US lawmakers voted Friday to elevate President Joe Biden’s giant social welfare bill to the Senate, in a major step forward for his vision to create a more equitable society — the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.

Build Back Better — Biden’s potentially legacy-defining package of education, health care, childcare and climate reforms — was green-lit by the House of Representatives four days after he signed into law the first part of his economic blueprint, a sweeping upgrade of the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

The $1.8 trillion measure faces a bumpier ride in the upper chamber Senate, with the Democrats’ deficit hawks jittery over spiraling inflation, before it gets a final rubber stamp in the House, likely in January.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi had hoped for a vote late Thursday but Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy scuppered that plan by breaking her record for the longest House floor speech, clocking in at more than eight-and-a-half hours.

The breakthrough vote in the House came as Biden was set to transfer power to Vice President Kamala Harris while he underwent a colonoscopy under anesthesia as part of a regular health check.

The White House released a statement from the president as he was out of action, describing the vote as “another giant step forward in carrying out my economic plan to create jobs, reduce costs, make our country more competitive and give working people and the middle class a fighting chance.”

Dealbreaker

The legislation would provide millions of jobs, according to the White House, although Republicans have characterized it as an example of wildly out-of-control Democratic spending.

It will likely be trimmed further in any case in the upper chamber, where Democrats have the narrowest of majorities and moderates are voicing concerns over Biden’s spending plans.

Annual inflation jumped to 6.2 percent last month, giving Republicans another cudgel to bash Biden with as they bid to retake both chambers of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. 

House Democrats would have lost the party-line vote had there been more than three defectors.

In the end only one Democrat — from a competitive district in Maine — joined the Republicans in rejecting the bill, boosting the majority party’s hopes that members in both chambers can overcome months of infighting to get the package signed into law.

Republicans seized on an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office saying the bill would boost the deficit by $367 billion over 10 years.

But White House officials had already been warning for days that the estimate would not take into account savings that could be made through tougher taxation enforcement.

‘Craptacular mess’

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday that Build Back Better was “more than fully paid for,” and would help reduce the deficit in the long run “by asking large corporations and the country’s top earners to pay their fair share.”

The bill is likely to be taken up by the upper chamber in late December or possibly January, with more urgent priorities such as avoiding a debt default and a government shutdown expected to take up much of the holiday period.

Pelosi downplayed the potential for senators making major changes, telling reporters after the vote that 90 percent of the text had been agreed among Democrats in both chambers of Congress and the White House.

“There were some differences at the end, and we’ll deal with that as we go forward,” she said.

The Senate has been locked in a 50-50 split for one of the longest periods in its history, and, with no votes to spare, every Democrat effectively has a veto on any bill as long as Republicans stick together.

Senate progressives are pushing for a national paid family leave program and a bigger expansion of health care benefits, but the latest inflation data could torpedo those efforts.

“We will act as quickly as possible to get this bill to President Biden’s desk and deliver help for middle-class families,” the upper chamber’s leader Chuck Schumer said.

But Nebraska’s Ben Sasse led a chorus of opprobrium from Senate Republicans over the legislation, labeling it a “craptacular mess” that will lead to “a million more annual IRS (tax) audits.”

Source: AFP

President Joe Biden will meet at the White House next week with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, his office said Wednesday, as the US administration seeks to shore up alliances that came under strain under Donald Trump.

At the November 18 meeting, Biden, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will discuss efforts to fight the pandemic, as well as climate change and immigration, the White House said.

Biden is relaunching a gathering known as the North American Leaders’ Summit, the last of which was held in 2016 before being abandoned by Trump.

“During the summit, the United States, Mexico, and Canada will reaffirm their strong ties and integration while also charting a new path for collaboration,” the statement said.

It said the talks will also address “a regional vision for migration,” a touchy issue for the US and Mexico, which regularly sees thousands of mainly Central American migrants arrive at its southern border hoping to reach the United States as they flee poverty and violence at home.

“With respect for each other’s sovereignty and in a true spirit of partnership, we affirm our unwavering vision that North America is the most competitive and dynamic region in the world,” the White House said.

In addition to the three-way talks, Biden will also participate in bilateral meetings with Trudeau and Lopez Obrador.

The US statement noted that Biden held his first foreign bilateral meetings as president with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

“Since day one of the Biden-Harris administration, the United States has reaffirmed the importance of our regional partnerships to realize a more equal, prosperous, greener, democratic future for all our hemisphere’s citizens,” said Biden’s senior director for western hemisphere affairs, Juan Gonzalez.

The change of tone from the Trump era is stark.

Trump renegotiated a major North American trade deal with the two US neighbors but he also triggered conflicts with them.

His project to build a wall along the southern US border weighed on ties with Mexico.

He also had tense relations with Trudeau, calling him “dishonest” and “weak” at the height of a spat over US tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, the European Union and Mexico.

Source: AFP

President Joe Biden returned from Europe Wednesday with a wake-up call for feuding Democrats holding up his sweeping domestic reforms in Congress — after a humiliating state election defeat that many blamed on inertia and infighting among the party’s lawmakers.

“I do know that people want us to get things done,” he told reporters asking for his takeaway on longtime favourite Terry McAuliffe’s loss to a Republican newcomer in Tuesday’s Virginia governor’s election.

“And that’s why I’m continuing to push very hard for the Democratic Party to move along and pass my infrastructure bill and my Build Back Better bill.”

Amid nosediving approval ratings and frustration over his stalled economic agenda, Biden came home to a Republican red wave that swept over the eastern United States Tuesday, from Virginia Beach to Long Island and beyond.

Republicans pulled off a decisive upset in the gubernatorial election in otherwise blue-trending Virginia, with untested multimillionaire Glenn Youngkin beating McAuliffe, while the Democratic governor of New Jersey won re-election but only barely.

There were also Republican gains across New York City and a conservative backlash to a liberal proposal in Minneapolis — the city where George Floyd was murdered by police — to dismantle the local force.

Hours before the polls closed, Biden had voiced confidence about the votes in Virginia and New Jersey, rejecting suggestions in any case that they were a verdict on his presidency.

Asked several times on Wednesday if he took responsibility for the bloodletting in local elections, he avoided giving a direct answer.

But he told reporters at the White House: “People are upset and uncertain about a lot of things — from Covid to school, to jobs to a whole range of things and the cost of a gallon of gasoline.

“And so if I’m able to sign into law my Build Back Better initiative, I’m in a position where you’re going to see a lot of those things ameliorated quickly and swiftly. So that has to be done.”  

‘Clear message’

Biden, who campaigned as a centrist but has governed to the left, is facing a thorny path to the November 2022 midterm elections as he plays peacemaker between the increasingly polarised Democratic factions he has failed to bring together.

The president offered bold action on the climate in Glasgow at the weekend, but the lack of tangible progress in Washington on his environmental goals reverberated through the COP26 summit, underscoring the damage being inflicted on his agenda by months of infighting.

Amid record-shattering turnout, Youngkin squashed McAuliffe’s comeback by leveraging parents’ fears over a public school curriculum they consider too liberal and growing frustration with Biden, who swept the state by 10 points only a year ago.

Democrats have privately been warning for weeks that a McAuliffe loss could spook moderates already skittish about the expansive scale of Biden’s two-pronged, $3 trillion plan to transform infrastructure and enlarge the social safety net.

While Biden’s news conference may spur rank-and-file lawmakers to deal more urgently with considering his priorities, it is far from clear they are united on the lessons they should be taking from Tuesday’s setbacks.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist holdout on much of Biden’s agenda, led calls Wednesday for a handbrake on spending negotiations so that lawmakers can “take time and do it right.”

But progressives reached the opposite conclusion, arguing that Virginia had been lost by middle-of-the-road Democrats blocking provisions for child care, prescription drug reform and paid family leave from Biden’s Build Back Better social welfare package.

“Terry McAuliffe has been saying for weeks that his fate was tied to the progress of negotiations here on Capitol Hill,” Senate majority whip Dick Durbin told reporters, echoing Biden.

“And there ought to be a clear message to my party and all those who support it to get the job done.”

In reality, Congress had nothing to do with perhaps the most damaging gaffe of McAuliffe’s campaign, when he said at a September 29 debate with Youngkin: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

The remark became a rallying cry for conservatives bitter over mask mandates in schools and misled by the false Republican notion that “critical race theory” was being taught to their children.

Peter Loge, a public affairs professor at George Washington University, offered a crumb of consolation to those fearing the death of the party, pointing out that the Virginia governor’s election almost always serves as voters’ first opportunity to cudgel the party of the new president.

“What I do think the White House has to do now is go to Democrats in Congress and other Democrats around the country and say, look, here are the details of the votes,” Loge said.

“Here’s what voters were telling us… Let’s focus on what matters — and that’s families, that’s schools, that’s jobs, that’s inflation.”

Source: AFP

President Joe Biden promised to show the world that democracies can work to meet the challenges of the 21st century. As he prepares to push that message at a pair of global summits, his case could hinge on what’s happening in Washington, where he was struggling to finalize a major domestic legislative package.

After a fitful day of talks over the fate of twin infrastructure and social spending bills that he cast as a choice between “leading the world, or letting the world pass us by,” Biden landed in Rome aboard Air Force One in the dark early Friday with the answer still undetermined.

Headed first to a Group of 20 summit in Rome and then to Glasgow, Scotland, for a UN climate summit, Biden will be pressed to deliver concrete ideas for stopping a global pandemic, boosting economic growth and halting the acceleration of climate change. Those stakes might seem a bit high for a pair of two-day gatherings attended by the global elite and their entourages. But it’s written right into the slogan for the meeting in Rome: “People, Planet, Prosperity.”

It was a reflection of his promise to align US diplomacy with the interests of the middle class. This has tied any success abroad to his efforts to get Congress to advance his environmental, tax, infrastructure and social policies. It could be harder to get the world to commit to his stated goals if Americans refuse to fully embrace them, one of the risks of Biden’s choice to knit together his domestic and foreign policies.

Before leaving Washington, Biden pitched House Democrats to get behind a scaled-back $1.75 trillion “framework” that he believes could pass the 50-50 Senate. It remained to be seen whether lawmakers would embrace the package or send Biden back to the negotiating table, as some key priorities like paid family leave and steps to lower prescription drug costs were excised from the bill, which will be paid for with hiked taxes on the nation’s wealthiest and corporations.

“The rest of the world wonders whether we can function,” Biden told the lawmakers, according to a source familiar with his remarks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invoked the trip as she tried to rally Democratic votes around the separate $1 trillion infrastructure package, attempting, unsuccessfully, to build support for a vote on Thursday before Biden arrived in Rome.

“When the president gets off that plane we want him to have a vote of confidence from this Congress,” she said. “In order for us to have success, we must succeed today.”

While Biden was in the air, Pelosi, facing opposition from progressives who also want assurances that the scaled-back social spending plan will pass, pulled the plug on a Thursday vote and instead set out to pass yet another stop-gap funding measure for a range of transportation initiatives.

Biden’s trip abroad comes as he faces an increasingly pessimistic nation at home, and souring views of his handling of the nation’s economy. According to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just 41% of Americans now approve of Biden’s economic stewardship, down from 49% in August and a sharp reversal since March, when 60% approved.

Americans are split on Biden overall, with 48% approving and 51% disapproving of his handling of his job as president. Only about a third of Americans say the country is headed in the right direction, also a significant decline since earlier this year when about half said so.

Domestic politics, global implications

One consequence of Biden’s decision to so closely link up his domestic and foreign policies is that both are now at the mercy of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, whose votes are essential in a Senate evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Biden aides have hoped for, among other things, a more than $500 billion investment to combat climate change in the United States, which would help efforts to persuade China and other nations to make investments of their own in renewable energy.

“It’d be very, very positive to get it done before the trip,” Biden said Monday.

But as talks slogged on, administration officials began to play down the significance of Biden’s spending plan still hovering in limbo. White House press secretary Jen Psaki stressed that the president can still work the phones from Rome, the city that gave birth to the word “Senate.” She suggested that foreign leaders can see beyond ongoing backroom talks with US lawmakers in order to judge Biden’s commitment.

“They don’t look at it through the prism of whether there is a vote in one body of the legislative body before he gets on an airplane,” Psaki said.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan, though, has framed the bills as vital to the nation’s security. “Making these investments in American strength will be very important to our national security going forward,” he said.

Reaching for a deal that has had a perilous journey thus far, the president is beginning his trip abroad with an expert in the power of prayer. Biden, the nation’s second Catholic president, will meet Friday with Pope Francis at the Vatican in a visit that is part personal for the intensely religious commander in chief and part policy, particularly around matters of climate and confronting autocracies.

Delicate diplomacy

Biden will also pay a visit to the Italian hosts of the G-20 summit before he sits down with French President Emmanuel Macron. Biden is trying to close a rift with France created when the US and UK agreed to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, supplanting a French contract in the process.

Biden is also expected to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who backed down just days ago from threats to expel Western diplomats and whose purchase of Russian surface-to-air missiles has upended his country’s participation in the F-35 fighter program.

In those and other meetings, Biden is expected to address the Iranian nuclear threat, and Iran’s announcement that it could return to talks next month in Vienna.

He is also set to continue to press wealthier US allies to step up their commitments to share Covid-19 vaccines with lower- and middle-income countries. Some nations have been slow to deliver on ambitious pledges and others have largely stayed on the sidelines. Biden will argue that the pandemic can’t be ended until vaccines are available widely, and that democracies can’t let Chinese and Russian vaccine diplomacy — which often comes with strings attached — take root globally.

Biden will have little interaction with those two most significant of American rivals, as China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin participate in the summits only virtually because of the pandemic threat. Those two leaders are critical for broader climate issues at a time of rising energy prices. China has committed to increase coal mining ahead of winter, while Russia’s natural gas reserves give it a degree of political power over parts of Europe.

Beyond the policies and personalities that will be prominent in Biden’s trip, the president will be trying to make the case for democracy itself, arguing that essential aspects — fair elections and representative government — are superior to autocracies in good times and bad.

Heading to Scotland on Sunday night for the climate summit, Biden will lead a large US delegation that he hopes will showcase America’s plans to address the threat of climate change. It’s a sharp reversal from former President Donald Trump, who withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord.

Biden is set to deliver a significant address on climate change and attempt to reclaim the mantle of American leadership. One of the key objections to shifting away from oil and other fossil fuels has been the costs, but the president has been making the claim that nature is already exacting a price with extreme weather from climate change.

Source: FRANCE 24 with AP