News & Notes
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 2021 -- ARMY SPECIAL COUNSEL JOSEPH WELCH TO SEN. JOE MCCARTHY, R-WI; 'HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF DECENCY?', 1954
President Biden has departed for a weeklong trip to Europe, where he will meet with the Group of 7 nations in Britain, followed by visits to NATO and the European Union. He ends the trip in Geneva where he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time as president. A charter flight for White House reporters covering Biden’s summit was delayed at Dulles International Airport when cicadas clogged an engine, NPR reports. The flight commenced when the journalists were reboarded onto another airplane.
Capito Off Infrastructure, Problem Solvers On – As we figured when we posted our debate yesterday on the emergence of a House of Representative Democratic infrastructure bill, negotiations between the White House and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-WV, over her caucus’ low-ball bid versus President Biden’s latest-best $1.2-trillion offer, wasn’t going anywhere. And negotiations, which apparently never got past the issue of how to pay for infrastructure – Biden’s wish to raise the corporate tax rate and other taxes, or Republicans’ preference for a gas tax hike and user fees – have officially ended as Biden left for Europe.
But the administration has several paths to an infrastructure bill, and would prefer a bi-partisan one rather than rely on reconciliation – which Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, could scuttle, anyway – Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told NPR Wednesday morning. There is another group of “moderate” Republican senators working on a compromise. There is House bill 3684, the INVEST in America Act [click on The Hustings banner above to return to the home page debate]. And now there is a new proposal by the bi-partisan Problem Solvers caucus in the House of Representatives, which consists of 29 Republicans and 29 Democrats.
The Problem Solvers infrastructure proposal’s $1.25-trillion price tag is close to Biden’s baseline, Roll Call reports, but offers significantly less funding for broadband, and wastewater treatment. The package includes $761.8-billion in new spending over eight years, including $518 billion for highways, roads and safety, $64 billion for bridges, $135 billion for mass transit, $120 billion for Amtrak, $41 billion for airports, $126 billion for water and ports and $25 billion for electric vehicle infrastructure. The transit, traffic and EV spending is quite a bit higher than Capito’s offer was willing to go, Roll Call says.
Note: As granular as the Problem Solvers’ spending list is, the proposal still lacks information on how the bi-partisan representatives would pay for it. But it seems the most promising step closing in on Biden’s already price-reduced proposal to date, and fruitful negotiations between the group and the White House would give the Problem Solvers greater name recognition among the voting public.
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Senate Passes Competitiveness Bill — Although ostensibly, as The Washington Post reports, written to “counter China’s growing economic and military prowess,” the $250-billion bill the Senate passed Tuesday is titled the “United States Innovation and Competition Act.” Among the items are more than $50 billion for microprocessor producers and $190 billion for federal spending on science, tech and research. The bill passed 68 to 32. The Post quotes Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, as saying, “The number one thing China was doing to take advantage of us . . . was investing heavily in research and science.”
Note: Under the Trump Administration, the response to China’s growing influence in trade was to establish tariffs on a variety of products. This basically had the consequence of making things more expensive for producers in the U.S. (who relied on Chinese suppliers for products with which to make things) and consumers (who paid more for the reduced availability of products). Although the Trump trope was “Make America Great Again,” that doesn’t happen by simply creating a blockage to trade. While there is a long way to go to help rebuild the technical supply base in the U.S. to make it competitive not only with China but with all industrialized countries, this bill is a good first step.
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Rep. Demings Challenges Sen. Rubio – Rep. Val Demings, D-FL, announced Tuesday she will challenge Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s re-election bid next year, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Deming says she’s “ready for a tough fight” in the mid-term challenge to Rubio, a former and likely future presidential candidate who flipped from “Little Marco” to become a hard-core supporter of Donald J. Trump five years ago. Demings, 64, represents the Florida district that includes Orlando, where she was formerly police chief. – Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash