Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Countering Biden, GOP pitches $568B for infrastructure
WASHINGTON — A group of Senate Republicans on Thursday unveiled a public works proposal with a much smaller price tag and a narrower definition of infrastructure than what President Joe Biden has proposed, highlighting the stark differences between the two sides that will be difficult to bridge in the coming months.
The price of the Republicans’ two-page outline came in at $568 billion over five years, compared with the $2.3 trillion that Biden has called for spending over eight years. The lawmakers framed their counterproposal as a “very, very generous offer.”
“This is the largest infrastructure investment that Republicans have come forward with,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., told reporters. “This is a robust package.”
Yet the unveiling of the GOP proposal also made clear the parties are leagues apart on the size and scope of what’s needed. Biden is spending time listening to Republicans and voicing a willingness to consider their ideas, but Democrats are intent on passing a major infrastructure boost this year with or without GOP support. They have made clear they are willing to use the budget reconciliation process to bypass Republicans altogether, just as they did on COVID-19 relief earlier this year.
Whether to raise taxes is perhaps the biggest dividing line. To help pay for their plan, the Republicans would instead rely on user fees, including for electric vehicles, and on redirecting unspent federal dollars. The outline does not offer specifics, such as which federal programs would lose unspent dollars to infrastructure. Biden has proposed raising the corporate income tax from 21% to 28% to help pay for his plan, a move the Republican senators rejected.
The GOP’s slimmer infrastructure plan received a positive reception from the White House, with press secretary Jen Psaki characterizing it as a legitimate starting point for negotiations. She said Biden’s aides looked forward to reviewing the details and that Biden would invite members to the White House to discuss it further after he addresses a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.
DC statehood: A decadeslong movement to reshape the American political map took a further step Thursday as the House of Representatives approved a bill to make the nation’s capital the 51st state.
Approval came by a 216-208 vote along strict party lines. Republicans oppose the idea given that the new state would be overwhelmingly Democratic — and the proposal faces a far tougher road in the Senate, where even full Democratic support isn’t guaranteed.
The legislation proposes creating a 51st state with one representative and two senators, while a tiny sliver of land including the White House, the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall would remain as a federal district. Instead of the District of Columbia, the new state would be known as Washington, Douglass Commonwealth — named after famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who lived in Washington from 1877 until his death in 1895.
An identical statehood bill passed the House in 2020, but died in the then-Republican-controlled Senate.
Now, with the 2020 elections leaving Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House, Republican senators may resort to a filibuster to stymie the statehood bill.
India adds 314K infections:
India reported a global record of more than 314,000 new infections Thursday as a grim coronavirus surge in the world’s second-most populous country sends more and more sick people into a fragile health care system critically short of hospital beds and oxygen.
The 314,835 infections added in the past 24 hours raise India’s total past 15.9 million cases since the pandemic began. It’s the second-highest total in the world next to the United States. India has nearly 1.4 billion people.
Fatalities rose by 2,104 in the previous 24 hours, pushing India’s overall death toll to 184,657, the Health Ministry said.
A large number of hospitals
are reporting acute shortages of beds and medicine and are running on dangerously low levels of oxygen.
The government is rushing oxygen tankers to replenish supplies to hospitals.
Sub may be too deep: Indonesian navy ships searched Thursday for a submarine that likely sank too deep to retrieve, making survival chances for the 53 people on board slim. Authorities said oxygen in the submarine would run out by early Saturday.
The diesel-powered KRI Nanggala 402 was participating in a training exercise Wednesday when it missed a scheduled reporting call. Officials reported an oil slick and the smell of diesel fuel near the starting position of its last dive, about 60 miles north of the resort island of Bali, though there was no conclusive evidence that they were linked to the submarine.
Britain’s war apology: The British government and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission have apologized after an investigation found that at least 161,000 mostly Africans and Indians who died fighting for the British Empire during World War I weren’t properly honored due to “pervasive racism.”
The investigation found that at least 116,000 people — and possibly as many as 350,000 — were either not commemorated by name or weren’t commemorated at all, according to findings released Thursday. In addition, between 45,000 and 54,000 other casualties were “commemorated unequally.”
“We apologize unreservedly for the historical wrongs found in this report and for failing to live up to founding principle of ‘equality of treatment in death,’ ” the commission said after the findings were released.
Postal board nominees:
President Joe Biden’s
nominees to the governing board of the U.S. Postal Service pledged Thursday to rebuild trust with the American public through prompt deliveries, as they outlined a vision for the agency in their first formal statements to lawmakers.
The nominees — Ron Stroman, a former deputy postmaster general; Amber McReynolds, who leads the nonprofit National Vote at Home Institute; and Anton Hajjar, the former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union — made the remarks during their confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The panel did not immediately vote on the nominations.
The hearing marked the first step in a process that could reshape the board as Postmaster General Louis DeJoy pursues a controversial overhaul of mail operations following outrage last year over delivery slowdowns.