Mediaboss Marketing

Democrats have argued for more generous pandemic relief, more pressure on drugmakers to lower prices and more attention to systemic racism in health care. On Jan. 20, with control of the Senate and the House of Representatives, theyll have the power to choose which health care proposals get a vote in Congress.

The victories of the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia last week gave Democrats two more Senate seats and the upper hand in the Senates now 50-50 split. After Vice President-elect Kamala Harris takes the oath of office, she will serve as the tiebreaker as needed in effect, Democrats 51st vote.

But that vote count is too small to eliminate the filibuster, meaning Democrats will not have enough votes to pass many of their plans without Republicans. That will likely doom many Democratic health care proposals, like offering Americans a government-sponsored public insurance option, and complicate efforts to pass further pandemic relief.

It remains to be seen how willing lawmakers are to compromise with one another in the aftermath of a pro-Trump mobs breach of the Capitol on Wednesday. Thursday, Democrats demanded the presidents removal for inciting rioters who disrupted the certification of President-elect Joe Bidens victory, assaulted Capitol Police officers and damaged federal property. One demonstrator and a police officer were killed, and three demonstrators died of medical emergencies.

Democrats slim margins in the Senate and the House where they can afford to lose only four votes and still pass legislation will also give individual lawmakers more leverage, handing those who disagree with party leaders an incentive to push their own priorities in exchange for their votes. There will be little room for intraparty disagreements, and Democrats made it clear during the presidential primaries that they disagree about how to achieve their health care goals.

In less than two weeks, Democrats will lead the committees charged with marking up health care legislation and vetting Bidens health nominees.

The change will hand control of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who brokered the 2013 agreement with then-House Speaker Paul Ryan that ended a long government shutdown, among other bipartisan deals.

In 2019, Murray and the committees Republican chairman, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, introduced a wide-ranging package to lower health costs for consumers. Among its proposals was an initiative to lower prescription drug prices by eliminating loopholes that allow brand-name drugmakers to block competition.

In an interview before Democrats secured the Senate, Murray said her committee work will be focused on the problems that prevent all Americans from receiving equitable, affordable treatment in health care. Racial disparities, evidenced by disproportionate mortality rates among Black mothers and among communities of color suffering the worst impacts of the pandemic, will be a priority, she said.

Not everybody goes into the doctor and gets the same advice, feels the same comfort level and is believed, Murray said.

Murray said she will press for senators to consider how any piece of legislation will affect communities of color. It will be the question I ask about every step we take, she said.

On Wednesday, she called out Republicans for standing in the way of fighting the pandemic with policies that would directly help those struggling the most and would help us build back from this crisis stronger and fairer.

With a Biden-Harris Administration and a Senate Democratic majority, the challenges we face wont get any less tough but weve finally got the opportunity to face them head on and start taking action, Murray said in a statement. I cant wait to start getting things done.

The Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Medicare, Medicaid and health-related tax policies, will be run by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). While the HELP committee will also hold a confirmation hearing for Bidens nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, it is the Finance Committee that will vote to advance his confirmation.

Senate Republicans signaled they would delay considering Becerras nomination before Biden officially announced his name last month. Calling him unqualified due to his lack of a health care background, they questioned his support for a single-payer health care system and opposed his efforts to preserve abortion rights. As Californias attorney general, Becerra led efforts to fight lawsuits brought by Republican state officials against the Affordable Care Act.

But Democrats slim edge in the Senate is expected to be enough to drown out Republicans objections to the nomination. Last month, praising Becerras commitment to responding to the pandemic, protecting health care coverage and addressing racial disparities, Wyden said he looked forward to Becerras hearing so he can get on the job and start helping people during this unprecedented crisis.

Also, after months of decrying the Trump administrations failures managing the pandemic, Democrats will control which relief bills get a vote.

Last months package did not include their demands for more funding for state and local governments, and House Republicans blocked a Democratic effort to increase stimulus checks to $2,000, from $600.

Democrats have been united in their calls for more assistance, though they have disagreed at times about how to push for it.

In the fall, with the election approaching and no deal in sight, moderate Democrats in tough races pushed for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to abandon negotiations for a $2.2 trillion relief package that Republicans called a nonstarter in favor of passing more modest but desperately needed relief.

Every member of the leadership team, Democrats and Republicans, have messed up. Everyone is accountable, Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) told Politico. Get something done. Get something done! He lost his bid for reelection.

More progressive voices like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have been a force for more generous aid, particularly larger stimulus checks.

Beyond the pandemic, top Democrats have mentioned drug pricing as another area ripe for action. But one of their most popular proposals, which would authorize the federal government to negotiate drug prices for those on Medicare, is unlikely to attract the Republican votes it would need. When House Democrats passed one such proposal in 2019, Senate Republicans vowed it would never pass.

Members of Democrats more progressive wing, for their part, argued the proposal may not go far enough.

After years of Republican efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act, though, it looks likely that efforts to stabilize the law could gain more traction under a Democratic-controlled Congress. The House passed legislation last summer aimed at increasing coverage and affordability, including by capping insurance costs at no more than 8.5% of income and expanding subsidies.

Lawmakers like Murray and Wyden have been quick to point out that the pandemics devastating consequences lost jobs and lost insurance coverage, to name just a couple have only underscored the need to strengthen the health care system.

Emmarie Huetteman: ehuetteman@kff.org,@emmarieDC

Visit link:
Even With Senate Control, Democrats Will Need Buy-In From GOP on Key Health Priorities - Kaiser Health News

In leaked audio of a Zoom meeting between Biden and civil rights leaders obtained by The Intercept, the president-elect said that in order for Democrats to win elections, activists must stop calling for the defunding of police. Biden goes as far as to say that anti-police activism is the reason Republicans "beat the living hell out of us across the country," in November.

Biden's suggestionthat Democrats faced losses due to anti-police activism is shared by other powerful Democrats. Rep.Jim Clyburn of South Carolina is among those who share this view. "'Defund the police' is killing our party, and we've got to stop it," he told CBS News. Even former President Obama said "defund the police" is a "snappy slogan" that could cost Democrats votes.

Despite the persistence of this argument, media critic Adam Johnson pointed out he could find no empirical evidence to support the claim. I couldn't either. As Johnson and co-host Nima Shirazi demonstrate convincingly on their podcast Citations Needed, liberals have historically scapegoated Black activists, suggesting that their demands would hinder the electoral chances of the Democratic party.

The hosts cite a 1964 headline of this trend: "Negro Extremists Aid Wallace" (Alabama Governor George Wallace was a right-wing segregationist) and another from 1966: "Failure To Stop Mobs Will Cost Democrats Votes."

After telling civil rights leaders to wait on calls for police reform until after the Georgia runoffs, Biden promised the civil rights leaders that he would look into issues surrounding policing in a new commission.

"I just raise it with you to think about how much do we push between now and January 5 we need those two seats about police reform. But I guarantee you, there will be a full-blown commission. I guarantee you it's a major, major, major element," Biden said on the call.

Now that Democrats have prevailed in the Georgia runoffs, will Biden's administration with a resounding mandate to act meaningfully take on the police?

But like the historical examples show about the rhetoric used to scapegoat demands for justice, the same is also true with commissions. Even when the president creates one to study uprisings, the recommendations have historically been ignored, the most notorious example being the 1968 Kerner Commission.

Over the course of the 1960s, race riots over police violence and inadequate access to jobs, education, housing, and other markers of racist inequalities, sent people into the streets. First in Brooklyn, then in Los Angeles, and by the summer of 1967, in over 150 cities all over the country.

Soon after, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Illinois Governor Otto Kerner to head the now famous commission, which set out to understand the root causes of the riots that were occurring at the time and how to prevent them in the future. Kerner's conclusion was blunt: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal," it said. In order to remedy this, it recommended investments in jobs, education, and housing. It also was direct about the need to reign in police abuses and called on departments to stop random "stop and frisk style" searches.

As the New York Times wrote about the commission, "The report left scant doubt that it regarded white racism as the tinder igniting those 1960s fires."

But Johnson, despite passing landmark civil rights and anti-poverty legislation, stopped short of carrying out the Commission's recommendations. So did every ensuing presidential administration.

More recently, President Obama launched a commission in the wake of the uprisings over Michael Brown's death in 2014, called the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing. It called for modest procedural reforms to further professionalize police departments and de-escalate their most wonton tendencies, including better transparency, more "community policing," and implicit bias training.

An op-ed in the New York Times by the commission's authors this summer laments that if only more of their recommendations had been carried out, the uprisings in response to George Floyd's death wouldn't have occurred. They write, "The problem is not that we lack a playbook for fixing the police. We have one. The problem is that we have not successfully followed the one we have."

Biden's commission will only be successful if its recommendations are carried out. We can't afford to placate the country with endless commissions as more Black people are killed by the police. Will these ideas ever be implemented, or will there just be a new commission next time people take to the streets to protest the savage brutality of the police?

This year's protests have called to defund the policethe implication being that instead of funding law enforcement, our tax dollars should be invested in social services, jobs, education, and non-punitive measures that improve social life in communities most impacted by police violence.

The Movement for Black Lives created a list of policy demands that has been updated and revised as of 2020. The group, composed of 50 organizations focused on ending violence against Black people, has already issued recommendations. But politicians refuse to hear them: "We have taken to the streets, launched massive campaigns, and impacted elections, but our elected leaders have failed to address the legitimate demands of our Movement. We can no longer wait."

But instead of taking the advice of Movement's demands, or the Kerner Commission for that matter, Democrats are demonizing a movement for justice they purportedly support and simultaneously are failing to make the case they have a better plan. Maybe this time a Commission will reconcile these contradictions. And if that doesn't work they can always blame movements for racial justice on their electoral shortcomings.

Will Meyer is a freelance writer and co-editor of The Shoestring in western Massachusetts. His writing has appeared in The Baffler, The New Republic, CJR, and many other publications. Find him on Twitter@willinabucket.

Original post:
Democrat leaders hate defund the police but have no alternative - Business Insider - Business Insider

The old saying Revenge is a dish best served cold is understood to mean it is better to deliver retribution for a perceived or actual injustice after time has passed, in order for it to be done dispassionately. Sometimes it is better not to serve that dish at all. Like perishable food left unrefrigerated, a different kind of bacteria can infect the nation.

Dispassion is in retreat in Washington and instead of revenge being served cold, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats are turning up the heat.

Some conservatives I hear from believe Democrats are trying to impeach President Trump for a second time and even deny him the right to ever hold public office again because they fear his policy successes and the 74 million who voted for him.

They are after more than revenge. They are engaging in vindictiveness.

President-elect Joe Biden has called for healing and unity, but he, too, has contributed to turning up the heat with some of his anti-Trump and anti-Republican comments. This proves a point I have previously made. The antithesis of the Proverb a soft answer turns away wrath is that a hard answer increases wrath. It can be argued that all of Trumps personal insults of others have now circled back to attack him.

If Pelosi and her fellow Democrats proceed with their threats to impeach, it will only further divide the country, deepen conspiracy theories, possibly lead to more violence and hinder the confirmation of Bidens nominees for critical offices. It could also embolden our enemies.

The model for dealing with a president many feel has disgraced himself and the office of the presidency is what Gerald Ford did for former President Richard Nixon following Nixons resignation over the Watergate affair.

On Sept. 8, 1974, Ford pardoned Nixon. He said among his reasons was a Senate trial would take up to a year and in the meantime the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks -- meaning Nixons resignation -- could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former president of the United States.

Ford continued in his pardon announcement: The prospects of such a trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest office of the United States.

True, President Trumps situation is different. He hasnt resigned or suffered from his actions, real and alleged. But the principle is the same.

This vindictiveness has spread to members of the White House staff and even to Trump supporters in Congress. There have been calls, including from Forbes magazine, for such people to be denied future employment as punishment for their association with Trump. Forbes editor, Randall Lane, warns companies that might hire Trump press secretaries they should assume everything they say is a lie.

This is reminiscent of the Hollywood blacklist, the Red Scare, and the McCarthy era. Where are the principled people who courageously stood up against those smears? If they dont stand up again now, they risk possible future harm to themselves and to the country.

Corporations, like Deutsche Bank, have announced they will no longer do business with Trump. For them he has the equivalent of a scarlet letter stamped indelibly on his chest.

The best policy to follow is to allow Trump to leave office and let the justice system work. If crimes have been committed let them be dealt with in the courts, but it is better to build a better future than to dwell on a bitter past. Vindictiveness will only turn him into a martyr in the minds of his supporters. That, too, will not be good for the country.

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.

Continue reading here:
Column: Democrats, unity and revenge - The Oakland Press

Last Friday morning, Representative Sean Casten, a Democrat from Illinois, appeared on a Chicago local news channel to talk about the mob of Trump-supporting rioters who had invaded the Capitol building and interrupted congressional proceedings two days earlier. Before going live, the anchor asked Casten if there was anything in particular he wanted to touch on. I said, Honestly, I want to talk about energy and climate policy, Casten told Grist.

Last weeks events overshadowed a major milestone in the effort to accomplish climate policy in the U.S.: Political newcomers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won their Senate runoff elections in Georgia, handing Democrats a de facto majority in the Senate and a political trifecta (control of the presidency and both houses of Congress). In the short term, Senate Democrats will have their hands full with the push to convict President Trump following his impeachment for inciting the riot at the Capitol. But after thats done or possibly simultaneously theyll turn to President-elect Joe Bidens legislative agenda and one of his top priorities, climate change.

The narrow margin of victory in the Senate Democrats hold 50 seats, including two independents, and will need Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to serve as tiebreaker if they can convince conservative Democrats to toe the party line means that climate action will not look quite the way Biden intended. His $2 trillion climate plan is likely off the table; there probably wont be huge sweeping bills that satisfy progressive visions of a Green New Deal. Instead, the Biden administration will have to work creatively, leveraging esoteric congressional rules and using all the powers of government to accomplish its goals.

Get Grist in your inboxAlways free, always fresh

The Beacon Other choices

Ask your climate scientist if Grist is right for you. See our privacy policy

The kind of blue sky dream of some of my friends in the climate movement of a set of standalone climate omnibus bills. I cant imagine those moving forward in the 117th Congress, Billy Fleming, a senior fellow at the progressive policy shop Data for Progress, told Grist. What I think is much likelier, and where theres real opportunity, is to think about how we pair climate policy and climate justice work into the massive amount of legislation and spending that has to happen anyway to keep the lights on in government.

The wins in Georgia mean that Biden will have one big advantage in passing his climate plans: a Senate prepared to quickly confirm his cabinet appointees and let them get to work. The huge, huge, huge thing that has happened with the Senate is the flexibility they have with appointments now, Casten said. All of a sudden, there can be some ambition in the agencies that wasnt there.

But when it comes to Congress, the hardest part of passing climate legislation isnt negotiating with fickle Republicans, or even pushing back against fossil fuel lobbyists. Its dealing with an arcane Senate rule known as the filibuster, which prevents almost any legislation from passing through the chamber without a supermajority of 60 votes. Climate hawks have been burned by the filibuster before: When Obama took office in 2009, he had a huge majority in the Senate with 57 seats but it wasnt enough. Democrats couldnt convince even a few Republicans to sign on to Obamas landmark climate change bill, and the legislation died in the Senate after passing the House.

Now, the situation is even more difficult: Finding 10 Republicans to support comprehensive climate legislation will be next to impossible, and while some Democrats have talked about abolishing the filibuster a move that would only require a simple majority the more moderate members of the party are unlikely to support ditching the antiquated rule entirely. Ive got a lot of colleagues who I like a lot who wont go for that, Casten said.

All this means that adding Warnock and Ossoff to the Senate probably is insufficient to get a coalition thats willing to debate and enact the very large climate bill that has been imagined for a long time, said David Konisky, a professor of political science at Indiana University.

Theres still a path forward, but its a narrow one. Under Senate rules, certain bills can still be passed by a simple majority during budget reconciliation, a once-a-year process to tinker with the federal budget. That rule doesnt give legislators totally free rein: It has to be something that is explicitly connected to taxes and revenues and spending, Konisky said. So one of Bidens central climate promises to require utilities to generate all their electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 is probably out. But a carbon price, tax credits for wind and solar, and research and development for clean energy will all be on the table.

Josh Freed, the director of climate and energy at the Washington, D.C.based think tank Third Way, said he hopes to see two budget reconciliation bills with climate worked in: One broad economic recovery bill, which could include tax incentives for electric cars, renewables, and energy efficiency; and another infrastructure package that could funnel money towards building more transmission lines to distribute power from renewables and creating a smart grid to improve efficiency. The downside is that budget reconciliation often happens only once a year giving Democrats a tight time window for action before the midterm elections in 2022.

Theres a real moment here that I think we need to seize with investment first, and get the economy really roaring, Freed said.

Its yet another sign of how politicians and advocates approach to climate policy has changed over the last several years. Once, most experts and activists believed that global warming would be addressed with one sweeping piece of legislation a carbon tax, a cap-and-trade bill, a mandate for clean power. Now, however, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing recession, addressing climate change has become more piecemeal: a tax credit here, a bit of infrastructure spending there. Its a strategy that mirrors how Biden has started to infuse climate concerns into every office of his administration, not siloing the issue off into just the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Energy. And if done right its a strategy that just might work.

The big question is whether Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Krysten Sinema of Arizona, and other moderate Democrats in the Senate will hamstring their partys efforts to pass climate policy with a simple majority. Both Manchin and Sinema voted with Republicans on a number of environmental measures last year. They cast votes to confirm David Bernhardt, a former oil industry lobbyist, to lead the Department of the Interior and voted against a resolution that would have invalidated Trumps rollback of carbon pollution limits for power plants. In a 2010 TV ad, Manchin, loading up a shotgun, told West Virginians that he had sued the Environmental Protection Agency. Then he took aim and fired at a copy of a major climate bill. Manchin is now in line to become chair of the Senates powerful Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Theres no guarantee that moderate Democrats will give soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer the crucial votes he needs to tie something like a carbon tax to the budget reconciliation process. As long as you have a Democratic majority that is predicated on a couple of vulnerable people from the oil patch and the coal patch, thats going to be very difficult, Casten said. But they could get behind other climate-related measures, especially if theyre offered something in return.

Fleming, the Data for Progress fellow, says hes optimistic that Manchin and Sinema will get behind any bill that drives investment in the states those senators represent. Manchin, who has an incentive to protect fossil fuel jobs in his state a big producer of natural gas and coal might support climate policy in exchange for federal funding for carbon capture and sequestration technologies, which, by trapping emissions and preventing them from escaping into the atmosphere, could allow power companies to continue burning fossil fuels. He might even go for out-of-the-box ideas, like transforming abandoned coal mines in West Virginia into big batteries to store power from solar and wind, an idea thats had industry support for years.

We should think about other ways we can creatively incentivize Senator Manchin and Sinema to go along with an ambitious bill that includes climate policy, Fleming said.

Freed, from Third Way, is confident moderates will back Bidens agenda. After all, the President-elect is a moderate himself. The agenda he wants to get done is a center, center-left agenda, Freed said. I think youre going to have a lot of support from across the Democratic caucus, including the Joe Manchins of the world, he said.

Whether moderates on the other side of the political aisle will support climate policy this congressional session remains to be seen. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska spearheaded the energy portion of a recent omnibus bill, and both she and Senator Susan Collins of Maine sponsored multiple pieces of climate legislation last Congress. Freed says there might be some Republicans in the House who would support it, too. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania co-introduced carbon pricing legislation in 2019. Peter Meijer, an incoming freshman Republican representative, ran on an environmentalist platform in Michigan.

On the Republican side, the question is, what do they choose? Freed said. Do they choose to actually govern and solve problems or do they get caught in this horrific cycle that theyve been in for a while now, particularly the past four years, of politics over country? Its a question thats just as relevant to climate legislation as it is to impeachment.

Need a daily dose of good climate news? Subscribe to The Beacon to receive daily updates on solutions driving us forward.

Read the original:
Democrats flipped the Senate. So why is a Green New Deal still unlikely? - Grist

Supporters of US President Donald Trump board a bus for an overnight drive to Washington, DC, in Newton, Massachusetts on January 5, 2021.

Joseph Prezioso | AFP | Getty Images

House Democrats on Friday asked more than two dozen private companies to take action to prevent domestic terror threats following last week's deadly invasion of the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trump's supporters.

The companies were asked to boost their screening measures and preserve all service requests and reservation records produced in January, which could be used as evidence that helps identify those involved in the mob.

"While the inciters and attackers bear direct responsibility for the siege on the Capitol and will be held fully accountable, they relied on a range of companies and services to get them there and house them once they arrived," House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., wrote in her letters to the companies.

The Oversight Committee sent the letters as law enforcement authorities prepare for potentially more violence ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next Wednesday. Officials fear that extremists are targeting statehouses around the country, as people online areattempting to organize pro-Trump rallies.

Lawmakers of both parties have called for investigations into the siege of the Capitol, which forced a joint session of Congress into hiding and left five dead, including a Capitol Police officer.

Maloney sent letters to 27 hotel, bus and rental car companies, including the Hyatt and Hilton hotel chains and the online travel company Expedia.

The other companies are Greyhound, Megabus, BoltBus, Lux Bus America, Vamoose, Jefferson Lines, Peter Pan, Flixbus, RedCoach,Enterprise, Hertz, Avis, National, Alamo, Budget, Dollar, Thrifty, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Accor Group, Choice Hotels, Marriott, Best Western International, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts and Extended Stay America.

A local resident looks at a billboard with pictures of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump wanted by the FBI who participated in storming the U.S. Capitol, forcing Congress to postpone a session certifying the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in Washington, January 13, 2021.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

Maloney also asked the companies to send her committee by Jan. 29 all "policies and procedures currently in place or being developed to ensure that your services are not used to facilitate violence or domestic terrorism."

Maloney's letters noted that Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has urged Americans to stay away from her city during the inauguration. National Guard troops are being deployed to the nation's capital in order to deter potential violence.

The letters also cited actions that have already been taken by some companies, including Airbnb, which canceled all D.C.-area reservations during inauguration week and is blocking any new bookings during that time.

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday said more than 100 arrests have been made in connection with the riot at the Capitol.

Among the arrests are a Delaware resident and his father, who was photographed holding the Confederate flag in the building, and a retired firefighter charged with throwing a fire extinguisher at police officers.

"We know you're out there and FBI agents are coming to find you," Wray said.

Guests staying at the JW Marriott hotel look out from their rooms as a pro-Trump rally is held at Freedom Plaza on January 5, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Samuel Corum | Getty Images

View original post here:
Democrats ask hotel, rental car chains to help find Capitol rioters and prevent more attacks - CNBC