FRI 3/11/22
Gas Tax Holidays are up for consideration in several states, including Tennessee, Georgia, Michigan, Maryland and highest-gas-tax-rate-in-the-U.S., California.
Beat the Midterms – The House Democratic Issues Conference meeting in Philadelphia through the weekend are split over how to stem their much-expected loss of the majority to Republicans in this November’s midterms, Roll Call reports. But the party’s progressives, who spent much of 2021 pushing to make the White House’s sweeping infrastructure program contingent on its even more sweeping Build Back Better plan, appears to have a solution.
Progressive House Democrats are pressing President Biden to enact those “big chunks” of BBB as outlined in his State of the Union address buy signing a pile of executive orders (EOs), Punchbowl News reports.
“We’re going to make sure that we do everything we can to cut costs for the American consumer,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the House Progressive Caucus, who will release a slate of proposed EOs next week.
Known Knowns: While this sounds like 2022 is 2021 all over again for the Progs, who appear to be acting like they have a commanding majority in the House, it should be noted that Jim Clyburn, the moderate Democrat from South Carolina largely credited with reviving Joe Biden’s bid for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020, “threw his considerable might behind the idea,” Punchbowl News says.
If the House Progs can convince the White House to stock up on ink for Biden’s Resolute desk, chunks of the nearly $2 trillion Build Back Better program to be given EO priority will certainly include the child tax credit, portions of the Green agenda and an increase in the refugee cap.
Known Unknowns: As a war-time president who got a bump in the polls after his SOTU from Trump-level low numbers, Biden may be in a better position than he was a few weeks ago to sign a pile of EOs, as House Dems – both progressive and moderate – attack their Republican midterm opponents as coming from a party of do-nothings and including even some pro-Putin candidates from the MAGA wing of the GOP.
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Meanwhile, in Constitutional News -- When someone pleads “the Fifth,” it generally goes to this clause in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution…
“nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
The Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, which undoubtedly knows more than a little bit about the law, explains it like this:
“To be self-incriminating, the compelled answers must pose a “substantial and ‘real,’ and not merely a “trifling or imaginary hazard” of criminal prosecution.”
Which sounds rather serious.
Michael Flynn appeared before the January 6 Committee Thursday. Politico quotes his attorney: “General Michael Flynn appeared before the January 6th Committee today in compliance with their subpoena and, on advice of counsel, exercised his Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer the Committee’s questions.”
This is the same Michael Flynn who once had a brief stint as the national security advisor and got a pre-emptive free pass from then-president Trump for charges that he lied to the FBI during an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Why would you need to lie if you’d done nothing wrong?)
About that brief stint: January 22 to February 13, 2017. He barely had enough time to find out where the washroom is.
Why so short? Due to it being revealed that he’d reportedly lied to then Vice President Pence about conversations with Sergey Kislyak, who was the Russian ambassador at the time.
All of this goes without comment.
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Kick the Can No More – The Senate appears to have become as tired as we are with the age-old cliché about “kicking the can” -- that is, federal budget continuing resolutions, a few weeks or months down the fiscal year road in order to avoid government shutdowns. The chamber voted, 68-31 yesterday to pass a $1.5-trillion government funding bill that takes us through the end of the fiscal year, September 30, The Hill reports. That’s just two days after the House of Representatives passed the bill along with a provision to allow the Senate a CR that would have extended the deadline beyond Friday, the date set by the previous CR, to next Tuesday, to allow the upper chamber more time.
Some conservative Republicans had objected to voting on the 2,741-page bill without time to read it, but the $13.6 billion in aid tied to Ukraine helped speed the process.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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THU 3/10/22
Inflation Rate Hits 7.9% in February – The Consumer Price Index rose 0.8% in February, the Labor Department announced Thursday morning, as measured even before the effect of Russia’s attack on Ukraine on already skyrocketing oil prices, for an annual rate of 7.9%, highest since January 1982. Gasoline prices were up 6.6%, accounting for nearly one-third of the February inflation rate, with food and shelter also leading the index, the Labor Department says. The annual inflation rate for 2021 was 7.5%.
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(Almost the) Final Kick of the Can – In the end, the House of Representatives passage of a $1.5-trillion omnibus appropriations bill for Fiscal 2022 seems anticlimactic next to all the news coming out of the war in Ukraine. But it’s not quite the end, as the Senate needs to take up passage and send the bill to President Biden’s desk, so the House added a four-day stopgap extending the deadline for federal funding to next Tuesday, Roll Call reports. The House passed the omnibus bill 361-169. Figure a dozen or so Republicans will join Democrats in the Senate.
Speaking of Ukraine, the House bill includes $13.6-billion in funding for the crisis there.
Democrats stripped out $15.6 billion in emergency COVID-19 funding and determined that coronavirus relief needs a standalone funding bill, which is due to happen next week.
Known Knowns: Separation of the COVID-19 funding began when House Republicans demanded budget cuts elsewhere to accommodate the White House’s $22.5 billion appropriation request for coronavirus relief. That led to infighting among Democrats over concentrated power of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to Punchbowl News – so taking up the separate appropriations bill next week looks to be far from a slam-dunk. Expect House Republicans to take advantage of the infighting.
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Facing Threats, 1/5 of Election Officials Plan to Quit – One in six election officials have experienced threats because of their jobs, with 77% saying the threats have increased in recent years, and fully 20% plan to leave before the 2024 election, says a new report for the Brennan Center for Justice.
“As American democracy finds itself under assault from lies about the 2020 presidential race ‘being stolen,’ election officials are a prime target in the attempt to undermine future elections,” the report begins. “In 2020, in the face of a pandemic, record-high turnout, and a flood of disinformation about the election process and its integrity, these officials managed to run ‘the most secure election in American history.’” < https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/poll-local-election-officials-finds-safety-fears-colleagues-and>.
More than half of poll respondents are concerned about the safety of their colleagues, and more than a quarter are concerned about being assaulted on the job. The Brennan Center reports that safety concerns range from death threats that name officials’ young children to racist and gendered harassment. The report says 90% of election officials either are not aware of, or know little about, the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which investigates and prosecutes threats against election officials. (Hat tip to NPR’s Morning Edition.)
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods