Tag: President Biden

Republicans promote pandemic relief they voted against

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said it pained her to vote against the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

But in the weeks that followed, the first-term Republican issued a news release celebrating more than $3.7 million from the package that went to community health centers in her district as one of her “achievements.” She said she prided herself on “bringing federal funding to the district and back into the pockets of taxpayers.”

Malliotakis is far from alone.

Every Republican in Congress voted against the sweeping pandemic relief bill that President Joe Biden signed into lawthree months ago. But since the early spring votes, Republicans from New York and Indiana to Texas and Washington state have promoted elements of the legislation they fought to defeat. Continue reading.

Biden sparked outrage calling Jan. 6 ‘the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War’ — he was right

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In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Joe Biden called the January 6 insurrection “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” This is an apt comparison. The insurrection was the worst attack on our democracy since the shelling of Fort Sumter, because the president of the United States schemed to overturn a free and fair election and remain in power against the will of the people, a high crime for which he was impeached. It was pure luck that the insurgents didn’t assassinate the vice president for refusing the president’s order to steal the election.

Revisionists are already trying to memory-hole the full significance of the attack and cast it as a mere riot rather than as a coordinated assault on American democracy orchestrated by a sitting president. While the out-and-out hacks allege January 6 was a false-flag operation masterminded by BLM, the more intellectually respectable apologists are trying to muddy the waters with spurious historical objections. 

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Eli Lake tweeted: “The Capitol Hill riot was terrible. All of this is true. At the same time, what happened on January 6 is not the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Some perspective would be nice here.” Continue reading.

ABC Anchor Fact-Checks GOP Senator’s False Claim About Infrastructure Spending

ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz immediately corrected Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) on Sunday when he tossed out a falsehood on the Biden administration’s infrastructure proposal. In recent weeks, Republicans have repeatedly claimed that only six percent of the $2 trillion spending plan is devoted to “traditional” infrastructure, something that fact-checkers have found to be untrue.

With Republican senators unveiling a $548 billion counteroffer, Barrasso repeated the false claim on ABC’s This Week, claiming that while “only six percent of the money goes to bridges and things,” the rest of Biden’s plan is focused on “electric cars.” Raddatz immediately corrected the record.

“The six percent for roads and bridges figures you and other GOP leaders have cited has been fact-checked multiple times. The total amount for what you have called traditional infrastructure, roads, bridges, waterways, public transit is more than 25 percent of the Biden plan,” she noted. The Republican lawmaker, for his part, did not object to the fact check. Continue reading.

GOP ramps up attacks on Biden’s border wall freeze

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Republicans in Congress are increasingly lashing out at President Biden’s decision to freeze funding for the wall along the southern border.

GOP lawmakers are zeroing in on Biden’s proclamation from January, immediately upon taking office, in which he followed through on a campaign promise to halt construction of the wall, which had become the centerpiece of former President Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.

The White House on Jan. 20 said it would take 60 days to review the use of border wall funds. Continue reading.

Biden’s Big History Lesson For Republicans

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Embedded in Joe Biden’s first speech to Congress was a crucial lesson in our nation’s economic history that every American ought to understand. 

Explaining why he proposes to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the construction of new power grids, broadband internet connections and transportation systems, the president reminded us of the public investments that have “transformed America” into a prosperous world power. It is a lesson too often and too easily forgotten amid the incessant propaganda, imbibed by almost all of us from an early age, about the “magic of the free market,” the “dead hand of government” and various equally hoary conservative cliches.

Markets are marvelous, but government has been essential in growing and regulating the economy from the republic’s very beginning. Biden cited the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highway system, the construction of public schools and colleges that enabled universal education, the medical and scientific advances that sprang from the space program and defense industries – but his speech could well have continued for quite a while in that same vein. Political leaders from Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy all have promoted public investment in research, infrastructure and people as the prerequisites of progress, and sometimes even national survival. Continue reading.

Newsmax host attacks Biden for giving his wife a dandelion — and suggests it will ‘give everybody asthma’

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Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield lobbed a scientifically illiterate attack against President Joe Biden this week after the president was filmed giving a dandelion to first lady Jill Biden.

While walking to Marine One on Thursday, Biden bent down to the ground and picked up a dandelion seed head and handed it to his wife before the couple boarded the helicopter.

Stinchfield, however, thought it was inexplicable that the president would give his wife the dandelion, which he bizarrely said “hasn’t even blossomed into a flower yet.” Continue reading.

Biden’s Betting On Public Support To Push His Agenda. Polls Show His Big Spending Packages Have It.

In his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, President Biden spent a lot of time extolling the virtues of the three massive spending packages that have quickly become centerpieces of his agenda: the $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, a $2 trillion infrastructure bill and a $1.8 trillion plan for child care, universal prekindergarten and more.

The first part of Biden’s agenda, his coronavirus stimulus package, has consistently garnered high approval numbers— both when it was first being considered and when it was enacted last month. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll(conducted April 18-21) has found that it’s still popular: 65 percent of Americans support it, and just 31 percent oppose it.

But what about the other two plans, which have yet to make it through Congress? Continue reading.

How Biden’s paid leave proposal would benefit workers, their families and their employers too

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1. How much of a change would this be?

Federal law currently guarantees many employed Americans the right to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave to care for family members through the Family and Medical Leave Act. Because of eligibility restrictions, less than half of all U.S. workerscan technically access this benefit. Even fewer of those who are eligible can afford to take advantage of it.

The U.S. is truly exceptional in this regard.

Employed women get paid maternity leave in almost every nation in the world. Many countries also provide workers with paid leave to care for their ailing parents, partners or other relatives who need care, which is what the Biden administration is proposing. Continue reading.

Biden makes case for sweeping change

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President Biden on Wednesday made the case for sweeping government action in an address to a sparsely populated joint session of Congress like no other in U.S. history.

Speaking on the 99th day of his presidency in a chamber overrun by insurrectionists just more than three months ago, Biden laid out an ambitious legislative agenda before an audience of lawmakers severely limited by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Biden used his address to tout his efforts to get the nation back to normal after the pandemic and the divisive presidency of Donald Trump. He made no direct mention of his predecessor, but argued those present had a responsibility to “prove democracy still works and our government still works and we can deliver for our people.” Continue reading.

Apples to apples, the Senate GOP infrastructure proposal is smaller than it appears

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“These figures are what you would consider regular appropriations-plus. So it’s baseline-plus.”

—Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), remarks at a news conference, April 22

The headlines were almost all universally the same — some variation of “GOP Counters Biden With $568 Billion Infrastructure Plan.” Just about every news report suggested that the headline-number offered for the Senate Republican plan was comparable to President Biden’s $2.2 trillion infrastructure plan.

But toward the end of the news conference announcing the Republican counteroffer, Capito made the comment above. She added, “When you hear the $115 billion [Biden is] dedicating to roads, that’s in addition. So we are going to have to square the figures for you better.”

Long ago, The Fact Checker used to be a federal budget reporter. From experience, we learned that the numbers announced at news conferences often needed to be scrubbed carefully. Capito’s reference to “baseline-plus” made our ears perk up a bit. Continue reading.