The GOP Debt Ceiling Puzzle: Reply to McCarthy at a Briefly Known Facts About Medicare, Social Security and Other Programs

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, however, reiterated in remarks on Monday that “cuts to Medicare and Social Security are off the table” in the debt ceiling discussions. From CNN’s Tami Luhby.

Bret: Well, the Republicans’ current strategy has all the intelligence of Foghorn Leghorn, the Looney Tunes rooster: They’re trying to play a game of chicken with the Biden administration when, deep down, they know they’re the ones who are going to chicken out. The federal government’s debt would be suicidal if it were to default. So we will probably go through this terrifying charade until a handful of swing-district Republicans break ranks and vote with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.

There would be no cuts to either program other than trying to slow the rate of spending growth. They’re popular with Republican voters too. There is no way anything will happen except on a bipartisan basis. Any suggestions for fixes that don’t involve large tax increases?

Tax Fairness: What Do We Need to Do to Save Social Security, Medicare, and Social Security? Sen. Mace’s Sen. Ben Morrone Revised

Gail: Well, some people may regard this as a tax increase, but I want to propose some tax fairness. Social Security payroll taxes stop at about $160,000. A person making a million dollars a year does not have to pay anything.

Gail: Bret, I spent a lot of my early career — way back in the ’70s — hanging out with the chief of police in New Haven, Ed Morrone, who was just so smart. He told my husband Dan, who was a police reporter then, that the most important job of a cop was “to keep people who hate one another apart.”

The White House insists that they don’t want to negotiate with House Republicans on the need to raise the debt limit and avoid a government default, while McCarthy is hearing suggestions from key players in his conference.

McCarthy promised to put a bill on the floor before the end of March that would direct theTreasury Department to prioritize payments if the debt ceiling is not raised.

Yellen subsequently said there could be a “global financial crisis” if there is no debt limit agreement. The Treasury Department is now taking “extraordinary measures” to continue paying bills on time.

It is more complicating matters. A few Republicans, like Vice President Mike Tyson and Representative Tim Burchett, have said they wouldn’t raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances.

Even as House Republicans are hoping to strengthen their negotiating hand with the White House by uniting around a proposal, finding conference-wide consensus on spending cuts will be easier said than done. Republican appropriators are committed to defending defense programs while GOP moderates are hesitant about cutting popular domestic spending programs which can be used in attack ads by Democrats.

“You are always going to have a handful that will vote ‘no’ on everything. So expect those people to exist,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican. That is why negotiations are important. We are a divided Congress, and we got to act that way.”

Speaking to CBS on Sunday, McCarthy promised to take Social Security and Medicare cuts “off the table.” And he left open the possibility of cuts to defense programs, saying: “I want to make sure we’re protected in our defense spending, but I want to make sure it’s effective and efficient.”

In the last fiscal year, Social Security took up 21% of the $5.8 trillion federal government spent, according to the nonpartisan Fiscal Policy Institute. The rest of the budget goes to a range of discretionary domestic programs, including 13% for defense and national security.

The conservative crew met Friday morning and Monday to discuss ideas for spending cuts that could achieve a balanced budget within 10 years, and plan to unveil a blueprint outlining their vision in the coming weeks, according to a member involved in the talks.

Ringleaders of the group like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas have been in regular communication with McCarthy, and the group wants to meet with GOP leaders and House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington of Texas as discussions intensify.

“What we will have is a blueprint of what we will be fighting for,” South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, told CNN. “Not touching Social Security, not touching Medicare … Every agency is being looked at on discretionary. We are going to make it public for the American people. It will be very hard for people to believe. … I think people will like what they see.”

The Budget Crisis in the Senate: How to levy the debt ceiling without spending restraint and what to do about it, and how to do it

I want us to be the adults in the room. We’ve got two things that could be a crisis,” Massie told reporters. “Take that off the table. … It would give you the time and space, and it would take the pressure off.”

McCarthy is trying to build a consensus among conference-wide members on what to do in exchange for increasing the nation’s borrowing limit, but some appropriators acknowledge they may not get to participate in the debate.

In order to be the beneficiary or the victim, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee will get a topline spending number for his subcommittee. I will be directly affected.

“I think most everyone is in the camp of ‘can’t default.’ The full faith and credit of the country is important, terribly important,” said Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, a member of the House Budget Committee. “But just to say we’re going to raise the debt ceiling without any spending restraint is just not an acceptable outcome.”

Massie said one idea he has been advocating for is passing a continuing resolution “as soon as possible” that funds the government at 99% of its current levels and pairs it with a debt ceiling increase, just so they have a backup plan in case they are unable to come to an agreement on the debt ceiling or funding the government.

President Joe Biden and House Republicans are at odds over how to address the debt ceiling. The proposed budget by Biden will aim to reduce the deficit by $2 trillion over the next 10 years.

In case talks between the White House and McCarthy collapse, the plan would be a false start, according to Representative Brian Fitzpatrick.

Bank of America is Not Ready for the Third World: The Case for Resolving the Covid 19 Crisis in the Post-Trump Era

Congress is once again at odds with each other over raising the US government’s debt ceiling. And that means that Corporate America has to be ready for the worst.

“We have to be prepared for that, not only in this country but in other countries around the world,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told Poppy Harlow on “CNN This Morning” Monday. Hope is not a strategy so you prepare for it.

Moynihan does not like that idea. He told Harlow that it was up to the US to decide whether or not to eliminate the debt ceiling.

The purse strings are held by Congress. I would be cautious about trying to restructure the US Constitution. I think that we should leave it alone and make sure it works.

He conceded that the government needed to spend more in order to overcome the negative effects of the Covid 19 crisis, and that the US had to take on a lot of debt to do so.

Food inflation is coming down, not fast enough, but coming down. Inflation has fallen every month for the last six months, while take-home pay has gone up.

With that in mind, Moynihan said, Bank of America is still predicting a “mild recession” at some point in the future — but the start date keeps getting pushed. He argues that higher rates could be a drag on corporate profits, but the good news is most people are still working, earning good wages and spending.

Moynihan also didn’t seem overly concerned that any geopolitical tension between the US and China stemming from the recent spy balloon incident will have a lasting impact on the global economy.

Facts First: Biden’s claim is correct. The national debt, now more than $31 trillion, increased by just under $8 trillion during Trump’s four years in office, in part because of Trump’s major tax cuts. It’s important to note, though, that some of the increase in the debt during the Trump era was because of the trillions in emergency Covid-19 pandemic relief spending that passed with bipartisan support. The national debt spiked in the first half of 2020 after increasing gradually during Trump’s first three years in office, and because of spending required by safety-net programs that were created by previous presidents. A significant amount of spending under any president is the result of decisions made by their predecessors.

Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved.

The 2021 Business Application Year: The First Year in Government Data Releases Business Applications and the State of the United States Small Business Statistical Economy

This is true, first of all. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest number since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. The number of high-propensity business applications that could turn into a business with a payroll hit a record in 2021 and was second highest in 2022, reflecting the fact that not every application turns into a real business.

Donald Trump had a last full year in office in 2020 which set a new record for high propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Some newly employed employees seized the opportunity to start their own businesses; Americans received extra money from the federal government through the health care reform law; and interest rates were low until a series of rate hikes kicked in.

Facts first, this is true. The unemployment rate was 3.4% in January 2023, the lowest figure since the rate also hit 3.4% in May 1969. The unemployment rate was 6.3% in January 2021, the month Biden took office.

The nation’s fiscal situation is what it has always been. According to the Treasury Department, the US has debt since it was founded. Wars, economic downturns and the Covid-19 pandemic have caused the debt to balloon over the centuries.

Biden made $bf Inflationreduction$ investment in the US Semiconductor manufacturing sector: Facts First: Can EV tax credits be fully available?

The majority of the manufacturing investments that have been publicly announced by Biden so far have been investments in the chip industry. In August, Biden signed a bill that helped to generate investment in the US Semiconductor manufacturing industry.

Facts First: This claim needs context. While Inflation Reduction Act tax credits will help save families money on their energy bills, it could take years for EV tax credits to become fully available.

Biden’s claim about energy savings is similar to an estimate from clean electricity nonprofit Rewiring America – which estimated last year that a US household could save $1,800 per year if they installed electric heat pumps to heat their water and heat and cool their air, replaced a gas car with an EV, and installed solar.

To qualify for tax credits, vehicles must have at least 40% of the critical minerals used to create their batteries produced in the US, or one of the countries that have a free trade deal with the US. That number will gradually rise to 80% of the battery minerals by 2027 and reach 100% by 2029.

Guidance on critical minerals and batteries is expected from the US Treasury Department in March. But the complex requirements for these tax credits could take years to fully kick in as companies must move their supply chain to North America.

This provision passed because Manchin wanted the US to compete with China on electric vehicles, and it will eventually have the impact of bringing more EV and battery jobs to the US or countries it has a free trade agreement with. Several companies have recently announced new factories in the US.

But it’s also a complex provision that will take time to implement, likely meaning vehicle manufacturers won’t be able to offer the credit in the next couple years as they move their supply chains to the US and North America.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

Fact Check President Biden State of the Union: Child Poverty Decrease in 2020 and a Rise in Gas Prices Since the Presidential Inauguration

This is true. The child poverty rate was cut nearly in half in 2021, and the expanded child tax credit was the major factor. The enhancement accounted for the bulk of the reduction.

The child poverty rate fell from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2% in 2021, according to the US Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes into account certain non-cash government assistance, tax credits and needed expenses.

As part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act that passed in March 2021, Congress enhanced the child tax credit for one year, beefing up payments to $3,600 for each child up to age 6 and $3,000 for each one ages 6 through 17, for lower- and middle-income families. For the first time, half the credit was paid in monthly installments from July through December, while parents could claim the other half when they filed their 2021 taxes this year.

“Similar to why the primary reason for rise in price isn’t due to the President, the same holds true for declines,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told CNN in a message this week. Asked about the role of the president in the decline since the peak of mid-2022, De Haan said: “While the president may have had a minimal role in lowering prices through easing regulation, and occasionally using waivers, the bulk of the decline is simply due to supply and demand changes, and Russian oil and refined products that are still being exported, providing needed supply to the global market.”

As of the day of the State of the Union, the national average for a gallon of regular gas was $3.457, per data from the American Automobile Association. That was down from a record high of $5.136 in June. It was still higher than the national average of $2.393 that Biden presided over on Inauguration Day.

The White House official responded Thursday by pointing to an analysis from the administration’s Treasury Department that estimated that the releases of reserve oil by the US and its allies could have reduced the price of gas by 40 cents a gallon.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The State of the Global Democracy: President Biden’s First Year at the Labor Labor Synergy in China and Russia, and a Counterexample to Freedom House

I stand here tonight after we’ve created, with the help of many people in this room, 12 million new jobs – more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.

The economy quickly recovered that summer, growing at an annualized rate of 35.3% in the third quarter of 2020, the fastest pace on record. The growth of the economy began to slow before Biden took office.

While touting his efforts to stand up to authoritarian leaders in China and Russia, Biden painted himself as a champion of freedom and inaccurately claimed that democracy was spreading under his watch.

The claim is at odds with data from Freedom House, which tracks democracy and human rights around the world. They say democracy has been in global decline over the past few years.

The most recent annual report on the state of global democracy was titled “The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule.” Their 2021 report was called, “Democracy under Siege.”

Getting into the data, Freedom House says 60 countries experienced democratic backsliding in the previous year, while only 25 countries improved their position. The group pointed to Afghanistan and Sudan, where the Taliban regained power when Biden withdrew troops from the country.

A new report is likely to be released soon, with the most recent one being one year old. And to be fair, Biden could merely be expressing his view that autocratic regimes have lost prestige on the world stage.

But the trends appear to be holding. The President of Russia initiated a domestic crackdown that eliminated civil liberties in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

Do Fast Food Chains Really Charge Fast Cars? Facts and Reasons Why the Biden Administration Can’t Attempt to Address the Problems of Electric Vehicle Charging

Facts First: This is more of a promise than a fact, but even so, it needs context. For a few reasons, it’s questionable whether the Biden administration will be able to meet its goal of installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations on US roads.

There is a big range in how much different types ofcharging costs and individual states can make differing decisions about which types ofcharging will be allowed on their roads. DC fast chargers can charge a car to mostly full in 20 minutes to an hour and are meant to go on major highways and roads. It can take hours to charge a car to full with the L2 charger. Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, a senior resident fellow at Third Way, told CNN that there is a difference between DC fast chargers and the L2 model, which costs around $6,000.

All employees in the manufacturing industry earned an average wage of $32.57 per hour in January, according to preliminary data from the BLS. A projected average hourly wage was $33.03. From CNN.

30 million workers have to sign non-compete agreements in order to work in restaurants that pay more money, a point illustrated by a cashier at a burger place not being able to cross the street to work in a restaurant that pays more money.

Facts First: This is partially true. Critics say non-compete agreements that have been signed by millions of rank-and-file employees and independent contractors suppress competition, wages and entrepreneurship. The FTC proposed a rule to ban employers from imposing non-competition agreements on workers and to eliminate existing non-competition agreements. But are burger chain workers really subject to those noncompete agreements? It isn’t likely anymore.

An investigation in Washington state found that several fast-food chains had no-poaching rules. By the year 2018, all those chains agreed to stop their no-poach practices. From David Goldman of CNN.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The Consumer Price Index: When Should Social Security and Medicare Be Shutdown? Observation of Lee’s “Closed” Decline

The bureau of labor statistics reported that the Consumer Price index for food rose by 10.4% in December. Food price inflation, as measured by the CPI, has slowly declined since hitting a 40-year high of 11.4% in August 2022.

The CPI, which measures the average change in the prices over time of a basket of consumer goods, is one of several closely watched inflation barometers that also have showed price increases to have moderated in recent months. There are a lot of different measures to gauge inflation. Most notably, “core” inflation measures that exclude items with more volatile price increases.

There are various ways to measure real wages. Between December 2021. and December 2022. real hourly earnings declined 1.7% and real average weekly earnings declined 3.1%. From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Alicia Wallace

Biden and the White House watched a video of Lee saying that he wouldn’t talk to politicians for the rest of his career. It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it.” The clip has gone viral on Twitter this week; a second viral clip features Lee saying moments later, “Medicare and Medicaid are of the same sort and need to be pulled up.”

The plan’s official text, which remains online on a dedicated website, says “all federal legislation,” period, should be sunset in five years – not all recent legislation, all crazy legislation or all legislation except for the laws that created Social Security and Medicare. McConnell said that the plan would ruin Social Security and Medicare within five years.

For instance, the conservative lawmakers proposed raising Medicare’s eligibility age to be in line with the normal retirement age for Social Security, which currently is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later, and then indexing it to life expectancy. But they would also raise the normal retirement age for Social Security, as well as trim benefits for higher-income earners.

Biden’s 2020 Presidential Campaign: Is There Peace During Trump’s Amenable Terms of Office? The Case of the Yemen Crisis

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden told CBS, “No, I don’t support defunding the police.” He supports conditioning federal aid to police on their level of decency and honorableness. They are able to demonstrate they can protect the community.

The slogan “de fund the police” means different things to different people, from the dissolution of police forces to partial reductions in funding.

It is ridiculous to claim that there was world peace when Trump’s tenure ended and that calling it stable is subjective.

When Trump left office the Yemen civil war is still going on. (Under Trump and Obama, the US supported Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in the war through arms sales. The policy was ended by Biden in 2021.

For instance, Trump did not end the war in Afghanistan, which was still ongoing when Biden took office. When Biden was sworn in he had thousands of troops in the country, but he withdrew them all in 2 years.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The U.S. Border Patrol Invented New History: Inflation, Product Growth, and the Economic Growth of the 21st Century

The Syrian civil war was also ongoing, though at a more isolated level than in past years. And a war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region was in full swing. The drug war in Mexico was still leading to deaths and disappearances.

Additionally, the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region was still unresolved. The war began in 2014, but had settled into a “frozen conflict,” with Russian proxies occupying a large chunk of the eastern Donbas region, and Ukrainian troops dug into trenches. Russia invaded in February of 2022, after Biden had already taken office. From CNN’s Marshall Cohen.

It is true that the Biden administration is facingrecord levels of apprehensions at the border, but Republicans and Democrats have defined it in different ways.

In fiscal year 2022, US Border Patrol encountered migrants more than 2.2 million times attempting to unlawfully cross the US southern border, according to federal data, marking a new record.

Facts First: This is partially true, but it lacks context. The US economy was bouncing back from the biggest job losses America has ever seen from the Covid shutdowns.

America’s gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 3.9% in the fourth quarter of 2020 and America lost jobs in December 2020. Biden’s stimulus bill helped juice the economy in 2021, although that helped stoke an inflation crisis caused in part by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a war that continues to impact the global economy to this day.

Reply to the Comments of Biden on the Inflation Reduction Act and a Plan to End Medicare: When Sen. Scott and I spoke with Biden

Biden and the White House criticized some Republican senators this week for their proposals that could affect the retirement and health care programs.

The videos are authentic and are from a decade ago when Biden was running for Senate, but he did not tell his audience in Wisconsin. And as Lee noted in Wednesday tweets responding to Biden, Biden didn’t mention that Lee added at the same 2010 event that current Medicare beneficiaries should have their benefits “left untouched” and that “the next layer beneath them, those who will retire in the next few years, also probably have to be held harmless.”

In his 12 years as a senator, Lee has not advocated for abolishing Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, but for better solutions to improve those programs and move them toward solvency. He has supported several proposals to raise the retirement age for Social Security.

Last year, Biden sometimes overstated the support for Scott’s sunset proposal among congressional Republicans, which appears very limited. Biden has said in his speeches this week that the proposal was put forward by Scott and that some Republicans are in favor of it.

Scott, in turn, has tossed a false claim into the debate with Biden this week by repeatedly accusing the president of having cut billions from Medicare in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act did not cut Medicare benefits; rather, it allowed the government and seniors to spend less money to buy prescription drugs – and, in fact, simultaneously made Medicare benefits more generous to seniors. The claim of a Medicare cut was repeatedly debunked last year, when Scott and a Republican campaign organization he chaired used it during the midterm elections.

Biden used Johnson’s remarks correctly this week. In August, Johnson said on a Green Bay radio show that everything should be evaluated so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be bankrupt. Because, again, as long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.” When he faced criticism for those remarks, he stood by them and said that was his longstanding position.

Since the first time I tried to be a congressman, the Democrats have been accusing me of wanting to end Social Security, but I have never said that. I’ve always been consistent: I want to save it,” he said in a radio interview this week.

It’s impossible to definitively fact-check this particular dispute without Johnson specifying how he wants to “fix” and “save” the program. His office did not respond to a CNN request for comment.

The White House deputy press secretary noted in the email that Johnson had accused Biden of lying this week about his stance on Social Security, and that he had also said in interviews that the program was a Ponzi scheme.

The New Biden, Medicare, and Social Security Tax Increases: Why Do Deficits Are Dragging on Economic Growth? A Commentary from Swagel

There were no indications in the report that the size of the federal debt was dragging on economic growth or would any time soon. They warned that policymakers should change the nation’s fiscal course, which could include raising taxes or cutting spending.

“Over the long term, our projections suggest that changes in fiscal policy must be made to address the rising costs of interest and mitigate other adverse consequences of high and rising debt,” the director of the budget office, Phillip L. Swagel, wrote in a letter accompanying the report.

While Republican lawmakers have blamed Mr. Biden and Democrats for the rising deficits, the report makes clear that bipartisan legislation — and the Fed’s interest rate increases — are to blame for the jump in debt projections.

Newly enacted legislation in the past nine months will add about $1.5 trillion to cumulative deficits over the next decade, the budget office said. More than half of the increase came from one law that expanded health care benefits for military veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits. The bill was overwhelmingly passed by the House and Senate, with large numbers of Republicans voting yes.

The legislation makes it easier for veterans who believe they were exposed to toxins during their service to receive medical benefits, by effectively presuming that any American service member stationed in a combat zone for the last 32 years could have been exposed. It also provides a dedicated stream of funding to treat ailments tied to those exposures.

President Biden is proposing a tax increase for people who make more than $400,000 to extend the life of Medicare for another 25 years, highlighting a major element of his budget proposal which the White House will release in full on Thursday.

These unsustainable figures result from demographics, rising health care costs and program design. The ratio of workers to retirees is going to fall by the next decade. People who live until age 90, a fast-growing group, will spend one-third of their adult life collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits. Today’s typical retiring couple will receive Medicare benefits three times as large as their lifetime contributions to the system, and also will come out ahead on Social Security (adjusted into present value), according to the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

The president’s implication that full benefits can be paid without raising taxes for 98 percent of families has no basis in mathematical reality. Imagine that Congress let Trump tax cuts go away, taxed the top two tax brackets 70 and 74 percent, imposed an 8 percent wealth tax on assets over $10 billion and levied a 77 percent estate tax on estates worth more than $2 million. Combined federal income, state and payroll marginal tax rates would approach 100 percent for wealthy taxpayers, and America would face among the highest wealth, estate and corporate tax rates in the developed world.

This year, the president’s budget — a policy document that usually is largely ignored by Congress, which holds the power of the purse — comes ahead of a deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.

The Tax Rate Should Be Increasing to 5% in the Presence of a Short Run Out of Money: Biden’s Message to Congress

Biden proposed in the New York Times that the Medicare tax rate should be increased to 5% for people making up to $400,000 per year in order to invest in the program so that it won’t run out of money in the mid-40s.

Biden said that Medicare has a “rocksolid guarantee” for retirees and his proposals were “common-sense changes” that most people would support.

And then there’s interest owed on the debt, which has grown rapidly over the past year amid repeated rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. The Peter G. Richardson Foundation says that interest costs are going to surpass federal spending on Medicaid and defense within a decade.

The Treasury Department said that the federal government collected $4.7 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2022, which was over $1 trillion less than it spent. The national debt is increased by the budget deficit for that year.

Lawmakers, however, do have control over so-called discretionary spending, which they vote on annually. A large portion of this funding goes to national defense, the rest is devoted to a variety of federal agencies and programs, including education, transportation, housing, environmental protection and federal law enforcement.

The largest chunk of revenue, by far, comes from individual income taxes — which amounted to more than half of the money collected in the last fiscal year. The next biggest slice comes from Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes of 12.4% and 2.9%, respectively. The levies are split between the employer and employee.

But the government also raises money in other ways, including charging admission to national parks, levying customs duties on foreign imports and exports and imposing excise taxes on items such as alcohol, tobacco and gasoline.

The president is also expected to continue proposing some tax increases to offset the cost of portions of his agenda that have not yet passed Congress. An agenda includes efforts to expand access to child care and reduce its cost, provide federally guaranteed paid leave for workers, establish universal prekindergarten and enable students to attend community college for free.

Time Outreview: Covering Politics and Political Issues for the Observer-Leading Group of the New York Times

Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.