Politics

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Friday nominated a lawyer who represented the Mississippi clinic at the heart of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision to become a federal appeals court judge.

Biden’s latest slate of nine new judicial nominees included Julie Rikelman, an abortion rights lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights whom the president picked to serve on the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The nomination, which Republicans are likely to oppose in the narrowly Democratic-controlled Senate, came a month after the conservative-majority Supreme Court overturned Roe, which for nearly five decades had guaranteed women nationally a constitutional right to obtain abortions.

Rikelman had argued against such a ruling in representing the Jackson Women’s Health Organization – Mississippi’s only abortion clinic – in challenging a Republican-backed law that banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The clinic has since closed, after a near-total ban in Mississippi sprang into effect following the decision by the United States’ highest court. About half of the 50 U.S. states have banned or are expected to ban or restrict abortions following that ruling.

“Julie Rikelman brings exactly the kind of experience with reproductive rights we desperately need on the courts,” Christopher Kang, chief counsel of the progressive group Demand Justice, said in a statement.

Conservative opposition is expected in the U.S. Senate, where Democrats are facing pressure from progressive activists to speed up judicial confirmations before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, when they risk losing control of the chamber to Republicans.

“This nominee is a radical, left-wing abortion activist who has no business being on any court, let alone a federal appellate court,” said Mike Davis, who heads the conservative judicial advocacy group the Article III Project.

Rikelman is one of two new appellate court nominees by Biden. He also nominated Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Maria Araujo Kahn to the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Biden’s latest nominees continued the White House’s push to diversify the federal bench. They include Daniel Calabretta, a California state court judge nominated to become the first openly LGBT federal judge in the state’s Eastern District.

Myong Joun, a state court judge in Boston, was picked to become the first Asian American man on the federal bench in Massachusetts, where Biden also nominated Julia Kobick, a deputy state solicitor in the state attorney general’s office.

District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman was nominated to be a federal judge in Washington, and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jeffery Hopkins would if confirmed by the Senate become a district court judge in Southern Ohio.

Biden also nominated Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the National Immigration Law Center and Superior Court Judge Rita Lin to be federal judges in California’s Northern District.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

source

MCDONOUGH, Ga. (AP) — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday took aim at the “Biden recession” and tacked the blame on Democrat Stacey Abrams, becoming one of many Republicans to seek to weigh down their rivals with voters’ worries about the economy.

How voters see the economy will be key in November’s elections nationwide. Currently, Democratic President Joe Biden has rock-bottom approval ratings, and the looming possibility of a recession is compounding political woes brought on by high inflation.

But while the argument against Democrats and the economy is straightforward for Republicans including Georgia’s Herschel Walker, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, it’s trickier for Kemp.

Along with other Republican governors seeking reelection, such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Ohio’s Mike DeWine, Kemp has to make a double argument that also defends his economic record. Kemp at times contends that Georgia’s economy is good and the national economy is bad, even though Georgia voters only experience one economy.

“Georgians know that our economy is fighting through the Biden-Abrams agenda, despite what’s going on nationally,” Kemp told reporters in the Atlanta suburb of McDonough, arguing Abrams bears blame for “runaway spending and disastrous policies” because she campaigned for Biden and even sought to be his vice president.

Abrams said Thursday that Kemp’s division between Georgia and the national economy is “mathematically and economically impossible,” and that Kemp has “woefully underperformed” at helping people.

“He has done very well for those who are already doing well,” Abrams told reporters after a speech in the north Georgia town of Clayton. “But if you were struggling in Georgia, Brian Kemp has done absolutely nothing to help you move forward.”

The economy also is central in Georgia’s closely contested Senate race. Warnock couches many proposals as meant to fight higher prices, including seeking a suspension of the federal gas tax and price limits on insulin. Walker focuses on increasing domestic oil production and attacks Warnock as a rubber stamp for Biden.

In reality, the economy is “a mixed bag,” said Emory University finance professor Tom Smith. Georgia has record low unemployment and more people working than ever before. Smith said the worst of inflation may be over. Gas prices have fallen by more than 50 cents a gallon in Georgia during July, according to AAA. But Smith said the economy is showing wobbles, and that a recession may have been going on for months. He said it’s unrealistic to expect office seekers to portray that whole picture.

“Politicians are going to say political things,” Smith said.

On McDonough’s courthouse square, some voters said Friday that they’re weighing the economy.

Times are good for Keith Sweat, who owns an art gallery and framing business. He said his business “skyrocketed” when the COVID-19 pandemic made people focus on beautifying their homes, and hasn’t slowed down.

“People ware wary, but they haven’t stopped spending, and that is unusual,” said Sweat. He said he’s not aligned with either party.

Karen Denegall of Ellenwood was helping her sister relocate her coffee shop. She writes off fluctuations of gas prices to the war in Ukraine, but said she’s feeling the pain of high food prices.

“What can we do to make groceries go down?” asked Denegall. A medical worker, she said her own finances are OK, but said she expects some Democrats to defect to Republicans.

Kemp on Friday again said that his decision to quickly remove pandemic restrictions was a key driver of prosperity. He pledged further actions in coming months to help voters. He’s already pushed through more than $1 billion in tax rebates and has suspended the collection of Georgia’s gas tax since March, at the cost of roughly $150 million a month.

Abrams has called on Kemp to suspend the gas tax through the end of the year and wants to issue another round of income tax refund checks using billions in state surplus funds. She says Democrats, including Warnock, should get credit for the “resources that have poured into the state” through COVID-19 relief, fattening its coffers and goosing the job market.

Abrams has put forth a housing plan that she ways would improve affordability and reduce costs. She also argues that expanding the state-federal Medicaid health insurance plan to all adults would reduce costs for Georgians.

In the Senate race, Walker argues Warnock shares blame with Biden for every economic ill.

“Why has my opponent not voted that we can continue to have an economy that’s going to be flourishing?” Walker said at a recent campaign stop in north Georgia.

Warnock, for his part, counters by highlighting any aspect of his work in Washington that aligns him with “ordinary people” and “working-class Georgians.”

“People are still struggling,” he acknowledges in his standard campaign speech.

While Warnock doesn’t openly embrace Biden, he touts the American Rescue Plan. Biden’s massive pandemic-related spending plan passed without any Republican votes and included a tax cut for lower-income workers.

“If you’re going to give a tax cut — and I believe in tax cuts — you ought to give a tax cut to those who actually need it,” Warnock said while campaigning in Atlanta.

He’s pushed his work on the so-called CHIPS bill that passed the Senate this week with 17 Republican votes. The plan, which still requires a House vote, would jumpstart microchip production in the United States, and Warnock emphasizes specific benefits for Georgia firms.

Warnock also highlights Georgia projects in a sweeping infrastructure plan that garnered some GOP support, along with proposals to lower insulin costs for diabetics and his call to suspend the federal gas tax. Warnock unfurled the latter proposal in February, ahead of many other Democrats, including Biden. And, in another move that shows a fault line between himself and the White House, Warnock emphasizes that he’s “pushing” the White House to be more aggressive in forgiving student loan debts. Biden has said he expects to make a decision on any widespread aid in August.

All those proposals and actions are aimed at reaching voters like Denegall, who said she’s undecided right now.

“I’ve got until November to see how things are going,” she said.

___

Barrow reported from Atlanta

___

Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.

source

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Appearing bare-shouldered in a TV ad, Connecticut Democrat Dita Bhargava looks directly into the camera and promises, if elected, to “lead the crusade” for abortion rights.

Photos of other women flash on the screen, also with no clothes showing. “This is who have freedom over their own bodies stripped away,” Bhargava says in the commercial, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion. “This is who the Supreme Court left completely vulnerable.”

It would make sense to think Bhargava is running for governor, state legislature or Congress — positions that could play a direct role in future abortion laws. She’s not. She’s a candidate for state treasurer.

Bhargava, a contender in Connecticut’s Aug. 9 primary, is among Democratic candidates in down-ballot races, such as treasurer, auditor or secretary of state, who have seized on the abortion issue, even when the office they seek doesn’t have an obvious connection to abortion access.

“Others might say it’s not relevant. It’s absolutely relevant to the treasurer’s office,” Bhargava, chief operating officer of a private investment fund, said in an interview, explaining that the state has the power to affect corporate behavior through its pension investment decisions.

“When I’m state treasurer, the state will not invest in companies that don’t do the right thing by their employees,” she said. “And part of doing that right thing is to support a woman’s right to safe, legal abortion.”

In Wisconsin, treasurer candidate Gillian Battino, a Democrat and physician, has asked donors to help her “fight to codify Roe.” The treasurer in Wisconsin does not set abortion policy or even oversee investments. The job mostly entails signing checks on behalf of the state and chairing a board that handles payments from lands held in trust.

The Supreme Court’s decision to return the abortion question to the states steered attention toward governor’s races, where winners will play an outsize role in the fate of future restrictions. But candidates for lower state offices also seek to capitalize on a ruling unpopular with a majority of Americans to boost campaign contributions and inspire voter turnout.

Sandy Theis, a Democratic consultant in Ohio, said threats to abortion access have a history of mobilizing Democratic voters.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1989 decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, which gave states greater leeway to restrict abortions, Democratic challengers unseated Republican governors in Virginia and Florida, and exit polls showed Democrat Ann Richards captured 60% of the women’s vote, including 25% of Republican women, to become governor of Texas.

“The Republican Party doesn’t understand the selling power of something like taking away women’s reproductive freedom,” Theis said. “If the Democrats play this right, and message this right, I think it will help them all over the ticket.”

Down-ticket Republican candidates have largely avoided the abortion issue, focusing often on their sought offices’ core functions. The exception is attorney general races, in which some GOP candidates have pledged to defend state laws under the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, help local prosecutors pursue abortion crimes and defend new restrictions in court.

Democratic attorney general candidates in Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Ohio pitch themselves as the last line of defense for abortion rights.

Taylor Sappington, the Democratic nominee for state auditor in Ohio, said voters sometimes question his focus on the abortion ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, given that the office he seeks would seem to have no bearing on women’s health care.

He said he reminds them that Ohio’s auditor sits on the state’s political mapmaking commission, which draws districts for entities that do have a role.

“The truth is that the voters empowered the redistricting commission, and put the auditor on that commission, to draw maps for the Legislature and for Congress,” he said. “All of the issues that those bodies handle — including abortion, but also education, health care, and civil liberties for LGBTQ folks like myself, like gay marriage — are affected by those maps.”

The current auditor, Republican Keith Faber, has promoted his endorsement by Ohio Right to Life, the Republican-leaning state’s oldest and largest anti-abortion group, but otherwise mostly steered clear of social issues. Instead, he is campaigning against high inflation under President Joe Biden.

Races for offices overseeing state elections also have joined the abortion discussion.

State Rep. Bee Nguyen, the Democratic secretary of state nominee in Georgia, said the Supreme Court ruling was “part of a broader assault on our fundamental rights,” and sought to link that back to elections.

“We must fight back at the ballot box and wield our most powerful tool: our sacred, most fundamental right to vote,” she said in a fundraising solicitation that appears to have worked. She’s currently outraising the Republican incumbent.

Democratic Secretaries of State Jocelyn Benson, of Michigan, and Jena Griswold, of Colorado, are also campaigning on the issue. Griswold, who chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, told would-be donors that, if reelected, she wouldn’t apply the state seal to the extradition paperwork of any out-of-state patient seeking an abortion or reproductive health care in Colorado.

Abortion is resonating even further down the ballot.

In New Hampshire, the issue has arisen in campaigns for elected members of an obscure but powerful state body that approves state contracts, judicial nominations and agency heads. Majority Republicans on the state’s Executive Council have repeatedly rejected funding for family planning clinics over unfounded concerns that public money is being used for abortions.

The political action fund for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England has gotten involved on the other side, citing the council’s “outsized role when it comes to reproductive health in this state.”

___

Carr Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Jim Anderson in Denver; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan; Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis; and Gabe Stern in Carson City, Nevada.

source

TONOPAH, Nev. (AP) — The Nye County Commission is used to dealing with all sorts of hot-button controversies.

Water rights, livestock rules and marijuana licenses are among the many local dramas that consume the time of the five commissioners in this vast swath of rural and deeply Republican Nevada. Last spring, it was something new: voting machines.

For months, conspiracy theories fueled on social media by those repeating lies about former President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020 inflamed public suspicions about whether election results could be trusted. In response, the commission put a remarkable item on its agenda: Ditch the county’s voting machines and instead count every vote on every ballot — more than 20,000 in a typical general election — entirely by hand.

Commissioners called a parade of witnesses, including three from out of state who insisted voting machines could be hacked and votes flipped without leaving a trace. They said no county could be certain their machines weren’t accessible via the internet and open to tampering by nefarious actors.

It was all just too much for Sam Merlino, a Republican who has spent more than two decades administering elections as the county’s clerk. She simply felt outgunned.

“It just made me feel helpless,” she said in a recent interview from her office in Tonopah, an old silver mining town surrounded by hills of rock and sagebrush about halfway between Las Vegas and Reno.

She defended the system’s checks and balances that ensure an accurate vote tally, but was bombarded with technical jargon and theories unlike any she’d ever heard. “I couldn’t do anything but just sit and listen,” she said.

When the county commission voted unanimously to recommend hand-counting ballots — even though there was no evidence of any tampering — she decided she’d had enough and submitted her resignation. Merlino will step down next week and leave the administration of elections in a county the size of New Hampshire to a new clerk; the most likely candidate to succeed her is someone who has promoted voting machine conspiracy theories and falsely contends that Trump actually won the 2020 election.

Merlino’s departure and Nye County’s plans to scrap voting machines and hand-count every ballot open a window into the real-world consequences of unfounded conspiracy theories that have spread across the country since Trump’s defeat. The moves also raise questions about how local elections will be run when overseen by people who are skeptical of the process.

A network of people peddling conspiracy theories about the security of voting machines has hop-scotched the country for more than a year, spinning elaborate yarns involving Venezuelan software, the Chinese Communist Party and offshore servers. They have tried to persuade state and local officials to do just what Nye County is attempting.

While no state has taken the same step, their efforts find fertile ground in conservative parts of the U.S. such as Nye County, where suspicions of government run deep. Already this year, some rural county boards have threatened to refuse to certify the results of their primary elections, even without evidence of problems.

Nye County, the country’s third largest by area, stretches from the strip malls on the outer margins of Las Vegas through desolate rangelands where cattle graze and the military trains pilots and practices missile-firing and bomb drops.

Conspiracy theories have long found an audience in the county. It’s home to part of Area 51, the once-secret U.S. Air Force base that draws alien enthusiasts and UFO hunters. During public comment at county commission meetings, residents reference Infowars’ Alex Jones, who has peddled fake conspiracy theories about the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre. In Pahrump, the county’s most populous town, a plaque on a park bench honors the late radio host and conspiracy theorist Art Bell, who lived here until his death in 2018.

Its voters are unrelentingly Republican. In 2018, they chose a Republican brothel owner over a Democrat in a statehouse race — even though the brothel owner had died weeks earlier.

Trump won Nye County by more than 40 percentage points among the 25,427 ballots cast in November 2020. That margin, however, has done nothing to stifle the spread of conspiracy theories about voter fraud and ballot tampering.

At a recent Republican Party event and county commission meeting, many brought up stories they had heard involving QR codes, half-inserted USB drives and foreign hackers infiltrating machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems.

No evidence has surfaced to prove any of the theories, yet they continue to spread in Nye County Facebook groups.

Merlino recalled when an error on a sample ballot ballooned on social media into a full-blown corruption conspiracy theory about the printing company’s financial ties: “Just like anything, once a rumor starts or once something is out there, people feed on it,” she said.

County commissioners say they are obligated to take action as a way to re-establish trust in elections, a concern that fed into their vote to recommend hand-counting ballots in the upcoming November election rather than use tabulating machines.

Election experts are skeptical that hand-counting is doable anywhere except in the tiniest counties; Nye County has about 31,500 registered voters. They say the potential for human error is far greater than running ballots through a tabulator and auditing the results afterward to ensure accuracy.

“It’s a very bad idea, and everyone from the most conservative election officials to the most liberal will testify to that,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonprofit that works on election procedures.

A lengthy hand-counting process could spark a political crisis in the state, a perennial presidential battleground and one of six states where Trump disputed his 2020 loss. It’s not clear what would happen if just one of Nevada’s 17 counties fails to finish counting votes within the seven-day timeframe required under state law, or declines to certify the results.

The secretary of state’s office has said hand-counting could conflict with state law and has scheduled hearings in August to discuss regulations for any county planning to attempt it.

Supporters of the move are undaunted. At a dimly lit Mexican restaurant in Pahrump, an hour’s drive from Las Vegas, activists attending a recent Nye County “GOP Unity” event attributed support for hand-counting to what they claimed were unexplained irregularities and suspicions about election tampering.

“You just don’t know 100%,” said Leo Blundo, a Nye County commissioner who voted against certifying the results from the June primary after he lost his reelection bid.

Pahrump Republican Tina Trenner said cutting voting off from electrical sources could help ease skepticism about election results.

“They could be hacked. Something as simple as a phone with a hotspot in it, sitting up on the counter, can suddenly make those machines available on the internet,” she said.

The push to hand-count ballots also has won support from at least one prominent Nevada Republican — Jim Marchant, the GOP nominee for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections. He has participated in rallies and other events around the country promoting the falsehood that Trump actually won the 2020 election.

“If we get out en masse and vote, we’ll overwhelm the system so that any mechanisms they have in place to manipulate the system will be negated,” he told applauding Republicans in Pahrump, without specifying who he feared would manipulate the election.

Marchant repeated a promise he made to the Nye County Commission months earlier, when the clerk said hand-counting ballots would require a substantial number of people. Marchant told The Associated Press he could provide as many members of his “election integrity” movement from Nevada and elsewhere as necessary to help with the process.

In a stump speech, Marchant said he was eager to work with Mark Kampf, the winner of the Republican Party primary in the Nye County clerk’s race. Kampf’s platform included replacing voting machines with hand-counting.

In one debate, Kampf, an accountant and corporate auditor, insisted Trump won the 2020 election. He told voters he was concerned that an interstate voter roll maintenance system could be a ploy from billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros. He warned about the misuse of ballot drop boxes, citing the film “2000 Mules.” Experts say it uses flawed analysis of cellphone data and drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election.

Kampf, who is expected to be appointed to replace Merlino in August, declined to comment for this story. He told the commission at its July meeting that he planned to emphasize voter education to restore trust in elections.

That may prove a tall task in a community that remains spellbound by Trump’s ongoing insistence that he was the true winner.

The degree to which distrust has entrenched itself worries Merlino, whose own efforts to educate have done little to sway her neighbors.

After a mostly quiet tenure, the self-described “personal responsibility Republican” said she has been sickened to witness fictions and falsehoods taking root in her county and politicizing the work of her fellow election workers in Nevada.

Merlino’s office has been inundated with public records requests from people looking for evidence of fraud or tampering. County residents who deny the results of the 2020 presidential election without evidence yell at her and her staff while in line to vote. Myths of stolen elections have even estranged her from members of her own family, including one to whom she hasn’t spoken in over six months.

On top of all that, the commission’s move toward hand-counting convinced her it was time to step down.

“I don’t think it can be done,” she said. “If they want to give it a go, that’s why I’m giving them the opportunity to do it.”

___

Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed.

source

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden’s campaign trail promise to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy as part of a battle against glaring income inequality in the United States got an unexpected boost on Wednesday.

Early proposals to increase tax rates from Biden and his fellow Democrats hit a brick wall in Congress after Republicans — and some Democrats — opposed them. But a sudden reversal by West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, a swing vote in the divided Senate, has given Biden’s tax agenda a new lease on life.

The amount U.S. companies contribute to tax revenue that funds roads and schools has plummeted https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-BIDEN/INVESTMENTS/xlbvgkbxlvq since the 1940s.

Biden has often said in office that companies should instead pay a “fair share,” a contrast to deference to private markets begun by Republicans with former President Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, and buoyed by rounds of tax cuts and deregulation, by both parties.

The new compromise bill includes $430 billion in new spending on energy, electric vehicle tax credits and health insurance investments. It more than pays for itself by raising minimum taxes for big companies and enforcing existing tax laws, Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

Biden said during a speech on Thursday that the deal would “for the first time in a long time begin to restore fairness to the tax code – begin to restore fairness by making the largest corporations in America pay their fair share without any new taxes on people making under $400,000 a year.”

The bill would impose a 15% minimum tax on corporations with profits over $1 billion, raising $313 billion over a decade, they wrote. Companies could claim net operating losses and tax credits against the 15%.

The U.S. corporate tax rate dropped to 21% from 35% after a 2017 tax cut pushed by then-President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans, but many companies pay much less than that, and some of the largest pay no federal taxes, research groups including the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy have found.

Biden proposed raising that rate to 28% last year as part of an infrastructure spending bill, but the tax component was struck from the bill.

The new Manchin-Schumer bill also aims to close the so-called carried interest loophole, long a goal of Democrats.

Carried interest refers to a longstanding Wall Street tax break that let many private equity and hedge fund financiers pay the lower capital gains tax rate on much of their income, instead of the higher income tax rate paid by wage earners.

Eliminating the loophole would raise $14 billion, the senators say.

Schumer said he expected the Senate to vote on the legislation next week, to “lower prescription drug prices, tackle the climate crisis with urgency and vigor, ensure the wealthiest corporations and individuals pay their fair share in taxes, and reduce the deficit.”

The Manchin-Schumer measure is substantially smaller than the multitrillion-dollar spending bill Democrats had envisioned last year.

But it still represents a major advance for Biden’s policy agenda ahead of midterm elections on Nov. 8 that could determine whether Democrats retain control of Congress.

It came just as Biden celebrated Senate passage of a bill aimed at boosting the U.S. semiconductor industry, another key priority of his administration, and as he struggles with low job approval ratings and ebbing support from his own party after a series of conservative Supreme Court rulings.

“This bill will reduce the deficit beyond the record-setting $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction we have already achieved this year, which will help fight inflation as well,” Biden said in a statement.

“And we will pay for all of this by requiring big corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, with no tax increases at all for families making under $400,000 a year,” he said.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Heather Timmons and Mark Porter)

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said on Wednesday he has reached a deal with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on a bill to increase corporate taxes, reduce the national debt, invest in energy technologies and lower the cost of prescription drugs.

Manchin has often been a roadblock to President Joe Biden’s policy goals, including those specifically addressed in the bill. He previously said he wanted to address high U.S. prescription drug costs, but was concerned more government spending could increase inflation.

The bill includes $430 billion in new spending on energy, electric vehicle credits and health insurance, and more than pays for itself by raising minimum taxes for big companies and enforcing existing tax laws, Schumer and Manchin said in a statement.

The measure is substantially smaller than the multitrillion-dollar spending bill Democrats had envisioned last year. But it still represents a significant advance for Biden’s policy agenda ahead of midterm elections on Nov. 8 that could determine whether Democrats retain control of Congress.

Schumer plans to pass the measure through a Senate maneuver called reconciliation that allows him to proceed with just a 51-vote majority, bypassing normal rules that require 60 of the 100 senators to agree to most legislation. That could allow him to pass the bill with only Democratic votes, if necessary, if every Democrat is on board.

Schumer said he expects the Senate Parliamentarian will rule in the coming days whether the bill qualifies for reconciliation under the chamber’s rules. He said the Senate will vote on the legislation next week.

Manchin and Schumer said in the statement that the bill would reduce the nation’s deficit by about $300 billion, lower carbon emissions by about 40% by the year 2030 and allow the government’s Medicare health plan to negotiate prescription drug prices.

Older and lower-income Americans could benefit, as well as some electric vehicle companies and green energy companies.

Out-of-pocket drug costs for recipients of Medicare, the U.S. health insurance for seniors and the disabled, would be capped at $2,000 a year and vaccines for seniors would be available for free, according to a summary of the bill.

It also includes a new $4,000 tax credit for used electric vehicles for lower-income people and new tax credits and grants for automakers to retool factories to build greener cars. [L1N2Z9027]

The new agreement will be paid for by raising the corporate minimum tax on big companies to 15%, ramping up Internal Revenue Service tax enforcement by adding $80 billion to its budget over a decade, lowering the price government agencies pay for prescription drugs and closing a loophole that lets some ultra-wealthy pay less tax, Schumer and Manchin said.

“I have worked diligently to get input from all sides on the legislation my Democratic colleagues have proposed and listened to the views of my Republican friends to find a path forward that removes inflationary policies so that Congress can respond to Americans’ suffering from high prices,” Manchin said.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another Democrats who has at times blocked Biden’s agenda, declined immediate comment on news of the agreement.

In a letter to colleagues, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the bill “a remarkable achievement” and “welcome news for House Democrats.”

CROSSING MCCONNELL

News of the agreement came hours after the Senate passed sweeping legislation to subsidize the domestic semiconductor chip industry with several Republican votes.

Last month, top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell promised to block the “Chips bill” as it is known, unless Democrats abandoned their plans for a reconciliation bill like the one Manchin and Schumer outlined. The House will vote on the “Chips bill” on Thursday, but Republicans don’t have the votes to block it on their own.

McConnell criticized the reconciliation bill on Wednesday, saying it would “kill many thousands of American jobs.”

The reconciliation bill does not include an expansion of a federal deduction for taxes paid to states and local entities. Expanding the deduction, known as SALT for State and Local Taxes, has been a demand of lawmakers in higher-tax states such as California, New Jersey and New York, especially in suburbs where Democrats seek to retain control in the November elections.

(Reporting by Eric Beech, David Morgan and Makini Brice, writing by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Scott Malone, Heather Timmons, Bill Berkrot, Cynthia Osterman and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

source

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A Senate Democratic deal includes a new $4,000 tax credit for used electric vehicles and other new tax credits and grants for automakers to retool factories to build greener cars.

The deal struck between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin also includes an expansion of the existing $7,500 EV tax credit as well as a new $10 billion investment tax credit to build clean-technology manufacturing facilities, according to a summary from Schumer’s office.

The bill that Schumer and Manchin agreed to also includes $2 billion in cash grants to retool existing auto manufacturing facilities “to manufacture clean vehicles, ensuring that auto manufacturing jobs stay in the communities that depend on them.”

If it becomes law, it will further provide up to $20 billion in loans to build new clean vehicle manufacturing facilities and $30 billion for additional production tax credits “to accelerate U.S. manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and critical minerals processing.”

Schumer said the Senate was expected to vote on the proposed legislation next week and it would next go to the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

President Joe Biden last year proposed boosting EV tax credits to up to $12,500 per vehicle — including $4,500 for union-made vehicles — and lifting a cap of 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer on the $7,500 credit. Automakers including General Motors and Tesla have hit the cap and are no longer eligible for the existing EV tax credit.

Toyota Motor Corp said this month it had hit the sales cap, which means its $7,500 credit will phase out over the next year.

Automakers have heavily lobbied for an extension of the EV tax credit, warning they cannot meet aggressive goals to cut emissions without tax incentives that make electric vehicles more cost competitive.

The new EV tax credits would be limited to trucks, vans and SUVs with a suggested retail price of no more than $80,000 and to cars priced at no more than $55,000. They would be limited to families with adjusted gross incomes of up to $300,000 annually.

    They also would be subject to rising annual requirements limiting sources of critical minerals used in batteries. Congressional aides and automakers said the provision was aimed at China, which produces much of the world’s critical minerals for batteries.

The deal would further provide $3 billion for the U.S. Postal Service to buy zero-emission vehicles and such EV infrastructure as charging stations.

Republicans have harshly criticized Democrats for touting EVs as a solution to rising gasoline prices, saying they are not affordable. Democrats argue the tax credits are crucial to shifting Americans away from gasoline-powered vehicles.

Biden has set a target to make half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 EVs or plug-in hybrids but has refused to endorse setting a date for phasing out internal combustion vehicles.

In the bill, a further $1 billion would be set aside for schools and other government entities to purchase heavy-duty vehicles, such as school and transit buses and garbage trucks.

The bill will also include new tax credits and grants “to support the domestic production of biofuels, and to build the infrastructure needed for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and other biofuels.” The SAF tax credit is worth at least $1.25 a gallon.

The Energy Department already has $2.9 billion in grants it is planning to award for battery production and is offering low-cost loans for cleaner automotive and parts production.

On Monday, the department said it planned to lend $2.5 billion to a joint venture of GM and LG Energy Solution to help finance construction of new lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing facilities in Ohio, Tennessee and Michigan.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Sandra Maler and Bradley Perrett)

source

By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The nearly $370 billion in climate and energy security measures in the budget reconciliation deal U.S. Senate Democrats struck on Wednesday were whittled down from previous versions of the bill, but highly praised by backers of clean energy.

Early versions of the bill had $555 billion in tax breaks for clean energy such as wind and solar power as well as batteries and nuclear reactors.

Still, Wednesday’s package would cut U.S. emissions 40% by 2030, a summary released by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office said.

The baseline for the cut was 2005, Leah Stokes, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who advised Democrats on the bill.

Clean energy backers said it would go a long way toward President Joe Biden’s goal of decarbonizing the U.S. economy by 2050.

“It’s an absolutely transformative package,” said Stokes. She said the bill would boost American manufacturing in everything from batteries to solar energy to electric vehicles and contains the largest environmental justice investment ever.

Biden, who has faced soaring oil prices and record gasoline prices that have helped drive inflation to 40-year highs, said in statement the bill would “improve our energy security and tackle the climate crisis.”

Heather Zichal, the head of American Clean Power, a group of renewable energy companies, said Congress is now close to passing “the biggest climate and clean energy investment in American history.”

Democrats hope to pass the bill by a simple majority in the Senate. The bill must also pass the House, where Democrats also have a razor-thin majority, and be signed by Biden.

It contains a “methane emissions reduction program” to cut leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane from drilling of natural gas, according to the summary.  

It was not immediately clear if a methane fee many Democrats had wanted on the emissions that would penalize energy companies for the leaks had been modified.  

Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat and the swing vote who has received more donations from oil and gas companies than any other lawmaker in recent years, had pushed for companies to not face the fee if they were unable to build a pipeline to carry the gas to market.

Manchin said the bill will invest in hydrogen, nuclear power, renewables, fossil fuels and energy storage.

“This bill does not arbitrarily shut off our abundant fossil fuels,” said Manchin, who has sought for months to preserve federal oil and gas leasing projects and natural gas pipelines in talks on the bill.  

Democrats, he added, “have committed to advancing a suite of commonsense permitting reforms this fall that will ensure all energy infrastructure, from transmission to pipelines and export facilities, can be efficiently and responsibly built to deliver energy safely around the country and to our allies.”

The measure has more than $60 billion in environmental justice programs to fight pollution and address public health harms in disadvantaged communities. It also has $20 billion for “climate-smart” agriculture practices, the summary said without providing details.

The bill contains a $10 billion investment tax credit to build clean technology manufacturing plants for EVS, wind turbines and solar panels, the summary said.

It also has an estimated $30 billion investment in production tax credits to accelerate U.S. manufacturing of batteries and wind and solar power components and critical minerals processing.  

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Bradley Perrett and Michael Perry)

source

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden celebrated his recovery from COVID-19 on Wednesday with an appeal to Americans to get vaccinated and a comparison of his mild symptoms and work-from-home performance to the more serious case experienced by his predecessor.

Biden, who is 79, ended his isolation period from COVID-19 after testing negative on Tuesday evening and again on Wednesday morning. During remarks to staff and reporters at the White House, he said he recovered without fear thanks to good care and readily available medicine.

Biden won the 2020 presidential election in part on a promise to take the pandemic more seriously than former President Donald Trump, whose own COVID case in the middle of the election campaign resulted in a trip to the hospital.

“My symptoms were mild, my recovery was quick and I’m feeling great. The entire time I was in isolation I was able to work, to carry out the duties of the office without any interruption. It’s a real statement on where we are in the fight against COVID-19,” Biden said.

Biden remains fever-free and is no longer taking acetaminophen (Tylenol), his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, said in a memo released earlier by the White House. The president had mild symptoms including cough, sore throat and body aches since his initial positive test last Thursday.

“His symptoms have been steadily improving, and are almost completely resolved,” O’Connor said.

Biden, who could potentially face Trump again in the 2024 election if both men run and win the nomination of their respective parties, made reference to his former opponent’s fate.

“Here’s the bottom line: When my predecessor got COVID, he had to get helicoptered to Walter Reed Medical Center. He was severely ill. Thankfully, he recovered,” Biden said. “When I got COVID, I worked from upstairs in the White House – in the offices upstairs – for the five-day period. The difference is vaccinations, of course.”

Biden has overseen the rollout of vaccines developed under Trump’s tenure and urged Americans to get inoculated and consider wearing masks as a new wave of the Omicron BA.5 subvariant of the coronavirus sweeps across the United States.

Biden wore a mask on his way to the Rose Garden and took it off for his remarks there. He will wear a mask for 10 full days when he is around others, O’Connor said, mindful of potential exposure to Secret Service personnel and White House staff who are in close proximity to him.

O’Connor said Biden would be tested regularly to watch for a potential “rebound” COVID-19 case of a sort experienced by some patients who have been treated with Paxlovid, the drug the president received.

The White House has been eager to show Biden at work during his convalescence. He held virtual events from the White House residence on multiple days and did video remarks on the first day he tested positive to reassure Americans that he was OK.

“Now, I get to go back to the Oval Office,” Biden said at the end of his remarks on Wednesday to cheers from White House staff.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Kanishka Singh, Doina Chiacu and Chris Gallagher; Editing by Howard Goller)

source

“You don’t need to be president to get these tools,” he said.

Biden had a mild bout with the virus that has killed millions of people around the world and disrupted daily life for more than two years.

“God bless you all, and now I get to go back to the Oval Office,” he said as he finished his remarks in the Rose Garden and returned to the West Wing.

Biden tested negative for the virus on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

Biden’s tweet included a photo of a rapid COVID-19 test with the line showing a negative result.

“Thanks to Doc for the good care, and to all of you for your support,” the president’s tweet said.

Biden’s symptoms were almost “completely resolved,” O’Connor reported.

“Given these reassuring factors, the president will discontinue his strict isolation measures,” the doctor wrote.

Biden plans to wear a “well-fitting” face mask for five more days anytime he is around others.

source