The News Caravan

Tag: Democrats

  • Bypassing Biden: Democrats Think of What Could Have Been

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    Putting Michigan “on the right side of history,” Whitmer assured the slacks-and-sportcoat crowd, “is going to be good for business.”

    This was before jokes about Mackinac-induced hangovers, “Yoopers and trolls” — those who live on both of Michigan’s peninsulas, longings for her adult daughters to remain in the state and a softball q-and-a with the Detroit Chamber chief during which Whitmer mused about luring Disney to Michigan. There was also a discussion of what Michigan State basketball legend Tom Izzo had termed the “KMA phase” of one’s career.

    “You know what the a is and the first two letters are kiss my,” she said in a Michigan accent so thick that Vernor’s Ginger Ale could bottle it and sell it as part of a Pure Michigan line.

    That Whitmer, 51, is decidedly not in that KMA phase was evident when I spoke to her at the to-die-for governor’s residence atop Mackinac (don’t call it a mansion!). She ruled out running for president next year even if Biden forgoes reelection, but allowed a resounding “maybe” to pursuing the White House down the road.

    “Might I have the fire in the belly?” she said. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. I can’t tell you.”

    Pointing to the tension between her Midwestern modesty and the demands of running for president, she chuckled about having “to get comfortable bragging.”

    A subsequent announcement, however, made it clear she’s willing to try. Whitmer is creating a federal PAC, called “Fight Like Hell,” to boost Biden and congressional candidates next year, offering her a platform for a visible role in the 2024 campaign and a foothold to mount a presidential bid in 2028.

    Which is not as soon as some of her admirers would like. Democrats in Michigan’s congressional delegation have pleaded with Whitmer to run, I’m told by officials familiar with the conversations, and the lawmakers have themselves been nudged by colleagues from other states to push her. Notably, that roster of congressional Democrats from other states eager for a Whitmer bid included members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

    These backstage conversations have taken place as Biden’s approval ratings show little sign of improvement and increasingly appear impervious to external events, for good or ill. Of course, Democrats are betting that the most significant external event of all — Republicans renominating a candidate with more baggage than O’Hare at Thanksgiving — will tip the election again to Biden.

    Yet even their assumedly strong odds in such a rematch have not soothed Democrats.

    Spending time on this car-free Great Lakes summer idyll, where much of Michigan’s political class heads each June to plot and gossip over local whitefish, fudge and IPAs, is to be reminded of a pattern I’ve noticed since the midterms: the Biden gap. The further up a Democrat is on the political food chain, the more publicly supportive and even defensive they are of the president. The closer a Democrat is to the grassroots, though, the more they sound like many of their own voters in openly pining for another nominee.

    So whether it was Whitmer, other statewide officials or legislative leaders, each offered emphatic praise for Biden.

    “There’s a distinction between waiting your turn and supporting leadership that you appreciate,” Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist told me, pushing back on the suggestion that Whitmer was being deferential to a relatively unpopular, octogenarian president.

    Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson went even further contorting herself, making an impassioned case for diverse representation until I pointed out that Biden was not exactly an avatar of the new face of America. “But his Cabinet,” Benson began, before citing her friendship with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. These defenses of Biden are understandable: Michigan leaders want to remain close to the White House, some of them are truly fond of Biden and none want to be responsible for doing anything that can be perceived as undermining the incumbent in the face of Donald Trump’s return.

    Yet to speak to others on the island, those who maybe have not been in the motorcade for a presidential visit and are not overly conscious of future statewide primaries, is to elicit much more direct answers.

    “I think it’s time for Joe to move on,” Livonia Mayor Maureen Brosnan told me, adding that she thought Whitmer would “be a great president.”

    Jen Eyer, an Ann Arbor city councilor, put it this way: “’That woman from Michigan’ would be amazing against Trump.”

    Eyer was alluding to Trump’s insult of Whitmer at the height of the pandemic, which the governor embraced as a badge of honor.

    It’s partly why, in Michigan especially, Biden’s decision to run again is so poignant.

    It was in Detroit — the night before he won the Michigan primary, effectively claiming the Democratic nomination as Covid arrived on America’s shores — where Biden memorably vowed to be “a bridge” to the next generation of Democrats.

    Among those standing behind him on stage as he made that pledge were his future vice president and the woman many high-level Democrats were hoping he’d make his future vice president: Whitmer.

    In the more than three years since that night, the governor has helped Biden win Michigan, claimed her own reelection by double-digits, flipped the state Legislature and pocketed a raft of progressive accomplishments in a state Democrats lost in 2016. The years since have, well, not gone as well for Kamala Harris.

    But it’s Harris who’s vice president, a near-lock to be on the ticket again next year and who could, by virtue of her office, ultimately block Whitmer from the nomination.

    That’s much to the chagrin of many of those same Democrats who were pushing Whitmer-for-vice president in 2020 and think her moment to run for president may be next year. After all, by 2028, she may face not only Harris but contemporaries like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats just elected governor last year, such as Maryland’s Wes Moore, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and Maura Healey of Massachusetts.

    If Whitmer is bitter about being passed over for vice president or Biden attempting to hold the presidency into his mid-80s, she’s hiding it pretty well.

    “I feel really lucky to be here, I really do,” she told me, “not just because we’re literally in maybe the best place you can sit in the United States of America.”

    She’s right about the view — there may not be a better state-owned property in the country than the Michigan governor’s summer residence.

    And Whitmer is one of the few potential presidential candidates I’ve covered whose insistence about loving her current job is at least plausible.

    When I was pressing her whether she’d be disappointed to miss her best opening to run for president, she dismissed my question. I pointed out that she didn’t seem like she was in the Bill Clinton mold of eyeing the White House from before adolescence.

    “Like I was born to run, no,” she interjected.

    What was less plausible were her claims about not even expecting to be governor.

    Her parents may have hailed from different parties, but Whitmer was born into Michigan political royalty.

    Her mom, the Democrat, was an assistant attorney general for the state’s long-serving attorney general (Frank Kelley held the post for so many years he became known as the “eternal general”) and her dad, the Republican, served as state commerce secretary before running Blue Cross Blue Shield in Michigan.

    Whitmer attended Michigan State for undergraduate and law school, an important political credential for those here who believe the East Lansing institution is the flagship university for actual Michigan residents.

    She won a seat in the Michigan House before she turned 30.

    Now she’s governor of the only state she’s ever lived in, a thoroughly rooted politician in an era of fading regionalism with the Midwestern Nice style along with that accent.

    “One of the best things about Michiganders is we’re humble, but that humility sometimes doesn’t work in our favor when we’re telling our story about how great the opportunity is here,” Whitmer told me.

    I don’t buy it.

    Whitmer has honed her Michigan Miracle pitch about the state’s unemployment rate dropping below 4 percent for only the third time since the 1970s — two of those times on her watch. .

    What’s more, she has a ready-made case for people and businesses ready to leave the pricey coasts but uneasy about Red America.

    “One of the things that we boast is that every person is protected and respected under the law in Michigan,” says Whitmer, pointing to abortion rights and gay rights. “That’s not true in Texas.”

    What I wonder is how much of her political reluctance owes less to Midwestern restraint and more to a lack of a male ego, something she invited with her Beto-adjacent “born to run” dismissal.

    She will only tiptoe there, by praising other women governors — she has hosted a group of them on Mackinac — and calling them all doers. “They don’t get out there and grandstand, they get shit done,” Whitmer says.

    They also, I can’t help but note, don’t run for president while nothing seems to stop a succession of male governors every four years, no matter how remote their prospects.

    This prompts another chuckle. “A lot of dudes who were just born think they should [run],” Whitmer says.

    One of Whitmer’s fellow female governors is more candid, though.

    “It is sort of an outrageous situation, with all due respect to all the men in the Republican primary now and all the men in the Democratic primary in 2020,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told me. “The notion that men will just do it and women have to be asked.”

    As I point out the Dakotas dynamic — South Dakota’s Republican Gov. Kristi Noem prepared for years to pursue the White House but then decided against it while North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum up and decided to run so he did — Lujan Grisham doesn’t even wait for me to finish the thought.

    “Men know this leads to other powerful positions!” she says about the downpayment of running for president.

    Lujan Grisham is a strong Biden supporter, but says 2028 “has to be” the year her party turns to a woman. “That’s going to be a real challenge for men,” she says,” because the country is going to say: Where are the women?”

    It was a question I was asking myself the weekend after Mackinac, when I was in Des Moines for the annual barbecue and motorcycle ride hosted by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), which becomes a GOP candidate forum this close to the state’s presidential caucuses. It was jarring to see Ernst and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speak at the outset before turning the program over to a series of mostly male presidential contestants, some of whom lacked the governing experience and most of whom lacked the appeal of the opening acts.

    For the moment, though, Whitmer is pushing to complete her Michigan story, one she knows won’t be fully successful without addressing the twin challenges of her time: retaining her state’s auto advantage in the transition to electric vehicles and reversing its population decline.

    She used the chamber gathering here to unveil a dedicated “chief growth officer” — a Detroiter so dedicated to Michigan she has both peninsulas tattooed on her forearm — and a bipartisan commission tasked with addressing the state’s population loss.

    The Republican co-chair of the commission is a longtime donor and Romney family retainer, John Rakolta, who made his peace with Donald Trump in 2016 and got rewarded with the ambassadorship to the UAE.

    Yet as Rakolta made his way to the ballroom for Whitmer’s keynote speech, he seemed to have entered what Coach Izzo calls the KMA stage of life.

    I asked him about Whitmer and 2024, and he quickly noted that she’s the future at a time both parties seem intent on tying themselves to the past.

    “It’s the same with us,” said Rakolta, alluding to the looming presidential rematch. “Why would you look backward?”

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    #Bypassing #Biden #Democrats
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Recession risks rise for Biden and Democrats

    Recession risks rise for Biden and Democrats

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    Other midsize banks including PacWest, Western Alliance and Zions came under heavy investor pressure late last week as Wall street probed for possible next victims in the rolling crisis, created in part by the Fed jacking up interest rates ten consecutive times to the highest level since 2007. The Fed bumped up rates another quarter point last week but suggested it could possibly pause the hikes at its next meeting in June.

    The rate increases helped tamp down a historic rise in consumer inflation in the wake of the Covid pandemic. But prices are still rising significantly faster than the Fed’s target of around 2 percent per year.

    The April employment report released on Friday, showing a still remarkably healthy 253,000 new jobs created, also showed wage increases bumping up to a 4.4 percent annual pace from 4.3 percent. The Fed is eager to see wage increases cool because they can feed into overall inflation as companies pass higher employment costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

    Shares in regional banks that got slammed late last week recovered somewhat over the last two trading sessions. And each bank has depositor profiles very different from the three failed lenders, which had much higher levels of accounts with above the FDIC insured threshold of $250,000.

    Still, there remains heavy concern across Wall Street and among many economists that the Fed’s rapid and intense campaign of rate hikes meant to battle inflation will smash the brakes on the economy hard enough to create a recession.

    Such a recession would come as Biden, who continues to suffer from very low approval ratings especially on the economy, is just launching his reelection effort. Republicans are poised to rip the incumbent and Congressional Democrats, arguing their heavy spending policies in the wake of Covid helped drive up inflation. The White House is also facing a possibly market-shaking showdown with Hill Republicans on the nation’s borrowing limit.

    All the rate hikes are only just now beginning to ripple across the economy, driving down the homebuilding and other sectors as borrowing costs make it much more difficult for consumers to make big purchases and businesses to make major investments. That impact showed up in the survey released on Monday, officially known as the Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Survey or “SLOOS.” The report, while not as dire as some feared, showed that the banking sector meltdown is causing lenders to tighten up even further.

    “Banks most frequently cited an expected deterioration in the credit quality of their loan portfolios and in customers’ collateral values, a reduction in risk tolerance, and concerns about bank funding costs, bank liquidity position, and deposit outflows as reasons for expecting to tighten lending standards over the rest of 2023,” the report said.

    The Fed in a separate report Monday cited a potential contraction in lending triggered by bank stress as one of the financial system’s top near-term risks. Businesses would feel the brunt of the impact.

    “A sharp contraction in the availability of credit would drive up the cost of funding for businesses and households, potentially resulting in a slowdown in economic activity,” Fed officials said in the report. “With a decline in profits of nonfinancial businesses, financial stress and defaults at some firms could increase, especially in light of the generally high level of leverage in that sector.”

    Many economists — including Democrats like former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers — argue that all the hikes will eventually cause at least a brief recession that drives the jobless rate higher, knocking out a key pillar of Biden’s pitch for a second term. The economy expanded at just a 1.1 percent pace in the first quarter of the year, according to an initial government estimate. And many economists now see significant odds of a recession starting later this year and possibly dragging into the 2024 campaign year.

    “The Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Survey provides the first real insight into how much lending has tightened on the back of turmoil among local and regional banks,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at consulting firm RSM US. “While banks have been tightening lending standards for the past year, the jump in the percentage of those reporting further tightening does denote an increase in the risk of a hard economic landing.”

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    #Recession #risks #rise #Biden #Democrats
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • New York Democrats lost the crime debate. They want a redo.

    New York Democrats lost the crime debate. They want a redo.

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    The move marks an early attempt to gain the high ground after Republicans last year seized on the state’s bail laws as evidence Democrats are weak on crime, fueling embarrassing losses for House Democrats in New York. The governor’s new strategy could shape next year’s House races, and maybe even control of Congress. But it could also prove a tough and complicated sell to voters.

    The new law will give judges greater authority to decide whether an individual can be held on bail. The tweaks mark, to the dismay of liberals, a third round of rollbacks of progressive bail laws Democrats passed in 2019.

    Hochul’s team realized too late in the midterm cycle that public safety and the economy — not abortion rights — were animating New York voters. The result was the closest governor’s race since 1994, and Democrats were swept out of all four House seats on Long Island, as well as battleground races in the Hudson Valley.

    The blame landed squarely on New York Democrats and especially Hochul, a messaging mishap that even former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said state leaders should have recognized earlier.

    Former GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin’s gubernatorial campaign focused on rising crime rates in big New York cities, and he consistently blamed the bail laws for permitting dangerous individuals to walk free.

    Democrats attempted to argue that there is little evidence linking crime spikes to New York’s bail laws and pointed to larger, national crime trends that were influenced by the pandemic. But Zeldin and GOP House candidates successfully used the issue to gain ground in the critical New York City suburbs.

    Hochul held up the state budget for nine days last year to get a handful of bail changes. But then she didn’t effectively promote the tougher laws during the campaign.

    She is trying not to make the same mistake twice.

    So Hochul’s budget, the first of her first full term, revolved around addressing those critiques; she delayed budget negotiations for weeks and sacrificed a deal on her other major initiatives, like a broad housing plan she wanted, in order to push reluctant Democrats to once again open talks on bail. She was backed up by Adams.

    “I say over and over again that there are many rivers that feed the sea of violence, and we have to dam each river, and we damned one during this process,” Adams said Wednesday on WABC Radio.

    The ultimate deal still left many unhappy. It did not go as far as Republicans, some moderates and even Adams wanted. Hochul has resisted backing a “dangerousness” standard for even greater judicial discretion that has been used by other states that have successfully overhauled bail laws.

    “The governor is going to claim a win for public safety even though the law expressly prohibits judges from taking a defendant’s dangerousness into account during the pretrial process,” Albany-area Republican Sen. Jake Ashby said in a statement during budget votes last week. “If she tries to spin that as judicial discretion, she will be embracing a level of shamelessness previously reserved only for her predecessor.”

    Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, too, brushed off the changes as inconsequential in the state’s fight against crime during his podcast Thursday. Cuomo, a Democrat who cruised to three terms before resigning in 2021 over sexual harassment allegations, said he personally would have sought a broader criminal justice deal.

    “I don’t think anyone won anything. The governor loses,” Cuomo said. “The answer was not bail reform.”

    The changes, for example, did not include adjustments to discovery laws — measures also passed in 2019 outlining how and when prosecutors hand over case material — despite pushes from progressive prosecutors who say those laws also need to be fixed to prevent cases from being tossed on technical grounds.

    Republicans won’t be letting up on attacking Democrats on crime, state GOP chair Ed Cox said. Democrats “are not going to be able to hide on this issue” in 2024 when all 26 House seats will be on the ballot, he said.

    “Kathy Hochul continues to have her head in the sand on crime,” he said in a statement. “The changes made in her budget are just window dressing.”

    The amendments go too far for the Legislature’s progressive caucuses, which say such adjustment could lead to more poor, mostly minority suspects being held on bail — the reason the laws were changed in the first place.

    Hochul struggled to build progressive enthusiasm for her candidacy last year, and the new changes may not help her do so in the future.

    “The governor’s effort to decimate bail wasn’t driven by facts. It was driven by fear mongering, headlines, political expediency and it was reacting to a far-right strategy to weaponize racism,” Assemblymember Latrice Walker (D-Brooklyn) said during the budget debate.

    They is also a policy gamble. Researchers have said Hochul’s measures are not the strongest way to address specific issues of recidivism and the broader issue of public safety.

    The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law was “disappointed by the Legislature’s continued focus on revising bail reform to the exclusion of other policies that can make our communities safer,” senior counsel Ames Grawert said in a statement.

    In response, Hochul said the budget also includes more money for gun violence prevention, mental health support and pay bumps for public defenders.

    Now she’ll have to better sell her plan to skeptical voters.

    Democrats will be “able to say they took significant steps toward improving the safety of New Yorkers, while not going back on reforms that were necessary,” Hochul told reporters.

    “And we have to show that we struck the right balance.”

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    #York #Democrats #lost #crime #debate #redo
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Senate Democrats will excoriate the House GOP debt bill during a Budget Committee hearing on Thursday morning. 

    Senate Democrats will excoriate the House GOP debt bill during a Budget Committee hearing on Thursday morning. 

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    The Senate Budget Committee will meet Thursday morning to hear from several witnesses on Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s opening debt limit bid.

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    #Senate #Democrats #excoriate #House #GOP #debt #bill #Budget #Committee #hearing #Thursday #morning
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Manchin’s ‘playing with fire’ — and some Democrats are tired of the drama

    Manchin’s ‘playing with fire’ — and some Democrats are tired of the drama

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    joe manchin 95861

    “That surprises me that he wants to repeal it. I think it’s one of his greatest accomplishments,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a close colleague of Manchin’s on the Energy Committee, in an interview.

    The IRA is far less of a political bright spot for Manchin, whose potential reelection hopes are clouded by growing disapproval ratings in his home state, partly driven by his support for the law. Manchin has yet to announce whether he’s running, but a formidable challenger entered the West Virginia Senate race last week — GOP Gov. Jim Justice.

    Manchin’s fellow Democrats understand that his reelection could determine whether they retain their slim 51-seat Senate majority in 2024. But they are also growing weary of his attacks against their marquee climate law — even if they’ve come to expect it and know there’s little they can do to change his mind. And his votes against Democratic policies and Biden nominees have already complicated his party’s agenda in the 51-49 Senate.

    Some Democrats fear that Manchin’s criticisms will do real damage by confusing the public about one of the law’s most debated-provisions: its $7,500 tax credits for electric vehicles. He has accused the Treasury Department of violating the law by flouting strict provisions he wrote designed to force electric vehicles to be made in the U.S. with American-made parts.

    “When you’re Joe Manchin it never hurts to be seen butting heads with the administration, but I think this is genuine umbrage over the fact Congressional intent seems pretty clear, even if the statutory construction left room for Treasury to maneuver,” said Liam Donovan, a lobbyist with the firm Bracewell who previously worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “And given that he would not have been on board for the bill at all had this been the understanding, it reads as a personal betrayal.”

    Democrats counter that the administration has been doing its best to balance the IRA’s competing goals of lowering the cost of electric vehicles while promoting U.S. manufacturing and jobs.

    “Fifty of us agree that [boosting electric vehicle deployment] is a priority,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said in an interview. “The law is what it is. If he doesn’t like implementation he can run for president.”

    Manchin in recent weeks has also joined Republicans in supporting resolutions they’ve brought up for a vote disapproving of the administration’s energy and environmental policies, most recently on Wednesday when he was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans in overturning an EPA regulation on emissions from heavy-duty trucks.

    Manchin also co-sponsored Sen. Rick Scott ‘s (R-Fla.) resolution to undo Biden’s suspension of solar power tariffs, which could come up for a vote this week after passing the House on a bipartisan basis Friday.

    And Manchin, chair of the Senate Energy Committee, has also expressed his ire with the administration by torpedoing a series of Biden’s nominees, including Richard Glick to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Laura Daniel-Davis, Biden’s pick for assistant Interior secretary for land and minerals management, and Gigi Sohn as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission.

    The White House has supported fossil fuel projects that Manchin has backed — angering environmentalists — including the Willow oil and Alaska LNG projects, as well as the Mountain Valley Pipeline that would deliver natural gas produced in West Virginia.

    Manchin did not comment for this article, but his spokesperson Sam Runyon said his objections were because the administration had strayed from the intent of the bill.

    “President Biden, then-Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer were in full agreement with Sen. Manchin that the IRA was an energy security bill and the legislative language is crystal clear,” she said. “The Administration continues to blatantly violate the law in an effort to replace Congressional intent with their own radical climate agenda that simply didn’t, and wouldn’t have, passed.”

    Some Republicans have expressed sympathy for Manchin’s position.

    “Is it playing with fire? Sure. Does Joe care? I don’t think so,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Manchin’s frequent legislative partner when she chaired the Energy Committee. “Good for him for calling the administration out.”

    Murkowski noted that the climate law had been seemingly dead for most of last year until Manchin’s support allowed Democrats to pass it on a party-line vote. The law includes $369 billion in incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles, as well as health measures such as a cap on insulin costs for Medicare recipients.

    “They made a deal with him,” Murkowski said. “And it was a hard deal and they wanted his vote, and they got it — at some political cost to him and he would admit that. And now [the Biden administration is] trying to rewrite the bill, or interpret in the way they wished they had been able to get it passed. That’s their problem.”

    Manchin has repeatedly denounced Biden’s electric vehicle policies in recent weeks, including by announcing he would support Republican efforts in Congress to overturn EPA auto pollution rules designed to speed up EV adoption. He accused the administration of “lying to Americans with false claims about how their manipulation of the market to boost EVs will help American energy security.”

    He repeated that theme in remarks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce April 18, saying, “I never wanted to give the electric vehicles 75-cents’ credit let alone $7,500.”

    “Y’all broke the law,” Manchin later told Biden’s Energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, at a hearing April 20, accusing the administration of “liberalizing” its rollout of the tax subsidy to stimulate sales of electric vehicles — and warning that that approach could send money and jobs to China.

    Republicans are eager to pounce on Democratic dissension over how the administration is executing the climate law. GOP lawmakers, who unanimously opposed the law, argue that it spends too much money and say its twin goals — quickly weaning the U.S. economy off fossil fuels while reducing reliance on China for clean energy technologies — are incoherent.

    “Maybe he’s looked at it [the IRA] more deeply and realized it’s not what he thought it was,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Manchin’s GOP counterpart from West Virginia, said in an interview. “I can’t believe he would be that naïve. But who knows?”

    But other Democrats say the administration is carrying out the law that Congress passed.

    “Almost all of us who voted for this legislation and contributed to it wanted to supercharge EV sales,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) in an interview. “Clearly Sen. Manchin did not. He thought he was maybe sabotaging the EV industry. And it’s driving him nuts that it’s not working out that way.”

    Negotiations over the EV tax credit were fraught from the start.

    After Manchin rejected Democrats’ climate and social spending agenda last July when it was packaged as Build Back Better — Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer quietly resumed negotiations. The electric vehicle tax credits were among the last items they haggled over.

    During the preceding months, Manchin repeatedly criticized Democrats’ interest in subsidizing electric vehicle sales, calling the idea “ludicrous.”

    Manchin, whose state is home to a non-unionized Toyota manufacturing facility, also derided Democrats’ original proposal to offer an extra incentive for electric vehicles made by union workers. He called the proposal “not American.” The version that became law dropped it.

    Manchin, Schumer and their staffs finally forged a compromise on electric vehicles in secret talks, unveiling the renamed Inflation Reduction Act on July 27. It offered a credit of up to $7,500 for electric vehicles, but only for those meeting a thicket of stringent requirements on what countries their battery minerals and components come from. Those requirements have since sparked a major trade feud with European governments whose companies are blocked from the incentives.

    “He [Manchin] does not support the credit at all. And really when he wrote it, he hoped nobody could use it. And so he’s disappointed there are a few vehicles that can use it,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from auto-industry-heavy Michigan.

    Heinrich said a clash with Manchin over implementation was “inevitable” given the different ways Manchin and the White House characterized the end product, which Manchin sees as an energy security measure designed to shore up energy production of all types. Biden is using the law to push a rapid transition away from fossil fuels in the name of combating climate change.

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the House Progressive Caucus, downplayed the idea of a rift within the Democratic Party.

    “The majority of [the IRA] we are all together on,” Jayapal said. “I do think he [Manchin] believes we should have a renewable energy transition. We probably have different ideas for what the transition looks like and how we get there. “

    But the law didn’t leave the Biden administration much wiggle room in developing regulations to fit its complex domestic content restrictions, energy experts say. Manchin contends the administration is abusing the leeway it got. He’s especially taken umbrage at the Treasury’s initial three-month delay in issuing rules, which until mid-April allowed electric vehicles to qualify for the tax credit without meeting any domestic sourcing requirements.

    When Treasury finally announced the guidance in March, it offered some olive branches to automakers worried about the rules being overly restrictive, but still left the majority of EVs on the market ineligible for the credit.

    Even so, Manchin cried foul, calling the Treasury rules too loose in allowing foreign suppliers to share in the tax credit bounty.

    He took particular aim at the Biden administration’s classification of certain foils, powders and other components used in the batteries. By classifying the powders as “critical minerals,” rather than “battery components,” Treasury avoided placing even more severe restrictions on vehicles eligible for the tax credit.

    Manchin has also criticized Treasury for allowing leased vehicles to qualify for full tax breaks as “commercial” vehicles, a workaround that skirts some restrictions in the law.

    And a crucial piece of guidance is still missing: clarity on which companies’ vehicles could be barred from receiving the credit because of their connections to China. The Treasury Department says it expects to release that provision later this year.

    “Manchin very clearly wanted to put deglobalization ahead of decarbonization,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a research group. “He wants this stuff made here and if it slows down the transition so be it. Treasury is leaning toward trying to transition faster.”

    Most Democrats, though, disagree that Biden has ignored congressional intent. They point to projections showing the IRA has already been a boon to the country’s clean energy jobs: It has prompted at least $243 billion in investments in battery plants, electric vehicles factories and other green energy projects since Biden signed the law in August.

    Since Biden became president, there have been at least $95 billion in private-sector investments announced across the U.S. clean vehicle and battery supply chain, according to the Department of Energy, including $45 billion since the IRA passed.

    Heinrich said he knows it may be “politically expedient” for Manchin to argue the IRA is not taking shape as he intended.

    “But the reality is this legislation is working, and this administration is trying to manage both what we need to do long term, which is make all of this stuff here, but also build the runway to get there,” Heinrich said.

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    #Manchins #playing #fire #Democrats #tired #drama
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Nearly 200 House Democrats have signed onto a letter echoing President Joe Biden’s call for a clean debt ceiling hike.

    Nearly 200 House Democrats have signed onto a letter echoing President Joe Biden’s call for a clean debt ceiling hike.

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    The letter comes as the House votes as soon as Wednesday on Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s opening debt limit offer, with spending concessions attached.

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    #Nearly200 #House #Democrats #signed #letter #echoing #President #Joe #Bidens #call #clean #debt #ceiling #hike
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House Democrats will hold a “shadow” hearing this week with a panel of medical experts and advocates on the “the state of a post-Roe America.”

    House Democrats will hold a “shadow” hearing this week with a panel of medical experts and advocates on the “the state of a post-Roe America.”

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    The Democratic Women’s Caucus is encouraging members both to ask the panelists questions and “share abortion stories from their state/districts.”

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    #House #Democrats #hold #shadow #hearing #week #panel #medical #experts #advocates #state #postRoe #America
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • A debt limit fight helped Democrats in 2011. This time, it’s no guarantee.

    A debt limit fight helped Democrats in 2011. This time, it’s no guarantee.

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    Republicans, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, can point to polls showing only tepid backing for raising the debt ceiling and preference for spending cuts over tax increases to bring down the budget deficit. On President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ side: overwhelming support for lifting the cap once poll respondents are told breaching it could lead to a default.

    That’s a mixed bag of public opinion: 54 percent of Americans opposed raising the debt ceiling in a new CBS News/YouGov poll this week, but that number dropped to only 30 percent when respondents were asked if they would let the U.S. default. But in Washington, polling uncertainty about the political fallout can have serious consequences. In the debt limit fight, it’s emboldening both sides.

    Biden is in an especially precarious position, as he reportedly prepares to roll out his reelection campaign as soon as next week. He’s entering this fight with lower approval ratings than Obama’s ahead of the 2011 crisis, and voters remain worried about inflation and the economy — which, along with government dysfunction, could supplant more Democratic-friendly issues like abortion in the news in the coming weeks.

    A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll from late February underscored the volatility of the situation — and the current disincentive for either party to cave: Asked whom they would blame if the U.S. defaulted, a plurality of voters, 37 percent, said they’d hold both parties equally responsible. Another 30 percent said Democrats would be most to blame, while 24 percent said the GOP would be.

    It’s a different climate from 12 years ago. A Washington Post/Pew Research Center poll from mid-June of 2011 — about six weeks before the crisis was ultimately resolved — found more Americans said they would blame Republicans (42 percent) than Obama (33 percent) if the debt limit wasn’t raised.

    In that debate, Obama and Democrats were generally seen as more in line with public opinion, backing a combination of spending reductions and tax increases on the wealthy — a generally popular plank — in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, compared with Republicans’ more drastic budget cuts.

    That combination hasn’t been floated this year, given Republicans’ aversion to new taxes and Biden’s lack of engagement with McCarthy so far. Broadly, Americans are split when asked to choose between the two: tax hikes or spending cuts, with a slight preference to trimming spending.

    A NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist College poll in February found that half of voters, 50 percent, thought in order to close the national debt the government should “mostly cut programs and services,” while 47 percent said it should “mostly increase taxes and fees.”

    In that poll, 52 percent of voters favored raising the debt ceiling “to deal with the federal budget deficit” — slightly different wording than the CBS News poll that yielded slightly stronger support. But only 26 percent of Republicans supported raising the debt ceiling, even as McCarthy seeks support for his plan in the House next week among a bloc of members who even opposed hiking it under then-President Donald Trump.

    What could make 2023 different from 2011, Republicans say, is inflation.

    “There is one really important change that’s occurred,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster and adviser to former House Speakers Newt Gingrich and John Boehner. “When you go back to prior discussions [about the debt ceiling], the national debt is still an abstraction.”

    But now, Winston said, “There is a clear connection that the electorate has between spending and inflation.”

    The GOP catered much of its 2022 midterm economic message around trying to connect government spending with the rapid increase in prices over the past few years.

    There’s some evidence that’s worked, to a degree: A YouGov poll from last October, just weeks before the midterms, found that 53 percent of Americans assigned “a lot” of blame for inflation to “spending from the federal government” — though that was fewer than blamed “the price of foreign oil” (60 percent) and roughly equal to those who held “large corporations trying to maximize profits” (52 percent).

    For Biden and Democrats searching for the upper hand, there are some encouraging signals in the polling. An ABC News/Washington Post poll from late January and early February asked Americans if Congress should only raise the debt ceiling if Biden agrees to spending cuts, or if “the issues of debt payment and federal spending” should “be handled separately?”

    The public took Biden’s side on the strategic question: Only 26 percent said Congress should only raise the debt limit if Biden cut spending, while 65 percent said the debt payments and spending should be separate.

    Moreover, while reducing spending might be broadly popular, there’s the issue of what to cut. In this week’s CBS News/YouGov poll, not only do seven-in-10 respondents want the country to avoid a default, but majorities actually support increasing spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as part of the budget notifications. Even on defense spending, more Americans want to see it increased (41 percent) than decreased (26 percent). A third, 33 percent, want it to remain the same.

    But Biden is also less popular than Obama — who was still enjoying a bounce in his poll numbers after the killing of Osama bin Laden entering the final three months of the 2011 debt crisis — at this point in the process. Biden’s average approval rating is 42 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight, while Obama in May 2011 was sitting on majority approval. And even Obama’s approval rating slipped as the country approached the debt ceiling that summer — a potential preview of what’s to come.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House GOP’s debt-limit plan seeks to repeal major parts of Democrats’ climate law

    House GOP’s debt-limit plan seeks to repeal major parts of Democrats’ climate law

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    McCarthy is eyeing to pass his plan in the House next week, setting up a showdown with Democrats amid worries that the U.S. could default on its debt as early as June.

    The Republicans’ 300-page-plus bill amounts to a legislative wish list of measures that have no future in the Senate, whose Democratic leaders have joined Biden in refusing to negotiate policy changes as part of the debt ceiling. They argue that lawmakers should raise the borrowing cap — and avert global economic havoc — without conditions, as Congress repeatedly did under former President Donald Trump.

    Biden derided McCarthy’s plan during an appearance Wednesday in Maryland, and vowed to reject GOP demands that he roll back his administration’s accomplishments.

    “They’re in Congress threatening to undo all the stuff that you helped me get done,” Biden said during an appearance at a Maryland union hall. “You and the American people should know about the competing economic visions of the country that are at stake right now.”

    Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) likewise dismissed the Republican proposal. “It’s pathetic,” he said.

    The GOP bill would enact the party’s marquee energy bill, H.R.1 (218), which the House already passed last month. That bill includes an easing of permitting rules for new energy infrastructure and mining projects that Republicans say would promote economic growth, and which might find some appeal among Democrats.

    The Republican proposal also includes more partisan elements of their energy bill, which would mandate more oil and gas lease sales on federal lands, ease restrictions on natural gas exports, and repeal a fee that the IRA imposed on methane emissions from oil and gas operations.

    Republicans have lambasted the IRA’s clean energy incentives, saying they’re wasteful and distort markets.

    “These spending limits are not draconian,” McCarthy said in a Wednesday floor speech ahead of the bill release. “They are responsible. We’re going to save taxpayers money. It will end the green giveaways for companies that distort the market and waste taxpayers’ money.”

    Republicans are seeking to repeal the IRA’s zero-emission nuclear power production, clean hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel tax credits. Their bill would also eliminate the law’s bonus provisions aimed at placing solar and wind facilities in low-income communities and that allow some entities to receive direct payments of the credits.

    “We have to create situations where traditional, reliable, resilient energy can compete in the marketplace,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) told POLITICO. “If that’s getting rid of some of the crazy renewable tax credits in the IRA, I am all for it.”

    Republicans are also proposing to modify several other existing tax credits under the law, including by reestablishing the previous investment and production tax credits for solar and wind that the IRA had extended and increased. The GOP would nix both the production and investments tax credits for green sources after 2024, as well as incentives for paying prevailing wage, using domestic content and placing facilities in communities historically dependent on fossil fuels.

    The proposal would eliminate changes to some tax credits that existed before Democrats’ IRA was enacted, including for carbon sequestration.

    And it would make major changes in the IRA’s electric vehicle tax credit, whose implementation by the Biden administration has taken bipartisan criticism. The GOP proposal would revive a prior $7,500 tax credit for qualifying electric vehicles, but would restore that tax break’s per-manufacturer limit of 200,000 vehicles. It would entirely repeal the IRA’s new incentives for critical battery minerals that are extracted from the U.S. or a close trading partner, and for batteries manufactured or assembled in North America.

    While some moderate Republicans called for party leaders to place a priority on policy measures that could draw bipartisan support — such as overhaul permitting rules — as part of the debt ceiling package, conservatives pushed for more partisan measures targeting Democrats’ climate law.

    But that could put some Republicans in a tricky spot, because many projects that could receive the IRA’s tax credits are set to be built in congressional districts represented by GOP lawmakers. Recent analysis from the American Clean Power Association found that there have been $150 billion in new clean power capital investments since the law’s August passage, including 46 utility-scale solar, battery and wind manufacturing facilities or facility expansions.

    Of the manufacturing announcements tracked by ACP where a congressional district was known, the majority of those facilities were in red districts.

    “There is a lot of stuff in the Inflation Reduction Act that should be repealed,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) told POLITICO. “But there is some common sense stuff that was in there as well.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • ‘Hypocrisy’: New York Democrats deride Judiciary Committee’s Manhattan hearing

    ‘Hypocrisy’: New York Democrats deride Judiciary Committee’s Manhattan hearing

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    He later told reporters outside the hearing: “It is really troubling that Americans’ taxpayer dollars are being used to come here on this junket to do an examination of the safest big city in America.”

    A rowdy crowd of anti-Trump protestors demanded to be let inside the federal building in lower Manhattan as the committee heard testimony from a formerly incarcerated bodega clerk and the mother of a homicide victim, among others who testified.

    The hearing — titled “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan” — was called by the committee in the wake of the arraignment of the former president, who, ever since being criminally indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan, has attacked Alvin Bragg, the district attorney leading the case, for not addressing local crime instead.

    His GOP allies have leveled similar criticisms. Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the committee, called New York a “city that has lost its way” during the hearing.

    “Here in Manhattan, the scales of justice are weighed down by politics,” Jordan later added during the hearing, accusing Bragg of taking a “soft-on-crime approach to the real criminals.”

    The mayor and other Democrats were quick to point out Monday that crime in many major categories is on the decline. A letter sent to Jordan last week cited recently released NYPD statistics showing murders are down roughly a tenth from at this time last year. Shootings and transit crimes have decreased, too.

    The full picture of crime statistics in New York is more of a mixed bag, though. Felony assaults are up, driven largely by domestic incidents and attacks on police officers, and major felony arrests are at a high not seen in more than two decades.

    Adams also pointed to data reported in the New York Daily News Monday morning suggesting that residents of Jordan’s home state of Ohio are far more likely to die from gun violence than New Yorkers.

    Wirepoints, an Illinois-based nonprofit, found in February that New York City had among the lowest homicide rates among the nation’s largest cities.

    Adams said neither he nor anyone from his administration was asked to speak.

    Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who represents New York’s 13th District, also took issue with Republicans on the committee criticizing crime in the state without backing stronger federal gun control legislation.

    “The common denominator in most homicides across the country is a gun,” he said during the hearing.

    The GOP’s embrace of the issue of crime in their attacks against Bragg — and the other side’s full-throated response — is indicative of just how salient the issue remains in New York politics, and of its soreness for Democrats in the wake of midterm losses and a much closer than anticipated gubernatorial race. Even public safety-focused Democrats like Adams have struggled to make voters think they’re making headway on the issue.

    Manhattan Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, a former chair of the committee, warned voters not to be “fooled.”

    “This hearing is being called for one reason and one reason only: to protect Donald Trump,” he said at the news conference with Adams.

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    #Hypocrisy #York #Democrats #deride #Judiciary #Committees #Manhattan #hearing
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )