The House Democratic Issues Conference meeting in Philadelphia through the weekend are split over how to stem their much-expected loss of the majority to Republicans in this November’s midterms, Roll Call reports. But the party’s progressives, who spent much of 2021 pushing to make the White House’s sweeping infrastructure program contingent on its even more sweeping Build Back Better plan, appears to have a solution.
Progressive House Democrats are pressing President Biden to enact those “big chunks” of BBB as outlined in his State of the Union address buy signing a pile of executive orders (EOs), Punchbowl News reports.
“We’re going to make sure that we do everything we can to cut costs for the American consumer,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the House Progressive Caucus, who will release a slate of proposed EOs next week.
Known Knowns: While this sounds like 2022 is 2021 all over again for the Progs, who appear to be acting like they have a commanding majority in the House, it should be noted that Jim Clyburn, the moderate Democrat from South Carolina largely credited with reviving Joe Biden’s bid for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020, “threw his considerable might behind the idea,” Punchbowl News says.
If the House Progs can convince the White House to stock up on ink for Biden’s Resolute desk, chunks of the nearly $2 trillion Build Back Better program to be given EO priority will certainly include the child tax credit, portions of the Green agenda and an increase in the refugee cap.
Known Unknowns: As a war-time president who got a bump in the polls after his SOTU from Trump-level low numbers, Biden may be in a better position than he was a few weeks ago to sign a pile of EOs, as House Dems – both progressive and moderate – attack their Republican midterm opponents as coming from a party of do-nothings and including even some pro-Putin candidates from the MAGA wing of the GOP.
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Meanwhile, in Constitutional News
When someone pleads “the Fifth,” it generally goes to this clause in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution…
“nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
The Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, which undoubtedly knows more than a little bit about the law, explains it like this:
“To be self-incriminating, the compelled answers must pose a “substantial and ‘real,’ and not merely a “trifling or imaginary hazard” of criminal prosecution.”
Which sounds rather serious.
Michael Flynn appeared before the January 6 Committee Thursday. Politico quotes his attorney: “General Michael Flynn appeared before the January 6th Committee today in compliance with their subpoena and, on advice of counsel, exercised his Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer the Committee’s questions.”
This is the same Michael Flynn who once had a brief stint as the national security advisor and got a pre-emptive free pass in the form of a pardon from then-president Trump for charges that he lied to the FBI during an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Why would you need to lie if you’d done nothing wrong?)
About that brief stint: January 22 to February 13, 2017. He barely had enough time to find out where the washroom is.
Why so short? Due to it being revealed that he’d reportedly lied to then Vice President Pence about conversations with Sergey Kislyak, who was the Russian ambassador at the time.
All of this goes without comment.
Kick the Can No More
The Senate appears to have become as tired as we are with the age-old cliché about “kicking the can” -- that is, federal budget continuing resolutions, a few weeks or months down the fiscal year road in order to avoid government shutdowns. The chamber voted, 68-31 yesterday to pass a $1.5-trillion government funding bill that takes us through the end of the fiscal year, September 30, The Hill reports. That’s just two days after the House of Representatives passed the bill along with a provision to allow the Senate a CR that would have extended the deadline beyond Friday, the date set by the previous CR, to next Tuesday, to allow the upper chamber more time.
Some conservative Republicans had objected to voting on the 2,741-page bill without time to read it, but the $13.6 billion in aid tied to Ukraine helped speed the process.
--Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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