“an economy the magnitude of Russia’s, the 11th largest in the world, has never been sanctioned so comprehensively. Going after a central bank of this size, a major economy’s connections to international banking systems, and many of its sectors, is indeed unprecedented. And to target an economy that large unleashes unintended consequences on Russia, the US, and the globe.
Russia is a major energy exporter, and energy prices are rising and sending inflation even higher. Russia also exports significant amounts of grains, cooking oils, and fertilizer. So sanctioning the country — even with carve-outs and waivers for humanitarian purposes — could have a devastating impact on vulnerable people in poor countries. The United Nations says that economic sanctions will impact Russian and Ukrainian food production, which is exacerbated by the war and Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports. One possible outcome, the UN reports, is that “the global number of undernourished people could increase by 8 to 13 million people in 2022/23.””
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““We all worry about the overuse of sanctions, but I think that this is clearly not a case of overuse,” an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity told me. “This is a case of responding to a clear and egregious violation of basic tenets of international law and human rights. I think this is a case of indisputable agreement that the world needs to respond and sanctions are an appropriate tool.””
“Writing in The Wall Street Journal, the president outlined three policy choices to deal with an inflation caused, he seems to believe, largely by pandemic-related supply-chain obstructions and intensified by the war in Ukraine. His plan is simple: Continue to trust that one of the main architects of our current inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, will raise interest rates fast and high enough to tame inflation without crashing the economy, dispense more subsidies and tax credits, and let the deficit melt away—by some miracle—without cutting spending.
Absent from the piece is any acknowledgement of what readers of this column know all too well: that inflation was fueled by Biden’s own reckless spending policies, especially the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021. Half a dozen or so studies have shown that fiscal policies implemented during COVID-19 are a main culprit behind today’s inflation. Biden also fails to mention the Fed’s overly accommodating monetary policy and its current slow response to inflation.
In other words, the president’s argument is amazing for its tone-deafness, inconsistent thinking, and sheer economic ignorance.”
“Record numbers of Venezuelan migrants have crossed into the United States from Mexico in recent months, hoping to apply for asylum. U.S. immigration authorities reported 24,819 Venezuelan border crossers in December 2021, compared to just 200 one year prior.
Despite the compelling case many Venezuelans have for seeking refuge in the U.S., the Biden administration is denying many of them that opportunity. Instead it is quietly deporting them to Colombia—a policy that resembles a controversial Trump administration practice.”
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” In March 2021, Biden’s DHS announced an 18-month “temporary protected status” for Venezuelans already present in the U.S. That designation, which protects migrants from expulsion, is reserved for people fleeing an “ongoing armed conflict,” “an environmental disaster, or an epidemic,” or “other extraordinary and temporary conditions.” The designation applies to 320,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. but excludes newcomers, despite the Biden administration’s explicit recognition that America should be a safe haven.”
“Although Biden waited more than 15 months before issuing any pardons or commutations, that delay compares favorably to those of many previous presidents. Even Barack Obama, who ultimately granted a record 1,715 commutations, did not approve any until the last year of his first term, and then just one. Obama did not get serious until the third year of his second term, and the vast majority of his commutations came during his last year in office.
That sort of timing is typical. Presidents tend to treat clemency as an afterthought rather than an ongoing process of correcting injustices, partly because they figure any political backlash against their decisions will be limited if they make them on their way out the door. Biden evidently anticipates that the net political impact of freeing nonviolent drug offenders will be positive, which is a good sign.”
“First, it’s worth noting that people with college degrees are more likely to both be employed and, on average, are better paid than those who never attended college. People who attend college are also more likely to come from comparatively affluent households in the first place.
Second, it’s worth asking: Who has $50,000 worth of school loans? Not, for the most part, struggling dropouts from state schools. No, large student loan values are heavily associated with professional schools that produce graduates who, on average, go on to be fairly well-compensated.
The single largest source of student loan debt is MBA programs, as Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Adam Looney has noted, and MBA grads average more than $73,000 in earnings their first year out of school. “The five degrees responsible for the most student debt are: MBA, JD, BA in business, BS in nursing, and MD,” Looney wrote in 2020. “That’s one reason why the top 20 percent of earners owe 35 percent of the debt, and why most debt is owed by well-educated individuals.”
Technically, it’s true that well-paid professional school graduates fall into the category of “working people.” But they are not the sort of working people Warren wants you to think of when she uses those words.
What Warren wants, and what Biden appears to be considering, is a massive program of government aid that would disproportionately benefit doctors, lawyers, well-paid medical specialists, and comfortably salaried individuals with advanced business degrees.
But for some reason, you don’t hear Warren and Biden talking about their plan to give huge amounts of money to corporate lawyers and junior associates at hedge funds.”
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“a program to forgive $50,000 per borrower would come in at around $950 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. This would be in addition to the cost of the current pause on student loan repayment, which has already cost more than $100 billion.
Warren’s pitch for a presidential program to help “working people” is a trillion-dollar bailout for the upper-middle class.”
“As part of a $33 billion funding request for Ukraine, the Biden administration last week proposed sending $500 million to American farmers with a goal of boosting production of wheat, soybeans, rice and other commodities, in order to make up for some of Ukraine’s food exports that have dried up since the Russian invasion.
But some agricultural economists say they’re unsure why the administration would move to boost subsidies for crops that are already fetching high prices, our Meredith Lee reports.
“I don’t think that this sort of intervention from the government makes any sense, other than to read it in a pure political sense, that this is something they feel like they need to do,” said Joe Glauber, former chief economist at USDA during Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s previous tenure during the Obama administration.
The funding request includes food aid programs that buy U.S. commodities and send them to countries in need, including many in Africa and the Middle East that relied on Ukraine and Russia for staples like wheat and sunflower oil and are now reeling from shortages and price spikes.
By the numbers: Under the Biden administration’s proposal, $100 million would go toward providing a $10-per-acre payment to farmers who plant a soybean crop after a winter wheat crop in 2023. Another $400 million would fund a two-year increase in loan rates for U.S. producers to encourage them to grow more select food commodities, including wheat, rice and oilseeds like soybeans, sunflowers and canola.
The Agriculture Department claims the proposal would help stabilize rising U.S. food prices and provide food for foreign countries in need, by helping American farmers grow 50 percent of the wheat normally exported by Ukraine, among other things. That plan, however, would probably also require the U.S. to step up funding for federal aid programs that buy and ship U.S. commodities abroad. Otherwise, wealthier countries like China would likely buy up the extra supply on the open market.
Biden’s proposal comes despite prior statements by key White House and USDA officials that high commodity prices alone would encourage U.S. farmers to increase their crop production and help meet global demand in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The president on Thursday described the plan as “good for rural America, good for the American consumer and good for the world.””
“The $1.2 trillion infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in November expanded requirements that federally funded infrastructure projects purchase American-made goods and materials. Now, new rules from the administration will make it harder to get waivers from those cost-increasing mandates.
For decades, Buy America laws required that grantees receiving federal funds to build roads, bridges, and rail lines purchase domestically produced steel, iron, and manufactured goods—including rolling stock like buses and trains. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) expanded those Buy America requirements to cover copper wiring, plastics, polymers, drywall, and lumber.
These requirements are known to raise costs and can even make some projects totally infeasible. For that reason, grantees have been allowed to request waivers from Buy America laws when they prove unworkable or raise costs too much.
But on Monday, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued guidance intended to narrow the use of those waivers for the Buy America provisions of the IIJA.
Typically, requests for those waivers are approved or denied by the federal agencies that provide a project’s funding. Monday’s guidance, in keeping with an earlier White House executive order, requires these agencies to consult with OMB’s Made in America Office when considering waivers for grant awards made with IIJA funds. It also gives OMB’s Made in America Office final say over whether these waivers are approved.
The explicit purpose of sending these waivers through OMB is to limit the number and extent of waivers granted.”
“The Biden administration is preparing to scrap a Trump-era rule that allows medical workers to refuse to provide services that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs”
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“The so-called conscience rule, unveiled in 2018 and finalized in 2019, was blocked by federal courts after dozens of states, cities and advocacy groups sued, and has never been implemented.
Had it gone forward, it would have allowed doctors, nurses, medical students, pharmacists and other health workers to refuse to provide abortions, contraception, gender affirming care, HIV and STD services, vasectomies or any procedure to which they object.”
“The Biden administration on Tuesday announced changes to federal student loan repayment plans that will make it easier for millions of borrowers to have their debts forgiven after being required to pay for 20 or 25 years.
Education Department officials said they would make a one-time revision to millions of borrower accounts to compensate for what they called longstanding failures of how the agency and its contracted loan servicers managed the income-driven repayment programs. Democrats and consumer groups have been calling on the Biden administration to enact such a policy in recent months.
The income-driven repayment programs are designed to provide loan forgiveness to borrowers who have been making payments tied to their income for at least 20 or 25 years. But few borrowers have successfully received relief under those plans, which Democrats have long promoted as an important safety-net for struggling borrowers.”
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“The Education Department said it would make a one-time adjustment to borrower accounts to provide credit toward loan forgiveness under income-driven repayment for any month in which a borrower made a payment. Officials will credit borrowers regardless of whether they were enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan.”
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“Department officials said they would credit borrowers for months in which borrowers were in long-term forbearances or any type of deferment before 2013. But borrowers will not receive automatic credit for months in which they were in default or enrolled in shorter-term forbearances or certain types of deferments after 2013.”
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“The Education Department said the changes lead to “immediate debt cancellation” for at least 40,000 borrowers under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and “several thousand” borrowers under income-based repayment programs.
A further 3.6 million borrowers will receive at least three years of retroactive credit towards loan forgiveness under income-driven repayment. The credit will be automatically applied to borrower accounts, regardless of whether a borrower is currently enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan”
“Acutely aware of the need to get distance from the president, the four most endangered Democratic incumbents — Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan — are increasingly taking steps to highlight their independence from the president and underscore their differences.
Their public pushback against Biden’s plan to lift the Trump-era border restriction known as Title 42 is the most visible expression of the effort to get distance from the president. But the four Democrats are also finding other ways of signaling to voters. They’ve visited the border wall and blocked his nominees. A month before a Trump-appointed judge struck down Biden’s mask mandate on mass transit, three of the four voted in favor of a Republican bill to do just that.
On social media, where they shy away from praise of the president and instead focus on their efforts to prod the White House to action, it’s hard to tell they’ve voted in line with Biden no less than 96 percent of the time.
“In these four states, these are senators just doing the work, keeping their head down, getting things done for their states while the Republicans are obviously tearing each other apart in these primaries,” said Martha McKenna, a Democratic ad maker who previously worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
“They are not people who go looking for conflict, they’re not grandstanders. They’re hard working senators willing to say, ‘Yes, I agree with Biden on child tax credits or health care, but look, I’ve got an issue on this issue, or that issue.’””