We are preparing for the possibility of a debt default

Does Congress Really Need $Delta F_3$ to Pay for Social Security? The Case Against Wall Street Wall-Closure

Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his House GOP allies are trying to work out their initial demands to raise the debt limit, but they are steering clear of Medicare and Social Security in order to avoid voter backlash.

The Republicans are using Foghorn Leghorn to play chicken with the Biden adminstration when they already know they are going to chicken out. It would be destructive and suicidal for the federal government to default on its debt. We will probably go through this terrifying act until a handful of swing-district Republicans break ranks and vote with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.

Other than trying to slow the rate of spending growth, I don’t think there will be cuts to either program. They’re popular with Republican voters, too, after all. And there’s no way anything is going to happen except on a bipartisan basis. Any suggestions for fixes that don’t involve large tax increases?

Corrupt Proposals to Increase Social Security and Medicare Taxes During the Donald Trump Era: Why the Republicans Shouldn’t Adopt an Extraordinary Measure

Gail: I’m sorry. Well, some people may regard this as a tax increase, but I want to propose some tax fairness. For some reason, Social Security payroll taxation stops at about $160,000. A millionaire doesn’t pay anything on $840,000.

Gail: I am interested in this. Bret, I spent a lot of my early career — way back in the ’70s — hanging out with the chief of police in New Haven, Ed Morrone, who was just so smart. He told my husband Dan, who was a police reporter then, that the most important job of a cop was “to keep people who hate one another apart.”

While McCarthy has not settled on any individual proposal and is unlikely to make a specific offer at the Wednesday meeting, he and other House Republicans are roundly rejecting the White House’s position to raise the borrowing limit without strings attached, even as it was suspended three times when Donald Trump was president and is intended to pay for bills already incurred.

McCarthy promised to put a bill on the floor before the end of March that would give the Treasury Department power to prioritize payments in the event that the debt ceiling is broken.

Yellen subsequently said there could be a “global financial crisis” if there is no debt limit agreement. The Treasury Department is now taking “extraordinary measures” to continue paying bills on time.

When asked by CNN if he would vote for the ceiling increase if it included all of his priorities, Rep. Greg Pence said, “No.” “That’s what I hear back home.”

It will be difficult for the conference to agree on spending cuts, even if House Republicans unite around a proposal. GOP appropriators are worried about protecting defense programs, but also uneasy about cutting popular domestic spending programs, which can be fodder for Democratic attack ads.

“You are always going to have a handful that will vote ‘no’ on everything. Nancy Mace of South Carolina stated that it was up to the people to exist. That is the reason why it is important to negotiate. We are a divided Congress, and we got to act that way.”

Even some of the most hardline conservatives say they don’t plan to propose cuts to Social Security or Medicare – something Trump has been encouraging Republicans not to do – and insist their plan will only focus on the discretionary side of spending.

Nearly two-thirds of annual federal spending is what’s known as mandatory spending, which means existing laws require the funds to be allocated. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, veterans benefits and retirement programs for federal civilian and military retirees all fall into this category. Congress does not specify funding levels for these programs annually.

Debt Limit Negotiations in the Confrontation of Republican and Senate Leaders: The Case for a Balanced Superannouncement

The conservative crew met on Friday and Monday to discuss ways in which they could cut spending to achieve a balanced budget in 10 years, as well as outline their vision in the coming weeks according to a member involved in the talks.

Ringleaders of the group like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, have been in regular communication with McCarthy and want to meet with GOP leaders as discussions intensify.

“What we will have is a blueprint of what we will be fighting for,” South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, told CNN. Every agency is being looked at on discretionary, not Social Security, not Medicare. We are going to make it available to the American people. It will stun people. … I think people will like what they see.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/politics/debt-limit-negotiations-republicans/index.html

Getting Around the Debt Ceiling: Issues for the U.S. Senate Budget and Sensitive Sensitivity to Correlations

“I want us to be the adults in the room. Massie told reporters that there are two things that could be a crisis. “Take that off the table. It would give you time and space, and make it easier to deal with the pressure.

Some appropriators acknowledged they may end up on the sidelines of the debate, while McCarthy was trying to build conference-wide consensus on what they will propose in exchange for raising the nation’s borrowing limit.

“I will be either the beneficiary, or victim, of however that comes out, because we will be getting a (topline spending number) for my subcommittee,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, told CNN. I will be directly affected.

President Joe Biden may touch on the topic in Tuesday’s State of the Union address. If there is not a raise of the debt ceiling by June, the US treasury secretary warns, the country could default on its financial obligations.

Massie has advocated for the passing of a continuing resolution, that funds the government at 99% of its current levels, and pairs it with a debt ceiling increase, in case they are unable to come to an agreement on the federal government’s future funding.

President Joe Biden and House Republicans are locked in a battle over whether to pair addressing the debt ceiling with cutting spending. Biden is expected to unveil his budget proposal on Thursday which will aim to reduce the deficit over the course of 10 years.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican involved in that effort, said that their plan would be a fallback in case talks between the White House and McCarthy collapse.

The Bank of America Debt Problem and the Challenge of Recovering from the Covid-19 Disaster: A CNN This Morning Perspective with Brian Moynihan

Congress is squabbling about raising the debt ceiling, the amount of money the US government can borrow to pay its bills. It means that Corporate America needs to be prepared for the worst.

“We have to be prepared for that, not only in this country but in other countries around the world,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told Poppy Harlow on “CNN This Morning” Monday. You prepare for it, but hope is not a strategy.

Some people want the government to get rid of the debt ceiling completely. The argument was that political squabbles should not stop the US from fulfilling its financial commitments.

“Congress has the purse strings. He stated that he would be careful in attempting to restructure the US Constitution. We should leave it alone and make sure it works as it should.

But he conceded that the government has needed to spend a lot more on various stimulus programs since 2020 due to the Covid-19 crisis, saying that the US had to take on “a lot of debt over the past couple of years to overcome the pandemic drag on the economy.”

The economy has rebounded sharply from the depths of the brief Covid downturn. So much so that inflation is now arguably the biggest problem facing the country, as well as the Federal Reserve.

With that in mind, Moynihan said, Bank of America is still predicting a “mild recession” at some point in the future — but the start date keeps getting pushed. He argues that higher rates could be a drag on corporate profits, but the good news is most people are still working, earning good wages and spending.

The global economy will face a lasting impact from the recent espionage balloon incident between the US and China, according to Moynihan.

The 2021 Post-Core Budget Boom in U.S. Business Innovation: Why Did Biden and Trump Start Running Expenditure Business Innovation?

The federal government has run deficits every year since 2000, spending more money than it receives in tax revenue. The deficit ballooned under former President Donald J. Trump after the onset of the pandemic recession, which spurred Congress to approve trillions of dollars in relief for individuals, businesses and state and local governments. It remained elevated in 2021, thanks to the economic aid package Mr. Biden signed in his first year in office.

The impact of one bill is not expected to be any worse than the impact of other bills and policies Biden approved.

This is true, first of all. The federal government released the data for a full year for the first time in 2005, and the number of business applications surged to more than 5 million in the following years. Not every application turns into a real business, but the number of “high-propensity” business applications – those deemed to have a high likelihood of turning into a business with a payroll – also hit a record in 2021 and saw its second-highest total in 2022.

Donald Trump’s last full year as President was a record for total and high propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Some newly unemployed workers took advantage of the moment to start their own businesses, American had extra money from the stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden, and the interest rates were low until a series of rate hikes in the spring of 2022.

The Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.4% in January 2023, just above the record low of 5.3% set in August 2019. This data series goes back more than 30 years. The rate was 9.2% in January 2021, the month Biden took office.

The US Economic Imbalance and Tax Credits: Facts First: Biden’s Inflation and State-of-the-Union

The nation’s fiscal imbalance is nothing new. The US has been in debt for a while, according to the Treasury Department. Over the centuries, war, economic downturns and the Covid-19 pandemic have caused the debt to balloon.

The US economy added 803,000 manufacturing jobs from Biden’s first full month in office, February 2021, through January 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The job growth rate was over six percent in the first two years of Biden’s presidency. The last time a comparable growth rate was higher was in 1979.

Facts First: This claim needs context. The Inflation Reduction Act will help families save money on their energy bills, but it could take years for the EV tax credits to be fully available.

Biden’s claim about energy savings is similar to an estimate from clean electricity nonprofit Rewiring America – which estimated last year that a US household could save $1,800 per year if they installed electric heat pumps to heat their water and heat and cool their air, replaced a gas car with an EV, and installed solar.

Starting this year, 40% or more of the critical minerals used to create a vehicle’s battery must be extracted or processed in the United States, or a country that has a free trade deal with the US, for the vehicle to qualify for tax credits. 80% of the battery minerals will be attained by the year 2027, and 100 percent by 2029.

The US Treasury Department is expected to issue guidance on critical minerals and batteries in March. Companies have to move their supply chain to North America in order to take advantage of tax credits, so it will take years to fully kick in.

This provision passed because Manchin wanted the US to compete with China on electric vehicles, and it will eventually have the impact of bringing more EV and battery jobs to the US or countries it has a free trade agreement with. The measure has already resulted in several companies announcing new factories in the US.

It will take time to implement, which is a shame because vehicle manufacturers won’t be able to give them in the next couple years as they migrate their supply chain to the US and Canada.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

Biden’s Improvement of the Child Tax Credit and a Low Child Poverty Rate: Fueling the Gas Prices in the United States After Ukraine Inauguration

Biden pointed to the fact that child poverty rate had been slashed because of the Democrats’ enhancement of the child tax credit.

The child poverty rate fell from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2% in 2021, according to the US Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes into account certain non-cash government assistance, tax credits and needed expenses.

Congress made the child tax credit more generous for lower income families by increasing it from $600 to $3,600 for children up to age 6 and $3,000 for children up to 17 years old. For the first time, half the credit was paid in monthly installments from July to December while parents could claim the other half when they file their taxes.

Biden is trying to lower gas prices. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, which contributed to a spike in gas prices, the Biden administration released 180 million barrels of oil from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The administration also issued an emergency waiver that allowed the sale of E15 gasoline, a blend that contains 15% ethanol, last summer. An official at the White House said that gas prices are lower than they were when the Russian invasion began.

The national average price of a gallon of regular gas on that day was $3.457, according to data from the American Automobile Association. That was indeed down more than $1.50 from a record high of $5.016 in mid-June. On Inauguration Day of Biden, the national average was still more than double the national average.

The White House official pointed out that the administration’s Treasury Department estimated that releasing reserve oil by the US could have lowered the price of gas by 40 cents a gallon.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule: How President Biden Amented the U.S. Economy and the State of the Union

I stand here tonight after we’ve created, with the help of many people in this room, 12 million new jobs – more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.

The economy quickly recovered that summer, growing at an annualized rate of 35.3% in the third quarter of 2020, the fastest pace on record. The pace of growth slowed in the winter before Biden took office.

While touting his efforts to stand up to authoritarian leaders in China and Russia, Biden painted himself as a champion of freedom and inaccurately claimed that democracy was spreading under his watch.

Facts First: This claim is at odds with data from Freedom House, a leading nonprofit that tracks democracy and human rights around the world. They say democracy has been in global decline over the past few years.

The most recent annual report on the state of global democracy was titled, “The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule.” Their report was titled, “Democracy under Siege.”

According to Freedom House, 60 countries experienced democratic backsliding in the past year and only 25 countries improved their position. The group highlighted the Taliban regaining power in Afghanistan when Biden withdrew all American troops from the country.

The most recent report from Freedom House is one year old. And to be fair, Biden could merely be expressing his view that autocratic regimes have lost prestige on the world stage.

The trends seem to be holding. For instance, after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last year, he initiated a domestic crackdown that rolled back the few remaining civil liberties that existed in Russia.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

On the cost of charging EVs on roads, according to data from CNN and analysis of fast chargers in the U.S. and other countries

In an interview with climate publication Grist last year, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that ultimately the number of EV chargers on the roads “really depends on how the states decide to mix the fast chargers and different types of technology.”

Individual states have a lot of latitude in deciding what kind of charger to use on their roads, and there is a broad range in how much different types of chargers cost. The DC fast charging station can charge a car to 100% capacity in 20 minutes or less and can be used on highways and roads. An L2 charging station takes hours to charge a car to full. But DC fast chargers are much more expensive, costing around $100,000 compared to around $6,000 for an L2, Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, a senior resident fellow at the think tank Third Way, has told CNN.

The BLS shows that in January the average hourly wage was $31.57 for all employees and $25.84 for production and non-supervisory positions. Nationally, the average hourly wage was a projected $33.03. From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

30 million people have to sign non-compete agreements to work in certain jobs, which is why a cashier at a burger place can’t cross the street to work at a restaurant that pays more money.

This is only partially true. Millions of workers and independent contractors have signed non-compete agreements to avoid competition and wages that critics say suppress entrepreneurship. The Federal Trade Commission in January proposed a rule to ban employers from imposing those agreements on workers and to rescind all existing noncompete agreements. burger chain workers may be subject to the noncompete agreements. It’s not likely anymore.

An investigation in Washington state in 2017 revealed that several fast-food chains, including Arby’s, Auntie Anne’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Carl’s Jr., Cinnabon, Jimmy John’s, and McDonald’s, had been enforcing no-poaching rules that prevented employees from moving between franchises within the same chain – not, as Biden suggested, between rival chains. By the year 2020, every chain agreed to end their no-poach practices. From CNN’s David Goldman

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The Inflationary Rate in December 2020 and What Scott’s Plan to Save America Would Have to Do With Its Current Expenditure

In December, the overall inflation was 6.3%. The headline inflation rate has declined for six consecutive months since hitting a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022.

The CPI, which measures the average change in the prices over time of a basket of consumer goods, is one of several closely watched inflation barometers that also have showed price increases to have moderated in recent months. Within CPI and other indexes, there are various measures to gauge inflation. Most notably, “core” inflation measures that exclude items with more volatile price increases.

There are various ways to measure wages. Between December of 2020 and December of 2020 real average hourly earnings declined by 1.7%, while real average weekly earnings declined by 3.1%. From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Alicia Wallace

Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott last year issued “An 11 Point Plan to Rescue America.” As the president said, Scott’s proposal would sunset all federal legislation – including the two entitlement programs – every five years and require Congress to pass them again. Ron Johnson, a GOP senator from Wisconsin, advocated during his campaign for a third term in the Senate that entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, should be shifted to discretionary spending that Congress can approve annually.

The official text of the plan does not say that any legislation should be stopped in five years, just that it should be. McConnell also said that Scott’s plan would ruin Social Security and Medicare within five years.

For instance, the conservative lawmakers proposed raising Medicare’s eligibility age to be in line with the normal retirement age for Social Security, which currently is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later, and then indexing it to life expectancy. They would also raise the normal retirement age for Social Security, as well as trim benefits for wealthier people.

The World Warfare Was Still Going On: The Biden Administration and the Democrats Have Called to End the Policing of the Police

HuckabeeSanders implied that the Biden administration and Democrats have called to end funding for the police.

The phrase “defund the police” means different things to different activists, such as the dissolution of police forces and partial reductions in funding.

Facts First: It’s obviously ridiculous to claim that there was world peace when Trump’s tenure ended, and calling the world “stable” is a subjective claim.

When Trump left the White House in 2021, there were still plenty of wars ongoing around the world – albeit not as many as under previous presidents, and very few of those conflicts directly involved American armed forces.

For instance, Trump did not end the war in Afghanistan, which was still ongoing when Biden took office. There were thousands of US troops in the country when Biden was sworn in, before he withdrew them all in 2021.

The Syrian civil war was also ongoing, though at a more isolated level than in past years. And a war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region was in full swing. There were deaths and disappearances in Mexico due to the drug war.

In addition, the war was still going on in the eastern Donbas region. The war began in 2014, but had settled into a “frozen conflict,” with Russian proxies occupying a large chunk of the eastern Donbas region, and Ukrainian troops dug into trenches. It escalated into a full-blown war when Russia invaded in February 2022, after Biden had already taken office. From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The Biden Era Revisited: Rethinking the U.S. Border Security Threat Against the 2020 Swine Flu, and Implications for Retirement and Health Care

Those figures include repeat crossers and reflect shifting migration patterns. In recent months, there had been an increasing number of Cubans, Venezuelas, Nicaraguas and Haitians travelling to the US-Mexico border due to the worsening conditions at home. The Biden administration was challenged by the fact that the US is limited in removing some of those nationalities.

According to federal data, in the fiscal year of 2022, US Border Patrol encountered more than 2.2 million migrants attempting to cross the US southern border.

This is partially true, but it doesn’t have context. The job losses America had faced from the Covid shutdowns at the beginning of the swine Flu was the worst to ever happen to the US economy.

The fourth quarter of 2020 saw 3.9% annual growth in America’s gross domestic product while the fourth quarter of 2020 also saw America lose jobs. Despite the impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine and supply chain disruptions, Biden’s economic program helped juice the economy in 2001, although it helped set off an inflation crisis that continues to plague the global economy today.

In speeches and tweets this week, Biden and his White House have singled out particular Republican senators – notably including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin – over proposals from those senators that could affect the retirement and health care programs.

The videos are authentic, though Biden didn’t tell his Wednesday speech audience in Wisconsin they are from more than 12 years ago – an event in 2010, when Lee was running for the Senate but before he was first elected. And as Lee noted in Wednesday tweets responding to Biden, Biden didn’t mention that Lee added at the same 2010 event that current Medicare beneficiaries should have their benefits “left untouched” and that “the next layer beneath them, those who will retire in the next few years, also probably have to be held harmless.”

Lee stated on Wednesday that he has not advocated for the abolishing of Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits, only for solutions to improve those programs and move them toward solvency. For example, he has endorsed various proposals over the years to raise the Social Security retirement age.

During the section of the State of the Union where he discussed the battle over the debt ceiling, Biden may have created an incorrect impression by mentioning the sunset proposal. There is no indication that House Republicans are pushing this proposal as part of the current debt ceiling negotiations with the Biden administration, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has, more generally, said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “off the table” in these negotiations.

He also proposed allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for more types of prescription drugs, and using the savings from that to preserve the program. The Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last year allowed the program to negotiate prices for some drugs.

Biden has taken exception to Johnson stating last year that Social Security should not be treated as permanent entitlements, but as discretionary spending, which Congress has to approve every year.

“The Democrats have been accusing me, since the first time I ran for office, of wanting to end Social Security, wanting to cut it, wanting to gut it, wanting to – I’ve never said that. I’ve always been consistent: I want to save it,” he said in a radio interview this week.

It is not possible to fact check this particular dispute without Johnson specifying how he will fix or save the program. His office did not respond to the CNN request for comment.

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates noted in an email to reporters on Thursday that, despite Johnson accusing Biden of lying about his stance on Social Security, he also said in interview this week that the program is a Ponzi scheme.

The Congressional Budget Office Report on the Debt, Tax Cuts, and Implications for Economic Growth, Social Security, and Health Care

There were no indications in the report that the size of the federal debt was dragging on economic growth or would any time soon. policymakers need to change the nation’s fiscal course which could come from raising taxes or cutting spending

In a letter accompanying the report, the director of the budget office said that changes in policy must be made to address the rising costs of interest and mitigate other adverse consequences of high and rising debt.

The report shows that the rise in debt projections is the result of a combination of increased Federal Reserve interest rates and bipartisan legislation.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects the deficit will grow slightly this fiscal year, to $1.41 trillion from $1.375 trillion, then continue to rise for the course of the decade, topping $2 trillion in 2032. The costs of medicare and social security are going up as members of the baby boom generation retire and the federal government is forced to service more debt due to rapid interest rate increases

The legislation makes it easier for veterans who believe they were exposed to toxins during their service to receive medical benefits, by effectively presuming that any American service member stationed in a combat zone for the last 32 years could have been exposed. It also provides a dedicated stream of funding to treat ailments tied to those exposures.

President Biden is proposing a tax increase for people who make more than $400,000 to extend the life of Medicare for another 25 years, highlighting a major element of his budget proposal which the White House will release in full on Thursday.

These unsustainable figures result from demographics, rising health care costs and program design. The ratio of workers supporting each retiree, which was about 5:1 back in 1960, will fall to just over 2:1 by the next decade. The group of people who live until age 90 will collect one-third of their adult life’s income on Social Security and Medicare. The Urban Institute says that couples will receive Medicare benefits three times as large as their lifetime contributions to the system, and then come out ahead on Social Security, adjusted into present value.

The president’s implication that full benefits can be paid without raising taxes for 98 percent of families has no basis in mathematical reality. Imagine if Congress allowed the Trump tax cuts to expire, applied Social Security taxes to all wages, hiked the top two tax brackets, and imposed a wealth tax on assets over $10 billion. Federal income, state and payroll marginal tax rates could approach 100 percent for wealthy taxpayers, and America would face among the highest wealth, estate and corporate tax rates in the developed world.

This year, the president’s budget — a policy document that usually is largely ignored by Congress, which holds the power of the purse — comes ahead of a deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.

Biden’s Tax Increase Plan for a Solvable Medicare Trust Fund: The Future of Social Security and Medicare is in the Tax Box

Biden published an op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday laying out his proposal to invest in Medicare’s trust fund so that the program can remain solvent into the 2050s, a plan that would increase the Medicare tax rate to 5% from 3.8% on people who make more than $400,000 a year.

Biden said his proposals were “common-sense changes” that most people would support and said that Medicare was a “rock-solid guarantee” for older Americans.

And then there’s interest owed on the debt, which has grown rapidly over the past year amid repeated rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. The Peter G.Peterson Foundation states that interest costs will surpass federal spending on defense and Medicaid within a decade.

According to the Treasury Department, the federal government earned $4.7 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2022, more than it spent. The budget shortfall adds to the total national debt.

Lawmakers, however, do have control over so-called discretionary spending, which they vote on annually. The funding supports a wide variety of federal agencies and programs, which includes education, transportation, housing, environmental protection, and federal law enforcement.

The biggest source of revenue was individual income taxes which made up more than half of the money collected. Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes are the largest slice of the tax. (These levies are split between employer and employee.)

But the government also raises money in other ways, including charging admission to national parks, levying customs duties on foreign imports and exports and imposing excise taxes on items such as alcohol, tobacco and gasoline.

The president is proposing tax increases to offset the cost of his agenda that has yet to be approved by Congress. Efforts to expand access to child care, give workers paid leave, and give students the chance to go to community college for free are all part of the agenda.

The Times: Reporting Political Processes in the Presence of Majority Members of the Congregation. The Times Reporter’s Report on Politics

Times reporters are covering politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. Times staff can vote, but they’re not allowed to campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.