“They’re related for sure,” Thune said of the debt limit talks and farm bill. “For better or worse, pretty much everything that we’re going to do subsequent to the debt limit discussion depends on how all that plays out.”
Fresh in Senate GOP leaders’ minds: The 2011 sequestration fight, which resulted in steep spending cuts to farm safety net programs popular among Republicans. One Senate GOP aide, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal discussions, warned that any “across-the-board cuts [included in legislation to raise the debt limit], may effectively reduce the investments we are able to make in the farm safety net, trade, research, and other priorities.” The person added that “debt ceiling negotiators need to use a scalpel, not an ax.”
Thune and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, the No. 4 Republican in the upper chamber, are now among the handful of GOP leaders navigating the debt talks with the White House and the upcoming budget negotiations while trying to protect key farm bill funding. Ernst acknowledged the three legislative efforts are becoming increasingly entangled. As a result, the farm bill timeline could slip.
“We anticipate it’s going to take a while to get the farm bill done. Sooner is better than later, but it could take a little bit longer,” Ernst said.
GOP senators are largely supportive of their House colleagues’ demand for cuts to nutrition spending, which ballooned during the pandemic. But they’re less enthusiastic about the idea of slashing key farm safety net programs they’ve long tried to protect.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that he expects Senate Republican leaders will likely need to step in to protect certain pots of farm bill funding from House GOP cuts given “the importance of agriculture to our entire economy.”
While Senate GOP leaders haven’t drawn any redlines, Thune has noted the importance of the farm bill to the rural voters his party relies on. “I think the [House Republican] leadership … understands even though on their right they’ve been getting a lot of pressure to cut, cut, cut in different areas, there are also a lot of members from agricultural states who need a farm bill,” said Thune. That includes his own state, South Dakota, where agriculture is the largest industry.
And, he pointed out, “If you look at our map in 2024, we got a lot of rural state Republicans who are up.”
Up to this point, McConnell and Senate Republicans have deferred to House Republicans in the debt limit negotiations with the White House, even as the U.S. inches closer to the June 1 date when the nation could hit its debt limit, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. But McConnell will be attending a White House meeting Tuesday with Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, which members of both parties are hoping could help begin to break the logjam.
Democrats, meanwhile, are warning that House Republicans’ proposals to slash spending as part of the debt limit deal threaten the viability of the traditionally bipartisan farm bill on Capitol Hill. Democrats are particularly incensed by the GOP push to expand work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — the nation’s leading anti-hunger program for low-income Americans, which accounts for approximately 80 percent of farm bill funding.
Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who is also a member of Democratic Senate leadership, has warned the proposed spending cuts in the House GOP debt legislation would also hit key parts of the farm bill — including critical risk management programs for crop farmers that are still being impacted by the 2011 spending cuts.
“If the Republicans want to tank a farm bill that’s up to them,” Stabenow said in an interview. “This is the most important rural economic development and farmer safety net in our country.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
In statements touting the news, Braun said the legislation would let farmers “tap into one of the fastest growing agricultural markets” and Tester said that they “don’t need government bureaucrats putting unnecessary burdens on their operations.”
Left unsaid was how the bill had come together.
Interviews with six hemp advocates, company officials and Senate aides reveal that hemp lobbyists and businesses brought the original idea for the legislation to Tester’s office. An email obtained by POLITICO also shows that in February they got a word-for-word early look at the bill that the two senators would go on to introduce weeks later.
“It comes down to the definition of ‘write,’” said Geoff Whaling, chair of the advocacy organization National Hemp Association, when asked if hemp insiders helped write the legislation. “Did they all provide feedback and comments and told the senator’s office: ‘Do we need this changed?’ Absolutely. Part of the legislative process is consultation with stakeholder groups and certainly, like any legislation, that was done.”
Depending on one’s vantage point, the process by which the Industrial Hemp Act of 2023 was put together resembles a thoughtful process or government at its quintessential unseemliness. Either way, it underscores how Congress often turns to self-interested outsiders for help understanding arcane issues and illustrates the blurry line between relying on industry expertise and letting those industry forces craft their own regulations.
The hemp lobby is hardly a D.C. powerhouse on the scale of Big Oil or Big Pharma. It’s only been since 2018 that hemp has been legal, done so as part of that year’s farm bill. It was touted as a potential boon for farmers, particularly in states where tobacco was once a major cash crop. But the market for hemp-derived CBD products has failed to develop as hoped, in part due to continuing legal and regulatory uncertainty. Five years ago, it was supposed to hit $22 billion in 2022, according to the Brightfield Group, which tracks the industry, but instead was less than a quarter of that size last year. That’s led the industry to shift more toward industrial applications for hemp, like textiles and building supplies.
Industry officials have been hoping that lawmakers will use the 2023 farm bill to provide changes to boost the fledgling industry. And they’ve made this case directly to members of Congress and their staff.
Tester’s aides said his office wrote the bill themselves with the nonpartisan Senate Office of the Legislative Counsel in order to help a Montana-based hemp business that reached out with a problem in 2022.
“As a third-generation Montana farmer, Jon Tester will always fight to do what’s best for his state,” said Eli Cousin, a Tester spokesperson. “After hearing directly from Montana small business owners who expressed that government red tape was putting unnecessary burdens on their operations, he did what he always does: took their feedback with him and worked across the aisle to find a solution. He’ll keep fighting until this bipartisan bill becomes law.”
The email obtained by POLITICO, however, suggests more direct collaboration between the senator’s office and the hemp industry Congress is tasked with regulating.
By this February, Tester’s office said, it had been working for a year on the legislation slashing regulations for hemp growers. That month Courtney Moran, who serves as the chief legislative strategist at Agricultural Hemp Solutions, emailed a legislative assistant for Tester, as well as Morgan Tweet, co-founder of that Montana-based industrial hemp company that contacted Tester’s team, IND HEMP; Erica Stark, the executive director of the National Hemp Association; and Cort Jensen, an attorney for the Montana Department of Agriculture.
“CONFIDENTIAL – Industrial Hemp Act, 2023,” read the subject line from Moran.
Moran included a PDF document in the email. It was the bill that Tester and Braun would go on to introduce.
Moran addressed the note to Jensen and thanked him for bringing together the “team” at the Montana Department of Agriculture earlier that week. “We greatly appreciate everyone’s feedback and insight,” she said.
“Attached is the current (and hopefully final!) draft bill language,” she wrote, adding that the legislation was sent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture the week prior for a “final review.”
“Appreciate you letting us know if you have any questions or comments after reading the bill,” Moran said. “PLEASE KEEP THIS CONFIDENTIAL at this time, and not share outside of the Department. Really appreciate you!”
It is unclear whether or how Jensen and the hemp industry insiders replied to the email. The document obtained by POLITICO did not include any follow-up. A USDA spokesperson said Tester’s office had sent the legislation to them, not industry officials.
Moran is registered as a lobbyist on behalf of IND HEMP, disclosing this year and last that she lobbied on the issue of industrial hemp to the Senate and USDA. One of her specific lobbying issues cited in 2023 is Tester and Braun’s Industrial Hemp Act.
A spokesperson for Braun said that his office negotiated his co-sponsorship with Tester’s team. They also suggested that they were uncomfortable with the degree to which advocates were involved in the process.
“[O]ur chief of staff called the chair of one of these advocacy groups to tell them we were negotiating directly with the other office and told them frankly we did not want them involved in our process,” said the spokesperson, who spoke candidly on the condition of anonymity. “We support this bill because it doesn’t make sense for industrial hemp crops grown in Indiana to go through the same testing and sampling as cannabinoid hemp.”
How a bill becomes law
According to Tester’s aides, the process by which the bill came together was more nuanced and deliberative than the email suggests. They said Tweet, whose business reports having between 11 and 50 employees, came to the senator’s team in February 2022 with a dilemma: A provision in the 2018 farm bill was creating major headaches for grain and fiber hemp farmers because it treated all hemp the same, whether it was being grown for industrial purposes or for consumer CBD products. Tester’s staffers invited Tweet, who brought Moran, to a meeting to discuss a legislative fix. Moran and Tweet then sent his office a draft legislative proposal in the spring of 2022 that sought to remedy the regulatory issues they were facing.
Between the summer of 2022 and this spring, Tester’s staffers said the bill went through at least five revisions, and that his and Braun’s offices solicited feedback from numerous stakeholders, including the USDA, the National Sheriffs’ Association, the Montana Farmers Union and the Montana Department of Agriculture.
Tester’s aides said their final bill included a number of changes from the original proposal that Tweet and Moran suggested, including different and sometimes stricter penalties for hemp farmers found to be in violation of the law, rulemaking authority provided to the USDA, and the added ability for states and tribes to create their own more stringent protocols for violations.
Asked to assess the differences between the final bill and the original plan by Moran and Tweet, Eric Steenstra, president of hemp advocacy group Vote Hemp, said they are fairly small.
“They were relatively minor in the bigger picture of what the thing was trying to accomplish,” he said. “It’s a few little details about how it was going to be implemented.”
Moran, the hemp lobbyist who wrote the February email, said in a statement that IND Hemp had approached her to represent them to fix their regulatory issues. “They reached out to Senator Tester to relay their on-the-ground challenges, and I helped articulate the issues they are facing. Senator Tester and his office did what any good representative would do – take this constituents’ feedback and work across the aisle to propose a legislative solution.”
Tweet, the hemp company co-founder, said the idea that the bill stemmed from a secretive process “is not true in the slightest,” pointing to the fact that she and others worked on it for 18 months with Tester’s office and “held several calls” with other fellow stakeholders “to garner as much input as impossible.”
“IND HEMP is the largest processor of grain and fiber in the United States,” she said of her company. “I say that so you know that this initiative was created because we know more than anyone else how burdensome and clunky the current hemp program is and how we need congressional language to implement change that would impact those farmers.”
Stark, the National Hemp Association executive director, said that she is “proud to be part of this effort” to get the bill introduced.
“This bill has the power to unlock the full potential of industrial hemp for fiber and grain, creating a host of economic and environmental benefits for our farmers and our planet,” she said.
Jensen, the state attorney who also received the email, said in a statement the “Montana Department of Agriculture always attempts to work with all of our elected officials at the state and federal level when legislation will have an impact good or bad on farms, ranches, and related agricultural industries.” In a brief interview, he added, “I think they [the advocates] definitely wrote some of the language. … People would often bounce bills by me.”
Whaling scoffed at the idea that the bill was a product of lobbyists, calling himself an advocate and noting the small stature of the industry.
“We didn’t need the paid lobbyists that the cannabinoid industry has engaged,” he said. “We’re not Big Tobacco, we’re not Big Marijuana, we’re not Big Alcohol.”
The day that Tester and Braun introduced the legislation, Whaling took to social media to praise the “stellar efforts” by Moran, Tweet and Stark to get it “drafted, negotiated, endorsed and introduced today in the US Senate.”
Congressional experts said it is not uncommon for trade organizations, especially those focused on niche subjects like hemp, to have major sway over bills introduced on Capitol Hill. Two trade industry executives POLITICO spoke with said this is especially common with cannabis because most lawmakers and their staff have never had to work on the issue until recently. The executives were granted anonymity to speak candidly about how cannabis policy gets made in Washington.
“No one knows shit about this on Capitol Hill,” said one of the executives.
The second executive with experience working on cannabis policy on Capitol Hill said they’ve seen multiple pieces of weed-related legislation introduced by lawmakers that were written entirely by trade organizations. Those bills often were never vetted by other outside sources or even lawyers who could determine if they would work correctly, the person said. In Tester’s case, however, aides pointed out that he has been working on hemp legislation for the better part of a decade.
The Industrial Hemp Act of 2023 could soon be a part of a top debate facing all of Congress. Advocates say their goal is to potentially get it into the farm bill.
Natalie Fertig contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
You can get your duplicate bill at http://www.jkpdd.net/jkapdrp/faces/jsp/bill/duplicateBillEntry.jsp
Step 1:
Step 2:
Here you need to enter your Consumer code, Name as on bill, Installation number, select month and year and then click on submit you will get your duplicate bill.
How to Pay JKPDD Online payment process:
Power Development Department (PDD is one of the Jammu and Kashmir state government departments responsible for energy transmission and power distribution in all districts. Later in 1995, the Department of Energy Development was changed to Jammu and Kashmir State Power Development Corporation (JKSPDC).
JKSPDC accepts online payments for electricity bills in Jammu and Kashmir districts. Consumers can use this online portal to pay their dues. To accept online bill payments, consumers must register their personal data, such as the consumer’s name, consumer number and other information in JKPDD Online’s invoice payment web portals.
Now pay the electricity bills through the net bank
Consumers in Jammu and Kashmir’s energy development department will suffer from the monthly clutter of queues at bank branches to pay electricity bills – the ministry started paying bills online at from this month.
Online billing would make it easier to pay bills, since customers can now pay bills sitting at home. Consumers can log on to http://billsahuliyat.jkpdd.net/ and use JK bank’s net banking service to pay the bill.
If you are new user then you need to sign up and proceed to make payment of your bill.
Speaking in Grand Kashmir, the Minister of State in power, Muhammad Ashraf Mir, said that this measure was intended to facilitate the payment of bills and that “this step is also part of the campaign to facilitate business because commercial consumers can also benefit from the convenience of online payment facility. “
“Our government is working to make services accessible to people at the door. We have witnessed that the payment of bills is a heavy exercise for our people and taking into account the difficulties they face, the decision to pay online has been taken to alleviate the problems of ordinary people, declared by Muhammad Ashraf.
Mir said that DP will not avoid the traditional bill payment system through bank branches. “We came to know about that seniors and uneducated people would have difficulty paying bills online; they can continue to pay their bills in the traditional way, declared by Minister of State in power.
The minister added that young people and educated people can, however, benefit from this facility. He added that with the advancement of IT, the DP needs to adapt to new technology.
PDD Deputy Executive Director Shabir Ahmad said that online billing was initially launched as a pilot project from last December month. “Due to the proper response and comments, we officially started bill payment online from this month, declared by Minister of State in power.
Ahmad said for now that consumers who have JK Bank’s net banking facility can make a bill payment online. Also can “Online payment through other banks can only be done after the state government gives a nod to this proposal.”
Meanwhile, the DP selection has obtained a very good reaction from the people. “ultimately, DP opted for an online charge of bills, which is a superb step,” said Imran Farooq, a resident of Srinagar, adding that the department should encourage people to pay their bills online by offering them some concessions.
Benefits of using DHBVN / UHBVN web portals for online bill payment:
The consumer can know the status of the current reading by connecting to the online bill payment portal JKPDD
The consumer can know the current status of the bill by logging into JKPDD’s online bill payment portal
The consumer can check the status of the previous online bill payment by logging into the online bill payment portal JKPDD
The consumer can pay the current bills by connecting to the online bill payment portal JKPDD
The consumer can use debit or credit cards 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without physically moving, which can also save time
Jammu and Kashmir Consumers can use the below-given link to pay their electricity bills online
http://billsahuliyat.jkpdd.net/
To register a complaint:
If you are facing any problem in getting a duplicate bill or bill payment, etc,. You can register with given link http://www.jkpdd.net/jkapdrp/faces/jsp/utility/registerComplaint.jsp
Step 1:
Step 2:
Here you need to enter your Consumer code, Customer name as on bill, Email Id, Phone number, select complaint type, and give complaint details and then click on submit to register your complaint
About JKPDD:
Power Development Department (PDD) is one of the state government departments of Jammu and Kashmir responsible for all functions associated with the transmission and distribution of electric power inside the state. The production sector is supported by J & K State Power Development Corporation (JKSPDC).
The Jammu and Kashmir State Energy Development Department works like any other electricity board in the country and around the world. Unlike other electricity boards in the country that collect revenue for their respective governments, the JKPDD is the only one of its kind that acts as a sink for the state treasury.
In fact, the JKPDD does not accumulate revenues in proportion to the quantum of electricity produced, purchased from other states and distributed by the ministry to the general public, but there is rather a significant variation in the discrepancy. Although the department does exceptionally well and the revenue mix is gradually increasing each year, so far the government has not yet been amortized by making profits through the department.
One should not be considered and start doubting the efficiency of the engineers and employees of the department, but the reasons why the JKPDD is a non-profit organization is other than technical and managerial, but the sphere includes the political factors, social and geographical. to a very large extent. There is no malfunction because of the branch, however different factors contribute to the purpose.
Recently, the unbundling of the JKPDD was cited by some as one of the remedies for the losing department but the same thing cannot be validated and this is not factual in my opinion. My point is that by unbundling the department, the government will add to our miseries, if not more.
The Power Development Corporation currently the SPDC that was previously part of the G & T (Generation and Transmission) wing of the Energy Development Department was in the 1990s separated from the DP and therefore unbundling started from this moment, by the Generation Wing turning into a society.
Despite Republicans curtailing its scope, Democrats still vehemently opposed the legislation, arguing that the policies are targeting transgender people. Republicans, however, argue the bill is are about protecting “public safety, decency and decorum.”
“We’ve had a huge scientific study with billions of people for 136 years that separate facilities work,” state Rep. Rachel Plakon (R-Lake Mary), who carried the House bill, said on the floor Wednesday. “Vote ‘yes’ for common sense.”
DeSantis is widely expected to sign the legislation.
One of the more contentious bills lawmakers considered in Florida during the two-month annual session, the proposal comes as state Republicans push legislation focused on how gender identity and sexual identity intersect with parental rights and education in general.
It joins other moves by Florida Republicans and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration focused on the transgender community, including Republicans seeking to pass a bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors and a recently-enacted state prohibition on Medicaid paying for gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments.
Named the “Safety in Private Spaces Act,” the legislation approved Wednesday is similar to bills taken up in conservative-leaning states like Iowa, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee. In 2016, North Carolina enacted one of the first “bathroom bills,” a move that sparked widespread blowback from businesses, the NBA and NCAA.
The bill opens the door for any person 18 years or older to be charged with a second-degree trespassing misdemeanor if they enter a restroom or changing facility designated for a person that isn’t the sex they are assigned at birth — and refuse to leave when asked by someone else. The bill also requires local school districts to craft code of conduct rules to discipline students who do the same.
Democrats argue that the legislation is “dehumanizing” and effectively “politicizing bathrooms” to benefit conservatives politically, namely DeSantis, who is widely expected to run for president. They took aim at how Republicans have discussed the issue, such as one conservative House member who called transgender people “demons” and “mutants” and questioned how it could be enforced.
“You have no idea what you’re doing here because you can’t think past your hatred, and you can’t think past your discrimination,” state Rep. Kelly Skidmore (D-Boca Raton) said on the floor Wednesday
Before approving the legislation, lawmakers changed the bill Wednesday to specify who can ask someone to leave a restroom. For schools, as an example, teachers, administrators or school safety officers would have that authority.
It also requires places such as colleges and government offices to establish disciplinary procedures for employees who use restrooms that don’t align with their sex at birth.
Florida Republicans defend the proposal by noting it includes no mention of transgender people or any particular group. They said the legislation will codify in law what are “universal common decency standards.”
The legislation, however, allows someone to chaperone a child or accompany an elderly or disabled person into a restroom that doesn’t align with their sex at birth. Law enforcement officers and medical personnel are also exempt if they’re responding to an emergency.
“There’s not anything in the language of this bill that is targeting any specific group,” state Sen. Erin Grall (R-Fort Pierce), who carried the Senate bill, said on the floor Wednesday. “Rather, it speaks to the differences that we have as different sexes, as male and female.”
Democrats, though, contend that the policies will isolate members of the transgender community, and possibly lead to increased acts of violence against them.
“Somebody out there is going to take that into his or her own hands into stopping somebody who’s transgender from using a bathroom,” said state Sen. Victor Torres (D-Kissimmee), who spoke Wednesday and in the past about his transgender granddaughter.
Jon Harris Maurer, public policy director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Florida, said the legislation criminalizes transgender people for using bathrooms that “aligns with how they live their lives every day.”
“This bill opens the door to abuse, mistreatment, and dehumanization,” Maurer said in a statement. “Our state government should be focused on solving pressing issues, not terrorizing people who are simply trying to use the restroom and exist in public.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Florida’s proposed parental rights expansions, FL HB1069 (23R), are part of the push by state conservatives to uproot what they say is “indoctrination” in schools and is one of several bills taken up this session focusing on the LGBTQ community and transness in particular. It’s an issue DeSantis frequently raises ahead of his expected presidential bid, where he regularly decries teachers who discuss gender identity with young students.
It’s also led to high profile fights pitting Florida Republicans and DeSantis against LGBTQ supports such as the Biden administration and Walt Disney Co., who said such legislation with further marginalize LGBTQ students and will lead to increased bullying and even suicide.
The bill will broaden the state’s prohibition on teaching about sexual identity and gender orientation from kindergarten through third grade to pre-K through eighth grade, though in April the Florida Board of Education already expanded the restrictions to all public schools through high school.
It also targets how school staff and students can use pronouns on K-12 campuses. Specifically, the legislation stipulates that school employees can’t ask students for their preferred pronouns and restricts school staff from sharing their pronouns with students if they “do not correspond” with their sex. Under the bill, it would be “false to ascribe” a person with a pronoun that “does not correspond to such person’s sex.”
“The ‘Don’t Say LGBTQ’ law has already caused sweeping damage across our state,” said Jon Harris Maurer, director of public policy at Equality Florida, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “It was wrong when it was adopted, and expanding it is wrong now. State Democrats have joined LGBTQ advocates in opposing the bill throughout the two-month session, contending that the policies equate to sex discrimination and are disrespectful to LGBTQ students and families.
Democrats suggested that even though the bill isn’t explicitly titled “Don’t Say Gay,” its policies extend beyond the language in the legislation and target the LGBTQ community, pointing to instances such as a Republican House member labeling transgender people as demons, imps and mutants.
Democrats argued that the legislation being taken up by Republicans is pushing people away from Florida, such as former Miami Heat basketball star Dwyane Wade, who said he left the state because he has a 15-year-old transgender daughter.
“Let’s be honest about at least what this bill is about,” state Sen. Tina Polsky (D-Boca Raton) said on the floor Tuesday. “It is about trying to silence any discussion about anything different from heterosexuality.”
But Republican legislators, who hold supermajorities in both chambers, maintain that expanding the parental rights law is necessary to ensure the state’s youngest students learn about adult topics like sexual orientation and gender identity from their parents instead of teachers.
Similar to last year, when the parental rights bill was introduced, conservatives have fought against the narrative surrounding the bill, condemning opponents who call the measure “Don’t Say Gay” and for politicizing an issue they say is “common sense.”
State Sen. Doug Broxson (R-Gulf Breeze), the Senate’s budget chief, addressed this Wednesday when speaking about why state Republicans don’t always debate controversial bills.
“They’re sitting there with a mandate from their district that says ‘Senator, would you make sure you reinforce common sense?’ Just do what makes sense,” Broxson said on the floor. “You don’t have to debate about it, you don’t have to get up and shout, scream. Just push a button that you believe in common sense.”
Additionally, the bill aims to expand Florida law to require that books facing objections for being pornographic, harmful to minors, or describe or depict sexual activity must be pulled within five days and remain out of circulation for the duration of the challenge.
This comes as DeSantis, along with other Florida conservatives, seek to remove books with graphic content from schools, taking aim at specific titles such as “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, which depicts sex acts.
Democrats criticize this provision as a “ban first, review later” mentality and censorship in education. But Republicans contend the measure is focused on protecting children from explicit content.
“We need to keep the discussion about what would be termed as book banning in context, because we’re talking about pornography or sexually inappropriate materials,” state Sen. Clay Yarborough (R-Jacksonville), who sponsored the bill, said during a Tuesday’s floor session. “We have in no way directed these schools or directed the districts to remove every single book off their school shelves. But parents need an opportunity to raise a concern If they have one, and that should be reviewed.”
The Florida House passed HB 1069 by a 77-35 vote in March. DeSantis is widely expected to sign the bill into law.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark called on Republicans to “be the grown-ups in the room,” in addressing the debt ceiling.
“The American people are looking at us and saying, this shouldn’t be a partisan drama playing out that we are going to foot the bill for,” the Massachusetts Democrat said on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.” “Avoid a default crisis that is manufactured by the GOP. And then we can go and talk about investments.”
But Republicans are continuing to blame President Joe Biden, who has called on Congress to pass a clean debt limit increase, saying he will not negotiate with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the issue, citing historical precedent.
“Happy to meet with McCarthy,” Biden said at the end of a brief press conference at the White House on Wednesday. “But not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended. That’s not negotiable.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called on Biden to come to the table Sunday.
“The White House ultimately needs to get into this negotiation. The president has been in hiding for two months, Martha,” Scalise told host Martha Raddatz during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “That’s not acceptable to Americans. They expect the president to sit in a room with Speaker McCarthy and start negotiating.”
Biden, Scalise said, is “trying to run out the clock and create a debt crisis.”
“We passed a bill to address the problem. It’s time now for the president to get in this game, get off the sidelines and let’s start negotiating and figuring this out. Not in June when we get to the midnight hour, but today.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Biden is willing to negotiate with McCarthy — just not over the debt limit.
“What he said is that he’s not going to negotiate with people who are threatening to literally blow up our economy, right, put more people out of work, drive up costs, in order to get their way,” Van Hollen said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“He will sit down with Speaker McCarthy to talk about these issues in the framework of the budget and the appropriations process,” Van Hollen added.
If Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling the U.S. government could default on its debt in coming months, according to financial analysts, an event that could plunge the country into economic crisis, as well as harm the nation’s credibility internationally.
But Biden knows “that we can’t default,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
One option he sees as a way forward: a sit-down between Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“He’s saying we can discuss that, we can negotiate but first pay your bills. And I think that — I think Senator McConnell understands this, and I think the President will sit down with Senator McConnell,” Khanna said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The measure, which passed the House by a vote of 217-215, is widely perceived as having no chance of passing the Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority.
Emmer didn’t explain why he thought Senate Democrats other than Manchin might come to embrace the legislation.
If no agreement is reached, the nation would bump up against its debt ceiling, which is now projected to happen in July, and default on its debts. President Joe Biden has said he is willing to negotiate over the nation’s budget, but wants the debt limit raised independently of those talks, without any conditions, as occurred during the Trump administration. Most Capitol Hill Democrats have said the same thing.
Emmer said no negotiations are needed: The Senate could simply approve the House GOP bill and Biden could sign it.
“Our recommendation is: We passed it through the House; take it up in the Senate and pass it,” Emmer said.
As he tried to redirect the narrative on the legislation, Emmer also rejected the idea that the bill was built on spending cuts, referring instead to “spending reforms.”
“I take a little issue, Dana, with the cuts language that the media likes to use all the time,” the Minnesota Republican told host Dana Bash. “This is a transformational bill. It would limit spending.”
Speaking later on the same CNN program, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said he didn’t see much hope that the debt crisis would be resolved quickly or easily.
“I’m really concerned about the debt limit when we approach it,” Kinzinger said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) set the tone at the beginning of the week, privately telling Democrats in a leadership meeting that the debt vote could be framed to the American people in the same way liberals responded to Republican efforts to privatize Social Security, repeal Obamacare and pass the 2017 tax cut package, according to a person familiar with his remarks.
“We’re focused on doing the right thing by the American people, which is to make sure we avoid a dangerous default and ensure that America pays its bills,” he said Wednesday in a brief interview.
Democratic groups are already gearing up to knock Republicans over the debt standoff. The DCCC said vulnerable Republicans were “helping build the case against themselves” and their re-election, and House Majority PAC singled out frontline Republicans who voted for the bill.
A focus on the GOP’s debt bill and proposed cuts isn’t without its own political pitfalls. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made clear his caucus is not responding to Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) legislation — ultimately putting the issue between President Joe Biden and the speaker after its passage in the House.
By contrast, the 2017 tax bill was signed into law with a GOP trifecta, giving Democrats real-life consequences to use against Republicans. It also gave candidates an avenue to campaign against Republicans without tying them specifically to then-President Donald Trump.
But what Democrats saw as effective campaign messaging in the 2022 midterms around the Jan. 6 insurrection and abortion rights could end up ranking higher on the list than potential spending cuts.
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And it was a hard-fought victory, at that. The conference had been in talks over the bill for months, yet McCarthy was still negotiating with on-the-fence members shortly before the vote. Still, GOP lawmakers cheered the bill’s passage, hoping it will give them some leverage to force leading Democrats to back down from assertions they would not negotiate at all over the debt limit.
“I think everybody is focused on solving this problem and finally getting the president … to come to the table,” said Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), adding that Republicans want to give McCarthy the “opportunity to go and negotiate with the president.”
Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Ken Buck (Colo.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.) were the Republicans who opposed the bill, along with all Democrats.
It’s still far from clear that the House GOP plan will change the calculus either at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue or across the Capitol with Senate Democrats. Both have stressed for months, along with their less influential House colleagues, that they want a “clean” debt ceiling increase, with no spending cuts attached.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer lambasted McCarthy ahead of the vote on Wednesday, accusing him of having “capitulated to the hard right once again” as he worked to lock down the votes to pass the debt plan.
“It’s a bill that might as well be called the Default On America Act. Because that’s exactly what it is — DOA, dead on arrival,” Schumer said.
The House Republican bill combines across-the-board spending cuts with other conservative proposals, including stricter rules for social safety net programs and energy production incentives. But after vowing for days that they wouldn’t open the bill for negotiations, worried it would create a tidal wave of demands, Republican leadership cut a middle-of-the-night deal to try to win over two critical holdout groups: Midwesterners and conservatives.
For Midwestern members, GOP leadership agreed to kill changes to incentives structures for renewable diesel, second generation biofuel, carbon dioxide sequestration and biodiesel. For conservatives, they beefed up the work requirements and sped up the implementation timeline. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who flipped to backing the bill on Wednesday, also said McCarthy committed to working on balancing the budget in a conversation with her.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) acknowledged that his conservative members weren’t sold on all the bill’s provisions but argued that passing the proposal was crucial to keeping Republicans at the table.
“It is not perfect. It’s a step in the right direction. We’ve got to be in the arena and stay on offense,” Perry said.
The next phase won’t get any easier for Republicans, though, who barely scraped by this time on a 217-215 vote. McCarthy eventually needs to cut a deal with Biden and Senate Democrats that somehow would also win over both the centrist and conservative factions of his conference.
”It’s gonna have to be a conservative package if it’s going to win the support of the Republican conference, but I don’t think it serves anyone’s interest by talking about red lines right now,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), the chair of the business-oriented Main Street Caucus.
Driving the debt-limit talks is still relatively new for House Republicans, who largely left it up to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to negotiate agreements on the debt ceiling during the first two years of the Biden administration. Those deals sparked fierce pushback not only from House Republicans but also Senate conservatives.
And Republican senators are warning they aren’t preparing to step into the breach again, at least not yet. Plus, it’s far from clear that a Senate GOP negotiated deal would even find favor in the more raucous House GOP conference.
The House bill “forces the administration to come to the table,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said Wednesday. “The pressure really ought to be on the White House.”
Sarah Ferris and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.
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