Pelosi Threatens to Take Trump’s TV Away

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Plus, is the ‘era of tax reductions’ over?

Pelosi Threatens to Shut Down Trump's State of the Union Speech

The state of our union is … on hold?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Trump Wednesday morning asking him to postpone his State of the Union address, scheduled for January 29, or deliver it in writing because of the government shutdown.

Citing frozen funding and furloughs for the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security, Pelosi wrote, “Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29th.”

Here’s what you need to know:

Can Pelosi really do this? Yes. “The House and the Senate have to pass resolutions to actually green light the State of the Union. Neither have done so yet and Pelosi controls whether the House passes one at all,” CNN explains.

Is security really a concern? Pelosi expanded on her security concerns in remarks to reporters: “We would have the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States, the entire Congress of the United States, the House and Senate, the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Cabinet of the United States, and the diplomatic corps all in the same room,” she said, according to The Washington Post. “This requires hundreds of people working on the logistics and security of it. Most of those people are either furloughed or victims of president’s shutdown.”

The White House did not respond immediately to Pelosi’s letter, but Republicans scoffed at the security issue and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen dismissed any concerns. “The Department of Homeland Security and the US Secret Service are fully prepared to support and secure the State of the Union,” she tweeted.

Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, said Wednesday that Trump should deliver his speech anyway. “There are no security concerns that have been raised, and it has nothing to do with that,” Scalise said. "I’d encourage the president to still come and we’ll find a place for him to speak.”

The politics at play: While Pelosi framed her suggestion to Trump in security terms, it was also a shrewd political power play and a signal that she’s willing to use the leverage she now holds in a divided government. Her letter “could deny Trump an opportunity to make his case for border wall funding in a prime-time televised address,” the Post noted. The White House had reportedly been preparing to use the address to hammer Democrats for their steadfast refusal to give Trump the money he wants to construct a barrier along the border with Mexico. Pelosi told reporters that Trump could still give the address from the Oval Office if he wants, but that still wouldn’t be the same as an address delivered to Congress. “Elevated by all the pomp and pageantry of a State of the Union address, even Trump can manage to appear presidential—which could pose a political hazard for Democrats scrambling to avoid being blamed for the longest shutdown in American history,” Jeff Greenfield suggested at Politico.

The risk Pelosi runs: There’s a chance Pelosi’s move backfires if it’s seen as trying to keep Trump from speaking to the American public, CNN’s Chris Cillizza notes. Donald Trump Jr. tried to make that argument in an interview with The Daily Caller, a conservative website: “Speaker Pelosi is clearly attempting to block my father from giving his State of the Union speech, not because 20 percent of the government is shut down, but because she is terrified of him having another opportunity to speak directly to the American people about her party’s obstruction, unfiltered and without her friends in the media running interference for her.”

Bipartisan Group of Senators Push for Trump to Reopen Government

Pelosi’s letter came as a bipartisan group of senators urged Trump to agree to a three-week stopgap funding measure that would end the government shutdown, now heading for its 27th day, while they negotiate a deal on border security funding. “We commit to working to advance legislation that can pass the Senate with substantial bipartisan support,” the senators said in their own letter to the president. “During those three weeks, we will make our best efforts following regular order in the appropriate committees and mark up bipartisan legislation relating to your request.”

Trump had previously shot down that suggestion, insisting that he wouldn’t accept a deal to reopen the government without an agreement on wall funding, and White House officials were pressing Republican senators to not sign the new letter, The Washington Post reported. The senators behind the plan, led by Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chris Coons (D-DE), are likely to fall short of their goal of getting as many as 20 senators from each party to sign on, Politico reported. The other senators on board so far include Republicans Lamar Alexander (TN), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Rob Portman (R-OH) along with Democrats Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ).

"You know when that’s going to happen?” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said of the effort to get the president to reopen the government. “When you look outside your window and see donkeys fly.”

Trump on Wednesday met at the White House with a different bipartisan group of lawmakers, the “Problem Solvers” caucus — a group Politico described as both “not empowered to make a deal” and “probably the group least representative of where most Republicans and Democrats are at the moment.”

The White House called the meeting “constructive” and the Democratic lawmakers said in a statement that they “look forward to continuing this conversation,” but they also made clear that they were sticking with Pelosi and the rest of their party in asking that the government be reopened for negotiations to begin.

The bottom line: We’re running out of ways to say there’s no real progress toward ending a shutdown.

Federal Workers Have Missed an Average $5,000 in Pay So Far

Government employees who are not receiving paychecks during the shutdown have lost about $5,000 each on average so far, according to an analysis by The New York Times. In total, the missing pay comes to about $200 million per day.

The Times’ Jugal Patel notes that the average obscures wide variations between departments and agencies. The average Securities and Exchange Commission employee, for example, has missed $12,543 in pay, while the average Department of Agriculture employee has lost $4,446.

An earlier study of government workers’ finances suggests that the losses won’t be easy to handle for most workers. A team of economists analyzing the government shutdown of 2013 found that most government workers did not have enough money to cover two weeks’ worth of expenses, with one in five living paycheck to paycheck. “Just like many Americans,” the economists wrote Wednesday, “many government workers don’t have much emergency money set aside.”

Hospitals Are Spending More on Drugs

From STAT’s Morning Rounds newsletter: “A new report commissioned by the nation’s biggest hospital groups found that hospital drug spending jumped by nearly 19 percent between fiscal years 2015 and 2017. The average amount U.S. community hospitals spent on prescription drugs for each admitted patient in 2017: $555.40. High list prices and ongoing drug shortages played a big role in the spending increase, according to the analysis. Many of the drugs that saw the largest percentage price increases are longtime hospital staples — like the painkiller hydromorphone, which increased in price by 107 percent between 2015 and 2017. The report is new fuel in the long-running fight between hospitals and drug makers about who's to blame for the high cost of health care.”

Read the full report.

Is the ‘Era of Tax Reductions’ Over?

If Greg Valliere, chief global strategist at Horizon Investments, is any indicator, Wall Street is getting worried about the rise of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

In a note to clients Wednesday, Valliere said “the self-described socialist who has rocked the aging and stale Democratic Party establishment” could create some headaches for the financial services industry. While he doesn’t expect to see any major legislation get through a divided Congress, Valliere warned that Ocasio-Cortez could use her subpoena power as a new member of the House Financial Services Committee to “make life miserable for industry execs with endless hearings.”

More broadly, Valliere says that Ocasio-Cortez’s “ambitious agenda – universal health care, a guaranteed income, student loan forgiveness” – could mark a shift in attitudes among some voters toward taxation and government spending, which the congresswoman’s young supporters tend to see in moral rather than financial terms. One implication of this renewed interest in large-scale social programs is that “the era of tax reductions is over; the challenge for conservatives is to simply keep the existing Trump tax cuts in place during the next decade.” Another is that “the sky's the limit on spending,” since Ocasio-Cortez “doesn't care about deficits.”

How 4 Big US Companies Used Their Tax Cuts

Bloomberg’s Laura Davison looked at what some major American corporations did with the tax cut windfalls they received in 2018. How did Apple, Walt Disney, Visa International and Starbucks use their extra cash? “The short answer: to buy back shares,” Davison writes. “The long answer is slightly more nuanced, but not by much.”

Here are some highlights from Davison’s analysis, which you can read in full here:

Apple announced it would spend $100 billion on buybacks in 2018, though its market performance has been mixed over the last year, due in large part to the tech giant’s weakness in China. Apple also announced that it will hire 20,000 new employees by 2023 and spend $1 billion on a new campus in Austin, Texas.
Disney saw its effective tax rate fall from 32 percent to 11.3 percent, the biggest drop in the group. The company said it would increase capital spending by $842 million in 2018. Its share buybacks actually decreased, in part due to a pause related its purchase of assets from 21st Century Fox.
Visa boosted to its dividend payout by 22 percent, which Davison notes does little to promote a company’s growth. Visa also increased its match for employee retirement accounts.
Starbucks founder Howard Schultz called the tax cuts “fool’s gold” but the company used its windfall to triple its share buybacks nevertheless. Both dividends and capital expenditures increased modestly. The company also boosted employee benefits, including expanded parental leave.

Davison concludes that, “At the end of the day (or rather, year), the law failed to live up to its proponents’ most optimistic promises of 4 percent economic growth, fueled by billions in new equipment purchases.” At the same time, the recent uptick in wages means that “it’s also clear that the detractors’ dystopian vision of chief executive officers lining their pockets while workers’ incomes stagnate hasn’t come to pass, either.”