Democrats eyeing Tuesday vote on Biden plan, infrastructure
WASHINGTON — House Democratic leaders are setting a Sunday target for finishing drafting President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion package of social spending and taxes, with possible floor votes Tuesday on that bill and a separate public works measure, a Democratic leadership aide said.
It’s the latest in a string of self-imposed deadlines by Democrats, who are now working off a framework Biden presented to Congress on Thursday that’s still open to revisions. As lawmakers put the details into legislative language, possible changes include adding a plan to cut prescription drug prices and altering the cap on deductions for state and local taxes.
The tentative schedule includes a meeting of the House Rules Committee possible Monday, with floor votes on both the social-benefits package and the $550 billion infrastructure plan as soon as Tuesday, according to the person, who asked not to be named discussing private deliberations.
Together, the two measures make up the core of Biden’s economic agenda. The Senate-passed, bipartisan infrastructure bill was blocked again last week by progressives in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s caucus until the larger measure is ready.
US spies say COVID-19 origin unclear without China’s help:
COVID-19 was probably not a biological weapon and most U.S. analysts believe it wasn’t genetically engineered at all, but a final conclusion on the virus’s origins is impossible without cooperation from China, a declassified U.S. report says.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its long-awaited public findings on the virus’s origins Friday, a declassified version of the secret report submitted to President Joe Biden this summer.
The intelligence community remains divided on where the outbreak began, but believes two causes are plausible — that it spread through animals to humans, or that it sprang from an incident at a lab in the city of Wuhan.
“China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19,” according to the report. “Beijing, however, continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information, and blame other countries, including the United States.”
The report sets out key outstanding questions, including information about the earliest cases of COVID19, Chinese hospital occupancy rates, and information on animals present in a series of Wuhan markets. The U.S. previously released declassified highlights of the same report.
G-20 leaders endorse global minimum corporate tax:
Leaders of the world’s biggest economies formally backed an ambitious plan to overhaul the way countries tax multinational companies in a bid to stem competition for the lowest rates.
All of the leaders at a Group of 20 summit in Rome endorsed the new rules on Saturday, “including a global minimum tax that will end the damaging race to the bottom on corporate taxation,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
The tax pact has two sweeping objectives. It intends first to halt the effort by multinational companies to shift profits into low-tax
havens through a new global minimum tax of 15% for multinational companies. It also attempts to address the increasingly digital nature of international commerce by taxing companies, in part, on where they do business instead of where they book profits.
While the deal has overcome some major impediments — such as getting low-tax Ireland to sign on — it faces several potential snags before it comes into force and proves effective, including the creation of a credible dispute resolution mechanism.
Signatory countries must also follow through by enacting domestic legislation to implement the new tax rules and by formally approving a multilateral convention, to be drafted by the OECD.
Suit says Texas city refused escort to protect Biden bus:
Police officials in a Central Texas city refused to provide an escort for a Joe Biden
campaign bus when it was surrounded by supporters of then-President Donald Trump on an interstate, an amended lawsuit filed over the 2020 encounter alleges.
The updated lawsuit, filed Friday, included transcribed 911 audio recordings, The Texas Tribune reported. The suit alleges that law enforcement officers in San Marcos “privately laughed” and “joked about the victims and their distress” in the audio recordings.
The city of San Marcos didn’t return a request for comment from the newspaper. A spokesperson previously has said that the city and the San Marcos Police Department would not comment because of the pending litigation.
Videos shared on social media from Oct. 30, 2020, show a group of cars and pickup trucks — many adorned with large Trump flags — riding alongside the campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin. The “Trump Train”
at times boxed in the bus. At one point, one of the pickups collided with an SUV behind the bus.
Roblox down, kids up in arms: To the dismay of millions of children — and the parents trying to keep them busy and cope with their anguish — the popular gaming platform Roblox crashed Friday, and the company was still trying to restore service Saturday.
In a statement Friday on social media, San Mateo, California-based Roblox apologized and said it was “still making progress’’ on the outage.
The cause of the problems was unclear, but Roblox said that it was “not related to any specific experiences or partnerships on the platform.’’
On the Roblox platform, players can create their own games and play with other users. It became wildly popular after the pandemic closed schools and kept children indoors looking for
something to do.
According to the social media consulting firm Backlinko, Roblox has more than 43 million active users a day, up from 14 million in 2016.
26K NYC workers still unvaccinated after deadline:
More than 26,000 of New York City’s municipal workers remained unvaccinated after Friday’s deadline to show proof they’ve gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, the city said Saturday.
A last-minute rush of jabs boosted the vaccination rate to 83% among police officers, firefighters, garbage collectors and other city workers covered by the mandate as of 8 p.m. Friday, up from 76% a day earlier.
Workers who haven’t complied with the requirement will be put on unpaid leave starting Monday, leaving the Big Apple bracing for the possibility of closed firehouses, fewer police and ambulances and mounting trash.