Key Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is asking for more time to get “clarification” on the economic impact of President Joe Biden’s social spending package and other Democrats.

Democrat Manchin calls Biden's $1.75 trillion spending proposal a "shell game"

Days before it became clear that Republican Glenn Youngkin would win Virginia’s gubernatorial race, pollsters, pundits and political strategists were trying to explain why a race that was the Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s to lose was on its way to being lost.

Some explanations were more convincing than others.

Least convincing was the suggestion that Youngkin, a former private equity executive, won by dogwhistling Dixie. The pro-McAuliffe Lincoln Project even tried to troll a Youngkin event in Charlottesville with tiki-torch bearers, but they were exposed. That theory fails to explain why Youngkin ever would have thought he could win by moving to the hard right in a state where no Republican has won statewide office in a dozen years, and which Joe Biden won last year by 10 points.

Another explanation is that early political reversals for an incumbent party are normal. Republican Chris Christie of New Jersey won a similar bellwether gubernatorial election in 2009, almost a year into Barack Obama’s first term. That win anticipated the GOP’s historic 63-seat gain in the 2010 House elections, but it did not keep Obama from getting his signature legislation enacted, much less from being reelected.

Then there is the fact that McAuliffe ran a lousy campaign. State races are about state issues. McAuliffe’s focus was to paint Youngkin as a Trumpkin, going so far as to invent a fictional Youngkin-Trump joint campaign event. Youngkin focused on issues like cutting taxes on groceries and giving parents more of a say in their kids’ education. Voters typically want governors to solve problems, not serve as moral avatars.

Finally, there’s Joe Biden. He is manifestly inept. He cannot get his party to pass a popular infrastructure bill. On inflation, Afghanistan and the southern border, he has offered benign assurances that have been summarily contradicted by events. No president elected after World War II lost more public support in his first few months of office than he has, according to Gallup. Biden’s losses are particularly steep among independents. If Biden doesn’t recover, this is bound to have down-ballot effects.

The last three explanations are true as far as they go. But they don’t sufficiently capture the Democrats’ deeper problem, which is the persistent and justified perception of a party too often composed of fake moderates and dissembling radicals. Middle-of-the-road voters — the kind who still decide elections in purplish places like Virginia — sense they’ve been bamboozled.

Who’s a fake moderate? Biden campaigned as the most centrist Democrat in last year’s primary field. He is trying to govern as the most socially transformational president since Lyndon B. Johnson. Attorney General Merrick Garland looks like a fake moderate, too willing to cite the power of the federal government after angry parents at school board meetings were labeled domestic terrorists. Whatever happened to Democrats as civil libertarians?

As for dissembling radicals, note the way in which the controversy over critical race theory is treated by much of the left as either much ado about an obscure scholarly discipline or, alternatively, a beneficent and necessary set of teachings about the past and present of systemic racism in America.

But CRT is neither obscure nor anodyne. It is, according to many of its leading theoreticians, a “politically committed movement” that often explicitly rejects notions of merit, objectivity, colorblindness and neutrality of law among other classically liberal concepts.

That’s no reason to ban teaching it or any other way of looking at the world. But it is dishonest to argue that it is anything less than ideologically radical, intensely racialized and deliberately polarizing. It is even more dishonest to suggest that it exists only in academic cloisters. We live in an era of ubiquitous race-based “affinity groups,” incessant allegations of white supremacy, and pervasive censorship and self-censorship in everything from words that can be said and documentaries that can be watched, to jokes that can be laughed at.

No wonder the debate over CRT-influenced pedagogies in public schools — which liberals insist don’t even exist in the state’s public schools, although they clearly do — had such a galvanic effect on the Virginia race. It exposed the myth that the illiberal currents at play in the United States today are solely a Republican phenomenon. They are not.

It’s fair to debate which kind of illiberalism is worse. But the Democrats’ political problem is either dishonesty about the kind of country they want, a lack of self-awareness, or some combination of both. An America in which group identity takes precedence over individual merit, racial categories become moral categories, success based on achievement is denigrated as “privilege” based on ancestry, blind justice is attacked as systemically biased, and independent thinking risks being treated as heresy, will eventually cease to be a free, fair and just country.

Many liberals who have tasted the progressive moonshine get the point. But too many still feel obligated to take sides against Trumpism when the real enemy is illiberalism writ large, whatever the source. The tragedy of the Republican Party is that too few conservatives had the nerve to fight the enemy within. Voters penalized the party in 2018 by losing the House, and in 2020 by losing the presidency.

The tragedy of the Democratic Party may yet be its own loss of nerve against its in-house extremists. Whether it’s this week or next year, the political penalties are likely to be steep.

Days before it became clear that Republican Glenn Youngkin would win Virginia’s gubernatorial race, pollsters, pundits and political strategists were trying to explain why a race that was the Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s to lose was on its way to being lost.

Days before it became clear that Republican Glenn Youngkin would win Virginia’s gubernatorial race, pollsters, pundits and political strategists were trying to explain why a race that was the Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s to lose was on its way to being lost. Some explanations were more convincing than others. Least convincing was the suggestion that Youngkin, a former private equity executive, won by dogwhistling Dixie. The pro-McAuliffe Lincoln Project even tried to troll a Youngkin event in Charlottesville with tiki-torch bearers, but they were exposed. That theory fails to explain why Youngkin ever would have thought he could win by moving to the hard right in a state where no Republican has won statewide office in a dozen years, and which Joe Biden won last year by 10 points. Another explanation is that early political reversals for an incumbent party are normal. Republican Chris Christie of New Jersey won a similar bellwether gubernatorial election in 2009, almost a year into Barack Obama’s first term. That win anticipated the GOP’s historic 63-seat gain in the 2010 House elections, but it did not keep Obama from getting his signature legislation enacted, much less from being reelected. Then there is the fact that McAuliffe ran a lousy campaign. State races are about state issues. McAuliffe’s focus was to paint Youngkin as a Trumpkin, going so far as to invent a fictional Youngkin-Trump joint campaign event. Youngkin focused on issues like cutting taxes on groceries and giving parents more of a say in their kids’ education. Voters typically want governors to solve problems, not serve as moral avatars. Finally, there’s Joe Biden. He is manifestly inept. He cannot get his party to pass a popular infrastructure bill. On inflation, Afghanistan and the southern border, he has offered benign assurances that have been summarily contradicted by events. No president elected after World War II lost more public support in his first few months of office than he has, according to Gallup. Biden’s losses are particularly steep among independents. If Biden doesn’t recover, this is bound to have down-ballot effects. The last three explanations are true as far as they go. But they don’t sufficiently capture the Democrats’ deeper problem, which is the persistent and justified perception of a party too often composed of fake moderates and dissembling radicals. Middle-of-the-road voters — the kind who still decide elections in purplish places like Virginia — sense they’ve been bamboozled. Who’s a fake moderate? Biden campaigned as the most centrist Democrat in last year’s primary field. He is trying to govern as the most socially transformational president since Lyndon B. Johnson. Attorney General Merrick Garland looks like a fake moderate, too willing to cite the power of the federal government after angry parents at school board meetings were labeled domestic terrorists. Whatever happened to Democrats as civil libertarians? As for dissembling radicals, note the way in which the controversy over critical race theory is treated by much of the left as either much ado about an obscure scholarly discipline or, alternatively, a beneficent and necessary set of teachings about the past and present of systemic racism in America. But CRT is neither obscure nor anodyne. It is, according to many of its leading theoreticians, a “politically committed movement” that often explicitly rejects notions of merit, objectivity, colorblindness and neutrality of law among other classically liberal concepts. That’s no reason to ban teaching it or any other way of looking at the world. But it is dishonest to argue that it is anything less than ideologically radical, intensely racialized and deliberately polarizing. It is even more dishonest to suggest that it exists only in academic cloisters. We live in an era of ubiquitous race-based “affinity groups,” incessant allegations of white supremacy, and pervasive censorship and self-censorship in everything from words that can be said and documentaries that can be watched, to jokes that can be laughed at. No wonder the debate over CRT-influenced pedagogies in public schools — which liberals insist don’t even exist in the state’s public schools, although they clearly do — had such a galvanic effect on the Virginia race. It exposed the myth that the illiberal currents at play in the United States today are solely a Republican phenomenon. They are not. It’s fair to debate which kind of illiberalism is worse. But the Democrats’ political problem is either dishonesty about the kind of country they want, a lack of self-awareness, or some combination of both. An America in which group identity takes precedence over individual merit, racial categories become moral categories, success based on achievement is denigrated as “privilege” based on ancestry, blind justice is attacked as systemically biased, and independent thinking risks being treated as heresy, will eventually cease to be a free, fair and just country. Many liberals who have tasted the progressive moonshine get the point. But too many still feel obligated to take sides against Trumpism when the real enemy is illiberalism writ large, whatever the source. The tragedy of the Republican Party is that too few conservatives had the nerve to fight the enemy within. Voters penalized the party in 2018 by losing the House, and in 2020 by losing the presidency. The tragedy of the Democratic Party may yet be its own loss of nerve against its in-house extremists. Whether it’s this week or next year, the political penalties are likely to be steep.

Opinion: Why Democrats are in trouble

In what can be called a ‘scary news' on Halloween, a new NBC News poll seems to have suggested the Americans have lost confidence in US President Joe Biden and their optimism for the country. &nbsp;

The moderator of ‘Meet the Press’, Chuck Todd, shared the findings of the latest poll on Sunday. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-urges-world-leaders-to-help-address-global-supply-chain-issue-425672" hreflang="en">Biden urges world leaders to help address global supply-chain issue</a>

This development comes days ahead of the off-year November election, which&nbsp;includes the governor's race in Virginia and one year out from the midterm elections. &nbsp;

"We have a brand-new NBC News poll out this morning that's filled with some scary news for the Democrats. The overarching message: Americans have lost their confidence in President Biden and their optimism for the country. At least, they have right now," Todd said. &nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/one-dead-9-injured-as-gunman-opens-fire-at-halloween-party-in-texas-425650">One dead, 9 injured as gunman opens fire at Halloween party in Texas</a>

"Just 22% of adults say we're headed in the right direction. A shocking 71% say we're on the wrong track and that includes a near majority of Democrats, who are saying that. President Biden's approval rating stands at a dismal 42%, versus 54% who disapprove," the moderator said. &nbsp;

As per NBC News, around 1,000 adults, 650 of whom were reached only by cellphone, were included in the survey between October 23 and 26. &nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

In what can be called a ‘scary news' on Halloween, a new NBC News poll seems to have suggested the Americans have lost confidence in US President Joe Biden and their optimism for the country.

In what can be called a ‘scary news' on Halloween, a new NBC News poll seems to have suggested the Americans have lost confidence in US President Joe Biden and their optimism for the country. The moderator of ‘Meet the Press’, Chuck Todd, shared the findings of the latest poll on Sunday. Also Read: Biden urges world leaders to help address global supply-chain issue This development comes days ahead of the off-year November election, which includes the governor's race in Virginia and one year out from the midterm elections. "We have a brand-new NBC News poll out this morning that's filled with some scary news for the Democrats. The overarching message: Americans have lost their confidence in President Biden and their optimism for the country. At least, they have right now," Todd said. Also Read: One dead, 9 injured as gunman opens fire at Halloween party in Texas "Just 22% of adults say we're headed in the right direction. A shocking 71% say we're on the wrong track and that includes a near majority of Democrats, who are saying that. President Biden's approval rating stands at a dismal 42%, versus 54% who disapprove," the moderator said. As per NBC News, around 1,000 adults, 650 of whom were reached only by cellphone, were included in the survey between October 23 and 26. (With inputs from agencies)

‘Scary News' on Halloween? New poll says Americans lose confidence in US President Joe Biden

Democrats are divided over a high stakes infra bill introduced by the US President. Dozens of progressive democrats in the house opposed the 1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill.

US: Democrats divided over a high stakes infra bill

US President Joe Biden recently said that his Build Back Better plan is "a bigger darn deal" than Obamacare. During a CNN town hall Thursday night, Anderson Cooper recalled Biden’s comment in 2010 during the signing of Obamacare.

After grinning at the question, Biden said that his current legislative agenda is “bigger” than Obamacare. It includes a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a multi-trillion dollar reconciliation package. “The answer is yes, this is bigger," Biden said.&nbsp;

“It is bigger because..not because what he did wasn't enormous, he broke the ice, enormous. But part of what I have in here is we also increased access to the Affordable Care Act and we reduced the price an average of 60 bucks a month for anyone who is in the Affordable Care Act. Plus on top of that we have another $300 billion worth of health care in it,” he continued.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-backed-12-trillion-infrastructure-bill-passes-key-hurdle-404062">Also read |&nbsp;Biden-backed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passes key hurdle</a>

“So it's -- I would say this is a bigger darn deal,” the president emphasised.&nbsp;

The comments come as lawmakers are almost at the end of a months-long negotiating period for the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the multi-trillion dollar reconciliation package.

A $1.2 trillion bill aimed at improving the US' roads, highways, bridges, and high-speed internet gained the support of 18 Republican senators and 49 Democratic senators.

With the addition of Republican senators to Democrats, on Saturday, the massive infrastructure bill passed a key procedural hurdle, ensuring its final passage in the upper chamber.

US President Joe Biden recently said that his Build Back Better plan is "a bigger darn deal" than Obamacare. During a CNN town hall Thursday night, Anderson Cooper recalled Biden’s comment in 2010 during the signing of Obamacare.

US President Joe Biden recently said that his Build Back Better plan is "a bigger darn deal" than Obamacare. During a CNN town hall Thursday night, Anderson Cooper recalled Biden’s comment in 2010 during the signing of Obamacare. After grinning at the question, Biden said that his current legislative agenda is “bigger” than Obamacare. It includes a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a multi-trillion dollar reconciliation package. “The answer is yes, this is bigger," Biden said. “It is bigger because..not because what he did wasn't enormous, he broke the ice, enormous. But part of what I have in here is we also increased access to the Affordable Care Act and we reduced the price an average of 60 bucks a month for anyone who is in the Affordable Care Act. Plus on top of that we have another $300 billion worth of health care in it,” he continued. Also read | Biden-backed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passes key hurdle “So it's -- I would say this is a bigger darn deal,” the president emphasised. The comments come as lawmakers are almost at the end of a months-long negotiating period for the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the multi-trillion dollar reconciliation package. A $1.2 trillion bill aimed at improving the US' roads, highways, bridges, and high-speed internet gained the support of 18 Republican senators and 49 Democratic senators. With the addition of Republican senators to Democrats, on Saturday, the massive infrastructure bill passed a key procedural hurdle, ensuring its final passage in the upper chamber.

Democrats' spending plan is 'bigger' than Obamacare, says Biden

Republicans believe they have a good shot at taking Congress next year. But there’s a catch.

The GOP’s ambitions of ending unified Democratic control in Washington in 2022 are colliding with a considerable force that has the ability to sway tens of millions of votes: former President Donald Trump’s increasingly vocal demands that members of his party remain in a permanent state of obedience, endorsing his false claims of a stolen election or risking his wrath.

In a series of public appearances and statements over the past week, Trump has signalled not only that he plans to work against Republicans he deems disloyal, but also that his meritless claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the White House in 2020 will be his litmus test, going so far as to threaten that his voters will sit out future elections.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2024-former-us-president-donald-trump-favourite-candidate-biden-lagging-behind-420648" hreflang="en">US election 2024: Former US President Donald Trump favourite candidate, Biden lagging behind</a>

“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020,” Trump said in a statement last week, “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It’s the single most important thing for Republicans to do.”

The former president’s fixation on disproved conspiracy theories is frustrating to many in his party who see it as needlessly divisive at a time when Republicans feel they are poised to take back the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. They worry he could cost Republicans otherwise winnable seats in Congress and complicate the party’s more immediate goal of winning the governor’s race in Virginia next month.

The concern over Trump’s attempts to make all federal elections a referendum on him points to the larger debate among Republicans over what his role should be, as someone who remains singularly popular with the party’s base but is also a liability with swing voters and a motivator for Democrats to turn out.

Some rising stars in the Republican Party — like Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who ousted Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming from a House leadership post in a bitter intraparty fight over the Jan. 6 riots and Trump’s attempts to downplay them — have been clear: They want Trump to play a role in the 2022 midterms. Stefanik called him “an asset to Republicans on the ballot” at a fundraiser last week.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/hows-biden-doing-do-you-miss-me-yet-trump-pokes-fun-at-us-president-420630" hreflang="en">'How's Biden doing? 'Do you miss me yet?': Trump pokes fun at US President</a>

And top party strategists said they expected the former president to remain front and center&nbsp;in the Republicans’ campaign to retake control of the House. “He’s the leader of the party,” said Corry Bliss, a consultant to Republicans on congressional races. “The more energized and engaged he is, the better we’ll do.”

But party officials believe Trump’s threat about his supporters staying home en masse is real. And the potency of his false claims about 2020 caught even some of his staunchest allies in the party off guard.

The stakes are amplified by Trump’s increasingly pointed hints that he plans to be the party’s nominee in 2024.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has supported exhaustive audits of the 2020 results to look for evidence of voting irregularities that repeated reviews have failed to produce. Still, she has told colleagues that she was surprised by a recent survey of Republican voters in her district, according to one person who spoke with her about it.

The internal survey found that 5% of Republican voters said they would sit out the 2022 election if the state of Georgia did not conduct a forensic audit of the 2020 election — a demand that some of Trump’s hard-core supporters have made. Another 4% said they would consider sitting out the election absent an audit.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/56-in-us-feel-cheating-affected-2020-presidential-election-outcome-says-poll-420060" hreflang="en">56% in US feel cheating affected 2020 presidential election outcome, says poll</a>

The possibility that nearly 10% of Republicans could sit out any election — even one in a solidly red district like the one held by Taylor Greene — was something Republican strategists said they found alarming.

Since Trump left office, polls have repeatedly shown that large majorities of Republican voters want him to run in 2024. And roughly 40% of Republicans say they consider themselves to be primarily his supporters rather than supporters of the party — about the same share who said so last November, according to the political research firm Echelon Insights.

Many Republicans don’t seem to want to hear anything critical about him. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center, for instance, highlighted the lack of an appetite for much dissent. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans, Pew found, said their party should not be accepting of elected officials who criticize Trump.

Trump’s recent interference in the Virginia contest — where polls show the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, narrowly trailing his Democratic rival, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe — worried advisers to Youngkin’s campaign. They watched as their carefully scripted plan to keep the race focused on their candidate and on claims that Democrats have veered too far left became engulfed by news coverage of the former president praising Youngkin at a political rally last week.

Some Republicans said they feared they were watching a preview of the awkward and unpleasant dilemma their candidates would face for the foreseeable future, as Trump remains the most popular figure in their party, determining what candidates say and how voters think.

“Here is where Trump is so destructive,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican member of Congress who lost her seat in suburban Virginia in 2018. That year, voters in swing districts across the country turned against centrist incumbents like her in a repudiation of Trump.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/white-tiger-and-cheetah-furs-a-mess-of-trump-gift-exchanges-419921" hreflang="en">White tiger and cheetah furs: A mess of Trump gift exchanges</a>

“He doesn’t want other people to win without groveling to him. That’s the threat,” Comstock added. “It’s not about winning. It’s all about him. And that’s what’s so stupid about Republicans even trying to deal with him, because you never know when he’ll drive the car off the cliff.”

One of the most concerned is Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader.

McConnell has told colleagues that he is concerned Trump’s campaign to relitigate the 2020 election could depress confidence among Republican voters and hurt the party’s chances at winning back the majority it lost this year after Democrats captured Georgia’s two Senate seats. Republican leaders warned Trump at the time that by blaming fraud for his loss, he would convince many of his supporters in Georgia that their votes in the Senate runoff election on Jan. 5 wouldn’t count, deterring them from participating.

Republican critics of Trump said that history was repeating itself. “Republicans should have learned this lesson after the Georgia debacle,” said Scott Reed, a veteran party strategist who has worked to elect Republicans to the Senate for three decades.

Reed said that the former president’s comments about Republicans not voting “should warrant a sanction from the Republican National Committee.” He warned, “It will impact the 2022 midterms severely.”

The tension between McConnell and Trump has escalated lately, as the former president has ratcheted up his attacks on the minority leader, accusing McConnell of “folding” to Democrats in a recent agreement to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. He called for the leader’s ouster in a recent interview with Fox News, saying, “Mitch is not the guy.”

Trump’s allies did not deny that he was content to see Republicans pay the ultimate political price for what he and a significant portion of his voters saw as disloyalty.

“President Trump is saying: ‘Hey, I’m putting you guys on notice. My people aren’t coming out,’” said Steve Bannon, the former chief White House strategist, who has been using his podcast to further amplify Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. “There could not be a bigger shot across the establishment bow.”

But the harder Trump’s allies push their election fraud claims, the harder it becomes to satisfy their most hard-core followers. Even Taylor Greene, who is as far-right and pro-Trump as they come in the Republican Party, cannot seem to always please the fringe. Lately, she has been feuding online with L. Lin Wood, an Atlanta attorney who helped Trump sow doubts over his loss in Georgia, over which of them truly represents the Trump movement. Wood has accused her of not doing enough to uncover instances of voter fraud. She has said that Wood is “not one of us.”

Such radicalization comes at a cost, said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida who is critical of the former president. At a time when the larger political trends are pointing toward trouble for the Democratic Party in 2022, he said, Trump’s actions risk interfering with what should be a good environment for Republicans.

“This should be a 100%, straight-up referendum on Biden,” Jolly said. “Instead, you have Trump the narcissist trying to inject himself into what should be a glide path for Republicans to an incredibly successful election, by making it all about him.”

Republicans believe they have a good shot at taking Congress next year. But there’s a catch. The GOP’s ambitions of ending unified Democratic control in Washington in 2022 are colliding with a considerable force that has the ability to sway tens of millions of votes: former President Donald Trump’s increasingly vocal demands that members of his party remain in a permanent state of obedience, endorsing his false claims of a stolen election or risking his wrath.

Republicans believe they have a good shot at taking Congress next year. But there’s a catch. The GOP’s ambitions of ending unified Democratic control in Washington in 2022 are colliding with a considerable force that has the ability to sway tens of millions of votes: former President Donald Trump’s increasingly vocal demands that members of his party remain in a permanent state of obedience, endorsing his false claims of a stolen election or risking his wrath. In a series of public appearances and statements over the past week, Trump has signalled not only that he plans to work against Republicans he deems disloyal, but also that his meritless claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the White House in 2020 will be his litmus test, going so far as to threaten that his voters will sit out future elections. Also read | US election 2024: Former US President Donald Trump favourite candidate, Biden lagging behind “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020,” Trump said in a statement last week, “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It’s the single most important thing for Republicans to do.” The former president’s fixation on disproved conspiracy theories is frustrating to many in his party who see it as needlessly divisive at a time when Republicans feel they are poised to take back the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. They worry he could cost Republicans otherwise winnable seats in Congress and complicate the party’s more immediate goal of winning the governor’s race in Virginia next month. The concern over Trump’s attempts to make all federal elections a referendum on him points to the larger debate among Republicans over what his role should be, as someone who remains singularly popular with the party’s base but is also a liability with swing voters and a motivator for Democrats to turn out. Some rising stars in the Republican Party — like Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who ousted Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming from a House leadership post in a bitter intraparty fight over the Jan. 6 riots and Trump’s attempts to downplay them — have been clear: They want Trump to play a role in the 2022 midterms. Stefanik called him “an asset to Republicans on the ballot” at a fundraiser last week. Also read | 'How's Biden doing? 'Do you miss me yet?': Trump pokes fun at US President And top party strategists said they expected the former president to remain front and center in the Republicans’ campaign to retake control of the House. “He’s the leader of the party,” said Corry Bliss, a consultant to Republicans on congressional races. “The more energized and engaged he is, the better we’ll do.” But party officials believe Trump’s threat about his supporters staying home en masse is real. And the potency of his false claims about 2020 caught even some of his staunchest allies in the party off guard. The stakes are amplified by Trump’s increasingly pointed hints that he plans to be the party’s nominee in 2024. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has supported exhaustive audits of the 2020 results to look for evidence of voting irregularities that repeated reviews have failed to produce. Still, she has told colleagues that she was surprised by a recent survey of Republican voters in her district, according to one person who spoke with her about it. The internal survey found that 5% of Republican voters said they would sit out the 2022 election if the state of Georgia did not conduct a forensic audit of the 2020 election — a demand that some of Trump’s hard-core supporters have made. Another 4% said they would consider sitting out the election absent an audit. Also read | 56% in US feel cheating affected 2020 presidential election outcome, says poll The possibility that nearly 10% of Republicans could sit out any election — even one in a solidly red district like the one held by Taylor Greene — was something Republican strategists said they found alarming. Since Trump left office, polls have repeatedly shown that large majorities of Republican voters want him to run in 2024. And roughly 40% of Republicans say they consider themselves to be primarily his supporters rather than supporters of the party — about the same share who said so last November, according to the political research firm Echelon Insights. Many Republicans don’t seem to want to hear anything critical about him. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center, for instance, highlighted the lack of an appetite for much dissent. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans, Pew found, said their party should not be accepting of elected officials who criticize Trump. Trump’s recent interference in the Virginia contest — where polls show the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, narrowly trailing his Democratic rival, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe — worried advisers to Youngkin’s campaign. They watched as their carefully scripted plan to keep the race focused on their candidate and on claims that Democrats have veered too far left became engulfed by news coverage of the former president praising Youngkin at a political rally last week. Some Republicans said they feared they were watching a preview of the awkward and unpleasant dilemma their candidates would face for the foreseeable future, as Trump remains the most popular figure in their party, determining what candidates say and how voters think. “Here is where Trump is so destructive,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican member of Congress who lost her seat in suburban Virginia in 2018. That year, voters in swing districts across the country turned against centrist incumbents like her in a repudiation of Trump. Also read | White tiger and cheetah furs: A mess of Trump gift exchanges “He doesn’t want other people to win without groveling to him. That’s the threat,” Comstock added. “It’s not about winning. It’s all about him. And that’s what’s so stupid about Republicans even trying to deal with him, because you never know when he’ll drive the car off the cliff.” One of the most concerned is Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader. McConnell has told colleagues that he is concerned Trump’s campaign to relitigate the 2020 election could depress confidence among Republican voters and hurt the party’s chances at winning back the majority it lost this year after Democrats captured Georgia’s two Senate seats. Republican leaders warned Trump at the time that by blaming fraud for his loss, he would convince many of his supporters in Georgia that their votes in the Senate runoff election on Jan. 5 wouldn’t count, deterring them from participating. Republican critics of Trump said that history was repeating itself. “Republicans should have learned this lesson after the Georgia debacle,” said Scott Reed, a veteran party strategist who has worked to elect Republicans to the Senate for three decades. Reed said that the former president’s comments about Republicans not voting “should warrant a sanction from the Republican National Committee.” He warned, “It will impact the 2022 midterms severely.” The tension between McConnell and Trump has escalated lately, as the former president has ratcheted up his attacks on the minority leader, accusing McConnell of “folding” to Democrats in a recent agreement to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. He called for the leader’s ouster in a recent interview with Fox News, saying, “Mitch is not the guy.” Trump’s allies did not deny that he was content to see Republicans pay the ultimate political price for what he and a significant portion of his voters saw as disloyalty. “President Trump is saying: ‘Hey, I’m putting you guys on notice. My people aren’t coming out,’” said Steve Bannon, the former chief White House strategist, who has been using his podcast to further amplify Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. “There could not be a bigger shot across the establishment bow.” But the harder Trump’s allies push their election fraud claims, the harder it becomes to satisfy their most hard-core followers. Even Taylor Greene, who is as far-right and pro-Trump as they come in the Republican Party, cannot seem to always please the fringe. Lately, she has been feuding online with L. Lin Wood, an Atlanta attorney who helped Trump sow doubts over his loss in Georgia, over which of them truly represents the Trump movement. Wood has accused her of not doing enough to uncover instances of voter fraud. She has said that Wood is “not one of us.” Such radicalization comes at a cost, said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida who is critical of the former president. At a time when the larger political trends are pointing toward trouble for the Democratic Party in 2022, he said, Trump’s actions risk interfering with what should be a good environment for Republicans. “This should be a 100%, straight-up referendum on Biden,” Jolly said. “Instead, you have Trump the narcissist trying to inject himself into what should be a glide path for Republicans to an incredibly successful election, by making it all about him.”

As Trump thunders about last election, Republicans worry about the next one

With all the subtlety of a bullhorn, former President Donald Trump has been hinting that he plans to run for office again in 2024.

And Republicans are so far treating him with the deference they displayed while he was in the White House as they wait to see if he makes his move.

On Saturday afternoon, Trump heads to Iowa for a rally at the state fairgrounds, a perennial stop on the presidential campaign circuit. Joining him will be several of the state’s top Republicans, including Gov. Kim Reynolds, Sen. Charles E. Grassley and the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, Jeff Kaufmann — a testament to the former president’s enduring dominance.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-tells-former-aides-to-defy-subpoenas-from-jan-6-panel-419184">Trump tells former aides to defy subpoenas from Jan. 6 panel</a>

Trump’s unwillingness to cede the spotlight has cast doubt on the political futures of an entire group of Republican politicians who have suggested that they might someday want to run for president. And while they — like the rest of the country — can’t be sure what the notoriously fickle former president might do, some of them are trying to stake their claims as leaders in the party.

That requires a good deal of delicacy on their part. And it got a little awkward this week for two of them.

First there was former Vice President Mike Pence, whose refusal to interfere with the counting of the electoral votes on Jan. 6 deeply angered <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Trump</a> and helped precipitate the deadly assault on the Capitol that day. Pence gave an interview this week to Sean Hannity of Fox News and sounded at times an awful lot like someone who wants to be president.

Also read |&nbsp;​​​​​​​<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/despite-disagreements-over-january-6-pence-still-close-to-trump-418444">Despite disagreements over January 6, Pence still 'close to' Trump</a>

He attacked President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a> for withdrawing US&nbsp;forces from Afghanistan. He also criticized the president’s approach to domestic affairs — for “lecturing the American people about vaccine mandates” and promoting what Pence called a “massive, big-government, socialist bill” before Congress that would widen the social safety net and address problems like climate change.

But when Hannity broached the subject of Pence’s reportedly frayed relationship with Trump, the former vice president tried to deflect by accusing the news media of blowing the events of Jan. 6 out of proportion, referring to it obliquely at one point as “one day in January.”

“They want to use that one day to try and demean the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believe we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration,” Pence said.

He did not address the fact that numerous rioters at the Capitol called for his execution during the attack, demanding that he be hanged for not carrying out Trump’s wishes. And Hannity didn’t bring it up.

Then there was a speech by Nikki Haley, another former Trump administration official whose relationship with Trump was damaged because she had declared herself “disgusted” with him after Jan. 6 and predicted that he’d “lost any sort of political viability.”

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/now-trump-drops-off-forbes-list-amid-pandemic-downturn-418624">Now, Trump drops off Forbes list amid pandemic downturn</a>

But Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, praised Trump in an appearance at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. She criticized Trump’s political opponents for accusing him of being compromised by the Russians, and said that Biden’s posture toward Russia was weaker by comparison.

Separately, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, she lauded Trump’s ability to “get strong people elected” and insisted, “I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.”

At the moment, that doesn’t seem like an option for Haley or anyone else who wants to have a bright future in the Republican Party. Trump continues to attack Republicans who broke with him after Jan. 6 and supported his impeachment, such as Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

His first rally since the day of the Capitol riot was in June outside Cleveland. He endorsed a local Republican who was challenging Rep. Anthony Gonzalez in next year’s primary election. Gonzalez, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the riot, announced last month that he was leaving Congress rather than staying to face his Trump-approved challenger.

Also read |&nbsp;​​​​​​​<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-airs-old-election-grievances-at-campaign-style-rally-394254">Trump airs old election grievances at campaign-style rally</a>

Polls taken over the course of the year have shown that Trump remains the overwhelming favorite for Republican voters, suggesting that he would be difficult to beat in a primary if he did indeed run. Though his popularity suffered somewhat in the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, most Republicans seem to have moved on. A Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday found that two-thirds of Republicans say Trump should continue to be a major national figure, an increase of 10 percentage points from January. Forty-four percent of Republicans or Republican-leaning voters want him to run again.

The Pew poll also found little tolerance for dissent. Asked whether their party should accept politicians who openly criticize Trump, 63 per cent&nbsp;said no.

With all the subtlety of a bullhorn, former President Donald Trump has been hinting that he plans to run for office again in 2024. And Republicans are so far treating him with the deference they displayed while he was in the White House as they wait to see if he makes his move.

With all the subtlety of a bullhorn, former President Donald Trump has been hinting that he plans to run for office again in 2024. And Republicans are so far treating him with the deference they displayed while he was in the White House as they wait to see if he makes his move. On Saturday afternoon, Trump heads to Iowa for a rally at the state fairgrounds, a perennial stop on the presidential campaign circuit. Joining him will be several of the state’s top Republicans, including Gov. Kim Reynolds, Sen. Charles E. Grassley and the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, Jeff Kaufmann — a testament to the former president’s enduring dominance. Also read | Trump tells former aides to defy subpoenas from Jan. 6 panel Trump’s unwillingness to cede the spotlight has cast doubt on the political futures of an entire group of Republican politicians who have suggested that they might someday want to run for president. And while they — like the rest of the country — can’t be sure what the notoriously fickle former president might do, some of them are trying to stake their claims as leaders in the party. That requires a good deal of delicacy on their part. And it got a little awkward this week for two of them. First there was former Vice President Mike Pence, whose refusal to interfere with the counting of the electoral votes on Jan. 6 deeply angered Trump and helped precipitate the deadly assault on the Capitol that day. Pence gave an interview this week to Sean Hannity of Fox News and sounded at times an awful lot like someone who wants to be president. Also read | Despite disagreements over January 6, Pence still 'close to' Trump He attacked President Joe Biden for withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan. He also criticized the president’s approach to domestic affairs — for “lecturing the American people about vaccine mandates” and promoting what Pence called a “massive, big-government, socialist bill” before Congress that would widen the social safety net and address problems like climate change. But when Hannity broached the subject of Pence’s reportedly frayed relationship with Trump, the former vice president tried to deflect by accusing the news media of blowing the events of Jan. 6 out of proportion, referring to it obliquely at one point as “one day in January.” “They want to use that one day to try and demean the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believe we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration,” Pence said. He did not address the fact that numerous rioters at the Capitol called for his execution during the attack, demanding that he be hanged for not carrying out Trump’s wishes. And Hannity didn’t bring it up. Then there was a speech by Nikki Haley, another former Trump administration official whose relationship with Trump was damaged because she had declared herself “disgusted” with him after Jan. 6 and predicted that he’d “lost any sort of political viability.” Also read | Now, Trump drops off Forbes list amid pandemic downturn But Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, praised Trump in an appearance at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. She criticized Trump’s political opponents for accusing him of being compromised by the Russians, and said that Biden’s posture toward Russia was weaker by comparison. Separately, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, she lauded Trump’s ability to “get strong people elected” and insisted, “I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.” At the moment, that doesn’t seem like an option for Haley or anyone else who wants to have a bright future in the Republican Party. Trump continues to attack Republicans who broke with him after Jan. 6 and supported his impeachment, such as Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. His first rally since the day of the Capitol riot was in June outside Cleveland. He endorsed a local Republican who was challenging Rep. Anthony Gonzalez in next year’s primary election. Gonzalez, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the riot, announced last month that he was leaving Congress rather than staying to face his Trump-approved challenger. Also read | Trump airs old election grievances at campaign-style rally Polls taken over the course of the year have shown that Trump remains the overwhelming favorite for Republican voters, suggesting that he would be difficult to beat in a primary if he did indeed run. Though his popularity suffered somewhat in the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, most Republicans seem to have moved on. A Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday found that two-thirds of Republicans say Trump should continue to be a major national figure, an increase of 10 percentage points from January. Forty-four percent of Republicans or Republican-leaning voters want him to run again. The Pew poll also found little tolerance for dissent. Asked whether their party should accept politicians who openly criticize Trump, 63 per cent said no.

Trump may run in 2024. So might they. It’s getting awkward.

As Democratic leaders struggle to unite their caucus behind a sprawling domestic policy package, it is increasingly clear the $3.5 trillion in spending and tax increases will have to be pared back, possibly by a lot, to make it to President Joe Biden’s desk.

That will involve difficult choices for a party fractured by mistrust and competing priorities. But in a package that is intended to shape every facet of American life, including public education, health care and the environment, there is room for agreement, even in a thinly divided Congress.

Here are three possible scenarios for how to structure a final deal.

A slightly scaled-back plan that uses budget tricks to hold down the cost.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chair of the Senate Budget Committee, initially urged his colleagues to embrace spending as much as $6 trillion over 10 years as they began drafting the bill.

To narrow the scope to its current price tag of $3.5 trillion over 10 years, aides said, Sanders and his colleagues employed budget gimmicks such as setting earlier end dates on programs or narrowing their proposed size to lower their cost.

In essence, rather than sacrificing entire programs, Democrats opted to shave down the amount of money devoted to some of them. It is a tactic they could use again to further scale back the package.

Democrats have said they want to extend the refundable child tax credit, which was expanded as part of the $1.9 trillion pandemic aid bill enacted in March and now provides benefits to more than 93% of children — 69 million — by sending monthly checks of up to $300 per child to families. They could lower the overall cost of the package by extending it until 2024 instead of 2025.

Similarly, a proposed expansion of Medicare benefits to cover dental, vision and hearing provisions could be phased in more slowly, reducing its cost in the bill’s official 10-year time frame.

House Democrats have proposed giving seniors access to vision benefits immediately, hearing benefits in 2023 and a dental program in 2028. Some top Senate Democrats say they want to see the dental benefit established sooner. Although rolling it out slower would be cheaper, Democrats would most likely fail to reap an immediate political benefit.

A lowest-common-denominator $900 billion package that extends existing health and child care benefits.

The easiest fallback for Democrats might be to extend the generous tax credits and other benefits created for a single year in the $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief law, known as the American Rescue Plan. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, that skinny option would total $900 billion, still more than President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus plan, which, when it passed, was considered huge.

The expansion of the child tax credit has already been hailed as a sea change in anti-poverty policy. Right now, the House is planning to extend it through 2025 at a cost to the Treasury of around $500 billion.

The law also greatly expanded subsidies for the purchase of health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and extended those subsidies further into the middle class through 2022. Extending them for 10 years would cost $210 billion.

For workers without children, the pandemic relief law raised the maximum earned-income tax credit, which supplements the income of the working poor, from about $540 to about $1,500 and raised the income cap to qualify from about $16,000 to about $21,000, while letting adults as young as 19 access the program for the first time. Extending that would cost $135 billion. Another popular but temporary provision — a much larger child and dependent care tax credit — could be extended by a decade for $95 billion.

Politically, this skinny option should not be a heavy lift, since the House and Senate have already passed both programs. Extending the child tax credit out a full decade would push the price tag to $1.5 trillion.

The cost of such a plan could be covered by proposals drafted by the House Ways and Means Committee to raise taxes on the wealthy and increase the corporate income tax rate.

A middle-ground $1.5 trillion bill that invests huge resources in programs to combat climate change.

Progressive Democrats have indicated that they will not vote for the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that has already passed the Senate and would fund new roads, bridges and tunnels without ensuring passage of the climate change and social welfare bill, which would push the country’s fleet of cars, trucks and buses more toward electric power, supported by electric utilities fortified to handle all those vehicles and fueled by solar, wind and other renewable sources. To pass the former without the latter could actually make global warming worse, they argue.

To answer those concerns, Democrats could include the social welfare components of the lowest-common-denominator option — extending the temporary benefits of the American Rescue Plan — while going big on climate change. Those climate provisions would cost $585 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

They would push utilities away from coal and natural gas-fired power plants with a $150 billion Clean Electricity Performance Program, fund renewable-energy deployment with tax credits worth more than $100 billion and offer $42 billion worth of tax credits for the purchase of electric cars, trucks and buses, while also pumping billions into home and commercial energy efficiency.

Those efforts, with a full, 10-year extension of the child credit, would push the total to $2.1 trillion.

Adding the remainder of the international corporate and business tax changes drafted by the House Ways and Means Committee to the higher corporate tax rate and increased taxes on the rich would just about pay for this option.

As Democratic leaders struggle to unite their caucus behind a sprawling domestic policy package, it is increasingly clear the $3.5 trillion in spending and tax increases will have to be pared back, possibly by a lot, to make it to President Joe Biden’s desk.

As Democratic leaders struggle to unite their caucus behind a sprawling domestic policy package, it is increasingly clear the $3.5 trillion in spending and tax increases will have to be pared back, possibly by a lot, to make it to President Joe Biden’s desk. That will involve difficult choices for a party fractured by mistrust and competing priorities. But in a package that is intended to shape every facet of American life, including public education, health care and the environment, there is room for agreement, even in a thinly divided Congress. Here are three possible scenarios for how to structure a final deal. A slightly scaled-back plan that uses budget tricks to hold down the cost. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chair of the Senate Budget Committee, initially urged his colleagues to embrace spending as much as $6 trillion over 10 years as they began drafting the bill. To narrow the scope to its current price tag of $3.5 trillion over 10 years, aides said, Sanders and his colleagues employed budget gimmicks such as setting earlier end dates on programs or narrowing their proposed size to lower their cost. In essence, rather than sacrificing entire programs, Democrats opted to shave down the amount of money devoted to some of them. It is a tactic they could use again to further scale back the package. Democrats have said they want to extend the refundable child tax credit, which was expanded as part of the $1.9 trillion pandemic aid bill enacted in March and now provides benefits to more than 93% of children — 69 million — by sending monthly checks of up to $300 per child to families. They could lower the overall cost of the package by extending it until 2024 instead of 2025. Similarly, a proposed expansion of Medicare benefits to cover dental, vision and hearing provisions could be phased in more slowly, reducing its cost in the bill’s official 10-year time frame. House Democrats have proposed giving seniors access to vision benefits immediately, hearing benefits in 2023 and a dental program in 2028. Some top Senate Democrats say they want to see the dental benefit established sooner. Although rolling it out slower would be cheaper, Democrats would most likely fail to reap an immediate political benefit. A lowest-common-denominator $900 billion package that extends existing health and child care benefits. The easiest fallback for Democrats might be to extend the generous tax credits and other benefits created for a single year in the $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief law, known as the American Rescue Plan. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, that skinny option would total $900 billion, still more than President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus plan, which, when it passed, was considered huge. The expansion of the child tax credit has already been hailed as a sea change in anti-poverty policy. Right now, the House is planning to extend it through 2025 at a cost to the Treasury of around $500 billion. The law also greatly expanded subsidies for the purchase of health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and extended those subsidies further into the middle class through 2022. Extending them for 10 years would cost $210 billion. For workers without children, the pandemic relief law raised the maximum earned-income tax credit, which supplements the income of the working poor, from about $540 to about $1,500 and raised the income cap to qualify from about $16,000 to about $21,000, while letting adults as young as 19 access the program for the first time. Extending that would cost $135 billion. Another popular but temporary provision — a much larger child and dependent care tax credit — could be extended by a decade for $95 billion. Politically, this skinny option should not be a heavy lift, since the House and Senate have already passed both programs. Extending the child tax credit out a full decade would push the price tag to $1.5 trillion. The cost of such a plan could be covered by proposals drafted by the House Ways and Means Committee to raise taxes on the wealthy and increase the corporate income tax rate. A middle-ground $1.5 trillion bill that invests huge resources in programs to combat climate change. Progressive Democrats have indicated that they will not vote for the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that has already passed the Senate and would fund new roads, bridges and tunnels without ensuring passage of the climate change and social welfare bill, which would push the country’s fleet of cars, trucks and buses more toward electric power, supported by electric utilities fortified to handle all those vehicles and fueled by solar, wind and other renewable sources. To pass the former without the latter could actually make global warming worse, they argue. To answer those concerns, Democrats could include the social welfare components of the lowest-common-denominator option — extending the temporary benefits of the American Rescue Plan — while going big on climate change. Those climate provisions would cost $585 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. They would push utilities away from coal and natural gas-fired power plants with a $150 billion Clean Electricity Performance Program, fund renewable-energy deployment with tax credits worth more than $100 billion and offer $42 billion worth of tax credits for the purchase of electric cars, trucks and buses, while also pumping billions into home and commercial energy efficiency. Those efforts, with a full, 10-year extension of the child credit, would push the total to $2.1 trillion. Adding the remainder of the international corporate and business tax changes drafted by the House Ways and Means Committee to the higher corporate tax rate and increased taxes on the rich would just about pay for this option.

How Democrats could shrink their $3.5 trillion budget bill

President Joe Biden huddled with congressional Democrats on Wednesday to try to break through a potentially devastating impasse over his multitrillion-dollar domestic agenda, toiling to bridge intraparty divisions over an ambitious social safety net bill and a major infrastructure measure as Congress raced to head off a fiscal calamity.

Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are nearing a make-or-break moment in their bid to push through huge new policies, as an escalating fight between the progressive and moderate wings — and a multitude of other divisions within the party — threatens to sink their chances of doing so while they retain control in Washington.

At the same time, even the basic functions of Congress — keeping the government from shutting down next week and from defaulting on its debt sometime next month — are in peril as Republicans refuse to support legislation that would both fund the government and increase the statutory cap on federal borrowing.

The challenges are unfolding against a backdrop of mistrust and strife within Democratic ranks. Moderates are pressing for quick action on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill; progressives are demanding approval first of a far-reaching, $3.5 trillion domestic policy plan including vast new investments in climate, education, health and social programs.

Without consensus on both, Democrats, who have minuscule majorities in the House and Senate, will not have enough votes to send either to Biden’s desk. That prospect has sown alarm at the top echelons of the party.

On Wednesday, John Podesta, who held key White House roles under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, sent a memo to every Democrat on Capitol Hill imploring them to scale back the $3.5 trillion plan in the interest of compromise, warning that doing otherwise would risk sinking both bills and costing the party control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

“You are either getting both bills or neither — and the prospect of neither is unconscionable,” he wrote. “It would signal a complete and utter failure of our democratic duty, and a reckless abdication of our responsibility. It would define our generation’s history and show that, when our time came, we failed, both for Americans now and in the years to come.”

Biden’s long day of meetings with lawmakers reflected a recognition that “there needs to be a deeper engagement by the president” to bring Democrats together, said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary.

The president, she added, “sees his role as uniting and as working to bring together people over common agreement and on a path forward.”

That path is exceedingly murky as Democrats careen toward a tangle of fiscal and political deadlines with no discernible public strategy in place, but party leaders remained publicly sanguine on Wednesday.

“We are on schedule — that’s all I will say,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters after meeting with Biden for more than an hour. “We’re calm, and everybody’s good, and our work’s almost done.”

But Democrats conceded that the process was painful.

“When you’ve got 50 votes and none to lose, and you’ve got three to spare in the House, there’s a lot of give and take — that’s just the way it is,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “It’s tough. But I think at the end of the day, we’re going to be fine.”

At the crux of the stalemate is a leadership commitment to a group of moderate Democrats that the House would take up the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill by Monday. Liberal House Democrats say they will vote down the measure until their priority legislation first clears both the House and Senate.

Those Democrats say the infrastructure bill, which omitted most of their top priorities including major provisions to combat climate change, cannot be separated from the $3.5 trillion package, which contains many of those elements, such as a shift to electric power. Beyond the climate portions, the social policy measure would, among many other things, extend child care and child tax credits, expand free prekindergarten and community college and fortify Medicare.

But key centrists in the Senate have balked at that package, which Democrats plan to push through using a fast-track budget process known as reconciliation that shields it from a filibuster. Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona both voted to begin work on a $3.5 trillion measure, but have since warned they will not support spending that much.

On Wednesday, Biden urged the holdouts to specify exactly what they would support, so Democrats could coalesce behind a plan that could pass.

“Find a number you’re comfortable with, based on what you believe the needs that we still have, and how we deliver to the American people,” Manchin said, describing the president’s request. “He was very straightforward in what he asked us to do.”

The internal disputes are escalating just as Congress is facing urgent deadlines. Without congressional action, at 12:01 a.m. next Friday, federal funding will lapse, shutting down the government. And at some point in October, the Treasury Department will reach its statutory borrowing limit, forcing it to halt some payments to international creditors, Social Security recipients and government contractors.

Amid those looming crises, Republican leaders are practically taunting Democrats, refusing to back legislation coupling a debt-limit increase and a stopgap spending measure.

“Don’t play Russian roulette with the economy; step up and raise the debt ceiling,” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said on Wednesday, even as he vowed not to give Democrats a single Republican vote.

And House Republicans on Wednesday urged their rank-and-file members to oppose the bipartisan infrastructure bill that they said had been “inextricably linked” to the reconciliation package.

“Republicans should not aid in this destructive process,” the office of Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, warned in a notice calling for “no” votes.

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of former Treasury secretaries wrote to congressional leaders in both parties to express a “deep sense of urgency” to raise the debt limit. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, offered a similar plea in a news conference.

“No one should assume that the Fed or anyone else can protect the markets and the economy, fully protect, in the event of a failure to make sure that we do pay those debts when they’re due,” he said.

Beyond that issue, Democrats must find a way to salvage Biden’s agenda. They had hoped to emerge from Wednesday’s meeting with public commitments from key moderates including Manchin and Sinema to support a reconciliation bill, but by evening they still had no such statement from the two senators.

Offering “COVID-safe” individually wrapped chocolate chip cookies bearing the presidential seal, Biden spent much of the day on Wednesday hosting groups of lawmakers in the Oval Office, beginning with Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader.

He met with nearly two dozen senators and House members from across the ideological range of his party, including liberal leaders and some of the moderates who played key roles in negotiating the infrastructure bill.

White House officials said Biden and his team would have follow-up meetings, beginning Thursday.

By Monday, leaders hope to reach agreement on a total price for the reconciliation measure, which will likely fall below the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, and an ironclad agreement on some key provisions that must be in the final package.

So far, neither side is budging. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused more conservative Democrats of making “impulsive and arbitrary demands,” while setting unnecessary deadlines like the Monday infrastructure vote.

“The package, the investments and the programs that we have in there are rather nonnegotiable. That’s why we are kind of at this impasse,” she said, adding, “We are at a moment, and a test of political will.”

Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a moderate from Florida, said it would be “really disappointing and embarrassing” if the infrastructure bill failed because of opposition from progressives.

After her meeting with Biden, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that “there isn’t a lot of trust” among Democrats, reiterating that liberals would follow through on their promise to vote against the infrastructure measure on Monday.

But the list of moderate objections is long and varied. Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon wants a bill that spends less than $1 trillion over 10 years. Rep. Ed Case of Hawaii has said he will not accept phasing in or phasing out of programs and tax measures to mask their true costs if made permanent. Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York objects to the get-tough approach to curb prescription drug prices.

And the disputes go beyond ideological differences. Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York says he will not vote for any version that does not substantially reinstate the state and local tax deduction, a crucial issue for high-tax states. Rep. Alma Adams of North Carolina says she will oppose the bill if it does not include tens of billions of dollars more for historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions.

Democrats across the ideological spectrum said forging consensus would be a tall order.

“We’ve got a hectic few days ahead,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a moderate from New Jersey, said after emerging from his negotiating session with Biden and other lawmakers.

President Joe Biden huddled with congressional Democrats on Wednesday to try to break through a potentially devastating impasse over his multitrillion-dollar domestic agenda, toiling to bridge intraparty divisions over an ambitious social safety net bill and a major infrastructure measure as Congress raced to head off a fiscal calamity.

President Joe Biden huddled with congressional Democrats on Wednesday to try to break through a potentially devastating impasse over his multitrillion-dollar domestic agenda, toiling to bridge intraparty divisions over an ambitious social safety net bill and a major infrastructure measure as Congress raced to head off a fiscal calamity. Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are nearing a make-or-break moment in their bid to push through huge new policies, as an escalating fight between the progressive and moderate wings — and a multitude of other divisions within the party — threatens to sink their chances of doing so while they retain control in Washington. At the same time, even the basic functions of Congress — keeping the government from shutting down next week and from defaulting on its debt sometime next month — are in peril as Republicans refuse to support legislation that would both fund the government and increase the statutory cap on federal borrowing. The challenges are unfolding against a backdrop of mistrust and strife within Democratic ranks. Moderates are pressing for quick action on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill; progressives are demanding approval first of a far-reaching, $3.5 trillion domestic policy plan including vast new investments in climate, education, health and social programs. Without consensus on both, Democrats, who have minuscule majorities in the House and Senate, will not have enough votes to send either to Biden’s desk. That prospect has sown alarm at the top echelons of the party. On Wednesday, John Podesta, who held key White House roles under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, sent a memo to every Democrat on Capitol Hill imploring them to scale back the $3.5 trillion plan in the interest of compromise, warning that doing otherwise would risk sinking both bills and costing the party control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. “You are either getting both bills or neither — and the prospect of neither is unconscionable,” he wrote. “It would signal a complete and utter failure of our democratic duty, and a reckless abdication of our responsibility. It would define our generation’s history and show that, when our time came, we failed, both for Americans now and in the years to come.” Biden’s long day of meetings with lawmakers reflected a recognition that “there needs to be a deeper engagement by the president” to bring Democrats together, said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary. The president, she added, “sees his role as uniting and as working to bring together people over common agreement and on a path forward.” That path is exceedingly murky as Democrats careen toward a tangle of fiscal and political deadlines with no discernible public strategy in place, but party leaders remained publicly sanguine on Wednesday. “We are on schedule — that’s all I will say,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters after meeting with Biden for more than an hour. “We’re calm, and everybody’s good, and our work’s almost done.” But Democrats conceded that the process was painful. “When you’ve got 50 votes and none to lose, and you’ve got three to spare in the House, there’s a lot of give and take — that’s just the way it is,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “It’s tough. But I think at the end of the day, we’re going to be fine.” At the crux of the stalemate is a leadership commitment to a group of moderate Democrats that the House would take up the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill by Monday. Liberal House Democrats say they will vote down the measure until their priority legislation first clears both the House and Senate. Those Democrats say the infrastructure bill, which omitted most of their top priorities including major provisions to combat climate change, cannot be separated from the $3.5 trillion package, which contains many of those elements, such as a shift to electric power. Beyond the climate portions, the social policy measure would, among many other things, extend child care and child tax credits, expand free prekindergarten and community college and fortify Medicare. But key centrists in the Senate have balked at that package, which Democrats plan to push through using a fast-track budget process known as reconciliation that shields it from a filibuster. Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona both voted to begin work on a $3.5 trillion measure, but have since warned they will not support spending that much. On Wednesday, Biden urged the holdouts to specify exactly what they would support, so Democrats could coalesce behind a plan that could pass. “Find a number you’re comfortable with, based on what you believe the needs that we still have, and how we deliver to the American people,” Manchin said, describing the president’s request. “He was very straightforward in what he asked us to do.” The internal disputes are escalating just as Congress is facing urgent deadlines. Without congressional action, at 12:01 a.m. next Friday, federal funding will lapse, shutting down the government. And at some point in October, the Treasury Department will reach its statutory borrowing limit, forcing it to halt some payments to international creditors, Social Security recipients and government contractors. Amid those looming crises, Republican leaders are practically taunting Democrats, refusing to back legislation coupling a debt-limit increase and a stopgap spending measure. “Don’t play Russian roulette with the economy; step up and raise the debt ceiling,” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said on Wednesday, even as he vowed not to give Democrats a single Republican vote. And House Republicans on Wednesday urged their rank-and-file members to oppose the bipartisan infrastructure bill that they said had been “inextricably linked” to the reconciliation package. “Republicans should not aid in this destructive process,” the office of Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, warned in a notice calling for “no” votes. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of former Treasury secretaries wrote to congressional leaders in both parties to express a “deep sense of urgency” to raise the debt limit. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, offered a similar plea in a news conference. “No one should assume that the Fed or anyone else can protect the markets and the economy, fully protect, in the event of a failure to make sure that we do pay those debts when they’re due,” he said. Beyond that issue, Democrats must find a way to salvage Biden’s agenda. They had hoped to emerge from Wednesday’s meeting with public commitments from key moderates including Manchin and Sinema to support a reconciliation bill, but by evening they still had no such statement from the two senators. Offering “COVID-safe” individually wrapped chocolate chip cookies bearing the presidential seal, Biden spent much of the day on Wednesday hosting groups of lawmakers in the Oval Office, beginning with Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader. He met with nearly two dozen senators and House members from across the ideological range of his party, including liberal leaders and some of the moderates who played key roles in negotiating the infrastructure bill. White House officials said Biden and his team would have follow-up meetings, beginning Thursday. By Monday, leaders hope to reach agreement on a total price for the reconciliation measure, which will likely fall below the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, and an ironclad agreement on some key provisions that must be in the final package. So far, neither side is budging. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused more conservative Democrats of making “impulsive and arbitrary demands,” while setting unnecessary deadlines like the Monday infrastructure vote. “The package, the investments and the programs that we have in there are rather nonnegotiable. That’s why we are kind of at this impasse,” she said, adding, “We are at a moment, and a test of political will.” Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a moderate from Florida, said it would be “really disappointing and embarrassing” if the infrastructure bill failed because of opposition from progressives. After her meeting with Biden, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that “there isn’t a lot of trust” among Democrats, reiterating that liberals would follow through on their promise to vote against the infrastructure measure on Monday. But the list of moderate objections is long and varied. Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon wants a bill that spends less than $1 trillion over 10 years. Rep. Ed Case of Hawaii has said he will not accept phasing in or phasing out of programs and tax measures to mask their true costs if made permanent. Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York objects to the get-tough approach to curb prescription drug prices. And the disputes go beyond ideological differences. Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York says he will not vote for any version that does not substantially reinstate the state and local tax deduction, a crucial issue for high-tax states. Rep. Alma Adams of North Carolina says she will oppose the bill if it does not include tens of billions of dollars more for historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions. Democrats across the ideological spectrum said forging consensus would be a tall order. “We’ve got a hectic few days ahead,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a moderate from New Jersey, said after emerging from his negotiating session with Biden and other lawmakers.

Biden huddles with Democrats as divisions threaten his agenda

Senate Democrats on Tuesday will propose a pared-down voting rights bill that has the backing of both progressives and centrists in an effort to present a united front against deep Republican resistance to new legislation setting nationwide election standards.

<article>
The measure is the result of weeks of intraparty negotiations overseen by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, the majority leader, and was built on principles put forward by Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the lone Democratic holdout against an earlier, much more sweeping piece of legislation called the For the People Act. Still, like that measure, it faces steep odds in the Senate, where it is unlikely to persuade Republicans to drop their opposition to legislation they have argued is an egregious overreach and an existential threat to their party.

The new bill, called the Freedom to Vote Act, drops some contentious elements of that initial bill such as restructuring the Federal Election Commission. It focuses heavily on guaranteeing access to the ballot following new voting restrictions being enacted around the country by Republican legislatures since the 2020 election. And it would set a national voter identification standard — something that many Democrats have vehemently opposed — but one that would be far less onerous than some states have attempted to impose, allowing voters to meet the requirement with a variety of identification cards and documents in paper and digital form.

The revised measure would also require that states allow at minimum 15 consecutive days of early voting, including two weekends; ensure that all voters can request to vote by mail; establish new automatic voter registration programs, and make Election Day a national holiday. The legislation would mandate that states follow specific criteria when drawing new congressional districting lines and would force disclosure of donors to so-called dark money groups.

“Following the 2020 elections in which more Americans voted than ever before, we have seen unprecedented attacks on our democracy in states across the country,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who leads the Rules Committee, which is responsible for election oversight. “These attacks demand an immediate federal response.”

Manchin had balked at the original legislation and offered elements of a voting bill he would back, prompting the negotiations between him, Klobuchar and fellow Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, Alex Padilla of California and Raphael Warnock of Georgia. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, also participated.

While Democrats cheered the agreement, they also recognized that they were unlikely to attract sufficient Republican support to break a filibuster against any voting bill, meaning that they would have to unite to force a change to Senate rules governing the filibuster if the legislation was to have any chance of passage. Republicans have already blocked debate on a voting rights measure twice before.

“We must be honest about the facts,” Schumer said Monday as he said he would try to break the impasse again next week. “The Republican-led war on democracy has only worsened in the last few weeks.”

Despite his support for the legislation, Manchin has reiterated multiple times his refusal to abolish the filibuster, although he has also indicated a willingness to entertain some changes. Schumer noted Monday that Manchin had been reaching out to Republicans to persuade them to back the new version of the voting rights bill.

Democrats hope continuing Republican opposition to a measure Manchin is now invested in as one of the chief authors will soften his opposition to weakening the filibuster, allowing his party to advance a measure they see as crucial to countering new voting restrictions in Republican-led states.

Manchin did not mention the filibuster in a statement strongly endorsing the new proposal.

“The right to vote is fundamental to our democracy and the Freedom to Vote Act is a step in the right direction towards protecting that right for every American,” Manchin said. “As elected officials, we also have an obligation to restore peoples’ faith in our democracy, and I believe that the common sense provisions in this bill — like flexible voter ID requirements — will do just that.”
</article>

Senate Democrats on Tuesday will propose a pared-down voting rights bill that has the backing of both progressives and centrists in an effort to present a united front against deep Republican resistance to new legislation setting nationwide election standards.

Senate Democrats on Tuesday will propose a pared-down voting rights bill that has the backing of both progressives and centrists in an effort to present a united front against deep Republican resistance to new legislation setting nationwide election standards. The measure is the result of weeks of intraparty negotiations overseen by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, the majority leader, and was built on principles put forward by Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the lone Democratic holdout against an earlier, much more sweeping piece of legislation called the For the People Act. Still, like that measure, it faces steep odds in the Senate, where it is unlikely to persuade Republicans to drop their opposition to legislation they have argued is an egregious overreach and an existential threat to their party. The new bill, called the Freedom to Vote Act, drops some contentious elements of that initial bill such as restructuring the Federal Election Commission. It focuses heavily on guaranteeing access to the ballot following new voting restrictions being enacted around the country by Republican legislatures since the 2020 election. And it would set a national voter identification standard — something that many Democrats have vehemently opposed — but one that would be far less onerous than some states have attempted to impose, allowing voters to meet the requirement with a variety of identification cards and documents in paper and digital form. The revised measure would also require that states allow at minimum 15 consecutive days of early voting, including two weekends; ensure that all voters can request to vote by mail; establish new automatic voter registration programs, and make Election Day a national holiday. The legislation would mandate that states follow specific criteria when drawing new congressional districting lines and would force disclosure of donors to so-called dark money groups. “Following the 2020 elections in which more Americans voted than ever before, we have seen unprecedented attacks on our democracy in states across the country,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who leads the Rules Committee, which is responsible for election oversight. “These attacks demand an immediate federal response.” Manchin had balked at the original legislation and offered elements of a voting bill he would back, prompting the negotiations between him, Klobuchar and fellow Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, Alex Padilla of California and Raphael Warnock of Georgia. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, also participated. While Democrats cheered the agreement, they also recognized that they were unlikely to attract sufficient Republican support to break a filibuster against any voting bill, meaning that they would have to unite to force a change to Senate rules governing the filibuster if the legislation was to have any chance of passage. Republicans have already blocked debate on a voting rights measure twice before. “We must be honest about the facts,” Schumer said Monday as he said he would try to break the impasse again next week. “The Republican-led war on democracy has only worsened in the last few weeks.” Despite his support for the legislation, Manchin has reiterated multiple times his refusal to abolish the filibuster, although he has also indicated a willingness to entertain some changes. Schumer noted Monday that Manchin had been reaching out to Republicans to persuade them to back the new version of the voting rights bill. Democrats hope continuing Republican opposition to a measure Manchin is now invested in as one of the chief authors will soften his opposition to weakening the filibuster, allowing his party to advance a measure they see as crucial to countering new voting restrictions in Republican-led states. Manchin did not mention the filibuster in a statement strongly endorsing the new proposal. “The right to vote is fundamental to our democracy and the Freedom to Vote Act is a step in the right direction towards protecting that right for every American,” Manchin said. “As elected officials, we also have an obligation to restore peoples’ faith in our democracy, and I believe that the common sense provisions in this bill — like flexible voter ID requirements — will do just that.”

Democrats to propose compromise voting rights bill

House Democrats on Monday presented a plan to pay for their expansive social policy and climate change package by raising taxes by more than $2 trillion, largely on wealthy individuals and profitable corporations.

But the proposal, while substantial in scope, stopped well short of changes needed to dent the vast fortunes of tycoons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, or to thoroughly close the most egregious loopholes exploited by high flying captains of finance. It aimed to go after the merely rich more than the fabulously rich.

Facing the delicate politics of a narrowly divided Congress, senior House Democrats opted to be more mindful of moderate concerns in their party than of its progressive ambitions. They focused on traditional ways of raising revenue: by raising tax rates on income rather than targeting wealth itself.

Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., who is on the Ways and Means Committee, which crafted the plan, called it “the boldest common denominator.”

“Being for something doesn’t make it law; 218 votes in the House, 50 votes in the Senate and the president’s signature make it law,” he said, adding, “What I don’t want is another noble defeat.”

The proposal includes nearly $2.1 trillion in increased tax revenues, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated on Monday. Democrats say those increases will go a long way to funding President Joe Biden’s ambitions to expand the federal government’s role in education, health care, climate change, paid leave and more.

But the bill dispenses with measures floated by the White House and Senate Democrats to tax wealth or to close off avenues that the super-rich have exploited to pass on a lifetime of gains to their heirs tax-free.

“It would be a monumental mistake for Congress to pass a bill that really exempts billionaires,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee.

Key Democrats cautioned Monday that the House proposal was likely to change — perhaps considerably — as Biden’s economic agenda wends its way through the House and Senate, where Democrats hold slim majorities and must hold nearly every member of their ideologically diverse caucus together. But White House officials welcomed the Ways and Means plan and said it took important steps toward the president’s vision of a tax code that rewards ordinary workers at the expense of the very rich.

The proposal includes substantial measures to raise taxes on the rich. Taxable income over $450,000 — or $400,000 for unmarried individuals — would be taxed at 39.6%, the top rate before President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut brought it to 37%. The top capital gains rate would rise to 25% from 20%, considerably less than a White House proposal that would have taxed investment gains as income for the richest, at 39.6%.

Under the committee’s plan, a 3% surtax would be applied to incomes over $5 million. The value of estates shielded from estate taxation, which doubled to $24 million for married couples under the Republican tax cuts of 2017, would go back to $12 million at the end of this year, four years earlier than the scheduled expiration.

The proposal would also raise taxes in a variety of ways on businesses called pass-through entities — like many law firms and financial companies — that distribute profits to their owners, who then pay individual income taxes on them. Those changes, including the extension of an existing 3.8% surtax to include pass-through income, would raise taxes primarily on high earners, generating several hundred billion dollars in revenues, by Democratic estimates.

The joint committee estimated Monday that the changes would raise about $1 trillion from high-income individuals.

Republicans balked at the proposal. Business lobbying groups rejected the package, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce slamming it as “an existential threat to America’s fragile economic recovery and future prosperity.”

“President Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats are ramming through trillions of wasteful spending and crippling tax hikes that will drive prices up even higher, kill millions of American jobs and drive them overseas, and usher in a new era of government dependency with the greatest expansion of the welfare state in our lifetimes,” Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the committee’s ranking Republican, said of the plan.

But what is not included is notable. The richest of the rich earn little from actual paychecks (Bezos’ salary as the founder of Amazon was $81,840 in 2020), so a surtax on income would have little impact. Their vast fortunes in stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets grow largely untaxed each year.

“The proposal is extremely modest in the area of structural change,” said Eric Toder, a co-director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington. “Mostly, it is about raising rates on existing tax bases.”

In the Senate, Democrats are taking aim directly at accumulated wealth. The Finance Committee has proposed a one-time surtax on billionaires’ fortunes, followed by annual levies on the gains in value of billionaires’ assets, similar to the way property taxes are adjusted each year to reflect gains in housing values.

Biden’s expansive tax proposals, during his campaign and as president, did not include a wealth tax. But he and top senators had called for a variety of measures to more heavily tax inherited wealth and the investments of very high earners.

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., who is on the Ways and Means Committee, conceded Monday that large swaths of wealth in the country were tied up in assets, not large salaries. But he said many Democrats were leery of going too far.

“I am very suspect of a wealth tax,” he said. “I think it’s perceived as ‘soak the rich.’ I don’t think it is, but that’s how it’s perceived.”

The committee did take aim at a loophole in retirement savings exploited by billionaire Peter Thiel, who, according to a ProPublica investigation, was able to take a Roth individual retirement account worth less than $2,000 in 1999 and grow it to $5 billion, which could be completely shielded from taxation.

To prevent such exploitation, the Ways and Means Committee would stop contributions to retirement accounts once they reach $10 million.

In other areas, the committee appears to be making only glancing blows at the wealthiest Americans. Former President Barack Obama, Trump and Biden have all vowed to close the so-called carried interest loophole, in which private equity managers pay low capital gains taxes on the fees they charge clients, asserting that the money is not income because it is drawn from their clients’ investment gains.

Senate Democrats have proposed closing the loophole completely, saving Treasury $63 billion over 10 years. The House proposal would merely limit the practice, forcing Wall Street financiers to hold their clients’ investment gains for five years before claiming them as capital gains and cashing out. It would save $14 billion, a fraction of the Senate proposal.

Another item missing from the House plan: a measure to tax inheritances more aggressively. Biden and many other Democrats want assets such as stocks and real estate to be taxed when they are inherited by wealthy heirs, based on the gain in value from the time the original owner purchased them. Under current law, such assets face capital gains taxation only when they are sold, according to their worth when they were inherited, allowing all the gain in value over the lifetimes of the superwealthy to go untaxed as long as they are passed on to heirs.

But the new proposal faced a fierce lobbying campaign, led by rural Democrats like former Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana. Rep. Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, left it out.

To some liberals, Neal’s pragmatism felt more like surrender.

“America’s billionaires are popping Champagne tonight as the House Ways and Means Committee — led by Chair Richie Neal — fails the president, fails the country and fails history,” said Erica Payne, the president of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy liberals that embraces much higher taxes on the rich.

Some Democrats expressed surprise Monday at Neal’s political calculations.

“A wealth tax? I don’t know anyone who says that’s not working for them politically,” said Rep. Donald Beyer Jr., D-Va., a member of the committee.

But with Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., suggesting that the final package might have to be half the size of the House plan, Beyer said he understood why Democratic leaders did not want to make vulnerable lawmakers embrace the most aggressive options.

“People will be saying, ‘You raised our taxes by $2.9 trillion,’” Beyer said. “Pelosi and leadership do not want to put a lot of threatened members on anything that’s just going to die in the Senate.”

White House officials on Monday welcomed the House plan, while acknowledging that it was far from a final product.

“We see it as a first step,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary.

House Democrats on Monday presented a plan to pay for their expansive social policy and climate change package by raising taxes by more than $2 trillion, largely on wealthy individuals and profitable corporations.

House Democrats on Monday presented a plan to pay for their expansive social policy and climate change package by raising taxes by more than $2 trillion, largely on wealthy individuals and profitable corporations. But the proposal, while substantial in scope, stopped well short of changes needed to dent the vast fortunes of tycoons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, or to thoroughly close the most egregious loopholes exploited by high flying captains of finance. It aimed to go after the merely rich more than the fabulously rich. Facing the delicate politics of a narrowly divided Congress, senior House Democrats opted to be more mindful of moderate concerns in their party than of its progressive ambitions. They focused on traditional ways of raising revenue: by raising tax rates on income rather than targeting wealth itself. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., who is on the Ways and Means Committee, which crafted the plan, called it “the boldest common denominator.” “Being for something doesn’t make it law; 218 votes in the House, 50 votes in the Senate and the president’s signature make it law,” he said, adding, “What I don’t want is another noble defeat.” The proposal includes nearly $2.1 trillion in increased tax revenues, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated on Monday. Democrats say those increases will go a long way to funding President Joe Biden’s ambitions to expand the federal government’s role in education, health care, climate change, paid leave and more. But the bill dispenses with measures floated by the White House and Senate Democrats to tax wealth or to close off avenues that the super-rich have exploited to pass on a lifetime of gains to their heirs tax-free. “It would be a monumental mistake for Congress to pass a bill that really exempts billionaires,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee. Key Democrats cautioned Monday that the House proposal was likely to change — perhaps considerably — as Biden’s economic agenda wends its way through the House and Senate, where Democrats hold slim majorities and must hold nearly every member of their ideologically diverse caucus together. But White House officials welcomed the Ways and Means plan and said it took important steps toward the president’s vision of a tax code that rewards ordinary workers at the expense of the very rich. The proposal includes substantial measures to raise taxes on the rich. Taxable income over $450,000 — or $400,000 for unmarried individuals — would be taxed at 39.6%, the top rate before President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut brought it to 37%. The top capital gains rate would rise to 25% from 20%, considerably less than a White House proposal that would have taxed investment gains as income for the richest, at 39.6%. Under the committee’s plan, a 3% surtax would be applied to incomes over $5 million. The value of estates shielded from estate taxation, which doubled to $24 million for married couples under the Republican tax cuts of 2017, would go back to $12 million at the end of this year, four years earlier than the scheduled expiration. The proposal would also raise taxes in a variety of ways on businesses called pass-through entities — like many law firms and financial companies — that distribute profits to their owners, who then pay individual income taxes on them. Those changes, including the extension of an existing 3.8% surtax to include pass-through income, would raise taxes primarily on high earners, generating several hundred billion dollars in revenues, by Democratic estimates. The joint committee estimated Monday that the changes would raise about $1 trillion from high-income individuals. Republicans balked at the proposal. Business lobbying groups rejected the package, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce slamming it as “an existential threat to America’s fragile economic recovery and future prosperity.” “President Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats are ramming through trillions of wasteful spending and crippling tax hikes that will drive prices up even higher, kill millions of American jobs and drive them overseas, and usher in a new era of government dependency with the greatest expansion of the welfare state in our lifetimes,” Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the committee’s ranking Republican, said of the plan. But what is not included is notable. The richest of the rich earn little from actual paychecks (Bezos’ salary as the founder of Amazon was $81,840 in 2020), so a surtax on income would have little impact. Their vast fortunes in stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets grow largely untaxed each year. “The proposal is extremely modest in the area of structural change,” said Eric Toder, a co-director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington. “Mostly, it is about raising rates on existing tax bases.” In the Senate, Democrats are taking aim directly at accumulated wealth. The Finance Committee has proposed a one-time surtax on billionaires’ fortunes, followed by annual levies on the gains in value of billionaires’ assets, similar to the way property taxes are adjusted each year to reflect gains in housing values. Biden’s expansive tax proposals, during his campaign and as president, did not include a wealth tax. But he and top senators had called for a variety of measures to more heavily tax inherited wealth and the investments of very high earners. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., who is on the Ways and Means Committee, conceded Monday that large swaths of wealth in the country were tied up in assets, not large salaries. But he said many Democrats were leery of going too far. “I am very suspect of a wealth tax,” he said. “I think it’s perceived as ‘soak the rich.’ I don’t think it is, but that’s how it’s perceived.” The committee did take aim at a loophole in retirement savings exploited by billionaire Peter Thiel, who, according to a ProPublica investigation, was able to take a Roth individual retirement account worth less than $2,000 in 1999 and grow it to $5 billion, which could be completely shielded from taxation. To prevent such exploitation, the Ways and Means Committee would stop contributions to retirement accounts once they reach $10 million. In other areas, the committee appears to be making only glancing blows at the wealthiest Americans. Former President Barack Obama, Trump and Biden have all vowed to close the so-called carried interest loophole, in which private equity managers pay low capital gains taxes on the fees they charge clients, asserting that the money is not income because it is drawn from their clients’ investment gains. Senate Democrats have proposed closing the loophole completely, saving Treasury $63 billion over 10 years. The House proposal would merely limit the practice, forcing Wall Street financiers to hold their clients’ investment gains for five years before claiming them as capital gains and cashing out. It would save $14 billion, a fraction of the Senate proposal. Another item missing from the House plan: a measure to tax inheritances more aggressively. Biden and many other Democrats want assets such as stocks and real estate to be taxed when they are inherited by wealthy heirs, based on the gain in value from the time the original owner purchased them. Under current law, such assets face capital gains taxation only when they are sold, according to their worth when they were inherited, allowing all the gain in value over the lifetimes of the superwealthy to go untaxed as long as they are passed on to heirs. But the new proposal faced a fierce lobbying campaign, led by rural Democrats like former Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana. Rep. Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, left it out. To some liberals, Neal’s pragmatism felt more like surrender. “America’s billionaires are popping Champagne tonight as the House Ways and Means Committee — led by Chair Richie Neal — fails the president, fails the country and fails history,” said Erica Payne, the president of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy liberals that embraces much higher taxes on the rich. Some Democrats expressed surprise Monday at Neal’s political calculations. “A wealth tax? I don’t know anyone who says that’s not working for them politically,” said Rep. Donald Beyer Jr., D-Va., a member of the committee. But with Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., suggesting that the final package might have to be half the size of the House plan, Beyer said he understood why Democratic leaders did not want to make vulnerable lawmakers embrace the most aggressive options. “People will be saying, ‘You raised our taxes by $2.9 trillion,’” Beyer said. “Pelosi and leadership do not want to put a lot of threatened members on anything that’s just going to die in the Senate.” White House officials on Monday welcomed the House plan, while acknowledging that it was far from a final product. “We see it as a first step,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary.

House Democrats’ plan to tax the rich leaves vast fortunes unscathed

The US Senate approved <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden's</a> historic $1.2 trillion&nbsp;infrastructure&nbsp;plan on Tuesday, paving the way for a major victory to the president if it wins final passage in the lower chamber&nbsp;of Congress.

Some seven weeks after the Democratic leader stood with senators from both parties hailing a preliminary agreement to fix the nation's roads, bridges, ports and internet connections, the deal arrived on the Senate floor needing just a simple majority to pass.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-backed-12-trillion-infrastructure-bill-passes-key-hurdle-404062">Biden-backed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passes key hurdle</a>

In the event, the package received rare bipartisan support among Washington's highly-polarized political elite, passing by 69 votes to 30 after winning the backing of a third of Republicans.

The measure now faces a make-or-break vote in the House of Representatives in the coming weeks, where its future is less certain as divisions have sprung up in the Democratic majority.

Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer credited Biden for winning approval of "the first major&nbsp;infrastructure&nbsp;package in over a decade on a bipartisan basis" after just seven months in office.

"It's been a long and winding road, but we have persisted," Schumer said. "The American people will now see the most robust injection of funds into&nbsp;infrastructure&nbsp;in decades."

The ambitious plan provides for $550 billion in new federal spending on transport&nbsp;infrastructure, but also for high-speed internet and efforts to fight climate change.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/business-economy/us-senate-in-rare-saturday-session-on-1-trillion-infrastructure-bill-402098">US Senate in rare Saturday session on $1 trillion infrastructure bill</a>

The total price tag of the package, the equivalent of Spain's 2020 gross domestic product,&nbsp;relies on other public funds that already have been appropriated.

The passage looks less certain in the House of Representatives, however, where rifts have emerged within the narrow Democratic majority between the progressive and moderate wings.&nbsp;

Negotiations are likely to be drawn out, and a final vote in Congress may not come until the fall.

In a deeply divided Washington, the&nbsp;bill's approval would mark a resounding victory for Biden, a former senator who touts his ability to reach across the aisle.&nbsp;

Sweeping domestic agenda&nbsp;

The package is a primary element of Biden's sweeping domestic agenda aimed at transforming the United States with more than $4 trillion in federal spending.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/acknowledging-disagreements-biden-and-merkel-signal-warmer-us-german-ties-398544">Acknowledging disagreements, Biden and Merkel signal warmer US-German ties</a>

Democrats now are working on the next stage: a go-it-alone, $3.5 trillion budget framework that includes major investments in health, education, tackling climate change and expanding social welfare programs.

The budget resolution "will be the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since (president Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and the New Deal of the 1930s," independent Senator Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Budget Committee, said this week.&nbsp;

Democratic leaders intend to use a fast-track process known as reconciliation that allows budget-related legislation to pass by simple majority.

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With Republicans united against the broader budget&nbsp;bill, every Senate Democrat would need to support the package.

Biden has urged Congress to deliver on his priorities, saying in July that "we can't afford not to make these investments."

Making a last-minute plea for passage of the bipartisan&nbsp;bill&nbsp;over the weekend, the president tweeted that it represented a "historic, once-in-a-generation investment in our nation's&nbsp;infrastructure."

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The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal is a historic, once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure. It will create good-paying, union jobs repairing our roads and bridges, replacing lead pipes, and building energy transmission lines. 
 
We can’t afford not to do it.
— President Biden (@POTUS) <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1424025037829464068?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 7, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Former Republican president Donald Trump however called it a "disgrace," noting the victory it would hand Biden, and threatened political reprisals against Republicans who voted for it.

In the wake of that threat, three Republican senators who participated in the&nbsp;infrastructure&nbsp;negotiations announced they would not vote to support for the plan, one of whom was absent from the session.&nbsp;

But top Republican Senator Mitch McConnell voted for it, aware of the program's huge popularity among voters tired of historic neglect of the nation's highways.&nbsp;

The US Senate approved Joe Biden's historic $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan on Tuesday, paving the way for a major victory to the president if it wins final passage in the lower chamber of Congress.

The US Senate approved Joe Biden's historic $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan on Tuesday, paving the way for a major victory to the president if it wins final passage in the lower chamber of Congress. Some seven weeks after the Democratic leader stood with senators from both parties hailing a preliminary agreement to fix the nation's roads, bridges, ports and internet connections, the deal arrived on the Senate floor needing just a simple majority to pass. Also read | Biden-backed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passes key hurdle In the event, the package received rare bipartisan support among Washington's highly-polarized political elite, passing by 69 votes to 30 after winning the backing of a third of Republicans. The measure now faces a make-or-break vote in the House of Representatives in the coming weeks, where its future is less certain as divisions have sprung up in the Democratic majority. Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer credited Biden for winning approval of "the first major infrastructure package in over a decade on a bipartisan basis" after just seven months in office. "It's been a long and winding road, but we have persisted," Schumer said. "The American people will now see the most robust injection of funds into infrastructure in decades." The ambitious plan provides for $550 billion in new federal spending on transport infrastructure, but also for high-speed internet and efforts to fight climate change. Also read | US Senate in rare Saturday session on $1 trillion infrastructure bill The total price tag of the package, the equivalent of Spain's 2020 gross domestic product, relies on other public funds that already have been appropriated. The passage looks less certain in the House of Representatives, however, where rifts have emerged within the narrow Democratic majority between the progressive and moderate wings. Negotiations are likely to be drawn out, and a final vote in Congress may not come until the fall. In a deeply divided Washington, the bill's approval would mark a resounding victory for Biden, a former senator who touts his ability to reach across the aisle. Sweeping domestic agenda The package is a primary element of Biden's sweeping domestic agenda aimed at transforming the United States with more than $4 trillion in federal spending. Also read | Acknowledging disagreements, Biden and Merkel signal warmer US-German ties Democrats now are working on the next stage: a go-it-alone, $3.5 trillion budget framework that includes major investments in health, education, tackling climate change and expanding social welfare programs. The budget resolution "will be the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since (president Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and the New Deal of the 1930s," independent Senator Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Budget Committee, said this week. Democratic leaders intend to use a fast-track process known as reconciliation that allows budget-related legislation to pass by simple majority. With Republicans united against the broader budget bill, every Senate Democrat would need to support the package. Biden has urged Congress to deliver on his priorities, saying in July that "we can't afford not to make these investments." Making a last-minute plea for passage of the bipartisan bill over the weekend, the president tweeted that it represented a "historic, once-in-a-generation investment in our nation's infrastructure." The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal is a historic, once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure. It will create good-paying, union jobs repairing our roads and bridges, replacing lead pipes, and building energy transmission lines. We can’t afford not to do it. — President Biden (@POTUS) August 7, 2021 × Former Republican president Donald Trump however called it a "disgrace," noting the victory it would hand Biden, and threatened political reprisals against Republicans who voted for it. In the wake of that threat, three Republican senators who participated in the infrastructure negotiations announced they would not vote to support for the plan, one of whom was absent from the session. But top Republican Senator Mitch McConnell voted for it, aware of the program's huge popularity among voters tired of historic neglect of the nation's highways.

US Senate passes Biden's massive infrastructure bill

Democrats unveiled a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint Monday that would launch work on a social and economic policy package that could prove to be the most significant expansion of the nation’s social safety net since Medicare and the Great Society.

The blueprint would allow Senate Democrats to piece together legislation this fall that would greatly boost spending on health care, child and elder care, education and climate change, fully paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, large inheritances and corporations. And if Democrats and their two independent allies can hold together, that measure could pass the Senate without a Republican vote.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/business-economy/bidens-budget-sees-low-inflation-rising-debt-and-slow-economic-growth-388118">Biden’s budget sees low inflation, rising debt and slow economic growth</a>

With the Senate on the brink of passing a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, the blueprint could unlock Democrats’ ability to secure the remainder of President Joe Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda.

“At its core, this legislation is about restoring the middle class in the 21st century and giving more Americans the opportunity to get there,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, wrote in a letter to his caucus.

He said the instructions had been carefully coordinated with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the chairman of the House Budget Committee.

The budget blueprint, while nonbinding, calls for a series of key liberal priorities, including ones championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. It calls for an expansion of Medicare to include dental, hearing and vision benefits, the formation of a Civilian Climate Corps to address climate change, and funding to establish universal pre-K and grant free community college tuition for two years.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-backed-12-trillion-infrastructure-bill-passes-key-hurdle-404062">Biden-backed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passes key hurdle</a>

It also accommodates key policy priorities like a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the country illegally and provisions to beef up enforcement of labour laws and penalties for employers that violate them. Democrats are trying to push the boundaries of the fast-track budget process to clear policy changes that otherwise would fail to gain Republican support, but the strict budgetary rules may ultimately prevent their inclusion.

Democrats appear to have rejected the possibility of addressing the approaching statutory limit on the federal government’s ability to finance the country’s debt in the budget blueprint. In a statement Monday morning, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Congress should address the debt ceiling in bipartisan legislation, even as Republicans warn they will not join with Democrats in doing so.

“The vast majority of the debt subject to the debt limit was accrued prior to the administration taking office,” Yellen said. “This is a shared responsibility, and I urge Congress to come together on a bipartisan basis as it has in the past to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

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The decision is a major risk since a default on the nation’s debt could trigger a global economic crisis. But raising the nation’s statutory borrowing limit in the budget resolution would come with political costs: to do it, Senate rules require that the provision includes a hard number for the debt ceiling increase.

Instead, Democrats would like to use separate legislation to extend the Treasury’s borrowing authority to a future date, not a dollar limit — a far less fraught political target.

Democrats unveiled a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint Monday that would launch work on a social and economic policy package that could prove to be the most significant expansion of the nation’s social safety net since Medicare and the Great Society.

Democrats unveiled a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint Monday that would launch work on a social and economic policy package that could prove to be the most significant expansion of the nation’s social safety net since Medicare and the Great Society. The blueprint would allow Senate Democrats to piece together legislation this fall that would greatly boost spending on health care, child and elder care, education and climate change, fully paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, large inheritances and corporations. And if Democrats and their two independent allies can hold together, that measure could pass the Senate without a Republican vote. Also read | Biden’s budget sees low inflation, rising debt and slow economic growth With the Senate on the brink of passing a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, the blueprint could unlock Democrats’ ability to secure the remainder of President Joe Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda. “At its core, this legislation is about restoring the middle class in the 21st century and giving more Americans the opportunity to get there,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, wrote in a letter to his caucus. He said the instructions had been carefully coordinated with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the chairman of the House Budget Committee. The budget blueprint, while nonbinding, calls for a series of key liberal priorities, including ones championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. It calls for an expansion of Medicare to include dental, hearing and vision benefits, the formation of a Civilian Climate Corps to address climate change, and funding to establish universal pre-K and grant free community college tuition for two years. Also read | Biden-backed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passes key hurdle It also accommodates key policy priorities like a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the country illegally and provisions to beef up enforcement of labour laws and penalties for employers that violate them. Democrats are trying to push the boundaries of the fast-track budget process to clear policy changes that otherwise would fail to gain Republican support, but the strict budgetary rules may ultimately prevent their inclusion. Democrats appear to have rejected the possibility of addressing the approaching statutory limit on the federal government’s ability to finance the country’s debt in the budget blueprint. In a statement Monday morning, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Congress should address the debt ceiling in bipartisan legislation, even as Republicans warn they will not join with Democrats in doing so. “The vast majority of the debt subject to the debt limit was accrued prior to the administration taking office,” Yellen said. “This is a shared responsibility, and I urge Congress to come together on a bipartisan basis as it has in the past to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.” The decision is a major risk since a default on the nation’s debt could trigger a global economic crisis. But raising the nation’s statutory borrowing limit in the budget resolution would come with political costs: to do it, Senate rules require that the provision includes a hard number for the debt ceiling increase. Instead, Democrats would like to use separate legislation to extend the Treasury’s borrowing authority to a future date, not a dollar limit — a far less fraught political target.

Democrats unveil $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, without addressing the debt limit

In a rare example of bipartisanship in Washington, a $1.2 trillion bill aimed at improving the US' roads, highways, bridges, and high-speed internet gained the support of 18 Republican senators and 49 Democratic senators.

With the addition of Republican senators to Democrats, on Saturday, the&nbsp;massive infrastructure bill&nbsp;passed a key procedural hurdle, ensuring its final passage in the upper chamber.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/business-economy/us-senate-in-rare-saturday-session-on-1-trillion-infrastructure-bill-402098">US Senate in rare Saturday session on $1 trillion infrastructure bill</a>

Republicans including Mitch McConnell, the party's Senate leader, supported the measure which was&nbsp;deemed historic by <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">US President Joe Biden</a>.

The bill needs 51 votes to clear senate passage. So, Saturday's vote greatly boosts its chances for passage, although fierce amendment arguments continue.

A second procedural step must be fulfilled before the bill can go to a final vote. The timing of this remained uncertain on Saturday evening, with the vote to be picked up again on Sunday.&nbsp;

The bill, which has been in development for months, calls for $550 billion in new federal spending to help the nation's ageing infrastructure, as well as to address climate change.

Totalling $1.2 trillion, the price tag equates to the 2020 GDP of Spain. This includes funds already approved but not yet spent.&nbsp;

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/acknowledging-disagreements-biden-and-merkel-signal-warmer-us-german-ties-398544">Acknowledging disagreements, Biden and Merkel signal warmer US-German ties</a>

Making a last-minute plea for passage, Biden tweeted Saturday that the bill represented a "historic, once-in-a-generation investment in our nation's infrastructure."&nbsp;

"We can't afford not to do it," he added.&nbsp;

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The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal is a historic, once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure. It will create good-paying, union jobs repairing our roads and bridges, replacing lead pipes, and building energy transmission lines. 
 
We can’t afford not to do it.
— President Biden (@POTUS) <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1424025037829464068?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 7, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Vice President Kamala Harris was also dispatched by Biden to Capitol Hill to shore up support for the bill.

The plan will move forward if approved by the Senate.&nbsp;

Next, it will go to the House of Representatives, where it is not guaranteed to pass. Democrats hold a slim majority there, and the liberal and centrist wings of the party have clashed over the bill's content.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/on-infrastructure-biden-tests-the-limits-of-having-it-both-ways-393986">On infrastructure, Biden tests the limits of having it both ways</a>

Final passage by both houses would represent a major victory for the Democratic president, who has been betting his political legacy on economic recovery,&nbsp;as well as fighting the destruction caused by <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/coronavirus">COVID-19</a>.

The Republican predecessor of Biden, Donald Trump, called the legislation "a disgrace" in a statement on Saturday.

While in office, Trump was unable to bring an infrastructure bill to passage. He&nbsp;stated that it was "very hard" for him to "endorse anyone foolish enough to vote in favor of this deal."&nbsp;&nbsp;

His position could make a final vote more problematic for Republicans looking ahead to the 2022 midterm elections.

In light of the 2022 midterm elections, his position could prove to be problematic during the final vote.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/white-house-lawmakers-strike-deal-on-infrastructure-393877">White House, lawmakers strike deal on infrastructure</a>

Despite this, Republicans know that the spending contained in the bill is very popular with voters.

(With inputs from agencies)

In a rare example of bipartisanship in Washington, a $1.2 trillion bill aimed at improving the US' roads, highways, bridges, and high-speed internet gained the support of 18 Republican senators and 49 Democratic senators.

In a rare example of bipartisanship in Washington, a $1.2 trillion bill aimed at improving the US' roads, highways, bridges, and high-speed internet gained the support of 18 Republican senators and 49 Democratic senators. With the addition of Republican senators to Democrats, on Saturday, the massive infrastructure bill passed a key procedural hurdle, ensuring its final passage in the upper chamber. Also read | US Senate in rare Saturday session on $1 trillion infrastructure bill Republicans including Mitch McConnell, the party's Senate leader, supported the measure which was deemed historic by US President Joe Biden. The bill needs 51 votes to clear senate passage. So, Saturday's vote greatly boosts its chances for passage, although fierce amendment arguments continue. A second procedural step must be fulfilled before the bill can go to a final vote. The timing of this remained uncertain on Saturday evening, with the vote to be picked up again on Sunday. The bill, which has been in development for months, calls for $550 billion in new federal spending to help the nation's ageing infrastructure, as well as to address climate change. Totalling $1.2 trillion, the price tag equates to the 2020 GDP of Spain. This includes funds already approved but not yet spent. Also read | Acknowledging disagreements, Biden and Merkel signal warmer US-German ties Making a last-minute plea for passage, Biden tweeted Saturday that the bill represented a "historic, once-in-a-generation investment in our nation's infrastructure." "We can't afford not to do it," he added. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal is a historic, once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure. It will create good-paying, union jobs repairing our roads and bridges, replacing lead pipes, and building energy transmission lines. We can’t afford not to do it. — President Biden (@POTUS) August 7, 2021 × Vice President Kamala Harris was also dispatched by Biden to Capitol Hill to shore up support for the bill. The plan will move forward if approved by the Senate. Next, it will go to the House of Representatives, where it is not guaranteed to pass. Democrats hold a slim majority there, and the liberal and centrist wings of the party have clashed over the bill's content. Also read | On infrastructure, Biden tests the limits of having it both ways Final passage by both houses would represent a major victory for the Democratic president, who has been betting his political legacy on economic recovery, as well as fighting the destruction caused by COVID-19. The Republican predecessor of Biden, Donald Trump, called the legislation "a disgrace" in a statement on Saturday. While in office, Trump was unable to bring an infrastructure bill to passage. He stated that it was "very hard" for him to "endorse anyone foolish enough to vote in favor of this deal." His position could make a final vote more problematic for Republicans looking ahead to the 2022 midterm elections. In light of the 2022 midterm elections, his position could prove to be problematic during the final vote. Also read | White House, lawmakers strike deal on infrastructure Despite this, Republicans know that the spending contained in the bill is very popular with voters. (With inputs from agencies)

Biden-backed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passes key hurdle

Three of the Democratic state lawmakers, who fled Texas to stymie a Republican-backed effort to impose broad new voting restrictions, have tested positive for COVID-19, the Texas House's Democratic caucus has said.

One lawmaker tested positive on Friday and the other two did so on Saturday, the caucus said in a statement. It said all three were fully vaccinated against the disease.

It didn't release their names or conditions to 'respect the privacy of Members and their personal health'.&nbsp;"This is a sober reminder that Covid is still with us, and though vaccinations offer tremendous protection, we still must take necessary precautions," caucus Chairman Chris Turner said in the statement, adding that the caucus was conferring with health experts in Texas to get additional guidance. Turner didn't immediately reply to a message seeking further information about the outbreak.

More than 50 Texas lawmakers arrived in Washington on Monday after leaving their home state on a private charter flight.&nbsp;They received criticism from Republicans and others after a photo showed them mask-less on the plane, though federal pandemic guidelines don't require masks to be worn on private aircraft.

The Democrats left the state to deny the Republican-controlled Legislature the necessary quorum to pass a bill that would place new restrictions on voting in Texas.

Members of the caucus have met with Vice President Kamala Harris, but it was not immediately known whether the three, who contracted COVID-19 did so. Harris' office said it would issue a statement later on Saturday.

Texas House Speaker Dade McPhelan, a Republican, issued a statement saying he and his wife were praying for the health and safety of the sick lawmakers.

"My staff has reached out to Dr&nbsp;John Hellerstedt, Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, and his epidemiology team for any additional guidance on protocols for those exposed to COVID-19 post-vaccination," Phelan wrote.&nbsp;

Three of the Democratic state lawmakers, who fled Texas to stymie a Republican-backed effort to impose broad new voting restrictions, have tested positive for COVID-19, the Texas House's Democratic caucus has said.

Three of the Democratic state lawmakers, who fled Texas to stymie a Republican-backed effort to impose broad new voting restrictions, have tested positive for COVID-19, the Texas House's Democratic caucus has said. One lawmaker tested positive on Friday and the other two did so on Saturday, the caucus said in a statement. It said all three were fully vaccinated against the disease. It didn't release their names or conditions to 'respect the privacy of Members and their personal health'. "This is a sober reminder that Covid is still with us, and though vaccinations offer tremendous protection, we still must take necessary precautions," caucus Chairman Chris Turner said in the statement, adding that the caucus was conferring with health experts in Texas to get additional guidance. Turner didn't immediately reply to a message seeking further information about the outbreak. More than 50 Texas lawmakers arrived in Washington on Monday after leaving their home state on a private charter flight. They received criticism from Republicans and others after a photo showed them mask-less on the plane, though federal pandemic guidelines don't require masks to be worn on private aircraft. The Democrats left the state to deny the Republican-controlled Legislature the necessary quorum to pass a bill that would place new restrictions on voting in Texas. Members of the caucus have met with Vice President Kamala Harris, but it was not immediately known whether the three, who contracted COVID-19 did so. Harris' office said it would issue a statement later on Saturday. Texas House Speaker Dade McPhelan, a Republican, issued a statement saying he and his wife were praying for the health and safety of the sick lawmakers. "My staff has reached out to Dr John Hellerstedt, Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, and his epidemiology team for any additional guidance on protocols for those exposed to COVID-19 post-vaccination," Phelan wrote.

3 Texas Democrats who fled elections bill vote get Covid 

Democratic legislators in Texas are fleeing the state in a bid to block Republicans from passing an elections bill that would impose new restrictions on voting.

Texas Democrats flee to Washington to oppose Republican voting bill

US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans said on Monday they opposed Democratic-led legislation intended to boost competitiveness with China and push Beijing on human rights, meaning the panel will likely advance the bill this week with only Democratic support. 
 
A spokesperson for Representative Michael McCaul, the top committee Republican, said he opposed the 'Ensuring American Global Leadership and Engagement Act',&nbsp;or Eagle Act, which the committee will consider on Wednesday. 
 
The desire for a hard line in dealings with China is one of the few truly bipartisan sentiments in the deeply divided US&nbsp;Congress, which is narrowly controlled by President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats. 
 
However, the two parties disagree on how best to deal with China. For example, Republicans object to provisions in the Eagle Act that would authorise funding for climate initiatives. 
 
But Republicans also said they felt the Eagle Act calls for too many studies and would be a missed opportunity to take meaningful action like tightening control of technology exports and regulating access to some types of sensitive personal data, such as Americans' health information. 
 
"It's largely just a messaging bill," a Republican aide said. 
 
The Eagle Act was introduced in May by Democratic Foreign Affairs Chairman Gregory Meeks. 
 
The Senate on June 8 passed by a strong bipartisan 68-32 majority its own sweeping China bill, the "US&nbsp;Innovation and Competition Act," or USICA, which authorises about $190 billion for provisions to strengthen US&nbsp;technology and research, and approved $54 billion to increase US&nbsp;production and research into semiconductors and telecommunications equipment. 
 
(With inputs from agencies)

US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans said on Monday they opposed Democratic-led legislation intended to boost competitiveness with China and push Beijing on human rights, meaning the panel will likely advance the bill this week with only Democratic support.

US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans said on Monday they opposed Democratic-led legislation intended to boost competitiveness with China and push Beijing on human rights, meaning the panel will likely advance the bill this week with only Democratic support. A spokesperson for Representative Michael McCaul, the top committee Republican, said he opposed the 'Ensuring American Global Leadership and Engagement Act', or Eagle Act, which the committee will consider on Wednesday. The desire for a hard line in dealings with China is one of the few truly bipartisan sentiments in the deeply divided US Congress, which is narrowly controlled by President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats. However, the two parties disagree on how best to deal with China. For example, Republicans object to provisions in the Eagle Act that would authorise funding for climate initiatives. But Republicans also said they felt the Eagle Act calls for too many studies and would be a missed opportunity to take meaningful action like tightening control of technology exports and regulating access to some types of sensitive personal data, such as Americans' health information. "It's largely just a messaging bill," a Republican aide said. The Eagle Act was introduced in May by Democratic Foreign Affairs Chairman Gregory Meeks. The Senate on June 8 passed by a strong bipartisan 68-32 majority its own sweeping China bill, the "US Innovation and Competition Act," or USICA, which authorises about $190 billion for provisions to strengthen US technology and research, and approved $54 billion to increase US production and research into semiconductors and telecommunications equipment. (With inputs from agencies)

US House Republicans oppose Democratic-led China bill

In a major setback for the Democrats, the Voting Rights Bill which is touted to be the most expansive federal election reform in the United States has been obstructed by a wall of Republican opposition.

US: GOP filibuster obstructs Big Voting Rights Bill

Sen. Christopher S. Murphy concedes that political rhetoric in the nation’s capital can sometimes stray into hysteria, but when it comes to the precarious state of American democracy, he insisted he was not exaggerating the nation’s tilt toward authoritarianism.

“Democrats are always at risk of being hyperbolic,” said Murphy, D-Conn. “I don’t think there’s a risk when it comes to the current state of democratic norms.”

After the norm-shattering presidency of Donald Trump, the violence-inducing bombast over a stolen election, the pressuring of state vote counters, the Capitol riot and the flood of voter curtailment laws rapidly being enacted in Republican-run states, Washington has found itself in an anguished state.

Almost daily, Democrats warn that Republicans are pursuing racist, Jim Crow-inspired voter suppression efforts to disenfranchise tens of millions of citizens, mainly people of colour, in a cynical effort to grab power. Metal detectors sit outside the House chamber to prevent lawmakers — particularly Republicans who have boasted of their intention to carry guns everywhere — from bringing weaponry to the floor. Democrats regard their Republican colleagues with suspicion, believing that some of them collaborated with the rioters on Jan. 6.

Republican lawmakers have systematically downplayed or dismissed the dangers, with some breezing over the attack on the Capitol as a largely peaceful protest, and many saying the state voting law changes are to restore “integrity” to the process, even as they give credence to Trump’s false claims of rampant fraud in the 2020 election.

They shrug off Democrats’ warnings of grave danger as the overheated language of politics as usual.

“I haven’t understood for four or five years why we are so quick to spin into a place where part of the country is sure that we no longer have the strength to move forward, as we always have in the past,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of Republican leadership, noting that the passions of Republican voters today match those of Democratic voters after Trump’s triumph. “Four years ago, there were people in the so-called resistance showing up in all of my offices every week, some of whom were chaining themselves to the door.”

For Democrats, the evidence of looming catastrophe mounts daily. Fourteen states, including politically competitive ones like Florida and Georgia, have enacted 22 laws to curtail early and mail-in ballots, limit polling places and empower partisans to police polling, then oversee the vote tally. Others are likely to follow, including Texas, with its huge share of House seats and electoral votes.

Because Republicans control the legislatures of many states where the 2020 census will force redistricting, the party is already in a strong position to erase the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the House. Even moderate voting-law changes could bolster Republicans’ chances for the net gain of one vote they need to take back the Senate.

And in the nightmare outcome promulgated by some academics, Republicans have put themselves in a position to dictate the outcome of the 2024 presidential election if the voting is close in swing states.

“Statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration, with Republican-controlled legislatures giving themselves the power to override electoral outcomes on unproven allegations,” 188 scholars said in a statement expressing concern about the erosion of democracy.

Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who lectured on American politics at Bowdoin College before going to the Senate, put the moment in historical context. He called American democracy “a 240-year experiment that runs against the tide of human history,” and that tide usually leads from and back to authoritarianism.

He said he feared the empowerment of state legislatures to decide election results more than the troubling curtailments of the franchise.

“This is an incredibly dangerous moment, and I don’t think it’s being sufficiently realized as such,” he said.

Republicans contend that much of this is overblown, though some concede the charges sting. Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., said Democrats were playing a hateful race card to promote voting-rights legislation that is so extreme it would cement Democratic control of Congress for decades.

“I hope that damage isn’t being done,” he added, “but it is always very dangerous to falsely play the race card and let’s face it, that’s what’s being done here.”

Toomey, who voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial, said he understood why, in the middle of a deadly pandemic, states sharply liberalized voting rules in 2020, extending mail-in voting, allowing mailed ballots to be counted days after Election Day and setting up ballot drop boxes, curbside polls and weeks of early voting.

But he added that Democrats should understand why state election officials wanted to course correct now that the coronavirus was ebbing.

“Every state needs to strike a balance between two competing values: making it as easy as possible to cast legitimate votes, but also the other, which is equally important: having everybody confident about the authenticity of the votes,” Toomey said.

Trump’s lies about a stolen election, he added, “were more likely to resonate because you had this system that went so far the other way.”

Some other Republicans embrace the notion that they are trying to use their prerogatives as a minority party to safeguard their own power. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said the endeavour was the essence of America’s system of representative democracy, distinguishing it from direct democracy, where the majority rules and is free to trample the rights of the minority unimpeded.

“The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for,” Paul said. “The Jim Crow laws came out of democracy. That’s what you get when a majority ignores the rights of others.”

Democrats and their allies push back hard on those arguments. King said the only reason voters lacked confidence in the voting system was that Republicans — especially Trump — told them for months that it was rigged, despite all evidence to the contrary, and now continued to insist that there were abuses in the process that must be fixed.

“That’s like pleading for mercy as an orphan after you killed both your parents,” he said.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in no way could some of the new state voting laws be seen as a necessary course correction. “Not being able to serve somebody water who’s waiting in line? I mean, come on,” he said. “There are elements that are in most of these proposals where you look at it and you say, ‘That violates the common-sense test.’”

Missteps by Democrats have fortified Republicans’ attempts to downplay the dangers. Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have mischaracterized Georgia’s voting law, handing Republicans ammunition to say that Democrats were willfully distorting what was happening at the state level.

The state’s 98-page voting law, passed after the narrow victories for Biden and two Democratic candidates for Senate, would make absentee voting harder and create restrictions and complications for millions of voters, many of them people of colour.

But Biden falsely claimed that the law — which he labelled “un-American” and “sick” — had slapped new restrictions on early voting to bar people from voting after 5 p.m. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said the Georgia law had ended early voting on Sunday. It didn’t.

And the sweep — critics say overreach — of the Democrats’ answer to Republican voter laws, the For the People Act, has undermined Democratic claims that the fate of the republic relies on its passage. Even some Democrats are uncomfortable with the act’s breadth, including the advancement of statehood for the District of Columbia with its assurance of two more senators, almost certainly Democratic; it's public financing of elections; its nullification of most voter identification laws; and its mandatory prescriptions for early and mail-in voting.

“They want to put a thumb on the scale of future elections,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Wednesday. “They want to take power away from the voters and the states, and give themselves every partisan advantage that they can.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who could conceivably be a partner in Democratic efforts to expand voting rights, called the legislation a “fundamentally unserious” bill.

Republican leaders have sought to take the current argument from the lofty heights of history to the nitty-gritty of legislation. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, pointed to the success of bipartisan efforts such as passage of a bill to combat hate crimes against Asian Americans, approval of a broad China competition measure and current talks to forge compromises on infrastructure and criminal justice as proof that Democratic catastrophizing over the state of American governance was overblown.

But Democrats are not assuaged.

“Not to diminish the importance of the work we’ve done here, but democracy itself is what we’re talking about,” said Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. “And to point at other bills that don’t have to do with the fair administration of elections is just an attempt to distract while all these state legislatures move systematically toward disenfranchising voters who have historically leaned Democrat.”

King said he had had serious conversations with Republican colleagues about the precarious state of American democracy. Authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban and Adolf Hitler have come to power by-election, and stayed in power by warping or obliterating democratic norms.

But, he acknowledged, he has yet to get serious engagement, largely because his colleagues fear the wrath of Trump and his supporters.

“I get the feeling they hope this whole thing will go away,” he said. “They make arguments, but you have the feeling their hearts aren’t in it.”

Sen. Christopher S. Murphy concedes that political rhetoric in the nation’s capital can sometimes stray into hysteria, but when it comes to the precarious state of American democracy, he insisted he was not exaggerating the nation’s tilt toward authoritarianism.

Sen. Christopher S. Murphy concedes that political rhetoric in the nation’s capital can sometimes stray into hysteria, but when it comes to the precarious state of American democracy, he insisted he was not exaggerating the nation’s tilt toward authoritarianism. “Democrats are always at risk of being hyperbolic,” said Murphy, D-Conn. “I don’t think there’s a risk when it comes to the current state of democratic norms.” After the norm-shattering presidency of Donald Trump, the violence-inducing bombast over a stolen election, the pressuring of state vote counters, the Capitol riot and the flood of voter curtailment laws rapidly being enacted in Republican-run states, Washington has found itself in an anguished state. Almost daily, Democrats warn that Republicans are pursuing racist, Jim Crow-inspired voter suppression efforts to disenfranchise tens of millions of citizens, mainly people of colour, in a cynical effort to grab power. Metal detectors sit outside the House chamber to prevent lawmakers — particularly Republicans who have boasted of their intention to carry guns everywhere — from bringing weaponry to the floor. Democrats regard their Republican colleagues with suspicion, believing that some of them collaborated with the rioters on Jan. 6. Republican lawmakers have systematically downplayed or dismissed the dangers, with some breezing over the attack on the Capitol as a largely peaceful protest, and many saying the state voting law changes are to restore “integrity” to the process, even as they give credence to Trump’s false claims of rampant fraud in the 2020 election. They shrug off Democrats’ warnings of grave danger as the overheated language of politics as usual. “I haven’t understood for four or five years why we are so quick to spin into a place where part of the country is sure that we no longer have the strength to move forward, as we always have in the past,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of Republican leadership, noting that the passions of Republican voters today match those of Democratic voters after Trump’s triumph. “Four years ago, there were people in the so-called resistance showing up in all of my offices every week, some of whom were chaining themselves to the door.” For Democrats, the evidence of looming catastrophe mounts daily. Fourteen states, including politically competitive ones like Florida and Georgia, have enacted 22 laws to curtail early and mail-in ballots, limit polling places and empower partisans to police polling, then oversee the vote tally. Others are likely to follow, including Texas, with its huge share of House seats and electoral votes. Because Republicans control the legislatures of many states where the 2020 census will force redistricting, the party is already in a strong position to erase the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the House. Even moderate voting-law changes could bolster Republicans’ chances for the net gain of one vote they need to take back the Senate. And in the nightmare outcome promulgated by some academics, Republicans have put themselves in a position to dictate the outcome of the 2024 presidential election if the voting is close in swing states. “Statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration, with Republican-controlled legislatures giving themselves the power to override electoral outcomes on unproven allegations,” 188 scholars said in a statement expressing concern about the erosion of democracy. Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who lectured on American politics at Bowdoin College before going to the Senate, put the moment in historical context. He called American democracy “a 240-year experiment that runs against the tide of human history,” and that tide usually leads from and back to authoritarianism. He said he feared the empowerment of state legislatures to decide election results more than the troubling curtailments of the franchise. “This is an incredibly dangerous moment, and I don’t think it’s being sufficiently realized as such,” he said. Republicans contend that much of this is overblown, though some concede the charges sting. Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., said Democrats were playing a hateful race card to promote voting-rights legislation that is so extreme it would cement Democratic control of Congress for decades. “I hope that damage isn’t being done,” he added, “but it is always very dangerous to falsely play the race card and let’s face it, that’s what’s being done here.” Toomey, who voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial, said he understood why, in the middle of a deadly pandemic, states sharply liberalized voting rules in 2020, extending mail-in voting, allowing mailed ballots to be counted days after Election Day and setting up ballot drop boxes, curbside polls and weeks of early voting. But he added that Democrats should understand why state election officials wanted to course correct now that the coronavirus was ebbing. “Every state needs to strike a balance between two competing values: making it as easy as possible to cast legitimate votes, but also the other, which is equally important: having everybody confident about the authenticity of the votes,” Toomey said. Trump’s lies about a stolen election, he added, “were more likely to resonate because you had this system that went so far the other way.” Some other Republicans embrace the notion that they are trying to use their prerogatives as a minority party to safeguard their own power. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said the endeavour was the essence of America’s system of representative democracy, distinguishing it from direct democracy, where the majority rules and is free to trample the rights of the minority unimpeded. “The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for,” Paul said. “The Jim Crow laws came out of democracy. That’s what you get when a majority ignores the rights of others.” Democrats and their allies push back hard on those arguments. King said the only reason voters lacked confidence in the voting system was that Republicans — especially Trump — told them for months that it was rigged, despite all evidence to the contrary, and now continued to insist that there were abuses in the process that must be fixed. “That’s like pleading for mercy as an orphan after you killed both your parents,” he said. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in no way could some of the new state voting laws be seen as a necessary course correction. “Not being able to serve somebody water who’s waiting in line? I mean, come on,” he said. “There are elements that are in most of these proposals where you look at it and you say, ‘That violates the common-sense test.’” Missteps by Democrats have fortified Republicans’ attempts to downplay the dangers. Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have mischaracterized Georgia’s voting law, handing Republicans ammunition to say that Democrats were willfully distorting what was happening at the state level. The state’s 98-page voting law, passed after the narrow victories for Biden and two Democratic candidates for Senate, would make absentee voting harder and create restrictions and complications for millions of voters, many of them people of colour. But Biden falsely claimed that the law — which he labelled “un-American” and “sick” — had slapped new restrictions on early voting to bar people from voting after 5 p.m. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said the Georgia law had ended early voting on Sunday. It didn’t. And the sweep — critics say overreach — of the Democrats’ answer to Republican voter laws, the For the People Act, has undermined Democratic claims that the fate of the republic relies on its passage. Even some Democrats are uncomfortable with the act’s breadth, including the advancement of statehood for the District of Columbia with its assurance of two more senators, almost certainly Democratic; it's public financing of elections; its nullification of most voter identification laws; and its mandatory prescriptions for early and mail-in voting. “They want to put a thumb on the scale of future elections,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Wednesday. “They want to take power away from the voters and the states, and give themselves every partisan advantage that they can.” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who could conceivably be a partner in Democratic efforts to expand voting rights, called the legislation a “fundamentally unserious” bill. Republican leaders have sought to take the current argument from the lofty heights of history to the nitty-gritty of legislation. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, pointed to the success of bipartisan efforts such as passage of a bill to combat hate crimes against Asian Americans, approval of a broad China competition measure and current talks to forge compromises on infrastructure and criminal justice as proof that Democratic catastrophizing over the state of American governance was overblown. But Democrats are not assuaged. “Not to diminish the importance of the work we’ve done here, but democracy itself is what we’re talking about,” said Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. “And to point at other bills that don’t have to do with the fair administration of elections is just an attempt to distract while all these state legislatures move systematically toward disenfranchising voters who have historically leaned Democrat.” King said he had had serious conversations with Republican colleagues about the precarious state of American democracy. Authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban and Adolf Hitler have come to power by-election, and stayed in power by warping or obliterating democratic norms. But, he acknowledged, he has yet to get serious engagement, largely because his colleagues fear the wrath of Trump and his supporters. “I get the feeling they hope this whole thing will go away,” he said. “They make arguments, but you have the feeling their hearts aren’t in it.”

In Congress, Republicans shrug at warnings of Democracy in peril

Democrats erupted in outrage Friday over news that Donald&nbsp;Trump's Justice Department secretly surveilled lawmakers probing possible collusion with Russia, reaping the phone records of top political foes in what they called an unprecedented abuse of power.

Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell said they were recently told by Apple that during 2017-2021 the company had been ordered to hand over records of their phone communications, as well as those of family members including a child, as&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;fought a flow of damaging leaks on his 2016 election campaign's links to Russia.

No proof they were the sources of leaks was ever presented, yet the probe stayed alive for as long as&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;remained in office, to January 2021.

Schiff called it "the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president."

"The politicization of the department and the attacks on the rule of law are among the most dangerous assaults on our democracy carried out by the former president," he said in a statement.

Senate leaders threatened to subpoena two&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, who oversaw the surveillance, to testify on the issue.

"This is a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers," said Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin in a statement.

The Justice Department, now led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, said Friday that its inspector general would investigate the use of subpoenas and other powers to probe lawmakers and journalists under&nbsp;Trump.

Echoes of Watergate

Analysts called the collection of lawmakers' phone data one of the most egregious abuses by a president since Richard Nixon's early 1970s Watergate scandal.

The secret surveillance took place as&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;faced investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and by the House Intelligence Committee -- where Schiff was then the top Democrat -- into whether his campaign colluded with Russian election meddling and whether&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;tried to obstruct those investigations.

As they progressed and the threat of impeachment intensified,&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;accused Schiff and other Democrats of leaking classified intelligence to reporters.

It was not known if&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;explicitly told the Justice Department to investigate Schiff and Swalwell.

But he repeatedly accused Schiff of leaks, tweeting some 350 times about the senior Democrat, who became chairman of the Intelligence Committee in 2019 and led&nbsp;Trump's first impeachment trial in January 2020 -- which ultimately saw the president acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.

Under Justice Department order, Apple handed over the metadata records of calls and texts -- essentially the phone numbers of those in contact with the subjects of the probe -- though not the content of those communications.

The surveillance remained secret because Apple was placed under a "gag order" that was renewed three times between 2017 and 2020, even though no charges were generated.

Swalwell and Schiff only learned of the surveillance in May after the last gag order on Apple expired.

'Fishing expedition'

Collecting a lawmaker's phone records is virtually unheard of, except in corruption investigations. And even then the Justice Department handles the cases gingerly.&nbsp;

Surveilling members of Congress -- particularly rivals of the president's Republican party -- is an extreme case that would demand strong justification and top-level approval in the department.

With some 100 people covered, it appeared to be a poorly justified "fishing expedition," Schiff said.

The revelation came on the back of Justice Department admissions that under&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;it collected the phone records of a number of high-profile journalists&nbsp;in leak investigations.

The surveillance came, Swalwell said, because the House Intelligence investigation turned up information "that the president didn't like. We showed that the president sought help from Russia, benefitted from help from Russia" in the 2016 election.

"This is about everyday Americans who don't want the government to weaponize law enforcement against them because of their political beliefs," he said.

Lawmakers urged Garland to clean house and remove and&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;allies who participated in the surveillance.

Patrick Toomey the American Civil Liberties Union said weak laws enable abuses.

"This is what happens when broad and secretive spying powers are left to the discretion of the executive branch," he said.

"Our laws should prevent this from happening, not enable abuses of power that trample on people's rights and threaten our democracy.”

Democrats erupted in outrage Friday over news that Donald Trump's Justice Department secretly surveilled lawmakers probing possible collusion with Russia, reaping the phone records of top political foes in what they called an unprecedented abuse of power.

Democrats erupted in outrage Friday over news that Donald Trump's Justice Department secretly surveilled lawmakers probing possible collusion with Russia, reaping the phone records of top political foes in what they called an unprecedented abuse of power. Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell said they were recently told by Apple that during 2017-2021 the company had been ordered to hand over records of their phone communications, as well as those of family members including a child, as Trump fought a flow of damaging leaks on his 2016 election campaign's links to Russia. No proof they were the sources of leaks was ever presented, yet the probe stayed alive for as long as Trump remained in office, to January 2021. Schiff called it "the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president." "The politicization of the department and the attacks on the rule of law are among the most dangerous assaults on our democracy carried out by the former president," he said in a statement. Senate leaders threatened to subpoena two Trump attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, who oversaw the surveillance, to testify on the issue. "This is a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers," said Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin in a statement. The Justice Department, now led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, said Friday that its inspector general would investigate the use of subpoenas and other powers to probe lawmakers and journalists under Trump. Echoes of Watergate Analysts called the collection of lawmakers' phone data one of the most egregious abuses by a president since Richard Nixon's early 1970s Watergate scandal. The secret surveillance took place as Trump faced investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and by the House Intelligence Committee -- where Schiff was then the top Democrat -- into whether his campaign colluded with Russian election meddling and whether Trump tried to obstruct those investigations. As they progressed and the threat of impeachment intensified, Trump accused Schiff and other Democrats of leaking classified intelligence to reporters. It was not known if Trump explicitly told the Justice Department to investigate Schiff and Swalwell. But he repeatedly accused Schiff of leaks, tweeting some 350 times about the senior Democrat, who became chairman of the Intelligence Committee in 2019 and led Trump's first impeachment trial in January 2020 -- which ultimately saw the president acquitted by the Republican-led Senate. Under Justice Department order, Apple handed over the metadata records of calls and texts -- essentially the phone numbers of those in contact with the subjects of the probe -- though not the content of those communications. The surveillance remained secret because Apple was placed under a "gag order" that was renewed three times between 2017 and 2020, even though no charges were generated. Swalwell and Schiff only learned of the surveillance in May after the last gag order on Apple expired. 'Fishing expedition' Collecting a lawmaker's phone records is virtually unheard of, except in corruption investigations. And even then the Justice Department handles the cases gingerly. Surveilling members of Congress -- particularly rivals of the president's Republican party -- is an extreme case that would demand strong justification and top-level approval in the department. With some 100 people covered, it appeared to be a poorly justified "fishing expedition," Schiff said. The revelation came on the back of Justice Department admissions that under Trump it collected the phone records of a number of high-profile journalists in leak investigations. The surveillance came, Swalwell said, because the House Intelligence investigation turned up information "that the president didn't like. We showed that the president sought help from Russia, benefitted from help from Russia" in the 2016 election. "This is about everyday Americans who don't want the government to weaponize law enforcement against them because of their political beliefs," he said. Lawmakers urged Garland to clean house and remove and Trump allies who participated in the surveillance. Patrick Toomey the American Civil Liberties Union said weak laws enable abuses. "This is what happens when broad and secretive spying powers are left to the discretion of the executive branch," he said. "Our laws should prevent this from happening, not enable abuses of power that trample on people's rights and threaten our democracy.”

Trump surveillance of Democrats sparks abuse of power claims

Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives boycotted a legislative session on Sunday, blocking a vote on an election reform bill, what critics say is one of the most restrictive voting bills in the country.

Texas Democrats abandon House floor, blocks passage of voting restriction law

A newly disclosed effort by Russian intelligence to hijack the email system of a U.S. government agency prompted leading Democrats on Friday to urge stronger action against Moscow for accelerating cyberattacks before President Joe Biden’s summit next month with President Vladimir Putin.

The latest hack was brought to light late Thursday by Microsoft and other private firms. They exposed how Russia’s SVR, the same intelligence agency that Washington has blamed for a range of cyberattacks on American networks over the past decade, infiltrated a communications company that distributes emails on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Using that access, the hackers sent authentic-looking messages to human rights groups, nonprofit organizations and think tanks, including some that have been critical of Putin. The emails contained links to malware that gave the Russians access to the recipients’ computer networks.

The White House on Friday played down the severity of the attack, saying it was typical of daily cyberconflict. Officials said the fact that the attack had been caught quickly and neutralized — chiefly by Microsoft, which acted when it saw fake emails being sent — was evidence that enhanced defenses being deployed to defend government networks were beginning to show results.

But the timing was striking, and added to the sense that the scope of cyberattacks emanating from Russia — ranging from the most sophisticated to the most embarrassing, as seen in the ease with which hackers got into the email system used by the aid agency — is expanding rapidly despite warnings and retaliation from Washington.

A month ago, Biden imposed economic sanctions on Russia and expelled diplomats in response to one of the most sophisticated attacks ever seen on the “supply chain” of software that government and private sector networks rely on — one that gave Russian intelligence wide access to 18,000 networks. While the Russians used the access only to enter about 150 government agencies and companies, the attack demonstrated that it was possible to corrupt regularly scheduled software updates of the kind that government agencies and companies rely on to keep their systems current.

Then, this month, came a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, carried out by a criminal group that Biden said was based in Russia. The pipeline was shut down for days, prompting panic-buying, long lines at the pump and shuttering gas stations across the Southeast. Colonial paid a $4.4 million ransom, and the attack underscored the vulnerability of the United States’ critical infrastructure.

The latest attack, at a moment of heightened tension with Russia, was more basic, but it focused further attention on why the United States has not been able to deter the wave of attacks by making its adversaries pay a higher price for them.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, argued that years of efforts to deter such attacks from Russia were failing.

“If Moscow is responsible, this brazen act of utilizing emails associated with the U.S. government demonstrates that Russia remains undeterred despite sanctions following the SolarWinds attack,” Schiff said, referring to the attack last year on the software supply chain. “Those sanctions gave the administration flexibility to tighten the economic screws further if necessary — it now appears necessary.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, echoed Schiff in calling for stronger consequences. “We must make clear to Russia — and any other adversaries — that they will face consequences for this and any other malicious cyberactivity,” he said.

Biden has already said that Russia’s cyberaggression would be part of the tense conversation he planned to have with Putin on June 16 in Geneva, at a moment when the two nations are at odds over Ukraine, human rights and Russia’s new generation of nuclear weapons.

Some analysts praised the way the U.S. government was responding.

“If you look at the steps the administration is taking to both defend and deter, which are the two key things we need to do here, they are going in the right direction in a significant way we have never seen before,” said Tom Burt, a senior Microsoft official who worked with the administration on several of the recent hacks. “But they are also facing a greater threat than we have ever seen.”

But some intelligence officials argued that sanctions and more covert actions — if there have been any — were showing few signs of deterring Putin. And so Biden is seeing the same kind of robust debate inside his own White House over whether more forceful responses are necessary, whether by exposing Putin’s financial entanglements, or by conducting retaliatory cyberstrikes.

Biden has shown caution, saying last month that he “chose to be proportionate” in response to the SolarWinds attack because he did not want “to kick off a cycle of escalation and conflict with Russia.”

Some cybersecurity experts now argue that Biden should have responded more aggressively.

“The U.S. tends to get too hung up on proportionality,” said James Lewis, one such expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We were too cautious in responding to SolarWinds, and that turned out to be a mistake. The way you set boundaries is through action, not by sending them nasty, diplomatic notes.”

U.S. officials have often been reluctant to respond to cyberaggression in kind, in part because the country’s own defenses are so inadequate. “Until we are confident in our own ability to deflect Russian cyberattacks, our actions will continue to be driven by concerns over what Putin will do,” said Kiersten Todt, managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute.

But both government officials and some experts argued that the hijacking of emails by the SVR was such bread-and-butter stuff in the modern world of constant cyberconflict that it did not mark an escalation from SolarWinds. “It’s not obvious to me that this type of attack is over the red line,” said Robert Chesney, director of the Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

In this case, Microsoft reported, the goal of the hackers was not to go after the aid agency itself. Instead, its motivation appeared to be to use emails purporting to be from the U.S. government to get inside groups that have revealed Russian disinformation campaigns, anti-corruption groups and those who have protested the poisoning, conviction and jailing of Russia’s best-known opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.

According to SecureWorks, an Atlanta cybersecurity firm tracking the attacks, the Russian hackers targeted the Atlantic Council and EU Disinfo Lab, which have both exposed several Russian disinformation campaigns.

Other targets included the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has drawn Putin’s ire for criticizing the fairness of elections in Belarus and Ukraine; the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, and Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs, according to SecureWorks.

Putin had previously described the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as a “vile instrument of the West.” The fact that Russia took aim at these targets, not federal networks as it did with SolarWinds, suggested sanctions may have diverted Russia elsewhere.

“This may be Russia, and Putin specifically, saying, ‘Thanks for the sanctions — now we’re going to use America’s open and vulnerable networks for our own political purposes and vendettas,’” Todt said.

Microsoft, like other major firms involved in cybersecurity, maintains a vast sensor network to look for malicious activity on the internet, and is frequently a target itself. It was deeply involved in revealing the SolarWinds attack.

In the most recent case, Burt said that Microsoft had been tracking the hackers as they broke into a mass-email system run by a company called Constant Contact, which has the Agency for International Development as a client.

“They never had to enter a U.S. government system,” Burt said. Instead, they compromised the Constant Contact communications system and made their way into the agency’s account. That enabled them to send emails that appeared to be from the agency.

In a statement, Constant Contact, without confirming the identity of its client, suggested that hackers had used stolen security credentials to breach the agency’s Constant Contact email accounts. “This is an isolated incident,” the statement said, “and we have temporarily disabled the impacted accounts while we work in cooperation with our customer, who is working with law enforcement.”

But Russian hackers have seized on many such opportunities, intelligence officials say. Biden’s aides said that the fact that the hackers were caught so quickly underscored the need for government agencies and suppliers to adhere to new standards required by an executive order issued two weeks ago. That includes monitoring requirements that would most likely set off alarms in cases where malware is being transmitted in emails, and reporting requirements if there are attacks.

Presenting the new order this month, Anne Neuberger, Biden’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said the new order would “raise the game” for anyone who wanted to do business with the federal government, and that the higher standards of security would spread through private industry. There are some signs that is already happening.

But the adversaries are also improving. Microsoft noted that the Russian attack used new tools and tradecraft in an apparent effort to avoid detection. “Some people would call this ‘espionage as usual,’ and it was,” Burt said. “But no government wants some other government living in their networks for three months.”

A newly disclosed effort by Russian intelligence to hijack the email system of a U.S. government agency prompted leading Democrats on Friday to urge stronger action against Moscow for accelerating cyberattacks before President Joe Biden’s summit next month with President Vladimir Putin.

A newly disclosed effort by Russian intelligence to hijack the email system of a U.S. government agency prompted leading Democrats on Friday to urge stronger action against Moscow for accelerating cyberattacks before President Joe Biden’s summit next month with President Vladimir Putin. The latest hack was brought to light late Thursday by Microsoft and other private firms. They exposed how Russia’s SVR, the same intelligence agency that Washington has blamed for a range of cyberattacks on American networks over the past decade, infiltrated a communications company that distributes emails on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Using that access, the hackers sent authentic-looking messages to human rights groups, nonprofit organizations and think tanks, including some that have been critical of Putin. The emails contained links to malware that gave the Russians access to the recipients’ computer networks. The White House on Friday played down the severity of the attack, saying it was typical of daily cyberconflict. Officials said the fact that the attack had been caught quickly and neutralized — chiefly by Microsoft, which acted when it saw fake emails being sent — was evidence that enhanced defenses being deployed to defend government networks were beginning to show results. But the timing was striking, and added to the sense that the scope of cyberattacks emanating from Russia — ranging from the most sophisticated to the most embarrassing, as seen in the ease with which hackers got into the email system used by the aid agency — is expanding rapidly despite warnings and retaliation from Washington. A month ago, Biden imposed economic sanctions on Russia and expelled diplomats in response to one of the most sophisticated attacks ever seen on the “supply chain” of software that government and private sector networks rely on — one that gave Russian intelligence wide access to 18,000 networks. While the Russians used the access only to enter about 150 government agencies and companies, the attack demonstrated that it was possible to corrupt regularly scheduled software updates of the kind that government agencies and companies rely on to keep their systems current. Then, this month, came a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, carried out by a criminal group that Biden said was based in Russia. The pipeline was shut down for days, prompting panic-buying, long lines at the pump and shuttering gas stations across the Southeast. Colonial paid a $4.4 million ransom, and the attack underscored the vulnerability of the United States’ critical infrastructure. The latest attack, at a moment of heightened tension with Russia, was more basic, but it focused further attention on why the United States has not been able to deter the wave of attacks by making its adversaries pay a higher price for them. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, argued that years of efforts to deter such attacks from Russia were failing. “If Moscow is responsible, this brazen act of utilizing emails associated with the U.S. government demonstrates that Russia remains undeterred despite sanctions following the SolarWinds attack,” Schiff said, referring to the attack last year on the software supply chain. “Those sanctions gave the administration flexibility to tighten the economic screws further if necessary — it now appears necessary.” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, echoed Schiff in calling for stronger consequences. “We must make clear to Russia — and any other adversaries — that they will face consequences for this and any other malicious cyberactivity,” he said. Biden has already said that Russia’s cyberaggression would be part of the tense conversation he planned to have with Putin on June 16 in Geneva, at a moment when the two nations are at odds over Ukraine, human rights and Russia’s new generation of nuclear weapons. Some analysts praised the way the U.S. government was responding. “If you look at the steps the administration is taking to both defend and deter, which are the two key things we need to do here, they are going in the right direction in a significant way we have never seen before,” said Tom Burt, a senior Microsoft official who worked with the administration on several of the recent hacks. “But they are also facing a greater threat than we have ever seen.” But some intelligence officials argued that sanctions and more covert actions — if there have been any — were showing few signs of deterring Putin. And so Biden is seeing the same kind of robust debate inside his own White House over whether more forceful responses are necessary, whether by exposing Putin’s financial entanglements, or by conducting retaliatory cyberstrikes. Biden has shown caution, saying last month that he “chose to be proportionate” in response to the SolarWinds attack because he did not want “to kick off a cycle of escalation and conflict with Russia.” Some cybersecurity experts now argue that Biden should have responded more aggressively. “The U.S. tends to get too hung up on proportionality,” said James Lewis, one such expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We were too cautious in responding to SolarWinds, and that turned out to be a mistake. The way you set boundaries is through action, not by sending them nasty, diplomatic notes.” U.S. officials have often been reluctant to respond to cyberaggression in kind, in part because the country’s own defenses are so inadequate. “Until we are confident in our own ability to deflect Russian cyberattacks, our actions will continue to be driven by concerns over what Putin will do,” said Kiersten Todt, managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute. But both government officials and some experts argued that the hijacking of emails by the SVR was such bread-and-butter stuff in the modern world of constant cyberconflict that it did not mark an escalation from SolarWinds. “It’s not obvious to me that this type of attack is over the red line,” said Robert Chesney, director of the Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin. In this case, Microsoft reported, the goal of the hackers was not to go after the aid agency itself. Instead, its motivation appeared to be to use emails purporting to be from the U.S. government to get inside groups that have revealed Russian disinformation campaigns, anti-corruption groups and those who have protested the poisoning, conviction and jailing of Russia’s best-known opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. According to SecureWorks, an Atlanta cybersecurity firm tracking the attacks, the Russian hackers targeted the Atlantic Council and EU Disinfo Lab, which have both exposed several Russian disinformation campaigns. Other targets included the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has drawn Putin’s ire for criticizing the fairness of elections in Belarus and Ukraine; the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, and Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs, according to SecureWorks. Putin had previously described the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as a “vile instrument of the West.” The fact that Russia took aim at these targets, not federal networks as it did with SolarWinds, suggested sanctions may have diverted Russia elsewhere. “This may be Russia, and Putin specifically, saying, ‘Thanks for the sanctions — now we’re going to use America’s open and vulnerable networks for our own political purposes and vendettas,’” Todt said. Microsoft, like other major firms involved in cybersecurity, maintains a vast sensor network to look for malicious activity on the internet, and is frequently a target itself. It was deeply involved in revealing the SolarWinds attack. In the most recent case, Burt said that Microsoft had been tracking the hackers as they broke into a mass-email system run by a company called Constant Contact, which has the Agency for International Development as a client. “They never had to enter a U.S. government system,” Burt said. Instead, they compromised the Constant Contact communications system and made their way into the agency’s account. That enabled them to send emails that appeared to be from the agency. In a statement, Constant Contact, without confirming the identity of its client, suggested that hackers had used stolen security credentials to breach the agency’s Constant Contact email accounts. “This is an isolated incident,” the statement said, “and we have temporarily disabled the impacted accounts while we work in cooperation with our customer, who is working with law enforcement.” But Russian hackers have seized on many such opportunities, intelligence officials say. Biden’s aides said that the fact that the hackers were caught so quickly underscored the need for government agencies and suppliers to adhere to new standards required by an executive order issued two weeks ago. That includes monitoring requirements that would most likely set off alarms in cases where malware is being transmitted in emails, and reporting requirements if there are attacks. Presenting the new order this month, Anne Neuberger, Biden’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said the new order would “raise the game” for anyone who wanted to do business with the federal government, and that the higher standards of security would spread through private industry. There are some signs that is already happening. But the adversaries are also improving. Microsoft noted that the Russian attack used new tools and tradecraft in an apparent effort to avoid detection. “Some people would call this ‘espionage as usual,’ and it was,” Burt said. “But no government wants some other government living in their networks for three months.”

Top Democrats call for stronger action against Russia after latest cyberattack

The Biden administration and House Democrats have reached a tentative deal to allow President Donald Trump’s former White House counsel, Donald McGahn, to testify before Congress about Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia inquiry, according to a court filing late Tuesday.

The deal appears likely to avert a definitive court precedent that would draw a clear line in an ambiguous areas: the scope and limits of Congress’ constitutional power to compel testimony for its oversight responsibilities, and a president’s constitutional power to keep secret conversations with a White House lawyer.

An appeals court had been set to hear arguments on the case next week, but lawyers for the Justice Department, which has been defending McGahn since 2019 against a House subpoena seeking to compel his testimony, and for the House of Representatives asked the court in a joint letter to drop that plan as mooted by the deal.

“The Committee on the Judiciary and the executive branch have reached an agreement in principle on an accommodation and anticipate filing, as soon as possible, a joint motion asking the court to remove this case from the May 19, 2021, oral argument calendar in order to allow the parties to implement the accommodation,” the letter said.

What to do about the subpoena case, which President Joe Biden inherited from the Trump administration, has been a rare locus of institutional disagreement among Democrats in the two branches.

Lawyers in the Biden White House have been hesitant about establishing a precedent that Republicans might someday use to force them to testify about their own internal matters. House Democrats under Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been determined to push forward after frustration that the Trump administration’s uncompromising approach and litigation strategy ran out the clock, preventing any testimony by McGahn before the 2020 presidential election.

The two sides had been negotiating for several months, leading to delays in the appeals court case. The filing was terse and offered no details about the deal, including what limits, if any, there would be — like whether McGahn would testify in public and the scope of what lawmakers could ask him to disclose.

But the filing also flagged a potential wild card: “Former President Trump, who is not a party to this case, is not a party to the agreement in principle regarding an accommodation,” it said.

That absence leaves open the question of whether Trump could try to intervene to block McGahn from testifying by asserting executive privilege. An attempt to invoke it by Trump would raise novel questions about the extent to which a former president may assert the privilege when the incumbent president declines to do so.

Should Trump try to intervene, a rare but limited precedent is a 1977 case, Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Richard Nixon could assert executive privilege claims over official records from his White House even though he was no longer the president — but it also weighed that assertion against the contrary view of Jimmy Carter, the president at the time.

That dispute, however, centered on control of Nixon-era White House documents, not a subpoena for a former White House lawyer’s testimony.

The present dispute centers on the House Judiciary Committee’s desire to question McGahn about matters related to his role as a key witness in the report by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, about efforts by Trump to obstruct the Russia investigation.

After the Justice Department made most of the report public, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee subpoenaed McGahn to testify. After he refused to appear, on Trump’s instructions, the committee sued.

The case has gone through several rounds of convoluted legal fights over constitutional issues that have lacked definitive precedents because previous disputes have generally been resolved with a negotiated compromise, averting a need for a court ruling.

But the lawsuit over the McGahn subpoena is one of an unprecedented number of cases pitting the two branches against each other in court that arose after Democrats took the House in the 2018 midterm elections and Trump vowed to stonewall “all” subpoenas.

First, the Justice Department under Trump had argued that McGahn was “absolutely immune” from any compelled appearance before Congress to testify about his work duties. Last year, the full District of Columbia Circuit rejected that theory.

The Justice Department then continued to fight the subpoena on other legal grounds, arguing that Congress had no “cause of action” that authorized it to sue the executive branch. (The executive branch has taken that position under administrations of both parties, and the Biden administration had signaled that it was prepared to keep arguing it.)

The apparent resolution of the McGahn subpoena case — unless Trump disrupts it — is similar to a dispute in 2009, when President Barack Obama took office and inherited a House lawsuit over a subpoena for testimony by President George W. Bush’s former White House counsel Harriet Miers related to the firings of U.S. attorneys.

The Obama administration, a lawyer for the House and a legal representative of Bush worked out a deal under which Democrats were able to confidentially interview Miers about the topic, with limits. That accommodation mooted the case, so the District of Columbia Circuit never issued a binding ruling, leaving the legal questions it rose unresolved.

The Biden administration and House Democrats have reached a tentative deal to allow President Donald Trump’s former White House counsel, Donald McGahn, to testify before Congress about Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia inquiry, according to a court filing late Tuesday.

The Biden administration and House Democrats have reached a tentative deal to allow President Donald Trump’s former White House counsel, Donald McGahn, to testify before Congress about Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia inquiry, according to a court filing late Tuesday. The deal appears likely to avert a definitive court precedent that would draw a clear line in an ambiguous areas: the scope and limits of Congress’ constitutional power to compel testimony for its oversight responsibilities, and a president’s constitutional power to keep secret conversations with a White House lawyer. An appeals court had been set to hear arguments on the case next week, but lawyers for the Justice Department, which has been defending McGahn since 2019 against a House subpoena seeking to compel his testimony, and for the House of Representatives asked the court in a joint letter to drop that plan as mooted by the deal. “The Committee on the Judiciary and the executive branch have reached an agreement in principle on an accommodation and anticipate filing, as soon as possible, a joint motion asking the court to remove this case from the May 19, 2021, oral argument calendar in order to allow the parties to implement the accommodation,” the letter said. What to do about the subpoena case, which President Joe Biden inherited from the Trump administration, has been a rare locus of institutional disagreement among Democrats in the two branches. Lawyers in the Biden White House have been hesitant about establishing a precedent that Republicans might someday use to force them to testify about their own internal matters. House Democrats under Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been determined to push forward after frustration that the Trump administration’s uncompromising approach and litigation strategy ran out the clock, preventing any testimony by McGahn before the 2020 presidential election. The two sides had been negotiating for several months, leading to delays in the appeals court case. The filing was terse and offered no details about the deal, including what limits, if any, there would be — like whether McGahn would testify in public and the scope of what lawmakers could ask him to disclose. But the filing also flagged a potential wild card: “Former President Trump, who is not a party to this case, is not a party to the agreement in principle regarding an accommodation,” it said. That absence leaves open the question of whether Trump could try to intervene to block McGahn from testifying by asserting executive privilege. An attempt to invoke it by Trump would raise novel questions about the extent to which a former president may assert the privilege when the incumbent president declines to do so. Should Trump try to intervene, a rare but limited precedent is a 1977 case, Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Richard Nixon could assert executive privilege claims over official records from his White House even though he was no longer the president — but it also weighed that assertion against the contrary view of Jimmy Carter, the president at the time. That dispute, however, centered on control of Nixon-era White House documents, not a subpoena for a former White House lawyer’s testimony. The present dispute centers on the House Judiciary Committee’s desire to question McGahn about matters related to his role as a key witness in the report by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, about efforts by Trump to obstruct the Russia investigation. After the Justice Department made most of the report public, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee subpoenaed McGahn to testify. After he refused to appear, on Trump’s instructions, the committee sued. The case has gone through several rounds of convoluted legal fights over constitutional issues that have lacked definitive precedents because previous disputes have generally been resolved with a negotiated compromise, averting a need for a court ruling. But the lawsuit over the McGahn subpoena is one of an unprecedented number of cases pitting the two branches against each other in court that arose after Democrats took the House in the 2018 midterm elections and Trump vowed to stonewall “all” subpoenas. First, the Justice Department under Trump had argued that McGahn was “absolutely immune” from any compelled appearance before Congress to testify about his work duties. Last year, the full District of Columbia Circuit rejected that theory. The Justice Department then continued to fight the subpoena on other legal grounds, arguing that Congress had no “cause of action” that authorized it to sue the executive branch. (The executive branch has taken that position under administrations of both parties, and the Biden administration had signaled that it was prepared to keep arguing it.) The apparent resolution of the McGahn subpoena case — unless Trump disrupts it — is similar to a dispute in 2009, when President Barack Obama took office and inherited a House lawsuit over a subpoena for testimony by President George W. Bush’s former White House counsel Harriet Miers related to the firings of U.S. attorneys. The Obama administration, a lawyer for the House and a legal representative of Bush worked out a deal under which Democrats were able to confidentially interview Miers about the topic, with limits. That accommodation mooted the case, so the District of Columbia Circuit never issued a binding ruling, leaving the legal questions it rose unresolved.

House Democrats and White House reach deal on Russia enquiry testimony by ex-Trump aide

The United States House of Representatives has narrowly voted to make Washington DC the 51st state. House voted 216-208 in favor of the bill. The democratic-controlled house has approved it without republicans support so far.

US lower house votes on making Washington DC the 51st state

The Biden administration and top Democrats in Congress began detailing plans for significant changes to how the United States and other countries tax multinational corporations as they look for ways to raise revenues and finance President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure proposal.

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen threw her support behind an international effort to create a global minimum tax that would apply to multinational corporations, regardless of where they locate their headquarters. Such a global tax, she said, could help prevent a “race to the bottom” in which countries cut their tax rates in order to entice companies to move headquarters and profits across borders.

“Together, we can use a global minimum tax to make sure the global economy thrives based on a more level playing field in the taxation of multinational corporations,” she said. The effort is aimed at “making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods and respond to crises, and that all citizens fairly share the burden of financing government.”

At the same time, Democrats in Congress released their own proposal to add teeth to the de facto minimum tax that the United States already imposes on income earned abroad — one that would apply to American multinational companies regardless of what the rest of the world does. The proposal could raise as much as $1 trillion over the next 15 years from large companies by requiring that they pay higher taxes on profits they earn overseas, according to analyses of similar plans.

Yellen’s support for a global minimum tax could help catalyse an agreement being worked out through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which seeks to reduce companies’ practice of booking profits in low-tax “haven” countries to avoid higher tax bills elsewhere. Negotiators are discussing a range of possibilities for such a plan, but they have not settled on several crucial details, including the rate of the minimum tax.

The focus on raising taxes for large companies comes as the Biden administration begins its push to sell a $2 trillion infrastructure plan and finance it with higher taxes. Biden’s proposal includes raising the US&nbsp;corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% and a variety of changes to international tax law, all meant to force companies to pay more to the Treasury after a plunge in corporate tax revenues spurred by President Donald Trump’s signature 2017 tax cuts.

Democrats and White House officials say that their goal is to ensure companies pay their fair share and that they do not move jobs and profits abroad to avoid paying taxes in the United States.

But some tax experts, along with large business lobbying groups, say the proposals could hobble US&nbsp;corporations on the global stage by forcing them to pay significantly higher tax rates than their competitors pay. That could be true even if global negotiators eventually agree to a worldwide minimum tax — because that tax rate could still be lower than what companies pay in the United States.

If the Democratic plans succeed and Yellen and her global counterparts reach agreement, “there could be a cogent international tax system” with some effective incentives for investments in the United States, said Danielle Rolfes, a former international tax counsel for the Treasury Department in the Obama administration who is now a leader of KPMG’s international tax practice in Washington.

But, she said, “I would be concerned, if the rates get too high, that the US&nbsp;might have competitiveness issues.”

Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, R-Pa., said Yellen’s call for a global minimum tax was an admission that Biden’s plan to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% would make US&nbsp;companies less competitive.

“This is why Secretary Yellen is imploring other developed countries to punish their workers and businesses with their own tax increases,” Toomey said in a statement. “‘Race to the bottom’ is the way the Biden administration describes competition among developed countries to get to a tax code that attracts investment and maximizes growth.”

Biden dismissed that view Monday, saying US&nbsp;companies could afford to pay a higher tax rate given many paid no taxes over the past several years.

“You have 51 or 52 corporations of the Fortune 500 that haven’t paid a single penny in taxes for three years,” he said. “Come on, man. Let’s get real.”

The proposal would increase the rate of the 2017 minimum tax and change how it is applied to income that corporations earn in various countries overseas, effectively forcing many companies to pay the tax on more of their income, while offering new targeted tax relief linked to domestic investments.

The Senate plan comes from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is in charge of writing tax legislation as chairman of the Finance Committee, and two Democratic colleagues: Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

But Republicans, the leading business lobbying group and some tax experts panned the proposal and defended the Trump system as one that worked.

The 2017 law “worked to improve a system that no one felt was working and struck a balance between the need for companies to be able to compete in the global economy while protecting the US&nbsp;tax base,” said Caroline Harris, the vice president of tax policy at the US&nbsp;Chamber of Commerce. “Today’s proposal to increase international taxes threatens to move us to a system even worse than where we started, to the detriment of economic growth, competitiveness and job creation.”

Tax experts expressed similar concerns about enforcing the kind of global minimum tax Yellen is calling for and about what that might mean for American companies.

“It’s administratively impossible to execute and it requires all countries in the world to hold hands,” said Peter Barnes, a lawyer at the tax firm Caplin and Drysdale who was previously a senior international tax counsel for General Electric. “Unless they can get 90% of the world’s countries to adopt it, countries will view exempting themselves from the system as a great way to create a potentially significant competitive advantage.”

The Biden administration and top Democrats in Congress began detailing plans for significant changes to how the United States and other countries tax multinational corporations as they look for ways to raise revenues and finance President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure proposal.

The Biden administration and top Democrats in Congress began detailing plans for significant changes to how the United States and other countries tax multinational corporations as they look for ways to raise revenues and finance President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure proposal. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen threw her support behind an international effort to create a global minimum tax that would apply to multinational corporations, regardless of where they locate their headquarters. Such a global tax, she said, could help prevent a “race to the bottom” in which countries cut their tax rates in order to entice companies to move headquarters and profits across borders. “Together, we can use a global minimum tax to make sure the global economy thrives based on a more level playing field in the taxation of multinational corporations,” she said. The effort is aimed at “making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods and respond to crises, and that all citizens fairly share the burden of financing government.” At the same time, Democrats in Congress released their own proposal to add teeth to the de facto minimum tax that the United States already imposes on income earned abroad — one that would apply to American multinational companies regardless of what the rest of the world does. The proposal could raise as much as $1 trillion over the next 15 years from large companies by requiring that they pay higher taxes on profits they earn overseas, according to analyses of similar plans. Yellen’s support for a global minimum tax could help catalyse an agreement being worked out through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which seeks to reduce companies’ practice of booking profits in low-tax “haven” countries to avoid higher tax bills elsewhere. Negotiators are discussing a range of possibilities for such a plan, but they have not settled on several crucial details, including the rate of the minimum tax. The focus on raising taxes for large companies comes as the Biden administration begins its push to sell a $2 trillion infrastructure plan and finance it with higher taxes. Biden’s proposal includes raising the US corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% and a variety of changes to international tax law, all meant to force companies to pay more to the Treasury after a plunge in corporate tax revenues spurred by President Donald Trump’s signature 2017 tax cuts. Democrats and White House officials say that their goal is to ensure companies pay their fair share and that they do not move jobs and profits abroad to avoid paying taxes in the United States. But some tax experts, along with large business lobbying groups, say the proposals could hobble US corporations on the global stage by forcing them to pay significantly higher tax rates than their competitors pay. That could be true even if global negotiators eventually agree to a worldwide minimum tax — because that tax rate could still be lower than what companies pay in the United States. If the Democratic plans succeed and Yellen and her global counterparts reach agreement, “there could be a cogent international tax system” with some effective incentives for investments in the United States, said Danielle Rolfes, a former international tax counsel for the Treasury Department in the Obama administration who is now a leader of KPMG’s international tax practice in Washington. But, she said, “I would be concerned, if the rates get too high, that the US might have competitiveness issues.” Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, R-Pa., said Yellen’s call for a global minimum tax was an admission that Biden’s plan to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% would make US companies less competitive. “This is why Secretary Yellen is imploring other developed countries to punish their workers and businesses with their own tax increases,” Toomey said in a statement. “‘Race to the bottom’ is the way the Biden administration describes competition among developed countries to get to a tax code that attracts investment and maximizes growth.” Biden dismissed that view Monday, saying US companies could afford to pay a higher tax rate given many paid no taxes over the past several years. “You have 51 or 52 corporations of the Fortune 500 that haven’t paid a single penny in taxes for three years,” he said. “Come on, man. Let’s get real.” The proposal would increase the rate of the 2017 minimum tax and change how it is applied to income that corporations earn in various countries overseas, effectively forcing many companies to pay the tax on more of their income, while offering new targeted tax relief linked to domestic investments. The Senate plan comes from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is in charge of writing tax legislation as chairman of the Finance Committee, and two Democratic colleagues: Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. But Republicans, the leading business lobbying group and some tax experts panned the proposal and defended the Trump system as one that worked. The 2017 law “worked to improve a system that no one felt was working and struck a balance between the need for companies to be able to compete in the global economy while protecting the US tax base,” said Caroline Harris, the vice president of tax policy at the US Chamber of Commerce. “Today’s proposal to increase international taxes threatens to move us to a system even worse than where we started, to the detriment of economic growth, competitiveness and job creation.” Tax experts expressed similar concerns about enforcing the kind of global minimum tax Yellen is calling for and about what that might mean for American companies. “It’s administratively impossible to execute and it requires all countries in the world to hold hands,” said Peter Barnes, a lawyer at the tax firm Caplin and Drysdale who was previously a senior international tax counsel for General Electric. “Unless they can get 90% of the world’s countries to adopt it, countries will view exempting themselves from the system as a great way to create a potentially significant competitive advantage.”

Biden and Democrats detail plans to raise taxes on multinational firms

The far-reaching voting rights measure that Democrats are pressing to enact, known as the For the People Act, was more a political statement than serious legislation when lawmakers first proposed it in 2019.

The bill, clocking in at 818 pages, includes a laundry list of Democratic priorities like expanded ballot access, tighter controls on political money and support for District of Columbia statehood. It had no chance of becoming law when Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House.

But with Democrats in power, the wish list has become a potentially historic law and the most pervasive overhaul of federal election rules in recent memory. Republicans have assailed it as a Democratic effort to rig the political system in their favor, even as some privately acknowledge that the bill’s broad aims are overwhelmingly popular, even among conservatives.

President Joe Biden and Democrats portray the bill as the civil rights imperative of modern times and call it essential to shoring up a shaky democracy. But many of them privately concede that some of its provisions, like restrictions on political money, have opponents in their own ranks.

Here is a summary of some of the central elements of the measure:

The bill would set a national floor for ballot access.

Should it become law, the legislation would effectively set a national floor on ballot access, requiring all federal elections to start with an identical set of rules. States and other federal jurisdictions could tweak them to provide more access, but not less. Some states like Colorado and Minnesota have rules that are more generous than what the bill mandates; others, like Texas and Tennessee, make it much harder to register and vote than the bill envisions.

Jurisdictions could ignore the rules for state and local elections, but as a practical matter, the new requirements would most likely apply to all voting.

Some Republicans charge that the bill would rig the voting rules in favor of Democrats. But Republican officials have been working for the past decade to restrict ballot access in ways that make it harder to vote for minority groups that traditionally favor Democrats.

Beyond the civic benefits of greater participation in elections, it is clear that expanding voting to more people would benefit both parties. Indeed, as Republicans have increasingly appealed to lower-income and less-educated voters, some experts say the restrictions that they have imposed may actually be cutting into turnout by the party’s loyalists.

Many Republican states have had one or more of the voting provisions for years with no indication that they disproportionately favor one party.

The measure would make it much easier to register to vote.

All voters would be able to register, designate party affiliations, change addresses and deregister online; 40 states and the District of Columbia offer some or all of those options. Voters would also be automatically registered when visiting state or federal agencies unless they explicitly decline, similar to what has been required of most states — but not always carried out — by the federal “motor-voter law” that passed in 1993. Voters could also register when they cast a ballot, either on Election Day or during early voting, as is already the case in 21 states.

Early voting would be expanded nationwide, with all jurisdictions offering it for 15 days, for 10 hours daily, at easily accessible polling places. All but a handful of states allow early voting; the average early-ballot period is 19 days, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The bill would also require jurisdictions to provide at least one secure ballot drop box for every 20,000 voters.

Mail voting would be extended nationwide, and states would have to prepay postage and electronically track ballots so voters would know when their ballots arrived and whether they had mistakes that needed to be fixed.

It would defang many voting restrictions imposed by Republicans.

Republicans have won enactment of voter-ID laws in most states by arguing that they are needed to combat fraud, even though the sort of in-person fraud that such rules discourage is all but nonexistent. The bill would effectively nullify such laws, allowing voters to sign affidavits swearing to their identities rather than showing ID.

The measure would also require that voters be notified at least a week before an election if their polling places have changed and order steps to reduce long lines. Voting rights activists and specialists argue that turnout falls when polling locations are closed or changed.

The legislation also would try to beat back rules adopted by some states, including Texas and New Hampshire, that make it more difficult for college students to vote. It would designate universities as voter-registration agencies and offer nonpartisan assistance to students who cast absentee ballots.

Under the bill, states would be barred from taking voters off the rolls because they had not participated in recent elections, a practice that the Supreme Court upheld in 2018. Critics argue that the practice is aimed at reducing turnout.

It would also restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences, cementing into law a practice that states have increasingly adopted but some, such as Florida, have resisted.

Partisan gerrymandering would end.

Among other redistricting changes, the bill would mandate that political maps be drawn by nonpartisan commissions, not by state legislatures. If a legislature refused to approve a map, a three-judge federal panel would take over drafting.

A number of states have established such commissions in recent years, including Ohio and Colorado, but removing politics from political maps has proved difficult. Critics say Arizona’s Republican governor has stacked the selection process for that state’s commission, and the composition of Colorado’s new commission also has come under fire. The legislation lays out detailed instructions for choosing panel members.

Political contributions would be reined in.

The legislation would try to stop the flow of money to campaigns from abroad by requiring political committees to report foreign contacts, outlawing the use of shell companies to launder foreign contributions and barring foreigners from advising PACs on contributions and other political efforts. These moves and other requirements are direct responses to Russian efforts to support Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The most contentious provisions would pull back the veil over so-called dark political money, whose donors are secret, and regulate independent political expenditures — mostly spending that is not expressly coordinated with a candidate — by corporations.

Those provisions would counter the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that independent expenditures are a form of free speech protected by the Constitution. The ruling effectively allowed nonprofit groups to spend unlimited amounts of money — $750 million in 2020, according to the advocacy group OpenSecrets — to support or oppose candidates or causes while keeping donors anonymous.

Public corporations would require approval by boards of directors and shareholders for independent expenditures and some other political spending over $50,000.

The bill would also require nonprofit groups spending money on elections or judicial nominations to disclose the donor of any contribution over $10,000 and ban shifting money between groups to disguise a donor’s identity.

It would also address the growing use of political advertising on the internet, requiring for the first time that ads disclose their sponsors and that online companies keep a public list of political advertising buyers.

Finally, the measure would set up new funds to match small donations to Senate and presidential candidates. The money, raised through fines on corporate lawbreakers and tax cheats, would be available only to candidates who reject political donations of more than $1,000.

The far-reaching voting rights measure that Democrats are pressing to enact, known as the For the People Act, was more a political statement than serious legislation when lawmakers first proposed it in 2019.

The far-reaching voting rights measure that Democrats are pressing to enact, known as the For the People Act, was more a political statement than serious legislation when lawmakers first proposed it in 2019. The bill, clocking in at 818 pages, includes a laundry list of Democratic priorities like expanded ballot access, tighter controls on political money and support for District of Columbia statehood. It had no chance of becoming law when Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House. But with Democrats in power, the wish list has become a potentially historic law and the most pervasive overhaul of federal election rules in recent memory. Republicans have assailed it as a Democratic effort to rig the political system in their favor, even as some privately acknowledge that the bill’s broad aims are overwhelmingly popular, even among conservatives. President Joe Biden and Democrats portray the bill as the civil rights imperative of modern times and call it essential to shoring up a shaky democracy. But many of them privately concede that some of its provisions, like restrictions on political money, have opponents in their own ranks. Here is a summary of some of the central elements of the measure: The bill would set a national floor for ballot access. Should it become law, the legislation would effectively set a national floor on ballot access, requiring all federal elections to start with an identical set of rules. States and other federal jurisdictions could tweak them to provide more access, but not less. Some states like Colorado and Minnesota have rules that are more generous than what the bill mandates; others, like Texas and Tennessee, make it much harder to register and vote than the bill envisions. Jurisdictions could ignore the rules for state and local elections, but as a practical matter, the new requirements would most likely apply to all voting. Some Republicans charge that the bill would rig the voting rules in favor of Democrats. But Republican officials have been working for the past decade to restrict ballot access in ways that make it harder to vote for minority groups that traditionally favor Democrats. Beyond the civic benefits of greater participation in elections, it is clear that expanding voting to more people would benefit both parties. Indeed, as Republicans have increasingly appealed to lower-income and less-educated voters, some experts say the restrictions that they have imposed may actually be cutting into turnout by the party’s loyalists. Many Republican states have had one or more of the voting provisions for years with no indication that they disproportionately favor one party. The measure would make it much easier to register to vote. All voters would be able to register, designate party affiliations, change addresses and deregister online; 40 states and the District of Columbia offer some or all of those options. Voters would also be automatically registered when visiting state or federal agencies unless they explicitly decline, similar to what has been required of most states — but not always carried out — by the federal “motor-voter law” that passed in 1993. Voters could also register when they cast a ballot, either on Election Day or during early voting, as is already the case in 21 states. Early voting would be expanded nationwide, with all jurisdictions offering it for 15 days, for 10 hours daily, at easily accessible polling places. All but a handful of states allow early voting; the average early-ballot period is 19 days, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The bill would also require jurisdictions to provide at least one secure ballot drop box for every 20,000 voters. Mail voting would be extended nationwide, and states would have to prepay postage and electronically track ballots so voters would know when their ballots arrived and whether they had mistakes that needed to be fixed. It would defang many voting restrictions imposed by Republicans. Republicans have won enactment of voter-ID laws in most states by arguing that they are needed to combat fraud, even though the sort of in-person fraud that such rules discourage is all but nonexistent. The bill would effectively nullify such laws, allowing voters to sign affidavits swearing to their identities rather than showing ID. The measure would also require that voters be notified at least a week before an election if their polling places have changed and order steps to reduce long lines. Voting rights activists and specialists argue that turnout falls when polling locations are closed or changed. The legislation also would try to beat back rules adopted by some states, including Texas and New Hampshire, that make it more difficult for college students to vote. It would designate universities as voter-registration agencies and offer nonpartisan assistance to students who cast absentee ballots. Under the bill, states would be barred from taking voters off the rolls because they had not participated in recent elections, a practice that the Supreme Court upheld in 2018. Critics argue that the practice is aimed at reducing turnout. It would also restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences, cementing into law a practice that states have increasingly adopted but some, such as Florida, have resisted. Partisan gerrymandering would end. Among other redistricting changes, the bill would mandate that political maps be drawn by nonpartisan commissions, not by state legislatures. If a legislature refused to approve a map, a three-judge federal panel would take over drafting. A number of states have established such commissions in recent years, including Ohio and Colorado, but removing politics from political maps has proved difficult. Critics say Arizona’s Republican governor has stacked the selection process for that state’s commission, and the composition of Colorado’s new commission also has come under fire. The legislation lays out detailed instructions for choosing panel members. Political contributions would be reined in. The legislation would try to stop the flow of money to campaigns from abroad by requiring political committees to report foreign contacts, outlawing the use of shell companies to launder foreign contributions and barring foreigners from advising PACs on contributions and other political efforts. These moves and other requirements are direct responses to Russian efforts to support Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign. The most contentious provisions would pull back the veil over so-called dark political money, whose donors are secret, and regulate independent political expenditures — mostly spending that is not expressly coordinated with a candidate — by corporations. Those provisions would counter the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that independent expenditures are a form of free speech protected by the Constitution. The ruling effectively allowed nonprofit groups to spend unlimited amounts of money — $750 million in 2020, according to the advocacy group OpenSecrets — to support or oppose candidates or causes while keeping donors anonymous. Public corporations would require approval by boards of directors and shareholders for independent expenditures and some other political spending over $50,000. The bill would also require nonprofit groups spending money on elections or judicial nominations to disclose the donor of any contribution over $10,000 and ban shifting money between groups to disguise a donor’s identity. It would also address the growing use of political advertising on the internet, requiring for the first time that ads disclose their sponsors and that online companies keep a public list of political advertising buyers. Finally, the measure would set up new funds to match small donations to Senate and presidential candidates. The money, raised through fines on corporate lawbreakers and tax cheats, would be available only to candidates who reject political donations of more than $1,000.

Here’s how Democrats’ sweeping voting rights law would work

Democrats have spent the last several years clamoring to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, seeing that as a necessary antidote to widening economic inequality and a rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s signature tax cuts.

Now, under President Joe Biden, they have a shot at ushering in the largest federal tax increase since 1942. It could help pay for a host of spending programs that liberal economists predict would bolster the economy’s performance and repair a tax code that Democrats say encourages wealthy people to hoard assets and big companies to ship jobs and book profits overseas.

The question is whether congressional Democrats and the White House can agree on how sharply taxes should rise and who, exactly, should pay the bill. They widely share the goal of reversing many of Trump’s tax cuts from 2017 and of making the wealthy and big businesses pay more. But they do not yet agree on the details — and because Republicans are unlikely to support their efforts, they have no room for error in a closely divided Senate.

For Biden, the need to find consensus is urgent. The president is set to travel to Pittsburgh on Wednesday to unveil the next phase of his economic agenda: a sprawling collection of programs that would invest in infrastructure, education, carbon-reduction and working mothers and cost $3 trillion to $4 trillion.

The package, which follows on the heels of Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic aid bill, is central to the president’s long-term plan to revitalize American workers and industry by funding bridges and roads, universal prekindergarten, emerging industries like advanced batteries, and efforts to invigorate the fight against climate change.

Biden plans to finance that spending, at least in part, with tax increases that could raise upward of $2.5 trillion in revenue if his plan hews closely to what he proposed in the 2020 presidential campaign. Aides suggest his proposals might not be entirely paid for, with some one-time spending increases offset by increased federal borrowing.

“I think what you’re going to see is the administration is going to put a pay-for on the table for at least some and maybe all of the infrastructure plan,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. “If Team Biden makes a proposal, I’m sure we’ll make adjustments, but that’s a good way to start.”

Others in his party, including his own transportation secretary, have pushed Biden to explore tax plans he did not campaign on, like taxing consumption, wealth or vehicle miles traveled. (A Transportation Department spokesperson said Saturday that there would be no vehicle-miles-traveled tax in the infrastructure proposal.) Biden has stressed his broad-brush desire to increase the tax burden on wealthy Americans who largely earn their money through inheritance or investment, to fund spending programs meant to help people who earn their money primarily through wages.

“I want to change the paradigm,” Biden said Thursday during a news conference. “We start to reward work, not just wealth.”

Democratic lawmakers have promised for decades to raise taxes on companies and the wealthy, a desire that kicked into overdrive after Trump signed a tax-cut package that delivered an outsize share of its benefits to corporations and high earners. But they have struggled to muster the votes for large tax increases since President Bill Clinton signed a 1993 law that included a variety of hikes intended to help reduce the budget deficit. Business groups, conservative activists, lobbyists and donors across the ideological spectrum have largely blocked such attempts.

President Barack Obama campaigned on ending tax cuts for the rich signed into law by President George W. Bush, but after the 2008 financial crisis, he cut deals with Republicans to extend those cuts before allowing some of them to expire at the end of 2012.

Liberal economists say this year could be different, thanks to the unique political and economic circumstances surrounding the recovery from the pandemic recession. With Biden’s signing of a $1.9 trillion economic relief bill, financed entirely by federal borrowing, forecasters now expect the economy to grow this year at its fastest annual clip since the 1980s. Republicans and some economists have begun to warn of overheating growth spurring runaway inflation, which could reduce the salience of warnings that tax increases would cause growth to stall.

Public polling shows broad support, even among many Republican voters, for raising taxes on large corporations and high-income individuals. The most conservative Democrats in the Senate, who hold great sway over Biden’s legislative agenda, say they favor trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending, so long as there is a plan to pay for it.

That includes Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who told reporters this week that Biden’s infrastructure plan was “going to be enormous” and that its costs needed to be covered. He signaled openness to making changes to the 2017 tax overhaul, adding that the benefits in that legislation were “weighted in one direction to the upper end.”

“Where do they think it’s going to come from? How are they going to fix America?” he said, when asked about Republican resistance to tax increases. “I don’t think that’s reasonable.”

Democrats widely share a desire to raise the corporate income tax rate after it was cut to 21% in 2017. And they want to raise the top marginal rate for individuals back to 39.6% from 37%.

But there are disputes in the rank and file, with some favoring Biden’s plan to set the corporate rate at 28% and others preferring a lower one, like 25%. There are also questions over which high-earning individuals should see a tax increase.

Biden has pledged not to raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000. Some of his progressive allies, including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have advocated raising taxes on a broader group. Democrats like Manchin have pushed him to consider additional tax plans that do not solely target the rich, like a European-style tax on consumption, though that type of tax could fall more heavily on low-income Americans than wealthy ones.

Republicans are unlikely to support any plan to raise taxes, leaving administration officials and leading congressional Democrats to hammer out a plan on their own. But absent Republican support in the Senate, where both parties hold 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties, Democrats would need to secure total consensus within their caucus to pass the legislation and use a fast-track budget process known as reconciliation to bypass the 60-vote threshold for ending a filibuster.

Business groups and Republican lawmakers, who supported the 2017 tax cuts, predict that any tax increase will slow economic growth and undermine the competitiveness of U.S. companies. They contend that the economic and wage growth in the run-up to the pandemic prove that Trump’s tax cuts worked, an argument Biden’s advisers reject, citing research from the International Monetary Fund and others.

“He wants a massive tax increase, and he wants to allocate the tax responsibility in this country on the basis of class,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “That’s a hell of a way to make tax policy. Sound tax policy is made on the basis of economics.”

Republicans who favor some form of an infrastructure bill have struggled to offer alternative ways to fund such an undertaking, which they argue should be significantly smaller than what Biden has floated. Some, however, are noodling on tax changes should a bipartisan plan emerge. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said this past week that her committee would examine changes to the gas tax or a related tax that also charges a fee to users of electric vehicles as discussions continue about a funding mechanism.

Many liberal economists say there are good reasons to raise taxes, starting with using those funds to invest in workers and help build economic opportunity. Spending on physical infrastructure, like roads and water pipes, or on programs like education and child care that are meant to help people earn more money could help curb persistent inequalities in income and wealth. The economists also say that tax increases that are properly set up would provide incentives for multinational companies to keep jobs in the United States and not shift profits to lower-tax foreign countries.

Key Democrats are trying to bring the party to consensus. The top tax writer in the Senate, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is drafting a series of bills to raise taxes, many of them overlapping with Biden’s campaign proposals.

“I’ll be ready to raise what the Democratic caucus decides is required to move forward,” Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in an interview.

Democrats have spent the last several years clamoring to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, seeing that as a necessary antidote to widening economic inequality and a rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s signature tax cuts.

Democrats have spent the last several years clamoring to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, seeing that as a necessary antidote to widening economic inequality and a rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s signature tax cuts. Now, under President Joe Biden, they have a shot at ushering in the largest federal tax increase since 1942. It could help pay for a host of spending programs that liberal economists predict would bolster the economy’s performance and repair a tax code that Democrats say encourages wealthy people to hoard assets and big companies to ship jobs and book profits overseas. The question is whether congressional Democrats and the White House can agree on how sharply taxes should rise and who, exactly, should pay the bill. They widely share the goal of reversing many of Trump’s tax cuts from 2017 and of making the wealthy and big businesses pay more. But they do not yet agree on the details — and because Republicans are unlikely to support their efforts, they have no room for error in a closely divided Senate. For Biden, the need to find consensus is urgent. The president is set to travel to Pittsburgh on Wednesday to unveil the next phase of his economic agenda: a sprawling collection of programs that would invest in infrastructure, education, carbon-reduction and working mothers and cost $3 trillion to $4 trillion. The package, which follows on the heels of Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic aid bill, is central to the president’s long-term plan to revitalize American workers and industry by funding bridges and roads, universal prekindergarten, emerging industries like advanced batteries, and efforts to invigorate the fight against climate change. Biden plans to finance that spending, at least in part, with tax increases that could raise upward of $2.5 trillion in revenue if his plan hews closely to what he proposed in the 2020 presidential campaign. Aides suggest his proposals might not be entirely paid for, with some one-time spending increases offset by increased federal borrowing. “I think what you’re going to see is the administration is going to put a pay-for on the table for at least some and maybe all of the infrastructure plan,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. “If Team Biden makes a proposal, I’m sure we’ll make adjustments, but that’s a good way to start.” Others in his party, including his own transportation secretary, have pushed Biden to explore tax plans he did not campaign on, like taxing consumption, wealth or vehicle miles traveled. (A Transportation Department spokesperson said Saturday that there would be no vehicle-miles-traveled tax in the infrastructure proposal.) Biden has stressed his broad-brush desire to increase the tax burden on wealthy Americans who largely earn their money through inheritance or investment, to fund spending programs meant to help people who earn their money primarily through wages. “I want to change the paradigm,” Biden said Thursday during a news conference. “We start to reward work, not just wealth.” Democratic lawmakers have promised for decades to raise taxes on companies and the wealthy, a desire that kicked into overdrive after Trump signed a tax-cut package that delivered an outsize share of its benefits to corporations and high earners. But they have struggled to muster the votes for large tax increases since President Bill Clinton signed a 1993 law that included a variety of hikes intended to help reduce the budget deficit. Business groups, conservative activists, lobbyists and donors across the ideological spectrum have largely blocked such attempts. President Barack Obama campaigned on ending tax cuts for the rich signed into law by President George W. Bush, but after the 2008 financial crisis, he cut deals with Republicans to extend those cuts before allowing some of them to expire at the end of 2012. Liberal economists say this year could be different, thanks to the unique political and economic circumstances surrounding the recovery from the pandemic recession. With Biden’s signing of a $1.9 trillion economic relief bill, financed entirely by federal borrowing, forecasters now expect the economy to grow this year at its fastest annual clip since the 1980s. Republicans and some economists have begun to warn of overheating growth spurring runaway inflation, which could reduce the salience of warnings that tax increases would cause growth to stall. Public polling shows broad support, even among many Republican voters, for raising taxes on large corporations and high-income individuals. The most conservative Democrats in the Senate, who hold great sway over Biden’s legislative agenda, say they favor trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending, so long as there is a plan to pay for it. That includes Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who told reporters this week that Biden’s infrastructure plan was “going to be enormous” and that its costs needed to be covered. He signaled openness to making changes to the 2017 tax overhaul, adding that the benefits in that legislation were “weighted in one direction to the upper end.” “Where do they think it’s going to come from? How are they going to fix America?” he said, when asked about Republican resistance to tax increases. “I don’t think that’s reasonable.” Democrats widely share a desire to raise the corporate income tax rate after it was cut to 21% in 2017. And they want to raise the top marginal rate for individuals back to 39.6% from 37%. But there are disputes in the rank and file, with some favoring Biden’s plan to set the corporate rate at 28% and others preferring a lower one, like 25%. There are also questions over which high-earning individuals should see a tax increase. Biden has pledged not to raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000. Some of his progressive allies, including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have advocated raising taxes on a broader group. Democrats like Manchin have pushed him to consider additional tax plans that do not solely target the rich, like a European-style tax on consumption, though that type of tax could fall more heavily on low-income Americans than wealthy ones. Republicans are unlikely to support any plan to raise taxes, leaving administration officials and leading congressional Democrats to hammer out a plan on their own. But absent Republican support in the Senate, where both parties hold 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties, Democrats would need to secure total consensus within their caucus to pass the legislation and use a fast-track budget process known as reconciliation to bypass the 60-vote threshold for ending a filibuster. Business groups and Republican lawmakers, who supported the 2017 tax cuts, predict that any tax increase will slow economic growth and undermine the competitiveness of U.S. companies. They contend that the economic and wage growth in the run-up to the pandemic prove that Trump’s tax cuts worked, an argument Biden’s advisers reject, citing research from the International Monetary Fund and others. “He wants a massive tax increase, and he wants to allocate the tax responsibility in this country on the basis of class,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “That’s a hell of a way to make tax policy. Sound tax policy is made on the basis of economics.” Republicans who favor some form of an infrastructure bill have struggled to offer alternative ways to fund such an undertaking, which they argue should be significantly smaller than what Biden has floated. Some, however, are noodling on tax changes should a bipartisan plan emerge. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said this past week that her committee would examine changes to the gas tax or a related tax that also charges a fee to users of electric vehicles as discussions continue about a funding mechanism. Many liberal economists say there are good reasons to raise taxes, starting with using those funds to invest in workers and help build economic opportunity. Spending on physical infrastructure, like roads and water pipes, or on programs like education and child care that are meant to help people earn more money could help curb persistent inequalities in income and wealth. The economists also say that tax increases that are properly set up would provide incentives for multinational companies to keep jobs in the United States and not shift profits to lower-tax foreign countries. Key Democrats are trying to bring the party to consensus. The top tax writer in the Senate, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is drafting a series of bills to raise taxes, many of them overlapping with Biden’s campaign proposals. “I’ll be ready to raise what the Democratic caucus decides is required to move forward,” Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in an interview.

Under Biden, Democrats are poised to raise taxes on business and the rich

As Democrats pushed this month to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, they were eager to rebuke Republicans for opposing en masse a measure filled with aid to struggling Americans. But they had another target as well: the core policy of President Barack Obama’s first-term agenda.

Party leaders from President Joe Biden on down are citing Obama’s strategy on his most urgent policy initiative — an $800 billion financial rescue plan in 2009 in the midst of a crippling recession — as too cautious and too deferential to Republicans, mistakes they were determined not to repeat.

The pointed assessments of Obama’s handling of the 2009 stimulus effort are the closest Democrats have come to grappling with a highly delicate matter in the party: the shortcomings in the legacy of Obama, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party and a powerful voice for bipartisanship in a deeply divided country.

The re-examination has irked some of the former president’s allies but thrilled the party’s progressive wing, which sees Biden’s more expansive plan as a down payment on his ambitious agenda. And it has sent an early signal that Biden’s administration does not intend to be a carbon copy of his Democratic predecessor’s. Times, all concede, have changed.

“This time, the feeling was, ‘We’re not very willing to negotiate what we think is needed,’ ” said former Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who retired before the 2010 midterm elections. “In 2009, I think the feeling was, ‘Oh we wanted more, but we didn’t get what we wanted.’ ”

The careful dance around Obama and his accomplishments continues a dynamic from the Democratic presidential primary. While taking care not to disparage his administration, several candidates stressed the need for the party to embrace a more take-no-prisoners political approach with Republicans; others criticized Obama’s policies on immigration: though he used an executive order to aid the Dreamers, he also pushed deportations and border detentions.

It also highlights the rapid change in Washington over a decade of partisan brawling. Both Obama and Biden came into office on promises of unity and bipartisanship in the face of an economic crisis, but Biden is the beneficiary of a changed landscape in the party. Democrats are now more cognizant of Republican obstruction, less deferential to the deficit hawks and energized by a growing progressive wing that has pulled the party’s ideological midpoint to the left.

A decade ago, Obama’s strategy reflected the Democratic Party’s mainstream, an insistence on negotiating with Republicans, keeping the Senate filibuster and trimming his own ambitions for a nation that he and others worried could handle only so much change after electing its first Black president. Now, the progressive criticism of that posture has become party canon.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading progressive voice, said the changes should be attributed partly to the growth of the left, but partly to an inadequate Democratic response to the Great Recession, which she said “created so much damage economically, for people, but it also created a lot of political damage for the party” by not being larger in scope.

“I came of age watching Democratic governance fail me and fail my family,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Obama is himself a person who carefully takes stock of his presidential legacy and his place in Democratic Party politics. He has not publicly responded to the recent criticism of his stimulus strategy, and through a spokesperson he declined a request to comment for this article.

But for friends and allies who are close to him, the characterizations of Obama’s 2009 efforts sting.

Some describe it as an attempt, in a different political era, to act as Monday-morning quarterback, and bristle that figures who were involved in the 2009 negotiations — like Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., or Biden — have now publicly expressed regret over them. Others describe it as the natural course of politics: past actions being used as a baseline for improvement.

Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s former senior adviser, said the administration was acting on the evidence and the political possibilities of the time.

“This was the worst economic recession since the Great Depression,” she said. “And therefore, there wasn’t a body of evidence about the size of the package and the impact it would have.” She also mentioned a political incentive: “It was important to show the country early in President Obama’s time in office, he was willing to work with Republicans.”

In many ways, the maneuvering is a stand-in for larger tensions within the party. Obama’s close-knit circle is keenly devoted to protecting his policy legacy. A growing left wing wants more investments in health care and combating climate change, and a break from hard-line policy on immigration. Biden’s administration is seeking to chart its own path.

In a recent address to House Democrats, Biden argued that it was Obama’s “humility” that cost Democrats at the time, because the president didn’t spend enough time explaining the benefits of his stimulus package to the American people.

“Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap,’ ” Biden said. “I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time, I’m not going to take a victory lap,’ and we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”

The White House recently announced that Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and some key administration figures would travel the country.

But Obama’s own public comments since his presidency hint at a changing worldview. At the funeral for Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died in 2020, Obama seemed to endorse ending the Senate filibuster as a way to expand voting rights — a move he had long avoided. He said during the Democratic primary that while he was proud of his presidential campaigns, the landscape had changed and required more expansive policy proposals.

“I want candidates now to propose beyond what we were able to get done then, because the politics have changed,” he said at a 2019 fundraiser.

That task is now left to Biden, who lacks the cult of personality that surrounded his former boss but is also less interested in cultivating one. In passing his first piece of signature legislation without a Republican vote, the president has subtly rejected the way Jarrett framed unity — he will pursue it not by endlessly wooing Republicans but by passing legislation that most Americans support.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who backed Obama’s stimulus measure after it was pared back, said Biden’s approach was a reversion on his campaign promise to be a unifying figure.

Biden “showed that he had absolutely no interest in trying to negotiate a bipartisan agreement.’’ Collins recently told reporters.

Progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ocasio-Cortez say the willingness to forego Republican buy-in is proof the entire party now agrees on the need for structural reform, and the hardball tactics that may be required.

“Schumer spoke to the very real pain of delaying decisive action, which is a self-inflicted wound, I would say, for the party,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Where you delay and you water down, and you just kind of hand Susan Collins a pen, to have her diminish legislation for months, just for her to not even vote for it in the end.”

As Democrats pushed this month to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, they were eager to rebuke Republicans for opposing en masse a measure filled with aid to struggling Americans.

As Democrats pushed this month to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, they were eager to rebuke Republicans for opposing en masse a measure filled with aid to struggling Americans. But they had another target as well: the core policy of President Barack Obama’s first-term agenda. Party leaders from President Joe Biden on down are citing Obama’s strategy on his most urgent policy initiative — an $800 billion financial rescue plan in 2009 in the midst of a crippling recession — as too cautious and too deferential to Republicans, mistakes they were determined not to repeat. The pointed assessments of Obama’s handling of the 2009 stimulus effort are the closest Democrats have come to grappling with a highly delicate matter in the party: the shortcomings in the legacy of Obama, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party and a powerful voice for bipartisanship in a deeply divided country. The re-examination has irked some of the former president’s allies but thrilled the party’s progressive wing, which sees Biden’s more expansive plan as a down payment on his ambitious agenda. And it has sent an early signal that Biden’s administration does not intend to be a carbon copy of his Democratic predecessor’s. Times, all concede, have changed. “This time, the feeling was, ‘We’re not very willing to negotiate what we think is needed,’ ” said former Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who retired before the 2010 midterm elections. “In 2009, I think the feeling was, ‘Oh we wanted more, but we didn’t get what we wanted.’ ” The careful dance around Obama and his accomplishments continues a dynamic from the Democratic presidential primary. While taking care not to disparage his administration, several candidates stressed the need for the party to embrace a more take-no-prisoners political approach with Republicans; others criticized Obama’s policies on immigration: though he used an executive order to aid the Dreamers, he also pushed deportations and border detentions. It also highlights the rapid change in Washington over a decade of partisan brawling. Both Obama and Biden came into office on promises of unity and bipartisanship in the face of an economic crisis, but Biden is the beneficiary of a changed landscape in the party. Democrats are now more cognizant of Republican obstruction, less deferential to the deficit hawks and energized by a growing progressive wing that has pulled the party’s ideological midpoint to the left. A decade ago, Obama’s strategy reflected the Democratic Party’s mainstream, an insistence on negotiating with Republicans, keeping the Senate filibuster and trimming his own ambitions for a nation that he and others worried could handle only so much change after electing its first Black president. Now, the progressive criticism of that posture has become party canon. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading progressive voice, said the changes should be attributed partly to the growth of the left, but partly to an inadequate Democratic response to the Great Recession, which she said “created so much damage economically, for people, but it also created a lot of political damage for the party” by not being larger in scope. “I came of age watching Democratic governance fail me and fail my family,” Ocasio-Cortez said. Obama is himself a person who carefully takes stock of his presidential legacy and his place in Democratic Party politics. He has not publicly responded to the recent criticism of his stimulus strategy, and through a spokesperson he declined a request to comment for this article. But for friends and allies who are close to him, the characterizations of Obama’s 2009 efforts sting. Some describe it as an attempt, in a different political era, to act as Monday-morning quarterback, and bristle that figures who were involved in the 2009 negotiations — like Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., or Biden — have now publicly expressed regret over them. Others describe it as the natural course of politics: past actions being used as a baseline for improvement. Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s former senior adviser, said the administration was acting on the evidence and the political possibilities of the time. “This was the worst economic recession since the Great Depression,” she said. “And therefore, there wasn’t a body of evidence about the size of the package and the impact it would have.” She also mentioned a political incentive: “It was important to show the country early in President Obama’s time in office, he was willing to work with Republicans.” In many ways, the maneuvering is a stand-in for larger tensions within the party. Obama’s close-knit circle is keenly devoted to protecting his policy legacy. A growing left wing wants more investments in health care and combating climate change, and a break from hard-line policy on immigration. Biden’s administration is seeking to chart its own path. In a recent address to House Democrats, Biden argued that it was Obama’s “humility” that cost Democrats at the time, because the president didn’t spend enough time explaining the benefits of his stimulus package to the American people. “Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap,’ ” Biden said. “I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time, I’m not going to take a victory lap,’ and we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.” The White House recently announced that Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and some key administration figures would travel the country. But Obama’s own public comments since his presidency hint at a changing worldview. At the funeral for Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died in 2020, Obama seemed to endorse ending the Senate filibuster as a way to expand voting rights — a move he had long avoided. He said during the Democratic primary that while he was proud of his presidential campaigns, the landscape had changed and required more expansive policy proposals. “I want candidates now to propose beyond what we were able to get done then, because the politics have changed,” he said at a 2019 fundraiser. That task is now left to Biden, who lacks the cult of personality that surrounded his former boss but is also less interested in cultivating one. In passing his first piece of signature legislation without a Republican vote, the president has subtly rejected the way Jarrett framed unity — he will pursue it not by endlessly wooing Republicans but by passing legislation that most Americans support. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who backed Obama’s stimulus measure after it was pared back, said Biden’s approach was a reversion on his campaign promise to be a unifying figure. Biden “showed that he had absolutely no interest in trying to negotiate a bipartisan agreement.’’ Collins recently told reporters. Progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ocasio-Cortez say the willingness to forego Republican buy-in is proof the entire party now agrees on the need for structural reform, and the hardball tactics that may be required. “Schumer spoke to the very real pain of delaying decisive action, which is a self-inflicted wound, I would say, for the party,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Where you delay and you water down, and you just kind of hand Susan Collins a pen, to have her diminish legislation for months, just for her to not even vote for it in the end.”

Democrats, pushing stimulus, admit to regrets on Obama’s 2009 response

There are plenty of numbers in the $1.9 trillion relief plan signed into law by President Joe Biden this past week. $1,400 for stimulus checks. $130 billion for schools. $350 billion for state and local governments.

But the most politically significant number might just be zero.

Yes, zero. That is the number of congressional Republicans who supported the legislation.

Looking at the lack of GOP support, you might assume the bill was unpopular, at least with Republican voters. You would be wrong. Americans overwhelmingly support the package, including a significant portion of the Republican base. According to some analysts, the bill is the most popular piece of major legislation in over a decade.

So Republicans will definitely pay a political price for opposing a measure that the country, including a large portion of their base, seems to want, right?

Well, it is complicated.

We are now in the post-passage phase of the American Rescue Plan, a battle likely to last through the midterm elections next year.

During the weeks of negotiations over the legislation, Republicans were unable to coalesce around a comprehensive argument against the bill. Instead, they offered a scattershot list of complaints. After the legislation passed, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s main argument seemed to be that the economic recovery would have happened anyhow.

“We’re about to have a boom,” said McConnell, the minority leader. “And if we do have a boom, it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion.”

Others seemed far more focused on Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, culture war bait that fires up their conservative base. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, even took the issue to the House floor.

“First they outlaw Dr. Seuss, and now they want to tell us what to say,” he said during a debate over a Democratic voting rights bill. (It was the company overseeing the author’s estate, not any Democrats, that recently chose to stop publishing several of his works. And Republicans’ focus on Dr. Seuss did deliver some economic benefit: More than 1.2 million copies of stories by the children’s book author sold in the first week of March — more than quadruple from the week before.)

The Republican predicament is simple: People like getting money, especially when they are struggling, and this bill will deliver. Roughly 90% of U.S. households will be eligible for stimulus checks. More than 93% of children — 69 million — will receive what is essentially a guaranteed income for families. Even those who do not receive a payment will benefit from new funding for reopening schools and vaccine distribution.

Former President Donald Trump taught Republican voters to love that kind of government spending by championing stimulus measures that were even larger than this bill. That makes it difficult for GOP lawmakers who backed those measures to argue against the cost of this legislation without facing charges of hypocrisy or possible pushback from portions of their base.

To shift public opinion, Republicans will have to settle on a clear argument against the legislation and find the party discipline to drive it. To that end, they will be keeping a close eye on how the money is distributed, hoping to find examples of waste or fraud that they can highlight to undercut Biden’s policy agenda. One area ripe for discontent is the aid to state and local governments, which polls significantly lower among Republicans than Democrats. But it will not be easy; Republicans are already struggling to overcome deep divides in their ranks.

Biden, acutely aware of the potential pitfalls, wants to ensure that Americans understand the benefits of this bill — and that they give him credit. His address Thursday evening was the start of an administrationwide push to promote the legislation across the country. It is a strategy to avoid the struggles of former President Barack Obama, who some Democrats believe was not aggressive enough in selling his 2009 stimulus package to voters.

The situation is not exactly the same: Unlike Obama, who faced the challenge of a slow recovery, Biden is likely to benefit from a quickly expanding economy, with forecasters predicting growth to speed up in the coming months as more Americans get vaccinated. He also starts his campaign with more goodwill. Biden’s legislation is roughly 20 percentage points more popular than the 2009 bill was immediately after passage.

Still, the 2009 stimulus package provides an instructive example on how quickly public opinion can change. No House Republicans voted for that $787 billion package, and only three moderate Republicans in the Senate backed it, even as nearly 2 in 3 Americans supported the bill.

Republicans calculated that they could make the bill a centerpiece of their efforts to win control of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections. They began arguing that the legislation was “chock-full of wasteful government spending” and failed to create jobs, even as dozens also trumpeted the federal dollars flowing into their states. Voters conflated the stimulus bill with the bailouts of the banking and auto industries, confusion that helped incite some of the fiercest opposition to Obama in the form of the tea party movement.

By January 2010, about 75% said half or more of the stimulus money had been wasted. Three months later, 62% said the legislation had not created jobs. And in exit polls after the 2010 midterms, only about one-third of voters said the package had actually helped.

White House officials eventually conceded that they had made mistakes in framing the public discussion of the measure. But by then, it was too late: Republicans won control of the House and gained six seats in the Senate.

There are plenty of numbers in the $1.9 trillion relief plan signed into law by President Joe Biden this past week. $1,400 for stimulus checks. $130 billion for schools.

There are plenty of numbers in the $1.9 trillion relief plan signed into law by President Joe Biden this past week. $1,400 for stimulus checks. $130 billion for schools. $350 billion for state and local governments. But the most politically significant number might just be zero. Yes, zero. That is the number of congressional Republicans who supported the legislation. Looking at the lack of GOP support, you might assume the bill was unpopular, at least with Republican voters. You would be wrong. Americans overwhelmingly support the package, including a significant portion of the Republican base. According to some analysts, the bill is the most popular piece of major legislation in over a decade. So Republicans will definitely pay a political price for opposing a measure that the country, including a large portion of their base, seems to want, right? Well, it is complicated. We are now in the post-passage phase of the American Rescue Plan, a battle likely to last through the midterm elections next year. During the weeks of negotiations over the legislation, Republicans were unable to coalesce around a comprehensive argument against the bill. Instead, they offered a scattershot list of complaints. After the legislation passed, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s main argument seemed to be that the economic recovery would have happened anyhow. “We’re about to have a boom,” said McConnell, the minority leader. “And if we do have a boom, it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion.” Others seemed far more focused on Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, culture war bait that fires up their conservative base. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, even took the issue to the House floor. “First they outlaw Dr. Seuss, and now they want to tell us what to say,” he said during a debate over a Democratic voting rights bill. (It was the company overseeing the author’s estate, not any Democrats, that recently chose to stop publishing several of his works. And Republicans’ focus on Dr. Seuss did deliver some economic benefit: More than 1.2 million copies of stories by the children’s book author sold in the first week of March — more than quadruple from the week before.) The Republican predicament is simple: People like getting money, especially when they are struggling, and this bill will deliver. Roughly 90% of U.S. households will be eligible for stimulus checks. More than 93% of children — 69 million — will receive what is essentially a guaranteed income for families. Even those who do not receive a payment will benefit from new funding for reopening schools and vaccine distribution. Former President Donald Trump taught Republican voters to love that kind of government spending by championing stimulus measures that were even larger than this bill. That makes it difficult for GOP lawmakers who backed those measures to argue against the cost of this legislation without facing charges of hypocrisy or possible pushback from portions of their base. To shift public opinion, Republicans will have to settle on a clear argument against the legislation and find the party discipline to drive it. To that end, they will be keeping a close eye on how the money is distributed, hoping to find examples of waste or fraud that they can highlight to undercut Biden’s policy agenda. One area ripe for discontent is the aid to state and local governments, which polls significantly lower among Republicans than Democrats. But it will not be easy; Republicans are already struggling to overcome deep divides in their ranks. Biden, acutely aware of the potential pitfalls, wants to ensure that Americans understand the benefits of this bill — and that they give him credit. His address Thursday evening was the start of an administrationwide push to promote the legislation across the country. It is a strategy to avoid the struggles of former President Barack Obama, who some Democrats believe was not aggressive enough in selling his 2009 stimulus package to voters. The situation is not exactly the same: Unlike Obama, who faced the challenge of a slow recovery, Biden is likely to benefit from a quickly expanding economy, with forecasters predicting growth to speed up in the coming months as more Americans get vaccinated. He also starts his campaign with more goodwill. Biden’s legislation is roughly 20 percentage points more popular than the 2009 bill was immediately after passage. Still, the 2009 stimulus package provides an instructive example on how quickly public opinion can change. No House Republicans voted for that $787 billion package, and only three moderate Republicans in the Senate backed it, even as nearly 2 in 3 Americans supported the bill. Republicans calculated that they could make the bill a centerpiece of their efforts to win control of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections. They began arguing that the legislation was “chock-full of wasteful government spending” and failed to create jobs, even as dozens also trumpeted the federal dollars flowing into their states. Voters conflated the stimulus bill with the bailouts of the banking and auto industries, confusion that helped incite some of the fiercest opposition to Obama in the form of the tea party movement. By January 2010, about 75% said half or more of the stimulus money had been wasted. Three months later, 62% said the legislation had not created jobs. And in exit polls after the 2010 midterms, only about one-third of voters said the package had actually helped. White House officials eventually conceded that they had made mistakes in framing the public discussion of the measure. But by then, it was too late: Republicans won control of the House and gained six seats in the Senate.

Will Republicans pay a price for opposing the stimulus?

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