Chris Talgo: Joy to the world, Build Back Better’s demise has come
On December 19, just days before millions of Americans gather for Christmas festivities, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) delivered a much-needed early present to the nation when he let it be known that he would not vote in favor of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill. While on “Fox News Sunday,” Manchin succinctly stated, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation.” When pressed if there is any room for future negotiations, Manchin dug in his heels, saying, “I’ve done everything humanly possible … This is a no. I have tried everything I know to do.” Although the possibility exists that portions of Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) bill could be resurrected in 2022, based on Manchin’s comments, it seems it is a fait accompli that the current version of BBB is dead and buried, forever. For most Americans, this is welcome news. Several recent polls show BBB is unpopular with the public. For instance, according to a December 9 poll conducted by NPR/Marist, only 41 percent of Americans support BBB. Unsurprisingly, only 42 percent of those polled said BBB “will help people like themselves,” while just 35 percent said BBB “will help lower inflation.” Apparently, and thankfully, the American people have a better understanding of basic economics than most members of the U.S. Congress, particularly those in the Democratic Party. Without a doubt, BBB would have supercharged the rampant inflation that is already wreaking havoc throughout the U.S. economy. As of this writing, the inflation rate, as measured by the consumer price index, has reached a 39-year high of 6.8 percent, with no sign of abating anytime soon. Even worse, the producer price index, which measures final demand for goods and services and functions as a gauge of future inflationary pressure, just hit an all-time high of 9.8 percent. In other words, the rapidly rising rate of inflation is unlikely to trend downward anytime soon. For all Americans, inflation has become a persistent problem. Per a report from the Penn Wharton Budget Model, “inflation in 2021 will require the average U.S. household to spend around $3,500 more in 2021 to achieve the same level of consumption of goods and services as in recent previous years (2019 or 2020). Moreover, we estimate that lower-income households spend more of their budget on goods and services that have been more impacted by inflation. Lower-income households will have to spend about 7 percent more while higher-income households will have to spend about 6 percent more.” However, despite the alarming signs that inflation is picking up steam and causing significant pain and suffering for American families, the Democratic Party could not care less. Immediately after Manchin put a stake through the heart of BBB, prominent Democrats and much of the mainstream media were in a tizzy. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) went into full-on attack mode, saying, “We all knew that Senator Manchin couldn’t be trusted, the excuses that he just made, I think, are complete bulls***.” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) chimed in with this quip, “The Senate must return to session immediately and bring this historic and transformational bill to a vote so Senator Manchin – and every Republican who has opposed it from the very beginning—can demonstrate, on the record, the contempt they have for their constituents and for everyone who calls America home.” What Omar, Pressley, and too many other radical leftists fail to understand is that Manchin is representing his constituents, the people of West Virginia, who overwhelmingly oppose BBB. According to a recent poll, 53 percent of West Virginians strongly oppose BBB, and 59 percent of independent voters in West Virginia strongly oppose BBB. What’s more, 64 of West Virginians strongly agree that BBB will make inflation worse while 66 percent strongly agree that “Congress should slow down and reconsider the Build Back Better Act in light of inflation concerns.” Fortunately, for now, at least, Joe Manchin has dealt a devastating blow to President Biden’s Build Back Better bill. It remains to be seen whether or not Manchin caves and votes for BBB-lite. Yet, regardless of what happens in the future, we should celebrate the early Christmas miracle that is the demise of Build Back Better. Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is senior editor at The Heartland Institute.
Joe Biden to allow eviction moratorium to expire Saturday
The Biden administration announced Thursday it will allow a nationwide ban on evictions to expire Saturday, arguing that its hands are tied after the Supreme Court signaled the moratorium would only be extended until the end of the month. The White House said President Joe Biden would have liked to extend the federal eviction moratorium due to spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. Instead, Biden called on “Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay.” “Given the recent spread of the delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the CDC to further extend this eviction moratorium to protect renters at this moment of heightened vulnerability,” the White House said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available.” Aides to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Sherrod Brown, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said the two are working on legislation to extend the moratorium. Democrats will try to pass a bill as soon as possible and are urging Republicans not to block it. In the House, a bill was introduced Thursday to extended the moratorium until the end of the year. But the prospect of a legislative solution remained unclear. The court mustered a bare 5-4 majority last month, to allow the eviction ban to continue through the end of July. One of those in the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, made clear he would block any additional extensions unless there was “clear and specific congressional authorization.” By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in June this would be the last time the moratorium would be extended when she set the deadline for July 31. It was initially put in place to prevent further spread of COVID-19 by people put out on the streets and into shelters. Housing advocates and some lawmakers have called for the moratorium to be extended due to the increase in coronavirus cases and the fact so little rental assistance has been distributed. Congress has allocated nearly $47 billion in assistance that is supposed to go to help tenants pay off months of back rent. But so far, only about $3 billion of the first tranche of $25 billion has been distributed through June by states and localities. Some states like New York have distributed almost nothing, while several have only approved a few million dollars. “The confluence of the surging delta variant with 6.5 million families behind on rent and at risk of eviction when the moratorium expires demands immediate action,” said Diane Yentel, executive director of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “The public health necessity of extended protections for renters is obvious. If federal court cases made a broad extension impossible, the Biden administration should implement all possible alternatives, including a more limited moratorium on federally backed properties.” Gene Sperling, who is charged with overseeing the implementation of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package, said it was key that states and local authorities speed up the rental assistance distribution. “The message is that there are no excuses,” he told The Associated Press. “States and cities across the country have shown these programs can work, that they can get money out the door effectively and efficiently,” he continued. “The fact that some states and cities are showing they can do this efficiently and effectively makes clear that there is no reason that every state and city shouldn’t be accelerating their funds to landlords and tenants, particularly in light of the end of the CDC eviction moratorium.” The trouble getting rental assistance to those who need it has prompted the Biden administration to hold several events in the past month aimed at pressuring states and cities to increase their distribution, coax landlords to participate, and make it easier for tenants to get money directly. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta also has released an open letter to state courts around the country encouraging them to pursue measures that would keep eviction cases out of the courts. On Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unveiled a tool that allows tenants to find information about rental assistance in their area. Despite these efforts, some Democratic lawmakers had demanded the administration extend the moratorium. “This pandemic is not behind us, and our federal housing policies should reflect that stark reality. With the United States facing the most severe eviction crisis in its history, our local and state governments still need more time to distribute critical rental assistance to help keep a roof over the heads of our constituents,” Democratic U.S. Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri, Jimmy Gomez of California, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said in a joint statement. But landlords, who have opposed the moratorium and challenged it repeatedly in court, were against any extension. They have argued the focus should be on speeding up the distribution of rental assistance. This week, the National Apartment Association and several others this week filed a federal lawsuit asking for $26 billion in damages due to the impact of the moratorium. “Any extension of the eviction moratorium equates to an unfunded government mandate that forces housing providers to deliver a costly service without compensation and saddles renters with insurmountable debt,” association president and CEO Bob Pinnegar said, adding that the current crisis highlights the need for more affordable housing. “Our nation faces an alarming housing affordability disaster on the horizon — it’s past time for the government to enact responsible and sustainable solutions that ultimately prioritize making both
Donald Trump’s tweets against 4 liberal congresswomen called racist
Starkly injecting race into his criticism of liberal Democrats, President Donald Trump said four congresswomen of color should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all of the women are American citizens and three were born in the U.S. His attack drew a searing condemnation from Democrats who labeled the remarks racist and breathtakingly divisive. Following a familiar script, Republicans remained largely silent after Trump’s Sunday morning broadsides against the four women. But the president’s nativist tweets caused Democrats to set aside their internal rifts to rise up in a united chorus against the president. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump wants to “make America white again.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, after jousting for days with Pelosi, said Trump “can’t conceive of an America that includes us.” Trump, who has a long history of making racist remarks, was almost certainly referring to Ocasio-Cortez and her House allies in what’s become known as “the squad.” The others are Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Only Omar, from Somalia, is foreign-born. Ocasio-Cortez swiftly denounced his remarks . “Mr. President, the country I ‘come from,’ & the country we all swear to, is the United States,” she tweeted, adding that “You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.” Omar also addressed herself directly to Trump in a tweet, writing: “You are stoking white nationalism (because) you are angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda.” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, summed up the Democratic response: “Racial arsonist strikes again. Shut. Your. Reckless. Mouth.”With his tweet, Trump inserted himself further into a rift between Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez, just two days after he offered an unsolicited defense of the Democratic speaker. Pelosi has been seeking to minimize Ocasio-Cortez’s influence in the House Democratic caucus in recent days, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to accuse Pelosi of trying to marginalize women of color. “She is not a racist,” Trump said of Pelosi on Friday. On Sunday, Trump’s tone took a turn. “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” he tweeted. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.” He added: “These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!” The attacks may have been meant to widen the divides within the Democrat caucus, which has been riven by internal debate over how far left to go in countering Trump and over whether to proceed with impeachment proceedings against the president. Instead, the president’s tweets, which evoked the trope of telling black people to go back to Africa, brought Democrats together. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential front-runner, tweeted Sunday that Trump “continues to spew hateful rhetoric, sow division, and stoke racial tensions for his own political gain.” “Let’s be clear about what this vile comment is: A racist and xenophobic attack on Democratic congresswomen,” tweeted Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate. Another 2020 contender, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, tweeted at the president: “This is racist. These congresswomen are every bit as American as you — and represent our values better than you ever will.” Few Republicans weighed in on the president’s comments. Congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Sen. Tim. Scott of South Carolina, the only Republican black senator. Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in a previously scheduled appearance on “Face the Nation” on CBS, said only: “You’re going to have to ask the president what he means by those specific tweets.” Shortly after the tweets, and a later presidential post defending the harsh scenes at a border detention facility where hundreds of migrant men are being held in sweltering, foul-smelling conditions, Trump left the White House to go golfing at his Virginia club. Trump appeared unbowed Sunday night when he returned to Twitter to say it was “so sad” to see Democrats sticking up for the women. “If the Democrat Party wants to continue to condone such disgraceful behavior,” he tweeted, “then we look even more forward to seeing you at the ballot box in 2020!” It was far from the first time that Trump has been accused of holding racist views.In his campaign kickoff in June 2015, Trump deemed many Mexican immigrants “rapists.” In 2017, he said there good people on “both sides” of the clash in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacists and anti-racist demonstrators that left one counter-protester dead. Last year, during a private White House meeting on immigration, Trump wondered why the United States was admitting so many immigrants from “shithole countries” like African nations. Repeatedly, Trump has painted arriving immigrants as an “infestation” and he has been slow in condemning acts of violence committed by white supremacists. And he launched his political career with false claims that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Despite his history of racist remarks, Trump has paid little penalty in his own party.Though a broad array of Republicans did speak out against his reaction to Charlottesville, they have largely held their tongues otherwise, whether it be on matter of race or any other Trump provocation. Fearful of his Twitter account and sweeping popularity among Republican voters, GOP lawmakers have largely tried to ignore the provocative statements.Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democratic presidential hopeful
How black women are organizing to energize voters this fall
Meeting on the campus of Jackson State University on a recent Friday afternoon, dozens of black women came together to strategize about the upcoming midterm elections, opening the gathering with a freedom song. “The revolution done signed my name,” they moaned, invoking the names of the ancestors whose strength has willed them to persevere: Harriet Tubman. Shirley Chisholm. Aretha Franklin. Two were like them, daughters of Mississippi: Ella Jo Baker. Fannie Lou Hamer. “All of us who are in the room right now are midwives for transformation,” said Rukia Lumumba, daughter of the late Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, and co-founder of the Electoral Justice Project. The impact of such targeted work is evident. Black women went to the polls in record numbers last December to elect Doug Jones as the first Democratic senator from Alabama in 25 years. As of this week, 39 black women are nominees for the U.S. House in the November midterms, including 22 women who aren’t incumbents. The meeting soon shifted to strategy as the women plotted how to harness the energy of black female voters this fall. Scenes like these are playing out across the country as black women convene at schools, churches and homes to plan how to make sure that black voters — particularly women — are aware of the upcoming elections, registered and planning to vote and that their family members will do the same. It’s all part of an effort to reshape the politics of the Trump era when many black voters feel threatened by the country’s increasingly racially polarized climate, with concerns ranging from access to the ballot box to the president’s hostility to protesting NFL players and the violent demonstrations last summer in Charlottesville, Virginia. In California, volunteers spent last weekend working at phone banks and texting for Ayanna Pressley, whose upset victory Tuesday put her on track to become Massachusetts’ first black female congresswoman. Others have started political action committees to provide financial resources to candidates such as Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor in Georgia. If she wins in November, Abrams would become the first black female governor elected to lead a U.S. state. The Mississippi gathering was part of a stop on a tour across the Deep South organized by LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, which aims to increase political power in black communities. Brown said the time is now for black women to lead again. She pointed to incidents like the attempt to close a majority of polling places in Randolph County, Georgia, last month, as proof of the need for the kind of continued vigilance black women have long provided. “This is what we do,” she said. “We want to take it to another level. We see what’s happening in this country. . We know how to fight, we know how to win, we know how to transform, we know how to build power. We have everything we need.” Headed into November, black female organizers are hoping to elect more African-Americans to power and not simply be a reliable voting block for white Democrats. In Alabama, “black women were looked to, to bail out Democrats and the state from a very problematic candidate,” said Glynda Carr, co-founder of Higher Heights for America, which focuses on electing black women and galvanizing them as voters. “Alabama was this tipping point around black women’s leadership, when we woke up to our Twitter feed going crazy. The broader community recognized black women are the building blocks to a winning coalition.” Rhonda Briggins has long worked in politics but never considered herself “a money person” until this year. Briggins co-founded R.O.S.E.-PAC, short for Raising Our Sisters’ Electability, and started the Sisters Supporting Sisters campaign this summer, with the goal of getting 100 women at a time to donate $100 each. Her pitch is simple: When black women go to the hair salon, she asks them to talk to other women about the midterms and about the importance of voting. Along the Black Voters Matter Fund tour, Briggins told a crowd of black women organizers in Stockbridge, Georgia, “This is not a time for us to play.” “So many times we have good sisters on the ballot and they don’t have the resources,” she said. “We’ve come together . we need people to educate everyone. We’re just trying to find grassroots ways to organize African-American women. We have been always behind the scenes.” Fallon McClure, who was sitting in the audience, agreed. “For the longest time, there’s been a lot of white-led organizations, and there’d be a sprinkling of women of color, but now it’s starting to be women of color-led organizations,” said McClure, state director for Spread the Vote, started by a black woman, which is working in states with voter ID laws to get free identification cards. “Even in organizations that are still white-led, we’re seeing their whole organizing crew is starting to be black women and other women of color,” she continued. “They’ve been doing the work for a long time but weren’t necessarily getting the credit, or they had a regular, full-time job, and they were just kind of doing the work on the side because they cared about their community and wanted to make a difference, but now they’re getting the recognition for it.” Black women are also collaborating across states and across the country to maximize their efforts. Many have worked together on previous campaigns or on other grassroots projects in black communities, bringing a familiarity to the work they now share. As the Black Voters Matter Fund tour rolled through Mississippi, Kenya Collins and Cassandra Overton Welchlin chatted easily in their seats, each tooting the other’s horn and finishing the other’s sentences. Because there are so few black women on the ground, Collins explained, they have no choice but to stick together. “In Mississippi, black women have always been about community,” said Overton Welchlin, co-convener of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable. “If we can shift the power
Inside the makeover of the Democratic Party
The Democratic makeover is in full swing. With just a few primaries remaining before the decisive midterm elections in November, voters have dramatically reshaped the Democratic Party to become younger, more diverse and unquestionably liberal. The latest turn came Tuesday in Massachusetts, where Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, 44, trounced 10-term congressman Mike Capuano, 66, in a Democratic primary. It reprised a June primary upset in which self-proclaimed democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, toppled New York congressman Joe Crowley, one of the House Democrats’ top leaders. They join minority candidates like Democratic gubernatorial nominees Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Andrew Gillum of Florida and a host of younger white candidates — including dozens of women and a gaggle of veterans — who are offering voters an antidote to President Donald Trump. “We are at a crossroads,” Pressley declared during a party unity rally Wednesday. “This can be our darkest hour or it can be our finest.” Outsider candidates are taking on establishment-aligned Democratic incumbents in the final primaries of the season over the coming week in states such as Delaware and Rhode Island. Victories by candidates such as Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez have generated substantial grassroots energy. But they’ve also raised questions about whether the party will be able to compete in broad swaths of the country, a potential vulnerability Republicans are eager to exploit. There’s also debate over what a younger, more diverse class of lawmakers might mean for the fate of congressional leaders such as House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and potential 2020 presidential candidates who are older and white, including former Vice President Joe Biden. “2020 is going to be about who voters want best to stand up to Trump and to take on Trump,” said Ben Tulchin, who worked as a pollster for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in 2016. “You’re going to have to have an authentically progressive message and to be able to communicate that.” For now, Democratic leaders are embracing the enthusiasm of their base — even as it’s unclear where it will lead. “The energy and momentum and the strength is clearly on our side,” said Rep. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “There’s nothing more unifying than winning back the House of Representatives and restoring checks and balances.” Democrats’ leftward lurch looks different contest to contest. Capuano and Crowley are reliable liberals, but Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez often go further, with full-throated calls for single-payer government health insurance and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Coming from heavily Democratic districts, Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez won’t determine whether Democrats pick up the 23 new seats necessary for a House majority. But they will affect the makeup of the Democratic caucus and what its priorities might be on issues from health care and immigration to potential impeachment proceedings against Trump once a special counsel investigation presents its findings. Elsewhere, Democratic nominees represent a clear shift from the status quo even if they aren’t as left-leaning as Ocasio-Cortez. Congressional nominees like Iowa’s Abby Finkenauer or Arkansas’ Clarke Tucker were the more moderate choices in their respective primaries, but are now trying to topple Republican incumbents with calls for a public option health insurance plan to compete alongside for-profit insurers. Abrams, the Georgia Democrat who’d be the nation’s first black woman elected governor, stops short of single-payer health care and abolishing ICE but promises to expand Medicaid insurance and keep Georgia’s state resources from aiding mass deportation efforts. And dozens of Democratic candidates for federal and state offices — regardless of their positions on ICE, health care or impeachment — have sworn off corporate campaign cash. The embrace of those positions among primary voters has activists on the left looking forward to upcoming primaries in Delaware, where Kerri Evelyn Harris, a black gay woman, is challenging moderate incumbent Democrat Tom Carper on Thursday. In New York, actress Cynthia Nixon will try on Sept. 13 to oust Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. It’s unclear whether any of these outsider candidates will enjoy the same success as Pressley or Ocasio-Cortez. The overall trend has been a wakeup call on Capitol Hill and thrilled leaders of the anti-Trump resistance and the grassroots left. Stefanie Brown James, co-founder of Collective PAC, which supports African-American candidates, praised Pressley as an example of a new assertiveness that goes beyond policy. “I think that for so long, a lot of us who are Democrats have felt like, ‘Dude, where’s the fight back? … Where’s the toughness?’” she said. “You’re seeing candidates who are brash and aggressive and are like, ‘No, we’re not going to wait.’” Crowley, who’d been viewed as a possible future House speaker before his defeat, said Wednesday he was “sad” for Capuano, but celebrated “the engagement and the activity that it’s causing and the fervor that is forming (among) young people, women.” Certainly, there is some political risk in Democrats’ approach, particularly if November draws a typical midterm electorate that is older, whiter and more conservative than presidential-year electorates. “We all know the fight for the majority runs through the suburbs. It doesn’t run through the inner city,” said Republican Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio, who leads the GOP’s House campaign committee. “It’s the suburbs that matter, and their extreme agenda doesn’t sell.” House Democrats implicitly acknowledge the potential divide, with the DCCC this week launching a series of ads and attacks on health care. Noticeably, they focused mostly on Republican votes that would strip existing protections for policy holders with existing health problems — the ads avoid any mention of single-payer proposals or even a public option. Likewise, Pelosi has begun unveiling her strategy for a Democratic majority. And while it’s focused generally on helping working- and middle-class households, it’s decidedly not the wish list of the grassroots left. Those tensions could come to a head if Pelosi struggles to be elected speaker. Even if she wins, it could be difficult for her to preside over a more liberal caucus. James,
