Biden Cancels Trump Border Wall Projects Funded by Military

By Yuval Rosenberg

Biden Cancels Trump Border Wall Projects Funded by Military
Money

Former President Donald Trump diverted funds from the Department
of Defense in 2019 to help fund his border wall with Mexico, using
his emergency powers to move the money after Congress refused to
provide the billions of dollars he demanded. On Friday, President
Joe Biden canceled the projects funded by the military
accounts.

“Consistent with the President’s Proclamation terminating the
redirection of funds for border wall, no more money will be
diverted from other purposes to building a border wall,” a Biden
administration official said, according to
The Hill. “Today, the Department of Defense will
begin canceling all wall projects using the diverted funds, and
will take steps to return remaining unobligated military
construction funds to their appropriated purpose as permitted by
law.”

Any unspent funds will be returned to their original accounts
and purposes, which include construction projects on military bases
and reserve equipment for the National Guard. 

The White House also said that it would use some of the
$1.4 billion appropriated for the border wall to repair
environmental damage resulting from previous construction
efforts.

Number of the Day: 30%

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says
that more than 101 million people in the U.S. — or 30% of the
population — have now been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Along
with New Mexico, states in the Northeast have the highest rates of
vaccination, while those in the South, including Mississippi,
Alabama and Arkansas, have the lowest.

American Incomes Surge as Relief Payments Flow

The third round of pandemic relief checks helped produced a
record increase in incomes last month, the Bureau of Economic
Analysis
reported Friday.

Following a 7% dip in February, U.S. personal incomes soared by
21.1% in March, the largest month-over-month jump on record dating
back to 1946. Purchases of goods and services also rose, climbing
4.2%, the largest increase since June.

The direct payments of up to $1,400 per person, authorized by
the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill President Biden signed into law
in March, played a major role in the increase. The relief payments
came to $3.9 trillion during the month, more than 90% of the $4.2
trillion overall increase.

Savings rose sharply as well, with the personal savings rate
climbing to 27.6% in March, the highest on record except for last
April, when the first round of relief payments was distributed.

Biden says to keep pushing: In an
interview with NBC’s Today Show Friday, Biden was asked why he is
proposing to ramp up both spending and taxes in the middle of the
economic recovery. “That’s the reason why it’s recovering,” he

said. “Because we’re investing. Look how rapidly
it’s recovered since we passed the last piece of legislation, and
that legislation was $1.9 trillion. If we don’t invest in this
country, we’re going to actually start to, we’re going to fall
behind even further.”

8 Takes on Biden's Big-Spending American
Families Plan

President Biden’s rollout this week of his $1.8 trillion
American Families Plan has resulted in a flood of analysis and
commentary befitting the size of the proposals. Here, a selection
of key responses and takeaways.

This is what the U.S. needs: Biden proposed “what amounts
to a revision of America’s social contract, giving the country
something closer to the social safety net that most of the world’s
advanced democracies have,” The Washington Post’s David Ignatius

writes. “The cost is enormous. … But it’s the
right thing to do. For a generation, the unfair distribution of
rewards in the American economy has been our glaring weakness. It
crushed the middle class and fueled the bizarro billionaire
populist crusade of Donald Trump, who nearly wrecked our politics.
Changing the formula so that rich people get less and everybody
else gets more will be hard, but it’s necessary.”

“Biden’s intentions are admirable,” Bloomberg’s Editorial Board

says. He’s right to prioritize opportunity for the
poor and disadvantaged — a consistent theme. He’s also right to
match long-term spending increases with plans to raise taxes,
because most of these outlays, however desirable, won’t pay for
themselves. And it makes sense, as Biden proposes, to target those
best able to afford it, hence pushing back against the trend of
worsening economic inequality.”

Biden is proposing the biggest government expansion in
decades: “Biden’s multi-trillion dollar spending splurge would
be the biggest federal investment in the middle and lower classes
since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, with the
potential to alter the country for generations,” Time’s Alana
Abramson and Brian Bennett say.

The Trump presidency, and how it changed the Republican
Party, paved the way for this: “Biden is making a $5 trillion
bet,” Abramson and Bennett add. “The president has calculated,
aides and allies say, that the twin shocks of the last four
years—President Donald Trump’s gutting of the federal government
and the historic pandemic—have created a once-in a career
opportunity. By embracing a pre-Reagan vision of expansive
government that delivers for a hurting nation, he hopes to
capitalize on the post-Trump political moment.”

It's not just Trump, but the Republican grassroots that have
changed. “A decade after Republicans responded to Barack Obama’s
election by launching the tea party and warning of the evils of
overzealous government, there is so far no similarly fervent
pushback in the electorate today,” The Washington Post’s Aaron
Blake
writes. “Indeed, about a quarter-century after a
Democratic president declared that ‘the
era of big government is over,’ the new Democratic
president comes into office with the electorate more in favor of
big government than at any point in recent history.”

As did changing views of deficits and debt: “President
Barack Obama operated in a world in which deficits mattered
politically. Biden doesn’t,” Washington Post columnist Megan
McArdle notes. “Between the unfunded Trump tax cuts and a year of
hog-wild
pandemic spending, politicians have largely given
up even pretending that they ought to pay for things their
constituents want; it’s no longer even a good cudgel with which to
beat the opposition when you’re out of power.”

But there are risks to Biden’s plans: “Spending on such a
scale without waste is a bigger challenge than the president
appears to think,” Bloomberg’s Editorial Board adds. “And when it
comes to taxes, the promise that the richest 0.3% will pay for
everything is implausible bordering on dishonest. The danger is
that the gains for the intended beneficiaries will be less than
hoped, and the substantial cost won’t in the end be confined to a
sliver of people atthe top.”

Biden’s proposals to pay for his plans raise lots of
questions: For example, the administration estimates that its
revenue-raising proposals would take 15 years to cover the $1.8
trillion cost of 10 years’ worth of additional spending and
tax breaks for child care, education, health care and other
programs. The divergence from the traditional 10-year
timeframe used in budget accounting has drawn some pushback from
budget watchdogs and some wonks. “The administration has already
proposed to jack up taxes on corporations and the richest
Americans,” McArdle says, “and it still comes up short on paying
for its proposals within the normal [10-year budget] window.”

But the key question may be what we’d get for the money:
“Promises to spend half a trillion here and half a trillion there
suggest the outlay is itself the purpose — the bigger, the better —
when the goal ought to be what the spending will buy, preferably at
least cost,” the Bloomberg Editorial Board argues. “Done right,
spending on infrastructure can boost private investment and growth;
done wrong, it builds bridges to nowhere. Universal access to
broadband internet is eminently desirable; it might be achieved
economically and efficiently, or at inordinate cost. Two years of
tuition-free community college could mean expanded training in
skills demanded by employers, hence higher incomes and faster
growth; or it could cause delayed entry into the labor force with
loss of wages and no offsetting benefit.”

So for Biden’s big bet on big government to really work, he has
to show that the government can deliver results.

If Biden succeeds, Republicans will be in
trouble: “If the main elements in Joe Biden’s
American Family Plan become law, they’ll be very hard to repeal.
Why? Because they’ll deliver huge, indeed transformational benefits
to millions,”
writes New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. “I mean,
just imagine trying to take away affordable child care, universal
pre-K and paid leave for new parents once they’ve become part of
the fabric of our society. You’d face a backlash far worse than the
one that followed Republican attempts to eliminate protection for
coverage of pre-existing health conditions in 2017.”

News

Views and Analysis