Another Republican President, Another Recession.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

it does, and the really sad part is that they are so deluded, that their racism, sexism, xenophobia, and insecurity issues seem real to them, seem like an appropriate response to real issues, to real people whose lives they are fucking up...
they think that minorities are either too stupid to cast a meaningful vote, or that they don't deserve a voice in their adopted country's electoral process, even though those people pay taxes, even though they came here looking for freedom, because we have a giant statue to hypocrisy in new york harbor, telling them to come...

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For decades, public health experts have known that syringe exchange programs reduce the spread of certain viral infections — like H.I.V., hepatitis B and hepatitis C — by removing contaminated syringes from circulation.

They have known that programs using sterile injection equipment are both safe and save money.

And yet they are rarely seen in the United States.

Evidence abounds that they work. A study of the first American program — started in the Tacoma, Wash., area in 1988 — found that use of the exchange was associated with a greater than 60 percent reduction in the risk of contracting hepatitis B or C. Another study of over 1,600 injection drug users in New York found that those who didn’t use a syringe exchange in the early 1990s were more than three times as likely to contract H.I.V.

Syringe exchange programs do more than improve health. Because they are so effective and far cheaper than the lifetime cost of treating H.I.V., hepatitis B or hepatitis C, they save taxpayers money. A cost-effectiveness analysis published in 2014 replicated the findings of others that came before it: A dollar invested in syringe exchange programs saves at least six dollars in avoided costs associated with H.I.V. alone.

The most frequently expressed concerns about the programs are that they promote drug use and raise crime levels. But according to many studies, that isn’t so. Instead, they are associated with increased participation in treatment programs.

Syringe exchange programs “reduce not only infectious disease but also create an opportunity for people to get the care and provide a transition into treatment for people in the community,” said Michael Botticelli, director of the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy, at an event sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce of northern Kentucky, a region hit hard by illegal drug use.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, seven evidence reviews for federal government agencies reaffirmed that syringe exchanges were effective, safe and cost-effective. Since then, numerous other studies of programs have replicated these results, including a systematic review by the World Health Organization and another by the United Nations. These include examination of exchange programs outside the United States, such as those in Canada and Australia.

Syringe exchanges are endorsed by the 2015 National H.I.V./AIDS Strategy for the United States and the 2012 President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Blueprint. The American Medical Association says they work.

With all this evidence and the official endorsements, you’d think the government would generously fund syringe exchanges. But just as the first program opened in 1988, Congress prohibited federal funding for any such programs. With the exception of a few years, that moratorium held until this year. Though federal funds may now be used to support syringe exchanges, they still may not be used to buy injection equipment.

Although most states and local governments limit or prohibit syringe exchange programs, some restrictions have been lifted, offering additional opportunities to study their effects. For example, in 2008, the District of Columbia’s syringe exchange funding ban was lifted, and several programs began offering harm reduction and exchange services. One study found that the funding ban’s lift was associated with a 70 percent drop in new H.I.V. cases tied to injection drug use.

“Policies that limit syringe access are not in the best interest of public health,” said Sean Allen, an infectious disease and public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University and a co-author of the study. “Syringe services programs can prevent new H.I.V. infections, but they need to be accessible to work.”

Today, injection drug use — notably, of heroin — is on the rise and has led to outbreaks of H.I.V. in some communities. In response, some leaders, like Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, have reversed course and embraced the programs.

Today, only about 200 syringe exchange programs are operating in 33 states. In many areas where they could do a lot of good, resistance to them remains strong.

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hanimmal said:

View attachment 5102835

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hanimmal said:

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

call them rich bitches out in the street

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hanimmal said:

Im floored that Koch is fully unmasking hisself as the nazi they have been towards our democracy by keeping his businesses open in Moscow.

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cannabineer said:

Omg $4.31 point me!!
I saw $5.49(9) today regular

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The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in the pandemic on Wednesday, while signaling far more hikes and warning that inflation would remain high through the rest of the year.

The quarter-point interest rate hike was expected and considered modest, but the Fed more than doubled the number of rate hikes anticipated this year — for a total of seven — to help rein in the highest inflation in 40 years. Wednesday marked the first rate hike since 2018.

The Fed Board has faced criticism that it has underestimated inflation over the past year, and now even more uncertainty lurks. Energy prices are spiking because of the war in Ukraine, and coronavirus surges are shutting down major Chinese manufacturing hubs, worsening global supply chain snarls that are pushing prices higher.

“Inflation is likely to take longer to return to our price stability goal than previously expected,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said during a news conference Wednesday. Later he added, “We’ll deal with what comes, whether it’s better or worse.”

Inflation has a long way to fall before it comes close to normal levels, but the Fed has to avoid intervening too forcefully or abruptly, which could cause a recession. The Fed expects inflation will remain high, hitting 4.3 percent at the end of the year, even taking into account interest rate hikes, according to new projections released at the end of the Fed’s two-day policy meeting.

Markets initially fell on the rate hike news but recovered as Powell spoke during a news conference, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing up 1.5 percent and the Nasdaq closing up 3.8 percent.

Raising interest rates has a cooling effect on the economy, because it increases the costs associated with a wide range of lending, from mortgages and auto loans to business investments.

The Fed’s rate increase is considered a moderate move, and Republican critics have maintained the Fed’s rate hike is too little too late. Rate hikes also tend to operate with a lag. Larry Summers, treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, warned in a Washington Post column Tuesday that the rate hike was not enough and would lead to stagflation and recession.

“I believe the Fed has not internalized the magnitude of its errors over the past year, is operating with an inappropriate and dangerous framework, and needs to take far stronger action to support price stability than appears likely,” wrote Summers, who also was an economic adviser to President Barack Obama and is credited with forecasting soaring inflation as a problem for the economy a year ago.



During the news conference, Powell said he expected inflation to remain high through the middle of this year, then drop, followed by a sharper fall next year. But that prediction depends on Russia’s invasion, coronavirus lockdowns in China and how the U.S. economy absorbs shocks from abroad.

Powell said that supply chains could take a further beating from the war in Ukraine and that the economy is already seeing pressure caused by higher energy and oil prices, complicating the Fed’s job.

“Making appropriate monetary policy in this environment requires a recognition that the economy often evolves in unexpected ways,” Powell said. “We will strive to avoid adding uncertainty to what is already an extraordinary uncertain moment.”

The Fed’s tools are limited when it comes to lowering prices. Monetary policy is not intended to respond to short-term blips in the economy, such as an energy shock. Yet, such shocks have the potential to weigh on the economy, especially the longer they last, forcing the Fed to consider more-aggressive moves in coming rate hikes.

To address surging energy prices, the White House, for its part, has explored a third release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and is considering a pause of the federal gas tax. The administration is also warning oil and gas companies not to keep prices artificially high for American consumers.

“If gas retailers’ costs are going down, they need to immediately pass those savings on to consumers,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday. “The invasion of Ukraine and the volatility in the oil market is no excuse for excessive price increases, profit-padding or any effort to exploit American consumers.”

Inflation has cast a shadow over the recovery. Early looks at consumer sentiment in March showed it had fallen to its lowest level since 2011, according to University of Michigan survey data, as incomes took a beating from rising fuel prices. Consumers said they held very negative prospects for the economy, apart from the job market.

Powell stressed the economy’s overall strength, especially in the job market. The unemployment rate in February fell to 3.8 percent, capping off 10 straight months of strong job growth. The Fed is projecting the unemployment rate to fall to the pre-pandemic level of 3.5 percent by the end of the year.

Yet Powell also that warned the job market continues to be tight, with job openings outnumbering job seekers, which works as a drag on employers competing for workers.

“Take a look at today’s labor market. What you have is 1.7-plus job openings for every unemployed person,” Powell said. “So that’s a very, very tight labor market — tight to an unhealthy level, I would say.”

But Powell dismissed fears that a recession in the next yea had become more likely, pointing to strong household balance sheets and consumer demand that has stayed strong even as inflation has risen. That is the main reason Fed officials felt comfortable pulling back on economic supports.

In recent weeks, some economists have taken the opposite view. Goldman Sachs analysts have forecast that the economic fallout of Russia’s invasion will pull back on economic growth and raise the risk of the United States entering a recession. Gas prices have climbed to record highs, with fears that the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia will continue to strain global energy markets and nudge prices up.

Powell has consistently left the door open for the Fed to move more aggressively if inflation does not fall as interest rates rise, supply chains heal and congressional aid from last year fades away. But the Fed’s track record on predicting and managing inflation has come under a blistering review.

For much of the past year, Fed officials have said inflation would be a temporary feature of the recovery and limited to parts of the economy hit hardest by the pandemic. Over time, as higher costs spread to rent, groceries and everything in between, that message contrasted with what was actually unfolding in the economy and in people’s lives.

That is especially the case for families scraping by to cover the basics and for whom rent, groceries and gas make up a huge share of daily costs. Inflation has hit lower-income workers harder, even though they have seen some of the fastest wage growth during the pandemic. Those gains are being eroded by rising prices.
Meanwhile, wealthier Americans have stronger protections against rising prices and can cushion inflation’s bite by dipping into savings, tapping home equity or cutting extra spending.



Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a GOP policy analyst who has served as director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said here was “no question” that the Fed had fallen “way behind” on controlling inflation. But he credited the Fed for not having a “jumpy reaction” to Russia’s invasion and focusing on the reality of high inflation that is already baked into the economy.

“Powell is sending the message that: ‘Look, we have a plan. We will adjust it according to the data,’” Holtz-Eakin said. “That allows them to move more aggressively later, and in my view they’ll need to.”

Powell also said the Fed would announce plans to start scaling back its enormous $9 trillion balance sheet possibly as soon as May. While the Fed’s primary way of combating inflation is by raising interest rates, Powell noted that drawing down the Fed’s balance sheet could add momentum to the Fed’s seven planned rate hikes and act as a powerful substitute in place of another increase.

One Fed official, St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard, wanted the central bank to act more aggressively and voted against the modest increase. In February, Bullard publicly called for the Fed to increase rates by 0.50 percentage points for its first hike, to make more headway on bringing prices down by the summer.

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U.S. gas prices are up nearly $1.50 from a year ago. Americans are feeling the pinch and looking for someone to blame. At the top of the list should be Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since his brutal invasion of Ukraine, gas prices surged almost 80 cents — accounting for more than half of the increase.

The second biggest driver of high gas prices is rebounding demand as the U.S. economy recovers from the deadly pandemic. The increase of roughly 70 cents that occurred before Mr. Putin’s invasion is largely due to people venturing out again for travel, work and school, and the surge in truckers crisscrossing the nation to move goods. Though President Biden’s hefty stimulus package added somewhat to inflation, the reopening effect was far larger. But predictably, especially given that this is an election year with control of both houses in the balance, Republican politicians are blaming Mr. Biden for pain at the pump. Stickers are popping up on gas pumps with a photo of Mr. Biden and the words “I did that.”

The reality is, presidents have little influence on gas prices. Oil trades in a global market. Drilling in the United States is done by private companies, not the government. Americans also have other priorities right now, including doing what they can to tip the balance in Ukraine against the aggressors. Poll after pollshows the vast majority support cutting off Russian oil imports, even if it means prices go up.

So what can be done to lower gas prices? The biggest help would be more oil supply coming to the world market from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran or Venezuela. There are already efforts to make this happen. U.S. oil production also appears to be rising, spurred by higher oil prices. And there are signs the global economy, especially China, is slowing, meaning less demand for oil.

Mr. Biden could release more oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but it would have minimal impact. Cutting gas taxes, another idea that politicians turn to when oil prices are rising, would be a mistake. It would likely cause a surge in gas purchases and a loss of revenue for road repairs, as well as bring more profit for oil companies, which would likely raise gas prices a bit. Mr. Biden is also berating businesses for price gouging. But it has long been true that gas prices have a tendency to rise much faster than they fall, and presidential tweets are unlikely to change that.

A better step Mr. Biden could take is to work with Congress to pass aid for lower-income families if gas prices remain high. This could have a double benefit of offsetting higher costs and encouraging households to use less energy so they can keep any leftover money.

With gasoline prices at historically high levels, Americans are demanding relief. Any solution should begin with some honesty from their leaders about what — and who — is to blame, as well as an acknowledgment of the fact that many of the forces currently driving costs upward are simply beyond anyone’s control.

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The White House will unveil a new minimum tax targeting billionaires as part of its 2023 budget Monday, proposing a tax on the richest 700 Americans for the first time, according to five people with knowledge of the matter and an administration document obtained by The Washington Post.

The “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” plan under President Biden would establish a 20 percent minimum tax rate on all American households worth more than $100 million, the document says. The majority of new revenue raised by the tax would come from billionaires.

Biden has long favored higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but the White House has not introduced a tax plan specifically designed to hit billionaires until now. The plan comes amid signs that the administration’s negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) over stalled White House economic proposal may be reviving. But all previous efforts to tax billionaires have failed amid major political head winds, and it is unclear if Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) will go along with the plan.

Many billionaires can pay far lower tax rates than average Americans because the federal government does not tax the increase in the value of their stock holdings until those assets are sold. Billionaires are able to borrow against their accumulated gains without triggering taxes on capital gains, enabling huge accumulations of wealth to go virtually untaxed by the federal government.

Lofty tax agenda of Democrats imperiled by resistance from within

The White House Office of Management and Budget and Council of Economic Advisers estimated this fall that 400 billionaire families paid an average federal tax rate of just over 8 percent of their income between 2010 and 2018.
That rate is lower than the rate paid by millions of Americans.

The White House plan would mandate billionaires to pay a tax rate of at least 20 percent on their full income, or the combination of traditional forms of wage income and whatever they may have made in unrealized gains, such as higher stock prices.

Billionaires paying a rate below that will have to pay the difference between what they pay now and the 20 percent rate. Billionaires already paying more than 20 percent would not owe additional taxes. The taxes paid toward the minimum tax would count toward whatever billionaires owe once they have to pay ordinary capital gains taxes.

“The Billionaire Minimum Income Tax will ensure that the very wealthiest Americans pay a tax rate of at least 20 percent on their full income,” the White House document says. “This minimum tax would make sure that the wealthiest Americans no longer pay a tax rate lower than teachers and firefighters.”

White House officials estimate the tax would raise roughly $360 billion in new revenue over the next 10 years if enacted, according to the document. The proposal was developed by Biden aides at the Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury Department and the White House National Economic Council.

The White House is expected to release a budget Monday that includes increases in defense and nondefense spending, with a focus on mental health, child care, other social programs, and reducing the deficit, two other people familiar with the matter said. These people, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect planning not yet made public.

Biden’s budget proposal will also cut the federal deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, according to a White House document. News of the deficit reduction was first reported by the Associated Press.

The outcry over the low tax rates of the financial elite has emerged as a key flash point in American politics, particularly after liberal Democrats in the 2020 presidential election sought to tackle wealth inequality by targeting billionaires.

Manchin launches new push for an ‘all of the above’ energy bill

Tax experts have long debated how best to turn that aspiration into reality. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed a wealth tax during that campaign that would have levied an annual 2 percent tax on all assets in excess of $50 million. Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) this fall unveiled a “billionaire income tax” that would have taxed on an annual basis the gains in value of stocks and other “unrealized assets.”

The White House approach represents yet another attempt to craft a billionaire tax that can be approved by Congress and administered effectively by the Internal Revenue Service. Wyden’s plan would have been assessed on an annual basis, whereas the White House plan gives wealthy households five years to be in compliance with the minimum 20 percent tax. The White House plan also creates an initial period of nine years from enactment for households to pay previously unrealized income.

“Biden’s proposal really effectively addresses the practical implementation challenges we’ve seen to previous proposals to tax very high income households,” said Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School who served as an economist in the Obama administration.

Still, some tax experts prefer Biden’s prior approach of taxing unrealized capital gains only once those gains are realized at death. Conservatives and other legal scholars have argued it is unclear if the Supreme Court will strike down any measure they view as a wealth tax.

“We still have questions of constitutionality. Can the IRS collect taxes if nothing has been sold based on the wealth, the property, of the taxpayers?” said Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think thank. “In my view, Biden’s minimum tax adds more complexity to Wyden’s original billionaire income tax, which already was complicated.”

One of the people familiar with the White House plan rejected the argument that it amounted to a wealth tax that could potentially be viewed as unconstitutional, saying, “This is an income tax, and income taxes are constitutional under the 16th Amendment. There are lots of income tax provisions that apply tax before a realization event. This tax on billionaires would be no different.”

It also remains unclear if even the more nuanced approach to taxing billionaires will be approved by Democrats in Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was among the Democrats who privately objected to Wyden’s billionaire tax plan, suggesting it amounted to a publicity stunt. Manchin denounced the billionaire tax as divisive last fall, though he later told the White House he could support a version of a billionaire tax.

The White House tax plan would dramatically change what some of the wealthiest Americans pay in taxes. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk would pay an additional $50 billion, while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would pay an additional $35 billion, according to calculations by Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California Berkeley. (Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post.)

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hanimmal said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/03/26/billionaire-tax-budget-biden/View attachment 5108771

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

long needed, but the rich will do their best to kill it...if it relies on manchin voting for it, i wouldn't count on it passing, without some unexpected support from the republicans. manchin is bought, paid for, and obedient to the MONEY...

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President Biden unveiled a $5.8 trillion budget plan on Monday that reflects a major administration pivot to rein in future borrowing, introducing a proposal that would reduce the national deficit by roughly $1 trillion over 10 years.

The White House budget includes substantial funding increases for the military and police, more money for a slew of domestic programs, and a “Bipartisan Unity Agenda” focused on cancer prevention, mental health care and veterans services. The deficit reduction would be achieved almost entirely through changes in the tax code, which could include a new minimum tax on billionaires.

While the debt would continue to grow even if all of the administration’s proposals are enacted, the White House document reflects a new focus on fiscal prudence. Last year, the White House budget would have increased the nation’s deficits over 10 years by almost $1.4 trillion. By contrast, the White House’s budget this year would reduce the annual deficit every year after its enactment.

“All told, it is a budget that includes historic deficit reduction, historic investments in our security at home and abroad, and an unprecedented commitment to building an economy where everyone has a chance to succeed,” Biden said in a statement.

The administration’s newfound emphasis on deficit reduction comes amid a potential revival of negotiations over its economic agenda with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who has repeatedly emphasized his interest in a budget deal that would reduce the nation’s fiscal imbalance. Inflation has also emerged as a key worry of voters coming out of the coronavirus pandemic, and reducing government borrowing in the long term may help allay those concerns ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Biden’s push on deficits could pose a political challenge to the Republican Party, which has traditionally modeled itself as more fiscally responsible than the Democrats. Both of the past two Republican presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, oversaw enormous increases in the federal debt during their administrations. And the Republican Party has resisted releasing its own economic blueprint for America, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rebuffing members of his own party for attempting to craft a policy vision for the 2022 midterms.

But the deficit argument has uncertain implications for Democrats as well. Biden spearheaded a $1.9 trillion economic relief plan last year that many voters believe contributed to the worst spike in prices in four decades. Biden’s initial plans for transforming the domestic economy, the Build Back Better agenda, fell apart amid criticism from centrist Democrats that it would do too much to fuel runaway federal spending, although Biden did successfully approve a bipartisan overhaul of the nation’s infrastructure. Republicans were quick to argue Monday that the budget increased spending too dramatically while simultaneously hurting economic growth through tax increases.

“What this budget shows is that President Biden values more spending, more debt, more taxes and more pain for the American people,” said Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.), a top Republican on the House Budget Committee.

The Biden administration’s new budget both includes and excludes the Build Back Better items that the president has made the cornerstone of his economic agenda — not including the provisions as counting in the overall budget calculations, but still touting them in the budget document.

Administration officials told reporters Monday that they did not incorporate the spending or revenue from Build Back Better in their budget projections because of the uncertain status of negotiations. The White House has pledged its economic spending package will not increase the deficit, meaning the deficit would not be larger if the Build Back Better provisions are passed.

Instead, the White House’s budget document included a slew of new tax hikes on the rich and corporations that to this point do not appear to be part of the congressional negotiations. Among the new tax measures incorporated into the budget is a “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” that would levy a 20 percent minimum tax on all income — including unrealized capital gains — for Americans with assets worth more than $100 million.

The White House budget includes roughly $2.5 trillion in new tax revenue. Of that $2.5 trillion, roughly $1.5 trillion goes to new spending programs, while the remainder goes toward reducing the deficit, said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that advocates for lower deficits.

“That’s like a $2.5 trillion swing — last year, the White House was increasing the deficit by $1.4 trillion, and now they’re decreasing it by over $1 trillion,” Goldwein said.

The White House’s annual budget submission to Congress is often ignored or dramatically changed by the legislative branch before being enacted into law. But the budget still reflects useful indications of the administration’s goals and priorities, as well as how its thinking on key issues has changed over time.

“It’s clear the administration is, at least in terms of tone and messaging, trying to pivot from expansionary fiscal policy to deficit reduction‚” said Ben Ritz, director of the Center for Funding America’s Future at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank.

Biden is proposing increasing the military budget to more than $800 billion per year, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a justification for more spending on the Defense Department. The White House is also asking Congress for more than $30 billion to fight crime, as the administration seeks to distance itself from some liberals who have called for defunding the police.

The White House is also including a “Bipartisan Unity Agenda” focused on mental health, fighting cancer and addressing the opioid epidemic.

That agenda includes a provision to ensure that all private health plans cover mental health and substance use disorders. It would also heavily invest in mental health providers, youth mental health and suicide prevention programs, and scholarships to address a shortage of mental health providers.

It also includes a major $119 billion investment in the Department of Veterans Affairs — a 32 percent increase above current levels. The administration is also seeking $3 billion for veterans’ homeless programs, $2 billion for caregivers and billions more to improve the department’s health-care delivery systems.

The White House budget also includes $82 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to prepare for pandemics and “other biological threats”; $21 billion for clean energy programs and climate resilience outside the president’s existing Build Back Better proposals; and substantial education funding increases.

The budget also places a heavy emphasis on deficit reduction — without completely closing America’s fiscal imbalance.

The U.S. government spends more money than it brings in through revenue, creating an annual budget deficit. It borrows money to cover this balance by issuing debt, which it must pay interest on. The Obama administration and Republicans in Congress reached a deal a decade ago to scale back future spending, which helped reduce the deficit, but Trump sought to push the deficit wider during his administration with a big tax cut package and a burst of new spending.

The government’s response to the pandemic pushed the deficit to even larger levels, peaking at $3.1 trillion in 2020. The deficit contracted in 2021 because some of that rescue spending expired, but Democrats and Republicans have sparred over how aggressively the deficit should be addressed in the next few years.

The White House projects America’s deficit falling from roughly 12.4 percent of the nation’s overall economy in 2021 to just 4.8 percent by 2032. But deficits would remain high by most historic measures, however, falling to roughly $1.3 trillion per year by the middle of the decade before increasing to close to $1.8 trillion by the end of the decade.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is preparing to order the release of up to 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve, according to two people familiar with the decision, in a bid to control energy prices that have spiked as the U.S. and allies have imposed steep sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine

The announcement could come as soon as Thursday, when the White House says Biden is planning to deliver remarks on his administration’s plans to combat rising gas prices. The duration of the release hasn’t been finalized but could last for several months. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the decision.

High oil prices have not coaxed more production, creating a challenge for Biden. The president has seen his popularity sink as inflation reached a 40-year high in February and the cost of petroleum and gasoline climbed after Russia invaded Ukraine. Crude oil on Wednesday traded at nearly $105 a barrel, up from about $60 a year ago.

Still, oil producers have been more focused on meeting the needs of investors, according to a survey released last week by the Dallas Federal Reserve. About 59% of the executives surveyed said investor pressure to preserve “capital discipline” amid high prices was the reason they weren’t pumping more, while fewer than 10% blamed government regulation.

RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR

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The steady release from the reserves would be a meaningful sum and come near to closing the domestic production gap relative to February 2020, before the coronavirus caused a steep decline in oil output.

The Biden administration in November announced the release of 50 million barrels from the strategic reserve in coordination with other countries. And after the Ukrainian war began, the U.S. and 30 other countries agreed to an additional release of 60 million barrels from reserves, with half of the total coming from the U.S.

According to the Department of Energy, which manages it, more than 568 million barrels of oil were held in the reserve as of Mar. 25.

News of the administration’s planning was first reported by Bloomberg.

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Amid surging inflation and energy price spikes, the Biden administration on Wednesday announced plans to spend roughly $3.2 billion to retrofit hundreds of thousands of homes in low-income communities with the aim of slashing Americans’ energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions.

The new funding from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill President Biden signed into law last year provides a massive boost to a federal home weatherization program that began during the 1970s oil crisis as a way to cut people’s heating bills. It allots funding to modernize eligible homes with cost-effective upgrades, adding insulation to attics, swapping older refrigerators and other appliances for new, more efficient models, and replacing leaky windows and doors.

Biden officials said the infusion of funding — a tenfold increase compared to the program’s current budget — means it will be able to serve 450,000 households total. It currently retrofits about 38,000 homes a year.

Known as the federal Weatherization Assistance Program, the program is broadly popular, especially among lawmakers from cold-weather states. Though President Donald Trump proposed eliminating it in 2017, it survived and has become a little-known tool in the Biden administration’s efforts to fight climate change.

Burning fossil fuels for electricity in buildings and homes accounts for roughly 13 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, although some experts say the actual figure is higher.

Funding from the weatherization program, which is administered by states and Native American tribes, can be used to help homeowners switch from traditional gas or oil-burning furnaces and energy-hungry air conditioners to electric heat pumps. These can heat and cool homes at a much lower cost to the environment. Experts say these changes could ultimately slash the nation’s use of fossil fuels for home heating and electricity generation if they’re made on a large enough scale.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm emphasized the potential cost savings, noting that the program has lowered some families’ power bills by as much as 30 percent.

“For some people, these might seem like small changes, but actually they make a big and immediate impact,” Granholm said.

The administration also announced several other climate-related actions Wednesday, including new energy code requirements for federal buildings and new efficiency standards for residential air conditioners and pool heaters. The General Services Administration, the agency that oversees procurement and most federal properties, unveiled a new requirement that federal contractors use concrete and asphalt with a low carbon footprint.

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America’s employers extended a streak of robust hiring in March, adding 431,000 jobs in a sign of the economy’s resilience in the face of a still-destructive pandemic and the highest inflation in 40 years.

The Labor Department’s report Friday showed that last month’s job growth helped shrink the unemployment rate to 3.6%, the lowest level since the pandemic erupted two years ago.

Despite the inflation surge, persistent supply bottlenecks, the damaging effects of COVID-19 and now a war in Europe, employers have added at least 400,000 jobs for 11 straight months. In its report Friday, the government also revised sharply up its estimate of hiring in January and February by a combined 95,000 jobs.

In an encouraging sign for the economy, 418,000 people began looking for a job in March, and many found one. Since the pandemic struck in 2020, many people have remained on the sidelines of the job market, a trend that has contributed to a chronic worker shortage in many industries.

Across the economy in March, hiring gains were widespread. Restaurants and bars added 61,000 jobs, retailers 49,000, manufacturers 38,000 and hotels 25,000.

CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

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Average hourly pay is up a strong 5.6% over the past 12 months. Though that is welcome news for employees, it is contributing to surging inflation pressures that have put the Federal Reserve on track to raise rates multiple times, perhaps aggressively, in the coming months. Those rate hikes will result in more expensive loans for many consumers and businesses.

For now, though, the job market has continued to rebound with unexpected speed from the coronavirus recession. Job openings are at a near-record level, and applications for unemployment benefits have dropped to near their lowest point since 1969.

The still-solid U.S. job market reflects a robust rebound from the brief but devastating coronavirus recession, which wiped out 22 million jobs in March and April 2020 as businesses shut down or cut hours and Americans stayed home to avoid infection.

But the recovery has been swift. Fueled by generous federal aid, savings amassed during the pandemic and ultra-low borrowing rates engineered by the Federal Reserve, U.S. consumers have spent so fast that many factories, warehouses, shipping companies and ports have failed to keep pace with their customer demand. Supply chains have snarled, forcing up prices.

As the pandemic has eased, consumers have been broadening their spending beyond goods to services, such as health care, travel and entertainment, which they had long avoided during the worst of the pandemic. The resulting high inflation is causing hardships for many lower-income households that face sharp price increases for such necessities as food, gasoline and rent.

It’s unclear how long the economy can maintain its momentum of the past year. The government relief checks are gone. The Fed raised its benchmark short-term interest rate two weeks ago and will likely keep raising it well into next year. Those rate hikes will result in more expensive loans for many consumers and businesses.

Inflation has also eroded consumers’ spending power: Hourly pay, adjusted for higher consumer prices, fell 2.6% in February from a year earlier — the 11th straight month in which inflation has outpaced year-over-year wage growth. According to AAA, average gasoline prices, at $4.23 a gallon, are up a dizzying 47% from a year ago.

Squeezed by inflation, some consumers are paring their spending. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that consumer spending rose just 0.2%% in February — and fell 0.4% when adjusted for inflation — down from a 2.7% increase in January.

Still, the job market has kept hurtling ahead. Employers posted a near-record 11.3 million positions in February. Nearly 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs, a sign of confidence that they could find something better.

Even so, so many jobs were lost in 2020 that the economy still remains 1.6 million shy of the number it had just before the pandemic struck. Over the past year, employers have added an average of 541,000 jobs a month. At that pace — no guarantee to continue — the nation would recover all the jobs lost to the pandemic by June. (That still wouldn’t include all the additional hiring that would have been done over the past two years under normal circumstances.)

Brighter job prospects are beginning to draw back into the labor force people who had remained on the sidelines because of health concerns, difficulty finding or affording daycare, generous unemployment benefits that have now expired or other reasons.

Over the past year, 3.6 million people have joined the U.S. labor force, meaning they now either have a job or are looking for one. But their ranks are still nearly 600,000 short of where they stood in February 2020, just before the pandemic slammed into the economy.

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President Trump took office at the crest of the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. He leaves presiding over the worst labor market in modern U.S. history, as an already-sputtering economic recovery has turned negative.

No other modern president has left the U.S. with a smaller workforce than it had when they took office. Since the government started keeping track in 1939, no other president has even seen significant job losses during a single presidential term — though job growth during George W. Bush’s first four years in office was essentially flat.
The economy lost 140,000 jobs in December

During the first three years of his term, Trump often cited the economy as one of his chief accomplishments. He built “the largest, most inclusive economy in American history with record low unemployment and rising wages until a pandemic from China destroyed it,” said White House spokesperson Judd Deere.

The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers said on Twitter that the loss of 140,000 jobs in December reflected "renewed state economic shutdowns.” The unemployment rate was flat at 6.7 percent, down sharply from its high of nearly 15 percent in April but still nearly double its pre-crisis rate of 3.5 percent.

Economists are typically reluctant to give any presidents undue credit or blame for economic growth. Labor-market fundamentals and the policies of your predecessors will often have more influence than the White House does.

And the catastrophic job losses during Trump’s presidency were not sparked by his labor-market policies, at least at first. They were caused by the arrival of a deadly novel coronavirus, and the slumping consumer demand and business closures that followed.

But Democrats and Republicans have been critical of the president’s response to the fast-escalating pandemic, and many blame him for labor-market destruction that followed. The virus has now killed more than 364,000 Americans, and the U.S. routinely has one of the highest per capita infection rates in the world.

As U.S. unemployment soared, Germany’s barely budged. Is America’s safety net enough?

University of Tennessee economist Marianne Wanamaker, who served on Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that the U.S. economy is actually doing better than it should be, given the nation’s high infection and death rates — a measured success she attributes to states like Tennessee that took a more relaxed approach to virus-related shutdowns.
But, Wanamaker said, there is a reason the U.S. has such high infection and death rates.

“Everybody knows that full recovery won’t come until the virus is under control. And our path to getting the virus under control right now is either people behaving in a different way or mass vaccination. And on both of those fronts, it’s pretty clear that the administration has failed to deliver.”

The administration resisted simple behavioral changes, such as wearing masks, that would have had no economic cost and have been shown to be effective in containing the virus, Wanamaker said.

“We had a big advantage in terms of getting the vaccine," Wanamaker said. "We are ahead of Europe in procuring it, but we don’t seem to be able to actually get the shot in people’s arms.”

Trump took “unprecedented actions" this year to provide much-needed economic relief to Americans and small businesses impacted by the coronavirus, said Deere, the White House spokesperson. Those steps "laid a firm foundation for a ‘Super V’ recovery,” he said.

Under Trump, the leisure and hospitality sector lost 2.9 million jobs, and retail lost another 659,000, losses that are not surprising amid a retail apocalypse and an actual apocalypse. But the pandemic and the crises that came with it also completely erased Trump’s much-touted gains in blue-collar sectors such as manufacturing, which is down 60,000 jobs over his term, and mining, which is down 19,000.

The only category where the president does not lag behind most of his predecessors? Transportation and warehousing. That sector, which pays less than either manufacturing or mining, has added more than half a million jobs since Trump took office. Thanks to the boom in online retail during the lockdown era, it is close to recovering all the jobs it lost at the start of the pandemic recession.

Howard University and AFL-CIO economist William Spriggs said the president’s response to the pandemic had turned what might have been a low passing mark into a failing grade.

According to Spriggs, a wartime-style mobilization against the virus would have kept millions of people employed as cleaners and contact tracers while reducing the spread of the global pandemic.

“He didn’t pump enough money to state and local governments,” Spriggs said, “and we lost more jobs in state and local government than we did the whole of the Great Recession.”

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Thirty million – that's the number of children who have been receiving free meals as part of a federal plan to ensure universal school lunches for every kid in America's public school system. But with virtually no congressional plan to extend the policy into next year, 30 million are now at risk of losing a guaranteed meal for five days a week/

This stunning development – which has sparked the ire of parents, administrators, and teachers alike – spans back to April 2020, when thousands of public schools issued sweeping closures over COVID-19 concerns. In response, then-president Donald Trump allowed the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to waive a slew of restrictions on free and reduced-price meals for school kids.

At the time, it was a vital executive action that granted students reliable access to food through school programs like grab-and-go meals and classroom lunches. Last year President Joe Biden extended the USDA's waivers through the Spring of 2022 as part of a federal plan to buoy the nation's public school system against the lingering effects of the pandemic.

But now, Republicans are angling to nix the waivers from Biden's federal budget for 2023, flouting the guidance of child nutrition advocates who argue that schools arent ready for the waivers to be lifted, largely because they remain steeped in a global pandemic that's seen an unprecedented surge in food prices.

"This has not been the recovery year that we thought it would be. School nutrition programs are still struggling families, and kids are still struggling. We're still transitioning back," Krystal FitzSimons, Director of School and Out-of-School Time Programs at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), told Salon in an interview. "Providing another year of these waivers will be critical to support kids and families, to support education, and to support the school nutrition operations."

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, FitzSimons said, the National School Lunch Program was often a dizzying mess of bureaucracy. Parents were expected to fill out forms used to determine whether their children qualified for free or reduced-price meals. Lunch staff had to account for every student's daily payments, logging their meal debt, which has been known to eat into school budgets. Not to mention, kids often forgot their lunch money, sometimes forcing them to go hungry or borrow from friends.

And yet, all of these problems completely vanished after the USDA announced the rollout of free meals, said Yooli O'Brien, a mother of two boys attending the Grand Rapids Christian Schools system in Grand Rapid, Michigan. Even though O'Brien was able to pay for both her boys' lunches before the COVID crisis, the program, she said, took a massive logistical weight off of her shoulders.

"All of these problems completely vanished after the USDA announced the rollout of free meals"

"Universal school lunch is still fantastic because there's nothing I need to do. I don't have to sit there and figure out if I've remembered to load in enough money on my kids' lunch accounts," O'Brien told Salon in an interview. "And the schools are the same way, where administratively there's so much less burden. They don't have to walk parents through how to fill out the forms. They don't have to feel like a gatekeeper."

O'Brien noted that many parents share her concerns: "I just feel like parents are just stretched so thin right now that, even if you don't need [universal school lunches] from a financial standpoint, the fact that [they're] there is just so easy."

Unsurprisingly, that sentiment is hardly anecdotal. According to a Data for Progress poll from last year, roughly three-quarters of all voters support or somewhat support making school lunch and breakfast free for every kid in America. Even the vast majority of Republicans backed free meals, with just 30% opposed.

But for reasons that remain hazy, public opinion on free lunches is now being flatly ignored by a broad swath of federal lawmakers, even though the program has passed with flying colors over the last two years.

According to the Post, the Biden administration repeatedly advocated for extending free meals into next year. But his efforts were reportedly thwarted as result of fierce pushback from Senate Republicans arguing that universal lunch was always meant to be a temporary measure whose extension might add billions of dollars to the nation's rising deficit.

Chief among this Republican cohort, the Post reported, is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a notorious deficit hawk who last year also adamantly opposed Biden's plan to expand the child tax credit.

As of this writing, McConnell has not publicly come out against extending universal lunches, so Salon asked the senator's office to elucidate his position. McConnell's press secretary, Doug Andres, suggested that the White House was to blame for the program's impending cancellation.

"You may want to check in with the White House since they never requested an extension of this program in their supplemental request – or even in their most recent budget," Andres told Salon over email.

"GOP leadership would "prefer to let our kids go hungry.'"

But according to the Post, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack aggressively pushed for the program's re-extension during the drawing up of Biden's budget, saying that he "made a request to speak to Leader McConnell and Leader McCarthy. Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., has likewise blamed Republicans for the program's disintegration, claiming that the GOP leadership would "prefer to let our kids go hungry."

According to POLITICO, which spoke to half a dozen aides on both sides of the aisle, there are still "intense disagreements" around how and why the pandemic-era universal lunch program will not be renewed. But in the meantime, there doesn't appear to be anything that the USDA can do to avert the expiration of the waivers.

"The long story short is [Vilsack] does not have the power to renew waivers that are currently in place," Kate Waters, Press Secretary for the USDA, explained to Salon. "That power rests solely with the Congress."

RELATED: Egg price-gouging accusations, a pandemic cheese "roller coaster": Why food costs are still in flux

Needless to say, the exact scope of the crisis is hard to assess for certain, but there's little doubt among experts that it will prove to be devastating.

Right now, USDA's waivers grant free lunch meals to 30 million kids, up 10 million from prior to the pandemic. For schools, these meals have been fully reimbursed by the SNA. But once the waivers are lifted, experts expect those reimbursements to cover just 40% of each lunch.
And in a nation where roughly 1 and 7 children are considered food insecure, the impact will be especially acute on families who are already struggling to put food on the table.

In Burke County, Georgia, for instance, where roughly 20% residents live in poverty, two-thirds of the district's 4,100 students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (i.e., their families' incomes fall below 185% of the federal poverty line), according to The Washington Monthly. Donna Martin, the county's nutrition director, told the outlet that she worries about half of her students will not be able to eat this summer if waivers are lifted. "If we don't get these waivers," she said, "it is just going to be a catastrophe."

Dr. Marlene Schwartz, Director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, affirmed Martin's concerns in an interview with Salon, saying that the discontinuation of universal lunches is going to "make the job of the food service director much, much harder."

"They're dealing with supply chain issues. They're dealing with labor shortages," Schwartz explained. "Food service directors are exhausted. It's been an incredibly arduous year for them. So I think [no waivers would be] adding a huge amount of stress to their jobs."

In addition, Schwartz said, lifting the waivers will have an especially negative impact on families who are just on the cusp of qualifying for reduced meals. "I think that the families that were right on the edge, are the ones that are going to suffer the most, because now they are going to have to go back to paying for the meals," she added.

On June 30, universal lunches are set to officially expire. But in the meantime, the impending deadline hasn't stopped some states from bracing for the impact.

Last year, both California and Maine mandated that free lunches be served to every school within state borders. And Colorado is currently weighing a bill that would do just the same.

"A lot of times, if you think back to getting vending machines out of schools, getting soda out of schools, and getting snacks and other junk out of schools, it happens at the state level first, and then eventually, the federal government catches up," Schwartz said. "This may work out that as states start to do it, it'll provide more pressure for the federal government to reinstate the waivers but not as a waiver but to actually change the policy."

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hanimmal said:

https://www.rawstory.com/everybody-blames-mitch-mcconnell-scrambles-to-avoid-blame-for-end-of-popular-school-lunch-extension/
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