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deltamusings · 3 years

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The Democrats’ draft spending bill still includes huge changes to the nation’s migration laws, even after the Senate’s parliamentarian removed several amnesties from the multi-trillion dollar spending bill.

The bill would dramatically push up housing prices by expanding the inflow of chain migrants, and also would slash white-collar salaries by creating a new and uncapped migration category of college-educated workers for a huge variety of Fortune 500 jobs from coast to coast.

Together, both migration rules will transfer wages and wealth from employees to coastal investors, and will also shift corporate investment, real estate wealth, government spending, and political power from heartland states — such as Ohio, Montana, West Virginia, and Arizona — to the major coastal states of California and New York.

But the parliamentarian’s decision to exclude the amnesties from the bill may prompt Democratic leaders to drop the uncapped white-collar giveaway for the Fortune 500 companies and their investors.

“If we’re talking about getting [white-collar] visas so we can take care of businesses’ problems, I’m not supportive — in the absence of getting anything else done,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) told Bloomberg Government.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) also suggested that he might oppose the white-collar giveaway to the Fortune 500 if Democrats do not get their amnesties and new voters. “Bob [Menendez] and I have the same goal, which is to get as many people as possible on a path to citizenship,” he told Bloomberg.

However, Democrat leaders still want to turbocharge the chain migration process, even without the amnesties, Menendez indicated. “If we’re talking about recapturing visas for family backlogs … I certainly would consider that,” even without the amnesties, Menendez said.

For many years, Democrats have blocked business efforts to import more white-collar workers unless business leaders help them win more voters from amnesties. In January, for example, Menendez said, “we need the high-tech community who will benefit from the reforms we are proposing, to be an advocate of the overall [amnesty] reform movement.”

But “the chain migration [expansion] is something that is supported by the same left-wing activist community as the [excluded] amnesty, and so, as long as they get the chain migration, then the activist left will consider it a fair deal if the business community getting uncapped foreign workers,” former White House advisor Steven Miller told Breitbart News.

The underlying bargain– more cheap workers and consumers for the Fortune 500 in exchange for more poor voters for the Democrats — is cementing the strategic alliance between the progressives who run the Democratic Party and the corporate investors who run the Fortune 500, said Miller:

There’s a progressive-corporate alliance that has been forged inside of the Democratic Party and nowhere can it be seen more clearly than on migration and the current reconciliation bill. The progressive left wants unlimited chain migration and the corporate donors and lobbyists want uncapped foreign workers. The reconciliation bill delivers both. And if they’re also able to get an amnesty from the parliamentarian, which I fear they will be able to do in some form, then that will just further cement the alliance between powerful progressive and powerful corporations.

The Fortune 500 giveaway will allow companies to recruit an unlimited number of foreign graduates with dangled promises of green cards and citizenship, said Rob Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. “It will be the equivalent of having unlimited legal immigration for [foreign] college graduates,” he said.

The plan rewards the investor-run corporations that already use the green card workforce of at least one million imported H-1B, J-1, L-1, and OPT workers to drop white-collar salaries. The cheap and compliant workforce also excludes many outspoken American graduates from rewarding careers in healthcare, business, technology, design, or science.

Law continued:

These are the companies that have intentionally discriminated against American workers, have subjected American workers to training their unqualified foreign replacements as a condition of getting severance packages, and, and now it is going to be a permanent loop where they will have as many cheap foreign workers — with at least a college degree — as they want, and that will just further suppress wages.

Both of the huge immigration changes have been ignored by the establishment press, partly because their immigration reporters prefer to cover the fears and hopes of Haitians as they try to move from home in South America to jobs throughout the United States.

The proposed changes have been ignored by journalists even though they will damage the income and status of journalists — and of their friends and peers. With lower income and status, fewer journalists will be able to buy good homes and get their children into high-status universities.

The journalists have also failed to quiz critical swing-vote Democrats about the migration changes that would divert investments and jobs away from their homes states. So far, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Krysten Sinema (D-AZ), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have said little or nothing about the chain migration change or the white-collar indentured worker rule.

GOP leaders have also not challenged these proposed changes as violations of the Senate’s debating rules, even though both changes will damage GOP electoral support, and redirect wealth and political power from GOP-run states to Democrat-run coastal states.

GOP leaders have persuaded the Senate’s debate referee, the parliamentarian, to dismiss the Democrats’ proposed amnesties as policy changes disguised as budget changes. “The policy changes of this proposal far outweigh the budgetary impact scored to it and it is not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation,” the parliamentarian wrote.

The amnesties are a direct threat to the jobs of GOP Senators because they would create many new Democratic voters.

But the silence about the chan migration plan and the white-collar giveaway reflects the reluctance of GOP legislators to protect Americans’ popular pocketbook interests amid donor demands for more migrants.

For example, on Wednesday, 34 House Republicans and 14 GOP Senators stayed silent as GOP leader Mitch McConnell approved a massive, expensive, and open-ended inflow of Afghans into Americans’ homes and jobs. The Senators were:

Roy Blunt (R-MO)

Richard Burr (R-NC)

Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)

Bill Cassidy (R-LA)

Susan Collins (R-ME)

John Cornyn (R-TX)

Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

John Kennedy (R-LA)

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Mitt Romney (R-UT)

Mike Rounds (R-SD)

Richard Shelby (R-AL)

Thom Tillis (R-NC)

Todd Young (R-IN)

In September, Breitbart News described the still;-hidden chain migration expansion in the spending bill:

The Democrats’ amnesty bill quietly invites three million chain migration arrivals into the U.S. workforce, likely forcing Americans to pay higher rents.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

About four million people are now waiting many years to get one of the roughly 240,000 cards annually available for the foreign siblings and adult children of legal immigrants. The new bill would allow them to “Early File’” for conditional residency and work permits if they have been waiting for more than two years and can also fly into the United States.

…

The amnesty’s offer of residency to the 3 million chain migration migrants likely could create an additional inflow of 1 million per year — and an extra shortfall of roughly 800,000 apartments or homes.

Many states’ residents are already suffering from high housing costs. For example, several low-income Americans and immigrants died in early September when a storm flooded their affordable basement apartments in New York.

Breitbart has also described the bill’s plan to flood the job market for U.S. graduates with a massive supply of foreign graduates who will work for low wages plus the promise of U.S. citizenship for themselves and their families:

Democrat leaders “are blowing away all the numerical limits” on employers offering green cards to [college graduate] employees, said Rosemary Jenks, policy director for NumbersUSA. “There’s no limit anywhere.”

The pending bill would allow U.S. investors and executives to import and pay an unlimited number of foreign workers with the dangled reward of citizenship. That citizenship-for-work law would minimize executives’ need to recruit Americans or even offer good salaries.

The bill was revealed Friday, and on Monday, was quickly rushed through the House judiciary committee without C-SPAN coverage. Mark Zuckerberg’s astroturf empire is marketing it as a relief bill for deserving illegal migrants — but it boosts investors by dramatically expanding the flow of cheap workers, government-funded consumers, and room-sharing renters into the U.S. economy. Democrat leaders hope to squeeze the bill through the Senate via the 50-vote reconciliation process.

The expanded foreign worker pipeline will remain open until at least September 2031, even though many millions of Americans will need jobs during the next ten years after they graduate with debts and degrees in health care, accounting, teaching, business, design, science, technology, or engineering. “If you’re in the pipeline by September 30, 2031, you’re in [the 2021 amnesty bill],” Jenks added.

The push for cheap workers and more chain migration is being led by Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us network of coastal investors. They stand to gain financially from more cheap labor, government-aided consumers, and urban renters.

Their network has funded many astroturf campaigns, urged Democrats to not talk about the economic impact of migration, and manipulated coverage by the TV networks and the print media.

Migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, raises their rents, curbs their productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, and wrecks their democratic, equality-promoting civic culture.

For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.

This pocketbook opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

#visa worker

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theliberaltony · 3 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

We’re fast approaching President Biden’s 100th day in office and already Congress has passed a massive $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package; helped usher in Biden’s history-making Cabinet picks; and approved a measure in the House that would give undocumented immigrants, including those currently with temporary protections under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a pathway to citizenship.

To understand just how much of the president’s agenda is getting through Congress and the extent to which various members of Congress support that agenda, we’re once again tracking how often representatives and senators agree with Biden and how that compares with our expectations, based on Biden’s 2020 vote margin in the member’s state or district. (If this sounds familiar, it’s because we did the same for former President Trump.) We’ve also added a number of new features to help illustrate how members of Congress vote relative to one another and identify the outliers in each party. (Hint: Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona might not be the only thorns in Biden’s side for the next several years.)

A member of Congress’ “Biden score” is just a simple percentage of how often a senator or representative supports the president’s agenda. (We calculate this by adding the member’s “yea” votes on bills that Biden supported and “no” votes on bills Biden opposed, then divide that by the total number of bills on which that member has voted and we know Biden’s position.) As we did during the Trump administration, we’re relying on the Office of Management and Budget’s “statements of administration policy” to determine the administration’s stance on a bill. To read more about what types of measures we’re tracking, check out our detailed methodology post from 2017 — it’s about Trump-era congresses, but the same rules still apply. And, as a reminder, these ratings will update through the 117th Congress.

It’s early yet — we have just 13 votes that aren’t related to the confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet,1 but there are two interesting trends we’ve noticed at the margins so far:

Republicans are not unilaterally voting against Biden’s agenda

After Biden was elected last year, story after story predicted that Republicans would thwart his agenda as control of the Senate remained in limbo and that Trump retained an ironclad grip on the party. And while the latter is still at least partially true, it’s also not yet entirely clear the extent to which they’re impacting the GOP’s ability to compromise. Republicans, for instance, haven’t entirely stymied Biden’s agenda.

Sure, no Republican in the House or Senate voted in favor of Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill. But in the Senate, many have backed his Cabinet picks, and in the House, Republicans and Democrats have found common ground on bills like reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act and allowing farmworkers a pathway to legal immigration status.

Now, it doesn’t mean these bills featured overwhelming bipartisan majorities, but 140 different House Republicans have voted at least once for something Biden supported. And for some members who fall in this category, the choice appears to be a matter of political caution. Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith and Michigan Rep. Fred Upton — two of whom represent districts Biden either won in 2020 or was competitive in — are so far the GOP members backing Biden’s agenda most frequently.

House Republicans who back Biden the most

The 11 Republican House members who vote with Biden’s positions most often, and how often we anticipated they’d vote with Biden based on their district’s 2020 vote margin

Representative District 2020 vote margin biden score plus-minus* Brian Fitzpatrick PA-1 D+ 5.8 76.9% -2.1 Chris Smith NJ-4 R+10.5 61.5 +43.8 Fred Upton MI-6 R+4.5 53.8 +20.3 Carlos A. Gimenez FL-26 R+5.6 46.2 +16.4 John Katko NY-24 D+ 9.0 46.2 -42.3 Jeff Van Drew NJ-2 R+2.9 46.2 +6.2 María Elvira Salazar FL-27 D+ 3.2 41.7 -26.0 Don Young AK at-large R+10.1 40.0 +20.8 Tom Reed NY-23 R+11.2 38.5 +21.8 Mike Bost IL-12 R+14.2 33.3 +19.5 Adam Kinzinnger IL-16 R+16.0 33.3 +21.6

*Plus-minus is the difference between a member of Congress’s actual Biden score and his or her predicted Biden score.

Sources: U.S. House, U.S. Senate, Office of Management and budget, Daily Kos, @unitedstates

But not all House Republicans are interested in backing Biden’s agenda. About one-third of members — 72 total — have completely opposed everything on Biden’s agenda so far. This includes Biden’s coronavirus stimulus package, but also things like increasing the waiting period for background checks on gun sales, expanding unionization and collective bargaining rights and an omnibus police reform bill named after George Floyd. (Only a handful of Republican representatives supported these measures.)

One thing we found surprising, though, is that even some of the most pro-Trump House members, according to our tracker of Congress and Trump, have supported at least one item on Biden’s agenda. Take Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, for example, the House’s No. 2 Republican who ended Trump’s term with a 98.2 percent Trump score rating overall. He was among the 121 House Republicans who approved a special waiver to allow retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin as secretary of defense. (Austin’s appointment required this waiver because he had only been retired from the military for four years, instead of the seven years required by law.) Even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — who supported Trump’s agenda 97.3 percent of the time — supported the same waiver. Granted, this is the only Biden-supported bill that they’ve backed; as such, both Scalise and McCarthy still rank very low in terms of backing Biden’s agenda with a Biden score of 7.7 percent so far.

In the Senate, every sitting member has supported Biden at least once (yes, even Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Mitch McConnell). An important caveat here, though, is almost all of the Senate votes so far — save for the COVID-19 aid package — were on or related to Cabinet confirmations.

However, the top Senate Republicans backing Biden’s nominations so far shouldn’t come as much of a shock, considering many were long seen as potential Senate swing votes or are members of the so-called G-10 — a group of 10 deal-making moderate Republicans who reportedly want to negotiate with Biden and other Democrats. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine leads the pack with a 91.3 percent Biden score. She’s followed by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (90.9 percent), Ohio Sen. Rob Portman (87 percent), Utah Sen. Mitt Romney (87 percent) and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (78.3 percent).

The usual suspects back Biden in the Senate

The 10 Republican senators who vote with Biden’s positions most often, and how often we anticipated they’d vote with Biden based on their state’s 2020 vote margin

Senator State 2020 vote Margin Biden Score plus-minus* Susan Collins ME D+ 9.1 91.3% -1.4 Lisa Murkowski AK R+ 10.1 90.9 +18.9 Rob Portman OH R+ 8.0 87.0 +12.3 Mitt Romney UT R+ 20.5 87.0 +29.3 Lindsey Graham SC R+ 11.7 78.3 +8.7 Shelley Moore Capito WV R+ 38.9 77.3 +40.6 Richard Burr NC R+ 1.3 75.0 -7.6 Chuck Grassley IA R+ 8.2 73.9 -0.5 Mitch McConnell KY R+ 25.9 73.9 +22.7 Mike Rounds SD R+ 26.2 73.9 +23.0

*Plus-minus is the difference between a member of Congress’s actual Biden score and his or her predicted Biden score.

Sources: U.S. House, U.S. Senate, Office of Management and budget, Daily Kos, @unitedstates

To be sure, a lot of what we’re seeing now among Republicans is pretty small in the grand scheme of things (i.e., supporting Cabinet nominations isn’t that surprising when Republicans don’t have enough votes to block them). Perhaps we’ll get a better sense of which GOP senators want to work with Biden via Democrats’ big infrastructure proposal, but if Democrats move to pass that via budget reconciliation, we still might not have a sense of who those senators are, as Democrats won’t need their votes. At this point, it’s unclear how many real opportunities for bipartisanship there will be, especially if Biden tries to push items forward that are consistent with what Republican voters want, but aren’t necessarily in line with what their GOP representatives want.

Democrats who don’t side with Biden are in the minority

Meanwhile, most Democrats support Biden 100 percent of the time.

In fact, the only time Senate Democrats have bucked the president’s agenda was when 14 of them voted against granting Austin’s waiver. This wasn’t a major flashpoint in the party, as Austin’s confirmation was never really in jeopardy. Instead, it mostly mirrored what happened when Congress approved a similar waiver in 2017, as many of the same Democrats expressed opposition to making a similar exception for Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

At this point, the two senators who have arguably received the most attention as being potential roadblocks to the president’s agenda — Manchin and Sinema — haven’t actually voted against any of the things Biden supports. Now, this is in large part because, again, almost all of the Senate votes so far were on noncontroversial Cabinet confirmations. And any controversial policy proposals both objected to, like raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, have been cut from the final bill. So the two senators are still exerting their power to block legislation in ways that aren’t captured by our data. That’s why we should keep an eye on these two members — and others from the more moderate wing of the party — going forward, especially when it comes to their votes on Biden’s infrastructure and climate proposals.

In the House it’s much of the same: Representatives who don’t vote with Biden 100 percent of the time are the exception, not the rule. Even members from competitive districts that Biden lost — Iowa Rep. Cindy Axne, Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, Pennsylvania Rep. Matt Cartwright and New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim — are completely supportive of the president’s agenda.

There have been some defectors in the lower chamber, though. And those members fall into two main categories: Progressive Democrats who were against supporting the Austin waiver and lawmakers from competitive districts.

Let’s examine the latter category first. Maine Rep. Jared Golden, who won one of the most competitive House districts, only has a 53.8 percent Biden score — the lowest among all House Democrats. Why? Well, Biden lost his district by nearly 8 points last year and Golden only barely wrested his seat out of Republicans’ grip in 2018.

So far, Golden has voted against Austin’s waiver, legislation allowing farmworkers to get legal immigration status, increasing the waiting period for federal gun background checks, requiring background checks for all gun sales and the coronavirus stimulus package, among other things. Beyond Golden, other members in competitive districts to watch are Wisconsin Rep. Ron Kind (76.9 percent Biden score), Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar (92.3 percent) and Texas Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (92.3 percent). Biden either lost their districts or won by fewer than 5 points in 2020, so we can likely expect for them to continue to deviate from Biden’s agenda.

Progressive Democrats have long criticized establishment members of their party as too centrist and cautious, but so far the measure that the largest number opposed was also the Austin waiver. Excluding that, the most liberal Democrats — including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley and New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman — have supported Biden 100 percent.

So, to recap: Democrats in both chambers are, so far, largely unified, with some more interesting splinters in the House among members facing competitive reelection bids in 2022. And in the Senate, we’ll likely see more fissures among Democratic members as Biden moves to pass more controversial agenda items. At this point, though, it’s hard to know what the progressive wing will do with Biden’s later proposals since they don’t really have the votes to bring legislation to the floor on their own and their main power will be — similar to Manchin and Sinema — in blocking bills.

There’s definitely not enough data to make sweeping statements about how senators and representatives are taking to Biden’s presidency. But at this early juncture, it’s fair to say Republicans might not be completely against compromise and most Democrats will be in lockstep with the president. We’ll continue updating our interactive as more votes are recorded along with publishing stories about the most interesting trends we see as the administration gets to work.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Alex Samuels

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ncpssm · 5 years

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In the waning hours of 2018, President Trump signed into law a bipartisan bill to boost federal efforts to address the Alzheimer’s epidemic that impacts some 5.7 million Americans and their families. The BOLD Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act provides $100 million in new funding and “restates priorities” in the fight against a disease that’s aptly been called “The Long Goodbye.”

The BOLD Act was cosponsored by Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV):

“The… Act will improve early detection and diagnosis, provide assistance for caregivers and educate the public on Alzheimer’s disease and brain health. This bipartisan legislation is the first step in addressing [this] ongoing public health crisis…” – Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, BOLD Act co-sponsor

Read more from this new blog post by clicking here.

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patriotnewsdaily · 3 years

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New Post has been published on PatriotNewsDaily.com

New Post has been published on https://patriotnewsdaily.com/republicans-help-democrats-pass-billions-to-support-95k-afghans-brought-to-u-s/

Republicans Help Democrats Pass Billions to support 95K Afghans Brought to U.S.

On Thursday, 34 House Republicans and 15 Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to approve $6.4 billion in taxpayer money for the roughly 95,000 Afghans that Biden hopes to bring to the U.S. over the next 12 months — a population nine times larger than Jackson, Wyoming’s resident population.

The Republican lawmakers backed the funding provisions despite overwhelming opposition to Afghan resettlement from Republican and Republican-leaning voters. The latest Pew Research Center survey shows that 63 percent of GOP voters oppose the Afghan resettlement.

Already, as Breitbart News reported, 40,800 Afghans are temporarily living at eight U.S. military bases in Texas, Virginia, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Indiana, and New Jersey.

The funding for Biden’s resettlement operation was slipped into a government funding bill and will give public benefits like welfare, housing assistance, medical coverage, and state-issued driver’s licenses to tens of thousands of newly-arrived Afghans.

Specifically, the provision giving IDs and driver’s licenses allow Afghans to skirt vital national security requirements put in place after the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks, according to some lawmakers and expert Andrew Arthur:

I will leave it up to others to decide whether giving massive amounts of cash to aliens who have no real status in the United States is a good idea or not. My main concern is the fact the [funding bill] makes paroled Afghan nationals eligible for driver’s licenses and identification cards, even if they are barred from receiving them under a law passed to protect the American people against national-security risks. [Emphasis added]

…

Section 202(b)(2)(C) of the REAL ID Act requires states to ensure that applicants for driver’s licenses have lawful status in the United States (including citizenship or a green card). Section 2502 in the [funding bill] would explicitly waive that requirement — not for you, or for those green card holders — but rather exclusively for paroled Afghan nationals. [Emphasis added]

Likewise, the funding bill leaves Biden’s resettlement operation wide open for future waves of Afghans to be brought to the U.S. by extending such resettlement to September 2022 and beyond for the foreign relatives of Afghans who get resettled in American communities.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), who voted against the funding bill, said the provisions “opens the U.S. to unlimited refugee resettlement from Afghanistan with zero vetting, putting our security at even greater risk.”

The 34 House Republicans who voted for the funding bill include:

Mark Amodei (R-NV)

Tom Cole (R-OK)

Rodney Davis (R-IL)

Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)

Andrew Garbarino (R-NY)

Carlos Giménez (R-FL)

Tony Gonzalez (R-TX)

Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH)

Garrett Graves (R-LA)

Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA)

Clay Higgins (R-LA)

John Katko (R-NY)

Young Kim (R-CA)

Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)

Doug LaMalfa (R-CA)

Julia Letlow (R-LA)

Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY)

Patrick McHenry (R-NC)

Peter Meijer (R-MI)

Blake Moore (R-UT)

Dan Newhouse (R-WA)

Jay Obernolte (R-CA)

Tom Reed (R-NY)

Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)

Hal Rogers (R-KY)

Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL)

Mike Simpson (R-ID)

Chris Smith (R-NJ)

Glenn Thompson (R-PA)

Mike Turner (R-OH)

Fred Upton (R-MI)

David Valadao (R-CA)

Don Young (R-AK)

Meanwhile, the 15 Senate Republicans who voted for the funding bill include:

Roy Blunt (R-MO)

Richard Burr (R-NC)

Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)

Bill Cassidy (R-LA)

Susan Collins (R-ME)

John Cornyn (R-TX)

Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

John Kennedy (R-LA)

Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Mitt Romney (R-UT)

Mike Rounds (R-SD)

Richard Shelby (R-AL)

Thom Tillis (R-NC)

Todd Young (R-IN)

Refugee contractors, funded by taxpayer money to annually resettle refugees, will be awarded $1.7 billion to “provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services, including wrap-around services during temporary housing and after resettlement, housing assistance, medical assistance, legal assistance, and case management assistance.”

Refugee resettlement costs taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years. Over the course of a lifetime, taxpayers pay about $133,000 per refugee and within five years of resettlement, roughly 16 percent will need taxpayer-funded housing assistance.

Over the last 20 years, nearly a million refugees have been resettled in the nation — more than double that of residents living in Miami, Florida, and it would be the equivalent of annually adding the population of Pensacola, Florida.

Original Article:

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youressentialsblog · 3 years

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Trump Humiliated As GOP Support For Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Doubled After He Tried To Block It

It was an epic humiliation, as Donald Trump tried to get Republicans to oppose the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but instead, 17 of them voted to advance it. Here is the list of the 17 Republican Senators who voted to advance the bill: Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) Sen.…

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a2znewsplace · 3 years

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Trump Humiliated As GOP Support For Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Doubled After He Tried To Block It

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alaturkanews · 3 years

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GOP lawmaker on Biden's infrastructure plan: The president's 'heart is in this'

GOP lawmaker on Biden’s infrastructure plan: The president’s ‘heart is in this’

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R- WV, on whether Biden's infrastructure plan can be passed with bipartisan support. Subscribe to Fox News! https://bit.ly/2vBUvAS Watch more Fox News Video: http://video.foxnews.com Watch Fox News Channel Live: http://www.foxnewsgo.com/ FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service delivering breaking news as well as political and business news. The…

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#foxnews #Youtube

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correctsuccess · 3 years

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With Congress Still Debating Stimulus, Should You Rush To File Your 2020 Tax Return Or Wait? WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 01: U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) speaks as (L-R) Sen. Invoice Cassidy ... (R-LA), Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rep. Todd Younger (R-IN), Sen. Lisa Murkwoski (R-AK), Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) speak to reporters after assembly with U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice P... #congress #eip #irs #recovery_rebate_credit #stimulus

#Congress #EIP #IRS #Recovery_Rebate_Credit #stimulus

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

You might not know it from the headlines, dear reader, but the presidential contest is not the only election happening in 2020. Control of the U.S. Senate is also up for grabs, and the party in charge of Congress’s upper chamber could determine the fate of many of the policies currently grabbing attention in the presidential campaign. As we noted right after the 2018 election, Republicans are favored to retain a majority in the Senate in 2020, but Democrats also have a realistic — if difficult — path to winning back control. This is the first of a series of regular updates on what’s happening in Senate contests around the country, so let’s take a look-see at the latest developments.

First, the top-line situation. Republicans are favored to hold on to the Senate, as they currently have a 53-to-47 seat edge,1 which means Democrats must gain a net of four seats for outright control, or three seats and the vice presidency, as the vice president casts the tiebreaking vote. What’s more, the competitive races in the Senate in 2020 will probably be on Republican-leaning turf, which should give the GOP a baseline advantage. However, Democrats’ silver lining is that the GOP has to defend 23 of the 35 seats on the ballot next year, and election forecasters Inside Elections, Sabato’s Crystal Ball and The Cook Political Report currently rate Democrats’ opportunities to pick up seats more favorably than Republicans’. (Though Republicans, of course, can win the Senate by simply hanging on to the seats they have.)

And keep in mind that the presidential race at the top of the ticket may be critical in determining which party wins control because of just how nationalized our elections have become. In the 2016 election, for instance, every state with a Senate race backed the same party for both president and Senate for the first time ever.2

Republicans must defend nearly twice as many Senate seats

Senators up for reelection in 2020, by their state’s partisan lean

Incumbent Inc. Party State median Race Rating* Partisan Lean OPEN R WY Safe R R+47.4 Jim Risch R ID Safe R R+34.9 Jim Inhofe R OK Safe R R+33.9 Mike Rounds R SD Safe R R+30.6 Shelley Moore Capito R WV Safe R R+30.5 OPEN R TN Safe R R+28.1 Doug Jones D AL Lean R R+26.8 Tom Cotton R AR Safe R R+24.4 Ben Sasse R NE Safe R R+24.0 OPEN R KS Likely R R+23.3 Mitch McConnell R KY Likely R R+23.3 Steve Daines R MT Safe R R+17.7 Bill Cassidy R LA Safe R R+17.3 Lindsey Graham R SC Safe R R+17.2 John Cornyn R TX Likely R R+16.9 Cindy Hyde-Smith R MS Safe R R+15.4 Dan Sullivan R AK Safe R R+14.9 David Perdue R GA Likely R R+11.8 OPEN** R GA Likely R R+11.8 Martha McSally** R AZ Toss-up R+9.3 Joni Ernst R IA Lean R R+5.8 Thom Tillis R NC Toss-up R+5.1 Jeanne Shaheen D NH Likely D R+1.7 Mark Warner D VA Safe D D+0.1 Gary Peters D MI Lean D D+1.3 Cory Gardner R CO Toss-up D+1.5 Tina Smith D MN Likely D D+2.1 Susan Collins R ME Toss-up/Lean R D+4.9 OPEN D NM Likely D D+7.2 Jeff Merkley D OR Safe D D+8.7 Dick Durbin D IL Safe D D+13.0 Cory Booker D NJ Safe D D+13.3 Chris Coons D DE Safe D D+13.6 Jack Reed D RI Safe D D+25.7 Ed Markey D MA Safe D D+29.4

*Rating is the median rating among Inside Elections, Sabato’s Crystal Ball and The Cook Political Report.

**Special election

Open seats are ones with retiring or resigning senators.

FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean metric is the average difference between how a state votes and how the country votes overall, with 2016 presidential election results weighted at 50 percent, 2012 presidential election results weighted at 25 percent and results from elections for the state legislature weighted at 25 percent. Note that the partisan leans in this article were calculated before the 2018 elections; we haven’t calculated FiveThirtyEight partisan leans that incorporate the midterm results yet.

But declining approval ratings may be a warning sign for endangered Republican incumbents in battleground states. The partisan lean metric in the table above measures how much more Democratic- or Republican-leaning a state is than the country as a whole,3 and all five GOP senators defending seats in states with a partisan lean of less than R+10 saw their approval ratings worsen in the third quarter of 2019, according to data from Morning Consult. And all but one — Arizona Sen. Martha McSally — has a net negative rating (approval rating minus disapproval rating).

Five vulnerable GOP senators’ net approval has dropped

Net approval rating (approval rating minus disapproval rating) in the second and third quarters of 2019

Net approval in 2019 Senator State 2nd QTR 3rd QTR Change Martha McSally AZ +2.9 +2.1 -0.8 Susan Collins ME -3.9 -5.8 -1.9 Cory Gardner CO +0.3 -2.9 -3.2 Thom Tillis NC -1.5 -5.1 -3.6 Joni Ernst IA +4.5 -4.0 -8.5

Source: Morning Consult

This is particularly worrisome for Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Cory Gardner of Colorado, who will likely need some ticket-splitting in their Democratic-leaning states to win reelection. Most notably, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s net approval rating dropped about 9 percentage points, falling into negative territory, though it dropped the most among Republican voters, who may come back into her fold by Election Day. Democrats probably need to defeat most or all of these senators — North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis is the fifth — to capture the Senate, and they have to be pleased that the public image of these incumbents has taken a hit. Of the Democrats in currently competitive contests (that is, those not rated as “safe” for either party), only Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith saw a decline in her net approval, although it remains fairly positive overall (+13).

Yet it’s certainly not all bad news for Republicans. Recent polling in Michigan, for instance, suggests they have a real shot of putting the state’s Democratic-held seat in play. Two recent polls found Democratic Sen. Gary Peters barely ahead of or in a dead heat with Republican John James, who lost Michigan’s 2018 Senate race but performed better than expected relative to the Democratic lean of the national environment. Although another poll found Peters ahead by 16 points, so it’s not entirely clear yet how competitive this race is, but given that President Trump carried Michigan by 0.2 points in 2016, it should be a competitive environment where James could take down Peters, especially if he can once again outperform expectations.

But we’re a long way from November 2020, so plenty of curveballs could still shake up the Senate picture between now and then. Consider, for example, that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reportedly considering a run for his old seat, which Democratic Sen. Doug Jones won in a surprise victory over scandal-ridden Republican Roy Moore in a 2017 special election. Major contenders for the GOP nomination — including Moore, who’s running again — aren’t inclined to get out of Sessions’s way just yet though, as his position in the party is somewhat complicated given Trump’s still-simmering anger over Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. If Sessions runs and Trump openly opposes him, that might make for a wide-open and unpredictable GOP primary. Jones, who is an underdog for reelection, would probably prefer the chaos, but we’ll know more very soon — the deadline to enter the race is Nov. 8.

As in Alabama, the eventual nominees in a handful of other races could influence how competitive they are. For instance, although New Hampshire is very narrowly divided between the parties (Hillary Clinton carried the state by less than half a point in 2016), election forecasters think Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is in relatively good shape to win reelection — the median race rating there is “Likely Democratic.” That’s partly because the GOP lacks a top-tier challenger there, but that could change if a high-profile Republican like former Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski jumps into the race. New Hampshire Republicans have said they worry that Lewandowski could harm the GOP ticket, but considering the razor’s edge by which Trump lost New Hampshire in 2016, Lewandowski’s entrance into the race while Trump is at the top of the ticket could make the seat less safe for Democrats.

Meanwhile, Democrats are hoping that state Sen. Barbara Bollier, a Republican-turned-Democrat who is their likely nominee, can run a competitive race for Kansas’s open seat despite the state’s strong Republican lean (R+23.3). And the GOP candidate most likely to make that possible for Democrats is former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who lost the state’s 2018 gubernatorial race. For that reason, national Republicans don’t want Kobach to win the GOP nomination, but thanks to the crowded GOP primary field, Kobach’s conservative base of support might be enough for him to win with only a plurality. The real Kansas wild card, of course, is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has done nothing to tamp down speculation that he might seek the seat. Pompeo is a former representative from Kansas and his entry might clear the GOP field — he doesn’t have a potential anti-Trump problem like Sessions.

As for the newest Senate race on the 2020 calendar — Georgia’s special election — there’s also a fair amount of uncertainty there. Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson announced that he will resign at the end of 2019, but Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has yet to announce who he will appoint in Isakson’s place. Some notable Democrats have entered the contest for Georgia’s other Senate seat (that’s right, both seats are up), but so far only Matt Lieberman — son of former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman — has announced a bid for the special election. Notably, Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath appeared to be preparing a run for Isakson’s seat, but decided to seek reelection to the House instead. Republicans are favored in both Georgia races, but Democrats will still want to have strong candidates contesting both seats in case the electoral environment is friendly enough to make Georgia a swing state. The close gubernatorial race between Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams in 2018 could portend a competitive presidential contest there, though Trump won the state by 5 points in 2016.

There will be many more twists and turns in the 2020 Senate race, so watch this space — we’ll be tracking all the ins and outs of the battle to control Congress’s upper chamber.

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