Biden, Harris dodge questions about Supreme Court expansion
Source: RISMedia
PHOENIX >> There are few topics that Joe Biden isn’t willing to opine on — except the Supreme Court.
The Democratic presidential nominee and his running mate, Kamala Harris, are refusing demands from Republicans — and some fellow Democrats — to say whether they would seek to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court.
Harris dodged persistent questioning about the issue on Wednesday during her debate against Vice President Mike Pence. And facing pressure to take a stance during a campaign swing through Phoenix on Thursday, Biden offered a particularly terse response.
“They’ll know my position on court packing when the election is over,” he said.
In the final weeks of the campaign, Biden is in a bind when it comes to the future of the judiciary. Republicans, increasingly fearful of losing both the presidency and the Senate, are seizing on the issue to make a lastminute argument to voters that a Biden administration would upend norms and install liberals on an expanding Supreme Court. Some progressive Democrats are pressing Biden to embrace all means possible to counter Republican power plays that have pushed the court to the right.
The debate is likely to intensify next week when Senate Republicans start confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. She would cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, the balance already tilted by Republicans’ holding open a vacancy in the 2016 election year by refusing to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee.
Biden and Harris have said the Senate should wait until after the election to fill the seat. Biden
has pledged to select the first Black female justice if given a chance. But he and Harris are otherwise taking pains to avoid talking about their vision for the Supreme Court’s future.
Tad Devine, a former top adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, said that Trump and his allies are pushing the issue to undercut Biden’s opening with moderate Republicans and that the ticket is wise to dodge the question for now.
“When you choose to engage on any issue like this, you’re going to create news coverage, awareness and back and forth,” Devine said. “And when you refuse to engage, you make it really hard for the side that’s trying to create the engagement.”
Republicans face political vulnerabilities related to the Supreme Court as well. In the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus infection, Barrett’s nomination hasn’t become the rallying cry the party hoped for.
Democrats also are trying to shore up any advantage by emphasizing that a conservative court could finally overturn the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which has grown in popularity
over time but faces its latest challenge in oral arguments slated for Nov. 10, a week after Election Day.
Polling suggests most Americans want the Senate to wait on confirming a new justice until after the election.
Indeed, the Constitution says nothing about the number of Supreme Court justices or lower court judges, only that the president nominates federal jurists and the Senate confirms them. The high court, in fact, has had as many as 10 justices since Congress set the original roster of six in 1789.
There are no formal proposals to add justices, and the court wasn’t a topline issue in the presidential campaign before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death last month. But since then, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said “nothing is off the table” if Republicans rush Barrett’s confirmation.
The matter presents Biden with uncomfortable realities. A former vice president and six-term senator, he venerates the Senate and a bygone era of deal-making that he insists is possible again. But the current confirmation politics don’t easily fit that vision.
CoreLogic® recently released the
Home Equity Report for the second quarter of 2020. The report shows U.S. homeowners with mortgages (which account for roughly 63 percent of all properties) have seen their equity increase by 6.6 percent year-over-year. This represents a collective equity gain of $620 billion, and an average gain of $9,800 per homeowner, since the second quarter of 2019. Despite a cool off in April, home-purchase activity remained strong in the second quarter of 2020 as prospective buyers took advantage of record-low mortgage rates. This, coupled with constricted for-sale inventory, helped drive home prices up and add to borrower equity through June.
Making sense of the story:
• With unemployment expected to remain elevated throughout the remainder of the year, CoreLogic predicts home price growth will slow over the next 12 months and mortgage delinquencies will continue to rise.
• “The CoreLogic Home Price Index registered a 4.3 percent annual rise in prices through June, which supported an increase in home equity,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. Home equity gains will be negligible next year, with equity loss expected in several markets.”
• Negative equity, also referred to as underwater or upside down, applies to borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.
• From the first quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2020, the total number of mortgaged homes in negative equity decreased by 5.4 percent to 1.7 million homes or 3.2 percent of all mortgaged properties.
• In the second quarter of 2019, 2.1 million homes, or 3.8 percent of all mortgaged properties, were in negative equity. This number decreased by 15 percent in the second quarter of 2020 to 1.7 million mortgaged properties in negative equity.
• The national aggregate value of negative equity was approximately $284 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2020. This is down quarter over quarter by approximately $0.7 billion.
• Because home equity is affected by home price changes, borrowers with equity positions near (+/-5 percent) the negative equity cutoff are most likely to move out of or into negative equity as prices change.
• Looking at the second quarter of 2020 book of mortgages, if home prices increase by 5 percent, 270,000 homes would regain equity; if home prices decline by 5 percent, 380,000 would fall underwater.