The politics of COVID-19 spending legislation is complicated.
President Biden and former President Donald Trump, who don't agree on much, both pushed to get $2,000 direct payments to most Americans this winter, and the Republican governor of West Virginia is backing Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package while his state's Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, favors a smaller package. The White House is privately meeting with a group of Senate Republicans who proposed a $618 billion alternative package, The Associated Press reports, even as Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reject that amount as insufficient and urge Democrats to go big and go quickly.
Biden and his advisers "publicly tout the virtues of bipartisan collaboration," but "they aren't pollyannaish about it," Sam Stein reports at Politico. "They know there is no recent history to suggest any such collaboration is coming.," but "inside the White House there is still some surprise that Republicans currently aren't more interested in working with them on COVID relief. Not because they believe Republicans philosophically support the bill, but because there are clear political incentives for them to do so."
Biden and his aides have noted repeatedly that just because the budget reconciliation process would allow Democrats to pass much of the $1.9 trillion package without Republican support, Republicans can still vote for the package.
If Democrats go the budget reconciliation route, the 10 Senate Republicans can either "oppose the measure without being able to stop it or work to shape it, pledge to vote for it, and get credit for the goodies inside it," Stein reports. "Put another way: Republicans could vote for a bill that includes billions of dollars of help for states, massive amounts of cash for vaccine distribution, and $1,400 stimulus check for most Americans. Or they could oppose it on grounds that the price tag is too steep, or the minimum wage hike is too high, or the process too rushed." And if they do that, a senior administration official told Stein, "they'll get no credit" for those $1,400 checks.
Democrats only have the party-line option because they unexpectedly won both Senate seats in a Georgia runoff election, Stein notes, and one political "lesson from that episode is, quite bluntly: It's better to be on the side of giving people money." Trump understood that. Time will tell what Senate Republicans will decide. Peter Weber
Meet the latest inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Wednesday unveiled its 2021 inductees, and in the performer category, they were Tina Turner, Carole King, The Go-Go's, Jay-Z, Foo Fighters, and Todd Rundgren. Outside of the performer category, Kraftwerk, Charley Patton, and Gil Scott-Heron are set to receive the Early Influence Award, and LL Cool J, Billy Preston, and Randy Rhoads will receive the Musical Excellence Award. Executive Clarence Avant will also receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
This, the announcement noted, was the "most diverse list of inductees in the history of the organization."
A larger group of sixteen nominees for this year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was revealed back in February, but among the artists who didn't make the final list were Mary J. Blige and Dionne Warwick.
"This diverse class of talented Inductees reflects the Rock Hall's ongoing commitment to honor artists whose music created the sound of youth culture," Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation chair John Sykes said.
Three of the inductees, Rolling Stone notes, are actually being inducted into the Hall of Fame for a second time: Dave Grohl, Tina Turner, and Carole King. "It's very difficult to get inducted twice and we have three this year," Sykes noted to Rolling Stone.
This year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony is set to take place on Oct. 30. Brendan Morrow
The congressional "Big Four" — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — will meet with President Biden on Wednesday to discuss infrastructure. It is the first time the four congressional leaders have convened at the White House since October 2019, and "this meeting will have a different dynamic, to say the least," Politico says.
Biden has "good working relationships" with Pelosi and Schumer, and "a cordial rapport" with McConnell, Politico reports, "but McCarthy's relationship with the president has been rather ... frosty of late, and that's unlikely to change as he arrives at the White House after dethroning a member of his own leadership team" for pointing out that Biden is the legitimate president.
If Biden does manage to get a bipartisan infrastructure package, it will likely be because he struck a deal "with rank-and-file members, not the party leadership," though, Politico says, which is "probably why Biden has prioritized meeting with backbenchers since Inauguration Day."
In fact, Biden has already hosted Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and Tom Carper (D-Del.) this week for infrastructure talks, and he will sit down with a group of lawmakers led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the GOP's infrastructure liaison, on Thursday. Negotiating a bipartisan roads-and-bridges infrastructure deal is Biden's Plan A, but if that falls through, Plan B requires buy-in for a Democrats-only package from Manchin and Sinema, the Senate's swing votes.
Manchin said after meeting Biden on Monday they had "a great conversation" that covered a lot of ground, and mostly common ground. Biden "wants things to happen, I agree with him," Manchin said. "He understands. He's up on everything. He knows what's going on, trust me. He's well-versed in what's going on." Peter Weber
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) isn't backing down.
The Republican lawmaker, who has been critical of former President Donald Trump and his false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, "aims to become an even more influential political figure capable of weakening" Trump's "hold" on the Republican Party after a Wednesday vote to strip her of her House leadership position, The Washington Post reports.
Cheney is reportedly making plans for increased travel and media appearances to continue making the case that Trump shouldn't remain a presence in the Republican Party going forward and is unfit to again serve as president, and she's also "considering an expanded political operation that would allow her to endorse and financially support other Republican candidates" who feel the same way, the Post reports. She has reportedly told allies she plans to run for re-election, but also that she's aware this effort could potentially cost her her job.
Axios similarly reports that Cheney will "take her case to the public with speeches and other appearances" and is looking to "mold" a Republican Party "that looks more like a Cheney party and less like a Trump party."
Meanwhile, the Trump team is looking to get behind a candidate to challenge Cheney in her re-election bid, although the Post reports that advisers thus far "have struggled" to settle on a single candidate. For his part, Trump is very much "hoping to escalate" the feud, with plans to continue going after Cheney publicly, the Post reports.
These new details about Cheney's plans come after she delivered a defiant speech in Congress on Tuesday ahead of the Wednesday vote, telling her fellow lawmakers, "I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president's crusade to undermine our democracy." Brendan Morrow
The average price of gasoline in the U.S. rose to $3.008 a gallon Wednesday, the first time gas prices have topped $3 a gallon since 2014, Bloomberg News reports, citing AAA data. The proximate cause of the rise in gas prices is the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline due to a suspected Russian ransomware cyberattack. The pipeline carries 45 percent of all fuel to the East Coast, and news of the pipeline suspension, plus the resulting higher prices, led to gas shortages throughout the Southeast.
"This is our fault," Devin Singer of Wilmington, North Carolina, told The Washington Post. "This whole thing. The people's fault. Same thing with the whole toilet paper shortage. Everybody wants something and nobody has it, so we all freak out and then nobody can get it. It's mass hysteria." Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm essentially agreed with that analysis Tuesday evening and asked Americans to stop "hoarding gasoline."
But the rise in gas prices also coincided with a shift toward the summer driving season, when gas prices are higher, and concerns on Wall Street about rising inflation. Stock futures were slightly lower in the U.S. early Wednesday in anticipation of the Labor Department's monthly report on consumer prices. Peter Weber