Monthly Archives: August 2023

Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., speaks at a news conference with members of the House Freedom Caucus outside the U.S. Capitol on July 25. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images hide caption

Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., speaks at a news conference with members of the House Freedom Caucus outside the U.S. Capitol on July 25.

While much of the nation tries to enjoy the last days of summer vacation, and Congress is taking its annual August recess, some members are already hard at work. They may not be physically present in the Capitol, or even in Washington, but their minds are on the mission they will undertake right after Labor Day.

Their goals are ambitious. So they want to make sure they have maximum leverage over the process when Congress makes its big budget and spending decisions at the end of the federal fiscal year.

And they are making no secret of how far they are willing to go. They see this next month as their window of opportunity to alter the policies and priorities of the federal establishment.

From their perspective, they have yet to deliver on the promises they made to the people who voted for them in 2022. They are especially focused on those who voted for them in the primaries first and then again in November, when their party won a narrow majority of the seats in the House (while falling short of control in the Senate).

Those all-important primaries were Republican primaries, of course, because we are talking here about members of the House Freedom Caucus a group of hardcore conservatives within the chamber's majority. Members of the caucus led the resistance to the election of Speaker Kevin McCarthy in January, which took 15 ballots to accomplish.

They have furiously protested the debt ceiling deal that kept the U.S. from defaulting on debt back in May. McCarthy had reached that deal with President Biden, and it passed the House with the votes of most members of both parties but not those of the House Freedom Caucus.

Caucus members were frustrated that the committee placements and rules changes they negotiated back in January when McCarthy became speaker did not seem to restrain him when it came to the debt-limit deal.

Now, caucus members want to declare a new day for the 118th Congress. They think they can force McCarthy to toe their line, because if he does not he will be subject to an effort to replace him. And they want September to be the month they shift the focus of Congress to their own aggressive agenda of opposing, investigating and even impeaching President Biden or members of his administration.

As a starting point, they are refusing to vote for a stopgap bill to keep the federal government operating past Sept. 30.

The stopgap, known as a continuing resolution, is a common fallback when the fiscal year ends and Congress has not finished all 12 of the regular spending bills that must pass both chambers. Without it, parts of the federal government shut down. At a July news conference, Rep. Bob Good of Virginia said McCarthy should seize the moment.

"We should not fear a government shutdown," Good said on the steps of the Capitol. "Most of the American people won't even miss it if the government is shut down temporarily."

Good, who opposed McCarthy's election as speaker, saw the choice in monumental terms for McCarthy and the country:

"Our speaker has the opportunity to be a transformational historical speaker who stared down the Democrats, that stared down the free spenders, that stared down the president and said, 'No, we're going to do what the American people elected us to do.' "

This month, the caucus members have been rallying around one of their own, third-term Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who on Aug. 16 told a radio host in his home state he would "use every tool I have at my disposal to stop [McCarthy's temporary spending measure] and frankly to fight any efforts to continue to fund this government without radical reform for border security, at the Department of Justice and at the Department of Defense, at a minimum."

Roy and other members of the caucus have objected to Justice's prosecution of two criminal cases against former President Donald Trump and to the Pentagon's adoption of diversity programs and sensitivity training for military personnel.

But Roy, whose district lies south of Austin in rural Texas, also made clear his central objection is to the performance of Biden's Department of Homeland Security. He has called on Republicans to "put our entire careers" on the line to "stop funding that smirking son of a b**** Alejandro Mayorkas," referring to the current secretary of Homeland Security, with whom Roy has clashed in congressional oversight hearings.

Anyone who watched the 15 ballots it took to elect McCarthy speaker can visualize Roy, a towering presence in those long debates in the wee hours. But what is happening now is more than just rhetoric or intraparty intrigue. Government shutdowns have real effects on public employees and the public interest. The 2019 shutdown triggered by then-President Trump's demands for more border wall funding lasted five weeks.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (right) talks to fellow Republicans then-Rep.-elect Chip Roy of Texas (center) and Rep.-elect Jim Jordan of Ohio in the House Chamber during the second day of elections for speaker of the House on Jan. 4. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images hide caption

Government shutdowns have never been popular with the public, at least in terms of opinion polling. But they are perfectly acceptable to the kind of partisans who often vote in GOP primaries.

So the prospect of a shutdown this fall is being taken seriously by serious people who know the system and its vulnerabilities. This week a former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, told CQ Roll Call that "the odds are increasing every day that there will be a shutdown."

Cantor should know. Before he became an investment banker, he was in the House leadership with former Speaker John Boehner, who struggled with "Tea Party" hardliners in the fall of 2013. In that case, the sticking point was funding for Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act).

The blockade led to a shutdown of 16 days, one of the longest ever at that time. Negotiating an end to it was complicated by the involvement of first-term GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who personally rallied House members against him. Roy served as chief of staff to Cruz before getting elected to the House.

Boehner has since referred to Cruz as "the devil in the flesh." In the fall of 2015, once again clashing over the budget, Boehner threw in the towel. He resigned as speaker in mid-session, an ignominious end to a career that had brought him the Big Gavel when the GOP captured 63 previously Democratic seats in the 2010 midterms (the ones Obama called "a shellacking").

Boehner was replaced by Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, who had been chairman of Ways and Means and the GOP's 2012 nominee for vice president. But Ryan too struggled to deal with the Freedom Caucus. Like Boehner, Ryan simply lacked the votes to prevail on the House floor without the caucus' support. Ryan retired voluntarily in 2019 after three years and three months as speaker.

More than two-thirds of the House Freedom Caucus today arrived in the House after the Obama presidency. But for those with longer memories of the partisan wars on Capitol Hill, the words "shutdown" and "impeachment" are closely associated with the last two GOP regimes that controlled the House.

Those Republican majorities, first elected in 1994 and 2010, are now remembered largely for their shutdowns (2005 and 2006 and 2013) and for impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998.

It must be noted that use of a government shutdown to pressure a Democratic president was a new tactic. Congress had always had the "power of the purse," as the Constitution requires legislation to move money out of the Treasury. But the world wars and Depression of the first half of the 1900s built a presumption that Congress would work with whoever was in the White House to maintain continuity of government. And presidents in both parties found ways to work with Capitol Hill, even when one or both chambers were controlled by the other party.

Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks to the press on Capitol Hill in March 1995 about the upcoming vote in the Senate on the Balanced Budget Amendment. Renaud Giroux/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks to the press on Capitol Hill in March 1995 about the upcoming vote in the Senate on the Balanced Budget Amendment.

That came to an end with the election of 1994, a blowout win for Republicans that gave them control of the House for the first time in 40 years. It also changed the mood of Washington after two years of full Democratic control under first-term Democratic President Bill Clinton.

That win was engineered in the House by the party's No. 2 man, Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who would be elected speaker in January 1995 and last almost four years in the job. Gingrich's unified approach to the fall campaign got GOP incumbents and challengers nationwide to sign a pledge ("The Contract with America") to prioritize and vote on 10 specific issues. That amplified the party message and elevated its primary messenger.

The heady GOP expectations of that moment did not come to fruition in the short term. One reason was that the Gingrich team's first two years were marked by two government shutdowns and other dramatic confrontations that failed to derail Clinton's re-election in 1996.

Once in office, Gingrich made it clear he would use tools no speaker had used before. He was the first speaker to make a cudgel of the debt limit which must be raised periodically so the Treasury can issue new debt while paying off bonds and other U.S. obligations that come due. Gingrich wanted concessions in exchange for raising the debt limit, and the showdown threatened default and chaos in financial markets

Gingrich left the speakership late in 1998 after his party lost seats in that fall's midterms amid the controversy surrounding its effort to impeach Clinton.

In 2006, the GOP lost control of both chambers. But when Republicans stormed back into the House majority on the energy of the Tea Party in 2010, it was at first even more confident than the Gingrich crew. They believed the answer to resistance was to plow ahead and reject calls to slow down or compromise the big goals such as balancing the federal budget.

And that is the vision that the House Freedom Caucus of today wants to recapture, starting in September.

See the original post here:

The Freedom Caucus' shutdown threat recalls tactics of past House ... - NPR

Summary

This report to Congress is provided in accordance with section 608(a) of the Millennium Challenge Act of 2003, as amended, 22 U.S.C. 7701, 7707(a) (the Act).

The Act authorizes the provision of assistance for global development through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) for countries that enter into a Millennium Challenge Compact with the United States to support policies and programs that advance the progress of such countries to achieve lasting economic growth and poverty reduction. The Act requires MCC to take a number of steps in selecting countries with which MCC will seek to enter into a compact, including determining the countries that will be eligible countries for fiscal year (FY) 2024 based on (a) a countrys demonstrated commitment to (i) just and democratic governance, (ii) economic freedom, and (iii) investments in its people; (b) the opportunity to reduce poverty and generate economic growth in the country; and (c) the availability of funds to MCC. These steps include the submission to the congressional committees specified in the Act and publication in the Federal Register of reports on the following:

This report is the first of three required reports listed above.

The Act requires the identification of all countries that are candidate countries for purposes of eligibility for MCC compact assistance for FY 2024 and the identification of all countries that would be candidate countries for purposes of eligibility for MCC compact assistance but for specified legal prohibitions on assistance. Under sections 606(a) and (b) of the Act, candidate countries must qualify as low income or lower middle income countries as defined in the Act.

Specifically, a country will be a candidate country in the low income category for FY 2024 if it

A country will be a candidate country in the lower middle income category for FY 2024 if it

Under section 606(c) of the Act as applied for FY 2024, a country with per capita income changes from FY 2023 to FY 2024 such that the country would be reclassified from the low income category to the lower middle income category or vice versa will retain its income status in its former category for FY 2024 and two subsequent fiscal years (FY 2025 and FY 2026). A country that has transitioned to the upper middle income category does not qualify as a candidate country.

Pursuant to section 606(d) of the Act, the Board identified the following countries as candidate countries under the Act for FY 2024. In so doing, the Board referred to the prohibitions on assistance to countries for FY 2023 under the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2023 (FY 2023 SFOAA) contained in Division K of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (P.L. 117-103).

Countries that would be considered candidate countries for purposes of eligibility for MCC compact assistance for FY 2024 but are ineligible to receive United States economic assistance under part I of the Foreign Assistance Act by reason of the application of any provision of the Foreign Assistance Act or any other provision of law are listed below. This list is based on legal prohibitions against economic assistance that apply as of July 25, 2023.

Countries identified above as candidate countries, as well as countries that would be considered candidate countries but for the applicability of legal provisions that prohibit U.S. economic assistance, may be the subject of future statutory restrictions or determinations, or changed country circumstances, that affect their legal eligibility for assistance under part I of the Foreign Assistance Act by reason of application of the Foreign Assistance Act or any other provision of law for FY 2024.

View post:

Report on Countries that are Candidates for Millennium Challenge ... - Millennium Challenge Corporation

Joe Biden is president of the United States.

Sixty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans marched on Washington for jobs and freedom. In describing his dream for us all, Dr. King spoke of redeeming the promissory note to which every American was to fall heir derived from the very idea of America we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. While weve never fully lived up to that promise as a nation, we have never fully walked away from it, either. Each day of the Biden-Harris administration, we continue the march forward.

That includes a fundamental break with trickle-down economics that promised prosperity but failed America, especially Black Americans, over the past several decades. Trickle-down economics holds that taxes should be cut for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, that public investments in priorities such as education, infrastructure and health care should be shrunk, and good jobs shipped overseas. It has exacerbated inequality and systemic barriers that make it harder for Black Americans to start a business, own a home, send their children to school and retire with dignity.

Vice President Harris and I came into office determined to change the economic direction of the country and grow the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. Our plan Bidenomics is working. Because of the major laws and executive orders Ive signed from the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, my executive orders on racial equity and more were advancing equity in everything we do making unprecedented investments in all of America, including for Black Americans.

This administration will continue to prioritize increasing access to government contracting and lending. We awarded a record $69.9 billion in federal contracts to small, disadvantaged businesses in fiscal 2022. Were taking on housing discrimination and increasing Black homeownership. To date, weve invested more than $7 billion in historically Black colleges and universities to prepare students for high-growth industries. Weve approved more than $116 billion in student loan debt cancellation for 3.4 million Americans so that borrowers receive the relief they deserve. And a new student debt repayment plan is helping Black students and families cut in half their total lifetime payments per dollar borrowed. Were doing all of this by making sure the biggest corporations begin to pay their fair share, keeping my commitment that Americans earning less than $400,000 a year not pay a single penny more in federal taxes.

And to help guide these policies, I made it a priority to appoint Black leaders to my Cabinet, my staff, in the judiciary and to key positions in agencies such as the Federal Reserve to ensure policymakers represent the experiences of all Americans in the economy.

But we know government cant do it alone. Private-sector leaders have rightly acted to ensure their companies are more reflective of America, often in response to their employees, their customers and their own consciences. Right now, the same guardians of trickle-down economics who attack our administrations economic policies are also attacking the private sector and the views of the American people. A recent poll from the nonpartisan Black Economic Alliance Foundation shows overwhelming bipartisan support for promoting diversity as central to a company being more innovative and more profitable, and central to fulfilling the promise of our country for all Americans. Despite the attacks, we all must keep pushing to create a workforce that reflects America.

For generations, Black Americans havent always been fully included in our democracy or our economy, but by pure courage and heart, they have never given up pursuing the American Dream. We saw in Jacksonville, Fla., yet another community wounded by an act of gun violence, reportedly fueled by hate-filled animus. We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin. On this day of remembrance, let us keep showing that racial equity isnt just an aspiration. Let us reject the cramped view that America is a zero-sum game that holds that for one to succeed, another must fail. Let us remember America is big enough for everyone to do well and reach their God-given potential.

Thats how we redeem the promissory note of our nation.

Read the original:

Opinion | Joe Biden op-ed: 60 years after March on Washington, we ... - The Washington Post

In 2020, Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang suggested Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a potential answer to job displacement from artificial intelligence. In those days, the general public had little idea of what OpenAI or ChatGPT could do.

Many didnt even know it existed. After all, GPT-3 didnt release until June of that year. The idea that a chatbot could write blogs, create PowerPoints, analyze data, and complete detailed reports with pie charts and bar graphs, all in a minute or two, was a foreign concept to the human workers doing those very jobs day in and day out.

Yang didnt come close to clinching the nomination, but he was the only candidate speaking about the looming near-term potential for job displacement as a result of this new technology. His suggestion supplement every American adult with a $1,000 per month Freedom Dividend sounded necessary to some and socialist to others. He proposed paying for it with a value-added tax (VAT). His ideas have since been adopted by several U.S. cities, including Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Oakland, and are dispensed to around 26 million Americans at the time of this article.

A recent poll found over two-thirds of respondents wanted UBI, with more Democrats than Republicans (82%-48%) and more GenZers than Baby Boomers (79%-63%) driving the results. Generation X was the least in favor at 61%, while 12% of the country was neutral and just 20% opposed the concept altogether.

Its difficult to say whether Yangs system could work on a national scale. The closest weve seen to the federal government running such a program is Social Security, and, according to the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds Annual Report, released on March 31, 2023, thats not going particularly well. The report postulates that the Medicare Trust Fund will become insolvent by 2031 and the Social Security Trust Fund will follow by 2033. In other words, recipients will no longer be able to receive their full benefits as promised if Congress doesnt take action.

Spoiler alert: they likely will.

If history is a guide, thats likely to result in your children and grandchildren working past the age of 67 (current age) before becoming eligible. Considering that life expectancy declined during the pandemic and has only recently inched up to 79.1 years (81 for females, 77 for males), thats not a lot of time to enjoy your Golden Years.

Following Yangs lead nationally would be a $3.132 trillion expense to a government that spent $1.45 trillion more in fiscal year 2022 than it took in. If you have faith in Washington to make the cuts required to accommodate UBI, then you might be a cockeyed optimist. Thats because our politicians have only logged surpluses five times in the last 50 years, with the last time being a relatively measly $128 billion in 2001.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a new report on Aug. 2, 2023, that looked at the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas using data from the World Economic Forum and Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their findings found that more than 10 million jobs fell into the at-risk category from AI adoption. These were mostly administrative roles (i.e., record-keepers, cashiers), accountants, bookkeepers, factory workers, and traditional security roles. Las Vegas was the most at-risk with around 16% of its workforce in danger by the year 2027. Other high-rankers were Miami, Louisville, Orlando, Houston, and Grand Rapids.

The good news: AI could be a massive job creator, provided governments can regulate it without stifling innovation. A PwC report projects the technology to add an average of 14% to 16% to the global economy, the equivalent of a $15.7 trillion contribution. Our share of that could be around 14.5%, or $3.7 trillion, more than enough to pay for a UBI program at the scale Yang envisioned. Expect discussion of this possibility among regulators as they seek ways to temporarily address job displacement or aid in upskilling for those who are employed.

For now, elected officials seem to understand the enormous responsibility that rests on their shoulders. Even if theyre unable to fully grasp the complexity of the tech, their study into possible regulations that launched in April of this year demonstrates a grasp of whats at stake. Whether that understanding translates into the right action, however, is anyones guess.

Editors note: Aric Mitchell is an AI consultant and communications strategist, and produces the AI-focused newsletter, Innovation Dispatch. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Continue reading here:

Universal Basic Income: Fiscal fantasy or AI necessity? - talkbusiness.net