House Democrats will consider $2.9T in tax hikes — mostly on the wealthy and corporations

House Democrats will consider as much as $2.9 trillion in tax hikes for the next 10 years — mostly on the extremely wealthy and corporate America — as they scramble for ways to pay for President Biden’s $3.5 trillion infrastructure and social spending plan.

Why it matters: A draft proposal from the Ways and Means Committee, which ricocheted across Washington Sunday night, previews epic fall fights between Democrats and some of the best-armed lobbies in America.

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Driving the news: The summary, first reported by The Washington Post, includes a top personal rate of 39.6%, up from 37%, which would raise $170 billion over 10 years.

• Democrats are looking to raise $1 trillion from the wealthiest Americans and $900 billion from corporate America.
• While President Biden has defined the “rich” as any individual or household that makes more than $400,000, the Democratic plan draws the line for individuals at $400,000; households at $425,000; and married couples at $450,000. 

By the numbers: The top capital gains rate would increase to 25% from 20% — raising some $123 billion.

• Changes to what qualifies as investment income, some of which is already subject to 3.8% Obamacare tax, would make the effective capital gains rate 28.3%, raising $252 billion. 
• Accelerating the end of the $24 million estate tax exemption would bring in another $50 billion.
• Imposing an additional 3% tax on Americans who make more than $5 million would raise $127 billion.
• Expanded restrictions on carried interest impacting how private equity firms compensate employees could bring another $14 billion.
• The pharmaceutical industry could be forced to foot $700 billion of new spending by negotiating rates directly with Medicare.

Add these provisions and others up and you get to $2.9 trillion.

• Then the plan counts $600 billion from so-called dynamic scoring, based on an assumption that the proposed policy changes will accelerate economic growth and therefore revenues. That’s how Democrats could get to $3.5 trillion, at least on paper.

The big picture: While the menu gives Democratic lawmakers options, it also forces them to take sides on everything from a 3% surcharge on the uber-rich to a 26.5% corporate tax rate.

• There’a already a raging argument over the top line spending figure, with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) settling between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) calling anything short of $3.5 “totally unacceptable.”
• Substantive policy differences between the House and the Senate could become as important, with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) threatening to vote against the budget package Sunday night over homeownership concerns.

Source: https://www.axios.com/democrats-tax-increases-wealthy-5de1ce55-a92e-433a-8481-bfddcd23f1a8.html
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‘The biggest bill in the history of the country’: Dems wrestle over control of the infrastructure throttle

Democrats are hurtling toward their most consequential stretch of legislating since the passage of Obamacare, with major decisions left unmade as they wrangle over the size and scope of President Joe Biden’s sweeping domestic agenda.

July and August will render a decisive verdict on Democrats’ so-called “two-track” strategy of enacting Biden’s jobs and families plans via twin bills, one with GOP support focusing on physical infrastructure and the other on a partisan spending plan centered on fighting climate change, increasing child care and raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

Work on both items is nearing a climax, with senators in both parties drafting that centrist bill for a July Senate vote and the Senate’s 50 Democrats haggling over how big to go in their own party-line endeavor.

Some House moderates are urging party leaders to focus squarely on the bipartisan bill, while many liberals remain skeptical it will happen at all — and Speaker Nancy Pelosi has threatened to sideline it without an accompanying Democratic package. A failed bipartisan result would force Democrats to write one huge spending bill marrying all their priorities.

Taken together, Democrats’ decisions in the coming days will define what may be the largest spending bill in history, offering their best chance at reshaping the federal government for years to come. Biden’s party has a rare opportunity with full control over Congress and the White House, but its majorities are so slim that even attempting the two-part move will be a daredevil act.

“If you add the two plans together, it would be the biggest bill in the history of the country,” said House Budget Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). “There’s no way it’s going to be easy.”

After three months of plodding negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has laid out an aggressive timetable that envisions passage of both a budget resolution to allow a huge Democrats-only tax and spending package plus a vote on a deal with Republican centrists to plow nearly $600 billion into roads, bridges and broadband. Schumer will reiterate the timetable in a Dear Colleague letter to Democrats on Friday, according to a Democratic aide, and warn of the possibility of working long nights, weekends and into the August recess to finish that work.

The majority leader has been constantly dialing up White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, as well as his members in the bipartisan group and committee chairs in charge of a party-line spending bill, whose work will run into the trillions.

Every Democrat knows that the partisan legislation could be this year’s last big train to which they can hitch their long-sought priorities, and demand is high. Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants Medicare expansion, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is pressing for immigration reform and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) is pushing her colleagues on child care spending. A whole slate of progressives want a major climate focus. And there will be restraints on spending from moderates and from the Senate parliamentarian on what can pass muster and avoid a GOP filibuster.

While Sanders initially suggested spending $6 trillion to complement the bipartisan deal, more moderate members are likely to tamp that down to $4 trillion or even lower — depending in large part what moderate Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) agree to. Asked if she had a number in mind, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) replied: “Yeah, $6 trillion.”

In the House a band of centrists — already anxious about their fragile majority — are fretting over the party-line bill. And the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are flexing their muscle and laying out demands, which will cause consternation among the party’s moderates.

With that policy maelstrom still churning, leadership may have to threaten cutting some of Congress’ beloved August recess to drive hard decisions and get bills on track to meet Schumer’s aggressive timetable.

“It will be used as a way for us to get the job done, the threat of losing August recess when we can go home,” Duckworth said. “Maybe that will be used as a carrot on the end of a very big stick.”

Lawmakers will likely receive more clarity on the details of both the bipartisan plan and its financing as well as the contours of the partisan budget reconciliation spending bill early next week. While both Budget Committee Democrats and the bipartisan group have been aiming to wrap their work by then, no one is setting hard deadlines yet.

“We are really working hard to try to get something that can get to the floor in the next couple of weeks,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), one of more than 20 senators working on the bipartisan bill. “But I don’t want to be too specific. Because in my experience, deadlines always slip a little bit.”

There’s also the question of whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell might end up opposing the package, which could scuttle any effort to get 10 GOP senators on board. McConnell spent the July 4 break barnstorming Kentucky, saying he thought the bipartisan bill had a “decent chance” but also asking that it be “credibly” financed. The plan is currently to use increased IRS enforcement, unspent coronavirus aid and infrastructure privatization to cover the bill’s price tag.

Financing some of the trillions in spending on Democratic-only priorities will be even trickier, considering the party wants to raise taxes on both large companies and capital gains for wealthy people. Manchin has suggested more modest increases than Biden, but his support for both the spending plan and rolling back some of the 2017 tax cuts law is a breakthrough in and of itself.

“The Senate Dems should look at each other and say: ‘We’re committed to doing a reconciliation bill.’ And I know Manchin is,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who has suggested the $4 trillion number.

A successful July and August will require intense coordination by Schumer, Pelosi and committee leaders. They’ll need to make sure the bipartisan bill can pass both the Senate and the House and that its paired reconciliation bill has lockstep support in both chambers, a more complex dance than Democrats’ swift passage of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid law in March.

Already there’s been plenty of infighting, so much so that before the July Fourth recess Yarmuth and other party leaders pleaded with their members to stop making policy demands and drawing red lines or they’d never find the support to pass it.

Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), who has already declared he will vote against the House’s budget resolution, said “it’s time to stop” spending after the massive Covid package. At the moment, House leaders can only afford to lose a couple more Democrats.

“When I was talking to the White House legislative team the other day, they said, ‘Oh, I bet you lie awake at night counting dollars on this,'” Yarmuth said. “I said, ‘No, I lie awake counting votes.'”

Laura Barrón-López, Marianne LeVine and Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/09/biggest-bill-dems-infrastructure-throttle-498841
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Supreme Court tosses lawsuit challenging Obamacare

The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a lawsuit threatening the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, finding that Republican-led states behind the case did not have legal ground to challenge the landmark health care law.

The 7-2 decision, which preserves health insurance for millions and the law’s popular protections for preexisting conditions, may serve as the final chapter in the decade-long legal assault on Obamacare, arriving as President Joe Biden seeks to build on the law’s coverage provisions. It’s also the final blow to former President Donald Trump’s pledge to rip up his predecessor’s signature health care law, after his administration had supported the red states who brought the lawsuit.

The opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer was joined by the court’s two other liberal justices and all but two conservatives, including Trump appointees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. By finding that the red states and individual plaintiffs couldn’t contest a change to the law, the conservative justices were essentially shielded from grappling with larger questions about whether Obamacare was no longer constitutional.

“[W]e conclude that the plaintiffs in this suit failed to show a concrete, particularized injury fairly traceable to the defendants’ conduct in enforcing the specific statutory provision they attack as unconstitutional,” Breyer wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas agreed, adding: “Although this Court has erred twice before in cases involving the Affordable Care Act, it does not err today.”

The red states challenging the law, led by Texas, argued that Obamacare’s so-called individual mandate became unconstitutional after Congress zeroed out the law’s penalty for not having health insurance in a 2017 tax cut package. They said the entire law should fall because the mandate to purchase insurance, which remains on the books, was central to the law’s functioning.

However, the states failed to show how they were hurt by a mandate that had been rendered ineffective, the Supreme Court said.

The battle over the lawsuit dragged on for over three years, after many legal experts and politicians had originally dismissed it as a longshot. But it gained traction with Republican-appointed judges in lower courts and played a major part in shaping Trump’s presidency. Democrats attacked Trump and Republicans down the ballot for threatening health insurance to over 20 million people and popular insurance protections, putting Trump on the defensive over his failure to produce a long-promised health care plan.

The health care law has now survived all three of its major challenges before the Supreme Court since its enactment in 2010, and the newest ruling spares Congress from a challenging mission to shore up health coverage for millions during the coronavirus pandemic. Biden has pledged to expand upon Obamacare, though his most ambitious plans will face resistance from Republican lawmakers who still criticize the law — even if they’re no longer eager to highlight their opposition after their repeal effort backfired years ago.

The law appeared to be in greater peril this fall when Republicans quickly filled the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat with Barrett, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority on the bench. However, Barrett’s vote to dismiss the case didn’t come as a surprise after oral arguments, when she questioned whether the red states had a case.

The law’s defense was organized by a group of blue state officials, originally led by former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is now Biden’s health secretary. The Democratic-led House of Representatives also defended the law, and the Biden-led Department of Justice earlier this year reversed the government’s position by urging the Supreme Court to uphold Obamacare.

The justices debated the case in November, one week after a presidential election that was partly fought over Obamacare’s future. They spent the bulk of arguments, conducted over telephone because of the pandemic, homing in on the red states’ standing to bring the case, teeing up Thursday’s ruling that wiped away the lawsuit on a legal technicality.

But even if the court had agreed the red states could challenge Obamacare and that the individual mandate was now unconstitutional, the majority of justices during oral arguments appeared reluctant to strike down other parts of the law. Two conservatives, John Roberts and Kavanaugh, suggested that the mandate could be easily severed from the law without affecting its remaining provisions. Congress also appeared to agree when it axed just the mandate penalty, Roberts said.

“I think it’s hard for you to argue that Congress intended the entire act to fall if the mandate were struck down when the same Congress that lowered the penalty to zero did not even try to repeal the rest of the act,” Roberts told a lawyer arguing the case for Texas. “I think, frankly, that they wanted the court to do that. But that’s not our job.”

Ultimately, the justices punted on the key question of “severability,” or whether the entire law had to fall if one portion was deemed unconstitutional.

In a dissent, Justice Samuel Alito contended the argument that Obamacare must be considered as a whole essentially gives the states standing because other parts of the law clearly affect them.

“The ACA imposes many burdensome obligations on States in their capacity as employers, and the 18 States in question collectively have more than a million employees. Even $1 in harm is enough to support standing. Yet no State has standing?” Alito wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/17/supreme-court-obamacare-decision-494990
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The Rise of the Biden Republicans

There are unwritten rules that dictate how American politics works. Former presidents shouldn’t weigh in on quotidian partisan squabbles. An incumbent senator shouldn’t support a primary challenger running against a fellow incumbent. If you’re an elected official, avoid directly comparing yourself to Abraham Lincoln — show some humility and instruct surrogates to do that on your behalf. Never try to correct a middle schooler spelling the word “potato.” And if you want to take the pulse of white middle America, go to its de facto national capital — Macomb County, Michigan.

Every four years, as if driven by mainspring, presidents, those aspiring to be presidents and the reporters who cover them, return to the blue-collar Detroit suburbs to try out their messages and make sense of what’s happening in middle America.

Presidents will visit the community college campus in Warren — where President Ronald Reagan famously declared, “I’m a former Democrat, and I have to say: I didn’t leave my party; my party left me” and where President Barack Obama announced his ill-fated American Graduation Initiative, a planned $12 billion investment in community colleges. And thick in the campaign season, candidates will swing by local factories to make major economic speeches, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016; take shots at NAFTA and celebrate new trade deals, as Donald Trump did in 2020; and hold campaign-debilitating photo ops, as Michael Dukakis did when he donned a helmet and drove around in an M-1 Abrams tank. Reporters will talk to voters at the ubiquitous Coney Island diners, hold televised roundtables with average Joes at bars and pry political chestnuts from locals wearing cut-offs and playing Euchre.

It’s been this way since the mid-1980s, when a Yale-based academic and pollster named Stanley Greenberg turned his attention from studying the interplay of class and race in apartheid South Africa to try and explain what was happening in Macomb. In 1960, it was the most heavily Democratic suburban county in the United States. By 1984, it was landslide territory for Ronald Reagan. The population was overwhelmingly white and thoroughly middle class, largely living in tract homes and driving their cars to industrial jobs throughout metro Detroit. They were, by all appearances, Democrats. But they weren’t voting like it. Why not?

After convening a series of focus groups, Greenberg coined a term for these voters — “Reagan Democrats” — and a theory of the case. In these voters’ eyes, “the leaders who were supposed to fight for them seemed to care more about the blacks in Detroit and the protesters on campus; they seemed to care more about equal rights and abortion than about mortgage payments and crime,” Greenberg later wrote. “The old politics has failed them. What they really want is a new political contract — and the freedom to dream the American dream again.” Macomb, he said, “is the site of an historic upheaval that has wrecked the old and promises a new volatile kind of politics.”

For four decades now, that historic upheaval and the quest for the support of “Reagan Democrats” has defined American politics, from the rise of Bill Clinton’s “New Democrats” — which Greenberg, as Clinton’s pollster, had a central role in crafting — to George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” to Barack Obama’s poll-tested evisceration of Mitt Romney’s venture capital experience, to Donald Trump’s white-grievance mongering and tirades against NAFTA. After Obama won Macomb in 2008 and 2012, Trump captured it in both 2016 and 2020.

Then something important happened: In leaning too hard into white identity politics — and perhaps being too focused on what he thought Reagan Democrats wanted — Trump accelerated the rise of a new voting bloc that is, in many ways, the mirror image of the Reagan Democrats.

Call them the Biden Republicans.

Like the Reagan Democrats, they’re heavily white and live in suburbs. But where the Reagan Dems are blue-collar and culturally conservative, Greenberg sees the Biden Republicans as more affluent, highly educated and supportive of diversity. Historically, they identified with the Republican Party as their political home. But the leaders who were supposed to fight for them seem to care more about white grievance and keeping out immigrants; seem to care more about social issues and “owning the libs” than about childcare payments and college tuition. They don’t consider themselves Democrats — at least not yet — but they are voting for them, delivering them majorities in the House and Senate, and making Joe Biden just the fourth candidate in the last century to defeat an incumbent president.

Now, with the support of Biden Republicans shored up — at least for the time being — Joe Biden is embarking on an audacious gambit that’s gone largely unnoticed, but, if successful, could kneecap national Republicans for a decade: Recapturing the support of the Reagan Democrats.

“Biden is very self-consciously campaigning for Macomb County-type, white working-class voters [for whom] race is not the only thing driving their vote, but who went to Trump [in 2016] because of globalization and their belief that Democrats are not fighting for American workers,” says Greenberg, now based in Washington, D.C., where he continues to work in political polling. “‘America First’ rhetoric was a part of Biden’s campaign. It’s still part of ‘build back better.’”

And that puts Republicans in a strategically difficult position.

“You have this battle kind of in the mainstream between ‘Reagan Democrats’ — who voted for Reagan, came back to vote for Bill Clinton, some voted for Obama — and a whole new set of voters brought in by Trump,” says Greenberg.

In both 2016 and 2020, Trump brought in new voters — people animated by “white nationalism and racial resentment, and whose overwhelming motivation is a deep worry that Black people and immigrants will control the country,” and who are “voting straight-ticket [Republican] to ‘save the country,’” says Greenberg. But by courting those votes, Republicans risk pushing the Biden Republicans further into the Democratic ledger.

Another option, of course, is to try and keep these new Trump voters active — which could be a major political gamble, especially when Trump isn’t on the ballot — and try to run up margins with the Reagan Democrats. One big problem with that: Joe Biden.

Biden lacks the cosmopolitan appeal of Obama, but to Reagan Democrats, that’s a feature not a bug. “Obama was pro-globalization, and believed we benefited from it,” says Greenberg. “He would have been embarrassed to go see a company that was bringing jobs back from abroad to build in America. He would have been embarrassed to highlight that. But Biden will.” It’s Trump’s economic populism without Trump’s dog-sees-a-squirrel message discipline.

“Trump voters, a large portion of them, want a welfare state that is dependable for working people,” says Greenberg. And Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion Covid relief package could make a tangible difference in their lives. Do the Reagan Democrats stick with non-Trump Republicans if Biden’s Democrats deliver reopened schools, a strong economy, a huge investment in infrastructure and a $3,600-per-child benefit to families on top of a $1,400 stimulus check?

For Republicans, Greenberg sees a reality not unlike the one Democrats faced when he first decamped to Macomb County: “They are going to have to lose a few elections before there can be a new dynamic within the Republican Party — just as the Democrats lost a lot of national elections before Bill Clinton was able to change the party.”

How exactly might this all play out? To sort through it, Politico Magazine spoke with Greenberg this week. A condensed transcript of that conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.

One of the key insights of your work identifying the “Reagan Democrats” was that these white, blue-collar suburbanites who were traditionally Democrats saw the party as increasingly detached from their political concerns — and instead aligned with people of color, academics and cultural “elites.” Was Donald Trump the endpoint of that shift? It’s hard to imagine a purer distillation of many of those components.

You know, I’m not sure we understand all of the dynamics in American politics right now. You have this battle kind of in the mainstream between “Reagan Democrats” — who voted for Reagan, came back to vote for Bill Clinton, some voted for Obama — and a whole new set of voters brought in by Trump. And I don’t know how it’s going to play out.

First, there’s one [level of this discussion that’s] about persuasion. If you look at the “Reagan Democrats,” they were dealing with their unions. They were part of establishment networks — you know, they would reject it in particular elections, but in most elections, they were aligned with what the big unions were doing. And Democrats were winning downballot, despite their problems at the presidential level.

Then, overlaying the persuasion battle is this engagement and mobilization component. Trump came to lead a kind of Tea Party, anti-government revolt against “elites.” It really began in a revolt against Obama and the idea an African-American president and his coalition were going to govern forever as demographic trends accelerated and we became a younger, more diverse, more immigrant nation. Trump challenged that [assumption] and produced huge turnout [in 2016] by people who had not voted before.

But that kind of reversed in a series of historic elections. The 2018 midterms had the highest turnout in the history of midterms, brought out more college-educated voters — suburban college-educated voters, not so much white working-class voters — and Democrats had a good year. And then the election of 2020 had virtually the highest turnout since William McKinley and the Populist Era — just a huge increase.

Trump brought in all kinds of new voters in 2016. And I didn’t realize that he could do it again in 2020. In the voter-eligible population, there was like a 1-point decline in the percentage of white non-college voters between 2016 and 2020. Yet Trump increased turnout — their share of the electorate — by 7 points. That was done by bringing in new voters.

The difference is [Trump’s] new voters are voting to “save the country” and solve the “demographic problem,” and they are voting straight ticket. Everybody else is kind of in between, [voting for some Democrats and some Republicans]. But they are voting to “save the country” from being this diverse place that has tolerant values and is open to immigration. And they’re voting for every Republican and against every Democrat, top to bottom.

We’ve seen these big suburban shifts towards Democrats over the last few elections, but there are lingering questions about how long-lasting that shift is. What’s your read: Are Democrats “renting” these suburban voters, or “buying” them?

The shift of college-educated voters toward Democrats has been going on from the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, up through Gore in 2000 and beyond. I had a fight with Rahm Emanuel when he was heading the DCCC: James Carville and I were arguing that the congressional district lines had been drawn with the standard assumption that college-educated and wealthier voters were strong Republicans, but that in fact, that demographic had flipped, and if you went a little bit further than just the races with the most resources being spent, there were many more competitive seats than people realized. We won control of the House in 2006. And we gained seats in 2008 — which surprised people. But that was because of this trend.

Nothing has changed that; that trend will continue. Millennials and Gen Z have a much higher proportion of college [educational attainment], and they’re increasing their share of the electorate. The values of those voters continue to be aligned with Democrats — though I actually think they are more likely to be ticket-splitters.

If you look at the midterms versus what happened in 2020, [Democrats] had a drop-off in support with them, but I think they were acting normally — whereas Trump’s new white working-class and rural voters were not. Many of them are new to the electorate and voting with a different kind of energy — voting straight-ticket to “save the country.” Anything short of that [level of support] is going to look like Democrats are just “renting” those suburban voters. But the Democrats’ new voters were being normal people who don’t vote 100 percent [party line].

So, you see that trend continuing? We’re not yet at the highwater mark for the “diploma divide?”

I do, at least with those people who are normal voters — that is, who are kind of in and out of elections. But on the white working-class and rural side, what happened in both ’16 and ’20 was this [surge of] new voters who hadn’t voted before. So I have no idea what’s going to happen in the midterms. I can see one scenario where, with the Democrats in control, those voters are motivated even more to turn out in huge numbers to “save the country.” Or they could drop off as they did in 2018 or maybe even like they did in [the Senate runoff elections in] Georgia, where Trump was not on the ballot. Are these voters anti-Democratic Party? Will they reward what looks like it might be a successful Democratic administration in the midterms — which we haven’t had for a while? I have no idea.

You’ve mentioned this sense, among certain Trump voters, of needing to “save the country.” Describe that. What animates that existential concern? Is it purely about race? Is it something else?

Yeah, racial resentment is a very strong piece. I think we underestimate how powerful a moment it was when Barack Obama won and then got reelected. To this coalition, they view “Obamacare” as simply paying off his base of voters with big government payoffs to ensure a permanent Democratic majority.

I think Obama campaigning in every election has given them the rationale that they have to vote. It’s why Trump made reversing Obama’s legacy — reversing everything Obama did — feature centrally in his rallies: Obama represented a whole changed America that they had to stop.

That actually sounds a lot like an aspect of the “Reagan Democrat” dynamic you identified in Macomb County, Michigan, in the ’80s and ’90s. You wrote about those focus groups in 1995’s Middle-Class Dreams: These white voters “expressed a profound distaste for Black Americans, a sentiment that pervaded almost everything they thought about government and politics. Blacks constitute the explanation for their vulnerability and for almost everything that had gone wrong in their lives; not being black was what constituted being middle class.” Is that the same dynamic at play now, decades later?

No. There’s a step in this history: In the end, these “Reagan Democrats” voted for Obama. It was competitive in ’08 and ’12, but when you listened to these voters, they decided Barack Obama was not Jesse Jackson: He was not a candidate they saw as running to represent “his people.” They thought he would fight for all Americans, and they ultimately voted for him — which is pretty astonishing. What they were most concerned about was NAFTA, corporations sending jobs to Mexico, CEOs enriching themselves and not investing in their own companies. They were incredibly focused on globalization. They were on the front lines of people angry about what was happening with corporate America, and were voting for Democrats — and for Obama, specifically — because they thought he would take up those issues.

That competed with this racial dynamic. Obama benefited from it. But Trump benefited from it, too, because he ran on reversing all these trade agreements, and Democrats were pansies on talking about trade in 2016. Hillary Clinton was really for [the Trans-Pacific Partnership], and Trump was authentically campaigning against NAFTA, against TPP and was depicted as “fighting for working people,” which Democrats hadn’t done for a long time. Trade was key to that. It was a key part of why he was winning these voters — not just because of race, but because “America First” represented fighting for American industry and American manufacturing, and Democrats were about “globalization” and trade and were actually embarrassed to attack some companies for moving jobs to Mexico.

That changed with Biden, by the way. Biden, when he came out of the basement — as Trump described it — he very self-consciously went right to these states first, and said, “I hear you. I’m listening. I’m not of that school.” He didn’t say the word “deplorable;” he said, “I’m listening to you.” And when you look at his economic plan, a lot of it was about “America First.” It was about building in America. It was about stopping outsourcing. “America First” rhetoric was a part of Biden’s campaign. It’s still part of “build back better.”

Right now, polling shows overwhelming public support for Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package. I’m curious how you read that. Is it a sign that the Reagan-era consensus about small government is over?

I don’t think the Republicans are as disillusioned with Trump as polls suggest, but I do think there’s huge support for the relief package. Trump voters, a large portion of them, want a welfare state that is dependable for working people. The “Reagan Democrats” and these white working-class voters are incredibly pro-Medicaid expansion. Look at what happened in any of any of these Senate races in ’18 in states [with initiatives on] on the minimum wage or Medicaid expansion. The minimum wage and Medicaid expansion won by much bigger numbers [than the incumbents]. I mean, it won in Utah.

To put a fine point on it: Do you think that the “Reagan Democrat” era is over? Is it still a useful lens for us to look at U.S. politics?

Well, look: There is a kind of suburban, white working-class voter today who faces a lot of competing dynamics that are similar to the Reagan era. It’s globalization and the welfare state, and whether that is going to work for them.

But there are also new voters coming in who are responsive to [appeals to] white nationalism and racial resentment, and whose overwhelming motivation is a deep worry that Black people and immigrants will control the country. For these new voters, that’s still issue number one; it’s not competing with trade. It’s the reason they’re voting. It’s the reason why they’re registering.

But the Reagan Democrats were not Republicans. That was the piece that was central to them: They did not become Republicans. They were for Reagan, but they wanted to be for Democrats. And I think it’s still true that we still have a lot of these voters who had been voting for Democrats recently — whether for [Bill] Clinton or Obama — who also voted for Trump but aren’t Republicans.

Do you see something similar at play now, with highly educated suburban voters who had long thought of themselves as Republicans now voting for Democrats, even if they don’t think of themselves as members of the party? Are “Biden Republicans” going to play a similar role in shaping politics in the 2020s?

I think there’s two kinds of Biden Republicans — two trends.

One of them is you saw quite affluent, very Republican towns [in suburban counties], and Biden got a very large percentage of votes from those counties. They are more affluent college graduates voting for Biden. Will they stick? They may, given how Trump is defining the Republican Party.

And the other piece is that Biden is very self-consciously campaigning for Macomb County-type, white working-class voters [for whom] race is not the only thing driving their vote, but who went to Trump [in 2016] because of globalization and their belief that Democrats are not fighting for American workers. Biden is fighting for those voters, too.

It’s interesting to see how Republicans are trying to respond to this political dynamic in the suburbs. Certainly, the GOP push on school re-openings right now seems directly like a play for suburban voters. Do you see that as a promising gambit for them?

Let’s see how this plays out over time. I mean, if you listen to what they said at CPAC, the reason they think it’s wrong for Democratic states to get this aid [in Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan] is because they’ve been following health protocols and opening up their economies in a paced way to reflect where they are on dealing with the [coronavirus] crisis. These Republicans are Covid deniers who want to open up the economy.

But what does this look like at the end of 2021? What does it look like after these places get their state aid? After schools are fully back in-person in the fall? Particularly if the economy is fairly strong — if Biden’s going forward with his infrastructure plans; if he’s going forward with his tax cuts and credits to working people; if there’s more affordable health care. What will politics look like when the schools are open and it looks like Biden’s been successful?

You’ve noted that many of the new voters Trump brought out are people who see an existential battle for America — who see this as cultural and race-related. And that seems to be a real bind for Republicans: To win back some of these suburban districts, they may need to adopt a posture that’s less driven by white grievance politics. But if they do that, they risk turning off this segment of new Trump voters who might otherwise stay home. How do they navigate that? It’s like squeezing a water balloon — you get a grip on one part, and it gets bigger elsewhere.

If you look at the trends in this election, [Trump’s campaign] was able to, like, wage a race war with a massive increase in turnout in the rural areas and among white working-class voters. But the percentage of eligible voters who are older than Millennials dropped by 8 points. So for Republicans to be successful with this strategy while going against that demographic trend, you need a continually animating and increasingly intense and effective effort to turn out the vote.

[In 2020,] the percentage of millennials and Gen Z voters went up, I think, 6 points. About two-thirds of that was from the natural trend [of demography], but about one-third was from increased turnout compared to the midterms. And that’s a very diverse, more college-educated, group. And the Biden won them. There’s no way that’s not going to be a bigger bloc in the [next] midterms and, certainly, presidential election. How do you win if you don’t compete at all for those voters, and you animate their turnout — and do the same for college-educated voters who want a more open country? It’s just in contradiction.

It’s interesting, when you look at last weekend’s CPAC straw poll, only 55 percent [of respondents] said they’d vote for Trump if the 2024 Republican primary was held today. People underestimate his [level of] insecurity about his hold on the Republican Party — which meant he had to command absolute loyalty and punish anybody who wasn’t for him. That will obviously continue. This battle is going to carry on within the Republican Party. He’s going to lead the party as long as he is alive and breathing — even if he’s under indictment or bankrupt, [he’ll blame it all] on the IRS and FBI; he’ll be a victim.

They are going to have to lose a few elections before there can be a new dynamic within the Republican Party — just as the Democrats lost a lot of national elections before Bill Clinton was able to change the party.

On the racial resentment component: You were Nelson Mandela’s pollster. Before your work in Macomb County in the ’80s, you were polling in South Africa during apartheid. How does that experience frame the way you see the politics surrounding race in the U.S.?

Initially, I was an academic doing polling — but not on elections — and wrote very obscure books. I wrote a book [in 1980] called “Race and State in Capitalist Development” that has a cult following. When I started the book, it was supposed to be equally about Alabama and the American South, as well as South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland. I got hooked on South Africa, ended up writing many more chapters about it. I interviewed business leaders, trade union leaders and leaders of farm organizations during the apartheid era trying to understand what they were bringing to the market. I was arguing that the decisions they were making were not leading to a breakdown of apartheid. The normal assumption was that if you had industrial development, capitalist development, it would lead to less racial division. I was arguing that, in fact, it will, for some period, exacerbate racial divisions before it undermines them.

What I was trying to understand was: What were the rational decisions that people were making, coming out of this racial history that they all live with? How do you use that history? That meant [exhibiting] understanding and empathy when I’d go to interview the trade union leaders — some of whom negotiated and built into the employment structure a racial structure very similar to Alabama. They were making kind of rational decisions as trade unionists to limit competition [for their jobs]. But then in other industries, like government, unions were broader and more inclusive and tried to bring nonwhites into the unions. I had an empathy, trying to understand working people and the history that they live with when they make decisions, but also how their leaders made decisions — not just political, but within civil society and the economy.

I think it’s part of why I was able to listen to Macomb County workers. I was arguing: If you bring them a thing they’ll agree with, like universal health care, these voters aren’t done with Democrats. They’re not done with Democrats if you are talking about universal issues that they can gain from. Even though [some of these voters] were clearly racist, I was not willing to say that there’s not something that lies behind that that we need to understand and that enables us to find a broader coalition and draws on their better nature.

When I presented my stuff at the Democratic National Committee [meeting in Chicago in 1985], I was ostracized because I was saying that these voters had to be part of our Democratic coalition. That was a time when Jesse Jackson was competing [for leadership] within the Democratic Party. I was ostracized. It’s why I ended up working for the Democratic Leadership Council: They were willing to hire me, but not the DNC. [Greenberg’s work for the DLC ended up leading to his work for then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who implemented the Macomb County findings in his messaging during his quest for the presidency.]

How does the racial resentment you saw in studying South Africa compare with the racial divide you see in the U.S. right now?

During the apartheid period, their fear was existential: the fear that only by maintaining this apartheid system could they maintain their way of life — and that, no, we couldn’t do this in pieces, because you once do, you began to chip apartheid away.

I don’t want to put all the Trump voters in that world. There are a lot of them who haven’t been involved at all. They’ve been politically disengaged. But Trump has brought a segment of white nationalists in. That’s very real and that [apartheid-era fear in South Africa] does look like their world. But that isn’t true of all Trump voters.

Prior to the 2020 campaign, you wondered whether Democrats were “ready to use government after this decade of anti-government tyranny.” Based on what you’ve seen so far, are they?

Absolutely, yes. I’m actually stunned by how much consensus there is around using the government to really deliver for people. I think the Biden administration buys that. The gap between the progressive wing and the Biden wing — if that is a wing — is small. You look at the relief package, and there’s like one piece they’re arguing about. But if you look at what they’re agreeing on, introducing a child benefit— not just child care, but also a child benefit, which is more of a European kind of safety net — combined with a great expansion on health care, I think you’re dealing with a big change. [Full disclosure: Greenberg’s wife is Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a leading proponent of the child benefit.]

Right now, everyone thinks that government needs to deliver in a big way. I think that scares Republicans. And it will be interesting to see. People are going to see real benefits, not just the $2,000 stimulus piece, but something more enduring. If you look at the proposed $3,600 per child; that’s delivered [in installments] monthly into people’s checking accounts. That not only reduces child poverty; it’s virtually every middle-class person that we are talking about.

Biden is willing to say, “I’m fighting to do this.” We’ve not had a Democrat… I mean, when Clinton ran in ’92, [his message] was very much about fighting for the middle class. It had a very populist and nationalist component to it. But [that was not the case] further into his administration, when [the virtues of] free trade was more part of the Democratic assumptions about the world.

Obama was pro-globalization, and believed we benefited from it. He would have been embarrassed to go see a company that was bringing jobs back from abroad to build in America. He would have been embarrassed to highlight that. But Biden will. We’re looking at a very different time.

At the start of every focus group, you ask people to fill in the blank in this sentence: “I feel ___ about the way things are going in the country.” How would you, Stan Greenberg, fill in that blank?

I feel deeply, deeply uncertain and foreboding. I think we’re in a battle for democracy whose outcome is uncertain.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/04/reagan-democrats-biden-republicans-politics-stan-greenberg-473330
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Democrats plot their Plan B to save minimum wage hike

Democrats are scrambling to piece together a backup plan that could save their minimum wage hike from getting tossed out of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package and win over moderates wary of the proposal.

The budget tool that Democrats are using to steer Biden’s plan through Congress without GOP support, known as reconciliation, is laden with thorny restrictions waiting to ensnare the $15 minimum wage boost they’ve added to the next tranche of coronavirus relief. The wage increase is also running into strong headwinds from two influential Senate Democratic centrists, Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who are both resistant to enacting the sweeping policy change through the powerful budget process.

The White House and Hill Democrats have been waiting to see how the Senate’s parliamentarian, its official adviser on procedural matters, opines on the wage increase. That ruling could happen as early as Tuesday, according to a senior Senate Democratic aide. In the meantime, Democrats are already weighing several options to try to save the wage hike from fully imploding and make it more palatable for moderates in their own party — whom congressional leaders need lockstep support from in order to muscle the Covid-19 aid package through the Senate with a simple majority vote before unemployment benefits expire for millions of Americans in mid-March.

“There are two issues going on right now — one is Byrd Rule problems, one is whip problems,” said House Budget Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), referring in the first case to the procedural hurdle that could quash the wage hike in the Senate. “If Joe Manchin isn’t going to vote for it because of the minimum wage, I assume we have to take it out or compromise in a way that he would accept.”

Some Democrats are discussing the possibility of capping the increase at less than $15 an hour, to possibly $11 or $12, Yarmuth said. Such a move could satisfy wonky Byrd Rule restrictions that constrain the projected cost of the pandemic relief proposal outside of a 10-year budget window, he said.

Budget rules that allow the bill to pass the Senate without the threat of a filibuster essentially require that all pieces of the bigger package have a significant effect on federal spending, revenues and the debt within a decade. If the package increases deficits beyond that window, approval from the Senate parliamentarian can get problematic.

Manchin has previously said that an $11 minimum wage hike, adjusted for inflation, would make more sense for his home state of West Virginia. Sinema’s support for any wage hike would likely be harder to win, since she told POLITICO earlier this month that the increase is “not appropriate” as an add-on to the Covid-19 aid bill.

Notably, some Republicans have backed a wage bump, but with extra strings that would divide Democrats. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) announced last week that he’ll introduce a bill with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that would raise the minimum wage — although he didn’t specify a number — “while ensuring businesses cannot hire illegal immigrants.”

Progressives aren’t yet ready to ditch the $15 figure. Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his staff have repeatedly contended that the Congressional Budget Office has already produced ample evidence showing that the $15 increase satisfies budgetary rules within the 10-year window. Sanders aides note that raising the wage will produce a much bigger effect on the budget than oil drilling in the Arctic and the repeal of Obamacare health insurance mandate penalties — which were both previously allowed under the Senate’s arcane rules.

But to ensure that the $15 wage hike officially checks off all the right boxes, progressives have another idea. They’re pushing the possibility of a small business tax relief plan that could be paired with the minimum wage increase in order to alleviate any burdens on businesses required to increase their pay, according to a senior Senate Democratic aide.

Separately, Democrats are exploring other options from the Senate Finance Committee that could include closing “some loopholes that benefit the rich or large corporations,” the Democratic aide said.

Democrats “could certainly repeal” some tax provisions, including one added to last year’s pandemic relief measure, “that benefit wealthy real estate owners,” the aide added. “There are some other tax provisions that President Biden has supported that would raise more than enough money to cover both the 10-year window and out-year expenses with respect to the minimum wage.”

Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) “is looking at various options to stay within our allocation and support small businesses,” said his spokesperson Ashley Schapitl, noting that he’s previously said “he’s doing all he can” to keep the minimum wage increase in the broader package.

A House Democratic aide, who described the issue as “a Senate math problem,” said additional revenue could also come from cutting one month off the expiration date for unemployment benefits that the House package would extend through August. House Democrats have already lopped a month off Biden’s original unemployment benefits extension, which he proposed to run through September, to offset the cost of pension aid that they included in the Covid-19 aid bill.

Schapitl said she hadn’t heard of any options involving unemployment insurance and raising the minimum wage, but declined to discuss any other specifics.

Biden has privately signaled to governors that the wage hike likely isn’t happening as part of his first Covid-19 aid measure. And while Democrats could technically overrule the parliamentarian on the issue, that’s unlikely to happen given that Biden is leaning heavily against the idea, POLITICO reported earlier this month.

Liberals, however, remain confident that the minimum wage boost will survive without any compromises — and they’re confident of a parliamentarian ruling in their favor.

“What Sen. Sanders is fighting for is a $15 minimum wage,” the senior Senate Democratic aide said. “Period. End of discussion.“

Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/22/democrats-minimum-wage-increase-plan-470860
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Biden’s stimulus gamble: Massive cuts to Medicare, farm aid

The budget gambit Democrats are embracing to fast-track President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic aid plan will trigger billions of dollars in cuts to critical programs.

Top Democrats are already shrugging off the threat, insistent that Congress will once again act in time to head off the slashing to programs like Medicare and farm subsidies — a byproduct of using the reconciliation process. But in that high-stakes trust fall, Democrats will be relying on the Senate Republicans they are now spurning.

The threat stems from limitations enacted in 2010 under pay-as-you-go rules, which require Congress to offset the cost of each piece of legislation.

At best, Republicans could use their votes to avert the impending cliff as leverage to notch GOP policy wins in negotiations later this year. At worst, they could let the cuts set in as punishment to Democrats for using the reconciliation tool to negate GOP input as the majority party pushes to advance Biden’s package with just 51 votes in the Senate.

“I don’t know whether to be concerned or not,” House Budget Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said in an interview. “I’ve been told not to be concerned.”

The fix could be as easy as inserting language in must-pass legislation before the cuts set in come mid-January, as Congress has previously done with little fanfare. Unlike a reconciliation bill, however, that solution can’t pass the Senate with a simple majority and requires 10 Senate Republicans to sign off.

“Everybody seems to not worry about it,” Yarmuth said. “I don’t know, I’ve been told it’s pretty much perfunctory that we’ll get it done.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office did not respond to two requests for comment about whether Republicans would help waive off the gouges to mandatory spending that stem from Biden’s pandemic aid plan.

In “ordinary” times, “it would be almost certain that Republicans would go along with it,” said David Wessel, a director at the centrist Brookings Institution.

“But these aren’t ordinary times, and you can’t be sure that Republicans would go along with this,” said Wessel, who heads the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings. “I think there’s a small but significant risk that the Republicans would use this as leverage to get something from Democrats.”

Both parties have repeatedly voted to waive the rule and avoid the cuts with other major reconciliation packages. Democrats joined Republicans to avert $150 billion in cuts that would have been prompted by the 2017 tax overhaul, including a $25 billion chunk from Medicare. The Congressional Budget Office at the time determined that certain programs, like the Public Health and Prevention Fund under Obamacare, would have been virtually wiped out.

Lawmakers similarly stopped any slicing when it came to Obama-era stimulus legislation and multiple tax cut packages under George W. Bush.

Some on Capitol Hill say times have changed, however.

“Although Democrats swooped in to protect Medicare and other programs from significant cuts after Republicans used reconciliation to pass tax cuts for the wealthy, we need to be realistic that Republicans are less likely to do the same for us,” said one House Democratic aide, who asked to remain on background in order to candidly discuss the concerns.

“Are we really going to find 10 Senate Republicans to prevent these cuts after they’ve found Jesus again on the national debt? Let’s be real,” the aide said in a statement. “There’s a good chance they will allow these cuts to happen and paint Democrats as the ones who are responsible since we have total power in Congress and the White House.”

Two other senior Democratic aides totally dismissed the threat and said worries about the cuts going into effect have not been raised as both the House and Senate pull together the particulars of Biden’s bill.

“This is not a concern,” said a senior Democratic aide. “This is not something we’re concerned about, because we know that every time this problem has come up in the past, it has always been corrected.”

Provisions to avert the cuts could be added to must-pass legislation like annual spending bills, ensuring it would be politically costly for Republicans to vote against waiving off the reductions.

“So they’re prepared to shut down the government in exchange for cuts?” the aide said. “No one is going to allow Medicare or farm worker programs to be cut because of the reconciliation bill … That I can guarantee you.”

Democrats are also considering the use of reconciliation twice this session — once to pass Biden’s pandemic aid plan, and again to push through a massive climate and infrastructure package. That legislation would also add to the cuts Congress must avoid.

Matthew Dickerson, a director at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Republicans could offer their support for preventing the reductions in exchange for more measured steps to reducing the nation’s debt and deficit, like an agreement to curb spending on mandatory programs.

“It’s a useful leverage point for Republicans,” said Dickerson, who runs the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget. “We can’t keep spending at the rate that we’re spending.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/13/biden-cuts-medicare-farm-aid-468895
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Medical marijuana’s last wildernesses

Marijuana legalization advocates have their eyes on the final frontiers of full prohibition.

Only two states — Nebraska and Idaho — have never passed any sort of medical marijuana law. There are now movements afoot in both states — as well as several others with very restrictive programs — to change that as soon as this year.

If the medical marijuana campaigns prevail in those last remaining holdouts, the U.S. could reach a dubious distinction: Cannabis policies in every single state would be in violation of federal law. That’s certain to further ratchet up pressure on Congress and the White House to loosen federal marijuana restrictions, and it could fuel the push to make recreational cannabis legal everywhere.

“There are very few things that many Americans agree on,” said Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for legalization advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project.

Medical cannabis is one of them. A pair of polls in 2019 showed support for medical marijuana surpassing 90 percent.

That’s “more than people that believe humans landed on the moon,” O’Keefe said, referencing a 2019 survey that showed one in 10 Americans believe the moon landing was fake.

Consensus is so broad that pollsters seem to have stopped asking the question altogether in national polls.

Cannabis advocates in Nebraska and Idaho are buoyed by the successful votes for legalization in other deep-red states last November. If lawmakers fail to act this year, advocates are vowing to take the issue directly to the ballot box, where voters are all but certain to approve them.

“We now have strong, vocal support from people across the state,” said Nebraska Democratic Sen. Anna Wishart, who has been trying to pass medical marijuana legislation for years. “At this point, everybody knows somebody that has benefited from having access [to medical cannabis].“

Several other conservative states, including Kansas, Alabama and Wyoming, have limited medical cannabis laws that focus on CBD products. Legislative efforts are also underway in those states to adopt more comprehensive medical marijuana programs.

Legalization advocates point out that medical marijuana legalization questions consistently get more votes than any elected official. A referendum in South Dakota passed with 70 percent of the vote, and a ballot question in Mississippi got nearly 74 percent of the vote.

“Disregarding what voters want can be perilous,” O’Keefe said.

Nebraska

Medical marijuana advocates in Nebraska were aiming to put a legalization initiative on the ballot in 2020. They successfully collected the necessary signatures and got the initiative certified by the secretary of state, before Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner sued and successfully got it tossed.

Now they’re focused on getting it done through the Legislature.

“I feel a lot more confident going into this year with my legislation than I have in the past,” Wishart said. She reintroduced her medical cannabis bill in January, which is slated for its first hearing in March.

But opponents also express confidence about thwarting the effort.

“There is nothing ‘medical’ about marijuana legalization,” said John Kuehn, co-chair of anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana’s Nebraska chapter, in an email. “It is not regulated for safety or efficacy through the FDA.”

Wishart acknowledged that getting legislation across the finish line will be an “uphill battle” thanks to Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts’ vehement opposition to the policy.

But she’s hopeful that successful legalization initiatives in other red states last November will pressure some of her colleagues to stand up to the governor.

If the legislative push fails, legalization advocates have a backup plan: They’re already working on efforts to put a medical marijuana referendum on the 2022 ballot.

Kansas

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is pushing a novel argument for legalizing medical marijuana: The tax revenues can pay for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and provide 165,000 people with health care.

Whether a Republican-dominated legislature will prove receptive to that argument — Obamacare is still a dirty word to many GOP lawmakers — remains to be seen. Previous legislative attempts to legalize medical marijuana have failed, and lawmakers have balked at the cost of Medicaid expansion.

But Kelly is hoping that public opinion will help alter the political dynamics.

“When we do polling on these two issues, the results are often over 70 percent of Kansans want both Medicaid expansion and medical marijuana,” Kelly said during a press conference earlier this month, touting her plan as one that would pay for itself and still have money left over.

While linking medical marijuana legalization with Medicaid expansion is encountering resistance in the Legislature, cannabis reform does have some support from Republican lawmakers. Rep. John Barker and Sen. John Doll are both pushing alternative medical marijuana proposals, reports the Kansas City Star.

And House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins didn’t dismiss the chances of passing medical marijuana legislation this year in a statement to POLITICO.

“While there seems to be increasing support for some version of medical marijuana, it’s still too early to predict how the debate will continue to play out or what will happen in the end,” Hawkins said.

Idaho

A campaign to put medical marijuana legalization on the ballot in 2020 was derailed due to the pandemic, forcing signature-gathering efforts to halt. The Idaho Citizens Coalition for Cannabis is turning its attention to the 2022 election, gathering signatures for the legalization of both medical and adult-use marijuana.

But before that can happen, there will be a big marijuana debate in Boise.

Republican Sen. C. Scott Grow introduced a bill to create a constitutional amendment banning the legalization of marijuana and other psychoactive drugs. That could end up on the 2022 ballot alongside the legalization referendums.

But that’s also spurred a push to legalize medical marijuana. Democratic Rep. Ilana Rubel and Republican Rep. Mike Kingsley introduced legislation on Monday. The bill is modeled after Utah’s medical cannabis rules but is stricter in terms of reducing the amount a patient can get at one time and enhancing penalties if the medical card is abused.

“If we don’t get medical marijuana on the books now, it may not ever happen,” Kingsley told POLITICO.

With growing public support for both medical and recreational use within the state, the lawmakers said legalization is likely inevitable.

A poll conducted in 2019 showed 73 percent of Idahoans supported legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes, and Rubel and Kingsley predict that number is even higher now.

“I think if [lawmakers] don’t get ahead of this issue like we are proposing then the dam is going to break and they are going to end up with [a proposal] they don’t like as much as ours,” Rubel said.

The medical cannabis bill has been introduced in the House, but hasn’t received any hearings. The constitutional amendment has passed the Senate and is waiting for a House vote.

Other states

In other conservative states with highly restrictive medical marijuana laws, advocates are hopeful that they can expand those programs. Alabama, Kentucky and South Carolina “all have well over a 50-50 chance,” said O’Keefe.

In both Alabama and Kentucky, medical marijuana legalization bills passed in one chamber last year before the coronavirus crisis derailed their legislative sessions. Those bills are expected to pass this time around. And in South Carolina, a medical marijuana bill was in committee before the Legislature adjourned due to the pandemic.

Lawmakers that are otherwise resistant to cannabis reform are facing different types of pressure: coronavirus-decimated budgets, legalization in neighboring states and overwhelming public support for the policy.

“Being that South Dakota is right on the border, and Montana is on our border … that’s going to put a lot of pressure on [lawmakers],” said Bennett Sondeno, executive director of the Wyoming chapter of pro-legalization group National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Pressure from law enforcement groups opposed to legalization has swayed lawmakers in the past, and Sondeno estimates that two-thirds of the Legislature “still thinks medical cannabis is just a boondoggle for all of us wanting to get high.”

Still, Republican lawmakers in Wyoming are readying both medical marijuana and decriminalization bills ahead of the legislative session in March. A December poll from the University of Wyoming found 85 percent of residents supportive of medical marijuana legalization.

Sondeno says that he hopes that lawmakers will work with advocates on the issue. Otherwise, they will turn to the ballot.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/12/medical-marijuana-state-laws-468937
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Biden moving to withdraw Trump-approved Medicaid work rules

The Biden administration on Friday will notify states it plans to revoke Medicaid work requirements, starting the process of dismantling one of the Trump administration’s signature health policies.

The move is one of several steps that Biden’s health department is expected to take this week to unravel the contentious work rules long criticized by Democrats, according to internal documents obtained by POLITICO.

The documents — which were labeled “close hold” — do not make clear how quickly Biden will cut off work rules the previous administration approved in a number of states, which for the first time were allowed to mandate that some people work or volunteer as a condition of enrollment in the low-income health care program.

Health officials are also preparing to withdraw the Trump administration’s 2018 letter that first announced the work requirements policy, and rescind a separate letter from earlier this year aimed at making it more difficult for the incoming Biden administration to quickly overturn the policy.

“CMS has serious concerns that now is not the appropriate time to test policies that risk a substantial loss of health care coverage or benefits in the near term,” according to a health department draft rollout plan entitled “Medicaid Work Requirement Rescission.”

President Joe Biden, who has targeted other Trump health policies as he looks to build on Obamacare, has long signaled plans to unravel the Medicaid work requirements. Democrats have criticized the rules as unlawful and aimed at kicking people off the program’s rolls.

Trump Medicaid chief Seema Verma, who was critical of Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to poor adults and crafted the requirements, argued they would encourage healthy people to work and help keep state Medicaid programs financially sustainable.

Biden last month issued an executive order directing his health department to identify policies that fail to “protect and strengthen Medicaid.” But the draft rollout plan obtained by POLITICO points to the coronavirus pandemic as the central reason for rolling back the work rules, arguing that the crisis has “greatly increased the risk” that the policy will lead to “unintended coverage loss.”

“In addition, the uncertainty regarding the lingering health consequences of COVID infections further exacerbates the harms of coverage loss or lack of access to coverage for the Medicaid beneficiaries,” the plan said.

The move also comes as the Supreme Court is slated to consider the validity of the work rules on March 29. Lower courts have so far blocked attempts to institute the work rules, which led most states with the requirements to halt their enforcement. Biden’s plan to withdraw the work rules could render the Supreme Court case moot.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Ten GOP-led states that applied for the Trump administration’s permission for work rules were approved or “considered approved,” according to the draft rollout plan. Several more states had sought permission for work rules but had not been approved before Trump left office.

The work rules were approved through Medicaid waivers, which allow states to test ideas for health coverage. A new administration typically can unwind waivers that it believes does not support Medicaid goals, though states may protest the decision.

In the final weeks of the Trump administration, Verma asked states to sign contracts that would establish a lengthy process for unwinding work requirements and other conservative changes to their Medicaid programs. Medicaid experts have questioned whether those contracts are legally enforceable.

The health department on Friday is also planning to scrub some references to the work requirements program and related documents from the government’s Medicaid website.

Instead, it will post a link to an HHS document entitled “Medicaid Demonstrations and Impacts on Health Coverage: A Review of the Evidence.” The document, among other topics, will address the “impact of work requirements on Medicaid’s commitment to Americans in need,” the draft rollout plan said.

Only one state, Arkansas, ever fully implemented the Medicaid work rules. About 18,000 people lost Medicaid coverage in 2018 during the few months the requirements were in effect, before a judge blocked them.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/11/biden-withdraws-trump-medicaid-rules-468759
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The biggest ACA overhaul in a decade is underway

Democrats’ coronavirus relief proposal includes major changes to the Affordable Care Act, aiming to make health insurance more affordable for the millions of people who have lost their employer-based coverage during the pandemic.

The big picture: These changes would check off a whole lot of moderate Democrats’ heath care agenda, at least temporarily. They include some of the biggest changes that President Biden campaigned on.

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Driving the news: The House Ways and Means committee will begin considering its portion of the relief package today, and the Energy and Commerce Committee will follow on Thursday.

Details: The Ways and Means legislation would enhance ACA subsidies for two years.

• People making up to 150% of federal poverty would be eligible for fully subsidized plans, and no one — regardless of their income — would pay more than 8.5% of their income for health insurance.
• People receiving unemployment would also be eligible for full subsidies for a year.
• The Energy and Commerce legislation incentivizes states that haven’t done so to expand Medicaid.

What they’re saying: “Since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, we have talked about the need to build on and strengthen the policy. We have had virtually no opportunities to make a meaningful contribution toward that end legislatively,” said Chris Jennings, a Democratic health strategist.

• “This is the first real, significant down payment that we’ve been able to secure since the policy’s enactment.”

What we’re watching: A large coalition of insurers, employers, hospitals and doctors — groups that often butt heads — support many of the components of Democrats’ proposal.

Yes, but: Notably absent from all of this are policies that would meaningfully reduce the actual cost of care.

• Increasing subsidies just means that the government would shoulder more of the burden, while the U.S’s extraordinarily high prices go untouched.
• Any attempt to control the cost of care would quickly erode any support from the health care industry.

What we’re watching: “These subsidy enhancements, along with a new outreach campaign that reverses the 90% cut by the Trump administration, has the potential to supercharge the upcoming reopened enrollment period,” said KFF’s Larry Levitt.

Source: https://www.axios.com/aca-coronavirus-democrats-health-affordability-795d2c6c-e2ea-4988-8db4-fc167778fb07.html
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In 2020, Obamacare proves it’s a survivor during a time of need

Between February and June, an estimated 14.6 million people lost their employee-sponsored health insurance. Elements of Obamacare helped shore up those losses.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/big-safety-net-affordable-care-act-filled-need-fended-dismantling-n1249149
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Biden pledges Americans won’t lose health coverage during pandemic

President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday that his advisers are making contingencies so Americans don’t have to worry about losing health coverage or protections for preexisting conditions during the pandemic, but did not specify what his administration would do if the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare.

Speaking just hours after the Court heard oral arguments on a Republican-backed challenge to the Affordable Care Act, Biden called the attempt to scrap the law “cruel,” and said that his incoming administration will make sure millions of people don’t have to spend the months between now and when the Court issues its ruling in limbo, not knowing the status of their coverage.

“They need a lifeline and they need it now,” he said. “They shouldn’t have to hold their breath. They shouldn’t be in that position, waiting to see if the Supreme Court is going to wrench away a peace of mind they’ve come to now rely on.”

Biden vowed on Tuesday to work with Congress to “dramatically ramp up health care protections” and “get Americans universal coverage.” He also reiterated campaign pledges to tackle the prescription drug costs and expand coverage to the millions of uninsured people — a group that’s grown significantly during the pandemic and economic crash.

“I promise you this beginning on Jan. 20, the Vice President-elect Harris and I, we’re going to do everything in our power to ease the burden of health care on you and your family,” he said. “I will protect your health care like I protect my kids with my own family.”

Yet Biden’s health plans, including the creation of a public insurance option to compete with private insurance and more generous subsidies for middle class consumers, depend on the Affordable Care Act being in place. And though the majority of justices on Tuesday appeared unlikely to side with the Trump administration and red state arguments that the entire law should be struck down, the uncertainty will hang over health care markets possibly through spring. And if Republicans keep control of the Senate and the law is struck down, Democrats’ hopes for passing a replacement would be quashed.

Both Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris described the Obamacare lawsuit as an attempt to “overturn the will of the people” following multiple unsuccessful attempts by Republican lawmakers to repeal the law in Congress, and cited their election night win as evidence that the public does not want the ACA’s protections eliminated.

“Health care was very much on the ballot in 2020,” Harris said. “Each and every vote for Joe Biden was a statement that health care should be a right and not a privilege. Each and every vote for Joe Biden was a call to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act, not to tear it away in the midst of a global pandemic.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/10/biden-health-care-coverage-pandemic-435805
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5 key moments from the latest SCOTUS Obamacare showdown

Obamacare returned to the Supreme Court on Tuesday as backers and opponents of the law did battle over the latest legal campaign to bring down President Barack Obama’s signature health care overhaul.

After two hours of arguments, the law’s supporters appeared to have the upper hand, after at least two of the court’s conservative justices seemed poised to excise the now-toothless-but-allegedly unconstitutional individual mandate rather than blow up the entire Affordable Care Act.

Still, considerable uncertainty remained over how the justices would sort through the thicket of highly technical legal issues of standing and statutory interpretation that seemed to have the potential to splinter the court.

Here’s POLITICO’s look at five key moments from one of the highest-profile cases the Supreme Court is expected to take up this term.

Grief from the chief

Perhaps the most startling remarks at Tuesday’s arguments came from Chief Justice John Roberts, who seemed to be complaining that he was bamboozled by Obamacare advocates back in 2012 when they argued that the mandate that individuals buy health insurance was critical to the functioning of the law. Roberts drew the ire of conservatives in that closely watched, politically sensitive case by aligning with the court’s liberal wing, which then stood at four justices, to preserve the provision.

“Eight years ago, those defending the mandate emphasized that it was the key to the whole act,” Roberts recalled. “Everything turned on getting money from people forced to buy insurance to cover all the other shortfalls in the expansion of healthcare.”

“But now the representation is that, oh, no, everything’s fine without it. Why the bait and switch?” the chief said, apparently saving up the pointed query for lawyer Donald Verrilli, who argued on Tuesday for states friendly to the law but also served as the law’s key defender at the court as solicitor general eight years ago. “We spent all that time talking about broccoli for nothing?”

Roberts’ reference to broccoli invoked a popular metaphor in the 2012 legal debate: whether the theory behind the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate meant the government could also force Americans to buy broccoli to make themselves healthier. (Roberts ultimately ruled that the feds couldn’t force purchases of broccoli or health insurance, but could slap a tax on those who refuse to buy it.)

It wasn’t totally clear on Tuesday whether Roberts was expressing genuine regret about being misled eight years ago or whether any such sentiment would affect his view on the latest Obamacare case.

Beyond broccoli: SCOTUS’ analogy palooza

The justices proved unsatisfied on Tuesday with the broccoli analogy that cast a green pall over the earlier Obamacare fight. As they made their points, several members of the court felt compelled to offer their own examples of hypothetical or real government mandates akin to the now-impotent one in the Affordable Care Act.

Roberts kicked off the analogy palooza by positing Congress passing a statute that says that “everybody has to mow their lawn once a week.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh also entered the derby. “Suppose Congress passed a law requiring every American who lives in a house to fly an American flag in front of the house,” he urged. “It’s a forced acquisition of an unwanted good or service.”

But Justice Stephen Breyer, the court’s unrivaled king of hypotheticals, brought it home with a trifecta. “Buy war bond. … Plant a tree. … Clean up the yard,” Breyer said, suggesting that Obamacare’s mandate stripped of its accompanying penalty was more of an exhortation than an order to do anything.

The Barrett bust

Anyone who watched the high-stakes confirmation hearings of Amy Coney Barrett last month would’ve come away with the impression that President Donald Trump tapped Barrett for the seat with one preeminent goal in mind: unleashing her like a torpedo aimed at blowing Obamacare out of the water at the arguments this week.

Democrat after Democrat painted her as an ideological zealot intent on destroying the landmark health care law, regardless of the misery and suffering such a ruling might create. Huge posters of those who’ve benefited from the law’s provisions were trundled into the hearing room and loomed over the session.

At those hearings, Barrett did her best to parry the criticism by pointing out that there’s a presumption that statutes should be preserved even if a part of them is thrown out — the severability issue at the heart of the current challenge.

But for all the hours spent on the issue last month, Barrett didn’t seem to be much of a factor on Tuesday. Of course, she’ll get a vote like every other justice. But her status as the court’s most junior member, combined with the more regimented sessions prompted by the virtual arguments, made her something of an afterthought, coming up at the bottom of the batting order in each round of questioning.

Barrett did interrupt a lawyer defending the law, California Solicitor General Michael Mongan, suggesting he’d strayed from a question she had asked that was aimed at how the government keeps track of who’s bought insurance. The court’s newest justice did ask an interesting question about whether the federal agencies sued in the case are actually causing the plaintiffs any harm, but it seems doubtful the entire challenge can be resolved on those grounds.

Barrett also seemed to flex her textualist muscles by take a subtle dig at Breyer late in Tuesday’s arguments, after he suggested that when the law says Americans who aren’t exempt “shall” buy health insurance, it really means they are encouraged to do so.

“Let’s assume that I agree with you and that I think ‘shall’ is ‘shall’ and not ‘should’ and, so, it’s a command,” Barrett said to acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall, who argued for the Trump administration against the law.

In the end, it seemed as though Barrett’s role in the case would be not the outsize one predicted at her hearings, but a more modest one. The reason is simple: Two of her GOP-appointed colleagues — Roberts and Kavanaugh — sounded unlikely to strike down the statute. That would make Barrett’s vote interesting to see but not pivotal to the outcome.

Who will stand up for standing?

One key question in the case is whether the red states suing to overturn Obamacare or a couple of individual plaintiffs seeking to do the same actually have legal standing to go into court and challenge the law. To do that, they have to show some injury they’re incurring or threatened with — not the easiest thing to do with a mandate that everyone from Trump on down has said is effectively repealed and won’t be enforced.

At least two justices suggested that in the Trump administration’s haste to upend the law, it’s overlooking the dangers for the federal government in allowing any state or virtually any person to come into court and challenge an entire law based on an objection to a single provision that isn’t even being enforced.

“I think that really expands standing dramatically,” Roberts said, in a riff that sounded more like a statement than a question. “I mean, just in this act alone, you’re talking about almost a thousand pages and you’re letting somebody not injured by the provision that needs challenging sort of roam around through those thousand pages and pick out whichever ones he wants to attack.”

Justice Elena Kagan went ever further, suggesting that the administration was endorsing a position that could come back to haunt the federal government in court.

“The United States is usually pretty stingy about standing law, so it did surprise me, in much the way that it surprised the chief justice, that you’re coming in here with a theory which, to my mind, threatens to kind of explode standing doctrine,” she said. “Isn’t that something that the United States should be very worried about?”

Wall insisted that finding standing for the plaintiffs in the current case wouldn’t “open the floodgates” to suits against massive pieces of legislation because the challengers here have unusually good arguments that the whole statute should be struck down if the mandate is unconstitutional.

Still, the exchanges called to mind the fact that Attorney General William Barr reportedly opposed the administration’s signing on to the states’ suit. Did he foresee the static his department would take from the justices for doing so?

The pandemic? What pandemic?

The ubiquitous undercurrent to so many parts of American life these days — the coronavirus pandemic — got short shrift at Tuesday’s arguments, despite the fact that the session focused on a bill that provides health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans and important benefits to a couple hundred million more.

There were only two explicit references to the viral outbreak. Justice Clarence Thomas asked early in the arguments whether someone who did not want to wear a mask would have standing to sue over a law mandating mask wearing, even if it was accompanied by no penalty. And Mongan, the California solicitor general, noted in passing in one of his statements to the court that eliminating the law would “cast 20 million Americans off health insurance during a pandemic.”

Of course, there was another reminder of the virus: The court continues to hear arguments virtually, avoiding the dangers of gathering the justices, lawyers, reporters and others. A high-profile argument like the one held on Tuesday would’ve been packed to the gills if held in the justices’ ornate courtroom across the street from the Capitol.

The audio-only arrangements were fairly smooth on Tuesday, with only one significant glitch. Breyer called on himself after a long pause in which Roberts didn’t seem to call on anyone. The chief justice then abruptly cut Breyer off, prompting the court’s eldest justice to declare somewhat cryptically: “Something happened. I’m sorry. My machine didn’t work.”

A couple minute later, Roberts apologized and came back to Breyer, but he demurred. “It’s not a problem,” Breyer said. “Go ahead. I’m good.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/10/key-moments-supreme-court-obamacare-435824
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