Made in America: Making America Grown from the Bottom up to the Middle Out – Two Years After Inflation and the First Presidential Referendum

We have made huge progress over the past two years. My administration is working with Democrats in congress to build an economy that grows from the bottom up and middle out.

The unemployment rate is 3.5% – a 50-year low. We’ve created 10 million jobs, including almost 700,000 manufacturing jobs. On my watch, “Made in America” isn’t just a slogan, it’s a reality.

We have more work to do. Inflation is caused by the pandemic and Russian President Putin’s war in Ukraine. A lot of people who have a job are struggling to pay their gas and rent. That’s why I’m so determined to lower costs for families.

I’m working to bring down the cost of everyday things for middle and working-class people, such as health care premiums, prescription drugs and energy bills. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed without a single Republican vote as it sought to lower health care premiums and prescription drug prices for 13 million Americans.

And partly because of the actions we’ve taken – including a historic release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve – gas prices are decreasing. They’re down $1.20 since their peak this summer and just this week they fell another 10 cents. That’s adding up to real savings for families.

The Republicans in congress are against trickle-down economics, which give the wealthy and big corporations preferential treatment. They clearly laid out their plan. It would make inflation worse, since you would pay more for it.

Medicare has now the power to negotiate lower drug prices. Seniors have their prescription drug costs capped at $2,000 a year, and seniors have their monthlyinsulin payments capped at $35 a month Big Pharma and scores of lobbyists spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prevent health care savings for Americans. They did not succeed.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/american-people-face-a-choice-joe-biden/index.html

The Campaign of Ron DeSantis: Protecting the Right Thinges from the Laws of State, the Right Way, and the Future

Democrats are making sure the biggest corporations begin to pay their fair share in taxes. In 2020, 55 of the wealthiest corporations in America paid zero dollars in federal income tax. No longer. I signed into law a 15% corporate minimum tax. My campaign commitment is that if you make less than $400,000 a year, you will pay no federal taxes at all.

In his first campaign for Congress in 2012, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed support for privatization of medicare, giving his opponents an opening to attack him leading up to his run for president in 2019.

The fact is, this is not your father’s Republican party: Many Republicans in Congress want to pass a national ban on abortion. I would veto it right away, and if we elect more Senate Democrats and keep the House, I’ll move to codify Roe v. Wade in January.

Democracy is being put to the test in America. We are learning what every generation has to learn: nothing about democracy is guaranteed. You have to defend it. It should be protected. Don’t choose it.

I’m absolutely confident that, just as they did in 2020, the American people will again vote in record numbers and make it clear that democracy is a value that both defines us and unites us as Americans.

We faced some of the most difficult challenges in the past few years, but we didn’t relent. And, I have never been more confident about our future. In 14 days, the American people will decide whether we keep moving forward or go backwards.

Meddling with the Biden Administration: Mass Shootings, Debt Ceiling and the Brooster’s Eye (Is It Really Getting Better)

Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his allies in the House want to raise the national debt limit, but they are also discussing steep cuts to domestic programs and a trim to defense spending in order to avoid voter backlash.

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. It would be economically destructive to let the federal government default on its debt. We will probably end up going through this terrifying trick until a few Republicans from swing-districts break ranks and vote with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.

There would be no cuts to either program if I had the ability to find ways to slow spending growth. They’re popular with Republican voters, too, after all. There is absolutely no chance of anything happening except on a bipartisan basis. Any suggestions for fixes that don’t involve large tax increases?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/mass-shootings-police-brutality-debt-ceiling.html

Why would a New York City legislator decide to raise the debt ceiling? Gail: No, it wasn’t. I didn’t

Gail: no. I want to propose tax fairness because some people may think this is a tax increase. For some reason, Social Security payroll taxation stops at about $160,000. So a person making a million dollars a year doesn’t pay anything on about $840,000.

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 that his most important duty as a police officer was to keep people who hate one another apart.

The fight to raise the debt limit will probably be influenced by McCarthy and Biden’s meeting on Wednesday, in a face-to-face that has already been subject to positioning. White House officials have been adamant that there will be no negotiations on the matter while the House Republicans have made it their priority to begin debt ceiling talks.

In his quest to become speaker, McCarthy promised to put a bill on the floor before the end of March that would direct the Treasury Department over which payments to prioritize if the debt ceiling is breached – essentially an emergency contingency plan.

It’s a recipe that – some fear – could take the nation to the brink of a potentially cataclysmic default, especially since some positions against raising the limit at all seem intractable.

The Indiana Republican was asked by CNN if he would vote for a debt ceiling increase if it included everything that he cared about. That is what I hear back home.

It will be difficult to find agreement on spending cuts if Republicans unite around a proposal, even if they want to strengthen negotiations with the White House. Republican appropriators vow to protect defense programs, while GOP moderates are uneasy about cutting programs, all of which can be fodder for Democratic attack ads.

“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’s why it’s important to negotiate. We are a divided Congress, and we got to act that way.”

McCarthy told CBS that he wouldn’t take cuts to Social Security and Medicare. 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.”

The nonpartisan Fiscal Policy Institute states that health care programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, account for 25% of the budget, while Social Security takes up 21%. The rest of the budget goes to discretionary programs for defense and national security.

The conservative crew met over the weekend to come up with ideas for spending cuts that would allow them to achieve a balanced budget in 10 years, 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.

The House will have a plan for what to fight for, according to South Carolina’s R.P. Norman. The agencies are being looked at on a discretionary basis. We are going to let the American people know about it. It will make people shake their heads. … I believe people will like what they see.

The Problem Solvers Caucus: How Democrats and the White House will respond to the president’s proposal to raise the debt ceiling and the borrowing limit

Massie told reporters that it was sort of a moot point. What can you do if the Senate passes and the president signs it? Why would you even start the discussion and let people distort what you’re trying to do when there’s no possible positive outcome?”

Appropriators may end up being on the sidelines of the debate while McCarthy builds conference-wide consensus on what they propose in exchange for raising the nation’s borrowing limit.

Chuck Fleischmann, who sits on the House Appropriations committee, told CNN that he will either be the beneficiary or victim of what comes out. I will be directly affected.

“I think most everyone is in the camp of ‘can’t default.’ Steve Womack is 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.

Others are looking at possible contingency plans as well. The House’s bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus is working on a proposal that would in part try to set a ratio for the allowable amount of US debt compared to the country’s gross domestic product – and develop a plan for budget cuts if that level is breached. The group is working with budget experts to draft the proposal.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican involved in that effort, said that their plan would be a fallback in case talks between the White House and McCarthy collapse.

The White House has closely coordinated with congressional Democrats in the effort to push Republicans to put unveil their own proposal, even as they’ve maintained a united front on the leadership level in opposition to any actual negotiations.

What Joe Biden said about the State of the Union: A fact check of the exchanges within the White House and a Senator named Mike Lee

McCarthy appeared on CBS. “Face the Nation,” where the California Republican said he wanted “to find a reasonable and responsible way that we can lift the debt ceiling, but take control of this runaway spending.”

McCarthy’s pledge, which is backed by former President Donald Trump, provides a window into the complex political dynamics House Republicans confront as they press for negotiations while still working to coalesce around a proposal to put on the table.

White House officials have closely monitored – and wasted no time responding – to House Republican preferences they see as both non-starters on the policy front and politically advantageous.

More broadly, there remain significant questions about whether House Republicans can find the necessary 218 votes for anything given the strident opposition held by some in the conference about raising the debt ceiling at all.

Still, the focus on Medicare and Social Security even as McCarthy has moved to take changes off the table underscores the view inside the White House of the political salience of the programs.

White House officials point out that the framing of “strengthening” the programs is a way to disguise the fact that they oppose structural changes. Without a clear House Republican proposal, that is now a central line of attack in the debate, with potentially dramatic consequences to come.

“Last night, I reported on the State of the Union: It is strong, it is strong,” Biden told the room of union workers at a LiUNA training facility in DeForest, Wisconsin, reiterating much of his economic messaging and highlighting key legislative accomplishments.

As he hit the road, Vice President Biden made clear that he would continue to fight for social safety net and that was when Republicans had one of their most memorable moments in the speech. The argument highlighted Bidens attempts to move his message away from the extreme rhetoric of the populist movement in the election in two years.

The Republican senators accused Biden of deceiving the public. Here is a fact-check of the exchanges.

“There’s a senator named Mike Lee who was also yelling, ‘Liar, liar, house on fire’ kind of stuff last night. … They played last night, something I didn’t even know existed, a video of him saying, ‘I’m here right now to tell you one thing you’ve probably never heard from a politician: It’ll be my objective to phase out Social Security,’” he said.

What did Biden say about the ‘MAGA Republicans’ in 2012, before he called for the House of Representatives to drop the deficit? An interview with Biden

Shortly after Biden’s remarks near Madison, PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff asked him if he was expecting the kind of reaction he got in the House chamber.

“From the folks that did it, I was,” Biden said. “The vast of majority of Republicans weren’t that way, but you know, there’s still a significant element of what I call the ‘MAGA Republicans.’”

He was skeptical about last night’s conversion of some Republicans during his speech. I’ll believe it when I see it when their budget’s laid down with the cuts they’re proposing. It looks like we negotiated a deal last night in the House of Representatives.

Earlier in the speech, Biden attempted to make a broader argument for working together with GOP lawmakers, touting the successes of his first two years in office.

“People sent us a clear message: Fighting for the sake of fighting gets us nowhere. He went on to draw strong arguments against his Republican colleagues, after saying we were getting things done.

And he again called on Congress to raise the nation’s debt limit during his earlier remarks, warning against the “chaos” he said Republicans are “suggesting.”

Biden said junk fees matter to him, because he grew up in the home where they do, even if wealthy people don’t care. They add hundreds of dollars a month to make it harder to pay your bills or afford that family trip. I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and think they can get away with it.”

According to a CNN KFile review of comments from the 2012 Congressional campaign, DeSantis supported plans to replace medicare with a system in which the government paid for partial costs of private plans. In one interview with a local newspaper, DeSantis said he supported “the same thing” for Social Security, citing the need for “market forces” to restructure the program.

During his 2012 campaign, DeSantis embraced then-Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget which became a political football in the 2012 presidential race, when Ryan was chosen as Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president. Democrats contended that Ryan turned Medicare into a voucher system, while Republicans said it was premium support. The government will pay for private plans or traditional Medicare plans for senior citizens under the proposals.

Some people have offered proposals that will provide some market forces in there, more consumer choice, and make it so that the system won’t be bankrupt when you have it.

At the time, DeSantis ran with the support of conservative groups such as the Eagle Forum, FreedomWorks, and the Madison Project.

DeSantis has yet to announce he if he running for president in 2024, nor has he spoken publicly about his position on the entitlement programs as the governor or Florida, preferring to focus on culture war issues.

In the State of the Union address on Tuesday and in speeches on Wednesday and Thursday, the president referred to a part of Scott’s plan that says, “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” The vice president claimed that the Social Security and Medicare programs would be included in all federal legislation.

“I think people who are low income will probably be given coverage that is similar to what they have now,” he said in the interview with the St. Augustine Record. It isn’t even that I will have to pay more, I think people like me, who have been more successful. I will have premium support that’s going to guarantee me a certain amount of coverage.”

“If you want something over and above that, if you want a Cadillac plan or something, then I do think it should be driven by the consumer rather than imposed on the taxpayers,” he added. “And I just think that that makes sense.”

He believes the program should be restructured in a way that is financially sustainable for both Social Security and Medicare.

After getting elected, one of the first interviews he did as a newly sworn-in member was with CNN, in which he said that he hoped congress would restructure Social Security and Medicare.

In speeches and tweets this week, Biden and his White House have singled out particular Republican senators – notably including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin – over proposals from those senators that could affect the retirement and health care programs.

The videos are authentic, though Biden didn’t tell his Wednesday speech audience in Wisconsin they are from more than 12 years ago – an event in 2010, when Lee was running for the Senate but before he was first elected. 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.”

During his speech last week in Florida, Biden called Scott’s proposal “outrageous” and vowed he would veto it.

During the State of the Union section where he discussed the battle over the debt ceiling, Biden mentioned the sunset proposal which may have been a mistake. There is no indication that House Republicans will push this proposal during the current debt ceiling negotiations, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says there are no plans to cut Medicare or Social Security.

In his State of the Union speech the president said that he would protect Medicare and Social Security from cuts. “He’s been very clear these past couple of years. … The bill from the 1970s was not included in the president’s agenda.

This week, Biden has used Johnson’s remarks correctly. According to Johnson on the Green Bay radio show, we need to turn everything into discretionary spending, so that we can fix problems and 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 Johnson faced criticism for those remarks at the time, he stood by them and said that was his consistent longtime position.

It’s impossible to definitively fact-check this particular dispute without Johnson specifying how he wants to “fix” and “save” the program. His office didn’t reply to the request for comment.

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates noted in an email to reporters on Thursday that, though Johnson accused Biden this week of lying about his stance on Social Security, Johnson also said in interviews this week that Social Security is a “legal Ponzi scheme” and that “Social Security might be in a more stable position for younger workers” if the government had proceeded with Republican President George W. Bush’s controversial and eventually abandoned proposal in the mid-2000s to allow workers born after 1949 to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts in which they could buy into the stock market and make other investments.

“In 1975, he has a bill, a sunset bill,” Scott said on CNN of Biden when he was a freshman senator. “It says, it requires every program to be looked at freshly every four years, not just cost but worthiness.”

What Happened When Congress didn’t Act Now, and How? Sen. Mike Rounds and the Future of Social Security, Medicare, and Social Security

[Republicans] all raised their hand. Guess what? We accomplished something. Unless they break their word. There will be no cuts to Medicare or Social Security.

The Republicans handle themselves in the next year could decide whether Biden’s foil will be as strong as he thinks in his expected run for president.

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota offered Sunday a stark warning about the future of Social Security and Medicare if Congress fails to take action now.

We need a better plan in place over the next 11 years. Or we’re going to see – under existing circumstances – some reductions of as much as 24% in some sort of a benefit. The easiest way to fix it would be five years from now, Rounds said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Scott told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week that his proposal is intended to eliminate wasteful spending and help ensure the government can “figure out how to start living within our means.”

“We think that there are possibilities out there of long-term success without scaring people and without tearing apart the system and without reducing benefits. But it requires management. He said it requires looking at and making things better.