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Tag: public finance

  • ‘I don’t know how they will get to 218’: House GOP struggles to find consensus on averting shutdown | CNN Politics

    ‘I don’t know how they will get to 218’: House GOP struggles to find consensus on averting shutdown | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    House Republicans are still struggling to reach consensus on a plan to fund the government, with lawmakers going back-and-forth over the issue and leadership forced to delay a planned procedural vote as they work to find agreement within their ranks.

    GOP leaders are planning to plow ahead with a vote on their proposal this week, even as some conservative hardliners are still digging in and threatening to oppose a procedural vote, which would prevent the bill from coming to the floor. GOP lawmakers stood up during a closed-door conference meeting Tuesday morning to make their case for – or against – the plan, which would temporarily fund the government and beef up border security but is dead-on-arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

    House GOP leaders canceled a procedural rule vote on the proposal originally slated for Tuesday morning amid that opposition from hardliners. It’s unclear when or if that vote will get rescheduled.

    “There are a lot of ‘No’ votes in that room. I don’t know how they will get to 218,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, exiting a conference meeting on Tuesday morning. “Without a deal with Democrats, I don’t see it passing. … It is going to be a long two weeks.”

    Government funding is slated to run out on September 30.

    In another closed-door meeting Tuesday afternoon – this time in the office of House Majority Whip Tom Emmer – members of the GOP conference from all corners of the party engaged in talks to try and salvage a GOP spending bill that would fund the government for a month, with little progress to flag after more than four hours.

    Republican steering committee chairman Kevin Hern, exiting the meeting, said he plans to introduce an amendment on the short-term funding bill to cut spending that would move three members from “No” to “Yes” on the embattled measure. The amendment is a new statutory spending cap, Hern said.

    Amid the impasse in the House GOP conference, there are discussions underway among some Republicans and Democrats about teaming up on a so-called discharge petition to fund the government if the House Republican-brokered plan fails on the floor this week.

    House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries will huddle with the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus on Wednesday, two sources told CNN, amid ongoing discussions between moderate Republicans and Democrats over a plan to avoid a shutdown. Politico first reported the meeting.

    In another sign of the divisions within House Republicans, the House has failed to pass a procedural vote that would bring a bill to fund the Department of Defense for the next fiscal year to the floor for final passage. Five Republicans – most of them from the right flank House Freedom Caucus – voted against the rule, denying House GOP leadership of the 218 votes it needed for passage.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy encouraged members who are opposed to the GOP government funding proposal brokered over the weekend to work out their difference in Emmer’s office, according to sources in the room.

    And Rep. Scott Perry, a conservative Republican from Pennsylvania and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus who helped negotiate the deal, told members during the meeting that if they are opposed to the current plan but think there’s something else that might support, “please tell someone what that is,” sources said.

    Some conservative hardliners are now floating the idea of amending the proposal to include lower spending cuts. Republican Rep. Bob Good of Virginia said leadership is “entertaining everything” at this point, and said that even though the deal was negotiated by some members of the Freedom Caucus, he made clear they were not representing the entire group.

    But he also predicted it would be hard to avoid a government shutdown at this point, though he added, it should not be something that they “fear.”

    Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican, said he thinks they should work through the weekend until they are able to find agreement among House Republicans on how to keep the government open. He said he accidentally voted to support a rule for the short-term funding bill, saying he was “asleep at the wheel” during the meeting on Monday night, but plans to vote against the rule when it comes to the floor.

    Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and one of the negotiators of the package, suggested that one of the potential ways to move forward would be for the speaker to lay out a topline spending number and spending numbers for each of the appropriations bills to help members who are still on the fence see the full picture.

    “I think the biggest thing that I have heard – and this is where my colleagues I think have a really important point – what do we do next? The speaker needs to set a topline, needs to set a structure, a target,” Roy said. “I have been saying that for months. We are here in my opinion because we haven’t had a clear target.”

    But Roy did blast some of the opposition.

    “I find it extremely difficult to explain or defend opposition to an 8% cut over 30 days in exchange for the most conservative and strong border security measures we’ve ever passed out of this body,” he said. “I think that is inexplicable. I think it is malpractice, and I think there are some outside groups … who are trying to advance themselves that are a part of this that are pushing this narrative that it is somehow malpractice to do that when what would be true malpractice is to head into a shutdown without a coordinated and concerted message.”

    Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds said that members who negotiated the bill are willing to talk.

    “I want to get real conservative wins, not talking points, not tweets, not any of that stuff,” Donalds said.

    Perry said he continues to try and sell the bill to his colleagues and his message is simple, they can keep making changes but at some point, they have to decide: Do they want to pass something or get jammed by the Senate?

    “This is a proposal. I speak for myself. It doesn’t mean that I love it, but I am working with my colleague to secure one of two paths. The one path is where we offer something and the American people can see what we stand for, the other path is quite honestly accepting whatever the Senate sends us,” Perry said. “You are not going to get every single thing that you want, but if you don’t do something, you aren’t going to get anything.”

    GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida is seen on his way to a House Republican Conference meeting at the Capitol on September 19, 2023 in Washington, DC.

    There are at least 15 members currently opposed, and more that are undecided, according to an CNN whip count. Among those who are opposed: Reps. Good, Norman, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Victoria Spartz of Indiana, Eli Crane of Arizona, Cory Mills of Florida, Wesley Hunt of Texas and Paul Gosar of Arizona.

    Those 15 “No” votes would easily sink the bill without any Democratic support, as Republicans control 221 seats to Democrats’ 212. It’s unclear, which votes Hern said would flip to “Yes” votes amid additional provisions being added to the proposal.

    Burchett told reporters he is aware of at least 16 to 17 holdouts.

    “Every day is progress, but I don’t see us doing a whole lot,” he said. “I think part of the problem is some of the folks that need to be in the room or not in the room.”

    Among the five Republicans who opposed the procedural vote Tuesday that would have brought the Defense funding bill to the floor for debate and final passage were four known “No” votes – Bishop, Biggs, Rosendale and Norman – as well as Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado.

    House Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole of Oklahoma had told reporters he planned to go to the floor Tuesday with the rule on the continuing resolution, but House leaders pulled a procedural rule vote on their short-term spending bill later Tuesday morning, in another sign that House Republicans are deeply divided on the path forward.

    Even if his own party sinks the bill, Cole said he is not worried about the overall strategy.

    “Welcome to politics,” Cole told reporters.

    Cole, who said some of the “No” votes are “movable,” warned his colleagues who are withholding their votes for the wrong reasons.

    “That’s not good legislation and that’s blackmail,” he said.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • House Democrats weigh risky strategy: Whether to save McCarthy | CNN Politics

    House Democrats weigh risky strategy: Whether to save McCarthy | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    House Democrats have begun internal discussions about how to deal with the prospects of a chaotic situation: The possibility that Speaker Kevin McCarthy could lose his job in an unprecedented vote on the floor.

    While no decisions have been made, some of the party’s moderates are privately signaling they’d be willing to cut a deal to help McCarthy stave off a right-wing revolt – as long as the speaker meets their own demands.

    Publicly, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has not weighed in on how he’d want his members to manage a challenge to McCarthy’s speakership, saying it’s hypothetical at this point. But privately, Jeffries has counseled his members to keep their powder dry, according to multiple sources, a recognition it’s better for Democrats to keep their options open as the government funding fight plays outs.

    “If somehow Democrats are asked to be helpful, it’s not just going to have to be out of the kindness of our hearts,” Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan, told CNN. “If Kevin can’t govern with just his part – which clearly he can’t – and he wants to have a conversation with us about how to do that, we are going to have a policy conversation.”

    Asked recently by CNN if he would need to rely on Democrats to help save him, McCarthy would not say.

    “I am not worried about that,” he said.

    The private discussions have picked up steam in recent days, as a handful of hardline GOP members dig in against a series of spending bills – an effort that could catapult the government into a shutdown – and as any move the speaker takes to advance a short-term spending bill with Democrats could trigger the end of his speakership.

    If McCarthy’s position was threatened with a so-called motion to vacate, and there were five Republicans backing it, Democrats would have a major role in deciding McCarthy’s fate.

    But members who spoke to CNN made clear that any Democratic help would come at a cost. And their asking price for saving his speakership, Democratic members say, is a bipartisan deal to avoid a shutdown – a route McCarthy is not yet prepared to take, as Republicans are still trying to find consensus on a GOP plan to fund the government.

    “I think it is fair to say Democrats have a responsibility to be preparing for the possibility that there will be some sort of upheaval,” one Democratic member told CNN.

    One of the strategies being discussed by Democrats is to vote “present” or vote to kill it all together if a motion to oust McCarthy is brought to the floor. Voting present would change the threshold and make it harder for McCarthy’s critics to oust him, which would require a majority of those voting in order to succeed.

    It’s a complicated dance for Democrats, who don’t want to be seen as saving McCarthy – especially after he just launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden – and could open them up to backlash on the left. But some Democrats also fear the potential alternative: a government shutdown and the prospect of an even more right-wing lawmaker ascending to the speakership if McCarthy is ousted – or the House being paralyzed with no candidate able to win 218 votes to be elected speaker.

    “If he just jams us with something awful, and they still try to kill him, and that’s gonna be his approach to work with the Freedom Caucus, there’s less incentive (to help him),” said one Democrat. “Still, even then, you’re gonna have a lot of people who say: ‘Well I think what’s behind door No. 3 might be a lot worse.’”

    “I think if he’s willing to work together on things,” the member said, adding, “There will be enough of us to protect him.”

    It’s still not clear when or if McCarthy’s detractors would try and push the issue. Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida – one of McCarthy’s most vocal critics – would not specify Wednesday when he would move to force a vote on removing McCarthy as speaker. But he warned McCarthy against working with Democrats, and said House Republicans who work with Democrats to avoid a shutdown would be signing their own “political death warrant.”

    “If Speaker McCarthy relies on Democrats to pass a continuing resolution, I would call the Capitol moving truck to his office pretty soon because my expectation would be he’d be out of the speaker’s office quite promptly,” said Gaetz, who privately told his colleagues Wednesday there are seven Republicans who would vote against any stop-gap measure, enough to kill it if all Democrats oppose a conservative plan.

    With less than two weeks before a government shutdown, Democrats are watching the speaker’s actions carefully on spending and taking whether McCarthy is willing to cut his right flank lose in pursuit of a bipartisan deal on spending – short-handed on Capitol Hill as a continuing resolution or a CR – into consideration for how they’d act on the floor if a motion to vacate were brought forward.

    “If we were actually part of the deal, like actually part of a commonsense agreement on CR and budget, I think you would find a significant group of people willing to vote present,” one Democrat said.

    Meanwhile, as frustration in the GOP has reached a fever pitch, private talks between moderate Democrats and Republicans about a bipartisan funding deal have grown more serious: the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus has developed a framework for a plan, and Jeffries stopped by their meeting on Wednesday.

    Leaving the meeting, Jeffries called for a bipartisan agreement in line with what was already negotiated in the debt ceiling package – a deal cut by McCarthy but later abandoned amid pressure from his right flank to seek deeper cuts.

    “We need to find a bipartisan agreement consistent with what was previously reached,” he said.

    But the mechanism for putting such a bill on the floor is complicated. One possible option is for GOP members of the group to sign onto a so-called discharge petition, a complicated and time-consuming procedural mechanism. If five Republicans did so, it would trigger a process that could force the bill onto the floor for a vote without McCarthy having to do it. But that process would likely take too long at this point to avert a shutdown.

    Members are also discussing other procedural options with the House parliamentarian, lawmakers told CNN.

    “Failure is not an option. We’re gonna do everything we can to prevent a shutdown,” said Republican Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a swing district in Nebraska.

    Bacon warned that he would cut a deal with Democrats if they reach an impasse with conservative hardliners.

    “Well, in the end, if not, we will have to work across the aisle and get it done. I think people got that message,” he said.

    But the growing consensus is that with time running out, the most viable path to avoid a government shutdown is for the speaker to cut his right flank loose and make a deal with the middle – and then Democrats could bail McCarthy out from the inevitable vote to oust him that would be triggered by that scenario.

    Democrats considering bailing out McCarthy say it wouldn’t necessarily stop there.

    “We are having pretty broad conversations about like, use your imagination in terms of how you re-envision … this place is not working,” the member said. “I don’t think it would ever be as transactional as ‘OK, I get a vote on my bill and I am done …’ because you can’t trust him. I think then it becomes everything from what is committee presentation to how bills get pulled to the floor and how are those decisions made?”

    An opportunity to extract concessions from McCarthy, however, likely would never be enough for some Democrats. For Democrats, extending a lifeline to McCarthy could mean facing a primary challenge back home, not to mention the fact that any goodwill McCarthy might have still had with some Democrats evaporated with his announcement he was launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden.

    “There is not a chance in hell I would vote for the speaker. I barely have words. What reasonable thing has he done? What demonstrable outreach has he made to try to bring the House together, to work together in a deliberative and cooperative way,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida told CNN. “The real answer is I don’t see a scenario right now in which he would warrant my support, but I also would never say never.”

    Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota recently said “right now, no,” he and other Democrats would not come to McCarthy’s rescue if he faced a motion to vacate from his own party.

    “If you’d asked about two months ago I would have said absolutely. But I think sadly his behavior is unprincipled, it’s unhelpful to the country,” he said.

    He continued later: “I understand the position he’s in but these are times when people have to make a choice. Do you pander to the few or do you take care of the many?”

    Several Democrats argued that past Republican speakers – like Paul Ryan or John Boehner – may have been worth saving. But McCarthy, they argue is different.

    If McCarthy were challenged, it may only take a handful of Democrats to save him. Aside from voting “present,” they could also just vote to table the resolution – a procedural workaround that would essentially kill the effort. But, letting members walk the plank alone could be politically dangerous for moderates. Voting in total Democratic unison could shield members from the base.

    “I think we need to have a party position on it. I don’t think that has been resolved yet. It is still evolving,” Democratic Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts told CNN.

    Many Democrats are still weighing their options.

    “You know there are so many variables right now, I really don’t have an answer,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania told CNN.

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  • Former IRS contractor accused of stealing Trump’s tax returns pleads guilty | CNN Politics

    Former IRS contractor accused of stealing Trump’s tax returns pleads guilty | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The former IRS contractor accused of leaking former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and stealing tax information on thousands of the wealthiest people in the US pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday.

    Prosecutors say Charles Littlejohn of Washington, DC, sent Trump’s tax returns and other data to two media outlets that “published numerous articles describing the tax information they obtained from the Defendant.”

    Littlejohn pleaded guilty to the one count of disclosing tax information, which he was charged with in late September.

    The contractor’s crime affected so many individuals that prosecutors plan to create a public website to notify the victims of any developments in the case.

    During the plea hearing, an attorney for Trump gave a victim impact statement, calling the crime “an egregious breach.”

    Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, said that Trump’s returns were “kept in a vault at the IRS” and suggested that the leak may have cost Trump votes in the 2020 election.

    Habba said Trump was opposed to the plea deal and called for the maximum sentence of five years in prison for Littlejohn.

    Judge Ana Reyes, the federal judge overseeing the case, said she agreed “completely that anyone taking the law into their own hands is unacceptable.”

    “I cannot overstate how troubled I am by what occurred,” Reyes said. “Make no mistake, this was not acceptable.”

    A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for January 29.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Microsoft to appeal IRS request for nearly $29 billion in back taxes | CNN Business

    Microsoft to appeal IRS request for nearly $29 billion in back taxes | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft plans to contest a US Internal Revenue Service request for an additional $28.9 billion in back taxes for the years 2004 to 2013, the company said in a securities filing Wednesday.

    The demand is the result of a yearslong audit by the IRS into Microsoft’s past accounting practices. In particular, the agency took issue with how the company “allocated profits … among countries and jurisdictions,” Microsoft said in the filing.

    “The IRS says Microsoft owes an additional $28.9 billion in tax for 2004 to 2013, plus penalties and interest,” the company said. It noted that the IRS’s determination is not final and does not include up to $10 billion in taxes Microsoft paid under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that could reduce its final bill.

    The company said it plans to appeal the IRS request, a process that will likely take several years.

    “We believe we have always followed the IRS’s rules and paid the taxes we owe in the U.S. and around the world,” the company said in the filing. “Since 2004, we have paid over $67 billion in taxes to the U.S.”

    Microsoft noted that as it prepares to work through the IRS Appeals Process — and, potentially, the courts — the company believes its current “allowances for income tax contingencies are adequate.”

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  • What could happen if the government shuts down | CNN Politics

    What could happen if the government shuts down | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The prospect of a US government shutdown grows more likely with each passing day as lawmakers have yet to reach a deal to extend funding past a critical deadline at the end of the month.

    Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are hoping to pass a short-term funding extension to keep the lights on and avert a shutdown. But it’s not at all clear that plan will succeed amid deep divisions over spending between the two parties and policy disagreements over issues such as aid to Ukraine.

    Here’s what to know if the government shuts down and what’s driving the current state of play:

    Government funding expires at the end of the day on Saturday, September 30 when the clock strikes midnight and it becomes October 1, which marks the start of the new fiscal year. (As shorthand, the deadline is commonly described as September 30 at midnight.)

    If Congress fails to pass legislation to renew funding by that deadline, then the federal government will shut down at midnight. Since that would take place over the weekend, the full effects of a shutdown wouldn’t be seen until the start of the work week on Monday.

    In the event of a shutdown, many government operations would come to a halt, but some services deemed “essential” would continue.

    Federal agencies have contingency plans that serve as a roadmap for what will continue and what will stop. For now, agencies still have time to review and update plans and it’s not possible to predict exactly how government operations would be impacted if a shutdown were to take place at the end of the month.

    Government operations and services that continue during a shutdown are activities deemed necessary to protect public safety and national security or considered critical for other reasons. Examples of services that have continued during past shutdowns include border protection, federal law enforcement and air traffic control.

    Federal employees whose work is deemed “non-essential” would be put on furlough, which means that they would not work and would not receive pay during the shutdown. Employees whose jobs are deemed “essential” would continue to work, but they too would not be paid during the shutdown.

    Once a shutdown is over, federal employees who were required to work and those who were furloughed will receive backpay.

    In the past, backpay for furloughed employees was not guaranteed, though Congress could and did act to ensure those workers were compensated for lost wages once a shutdown ended. Now, however, backpay for furloughed workers is automatically guaranteed as a result of legislation led by Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, that was enacted in 2019. Employees deemed “essential” and required to work were already guaranteed backpay after a shutdown prior to the passage of that legislation.

    And federal employees aren’t the only ones who can feel the effects of a shutdown.

    During past shutdowns, national parks have become a major focal point of attention. Although National Park Service sites across the country have been closed during previous government shutdowns, many remained open but severely understaffed under the Trump administration during a shutdown in 2019. Some park sites operated for weeks without park service-provided visitor services such as restrooms, trash collection, facilities or road maintenance.

    “If you’re a government worker, it’s highly disruptive – whether you’re not going to work or whether you are,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. “If you’re somebody who wants to use one of the services that you can’t get access to … it’s highly disruptive. But for many people … all the things that they are expecting and used to seeing of government are still happening and the inconveniences and the kind of wasted time and wasted resources aren’t things that they see and feel directly.”

    There is a deep divide between the House and Senate right now over the effort to reach consensus on and pass full-year spending legislation as House conservative hardliners push for deep spending cuts and controversial policy add-ons that Democrats as well as some Republicans have rejected as too extreme.

    With the funding deadline looming, top lawmakers from both parties hope to pass a short-term funding extension known on Capitol Hill as a continuing resolution or CR for short. These short-term measures are frequently used as a stopgap solution to avert a shutdown and buy more time to try to reach a broader full-year funding deal.

    It’s not clear, however, whether there will be enough consensus to pass even a short-term funding bill out of both chambers before the end of the month as House conservatives rail against the possibility of a stopgap bill and have threatened to vote against one while demanding major policy concessions that have no chance of passing the Senate.

    A fight over aid to Ukraine could also take center stage and further complicate efforts to pass a short-term bill.

    Senate Democrats and Republicans strongly support additional aid to Ukraine, which could be included as part of a stopgap bill, but many House Republicans are reluctant to continue sending aid and do not want to see that attached to a short-term funding bill.

    The White House issued a stark warning this week that a shutdown could threaten crucial federal programs.

    In its warning, the White House estimated 10,000 children would lose access to Head Start programs across the country as the Department of Health and Human Services is prevented from awarding grants during a shutdown, while air traffic controllers and TSA officers would have to work without pay, threatening travel delays across the country. A shutdown would also delay food safety inspections under the Food and Drug Administration.

    “These consequences are real and avoidable – but only if House Republicans stop playing political games with peoples’ lives and catering to the ideological demands of their most extreme, far-right members,” the White House said.

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  • House speaker crisis is a symptom of historic Republican divisions | CNN Politics

    House speaker crisis is a symptom of historic Republican divisions | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    You might have thought it was a Democrat who recently said that House Republicans were in the “same stupid clown car with a different driver.” And while I’m sure many Democrats feel that way, it was Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson who uttered that memorable phrase.

    The South Dakota congressman was referring to the current House mess after eight Republicans voted (with Democrats) to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker.

    But whether or not the House Republican majority elects a new speaker anytime soon is irrelevant. What we’re seeing now is something we haven’t seen in modern times.

    This episode is symptomatic of a historic Republican divide in the House: It’s not just over ideology but also over trust in their leaders to compromise in a way that makes the party happy.

    Much of the recent discussion over House Republican divisions tries to frame it along the right-left ideological spectrum. Those who voted against McCarthy are more conservative, on average, than the GOP at large – and this is a very conservative House majority. But there are plenty of Republicans who are quite conservative and didn’t vote McCarthy out (think Texas Rep. Chip Roy, for example).

    What’s also going on is a split over whether Republicans should try to govern by way of compromise. Are people willing to line up behind the compromises House GOP leaders have made with Democrats to keep the government going?

    Analyzing roll call votes in Congress can offer some answers. Not surprisingly, the Republican representative who has been the least friendly to party leadership this Congress is Florida’s Matt Gaetz, according to a metric produced by the academics at Voteview.

    More importantly, the difference on this score between those House Republicans most open to compromise and friendly to party leadership and those most opposed (i.e., the top fifth and bottom fifth percentiles) is wider than it has been in the past 80 years. These lawmakers on the edges of the conference are so important because of how narrow the current GOP majority is – all it takes is a few members to topple the speaker, as we saw earlier this month.

    Representatives like Gaetz didn’t pop out of nowhere. They are in the Congress because people elected them.

    Specifically, many of the same people who really like former President Donald Trump.

    Take a look at a question asked in our latest CNN/SSRS survey published on Thursday. We asked whether Republicans in Congress should “stand firm on beliefs without compromise, even if not much gets done in Washington, or work across the aisle to get things done in Washington, even if it means losing out on some high-priority policies?”

    A majority of voters who are behind Trump in the 2024 GOP primary contest (52%) wanted Republicans in Congress to stand firm. Among Republicans not behind Trump, just 23% preferred lawmakers who didn’t compromise. Most (77%) yearned for congressional Republicans who worked across the aisle.

    Of course, most Republicans (58%) are backing Trump in the primary, the CNN poll found. Part of Trump’s appeal is that he isn’t a conventional Republican who does business as usual.

    Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that a majority of Trump supporters (56%) approve of McCarthy being removed as speaker after he made a deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.

    Among all other Republicans, only 37% approved of McCarthy’s ousting.

    I should note that among Republican voters, the idea of compromising to avert a government shutdown isn’t terribly different than it was a decade ago. What does seem to have changed, to some degree, is the people in Congress.

    GOP lawmakers who were seen as anti-establishment a decade ago – like Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, who voted to retain McCarthy as speaker – are apparently not anti-establishment enough these days.

    Folks like Massie have been pushed aside for folks like Gaetz. For at least some Republicans in Congress, this now is the party of Trump.

    Another key difference is that the current size of the House GOP majority is more reminiscent of the late 1990s and early 2000s than the tea party era of a decade ago.

    Some 25 years ago, NBC polling found that Republicans were far more open to compromise than they were to standing on principle. When it came to negotiations with Democratic President Bill Clinton, 63% of Republicans wanted compromise and only 28% wanted to stand on principles when forced to pick between the two choices.

    Today, Republicans again have a slim majority in the House – but with a party electorate willing to tolerate a lot in the name of principle. It’s no surprise then that we’re dealing with a House GOP leadership fight that seems more fitting of an Aaron Sorkin script than the real world.

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  • House Republicans are making a gamble with a possible Jim Jordan speakership | CNN Politics

    House Republicans are making a gamble with a possible Jim Jordan speakership | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    If House Republicans elect hard-charging Jim Jordan as speaker on Tuesday, they will be picking an election denier who is known for working to shut down the government rather than running it.

    The party would be ending its two-week speakership debacle, but it’d be elevating a ringleader in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election into a position that is second in the line of succession behind President Joe Biden.

    A Jordan speakership would represent a huge victory for Trump, given the Judiciary chairman’s record of using his power to target Democratic presidential candidates, including Biden and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton. Before the midterm elections last year, for instance, Jordan said at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he’d use probes into the Biden administration to “frame up the 2024 race” for Trump.

    He has been as good as his word, working to highlight the ex-president’s claims that the federal government has been “weaponized” against him in an effort to distract from the four criminal trials the GOP front-runner is now facing. And Jordan has been a prominent player in the impeachment investigation opened against Biden, despite the failure of the GOP to provide evidence that the president personally profited from the business ventures of his son in places like China and Ukraine.

    Jordan’s hopes of becoming speaker increased dramatically over the weekend as he began to turn holdouts amid an intense lobbying campaign. Some key moderates who had previously said they wouldn’t back the Ohio Republican had changed course by Monday. But given the tiny House GOP majority, Jordan can only lose a small number of Republicans and still win the job in a vote in the full House, which is expected at noon on Tuesday. Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis will be away from the Capitol on Tuesday, further complicating the vote math for Jordan, making it so that he can only lose three Republicans.

    But this is a temporary drop until the Florida congressman returns to Washington on Tuesday evening.

    Several high-profile dissidents still insist they will only vote for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy or are firmly against Jordan, who co-founded the conservative Freedom Caucus that was instrumental in the demise of the last three Republican speakers. Jordan’s opponents have cited his role in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection – when he discussed plans to object to the results – and have concerns that his hardline positions could alienate crucial swing voters next year.

    If Jordan wins the speakership, his reputation for resistance to compromise is likely to immediately fuel fresh fears of a government shutdown caused by Republican demands for massive spending cuts. Facing a right-wing revolt, McCarthy was forced to use Democratic votes to pass a stopgap funding measure. And he paid for his effort to stave off a national crisis, which could have hurt millions of Americans, with his job. Jordan has been among the right-wing Republicans who want to use their power to bulldoze through their agenda despite the fact that Democrats control the Senate and the White House.

    As speaker, Jordan would be in control of half of one of the three branches of the US government – a role that confers duties to the Constitution and the national interest far greater than those that weigh on individual members. By definition, he’d be an insider after years as an insurgent, a switch that could be a challenge. Fellow Ohioan and former Republican House Speaker John Boehner told CBS News in a 2021 interview referring to Jordan: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart – never building anything, never putting anything together.”

    A Jordan victory would mark one of the most significant milestones in Washington Republicans’ embrace of an extreme right-wing populist, nationalist ideology that is more dedicated to tearing political institutions down than using them to forge change. And it would reward the eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to topple McCarthy. More broadly, it would remove power from the party’s traditional Washington, DC, political establishment, which many of the party’s grassroots voters despise, and place the Freedom Caucus at the pinnacle of power in the House.

    The shift toward Jordan over the weekend, however, may also reflect a realization by lawmakers that the optics of continued chaos in the House are disastrous for the party and sends a message of American weakness amid a raging crisis in the Middle East.

    New York Rep. Marc Molinaro, who represents a district Biden would have won in 2020 under redrawn lines, announced Monday evening that he’s backing Jordan. “What I care deeply about is getting back to governing. And having been home over the weekend, I can tell you that most people I talk to just want us to fight inflation, just want us to secure the border, just want us to govern on their behalf. And truly they just want this House to function,” he told CNN.

    And if there is anyone who could keep far-right flamethrowers in line, it is Jordan. After all, he’s one of them. If wins the speakership, he’d potentially face a choice whether to at least seek a modicum of governance to show voters that the GOP can get results ahead of the 2024 election. Just as President Richard Nixon had the political cover as a hardline anti-Communist to forge an opening to Maoist China, Jordan might have more leeway than other potential Republican leaders to make painful concessions and keep his hardliners in line.

    But choosing Jordan to end the impasse would also represent a huge risk for the GOP. His close alliance with Trump, who has endorsed the Ohio Republican for the top job, could alienate moderate voters in districts that paved the way to the party’s narrow majority in last year’s midterms. His record of full bore confrontation could exacerbate a showdown with the Democratic Senate and the White House over spending that could shut down the government by the middle of November and cause a backlash against Republicans.

    And the qualities that his supporters see in Jordan – the fearsome use of power to drum up investigations against political opponents and a pugilistic refusal to find middle ground – are not those traditionally associated with successful speakers. Jordan has no history of bringing disparate factions of his party together – quite the opposite. His brand of politics is built around his history as a champion wrestler in college. “I look at it like a wrestling match,” Jordan told the New York Times earlier this year, referring to his staccato interrogations of witnesses in hearings that made him a hero on conservative media and a Trump favorite.

    Another knock on Jordan is that he’s not known as a prolific fundraiser – one of the most important jobs of a party leader in the House. McCarthy was known for his lucrative hauls that he used to boost candidates and foster loyalty from his supporters. In fact, Jordan has actively worked against some fellow members in the past, with the political arm of the Freedom Caucus backing primary challengers to 10 GOP incumbents over the last few cycles.

    The job of the House has traditionally been to pass laws. And by that measure, Jordan is one of the least effective legislators of his generation, according to the Center For Effective Lawmaking, a joint project of the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University.

    Still, Jordan’s supporters worked to mitigate his liabilities heading into a floor vote that would force opponents to publicly renounce him at the risk of drawing primary challenges. House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers of Alabama, who had been vehemently anti-Jordan, flipped after what he described as “two cordial, thoughtful and productive” conversations with the prospective speaker and securing his support for a strong defense bill. Sources familiar with Jordan’s pitch to the GOP conference told CNN’s Annie Grayer and Melanie Zanona Monday that the Ohio congressman had promised to fundraise hard for Republicans across the country and that he would also do what he could to protect moderates – potentially by ensuring that they don’t face primary challenges next year from hardline pro-Trump candidates.

    However, Zanona and Grayer also reported that some big GOP donors had vowed not to invest in the House majority under Jordan and would instead concentrate their resources on flipping the Senate next year. That GOP coolness highlights how a 2024 Republican slate featuring Trump, the front-runner for the presidential nomination, and Jordan as the most powerful Republican in Washington could delight Democrats campaigning in the battleground districts that could decide the election.

    Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a swing district in Nebraska, emerged from a meeting of Republican lawmakers on Monday evening resolved not to support Jordan, after expressing concerns that handing him the speaker’s gavel would represent a victory for the hardliners who ended McCarthy’s tenure. Bacon said he was inclined to vote for McCarthy even though the former speaker is not standing, at least in a first ballot. “I’m going to vote tomorrow and we’ll take it after that one at a time,” Bacon said.

    Another anti-McCarthy holdout is Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, who has said “part of” the reason he is opposed to Jordan is his behavior after the 2020 election. According to the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, Jordan was a “significant player” in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and to block the certification of Biden’s victory in Congress, including in multiple conversations with Trump and senior White House officials.

    But some key lawmakers appear to have made their peace with Jordan’s potential speakership, partly because of the damage being done to the GOP and their potential reelection prospects by self-indulgent internal battles. New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a freshman who is one of the most endangered Republicans next year and has been a strong supporter of McCarthy, called on the House to get back to work. “At the end of the day, we need to get back to the work of the American people,” Lawler told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday. He said he told Jordan on Friday that he was not a “hell no” and that he’d only back him if he had the votes to become speaker.

    He shrugged off attacks that are already coming from Democrats over his possible vote for Jordan.

    “They are going to attack me no matter what I do. That’s their job, that’s their objective. They want to get back into the majority,” Lawler told Tapper.

    “My constituents know who I am, they know where I stand on these issues,” Lawler said, noting how he had fought to raise the government’s borrowing limit earlier this year, averting a debt default, and to keep the government open.

    Lawler might be right. But the potential chaos and discord Jordan could sow may give voters fresh reasons to vote against Lawler by November of next year.

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • Bipartisan House caucus leaders say ‘all options are on the table’ as shutdown looms | CNN Politics

    Bipartisan House caucus leaders say ‘all options are on the table’ as shutdown looms | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    With government funding slated to run out September 30, the leaders of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus told CNN on Sunday that “all options are on the table” to force a vote on their alternative stopgap plan to avert a shutdown.

    There is no consensus plan to keep the government funded, and persistent opposition by a bloc of conservatives to House GOP leadership’s agenda has made any effort to pass a stopgap bill in the House a major challenge.

    While the caucus leaders, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Josh Gottheimer, said they hope House Speaker Kevin McCarthy puts the measure on the floor, they said they have spoken with the parliamentarian about other avenues and raised the possibility of using a discharge petition – an arcane procedural step – to force a vote.

    The procedural tool can be used to force a floor vote, but only if a majority of House members sign on in support. Discharge petitions rarely succeed because of how high the threshold is to clear.

    “We’re going to do whatever it takes to get that bill on the floor. … A discharge petition is one of several options, and a group of us met with the parliamentarian this past week to discuss all the options we have to force a vote on our bill,” Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, added: “I think our plan is reasonable. And it deals with the extremes and … instead of burning the place down as, Speaker McCarthy said of the far right, it actually provides a reasonable, commonsense solution working with people like Brian Fitzpatrick who want to get things done.”

    The caucus last week endorsed a potential backup plan if House Republicans are unable to pass their stopgap bill alone. The bill would fund the government through January 11 and include Ukraine aid, disaster response and border security provisions.

    “This is a decision the speaker is gonna have to make. He can bring that reasonable bill to the floor that we’ve proposed, and I guarantee you’re gonna get Democrats (and) Republicans coming together to support it and we can keep the lights on,” Gottheimer said.

    McCarthy, who is under pressure and has faced threats of an ouster, said Saturday he still lacks support from a handful of GOP hardliners to put a stopgap measure on the floor, making a shutdown likely.

    Rep. Tim Burchett, one of the holdouts, told CNN on Sunday he is still a “no” on passing a stopgap funding bill.

    “No, ma’am,” the Tennessee Republican told Bash. “I think it’s completely blowing away our duties. We have a duty to pass a budget.”

    He also said he would strongly consider support for ousting McCarthy if the California Republican cuts a deal with Democrats to keep the government open.

    “That would be something I’d look strongly at, ma’am, if we do away with our duty that we said we’re going to do,” Burchett said.

    McCarthy has been hoping the momentum of a handful of appropriations bills, which will head to the House floor this week, would bring some of those holdouts into the fold. But Burchett’s comments Sunday are the latest indication that hope may be in vain.

    “We’re sticking to our guns and all of a sudden we’re the bad guys because we want to balance our budget,” Burchett said.

    Another holdout, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, said Sunday that McCarthy is in “breach” of promises he made regarding government spending when elected speaker.

    “We should have separate single-subject spending bills. Kevin McCarthy promised that in January, he is in breach of that promise, so I’m not here to hold the government hostage, I’m here to hold Kevin McCarthy to his word,” Gaetz said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

    Gaetz added it would be fine if some departments shut down for a few days if it meant measures such as the Homeland Security appropriations bill passed first.

    “If, you know, the (departments) of Labor and Education have to shut down for a few days as we get their appropriations in line, that’s certainly not something that is optimal, but I think it’s better than continuing on the current path we are to America’s financial ruin,” Gaetz said.

    The holdouts’ comments come as the White House urges Republicans to find a solution, warning that a government shutdown could threaten crucial federal programs.

    “Funding the government is one of the most basic responsibilities of Congress, and it’s time for Republicans to start doing the job America elected them to do,” President Joe Biden said Sunday at an event held by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

    Speaking on Sunday to CNN’s Bash, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called on House Republicans to “come to their senses and keep the government running.”

    “This is something that can and should be prevented,” Buttigieg said on “State of the Union.” He echoed Biden administration talking points, saying Republicans should hold up their end of the agreement made this year during debt ceiling negotiations.

    The White House has warned of massive disruptions to air travel if the government shuts down, as tens of thousands of air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration personnel will have to work without pay.

    “They’re under enough stress as it is doing that job without having to come into work with the added stress of not receiving a paycheck,” Buttigieg said of air traffic controllers.

    He added, “The American people don’t want to shutdown. From what I can tell, the Senate is ready to go. The administration is ready to go. House Republicans need to come to their senses and keep the government running.”

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  • Federal deficit effectively doubled in fiscal year 2023 | CNN Politics

    Federal deficit effectively doubled in fiscal year 2023 | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The US budget deficit soared in fiscal year 2023, which will likely complicate Congress’ efforts to come to a federal spending deal before government funding runs out next month.

    The deficit was $1.7 trillion for the most recent fiscal year, which ended September 30, according to Treasury Department data released Friday. That marks a $320 billion, or 23%, increase from the prior fiscal year.

    However, the deficit essentially doubled to about $2 trillion if the impact of President Joe Biden’s federal student debt cancellation plan – which the Supreme Court struck down before it took effect – is not included.

    The US Treasury Department listed the fiscal year 2022 deficit as $1.4 trillion because it took into account the cost of the president’s proposal. Without it, the deficit would have been closer to $1 trillion.

    The agency then logged the overturning of the cancellation plan as a savings for fiscal year 2023, which reduced the size of the deficit to $1.7 trillion.

    “We are a nation addicted to debt,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “With the economy growing and unemployment near record lows, this was the time to instill fiscal responsibility and reduce our deficits.”

    The nation’s hefty debt load will become even costlier in coming years as interest payments rise.

    “We are seeing in real time the painful combination of rising debt, inflation and interest costs, all leading to even more debt,” said Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to raise awareness of the US’ long-term fiscal challenges. “Interest costs rose almost 40% last year, and soon we’ll spend more on interest than we do on national defense.”

    Also contributing to the growth in the deficit was a sizable drop in tax revenue.

    More than 40% of the jump was attributable to lower tax revenues, according to Bernard Yaros, lead US economist for Oxford Economics. Individual income tax receipts plummeted because a weak stock market in 2022 resulted in lower capital gains and because the Internal Revenue Service extended the tax deadlines for much of California and parts of Alabama and Georgia due to natural disasters.

    In addition, increased spending on entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, as well as on Medicaid accounted for just over a quarter of the widening in the budget shortfall, Yaros said. The growing number of Social Security beneficiaries and the inflation-fueled 8.7% cost-of-living adjustment for 2023 contributed to the rise in expenditures.

    The annual deficit data will likely factor into Congress’ already-fraught negotiations over funding federal agencies for fiscal year 2024. Lawmakers passed a stopgap spending measure on September 30, just before the federal government was set to shut down. It extended federal funding until November 17.

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  • White House readies itself for operating in a government shutdown | CNN Politics

    White House readies itself for operating in a government shutdown | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The White House is now “girding for a shutdown” and senior West Wing officials are drawing up plans for which personnel would be deemed “essential” starting on October 1 as the deadline to fund the government is only a handful of days away.

    Most of President Joe Biden’s senior-most aides are expected to be designated “essential,” meaning they would not be furloughed, one administration official said. The contingency planning currently underway kicked off in earnest on Friday when the Office of Management and Budget began its formal process of communicating with agencies about the possibility of bringing to halt all work deemed “non-essential.”

    Within the ranks of the White House, prior shutdowns have seen employees whose roles carrying the title “Special Assistant to the President” – a rank that also carries access to the Navy Mess – automatically deemed to be serving in essential roles. A 2023 directory of White House staff and salaries submitted to Congress each year showed 97 employees with that title.

    Even Biden is planning to remain in Washington this weekend, a relatively rare occurrence, as the likelihood of a shutdown loomed. He typically decamps for one of his Delaware homes or Camp David on Friday afternoons, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday that he would remain in the capital.

    The active preparations related to White House staffing is yet another sign of the widespread anticipation in Washington that lawmakers on Capitol Hill may fail to find a way to fund the government by the end-of-month deadline.

    With four days until funding expires, Senate leadership on Tuesday reached a deal that would keep the government open through November 17, with $6.2 billion in funding for Ukraine and $6 billion for domestic disasters, CNN reported. A White House official had said earlier this week that Biden would be “broadly supportive” of a Senate-brokered deal, even if it included a fraction of the $24 billion the administration was seeking to continue assisting Ukraine.

    But even after a deal was reached in the Senate, White House officials maintained that the ultimate outcome remained unpredictable, in large part because it was impossible to guess what House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s next moves might be. McCarthy, who may see a harder-line package with steeper spending cuts as the antidote to his intra-party politics, has not committed to putting a bipartisan Senate bill on floor for a vote.

    “Ultimately it’s going to come down to Kevin McCarthy and his conference,” said National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”

    Behind the scenes, the White House is not confident the two chambers can reach a mutually agreed deal in the next few days.

    “Nothing is inevitable, but every day that passes, it’s more likely,” a White House official said of a shutdown. “It’s hard to say we are confident about anything.”

    The White House has been closely monitoring the ongoing deliberations on Capitol Hill, including McCarthy’s efforts to placate some of the hardline members of his own caucus, as well as the deliberations in the Senate.

    Yet without a direct role in the negotiations, the White House strategy has been as much about messaging as it is about finding a funding solution. Biden’s aides are broadly confident that Republicans will catch the blame if the government shutters, and the president recorded a video this week pointing the figure at a “small group of extreme House Republicans” he said are “determined to shut down the government.”

    House Republicans, he added, “refuse to stand up to the extremists in their party – so now everyone in America could be forced to pay the price.”

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  • How the ‘uniparty’ myth shut the House down | CNN Politics

    How the ‘uniparty’ myth shut the House down | CNN Politics

    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Republicans’ House speaker morass continued Tuesday with a little help from former President Donald Trump.

    Yet another lawmaker with support from most House Republicans – Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who was picked as their party’s nominee – failed to get the support of nearly all Republicans. He dropped out of the running Tuesday afternoon, leaving Republicans again back at square one.

    Emmer, who supports military aid to Ukraine and who voted to certify the 2020 election, saw his chances fade in the most bizarre possible way hours after being picked.

    Trump lobbied against Emmer with a social media post that hit while Emmer was trying to convince a few dozen skeptics on Capitol Hill and Trump was inside a New York courtroom facing civil fraud charges. Trump later told reporters outside the courtroom, “It looks like he’s finished.”

    After one fired speaker and three failed candidates who got majority but not universal support, no one seems currently capable of uniting their tiny House majority – and the idea of getting help from Democrats remains, for now, unthinkable to both Republicans and Democrats.

    It’s a situation that highlights not only Republican divisions, but also the bright line between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

    But it’s important to note that it was born of a fringe protest meant to demonstrate there’s no difference at all between the two parties.

    The term “uniparty” has been a favorite of people like Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House official turned podcaster. He’s been using it for years in conjunction with the similarly cynical idea of Washington as a swamp that needs to be drained or the belief in a deep state that needs to be rooted out.

    Bannon’s goal is to mobilize support for dismantling the current version of the US government.

    The term also features prominently in the more-conservative-than-Fox-News media environment – networks like One America News, known as OAN, and Salem Radio.

    “Right now, we are governed by a uniparty,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican, told the former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka in a September interview on the right-wing Salem News Channel in which he argued then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy was in cahoots with President Joe Biden and the Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Gaetz posted the interview on his official House website.

    “You’ve got a small band of House conservatives who are fighting, really, in a lot of ways, a political guerrilla war against that uniparty,” Gaetz said. In early October, it was Gaetz who moved to successfully oust McCarthy from the speakership.

    It’s indisputable that government spending has ballooned in recent years and reasonably arguable that it is out of control. But blaming a perceived “uniparty” is oversimplified nonsense.

    Republicans under Trump passed a tax cut bill all by themselves. Democrats under Biden passed a spending bill without help from Republicans.

    Reforming costly programs seems impossible because the two parties rarely work together, not because they secretly collude.

    Multiple Republicans who supported McCarthy have argued Democrats are to blame for the current lack of a speaker because they did not break party ranks and support McCarthy.

    There has been no substantive movement toward a unity speaker of some sort, although it is becoming hard to imagine any Republican getting enough support to become speaker without help from some Democrats.

    The current math is that any Republican can lose the support of only four party comrades and become speaker without Democratic help.

    Another lawmaker who voted to oust McCarthy is Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, who argued back in September that allowing the government to run out of money would not be that bad.

    “Don’t let the DC uniparty scare you into thinking that a government shutdown is the end of the world,” Biggs said on social media in September, before McCarthy used Democratic votes to pass a funding bill.

    This is a line of thinking that will get more attention, perhaps, when the government again faces a funding lapse November 17.

    RELATED: The last time the government faced a funding lapse, just last month, CNN documented how a government shutdown could impact Americans.

    Any potential speaker must find a way to both get the support of people like Gaetz and figure out how to fund the government in a little more than three weeks.

    Emmer’s downfall is yet another cautionary tale. The majority of House Republicans backed Emmer, their fourth choice this year to be speaker, in both secret ballot voting and a behind-closed-doors roll call vote.

    He had been working to convince holdouts when the post opposing him hit Trump’s social media account. For the fringe of the party, counts against Emmer include that he is a supporter of additional funding for Ukraine to repel Russia’s invasion. Foreign aid is a chief target of those who believe there is a uniparty.

    Politico noted back in 2017 that the term has roots on the American left, in the rhetoric of Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate turned Green Party presidential candidate.

    While there is not much polling on the idea of a uniparty, there is a lot of polling about the two main political parties.

    In a Pew Research Center survey published in September, just 10% of Americans said they saw “hardly any” difference between the parties. A larger portion of the country – 25% – does not feel either party represents the interests of people like them, but that sentiment is held by roughly equal shares of Republicans and Democrats.

    Similarly, about a quarter of both Republican and Republican-leaning voters and Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters do not feel well-represented by their parties.

    Interestingly, despite gripes about a uniparty by the Republican fringe, Republicans are less likely than Democrats to express an interest in more party choices, according to Pew’s survey.

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  • Expect more rate hikes from the Fed after the latest jobs report | CNN Business

    Expect more rate hikes from the Fed after the latest jobs report | CNN Business


    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    An interest rate hike later this month was already in the cards for the Federal Reserve. But after the June jobs report, the timing of a second hike remains unclear.

    Job gains remain robust, wage growth is still going strong, and unemployment continues to hover near historic lows. That means the job market is still fueling demand in the economy, which the Fed has been trying to slow through rate hikes. And Fed officials have made it clear they think the central bank still has more work to do to bring down inflation, which is still running well above the 2% goal.

    Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee, a voting member of the Fed committee that decides interest rates, said in an interview Friday that he sees “a decent chance of further tightening down the pipeline” and that inflation “needs to come down more.”

    Other Fed officials have struck a similarly hawkish tone on inflation, hinting strongly at a hike in July.

    “I remain very concerned about whether inflation will return to target in a sustainable and timely way,” said Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Lorie Logan on Thursday during a meeting hosted by the Central Bank Research Association. “I think more restrictive monetary policy will be needed to achieve the Federal Open Market Committee’s goals of stable prices and maximum employment.”

    Fed officials voted last month to hold the key federal funds rate steady at a range of 5-5.25% to reassess the economy after a string of 10 consecutive rate hikes and to monitor the effects of bank stresses in the spring, according to minutes from that meeting released Wednesday.

    “We can take some time and assess and collect more information and then be able to act, knowing that we also communicated through our projections that we don’t think we’re done, based on what we know,” said New York Fed President John Williams Wednesday during a moderated discussion in New York. “And obviously we’re absolutely committed to achieving our 2% inflation goal.”

    And Fed Chair Jerome Powell himself has doubled down on the need for more rate increases in recent speeches, not ruling out back-to-back hikes, despite economic indicators showing slight progress on inflation.

    Financial markets are pricing in a more than a 90% chance of a rate hike later this month, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

    The Fed wants to see the labor market slow down broadly, bringing it into “better balance,” as Powell has frequently described it. That means wage growth would need to cool consistently, monthly payroll growth would need to be close to a range of 70,000 and 100,000 — the smallest job gain needed to keep up with population growth — and unemployment would need to rise, according to economists. Job market conditions don’t resemble that just yet.

    “This is clearly a very tight labor market, so I expect the Fed to look at this data and say there is justification here for continued small rate increases because the labor market is not cooling enough,” Dave Gilbertson, labor economist at payroll software company UKG, told CNN.

    Labor costs are higher because of a persistent difficulty in hiring, weighing on labor-intensive service providers such as hospitals and restaurants, which has put upward pressure on consumer prices since businesses typically raise wages to address hiring challenges.

    Powell homed in on that dynamic in recent remarks, and research from top economists argues the Fed will have to slow the economy further to fully address the labor market’s stubborn impact on inflation. Whether that means a full-blown recession or a so-called soft landing remains to be seen, but some Fed officials are optimistic.

    “I feel like we are on a golden path of avoiding recession,” Goolsbee told CNBC Friday.

    And there has been some progress on bringing the job market back into better balance while inflation has come down. Job openings fell to 9.82 million in May, down from a peak of 12 million in March 2022, though they still greatly exceed the number of unemployed people seeking work. And June’s jobs total of 209,000 is still robust by historical standards.

    But Gilbertson said labor shortages have been largely driven by demographic shifts, which might keep the job market tight for the foreseeable future.

    Beyond the expected hike in July, the Fed is going to remain laser-focused on wage growth to inform its decision-making later in the year. Central bank officials will pay particular attention to the Employment Cost Index, which recently showed that pay gains picked up in the first three months of the year. The index for the second quarter will be released in late July — after the Fed meets.

    “The focus is on the path of wage inflation because of its pass-through to services inflation,” said Sonia Meskin, head of US Macro at BNY Mellon IM.

    The June jobs report showed that average hourly earnings growth was unchanged at 0.4% from the month before and also unchanged at 4.4% year-over-year — not a welcome development.

    Core inflation hasn’t decelerated as fast as the headline measure because of the tightness in the labor market. The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, rose 3.8% in May from a year earlier, down from April’s 4.3% rise; while the core measure edged lower to 4.6% from 4.7% during the same period.

    Within the core measure, services inflation also remains sticky and Powell said in last month’s post-meeting news conference that “we see only the earliest signs of disinflation there” and that the services sector’s “largest cost would be wage cost.”

    The Fed’s strategy to address services inflation is simply by curbing demand through more rate hikes. So, in addition to the labor market, the Fed is highly attentive to consumer spending, which has cooled in the past several months, according to figures from the Commerce Department.

    Other headwinds are expected to weigh on consumers in the months ahead, such as the resumption of student loan payments and the Supreme Court blocking President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. Americans are also running down their savings accounts while racking up debt, so US consumers may need to start cutting back soon.

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  • California is about to give Hollywood studios a lucrative tax deal during the writers’ strike | CNN Business

    California is about to give Hollywood studios a lucrative tax deal during the writers’ strike | CNN Business



    CNN
     — 

    The state of California is about to give movie and TV studios a new lucrative tax perk.

    A bill awaiting California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature would the state’s tax incentive program for film and TV productions for five years but with a key update: Studios with more tax credits than they can use will be able to exchange those credits for cash. The bill, part of the state’s overall budget plan, was passed by California legislators on Tuesday, and Newsom is expected to sign it on Friday.

    The bill also mandates any production that receives the tax credit to comply with new on-set firearm safety protocols following the 2021 deadly shooting on the set of Alec Baldwin’s film “Rust,” and it implements requirements aiming to meet diversity hiring targets.

    The new, refundable tax credits come as competition for film and TV production from other states and countries is on the rise. States like New York and Georgia are gaining share of the TV and film market, thanks to their own tax incentive programs, according to a 2021 report from FilmLA — a nonprofit organization that helps creators with production planning and film permitting.

    The bill should be a boon for studios like Netflix. The streaming giant had not previously been able to take full advantage of the tax credit program since it uses a separate research and development incentive from California to significantly reduce its tax liability. In a 2020 SEC filing, Netflix said it had $250 million in California R&D tax credits — far more than it could use.

    Disney and Comcast’s Universal Studios were the only two studios that benefited under California’s existing tax incentive program, due to their relatively larger tax bills from theme parks, according to Democratic assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo, one of the bill’s sponsors. The new bill could benefit other studios that don’t have theme parks in the state, including Warner Bros, which is owned by CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.

    The bill’s safety measures require productions to employ an adviser to oversee production safety and complete detailed risk assessments. Studios must also establish training requirements and standards that focus on the safe handling of firearms. Many of these safety protocols were voluntary before the bill.

    Dave Cortese, the Democratic state senator who introduced the safety protocols in the bill, said research for the legislation began soon after actor Baldwin fired a live round of ammunition from what he said he believed to be an unloaded prop gun during a film’s rehearsal. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed.

    “Conversations about this legislation started the week after the tragic loss of a cinematographer. Those negotiations have produced the nation’s first and best safety practices for California workers in the state’s vital motion picture industry,” Cortese said.

    In addition to refundable tax credits and stricter safety standards, the bill establishes specific diversity requirements. Studios must submit data about the diversity of their workforce to qualify for the full credit. The bill also adds a new member to the state’s film commission with diversity, equity, and inclusion expertise.

    The tax perk for Hollywood comes amid ongoing tension between the industry’s workforce and the studios’ bosses. The Writers Guild of America, has been on strike since early May, halting the production of many shows. The association’s more than 11,000 members are fighting over substantial issues like pay, the number of writers staffed on any given project, and whether artificial intelligence can be used in writing material.

    Actors may soon stage a work stoppage, as well. Members of the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, have voted to authorize a strike against the major studios if they cannot agree to the terms of a new contract. Similar to the WGA, the actors’ union has voiced similar concerns about pay and the use of AI.

    Democratic lawmakers in California celebrated the bill. Carrillo said the plan was a “grand compromise,” and it would help protect jobs in the state.

    “These are hundreds of thousands of jobs, most of which impact Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles. They’re good union jobs, they’re production jobs, they’re creative jobs,” she said.

    However, the bill has attracted some criticism. Chris Hoene, the executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center, a nonprofit think tank that provides analysis on state budget issues intending to improve outcomes for low-income communities and people of color in the state, called it “bad policy.”

    “Refundable tax credits were designed to help low-income households… so to take that refundability structure and apply it to a business tax credit, you would think there are some film companies that struggle to make ends meet and don’t make enough money to owe any taxes, but that’s not how it works,” he said.

    Hoene called the new policy a “giveaway that doesn’t have any positive outcomes.”

    The refundable credits are designed to help more than just the big studios, Carrillo said. Film and TV productions help support surrounding businesses in the area, including “small restaurants and catering services,” Carrillo said.

    “It’s very important that California has a competitive advantage and ultimately keeps these jobs and productions in our state while other states continue to announce more incentives,” she added.

    Still, Hoene argued that there were more effective ways to create well-paying jobs in California.

    “If we wanted to take scarce state resources to help workers, we could do that in ways that could provide them with assistance directly, rather than giving it to large corporations who are already minimizing their tax bills in other ways,” he said.

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  • Turkey hikes interest rates to 15% as Erdogan reverses policy on fighting inflation | CNN Business

    Turkey hikes interest rates to 15% as Erdogan reverses policy on fighting inflation | CNN Business


    London
    CNN
     — 

    Turkey’s central bank almost doubled interest rates to 15% Thursday in a dramatic reversal of its unorthodox policy of cutting the cost of borrowing to tame painfully high inflation.

    Annual consumer price inflation has come down from a two-decade high of 85.5% in October but was still 39.6% in May.

    The central bank said that there were indications that underlying inflation in Turkey was increasing, even as inflation in many other countries trends downwards.

    “The strong course of domestic demand, cost pressures and the stickiness of services inflation have been the main drivers,” the central bank said in a statement.

    This is the first rate decision by Turkey’s central bank since last month’s reelection of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    It is also the first rate increase in more than two years, and the central bank’s first decision since the appointment earlier this month of new governor Hafize Gaye Erkan, a former Goldman Sachs banker and the first woman to hold the position.

    In its statement, the central bank said it hiked rates to bring down inflation “as soon as possible,” and that it would continue to do so gradually “until a significant improvement in the inflation outlook is achieved.”

    Liam Peach, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a Thursday note that there were “encouraging signs” from the central bank that further rate hikes were ahead.

    The London-based research firm expects Turkish interest rates to rise as high as 30% later this year.

    Erdogan had ordered his central bank to cut rates nine times since late 2021, taking them to 8.5%, even as inflation around the world started to accelerate and most economies were doing the opposite. In that time, the value of the Turkish lira crashed 170% to a record low against the US dollar.

    A weaker lira has aggravated Turkey’s cost-of-living crisis by making foreign imports more expensive, and pushed the government to use up billions of its foreign currency reserves in an attempt to boost the currency’s value.

    Erdogan — who has fired four central bank governors in as many years — has since tried to reassure investors that he intends to normalize Turkish economic policy by filling key posts with more orthodox figures such as Erkan.

    This month, Erdogan also appointed Mehmet Simsek, Turkey’s former deputy prime minister and finance minister, and a former economist for US wealth management firm Merrill Lynch, as his finance minister.

    But the lira weakened further after Thursday’s rate hike news, dropping more than 2% to a new record low of 24 to the US dollar.

    Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, noted that the rate hike had come in at the lower end of market forecasts, and investors couldn’t afford to relax too soon.

    “Erdogan hasn’t really hesitated to sack [central bank] governors that raise rates in the past, so investors will never feel fully at ease as long as he’s president,” he wrote in a note.

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  • Freedom Caucus member says hard-line group ‘failed’ with passage of ‘Democratic’ debt limit bill | CNN Politics

    Freedom Caucus member says hard-line group ‘failed’ with passage of ‘Democratic’ debt limit bill | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ken Buck criticized the bipartisan debt ceiling deal reached between House Republicans and the White House as a “Democratic bill,” and said his hard-line, conservative group had “failed” in its efforts to influence legislation more to its liking.

    The caucus “still retains a lot of influence in the House,” the Colorado Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “The key is that we use that influence in a way that brings conservative results. And I think that that’s what we tried to do with this case, and we failed, honestly.”

    “This bill is a Democrat bill. It is a bill that not only avoided a default but also locked in the progressive gains that the president made in the last two years,” he added.

    President Joe Biden signed into law Saturday the legislation to suspend the nation’s debt limit through January 1, 2025, helping avert a first-ever US default. The deal has faced backlash from conservatives and progressives but ultimately won support from a wide array of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, many of them moderates.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Sunday he felt good about Biden signing the agreement “because we’re finally spending less than we spent the year before.”

    “We actually got more than you thought in the process you could get at this point,” McCarthy, a California Republican, told Fox News.

    Meanwhile, in a separate interview on “State of the Union,” White House budget chief Shalanda Young, a top debt ceiling negotiator, declined to call the new law an outright win for the Democrats despite suggestions from some in the party that they downplayed their initial approval of the bill to garner more Republican support.

    Biden budget chief: McCarthy was ‘very professional’ in talks

    “At the end of the day, the long view, the short and the medium view is default was not an option. So, not who can win,” Young told Bash when asked about a Democratic congressman saying his party had “rolled” Republicans.

    “I have done this a long time, and we had to talk about the budget at some point this year. And this is about what you would expect to see out of a budget agreement with divided Congress,” Young said.

    Buck said Sunday that while he believes McCarthy has credibility issues following passage of the debt ceiling deal, he’s not sure a vote to oust the California Republican from his speakership – also known as a “motion to vacate” – would happen “right away.”

    “We continue to see the swamp, the folks in Washington, DC, who want to spend more money, winning, and we continue to see the folks who want to spend less money and really act responsibly losing. And so I think that Kevin McCarthy has an issue in a broader sense,” Buck said.

    Among the concessions agreed to by McCarthy to secure his speakership earlier this year was that any member can call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, making it easier to trigger what is effectively a no-confidence vote in the speaker.

    When asked by Bash what would lead him and his colleagues to employ such a move, Buck said that was something that should be done with “consensus” in the House Republican Conference.

    “I don’t think it can be used by just a few people,” he said. “I applaud Kevin McCarthy for saying he wants to bring people back together again. Let’s see if he does that in a way that involves spending responsibly in the future.”

    CNN has previously reported that while some of McCarthy’s fiercest critics have had private discussions about the motion to vacate, there is less appetite among the Freedom Caucus as a whole to go that route with the group’s chairman calling it “premature” in a caucus call earlier this week.

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  • In desperate bid for cash, the Treasury is auctioning one-day bills | CNN Business

    In desperate bid for cash, the Treasury is auctioning one-day bills | CNN Business



    CNN
     — 

    Desperate times are calling for desperate measures at the Treasury Department.

    For the first time since 2007, the department is set to auction $15 billion worth of one-day cash management bills on Friday that will be issued on June 5.

    This comes as the Treasury’s cash balances hover around $37 billion, the lowest level since 2017. Since the debt ceiling was initially breached in January, the Treasury hasn’t been able to borrow more money to pay its bills. If lawmakers don’t raise the debt ceiling by June 5, the Treasury is poised to run out of funds to meet its full obligations, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned.

    Congress appears to be on track to avoid that scenario. The House of Representatives passed the debt deal House Speaker Kevin McCarthy cut with President Joe Biden on Wednesday. Now its fate rests in the hands of the Senate and Biden, who vowed to quickly sign it into law.

    Cash management bills mature in a relatively short time frame, ranging from a few days to a year, according to the Treasury. They’re used to help manage the Treasury’s short-term financing needs.

    Unlike Treasury bill auctions that occur on a weekly and monthly basis, cash management bill auctions are irregular, though not uncommon. For instance, last year the Treasury held more than 30 cash management bill auctions.

    It is, however, quite unusual for the department to auction debt that matures in just one day. Over the past 25 years, the Treasury held six one-day cash management bill auctions.

    Yields on cash management bills, which are determined by the auction process, tend to be higher than regular fixed maturity bills. On Thursday, the Treasury auctioned $25 billion of three-day cash management bills yielding 6.15%. That exceeds the yields almost all other Treasury bills are trading at.

    Friday’s auction is open to the public with a minimum $100 bid and can only be purchased in $100 increments.

    “There likely won’t be an issue for the Treasury to find bidders on the paper as maturities this short can fit well in money-market funds or other institutional buyers’ books that are looking to invest cash over the weekend,” said Charlie Ripley, senior investment strategist at Allianz Investment Management.

    It’s likely that yields on the one-day bills will end up mirroring yields of other bills that mature on June 6, he added, “but any negative headlines overnight indicating bottlenecks with the legislature getting through the Senate will impact the auction price.”

    Underscoring the uncertainty around the debt ceiling bill, the Treasury said plans to issue $65 billion of 13-week bills and $58 billion of 26-week bills on June 8 were “tentative.”

    The announcements “are conditional on enactment of the debt limit suspension because Treasury forecasts insufficient headroom under the current debt limit to issue securities in these amounts on June 8,” the Treasury said in a statement on Thursday.

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  • 5 things to know for May 31: DeSantis, Artificial intelligence, Debt deal, UK, Ukraine | CNN

    5 things to know for May 31: DeSantis, Artificial intelligence, Debt deal, UK, Ukraine | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    One-time Silicon Valley darling Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison Tuesday to begin serving out her 11-year sentence after being convicted on multiple charges of defrauding investors. Her life in prison will be quite a change, with mandatory jobs, very early mornings and no black turtlenecks.

    Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “CNN’s 5 Things” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    Ron DeSantis officially kicked off his 2024 presidential campaign Tuesday in Iowa. While speaking to reporters after the event at an evangelical church outside Des Moines, the Florida governor leveled a series of shots at his rival, former President Donald Trump, painting him as selfish, unprincipled and petty. As the opening contest in the GOP nominating fight, Iowa holds a unique role in sizing up the presidential field. That’s especially important this election season since it’s the first time in over a century a former president is seeking to return to the White House. Meanwhile, Florida officials just changed state campaign finance guidelines in a very specific way to allow DeSantis’ allies to initiate a specific kind of transfer to move tens of millions of dollars to a super PAC supporting his campaign. The planned move has already drawn a watchdog complaint with the Federal Election Commission.

    Dozens of industry leaders and academics in the field of artificial intelligence have called for greater global attention to the possible threat of “extinction from AI.” A statement, signed by leading industry officials like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Geoffrey Hinton — the so-called “godfather” of artificial intelligence — highlights wide-ranging concerns about the ultimate danger of unchecked AI. Experts say humanity is still a ways off from the prospect of science-fiction-like AI overlords, but the flood of hype and investment into the AI industry has led to calls for regulation now before any major mishaps occur. The growing AI arms race has already generated more immediate concerns. Lawmakers, advocacy groups and tech insiders have raised alarms about the potential for AI-powered language models like ChatGPT to spread misinformation and displace jobs.

    AI developers are warning ‘risk of extinction’ to humans

    The House of Representatives is on track to vote today on a bill to suspend the nation’s debt limit through January 1, 2025. The bill already cleared a key hurdle Tuesday evening when the powerful House Rules Committee voted 7-6 to advance it to the floor. That’s a win for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was tasked with convincing members of the committee to vote in favor even though some fellow Republicans don’t approve of the bill and have vowed to sink it in the chamber. Still, it appears a wide range of House members on both sides of the aisle are poised to support the deal. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would reduce budget deficits by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, and reduce discretionary spending by a projected $1.3 trillion from 2024 to 2033.

    exp debt limit bill rana foroohar intv 053102ASEG1 cnni us_00005607.png

    U.S. House to vote on debt limit bill amid criticism

    The UK’s inflation problems are getting so out of hand, officials are considering food price caps to curb the crisis. New data released this week shows the cost of store items, a metric known as shop price inflation, rose 9% through the year to May. That’s the highest it’s ever been since such stats were first recorded in 2005. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is considering asking retailers to cap the price of essential food items, something the UK government tried in the 1970s to tepid effect. Economists say capping prices leads to lower supply and higher demand, resulting in shortages. The enduring shadow of Brexit still looms large over Britain’s economy, and some experts say the government should be focused on shedding burdensome regulations that resulted from the move instead of trying to control prices. 

    Russia’s war on Ukraine is increasingly spilling into Russian territory. The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said four people were recently injured in a “massive strike” there. This is the latest in a series of strikes against Russian targets by Ukrainian forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the spate of attacks, saying Ukraine “chose the path of intimidation,” and is provoking Russia to “mirror actions.” Amid all the violence, scientists have another concern: International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi has outlined a plan to protect Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and asked that Russia and Ukraine observe them to ensure the plant’s safety and security. 

    exp russia ukraine drone strikes sam kiley FST 053112ASEG2 cnni world_00002524.png

    Russia blames Ukraine after drone strikes in Moscow

    Alleged Russian ‘spy’ whale now in Swedish waters

    Patiently waiting for a mystery novel series about spy whales. 

    Michael Jordan was a ‘horrible player’ and ‘horrible to play with,’ says former Chicago Bulls teammate Scottie Pippen

    Dang, Scottie. Tell us how you really feel!

    Venice authorities discover why canal turned fluorescent green

    Given all the fluorescent things it could have been, this is quite a relief.

    This is the world’s first 3D-printed, cultivated fish fillet

    Mmm, science is delicious.

    Air New Zealand to weigh passengers before they board the airplane

    What an innovative way to make air travel even more stressful! 

    1.4 million

    That’s about how many people have now been displaced in Sudan since a civil war erupted there in April, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says. Hundreds have been killed in the violence, and reports of sexual assault are increasingly common. 

    “I just tried to follow the police commands but I guess that didn’t work.”

    — Aderrien Murry, the 11-year-old boy who was shot in the chest less than two weeks ago by a Mississippi police officer after he called 911 for help. The boy said he prayed and sang in the moments after he was shot as his mother tried to stop the bleeding. Aderrien’s family wants the officer fired, and is seeking restitution from the state. 

    Check your local forecast here>>>

    A perfect day

    Bless people who put little collar cameras on their outdoor cats. These videos bring a type of peace I didn’t know existed. (Click here to view)

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  • US oil prices sink below $70 on debt ceiling jitters and Russia-Saudi tensions | CNN Business

    US oil prices sink below $70 on debt ceiling jitters and Russia-Saudi tensions | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    US oil prices dropped below $70 a barrel Tuesday on concerns about whether the debt ceiling deal will make it through Congress and on reports of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Russia ahead of a key OPEC+ meeting.

    Crude slumped 4.4% to close at $69.46 a barrel, the lowest settlement price in nearly four weeks.

    The selloff marks one of the worst days of the year for the oil market and could help keep a lid on pump prices. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is down by about $1 from a year ago.

    Oil market veterans blamed Tuesday’s decline in part on worries about whether conservatives in the House of Representatives will try to block the bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling forged over the weekend by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    “It’s not a layup that the debt deal is going to get done. That’s spooking the market, no doubt about that,” said Robert Yawger, vice president of energy futures at Mizuho Securities.

    Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, also pointed to “growing skepticism” about the debt ceiling agreement and the risk that a failure to raise the borrowing limit sets off a “deep recession” that curbs demand for oil.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned the government will not have enough funds to meet all of the nation’s obligations if Congress does not address the debt ceiling by June 5.

    Brent crude, the world benchmark, dropped by more than 4%, slipping below $74 a barrel.

    Meanwhile, there are new questions about the relationship between OPEC leader Saudi Arabia and Russia ahead of this weekend’s meeting of oil producers in Vienna.

    Saudi Arabia has expressed anger to Russia for failing to follow through on Moscow’s promise to cut production in response to Western sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources. The apparent tensions raises uncertainty about the status of OPEC+, the alliance between OPEC members like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait and non-OPEC nations led by Russia.

    “There is starting to be chatter about the Russian and Saudis not being the best of friends,” said Yawger.

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  • Corporate America celebrates debt ceiling deal and urges Congress to quickly pass legislation | CNN Business

    Corporate America celebrates debt ceiling deal and urges Congress to quickly pass legislation | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Leading business groups are praising President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for forging a bipartisan agreement to raise the debt ceiling, and they are calling for Congress to pass the legislation before the government suffers a devastating default.

    “With the US at risk of defaulting in less than 10 days, there is no time to spare. We urge members of Congress to give the legislation their strong support,” Josh Bolten, the CEO of the Business Roundtable and former chief of staff to President George W. Bush, said in a statement on Sunday.

    Bolten applauded the agreement for not only raising the debt ceiling through January 1, 2025, but for making a “down payment” on permitting reform and taking steps towards putting America on a “more sustainable fiscal trajectory.”

    Suzanne Clark, president and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, said in a separate statement that by reaching a compromise, Biden and congressional leaders have “shown they can come together on a bipartisan basis and act in the best interests of our country.”

    “Members of Congress must finish the job and send the bill to the President’s desk to be signed into law without delay. The gravity of this moment cannot be overstated,” said Clark, who added the Chamber will consider this a “key vote” for lawmakers.

    The National Association of Manufacturers, the largest manufacturing trade group in the nation, congratulated Biden, McCarthy and their lawmakers for reaching an agreement.

    “Defaulting on our debt would create economic chaos, harming manufacturing workers and their families and jeopardizing our leadership in the world,” NAM CEO Jay Timmons, who previously worked as a senior aid to Republican officials, said in a statement. “Congress should act quickly to pass this agreement and to demonstrate to Americans and to the world the continued strength of our institutions and our democracy.”

    Big bank CEOs are also pressing lawmakers to green light the debt limit deal.

    The Financial Services Forum, a trade group whose members include Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, issued a statement Tuesday praising the efforts of Biden and McCarthy and urging Congress to adopt the agreement.

    “Responsible and timely action will preserve the full faith and credit of the United States and our nation’s important position of global economic leadership,” Financial Services Forum CEO Kevin Fromer said in the statement.

    Biden and McCarthy reached an agreement Saturday, but the deal isn’t done yet. Party leaders in Washington are working furiously Monday to convince holdouts to back the compromise legislation that would avert default. Still, prospects for passage of the bill are rising as many centrist Democrats said they would back the bill, and Republicans said they believed that they would be able to carry the support of the majority of their House conference.

    The House vote is expected to take place Wednesday.

    – CNN’s Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

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  • Republican tries to scuttle debt limit bill in House Rules Committee as pressure grows on key swing vote | CNN Politics

    Republican tries to scuttle debt limit bill in House Rules Committee as pressure grows on key swing vote | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Chip Roy accused House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday of cutting a deal that could complicate negotiators’ efforts to pass a bill to raise the US debt ceiling this week.

    But McCarthy’s allies quickly refuted the Texas Republican, underscoring the tension ahead of a key meeting of the House Rules Committee on Tuesday – and putting new pressure on a conservative holdout, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has yet to take a position on the plan.

    Roy contended that McCarthy cut a hand-shake deal in January that all nine Republicans on the powerful panel must agree to move any legislation forward, otherwise bills could not be considered by the full House for majority approval. That would essentially doom the debt ceiling bill since Roy – who sits on the panel – and another conservative committee member are trying to stop the bill from advancing.

    “A reminder that during Speaker negotiations to build the coalition, that it was explicit both that nothing would pass Rules Committee without AT LEAST 7 GOP votes – AND that the Committee would not allow reporting out rules without unanimous Republican votes,” Roy tweeted.

    Senior GOP sources acknowledged that there was an agreement for seven Republican committee members to agree to move forward in order to advance a bill to the floor, but they flatly dispute that there was a deal for all nine to sign off for legislation to advance.

    “I have not heard that before. If those conversations took place, the rest of the conference was unaware of them,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota. “And frankly, I doubt them.”

    The dispute is significant because Roy sits on the committee – which is divided between nine Republicans and four Democrats – as does GOP Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina. Both men have emerged as leading foes of the bipartisan debt limit bill to avoid a June 5 default, arguing it does little to rein in government spending.

    A third conservative who sits on the panel – Massie – has been mum about how he plans to handle the rule vote in committee. McCarthy agreed to name all three men to the panel as part of the promises he made during his hard-fought speaker’s victory – all to give more power to conservatives on committees, including on Rules, which is typically stacked with the speaker’s closest allies.

    If Massie were to join Roy and Norman and vote against the rule at Tuesday’s meeting, he could effectively stall the measure in committee.

    But in January, Massie told CNN he was reluctant to vote against rules to stop bills in their tracks.

    “I would be reluctant to try to use the rules committee to achieve a legislative outcome, particularly if it doesn’t represent a large majority of our caucus,” Massie said at the time. “So I don’t ever intend to use my position on there to like, hold somebody hostage – or hold legislation hostage.”

    Democrats on the committee may also vote for the rule, sources told CNN, and that would ensure it has the votes to advance to the floor. But if Massie were to oppose the rule, only six Republicans would be in favor of it, complicating McCarthy’s efforts to bring the plan to the floor since he previously agreed to only take up bills with the backing of seven committee Republicans.

    Massie’s office declined to comment on how he may vote on Tuesday, and neither Roy nor the speaker’s office responded to requests for comments on the Texan’s assertion.

    But Republicans close to McCarthy refuted the notion that bills could only advance with unanimous GOP support in the committee.

    “I’m a rules guy,” Johnson said. “And when I checked, there wasn’t a rule that something has to come out of Rules Committee unanimously. Now Chip is a rules guy too. So I think he’s going to understand that, that this is a majoritarian institution, and that ultimately, we’re going to serve Americans the best way that the majority of us know how – that’s going to be to pass this bill.”

    Other McCarthy allies agreed.

    “I don’t know what Speaker McCarthy agreed to, but that has not been something that any of us were familiar with,” Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma said. “I think that comment was that it had to be unanimous to come out of the Rules Committee to go to the floor is the tweet that I read. And I think that is inaccurate, at best, but I don’t know because I wasn’t in the room. I don’t know how you would have something like that functionally work.”

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