•President Biden has cancelled a trip to Chicago today in order to push his budget agenda forward as deadlines loom. Biden continues to negotiate with Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, and Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, to get the $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation bill passed, Politico reports. Sinema said after negotiations Tuesday that she was “not there” on the Biden’s Build Back Better plan, though a senior White House official says much progress was made, according to Politico.
Senate Dems to Forward a ‘Clean’ Two-Month Funding Bill, Report Says –Senate Democrats will propose a “clean” federal funding bill that will keep the government open to December 3 and avoid potential economic calamity Friday, according to Punchbowl News. The bill will contain no language regarding a suspension of the debt limit, the sticking point that prompted Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, to block an extension twice in the last two days. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin estimates that without an extension, the federal government will run out of money by October 18.
Note: To recap, the Senate must extend federal funding by tomorrow to avoid a potential partial shutdown; the House of Representatives also has until Thursday to pass the $1.2-trilion bi-partisan infrastructure plan, per Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, D-CA, self-imposed deadline. Meanwhile, Pelosi has promised House progressives that the $3.5-trillion Build Back Better Plan budget reconciliation will get a vote first, then must also pass the Senate, which needs the support of Senators Manchin, D-WV, and Sinema, D-AZ, in order to get to the necessary 51 filibuster-proof votes. Sure, could happen.
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Generals Contradict, Support Biden on Afghanistan – Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie advised President Biden to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan past the planned withdrawal last summer in order to maintain “substantial gains” made in the country over the last 20 years, they told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. This contradicts statements Biden made to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos last August, though both generals refused to discuss specifics of their private discussions with the president.
“If Biden didn’t take your advice, why didn’t you resign?” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-AR, asked Milley. It would have “been a political act” if he had, Milley responded.
The two generals, who testified along with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, admitted that while there was every expectation Afghanistan would fall to the Taliban following the U.S. military withdrawal, no one expected it to happen in 11 days.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s quick flight before the Taliban captured the capital of Kabul sealed the country’s fate, McKenzie said.
Note: This hearing stood out most for its relative civility, a rare quality even in the Senate these days. The Senate committee’s Republicans and Democrats were largely in agreement over mistakes made in the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal, while resolved to the reasons for the withdrawal. While the Pentagon officials lamented loss of “substantial gains” made in trying to prop up the country for nearly 20 years, Milley said, in response to a question by Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, that while the “outcome in which the enemy is in charge of the country upon our withdrawal is not the failure of days, weeks or even years, it is the cumulative effect of the entire war.”
Milley, McKenzie and Austin are scheduled to testify to the House Armed Services Committee today.
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About Milley and Our Nation in Peril – The subject of Gen. Mark Milley’s calls to his Chinese counterpart, and his apparent efforts as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prevent then-President Trump from potentially launching missiles on China as he tried to remain in the White House after his November 2020 defeat, as described in the book Peril, did come up during Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
The call with Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng was within his duties as Joint Chiefs chairman, Milley said.
Milley was not trying to undermine President Trump, he said. According to the book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, both of The Washington Post, Milley told other top military officials they were not to carry out any request by the president for such a strike without first consulting him. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, was also concerned that Trump might try an attack before Joe Biden’s inauguration January 20.
“I assured Li that President Trump did not plan to attack,” Milley said, and he “assured Pelosi that (I was) part of the official process. …”
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Omarosa Beats Trump — Former presidential aide of uncertain portfolio and The Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman was taken to arbitration by former president Donald Trump (through his campaign) for what the ex-president claimed was a violation of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that Manigault Newman signed, with the violation taking the form of a book she published in 2018, Unhinged. The arbitrator, T. Andrew Brown, rejected Trump’s claim, according to The Washington Post. Brown’s finding says the Trump NDA defined “confidential” much too broadly, as in “all information . . . . that Mr. Trump insists remain private.”
Note: This could be the start of something big. As has been the case from the start of Trump’s 2016 campaign straight through to right now (actually before the campaign, but as we are considering this all from a political POV, we’ll go with that), Trump and his acolytes have imagined that whatever they said is true and whatever they don’t like that other people have said is lies or somehow wrong. This finding by the arbitrator indicates that that ain’t necessarily so. Conceivably this — along with the legal travails that will be experienced by the likes of Lindell, Powell, Giuliani, and Trump himself —will be effective in bringing back what has long considered to be (1) informed opinion and (2) non-alternate reality.
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New Leader for Japan – Former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida won his Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership election Wednesday setting him on course to become Japan’s prime minister. Next Monday, Kishida will replace Yoshihide Suga, who has served as prime minister for only one year, in which the country suffered a spike in coronavirus cases as it prepared for the Summer Olympics, already delayed by a year (per Associated Press).
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North Korea Tests Hypersonic Missile – North Korea confirmed Wednesday that it successfully tested a hypersonic missile, implying it would be nuclear-capable, Forbes reports. “Hypersonic” means it can travel at least five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5.
Note: North Korea tends to escalate missile testing at times when Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un craves a new round of attention from the West. But the Hermit Kingdom has been particularly bellicose lately, and its potential ability to build hypersonic missiles means we’re in for a fresh round of posturing.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2021
•Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, told her caucus Monday night – progressives be damned -- she will not make a House of Representatives vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill contingent on a vote on the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, Politico says, even if the latter is simply a vote to advance its framework. Pelosi yesterday moved the deadline to vote on infrastructure – the only ‘sure thing’ in President Biden’s agenda so far – from Monday to Thursday.
Pelosi v. The Squad – Pelosi doesn’t have the votes without the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which will tank the infrastructure bill Thursday without the reconciliation bill, says caucus chairwoman, Rep. Pramila Jaypal, D-WA (per Politico). Speaking after Monday’s Democratic caucus meeting, Jaypal said, “we are going to vote for both bills after the reconciliation bill is done.”
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Well, This Was Quite Predictable – Democrats “may drop [the] debt fight” so they can pass funding of the federal government past this Thursday, Politico says, following Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s, R-KY, blockage of a House-passed bill that coupled the two together. No Senate Republicans voted for cloture when a bill to extend short-term funding to December 3, while it would also have raised the debt limit through December 2022.
Yes, that’s right, Senate Democrats had hoped to get at least 10 Republicans on board to raise the debt limit through next year’s midterms. McConnell, who has been blocking Democratic legislation since the beginning of the Obama administration, was having none of it. To be fair, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, was perfectly aware Monday that the bill would go nowhere.
Seems like a busy time to make a point, what with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, having moved back the promised vote on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill from Monday to Thursday, with attention in the two days in between diverted to the Senate and House armed services committees and our disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Note: Former U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards, D-MD, argues in a recent Washington Post column that the vote against cloture gives Democratic senators the excuse they need to kill the legislative filibuster. Democrats might have the bare minimum of a majority in both chambers; progressives do not.
Edwards writes that the “deadbeat Republican party” is “unwilling to pay the bills and ready to turn off the lights in America.” Yes, they are, Ms. Edwards. And whatever happens, Democrats will take the blame.
Eighteen-day Margin? – Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin Tuesday offered in a letter to Congress a quite specific date for when the federal government will default on its debt (per The Hill). “We now estimate that Treasury is likely to exhaust its extraordinary measures if Congress has not acted to raise or suspend the debt limit by October 18,” Yellin wrote. “At that point, we expect Treasury would be left with very limited resources that would be depleted quickly.”
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WSJ Scoop Says Putin Offered U.S. Central Asian Military Bases – Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed with his Russian counterpart an offer by President Vladimir Putin to use Russia’s military bases in Central Asia to respond to terrorist threats from Afghanistan, The Wall Street Journal reported in a scoop late Monday. Milley discussed the offer at a meeting in Helsinki last Wednesday with Russia’s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov at the request of President Biden’s National Security Staff, the newspaper reports.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing Tuesday with Milley, Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin and Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who leads the U.S. Central Command. They are scheduled to testify before the before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday. All will testify about the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Milley also will answer questions about phone calls during the late days of the Trump administration to a Chinese counterpart that the U.S. was not going to attack his country.
Note: It says something about the desperation of the Biden administration following the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that the president would now be ready to trust a government known to have meddled in our last two presidential elections (at least) with hosting our military intelligence in its Central Asian military bases.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods
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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2021
•Cold War with China? Scroll down this page with the trackbar on the far right to read commentary by Stephen Macaulay and Bryan Williams.
•Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, has pushed back today’s deadline for the House of Representatives to vote on the $1.2-trillion bi-partisan infrastructure bill to Thursday, when a number of surface transportation bills expire, Politico reports. The House begins debate on the infrastructure bill later today.
•The Senate, meanwhile, is set to vote on a cloture motion today to move forward a short-term funding bill, passed by the House, that would keep federal agencies funded to December 3 and suspend the debt limit to December 2022, according to Roll Call. The cloture motion will not pass, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, has rallied his caucus to oppose it.
Merkel’s Conservatives are Narrowly Defeated – German voters Sunday gave the center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP) a narrow victory over outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats, The Wall Street Journal reports. But the parliament will have to form a coalition government, with the Greens coming in a “strong second” in votes and the pro-market Free Democratic Party finishing third in the vote.
Germany’s next chancellor could “possibly” be the GDP’s Olaf Scholz, says The Washington Post.
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Abbott Will Hire Border Agents Under Investigation – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, R, says he will hire U.S. Border Patrol agents under investigation after they were photographed charging migrants on the border near the Del Rio bridge, the Republican governor told Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace (per Politico). At least one border agent was photographed wielding a whip on undocumented migrants who crossed the Texas-Mexico border, which has prompted President Biden to call for an investigation.
“You have a job in the state of Texas,” Abbott said. “I will hire you to help Texas secure our border.”
Note: Welcome to the latest volley in the Culture Wars, as pro-Trump Republican governors like Abbott and Florida’s Ron DeSantis potentially move on from anti-vaxxer, anti-mask mandate issues as their hospitals overflow with patients.
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Two Dead in New Mexico After Using Ivermectin – New Mexico’s health department has reported that two patients, aged 38 and 79, have died after apparently attempting to use ivermectin to treat themselves for the coronavirus, The Hill reports. The state’s acting health department head, Dr. David Scrase, said that one of the two patients died of kidney failure.
Ivermectin is primarily used in animals but may be administered to humans in small doses to treat internal parasites.
Note: The drug had become an alternative to FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines by anti-vaxers last summer after being promoted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and political podcaster Joe Rogan, The Hill notes. To reiterate the obvious: Ivermectin is NOT safe for treatment of the coronavirus in humans.
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NTSB Investigates Montana AMTRAK Derailment – The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating an Amtrak passenger train derailment near Joplin, Montana, Saturday, about 200 miles north of Helena, near the Canadian border, in which three people were killed and up to 30 were injured, The Washington Post reports. Eight of 10 passenger cars with an estimated 141 passengers and 17 crew members aboard derailed in the accident. The NTSB holds a briefing today.
Edited by Todd Lassa and Donna MacKeand