Live Updates: Democrats Begin to Lay Groundwork for Unilateral Infrastructure Plan
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Even as the White House and a bipartisan group of senators reach for a compromise infrastructure plan, top Senate Democrats have begun a parallel effort to press forward with their own ambitious public works package that would include tax increases on corporations and wealthy individuals, as well as programs under the rubric of “human infrastructure” to combat climate change and support caregiving.
Republicans uniformly oppose such measures, so advancing them would require using the fast-track budget process known as reconciliation, which shields fiscal measures from filibusters, allowing them to pass with a simple majority vote.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, is set to meet on Wednesday with the 11 Democrats on the Budget Committee to discuss starting the reconciliation process, according to a senior Democratic aide who disclosed the plans on the condition of anonymity.
And committee staff members have already begun work on the legislation needed to trigger the process.
“There are members with very justified views, whatever you can do bipartisan, we should try,” Mr. Schumer said at a news conference on Tuesday, adding that he hoped to advance both a bipartisan infrastructure proposal and the budget blueprint in July. “But alongside that is the view that that won’t be enough.”
Members of the bipartisan group, five Republicans and five Democrats, have briefed their colleagues on the blueprint for their emerging proposal, which is expected to total about $1.2 trillion over eight years — roughly half in new spending — for roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure. But the plan has drawn fire from liberal Democrats, who see it as inadequate and misguided, and some have openly urged that the talks be abandoned in favor of legislation that better reflects President Biden’s priorities.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a member of House Democratic leadership, said of Republicans, “If they choose the obstruction pathway, then we’re prepared to do what is necessary” to pass Mr. Biden’s plan.
Steve Ricchetti, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, privately told House Democrats on Tuesday that the White House would give the bipartisan talks at least another week before assessing the likelihood of a deal.
Using reconciliation would require nearly every House Democrat and all 50 senators who caucus with Democrats to remain united, and some liberal lawmakers worry that any bipartisan deal could sap away necessary votes.
Several Republicans, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, have said they are open to a bipartisan deal and are putting the onus on Democrats to accept the kind of concessions that would be necessary to seal one — the very outcome that many progressives dread.
“Put me down as listening and hopeful,” Mr. McConnell said.
Democrats have little room to maneuver, with razor-thin margins in both chambers. On Tuesday, Mr. Schumer postponed votes to advance and confirm the director of the Office of Personnel Management, citing the absence of two Democrats dealing with family illness.
The Senate on Tuesday passed a bill to recognize Juneteenth, which commemorates the emancipation of slaves in the United States, as a federal holiday.
Many states have recognized Juneteenth for decades, but only some observe it as an official holiday. The holiday is already celebrated in 47 states and the District of Columbia. In the wake of protests against police brutality last year, dozens of companies moved to give employees the day off for Juneteenth, and the push for federal recognition of the day as a paid holiday gained new momentum.
I just put a bill on the floor of the Senate from @SenMarkey and @SenTinaSmith to make #Juneteenth a federal holiday.
It passed the Senate!
Next up: It should pass the House. Then to President Biden’s desk for signature.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 15, 2021
The day, which is also known as Emancipation Day, recalls June 19, 1865, when Gordon Granger, a Union general, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African-Americans that the Civil War had ended and that they had been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The proclamation ended slavery only in states that had seceded; an end to slavery in the entire country waited until December 1865, when the 13th Amendment was adopted into the Constitution.
Texas was the first state to observe Juneteenth as an official holiday, starting in 1980.
BREAKING: The Senate just unanimously passed #S475 to establish Juneteenth National Independence Day (June 19) as a legal public holiday.
Juneteenth is one step closer to becoming a federal holiday.
— The Leadership Conference (@civilrightsorg) June 15, 2021
The latest effort to commemorate the day as a federal holiday came through a bill which the Senate passed unanimously on Tuesday. It heads to the House next. If it becomes law, it would be the 11th national holiday recognized annually by the federal government.
Vice President Kamala Harris threw a private dinner party at the Naval Observatory on Tuesday night for the 16 Democratic and eight Republican women serving as U.S. senators, a gathering that came at a tense moment in negotiations on a number of the Biden administration’s biggest ambitions.
The bipartisan dinner was the first social event Ms. Harris had hosted since coming into office five months ago — her move to the official vice-presidential residence was delayed for three months because of renovations — and the outreach to her former Senate colleagues came as Ms. Harris has taken the lead on the administration’s push to pass voting rights legislation.
All 24 women in the Senate were invited, according to an administration official. All but three — Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi; Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming; and Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona — attended.
Photos posted online after the event by Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, showed about 20 of the senators seated together.
Ms. Stabenow posted a photo that showed the vice president giving a toast to the group, flanked by Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, and Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington. She also shared a photo of cheese puffs that she said Ms. Harris, known for her love of cooking, made from scratch for the group.
Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, was scheduled to appear on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News directly after the dinner to give viewers an “inside look at the event,” Mr. Hannity tweeted.
With just six weeks left before Congress’s August recess, the Biden agenda appears to be stalled while Republicans try to derail the president’s economic plans and delay any Democratic changes past the point where they can be implemented before the 2022 elections.
There are intraparty fights to deal with, as well. Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, remains opposed to the voting rights legislation that Ms. Harris is championing for the administration and to ending the Senate filibuster, which could be used to derail Biden priorities.
Two Democrats invited to the dinner, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, are part of a bipartisan group of senators that is negotiating an alternative to the president’s infrastructure plan that does not address key Democratic priorities, like climate change. The plan does not have the support of a majority of Republicans, and progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, have already come out against it.
Ms. Harris has not been a key player in infrastructure negotiations and was not known for her close relationships with colleagues on Capitol Hill during her four years in the Senate, a chunk of which she spent running for president.
But as vice president — and the tiebreaking vote in the evenly divided Senate — she has taken on some of the administration’s most difficult goals. Besides the voting rights push, Ms. Harris has also been tasked with stemming the flow of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border by addressing the root causes in countries like Guatemala that push migrants north.
Jared Kushner has a book deal, joining former White House officials like Kellyanne Conway and Mike Pence who are also writing books.
But others from the Trump administration have had a tougher time with mainstream publishers. Those companies have struggled to find a balance between promoting a range of voices — including conservative authors who can sell a lot of copies — and heeding their employees, readers and authors who consider it morally unacceptable to publish them.
Now there is a new publishing company, All Seasons Press, that wants those conservative authors and is pitching itself as an alternative to mainstream houses.
“The company is open to welcoming those authors who are being attacked, bullied, banned from social media, and, in some cases, outright rejected by politically correct publishers,” it said in a news release on Tuesday.
All Seasons is staking out territory that some mainstream publishers are wary to venture into, by courting former Trump officials who staunchly supported the president through the bitter end of his administration, including those who echoed the president’s false claims that the election was rigged. The company plans to release a book in the fall by Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, and another by Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s former trade adviser. Its founding was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
All Seasons is led by Kate Hartson and Louise Burke, both of whom ran conservative imprints at major publishers.
Ms. Burke, the publisher of the new company, was previously the publisher of Threshold Editions at Simon & Schuster, where the authors she worked with included Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and former President Donald J. Trump. Ms. Hartson, the editor in chief of All Seasons, spent 10 years at Center Street, a Hachette imprint that published Donald Trump Jr., Senator Rand Paul, Newt Gingrich and Jeanine Pirro. Hachette dismissed Ms. Hartson earlier this year.
Whether a Trump memoir is coming remains a hot topic in publishing. The former president poses a significant challenge to many book executives, who have said they would be reluctant to work with him because of the potential for a revolt by their employees and the accuracy concerns his words would raise.
Mr. Trump said in a statement last week that he had turned down two book deals, but offered no proof. Ms. Hartson and Ms. Burke said that they “would be honored to publish him.”
A federal judge in Louisiana has blocked the Biden administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, in the first major legal roadblock for President Biden’s quest to cut fossil fuel pollution and conserve public lands.
Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted an injunction on Tuesday against the administration, pending the outcome of a separate legal challenge led by Jeff Landry, the Republican attorney general of Louisiana.
Mr. Landry and attorneys general from 12 other states, all Republicans, sued to lift a White House executive order issued in January that temporarily halted new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters.
Mr. Biden, who has made climate action central to his agenda, signed the order during his first week in office, a controversial act that he said would provide time to review leasing.
Judge Doughty ruled that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and her agency “are hereby enjoined and restrained from implementing the pause of new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters” until the states’ legal case against the administration is decided.
He wrote that the pause on new leasing should end nationwide and noted that such sweeping preliminary injunctions against federal actions were exceedingly rare. But he concluded that the 13 states had demonstrated that their economies could be irreparably harmed by the pause on drilling.
The 13 states have argued that the pause was illegal because it was issued without a formal public comment period. Joining Louisiana were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
After spending much of his first trip abroad working to rebuild and strengthen America’s alliances in Europe, President Biden is meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Wednesday in a summit freighted with history and fraught with new challenges.
Mr. Putin, who flew in from Sochi, Russia, arrived first for the meeting, which is taking place in an 18th-century Swiss villa perched above Lake Geneva. A short time later, Mr. Biden’s motorcade pulled up — Russian, American and Swiss flags waving in the breeze under a blue sky — with the United States entourage.
The two leaders were greeted by President Guy Parmelin of Switzerland, who welcomed them to Geneva, “the city of peace.”
“I wish you both presidents a fruitful dialogue in the interest of your two countries and the world,” he said.
Mr. Biden turned to Mr. Putin, holding out his hand; Mr. Putin took a step toward him and shook it. They then moved into an ornate library, where both men sat stone-faced and mostly in silence as members of the news media jostled to get into the room.
“I would like to thank you for the initiative to meet today,” Mr. Putin told Mr. Biden. “Still, U.S.-Russian relations have accumulated a lot of issues that require a meeting at the highest level, and I hope that our meeting will be productive.”
Mr. Biden said a few words before the camera crews were ushered out and the leaders moved into private sessions that could stretch for five hours. The two sides will engage in difficult topics ranging from military threats to human rights concerns.
During the Cold War, the prospect of nuclear annihilation led to historic treaties and a framework that kept the world from blowing itself up. At this meeting, for the first time, cyberweapons — with their own huge potential to wreak havoc — are at the center of the agenda.
While there is no expectation that the two sides will agree on formal rules to navigate the digital landscape, both Washington and Moscow have talked about a desire for stability. Mr. Biden is expected to single out the rising scourge of ransomware, much of it emanating from Russia, although Mr. Putin is expected to deny having anything to do with it.
The White House has said that Mr. Biden will also raise the issues of Mr. Putin’s repression of his domestic political opposition, Moscow’s aggression toward Ukraine and foreign election interference.
The Kremlin has said that there are areas of common ground, like climate change, where the two sides can find agreement. And for Mr. Putin, the symbolism of the summit itself is important to demonstrate the respect he seeks on the world stage.
Henry Kissinger once said that Americans vacillated between despair and euphoria in their view of the Soviet Union, and the same could be said of Russia under Mr. Putin, who has spent the past two decades tightening his grip on power.
As the two leaders sit down in the Swiss villa, no meals will be served during hours of discussions, and there is little chance of euphoria.
The optimism expressed by President George W. Bush after a 2001 summit in Slovenia, where he said he was “able to get a sense of his soul” and found Mr. Putin “trustworthy,” faded long ago.
Mr. Biden began his trip a week ago in Britain saying that the United States would respond in a “robust and meaningful way” to what he called “harmful activities” conducted by Mr. Putin. The Russian leader, whose advisers have spoken of a new Cold War, told NBC News on Friday that it was a “relationship that has deteriorated to its lowest point in recent years.”
It is the first summit meeting since President Donald J. Trump flew to Helsinki to meet Mr. Putin in 2018 and declared at a joint news conference that he trusted the word of the Russian leader as much as his own intelligence agencies when it came to election interference.
Mr. Putin said Mr. Biden was “radically different” from Mr. Trump, calling him a “career man.”
Mr. Biden has argued that a new existential battle is underway between democracy and autocracy, and with Mr. Putin on the vanguard of the autocrats, the American leader faced criticism from some quarters for even holding the summit.
“The bottom line,” Mr. Biden said in a news conference before the meeting, “is that I think the best way to deal with this is for he and I to meet.”
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen will urge lawmakers to pass President Biden’s $4 trillion jobs and infrastructure plans on Wednesday, warning that the United States must invest to combat “destructive forces” that are holding back millions of Americans from prosperity.
Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, Ms. Yellen will make the case that it is a critical time to deploy “ambitious fiscal policy” to reshape the economy in the aftermath of the pandemic. She will point to income and racial inequality, declining labor force participation and climate change as festering economic problems that need to be addressed.
“We need to make these investments at some point, and now is fiscally the most strategic time to make them,” Ms. Yellen will say, according to her prepared remarks.
The hearing, which is focused on Mr. Biden’s budget proposal, comes as the White House is negotiating with lawmakers in Congress over how to move forward with infrastructure legislation. Mr. Biden has expressed a willingness to narrow the scope of his plan to win support from some Republicans, but Democrats are also considering moving ahead with legislation on their own if talks break down.
Ms. Yellen will say that Mr. Biden’s plans are fiscally responsible and that the investments in the economy will be paid for with an overhaul of the tax code. Mr. Biden’s tax proposals would raise taxes on the wealthy and on big companies, but he has promised not to increase taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year.
The Treasury secretary will tell lawmakers that the government needs to make these investments in expanding child care and modernizing infrastructure because the private sector is not enough on its own to train workers or reduce carbon emissions.
“We need to remedy this lack of investment,” Ms. Yellen will say.
Republicans have been resistant to most of Mr. Biden’s proposals, arguing that such robust spending threatens to overheat an economy at a time when deficits are growing and inflation is on the rise.
Ms. Yellen will argue on Wednesday that because interest rates are so low, this is the best time to spend.
“We expect the cost of federal debt payments will remain well below historical levels through the coming decade,” she will say. “We have a window to invest in ourselves.”