Democrats Weigh Strategy to Force Through Bidens Infrastructure Plan – The New York Times

Heres what you need to know:Representative Tom Suozzi, Democrat of New York, warned that he would not support the presidents spending plan unless it eliminated a rule that prevents taxpayers from deducting more than $10,000 in local and state taxes from their federal income taxes.Credit...Cheriss May/Getty Images

Senior Democrats on Monday proposed a tax increase that could partly finance President Bidens plans to pour trillions of dollars into infrastructure and other new government programs, as party leaders weighed an aggressive strategy to force his spending proposals through Congress over unified Republican opposition.

The moves were the start of a complex effort by Mr. Bidens allies on Capitol Hill to pave the way for another huge tranche of federal spending after the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that was enacted this month. The president is set to announce this week the details of his budget, including his much-anticipated infrastructure plan.

He is scheduled to travel to Pittsburgh on Wednesday to describe the first half of a Build Back Better proposal that aides say will include a total of $3 trillion in new spending and up to an additional $1 trillion in tax credits and other incentives.

Yet with Republicans showing early opposition to such a large plan and some Democrats resisting key details, the proposals will be more difficult to enact than the pandemic aid package, which Democrats muscled through the House and Senate on party-line votes.

In the House, where Mr. Biden can currently afford to lose only three votes (not eight votes, as an earlier post said), Representative Tom Suozzi, Democrat of New York, warned that he would not support the presidents plan unless it eliminated a rule that prevents taxpayers from deducting more than $10,000 in local and state taxes from their federal income taxes. He is one of a handful of House Democrats who are calling on the president to repeal the provision.

And in the Senate, where most major legislation requires 60 votes to advance, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, was exploring an unusual maneuver that could allow Democrats to once again use reconciliation the fast-track budget process they used for the stimulus plan to steer his spending plans through Congress in the next few months even if Republicans are unanimously opposed.

While an aide to Mr. Schumer said a final decision had not been made to pursue such a strategy, the prospect, discussed on the condition of anonymity, underscored the lengths to which Democrats were willing to go to push through Mr. Bidens agenda.

The presidents initiatives will feature money for traditional infrastructure projects like rebuilding roads, bridges and water systems; spending to advance a transition to a lower-carbon energy system, like electric vehicle charging stations and the construction of energy-efficient buildings; investments in emerging industries like advanced batteries; education efforts like free community college and universal prekindergarten; and measures to help women work and earn more, like increased support for child care.

The proposals are expected to be partly offset by a wide range of tax increases on corporations and high earners.

The Biden administration announced a plan on Monday to vastly expand the use of offshore wind power along the East Coast, aiming to tap a potentially huge source of renewable energy that has so far struggled to gain a foothold in the United States.

The plan would designate an area between Long Island and New Jersey as a priority offshore wind zone and sets a goal of installing 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines in coastal waters nationwide by 2030, generating enough clean electricity to power 10 million homes. To help meet that target, the administration said it would accelerate permitting for proposed wind projects off the Atlantic coast, offer $3 billion in federal loan guarantees for offshore wind projects and upgrade the nations ports to support wind construction.

The White House said on Monday that the plan would avoid 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

The moves come as President Biden prepares an approximately $3 trillion economic recovery plan that will focus heavily on infrastructure to tackle climate change, an effort he has framed as a jobs initiative. Officials made a similar case on Monday, saying offshore wind deployment would directly create 44,000 new jobs, such as building and installing turbines, and indirectly create another 33,000.

The president recognizes that a thriving offshore wind industry will drive new jobs and economic opportunity up and down the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico and in Pacific waters, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said during a briefing on Monday.

Republicans said they were skeptical of Mr. Bidens promise of millions of green jobs. They have criticized his earlier moves to suspend new oil and gas leases and revoke permits for the Keystone XL pipeline as responsible for killing well-paying jobs in their states.

Gina McCarthy, the White House national climate adviser, called offshore wind a new, untapped industry that will create pathways to the middle class for people from all backgrounds.

Last month, the Biden administration took a key step in approving the nations first large-scale offshore wind farm, off the coast of Marthas Vineyard in Massachusetts a project that had stagnated under the Trump administration. The proposal for 84 large turbines with 800 megawatts of electric generating capacity is slated to come online by 2023.

Vineyard Wind is one of 13 offshore wind projects proposed along the East Coast, and the Interior Department has estimated that as many as 2,000 turbines could be rotating in the Atlantic Ocean by 2030.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

President Biden, charged as vice president under President Barack Obama to oversee the implementation of the 2009 stimulus bill, is preparing a new, vastly larger, economic recovery plan that would once again unite the goals of fighting climate change and restoring the economy.

While clean energy spending was just a fraction of the Obama stimulus bill, Mr. Biden wants to make it the centerpiece of his proposal for trillions of dollars not billions of government grants, loans, and tax incentives to spark renewable power, energy efficiency and electric car production.

Mr. Bidens plan, for example, is expected to call for funding at least half a million electric vehicle charging stations.

But the failures of the Obama stimulus and Mr. Bidens role in them he oversaw Recovery Act spending could haunt the plan as it makes its way through Congress. The risk to taxpayers could be much higher this time around, and Republicans for years have proven adept at citing Solyndra a solar panel company that went defunct after securing federal subsidies to criticize federal spending.

Mr. Bidens advisers, many of whom worked on the Obama stimulus, say the situation is very different this time around.

For one, the market demand for electric vehicles is much higher, and the cost of the cars much lower than in 2009, the year after Tesla Motors produced its first roadster. Solar power is more economically competitive. The use of wind power is expanding rapidly.

You have to step up to the plate and take a swing in order to hit the ball, and sometimes you swing and you miss, said Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, who served as governor of Michigan during the Obama years.

Advisers to Mr. Obama concede they fell short, especially on electric cars. The recovery act was supposed to put a million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015, but mustered fewer than 200,000. Even today, fewer than 1 percent of vehicles on the road are electric.

Republicans are already weaponizing the losses of the Obama green stimulus in their political attacks against the Biden plan.

The Obama administration promised thousands of green energy jobs, said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy Committee. These jobs never materialized.

Most economists say that, on balance, the Obama green stimulus spending did lift the economy, and had a long-lasting impact. Clean energy spending created nearly a million jobs between 2013 and 2017, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

It also made money for taxpayers: The Energy Departments loan guarantee program ultimately made $2 billion.

That is why Democrats say that one of the biggest lessons from the Obama stimulus is to go bigger much bigger.

One element of the spending in Mr. Bidens bill that was not in the Obama plan could draw bipartisan support: Mr. Biden has spoken explicitly of the need to adapt the nations roads and bridges to a changing climate, which will bring stronger storms, higher floods and more intense heat and drought.

In a series of speeches, interviews and Twitter posts, Mike Pompeo is emerging as the most outspoken critic of President Biden among former top Trump officials. And much as the former Trump secretary of state did when in office, he is ignoring the custom that current and former secretaries of state avoid the appearance of political partisanship.

In back-to-back appearances in Iowa and during an interview in New Hampshire over the past week, Mr. Pompeo questioned the Biden administrations resolve toward China. In Iowa, he accused the White House of reversing the Trump administrations immigration policy willy-nilly and without any thought. He derided Mr. Biden for referring to notes during his first formal news conference on Thursday.

Whats great about not being the secretary of state anymore is I can say things that when I was a diplomat I couldnt say, Mr. Pompeo said the next morning, to a small crowd at the Westside Conservative Club near Des Moines.

It seems clear that Mr. Pompeo, a onetime Republican congressman from Kansas, is animated not just by freedom but also by a drive for high elective office long evident to friends and foes. His appearances in a pair of presidential battleground states only seem to confirm his widely assumed interest in a 2024 presidential campaign.

Usually former presidents and secretaries of state try not to quickly trash their successors especially in foreign policy, said Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian. He said Mr. Pompeo probably believes he is demonstrating his Trumpiness by castigating the performance of the newly installed President Biden.

Last week, Mr. Pompeo tweeted that the Biden administrations plans to restart aid to the Palestinians canceled under Mr. Trump were immoral and would support terrorist activity. Americans and Israelis should be outraged by the Biden administrations plans to do so, Mr. Pompeo wrote.

But his commentary goes beyond foreign policy. Mr. Pompeo has also condemned Mr. Bidens backward open border policies. And on March 19, he simply tweeted the number 1,327 an apparent reference to the number of days until the 2024 election.

There is little sign that Mr. Pompeos criticism has struck a nerve among Biden officials and their allies. Asked about the remarks last month, a State Department spokesman, Ned Price, declined to respond directly but said the Biden and Trump administrations shared the goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

No one cares, Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted in response to a recent news report about a Pompeo critique of Mr. Bidens policies.

Kelly Tshibaka, an Alaska Republican who promoted former President Donald J. Trumps false claims of rampant election fraud, announced Monday that she would challenge Senator Lisa Murkowski, one of Mr. Trumps fiercest Republican critics, in 2022.

Ms. Murkowski, a moderate who called on Mr. Trump to resign after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and then voted to convict him on a charge of incitement in his subsequent impeachment trial, had expected a fight after the former president called her disloyal and invited challengers.

Ms. Tshibaka who is from Alaska, served as the chief data officer in the U.S. Postal Service inspector generals office, and held other high-profile jobs over a 17-year career in Washington before returning home in 2019 is pitching herself as an outsider taking on the insider, Ms. Murkowski.

In a preview of the kind of campaign she intends to run, Ms. Tshibaka posted a five-minute ad on her campaigns Facebook page that included a scathing takedown of Ms. Murkowski, who was censured by the state party earlier this year for being one of seven Republicans to vote for Mr. Trumps conviction in the Senate.

Lisa Murkowski is so out of touch that she even voted to remove Donald Trump from office, even after he was already gone, Ms. Tshibaka said, in a video that alternated footage of her speaking in her kitchen with images of her standing in front of snow-blanketed mountains. (If Mr. Trump had been convicted in the trial, the Senate could have voted to bar him from running for office in the future.)

Earlier on Monday, Ms. Tshibaka stepped down as commissioner of Alaskas sprawling Department of Administration, which oversees many of the states agencies.

In a resignation letter posted on her personal Facebook page, Ms. Tshibaka wrote that she was leaving, effective immediately, to pursue other endeavors.

Last November, Ms. Tshibaka, a graduate of Harvard Law School, wrote an op-ed in which she claimed, inaccurately, that there were many credible allegations and documented incidents of fraud, voter oppression and voting irregularities during the election. She slammed the news media for what she called its premature announcement that Biden is our president-elect.

Ms. Murkowski a daughter of Frank Murkowski, who served as governor and represented Alaska in the Senate has not formally announced her intention to run again, but she filed the necessary federal paperwork this month.

Speaking to reporters in Juneau last month, Ms. Murkowski said she was doing what I should be doing to ensure that I have that option and that opportunity to run for yet another term.

Ms. Murkowski, a resourceful and tenacious campaigner, has managed to win all four of her Senate campaigns, despite never breaking the 50 percent threshold, thanks to the presence of third-party candidates who have divided the opposition.

She has faced tough primary opponents before. In 2010, she lost the Republican nomination but managed a stunning victory as a write-in candidate with strong backing from local unions and Alaska Natives.

But the dynamic will be different next year.

In 2020, Alaska voters approved a ranked-choice system that eliminated party primaries and replaced them with a free-for-all primary from which the top four candidates, whatever their affiliation, will advance to the November election.

A frustrated Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday in a securities fraud class-action case against Goldman Sachs, with several justices indicating puzzlement about what they were supposed to do in light of both parties seeming to agree about the governing legal standard.

Two justices, using the same metaphor, said they saw little daylight between the two sides.

The case was brought by pension funds that said they had lost as much as $13 billion because of what they called false statements about the investment banks sales of complex debt instruments before the 2008 financial crisis.

The contested statements were abstract and general. One example: Our clients interests always come first. Another: Integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business.

The plaintiffs argued that those statements and others were at odds with what they said were conflicts of interest at the firm, which they accused of packaging and selling securities intended to fail even as Goldman Sachs and its favored clients bet against them. Goldman has denied deceiving investors.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, said Goldmans statements, in context, were enough to allow the case to proceed as a class action. If that decision is upheld, it would simplify future plaintiffs task in bringing class-action fraud suits.

Securities fraud cases often involve examining whether false statements caused a companys stock price to rise, but in this case, the plaintiffs argue that the statements served to keep the stock from falling, until it plummeted in 2010 on word that the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating one of the banks funds that dealt with subprime mortgages.

A lawyer for Goldman Sachs, Kannon K. Shanmugam, said the exceptionally generic and aspirational statements could not have affected its stock price, but conceded as a general matter that courts could take account of generic statements in deciding whether investors had relied on them.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the positions of the pension funds and Goldman Sachs had evolved and converged during the litigation. It seems to me that youve both moved toward the middle, she told Thomas C. Goldstein, a lawyer for the pension funds. Theyve backed off on how important they think generality is and whether it can be decided categorically. But youve also conceded that generality is relevant.

And Justice Stephen G. Breyer suggested there might be nothing for the Supreme Court to do, as its main job is to announce general legal principles rather than to decide particular disputes.

This seems like an area that, the more that I read about it, he said, the less that we write, the better.

Pressure is growing on President Biden to fulfill his campaign promise to renew the thaw in relations with Cuba that began under President Barack Obama.

Mr. Biden, focused on the pandemic and its economic devastation, has said little as president about how and when he would change United States policy toward Cuba, irking some progressives and former administration officials who urge a swift return to the more accommodating policies of the last Democratic administration.

A Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Bidens top priorities, Mr. Bidens spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said earlier this month.

Theres no reason for the Biden Administration to stick with Trumps failed reversal of the Cuba opening and plenty of good reasons for the Cuban people and US interests to reopen relations ASAP, Ben Rhodes, an Obama White House official who helped negotiate a 2014 agreement with officials in Havana, wrote Monday on Twitter.

On Sunday, demonstrators in Havana demanded an end to the 60-year-old U.S. embargo on the island. Reuters reported that more than 50 small protests took place around the world, including in the United States, in an effort to press the Biden administration to act.

Earlier this month, 75 progressive congressional Democrats wrote the White House, urging Mr. Biden to use his executive authority to quickly void all of Mr. Trumps actions on Cuba especially his designation of Cuba as an official state sponsor of terrorism a few days before he left office. That reversed Mr. Obamas decision in 2015 to remove Havana from the list.

By signing a single order, you have the power to revert these regulations back to their status on the final day of the Obama-Biden administration, the members wrote.

Mr. Trump took dozens of executive actions that chilled relations between the two nations, aimed at pleasing the politically critical, conservative Cuban-American community in South Florida. His actions included a renewed ban on the importation of Cuban goods such as rum and cigars, and an order that in effect prohibited Cubans residing in the United States from sending cash remittances to their relatives back home.

During the campaign, Mr. Biden sharply criticized those executive actions, suggesting he would swiftly reverse them and arguing during the 2020 campaign that they had done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.

But his administration has done little thus far, apart from beefing up the investigation into mysterious illnesses suffered by U.S. diplomatic officials in Cuba, known as Havana syndrome.

And Ms. Psaki, when pressed, offered no timetable for any changes, telling reporters only that the White House was committed to carefully reviewing policy decisions made in the prior administration.

The Biden administration suspended a trade pact with Myanmar on Monday following one of the deadliest weekends in the country since the military ousted the civilian leadership and began a killing spree on civilians.

United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement that the halt on a 2013 trade agreement with the country would remain in place until a democratically elected government is restored.

The killing of peaceful protesters, students, workers, labor leaders, medics and children has shocked the conscience of the international community, Ms. Tai said in a statement. These actions are a direct assault on the countrys transition to democracy and the efforts of the Burmese people to achieve a peaceful and prosperous future.

The suspension is largely a symbolic move to condemn the violence in Myanmar, where more than 100 people were killed on Saturday during protests against the Tatmadaw, the countrys military, according to the United Nations. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said during a briefing on Monday that the suspension would take effect immediately.

Were deeply concerned by the recent escalation of violence against peaceful protesters in Burma, Ms. Psaki said. Burmese security forces are responsible for hundreds of deaths in Burma since they perpetrated a coup on February 1st.

Myanmar, formerly Burma, is the United States 84th-largest trade partner, with the two countries exchanging $1.4 billion worth of goods during 2020. And the country was the United States 100th-largest goods export market last year, according to the Trade Representatives office.

The Treasury Department last week also announced sanctions on two miliary holding companies in Myanmar to target the economic resources of Burmas military regime.

The Tatmadaw has killed more than 420 people and assaulted, detained or tortured thousands of others since the Feb. 1 coup, according to a monitoring group.

Many of the civilians killed on Saturday were bystanders, including teenagers and a 5-year-old boy. A baby girl in Yangon, Myanmars largest city, was also struck in the eye with a rubber bullet.

Last weeks killing of children is just the most recent example of the horrific nature perpetrated by the military regime, Ms. Psaki said.

transcript

transcript

When I first started at the C.D.C. about two months ago, I made a promise to you: I would tell you the truth, even if it was not the news we wanted to hear. Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth, and I have to hope and trust you will listen. Im going to pause here. Im going to lose the script. And Im going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now, Im scared. We have come such a long way: Three historic scientific breakthrough vaccines, and we are rolling them out so very fast. So Im speaking today not necessarily as your C.D.C. director, and not only as your C.D.C. director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer. I so badly want to be done. I know you all so badly want to be done. We are just almost there, but not quite yet. We can change this trajectory of the pandemic, but it will take all of us recommitting to following the public health prevention strategies consistently while we work to get the American public vaccinated. We do not have the luxury of inaction. For the health of our country, we must work together now to prevent a fourth surge.

President Biden, facing a rise in coronavirus cases around the country, called on Monday for governors and mayors to reinstate mask mandates as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of impending doom from a potential fourth surge of the pandemic.

The presidents comments came only hours after the C.D.C. director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, appeared to fight back tears as she pleaded with Americans to hold on a little while longer and continue following public health advice, like wearing masks and social distancing, to curb the viruss spread. The nation has so much reason for hope, she added.

But right now, she said, Im scared.

The back-to-back appeals reflected a growing sense of urgency among top White House officials and government scientists that the chance to conquer the pandemic, now in its second year, may slip through its grasp. According to a New York Times database, the seven-day average of new virus cases as of Sunday was about 63,000, a level comparable with late Octobers average. That was up from 54,000 a day two weeks earlier, an increase of more than 16 percent.

Public health experts say that the nation is in a race between the vaccination campaign and new, worrisome coronavirus variants, including B.1.1.7, a more transmissible and possibly more lethal version of the virus that has been spreading rapidly. While more than one in three American adults have received at least one shot and nearly one-fifth are fully vaccinated, the nation is a long way from reaching so-called herd immunity the tipping point that comes when spread of a virus begins to slow because so many people, estimated at 70 to 90 percent of the population, are immune to it.

The warnings come at the same time as some promising news: A C.D.C. report released Monday confirmed the findings of last years clinical trials that vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer were highly effective against Covid-19. The report documented that the vaccines work to prevent both symptomatic and asymptomatic infections in real-world conditions.

The seven-day average of vaccines administered hit 2.76 million on Monday, an increase over the pace the previous week, according to data reported by the C.D.C. On Sunday alone, nearly 3.3 million people were inoculated, said Andy Slavitt, a senior White House pandemic adviser.

Mr. Biden said on Monday that the administration was taking steps to expand vaccine eligibility and access, including opening a dozen new mass vaccination centers. He directed his coronavirus response team to ensure that 90 percent of Americans would be no farther than five miles from a vaccination site by April 19.

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Democrats Weigh Strategy to Force Through Bidens Infrastructure Plan - The New York Times