Joe Biden 20 , CD3 DFL

Biden urges national unity to reach normalcy

President Biden on Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of pandemic restrictions, urging Americans to come together and do their part to remain vigilant against the coronavirus in order to return to a semblance of normalcy by summer.

In his first prime-time address as president, Biden made an emotional appeal to Americans who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 and those grappling with economic and personal hardships after a year of isolation.

The president balanced his look back at the grim year by offering a sense of optimism. He outlined steps his administration is taking to ramp up vaccine distribution, including a call for states to make all adults eligible to receive a shot by May 1. Continue reading.

Fox News buried in mockery for griping about Biden’s lack of press conferences: ‘Call me when he golfs every weekend’

Fox News was hit with a round of mockery for making a big deal out of President Joe Biden going 50 days into his administration without a press conference.

The president conducted a town hall in mid-February to discuss the coronavirus pandemic and vaccination efforts, but he hasn’t conducted a solo news conference with reporters.

Social media users, however, quickly reminded Fox News of former president Donald Trump and his administration’s failures. Continue reading.

Poll: Americans Blame Republicans, Not Biden, For Partisan Divide On Relief

Congressional Republicans’ effort to pin blame for the lack of bipartisanship over the American Rescue Plan on President Joe Biden has failed badly.

A Pew Research Center poll released on Tuesday found that 57 percent of Americans believe the Biden administration made a “good faith effort” to work with Republicans on the mammoth pandemic relief legislation. Forty percent said they did not believe the administration had made such an effort.

Among Democrats, the number of those polled who answered yes to the question was unsurprisingly high — 87 percent. Among Republicans, that figure was much lower, at just 23 percent. Continue reading.

Here’s what’s in the $1.9T COVID-19 relief package

President Biden is on the precipice of the biggest legislative win so far in his time in office: the signing of a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package the House is expected to approve Wednesday.

The package is highlighted by the $1,400 direct payments to be sent to millions of households, an extension of unemployment benefits and funding for vaccine distribution.

But it includes much more than those provisions. Here’s a look at what else is in the bill. Continue reading.

While Fox And Trump Make Stupid Noises, Biden Is Busy Governing

So it turns out that the whole time Sleepy Joe Biden was hiding in the basement, he was working on a plan to render congressional Republicans irrelevant. Which, for the foreseeable future, they certainly are.

If you don’t remember—why should you?—the GOP literally had no party platform in 2020. It was Trump, Trump, Trump. A cult of personality. What they didn’t count on was a strong majority of Americans being all Trumped-out. And so now they’ve got nothing to talk about.

Except, oh yes, the budget deficit. A deficit that literally tripled on Trump’s watch, leading many to doubt that it was ever such a terrible threat to begin with. Washington Republicans who stood quiet as deficits soared over the past four years are donning green eyeshades and calling themselves “fiscal conservatives” again. Continue reading.

DFL Party Statement on President Biden Signing the American Rescue Plan Into Law

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Today, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, his $1.9 trillion COVID relief and stimulus bill, into law. The wide-ranging and incredibly popular bill contains numerous important measures to combatting COVID-19 and helping the American people build back better from the pandemic, including:

$1,400 relief checks for most Americans
Extended unemployment insurance of $300 per week through early September
Child tax credits of up to $3,600
More than $15 billion for vaccine distribution
Roughly $50 billion for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing
$130 billion to safely reopen schools
$350 billion in state and local aid

Every DFL member of Congress voted in favor of the American Rescue Plan and every Minnesota Republican voted against it. Republican opposition comes despite the bill’s tremendous popularity among voters across the political spectrum – 75% of American voters and 59% of Republican voters approve of the American Rescue Plan – and despite the roughly $1 billion in local government aid the bill will bring to Minnesota’s Republican-controlled congressional districts.

White House: President Biden’s name will not appear on $1,400 stimulus payments

The checks are a key part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan the House is expected to vote on Wednesday.

The White House said Tuesday that President Biden’s name would not appear on the $1,400 stimulus payments set to be sent out to millions of American families as part of the administration’s relief package, a reversal from the precedent set under President Trump.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that the payments approved under Biden would instead by signed by a career official at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, an office within the Department of Treasury. The House is expected to vote on the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan as soon as Wednesday, putting it on course to be signed into law by Biden next week.

The decision marks a reversal from the Trump administration. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin included Trump’s signature on the memo line of the payments approved in March last year, as well as a gushing letter signed by Trump taking credit for the benefit. Continue reading.

Early in Biden’s presidency, GOP shows the places they’ll go

If you listened to the Republican Party over the past week, it might have been easy to think that the core planks of its platform were defending a deceased children’s author, a decades-old children’s toy — and a subspecies of human that went extinct 40,000 years ago.

That’s because GOP leaders have been vociferously protesting a decision to stop publishing Dr. Seuss books that include racially stereotyped images; the removal of “Mr.” from the Mr. Potato Head brand; and President Biden’s characterization of ending mask mandates as “Neanderthal thinking.”

Amid debate over one of the most expensive stimulus packages in American history and turmoil over the global pandemic, many Republicans have been focused on what they view as “cancel culture” run amok. Continue reading.

Biden turns focus to next priority with infrastructure talks

President Biden is starting to look beyond coronavirus relief to his next legislative fight, preparing to lay out a recovery package that makes significant investments in rebuilding U.S. infrastructure.

Biden met with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and a bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for over an hour on Thursday afternoon, his second bipartisan meeting with the group over the past month.

The president is expected to lay out his “Build Back Better” recovery plan sometime after the Senate passes its $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, which the chamber took up on Thursday and could pass by the weekend. While the White House has been mum on details of the recovery plan, it’s likely to at least partly mirror the $2 trillion infrastructure and climate proposal he laid out on the campaign trail and include a hefty investment in infrastructure to spur job creation. Continue reading.

GOP pulling out all the stops to delay COVID-19 package

Senate Republicans are taking on a risky strategy to use all the procedural tactics at their disposal to delay President Biden’s popular $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package as long as possible in hopes that they can turn public opinion against the legislation.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a staunch ally of former President Trump, is leading the resistance effort and says he is trying to recruit about a dozen Republican colleagues to delay final passage of the legislation until Saturday or Sunday.

Johnson told colleagues Wednesday that he would force the Senate clerks to read the entirety of Senate Democrats’ substitute relief bill, which is expected to span more than 600 pages, something that will delay the floor debate and amendments by 10 hours. Continue reading.

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