Biden Defiant as Republicans Blast New Vaccine Rules

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the Delta variant and his administration's efforts to increase vaccinations, from the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington
KEVIN LAMARQUE
By Yuval Rosenberg

Good Friday evening. This will likely be a somber
and difficult weekend as we mark the 20th anniversary of the 9/11
attacks. It’s hard to believe it has been two decades, but the
images and memories of that day are as searing as ever.

Here’s what else is going on.

Biden Defiant as Republicans Blast New Vaccine Rules

Some Republican leaders are making it crystal clear that they do
not support the vaccine requirements affecting thousands of
businesses and millions of workers that President Joe Biden
announced on Thursday.

A Fox News headline sums up much of the GOP response:
“Republicans explode with fury over Biden vaccine mandate:
‘Absolutely unconstitutional.’”

Echoing numerous Republican officeholders, Arizona Gov. Doug
Ducey vowed to resist the president’s vaccination plan, part of a

six-point strategy to bring the latest Covid surge
under control. “This is exactly the kind of big government
overreach we have tried so hard to prevent in Arizona," Ducey
tweeted. “The vaccine is and should be a choice. We must and will
push back.”

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster was more combative: “Rest
assured, we will fight them to the gates of hell to protect the
liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian,” he wrote in a
tweet.

Biden pushes back: The president was asked about
Republican plans to challenge his vaccination effort Friday. “Have
at it,” he replied defiantly.

“I am so disappointed that particularly some Republican
governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so
cavalier with the health of their communities,” Biden added. “We’re
playing for real here, and this isn’t a game, and I don’t know of
any scientist out there in this field that doesn’t think it makes
considerable sense to do the six things I’ve suggested.”

Nevertheless, Republicans are expected to mount serious
resistance to the Biden plan, including taking legal action. “South
Dakota will stand up to defend freedom,” Republican Gov. Kristi
Noem tweeted. “@JoeBiden see you in court.”

Democrats May Use Short-Term Funding Bill to Suspend the Debt
Ceiling

Funding for a good chunk of the federal government runs out when
the fiscal year ends on September 30, and the White House is
reportedly pushing Congress to pass a short-term continuing
resolution to keep the doors open this fall while lawmakers
negotiate a full-year plan.

More than just short-term funding: Democrats are
reportedly considering using the next continuing resolution to do
more than just keep the government open. According to Politico, the
White House wants to include a suspension of the federal debt
ceiling in the resolution, along with relief funds for hurricane
victims and Afghan refugees, effectively daring Republicans — who
have declared that they will not vote to raise or suspend the debt
limit, despite warnings from the Treasury on the dire need to do so
soon — to vote against it. The resolution would need 60 votes to
pass the Senate, which means at least 10 Republicans would have to
vote yes.

“The posture from the president on down is setting up a game of
chicken with incredibly high stakes — if a vote to suspend or
increase the debt limit fails, the U.S. economy will likely
crater,” Politico’s Laura Barrón-López and Christopher Cadelago

write.

The use of continuing resolutions has become more or less
standard operating procedure in Washington. As Axios’s Stef W.
Kight
reports, the legislative tool has been used in 42
of the last 45 fiscal years. In some years, there are multiple
continuing resolutions, each lasting just a few days or weeks. Over
the last four decades, the short-term approach was used most
frequently in 2001, when 21 continuing resolutions were passed.

Whatever approach Democrats take, expect to see action
soon. The government will need to be funded starting October 1, and
the U.S. could face the threat of default due to spending limits
imposed by the debt ceiling just a few weeks later.

House Ways and Means Committee Approves Medicare Expansion

The House Ways and Means Committee voted on Friday to
advance a measure expanding Medicare coverage to include vision,
hearing and dental care. Under the plan, vision benefits would
begin in 2022 and hearing would be added in 2023 while dental
coverage would start in 2028.

The 24-19 vote to send the measure to the House Budget
Committee fell almost entirely along party lines, with Rep.
Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) joining Republicans in voting against
it.

Murphy, a leader of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog
Coalition, said Thursday that she would vote no on the elements
being considered by the Ways and Means Committee because she felt
the process was “too rushed, driven by politics rather than
policy.” She complained that panel members didn’t have clarity on
what would be in the broader package or official Congressional
Budget Office scores for the components they were considering. “I
don’t know how much we’re spending, how much we’re raising, how
we’re spending some of the money, and how we’re raising any
of the money,” she said.

House committees are working to approve their portions of
the Democratic budget reconciliation bill by September 15. The
House Budget Committee would then combine those elements into a
single package that Democratic leaders hope can be brought to a
full floor vote within weeks.

The Ways and Means Committee is expected to provide about
half of the spending and the vast majority of the revenue for the
total package,
Roll Call notes. Friday was the second day of the
committee’s markup of its portions of the budget bill.

The committee on Thursday approved a measure ensuring 12 weeks
of paid family leave for U.S. workers who have at least four hours
of caregiving duties a week. It also approved a provision aimed at
bolstering Americans’ retirement savings by requiring employers
without retirement plans to automatically enroll workers in
individual retirement accounts. That measure also would expand a
federal credit for savers, making it refundable so that people with
low or moderate incomes who don’t owe federal income taxes can
still receive the benefit. The retirement provisions are projected
to cost about $47 billion over 10 years, according to the
congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Column of the Day: A Double Standard in Discussing the
Democratic Budget

Should we be calling the Democratic budget reconciliation bill a
$3.5 trillion package? That’s the maximum Democrats can spend on
their agenda of social safety net expansions, based on the budget
resolution they passed. But Washington Post columnist Catherine
Rampell argues that there’s a double standard in how the public
accounts for and debates Republican and Democratic tax and spending
plans.

The 2017 Republican tax overhaul, she says, was usually referred
to as a $1.5 trillion tax cut because that was the original
estimate for the law’s net cost over 10 years, an estimate that was
later revised to nearly $2 trillion. “If, however, we had counted
only the law’s gross costs (i.e., without offsetting
revenue-raisers, such as the cap on state and local tax
deductions), its price tag would have looked multiple times more
expensive,” she writes. “But that’s exactly how most politicians
and journalists are tallying the ‘cost’ of Democrats’
safety-net-and-climate legislation.”

Democrats, Rampell points out, are planning to offset at least
some of the cost of their new plans via higher taxes on
corporations and the wealthy, meaning that the net cost of the
legislation will be lower than the $3.5 trillion being discussed.
Democrats are likely to bring that topline figure down as they
negotiate the details of their bill and face pressure from
moderates in the party, and the reconciliation instructions they
passed allow for up to $1.75 trillion to be added to deficits over
a decade. The ultimate net cost could be lower, and the White House
and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have said they’d like the bill to be
fully paid for, though that’s not likely to happen.

“The $1.75 trillion maximum net cost has gotten almost no
attention, while the $3.5 trillion gross figure dominates news
coverage,” Rampell notes, adding that this has bothered some White
House officials. “And the framing matters because it has been
distorting congressional negotiations,” she says.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has reportedly said he’s open to a
maximum of $1.5 trillion, but it’s not clear if that’s net or
gross. Analyst Chris Krueger of the Cowen Washington Research Group
told clients Friday he believes it’s the former, which would mean
about $2 trillion of the package would need to be offset. But
Rampell suggests it might mean gross costs. “That severely
constrains what programs Democrats can create or expand, no matter
how enormous the offsets are,” she writes.

Rampell also points out that there’s a logic behind the
differences in how the Republican and Democratic plans were
discussed. “[I]t makes intuitive sense to think about tax changes
in net terms, because so many tax provisions interact with each
another,” she explains. “Meanwhile, some Democrats emphasize their
agenda’s gross costs because they want to play up the scale of
progressive ambitions. … So progressive leaders don’t guide the
debate away from that $3.5 trillion gross figure, and reorient
discussions toward (smaller) net costs, as White House officials
might prefer.”

The bottom line: We still don’t know how much the
Democratic spending and tax plans will cost, and Democrats still
have to bridge internal differences over their agenda and how they
want to push it publicly.


Read Rampell’s full piece at The Washington
Post.

Numbers of the Day

11: Unvaccinated people are 11 times more likely
than vaccinated people to die from Covid-19, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The unvaccinated were
4.5 times more likely to get infected and 10 times more likely to
be hospitalized. “As we have shown, study after study, vaccination
works,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

8.3%: The producer price index rose
0.7% in August, the Labor Department reported Friday, higher than
expected. On an annual basis, prices paid by producers are up 8.3%,
the largest increase on that measure dating back to 2010. “The data
comes amid heightened inflation fears fed by supply chain issues, a
shortage of various consumer and producer goods and heightened
demand related to the Covid-19 pandemic,”
CNBC reported. “Federal Reserve officials expect
inflationary pressures to ease through the year, but they have
remained stubbornly persistent, with Friday’s numbers indicating
that the trend likely will continue.”

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