•President Biden flies to Rome tomorrow to meet with Pope Francis, ahead of a trip to Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday for next week’s United Nations climate conference.
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Billionaire Income Tax and Half-Trillion for Climate Change Push Negotiations –Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-OR, released a “billionaires income tax” proposal targeting about 700 Americans to help pay for the White House’s Build Back Better budget reconciliation bill currently under intense negotiations between moderate and progressive Congressional Democrats, according to multiple sources, including Punchbowl News and NPR’s Morning Edition.
The proposal appears to have widespread support among the two Democratic factions. The budget reconciliation framework has a current target price of $1.75 trillion to $1.9 trillion, but that would be spread out over a number of years, and the approximately $300 billion the billionaires’ tax is expected to raise would cover much of the cost.
On the spending side, Axios reports that the White House is telling lawmakers that the climate change provisions in the reconciliation bill are “largely settled” at $500 billion to $555 billion, making it likely the costliest single expense. This would give President Biden something to talk up when he attends the 2021 United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, next week, though he may have to describe it as a proposal, rather than legislation passed by Congress.
How the Billionaire Income Tax Would Work: Wyden’s proposal would tax more than $1 billion in assets, or more than $100 million income over three straight years, including “tradable assets,” known as “marked to market” in which billionaire taxpayers would pay taxes on investment gains or take a deduction on investment losses. This would tax, for example, gains on a stock’s value even if the billionaire investor does not sell the stock to pocket the gain.
Wyden’s proposal also would impose a minimum tax rate on corporations of 15%, regardless of whether the company posts income or loss in a given year.
The Finance Committee notes that the Joint Committee on Taxation has not yet scored the proposal, Punchbowl News says.
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Lost the Election and >130,000 People: Dr. Deborah Birx, coronavirus response coordinator in the Trump Administration, told the House Coronavirus Crisis Select Subcommittee, “I felt like the White House had gotten somewhat complacent through the campaign season,” in an excerpt released by the subcommittee quoted by The Washington Post. Birx is also quoted: “I believe if we had fully implemented the mask mandates, the reduction in indoor dining, the getting friends and family to understand the risk of gathering in private homes, and we had increased testing, that we probably could have decreased fatalities into the 30%-less to 40%-less range.” Or about 130,000 people.
Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington responded in a statement: “President Trump led an unprecedented effort to successfully combat the coronavirus, delivering PPE, hospital beds, treatments, and three vaccines in record time. Unfortunately, this approach was not taken up by the current government, and more lives have been lost from covid this year than the entirety of 2020, which the Fake News media places no blame onto Joe Biden.”
Note: Isn’t the phrase “successfully combat the coronavirus” used by Harrington essentially undercut by reality? Aren’t Joe Biden’s declining poll numbers, regularly quoted by news outlets that are undoubtedly considered “Fake” by Trump and his acolytes, associated with the pandemic? Although there have been some 353,000 deaths this year associated with COVID according to Johns Hopkins University, which exceeds the estimated 352,000 in 2020, doesn’t Harrington realize that were people to have undertaken the recommendations that Birx enumerates, there would have been fewer people infected, which means that there would have been fewer fatalities in 2020 and 2021?
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McConnell Endorses Trump Senate Candidate – In the ongoing gauge of which way the GOP winds are blowing in relationship to Donald J. Trump’s control of the party, this one counts as a “win” for the twice-impeached former president. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, has endorsed Herschel Walker for next year’s GOP primary to run against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-GA, who won his seat in Georgia’s January runoffs to help Democrats take their tie breaker-thin majority.
“Herschel is the only one who can unite the party, defeat Sen. Warnock, and take back the Senate,” McConnell said in a statement issued to Politico. The Senate’s number-two Republican, John Thune of South Dakota, had endorsed Walker on Monday. There has been some concern among Republicans regarding Walker’s personal life, including allegations he drew a gun on his ex-wife.
Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner as University of Georgia running back, served as co-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition under the Trump administration. Before playing for several NFL teams, Walker played for the New Jersey Generals, a team of the short-lived U.S. Football League once owned by Trump.
Note: McConnell is still stinging for the GOP’s loss of both Senate seats from Georgia in last January’s special run-offs, after Trump apparently dissuaded Republicans in the state from showing up to the polls with his false “voter fraud” claims, and he clearly sees Walker as providing his best path to retaking the Senate majority leader’s gavel. At a recent rally, Trump threatened another Georgia January: “If we don’t solve the presidential election fraud of 2020 … Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It’s the single most important things for Republicans to do.”
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Comedian/Satirist Mort Sahl Dies – Joke-writer for John F. Kennedy and personal friend of Ronald Reagan, and cited by the Library of Congress as the “earliest example of modern stand-up comedy on record” for “At Sunset,” recorded in 1955, according to his New York Times obituary, Mort Sahl has died, in Mill Valley, California. He was 94. Sahl’s particular brand of political humor – explaining the “horse shoe” of left-and-right political philosophy, for example -- in the late 1950s and 1960s made him an influence on numerous comedians to come.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Charles Dervarics