Thursday News & Notes
SEPTEMBER 23, 2021 -- STANDARD OIL GEOLOGISTS ARRIVE IN SAUDI ARABIA, 1933
•Leaders of African countries will speak before the UN General Assembly today about global inequity in COVID-19 vaccine supplies, NPR reports.
•The FDA may sign off as early as today on Pfizer BioNTech booster shots for its COVID-19 vaccinations, but only for those 65 and older and those at high risk. The booster shots could be available next week, The Washington Post reports.
Special Envoy to Haiti Resigns Over Biden Policy – Daniel Foote, appointed special envoy to Haiti following the assassination of the country’s president, Jovenel Moise, has resigned, citing the Biden administration’s “inhumane, counterproductive decision” to send Haitian refugees from Texas back to their native country, The New York Times reports. Since its president’s assassination in July, Haiti has also been hit by a deadly earthquake.
Note: An estimated 14,000 Haitian refugees had gathered under the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas over the last several days, and the White House came under criticism from advocates who say President Biden is simply continuing Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies. It should be noted, however, that most of the Haitian refugees are being identified as having come from South American countries, gathering in southern Mexico in recent weeks, according to a report on NPR’s Morning Editon.
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Highway Bill Becomes a Bargaining Chip – The law that allows federal highway and transit spending expires September 30, three days after Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, D-CA, date for a House of Representatives vote on the Senate’s bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, Roll Call says. Pelosi continues to insist the House will get the $3.5 trillion “soft infrastructure” budget reconciliation bill and the bipartisan bridges-and-roads infrastructure done in time, while nearly everyone else on Capitol Hill is panicking.
Note: However, several progressives making the rounds of media outlets insist they have a mandate on the bigger reconciliation bill and appear confident that their priority – the “soft infrastructure” bill that includes environmental and child-welfare programs – will get passed in time.
“We are on schedule. And we’re calm and everybody’s good and our work is almost done,” Pelosi said. House progressives seem to have left some room to negotiate the $3.5 trillion down to placate Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV. Also worth noting is that the House will have completed its work, per Pelosi, if it passes the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and sends it to President Biden’s resolute desk, while approving the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill and then sending it back to the Senate. Pelosi’s task is to make sure that both moderate and progressive Democrats vote in favor of the reconciliation bill.
Furthermore: Biden extracted a concession from moderates in a five-hour meeting with 23 legislators in the Oval Office, ending 7 p.m. Wednesday, according to Politico Playbook. “Moderates agreed that they need to coalesce around an offer to the liberals,” a senior White House official told Politico, to which the online publication added; “The White House views the commitment from the Manch-ema wing as ‘a real breakthrough.’”
What Would it Take to Get You Into this Reconciliation Bill Today?: Biden remains frustrated, however, that the Manch-ema wing, which includes Manchin, Sen. Krysten Sinema, R-AZ, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-FL and Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-NJ, would not give him a specific “this is my final deal” number anywhere south of the $3.5 trillion price tag.
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Coal & Climate & West Virginia — It’s not all about the price tag for Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV. After leaving the Oval Office meeting with President Biden yesterday evening, Manchin said of the climate provisions that are part of the infrastructure package, “I have big problems” and added, “Probably [the president] and I are in a different place on that,” Politico reports. There is some $150 billion in the package for “clean energy,” which doesn’t mean coal.
Note: Think what you may about Manchin’s intransigence, coal is hugely important to West Virginia’s economy. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on 2019 data, it is the second-largest coal producer in the nation, accounting for 13% of total U.S. coal production, and more than one-third of the 93 million short tons of coal mined is exported to foreign markets. In terms of consumption of coal vs. other fuels, it consumes 621.7 trillion BTU from coal and 238 trillion BTU from second-place natural gas. Manchin does represent a state that has a huge amount riding on coal.
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Federal Reserve to ‘Taper’ Bond Purchases – The Federal Reserve indicated it would begin to “taper” – that’s the technical economic term – off its $120 billion monthly purchase of bonds and other assets at the end of its rate-setting committee’s two-day meeting Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reports. Such tapering would help alleviate inflation in the U.S., although the Fed believes the current inflation rate of 5.3% annually is “transitory,” and will come down as workers return to factories and production ramps up to normal again. The Fed’s target rate for inflation is 2%
“The purpose of that language,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said, referring to the signal of a tapering, “is to put notice out that that could come as soon as the next meeting,” which is scheduled for November 2-3, the WSJ says.
Note: Federal bond purchases, industrial production and delivery (freight ships are stacked up in the waters outside most of the nation’s ports, thanks to a shortage of truck drivers and rail capacity, PRI’s Marketplace reports), and the inflation rate will affect the success of whatever combo of President Biden’s infrastructure program and reconciliation bill gets signed in the next couple of months. Although “tapering” will start to relieve inflationary pain, it will take months, at best, to reduce the inflation rate from 5.3% to just 2%. It’s yet another issue that will affect the November 2022 midterm elections.
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Senate Compromise on Police Overhaul Stalls – Months of negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans on police reform legislation came to an abrupt halt Wednesday, Roll Call reports. Efforts to negotiate a package that would placate Republicans in their opposition “ran out of steam,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, said.
Rep. Karen Bass, D-CA, lead sponsor of a bill the House passed in March criticized Senate Republicans for being “unwilling to compromise.” The House bill includes a ban on chokeholds by federal officers, would end qualified immunity for police departments against civil lawsuits and create a national standard for policing, Roll Call notes. Bass has been negotiating with Booker and Sen. Tim Scott, R-SC, on the bill.
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EPA Regulates Hydrofluorocarbons – The Environmental Protection 0Agency is issuing a new rule that cuts use and production of hydrofluorocarbons found in refrigerant and air conditioning by 85% over the next 15 years, The Washington Postreports. The regulation implements a law Congress passed last year, although it has broad bipartisan support as a likely job source from the production of green alternatives
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods