Monday News & Notes
AUGUST 23, 2021 -- DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE BARACK OBAMA INTRODUCES RUNNING MATE, SEN. JOE BIDEN, 2008
•Today is Andrew Cuomo’s last day as governor of New York, as the Democrat steps down after a state attorney general’s report alleges widespread sexual harassment. Cuomo’s replacement at midnight tonight is Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat who intends to run for a full term in November 2022.
•Climate Change Mayhem: Hurricane Henri has been downgraded to a tropical storm, though authorities in southern New England fear potential flash floods as it slowly moves up the coast. Meanwhile, Politico reports, the death count had reached 22 Monday morning from flash floods that occurred in Western Tennessee after 17 inches of rain in less than 24 hours, Saturday.
•The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, The Hill reports. The Biden administration hopes full approval will persuade many of the vaccine-resistant to take the shots.
Budget Resolution vs. Infrastructure Program Face the ‘Unbreakable Nine’ – Despite President Biden’s standing on Capitol Hill being weakened by his lack of pre-planning of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, is still planning to take up a vote in the House of Representatives on the $1.2-trillion infrastructure package and the $3.5-trillion budget resolution package together, despite House Democrats’ lack of votes on the latter, according to Punchbowl News. The so-called “Unbreakable Nine” of moderate Democrats are holding firm on opposing the pairing of the budget resolution and the infrastructure bill, both already passed in the Senate.
Pelosi is walking a tightrope between progressives who want even more than Biden’s $4.7-trillion worth of roads and bridges and “social” infrastructure program proposals and the Unbreakable Nine, who authored an opinion piece in The Washington Post, headlined “Let’s take the win. Let’s do infrastructure first.”
“While we have concerns about the level of spending and potential revenue raisers, we are open to immediate consideration of that package,” Democratic Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Carolyn Bordeaux of Georgia, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Jim Costa of California, Jared Golden of Maine, Ed Case of Hawaii and Vincent Gonzalez, Henry Cuellar and Filemon Vega of Texas, wrote of the budget reconciliation bill. “But we are firmly opposed to holding the president’s infrastructure legislation hostage to reconciliation, risking its passage and the bi-partisan support of it.”
Note: It’s possible Pelosi has enough votes from moderate Republicans for bi-partisan passage of the infrastructure bill alone, Punchbowl News theorizes, though that would mean some slight-of-hand on the speaker’s promise to group the bills together. We expect Pelosi, probably the most savvy leader on Capitol Hill, has some sort of plan to assure that Biden will get a much-needed win on infrastructure (his averaged poll numbers have dipped below 50%, Politico reports). Whatever Pelosi’s plan, it will almost necessarily involve tamping down progressive Democrats’ delusion that they have a “mandate” in the 117thCongress in order to be effective. The timing for a full reversal of Reganomics is not good.
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Taliban Will Not Extend August 31 Deadline – Taliban leadership says it will not extend the self-imposed U.S. deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan, despite President Biden saying Sunday he would not rule it out, the BBC reports Monday. Biden said Sunday the airlift out of Kabul is accelerating, but the withdrawal remains “hard and painful.”
“The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful, no matter when it started, when we began,” the president said in a national address Sunday afternoon (AP). “It would have been true if we’d started a month ago, or a month from now. There is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images you see on television.”
Note: Biden already had moved up his initial September 11 withdrawal deadline to August 31. The president has had to increase the number of U.S. troops from the 2,500 left by the Trump administration to about 5,800 troops, and they’re barely holding the perimeter of Karzai International as Americans and allies try to get past Taliban security stops.
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GM Recalls All Bolt EVs — General Motors has added the 2019-2022 model year Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV models, some 73,000 units, to its recall of the electric vehicles, meaning that all of the Bolts built have now been recalled by the company. The recall is based on a concern of battery fires. According to the automaker, “In rare circumstances the batteries supplied by GM” — they are supplied by a Korean company, LG — “may have two manufacturing defects . . . present in the same battery cell, which increases the risk of fire.”
Note:
This is a particularly significant recall, based on the Biden Administration’s recent goal of having 50% of light vehicle sales being electric by 2030. GM is in the process of investing $35 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles between now and 2025 and it is shooting for a goal of having all of its vehicles electrified by 2035. GM is still the biggest automaker in the U.S. and the Bolt fires could put a dent in (1) consumer willingness by buy an EV and (2) GM’s transformation efforts.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash