Biden vetoed the retirement investment resolution

Will he do anything? He said in Brussels on December 6, 2021 during a meeting with the U.S. Senator John Biden

He was met with polite appreciation from his foreign counterparts. But the deep skepticism served only to underscore his commitment to a belief that sat at the heart of a pledge that was often pilloried during the campaign as naïve. Biden said there was only one real reassurance, and it was what he’d promised.

After 18 months since those meetings in Europe, Biden departed Washington on Tuesday for the year-end vacation to take advantage of the historic legislative success and the defiance of political gravity that has changed expectations for the crucial months. It’s a moment that Biden never seemed to doubt would come, even as his party – and some inside the White House – questioned or outright urged a change in approach to address political and economic headwinds driven primarily by soaring inflation that threatened to drag down his presidency.

During those 2021 meetings in England and Belgium, Biden found a group of allies genuinely shaken by the January 6 insurrection and the events that led to it. The president tried to calm them that there would be healing of the wounds from that day, and that politics would return to normal.

The Vaccine, the Economy, and the Infrastructure are all important to Biden so he must succeed in his agenda, he told reporters in Brussels before boarding Air Force One. We have to show we can make progress and keep making progress. I think we can do that.

He enters the final two years of his term with much of his agenda now law as he ponders running for reelection at age 80. Core elements of that agenda were driven by bipartisan consensus. In addition to the initial 500 million for the technology and innovation hubs that are part of the CHIPS and Science Act, the final bipartisan achievement of the year is the fact that Biden included a $1 trillion spending package.

“One thing that is foundational with him is if he says he’s going to do something, he does it,” Steve Ricchetti, one of Biden’s closest and longest-serving advisers, told CNN in an interview, underscoring an approach that has been defined by steady, and at times stubborn, persistence.

Simple as it seems, a promise or commitment to action has led to debates on policy decisions more than once.

Biden’s closest confidants also stress that it’s a perspective that is instructive as the White House prepares for the dramatically reshaped Washington that will confront him upon his return from his family vacation to the US Virgin Islands.

An adviser to Biden said that the idea of showing people government can work was mocked in some corners. “That’s literally what’s happening now.”

There are still many challenges facing us. Even if the inflation seems to be easing, it is still high. Advisers to Biden expect the economy to grow slower, though they are hopeful that a recession can be avoided.

Biden has an approval rating that is low and his age is considered a concern by Democrats as they wait for an official decision about whether he will seek reelection.

But Biden’s overarching approach has guided the early-stage planning for the legislative and political implications of a new House Republican majority and served as the basis for aides already working through the outlines of the State of the Union address that will come early next year.

It’s also a defining element of the structure and message planning of a nascent campaign that has taken shape over the last several months and accelerated. Biden’s senior team has become increasingly confident that a reelection campaign will be green lit in the weeks ahead.

The political salience of his agenda, as well as his ability to defy expectations of GOP gains in the elections, is a critical piece of what will happen in the years to come. The agenda now in the implementation phase is unaffected by the prospect of divided government and the extremely narrow legislative pathway it brings.

Mike Donilon, the White House senior adviser and long-standing member of Biden’s inner circle, wrote a memo this month about the foundation of stronger achievements as the nation heads into the New Year.

Biden, advisers said, has laid down strict directives to senior aides and Cabinet officials about the necessity of efficient implementation in the months ahead.

A senior official said that the message was from the top. When we don’t get it right, we have to explain it and fix it.

“A lot of people told him that this wouldn’t resonate, or that it wasn’t the message, or that it’s outdated,” Stef Feldman, the longtime Biden aide who served as the 2020 campaign policy director before following him to the White House, told CNN.

The infrastructure proposal was a key plank in Biden’s campaign as his competitors in the primary race, with their transformational progressive proposals, failed to provide a realistic way to pass a divided Congress.

Biden and his economic advisers zeroed in on an intensive manufacturing and supply chain agenda that grew more aggressive and transformational as a once-in-a-century pandemic gripped the country. They believed that it was a key to reverse the atmosphere that led to Donald Trump’s presidency.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/politics/joe-biden-2022/index.html

Joe Biden’s Foundation for the 2020 Presidential Election: From the Senate to the White House, From Business and Economics to the World, to the Center of the Economic Enterprise

“This was the right moment for his theory of the case,” Feldman said. “He could apply the principles that have really guided him throughout his whole career.”

Biden’s time as a senator and vice president has largely stayed with his principles that were refined during the two years he spent out of office as he pondered another run for the presidency.

“Ever since I’ve talked to the president about the economy, he’s distinguished between the short-term and the long-term, between consumption and investment,” said Jared Bernstein, Biden’s chief economist as vice president who now sits on the Council of Economic Advisers. These have always been at the core of his economic thinking.

The key themes of the 2020 Biden campaign did not seem to differ from the ones outlined in the 22-page memo he drafted as the then-vice president weighed jumping into the 2016 race.

Even the anecdotes from the period – whether the one about Chinese leader Xi Jinping and American “possibilities” or his father’s sayings about the dignity of work, or the importance of “breathing room” – are the same that populate his speeches as president.

During his time as vice president, as well as in the first two years of President Trump’s presidency, there was a clear “through-line” from Joe Biden’s time as a senator, said the man who helped lead the White House legislative effort.

Biden wrote a book detailing his decision not to run for president as he dealt with the pain of his son Beau’s fight with, and eventual death from, brain cancer. That process and the book tour that followed are viewed by Biden’s inner circle as an essential experience in the eventual decision to run in 2020.

If the effort to turn that foundation into a policy agenda was accelerated and expanded in the last months of the campaign, Democrats would have taken control of the majority in the Senate.

Even if the proposals were eventually scaled back in the legislative process, officials structured the infrastructure, manufacturing, research and development, climate and equity proposals into interlocking pieces to work in tandem.

“At the core of this strategy was that the power of it is that these things work together,” National Economic Council Chairman Brian Deese, one of the architects of the package, said in an interview.

It is not universally accepted to subscribe to the term industrial policy. Deese is fond of the Modern American Industrial Strategy. If you do public investment in a thoughtful way, what you’ll actually do is crowd in private investment, Deese said.

A resurgence in research and development funding. Significant public investments designed for critical areas of national and economic security. The elevation of labor unions and the creation of conditions for manufacturing jobs to come back to the US are some of the things that need to be done.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/politics/joe-biden-2022/index.html

The Pandemic: Why Biden Came to the White House and What he Has Learned About Science, Technology, and Politics

These issues are politically popular, even if they are not exclusive to Biden. It is difficult to turn them into policy. It is at least until there is a swine flu.

The bipartisan urgency behind the CHIPS and Science law was due to the tiny chips that power everything from cars and washing machines to advanced weapons systems. One of the reasons for the effort on Capitol Hill was because Sen. Todd Young, an INDIAN Republican up for reelection in 2022, drove the effort.

For Young, who pressed for legislation about the issue in the year prior to Biden entering the White House, it was just a matter of addressing the fact that China had pursued exactly that for a decade or longer. Young was one of 17 Senate Republicans who voted to advance the eventual law that drove new private sector investment or commitments in the last several months.

The pandemic. The rise of China as key feature of policy making in both parties. A president animated by the idea of long-term economic incentives crafted to connect workers and communities left behind for decades.

“There’s a confidence that comes from knowing what you’re doing,” said Kaufman, the former Delaware senator, longtime Biden Senate chief of staff and one of the president’s closest friends. “This is a guy who is so incredibly well qualified to be president because of experience.”

In a way it’s both an implicit acknowledgment of the unprecedented factors – most notably Trump, but in some ways the pandemic as well – that created an opening to the presidency for Biden. Advisers note that there wouldn’t be a question of if Biden would win. He wouldn’t have run.

The voters reject most of the voices parrotsing 2020, particularly the ones for the governor and secretary of state.

In the months leading up to the elections, Biden had begun to recount the experience of his first foreign trip with his foreign counterparts in an attempt to underscore the stakes.

After his return from Indonesia where the G-20 Summit was taking place, he was ready to give an update as he stood in front of a Taiwanese chip maker’s announcement at a new factory that would mark one of the largest foreign investments in US history.

“What was clear in those meetings is the United States is better positioned than any other nation to lead the world economy in the years ahead if we keep our focus,” Biden said.

The Senate Budget Measure to Overturn the Labor Retirement Investment Rule: Is it a Preemptory, Not a Mandatory?

Legislation passed by the House will not be able to be passed by the Senate. The resolution to overturn the investment rule needed a simple majority in the Senate. Republican lawmakers advanced it under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to roll back regulations from the executive branch without needing to clear the 60-vote threshold in the Senate that is necessary for most legislation.

The advocates of the rule argued that the rule was being used to promote a liberal agenda and that it politicized retirement investments.

The measure, which would repeal a Department of Labor rule, now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature. The administration, however, has issued a veto threat. As a result, passage of the resolution could pave the way for Biden to issue the first veto of his presidency.

Opponents of the rule could try to override a veto, but at this point it appears unlikely they could get the two-thirds majority needed in each chamber to do so.

The resolution was written by GOP Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana. The bill passed with the support of two democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana.

The ability to roll back regulations from the executive branch without having to go through the Senate for most legislation is afforded by the Congressional Review Act.

The Senate GOP leader said that the Biden Administration wants to let Wall Street use workers’ hard-earned savings to pursue left-wing political initiatives.

Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming said at a news conference on Tuesday, “What’s happened here is the woke and weaponized bureaucracy at the Department of Labor has come out with new regulations on retirement funds, and they want retirement funds to be invested in things that are consistent with their very liberal, left-wing agenda.”

Supporters of the rule argue that it is not a mandate – it allows, but does not require, the consideration of environmental, social and governance factors in investment selection.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in defense of the rule that Republicans are “using the same tired attacks we’ve heard for a while now that this is more wokeness. … But Republicans are missing or ignoring an important point: Nothing in the (Labor Department) rule imposes a mandate.”

He said that it is not about ideological preference but about looking at the biggest picture possible for investments to minimize risk and maximize returns.

The administration policy warns that if the measure is presented to Biden it would cause him to veto it. The rule simply makes certain that the retirement plan fiduciaries must analyze their investment decisions based on factors that are relevant to that analysis.

Why did President Biden decide to veto a Washington, DC, crime law with a simple majority vote in the U.S. Senate?

Republicans are also working to advance a measure to rescind a controversial Washington, DC, crime law – which critics argue is soft on violent criminals – with a simple majority vote in the Senate.

Many Democrats oppose overriding the DC law. They argue local officials should make their own laws free of congressional interference and decry Republicans as hypocrites since they typically promote state and local rights.

“I just signed this veto because legislation passed by the Congress would put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country. They couldn’t take into consideration investments that wouldn’t be impacted by climate, impacted by overpaying executives, and that’s why I decided to veto it – it makes sense to veto it,” Biden said in a video posted to social media Monday afternoon.