Biden Previews His 'Next Major Initiative'

By Yuval Rosenberg

5 Key Takeaways From Biden’s First Presidential News
Conference

President Joe Biden’s first news conference in office covered a
range of topics, including the
migrant surge at the southern U.S. border, GOP
efforts to
restrict voting rights, foreign relations with
China and North Korea and the timetable for
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

But Biden also made clear that his next priority is the massive,
two-part jobs and infrastructure bill that he said he will announce
in more detail on Friday, and he made news on other fronts as well.
Here are five key takeaways from Thursday’s turn in front of the
news media:

A new goal for vaccinations: Biden opened his remarks by
announcing a new target for Covid-19 vaccinations of 200 million
shots administered in his first 100 days in office. The
administration reached its previous goal of 100 million shots last
week, and Biden said the new benchmark was "ambitious," but given
that the news conference came on Biden’s 65th day as president and
that the country is now averaging about 2.5 million doses a day,
the target should be reachable.

In what could be seen as a sign of how much progress has been
made in the fight against Covid, Biden
didn’t get asked one question about his pandemic
response during the hour-long press conference. That could also be
a sign of the news media’s Covid fatigue and limited attention
span, given that new cases are still averaging nearly 60,000 a day
and deaths are still averaging more than 1,000 a day, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which warned
this week that case rates are increasing slightly.

A focus on the infrastructure package: Biden said his
"next major initiative" will be "to rebuild the infrastructure,
both physical and technological infrastructure in this country so
we can compete and create significant numbers of really good paying
jobs." He said he will announce more details Friday at an event in
Pittsburgh.

That proposal reportedly will be broken into
two parts, one centered on infrastructure and
clean energy and the other focused on domestic priorities including
education, paid leave and child care. The plan is expected to call
for some $3 trillion in spending, paid for in part by tax increases
on corporations and the wealthy. "I want to change the paradigm. We
start to reward work, not just wealth," Biden said Thursday.

Biden’s plan is sure to face sharp pushback from Republicans,
who have already dismissed the idea of raising taxes.

Bracing for budget battles: Biden on Thursday derided the
GOP’s fiscal approach. "When the federal budget is saving people’s
lives, they don’t think it’s such a good idea," he said,
contrasting that to what he called GOP support for "feathering the
nest of the wealthiest Americans."

In answering a question on relations with Beijing, Biden also
reiterated his call for government investment in science and
research as a way to compete with China. "Back in the ‘60s we used
to invest a little over 2% of our entire GDP in pure research and
investment in science. Today it’s 0.7%. I’m going to change that."
Biden said the country must pursue investments in medical research
on cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes in addition to research
on artificial intelligence, quantum computing and
biotechnology.

Support for filibuster reform: Biden, who served in the
Senate for 36 years, said the filibuster is "being abused in a
gigantic way" and that he "strongly supports" a return to a talking
filibuster, which would require senators to stay on the floor to
block legislation instead of just raising more painless procedural
objections. He also indicated that he might support going
further.

"We’re going to get a lot done, and if we have to, if there’s
complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster,
then we’ll have to go beyond what I’m talking about," he said.

Biden also said he agreed that the filibuster is a "relic of the
Jim Crow era," but he didn’t specify what other changes he might
support.

The future of the filibuster could be key to Biden’s hopes to
advancing major elements of his agenda, and Biden likely doesn’t
have the Democratic votes he would need to eliminate the filibuster
completely, leaving him trying to pressure Republicans into backing
an agenda that he emphasizes has wide public backing.

"Here’s the deal: I think my Republican colleagues are going to
have to determine whether or not we want to work together or decide
that the way in which they want to proceed is to just decide to
divide the country, to continue the politics of division," he
said.

Biden expects to run for a second term:
Biden is 78, the oldest president to take office, and there
had been talk during the campaign that he might step aside after
one term. He told reporters Thursday that he expects to run again
in 2024, and that he expects Vice President Kamala Harris to again
be on the ticket. Asked who he thinks he’ll be running against,
Biden said he doesn’t think about it and has no idea: "I have no
idea whether there will be a Republican Party. Do you?"

Quote of the Day

"I'm sure of one thing: It’s going to be enormous."

– Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), indicating Wednesday that he
supports a large infrastructure package. Manchin also
said that Congress should do "everything we
possibly can" to pay for the new spending and that there should be
"adjustments" to the 2017 Republican tax law, including an increase
in the corporate rate from 21% to 25% or higher. Manchin also
criticized Republican resistance to tax hikes as part of the
infrastructure negotiations. "Where do they think it's going to
come from?" he asked. "How are you going to fix
America?"

Let the ‘Super Bowl of Tax Reform’ Begin!

Newly installed as chair of the powerful Senate Budget
Committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) released two proposals
Thursday that would increase taxes on the wealthy and
corporations.

One proposal would restore the corporate tax rate to 35%, up
from the 21% rate imposed by the 2017 GOP tax overhaul, while
seeking to deter businesses from moving profits offshore.

The other proposal takes aim at concentrated wealth by raising
the estate tax to 45% for estates worth between $3.5 million and
$10 million, with the tax rate rising to 65% for estates worth more
than $1 billion. The current estate tax tops out at 40%, with the
first $23.4 million exempted for couples — a structure that
eliminates the tax for all but a few thousand estates.

At a hearing Thursday dedicated to "Ending a Rigged Tax Code:
The Need To Make the Wealthiest People and Largest Corporations Pay
Their Fair Share of Taxes," Sanders highlighted what he said were
the structural problems with the tax system he is trying to fix.
"We have a tax code which enables the very, very richest people in
America and the largest corporations to avoid paying their share of
taxes," Sanders said. "That has got to change."

Why now: The hearing and the proposals come as Democrats
turn their attention to strengthening the economy and expanding the
social safety net in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. "The focus
on redistributing wealth comes amid concerns about a recovery from
the coronavirus-fueled economic crash that has boosted the highest
earners more than the working class," CNBC’s Jacob Pramuk
wrote. "Democrats plan to pursue mammoth bills not
only to bolster the country’s infrastructure and combat climate
change but also to shore up the social safety net with expanded
paid leave and pre-K programs."

But Democrats face a difficult path to overhaul the tax system.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recently reiterated
his long-standing opposition to tax increases of any kind, and the
Budget Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), took
the same tack Thursday while arguing that the tax cuts provided by
the 2017 GOP tax law were a great success.

Let the game begin: Graham’s stance during the hearing
jibes with the messaging being amplified by an alliance of
conservative, anti-tax groups — part of what CNBC
referred to as a "Super Bowl of tax reform" that
will play out in the coming months.

Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group
backed by billionaire Charles Koch, provided a taste of that
anti-tax message as it relates to the latest effort to raise taxes.
"The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was a tremendous win for the American
people and helped them keep more of what they earn to put towards
their families, businesses, and communities," Phillips told CNBC.
"Clawing back those cuts or adding on new taxes would worsen our
already devastated economy, hurt workers’ wages, crush small
businesses, and ultimately wouldn’t come close to paying for the
partisan wish lists President Biden and congressional leaders are
proposing."

In the end, given Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking
power and a growing willingness to go it alone, Republicans may not
be able to stop Democrats from passing a set of tax reforms, though
they would still have to resolve numerous internal differences over
issues that include the top income tax rate and the size of
infrastructure spending.

Even so, conservatives plan to make the process as
difficult and unproductive as possible. "Our plans are a full court
press to make it the most expensive vote," anti-tax crusader Grover
Norquist told CNBC. "You want to make it so expensive politically
so people will reduce the size and scope of the
legislation."

Jobless Claims Hit Pandemic Low

New applications for unemployment benefits fell to the lowest
level since the Covid-19 pandemic began, the Labor Department
reported Thursday. Initial claims in state jobless programs fell by
nearly 100,000 from last week, down to 684,000. Another 242,000
people applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the temporary
federal program that provides benefits to self-employed and gig
workers.

The report shows that the economy is "on the right path,"
economist Jennifer Lee of BMO Capital Markets told
Bloomberg, though she added that she will be more
impressed once initial claims fall below 300,000 per week.

Still a long way to go: Although the drop below 1 million
total weekly fillings is a good sign, job losses remain at historic
levels more than a year after the onset of the pandemic.

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at the consulting firm RSM,

provided some perspective on the scale of the current
problem: "Initial Claims: at 684K it’s still roughly 3 times what
one would consider acceptable."

Noting that "millions of Americans have been jobless for a
year," The Washington Post’s Erica Long
highlighted another grim statistic in the report:
"There are now more Americans on long-term unemployment (5.6
million on [Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation]) than
there are on regular state unemployment aid (4.5 million)."

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