“The Biden administration..launched “China House,” the centerpiece of its effort to strengthen its diplomatic heft in its global rivalry with Beijing.
The State Department-based unit is designed to eliminate silos among sometimes redundant government bodies, giving U.S. officials from within State and beyond a central clearinghouse to share information and shape policy on China, State officials told POLITICO”
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“China House — formally known as the Office of China Coordination — replaces the China Desk in the State Department’s East Asian and Pacific Affairs bureau. The new entity will employ roughly 60 to 70 personnel, including liaisons from other parts of the department such as the Africa and Latin America bureaus, as well as people detailed from other U.S. departments and agencies who may focus on topics such as technology or economic policy.
“The sheer scale, scope, complexity and stakes of the China challenge required us to think, collaborate, organize and act differently,” a senior State Department official said. “It could not be managed alone through the bilateral desk approach.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussion involved sensitive diplomatic matters.”
“By signing the bill, Biden will be forced to agree to a repeal of the Pentagon’s policy requiring troops to receive the Covid vaccine or face expulsion from the military.
The repeal is a victory for Republicans who pushed to do away with the policy during negotiations on a final defense bill. Conservatives have hammered the administration for forcing out thousands of military personnel and piling onto an already rough recruiting environment.
Rescinding the August 2021 mandate is a black eye for Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who still back the policy as a matter of health and readiness for the armed forces.”
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“The bill, however, doesn’t prohibit a new vaccine requirement in the coming months, meaning Austin could implement a new policy when the 2021 directive is repealed. Doing so, however, would spark a battle with the Republican-controlled House next year.”
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“Both parties roundly rejected Biden’s $813 billion military spending plan as too low to meet worldwide threats and counter the impacts of inflation on the Pentagon.
Instead, Congress endorsed that hefty $45 billion increase to Biden’s budget, which already would have boosted defense by about $30 billion over last year’s level. The final bill amounts to an increase of roughly $75 billion, or nearly 10 percent, from the previous year.
The additional money went toward buying more weapons as well as efforts to blunt the effects of inflation on Pentagon programs, troops and construction.
This marks the second straight year that Congress has significantly rewritten Biden’s budget. Defense legislation approved last year authorized an increase of $25 billion to the administration’s first proposal. It’s a pattern Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), who is set to chair House Armed Services next year, chalked up to Congress and the White House rarely seeing eye to eye on federal spending.”
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“Congress foiled one of the few major changes Biden proposed to the nuclear arsenal, keeping alive a sea-launched cruise missile first proposed by the Trump administration.
Proponents of canceling the developmental program criticized it as costly, destabilizing and redundant, because Biden kept low-yield nukes fielded by the Trump administration deployed aboard ballistic missile submarines. A 2021 report by the Congressional Budget Office estimated the missile will cost $10 billion through 2030.
But lawmakers ultimately authorized $45 million to continue the program after top military brass, including Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley, publicly expressed support for the weapon, in a split with Austin and other top civilians who argued the missile isn’t needed.”
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“Lawmakers also voted to require the Pentagon to keep most of its inventory of B83 nuclear gravity bombs, which Biden proposed retiring. The agreement prohibits retiring or deactivating more than 25 percent of the stockpile until the Pentagon provides Congress with a study on how it will field capabilities to strike hard and buried targets.”
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“Lawmakers authorized $32.6 billion to buy new ships, boosting the budget by $4.7 billion and ordering up three new hulls the Navy didn’t ask for.
The additions include a third unrequested Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which the White House said it “strongly opposes” when the House approved it. Navy leaders have questioned whether a strained shipbuilding base can handle a rate of three destroyers per year. The bill also set a legal floor of 31 amphibious warships for the Navy, which the administration also opposes, arguing it would “unduly constrain” military planning.
Congress also threw a wrench into Navy plans to retire two dozen ships. The move was aimed at saving money but it also drew criticism on Capitol Hill because the plans would have scrapped some troubled littoral combat ships relatively early in their service lives.
The compromise bill ultimately bars the Navy from retiring a dozen warships it had planned to decommission, including five littoral combat ships and a Ticonderoga-class cruiser.
The legislation also crimps efforts by the Pentagon to retire dozens of aircraft. It jams up the administration’s plans to retire Navy EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets, requiring the service to maintain a fleet of at least 158 aircraft through fiscal 2027. The bill similarly blocks efforts by the Air Force to retire some F-22 fighters through fiscal 2027.
Lawmakers also limited the Air Force’s ability to reduce its fleet of E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System planes below a certain level. Those restrictions would be eased if the service submits an acquisition strategy or awards a contract for its successor, the E-7 Wedgetail.
Lawmakers, meanwhile, boosted procurement for a swath of aircraft across the military services. Most notably, Armed Services leaders approved $666 million for eight Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets the Navy didn’t seek in its budget, keeping the production line active.”
“Despite campaigning as a moderate, President Biden has dramatically accelerated federal spending during his time in office. He has now spent more in his first two years than President Trump did during his last two years at the height of the pandemic.
Official estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that, since January 2021, legislation signed by President Biden has set in motion a record $3.37 trillion in new spending, surpassing Trump’s previous record of $3.28 trillion during the 116th Congress.
Like Trump, Biden has overseen significant pandemic-related relief, but he also has ramped up spending on priorities well beyond COVID-19. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), passed in March 2021, cost $1.8 trillion, more than half of the new spending enacted during Biden’s time in office.
But it’s the other expensive legislation Biden has signed that pushed him past Trump. The much-vaunted Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act spent another $765 billion, though the infrastructure expenditures will occur over the course of the next five years. The Jon Stewart-promoted Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act contributed another $278 billion, while the recently passed CHIPS Act “chipped” in $255 billion more. And though congressional Democrats failed to pass Biden’s Build Back Better legislation earlier this year, its eventual successor, the Inflation Reduction Act, is still estimated by the CBO to add another $51 billion to the federal ledger.”
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“the CBO estimated in June that a number of the president’s executive actions total another $532 billion, including interest expenses. The list of actions reviewed by the CBO include $300 billion for an expansion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, $34 billion for the extension of various healthcare subsidies, and $85 billion for pauses in student loan repayment.
What’s more, on the topic of student loans, Biden has since taken even greater actions. One estimate puts his most recent pause at another $40 billion, while the cost of fuller loan forgiveness would be more than $400 billion. Taken together, these add more than another $1 trillion in spending to Biden’s legislative impact, and help explain how the administration racked up a whopping $4.8 trillion in new borrowing in just the last two years.”
“The Senate voted Thursday to avert a freight rail strike just days before crucial drinking water, food and energy shipments were set to be sidelined, after hurried talks in both chambers of Congress and a visit to the Senate from two of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet secretaries — but a bipartisan push to add paid sick leave to the deal fell short.
Ultimately the Senate voted 80-15, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voting present, to pass a bill that would impose the terms of a contract negotiated among freight railroads and most of their unions in September. Four out of the 12 unions involved had been holding out for additional paid sick days, making a strike possible as soon as Dec. 9.”
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““What’s frustrating is that the railroads know that their backstop is federal government intervening in a strike,” said Tony Cardwell, president of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division, one of the four unions that rejected the tentative agreement. “The railroads would have come running to the bargaining table if they knew that we would have been able to go on strike. But they were reliant on the Congress stopping our strike, and therefore they bargained in bad faith.””
“President Joe Biden, who recently issued a mass pardon for low-level marijuana offenders, says cannabis consumption should not be treated as a crime. His administration nevertheless defends the federal ban on gun possession by marijuana users, arguing that Second Amendment rights are limited to “law-abiding citizens.”
Last week, a federal judge agreed, dismissing a challenge to that rule by medical marijuana patients in Florida. The reasoning underlying that decision shows that the constitutional right to armed self-defense, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld, is still subject to legislators’ arbitrary whims and irrational prejudices.”
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“Winsor noted a long history of banning gun ownership by people convicted of certain crimes. But as Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett pointed out in a 2019 dissent as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, that history does not suggest that any crime, or even any felony, will do.
“Legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,” Barrett wrote. “But that power extends only to people who are dangerous.”
Are cannabis consumers dangerous? Winsor suggested that they are, accepting the Biden administration’s analogy between the gun ban for marijuana users and laws enacted in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries that prohibited people from either carrying or firing guns “while intoxicated.”
That analogy fails, however, because those laws did not impose general bans on gun possession by drinkers. They applied only when gun owners were under the influence.”