Joe manchin

Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images At the outset of the debt-ceiling fight, Joe Biden drew two lines in the sand: He insisted, first, that the United States would not default on its debt and, second, that he would not negotiate over legislation to prevent such a cataclysm. After all, both parties were ostensibly opposed to a default. And raising the debt ceiling merely enables the Treasury Department to finance the spending Congress has already authorized. Democrats did not owe Republicans any concessions in exchange for their cooperation in preventing a financial calamity. The two parties would eventually need to reach a compromise on the federal budget in order to keep the government funded. But the GOP had no right to use the threat of economic sabotage to secure more leverage in fiscal negotiations. Now, the United States is at risk of defaulting on its debt within weeks if not days . And Biden has accepted the House GOP’s premise that it is owed deficit reduction in … [Read more...] about Is Joe Biden Botching the Debt-Ceiling Fight?

Environmental activists are enraged by the deal struck between President Biden and Republicans to raise the debt ceiling because it would also expedite construction of a bitterly contested gas pipeline and includes unusual measures to insulate that project from judicial review. The $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline, intended to carry natural gas about 300 miles from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia across nearly 1,000 streams and wetlands before ending in Virginia, is a top priority of Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, but has been fought by environmentalists and many Virginia Democrats for a decade. A constellation of environmental groups condemned the pipeline’s inclusion in a debt limit deal, with one group, Climate Defiance, planning to protest Tuesday evening at the New York home of Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader. One of the companies behind the pipeline, NextEra Energy, is a major donor to Mr. Schumer and Mr. Manchin. In … [Read more...] about Debt Deal Includes a Green Light for a Contentious Pipeline

Follow live updates as the Senate votes on the debt ceiling bill. The full legislative text of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s agreement in principle with President Biden to suspend the nation’s borrowing limit revealed new and important details about the deal, which House lawmakers are expected to vote on this week. The centerpiece of the agreement remains a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling , which caps the total amount of money the government is allowed to borrow. Suspending that cap, which is now set at $31.4 trillion, would allow the government to keep borrowing money and pay its bills on time — as long as Congress passes the agreement before June 5, when Treasury has said the United States will run out of cash. In exchange for suspending the limit, Republicans demanded a range of policy concessions from Mr. Biden. Chief among them are limits on the growth of federal discretionary spending over the next two years. Mr. Biden also agreed to some new work requirements … [Read more...] about New Details in Debt Limit Deal: Where $136 Billion in Cuts Will Come From

Has oil activism peaked? The annual shareholder meetings of Exxon Mobil and Chevron, scheduled for Wednesday, are set to be largely sedate, as they will be held virtually. But their European rivals had raucous meetings last week, with environmental protesters storming the stage at Shell’s gathering and clashing with tear-gas-wielding police outside Total’s. Despite the drama, however, climate-focused shareholder activists are being forced to rethink their approach, two years after the tiny hedge fund Engine No. 1 won a stunning victory over Exxon, Vivienne Walt writes for DealBook. Activists have failed to win more than 50 percent in many key proxy votes since then. That string of disappointing results is forcing a reckoning at some of the sector’s biggest players: “In June, we’re going to revisit our strategy, and think about what’s next for the coming years,” Mark van Baal, the founder of the shareholder activist group Follow This, told DealBook. And it comes despite … [Read more...] about Following Setbacks, Climate Activists Rethink Their Approach

There are plausible defenses to be made of the Biden administration’s negotiating strategy on the debt ceiling . I happen to believe Kevin McCarthy’s default threat was a bluff, and if not, Biden could have used executive action to avoid that outcome. But if you believe Republicans really would have triggered a global economic meltdown if Biden had refused to pay a ransom, and that the Supreme Court would have let them, then this ransom was about as painless as he could have gotten. And you could argue that, in the face of a likely challenge by Donald Trump, Biden was correct to worry first about avoiding a hit to the economy and can fret about the long-run costs of rewarding hostage-takers later. But there is a small coterie of fanatical centrists who believe Biden did not merely manage to contain the damage. They see his deal as a shimmering triumph of bipartisan brilliance, not an exercise in harm reduction but something close to perfection itself. By “fanatical,” I am … [Read more...] about Centrist Fanatics Go Wild Over Debt-Ceiling Deal

Shalanda Young couldn’t sleep. A small team of Biden administration officials had spent the past two days in intense negotiations with House Republicans in an attempt to avert a catastrophic government default. Ms. Young, the White House budget director, had been trading proposals on federal spending caps with negotiators deputized by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose Republican caucus was refusing to raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit without deep cuts. Now, as she scrolled Netflix in search of “bad television” to distract her racing mind, Ms. Young had a sinking feeling. What if she cut a deal to reduce spending and raise the debt limit, only to see Republicans attempt to force through much deeper cuts when it came time to pass annual appropriations bills this fall? At work the next morning, Ms. Young asked her staff how to stop that from happening. They settled on a plan , which in essence would penalize Republicans’ most cherished spending programs if they failed … [Read more...] about Biden’s Debt-Deal Strategy: Win in the Fine Print