ROCKPORT â The Rockport Fire Department is the recipient of thousands of dollars in state grant money to be used for equipment.
Rockport firefighters received $10,230 in this round of grants, according to a posting on the departmentâs Facebook page.
The grant is part of a $5 million state appropriation recently announced by Gov. Maura Healey, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and Massachusetts Fire Marshal Jon Davine. The fiscal 2024 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grants provide funding for protective firefighting gear and specialized tools.
âWeâd like to thank the Governorâs Office, (the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security) and the (Massachusetts) Fire Marshalâs Office for their continued support,â reads Rockport Fire’s Facebook posting.
Healey said the Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant program is just one way the state can express its appreciation for the dedication shown by firefighters.
âEvery single day, firefighters across Massachusetts put themselves in harmâs way to protect their communities,â she said. âThey deserve our thanks and our support.â
The Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant program provides reimbursement on purchases of 135 different types of firefighting equipment, including hoses and nozzles, turnout gear, ballistic protective equipment, thermal imaging cameras, hand tools and extrication equipment, communications resources and hazardous gas meters.
This is the fourth year the funding has been available through the program.
âFrom structure fires and water rescues to hazardous materials and building collapses, firefighters never know what life-threatening risks the next call will bring,â said Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll. âThese grants will support the purchase of fundamental tools and specialty equipment to help them do a dangerous job more safely.â
Echoing Healey and Driscollâs sentiments, Davine said the grants are an investment in the health and safety of all firefighters.
âThe flexibility of the program is especially valuable because it allows each department to make purchases based on their specific needs and resources,â Davine said. âIt has become a vital part of the way the Massachusetts fire service prepares for the constantly evolving threats in the world around us.â
The truth is, Europe only has itself to blame for the morass. Trump has been harping on about NATO’s laggards for years, but he hardly invented the genre. American presidents going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower have complained about European allies freeloading on American defense.
What Europeans don’t like to hear is that Trump has a point: They have been freeloading. What’s more, it was always unrealistic to expect the U.S. to pick pick up the tab for European security ad infinitum.
After Trump lost to Biden in 2020, its seemed like everything had gone back to normal, however. Biden, a lifelong transatlanticist, sought to repair the damage Trump did to NATO by letting the Europeans slide back into their comfort zone.
Even though overall defense spending has increased in recent years in Europe — as it should have, considering Russia’s war on Ukraine — it’s still nowhere near enough. Only 11 of NATO’s 31 members are expected to meet the spending target in 2023, for example, according to NATO’s own data. Germany, the main target of Trump’s ire, has yet to achieve the 2 percent mark. It’s likely to this year, however, if only because its economy is contracting.
The truth is, Europe was lulled back into a false sense of security by Biden’s warm embrace. Instead of going on a war footing by forcing industry to ramp up armament production and reinstating conscription in countries like Germany where it was phased out, Europe nestled itself in Americas skirts.
February is Black History Month and we’re celebrating by amplifying Black voices, celebrating Black pioneers in animal welfare, and exploring the ways our community is honoring this month. And we want our APA! community to join in with us on learning something new and honoring the deep and rich Black history so that we may continue to move toward a more equitable future.
Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina governor, made the comments during a CNN town hall at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire.
CNN moderator Jake Tapper said Haley’s political group, Stand For America, once referred to a previous version of the child tax credit as “no-strings-attached welfare handouts.” After noting these credits “cut child poverty in half,” Tapper asked Haley if she’s against expanding child tax credits to help more low-income families.
“I’m for child care tax credits for everyone. If you’re going do it, do it across the board and make sure that it’s fair,” she said.
Republican presidential candidate and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley on Thursday speaks during a campaign stop at the historic Robie Country Store in Hooksett, New Hampshire. During a later CNN town hall, Haley discussed what she would do about the child tax credit if she wins the presidency. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Haley continued by saying that when evaluating welfare systems, “the goal that I want to look at is what are we doing to lift them up.”
She then spoke of her time as governor, saying she worked to help people on welfare find work with businesses that would train them.
“We moved 35,000 people from welfare to work. We had family parties so that we could celebrate the fact that they were now contributing members of society,” she said.
“Don’t just give handouts. What are you doing to lift them up to? And if you’re going to do tax credits, do it for everybody. Don’t play favorites. Don’t pick winners and losers,” she continued. “That’s not what we do in America.”
The GOP hopeful then described how tax credits could have a negative impact on some Americans.
“When you just throw out a tax credit and say, ‘We’re going give it to these people or give it to these people’—that’s not sustaining anything, that’s actually harming them. Instead, let’s do the harder work and say, ‘What can we do to get them into a better situation?'” Haley said.
CNN’s town hall with Haley took place days before New Hampshire’s Tuesday primary. Her campaign will look to benefit from former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie withdrawing from the GOP race last week.
A CNN poll released on January 9 conducted by the University of New Hampshire (UNH) pointed to how Christie’s followers could help Haley. The poll found Haley had shaved Trump’s lead in the New Hampshire primary race to 7 percentage points. If Haley gains a sizable portion of Christie’s supporters, she may take the win in the state during its January 23 primary.
The CNN/UNH poll found 39 percent of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire said they would vote for Trump, compared to 32 percent who support Haley. However, the same poll showed 12 percent of the GOP voters said they would back Christie.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
An elephant at the Los Angeles Zoo died this week, the second in about a year and just days before a vigil is set to be held by animal activists at the zoo to mourn elephants who have died in captivity.
Shaunzi, a 53-year-old female Asian elephant, was euthanized early Wednesday morning, according to zoo officials.
Around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Shaunzi was seen lying down in the exhibit she shared with the zoo’s other female elephant, Tina, and appeared unable to get up. Zoo veterinarians and care staff evaluated her condition, but efforts to help her were unsuccessful. She was sedated and subsequently put down.
“The decision to euthanize Shaunzi was a consensus decision made by her care team based on several factors including prognosis and welfare,” zoo officials said in an email. “These factors include her age, past medical history, her inability to right herself with supportive efforts to raise her” and other concerns.
“As a result, it was deemed the best for her welfare to let her go,” the statement concluded.
Shaunzi is the second L.A. Zoo elephant to die in about a year after Jewel, a 61-year-old female, was euthanized in January 2023 due to what zoo officials said was her declining quality of life. Asian elephants typically have a lifespan of 60 to 70 years in the wild, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The L.A. Zoo has two Asian elephants remaining: Tina, 58, who arrived at the zoo in 2010, and Billy, a 39-year-old male who has been at the zoo since 1989.
Shaunzi was born in 1970 in Thailand, where she lived for about a year before she was captured and used in circus work in the United States. In 1983, she was given to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, where she lived before being transferred to the L.A. Zoo in 2017.
“Shaunzi lived a full life and was an ambassador for her species,” the zoo said in a statement on her passing. “She helped Angelenos learn about her wild counterparts and the challenges they face in their native range.”
Shaunzi’s death comes days before a group of animal welfare activists are set to hold the annual International Candlelight Vigil for Elephants outside the L.A. Zoo. The event is meant to honor the elephants who died in captivity over the last year at zoos and sanctuaries around the world, as well as highlight the host of problems they face compared with elephants in the wild, including medical issues such as arthritis and the bone infection osteomyelitis.
“The lack of space alone is extremely cruel, because their brains and their bodies are meant for walking huge distances,” said Courtney Scott, an elephant consultant for In Defense of Animals, one of the groups behind the event.
The vigil is set to take place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Saturday outside the Los Angeles Zoo, at 5333 Zoo Drive. Zoo officials said they were aware of the event but declined to comment further.
PARIS ― French President Emmanuel Macron scored a Pyrrhic victory late Tuesday night after passing a flagship immigration bill in a vote that leaves his parliamentary coalition deeply scarred.
The bill imposes a series of measures that have been heavily criticized by the left as pandering to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, while the far-right party claims the Macron government has been inspired by its long-time calls for foreigners to be excluded from state welfare benefits.
In a surprise move, the National Rally on Tuesday announced it would vote in favor of the latest version of the government’s bill, embarrassing the top brass of Macron’s party, who had to choose between passing a bill with far-right support or throwing in the towel.
The government managed to pass the law thanks to a last-minute pledge not to enact the legislation if it didn’t get enough support without the far right.
A total of 349 MPs, including lawmakers from Macron’s centrist coalition, the conservatives and 88 National Rally MPs, ultimately voted Tuesday in favor of the draft legislation, while 186 were against. While that may seem a comfortable majority, almost a quarter of the MPs from Macron’s coalition abstained or voted against the bill.
“There have been moments of great difficulty, but today we can be satisfied that a majority of MPs clearly voted for very strong measures,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said after the vote.
But the government now faces a shattered coalition in parliament. The debates and compromises have left Macron’s allies badly bruised, with 27 MPs belonging to his centrist coalition voting against the latest version of the legislation.
Macron is now expected to speak on Wednesday to address the crisis.
Speculation is swelling that he might soon undertake a reshuffle including a change of prime minister to re-energize his government.
A point of contention on Tuesday was whether the government needed the National Rally votes to get its bill through parliament. During an emergency meeting at the Elysée Palace before the vote, Macron warned his party that if it failed to get a majority without the far right, he would refuse to enact the legislation. The move was meant to show that there was no tacit understanding or negotiation between Macron’s party and the party of his arch-rival Le Pen.
But while the government did not need RN MPs to pass the legislation, it would have failed if they had voted against the bill.
“It’s a sickening victory,” said far-left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon in a scathing social media post. “Without the 88 votes of the National Rally,” the government would have “less than the absolute majority … A new political axis is appearing,” he said.
The immigration bill was a major test for Macron’s government as it seeks to repress a resurgent far right and respond to hardened public opinion on questions of migration and border control. It came after questions were raised about Macron’s ability to govern France after a defeat in parliamentary elections last year cost him his majority in the National Assembly.
BRUSSELS — Western leaders are grappling with how to handle two era-defining wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine. But there’s another issue, one far closer to home, that’s derailing governments in Europe and America: migration.
In recent days, U.S. President Joe Biden, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak all hit trouble amid intense domestic pressure to tackle immigration; all three emerged weakened as a result. The stakes are high as American, British and European voters head to the polls in 2024.
“There is a temptation to hunt for quick fixes,” said Rashmin Sagoo, director of the international law program at the Chatham House think tank in London. “But irregular migration is a hugely challenging issue. And solving it requires long-term policy thinking beyond national boundaries.”
With election campaigning already under way, long-term plans may be hard to find. Far-right, anti-migrant populists promising sharp answers are gaining support in many Western democracies, leaving mainstream parties to count the costs. Less than a month ago in the Netherlands, pragmatic Dutch centrists lost to an anti-migrant radical.
Who will be next?
Rishi Sunak, United Kingdom
In Britain, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under pressure from members of his own ruling Conservative party who fear voters will punish them over the government’s failure to get a grip on migration.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during a press conference in Dover on June 5, 2023 in Dover, England | Pool photo by Yui Mok/WPA via Getty Images
Seven years ago, voters backed Brexit because euroskeptic campaigners promised to “Take Back Control” of the U.K.’s borders. Instead, the picture is now more chaotic than ever. The U.K. chalked up record net migration figures last month, and the government has failed so far to stop small boats packed with asylum seekers crossing the English Channel.
Sunak is now in the firing line. He made a pledge to “Stop the Boats” central to his premiership. In the process, he ignited a war in his already divided party about just how far Britain should go.
Under Sunak’s deal with Rwanda, the central African nation agreed to resettle asylum seekers who arrived on British shores in small boats. The PM says the policy will deter migrants from making sea crossings to the U.K. in the first place. But the plan was struck down by the Supreme Court in London, and Sunak’s Tories now can’t agree on what to do next.
Having survived what threatened to be a catastrophic rebellion in parliament on Tuesday, the British premier still faces a brutal battle in the legislature over his proposed Rwanda law early next year.
Time is running out for Sunak to find a fix. An election is expected next fall.
Emmanuel Macron, France
The French president suffered an unexpected body blow when the lower house of parliament rejected his flagship immigration bill this week.
French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on June 21, 2023 | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
After losing parliamentary elections last year, getting legislation through the National Assembly has been a fraught process for Macron. He has been forced to rely on votes from the right-wing Les Républicains party on more than one occasion.
Macron’s draft law on immigration was meant to please both the conservatives and the center-left with a carefully designed mix of repressive and liberal measures. But in a dramatic upset, the National Assembly, which is split between centrists, the left and the far right, voted against the legislation on day one of debates.
Now Macron is searching for a compromise. The government has tasked a joint committee of senators and MPs with seeking a deal. But it’s likely their text will be harsher than the initial draft, given that the Senate is dominated by the centre right — and this will be a problem for Macron’s left-leaning lawmakers.
If a compromise is not found, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally will be able to capitalize on Macron’s failure ahead of the European Parliament elections next June.
But even if the French president does manage to muddle through, the episode is likely to mark the end of his “neither left nor right” political offer. It also raises serious doubts about his ability to legislate on controversial topics.
Joe Biden, United States
The immigration crisis is one of the most vexing and longest-running domestic challenges for President Joe Biden. He came into office vowing to reverse the policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump, and build a “fair and humane” system, only to see Congress sit on his plan for comprehensive immigration reform.
U.S. President Joe Biden pauses as he gives a speech in Des Moines, Iowa on July 15, 2019 | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The White House has seen a deluge of migrants at the nation’s southern border, strained by a decades-old system unable to handle modern migration patterns.
Ahead of next year’s presidential election, Republicans have seized on the issue. GOP state leaders have filed lawsuits against the administration and sent busloads of migrants to Democrat-led cities, while in Washington, Republicans in Congress have tied foreign aid to sweeping changes to border policy, putting the White House in a tight spot as Biden officials now consider a slate of policies they once forcefully rejected.
The political pressure has spilled into the other aisle. States and cities, particularly ones led by Democrats, are pressuring Washington leaders to do more in terms of providing additional federal aid and revamping southern border policies to limit the flow of asylum seekers into the United States.
New York City has had more than 150,000 new arrivals over the past year and a half — forcing cuts to new police recruits, cutting library hours and limiting sanitation duties. Similar problems are playing out in cities like Chicago, which had migrants sleeping in buses or police stations.
The pressure from Democrats is straining their relationship with the White House. New York City Mayor Eric Adams runs the largest city in the nation, but hasn’t spoken with Biden in nearly a year. “We just need help, and we’re not getting that help,” Adams told reporters Tuesday.
Olaf Scholz, Germany
Migration has been at the top of the political agenda in Germany for months, with asylum applications rising to their highest levels since the 2015 refugee crisis triggered by Syria’s civil war.
The latest influx has posed a daunting challenge to national and local governments alike, which have struggled to find housing and other services for the migrants, not to mention the necessary funds.
The inability to limit the number of refugees has put German Chancellor Olaf Scholz under immense pressure | Michele Tantussi/Getty Images
The inability — in a country that ranks among the most coveted destinations for asylum seekers — to limit the number of refugees has put German Chancellor Olaf Scholz under immense pressure. In the hope of stemming the flow, Germany recently reinstated border checks with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, hoping to turn back the refugees before they hit German soil.
Even with border controls, refugee numbers remain high, which has been a boon to the far right. Germany’s anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party has reached record support in national polls.
Since overtaking Scholz’s Social Democrats in June, the AfD has widened its lead further, recording 22 percent in recent polls, second only to the center-right Christian Democrats.
The AfD is expected to sweep three state elections next September in eastern Germany, where support for the party and its reactionary anti-foreigner policies is particularly strong.
The center-right, meanwhile, is hardening its position on migration and turning its back on the open-border policies championed by former Chancellor Angela Merkel. Among the new priorities is a plan to follow the U.K.’s Rwanda model for processing refugees in third countries.
Karl Nehammer, Austria
Like Scholz, the Austrian leader’s approval ratings have taken a nosedive thanks to concerns over migration. Austria has taken steps to tighten controls at its southern and eastern borders.
Though the tactic has led to a drop in arrivals by asylum seekers, it also means Austria has effectively suspended the EU’s borderless travel regime, which has been a boon to the regional economy for decades.
Austria has effectively suspended the EU’s borderless travel regime, which has been a boon to the regional economy for decades | Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images
The far-right Freedom Party has had a commanding lead for more than a year, topping the ruling center-right in polls by 10 points. That puts the party in a position to win national elections scheduled for next fall, which would mark an unprecedented rightward tilt in a country whose politics have been dominated by the center since World War II.
Giorgia Meloni, Italy
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made her name in opposition, campaigning on a radical far-right agenda. Since winning power in last year’s election, she has shifted to more moderate positions on Ukraine and Europe.
Meloni now needs to appease her base on migration, a topic that has dominated Italian debate for years. Instead, however, she has been forced to grant visas to hundreds of thousands of legal migrants to cover labor shortages. Complicating matters, boat landings in Italy are up by about 50 per cent year-on-year despite some headline-grabbling policies and deals to stop arrivals.
While Meloni has ordered the construction of detention centers where migrants will be held pending repatriation, in reality local conditions in African countries and a lack of repatriation agreements present serious impediments.
Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni at a press conference on March 9, 2023 | Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images
Although she won the support of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for her cause, a potential EU naval mission to block departures from Africa would risk breaching international law.
Meloni has tried other options, including a deal with Tunisia to help stop migrant smuggling, but the plan fell apart before it began. A deal with Albania to offshore some migrant detention centers also ran into trouble.
Now Meloni is in a bind. The migration issue has brought her into conflict with France and Germany as she attempts to create a reputation as a moderate conservative.
If she fails to get to grips with the issue, she is likely to lose political ground. Her coalition partner Matteo Salvini is known as a hardliner on migration, and while they’re officially allies for now, they will be rivals again later.
Geert Wilders, the Netherlands
The government of long-serving Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was toppled over migration talks in July, after which he announced his exit from politics. In subsequent elections, in which different parties vied to fill Rutte’s void, far-right firebrand Geert Wilders secured a shock win. On election night he promised to curb the “asylum tsunami.”
Wilders is now seeking to prop up a center-right coalition with three other parties that have urged getting migration under control. One of them is Rutte’s old group, now led by Dilan Yeşilgöz.
Geert Wilders attends a meeting in the Dutch parliament with party leaders to discuss the formation of a coalition government, on November 24, 2023 | Carl Court/Getty Images
A former refugee, Yeşilgöz turned migration into one of the main topics of her campaign. She was criticized after the elections for paving the way for Wilders to win — not only by focusing on migration, but also by opening the door to potentially governing with Wilders.
Now, though, coalition talks are stuck, and it could take months to form a new cabinet. If Wilders, who clearly has a mandate from voters, can stitch a coalition together, the political trajectory of the Netherlands — generally known as a pragmatic nation — will shift significantly to the right. A crackdown on migration is as certain as anything can be.
Leo Varadkar, Ireland
Even in Ireland, an economically open country long used to exporting its own people worldwide, an immigration-friendly and pro-business government has been forced by rising anti-foreigner sentiment to introduce new migration deterrence measures that would have been unthinkable even a year ago.
Ireland’s hardening policies reflect both a chronic housing crisis and the growing reluctance of some property owners to keep providing state-funded emergency shelter in the wake of November riots in Dublin triggered by a North African immigrant’s stabbing of young schoolchildren.
A nation already housing more than 100,000 newcomers, mostly from Ukraine, Ireland has stopped guaranteeing housing to new asylum seekers if they are single men, chiefly from Nigeria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Georgia and Somalia, according to the most recent Department of Integration statistics.
Ireland has stopped guaranteeing housing to new asylum seekers if they are single men, chiefly from Nigeria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Georgia and Somalia | Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images
Even newly arrived families face an increasing risk of being kept in military-style tents despite winter temperatures.
Ukrainians, who since Russia’s 2022 invasion of their country have received much stronger welfare support than other refugees, will see that welcome mat partially retracted in draft legislation approved this week by the three-party coalition government of Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.
Once enacted by parliament next month, the law will limit new Ukrainian arrivals to three months of state-paid housing, while welfare payments – currently among the most generous in Europe for people fleeing Russia’s war – will be slashed for all those in state-paid housing.
Justin Trudeau, Canada
A pessimistic public mood dragged down by cost-of-living woes has made immigration a multidimensional challenge for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
A housing crunch felt across the country has cooled support for immigration, with people looking for scapegoats for affordability pains. The situation has fueled antipathy for Trudeau and his re-election campaign.
Trudeau has treated immigration as a multipurpose solution for Canada’s aging population and slowing economy. And while today’s record-high population growth reflects well on Canada’s reputation as a desirable place to relocate, political challenges linked to migration have arisen in unpredictable ways for Trudeau’s Liberals.
Political challenges linked to migration have arisen in unpredictable ways for Trudeau’s Liberals | Andrej Ivanov/AFP
Since Trudeau came to power eight years ago, at least 1.3 million people have immigrated to Canada, mostly from India, the Philippines, China and Syria. Handling diaspora politics — and foreign interference — has become more consequential, as seen by Trudeau’s clash with India and Canada’s recent break with Israel.
Canada will double its 40 million population in 25 years if the current growth rate holds, enlarging the political challenges of leading what Trudeau calls the world’s “first postnational state”.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain
Spain’s autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in Northern Africa, are favored by migrants seeking to enter Europe from the south: Once they make it across the land border, the Continent can easily be accessed by ferry.
Transit via the land border that separates the European territory from Morocco is normally kept in check with security measures like high, razor-topped fences, with border control officers from both countries working together to keep undocumented migrants out.
Spain’s autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in Northern Africa, are favored by migrants seeking to enter Europe | Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP
But in recent years authorities in Morocco have expressed displeasure with their Spanish counterparts by standing down their officers and allowing hundreds of migrants to pass, overwhelming border stations and forcing Spanish officers to repel the migrants, with scores dying in the process.
The headaches caused by these incidents are believed to be a major factor in Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s decision to change the Spanish government’s position on the disputed Western Sahara territory and express support for Rabat’s plan to formalize its nearly 50-year occupation of the area.
The pivot angered Sánchez’s leftist allies and worsened Spain’s relationship with Algeria, a long-standing champion of Western Saharan independence. But the measures have stopped the flow of migrants — for now.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece
Greece has been at the forefront of Europe’s migration crisis since 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people entered Europe via the Aegean islands. Migration and border security have been key issues in the country’s political debate.
Human rights organizations, as well as the European Parliament and the European Commission, have accused the Greek conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis of illegal “pushbacks” of migrants who have made it to Greek territory — and of deporting migrants without due process. Greece’s government denies those accusations, arguing that independent investigations haven’t found any proof.
Mitsotakis insists that Greece follows a “tough but fair” policy, but the numerous in-depth investigations belie the moderate profile the conservative leader wants to maintain.
In June, a migrant boat sank in what some called “the worst tragedy ever” in the Mediterranean Sea. Hundreds lost their lives, refocusing Europe’s attention on the issue. Official investigations have yet to discover whether failures by Greek authorities contributed to the shipwreck, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
In the meantime, Greece is in desperate need of thousands of workers to buttress the country’s understaffed agriculture, tourism and construction sectors. Despite pledges by the migration and agriculture ministers of imminent legislation bringing migrants to tackle the labor shortage, the government was forced to retreat amid pressure from within its own ranks.
Nikos Christodoulides, Cyprus
Cyprus is braced for an increase in migrant arrivals on its shores amid renewed conflict in the Middle East. Earlier in December, Greece sent humanitarian aid to the island to deal with an anticipated increase in flows.
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has called for extra EU funding for migration management, and is contending with a surge in violence against migrants in Cyprus. Analysts blame xenophobia, which has become mainstream in Cypriot politics and media, as well as state mismanagement of migration flows. Last year the country recorded the EU’s highest proportion of first-time asylum seekers relative to its population.
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has called for extra EU funding for migration management | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Legal and staffing challenges have delayed efforts to create a deputy ministry for migration, deemed an important step in helping Cyprus to deal with the surge in arrivals.
The island’s geography — it’s close to both Lebanon and Turkey — makes it a prime target for migrants wanting to enter EU territory from the Middle East. Its complex history as a divided country also makes it harder to regulate migrant inflows.
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Tim Ross, Annabelle Dickson, Clea Caulcutt, Myah Ward, Matthew Karnitschnig, Hannah Roberts, Pieter Haeck, Shawn Pogatchnik, Zi-Ann Lum, Aitor Hernández-Morales and Nektaria Stamouli
BERLIN — Germans gave the world schadenfreude for a reason. And southern Europe couldn’t be more pleased.
For countries that spent years on the receiving end of Europe’s German-inspired fiscal Inquisition, there’s no sweeter sight than to see Germany splayed on the high altar of Teutonic parsimony.
The irony is that Germany put itself there on purpose and has no clue how it will find redemption.
A jaw-dropping constitutional court ruling earlier this month effectively rendered the core of the German government’s legislative agenda null and void left the country in a collective shock. In order to circumvent Germany’s self-imposed deficit strictures, which give governments little room to spend more than they collect in taxes, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition relied on a network of “special funds” outside the main budget. Scholz was convinced the government could tap the money without violating the so-called debt brake.
The court, in no uncertain terms, disagreed. The ruling raises questions about the government’s ability to access a total of €869 billion parked outside the federal budget in 29 “special funds.” The court’s move forced the government to both freeze new spending and put approval of next year’s budget on hold.
Nearly two weeks after the decision, both the magnitude of the ruling and the reality that there’s no easy way out have become increasingly clear. Though Scholz has promised to come up with a new plan “very quickly,” few see a resolution without imposing austerity.
The expectation in the Bundestag is that Scholz will find enough cuts to deal with the immediate €20 billion hole the decision created in next year’s budget, but not much more.
In the meantime, his government is on edge. While Economy Minister Robert Habeck, a Green, has been telling any microphone he can find that Germany’s economic future is hanging in the balance, Finance Minister Christian Lindner has triggered panic and confusion by announcing a series of ill-defined spending freezes.
On Thursday, the government was forced to deny a report that a special fund created to bolster Germany’s armed forces after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be affected by the cuts.
At a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni late Wednesday, Scholz endured the humiliation of a reporter asking his guest whether she considered Germany to be a reliable partner given its budget crisis. A magnanimous Meloni, whose country knows a thing or two about creative accounting, gave Scholz a shot in the arm, responding that in her experience he was “very reliable.”
Greek accounting
Between the lines, the justices of Germany’s constitutional court suggested the use of the shadow funds by Scholz’s coalition amounted to a bookkeeping sleight of hand — the same sort of accounting alchemy Berlin upbraided Greece for more than a decade ago. Perhaps unwittingly, the court ruling echoed then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s unsolicited advice to Athens during Greece’s debt crisis: “Now is the time to do the homework!”
For eurozone countries with a recent history of debt trouble — a group that alongside Greece includes the likes of Spain, Portugal and Italy — Germany’s financial pickle must feel like déjà vu all over again. From 2010 onwards, they found themselves in the unenviable position of trying to explain to Wolfgang Schäuble, Merkel’s taskmaster finance minister, how they planned to return to the path of fiscal rectitude. At Schäuble’s urging, Greece nearly ditched the euro altogether.
The expectation in the Bundestag is that Scholz will find enough cuts to deal with the immediate €20 billion hole the decision created in next year’s budget, but not much more | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
In recent months, Germany has once again assumed the role of the fiscal scold in Brussels, where officials have been negotiating a new framework for the eurozone’s rulebook on government spending, known as the Stability and Growth Pact. The pact, which dates to 1997, has been suspended since the pandemic hit, but it is set to take effect again next year. Many countries want to loosen the rules given the huge budget pressures that have followed multiple crises in recent years. Berlin is open to reform but skeptical of granting its fellow euro countries too much leeway on spending.
The latest budget mess certainly won’t help the Germans make their case.
Simple hubris
The allure of the strategy the court has now deemed illegal was that the government thought it could spend money it salted away in the special funds without violating Germany’s constitutional debt brake, which restricts the federal deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP, except in times of emergency.
Put simply, Scholz’s coalition wanted to have its cake and eat it too, creating a veneer of fiscal discipline while spending freely to finance an ambitious agenda.
Despite ample warning from legal experts that the government’s plan to repurpose a huge chunk of emergency pandemic-related funds might not withstand a court challenge, Scholz and his partners went ahead anyway. What’s more, they staked their entire political agenda on the assumption that the strategy would go off without a hitch.
Last week’s court decision is the national equivalent of a rich kid being cut off from his trust fund: Daddy’s money is still there, but junior can’t touch it and has to exchange his Porsche for an Opel.
What many in Berlin cite as the main reason for what they are calling derSchlamassel (fiasco), however, is simple hubris.
Scholz’s mild-mannered public persona belies a know-it-all approach to governing. A lawyer by training who has served for decades in the top ranks of German government, Scholz, at least in his own mind, is generally the smartest person in the room.
During coalition negotiations in 2021, Scholz sold the budget trick idea to his future partners — the conservative liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens — as a way to square the circle between the welfare agenda of his own Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens’ expensive climate agenda, and the FDP’s demands for fiscal rigor (or at least the appearance thereof).
Indeed, it’s doubtful the coalition would have ever been formed in the first place without the plan. The Greens and FDP happily went along; after all Scholz, Germany’s finance minister from 2018-2021, knew what he was doing. Or so they thought.
Finance minister or ‘fuck-up’?
Scholz’s role notwithstanding, his successor as finance minister, FDP leader Christian Lindner, shares a lot of the responsibility for the snafu, for the simple reason that it was his ministry that oversaw the strategy.
During the coalition talks in 2021, Lindner was torn between a desire to govern and the fiscal strictures long championed by his party. Scholz offered him what appeared to be an elegant way to do both.
Scholz’s role notwithstanding, his successor as finance minister, FDP leader Christian Lindner, shares a lot of the responsibility for the snafu | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
When Lindner, who had never served in an executive government role before, was poised to secure the finance ministry, some critics questioned his qualifications to lead the financial affairs of Europe’s largest economy.
Many Germans have no doubt made their determinations in recent weeks.
Green machine
In contrast to the FDP, the Greens, had no qualms about endorsing Scholz’s bookkeeping tricks.
When it comes to realizing the Greens’ environmental goals, the ends have long justified the means.
In the early 2000s, for example, party leaders sold Germans on the idea of switching off the country’s nuclear plants and transitioning to renewables. They won the argument by promising that the subsidies consumers would be forced to finance to pay for the rollout of solar and wind power wouldn’t cost more every month than a “scoop of ice cream.”
In the end, the collective annual bill for German households was €25 billion, enough to have cornered the global ice cream market many times over.
The Greens’ ice cream strategy — secure difficult-to-reverse legislative commitments and worry about the financial details later — also informed their approach to what they call the “social, ecological transformation,” a plan to make Germany’s economy carbon neutral.
That’s why the shock of the court decision has hit the Greens hardest. After more than 15 years in opposition, the Greens saw the alliance with Scholz and Lindner as the culmination of their effort to convince Germans to embrace their ecological vision for the future. Just as the hoped-for revolution was within reach, it has slipped from their grasp.
Habeck, the face of the Green transformation, has looked like a man at his wits’ end in recent days, making dire predictions about the coming economic Armageddon.
“This marks a turning point for both the German economy and the job market,” Habeck told German public television this week, predicting that it would become much more difficult for the country to maintain the level of prosperity it has enjoyed for decades.
Road to perdition
For all his candor, Habeck failed to address the elephant in the room: It’s a fake debt crisis.
There is no objective reason for Germany to be in this dilemma. A best-of-class credit rating means Berlin can borrow money on better terms than almost any country on the planet. With a budget deficit of 2.6 percent of GDP last year and a total debt load amounting to 66 percent of GDP, Germany is also well above average compared to its eurozone peers in terms of fiscal discipline — even counting the debt raised for the special funds.
The only reason Germany can’t spend the money in the special funds is not because it can’t afford to, but rather because it remains beholden to an almost religious fiscal orthodoxy that views deficit debt as the road to perdition.
That conviction prompted Germany to anchor the so-called debt brake in its constitution in 2009, thereby allowing the government to run only a minor deficit, barring a natural disaster or other emergency, such as a war.
For eurozone countries with a recent history of debt trouble — a group that alongside Greece includes the likes of Spain, Portugal and Italy — Germany’s financial pickle must feel like déjà vu all over again | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
The constitutional amendment passed by a comfortable margin with broad support from both the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the SPD, which shared power in a grand coalition led by Merkel. At the time, Germany was still recovering from the shock triggered by the 2008 collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers and had to commit billions to shore up its banking sector.
The country’s federal government and states had begun planning a reform of fiscal rules even before the crisis. The emergency gave them additional impetus to pursue a debt brake enshrined in the constitution as a way to restore public trust.
In that respect, it worked as planned. As countries such as Greece and Spain struggled with their public finances in the years that followed, Germany’s debt brake looked prescient.
Even as southern Europe struggled, the German economy went into high gear powered by strong demand for its wares from Asia and North America, allowing the government to not just balance its budget but to run a string of surpluses, peaking in 2018 with a €58 billion windfall.
Goodbye to all that
The good times ended with the pandemic. Germany, along with the rest of the world, was forced to dig deep. It had the fiscal capacity to do so, however, as the pandemic justified lifting the debt brake in both 2020 and 2021.
The fallout from Russia’s attack on Ukraine forced the government to do so again in 2022.
By drawing from special funds, Scholz and Lindner believed they could avoid a repeat in 2023. But the court’s ruling dashed that plan.
Long before the current crisis, it had become clear to most in government — both conservative and left-leaning — that the debt brake was a hampering investment in public infrastructure (Merkel’s coalition emphasized paying down debt instead of investing the surpluses) and, by extension, Germany’s economic competitiveness. Hence the liberal use of the now-closed special fund loophole.
Trouble is, even as many politicians have woken up to the perils of the debt brake, the public remains strongly in favor of it. Nearly two-thirds of Germans continue to support the measure, according to a poll published this week by Der Spiegel.
Repealing or even reforming the brake would require Germany’s political class not just to convince them otherwise, but also to muster a super majority in parliament, which at the moment is unlikely.
Late Thursday, the finance minister signaled that the debt brake would have to fall for 2023 as well. That means the government will have to retroactively declare an emergency — likely in connection with the war in Ukraine — and then hope that the constitutional court buys it.
BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday his ruling coalition would seek to present new budget plans “very quickly” to Parliament, after a constitutional court ruling last week plunged his government and its finances into disarray.
The chancellor is facing mounting criticism that he still hasn’t managed to offer a proposal on how to make up Germany’s yawning budgetary shortfall one week after the bombshell court ruling blew a €60 billion hole in the books.
It’s an accounting mess that now throws into doubt future payments for energy, the green transition of industry and microchip manufacturing.
Crucially, last week’s ruling means not only a delay to next year’s budget — which became evident on Wednesday when a parliament committee postponed a preliminary adoption of spending plans for 2024 — but may also require a supplementary “emergency” budget for this year to deal with the fallout of the court decision.
Speaking at a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Berlin, Scholz evaded specifics on what happens next, arguing the consequences of the ruling must still “be examined very carefully,” which should now be done “very swiftly and promptly.”
The Social Democratic chancellor argued his three-party coalition, which also includes the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), was determined to “very quickly” move forward with new budget plans, and “ensure that what we have set out to do — for good cohesion in Germany, for the further development of our welfare state, for the modernization of our economy — can actually be pursued further.”
Still, he did not say where he could make the spending cuts that appear to be needed to make this possible.
Scholz had already sounded upbeat on Tuesday that, despite budget cuts, Germany could still pay subsidies to chipmakers Intel and TSMC for building new plants in eastern Germany.
A key consequence of last week’s ruling is that it will probably limit the ability of German leaders, both at the federal and state level, to use money from a variety of special funds that have been established to circumvent the debt brake. This mechanism restricts the federal deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP, except in times of emergency.
During a budgetary committee hearing on Tuesday, several legal experts argued Scholz’s government would have to present a supplementary “emergency” budget for this year to account for more than €30 billion of expenses for energy subsidies. These subsidies had been financed via a special fund outside the regular budget — a practice that is likely to be unlawful in the light of last week’s ruling.
Controversially, such a decision would probably require the suspension of the debt brake for this year.
Questioned by POLITICO during an event in Berlin on Tuesday evening, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who has expressed great pride about upholding the debt brake in the past, evaded making a clear reply on potentially relaxing debt rules for this year.
Lindner also argued the 2024 budget would be “a little less moderate and a little more restrictive.”
Social Security’s pending insolvency grabbed attention at the Republican presidential debate Wednesday night, with some candidates saying they would be willing to raise the full retirement age for young people just starting out.
“We have to raise the retirement age,” said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. “I have a son who’s in the audience tonight, who’s 30 years old. If he can’t adjust to a few years increase in Social Security retirement age over the next 40 years, I got bigger problems with him than his Social Security payments.”
Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, said promises to current older adults must be kept, but young people just starting out should see higher retirement ages.
“What we need to do is keep our promises, those that have been promised should keep it,” Haley said. “But for like, my kids in their 20s, you go and you say ‘We’re going to change the rules.’ You change the retirement age for them.”
Currently, the full retirement age is 67 for those born in 1960 or later.
Haley declined to cite a specific age that retirement should be raised to, but said it should reflect longer life expectancy.
Sen. Tim Scott, however, said he would protect Social Security for older adults and not raise the retirement age.
“Let me just say to my mama and every other mama or grandfather receiving Social Security: As president of the United States, I will protect your Social Security.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he’d protect Social Security for seniors.
“I know a few people on Social Security and … my grandmother lived until 91 and Social Security was her sole source of income. And that’s true for a lot of seniors throughout this country,” DeSantis said. “So I’d say to seniors in America: Promise made, promise kept.”
When pressed whether he would raise the retirement age, he said: “So it’s one thing to peg it on life expectancy, but we have had a significant decline in life expectancy in this country, and that is the fact.”
The Social Security Administration said Wednesday it would review its overpayment procedures and policies, and may claw back any overpayments found.
During the 2022 fiscal year, the agency recovered $4.7 billion of overpayments, according to a report by the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General.
While payment accuracy rates are high, overpayments do happen given the number of people the agency serves, the number of changes in their circumstances and the complexity of the programs, the SSA said.
“Despite our high accuracy rates, I am putting together a team to review our overpayment policies and procedures to further improve how we serve our customers,” said Kilolo Kijakazi, acting commissioner of Social Security.
“There is misinformation in the media claiming that the Social Security Administration is attempting to collect $21 billion. This figure was derived from the total amount of overpayments that have occurred over the history of the programs,” the SSA said in a statement.
The 2024 COLA for Social Security is expected to rise about 3.2%, according to estimates from the Senior Citizens League, a pro-senior think tank. That’s compared with an 8.7% increase for 2023, which was the highest COLA in more than 40 years amid high inflation.
Social Security is an important benefit for most Americans. Half of the population age 65 or older live in households that receive at least 50% of their family income from Social Security benefits, according to SSA data, and about 25% of senior households rely on Social Security benefits for at least 90% of their income.
“The government’s got to fix this,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat who chairs a Senate panel that oversees Social Security, recently told KFF Health News on the subject of overpayments. Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Carey of Ohio, the No. 2 Republican on a House panel that oversees Social Security, has called for a congressional hearing to review the problem, according to the KFF Health News report.
Social Security pays $1.4 trillion in benefits to more than 71 million people each year. Only around 0.5% of Social Security payments are overpayments, the SSA said.
“For the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, overpayments also represent a small percentage of payments — about 8% — but are higher due to the complexity in administering statutory income and resource limits and asset evaluations,” the agency said in the announcement.
If a person doesn’t agree that they’ve been overpaid, or believes the amount is incorrect, they can appeal. If they believe they shouldn’t have to pay the money back, they can request that the agency waive collection of the overpayment. There’s no time limit for filing a waiver.
The SSA said it is required by law to adjust benefits or recover debts when overpayments occur. The law allows Social Security to waive recovery in some cases.
The median annual household income in the U.S. was $74,755 in 2022, a 0.8% decline from the previous year after adjusting for inflation, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau.
The decline in income is “disappointing,” said Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,…
My colleagues JP Aubry and Yimeng Yin just released an update on state and local pension plans. Their analysis compared 2023 to 2019 – the year before all the craziness began. Think of the unusual events that have occurred in the last few years: 1) the onset of COVID; 2) the subsequent COVID stimulus; 3) declining interest rates; 4) rising inflation; and then 5) rising interest rates.
Despite the volatility of asset values over this period, the 2023 funded status of state and local pension plans is about 78%, which is 5 percentage points higher than in 2019 (see Figure 1). Of course, the numbers for 2023 are estimates based on plan-by-plan projections, but these projections have an excellent track record.
While the aggregate funded ratio provides a useful measure of the public pension landscape at large, it also can obscure variations in funding at the plan level. Figure 2 separates the plans into thirds based on their current actuarial funded status. The average 2023 funded ratio for each group was 57.6% for the bottom third, 79.5% for the middle third, and 91.1% for the top third.
The major reason for the improvement in plans’ funded status is that, despite the turbulence in the economy, total annualized returns, which include interest and dividends, have risen noticeably for almost all major asset class indexes over the 2019-2023 period (see Figure 3). The exception over this short and volatile period is fixed-income assets, which have declined in value.
The effect of fixed income’s decline on overall portfolio performance has been modest because, since 2019, fixed income has averaged only about 20% of pension fund assets (see Figure 4).
So, things are looking a little better for state and local pensions. Yes, the funded ratios are biased upward because plans use the assumed return on their portfolios – roughly 7% – to discount promised benefits. That said, trends are important, and the trend is good.
Moreover, annual state and local benefit payments as a share of the economy are approaching their peak for two reasons. First, most pension plans do not fully index retiree benefits for inflation, which lowers the real value of benefits over time. Second, the benefit reductions for new hires – introduced in the wake of the Great Recession – have started to have an impact.
With liabilities in check and solid asset performance, maybe we can all relax a bit about the future of the state and local pension system.
The Supreme Court knocked down the Biden administration’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for a wide swath of borrowers, the court announced Friday.
The decision means that the White House won’t move forward with the plan for now, though it’s possible officials could try to launch a new version of the debt-forgiveness initiative using a different legal authority. Roughly 26 million borrowers applied for or were automatically eligible for debt relief under the Biden administration’s plan, which canceled up to $10,000 in student debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 and up to $20,000 in federal loans for borrowers who met that criteria and also used a Pell grant in college.
Americans owe $1.7 trillion of student loans and the White House had estimated that more than 40 million borrowers would benefit from the initiative. But almost as soon as the Biden administration announced the debt-forgiveness plan last year, opponents looked for ways to challenge it legally. Ultimately, two cases made it to the high court.
In one case, two student-loan borrowers sued over the debt-relief plan in part because the Department of Education didn’t submit it for public comment. That, they said, resulted in an initiative that arbitrarily left out or limited the amount of relief available to some student loan borrowers, like themselves. The suit filed by the borrowers was backed by the Job Creators Network, a conservative advocacy organization co-founded by Bernard Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, who also supported former President Donald Trump.
Six Republican-led states brought the other case on the basis that canceling debt could harm their state coffers.
The court considered two issues in these cases. The first is whether the plaintiffs had standing, or the ability to bring a lawsuit because they’ve been directly harmed by the policy. The second is whether the Biden administration overstepped in its executive authority when issuing the policy. In order for the justices to reach the second issue, or the merits of the case, they had to find that the plaintiffs had standing to sue.
Legal experts, including some who believed the Biden administration didn’t have the authority to authorize the debt-relief plan, were skeptical of the notion that the parties bringing the cases had standing to sue. During oral arguments in February, the court’s three liberal justices also questioned whether the parties who challenged debt forgiveness were actually injured by the policy.
In addition, one of the members of the court’s conservative wing, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, asked pointed questions about the six states’ argument that they had standing to sue in part because the debt-relief plan would injure the state of Missouri. That claim surrounded the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, or MOHELA, a state-affiliated organization that services federal student loans. The states had argued if MOHELA lost accounts due to the debt-relief plan, its revenue would decline and that loss would hurt Missouri because of MOHELA’s ties to the state.
Despite these questions, Barrett agreed with the court’s five other conservative judges and found that the states have standing to sue. The three liberal justices dissented.
“MOHELA is, by law and function, an instrumentality of Missouri,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “It was created by the State, is supervised by the State, and serves a public function. The harm to MOHELA in the performance of its public function is necessarily a direct injury to Missouri itself.”
The court’s decision in the states’ suit allowed the justices to get to the merits of the case. The parties challenging the debt-relief plan argued that the Department of Education went beyond the authority Congress delegated it in discharging student debt. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued to the justices that in canceling student debt, the Secretary of Education acted “within the heartland” of the authority Congress provided to him under the HEROES Act, a 2003 law that aims to ensure student-loan borrowers aren’t left worse off by a national emergency.
The court’s conservative majority sided with the states, with a 6-3 decision, striking down the debt-relief plan in its current form.
“The HEROES Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, but does not allow the Secretary to rewrite that statute to the extent of canceling $430 billion of student loan principal,” Roberts wrote.
In the months leading up to the court’s decision, White House officials said there was no backup plan for if the Supreme Court knocked down the debt-forgiveness initiative. Advocates and activists have said that student-loan repayments shouldn’t resume until the Biden administration fulfills its promise to cancel some student debt.
The bill President Joe Biden signed in June to raise the nation’s debt limit requires that the Department of Education end the pause on federal student loan, interest payments and collections 60 days after June 30, 2023. Interest on federal student loans will resume starting September 1 and payments will start to come due in October, according to the Department’s website.
Advocates and activists have said for years that the Higher Education Act provides the Secretary of Education with the authority to discharge student loans. In ruling that the HEROES Act didn’t authorize the Biden administration’s debt-relief plan, the court left the option open for the Biden administration to create a loan-forgiveness program authorized under the HEA.
The court’s decision marks the latest development in a more-than-decade-long push to get the government to cancel student debt en masse. The idea, which has its origins in the Occupy Wall Street movement, made it to the presidential campaign stage during the 2020 cycle and was adopted by the White House last year.
Proponents of student debt cancellation and the Biden administration, have expressed concern that without some kind of relief a large swath of borrowers could slip into delinquency and default with the return of student loan payments later this year.
With hundreds of wildfires still burning in Canada, a large swath of the U.S. Northeast continues to suffer under hazy skies and compromised air into Wednesday. In fact, according to an international gauge, New York City had the second-worst air in the world early Wednesday.
As of late Tuesday, Quebec’s forest fire prevention agency reported that more than 150 blazes were active, including more than 110 deemed out of control, the Associated Press reported. A hot, dry summer is expected for the province and beyond.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said its Air Quality Index registers above 151 in some areas of the northeastern U.S., spreading down into the Mid-Atlantic region. The upper Midwest reported concerning issues to start the week as well. Once an Air Quality Index reading clears 100, it’s typically a warning to people who have respiratory conditions, including asthma, to take precautions.
What is the Air Quality Index?
The EPA established an AQI for five major air pollutants regulated by the 50-year-old Clean Air Act. The agency takes readings at more than 1,000 air-quality stations around the country and includes special sensors activated by smoke in particular, for real-time readings.
Each of these pollutants measured by the EPA requires a standard deemed important to public health:
ground-level ozone
particle pollution (also known as particulate matter, including PM2.5 and PM10)
carbon monoxide
sulfur dioxide
nitrogen dioxide
Especially during wildfire season, fine particles in soot, ash and dust can fill the air. And because it’s nearly summer, the combination of smoke and hotter temperatures can generate more ozone pollution, which can aggravate respiratory issues.
The EPA says to think of the AQI as a yardstick that runs from 0 to 500. The higher the AQI value, the greater the level of air pollution and the greater the health concern.
For example, an AQI value of 50 or below represents good air quality for essentially all the population. A reading above 100 typically means that the outdoor air remains safe for most, but seniors, pregnant people and children are at increased risk. Those with heart and lung disease may also be at greater risk. And an AQI value over 300 represents hazardous air quality that will impact to some degree nearly everyone exposed to the air, even healthy people.
Because remembering the severity of number ranges may be challenging, EPA has assigned a color to each range, with green and yellow representing the most favorable conditions, and orange, red, purple and maroon reflective of levels that are progressively worse, topping out at maroon or readings between 301 to 500.
For comparison, the record-setting wildfire years of 2020 and 2021 meant that outdoor air near Portland, Ore., on select days produced an AQI above 400.
What are the health concerns from poor air quality?
The EPA and public health officials warn citizens against regular exposure to fire-impacted air, especially for outdoor workers, even if local readings aren’t especially dangerous.
The effects of air pollution can be mild, like eye and throat irritation. But, for some, those effects turn serious, including heart and respiratory issues. And pollutants might linger longer than hazy, discolored skies persist, causing inflammation of the lung tissue and increasing vulnerability to infections.
Lingering particle measurements are picked up when the AQI tracks PM 2.5, which quantifies the concentration of particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers. When inhaled, these nearly undetectable particles can increase the risk of heart attack, select cancers and acute respiratory infections, especially in children and older adults.
Smokers, including those using vape pens, can invite added health risk with wildfire smoke exposure, say public health officials.
What precautions can be taken when there’s dangerous air outdoors? Do masks help?
Stay indoors if you can, with the windows and doors closed.
The EPA recommends eliminating outdoor exercise such as walking, jogging or cycling, once an AQI moves above 150. That includes gardening and mowing the lawn.
If you have to work outside, additional breaks out of the smoke may be necessary.
If you have air conditioning, run it continuously, not on the auto cycle. It’s also recommended to close the fresh air intake so that smoke doesn’t get inside the house.
But if you’re still worried about the outdoor air entering your home, air purifiers, often the size of table fans or smaller, can reduce indoor particulate matter in smaller spaces.
Avoid stove-top cooking that could increase indoor smoke, even if you plan to run the overhead fan.
Do masks help? An N95 respirator mask can filter out some of the particles. If fitted and worn correctly, the N95 mask filters out 95% of particles larger than 0.3 microns, so they’re very efficient with keeping out the 2.5-micron particles in wildfire smoke, say health officials. Notably, even an N95 does little to protect against harmful gases in wildfire smoke, including carbon monoxide.
If there were no tax cheats in America, there would be no Social Security crisis. Benefits could be paid, and payroll taxes kept the same, for the next 75 years.
That’s not me talking. That’s math. It comes from the number crunchers at the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.
And it explains why those of us who support Social Security should be pounding the table in outrage over one clause of the Biden-McCarthy debt ceiling deal: The part where the president has to retreat from his crackdown on tax cheats just so McCarthy and the House Republicans would agree to prevent America defaulting on its debts.
It’s just two years since the administration got into law an extra $80 billion for the IRS to beef up enforcement. That was supposed to include hiring an estimated 87,000 IRS agents.
OK, so nobody likes paying taxes and nobody likes the IRS. Cue the inevitable critiques of an IRS tax “army,” and so on. But this isn’t about whether taxes should be higher or lower. It’s about whether everyone should pay the taxes that they owe.
After all, if we’re going to cut taxes, shouldn’t they apply to those of us who obey the laws as well as those who don’t? Or do we just support the “Tax Cuts for Criminals” Act?
Why would any voter rally around a platform of “I stand with tax cheats?”
If this seems abstract, consider the context and how it affects you and your retirement — and the retirements of everyone you know.
Social Security is now running at an $80 billion annual deficit. That’s the amount benefits are expected to exceed payroll taxes this year. (So say the Social Security Administration’s trustees.)
Next year, that deficit is expected to top $150 billion. By 2026, we’re looking at $200 billion and rising. The trust fund will run out of cash by 2034, and without extra payroll taxes will have to slash benefits by a fifth or more.
Over the next 75 years, says the Congressional Budget Office, the entire funding gap for the program will average about 1.7% of gross domestic product per year.
Meanwhile, how much are tax cheats stealing from the rest of us? A multiple of that.
But it still worked out at around 12% of all the taxes people were supposed to pay (including payroll taxes). And around 2.3% of GDP.
Over the next 10 years, based on similar ratios to GDP, that would come to another $3.3 billion.
Sure, Social Security’s trust fund is theoretically separate from the rest of Uncle Sam’s finances. But that’s an accounting issue: A distinction without a difference.
Some people want to cut benefits. Others want to raise the retirement age, which also means cutting benefits. Others want to raise taxes on benefits — which also means cutting benefits. Others want to hike payroll taxes, either on all of us or (initially) only on very high earners.
But if investing some of the trust fund in stocks is a no-brainer, so, too, is insisting everyone obey the law and pay the taxes they actually owe each year. I mean, shouldn’t we do that before we think about raising taxes even further on those who abide by the law?
How could anyone object? Any party that believes in law and order would support enforcing, er, law and order on tax evasion. And any party of fiscal conservatism would support measures, like tax enforcement, to narrow the deficit.
And, actually, any party that truly supported lower taxes for all would be tough on tax evasion: It is precisely this $500 billion in evasion by a small, scofflaw minority that forces the rest of us to pay more. We have, quite literally, a tax on obeying the law.
The Democratic president and Republican speaker spoke with each other Sunday evening as negotiators rushed to draft the bill text so lawmakers can review compromises that neither the hard-right or left flank is likely to support. Instead, the leaders are working to gather backing from the political middle as Congress hurries toward votes before a June 5 deadline to avert a damaging federal default.
“Good news,” Biden declared Sunday evening at the White House.
“The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis, a default, for the first time in our nation’s history,” he said. “Takes the threat of a catastrophic default off the table.”
The president urged both parties in Congress to come together for swift passage. “The speaker and I made clear from the start that the only way forward was a bipartisan agreement,” he said.
The compromise announced late Saturday includes spending cuts but risks angering some lawmakers as they take a closer look at the concessions. Biden told reporters at the White House upon his return from Delaware that he was confident the plan will make it to his desk.
McCarthy, too, was confident in remarks at the Capitol: “At the end of the day, people can look together to be able to pass this.”
The days ahead will determine whether Washington is again able to narrowly avoid a default on U.S. debt, as it has done many times before, or whether the global economy enters a potential crisis.
In the United States, a default could cause financial markets to freeze up and spark an international financial crisis. Analysts say millions of jobs would vanish, borrowing and unemployment rates would jump, and a stock-market plunge could erase trillions of dollars in household wealth. It would all but shatter the $24 trillion market for Treasury debt.
Anxious retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with the next Social Security payments due soon as the world watches American leadership at stake.
McCarthy and his negotiators portrayed the deal as delivering for Republicans though it fell well short of the sweeping spending cuts they sought. Top White House officials were briefing Democratic lawmakers and phoning some directly to try to shore up support.
As Sunday dragged on, negotiators labored to write the bill text and lawmakers raised questions.
McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol on Sunday that the agreement “doesn’t get everything everybody wanted,” but that was to be expected in a divided government. Privately, he told lawmakers on a conference call that Democrats “got nothing” they wanted.
A White House statement from the president, issued after Biden and McCarthy spoke by phone Saturday evening and an agreement in principle followed, said the deal “prevents what could have been a catastrophic default.”
Support from both parties will be needed to win congressional approval before a projected June 5 government default on U.S. debts. Lawmakers are not expected to return to work from the Memorial Day weekend before Tuesday, at the earliest, and McCarthy has promised lawmakers he will abide by the rule to post any bill for 72 hours before voting.
With the outlines of an agreement in place, the legislative package could be drafted and shared with lawmakers in time for House votes as soon as Wednesday, and later in the coming week in the Senate.
Central to the compromise is a two-year budget deal that would essentially hold spending flat for 2024, while boosting it for defense and veterans, and capping increases at 1% for 2025. That’s alongside raising the debt limit for two years, pushing the volatile political issue past the next presidential election.
Driving hard to impose tougher work requirements on government aid recipients, Republicans achieved some of what they wanted. It ensures people ages 49 to 54 with food stamp aid would have to meet work requirements if they are able-bodied and without dependents. Biden was able to secure waivers for veterans and homeless people.
The deal puts in place changes in the landmark National Environmental Policy Act designating “a single lead agency” to develop environmental reviews, in hopes of streamlining the process.
It halts some funds to hire new Internal Revenue Service agents as Republicans demanded, and rescinds some $30 billion for coronavirus relief, keeping $5 billion for developing the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines.
The deal came together after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that the United States could default on its debt obligations by June 5 — four days later than previously estimated — if lawmakers did not act in time. Lifting the nation’s debt limit, now at $31 trillion, allows more borrowing to pay bills already insurred.
McCarthy commands only a slim Republican majority in the House, where hard-right conservatives may resist any deal as insufficient as they try to slash spending. By compromising with Democrats, he risks losing support from his own members, setting up a career-challenging moment for the new speaker.
“I think you’re going to get a majority of Republicans voting for this bill,” McCarthy said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding that because Biden backed it, “I think there’s going to be a lot of Democrats that will vote for it, too.”
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he expected there will be Democratic support but he declined to provide a number. Asked whether he could guarantee there would not be a default, he said, “Yes.”
A 100-strong group of moderates in the New Democratic Coalition gave a crucial nod of support on Sunday, saying in a statement it was confident that Biden and his team “delivered a viable, bipartisan solution to end this crisis” and were working to ensure the agreement would receive support from both parties.
The coalition could provide enough support for McCarthy to make up for members in the right flank of his party who have expressed opposition before the bill’s wording was even released.
It also takes pressure off Biden, facing criticism from progressives for giving into what they call hostage-taking by Republicans.
Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told CBS that the White House and Jeffries should worry about whether caucus members will support the agreement.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached an “agreement in principle” to raise the nation’s legal debt ceiling late Saturday as they raced to strike a deal to limit federal spending and avert a potentially disastrous U.S. default.
However, the agreement risks angering both Democratic and Republican sides with the concessions made to reach it. Negotiators agreed to some Republican demands for increased work requirements for recipients of food stamps that had sparked an uproar from House Democrats as a nonstarter.
Support from both parties will be needed to win congressional approval next week before a June 5 deadline.
The Democratic president and Republican speaker reached the agreement after the two spoke earlier Saturday evening by phone, said McCarthy. The country and the world have been watching and waiting for a resolution to a political standoff that threatened the U.S. and global economies.
“The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want,” Biden said in a statement late Saturday night. “That’s the responsibility of governing,” he said.
Biden called the agreement “good news for the American people, because it prevents what could have been a catastrophic default and would have led to an economic recession, retirement accounts devastated, and millions of jobs lost.”
McCarthy in brief remarks at the Capitol, said that “we still have a lot of work to do.”
But the Republican speaker said: “I believe this is an agreement in principle that’s worthy of the American people.”
With the outlines of a deal in place, the legislative package could be drafted and shared with lawmakers in time for votes early next week in the House and later in the Senate.
Central to the package is a two-year budget deal that would hold spending flat for 2024 and impose limits for 2025 in exchange for raising the debt limit for two years, pushing the volatile political issue past the next presidential election.
The agreement would limit food stamp eligibility for able-bodied adults up to age 54, but Biden was able to secure waivers for veterans and the homeless.
The two sides had also reached for an ambitious overhaul of federal permitting to ease development of energy projects and transmission lines. Instead, the agreement puts in place changes in the the National Environmental Policy Act that will designate “a single lead agency” to develop economic reviews, in hopes of streamlining the process.
The deal came together after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that the United States could default on its debt obligations by June 5 — four days later than previously estimated — if lawmakers did not act in time to raise the federal debt ceiling. The extended “X-date” gave the two sides a bit of extra time as they scrambled for a deal.
Biden also spoke earlier in the day with Democratic leaders in Congress to discuss the status of the talks.
The Republican House speaker had gathered top allies behind closed doors at the Capitol as negotiators pushed for a deal that would avoid a first-ever government default while also making spending cuts that House Republicans are demanding.
But as another day dragged on with financial disaster looming closer, it had appeared some of the problems over policy issues that dogged talks all week remained unresolved.
Both sides have suggested one of the main holdups was a GOP effort to expand work requirements for recipients of food stamps and other federal aid programs, a longtime Republican goal that Democrats have strenuously opposed. The White House said the Republican proposals were “cruel and senseless.”
Biden has said the work requirements for Medicaid would be a nonstarter. He seemed potentially open to negotiating minor changes on food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, despite objections from rank-and-file Democrats.
McCarthy, who dashed out before the lunch hour Saturday and arrived back at the Capitol with a big box of takeout, declined to elaborate on those discussions. One of his negotiators, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, said there was “not a chance” that Republicans might relent on the work requirements issue.
Americans and the world were uneasily watching the negotiating brinkmanship that could throw the U.S. economy into chaos and sap world confidence in the nation’s leadership.
Anxious retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with the next Social Security payments due next week.
Yellen said failure to act by the new date would “cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests.”
The president, spending part of the weekend at Camp David, continued to talk with his negotiating team multiple times a day, signing off on offers and counteroffers.
Any deal would need to be a political compromise in a divided Congress. Many of the hard-right Trump-aligned Republicans in Congress have long been skeptical of the Treasury’s projections, and they are pressing McCarthy to hold out.
Lawmakers are not expected to return to work from the Memorial Day weekend before Tuesday, at the earliest, and McCarthy has promised lawmakers he will abide by the rule to post any bill for 72 hours before voting.
The Democratic-held Senate has largely stayed out of the negotiations, leaving the talks to Biden and McCarthy. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has pledged to move quickly to send a compromise package to Biden’s desk.
Weeks of talks have failed to produce a deal in part because the Biden administration resisted for months on negotiating with McCarthy, arguing that the country’s full faith and credit should not be used as leverage to extract other partisan priorities.
But House Republicans united behind a plan to cut spending, narrowly passing legislation in late April that would raise the debt ceiling in exchange for the spending reductions.
With the outlines of a deal in place, the legislative package could be drafted and shared with lawmakers in time for votes early next week in the House and later in the Senate.
Central to the package is a two-year budget deal that would hold spending flat for 2024 and impose limits for 2025 in exchange for raising the debt limit for two years, pushing the volatile political issue past the next presidential election.
Negotiators agreed to some Republican demands for enhanced work requirements on recipients of food stamps that had sparked an uproar from House Democrats as a nonstarter.
Biden also spoke earlier in the day with Democratic leaders in Congress to discuss the status of the talks, according to three people familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The Republican House speaker had gathered top allies behind closed doors at the Capitol as negotiators pushed for a deal that would raise the nation’s borrowing limit and avoid a first-ever default on the federal debt, while also making spending cuts that House Republicans are demanding.
As he arrived at the Capitol early in the day, McCarthy said that Republican negotiators were “closer to an agreement.”
McCarthy’s comments had echoed the latest public assessment from Biden, who said Friday evening that bargainers were “very close.” Biden and McCarthy last met face-to-face on the matter Monday.
Their new discussion Saturday by phone came after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that the United States could default on its debt obligations by June 5 — four days later than previously estimated — if lawmakers do not act in time to raise the federal debt ceiling. The extended “X-date” gives the two sides a bit of extra time as they scramble for a deal.
Americans and the world were uneasily watching the negotiating brinkmanship that could throw the U.S. economy into chaos and sap world confidence in the nation’s leadership. House negotiators left the Capitol at 2 a.m. the night before, only to return hours later.
Failure to lift the borrowing limit, now $31 trillion, to pay the nation’s incurred bills, would send shockwaves through the U.S. and global economy. Yellen said failure to act by the new date would “cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests.”
Anxious retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with the next Social Security payments due next week.
Social Security has been a vital safety net for retirees, disabled individuals, and surviving family members for decades. However, the program is facing financial challenges that may necessitate changes in the coming years. Let’s explore three potential ways Social Security benefits could change in the future.
Adjustments to the full retirement age
One possible change could involve adjusting the full retirement age (FRA), which is the age at which individuals can receive full Social Security benefits. Currently set at 67 for those born in 1960 or later, some experts argue that increasing the full retirement age could help address the program’s funding shortfall. However, this change could mean longer working lives for future retirees and careful consideration of how it impacts individuals with physically demanding jobs or limited job opportunities later in life.
This change would also result in a smaller benefit for the earliest filers at age 62, since the reductions are based on the amount of time between your filing age and the Full Retirement Age. If the FRA is increased to 68, for example, filing at age 62 would result in a benefit that is only 65% of your Full Retirement Age benefit amount.
In addition, unless the maximum filing age is adjusted, Delayed Retirement Credits (DRCs) would also be limited under such a scenario. Currently when your FRA is 67 you have the opportunity to increase your benefit by 24% (8% per year for DRCs), but if the FRA is 68, the increase would only be 16% at maximum.
Means-testing benefits
Another potential change is means-testing Social Security benefits. Means-testing would involve adjusting benefit amounts based on an individual’s income or assets. Supporters argue that this would ensure benefits are targeted to those who need them most, potentially reducing the strain on the program’s finances. However, critics express concerns about the potential impact on middle-income earners who have paid into the system throughout their working lives and rely on Social Security as a significant part of their retirement income.
An interesting concept I’ve recently seen bandied about involves a trade-off between Social Security benefits and Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from retirement plans. Essentially an individual could forgo Social Security benefits (at least partially if not fully) in exchange for looser restrictions on RMDs – allowing for further deferral of taxation on retirement accounts.
Benefit reductions
In order to sustain the Social Security program, benefit reductions might be considered. This could involve various approaches such as adjusting the formula used to calculate benefits or implementing a scaling factor to reduce benefit amounts. While benefit reductions would aim to preserve the long-term viability of Social Security, they could pose challenges for retirees who rely heavily on those benefits to cover essential living expenses.
Most benefit reduction proposals in the pipeline are in concert with expanding the tax base, while at the same time limiting benefits to the upper echelons of earnings levels. In these cases the taxable wage base is either expanded or removed altogether, and the amounts above the current wage base are credited for benefits at a minuscule rate.
It’s important to note that any changes to Social Security benefits would likely be accompanied by broader discussions and careful consideration from policy makers. The goal would be to strike a balance between ensuring the program’s financial stability and protecting the well-being of current and future retirees.
As an individual planning for retirement, it’s crucial to stay informed about potential changes to Social Security benefits. Keeping track of legislative proposals and staying engaged in the conversation can help you adapt your retirement plans accordingly. Consider consulting with a financial adviser who specializes in retirement planning to assess the potential impact on your retirement income and explore other strategies to supplement your savings.
Social Security benefits may undergo changes in the future as policy makers grapple with the program’s financial challenges. Adjustments to the full retirement age, means-testing benefits, and benefit reductions are among the potential changes that could be considered. By staying informed and seeking professional guidance, you can navigate these potential changes and make informed decisions to secure your financial well-being during retirement.
