Republicans, meanwhile, have promised to grill Werfel on everything from what they view as the agency’s excessive funding to the leak of confidential taxpayer information.
Senate Finance Committee Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a floor speech Wednesday that Werfel can handle the crosswinds, given his stint as acting commissioner of the IRS in 2013 after the resignation of his predecessor over allegations that the agency unfairly targeted conservative organizations who were seeking tax-exempt status.
“For Mr. Werfel to get bipartisan support to lead the IRS at a time when a lot of Republicans would happily mothball the entire agency is a testament to his fairness, his ability to work with both sides and his undeniable qualification for this role,” said Wyden.
Werfel, whom Biden plucked from a top job at Boston Consulting Group, had stints at the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department under Republican and Democratic administrations.
His overriding order of business at the IRS will be managing how the unprecedented $80 billion influx is spent. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had promised to deliver a blueprint for the spending by February, but missed the deadline.
In addition to playing defense with Republicans, lawmakers also want to see improved customer service — an abysmal 250 million of 282 million calls to the taxpayer help line went unanswered in 2021 — and upgrades to the computer systems that lawmakers from both sides consider woefully outdated.
IRS employees have also traditionally had to manually enter information from paper returns number by number, a labor-intensive process that severely bogged down the agency during the pandemic and that Treasury hopes to now fix with new digital scanning technologies.
Republicans, however, say the administration’s true intent is to unleash an army of auditors on middle-class taxpayers and small businesses, with Finance Committee ranking member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) saying Wednesday that achieving the agency’s collection targets will be impossible without violating Yellen’s pledge to not increase audits on those making less than $400,000.
Werfel managed to alleviate at least some of those concerns for the Republicans who voted for him: Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Todd Young of Indiana.
“Danny Werfel showed an openness to different ways to update IRS processes. This is long overdue,” said Cassidy on why he voted for Biden’s pick.
Young added that former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who led the OMB under George W. Bush while Werfel was climbing the ranks there, attested to the Biden nominee’s competency and non-partisan nature.
Still, Werfel’s bona fides didn’t prove enough to sway most of the GOP conference, with several indicating their no votes were cast out of general frustration with the tax policy charted by Biden and Yellen.
Those skeptical Republicans got an unexpected boost from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who voted against Werfel amid a fierce battle over the administration’s handling of some provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act enacted last year, including those that require components of batteries for electric vehicles to be made in the United States and the opening of new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
“I hope they come to their senses and do what the bill says that should be done,” said Manchin, who nonetheless called Werfel “supremely qualified.”
[ad_2]
#Bidens #nominee #IRS #chief #confirmed #Senate
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Manchin’s move also comes as he faces the prospect of a tough reelection race next year in his Republican-leaning state. He has not said whether he’ll run for another term.
Manchin’s opposition is unlikely endanger Werfel’s nomination, which appears assured. Werfel won bipartisan support on the chamber’s Finance Committee, with three Republicans there backing him. The Senate is expected to vote on Werfel’s confirmation Wednesday evening.
“At every turn, this administration has ignored congressional intent when implementing the Inflation Reduction Act,” Manchin said, referring to the law that includes the tax incentives. “First and foremost, the IRA is an energy security bill with clear and direct guidelines to ensure we are able to onshore our supply and manufacturing chains.”
“But instead of adhering to Congressional intent and prioritizing our nation’s energy and national security, the Treasury Department has pandered to automakers and progressive extreme groups and continued to sacrifice the national security of the United States.”
[ad_2]
#Manchin #oppose #Bidens #nominee #IRS
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The law, enacted in December, eliminated a requirement that practitioners go through time-consuming training to prescribe buprenorphine, which helps patients wean themselves from dangerous opioids like fentanyl or heroin. It also lifted restrictions on the number of patients doctors could treat with the drug.
But buprenorphine is itself an opioid, and access to it is controlled by the DEA.
Doctors in several states told POLITICO that they have trouble getting patients’ buprenorphine prescriptions filled, as pharmacies and drug distributors try to avoid running afoul of the DEA system that tracks suspicious orders of controlled substances. Pharmacies and distributors are also anxious about legal jeopardy; members of their industries have already agreed to pay billions to settle allegations that their businesses fueled the national opioid crisis.
The DEA supports the new law and wants to see medication-assisted treatment accessible to everyone in the country who needs it, an agency spokesperson told POLITICO.
The spokesperson said the DEA is both reaching out to pharmacies and making public statements to encourage the prescribing of buprenorphine, and it is working to identify bottlenecks in the distribution chain.
At a White House event in January, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram called the new law “a game changer,” but acknowledged that “there is more for us to do together.”
The White House also said it is working on removing patients’ barriers to accessing buprenorphine. “Now that every prescriber of controlled substances can treat their patients who have opioid use disorder with buprenorphine, we are working with our federal partners to make sure people can access this lifesaving medication when they need it,” said Alex Barriger, a spokesperson with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
More than 20 practitioners experienced in treating opioid addiction told POLITICO there are obstacles beyond the DEA’s rules. Many doctors still don’t know that the training requirement to prescribe buprenorphine, known as the X waiver, is gone. Prescribing opioids and opioid use disorder are still stigmatized. There are snags with insurance coverage. Some states impose their own requirements for doctors to prescribe the drug, and treatment advocates fear others might impose new requirements.
“Every barrier that someone faces trying to get a lifesaving medicine must be removed, including the waiver,” said Stephen Martin, head of research and education at Boulder Care, a treatment clinic. “Their medicine is literally on the other side of the counter, and the pharmacist is saying no.”
Buprenorphine is one of the most effective tools providers have to treat opioid use disorder — research has shown it reduces the risk of an opioid overdose death by about 40 percent — but not everyone likes the idea of prescribing an opioid to keep patients off more powerful drugs.
Though the risk of patients overdosing on buprenorphine is low, particularly as it’s often sold in combination with naloxone, which reverses opioid overdose, it can still cause dependency, and is used illegally.
When the X waiver was eliminated, only 130,000 practitioners in the country had received it; about 40 percent of counties in the country did not have a waivered provider in 2018.
Now that the waiver is gone, any practitioner registered with the DEA to prescribe controlled substances — currently about 1.8 million people — can prescribe it to patients.
Lawmakers, advocates and doctors who lobbied to get rid of the waiver are hopeful that change will ultimately save lives — but say more needs to be done.
“I worked across the aisle to eliminate burdensome hurdles that had prevented doctors and nurses from prescribing this treatment to people who need it,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who introduced the first version of the bill in 2019 that was ultimately passed in December.
Congress, in a report preceding passage, noted patients’ problems filling buprenorphine prescriptions and asked the DEA to clarify how it regulates the drug. Now, Hassan said, she is pushing the administration to “ensure that doctors and nurses are prescribing this proven treatment and that people can get their medication at their local pharmacy.”
‘We’re at the edge of the abyss’
One Friday in late January, Lynch, the doctor in Pittsburgh, was helping a patient from rural Pennsylvania who was trying to get off opioids again.
The patient’s prescription for buprenorphine was sent to a pharmacy, which said it didn’t stock the drug. A second prescription went to another pharmacy, which said it wasn’t allowed to fill any more buprenorphine prescriptions because it had met its distributor’s limit. So Lynch and his co-workers tried a third, which said the patient lived too far away.
It’s a scenario playing out in several parts of the country — and one that pharmacists, distributors, and physicians say could get worse as more practitioners start to prescribe buprenorphine.
Distributors, the companies that sell drugs to pharmacies, are obligated to report any pharmacy’s suspicious order of a controlled substance — including buprenorphine — to the DEA. Neither the Controlled Substances Act nor DEA regulations specify what amount of the drug constitutes a “suspicious order;” it’s up to distributors to come up with in-house formulas based on research each company conducts on their pharmacy customers.
If a pharmacy places an order that strays too far from its usual size, frequency, or pattern, it gets flagged, and under the national opioid settlement, any flagged order must be immediately reported to the state and, in some cases, to the DEA.
The system, designed to discourage bad actors from ordering drugs, has made many pharmacies anxious about getting dragged into a federal probe. “Everybody wants to take care of the patients, but neither party — distributor nor pharmacy — wants to be in hot water with the DEA,” said Kurt Proctor, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at the National Community Pharmacists Association.
For some, the simplest way to avoid trouble is not to carry the drug. A 2020-2021 survey of thousands of pharmacies in 11 states found nearly half did not carry the buprenorphine/naloxone combination, a commonly prescribed version of the drug for opioid addiction.
Pharmacies that do stock the drug are left trying to anticipate when and if they are going to cross an unknown limit. The distributors who agreed to the national opioid settlement — and who have not admitted to any wrongdoing — are prohibited from telling pharmacies what their individual thresholds are.
Walgreens and Walmart did not respond to requests for comment for this story. A spokesperson from CVS said that the company was “not experiencing an issue with buprenorphine supply.”
The dynamic routinely leaves physicians who work on the opioid crisis hitting the phones, trying to find pharmacies that will fill their patients’ prescriptions.
Eric Ketcham, an addiction medicine specialist and emergency physician for the Presbyterian Healthcare System in New Mexico, has spent years training other providers on how to prescribe buprenorphine.
“The more that we train people how to use buprenorphine, the more we’re running into shortage after shortage after shortage,” Ketcham said. He also worked to eliminate the X waiver, but now, he said, with more people set to start prescribing the drug, that problem is set to get worse. “We’re at the edge of the abyss.”
Distributors are also worried. They say they need clear guidance from the government, particularly on what a reasonable increase in prescriptions might look like now that more physicians are prescribing the drug.
McKesson, one of the three largest distributors in the nation, did not respond to a request for comment. Cardinal Health, another, directed POLITICO to the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, a trade group that represents it.
“Everybody wants to do the right thing. It’s just a question of how we get that done if everybody is left to determine what the right thing is in their own eyes,” said Patrick Kelly, HDA’s executive vice president of government affairs.
AmerisourceBergen, the other large distributor, echoed the HDA’s call for clear federal guidance. “Distributors like AmerisourceBergen have been asked to walk a legal and ethical tightrope,” the company said in a statement.
A DEA spokesperson said the agency is considering all options when it comes to expanding access to medication-assisted treatment.
‘Everyone’s got to be on the same page’
The supply-and-demand quagmire is only part of why nearly 90 percent of Americans with opioid use disorder don’t get medication to treat their disease.
After decades of tight controls, many doctors and pharmacists still don’t know how buprenorphine works, mistaking it for more dangerous opioids. Brian Hurley, president-elect of the American Society of Addiction Medicine board of directors, said the X waiver made clinicians feel like prescribing it was “difficult or complicated or not safe.”
In other cases, it’s the disease itself that’s the problem.
Some doctors don’t want patients grappling with drug addiction in their waiting rooms, said Bobby Mukkamala, the chair of the American Medical Association’s substance use and pain care task force, “because of their own personal feelings about it or the disruption in the office.”
Martin of Boulder Care said the country’s primary care system isn’t ready to handle routine treatment for opioid use disorder. “This is being paid for as though I’m seeing someone with high blood pressure,” Martin said. “It’s completely incommensurate with the knowledge and time and complexity that it deserves.”
Advocates and medical societies, such as the AMA and American Academy of Physician Associates, said they are planning education campaigns to make more doctors aware of the waiver’s end. But they acknowledge that the process will take time.
To stop more overdose deaths, “everyone’s really got to be on the same page,” said Joshua Lynch, an associate professor of emergency and addiction medicine at the University of Buffalo.
Doctors have to be willing to prescribe the drug. Patients need insurance that covers it. Pharmacists have to feel comfortable dispensing it to more patients, and distributors have to feel comfortable sending more of it to pharmacies.
“If any one of those pieces doesn’t work,” Lynch said, “patients will go back to buy drugs on the street.”
[ad_2]
#Bidens #battle #opioids #fight #bureaucracy
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
At a gathering for global antitrust thinkers and policymakers in Brussels last week, Wu spoke about — and directly to — a movement that has hit a high-water mark under Biden. Regulators have pushed hard against corporate growth with some major cases, including the Justice Department’s new lawsuit to block JetBlue’s takeover of Spirit Airlines, and the Federal Trade Commission’s recent challenge to Microsoft’s $68 billion deal for Activision Blizzard.
Since the end of Obama’s presidency, anti-corporate sentiment has exploded in mainstream politics, helping to propel former academic critics like Wu, as well as the FTC chair Lina Khan and DOJ prosecutor Jonathan Kanter, into key enforcement roles under Biden.
But given a largely failed effort to revamp U.S. antitrust law in Congress last year, and the potential for the White House to change hands in two years, Wu and others are now worried the movement could pass without meaningful reform.
To build a more permanent constituency for stronger oversight of corporate growth, Wu suggested a “five or six” point plan that “we need to do over the next two years to institutionalize this program.”
While new legislation is one part of the plan, it is not the driver, Wu said: “I think it’s very important not to just have it focused on, you know, did Congress pass new legislation.”
He added that “Congress at this point is possibly the least democratic branch of the United States government.”
In an interview on the sidelines of the conference — held at a decidedly unpopulist hotel on Brussel’s swanky Avenue Louise — Wu elucidated his multi-pronged plan, which in a sign of its complexity jumped to seven points during the conversation.
Among the goals: institutional change within the White House.
In July 2021, President Joe Biden issued a wide-ranging executive order directing agencies across the federal government to focus on competition policy issues. As part of the order, Biden set up a Competition Council, which meets several times each year.
Wu said that for long-term stability, the competition council — currently housed within the National Economic Council — should at some point become a free-standing operation within the White House, with its own director and staff. The timing of this isn’t clear, he said, since “free-floating” groups in the White House risk losing relevance.
Also critical, he said, would be the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department racking up some wins in court.
The Justice Department scored a key victory last fall in blocking the merger of publishing giants Penguin Random House and Simon and Schuster. However it also lost challenges to a health care deal, a merger of two sugar producers and a deal between two national security contractors.
The FTC, meanwhile, recently lost its bid to block a small Meta acquisition that it believes will boost the company’s dominance in the nascent virtual reality market.
“We have to win some big cases,” Wu said. “We can either work through legislative change or win some cases, ideally both. But if neither happen, then we’re in trouble.”
The agencies have a number of pending cases, including two DOJ lawsuits against Google and an FTC lawsuit to block Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of video game maker Activision Blizzard.
While competition policy is unlikely to revert fully back to the free market consensus that prevailed for several administrations, serious headwinds remain for Wu and his allies in the movement. The DOJ and FTC have so far struggled to win over judges in several recent cases, and dominant companies across the economy still have considerable pull with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. And despite the notes of anti-corporate populism that drive modern conservative politics, House Republican leaders have empowered antitrust skeptics in some key committee jobs.
Wu, an author and professor who is now back outside government at Columbia University Law School, offered a few further prescriptions for Biden: Keep appointing federal judges supportive of a progressive economic agenda; offer clear new agency enforcement guidance; support academic research into the effects of corporate power; and push agencies across the federal government to reflect a corporate-watchdog worldview.
[ad_2]
#Bidens #antitrust #guru #issues #warning
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Congress has put a record amount of money behind boosting jobs the U.S. workforce presently does not appear equipped to fulfill. That includes $369 billion in climate incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, $550 billion in new money through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act’s $52 billion to boost semiconductor manufacturing.
Lawmakers, former administration officials, clean energy and labor advocates said immigration fixes are needed if the administration wants to ensure its biggest victories don’t go to waste — and that the nation can fight climate change, add jobs and beat geopolitical rivals like China in the global marketplace. Those changes include raising annual visa caps for highly skilled workers needed to grow the next wave of U.S. industry and securing ironclad work protections for people in the country on a temporary basis, they said. It’s the key to building a workforce needed to design, manufacture and install millions of new appliances, solar panels and electric vehicles.
The high stakes for Biden’s jobs agenda, which will be a pillar of his likely reelection message next year, may force the White House to finally grapple with an issue it’s mostly kept on the back burner.
President Donald Trump cut legal immigration in half over his four years in office through a mix of executive orders that halted immigration from Muslim countries and limited the ability of people seeking to join their spouses and other family members in the U.S. As Republicans have attacked Biden over the migrant crisis at the southern border, his administration has kept some of his predecessor’s immigration policies in place. And the White House is wary about enabling additional GOP attacks that would likely ignore the economic rationale for any easing of legal migration and simply hammer Biden as “soft” on immigration.
In addition, calling for foreign-born workers would appear at odds with Biden’s blue-collar, American-made green revolution.
Last decade saw the U.S. population grow at its slowest rate since the Great Depression, yet the White House remains somewhat hesitant to take further executive action or use its bully pulpit on immigration, according to people familiar with the administration’s thinking. But they said the administration recognizes immigration tweaks could break a labor shortage raising the price of goods through supply chain constraints, slowing clean energy projects and preventing highly skilled people from helping American businesses lead in emerging global industries.
One former administration official warned that policymakers must soon address the reality of global competition for high-skilled talent.
“If in the long term we neglect the human capital equation here, to some extent these efforts to change the face of industrial policy in the United States are not going to be as successful as they should be,” said Amy Nice, distinguished immigration fellow and visiting scholar at Cornell Law, who until January led STEM immigration policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “And some measures will be in vain.”
The White House has been hearing from senior officials, including at least one Cabinet secretary, about the need for administrative actions on immigration — raising caps on certain visa categories, filling country quotas — to help alleviate the pressure on the workforce and increase the country’s labor supply, according to a senior administration official not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Biden, some officials and lawmakers have asserted, could also increase staff and other resources to help speed up visa processing and cut through a massive backlog that has left potential workers in limbo for months, years, and in some cases, decades.
But for now, the administration seems more inclined to allow Congress to work on the issue.
“I don’t think politics is the main concern. It’s just inertia and the hope that something more substantial could be done through legislation,” said one senior administration official who did not want to be named in order to speak freely.
A White House official defended the administration’s record on immigration, noting Biden sent a framework for comprehensive immigration reform to Congress as one of his first presidential actions. The measure has yet to gain traction.
The White House official noted the administration is moving to address immediate clean energy workforce needs in the construction, electrification and manufacturing fields, where a shortage of qualified people threatens to slow deployment of climate-fighting innovations Biden needs to meet his climate goals.
The official said the administration has worked with organizations to pair skilled refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine with trade union apprenticeship programs. The official said the administration’s focus remains on retraining people through creating training pipelines for electricians, broadband installers and construction workers. The official added that expanding union participation would ensure stronger labor supply by reducing turnover through improved job quality, safety and wages.
“I don’t think we’ve run out of people to do these kinds of jobs,” the official said.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in an interview that the White House is “certainly aware that the low unemployment rate can be an obstacle” to the economy and the laws it has passed, but that the administration “hasn’t come to the Hill with a real workforce focus” on immigration.
The stakes are clear for sectors pivotal to building and operating the infrastructure, manufacturing and clean energy projects Biden and Democrats have promised. The 57,000 foreign-born workers currently in the electrical and electronics engineering field comprise nearly 27 percent that sector’s workforce, while the 686,000 foreign-born construction laborers account for 38 percent of the nation’s total, according to a New American Economy analysis of Census data. Most foreign-born construction laborers are undocumented immigrants, according to the Center for American Progress, making up nearly one-quarter of the sector’s national workforce.
“My largest worry about the American economy right now is the workforce worry,” Kaine said.
The White House has seemed more comfortable taking executive steps, Kaine said, such as expanding a humanitarian parole program for migrants that also comes with a two-year work authorization. It also has pledged to step up enforcement against employers that exploit undocumented workers, which advocates contend will help keep those people in the workforce.
But conversations are also brewing again on Capitol Hill about more “discreet” immigration bills. Kaine said he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have discussed legislation to help support people with Temporary Protected Status, a Department of Homeland Security designation for people who have fled natural disasters, armed conflict or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” in their home country.
Immigration restrictions are even hindering oil and gas companies right now, Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), said in a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last month.
“The permits that ranchers use, agriculture, the permits that hospitality use — those same immigration permits are not the ones that are needed for people to have temporary work visas in the oil and gas sector,” he said. “You ain’t unleashing a thing unless you do something about immigration reform.”
Others have suggested that in addition to its inability to reach a deal to update the nation’s outdated immigration system, Congress needs to do a better job at retaining the immigrants who specifically come to the U.S. to earn degrees.
The U.S. for years has struggled to develop advanced STEM degree holders, a key indicator of a country’s future competitiveness in these fields. It has fewer native-born advanced STEM degree recipients than countries like China, raising national security concerns from top officials. The Biden administration has tried to break that logjam, in part by allowing international STEM students to stay on student visas and work for up to three years in the U.S. post-graduation.
“Why educate some of these folks in American schools … and then lose some of our best and brightest talent just because our system is super outdated?” said Kerri Talbot, deputy director of the Immigration Hub.
And the demand for high-skilled workers far outweighs the nation’s immigration caps, said Shev Dalal-Dheini, head of government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Congress limited employment-based green cards and H-1B visas offering temporary residency to skilled workers to 140,000 and 85,000 per year, respectively.
Foreign nationals dominate the exact fields the U.S. needs to grow its clean energy and manufacturing base. Nearly three-quarters of all full-time graduate students at U.S. universities pursuing electrical engineering, computer and information science, and industrial and manufacturing engineering degrees are foreign-born, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, an innovation, trade and immigration think tank. The same is true for more than half seeking mechanical engineering and agricultural economics, mathematics, chemical engineering, metallurgical and materials engineering and materials sciences degrees.
Subtle changes, like requiring more evidence and interviews, under the Trump administration worsened already-common backlogs. Processing at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is mainly paper based, not electronic, shuttered during the pandemic — it remains plagued by staff and funding shortages.
To the extent that the green energy transition is a race for a global market and influence, the U.S. immigration system is like a boulder in its shoe.
“Canada literally places billboards in Washington state saying, ‘Come here,’” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior advisor for immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Our ability to succeed in these big goals relies on people being able to do the work to meet those goals.”
[ad_2]
#avoiding #Immigration #issues #threaten #Bidens #climate #program
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The biopsy results come about three weeks after President Joe Biden went to Walter Reed Medical Center for his second annual physical since taking office. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo
The White House on Friday confirmed President Joe Biden’s skin lesion that was removed during his physical last month was basal cell carcinoma — a very common and treatable skin cancer. All cancerous tissue was removed and no further treatment is required, his doctor said.
In a memo on Friday, the president’s doctor noted that basal cell lesions “do not tend to ‘spread’ or metastasize,” as other serious skin cancers do. During Biden’s physical last month, the area of the skin on his chest was removed via electrodesiccation and curettage, a common skin cancer treatment that involves scraping and removing the skin with a sharp instrument and a high-frequency electric current. The doctor sent the lesion for a biopsy on Feb. 16.
“The site of the biopsy has healed nicely and the President will continue dermatologic surveillance as part of his ongoing comprehensive health care,” Kevin O’Connor, the president’s physician, wrote Friday.
[ad_2]
#Biopsy #Bidens #skin #lesion #common #skin #cancer #White #House #doctor
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“It may well be that 2023 is the best chance Ukraine has,” said Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Biden can say the U.S. will support Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’ if he can keep getting Congress to approve funds, and the idea with that rhetoric is to send a clear message to Moscow. But there’s also a U.S. election in 2024, and a German election in 2025, which will make things far more complicated.”
Scholz’s meeting with Biden — scheduled to be just one hour — will largely highlight both the transformation of Europe and the challenges for the U.S. president to hold it together to resist Russia. Two days after Russia’s invasion, Scholz vowed in his “Zeitenwende” speech that Germany, long wary of militarization in the postwar WWII era, would take steps to boost defense spending. It was an immediate recognition of how Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had shattered the existing security architecture of Europe.
Scholz quickly canceled the Nord Stream 2 Baltic gas pipeline project, and Germany has committed more than 6 billion euros in aid to Ukraine since the war began. But Wolfgang Schmidt, Scholz’s chief of staff, acknowledged this week that a budget crunch was likely to prevent Berlin from fulfilling last year’s promise of an increased defense spending.
“We must be honest about this,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “Ambition and reality are diverging.”
Zelenskyy has long called out Germany, by far Europe’s biggest economy, to do more in supplying weapons to the front, including Leopard II tanks. Reflecting the frustration some in the alliance have had with Scholz, national security adviser Jake Sullivan made the candid admission on a Sunday talk show that the U.S. only authorized sending its Abrams tanks — which could take up to a year to see the battlefield — to push Germany to send its own vehicles, which can be deployed much sooner.
“There’s no one strong leader that’s really holding the Europeans together. It’s Biden who’s doing it,” said Rachel Rizzo, senior fellow at Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. “And without the emergence of Germany as a strong leading actor, we are going to start to see more fissures within the alliance.”
Part of Biden’s task is managing the emerging divide in Europe over how to end the war. Some voices on the continent are urging peace talks now, to limit the human and economic toll. Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron have urged Zelenskyy to consider negotiations with Putin to bring the fighting to a close. And Macron last month said that it “has never been the position of France” to “crush Russia,” suggesting that it would be acceptable for Putin to remain in power and Russia to retain its military power if the fighting stopped.
Others in Europe hold a decidedly different view. After Biden’s triumphant secret visit to Kyiv last week, he traveled to Warsaw where he delivered a rousing speech about European unity. But the next day, in a closed-door meeting, Biden had to deliver a reminder to the Bucharest Nine — a group of Eastern European countries closest to Russia’s border — that the goal of the war was not to end Putin’s regime, according to officials not authorized to discuss private conversations. Biden himself once declared that Putin “cannot remain in power” but his administration has since backed away from the claim.
The Bucharest Nine, or B9, has most acutely felt Putin’s threat and has suggested that the only way to prevent an eventual Russian invasion of their own countries is to cripple Moscow for good. That has placed Biden in a delicate spot: a president who has sent an enormous military stockpile to Kyiv along with pledges to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” with disagreements over what offramps to take and amid growing Republican resistance for open-ended U.S. involvement in the conflict.
“We still need a strategy. Where are we going to be a year from now? I don’t think that Biden or anyone on his team has articulated that,” said Brett Bruen, a former State Department official in the Obama administration. “We’re past days of dancing around the sensitivities of one country or one political leader. We have got to either give Ukraine what it is going to take to win or we need to rethink the game plan.”
Faced with these political realities, Biden has leaned more on audacious set pieces to keep support for Ukraine intact. His trip to Kyiv — which aides believe helped inject momentum into the war effort — came after months of Biden wanting to travel there.
Very few White House officials, even senior ones, were read in on the plan, which involved him making a covert, 10-hour train trip ahead of his previously announced visit to Poland. Other means of travel were considered and dismissed, said aides not authorized to speak publicly about security measures. Driving might have been possible, but there were concerns about transporting enough escort vehicles to Poland as well as concerns about stops to refuel and dangers posed by the quality of Ukraine’s shelled roads.
Another option was to defiantly fly in on Air Force One. Proponents of that idea believed it would reflect a powerful show of resolve and signal that Russia was not to be feared, aides said. Ultimately, Moscow was given notice of the trip and U.S. officials believed that Putin and his military would not try anything against the presidential plane out of fear of retaliation. But the idea was tossed aside because the skies over Ukraine were not secure and there was no way to guarantee that a rogue actor on the ground might not try to down the instantly recognizable aircraft.
The centerpiece events of Biden’s trip to Eastern Europe went off spectacularly, aides believe. But what followed was Biden’s message to the Bucharest Nine, underscoring the challenges of holding the alliance together.
Kyiv, too, has not always been on the same page with the rest of the alliance. Zelenskyy has vowed not to negotiate until Russia has abandoned all of the Ukrainian territory it has seized — a declaration that includes Crimea, which Moscow forcibly annexed in 2014. But U.S. officials have sent signals to Kyiv that trying to retake Crimea would be difficult — and perhaps a mistake, potentially crossing a red line for Putin that would trigger an escalation.
U.S. officials are skeptical that Putin’s battered and humiliated military can conquer Kyiv but they do believe the Russian leader has no inclination to abandon his bloody quest. Possessing a massive manpower advantage and seemingly little consideration for the loss of life, Putin continues to throw waves of men into battle.
“Putin has not shown any interest in ending this war, so we will continue to help Ukraine succeed on the battlefield so they can be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table for when that time comes,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson. “That’s why we are working closely with our allies and partners, including Germany, to get Ukraine the weapons and equipment they need to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.”
Even a frozen conflict, one that weakens Ukraine and the West, would be perceived as a partial win for Putin, U.S. officials believe. Most intelligence analysts on both sides of the Atlantic believe the war, as currently fought, could stretch for years. While that would end up draining each nation’s military and economy, the Biden administration has begun to loudly sound the alarm that Moscow may soon have help on the way.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week declared that the U.S. believes China is considering sending lethal military aid to Russia, a development that could change the war’s trajectory. Much like it did on the eve of Russia’s invasion, the Biden administration broadcast its intelligence with the hope that the public threats may deter Beijing from acting. U.S. intelligence officials believe China has not yet decided on a course of action, a senior official said.
Though a move to help Moscow would bring severe economic repercussions from the West, China may consider propping up Putin enough to allow him to save face and wind the war down with some gains. That, in turn, would allow him to keep power and not bring instability to China’s borders. Additionally, U.S. analysts believe, China may be trying to ensnare the U.S. and its allies in a lengthy proxy conflict, draining their resources and potentially making it less of a threat if Beijing were to move on Taiwan.
“Their economy is based on globalization and they have to know that helping Russia will lead to sanctions and endanger that so we have to ask ourselves, ‘What do they have to gain?’” said Hagar Chemali, a former National Security Council and Treasury Department official under Obama. “Helping Russia would make things more difficult for Ukraine and more expensive for the U.S.”
“And this we know: Xi is not rash,” Chemali said. “He always plays the long game.”
[ad_2]
#Bidens #triumphant #visit #Kyiv #sober #war #reality
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Cruz, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee vetting the nomination, asked Washington specifically about what a device known as an “angle of attack” sensor does, how many are equipped on Boeing’s troubled 737 MAX jetliner, and whether he’d ever flown a plane or been an air traffic controller, among others. (Details about Washington’s career are spelled out in documents already submitted to the committee.) The sensor is one of the systems implicated in two fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019, which killed hundreds of passengers on planes operated by Ethiopian Airlines and Indonesia-based Lion Air.
As part of the exchange, Cruz asked Washington what happens when a pilot gets two different readings from two different angle of attack sensors. Washington replied that “human reaction needs to take over.”
“Why did that not happen on the Lion Air and Ethiopian Air flights?” Cruz asked.
“Senator, I’m not a pilot — I don’t know if I can answer that particular question,” Washington replied.
Cruz shot back that Washington’s answer was part of the “fundamental problem” with his nomination.
Cruz capped off his questioning with a statement ripped straight from the culture wars, saying the flying public doesn’t care if pilots are “transgendered witches” and instead want someone who knows how to fly a plane. Neither Washington nor Cruz had referenced gender identity before or after that remark, which had Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) barely restraining her laughter.
Washington countered that though he has never been a pilot, he knows how to manage large bureaucracies and lead people to excel, and suggested that means he’s the right person for the job.
“As a military veteran and leader of three large transportation organizations, my broad transportation safety knowledge and real-world leadership experiences provide me a unique perspective of how aviation and all modes of transportation should integrate into a seamless system,” Washington said.
Cruz also referenced ongoing lawsuits in which Washington has been named, including a politically tinged corruption probe into Los Angeles County politicians, as well as a recent lawsuit filed by a former employee of Denver airport alleging racial discrimination in pay and other items. Washington has denied any wrongdoing and on Wednesday said he has “nothing to hide.”
After the hearing, Cantwell said she thought the hearing went well and that she supports Washington’s nomination. She said that Washington’s lack of ties to aviation manufacturers and airlines is actually an asset as the FAA tries to ensure that another 737 MAX incident does not happen again.
“He’s actually might be somebody who is more likely to continue to push for reforms and have a stronger, independent FAA,” Cantwell said.
And Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said GOP arguments against Washington amount to a “hatchet job.”
Democrats anticipated Cruz’s attack and circled the wagons ahead of the hearing, including blasting out a document rebutting some of Cruz’s assertions about Washington’s experience and his time overseeing Los Angeles Metro.
Just before the hearing, Democrats lined up key aviation figures such as former House Transportation chair Peter DeFazio and Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson to voice their support.
“Mr. Washington’s record and engagement with stakeholders gives me tremendous confidence in his ability to lead us forward for the industry, our world partners, and the traveling public,” Nelson wrote.
Other Republicans on the committee, including Aviation Subcommittee ranking member Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and former committee Chair John Thune (R-S.D.), did not explicitly come out against Washington’s nomination during their questioning.
One Democrat on the panel, Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada, said she was undecided on the nomination.
By law, the head of the FAA must have aviation experience, and must be a “civilian.” Whether Washington, who retired after 24 years in the military, can be considered a “civilian” has not been resolved, but after the hearing Cantwell said he will not need a waiver because he’s considered a civilian.
If he is not considered a civilian under the terms of the law, then he will have to seek a waiver. That could complicate his nomination, because it will involve the assent of the House, where Republicans such as Transportation chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) are opposed.
[ad_2]
#Ted #Cruz #trip #Bidens #pick #FAA #nominee
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The three liberal justices and Amy Coney Barrett all raised questions about whether the states had standing to bring the case. A big wild card is three other Republican appointees — Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Roberts — all of whom were silent on the standing question, even though they seemed sharply critical of the merits of the case.
Here’s POLITICO’s look at five key aspects of Tuesday’s closely-watched arguments on one of the Biden administration’s highest-profile policy initiatives:
John Roberts: Size matters
One particular fact about the Biden administration’s education debt relief program really seemed to be galling to Chief Justice John Roberts: It’s so darn big.
Roberts seemed fixated on the sheer amount of the debt cancellation the Education Department was planning to offer before the courts froze the effort: an estimated $400 billion.
Not content with the B-word that made astronomer Carl Sagan famous, the chief justice turned to the even more gargantuan T-word at least four times to make the debt relief program sound simply enormous.
“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans,” Roberts intoned just minutes into the arguments Tuesday. “Congress shouldn’t have been surprised when half a trillion dollars is wiped off the books?”
That became the prevailing framing of the program for Roberts and many of his colleagues, even liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Samuel Alito uncharitably characterized the administration’s arguments this way, perhaps with inspiration from the late Senate Majority Leader Everett Dirksen: “When it comes to the administration of benefits programs, a trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, it doesn’t really make that much difference to Congress.”
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the conservative justices they were making a mistake to put so much emphasis on the overall cost and insisted it was proportionate to the need. “I recognize that this is a big program,” she said, adding, “but that’s in direct reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic, which itself was a really big problem.”
Did Kavanaugh compare student loan relief to Korematsu?
One of the most jarring comparisons at Tuesday’s arguments came when Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that the dangers posed by Biden’s debt relief plan could be akin to those from some of the worst excesses of presidential power. Kavanaugh mentioned the seizure of steel mills by President Harry Truman in 1952.
Another leading example that the Trump appointed-justice didn’t cite directly is the internment President Franklin Roosevelt ordered of about 120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II, a policy blessed by the Supreme Court in 1944 in Korematsu v. U.S., a decision many Americans hold in disgrace.
“Some of the biggest mistakes in the Court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive emergency power. Some of the finest moments in the Court’s history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency power. And that’s continued not just in the Korean War, but post-9/11 in some of the cases there,” said Kavanaugh, who worked in President George W. Bush’s White House during the September 11 attacks.
While Kavanaugh said that history left him concerned about the Biden policy, he later seemed to backtrack a bit, pointing to an amicus brief calling the debt relief plan “a case study in abuse” of those powers. “I’m not saying I agree with that,” the conservative justice quickly added, muddling the question.
The most pointed rejoinder to Kavanaugh came from Justice Elena Kagan, who sits next to Kavanaugh and often trades quiet asides with him during arguments. She said Biden’s action didn’t sideline Congress as other presidents have, but directly embraced Congressional authority.
“Congress used its voice in enacting this piece of legislation,” the Obama appointee said, referring to the 2003 law allowing the Education secretary to waive various rules during emergencies. “All this business about executive power, I mean, we worry about executive power when Congress hasn’t authorized the use of executive power.”
Where’s MOHELA?
The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, known as MOHELA, figured heavily in the justices’ debate over whether the GOP states had standing to bring their lawsuit in the first place.
Missouri, one of the states, argues that it can advance its case based on harms to MOHELA, which is a state-created entity that will face a reduction in revenue under Biden’s student debt relief plan.
Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, conceded that if MOHELA itself had brought the lawsuit, the government wouldn’t contest its standing to bring such a case. But she said that Missouri couldn’t adopt MOHELA’s injuries as its own.
Several of the justices also seized on the fact that MOHELA wasn’t part of the case.
“If MOHELA is an arm of the state, why didn’t you just strong-arm MOHELA and say, ‘you’ve got to pursue this suit?’” Barrett asked the lawyer representing the GOP states.
“That’s a question of state politics,” responded James Campbell, the Nebraska solicitor general who was representing the group of Republican states, including Missouri.
Kagan suggested the state of Missouri was so far removed from MOHELA that the attorney general had to submit a public records request to obtain documents from the company. “If MOHELA was willing to hand you over the documents, you wouldn’t have filed a state FOIA request,” she said.
Alito, who appeared sympathetic to the state’s argument for standing, speculated that MOHELA might have been worried about its contract with the Education Department under which the company is paid to manage millions of federal student loan borrower accounts. “Do you think there might be a dependent relationship between agencies like MOHELA and the federal government since we’re speculating about why they’re not here?”
Indeed, MOHELA has publicly distanced itself from the GOP states’ lawsuit. The company has said its “executives were not involved” with the Missouri attorney general’s decision to file a lawsuit.
MOHELA officials from the company also privately sought to reassure Democratic congressional aides and Biden administration officials that they were not involved in the lawsuit, POLITICO previously reported.
Sotomayor tugs at heartstrings
In hours of debate on complicated legal questions of standing, statutory interpretation and separation of powers, one soliloquy by Justice Sonia Sotomayor stood out: She detailed what hangs in the balance for borrowers in personal terms.
“There’s 50 million students who … will benefit from this who today will struggle,” Sotomayor said, somewhat inflating the number of federal student loan borrowers who would benefit. (The Education Department estimates the total is roughly 42 million).
“Many of them don’t have assets sufficient to bail them out after the pandemic,” the Obama appointee said. “They don’t have friends or families or others who can help them make these payments. The evidence is clear that many of them will have to default. Their financial situation will be even worse because once you default, the hardship on you is exponentially greater. You can’t get credit. You’re going to pay higher prices for things. They are going to continue to suffer from this pandemic in a way that the general population doesn’t.”
Sotomayor also seemed to warn her colleagues against substituting their judgements about fairness and need for those the administration made in setting up the debt relief program.
“What you’re saying is now we’re going to give judges the right to decide how much aid to give them,” Sotomayor said during an exchange with Campbell. “Instead of the person with the expertise and the experience, the Secretary of Education, who’s been dealing with educational issues and the problems surrounding student loans, we’re going to take it upon ourselves.”
A former Education secretary makes an appearance:
Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who invoked the HEROES Act in 2020 to extend the pandemic moratorium on student loan payments, was among those who watched the arguments from the court gallery.
DeVos has been sharply critical of student debt relief and signed an amicus brief with other former Republican education secretaries that blasted the proposal as unconstitutional.
Under her leadership, the Education Department developed a legal opinion concluding that the agency lacked the legal authority to cancel large amounts of student debt without new Congressional approval. The Biden administration last August rescinded the department’s legal opinion and issued its own memo concluding that the HEROES Act provides a basis for broad-based debt relief.
Several Biden Education Department officials also attended the arguments, including Rich Cordray, the head of the department’s student aid office, who oversees implementation of the debt relief program.
[ad_2]
#key #moments #Supreme #Court #showdown #Bidens #student #debt #relief
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Chief Justice John Roberts emerged as one of the most hostile voices on the court towards the debt relief plan, repeatedly invoking its overall cost and raising questions about its fairness.
“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans,” Roberts said early in the arguments, questioning why the court shouldn’t expect Congress to explicitly bless a program of such mammoth scope.
Roberts also seemed to skewer the Biden administration’s claim that the debt cancellation plan was not much different from existing programs that forgive student debts in specific circumstances.
“Because there’s a provision to allow [a] waiver when your school closes…because of that Congress shouldn’t have been surprised when half a trillion dollars is wiped off the books?” the chief said skeptically.
Roberts also said the administration’s decision not to wait on specific debt-forgiveness legislation may have cut short debates Congress could have had about whether student loan recipients were getting special treatment that people who paid off their loans or chose not to attend college did not.
“Nobody’s telling the person who was trying to set up the lawn service business that he doesn’t have to pay his loan,” the chief justice said. “He still does, even though his tax dollars are going to support the forgiveness of a loan for the college graduate who’s not going to make a lot more than him over the course of his lifetime.”
Justice Samuel Alito also hammered away at the perceptions of unfairness. “Why is it fair? Why is it fair?….Why was it done?” he asked the lawyer representing the Biden administration, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
In all, four of the conservative justices–Roberts, Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch–seemed most skeptical of the claimed legal basis for the debt relief plan, while all three of the court’s liberals appeared inclined to reject the challenges to the program.
The high court’s two other members–Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett–were less clear in their views. Barrett, notably, questioned some of the GOP states’ arguments that they had standing to bring the lawsuit.
Kavanaugh seemed opposed to allowing the emergency authority Congress passed two decades ago to be used to uphold a program giving debt relief to 95 percent of federal borrowers. He even seemed to suggest the relief was akin to some of the worst perceived excesses of executive power in U.S. history.
“Some of the biggest mistakes in the court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive or emergency power. Some of the finest moments in the court’s history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency power,” Kavanaugh said. “Given that history, there’s a concern, I suppose, that I feel, at least, about how to handle an emergency assertion.”
But later in the session Tuesday, Kavanaugh acknowledged that the language Congress used allowing the education secretary to “waive” requirements in a crisis was “extremely broad.”
The liberal members of the court appeared to largely agree with the Biden administration that a 2003 law, the HEROES Act, gives the Education Department broad authority to help borrowers respond to national emergencies.
“Congress doesn’t get much clearer than that,” Kagan said. “We deal with congressional statutes every day that are really confusing. This one is not.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor acknowledged the staggering sums of money involved, but said it was unsurprising given the scope of the programs and the pandemic. She noted that the forbearance the Trump administration began in 2020 and the Biden administration continued costs about $5 billion per month. But she said all the talk of the cost was irrelevant to the legal questions involved.
“It’s an outrageous sum,” Sotomayor acknowledged. “It’s not a question of money. It’s a question of Congress’ intent.”
Among those in the gallery for the debt relief arguments was former secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Rich Cordray, the Education Department’s student aid chief, was among the Biden administration officials who attended.
At issue in the cases is whether the Biden administration can unilaterally cancel student debt under the HEROES Act, which gives the Education Department special powers to help student loan borrowers respond to national emergencies.
The law says that the secretary of Education may “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” related to federal student loans “as may be necessary to ensure that” borrowers “are not placed in a worse position financially” because of a national emergency.
The Biden administration argues that it needs to cancel student debt for most borrowers to avoid a surge of defaults when it resumes collecting payments for the first time since the pandemic began.
Republican states, led by the attorneys general of Nebraska and Missouri, meanwhile, argue that the law is meant to allow the Education Department to ease some requirements on a temporary basis, not permit the mass discharge of student loan debt. They contend that the Biden administration’s pandemic rationale was a pretext to fulfill a longstanding demand from progressives that predated the Covid emergency.
Indeed, since the plan was announced and a flurry of lawsuits were filed last year, the administration has indicated it expects to end the public health emergency related to the coronavirus pandemic on May 11.
The justices on Tuesday also heard a second challenge to the debt relief program filed by two federal student loan borrowers who complain that they were excluded in whole or in part from the program because it doesn’t extend to those whose loans are now owned by commercial entities and because of limits on the plan’s benefits for those who did not receive Pell Grants.
Both cases at the high court also raise questions about whether the plaintiffs have legal standing to sue over the program, regardless of its ultimate legality.
The legal challenges to Biden’s student debt plan, first announced in August, landed at the Supreme Court late last year after speeding through lower courts. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the cases even though federal appeals courts had not yet ruled on the merits of either one.
The Biden administration has already extended the pause on student loan payments and interest into the summer to give time for the Supreme Court to issue its rulings in the cases, which are expected by the end of June.
The Education Department is currently preparing to resume collecting payments from borrowers in September, but that timeline could change in the coming months.
Even before a final decision, the skepticism from many justices on Tuesday is likely to intensify pressure on the White House to prepare an alternative plan for delivering debt relief.
Progressives have urged the Biden administration to invoke another legal provision to cancel student debt if its pandemic-related rationale gets shut down by the Supreme Court. They’ve pointed to a provision of the Higher Education Act that allows the Education Department to “compromise” or “settle” student loan debts owed to the agency.
The Biden Education Department has already used that settlement authority to discharge billions of dollars worth of federal student loans, mostly for borrowers who claimed they were defrauded by a for-profit college. But it hasn’t said publicly whether it would use that provision to cancel debt more broadly.
White House officials have said they’re confident in their legal authority under the HEROES Act and aren’t drafting alternative plans.
During the roughly four weeks that the Education Department accepted applications, nearly 25 million Americans signed up for the program.
A POLITICO analysis of those applications found that borrowers from lower-income ZIP codes and majority non-white neighborhoods submitted applications at a higher rate than did those living in wealthier and majority-white areas. It also found that applications were more likely to come from blue states and congressional districts won by Democrats.
In total, the Education Department estimates that about 40 million federal student loan borrowers would qualify for the program based on their 2020 or 2021 income. Borrowers must earn below $125,000 individually or below $250,000 as a couple to receive the relief.
Department officials approved about 16 million borrowers for debt relief until it was forced to halt the processing of applications in November in response to a court order.
[ad_2]
#Supreme #Court #appears #skeptical #Bidens #student #debt #relief #plan
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
