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Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia at the US Capitol in June 2021. Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

Congress still can't agree on a solution to save the country from a catastrophic default that could happen in less than a month, but there are some paths to avoid that outcome and avoid the congressional drama that comes with it.

But Democrats aren't so sure a debt ceiling solution is viable outside of Congress.

Since January, both parties have been sparring over the best approach to raise the debt ceiling and ensure the US can pay its bills before the country defaults, which Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said could happen as early as June 1.

While Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy recently passed a bill that would raise the debt ceiling through March 2024, it was accompanied by over $4.5 trillion in spending cuts. President Joe Biden and Democrats have been adamant that raising the debt ceiling should be a bipartisan and clean increase, with no cuts attached, and Biden vowed to veto McCarthy's bill should it make it to his desk.

Biden even met with McCarthy and other top congressional leaders on Monday to discuss raising the debt ceiling, but McCarthy emerged from the meeting telling reporters that there was not "any new movement" on the issue.

This means that there is a severe time crunch for Congress to come to an agreement in the next few weeks, or else the country will hurdle into an unprecedented and devastating default. But Congress isn't necessarily required to avoid that outcome.

As Insider has previously reported, there are a few options on the table to get around the debt ceiling crisis, like minting a $1 trillion platinum coin or invoking a clause in the 14th amendment. The coin takes an advantage of an obscure law that would allow the Treasury to deposit aplatinum coin of any denomination into the Federal Reserve, allowing the country to effectively pay its debts. The 14th amendment, on the other hand, contains a clause that could declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional and get rid of it forever.

With a default inching closer by the day, those two options have been increasingly floated among lawmakers but some of them aren't so sure they would solve the problem.

Insider asked some Democratic senators what they thought of minting a coin or using the 14th amendment to get around the debt ceiling crisis. None of them were thrilled with the ideas.

"It would be better if Congress did the job and didn't make the president try something that hasn't been done before," Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said of the 14th amendment. "I've heard legal arguments on both sides, but the right answer is for Congress just to live up to its responsibilities."

Sen. Ron Wyden, top lawmaker on the Senate Finance Committee, said that when it comes to the 14th amendment, "I'm not there yet. Clearly, it keeps coming at us with the prospect of default."

Minting a coin had an even less enthusiastic response. On going that route, Kaine said that he "would not recommend it and I have never heard that he's considered it," referring to Biden. Montana Sen. Jon Tester also told reporters last week that considering the platinum coin is "beyond my paygrade and my mental capacity to figure out how we can make a coin that gets us beyond this, but what the hell."

The Democrats Insider spoke to broadly seemed to believe that raising the debt ceiling and avoiding a default has been, and should continue to be, Congress' job.

"I think we should do our job," Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told Insider. "I think we should not default on our debt. Congress should do the job that we've, without exception up until this point, done."

Biden and Yellen have also expressed concerns with a debt ceiling solution that does not involve Congress. After meeting with lawmakers on Tuesday to discuss the issue, Biden told reporters that he has been "considering" the 14th amendment to get around the debt ceiling, "but the problem is it would have to be litigated."

He added that he doesn't think the 14th amendment "solves our problem now. I think that only solves your problem once the court has ruled that it does apply for future endeavors."

Yellen also said at a new conference in Japan on Wednesday that "it's legally questionable whether or not that's a viable strategy," referring to the 14th amendment. Even McCarthy opposed going that route, telling reporters on Tuesday that "if you're the leader of the free world, you're the only president, and you're going to go to the 14th amendment to look at something like that, I would think you're kind of a failure of working with people across the sides of the aisle or working with your own party to get something done."

Biden is set to meet with the top four congressional leaders again on Friday, and until then, Democrats are still maintaining that both sides of the aisle should come together to reach a solution.

"I think that default would be catastrophic for the US and the world economy and it is deeply irresponsible to threaten financial cataclysm as a legislative tactic," Georgia Sen. Jon Ossof told Insider.

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Debt ceiling crisis: Democrats unsure of using $1 trillion coin, 14th amendment - Business Insider

Bidens industrial and climate policies are crudely protectionist; they have provoked mass outrage from foreign governments. Biden joins Donald Trump in undermining the open trade regime that their predecessors from both parties worked for decades to build.

So says Dylan Matthews of Vox. To help make the case, Matthews relies on Kimberly Clausing, a former Treasury official, now out of government and teaching at UCLA Law School.

The conversation promotes and echoes a 2019 book by Clausing, Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital, which was also blurbed by Larry Summers. At Treasury, where she was a senior economist, Clausing did good work on global tax evasion, but was known as a traditionalist on trade.

More from Robert Kuttner

The Matthews-Clausing dialogue hauls out discredited clichs about the efficiency of free trade, as well as misrepresenting the continuity between Bidens policies and Trumps.

Trump levied 25 percent across-the-board tariffs on most Chinese exports, on the ground that the entire Chinese economic system was riddled with subsidies, dumping, and cheap state-directed capital.

This sensible policy, created by Trumps one good appointee, U.S. trade rep Robert Lighthizer, was bundled with Trumps own ugly nativism. Biden has kept the tariffs but pursued a much more nuanced set of other policies stripped of the China-bashing.

Both Matthews and Clausing gloss over the fact that Chinas economic system is anything but free-market, and thus makes a mockery of the supposed free-trade regime that they fault Biden for not defending. Instead, they both blame the U.S. for adding to bilateral tensions. Clausing calls on the U.S. to join the thoroughly discredited Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was blocked by Congress as a series of sweetheart corporate deals masquerading as China policy.

The dialogue also uses one straw man after another. I wonder if the Buy America stuff will even work on its own terms, says Matthews. Maybe we do bring manufacturing back, but we dont bring jobs because its a highly automated industry now.

Clausing heartily agrees. Its kind of a fools errand to think that youre going to get a lot of manufacturing jobs out of all this CHIPS money and all this steel protection.

But the point of CHIPS was never to generate massive numbers of jobs but to get the U.S. back in the game in cutting-edge technology. And in fact, when all the infrastructure, construction, and production jobs are added up, the job gains will likely be in the millions.

Last month, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan delivered a masterful speech disavowing the neoliberal set of ideas that championed tax cutting and deregulation, privatization over public action, and trade liberalization as an end in itself.

But the neoliberal zombies live on, fighting a rearguard action to resurrect the strategy of corporate globalismthat so clearly abandoned Americas working families, enriched billionaires, and paved the way for Trump.

Originally posted here:
Vox and the Undertow of Corporate Democrats - The American Prospect

The move marks an early attempt to gain the high ground after Republicans last year seized on the states bail laws as evidence Democrats are weak on crime, fueling embarrassing losses for House Democrats in New York. The governors new strategy could shape next years House races, and maybe even control of Congress. But it could also prove a tough and complicated sell to voters.

The new law will give judges greater authority to decide whether an individual can be held on bail. The tweaks mark, to the dismay of liberals, a third round of rollbacks of progressive bail laws Democrats passed in 2019.

Hochuls team realized too late in the midterm cycle that public safety and the economy not abortion rights were animating New York voters. The result was the closest governors race since 1994, and Democrats were swept out of all four House seats on Long Island, as well as battleground races in the Hudson Valley.

The blame landed squarely on New York Democrats and especially Hochul, a messaging mishap that even former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said state leaders should have recognized earlier.

Last year's race for governor in New York between Republican Lee Zeldin and Democrat Kathy Hochul focused heavily on the state's bail laws and crime, helping Republicans up and down the ballot.|Mary Altaffer/AP Photo

Former GOP Rep. Lee Zeldins gubernatorial campaign focused on rising crime rates in big New York cities, and he consistently blamed the bail laws for permitting dangerous individuals to walk free.

Democrats attempted to argue that there is little evidence linking crime spikes to New Yorks bail laws and pointed to larger, national crime trends that were influenced by the pandemic. But Zeldin and GOP House candidates successfully used the issue to gain ground in the critical New York City suburbs.

Hochul held up the state budget for nine days last year to get a handful of bail changes. But then she didnt effectively promote the tougher laws during the campaign.

She is trying not to make the same mistake twice.

So Hochuls budget, the first of her first full term, revolved around addressing those critiques; she delayed budget negotiations for weeks and sacrificed a deal on her other major initiatives, like a broad housing plan she wanted, in order to push reluctant Democrats to once again open talks on bail. She was backed up by Adams.

I say over and over again that there are many rivers that feed the sea of violence, and we have to dam each river, and we damned one during this process, Adams said Wednesday on WABC Radio.

The ultimate deal still left many unhappy. It did not go as far as Republicans, some moderates and even Adams wanted. Hochul has resisted backing a dangerousness standard for even greater judicial discretion that has been used by other states that have successfully overhauled bail laws.

The governor is going to claim a win for public safety even though the law expressly prohibits judges from taking a defendants dangerousness into account during the pretrial process, Albany-area Republican Sen. Jake Ashby said in a statement during budget votes last week. If she tries to spin that as judicial discretion, she will be embracing a level of shamelessness previously reserved only for her predecessor.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, too, brushed off the changes as inconsequential in the states fight against crime during his podcast Thursday. Cuomo, a Democrat who cruised to three terms before resigning in 2021 over sexual harassment allegations, said he personally would have sought a broader criminal justice deal.

I dont think anyone won anything. The governor loses, Cuomo said. The answer was not bail reform.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (center) join New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) for state budget-related announcements.|Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office

The changes, for example, did not include adjustments to discovery laws measures also passed in 2019 outlining how and when prosecutors hand over case material despite pushes from progressive prosecutors who say those laws also need to be fixed to prevent cases from being tossed on technical grounds.

Republicans wont be letting up on attacking Democrats on crime, state GOP chair Ed Cox said. Democrats are not going to be able to hide on this issue in 2024 when all 26 House seats will be on the ballot, he said.

Kathy Hochul continues to have her head in the sand on crime, he said in a statement. The changes made in her budget are just window dressing.

The amendments go too far for the Legislatures progressive caucuses, which say such adjustment could lead to more poor, mostly minority suspects being held on bail the reason the laws were changed in the first place.

Hochul struggled to build progressive enthusiasm for her candidacy last year, and the new changes may not help her do so in the future.

The governors effort to decimate bail wasnt driven by facts. It was driven by fear mongering, headlines, political expediency and it was reacting to a far-right strategy to weaponize racism, Assemblymember Latrice Walker (D-Brooklyn) said during the budget debate.

They is also a policy gamble. Researchers have said Hochuls measures are not the strongest way to address specific issues of recidivism and the broader issue of public safety.

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law was disappointed by the Legislatures continued focus on revising bail reform to the exclusion of other policies that can make our communities safer, senior counsel Ames Grawert said in a statement.

In response, Hochul said the budget also includes more money for gun violence prevention, mental health support and pay bumps for public defenders.

Now shell have to better sell her plan to skeptical voters.

Democrats will be able to say they took significant steps toward improving the safety of New Yorkers, while not going back on reforms that were necessary, Hochul told reporters.

And we have to show that we struck the right balance.

Link:
New York Democrats lost the crime debate. They want a redo. - POLITICO

Arrested DeSantis protesters still singing as they get booked

The arrested DeSantis protesters were booked on Wednesday, May 3, 2023, in the Cabinet Meeting Room on the floor below the governor's office. They still sang.

Douglas Soule, USA TODAY NETWORK FLORIDA

These are dark times for Florida Democrats in the Legislature.

The just completed 2023 session saw them consistently lose debates as Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican majority "seized the moment" and passed a culture-war laden agenda that expanded gun rights, restricted access to abortion, and banned diversity efforts in public education among other things.The session also saw mass arrests from two separate protests, when demonstrators refused orders to vacate the premises.

Elements of DeSantis's legislative blueprint sailed through House and Senate committee meetings on 15-5 and 5-3 votes as the GOP consistently rolled over the outnumbered Democrats.

Registered Democratic voters stayed on the sidelines last November, with more than half not casting a ballot.

Sine Die: Florida Legislature's tough-edged session ends with budget, tax breaks and cultural scars

Analysis: DeSantis gets conservative wish list to campaign for president. Will it matter?

Winners and losers: DeSantis-dominated legislative session: The priorities that sailed, struggled and sank

That enabled DeSantis to score a 19-point reelection victory and become the big man on the Capitol Campus - backed by two-third Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Thursday, DeSantis said the GOP went on a historic run that has never been seen before in this states history, as he set the stage for a potential presidential bid.

House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa knew election night when Democrats sank deep into superminority status they would hold little or no influence at the state capitol.

At the time, she told Tampa public radio her fear was that Democratic voices would be shut out of the process in Tallahassee.

That is what happened this session, she said Thursday.

We saw the Republican supermajority bend to the will of the governor. I think that he and the Republicans in the legislature felt very emboldened, so much so that they passed bill after bill that's unpopular with the people, said Driskell.

A University of North Florida poll found more than 77% of respondents opposed the Legislatures decision to allow permit less carry of firearms, and 75% opposed to the six-week ban on abortion.

Superminority status is a math problem; too few votes to block, delay, or mitigate the majorities initiatives, according to Charles Zelden, political science professor at Nova Southeastern University.

Rhetoric is all you have at that point because you cant shape the outcome of policy, said Zelden.

The best you can do is to make good PR. Sellan alternative vision to the public and hope that will help in the next election cycle, said Zelden.

Democrats say they did not intentionally craft viral moments in legislative debate but their assertions, and questions produced some memorable ones that may become decisive talking points in a 2024 election featuring Florida's head of state.

Rep. Randy Fine, R-Brevard said, damn right, about the possibility of erasing Drag Queens if it meant protecting children.

Sen. Jay Collins, R-Tampa, argued Second Amendment rights were more important than protecting children from gun violence.

Rep. Jeff Holcomb, R-Spring Hill, defended support of a gay ban in the military with the conclusion, Our terrorist enemies hate homosexuals more than we do.

And Rep. Webster Barnaby, R-Deltona, compared transgender people to demons.

Harsh words: Florida legislator compares transgender people to 'demons and imps' as bathroom bill passes

Targeting trans: What can I do if I'm a transgender person living in Florida? State erasing trans options

I wish I could take credit for that, said Driskell in a discussion of a series of statements Republicans made that were shared widely on social media and picked up by national news outlets.

They pushed and rammed through all those things and were their worst enemy. It's starting to have adverse consequences for Ron DeSantis, and I hope its reflected at the ballot box in 2024, said Driskell.

It wasnt all bad news in 2023 for Driskell and the Democrats.

Lawmakers approved a $117 billion state budget that included many local spending projects and initiatives submitted by Democrats.

Driskell was able to secure $5 million for a sickle cell disease care program and approval of a historical cemetery program to locate, identify, and maintain abandoned cemeteries.

Rep. Allison Tant, D-Tallahassee, landed a $1.9 million check to refurbish a shelter for theBig Bend Homeless Coalition, and $720,000 for a special needs shelter in Jefferson County.

To combat rising sea levels, Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, got a saltwater intrusion grant program established within the Department of Environmental Protection

Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Miami, chaperoned a child custody bill in cases involving domestic violence to unanimous approval by the House and Senate it now awaits DeSantis signature.

And while it appears every lawmaker got something to take back home for their time in Tallahassee, Driskell said budget victories do not ease the feelings of defeat that came with losses on major policy bills.

You can not take away Floridians rights and then soothe the loss of those rights with a water project. We have to have a government that actually is for the people and by the people. Not what we've had with this Republican supermajority, which is really just serving the Governor, said Driskell.

James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on him Twitter: @CallTallahasse

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What Democrats got done as a superminority in Florida Legislative Session - Tallahassee Democrat

In a politically healthy city,Cyn Wang would be embraced by the local Democratic Party. She might even be touted in campaign ads.

The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she married a woman from Mexico who just got her green card last week. She serves on the entertainment commission promoting nightlife, helps run her familys small insurance business, sends her daughter to her neighborhood public school, and worked in the Obama administration as a diplomat in the foreign service.

Shes a registered Democrat and has been active in Democratic politics since high school. She voted for Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 presidential primary and Joe Biden in the general election. She calls herself an intersectional feminist in her Twitter bio and considers todays Republican Party the biggest threat to our democracy.

But are she and her political alliesreally Democrats or are they Republicans playing pretend? This is the ludicrous question that has emerged in San Francisco where many liberal leaders have chosen to embrace zero-sum politics rather than a shared opportunity to fix the citys biggest problems.

Wang and other parents living on the citys sleepy, politically moderate west side asked the San Francisco Democratic Party last weekto charter their new club, the Westside Family Democratic Club. They want to register more voters in Districts One, Four and Seven in time for next years big elections and persuade families to get involved in civic life rather thanbail on our struggling city.

But party members rebuffed them over a host of ill-defined concerns: They invited Supervisor Joel Engardio, a leader in last years school board recall movement, to an event! Their members include some well-off families! They say theyre Democrats, but what if theyre actually closeted Republicans? What if Republicans are funneling dark money into their bank accounts? In the most out-of-nowhere chatter of all, some party members speculated that the club co-founders are racist.

My mouth was agape, Wang said, expressing a shock shared by many San Franciscans these days over the meanness in local politics and the political orthodoxy in some progressive circles.

Those allegations could not be more false. We dont have any funders! We probably have less than $100 in our account, she continued. Fighting systemic racism is one reason Im involved in local Democratic politics. To me, it lifted the veil on how narrow of a definition they have of what being a Democrat means.

San Francisco politics have long been toxic, but the blue-vs.-blue infighting has grown particularly nasty in recent years. Too often, debate jumps from what would be a small disagreement anywhere else to, Youre a Republican-backed, Trump-supporting monster! Common ground has been ceded to groundless accusations.

And in this case, the rejection matters beyond hurt feelings. San Franciscos Democratic County Central Committee or the D triple-C to local political nerds is a little-known yet powerful group of people elected by party members in both of the citys assembly districts. Democrats elected to office at the state and federal level also get votes on the committee.

The committee holds a lot of sway with its endorsements; a seal of approval from the San Francisco Democrats can vault local candidates into office. They also charter local clubs 23 are listed on the partys website that can also endorse candidates, register voters and advocate for issues. Very few clubs exist on the west side or to promote issues important to families, leaving a big hole in a party thats supposed to be inclusive.

Wang wanted to create a more welcoming party, including families with young children. She helped form the nonprofit San Francisco Parent Coalition, which supported the recall of two of the three school board members last year, and then teamed up with a few other politically involved parents to launch the new club.

Among them are Robin Pam, who started Kid Safe SF and the campaign to make car-free JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park permanently car-free; Parag Gupta, chief program officer at Mercy Housing, a nonprofit that builds affordable units; Sara Barz, a product manager at Apple and a Slow Streets supporter; and Maco Stewart, a privacy lawyer at Salesforce.

The club wants to improve the citys public schools, make its streets cleaner and safer, get more housing built and strengthen public transit a platform most Democrats across the political spectrum say they support. They met all the criteria to get chartered, including getting enough registered Democrats to join and filling out the proper paperwork.

They figured the Zoom meeting with party leaders would be a breeze. They figured wrong.

Some members of the DCCC grilled them intensely, made baseless accusations and then voted to table their chartering request.

Janice Li, a DCCC member who voted against tabling the effort, said the outcome reflected the citys intense polarization.

Its that You cant sit with us mentality that makes me very uncomfortable with the state of San Francisco politics, Li said. Its very, Youre not even allowed in. Its very Mean Girls.

Li was referring to the 2004 comedy starring Lindsay Lohan as a new kid at a high school ruled by a trio of popular girls who cast out anybody whos not exactly like them. Its based on a book about cliques called Queen Bees and Wannabes.

In this case, the DCCC Queen Bees told Wang and her fellow Wannabes that the party suspects theyre DINOs(Democrats in Name Only), secretly funded by Republicans and perhaps even racist.

Based on what? Turns out, not much.

Before the chartering discussion began, the DCCC heard public comment and two people opposed the charter. Brandee Marckmann, who staunchly opposed the school board recall, said DCCC members should think twice because the Westside Family Democratic Club invited Engardio to one of its events.

I know a Republican when I see one, Marckmann said of Engardio and the club founders, all Democrats.

Tenant activist Jordan Davis also opposed the charter, saying the word family is a common dog whistle on the right, that the club would be a funnel for Republican dark money and that the club wants to turn San Francisco into a bland-ass gated community.

F you, Westside Family Democratic Club! Davis shouted into the computer screen. I yield my time! F you!

In a normal city, these comments wouldnt be enough to undo a clubs chances. But soon, DCCC members were grilling Gupta, who defended the club over Zoom. The harsh questioning transpired remarkably likethe infamous 2021 school board meeting in which the commissioners wouldnt let a gay dad volunteer on a parent council with lots of empty seats and nobody else wanting to fill them because hes white.

In this case, the DCCC asked Gupta about the club members income levels, racial backgrounds, sexual orientations and gender identities. They asked for the members positions on the school board recall and building market-rate housing. They asked why they used the word family in their club name. They asked whether the club members are really Democrats, whether theyre secretly taking money from Republicans and whether theyre racist.

Gupta, looking shell-shocked, gamely tried to answer their questions, but acknowledged he hadnt quizzed all the clubs members on details like how they voted in a recall 15 months ago.

Were just starting out, Gupta told his inquisitors. We seek to be an inclusive club, and we seek to be representative of all demographics, genders, races and inclusive of all families. If someone considers themselves a family, we consider them a family.

His admirable attempt to answer these questions wasnt good enough. DCCC member Keith Baraka moved to table the chartering of the club. Honey Mahogany, the DCCC chairperson, stuck up for the group, reminding members that the club met the chartering requirements and had the right to form, but her instructions went unheeded.

Most club members abstained from the vote, but six voted with Baraka, enough to kill the clubs chances for now. Baraka told me after the vote his concerns had stemmed purely from the two public commenters, but that he had a fruitful discussion with Wang afterward and will support the club if it comes back for a vote. Its unclear whether others will join him.

Peter Gallotta, a DCCC member who voted to table the chartering, told me after the meeting that hes not clear why the group wants to be a chartered club with the Democratic Party rather than an advocacy organization.

I think we need to reform our application process so we have more, and better, information as members before we give a stamp of approval, he said.

Mahogany said shell schedule another vote on the club soon and thinks the real reason for the pushback was that someDCCC members fear the Westside Family Democratic Club could help get a moderate challenger to Supervisor Connie Chan elected in District One next year. But, she pointed out, thats no reason not to grant a charter.

This was really unprecedented, she said of the scrutiny and quashing of the club. The Democratic Party is a big tent, and we have people with different viewpoints.

That, she said, is how we have a healthy democracy.

Reach Heather Knight: hknight@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @hknightsf

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Who counts as a real Democrat in S.F.? Infighting on left reaches new lows - San Francisco Chronicle