https://thehill.com/policy/finance/budget/533750-sanders-to-wield-gavel-as-gatekeeper-for-key-biden-proposals

The Democratic wins in Georgia have elevated Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to a key legislative role in the new Congress.

President-elect Joe Biden’s former primary rival is now set to become chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, where he will wield influence over some of the biggest legislative priorities under the Democratic majority.

The panel sets the terms for budget reconciliation, a procedure that allows senators to approve certain tax and spending bills with a simple majority and sidestep the 60-vote threshold needed for most legislation.

With a 50-50 split that will often require tie-breaking votes cast by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Democrats are likely to find themselves relying on reconciliation to advance the parts of their legislative agenda most likely to draw full GOP opposition, from more COVID-19 relief, including another round of stimulus checks, to infrastructure, health and climate legislation.

As Budget chair, Sanders will have the opportunity to shape each reconciliation bill, a role fellow progressives are relishing.

“Everybody on the Democratic side wins if we pass the most maximalist proposals that all 50 Democrats can agree on. What Bernie Sanders being Budget chair means is that there will be at least one strong advocate in the room for the maximalist equation,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The liberal group is advocating for a $5 trillion package combining coronavirus relief and infrastructure spending. That amount, Green argued, would be much smaller if the decision making was left to lawmakers like Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).

“You could see a scenario where it was Schumer, Manchin and Coons in the room, where they’d find things to agree on, but it would be $2 trillion less than what they could have passed,” Green said.

But some argue that the particulars of the budget reconciliation process, combined with a razor-thin Democratic majority in both chambers, could lead to a scenario where Sanders and his committee gavel aren’t as powerful.

“There are things you can do through reconciliation that you couldn’t do otherwise, but if you don’t have a majority that already agrees on the policy, the rules won’t save you,” said Molly Reynolds, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution.

“The fact that the majority is so slim really does mean that Democrats are going to have to get all their members on board.”

While Sanders will be in the room and oversee the process in the Senate Budget Committee, the 50-50 split means just one Democratic senator could sink a reconciliation bill, essentially giving everyone in the caucus the power to torpedo major legislation.

Reconciliation was originally intended as a tool to let Congress adjust mandatory spending and taxation in order to hit its budget goals.

The rules allow every individual section of reconciliation legislation to be challenged individually.

Any one part can be excluded if the Senate parliamentarian determines that it does not adhere to the requirements. For example, reconciliation bills cannot touch Social Security, nor can they approve discretionary spending. Instead, they must have a clear budgetary effect, and policies cannot be deemed to be “merely incidental” to that effect.

“It’s difficult to say exactly what they can and can’t do, because any individual provision has to be approved by the parliamentarian,” said Reynolds.

While it should be possible to pass stimulus checks, change tax rates and fund emergency vaccine spending through reconciliation, it becomes far more complicated when dealing with infrastructure, climate or even long-held Democratic goals such as raising the minimum wage.

That means that Democrats, and Sanders, may have to think of clever ways to advance their policy goals, without a clear indication of whether or not they will hold up.

“It’s a very complicated process, it’s like a chess game, there are many moves here,” said Hoagland.

A single vaccination was not enough to protect her

Any Member who refuses to wear a mask should be fully held accountable for endangering our lives because of their selfish idiocy. I'm calling for every single Member who refuses to wear a mask in the Capitol to be fined and removed from the floor by the Sergeant at Arms.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) January 12, 2021

I share the outrage and anger of those across America who have watched Trump fail to combat this raging pandemic and refuse to take care of Americans who are suffering, dying, and devastated.

I will not rest until I do everything in my power to remove this President from office.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) January 12, 2021

Ding Dong

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/business/sheldon-adelson-dead.html

Sheldon G. Adelson, a cabdriver’s son who built the world’s largest empire of casinos and resort hotels in Las Vegas, Macau, Singapore and other gambling meccas and used his vast wealth to promote right-wing political agendas in America and Israel, died on Monday night. He was 87.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/12/josh-hawley-fanned-flames-diehard-trump-voters

Hawley is a conservative evangelical Christian who is ardently anti-abortion and known for railing against the “cosmopolitan elite”. Unusually for a Republican politician, however, he has also called to investigate and possibly break up major Silicon Valley tech companies and criticized corporations such as Walmart for underpaying their employees.

In December, he formed an unexpected alliance with congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the socialist senator Bernie Sanders in an unsuccessful attempt to secure higher Covid relief checks. Hawley called the $600 checks which Congress ultimately issued insulting to struggling people.

The senator’s favorite pet issue, however, is the evils of big tech. He has pushed for the government to investigate Facebook and Google for antitrust and consumer violations and has described social media as addictive and “a parasite” on society. In 2019, he introduced a bill in Congress that would automatically limit time on social media platforms to 30 minutes a day unless individual users opt out of the requirement. The unsuccessful bill also sought to ban functions such as “infinite scrolling” and autoplay.

The libertarian wing of the conservative movement is, unsurprisingly, leery about Hawley and his enthusiasm for using the levers of the state to enforce morality. The libertarian magazine Reason has called Hawley “a first-rate demagogue” and “the ultimate Karen”.

The extent to which Hawley is actually an economic populist, let alone economically leftwing, is questionable. He opposed raising the minimum wage in Missouri and has endorsed anti-union legislation. But he has a finger in the wind, and is keenly attuned to the fact that the Republican party, historically the party of the more educated and affluent, is increasingly becoming the party of the working class.

Hawley appears to be placing his bets on a political realignment, one in which Trump was the beginning, not the culmination, of a political phenomenon. The Missouri senator has worked overtime to position himself as a voice for socially conservative, working-class Americans.

The notion that Hawley – Ivy League-educated, the son of a banker – is a man of the people may be difficult to swallow. Then again, Trump, a billionaire, successfully ran for president by presenting himself as an outsider attacking an establishment elite.

The question now is whether Hawley’s eagerness to court diehard Trump voters has helped his 2024 ambitions, or hindered them. His actions may be popular with part of his Republican base in Missouri, a state which Trump won by a more than 15% margin.

It seems less likely, however, that the American public as a whole will be sympathetic. Hawley did “something that was really dumbass,” Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, complained on NPR. “This was a stunt. It was a terrible, terrible idea.”

Seems like a good idea to me. And it needs only a simple majority.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/opinion/Trump-impeachment-disqualification.html

Congress should use its constitutional power to prohibit instigators and perpetrators of last week’s violent siege of the Capitol, including President Trump, from holding public office ever again.

On Monday, House leaders introduced an article of impeachment against the president for “inciting violence against the government of the United States,” an obligatory action, given the gravity of the president’s transgression. But this is not the only route for ensuring accountability. The Constitution has another provision that is tailor-made for the unthinkable, traitorous events of Jan. 6 that goes beyond what impeachment can accomplish.

Emerging from the wreckage of the Civil War, Congress was deeply concerned that former leaders of the Confederacy would take over state and federal offices to once again subvert the constitutional order. To prevent that from happening, Congress passed the 14th Amendment, which in Section 3 bars public officials and certain others who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution from serving in public office. Although little known today, Section 3 was used in the post-Civil War era to disqualify former rebels from taking office. And, in the wake of perhaps the boldest domestic attack on our nation’s democracy since the Civil War, Section 3 can once again serve as a critical tool to protect our constitutional order.

Congress can also decide how this legislation will be enforced by election officials and the courts, based on all the facts as they come out. The Constitution prohibits Congress from enacting so-called bills of attainder, which single out individuals for guilt. But, in addition to the legislation we suggest, Congress could also pass nonbinding sense-of-Congress resolutions that specify whom they intend to disqualify. This would provide a road map for election officials and judges, should any people named in those resolutions seek to run for or hold public office. And Congress can do this by a simple majority — far less of a hurdle than the two-thirds majority in the Senate that removing the president requires.

We believe legislators of conscience should brandish this option not as a substitute for impeachment but as a complement to it. Senators shouldn’t be allowed to escape or indefinitely delay a vote on Mr. Trump’s conduct simply by running out the clock on his term. (The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has suggested no trial will happen before the inauguration.) Republicans should be on notice that whether or not they face a vote on conviction and removal of Mr. Trump, they will at the very least be compelled to vote by a Democratic-controlled Congress on barring Mr. Trump from ever holding public office again.

This option also has power that the impeachment process lacks. As we learn more in the coming months about who is culpable for the siege, the ranks of those disqualified from office will likely swell. The legislation we envision would allow future courts and decision makers to apply the law after the investigations are complete. Eventually, we should have a 9/11 Commission-style report on what led to these events; the facts marshaled there can be deployed under the legislation we propose.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/533798-trump-says-impeachment-effort-causing-tremendous-anger

President Trump on Tuesday criticized efforts by House Democrats to move forward with impeaching him a second time, calling it “ridiculous” and the cause of “tremendous anger.”

The Democratic-controlled House is poised to vote Wednesday on impeaching Trump for inciting a violent mob of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol last week. The attack left five individuals dead and has prompted broad condemnation of Trump’s actions and rhetoric.

Trump, who spoke to reporters before leaving Washington for a trip to Texas on Tuesday to tour sections of the border wall, said that a second impeachment would be a “continuation of the greatest witch hunt in the history of politics.” He also said that he wanted “no violence” following the assault in Washington, D.C., last week.

Trump for two months refused to accept President-elect Joe Biden’s win and repeatedly claimed that the election was stolen from him through widespread fraud, assertions that have been roundly disputed by election officials and others.

The attack at the Capitol last week took place after Trump urged a crowd of supporters on the Ellipse to head to the complex and fight the election results as Congress convened to certify the Electoral College votes.