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The Joe Biden Presidency Thread


swordfish

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https://www.natlawreview.com/article/president-biden-issues-proclamation-adding-india-to-covid-19-travel-restrictions-us

President Biden Issues Proclamation Adding India to COVID-19 Travel Restrictions (US)

Monday, May 3, 2021

On April 30, 2021, the President issued another Proclamation suspending entry into the United States of nonimmigrants and noncitizens who were physically present within the Republic of India during the 14-day period preceding their attempted entry into the United States. These restrictions take effect at 12:01 am EDT on May 4, 2021 and remain in effect until terminated by order of the President.

The scope of this Proclamation is similar to those issued by President Trump covering ChinaIran, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the European Schengen Area, and Brazil. On January 25, 2021, President Biden signed a Proclamation continuing the suspension of entry of certain travelers from these countries and added South Africa.

The following categories of individuals are exempted from the entry restrictions:

  • U.S. citizens, noncitizen nationals and lawful permanent residents;

  • Spouse of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident;

  • Parent or legal guardian of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, if the U.S. citizen or permanent resident is unmarried and under the age of 21;

  • Sibling of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, provided that both are unmarried and under the age of 21;

  • Child, foster child, or ward of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, or who is a prospective adoptee seeking to enter the United States pursuant to the IR-4 or IH-4 visa classifications;

  • Noncitizen (foreign national) traveling at the invitation of the U.S. government for a purpose related to containment or mitigation of the virus;

  • Nonimmigrant crewmembers holding C-1, D or C-1/D nonimmigrant visas;

  • Noncitizen seeking entry or transiting the United States under an A-1, A-2, C-2, C-3, G-1, G-2, G-3, G-4, NATO-1 through NATO-4 or NATO-6 visa;

  • Noncitizen whose entry would further important United States law enforcement objectives; or

  • Noncitizen whose entry would be in the national interest as determined by the Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security or their designees.

While the National Interest Exception (NIE), referenced in the last bullet point, has been included in all of the geographic Proclamations issued since February 2020, the qualifying criteria has evolved over time. One could even say, the definition of “national interest” has mutated. Per recent guidance issued by the State Department, national interest includes travelers “who are seeking to provide vital support for critical infrastructure sectors” or seeking to enter the United States “for purposes related to humanitarian travel, public health response, and national security.” In addition, the State Department has determined the following individuals automatically qualify for an NIE:

  • Fiancé(e)s.

  • Students and certain academics covered by exchange visitor programs; students with academic programs beginning August 1, 2021 or later; students with valid F-1 and M-1 visas intending to begin or continue an academic program from August 1, 2021 or later;

  • Journalists.

  • Pilots and aircrew traveling to the United States for training or aircraft pickup, delivery, or maintenance.

  • Certain J-1 exchange visitors, including:

    • Au pair caring for children of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or nonimmigrants when the au pair possesses special skills required for a child with particular needs (e.g., medical, special education, or sign language);

    • Au pair that prevents a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or other nonimmigrant from becoming a public health charge or ward of the state or of a medical or other public funded institution;

    • Au pair providing childcare services for a child whose parents are involved with the provision of medical care to individuals who have contracted COVID-19 or COVID-19 related medical research at United States facilities;

    • Travel for an exchange program conducted pursuant to an MOU, Statement of Intent, or other valid agreement or arrangement between a foreign government and the U.S. government designed to promote U.S. national interests if the agreement or arrangement with the foreign government was in effect prior to June 24, 2020;

    • Interns and Trainees on U.S. government agency-sponsored programs;

    • Specialized Teachers in Accredited Educational Institutions with a program number beginning with “G-5” on Form DS-2019;

  • Travel in support of critical foreign policy objectives; limited to exchange visitors participating in a small number of exchange programs that fulfill critical and time sensitive foreign policy objectives, per the State Department guidelines; and

  • Derivative family members accompanying noncitizen who is excepted from or otherwise not subject to the Proclamation and who is engaging in certain types of long-term employment, studies, or research of four weeks or longer.

NIEs have become increasingly difficult to obtain in recent months, particularly for standard business visitors, but even for many workers on visas related to critical infrastructure sectors, with the Department of State often determining that their activities can be properly conducted remotely or that the connection to critical infrastructure is insufficient.

 

Did anyone else notice the difference from the left on this latest travel ban from President Biden?  SF thought the left believed ALL travel bans were racist.......

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Biden Believes in Science — So Long as the Teachers’ Unions Approve

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/biden-believes-in-science-so-long-as-the-teachers-unions-approve/

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Democrats love to claim that they stand against political interference in “science.”

This is often an oversimplified understanding of how science and technology interact with government. Decisions about public-health policy or energy policy almost invariably entail the sorts of competing priorities that should involve the people’s democratically elected representatives. We do not live in a dictatorship robed in white lab coats. It is also wildly hypocritical. Democrats are not against politics in science — only against politics they do not like. A glance at their treatment of embryology, biological sex, or nuclear power is proof enough of that. The latest example comes from evidence of the Biden administration allowing the Centers for Disease Control’s guidance on school reopening to be influenced by one of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions.

During the 2020 campaign, Biden and his political and media allies leaned hard on the argument that the Trump administration was using undue political influence to disregard science. Biden was the first presidential candidate endorsed by Scientific American in its 175-year history. In Biden’s convention speech, he declared, “Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot.” In October, he tweeted, “I believe in science. Donald Trump doesn’t. It’s that simple, folks.” In January, announcing his science advisers, Biden proclaimed, “We’re going to lead with science and truth” — a line intended and received as an attack on the Trump administration. One of his first executive orders declared it “the policy of my Administration to listen to the science.” His CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, claimed that Trump “muzzled” scientists. Kamala Harris recently tweeted, “I am proud that science is back in the White House.” Biden’s Office of Science and Technology Policy has even instituted an investigation into what it calls its predecessor’s “blatant attempts to distort, to cherry pick and disregard science.”

 

One of the specific charges against the Trump administration was that White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas had intervened in shaping the language of CDC reports during the pandemic. Biden ally Representative James Clyburn thundered that this amounted to “political interference in the nation’s public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, overruling and bullying scientists and making harmful decisions that allowed the virus to spread more rapidly.”

The Biden-Harris campaign even stoked irresponsible fears that a COVID vaccine developed by pharmaceutical companies and cleared by the regulatory bureaucracy would be unsafe if it was announced by the Trump White House. As Harris declared in the vice presidential debate, “If Donald Trump tells us to take it, I’m not taking it.”

Given all of this rhetorical high dudgeon, voters might reasonably expect this administration to be purer than Caesar’s wife on the specific issue of the CDC’s pronouncements on the COVID pandemic. Any voter who believed that should be sadly disappointed.

In February, Dr. Walensky told the press that there were “increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated.” Press Secretary Jen Psaki immediately backtracked, telling reporters that Walensky was speaking in her “personal” capacity and that there was no “official guidance from the CDC yet on the vaccination of teachers and what would be needed to ensure the safe reopening of schools.” This despite extensive evidence, even from CDC studies, that it was safe for schools to fully reopen. The CDC ignored that evidence in releasing its guidelines in March, insisting that schools should generally be closed or partly virtual when community spread is high and the school doesn’t have routine testing — a standard that would be failed in 90 percent of the country at the time, under the agency’s definition of high spread. A group of doctors who conducted a study of school districts in Wood County, Wis., even publicly accused the CDC of misrepresenting their research. The administration also intervened to block the CDC from revising its guidelines on travel to allow for travel by people who have been fully vaccinated.

Now, a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative watchdog group Americans for Public Trust, reported by the New York Post, reveals the depth of political interference in the school-reopening guidance. The powerful American Federation of Teachers, which spent nearly $20 million to elect Democrats in 2020, was deeply involved in crafting the CDC guidance. One AFT email to officials in the Biden White House said: “We were able to review a copy of the draft guidance document over the weekend and were able to provide some initial feedback to several staff this morning about possible ways to strengthen the document.” This and other AFT emails to the White House were then forwarded to Walensky by the White House, lest she miss the point of who was calling the shots. The AFT also leaned on Walensky directly, and AFT president Randi Weingarten lobbied her by phone. As a result, the Post noted at least two instances of AFT-drafted language being inserted verbatim into the CDC guidelines, in each case to limit in-person instruction.

Many Americans have had their eyes opened during the past year to the lengths to which the teachers’ unions will go in placing the interests of their members ahead of the interests of children. Now, they can see the Biden administration bending the CDC itself to the union’s will. Whatever this is, it is not science.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Since it is a U.S. citizens duty to blame the sitting U.S. President for negative economic developments:

 

As gas prices soar, Americans can blame Joe Biden

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/541833-as-gas-prices-soar-americans-can-blame-joe-biden

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President Biden is already boosting oil prices, and he’s barely gotten started.

Biden is frantic to help Americans hard-hit by COVID-19, or so he says. But while his $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” would send cash to millions, much of that windfall may go to pay for higher gasoline and home heating prices.

Americans should blame Biden, but not for the reason you might think. Biden’s attack on U.S. energy producers, starting with his freeze on federal oil and gas leases, will assuredly take a toll on output down the road and cause prices at the pump to rise.

But today, Biden has pushed those prices, which were already rising because of severe weather, even higher by gratuitously alienating Saudi Arabia. The Gulf kingdom just surprised energy markets by announcing it would not raise oil output, despite developing supply constraints and rising prices. Oil prices jumped on the news, popping 4 percent to pre-pandemic levels for the first time in a year; the surge rattled markets already nervous about rising inflation.

The Saudis are reminding Biden that they can be a valuable ally or a formidable foe.

In his fever to undo every vestige of the Trump presidency, Biden has undermined the extraordinary progress made by the previous administration towards peace in the Middle East, including by “recalibrating” our relationship with Saudi Arabia. The signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco marked an undisputed breakthrough in opening relations among bitter enemies and also in ring-fencing a belligerent Iran.

Instead of attempting to build on that achievement, Biden has tried to bury it. Upon taking office President Biden immediately froze arms sales to the UAE, which had been promised as part of the deal. He next halted military aid to the Saudi war in Yemen and rescinded the terrorist organization designation applied to the Houthis by President Trump, emboldening that group to step up their attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Also, it took a full month for Biden to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, finally speaking to the leader of one of our strongest allies only after reaching out to more than a dozen other heads of state.

All these gestures made it clear, not that “America is back,” as Biden has proudly announced, but that America is going backward…fast.

The crowning blow to our improved realignment of interests in the Middle East, however, was Biden’s decision to insult the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia by releasing an intelligence assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was responsible for orchestrating the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. This affront followed the White House announcing that Biden would not speak to MBS, as he is called, but rather, communicate with his father, the ailing Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz.

The Khashoggi report contained nothing new; the “reveal” simply signaled Biden’s disdain for the controversial leader and disagreement with everything Trump, who had a close working relationship with Saudi Arabia’s next ruler.

The Abraham Accords shocked the world; even the New York Times’s Tom Friedman recently hailed the “game-changing” breakthrough, writing that “something big seems to be stirring.”

Many hoped that Saudi Arabia might also join the Accords, which would, Friedman concludes, make the agreement “one of the most significant realignments in modern Middle East history.” Most likely, Biden has killed that possibility.

Offending Saudi Arabia scratches a Leftist itch; indeed, human rights groups complain that Biden did not punish MBS directly, after promising to do so on the campaign trail. But it will not help American consumers.

Saudi Arabia still occupies the enviable position of swing oil producer; they are currently producing about nine million barrels of oil per day, down from 9.8 million barrels in 2019. The country has the capacity to produce between 11 and 12 million barrels, thus allowing it to flood the market when prices get too high. Because the nation is wealthy, it also can cut output to prop up prices, as it did last year when, due to COVID-19, energy demand collapsed.

In other words, despite the growth in U.S. oil output in recent years, the Saudis still run the show. And MBS runs Saudi Arabia. Last year, a personal confrontation with Vladimir Putin drove him to push a price war with Russia; almost certainly, the recent decision to drive prices higher was also his.

Gasoline prices had already posted sizable increases, with the national average price rising for eight weeks in a row to $2.71 a gallon as of March 1, up from $2.40 at the end of January and against last May’s price of $1.79. 

Some are now predicting that prices will top $3.00 per gallon as we approach the summer driving season. A driving season that will see millions return to the roads as the COVID-19 crisis eases.  

Travelers this summer may get a preview of what Biden’s anti-oil policies will come to mean for their pocketbooks. Right out of the gate, Biden curtsied to the climate warriors by canceling the Keystone Pipeline and, more consequentially, pausing the leasing of federal lands for oil and gas development. Federal lands account for about 22 percent of U.S. oil production.

It is clear those are just his opening moves; Biden’s appointments of progressives to important Cabinet posts and insertion of climate issues into every agency’s agenda will doubtless drive U.S. oil and gas investment and production down over time. Consequently, prices will increase. 

In 2012, President Obama suffered one of the worst-ever drops in his approval rating when gas prices spiked. According to a NYTimes/CBSNews poll at the time, “54 percent of poll respondents believed that a president can do a lot to control gas prices…” and had punished Obama accordingly.  

In Biden’s case, that 54 percent is correct. 

 

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/10/politics/biden-employer-assistance-child-care-state-and-local-funding/index.html

The same government telling you 'there's no evidence' inflated and expanded unemployment benefits keep people from looking for work is now telling you there's no gas shortage, it's just a 'supply crunch' while over 70% of gas stations are out of gas in some Northeast/Southeast areas of the country.Explosion Reaction GIF

Edited by swordfish
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15 hours ago, swordfish said:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/10/politics/biden-employer-assistance-child-care-state-and-local-funding/index.html

The same government telling you 'there's no evidence' inflated and expanded unemployment benefits keep people from looking for work is now telling you there's no gas shortage, it's just a 'supply crunch' while over 70% of gas stations are out of gas in some Northeast/Southeast areas of the country.Explosion Reaction GIF

Despite pipeline restart, thousands of gas stations remain dry

Drivers swarm gas pumps, ignore pleas to stop hoarding: 'Forget that' |  Autoblog

Colonial Pipeline slowly restarts as Southeast U.S. scrambles for fuel |  Reuters

Colonial restarts operations after cyberattack as panic buying mounts in  Southeast - OPB

Fact check: Viral Twitter photo of plastic bags full of gas was taken in  2019 - NBC2 News

Thanks Joe Biden.

 

 

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4 hours ago, swordfish said:

Carter brought us Reagan.

Obama brought us Trump.

What will Biden bring us?

The effective insolvency of the federal government, and the economic carnage that will follow.

 

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24 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

... and a global pandemic, a recession, and Joe Biden at the end.

Buy a Tesla if you are worried about the price of gasoline. 

ORANGE MAN BAD.  We get it, Dante.

No reliable place to quickly charge an EV.

 

 

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3 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

near you?

Correct.  AFAIK Frankfort has one Tesla charging station, located behind a goverment funded/boondoggle apartment building.  Approx. 1 mile from my location.

 

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12 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Turn on the car, and put your foot on the accelerator.

As long as you stay within an hour of home, I guess.......

Look, we get it, EV's are the future, but there is still a long way to go before I am ready to make the switch......

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https://nypost.com/2021/05/19/joe-biden-ripped-for-joking-about-running-over-reporter/

Biden ripped for joking about running over reporter who asked about Israel

This joke really crashed.

President Biden is being ripped for joking about running down a reporter rather than answer a question about the ongoing deadly conflict in Gaza.

Biden made the questionable quip Tuesday from behind the wheel of the new F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck when a reporter asked if she could ask “a quick question on Israel … since it’s so important?”

“No, you can’t,” Biden replied bluntly. “Not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it.”

The car-loving commander-in-chief insisted he was “only teasing” — but still raced away on a Michigan race track rather than accept a question on the ongoing conflict.

He was quickly ripped online, with many noting how his predecessor, President Donald Trump, was routinely savaged for his own jokes.

Had this been the former President, the headline would have been "Trump threatens reporter".  

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https://nypost.com/2021/05/19/jill-biden-said-harris-should-go-f-k-herself-for-debate-attack/

Jill Biden said that Kamala Harris should “go f—k” herself after famously questioning her husband’s record on race during a Democratic primary debate, according to new report.

The future first lady fumed to supporters after Harris, who is now President Biden’s vice president, slammed his record opposing federally mandated interracial busing to desegregate schools.

“That little girl was me!” Harris told Biden in one of the most cutting moments of the Democratic primary.

Jill Biden vented one week later on a group phone call of supporters, according to an account published by Politico.

“With what he cares about, what he fights for, what he’s committed to, you get up there and call him a racist without basis? Go f–k yourself,” Jill Biden allegedly said.

Biden also was furious about the attack.

While still on stage during the debate, Biden allegedly turned to fellow candidate Pete Buttigieg and said of Harris’ attack: “That was some f—king bullshit.”

Buttigieg is currently Biden’s transportation secretary.

Biden and Harris have worked closely together since taking office in January. Biden has referred to himself as a transitional president and the administration has taken pains to brand initiatives as the work of the “Biden-Harris” administration.

Harris is the first African-American vice president and her position on the Democratic ticket helped blunt left-wing attacks on Biden for his history on race, including warm words with segregationists and Biden-authored crime bills in the 1980s and ’90s that disproportionately jailed black people for drugs.

Harris’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.

Michael LaRosa, a spokesman for Jill Biden, said: “Many books will be written on the 2020 campaign, with countless retellings of events – some accurate, some inaccurate.  The First Lady and her team do not plan to comment on any of them.”

 

Literally LOL - So is Mrs. Biden now considered a racist?  or a sexist?  I mean, she can't say that can she?

 

 

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Biden's Jobs Plan: How Some Jobs Destroy Wealth

https://mises.org/wire/bidens-jobs-plan-how-some-jobs-destroy-wealth

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It seems that every time something adverse happens in the labor market, it restarts the partisan battle between those currently in and out of power as to who is a better steward of the economy.

That was illustrated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics's (BLS) release of the job numbers for April, which made headlines when job growth, which was expected to surge, came in “unexpectedly” low. The 266,000 jobs created were only a quarter of some forecasts, which topped 1 million. Further, March job creation was also revised down by 146,000. And unemployment ticked up for the first time since the lockdown, despite a reportedly massive shortage of workers, as illustrated by the 7.4 million unfilled job openings reported for February.

The Biden administration, put on its heels by the poor results and the finger-pointing at its policies that followed (particularly the $300 weekly unemployment bonus), insisted the economy is improving, and tried to claim credit for it (even though the economy was recovering far faster than anticipated before he took office) but that the magnitude of the problems faced means that still more government aid is necessary, almost as if they are trying to introduce quadrillion as a measure in common use when talking about deficits and debt, rather than trillion.

This battle, like many before, include skirmishes about a multitude of measurement issues—whether employment or unemployment measures are more accurate, which unemployment measure is the best, reasons for changes in labor force participation, part-time versus full-time jobs, discouraged workers, how many officially unemployed workers are really gaming the system, seasonal adjustments, and more. Other discussions include whether government programs create jobs or just move them, given that the resources must come from elsewhere, whether that transfer produces increased or decreased value, etc.

However, the discussion generally overlooks a further factor. Many of the jobs created directly or indirectly by government policies impose costs on society rather than producing benefits. Such job creation worsens rather than improves Americans’ well-being.

The most obvious illustrations come from the vast (and getting vaster) crazy-quilt of federal executive agencies, mandates, regulations, czars, etc. Peaceful wealth creation arises from voluntary agreements among people, but the primary activity of the regulatory state is often to interfere with mutually productive jobs, undermining social coordination and destroying wealth. Imposing added constraints on voluntary productive arrangements does create some jobs, but that acts as a massive regulatory tax on jobs that benefit other people.

Professors Susan Dudley and Melinda Warren have studied federal regulatory agencies that explicitly restrict private sector transactions. They found 277,000 such regulators in 2015 (substantially larger than General Motors’ worldwide workforce) and an eighteenfold increase in those agencies’ inflation-adjusted budgets since 1960, to over $57 billion (in 2009 dollars).

Government’s forcible interventions also create private sector jobs to comply with its expanding range of dictation. For example, many human resources and healthcare industry jobs were created to comply with Obamacare. But for ill-advised programs and restrictions, those jobs entail costs rather than benefits for society.

Government’s increasing redistributive power over every wallet also means more lobbyists are hired to help special interests benefit at others’ expense. That, in turn, pushes others to hire more lobbyists to minimize the extent of robbery they will be forced to bear. The expanded fight to control federal government theft creates influence industry jobs, which have dramatically stimulated the economy in Washington, DC, but which produces a negative-sum game that destroys wealth for people everywhere else.

Similarly, when laws or rules of questionable constitutionality or legality are promulgated, it increases the number of lawyers and legal resources government employs. It also increases the number employed by those who would be abused. Such opposition can be one of the most valuable investments for Americans in stopping such inroads on people’s rights, but even fighting them to a standstill leaves Americans no better off than if those overstepping initiatives had not been advanced in the first place.

While the battle over President Biden’s job creation underachievement continues, we should remember that in one area, he clearly aims to overachieve—creating jobs in government (as well as because of government) that harm Americans’ ability to mutually benefit one another. Such job creation may boost the employment numbers Biden desires, but they block rather than boost our well-being.

 

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Senate Republicans Released a $928 Billion Infrastructure Plan. Biden Says It Still Doesn't Spend Enough.: https://reason.com/2021/05/28/senate-republicans-released-a-928-billion-infrastructure-plan-biden-says-it-still-doesnt-spend-enough/

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For the last several weeks, President Joe Biden has been negotiating an infrastructure spending proposal with a select group of Senate Republicans, hoping to find a plan that can garner bipartisan support. In the process, Biden has revealed how little he cares about infrastructure per se and how much he cares about spending for its own sake.  

Biden started with a plan that would cost about $2.3 trillion, give or take. After Republicans said the topline figure was too high, he released a follow-up offer that brought the total down to around $1.7 trillion. Republicans started with a $568 billion proposal, and yesterday released a counteroffer for $928 billion in infrastructure spending. 

Even the Republican counterproposals are massive sums by any measure, but for Biden they are still not enough. Shortly after Republicans released their plan yesterday, the Biden administration responded by complaining that it did not represent enough new spending, because much of it would be paid for by redirecting unspent funds from previous COVID relief bills. 

The GOP counteroffer was an improvement, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said. But it "still provides no substantial new funds for critical job-creating needs."

The key phrase there is "new funds." Of the $928 billion, Axios reports, about $257 billion would come from new spending; the rest would come from repurposed funds, such as earlier pandemic relief bills where the money has not been fully spent. 

Republicans, in other words, not only proposed nearly $1 trillion in spending on a constellation of projects that Biden says are a priority; they found ways to offset the cost of much of it by redirecting unused money. You might think Biden would be interested in backing that, since it funds his priorities in a way that required less federal funding. Yet his administration complains that the proposal doesn't have enough new spending. 

The spending is the point, almost entirely apart from how the money is spent or what projects it produces. The president is not just concerned about obtaining funding for specific infrastructure projects or programs; he wants to spend money just to have spent it.

That drive to spend—and spend and spend and spend—is how we ended up with a nearly $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill that had little to do with the coronavirus. It is how Biden stuffed his initial infrastructure proposal with what amounted to a lump-sum payout to a friendly labor union. It is how he arrived at a budget proposal that would push annual spending to new peaks while relying on near-record levels of borrowing. And it is why Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin gave a speech this week complaining that even after the roughly $6 trillion in pandemic-adjacent spending that was tacked onto the federal budget over the last year or so, Congress simply wasn't spending enough. It's all part of a push to permanently enlarge the scale, scope, and spending of the federal government. 

It's already costing us even more than planned: According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit-financed $1.9 trillion relief bill Biden signed earlier this year will actually cost more like $2.1 trillion once a little more than $200 billion worth of interest payments are factored in. It's costing taxpayers money to spend money. Expect a lot more of that in the months and years to come. 

Sickening.  Slowly destroying this country.  I fear for the future of our children and grandchildren.

 

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Amtrak Wants $75 Billion To Create More Money-Losing Routes

https://reason.com/2021/05/28/amtrak-wants-75-billion-to-create-more-money-losing-routes/

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With "Amtrak Joe" at the helm, America's premier passenger rail service is going for broke with the release of its 15-year "Corridor Vision." The company's plan, which was published yesterday, calls for service improvements along 25 existing routes, the creation of another 39, and the expansion of service to 160 new cities across the country.

To bring this vision into reality, the for-profit Amtrak is asking for $75 billion in new federal funding and the power to enforce the prioritization of its own passenger trains' movement on tracks owned by private freight rail companies.

"Now is the time to invest in our country's infrastructure and future," said Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn in a press release. "New and improved rail service has the ability to change how our country moves and provides cleaner air, less traffic and a more connected country."

Prior to the pandemic, Amtrak was receiving roughly $2 billion in federal subsidies each year. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March 2020 gave the company another $1 billion in bailout funds. The American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021, gave it another $1.69 billion.

President Joe Biden, a longtime booster of Amtrak, has proposed spending $80 billion on the company as part of his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan. Republicans have proposed a more modest $46 billion for passenger and freight rail, or $22 billion above current spending levels, in their latest infrastructure proposal.

Besides the price tag, both parties' infrastructure plans are pretty light on the details of how this money would be spent, however.

"Right now, in the infrastructure debate, we're not really talking about what we're going to build and what benefit that is supposed to provide. We're two sides bidding on top-line dollar amounts," says Marc Scribner, a senior transportation policy analyst at Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website. "Amtrak releasing this [plan] yesterday is them trying to get politicians to focus on discrete priorities and real-world implementation."

In a Wednesday letter to Congress, Flynn laid out four specific asks to lawmakers.

These include creating a "Corridor Development Program" that would use exclusively federal funds to establish new Amtrak routes and subsidize their early operation. Without that program, states would be expected to cover some of those costs.

Flynn has also asked Congress to create a "Passenger Rail Trust Fund" to provide the company with dedicated multiyear federal funding, similar to how the federal government funds highways. Currently, federal subsidies to Amtrak are approved on a year-by-year basis.

Amtrak also wants Congress to give it greater powers to expand its operations onto privately-owned "host railroads" and to sue railroad owners who don't sufficiently prioritize passenger trains over freight rail trains.

About 70 percent of the miles Amtrak trains travel are on these privately owned freight railroads, according to the Association of American Railroads. Opening up new routes, as the Corridor Vision calls for, would see Amtrak run even more trains on these privately-owned tracks, where they'd potentially be displacing lots of freight traffic.

"When Amtrak is talking about expanding service, they're not talking about building parallel track," says Scribner. "Whenever we're talking about Amtrak service expansion, the other side of that is freight rail service degradation."

Scribner notes that private, profitable freight rail companies also transport tonnage with far lower emissions than trucks. Should more passenger rail service lead to more freight being shipped on highways, that would count against Amtrak's own goals of more environmentally-friendly transportation.

Instead of opening up even more money-losing routes around the country, Scriber says Amtrak should focus its efforts on improving service in the Northeast Corridor, where it owns much of the tracks it uses and where it actually competes with intercity air and bus travel.

That they're loath to focus on that goal, and instead push for more routes to cities outside the Northeast Corridor, has a lot to do with politics. After all, why would a senator vote to fund a rail service that doesn't run through her state?

"Amtrak's primary customers aren't the riders, they're the politicians in Congress," says Scribner. This latest $75 billion Corridor Vision reflects that.

Where in the U.S. Constitution is a federally owned rail system an enumerated function of the federal government?

 

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