Tag: Congress

Biden Negotiates Budget in SOTU

By Todd Lassa

In the buildup to his sucker-punch of MAGA Republicans, President Biden in his State of the Union address repeated recent Democratic talking points of how he has cut the federal deficit after Congress raised the debt ceiling for his “predecessor.” Even without mentioning Donald J. Trump by name, Biden riled up those Republicans in the House of Representatives who remain resolute in support of said predecessor by describing the last administration’s budget battle in a manner few would have expected from the longtime politician.

“For the last two years my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion. The largest deficit reduction in American history.” Biden’s fellow Democrats began applauding. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), sitting behind the president and next to Vice President Kamala Harris, appeared to be looking in the direction of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) while he silently mouthed appeals to shut up. 

“In the previous administration, the deficit went up four years in a row,” Biden continued. “Because those deficits, no president added more to the national debt in any four years of my predecessor. Nearly 25% of the entire national debt that took over 200 years to accumulate was added by just one administration alone … the last one.”

GOP grumbling began to build. 

“That’s a fact,” Biden dug in. “Check it out.” 

Boos from the MAGA wing rose to a crescendo when Biden said “some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset … some Republicans. … I’m politely not naming them, but it’s being proposed.”

From the Republican side of the gallery, MTG rose to call out “Liar!” She took Biden’s bait.

“So, folks,” Biden responded, “as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the table.” 

Biden Tuesday evening gave his most loyal supporters reason to feel good about his deft balance of pugilistic politics and bipartisan comity. But it’s hard to tell whether the most progressive Democrats were sufficiently impressed with the considerable dose of anti-supply-side reverse-Reaganomics that Biden served up.

“Let’s sit down and discuss our mutual plans together” for raising the debt ceiling, Biden continued. He wants to cut the deficit by another $2 trillion. This will entail Biden’s decidedly un-bipartisan plan to impose a minimum 15% tax on billion-dollar businesses and raise taxes for rich individuals (while funding better IRS enforcement) but with no tax increases for anyone making less than $400,000 per year.

Continuing with his theme of a more blue-collar, less limousine-liberal Democratic Party, Biden outlined his new Junk Fee Protection Act, which would reduce exorbitant bank overdrafts and credit card late fees, and force airlines to return payments for cancelled flights.

Biden called for restoration of the full Child Tax Credit and proposed a public education package that would make pre-school available to all 3- and 4-year-olds, increase public school teacher pay, increase Pell Grants and expand two-year colleges. 

With Row Vaughn and Rodney Wells, parents of Tyre Nichols, in the audience as guests of first lady Jill Biden, the president voiced support for police, but said, “when police violate the public trust, they must be held accountable.” He called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Calling out Brandon Tsay, another guest of the first lady, who in January disarmed a shooter at a Monterey Park, California, Lunar New Year celebration, Biden demanded a ban on assault weapons. 

He called on Congress to “restore the right” taken away by the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.

“If Congress passes a national ban [on abortion], I will veto it,” Biden said.

And Biden expressed continued support of Ukraine in its struggle against Russia. Some hard-conservative Republicans want to limit U.S. spending on military aide, while a few MAGA Republicans are more blatantly sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.

“Putin’s invasion has been a test for the ages,” Biden said. “Would we stand for the defense of democracy?”

For at least the two-plus hours of his State of the Union address Tuesday night, it was hard to objectively avoid the conclusion that President Biden was owning the MAGAs. But as Capitol Hill returns to the cold, hard reality of a politically split 118thCongress, much of Biden’s agenda still faces likely opposition in the House, as well as four more months of arguments against raising the debt ceiling.

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Although we’re joining Congress in taking recess through Labor Day, this is a good opportunity to voice your thoughts for the right or the left columns. Write your opinions down in the Comments box in this column or the left column, or email us at editors@thehustings.news and please include your political leanings (conservative or liberal) in the subject line.

Scroll down to read our aggregate coverage of the FBI’s search of Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and the fallout, with commentary in the left and right columns. Pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay’s commentary, “Donald Trump and the Art of the Flush” is below in the right column.

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Cracked Lens of the Shining Beacon

By Stephen Macaulay

At 3:44 am, January 7, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, President of the Senate, took the gavel in hand and closed the joint session of Congress that certified the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the President and Vice President of the United States.

Was anyone surprised at the outcome?

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“Schoolhouse Rock” Revisited

The process is one that most of us probably missed during “Schoolhouse Rock”: the procedure for certifying the presidential election. The Electoral College was established under Article II and Amendment 12 of the U.S. Constitution. States choose electors based on the results of the general election. 

The electors create what are known as Certificates of Vote, which are sent to Congress, which then sits in joint session to certify the election.

There is a second place they are sent: The Office of the Federal Register (OFR), which is under the National Archives and Records Administration.

The OFR puts these electoral documents on public display for a year. Then they go to the Archives of the United States.

You might wonder why there is this tutorial.

Several reasons.

To point out to some people who were involved in Wednesday’s national embarrassment that there is a U.S. Constitution. That there is a careful process of certification. That this entire procedure is part and parcel of what has made the United States of America a special place for more than two centuries.

Maybe they skipped civics.

And to let some of these people know where they can spend their time now it is established that the man from whom they took their marching orders is no longer in office: Gazing at the documents that show that the people of the United States of America and their designated electors have made Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the President and Vice President, respectively.

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That was written Wednesday before an angry mob, goaded on by the angry man who lost the election, attacked the United States of America. Extreme? Not if you see the photo of the law enforcement officials, guns in hand, behind the barricaded doors of the House of Representatives. 

While I had thought about deleting that explanation, when Mike Lee, Republican Senator from Utah, took to the floor of the Senate last evening to make his remarks regarding the curious claims of Ted Cruz, Republican Senator from Texas, that there needed to be a commission that would run for 10 days looking into the security of the election, he cited Article II, Section 12.

In Lee’s words: “Our job is to open and then count. Open and then count. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

Lee had proffered a booklet containing the Constitution when he made those remarks. I wonder if there are any copies at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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The most-telling admission of the lack of seriousness of the results to overturn the election (let’s call it what it was) came from Kelly Loeffler, Republican Senator from Georgia, who had signed on with the Hawley/Cruz Putsch Planners. Realize that Loeffler, that very day, had been handed a pink slip by the voters of Georgia. Arguably, she would have nothing to lose politically were she to maintain her allegiance to something — or more accurately, someone -- other than the flag.

But Loeffler, who would undoubtedly be one of the many who’d have angry tweets written about her were it not that Donald Trump’s Twitter account had been given a time-out, appeared shaken to realize that words have consequences, and when those words are not true, when they are about fanciful conspiracies, then there can be things like angry mobs attacking the U.S. Capitol.

She saw the consequences. She withdrew her support of the efforts to, as she had it on the homepage of her website (probably to be taken down by now), “give President Trump and the American people the fair hearing they deserve and support the objection to the Electoral College certification process.”

She knew there was nothing there. And she probably knew that had the Senators not been escorted out of the chamber earlier in the day by armed police, the mob wouldn’t be discerning: she would have been in the same danger as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. That would have been real.

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A word about the rule of law.

Rudolph Giuliani is the former associate attorney general in the Reagan administration. He was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted the likes of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for financial fraud, organized crime figures, and other people who broke the law. He was lauded for his forthright efforts to uphold the rule of law. After the horrible events that occurred on September 11, 2001, Giuliani, then mayor of New York City, became “America’s mayor,” as he stood up to the forces that were attacking the core values of the United States.

Shortly before the Capitol was stormed, Giuliani, now Donald Trump’s personal attorney, told the crowd at the “Save America Rally,” “Let’s have trial by combat.”

The personal attorney of the President of the United States.

“Let’s have trial by combat.”

That’s not in the Constitution, either.

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Victory for Ossoff and Warnock Doesn’t Leave Manchin Behind

By Michelle Naranjo

Even as ballots were being counted in the first frenzied moments after polls closed for the Georgia senatorial run-offs, West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin was brought up as a potential obstacle to a new Democratic Senate majority.

Victory in Georgia for Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff was never a sure bet. Results for Warnock came in so fast, it was almost disconcerting to learn of his victory so quickly since we have had such a drawn-out presidential election. Violent supporters of President Trump overshadowed the mid-afternoon moment of triumph for Ossoff.

But they both won. 

It has been two months since the repeatedly contested presidential election. As the final ballots in Georgia are still being counted, the U.S. Senate and Congress were to debate electoral college certification. Protestors stormed the steps of the Capitol; many have forced entry. 

What is clear today is that Manchin is hardly the stumbling block our Republic has before it. 

Senator Joe Manchin may be from a deeply red state and has a voting record that tips towards being a Trump supporter, but just barely.

He is a labor supporter, gaining the support of unions and those who support workers’ rights. 

The actual foes are the arrogant members of both the House and Senate who demanded that the presidential election be questioned, elected officials who allowed and encouraged conspiracy theories and voter suppression. These are the same people who allowed Brian Kemp to cheat in the Georgia gubernatorial election two years ago.

After this fateful series of elections, failed court cases, seditious behavior from seated supporters of Trump in the House and Senate, the impressive diversity of Democratic representatives is the path forward. 

Manchin won’t work against fellow Democrats if he gets some of what he wants. That can only be beneficial to his colleagues, who also want to raise worker’s rights. He may be a conservative Democrat, but he has also managed to hold on to his seat in West Virginia: quite the feat. What Warnock and Ossoff bring to the table is not a threat to him and might even enable him to accomplish more. 

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Trump Signs $900-billion COVID Relief Package

By Todd Lassa

President Trump signed the $900-billion COVID-19 emergency relief Sunday night while enjoying an extended Christmas weekend at Mar-a-Lago. He had left Washington last week while erstwhile Senate Republican allies fumed because he wanted $2,000 checks to taxpayers, calling the $600 checks in the bill, and items he considers excessive “a disgrace.”

The president’s signing of the bill also averts a federal government shutdown Monday night, with $1.4-trillion to fund the government through fall of 2021. In addition, the bill provides eviction protection for millions of people, who would have otherwise faced potential homelessness. 

“I will sign the omnibus and COVID package with a strong message that wasteful items need to be removed,” Trump said, according to Politico. He said he planned to send back to Congress a “redlined” version with items to be removed from the bill, which has no effect on its passage.

Last week Trump vetoed a $740.5-billion defense spending bill for the coming fiscal year, because it contained a provision to rename military bases named for Confederate leaders, and online liability protections. Like the COVID relief bill, the defense spending legislation was passed by veto-proof Senate majorities. The Senate is scheduled to return to the Capitol Tuesday. 

For one Coronapocalipse weekend, Trump and Pelosi appeared to be on the same political page, as Pelosi was eager to take up the president’s demand for bigger relief checks, even after months of negotiations between her and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin landed on the $600 figure. The House will vote on a separate bill Monday that would increase the payments to $2,000.

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Getting to a Safe Market Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Cash

By Stephen Macaulay

Although Christmas 2020 is behind us, the current situation vis-à-vis the COVID-relief bill brings Dickens’ classic holiday horror story to mind. While most of us remember that there are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, there is also the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge’s former partner, Jacob Marley. Marley is condemned to wander the earth wearing heavy chains because of his counting house-based greed and ill-will.

Donald Trump claimed that he didn’t want to sign the bill that was many months in the making and passed by both houses of Congress because, he belatedly claimed, the $600 that will go to adults with an adjusted gross annual income, in 2019, of up to $75,000 is too paltry. He wanted, as the Democrats had been working toward before they thought the best was the enemy of the good and negotiated it down, $2,000.

One wonders whether Saturday night during still another vacation at Mar-a-Lago he’d been visited by Jacob Marley. Or whether he wanted his Sharpie signature to be on something more robust. Bigly.

Without going all Scrooge, there is something that isn’t discussed a whole lot in light of the prevailing pandemic situation: the national debt.

If you want to see something that is both inexplicable and scary, go to usdebtclock.org and watch the number roll up at a rate that is probably best viewed on a gaming machine because it has a video card better capable of handling this rate of change.

As I am writing this the U.S. national debt is $27.5-trillion. By the time you read this, it may be higher.

So the question is, what’s a few trillion dollars more?

The first CARES Act was passed March 27, 2020. That was long before, arguably, the pandemic really hit the fan.

Let’s not just put Trump in the corner for his belated action on the demand for the increase in family funding. Congress is more than derelict in its response to the pandemic.

But here’s the thing. If $600 is too little, is $2,000 enough? Would $4,000 be better? How about more?

What is perhaps not recalled is that the CARES Act provided $1,200 per adult whose income was less than $99,000 and $500 per child under 17, or up to $3,400 for a family of four.

As Nic Woods points out, the economy is not going to get back into full swing unless people feel safe in the market. People — well, this is perhaps too broad a brush, because the images of the people filling airports during the holiday indicates that there are plenty who just don’t care or believe the danger — will not feel safe-ish until the pandemic is under control.

Citizens who are following the rules — wearing a mask, social distancing, washing hands frequently — with a Trump-signed check for $2,000 aren’t likely to spend that money at their local small business as they might have, say, last February, because they know what the consequences can be. So they order from Amazon. Which is good for Jeff Bezos, but how about the local economies?

What is really needed is Operation Warp Speed Squared in terms of getting the vaccines into arms so that people can truly be safe and then more likely to go out in the world in a more normal way, as well as testing that doesn’t require idling in a car for a few hours.

Of course, there is nothing normal about current conditions.

Let’s make sure that those who have been blindsided by the pandemic get help, whether they are individuals or owners of a family bakery. Let’s make sure that the first responders as well as those who are on the front lines, from medical personnel to teachers to the people who are working in grocery stores, are given additional support: that woman who is ringing a register at Kroger hour after hour sure as hell didn’t sign up for a job that puts her life at risk. That young guy who is emptying bed pans and pushing people in wheel chairs probably didn’t imagine that his main concern is keeping his parents safe when he gets home from work.

But let’s make sure we are providing money to create the conditions that will make the market safe so the economy can get back on its feet. Vaccinations. Testing. Rinse. Repeat.

That debt clock is still racking up numbers. At some point we’re going to have to pay it down. But unless the virus is controlled, there will be continued strains on people: Do you go to work if your kid is sick? On the health care system: Do we really expect all of those hospital employees to continue to work as hard as they have for the past many months? And there will be continued strains on the economy as a whole.

It isn’t necessarily about spending more. It is about spending better. There is a real cost to all of this. We can’t ignore it.

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Georgia and the GOP Need Trump’s Support

By Bryan Williams

During our four years with President Trump, I had a rule of thumb: Pay attention to what he does, not what he says (or tweets).

I would check his twitter feed every once in a while for a laugh, but I would pay close attention to his official actions from the (supposedly) unbiased media reports, or from news broadcasts of his impromptu Q&A time with the media on his way to Marine One.

Since the election last month things have gotten weird. During my time in politics, we knew there was some shenanigans going on, but it was always so difficult to prove, and the local district attorney could not prove any fraud. So, I believe there may have been some election fraud last month in all the battleground states, but even I don’t buy the Trump campaign argument that it’s on the scale of thousands of votes, or part of some strange international conspiracy.

Now the Trump camp is telling Republicans in Georgia to not vote because of the rigged nature of the election as a way to boycott the "corrupt" system down there. 

Say what? I'm sorry but if I was registered to vote in Georgia, no one would tell me not to return to the polls. Corrupt or not, fraud or not, you need to show up and vote. Elections are a numbers game. If you don't vote, you will only hurt your candidates, ideals, and party. It's not like a business that will lose profits from a well-organized boycott.

If any Republican in Georgia is reading this, please vote. Do you really want the Democratic Party to control both houses of Congress and the White House? And to President Trump: Use your popularity to rally folks to vote. People love you, and the GOP needs your energy one more time.

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Georgia Republican Party needs you to vote.

An Agenda for Uncle Joe

By Jim McCraw

Come January, when the 46th president takes office, we have a few words of advice for Uncle Joe. Herewith, assuming a majority in the House, a recommended agenda.

First, bring COVID-19 to a halt by example and by force of will, which President Trump never did. A quick and thorough response may shut down businesses hard in the short-term but will pay off in stemming outbreaks in the U.S. more quickly allowing us to open up again. The new president has to be in charge of this effort, has to wear a mask at every appearance, and has to coerce Americans to socially distance properly. 

If we could get General Motors and Ford Motor Company to build respirators and make masks in a revival of the “Arsenal of Democracy,” why can’t we get Americans to wear masks and avoid crowding in a World War II-era display of patriotic citizenship?  

Next, undo all the harm that Trump did in terms of environmental deregulation. We need, within reasonable limits, to protect our clean water, our clean air, our natural resources, our national parks from commercialization in all its forms. It’s still our country, every cubic inch of it, and we need to protect it.

We need to have a very serious look at our defense spending, which has, over the last 50 years, become a gigantic, self-sustaining pork barrel.  The Defense department and the federal government have presided over a system where communities in every state count on contributing something to the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us of 60 years ago, to the point where defense accounts for almost 60 percent of the federal budget. We already own enough weaponry to dominate every other country on Earth. This is ridiculous.

And, Joe, since you’re a center-left Democrat, why not some policy that would please center-right Republicans? Dismantle the Department of Education, send all those people back to real, productive jobs, and leave education to the states, counties, cities, towns and school systems.

If you have some free time, how about bringing together Treasury and Congress and figure out a new tax system that shuts the hundreds of loopholes in the current system and gives money for nothing to huge corporations.  Be the new Democratic party of smaller, more effective spending and fair taxation.

And have a good look at the Department of Energy, confine its role to the original intent, and let the rest of the 108,000 direct and contract employees go out and compete for real jobs.

Now that you’re in, start talking up term limits.  You may not get re-elected over this, but you will be doing a great service to your country by giving government back to the people and dismantling the Washington oligarchy.  While you’re at it, have a good look at lobbying and the damage it does to the democratic process.

And, as Justice Kavanaugh said, Roe v. Wade is settled law.  Let’s hope the Supreme Court keeps it that way. [McCraw is not interested in having Biden “stack the court” beyond nine justices. -Ed.]

Election spending limitation also deserves a hard look now that you’re back in office, and it’s time for a re-write of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) as a run-around to restore portions of the legislation that were dismantled by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission.

Oh, and how about taking In God We Trust off the money and "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance?  Trump doesn’t believe in God, so why should the rest of us?

Thanks, Joe.  Appreciate you taking the time to listen.

Jim McCraw is a semi-retired writer and columnist. He has been a resident of The Villages for nearly five years.

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