Mediaboss Marketing

If the Democrats dont pass H.R. 1 and the new VRA, there is a very good chance that America will wind up under an extended period of minority rule in which the party that represents 4546 percent of the country can have a majority of power in Washington, Drutman told me. Which is not only fundamentally unfair, but it contravenes any set of democratic values and creates a sense of fundamental illegitimacy [that] is deeply destabilizing for a democracy.

Merkley, the principal sponsor of the Senate companion bill, is no less emphatic. Especially with Trumps efforts to subvert the election, the American vision of representative government has slid over the cliff, and [its as if] we caught a root, and we are just holding on by our fingertips, he told me. We must find a way to pass this bill. It is our responsibility in our majority to defend citizens rights to participate in our democracy. There is no other acceptable outcome.

Still, passing the bill, and perhaps the new VRA, will almost certainly require every Senate Democrat agreeing to end the filibuster in some fashionand at least two of them, West Virginias Joe Manchin and Arizonas Kyrsten Sinema, have been adamantly opposed to that action. Merkleys strategy for convincing Democrats to reconsiderat least for the democracy-reform legislationis to encourage an extended debate on the bill, both within the committee and on the Senate floor, and to allow any senator to offer amendments. If Republicans still block final passage with a filibuster after that process, Democrats could either vote to carve out election-reform legislation from the filibuster, or require Republicans blocking the bill to actually filibuster in person, he told me. Democrats could change the rules to tell Republicans you better be here day and night, because we are going to go for weeks and if you are not here, we are going to a final vote on the bill.

Read: This is the future that liberals want

Whatever mechanism Democrats employ, its clear the voter-mobilization groups that worked to produce their unified control are prepared to erupt if the party allows procedural constraints to block passage of H.R. 1 and the VRA. The New Georgia Projects Ufot told me that when Biden and Harris campaigned in Georgia just before the twin runoff elections, they promised big change if the states voters gave them the Senate majority. They didnt add an asterisk that change would be possible only if McConnell somehow chooses not to filibuster their agenda. The filibuster never made it into any of [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumers campaign ads; the filibuster was not a part of President Bidens stump speeches, or Vice President Harriss when she was down in Savannah, Ufot said. Their campaign rhetoric was on full blast, on 10, about why we needed to send them to Washington, D.C., to work on a progressive agenda.

Saying we cant make progress on that agenda, because of existing rules that they have the ability to change will ring like a hollow argument, and it wont bode well for this coalition, Ufot added.

View post:
Democrats' Biggest Decision: Nuking the Filibuster - The ...

Many liberal economists say there are good reasons to raise taxes, starting with using those funds to invest in workers and help build economic opportunity. Spending on physical infrastructure, like roads and water pipes, or on programs like education and child care that are meant to help people earn more money could help curb persistent inequalities in income and wealth. The economists also say that tax increases that are properly set up would provide incentives for multinational companies to keep jobs in the United States and not shift profits to lower-tax foreign countries.

The purpose of the tax system is to both raise enough revenue for what the government wants to do, and to make sure that as were doing that we are encouraging activities that are in the national interest and discouraging ones that are not, said Heather Boushey, a member of the White Houses Council of Economic Advisers.

Key Democrats are trying to bring the party to consensus. The top tax writer in the Senate, Ron Wyden of Oregon, is drafting a series of bills to raise taxes, many of them overlapping with Mr. Bidens campaign proposals.

Ill be ready to raise what the Democratic caucus decides is required to move forward, Mr. Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in an interview.

Mr. Wydens plans include big changes to the portions of Mr. Trumps tax cuts that overhauled how the United States taxes multinational companies, including the creation of a minimum tax of sorts on income earned abroad. Mr. Wyden and many Democratic economists, including some inside the Biden administration, say that the tax was devised in a way that it ultimately incentivized companies to continue moving profits and activities offshore to avoid American taxes. Republican economists and some tax experts disagree and say the law has allowed U.S. companies to better compete globally.

A report from the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation this month showed that multinational companies paid an average U.S. tax rate of less than 8 percent on their income in 2018, down from 16 percent in 2017. The report also found that those companies did not slow their practice of booking profits in low-tax havens like Bermuda.

Mr. Biden, Mr. Wyden and Mr. Sanders have all drafted plans to raise revenues by amending the 2017 law to force multinational companies to pay more to the United States. One of the most lucrative ways to do that, according to tax scorekeepers, would be to increase the rate of the global minimum tax, forcing those companies to pay higher U.S. tax rates no matter where they locate jobs or profits.

Original post:
Biden Poised to Raise Taxes on Business and the Rich - The New York Times

Author and conservative commentator Candace Owensjoined "Life, Liberty & Levin" Sunday to discussDemocrats' hypocrisy on election reform legislation, as well as theborder crisis under President Biden's watch.

Owens told host Mark Levin that "over the last four years, it really has been my mission and my purpose to make sure Black Americans and all minorities in this country recognize that" the Black community is being used as"cover" for the imposition of a radical leftist agenda.

"I feel that the Democrat Party represents Black Americalike plantation owners represented slaves,the irony here being is that the Democrats were the slave owners [in the 1800s]," she added.

On Friday, Biden called a new Georgia state election law"Jim Crow in the 21st Century." The law strengthens voter identification procedures,shortens the absentee votingwindow, and prohibits distributing "money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink" to people waiting in line to vote.

"They're using language, referring to things like Jim Crow," Owens toldLevin. "Who was the party that implemented Jim Crow in this country? It was the Democrats."

She also accused Democrats oftrying to "rewrite" history and make the public believe that they have always been the champion ofminority communities.

"That's the deep, sinister evil of the Democrat Party, that they're really just rewriting what they authored in the beginning," she said. "These were the slave-masters, and they understand the system better than anybody else because they wrote it. It is it is the fabric of the Democrat Party."

The "Blackout" author compared the practice of critical race theory in America's public schools to 19th-century slave codes that prohibited Black people from learning how to read or write.

She compared critical race theory to the way the Slave Codes in the 19th CenturySouth prohibited Black people from learning how to read or write.

"They understand that an educated mind can not be enslaved," she said. "They need to make sure there are no educated minds. What better way to ensure that than to pretend that you're educating Black Americans, but instead you're filling our minds with absolute filth, making us see the world in Black and White?

"And itmakes me so angry that they are still doing this and that they're now broadening their reachand saying, you know what, not just Black America ... [because]the growth rate population-wise, is not significant enough. So now they're bringing in a new class of voters."

She pointed to the flood of migrants and illegal immigrants from Central American countries coming across the southern border from Mexico.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Owens said the border "crisis" is not a crisis, but an intentional "border plan" by Biden and the Democrats to import a new electorate and displace American citizens.

"They are trying to import a new class of voters. They are trying to say to the [migrants]coming over the border,'We will help you. We'll give you free stuff like we gave Black Americans free stuff ...after Jim Crow ended, we're going to welfare-ize you'."

She said the Democrats plan to "marry" the new migrants to the government: "like we married Black Americans to the government."

"It's pure evil," she concluded.

The rest is here:
Candace Owens: Democrats gaslighting with 'Jim Crow' election law claims; trying to 'import' new voters - Fox News

Democrats have spent the last several years clamoring to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, seeing that as a necessary antidote to widening economic inequality and a rebuke of former President Donald Trumps signature tax cuts.

Now, under President Joe Biden, they have a shot at ushering in the largest federal tax increase since 1942. It could help pay for a host of spending programs that liberal economists predict would bolster the economys performance and repair a tax code that Democrats say encourages wealthy people to hoard assets and big companies to ship jobs and book profits overseas.

The question is whether congressional Democrats and the White House can agree on how sharply taxes should rise and who, exactly, should pay the bill. They widely share the goal of reversing many of Trumps tax cuts from 2017 and of making the wealthy and big businesses pay more. But they do not yet agree on the details and because Republicans are unlikely to support their efforts, they have no room for error in a closely divided Senate.

For Biden, the need to find consensus is urgent. The president is set to travel to Pittsburgh on Wednesday to unveil the next phase of his economic agenda: a sprawling collection of programs that would invest in infrastructure, education, carbon-reduction and working mothers and cost $3 trillion to $4 trillion.

The package, which follows on the heels of Bidens $1.9 trillion economic aid bill, is central to the presidents long-term plan to revitalize American workers and industry by funding bridges and roads, universal prekindergarten, emerging industries like advanced batteries, and efforts to invigorate the fight against climate change.

Biden plans to finance that spending, at least in part, with tax increases that could raise upward of $2.5 trillion in revenue if his plan hews closely to what he proposed in the 2020 presidential campaign. Aides suggest his proposals might not be entirely paid for, with some one-time spending increases offset by increased federal borrowing.

I think what youre going to see is the administration is going to put a pay-for on the table for at least some and maybe all of the infrastructure plan, said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. If Team Biden makes a proposal, Im sure well make adjustments, but thats a good way to start.

Others in his party, including his own transportation secretary, have pushed Biden to explore tax plans he did not campaign on, like taxing consumption, wealth or vehicle miles traveled. (A Transportation Department spokesperson said Saturday that there would be no vehicle-miles-traveled tax in the infrastructure proposal.) Biden has stressed his broad-brush desire to increase the tax burden on wealthy Americans who largely earn their money through inheritance or investment, to fund spending programs meant to help people who earn their money primarily through wages.

I want to change the paradigm, Biden said Thursday during a news conference. We start to reward work, not just wealth.

Democratic lawmakers have promised for decades to raise taxes on companies and the wealthy, a desire that kicked into overdrive after Trump signed a tax-cut package that delivered an outsize share of its benefits to corporations and high earners. But they have struggled to muster the votes for large tax increases since President Bill Clinton signed a 1993 law that included a variety of hikes intended to help reduce the budget deficit. Business groups, conservative activists, lobbyists and donors across the ideological spectrum have largely blocked such attempts.

President Barack Obama campaigned on ending tax cuts for the rich signed into law by President George W. Bush, but after the 2008 financial crisis, he cut deals with Republicans to extend those cuts before allowing some of them to expire at the end of 2012.

Liberal economists say this year could be different, thanks to the unique political and economic circumstances surrounding the recovery from the pandemic recession. With Bidens signing of a $1.9 trillion economic relief bill, financed entirely by federal borrowing, forecasters now expect the economy to grow this year at its fastest annual clip since the 1980s. Republicans and some economists have begun to warn of overheating growth spurring runaway inflation, which could reduce the salience of warnings that tax increases would cause growth to stall.

Public polling shows broad support, even among many Republican voters, for raising taxes on large corporations and high-income individuals. The most conservative Democrats in the Senate, who hold great sway over Bidens legislative agenda, say they favor trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending, so long as there is a plan to pay for it.

That includes Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who told reporters this week that Bidens infrastructure plan was going to be enormous and that its costs needed to be covered. He signaled openness to making changes to the 2017 tax overhaul, adding that the benefits in that legislation were weighted in one direction to the upper end.

Where do they think its going to come from? How are they going to fix America? he said, when asked about Republican resistance to tax increases. I dont think thats reasonable.

Democrats widely share a desire to raise the corporate income tax rate after it was cut to 21% in 2017. And they want to raise the top marginal rate for individuals back to 39.6% from 37%.

But there are disputes in the rank and file, with some favoring Bidens plan to set the corporate rate at 28% and others preferring a lower one, like 25%. There are also questions over which high-earning individuals should see a tax increase.

Biden has pledged not to raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000. Some of his progressive allies, including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have advocated raising taxes on a broader group. Democrats like Manchin have pushed him to consider additional tax plans that do not solely target the rich, like a European-style tax on consumption, though that type of tax could fall more heavily on low-income Americans than wealthy ones.

Republicans are unlikely to support any plan to raise taxes, leaving administration officials and leading congressional Democrats to hammer out a plan on their own. But absent Republican support in the Senate, where both parties hold 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties, Democrats would need to secure total consensus within their caucus to pass the legislation and use a fast-track budget process known as reconciliation to bypass the 60-vote threshold for ending a filibuster.

Business groups and Republican lawmakers, who supported the 2017 tax cuts, predict that any tax increase will slow economic growth and undermine the competitiveness of U.S. companies. They contend that the economic and wage growth in the run-up to the pandemic prove that Trumps tax cuts worked, an argument Bidens advisers reject, citing research from the International Monetary Fund and others.

He wants a massive tax increase, and he wants to allocate the tax responsibility in this country on the basis of class, said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. Thats a hell of a way to make tax policy. Sound tax policy is made on the basis of economics.

Republicans who favor some form of an infrastructure bill have struggled to offer alternative ways to fund such an undertaking, which they argue should be significantly smaller than what Biden has floated. Some, however, are noodling on tax changes should a bipartisan plan emerge. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said this past week that her committee would examine changes to the gas tax or a related tax that also charges a fee to users of electric vehicles as discussions continue about a funding mechanism.

Many liberal economists say there are good reasons to raise taxes, starting with using those funds to invest in workers and help build economic opportunity. Spending on physical infrastructure, like roads and water pipes, or on programs like education and child care that are meant to help people earn more money could help curb persistent inequalities in income and wealth. The economists also say that tax increases that are properly set up would provide incentives for multinational companies to keep jobs in the United States and not shift profits to lower-tax foreign countries.

Key Democrats are trying to bring the party to consensus. The top tax writer in the Senate, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is drafting a series of bills to raise taxes, many of them overlapping with Bidens campaign proposals.

Ill be ready to raise what the Democratic caucus decides is required to move forward, Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in an interview.

See more here:
Under Biden, Democrats are poised to raise taxes on business and the rich - WION

Nine Democrats who chair House committees sent letters to more than a dozen federal and local agencies on Thursday, kicking off a major investigation into what happened before, during and after the insurrection at the Capitol. House Democrats say they are still pursuing the creation of an independent commission, too -- but privately Democratic lawmakers and aides tell CNN the move forward on the congressional probe is the clearest sign yet that an agreement on a commission may not be possible.

"I think it's close to dead," one Democratic member said.

Pelosi herself expressed frustration with the lack of progress and accused Republicans of being unwilling to bend in particular on the issue of the scope of the investigation.

"I'm optimistic," the California Democrat said before correcting herself. "I'm persistent, in terms of, we have get to the truth now."

But both Republicans and Democrats involved in the negotiations say the talks on the issue have ground to a halt with little communication between the two sides. While Pelosi has not agreed to 50-50 partisan split on the commission, she argues that the real problem is a GOP unwillingness to focus the probe specifically on what led to insurrection. Republican leaders have argued that political violence in general should be a topic of the investigation.

"We have to find the truth. And we're not walking away from that," Pelosi told reporters Thursday. "Now, we'd love it to be as bipartisan as possible. But we have other, shall we say, paths, should there not come -- we can't come to something that would be similar to the 9/11 Commission."

At loggerheads

"If you start with the premise that you only want it one-sided, you understand what the outcome is going to be," McCarthy said. His office said Friday that the negotiations have made no progress.

"Leader McCarthy is still requesting a bipartisan commission where Republicans and Democrats have equal representation and subpoena power, the same as it was for the 9/11 Commission," said a House GOP leadership aide. "So far the speaker continues to insist on carrying out a partisan process."

While Democrats could muscle through a commission plan with just Democratic votes in the House, they need Republican buy-in in the Senate, where 60 votes would be required to approve legislation for the outside panel. Pelosi said McConnell had told her he was serious about a commission but that he then went to the Senate floor and "dumped all over" her proposal.

Pelosi said Thursday that she was willing to have her committee chairs reach out to rank-and-file Republicans to see if they would be willing to cut a deal. But even that, she conceded, has gone nowhere. "Some of them have been receptive," Pelosi said. "But then they'll say, 'Well, the leadership doesn't want us to do anything. We won't do anything.' "

'Walk and chew gum'

Democrats say they are moving forward with their committee investigations while still laying the groundwork for an independent commission to be created later. In the Senate, bipartisan leaders of the Homeland Security and Rules committees are conducting a joint investigation too, with plans to issue a report on their findings later in the year.

"Even though Democrats are in agreement that a bipartisan 9/11-style commission is necessary, we can't wait to get started and it's clear Republicans want to drag this out," said a senior Democratic aide. "By modeling our work on what's happened after other national tragedies -- from Katrina to 9/11, when the Congress began investigations with broad information requests -- we can both do the work now and ensure we're collecting the necessary information to turn over when a commission starts."

Another Democratic aide told CNN that the broad request from committee chairs relating to the insurrection should not be seen as an effort to replace the independent commission. Even if the commission does go forward, the aide argued that committees can still conduct their own investigations: "We can all walk and chew gum."

But with negotiations between Democrats and Republicans stalled, largely over what the commission should be investigating, the aide admitted there is a time limit for how long Democrats are willing to wait before moving forward on their own. The aide predicted that the committees could move forward unilaterally in "a matter of weeks" if there's no progress.

"I think a commission is still our number one priority," the aide said. "If there's no, you know, agreement to be had with Republicans on the commission, then at that point we have a responsibility to do something unilaterally."

The document requests issued by the Democratic committee chairs on Thursday went to a broad stretch of agencies connected to the response to the insurrection, including the White House, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Capitol Police, the National Guard and Washington's Metropolitan Police Department. The requests for documents are an opening salvo in an investigation that could be ramped up further even if an agreement is reached for an outside commission.

The chairs noted that some of the information they are requesting is related to the sprawling FBI investigation into the attack, which has led to hundreds of arrests related to the breach of the Capitol and attacks on police officers. "We are happy to work with you to ensure that the document requests in this letter do not interfere with ongoing investigations and prosecutions," the chairs wrote.

Democrats are also preparing to release a security supplemental funding bill based on Honor's task force recommendations earlier this month, which included updates to security like mobile fencing at the Capitol and the hiring of hundreds of Capitol Police officers. The funding proposal, which is likely to account for costs associated with enhanced security and the damage to the Capitol, is expected in the coming week, according to a Democratic aide, and it's likely to turn attention on Capitol Hill back to how Congress is responding to the January 6 attack.

The House is already upgrading its security. During the recess this week, crews were in the process of installing bulletproof doors on the entrances to the gallery, and eventually all doors leading to the House will be replaced. It's an improvement that aides say was in the works before the insurrection.

View post:
Bipartisan panel on Capitol riot in danger as Democrats proceed with their own investigation - CNN