[ad_1]
The debt ceiling standoff: a crisis Washington saw coming
Everyone in Washington DC – from Joe Biden to Kevin McCarthy to congressional rank and file young and old – could see the debt ceiling standoff coming for months. The US government tracks its spending and borrowing, and as far back as last year, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen began sending ominous letters to Congress warning that action must be taken to allow the government to continue paying its bills beyond a certain date. In her latest letter sent yesterday, she made clear that the government will have little time beyond the first day of June to agree to an increase.
For the GOP, the debt limit is one of the few pieces of leverage they have over the Biden administration, and they have demanded spending cuts and the enactment of conservative priorities – such as the cancellation of the president’s effort to cancel some student debt – in exchange for their votes in the House to raise the ceiling.
But Democrats had an opportunity to prevent this situation in the last Congress, when they controlled both the Senate and the House. As Politico reported yesterday, some lawmakers are expressing regret that they didn’t act to raise the borrowing limit then:
Looking back on the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, Tim Kaine has one big regret about a largely successful stretch of Democratic rule: That his party didn’t try to raise the debt ceiling on its own last year.
The Virginia senator believes that if Democrats had tried to hike the debt limit before the House GOP swept into a majority, even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) might have gone along with it. But Biden’s party never moved on the issue. And six months later, Democrats are stuck doing exactly what they said they wouldn’t — negotiating on the debt ceiling with Republicans.
“If I could do one thing different,” Kaine lamented this week, it would have been a late-2022 debt hike. “And I was saying it at the time … ‘hey, we got the votes.’”
Key events
Joan E Greve
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House appropriations committee, attacked House Republicans’ proposed budget cuts as unrealistic.
“They cannot govern,” DeLauro said at the press conference on Capitol Hill this morning. “Because you can’t go back to 2022 and apply those numbers to the 2024 budget. It just doesn’t work.”
.@rosadelauro says Republicans are “unraveling” in their efforts to implement a FY2024 budget:
“They cannot govern. Because you can’t go back to 2022 and apply those numbers to the 2024 budget. It just doesn’t work.” pic.twitter.com/zFx8bRcbB7
— Joan Greve (@joanegreve) May 23, 2023
DeLauro warned the proposed cuts would limit childcare access, slash nutrition benefits and threaten veterans’ healthcare if they were implemented equally to all non-defense discretionary spending.
“House Republicans did not release any 2024 spending bills until after they passed their ‘Default on America Act,’” DeLauro said. “And they now have to come to the realization that their default plan is unworkable.”
Joan E Greve
This morning, leading House Democrats spoke at a press conference on Capitol Hill hosted by the left-leaning group Courage for America to denounce Republicans’ proposed spending cuts as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling.
“The [Make America Great Again] majority wants the American people to make an impossible choice: accept devastating cuts or a devastating default,” said Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the House Democratic whip.
“They manufactured a crisis so they can bully and threaten the very people they were sent to Washington to represent.”
Leading House Dems hold a press conference at the Capitol to denounce Republicans’ proposed spending cuts. @WhipKClark: “The MAGA majority wants the American people to make an impossible choice: accept devastating cuts or a devastating default.” pic.twitter.com/yImK1A71Tt
— Joan Greve (@joanegreve) May 23, 2023
Congressman Joe Neguse of Colorado, co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, warned House Republicans’ debt ceiling proposal “would impose draconian and cruel cuts that would harm everyday Americans”.
“The consequences of this manufactured crisis — a crisis of their own invention — would be catastrophic for the American people,” Neguse said.
“We intend to do the right thing by the American people, to do what we have done time and time again: pay our bills and avoid a disastrous default and put people over politics.”
The day so far
Negotiations between Joe Biden’s team and deputies of Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy are continuing in the shadow of a warning from Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, who confirmed that 1 June remains the deadline to raise the borrowing limit or spark a default. There are no signs yet that a deal is at hand, but things could always change, and this blog will let you know if they do.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
-
Donald Trump will later today appear virtually in a New York City courtroom, where a judge will read out an order preventing him from attacking witnesses in his case over allegedly falsifying business records.
-
Special counsel Jack Smith may soon wrap up his investigation of the classified documents Trump kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and recommend whether to charge the former president or his allies, according to a report.
-
House Republicans auctioned off chapstick used by McCarthy. No idea why they did this. Rightwing representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was the winner, after paying $100,000 for it.
For the Guardian, Drew Hawkins looks into the case of John Kennedy, the Republican Louisiana senator whose at-times offensive statements betray an opportunistic, perhaps wily, approach to politics:
Senator John Neely Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, offended Mexicans across the world in a hearing on the FBI and DEA’s budget this month, calling for American military members and law enforcement agents to invade their country in order to “stop the cartels” while adding that Mexico would be “eating cat food and living in tent behind an Outback [Steakhouse]” if not for “the people of America”.
Mexico’s top diplomat condemned the comments as “profoundly ignorant”, and the country’s ambassador to the US called for a formal apology for the “vulgar and racist” language. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, urging the more than 37 million Americans of Mexican and other Latin American descent to “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.
Besides hearing an update on the debt ceiling negotiations from Kevin McCarthy in their conference today, House Republican lawmakers … bid on chapstick?
They did indeed, Politico reports:
NEW: During GOP conference today, House Rs did about a 15-min fundraising auction for chapstick used by Speaker McCarthy.
The winner: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), whose winning bid was $100,000, her Spox confirms to me.
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) May 23, 2023
Others bid on it as well, but MTG ultimately won: And as bidding went on, McCarthy would sweeten the deal, throwing in agreeing to attend a dinner with donors/supporters for whoever wins, Spox confirmed.
The chapstick specifically was a Rep. Aaron Bean campaign chapstick.
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) May 23, 2023
Ahead of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign announcement tomorrow, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports that a program set up by his administration to hire police officers brought people to the state with checkered pasts:
Numerous police officers lured to new jobs in Florida with cash from Governor Ron DeSantis’s flagship law enforcement relocation program have histories of excessive violence or have been arrested for crimes including kidnapping and murder since signing up, a study of state documents has found.
DeSantis, who is expected to launch his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination this week, has spent more than $13.5m to date on the recruitment bonus program, which he touted in 2021 as an incentive to officers in other states frustrated by Covid-19 vaccination mandates.
“This will go a long way to ensuring we can have the best and the brightest filling our law enforcement ranks,” Florida’s Republican attorney general, Ashley Moody, said in April last year as DeSantis announced one-time $5,000 bonuses for new recruits.
Special counsel has almost finished investigating Trump – report
Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by attorney general Merrick Garland, is nearly finished with his investigation of Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents, and will decide whether to bring charges against the former president or his associates, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Smith has interviewed almost every employee at Mar-a-Lago, the south Florida club where federal investigators last year retrieved boxes of classified documents following a court-sanctioned search, and Trump’s associates are grappling with the possibility that he could face federal charges for keeping the material, the Journal says.
Garland appointed Smith late last year, and also tasked him with investigating Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection, and the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those inquiries remain ongoing.
Here’s more from the Journal’s report:
Some of Trump’s close associates are bracing for his indictment and anticipate being able to fundraise off a prosecution, people in the former president’s circle said, as clashes within the Trump legal team have led to the departure of a key lawyer.
In recent weeks prosecutors working for Smith have completed interviews with nearly every employee at Trump’s Florida home, from top political aides to maids and maintenance staff, the people said. Prosecutors have pressed witnesses—some in multiple rounds of testimony—on questions that appeared to home in on specific elements Smith’s team would need to show to prove a crime, including those that speak to Trump’s intentions, and questions aimed at undermining potential defenses Trump could raise, they said.
The special counsel team conducted a flurry of grand jury interviews in recent weeks that appeared to tie up loose ends, the people said.
The Journal couldn’t determine whether Smith has decided whether to charge Trump, or if he has presented a recommendation on the matter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who would ultimately make a final decision on any such charges. A spokesman for Smith declined to comment. A Trump spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment but has previously described the probe as a politically motivated witch hunt.
Smith’s team, which has been examining whether anyone tried to obstruct the criminal inquiry, has obtained evidence that appears to show Trump held on to sensitive documents after being asked to relinquish them, the people said. Last week the National Archives turned over to Smith’s team records of communications between then-President Trump and some of his advisers about how he could declassify documents, some of the people said, material that could help prosecutors overcome the defense that Trump believed he could do so verbally. CNN first reported the National Archives transfer.
More details have emerged in the crash of a truck outside the White House earlier this morning in which the driver was found to be possessing a Nazi flag, the Guardian’s Gloria Oladipo reports:
A driver who was arrested after crashing into security barriers near the White House has been charged with threatening to kill or harm the US president, along with other crimes.
Police named the suspect as Sai Varshith Kandula from Chesterfield, Missouri. He was accused of threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict harm on the president, vice-president or a relative, said a statement from the US park police, who have jurisdiction of the area where the struck barriers are located.
The driver was also charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, reckless operation of a vehicle, and other criminal charges. He had been accused of having a Nazi flag on him.
Donald Trump is expected to gain a new challenger for the Republican presidential nomination tomorrow: Ron DeSantis.
The Florida governor will reportedly make his long-anticipated campaign announcement on Wednesday, and the New York Times reports that in a speech yesterday, DeSantis argued that he would do the best job in cementing the supreme court’s conservative tilt.
“You would have a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that would last a quarter-century,” he told the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando. Trump has started attacking DeSantis in the run-up to his campaign announcement, but as the Times reports, the former president could only serve one four-year term if returned to the White House.
DeSantis, on the other hand, could be president for up to eight years – enough time to appoint another justice to the supreme court.
“I think if you look over, you know, the next two presidential terms, there is a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito,” DeSantis said. Both justices are conservatives who were in the majority in overturning Roe v Wade last year, among other decisions. The Times reported that DeSantis also reminded the crowd that liberal Sonia Sotomayor could retire in the years to come.
Fresh off of winning an expensive civil judgment against Donald Trump, advice columnist E Jean Carroll is once again suing the former president over statements he made about her on CNN:
The author and columnist E Jean Carroll will go back to court to demand “very substantial” additional damages from Donald Trump for the disparaging remarks he made about her during a televised CNN town hall just a day after he was found liable in a civil case for sexually assaulting her.
An amended lawsuit seeking an additional $10m in compensatory damages – and more in punitive damages – was filed in Manhattan on Monday by lawyers for Carroll, who say remarks made by the former president in response to her rape allegations have so spoiled her reputation that she lost her longtime job as an Elle magazine advice columnist.
On 9 May, a New York jury found that Trump had sexually abused the advice columnist in a New York department store changing room 27 years ago. It also awarded about $5m in compensatory and punitive damages: about $2m on the sexual abuse count, and close to $3m for defamation for branding her a liar.
Donald Trump will be in court in New York City today – though by video rather than in person, sparing the city the crowds and road closures that marked his in-person appearance when he was indicted on felony charges of falsify business records last month.
The Associated Press reports that the former president has been summoned by the judge in that case to hear an order preventing him from attacking witnesses. While Trump will appear virtually, his defense attorneys as well as prosecutors will be in the room.
Here’s more from the AP:
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan agreed to the extra step of personally instructing Trump on the restrictions after listing them May 8 in what’s known as a protective order.
Trump is allowed to speak publicly about the case, but he risks being held in contempt if he uses evidence turned over by prosecutors in the pretrial discovery process to target witnesses or others involved in the case.
Trump pleaded not guilty April 4 to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to payments his company made to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Prosecutors say those payments were intended to reimburse and compensate Cohen for orchestrating hush money payments during the 2016 campaign to bury allegations of extramarital sexual encounters. Trump denies having had extramarital flings and says the prosecution is politically motivated.
Merchan’s protective order bars Trump and his lawyers from disseminating evidence to third parties or posting it to social media, and it requires that certain, sensitive material shared by prosecutors be kept only by Trump’s lawyers, not Trump himself.
Prosecutors sought the order soon after Trump’s arrest, citing what they say is his history of making “harassing, embarrassing, and threatening statements” about people he’s tangled with in legal disputes.
Merchan, noting Trump’s “special” status as a former president and current candidate, has made clear that the protective order shouldn’t be construed as a gag order and that Trump has a right to publicly defend himself.
‘Nowhere near a deal yet’: McCarthy
Punchbowl News reports that House speaker Kevin McCarthy has told Republicans in a closed-door meeting that a deal with Joe Biden over raising the debt ceiling is not imminent:
🚨🚨NEW — WHAT @SpeakerMcCarthy JUST TOLD HOUSE REPUBLICANS …
Inside a closed House GOP meeting:
“I need you all to hang with me on the debt limit.
“We are nowhere near a deal yet.”
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 23, 2023
“I told the president three things: No clean debt limit, no raising taxes, spend less money.
“Remember where we were – they refused to negotiate .
“We owe Garret Graves and Patrick McHenry a round of applause.
“They made a mistake to not negotiate. Let’s stay strong…
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 23, 2023
The speaker’s comments were a reversal of tone from yesterday, when he said he had “productive discussion” with Biden, but had not reached an agreement yet.
The Treasury isn’t just warning lawmakers about the critical need to raise the debt ceiling by June. The Washington Post reports that the department has written to US government agencies to determine if they could delay payments.
Here’s more from their story:
To push off the so-called “X-date” when reserves run dry, Treasury officials have asked their counterparts in other federal agencies about the flexibility of payments due before early June, one of the people said. Treasury has not asked federal agencies to postpone payments beyond their due dates, the person said.
The planning has become increasingly urgent in recent days. Last week, senior Treasury staff sent a memo to federal agencies instructing them to take additional steps to keep the Treasury Department closely apprised of their spending. In the memo — which was obtained by The Washington Post and has not been previously reported — David A. Lebryk, fiscal assistant secretary for Treasury, ordered agency officials to notify Treasury at least two days in advance all “deposits and disbursements” of between $50 million and $500 million. Payments above $500 million require five days notice, the memo said.
“Please stress to your staff the importance of these updates during this time and to ensure that your agency’s reports are accurate,” the memo said. “Your reporting offices should be reconciling reported amounts to actual payment activity to ensure the reliability of these reports during the critical period.”
Spokespeople for the White House declined to comment. A spokesperson for Treasury said: “To produce an accurate forecast around the debt limit, it’s critical that Treasury have updated information on the magnitude and timing of agency payments. As in prior debt limit episodes, Treasury will continue to regularly communicate with all aspects of the federal government on their planned expenditures.”
The debt ceiling standoff: a crisis Washington saw coming
Everyone in Washington DC – from Joe Biden to Kevin McCarthy to congressional rank and file young and old – could see the debt ceiling standoff coming for months. The US government tracks its spending and borrowing, and as far back as last year, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen began sending ominous letters to Congress warning that action must be taken to allow the government to continue paying its bills beyond a certain date. In her latest letter sent yesterday, she made clear that the government will have little time beyond the first day of June to agree to an increase.
For the GOP, the debt limit is one of the few pieces of leverage they have over the Biden administration, and they have demanded spending cuts and the enactment of conservative priorities – such as the cancellation of the president’s effort to cancel some student debt – in exchange for their votes in the House to raise the ceiling.
But Democrats had an opportunity to prevent this situation in the last Congress, when they controlled both the Senate and the House. As Politico reported yesterday, some lawmakers are expressing regret that they didn’t act to raise the borrowing limit then:
Looking back on the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, Tim Kaine has one big regret about a largely successful stretch of Democratic rule: That his party didn’t try to raise the debt ceiling on its own last year.
The Virginia senator believes that if Democrats had tried to hike the debt limit before the House GOP swept into a majority, even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) might have gone along with it. But Biden’s party never moved on the issue. And six months later, Democrats are stuck doing exactly what they said they wouldn’t — negotiating on the debt ceiling with Republicans.
“If I could do one thing different,” Kaine lamented this week, it would have been a late-2022 debt hike. “And I was saying it at the time … ‘hey, we got the votes.’”
Treasury confirms 1 June remains debt limit deadline as deal remains elusive
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Congress got some bad news from Treasury secretary Janet Yellen yesterday afternoon in the form of a letter to top lawmakers that said early June, perhaps as soon as the first day of the month, is the day when the US government will run out of money and potentially default for the first time in history. Joe Biden and Republican speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy have since last week been negotiating some kind of bargain to prevent that from happening, but despite another round of face-to-face talks yesterday, have yet to reach an agreement. Yellen’s letter confirms that there is unlikely to be any wiggle room for the two sides if they want to prevent what is expected to be an economically catastrophic debt crisis. Expect to hear more about this long-running standoff throughout today.
Here’s what else is going on:
-
The debt limit will undoubtedly be discussed when House GOP leaders hold a press conference at 10am eastern time.
-
A Nazi swastika flag was found in a truck that crashed into White House security barriers last night. The driver has been arrested.
-
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 2.30pm.
[ad_2]
Source link
(This article is generated through the syndicated feed sources, Financetin neither support nor own any part of this article)
