Holi 2023: If you have to do any work related to the bank, then you should not delay any more for that work. We are saying this because banks will remain closed for 3 days this week due to Holi (2023) .
If you have important bank work this week, then you have only today’s time. Because in the second week of March, due to Holi , banks will remain closed for many days continuously. For this reason, you should complete the bank related works by today and tomorrow. Due to Holi in some states of the country, banks will remain closed for three days (Holi 2023 Bank Holiday) .
With this, there will be a holiday in banks for 12 days in the entire month of March. Regarding this, RBI has released the list of bank holidays for March 2023. There are a total of 12 holidays in March including different festivals, second and fourth Saturdays and four Sundays. Also, they open on the first and third Saturdays of every month, while the second and fourth Saturdays are bank holidays.
Banks will remain closed at these places even on March 7
Banks will remain closed for 3 days from tomorrow till the next day of Holi. Banks will have a holiday on March 7, 8 and 9 on account of Holi festival. Whereas on March 11, there will be second Saturday holiday and on March 12, there will be a Sunday holiday. However, in the meantime, online services will continue in banks.
According to RBI’s banking calendar, banks will remain closed on March 7, 2023 (Tuesday) in some states on the occasion of Holika Dahan. This includes Uttarakhand’s Dehradun, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Rajasthan’s Jaipur, Jammu, UP’s Kanpur and Lucknow, Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur, Panaji, Ranchi and Srinagar.
Banks will remain closed in Agartala, Ahmedabad, Aizawl, Gangtok, Imphal, Patna, Raipur, Aizawl, Bhopal, Lucknow, Delhi, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Ranchi, Shillong, Srinagar and Shimla on Wednesday, March 8. Banks will remain closed in Bihar on March 9 due to Bank Holi or Osang.
Work like this when the bank is closed
Even though banks will be closed for many days in Holi, but you will be able to transfer money through Mobile Banking, Net Banking sitting at home. Apart from this, you can also transfer money through UPI. At the same time, you can use ATM for cash withdrawal.
The president’s “no negotiations” playbook comes after more than a decade of hostile debt fights, during which Biden was often an influential dealmaker. When Democrats fired up bipartisan talks upfront, like in 2011, it ended in major spending cuts and economic fallout. When they wouldn’t engage from the beginning, like 2013, House Republicans eventually unraveled their own ultimatums.
Having lived that history, Biden now continues to goad House Republicans to show they can rally around a plan for fiscal reforms, as the nation approaches the threat of a summer default on its more than $31 trillion debt.
If the past is prologue, the strategy is still a setup for an economically bruising impasse that ends with some budget concessions. Over the last decade, Democrats were often willing to eventually agree to more minor fiscal changes than the deep spending cuts their colleagues initially sought.
“If the president looks back at recent history and is fair-minded about it,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), “what he will see is that it’s always a negotiation process.”
Many Democrats argue there are two significant but nuanced differences between the current debate and past debt-limit deals: first, that the party demanding concessions hasn’t made an offer; second, the growing concern that, this time, Republicans would let the nation default on its debt if they can’t extract their tradeoffs.
“If they’re willing to actually pull the trigger, then that’s the difference,” said Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
Here’s how negotiations went down the last 10 times Congress acted on the debt limit:
Ceiling at the time: $28.4 trillion
How it went down: Just as they’re doing this year, Republican lawmakers insisted in 2021 that they wouldn’t vote to raise the debt limit without major changes to the federal government’s spending habits.
But things were different from the current standoff in one big respect — Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House at the time, giving them the power to raise the limit on their own. But they made a concerted decision not to.
With slim majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats could have used filibuster protections afforded by congressional budget rules to hike the nation’s borrowing limit without any Republican help. Instead, they zipped up their budget measure without any mention of the debt limit, effectively challenging Senate Republicans to help them avert a disaster.
In the end, both sides caved a little, joining forces to punt for two months and then to create a one-time filibuster loophole that allowed Senate Democrats to raise the cap with a simple majority vote.
Concessions: No major fiscal changes were tied to the deal. But it delayed some cuts to Medicare and other health programs.
How close? The brinkmanship rattled Wall Street for almost three months, exacerbating stock volatility as the Treasury Department came just one day away from defaulting on U.S. debt by the time Congress finally acted.
Ceiling at the time: $22 trillion
*The limit was waived for two years, allowing $6.4 trillion in new debt.
How it went down: Donald Trump didn’t want a market-rattling debt crisis a year before his reelection bid. Steven Mnuchin didn’t want to be the first Treasury secretary to lead the nation through a default. And lawmakers in both parties were keen on ensuring the debt limit wouldn’t plague them right before the 2020 elections.
With that common interest, Mnuchin and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi conducted high-stakes talks for weeks, as the Treasury chief led negotiations for the White House. Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff at the time, and Russ Vought, then the White House budget chief, were also in the mix, both unsuccessfully pushing to freeze federal spending.
Mnuchin and Pelosi ultimately hammered out a two-year budget deal that provided a bigger funding boost for domestic programs than it did for the military, in a win for House Democrats. Trump even took to Twitter to whip Republican support in the House, with limited success.
Only 65 out of 197 House Republicans ended up voting for the measure, with most rejecting the pleas from Trump and their own leadership.
Concessions: The two-year deal raised spending caps by about $320 billion. If the two parties had not struck a deal, $126 billion in sequestration cuts would have set in, ravaging every discretionary account in the federal government.
How close? Trump signed the bill about a month before the U.S. was expected to default.
Ceiling at the time: $20.5 trillion
*The limit was waived for 13 months, allowing $1.5 trillion in new debt.
How it went down: What started as a classic bipartisan budget deal devolved into a brief government shutdown.
After months of closed-door negotiations, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and then-Minority Leader Chuck Schumer locked in a plan to raise spending caps, increase the debt limit and fund the government.
Then-President Trump gave his blessing, and the deal enjoyed bipartisan support in both chambers. But Rand Paul wasn’t happy, and the Kentucky Republican temporarily blocked the bill from passing the Senate, demanding a vote to strip the debt limit increase from the package and keep the government under strict budget caps.
There was drama in the House, too. Then-Minority Leader Pelosi tried to whip her caucus to oppose the bill, protesting Republican inaction on honoring legal status for young undocumented immigrants and delivering an eight-hour floor speech on the issue. But the California Democrat failed to tank the vote, with 73 Democrats supporting passage.
Concessions: The bipartisan agreement raised military and non-defense spending caps by about $300 billion over two years and provided nearly $90 billion in disaster aid.
How close? The debt-limit suspension came about a month before Treasury was set to fully exhaust its borrowing authority.
Ceiling at the time: $19.8 trillion
*The limit was waived for three months, allowing $700 billion in new debt.
How it went down: In a move that shocked Hill Republicans, Trump unexpectedly sided with Democrats to back an offer that waived the debt limit and extended government funding for three months, while providing disaster relief for Hurricane Harvey.
Trump’s support for the hurricane and fiscal relief patch dealt a blow to the rest of his party. Fellow Republicans saw him as abandoning any shred of GOP leverage while Democrats pushed to negotiate a high-stakes year-end government funding and debt-ceiling deal, in addition to an immigration overhaul, all in quick succession. The GOP had originally hoped to extend the debt limit through the 2018 midterm elections.
Concessions: The package provided $15 billion in emergency funding to aid recovery from Hurricane Harvey, the storm that made landfall in Texas and Louisiana that summer, killing more than 100 people and causing well over $100 billion in damage.
How close? The deal was signed into law just weeks before the U.S. was forecast to default on its loans.
Ceiling at the time: $18.1 trillion
*The limit was waived for about 16 months, allowing $1.7 trillion in new debt.
How it went down: The debt ceiling suspension was part of a closely held, last-minute budget deal Republican congressional leaders struck with then-President Barack Obama, as much of Washington was distracted by then-Speaker John Boehner’s resignation announcement.
Just 12 days before the U.S. was set to default, Boehner and McConnell told Obama they couldn’t pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase, with Republicans demanding entitlement changes and Democrats pushing for more domestic spending.
So the trio embarked on speedy talks that resulted in a two-year budget accord, ultimately ending years of bitterly partisan fiscal battles exacerbated in part by the rise of the Tea Party. The agreement took the debt ceiling off the table for the rest of Obama’s presidency and capped Boehner’s career in Congress, after the Ohio Republican’s long struggle to keep his conference in line.
Concessions: Both sides emerged from the breakneck talks claiming wins. Democrats lauded domestic spending increases and some tweaks to Social Security and Medicare, and Republicans celebrated more money for the military and changes to entitlement programs. Democrats and Republicans were also able to relax the discretionary spending caps that had been put in place years earlier, squeezing priorities on both sides of the aisle.
How close? Obama signed the bill one day before the government was set to max out its borrowing authority.
Ceiling at the time: $17.2 trillion
*The limit was waived for about 13 months, allowing $900 billion in new debt.
How it went down: The White House and congressional Democrats refused to accept anything but a “clean,” one-year debt limit increase. Boehner, unable to rally enough support from within his GOP ranks for any kind of debt hike, ultimately had to rely on Democrats to push the measure through the House.
Boehner was forced to capitulate despite his prior insistence that any debt ceiling increase must be accompanied by “significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt.” Senate Republicans also didn’t protest the measure; they were more concerned about getting out of town before a snowstorm than getting mired in a fiscal fight. With only 45 seats in the Senate, Republicans also weren’t in a position to drive policy.
Boehner had floated a number of policy sweeteners in an effort to win support from House Republicans, including Obamacare changes and a reversal of cuts to military pensions. But rank-and-file Republicans rejected each offer, and several dozen hardline conservatives refused to raise the borrowing limit no matter what.
Concessions: No strings attached this time.
How close? Treasury was expected to run out of cash-conserving tricks in less than a month.
Ceiling at the time: $16.7 trillion
*The limit was waived for about four months, allowing $500 billion in new debt.
How it went down: Boehner promised a “whale of a fight” as debt limit talks heated up that summer. It was, and he lost.
Similar to this year’s dynamic, Democrats made a pact to negotiate nothing until Republicans helped waive the debt limit and fund the government. One assumption underpinned that strategy: House Republicans, even with a hearty majority, couldn’t pass any debt limit remedy on their own thanks to conservative resistance.
And indeed, Republicans insistent on killing Obamacare ended up crushing every idea Boehner proposed for handling the debt limit and funding the government. The House impasse spurred a 16-day government shutdown and took the nation to the brink of debt default.
Throughout the protracted fight, interpersonal drama erupted within both parties. Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was mad about concessions Biden had made during previous debt-limit negotiations and shut the then-vice president out of direct negotiations with lawmakers. Many Senate Republicans turned on Sen. Ted Cruz as the Texas Republican led the anti-Obamacare push.
Finally, a bipartisan deal born in the Senate ended the government shutdown and staved off debt default. Not a single House Democrat voted against the plan, while 144 of the chamber’s Republicans — more than 60 percent — opposed the bill despite urging from their leadership. Across the Capitol, 81 senators voted yes, with 18 Republicans opposed.
Concessions: The deal included a plan for House and Senate leaders to appoint negotiators to hash out a budget agreement by mid-December that year, while giving Congress formal power to disapprove of the debt-ceiling increase.
How close? Congress got the debt-limit suspension to Obama’s desk with one day to spare before Treasury expected the government would default.
Ceiling at the time: $16.4 trillion
*The limit was waived for about four months, allowing $300 billion in new debt.
How it went down: Republicans began with demands for dollar-for-dollar spending cuts to match any increase in the nation’s borrowing cap. Democrats wanted the debt limit waived past the 2014 midterms, an election that ended up relegating them to the minority in both chambers.
In the end, the two parties agreed to much less on both fronts.
Concessions: Along with suspending the debt limit for about four months, Congress passed a “no budget, no pay” plan, barring lawmakers from getting paychecks if they didn’t pass a budget by mid-April of that year.
How close? The deal came together just weeks before Treasury was expected to default.
Ceiling at the time: $14.3 trillion
How it went down: With its vivid imagery of a “fiscal cliff,” this standoff is remembered as the most economically devastating debt limit brawl in U.S. history thus far. It also marked Republicans’ biggest win on demands for new spending controls. And two familiar faces are credited with saving the day: then-Vice President Joe Biden and McConnell, who was Senate minority leader at the time.
While Obama and then-House Speaker John Boehner sealed the final deal, Biden’s longtime connection with McConnell led to the breakthrough, according to lawmakers, congressional staff, administration aides and Democratic officials familiar with the talks.
After the House speaker rejected an initial spending-cuts plan, McConnell paused talks with Biden, giving Boehner breathing room to appease his caucus with an attempt to pass their own debt-limit plan (it failed). Then, when the time was right, McConnell dialed up Biden with an idea for a workaround — and it worked.
Still, the Republican majority in the House wasn’t united enough to carry the vote alone, and GOP leaders called for help across the aisle. Then-House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and then-Minority Leader Pelosi swallowed their objections to the plan and whipped their own as the vote remained open. The final House count: 174 Republican ayes, 66 Republican nays. Democrats split evenly, 95 on each side.
Concessions: The deal created a decade of spending caps for both military and non-defense programs, with the aim of saving more than $900 billion over that time. It also set up the threat of across-the-board cuts. The Pentagon, domestic programs and Medicare would all face the chopping block if Congress didn’t act to prevent that slashing.
How close? The talks got so intense and dragged on so close to the brink of default that the Standards and Poor’s credit rating agency downgraded the nation’s status as a borrower — the only time the U.S. has lost its A+ badge as a firmly trusted debtor. Even rumors of a downgrade that year caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to swing by more than 400 points.
Just before the final deal came together, Obama privately braced for the possibility that then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner would need to prepare the country for a market crash.
Ceiling at the time: $12.4 trillion
How it went down: In another echo of the current debt fight, fiscal conservatives made it tough that year to rally enough votes to raise the borrowing limit. But back then, in the pre-Tea Party era, it wasn’t Republican conservatives causing the most trouble — it was Democrats of the Blue Dog persuasion pushing hardest for spending restraint.
Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, and still it took them weeks of negotiations among their own party leaders to lock in a deal that narrowly cleared both the House and Senate.
Coming off the so-called Great Recession, then-President Obama and congressional leaders were prepared for years of red ink amid waning tax revenue. And moderate Democrats were demanding new fiscal controls.
Democratic leaders even called on former President Bill Clinton, nearly a decade after his tenure in the White House, to sell the caucus on the idea that new spending restrictions would remind voters their party “had a better record on fiscal discipline” than the GOP. Biden, as the lead proxy for Obama, worked his Senate ties.
Following Senate passage, without a vote to spare, then-Speaker Pelosi whipped alongside House Blue Dog leaders, prevailing 217-212 to raise the debt limit despite 37 defections.
Concessions: The deal reinstated “pay-go” budget rules similar to those credited with helping rein in deficits in the 1990s. Obama heralded the restraints, describing them as “a simple but bedrock principle: Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere.”
To win over moderates in the Senate, including then-Budget Chair Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Obama also promised to create an 18-member fiscal commission to recommend more steps to reducing the deficit.
How close? Federal debt could have exceeded the limit in less than a month if Congress hadn’t acted then.
Nancy Vu and Beatrice Jin contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“Everybody will have a little different perspective. But when you want to attack inflation in this country, it starts with an all-of-the-above energy policy, and I think that will be the more unifying thing,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.).
While each of the 20 or so bills getting united for the House package has broad support in committee, senior Republicans are still deciding how exactly to maneuver on the floor. While conservatives have demanded a kind of “open season” for amendments, GOP leaders sense that could be a risky strategy for such a high-stakes bill — one that’s likely to be a key plank in their 2024 platform. They’re still undecided on whether to allow a so-called “open rule,” according to multiple lawmakers and aides.
“That’s the five-vote majority problem,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), noting that the GOP has already seen energy issues like offshore drilling pit cause intra-party tension on the floor — most recently pitting drill-skeptical Florida Republicans against their colleagues. “If you have a delegation that has a problem, you have a bill problem.”
The big energy package has long been atop the GOP’s agenda, not all of which has gone smoothly after a dragged-out speaker’s race and slow start to legislating. While House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) had pledged to bring up bills on the southern border, criminal justice and abortion insurance restrictions within the first two weeks of the new majority, those bills have all stalled amid resistance within the conference.
And there’s another big reason House Republicans are relishing the chance to bring this to the floor. It’s considered their opening bid on the wonky yet critical issue of energy permitting — a rare policy area that both parties believe could lead to a bipartisan deal that President Joe Biden’s willing to sign.
They know that their package’s pro-fossil-fuel proposals and its targeting of Biden’s progressive climate policies are unlikely to garner bipartisan support, but GOP lawmakers hope the permitting plank in particular represents an aggressive starting point for negotiations with Senate Democrats. Perhaps their most politically vulnerable centrist, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), watched his permitting reform plan fall short last year even as his party controlled both the House and Senate.
“The dynamics of the last Congress, with Manchin leading it, weren’t really conducive to getting something done. And this approach of doing something that originates in the House is a better start,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a McCarthy ally and party leader on energy issues.
Graves crafted the main permitting measure in the House GOP package, which would overhaul rules for reviews conducted under the National Environmental Policy Act — a bedrock environmental law adopted in 1970 — for energy infrastructure, be it pipelines or wind turbines.
Manchin had demanded his party attempt to pass a similar effort but failed thanks in part to Republicans who were peeved by his support for Democrats’ party-line tax, health care and climate bill.
From his perch atop the Energy Committee, Manchin is still joining with the White House to press for a congressional permitting modernization that would, they say, help companies take full advantage of the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies that the party-line deal devoted to expanding clean energy.
“I wouldn’t expect their [Republicans’] first bill to be something the Democrats could support,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), a centrist who is talking to House Republicans about permitting. “It is true we have an interest, as climate action advocates, to move things along in a way I am not sure the current law accommodates.”
Most of the rest of Republicans’ legislative package, though, is dead on arrival in the Senate. Instead, it serves mostly political purposes for a GOP that hammered the issue for months during the midterm campaign.
The effort follows components of a broader energy strategy that McCarthy released last summer, calling for measures to stimulate oil and gas production, ease permitting regulations and reduce reliance on China for critical materials used in green energy technologies.
McCarthy’s strategy stemmed from an “energy, climate, and conservation task force” he created ahead of the midterms, chaired by Graves, that incorporated legislative ideas from across the conference. That work drew support from leaders of key committees, including Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) of Energy & Commerce, Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) of Natural Resources, Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) of Science, and Sam Graves (R-Mo.) of Transportation and Infrastructure.
“It’s energy security, it’s domestic production, and it’s inflation,” Westerman said. “It’s all of the above energy.”
The GOP effort, notably, started off at least partly with climate change in mind, as McCarthy recognized the political liability that his party faces on an issue which animates young voters on both sides of the aisle.
But in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which spiked oil and natural gas prices, most Republicans are downplaying elements of their forthcoming package that could potentially boost clean energy and help address climate change. Instead, Republicans are arguing that Democratic climate policies have stoked inflation by slowing oil and gas production — even though output of both has climbed under Biden.
“Their agenda is just all in for the polluters and Big Oil,” said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who led the Select Climate Crisis Committee last Congress alongside Graves (Republicans have since disbanded it). “There is such dissonance there. It’s confusing, to say the least.”
Republicans counter that their agenda — promoting production and export of all forms of energy, including renewables and other carbon-free sources — makes more sense since Russia’s continental aggression underscored the importance of maintaining ample supplies of oil and gas even as the world transitions off fossil fuels.
“It’s a really good time to merge energy and climate policy with rational approaches to being cleaner,” said Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who chairs the nearly 80-member Conservative Climate Caucus. “Before, maybe the whole conversation was on being clean. Now, it’s about being affordable, reliable, safe, and clean. That’s a good nexus for a lot of us.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
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Lightfoot, who was elected in 2019, came under fire from voters and her eight challengers for her handling of crime in Chicago.
On Tuesday night, Lightfoot conceded after gaining about 17% of the vote, coming in third behind former public schools chief Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who will face off in a runoff. She was the first elected Chicago mayor to lose reelection since Jane Byrne in 1983.
When it comes to crime, mayors are “the closest to the problem” Adams said Sunday, calling public safety “a prerequisite to prosperity.”
“That is why we’re zero-focused, double-digit decrease in shooters, double-digit decrease in homicides,” Adams said. “We have witnessed this year, particularly in the month of February, all of our index crimes is low, low for the entire year.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“The president has made clear for over a year now that a top priority is bringing down costs for folks,” said Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council and one of the officials spearheading the junk fee initiative. “The fact he’s willing to sharply call out certain behavior and highlight it is encouraging these corporations — at least some of them — to come along with us.”
The changes made by companies over the last several days are modest, and as much a result of corporate calculations as political pressure. Drugmaker Eli Lilly plans to slash its insulin prices and cap out-of-pocket costs at $35 a month for privately insured patients, bringing it in line with a limit Democrats imposed on Medicare as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. But the discounts will only apply to its older products, and the changes are unlikely to affect the company’s bottom line.
In a similar vein, three major airlines — United, American and Frontier — are eliminating extra fees often faced by parents wanting to ensure they can sit with their children on flights, a practice Biden slammed last month as akin to treating kids “like a piece of luggage.” Still, they’re keeping the web of other seat and baggage charges that have become the industry norm.
The announcements nevertheless sparked celebrations in the West Wing, where aides believe pressure will now ramp up on competitors to follow suit — and provide Biden with tangible new achievements to tout.
Democrats have long targeted high pharmaceutical prices, driven in large part by surveys showing drug affordability is a top worry for voters on both sides of the aisle. White House economic aides charged with assembling Biden’s “junk fee” agenda, meanwhile, zeroed in on surprise fees that not only affect broader economic competition but are simply the most likely to drive Americans crazy.
“I do a lot of polling, and it’s rare to see policies that have this much universal consensus,” said Danielle Deiseroth, the interim executive director at Data for Progress. The progressive think tank published a post-State of the Union survey pegging voter support for banning such fees — like those tied to concert ticket purchases, hotel stays and seating families together on airplanes — at nearly 80 percent. “Saving people money transcends party lines,” she said.
Biden is pushing for comprehensive legislation that would lock in those price restrictions across the board. The White House has vowed to renew its pursuit of a universal insulin price cap, after Republican opposition forced it out of the IRA. And since Biden pitched his vision for a “Junk Fee Prevention Act” during the State of the Union, aides have sought out Democratic lawmakers willing to turn the idea into actual legislation.
But there’s little expectation that those proposals will gain traction with a Republican House staunchly opposed to the administration’s economic agenda. That’s prompted Biden officials to focus on wringing concessions out of individual corporations, using what aides characterized as a combination of public pressure and lighter-touch coaxing behind the scenes.
The White House honed the approach during its initial Covid-19 response. It rolled out plans for sweeping new regulations like requiring employers to give workers paid time off to get vaccinated, while simultaneously encouraging companies in private to get out ahead by instituting their own similar policies — and showering praise on them when they did.
“If we could find a company that was willing to take the first step, then that was always an opening to bring other companies along,” said Zach Butterworth, who until recently served as the White House’s liaison to the business community. He added that the goal was to create a pervasive sense within the private sector that “if you weren’t taking these steps, you were outside the mainstream.”
It’s a strategy that’s found varying success; for every industry-wide pact the White House secured on initiatives, such as discounted broadband internet access, it’s faced resistance on others like lowering gas prices, where oil companies effectively shrugged off Biden’s threats to rein in what he criticized as “war profiteering.”
The airlines’ decisions to be more family friendly came after the Department of Transportation told companies it planned to publish a table showing which carriers charged parents extra to sit with their young kids. Eli Lilly is cutting insulin prices amid sustained scrutiny over the drug’s cost, going as far in its announcement as urging “policymakers, employers and others to join us in making insulin more affordable,” despite resisting such calls from consumer advocates for years until it made financial sense for the company.
Despite the companies’ murky motives, Biden has made a show of applauding them without reservation, hoping it will convince competitors to do the same if only to get the public relations boost.
“The thing we can always withhold is that praise,” a senior White House official said. “Part of the benefit for the company is they get a pat on the head from the government.”
Within corporate boardrooms, the reaction has been more measured. Though others may follow suit, analysts said, it’s far from signaling a sea change in industry behavior.
“The industry was moving in this direction anyway without the president making it part of his State of the Union,” said Jay Sorensen, president of airline consulting firm IdeaWorksCompany, adding that family seat fees had already become a nuisance for another group: the flight attendants having to mediate travelers’ constant requests to switch seats.
Umer Raffat, an analyst who covers the drug industry for investment bank Evercore ISI, provided a blunt assessment of Eli Lilly’s price cuts: “Not a needle mover for them.”
The White House’s crowing has also failed to dent the business lobby’s opposition to Biden’s broader junk fee plan, with corporate leaders grumbling that the administration was vastly overstating the impact and popularity of the moves, as well as its own role in driving them.
“What this is really about is trying to impose price caps — and that didn’t work very well in the early 1970s, it’s not going to work very well today,” said Neil Bradley, chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “This isn’t a junk fee agenda; this is a government price control agenda that’s trying to be rebranded.”
The extra attention has also yet to prompt other airlines or insulin makers to take actions of their own. And there’s little visible progress so far on other elements of the junk fee agenda. The White House has yet to directly discuss their efforts to ban resort fees with major hotel brands or talk to Ticketmaster executives about its ticketing service charges.
But Democrats argue that even if the financial effects are limited, the moves create an outsized political opportunity for Biden — and show his administration is making small yet visible improvements to Americans’ financial situation.
“There are very few pieces of legislation that will move through Congress over the next two years,” Deiseroth said. “So for the Biden administration to be able to point to these victories and say, we called for this and it’s happening, it’s almost an achievement by proxy.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Abu Dhabi: A Turkish national won the grand prize of 15 million Dirhams (Rs 33,36,93,940) in the Big Ticket Abu Dhabi weekly draw on Friday.
The winner Sam Heidaritorshizi won the mega draw after his ticket number 172108 was picked in the Dh15 million series 249.
While Salim Al Bastaki from United Arab Emirates (UAE) won the second prize of one million Dirhams (Rs 2,22,46,262), Indians Linta Thomas won the third prize of 100,000 Dirhams (Rs 22,24,626), and Mallesh Thumpeti won the fourth prize worth 50,000 Dirhams (Rs 11,12,313).
Tickets can be purchased online through the Big Ticket website or by visiting the store counters at Abu Dhabi International Airport and Al Ain Airport.
The Ministry of Personnel, which comes under the Central Government, has given a one-time option to a select group of central employees to opt for the old pension scheme. There is a chance till August 31, 2023 to exercise the option.
There is great news for central government employees. In fact, the Ministry of Personnel, which comes under the government, has given a one-time option to a select group of central employees to opt for the old pension scheme. According to the order, employees joining the Central Services for posts advertised or notified before December 22, 2003, will get this option. There is a chance till August 31, 2023 to choose this option.
What happens to those who do not opt: Those government employees who are eligible to exercise the option but do not exercise the option by the due date will continue to be covered by the National Pension System i.e. NPS. The order states that the option once exercised will be final.
Necessary orders in this regard will be issued by October 31, 2023, if the Government servant fulfills the conditions of coverage under the CCS (Pension) Rules, 1972 (now 2021). At the same time, the NPS account of government employees who choose this option will be closed from December 31, 2023.
The National Movement for Old Pension Scheme (NMOPS), an organization of over 14 lakh central and state government employees, has welcomed the government’s decision.
7th Pay Commission Update: Big gift from the government to lakhs of employees and pensioners. The government has increased the salary of the employees. Under which the salary of the employees has been increased by Rs 2276 per month.
Lakhs of central government employees and pensioners of the country have got a big gift before Holi. The government has increased the salary of the employees. The increase in dearness allowance has been approved in the Modi cabinet meeting. After this approval, the salary of the employees has increased by more than Rs 27,000. Let us tell you how much the salary of the employees of which level has increased-
There has been an increase of 4 percent-
According to the information received from the AICPI index, from January 1, 2023, employees will get the benefit of increased DA. At this time the employees were getting dearness allowance at the rate of 38 per cent, but now it has increased by 4 per cent.
42 percent will get DA-
It has been learned from the cabinet meeting held before Holi that the employees will get the benefit of dearness allowance at the rate of 42 per cent. Dearness allowance is calculated on the basis of AICPI-IW only.
Which employee’s salary will increase by how much?
Let us tell you that if the basic salary of an employee is Rs 18,000, then there will be an increase of Rs 720 per month in his salary, that is, there will be an increase of Rs 8640 in the salary of the employees on an annual basis. On the other hand, if the basic salary of the employees is Rs. 56900 per month, then their salary will increase by Rs. 2276 per month, that is, the salary will increase by Rs. 27312 on an annual basis. An announcement to increase the salary may be made soon by the government.
Notification can be issued before Holi-
According to information received from sources, it is believed that PM Modi can announce it before Holi. After Holi, the Finance Ministry will issue its notification. Along with the March salary, the increased dearness allowance is to be paid. Employees will also get arrears of two months.
DA was increased by 4 percent in July as well.
Let us tell you that if there is an increase of 4 percent in the DA of the employees, then the dearness allowance will reach at the rate of 42 percent. In July 2022 also, the government had increased the DA of the employees by 4 percent. Lakhs of central employees and pensioners will benefit from the increase in DA and DR.
