POLITICO NIGHTLY: 5 ideas for what Biden should tackle next

 

BY MYAH WARD AND RENUKA RAYASAM BEFORE THE SPEECH — President Joe Biden is scheduled to give his first joint address to Congress at 9 p.m. ET tonight. Head to POLITICO’s liveblog for the latest news and analysis and watch Playbook author Ryan Lizza break down what to expect from Biden’s big speech. AFTER THE SPEECH — By the time Biden ends his speech tonight, he is expected to have unveiled an agenda that adds up to $4 trillion in spending. That’s on top of an already passed $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill and more than 60 executive actions. But what has Biden left undone? Nightly reached out to a group of experts to ask: What’s the most important challenge facing the country that Biden hasn’t tackled in his first 100 days? Here are their edited answers: “Of all the crises President Biden faces, his greatest has not been seen since the days of Abraham Lincoln: a bitterly divided country that gets more polarized daily. And a tribal racial climate not seen since the days of the Jim Crow 1960s. He opened his campaign with racial justice, and as president I believe it will be his singular greatest challenge and opportunity to heal this great land of ours before 2024 comes and he decides to either seek a second term or not.” — Sophia A. Nelson, contributing editor theGrio & USA Today opinion columnist “The more important question is the most vital issue that President Biden and Vice President Harris have ignored in their first 100 days … which is the crisis they have created on our southern border.” — Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s Republican governor “President Biden and Congress must act now to establish sustainable mechanisms that ensure we invest in our core public health infrastructure and health security programs to prevent the next pandemic and break the deadly cycle of panic and neglect. This is best achieved through a permanent budget cap exemption for our health defense: public health functions that are critical to prevent, detect and respond to infectious diseases. The creation of a Health Defense Operations budget designation would exempt critical health protection funding from spending caps so our public health agencies can protect us.” — Tom Frieden, former CDC director and president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives “President Biden’s top campaign promise was to unify America, and he then made it the theme of his inaugural address. He has failed miserably. The first actions on taking office were to unilaterally destroy women’s sports and push several other divisive issues using executive authority alone. He is leading Democrats to pass the most extreme socialist power-grab agenda in U.S. history. Biden is moving this agenda without any congressional Republicans, then in another Orwellian move Biden redefines ‘bipartisan’ to say that as long as polls show any Republican voters who support a bill, that it is ‘bipartisan’ without a single Republican vote. He refuses to compromise on anything.” — Ken Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of State “President Biden must help Americans recognize that the barriers that harm and hold back so many people — because of structural racism, sexism and ableism, among others — took centuries to erect and will require years and significant, sustained resources to eliminate. For instance, the American Rescue Plan Act is projected to reduce poverty by 30 percent and child poverty by 50 percent in 2021, but these investments are limited and time-restrained. “Some of our most basic needs — access to high-quality, affordable health care, safe housing, a good education, food security, paid family or sick leave, child care — are universal, and access to them should not be determined by skin color, income or where we live. Given this fractious moment in time, asking any president to unify this nation feels like an impossible request. Instead, the president must turn these long-term aspirations into shared American goals — rather than party-line priorities.” — Richard Besser, president and CEO Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at mward@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @myahward or @renurayasam.   JOIN TUESDAY FOR A CONVERSATION ON SMALL BUSINESSES POST-COVID-19: About one in six small businesses closed their doors since the pandemic began. The small businesses that remained open are getting by with fewer employees after laying off workers or a hiring freeze. What is ahead for small businesses in 2021 as they try to weather the ongoing economic uncertainty? And how does President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package intend to support small-business owners? Join POLITICO for a virtual conversation on what small businesses need to survive and thrive beyond the Covid economic crisis. REGISTER HERE.     FROM THE TAX DESK HOW BIDEN WANTS TO PAY FOR IT — Biden will propose another slate of tax increases tonight on top of a previous round of tax hikes targeting corporations that he wants to use to defray the cost of two big spending packages, writes senior tax reporter Brian Faler . But raising taxes is hard — for all the loose talk about money-hungry politicians, tax hikes are actually somewhat rare in Washington. And Democrats will be contending with tiny majorities in both the House and Senate. Biden’s proposals will only be the starting point in negotiations and lawmakers will have their own ideas. Here’s a look at eight of Biden’s proposed tax increases, ranked from most likely to happen to least likely. PALACE INTRIGUE UNPACKING THE GIULIANI RAID — The Justice Department sharply escalated an investigation into President Donald Trump’s longtime confidant and lawyer Rudy Giuliani today by executing search warrants at his Manhattan home. The actions were part of a long-running probe into Giuliani’s dealings with a shadowy cast of characters in Ukraine during Trump’s presidency, write Josh Gerstein, Meridith McGraw and Betsy Woodruff Swan. The FBI also arrived this morning at the D.C.-area home of another attorney who had dealings with Ukrainians and remains close to Giuliani and Trump, Victoria Toensing, and took her cellphone pursuant to a search warrant, according to a person familiar with the episode. Toensing’s home was not searched and officials indicated that she is not a focus of the probe, the person said. The raids are a highly unusual intrusion into a former president’s inner circle and a rare case of law enforcement deploying such aggressive tactics against attorneys.   DON'T MISS OUT ON OUR NEW PLAYBOOK DEEP DIVE PODCAST: Washington is full of whispers, colorful characters and little-known back stories that even D.C. insiders might not know. Playbook Deep Dive is a new, weekly podcast that pulls back the curtain on the stories behind the power. From Congress and the White House to bar stools and backrooms, POLITICO's top reporters and Playbook authors bring you the most compelling and confounding stories that explain what’s really going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW.     WHAT'D I MISS? — FDA readies menthol cigarettes ban: The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to bar menthol cigarettes nationwide in a plan to be released Thursday, according to two people familiar with the matter. The menthol ban would be one of FDA’s most aggressive tobacco reform efforts since the agency first began regulating the industry in 2009, and one long-awaited by scores of public health groups. — Biden to invite lawmakers to W.H. next week: White House press secretary Jen Psaki said today that the president will likely invite members of Congress to the White House next week for bipartisan meetings on his sprawling infrastructure and social welfare proposals. — NYC mayoral candidate denies accusations: A lobbyist and former intern accused mayoral candidate Scott Stringer of sexual harassment and assault when she worked on his 2001 public advocate campaign, during a press conference in Manhattan today — allegations Stringer denied later in the day. — Pelosi defends tax increases: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended Biden’s proposed tax increases against GOP criticism today, slamming Republicans for their 2017 tax cuts, which had a $1.5 trillion price tag over 10 years. NIGHTLY NUMBER 44 The percentage of independents who gave Biden an “A” or “B” grade for his first 100 days in office, according to today’s POLITICO and Morning Consult poll. Eighty-five percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Republicans gave Biden relatively high marks. PARTING WORDS People are silhouetted against multiple burning funeral pyres of patients who died of the Covid-19 coronavirus disease at a crematorium on April 24, 2021 in New Delhi, India. | Getty Images ‘INDIAN WALL’ — Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam writes about the dire Covid situation in India: The headlines and pictures out of India are terrifying: hospitals running out supplies, planes airlifting oxygen, bodies piling up at crematoriums, sobbing family members mourning their dead. But among my cousin’s friends in Hyderabad, in South India, life is continuing as normal. When we talked on the phone this morning, she described a state of extreme denial among people in her social circle. One friend was having her maid continue to work every day even though she had symptoms that clearly resembled Covid. The friend finally told her maid to stop coming after the maid’s mother died. Another friend organized a sleepover for her daughter’s 16th birthday — my cousin tried to lobby the other moms, including one doctor, into cancelling the party with no success. My cousin, who lived in California for about a decade before moving back to India 15 or so years ago, told me that it would be easy for many people in her circle to avoid social gatherings, and they could afford to pay their maids to not work. (Domestic and farm workers and others living day-to-day don’t have that luxury.) But they just aren’t scared. People are still going to movies and having big weddings, she said. She sees them drinking sugarcane juice at crowded street stalls unworried about a virus that’s killed more than 200,000 people by official estimates — the current mortality rate is likely 10 times higher than official numbers. Some epidemiologists believe the country could reach a million deaths by the end of August. My cousin describes Indians as an overly optimistic bunch, confident that Ayurvedic medicine and heaps of turmeric will protect them from illness. “Until it strikes the family, they think it’s OK,” she said. Covid is now striking a lot of families in India: Many of my own relatives have tested positive in recent days. Some were told not to go to the hospital because there is no room for them. People have named the surge “The Indian wall,” after the charts showing the rapid rise in cases, essentially a vertical line that splits off from a horizontal one, said Rupali Limaye, global vaccine expert at Johns Hopkins University. That precipitous shift in reality has been difficult to comprehend. “From a risk perception standpoint, it’s really hard for people to wrap their heads around,” said Limaye, who runs several projects in India. “They were told that India has scooted by.” That complacency, combined with the lack of lockdowns, a more contagious and deadly variant, and the slow pace of vaccinations, means cases in the country are projected to rise for at least the next three weeks. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown little appetite to order countrywide Covid safety measures for now. His Hindu nationalist government has taken steps to blunt criticism, refusing to call the situation an official emergency for fear of looking like the country’s Covid response failed. Today Facebook blocked posts calling for Modi’s resignation for several hours. Limaye believes that Indians will change their behavior once they start to see more people getting sick. But convincing Indians to get vaccinated will be an even bigger challenge, she said. Indians are bombarded with reams of misinformation about vaccine risks. Limaye talked this morning with a group she works with in India to launch a new campaign to encourage vaccinations featuring Bollywood stars, cricket players and Instagram celebrities. My cousin is less optimistic about India’s Covid trajectory, issuing what I hope won’t be a chilling warning for those in the U.S. who also think the pandemic has passed. “Until last month we thought we were out of danger,” she said. “We were laughing at other people. Now you see. You never know what could happen. It’s changing very fast.” Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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RSN: FOCUS: Country Catching Up to Bernie Sanders's Way of Thinking

 

 

14 April 21

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FOCUS: Country Catching Up to Bernie Sanders's Way of Thinking

Jeff Robbins, The Boston Herald
Robbins writes: "Americans are with him."

ernie Sanders was never the most all-American of presidential candidates. The Brooklyn-born socialist senator from Vermont has an overpowering New York accent. Lecturing America relentlessly on its ills, he presented as a cross between Scrooge and the Grim Reaper, seemingly as likely to appeal to American voters as Leon Trotsky, with whom he appeared to share a hair stylist. He did not slap backs, could not tell jokes and spouted policy prescriptions that sounded right out of “Das Kapital.”

First in 2016 and then again in 2020 he was underestimated, and even dismissed. New York Times reporter Amy Chozick recounts missing the meaning of Sanders’ message in 2016, nearly blowing off the opportunity to interview him early in that campaign in favor of a physical fitness class. “I initially brushed Bernie off with such casual nonchalance, such ill-informed elite media snobbery,” she has written, “that I almost canceled our first one-on-one coffee because I didn’t want to miss abs-and-back day at boot camp.”

Today it’s clear that on issue after issue, Sanders’ thunder on the left has carried the day among a majority of Americans, including substantial numbers of Republicans. Conservative attacks on Sanders-style proposals for universal health care, raising taxes on the wealthy, raising the federal minimum wage and other programs as “European socialism,” once tried and true, are increasingly falling flat.

So say the polls, in any event.

In announcing his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, for example, Sanders proclaimed “We say to the American people that we will rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: our roads, our bridges, our rail systems and subways and our airports,” vowing to create millions of jobs in the process. And he promised to tax the rich to pay for it. “The wealthy and multi-national corporations in this country,” Sanders said, “will start paying their fair share of taxes.”

Americans are with him. Asked last month whether they would support President Biden’s massive public infrastructure plan even after passage of a $1.9 trillion COVID relief act, 77% of Democrats, 57% of independents and 61% of Republicans told Data for Progress pollsters that they would. A Morning Consult poll two weeks ago found that 54% of Americans supported funding those improvements by raising taxes on those earning over $400,000 a year and by raising the corporate tax rate. Unsurprisingly, this included 73% of Democrats. More notably, it included 52% of independents and 32% of Republicans. Fifty-seven percent of voters told the pollsters that they would be more likely to support Biden’s infrastructure plan if it included raising taxes on high earners; only 17% said it would make them less likely to do so. Forty-seven percent of Americans said they would be likelier to support the bill if it was paid for by raising corporate taxes, while only 21% said it would make them less likely to support it.

Raising taxes to invest in public infrastructure is not the only issue on which America’s political sands are shifting. A poll taken last fall by the Kaiser Family Foundation concluded that 53% of Americans supported a national health plan that would insure everyone. This included 58% of independents and 21% of Republicans. A contemporaneous Pew Research Center poll found that 63% of American adults believe that government bears responsibility for providing health care coverage for all, up from 2019. This included 34% of Republicans. And a recent Morning Consult poll found that a majority of Republicans support raising the federal minimum wage.

It has been a very long time since Bernie Sanders could be ignored. If once it could be said that he was ahead of his time, it must now be said that Americans are catching up to him.

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