Daily Archives: December 26, 2020

Fed officials might no longer have to fear presidential tweets calling them boneheads, as President Donald Trump did last year in one of many missives mocking Chair Jerome Powell. But with millions out of work and the economic recovery beginning to falter, the stakes are much higher for the central bank to help the economy without running afoul of Congress.

How much blowback the Fed gets will depend on how quickly the economy is able to recover, which will in turn drive how aggressive Powell and former Fed Chair Janet Yellen, now nominated for Treasury secretary, feel they need to be in their economic intervention.

The Federal Reserve building is seen in Washington, D.C. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

This is a shot across the bow by Republicans, said Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James. All of the commentary after Yellen was selected was, They know the Feds authority better than anybody else. They could be this dynamic duo that could do whatever it takes to support this economy.

Republicans exerted their prerogative to send a warning to the Fed: The more creative you get, the more political risk you take, he added.

The push from Senate Republicans was striking, given that the Fed has received bipartisan praise all year for its efforts to prevent a financial crisis when key debt markets began freezing up at the onset of the pandemic.

But Toomey has framed it less as a rebuke of the Fed than as an effort to head off Democratic plans to use these lending programs to bail out struggling businesses and municipalities. The move also comes as Democrats have urged the central bank to do more to combat climate change through its lending programs and oversight of banks, a demand that has drawn opposition from Republicans.

Historically, the Feds emergency powers have been about ensuring the proper functioning of markets, but as part of the CARES Act, Congress asked the central bank to step in and more directly bolster nonfinancial corporations, as well as state and local governments.

That was within its power to do without authorization, but Toomey has essentially suggested that, going forward, the Fed should ask Congress for permission to do that type of intervention. The message: The central bank should stick to its traditional role.

Those programs were complete departures from traditional, historical, normal Fed [emergency] functions, which is why the Fed came to Congress to launch them and to fund them, Toomey told reporters on Sunday.

The purpose was to restore the normal functioning of the private lending and capital markets, not as a general, all-purpose fix-all for the economy, he added. They were remarkably successful. They achieved the results we wanted. Then, the Democrats came along and decided, now, lets morph this into some other purpose.

Lending programs for state and local governments and midsized businesses have both been disappointing to Democrats. The Main Street business program lent about $10 billion out of a total capacity of $600 billion. Similarly, the municipal program only lent to a couple of borrowers: Illinois and New York Citys transit system.

Democratic lawmakers were hoping that Yellen, assuming she is confirmed, would make the loan terms more generous; the Treasury secretary shares authority over any emergency programs undertaken by the Fed.

Its an about-face from earlier this year when Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) warned the money set aside to boost Fed lending amounted to a slush fund for boosting big businesses.

You stick around D.C. long enough, all political battles come full circle, Mills said. This one just happened a little faster.

In the spring, Democrats were worried about who the Fed was going to help when [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin and Powell were setting this up, he said. Because of the election of Biden, now its Republicans who are concerned who Powell and Yellen were going to help.

For now, the $900 billion relief bill and hopes for more should lower that kind of pressure from Democrats on the Fed, particularly since the existing programs will now definitively close after this year. The programs also only offer the prospect of more debt for businesses and states, rather than an infusion of cash that only Congress can authorize.

But if Congress is unable to pass additional stimulus next year and if the economy begins sliding back into recession, the central bank could once again be in the hot seat to find a way to loosen its new handcuffs in the relief deal, which prevents the same lending programs from being recreated.

The language could give the Fed and Treasury more flexibility to design different programs that help businesses and municipalities, although Republicans would likely object if they tried, suggesting the fight this month over the Feds emergency powers could reemerge.

Already, the office of House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) described the compromise as allowing substantially similar lending programs to help small businesses, nonprofits and states.

Its the predicament of being at the edge of your powers, said Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University, since the more the central bank does, the more it risks influencing who is able to borrow money and at what price. Its the same debates and pressures the Fed faced during the financial crisis last time. They were accused of determining winners and losers.

So long as the Fed remains central to the recovery and especially with a Democrat in the White House Republicans are likely to keep Powell in their crosshairs.

Continued here:

Fed enters Biden era with clipped wings and a warning from Republicans - POLITICO

After record turnout in the 2020 presidential election, Republicans in some states are already signaling they will pursue measures that make it harder to vote in the coming years.

The Republican efforts come after an election in which nearly 160 million people voted, the highest in a presidential election in over a century. About half of voters cast their ballots by mail, a big increase from 2016, while about another quarter cast their ballots in person ahead of election day.

The GOP backlash underscores how swiftly and severely the party is willing to cut off access to the ballot amid signs of a changing electorate. The baseless accusations of fraud that Donald Trump and other allies continue to levy about the election has offered election officials justification for passing the measures.

There will be some states where it is very clear that the existing power structure is worried about their voters. And part of their job security plan is to make it harder for their voters to participate, said Myrna Prez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Two states that appear to be at the center of the push are Georgia and Texas, where Republicans are already advocating measures to scale back mail-in voting and other access to the ballot. Both states, traditionally seen as Republican strongholds, are increasingly seen as politically competitive because of demographic shifts, with the electorate becoming much more diverse. In Georgia, there has been significant growth among Black, Hispanic and Asian eligible voters over the last two decades, while Texas has seen a surge in its Latino population.

I am not at all surprised to see this happening in Texas and Georgia that I think are on the cusp of a big shift, Prez said. You have some dinosaurs who are not going to stay in power much longer trying to suppress votes.

In Georgia, a state where record numbers of voters cast their ballots by mail, Republicans who control the state legislature have said they want to pass a slew of new restrictions focused on mail-in voting. They have said they want to require voters to submit a copy of their ID with their mail-in ballot and eliminate ballot drop boxes. While Georgia currently allows anyone to vote by mail, Republicans said they intend to work on a new law that would only allow voters to cast a mail-in ballot if they have an excuse. Newt Gingrich, the conservative Georgian and former speaker of the US House, complained earlier this month that Republicans were helping Democrats by making it easier to vote.

The Republican push to do away with no-excuse absentee voting comes just 15 years after the party embraced the practice and adopted a state law doing away with the excuse requirement to vote by mail. In previous elections, Republicans in the state have used the practice more widely than Democrats, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.

Now, theyre clearly operating on the premise that: fewer votes, we win, he said. Making it harder to do absentee voting, assuming we dont remain all locked in our homes because of the pandemic, that may hurt Republicans more than Democrats. Its kind of a simple, kneejerk reaction to an election they very narrowly lost.

Helen Butler, the executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda, a civil rights group that works on expanding voter access, questioned why Republicans were suddenly interested in restricting access to vote by mail. Im just gonna be honest, more white people used vote by mail than people of color, because they didnt trust the process now that weve got them trusting the process, now they want to go in and change the rules, she told the Guardian earlier this month.

In Texas, which already has some of the most stringent rules around voting in the country, lawmakers have pre-filed several bills with new restrictions. One bill would prevent state officials from sending out applications to vote by mail. The measure comes after election officials in Harris county tried to mail applications to all 2.4 million registered voters in the county.

There are definitely going to be those same efforts, like we saw during the election, to combat what local election administrators are doing to try and innovate to try and make voting more convenient and safer, said Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of Common Cause Texas, a government watchdog group. Texas is always on the cutting edge of finding new ways to suppress the vote.

Another measure would require state officials to investigate anyone who casts a ballot while swearing they dont have an acceptable form of photo identification (something currently allowed under Texas law). The same bill would require the state to regularly compare its voter rolls with a Department of Homeland Security data to try and find registered non-citizens, a process that has been shown to be inaccurate in the past. In 2019, Texas officials announced they had found nearly 100,000 non-citizens on its voter rolls, but were forced to retract that accusation once the data was shown to be inaccurate.

This isnt the first time that lawmakers have moved to cut off voting access after turnout surged, Prez said. After the 2008 presidential election, Republicans took control of state legislatures in 2010 and were more likely to pass voting restrictions in places where there were high minority populations or high turnout among minority voters. People dont get threatened about participation levels until they start reaching a certain threshold where they can actually disrupt the power structure, she said.

Keith Bentele, a professor at the Southwest Institute for Research on Women at the University of Arizona who has studied efforts to restrict voting access, said it was extremely likely that Republicans who will still wield enormous power over state legislatures would pass new voting restrictions.

Given the extraordinarily intense amplification of the voter fraud myth by President Trump and allies unfolding currently, it would seem odd if state legislators did not follow through with legislation to address these alleged (and in nearly all cases immaterial) issues of election integrity, he wrote in an email.

Prez questioned what kind of message it would send to the American public to see politicians so swiftly restrict access to voting after many people used it for the first time.

What does it do to the American population to have to see our politicians being so self serving. So brazen in their attempts to make it harder for people to vote?, she said. Its just gonna tell a really ugly story about America.

Read the rest here:

Republicans strategize for next elections: 'Their plan is to make it harder for voters to participate' - The Guardian

Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, greets a supporter with an elbow bump at a drive-through event to pick up yard signs last month in Alpharetta, Ga. Ossoff is in a runoff with Republican David Perdue, the incumbent, for the U.S. Senate. Austin McAfee/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images hide caption

Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, greets a supporter with an elbow bump at a drive-through event to pick up yard signs last month in Alpharetta, Ga. Ossoff is in a runoff with Republican David Perdue, the incumbent, for the U.S. Senate.

There was still an hour to go before Vice President Pence took the stage to stump for Georgia's two incumbent U.S. senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Both Republicans are fighting to hold onto their seats against Democratic challengers, with a runoff election set for Jan. 5.

But Pence was clearly the celebrity draw at this Nov. 20 campaign event in Canton, an Atlanta suburb. People were so eager to see him that parking spots were scarce and a long line of cars snaked through the parking lot of a community college. Some drivers jumped the curb and parked in the grass.

Hundreds of people, many unmasked, had to undergo temperature checks before boarding large coach buses for a short ride down the road to the rally site. It took place in a large open space outside of a conference center, but people stood close together, with little physical distancing.

Next month's runoff in Georgia was triggered after no candidate in either Senate race won more than 50% of the vote in the Nov. 3 general election.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and with the fate of the Affordable Care Act in question, Republicans are hoping the two incumbents can hang on to their seats, and thus preserve their party's control of the Senate, by a 50-48 margin.

But if the two Democratic challengers, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both win their runoffs, it will allow Democrats to take narrow control of the Senate, with the help of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as a tiebreaker.

Yana De Moraes had come to the rally from another Atlanta suburb, Buford. She's uninsured, and, after a recent hospital stay, had been thinking a lot about how expensive medical care can be.

"We would like our health care costs lowered, so it could be more affordable," she said, with a rueful laugh. "So you don't get another heart attack while you're getting a bill!"

De Moraes added she'd also like to see better price controls on prescription drugs to stop pharmaceutical companies from "robbing American people."

Vice President Pence waves to supporters during a Nov. 20 rally in Canton, Ga. Pence appeared alongside U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. The Republican incumbents are defending their seats in a Jan. 5 runoff. Jason Armond /Los Angeles Times via Getty Images hide caption

Vice President Pence waves to supporters during a Nov. 20 rally in Canton, Ga. Pence appeared alongside U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. The Republican incumbents are defending their seats in a Jan. 5 runoff.

Other voters said they were just looking for any kind of change, ideally one that involves less government involvement in health care.

Barry Brown had made the 40-mile drive from his home in Atlanta for the rally. He's retired but too young to qualify for Medicare, so he has Obamacare insurance, which he affords with the help of a federal subsidy.

"It sort of works. It's better than nothing," Brown said. "I would like to see an improved health care situation. I don't know what that will be, so maybe they'll mention that today. I'm hoping so."

But Brown didn't get the answers he was looking for.

At the rally, Loeffler made only brief mention of her health care plan, which focuses on reducing drug prices and giving people access to insurance options that cost less but offer fewer benefits.

When it was his turn to speak, Perdue didn't talk much about health care either, though he did take a shot at Obamacare, which he's voted multiple times to overturn.

"Remember a little thing called the Affordable Care Act? You think that was done bipartisan?" Perdue asked the crowd. "No! It was done with a supermajority! Can you imagine what they're gonna do if they get control of the Senate?"

This has been typical for how the two Republicans handled health care as they campaigned throughout the state.

It's common to hear them stoke fears about what Democrats could do if they win the Senate. It's not common to hear them talk about health care despite their potential voters' interest in the issue.

Their Democrat challengers, however, have been all over health care in their own speeches.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock kicks off his runoff campaign Nov. 12 to try to unseat Loeffler. Warnock leads Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and has been politically active in the fight to expand Medicaid to uninsured Georgians. Sam Whitehead/WABE hide caption

The Rev. Raphael Warnock kicks off his runoff campaign Nov. 12 to try to unseat Loeffler. Warnock leads Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and has been politically active in the fight to expand Medicaid to uninsured Georgians.

Warnock opened his runoff campaign to unseat Loeffler with a modestly attended Nov. 12 event that focused entirely on health care. So did Ossoff in his bid to win Perdue's seat.

"This is why these Senate runoffs are so vital," Ossoff said at a small, physically distanced event Nov. 10 in the shadow of the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta.

Ossoff and Warnock support adding a public insurance option to the Affordable Care Act. They also have emphasized the role Democrats will play in resurrecting key parts of the law if the U.S. Supreme Court decides to overturn it. The justices are set to make a ruling next year.

"If the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act, it will be up to Congress to decide how to legislate such that preexisting conditions remain covered," Ossoff said.

Democratic voters such as Janel Green connect with that message. She's from the nearby suburb of Decatur and is fighting breast cancer for the second time. Green is worried that if the protections in the Affordable Care Act disappear, her private health insurance might try to deny her coverage.

"I have to worry about whether or not next year in open enrollment that I won't be discriminated against, that I won't have limits that would then potentially end my life," she said.

More than one-quarter of Georgians have preexisting conditions that could make it hard to get coverage if the Affordable Care Act is struck down, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

That possibility is also driving Atlanta resident Herschel Jones to get involved in the runoff. On a recent weekday morning he dropped by an Ossoff campaign office to pick up a yard sign.

Jones, who has diabetes, is insured through the Department of Veterans Affairs. He said everyone deserves access to health care.

"It's a main issue, because the Affordable Care Act benefits all those individuals who might have preexisting conditions," Jones said.

One reason why Ossoff and Warnock are running so much harder on health care than Perdue and Loeffler is because that strategy paid off for Democrats in the general election, said Ken Thorpe, a health policy professor at Emory University.

President-elect Joe Biden can thank independent voters for his win in Georgia, Thorpe said, and they were drawn to him because of his promise to uphold Obamacare.

"The threat of potentially losing health insurance in the midst of this pandemic turned out to be probably the major defining issue in the election," he said.

Polling in the days leading up to the Nov. 3 election showed Democrats were motivated on the issues of health care and the coronavirus pandemic.

If Democrats want to win these Senate runoffs in Georgia, Thorpe said, they'll need to continue to stay focused on those issues. That emphasis could help them attract additional moderate voters as well as provide the motivation to entice those in the party base to come out again and cast ballots for a second time.

"The health care issue is the probably main motivating factor that's gonna get Democrats and independents to the polls," he continued.

But in a state that's traditionally favored Republicans in runoff races, even with a strong health care message, it'll be tough for Ossoff and Warnock to break that trend and unseat the Republicans, Thorpe said.

This story comes from NPR's reporting partnership with WABE and Kaiser Health News.

Read the rest here:

In Georgia Senate Runoffs, Parties Diverge Sharply On Health Care Messaging : Shots - Health News - NPR