trump’s “travel ban” defined it.
  • January 31, 2020: On the same day Trump was enacting his fake travel ban, Foreign Policy reports that face masks and latex gloves are sold out on Amazon and at leading stores in New York City and suggests the surge in masks being sold to other countries needs “refereeing” in the face of the coming crisis.
  • February 4, 2020: Gottlieb and Borio take to the WSJ again, this time to warn the president that “a pandemic seems inevitable” and call on the administration to dramatically expand testing, expand the number of labs for reviewing tests, and change the rules to allow for tests of people even if they don’t have a clear known risk factor.
  • Note: Some of these recommendations were eventually implemented—25 days later.
  • February 5, 2020: HHS Secretary Alex Azar requests $2 billion to “buy respirator masks and other supplies for a depleted federal stockpile of emergency medical equipment.” He is rebuffed by Trump and the White House OMB who eventually send Congress a $500 million request weeks later.
  • February 4 or 5, 2020: Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, and other intelligence officials brief the Senate Intelligence Committee that the virus poses a “serious” threat and that “Americans would need to take actions that could disrupt their daily lives.”
  • February 5, 2020: Senator Chris Murphy tweets: Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren't taking this seriously enough. Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.
  • February 9, 2020: The Washington Post reports that a group of governors participated in a jarring meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Robert Redfield that was much more alarmist than what they were hearing from Trump. “The doctors and the scientists, they were telling us then exactly what they are saying now,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said.
  • the administration lifted CDC restrictions on tests. This is a factually true statement. But it elides that fact that they did so on March 3—two critical weeks after the third Borio/Gottlieb op-ed on the topic, during which time the window for intervention had shrunk to a pinhole.
  • February 20, 2020: Borio and Gottlieb write in the Wall Street Journal that tests must be ramped up immediately “while we can intervene to stop spread.”
  • February 23, 2020: Harvard School of Public Health professor issues warning on lack of test capability: “As of today, the US remains extremely limited in#COVID19 testing. Only 3 of ~100 public health labs haveCDC test kits working and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it.
  • February 24, 2020: The Trump administration sends a letter to Congress requesting a small dollar amount—between $1.8 billion and $2.5 billion—to help combat the spread of the coronavirus. This is, of course, a pittance
  • February 25, 2020: Messonier says she expects “community spread” of the virus in the United States and that “disruption to everyday life might be severe.” Trump is reportedly furious and Messonier’s warnings are curtailed in the ensuing weeks.
  • Trump mocks Congress in a White House briefing, saying “If Congress wants to give us the money so easy—it wasn’t very easy for the wall, but we got that one done. If they want to give us the money, we’ll take the money.”
  • February 26, 2020: Congress, recognizing the coming threat, offers to give the administration $6 billion more than Trump asked for in order to prepare for the virus.
  • February 27, 2020: In a leaked audio recording Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Intelligence Committee and author of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) and the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act (reauthorization of PAHPA), was telling people that COVID-19 “is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”
  • March 4, 2020: HHS says they only have 1 percent of respirator masks needed if the virus became a “full-blown pandemic.”
  • March 3, 2020: Vice President Pence is asked about legislation encouraging companies to produce more masks. He says the Trump administration is “looking at it.”
  • March 7, 2020: Fox News host Tucker Carlson, flies to Mar-a-Lago to implore Trump to take the virus seriously in private rather than embarrass him on TV. Even after the private meeting, Trump continued to downplay the crisis
  • March 9, 2020: Tom Bossert, Trump’s former Homeland Security adviser, publishes an op-ed saying it is “now or never” to act. He advocates for social distancing and school closures to slow the spread of the contagion.
  • Trump says that developments are “good for the consumer” and compares COVID-19 favorably to the common flu.
  • March 17, 2020: Facing continued shortages of the PPE equipment needed to prevent healthcare providers from succumbing to the virus, Oregon Senators Jeff Merkeley and Ron Wyden call on Trump to use the Defense Production Act to expand supply of medical equipment
  • March 18, 2020: Trump signs the executive order to activate the Defense Production Act, but declines to use it
  • At the White House briefing he is asked about Senator Chuck Schumer’s call to urgently produce medical supplies and ventilators. Trump responds: “Well we’re going to know whether or not it’s urgent.” Note: At this point 118 Americans had died from COVID-19.
  • March 20, 2020: At an April 2nd White House Press Conference, President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who was made ad hoc point man for the coronavirus response said that on this date he began working with Rear Admiral John Polowczyk to “build a team” that would handle the logistics and supply chain for providing medical supplies to the states. This suggestion was first made by former Trump Administration officials January 28th
  • March 22, 2020: Six days after calling for a 15-day period of distancing, Trump tweets that this approach “may be worse than the problem itself.”
  • March 24, 2020: Trump tells Fox News that he wants the country opened up by Easter Sunday (April 12)
  • As Trump was speaking to Fox, there were 52,145 confirmed cases in the United States and the doubling time for daily new cases was roughly four days.
Javier E

Democrats copied the GOP's politics of 'personal responsibility,' and it hurt America -... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...onsibility-and-it-hurt-america

responsibility accountability opportunity culture obama Democratic party reform

shared by Javier E on 29 May 17 - No Cached
  • On the campaign trail, Trump styled himself as an advocate of working people who believed that the state has an obligation to help struggling Americans, irrespective of why they are in need. Whereas his main rivals for the Republican nomination insisted that Americans have a responsibility to procure their own health care, for example, Trump proclaimed that we “need health care for all people.” There was, he said in one interview, “a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”
  • Since taking office, Trump has reverted to a more traditional Republican playbook: His economic policy offers huge handouts to the richest Americans, and it justifies this redistribution from bottom to top with the classic rhetoric of “personal responsibility” — a trope that has dominated American politics for the better part of three decades.
  • As Trump says in his official statement on the budget, he “will champion the hardworking taxpayers who have been ignored for too long” while reforming the welfare state so that it no longer “discourage[s] able-bodied adults from working.”
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  • “Personal responsibility” is a peculiar phrase, at once anodyne and foreboding. It is both an expression of breezy common sense and a barely concealed threat to those unfortunate souls who might be so foolish as to act irresponsibly.
  • It’s such a routine part of American discourse that the literal meanings of the words barely register.
  • This language has had a profound impact on American politics. Weaponized by conservatives such as Ronald Reagan, then slowly adopted by liberals such as Bill Clinton, “responsibility” has shaped public policies from health care to housing
  • It is no coincidence, for example, that the greatest overhaul of the U.S. welfare state, which Clinton signed into law with bipartisan support in 1996, was called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
  • it seems to answer the question of what the state owes to whom
  • Conservatives often argue that some people lead irresponsible lives, characterized by laziness and bad choices. So, since a large share of the poor and the sick have but themselves to blame for their suffering, the state does not owe them anything. And to tax people who work hard and make good choices in order to look after people who are irresponsible is not just bad for economic growth; it is immoral.
  • By invoking personal responsibility, Americans could tell themselves that racial disparities did not stem from historical injustice but rather from factors for which the poor were themselves to blame.
  • Whereas the Republican base once saw personal responsibility as a way to claim credit for its successes while casting blame for others’ failures, the same language now feels like a way of adding insult to injury
  • Trump, in Beinart’s words, was so appealing in good part because “instead of demanding personal responsibility,” he pledged “state protection.”
  • The vast gulf between candidate Trump’s promise not to judge ordinary Americans for their problems and President Trump’s policy of making life more difficult for Americans who fail to be self-sufficient creates a new opening for liberals. After decades when talk about personal responsibility gave conservatives ideological hegemony over most discussions of the welfare state, liberals could now go on the rhetorical offensive.
  • Stunned by the rhetorical power of “personal responsibility,” the left long ago came to accept the assumptions of its political adversaries.
  • Clinton and Barack Obama spoke as though they wanted to help only those Americans who were in need for reasons beyond their control, incessantly emphasizing the plight of those who “work hard and play by the rules.”
  • But since they sought to preserve key social provisions, they highlighted an empirical disagreement instead: Most people are not at fault for being in need.
  • As study after study has demonstrated, the odds are still stacked against blacks and Latinos: They are likely to be born to less-educated parents, to attend worse schools and to have more trouble finding jobs than similarly qualified whites.
  • Instead of thinking of them as equals, just as capable of taking their fates into their own hands, the left has, as political philosophers Elizabeth Anderson and Jonathan Wolff have argued, adopted a stance of pity for those poor dolts who could never amount to anything because of all the structural forces aligned against them
  • liberals should break with the punitive politics of responsibility in a much more radical way.
  • liberals now need to envisage an economic policy that would empower citizens of all classes and races to lead meaningful, economically productive lives — whether or not they have used drugs or served time or failed to finish high school.
  • liberals should, counterintuitively, recognize that personal responsibility can be a positive force. Stripped of its punitive connotations, responsibility is a virtue most people are eager to practice
  • we should recognize that most people already aspire to a broader, community-minded notion of responsibility, and that the state should help ensure that people have access to the basic educational resources they need to realize this goal.
  • A positive vision of responsibility would not be a political cudgel against ordinary citizens, a way to punish people for their pasts or to deprive them of state assistance. Instead, it would start with the recognition that, with a little help, most people are perfectly able and willing to take control of their own lives.
anonymous

CDC Likely To Extend Eviction Moratorium With Millions Of People Behind On Rent : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...lions-of-people-behind-on-rent

shared by anonymous on 21 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has taken a key step toward extending an order aimed at preventing evictions during the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. The CDC order is currently set to expire in less than 2 weeks.
  • Housing advocates have warned for months that allowing this protection for renters to lapse would spark a tsunami of evictions, putting upward of 1 million people out of their homes. The CDC has now sent a proposal to the Office of Management and Budget for regulatory review. The CDC hasn't responded to a request for comment. And the listing on the OMB site doesn't indicate how long the CDC might extend the eviction order for. The move doesn't mean absolutely that the the agency will extend the order. But that now appears likely.
  • "It means that CDC likely intends to extend and perhaps improve the CDC order on evictions," says Shamus Roller, the executive director of the National Housing Law Project
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  • Nearly 10 million Americans are behind on their rent payments, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the last two COVID-19 relief bills, Congress has approved more than $50 billion for rental assistance.
  • But the state and local application portals that the money will flow through are only just now opening up to take applications. So the vast majority of people who need the help won't have gotten it by the end of March when the CDC eviction order expires.
  • Studies have found that evictions spread COVID-19 and result in more deaths from the disease since people are forced into more crowded living situations and often double up with other families or family members.
  • Landlord groups have applauded the rental assistance money from Congress, but they are opposed to the CDC extending its order, saying landlords need to have the right to move forward with eviction cases a year into the pandemic.
hannahcarter11

President Biden has released his $6 trillion budget. Here's what's in it. - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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biden budget

shared by hannahcarter11 on 31 May 21 - No Cached
  • President Joe Biden on Friday proposed a $6 trillion budget for fiscal year 2022, laying out details of a proposed dramatic increase in federal spending that serves as the underpinning of an economic agenda that seeks to transform the American economy as the country emerges from dual public health and economic crises.
  • The budget proposal, which is an opening bid in negotiations with Congress and is expected to change before being signed into law, calls for the most sustained period of spending in more than half a century. The White House budget serves more as a marker of administration priorities than a policy blueprint destined to be signed into law. It would invest heavily in Biden's top priority areas including infrastructure, education, research, public health, paid family leave and childcare.
  • The proposal includes the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan, the $4 trillion infrastructure, jobs and economic proposal that the President had previously laid out and is negotiating with lawmakers. It also outlines additional funds to launch a new health research agency to focus on diseases like cancer, and funds to address gun violence, tackle the climate crisis, help end homelessness and curb the opioid epidemic.
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  • The scale of the spending, which Biden has made the center of his economic plans, is an intentional effort to transform an economy the President has repeatedly said leaves too many behind and, just as importantly, has made the US less competitive in the face of an ascendant China.
  • At its core, the budget underscores the fundamental divide in viewpoints between the two parties in the wake of the pandemic -- as well as the clear shift in the Democratic Party towards an embrace of ramping up spending and tax increases on corporations in the wealthy in order to expand the federal government's role in assisting those on the lower-end of the income scale.
  • Biden is asking Congress for $932 billion for discretionary, non-defense programs for fiscal year 2022 -- a significant increase from last year. The President has proposed $756 billion in defense funding, which is also an uptick from last year
  • Young argued the investments are "front-loaded" and would be "more than paid for" by the reforms to the tax code that would require the wealthiest of Americans and corporations to pay higher taxes. The President has repeatedly pledged that Americans making less than $400,000 would not have to pay increased taxes.
  • Biden has made racial equity a top focus of his administration, but there is no specific line item in the budget focused on addressing racial inequality. Young argued it wasn't necessary because Biden has directed the entire federal government to address racial inequality as it implements all of its programs.
  • In addition to the American Jobs Plan and the American Families plan, the budget proposal calls for:
  • The presidential budget did not include the Hyde amendment -- a four-decade-old ban on federal dollars being used for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is in danger -- which Biden previously supported before reversing course and denouncing during the Democratic primary. Abortion rights supporters had long called for Biden to drop the measure.
  • In his budget overview, the President calls on Congress to enact several of his major health care initiatives, including lowering prescription drug costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices, creating a public health insurance option, giving those age 60 and older the option to enroll in Medicare and closing the Medicaid coverage gap.
  • Instead, the White House budget focuses on the health care measures contained in the American Families Plan, which would make permanent enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that were contained in the Democrats' $1.9 trillion rescue plan that Biden signed into law in March. That boost to the federal subsidies currently lasts only two years.
  • The budget also doesn't include increasing the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, which Biden had included in his $1.9 trillion relief proposal. But the measure was dropped from the Senate version after the parliamentarian ruled it did not meet a strict set of guidelines needed to move forward in the Senate's reconciliation process.
  • What is in the budget is setting the hourly minimum wage at $15 for federal contractors. This process is already underway, thanks to an executive order Biden signed in late April.
yehbru

Biden budget would give CDC biggest funding boost in nearly 20 years - 0 views

www.cnbc.com/...-boost-in-nearly-20-years.html

US Politics Biden CDC Funding

shared by yehbru on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The budget blueprint for fiscal 2022 would include $8.7 billion in discretionary funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to budget documents shared by the Office of Management and Budget.
  • The agency said that budget bump would build on the CDC investments doled out in the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan that Biden signed into law in March.
  • The new funding would be used to “support core public health capacity improvements in States and Territories, modernize public health data collection nationwide, train new epidemiologists and other public health experts, and rebuild international capacity to detect, prepare for, and respond to emerging global threats,” the OMB said.
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  • While the CDC funding request is a big increase from recent years, it comprises just a small slice of Biden’s $6 trillion budget proposal for 2022.
  • The budget materials say $153 million would be allocated for the CDC’s Social Determinants of Health program to work on “improving health equity and data collection for racial and ethnic populations.”
  • The government would also provide $100 million for the CDC’s Climate and Health program as part of a $1.2 billion investment in strengthening resilience to wildfires, floods, droughts and other climate-related disasters.
  • Overall, HHS is requesting $133.7 billion in discretionary funding — a $25.3 billion, or 23.4%, bump from the enacted budget of fiscal 2021.
Javier E

From World War II, Economic Lessons for Today - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...conomic-lessons-for-today.html

wwII depression economics policy history employment

shared by Javier E on 14 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • the oft-repeated notion that it took World War II to end the economic nightmare of the ’30s: If a global war was needed to return the economy to full employment then, what is going to save us today?
  • While the war helped the recovery from the Depression, the economy was improving long before military spending increased. More fundamentally, the wrenching wartime experience provides a message of hope for our troubled economy today: we have the tools to deal with our problems, if only policy makers will use them.
  • Starting in the mid-1930s, Hitler’s aggression caused capital flight from Europe. People wanted to invest somewhere safer — particularly in the United States. Under the gold standard of that time, the flight to safety caused large gold flows to America. The Treasury Department under President Franklin D. Roosevelt used that inflow to increase the money supply.
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  • The result was an aggressive monetary expansion that effectively ended deflation.
  • The economy responded strongly. From 1933 to 1937, real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of almost 10 percent, and unemployment fell from 25 percent to 14. To put that in perspective, G.D.P. growth has averaged just 2.5 percent in the current recovery, and unemployment has barely budged.
  • The lesson here is that fiscal stimulus can help a depressed economy recover — an idea supported by new studies of the 2009 stimulus package. Additional short-run tax cuts or increases in government investment would help deal with our unemployment crisis.
  • What of the idea that monetary and fiscal policy can do little if unemployment is caused by structural factors, like a mismatch between workers’ skills and available jobs
  • businesses and workers found a way to get the job done. Factories simplified production methods and housewives learned to rivet.
  • Here the lesson is that demand is crucial — and that jobs don’t go unfilled for long. If jobs were widely available today, unemployed workers would quickly find a way to acquire needed skills or move to where the jobs were located.
  • at the end of World War II, that ratio hit 109 percent — one and a half times as high as it is now. Yet this had no obvious adverse consequences for growth or our ability to borrow.
  • what about the national debt? Given the recent debt downgrade, it might seem impossible for the United States to embark on fiscal stimulus that would increase its ratio of debt to G.D.P.
  • Everyone understood then why the nation was racking up so much debt: we were fighting for survival, and for the survival of our allies. No one doubted that we would repay our debts. We had done it after every other war, and raising taxes even before the attack on Pearl Harbor showed our leaders’ fiscal resolve.
  • someone needs to explain to the nation and to world markets just why we must increase the debt in the short run. Unemployment of roughly 9 percent for 28 months and counting is a national emergency. We must fight it with the same passion and commitment we have brought to military emergencies in our past.
blythewallick

Trump impeachment: White House broke law by freezing Ukraine aid, says watchdog - live ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...atest-updates-senate-democrats

trump politics US culture Policy crisis

shared by blythewallick on 16 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • House speaker Nancy Pelosi is speaking to reporters and said the impeachment trial is needed because “every day new, incriminating information comes forward.”
  • Pelosi then spoke about a poster in her grade school classroom which said: “What a tangle web we weave when we first practice to deceive,” and said with this White House, you see that happen “more and more.”
  • This year America will face an epic choice. The future of the White House and supreme court, abortion rights, climate policy and a range of other issues – all are in play, at the same time that misinformation makes rigorous reporting more important than ever. Across the world, similar challenges lie ahead: far-right populism, escalating inequality, and a growing number of autocrats in power.
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  • The GAO’s central argument is the White House can’t unilaterally decide to withhold foreign aid that has been appropriated by Congress. An OMB spokesperson said the office disagreed with the watchdog’s findings.
  • Government investigators says White House broke the law by freezing Ukraine aid
  • “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the report said.
  • Yesterday, the House voted to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, setting in motion the third impeachment Senate trial in US history.
  • Lev Parnas said while he did not speak directly with Donald Trump about efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating the former vice-president Joe Biden, a political rival, he had met with the president several times. Parnas also said Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, told Parnas he was updating Trump in an interview with the New York Times.
  • “My biggest regret is trusting so much,” Parnas said. “I thought I was being a patriot and helping the president,” he said, adding that he “thought by listening to the president and his attorney that I couldn’t possibly get in trouble or do anything wrong”.
  • Trump has denied misconduct, and it’s unclear how much this new material will be absorbed into the Senate impeachment trial.
  • Trump, meanwhile, has a quiet schedule for the day besides an announcement about prayer in schools in the afternoon.
katherineharron

Congress rocked by consequential battles that will shape Biden's presidency - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

congress

shared by katherineharron on 24 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • The future of the Biden presidency, the terrain of the midterm elections and the fate of the Republican Party will all be shaped by a series of early battles unfolding on Capitol Hill.
  • The White House is standing firm behind Neera Tanden, its pick for budget director, though her nomination seems doomed. Aides to Joe Biden know this first big fight will help set the terms of the new President's relationship with Congress. Other bitter confirmation hearings are turning into early de-facto fights on the great issues of the Biden era, like climate change and expanding access to health care.
  • Republicans are meanwhile beginning to mobilize against Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid rescue package in the hope of billing it as an example of massive liberal overreach and winning a political payoff.
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  • The Covid relief plan is meanwhile stretching the papered over unity observed by Democrats in their election-year zeal to beat Donald Trump, with a split widening over including a minimum wage hike in the huge plan.
  • The Republican Party is even more divided than Democrats. While some senators like Mitt Romney are working through principled objections to Biden's policies and nominees, Trump loyalists like Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Ron Johnson are performing for their watching leader in exile and, perhaps more critically, his base of supporters.
  • "These criminals came prepared for war," said former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund.The next big point of tension between the President and his Capitol Hill adversaries comes Wednesday when two key Senate committees are expected to vote on whether to advance Tanden's nomination.
  • Another under pressure Biden nominee, New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland, who would become the first Native American Cabinet member if she makes it to the Interior Department, faced fierce attacks from Republicans during her confirmation hearing Tuesday.
  • In a fresh sign of tensions inside the Democratic Party, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a standard bearer for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, rebuked Manchin after his office said he had "remaining questions" for Haaland, noting that the West Virginian voted to confirm Trump's first Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who she called "openly racist."
  • The GOP, with a clear eye on midterm elections that are usually tough for first-term presidents, is driving a case that Biden's climate policies -- including a pause on new leases for oil and gas extraction on federal lands -- are a massive job killer.
  • Elsewhere in the Capitol on Tuesday, Republican senators worked through the intricacies of the budget procedure known as reconciliation, which Democrats plan to use to ease the Covid rescue bill past filibuster attempts.
  • In one possible troublemaking maneuver that would double as points on the board ahead of congressional elections in November 2022, Romney and Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton are working on a plan to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour on condition that there are mandatory requirements on business to discourage the hiring of undocumented migrants.
  • Their gambit followed Manchin's proposal to hike the rate to $11 per hour over two years. Neither suggestion is likely to be acceptable to progressive Democrats who are seeking to include a $15 per hour minimum wage in the Covid rescue plan. This could all be academic -- at least for now -- since both sides are waiting from a ruling from the Senate parliamentarian on whether including minimum wage changes is allowed under reconciliation rules.
  • Tugs of war over economic policy and the shape of relief legislation -- and ideological fault line issues like abortion -- are necessary features of the adversarial democratic process. But some Republicans, who abetted the ex-President's assault on America's political system fraud, can't break the habit
  • Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who led the charge in the Senate to stop Biden's legitimate election win, tried to re-up Trump's misleading claims that Biden wanted to "defund the police"
  • "I would say that's absolutely outrageous and an utter lie and no one I think who knows any of the facts alleges any such thing," he said.
  • And Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, one of Trump's favorite senators, on Tuesday used the Senate hearing into the insurrection to imply on the thinnest of evidence that the rioters who desecrated the Capitol were not Trump supporters at all, in referring to an article that suggested that security forces might have overreacted to the violence.
hannahcarter11

Yellen, Tanden, Rouse: Biden Formally Unveils Economic Team : Biden Transition Updates ... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-formally-unveil-economic-team

biden transition politics coronavirus

shared by hannahcarter11 on 01 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • With the number of confirmed coronavirus cases spiking and the nation's job market struggling to pull itself out of the abyss caused by the pandemic, President-elect Joe Biden has formally announced the advisers he hopes can guide the United States back to solid economic footing.
  • the president-elect referred to the group as "first-rate" and well-equipped to meet the dual challenges the pandemic and the sputtering economy present.
  • He cited the two-track economic recovery amid the pandemic, in which working people continue to struggle while the wealthy get further ahead.
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  • Biden said Congress should come together to pass a "robust" aid package, but also repeated his call for "immediate relief" in the lame-duck period, before he takes office.
  • He also laid out a laundry list of economic goals that must be addressed early on in his administration. These include keeping businesses and schools open safely, delivering economic relief for those who have lost jobs or had hours cut, stabilizing the nation's health care system and addressing racial inequities the virus has laid bare.
  • Yellen would become the first woman to lead the department in its 231 years of existence.
  • She would be just the fourth woman and the first Black woman to lead the CEA since it was established nearly 75 years ago.
  • Biden also named Wally Adeyemo, who, if confirmed, would become the Treasury Department's first Black deputy secretary.
  • Tanden — who is the CEO of the left-leaning public policy organization the Center for American Progress and a veteran of both the Clinton and Obama administrations — would be the first woman of color to lead OMB.
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