Новости за 19.11.2021

On Thursday evening, the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, finally released what everyone on Capitol Hill had been breathlessly awaiting: its score of the Build Back Better Act, the multitrillion-dollar spending bill that will likely be the foundation of the party’s midterms pitch next year. For weeks, Democrats had fretted over the score’s impact. Given the financial jujitsu required to say, as Joe Biden did, that the multitrillion-dollar bill would “cost zero dollars”—the underlying idea... Читать дальше...

Perhaps John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, ranking member of the Economic Policy Subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee, was auditioning for a gig on the Comedy Channel when, at a hearing on Thursday, he ripped into Cornell law professor Saule T. Omarova, President Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, the country’s top bank regulator. 

The House on Friday morning approved President Joe Biden’s massive social spending bill, representing a historic investment in health care, childcare, climate, and education and bringing the legislation one step closer to becoming law. That the House managed finally to bring this bill to the floor and pass it is a significant achievement for Democrats—the measure has been the subject of intense negotiations that have burdened it with substantial delays. But Democrats should wait to break out the champagne... Читать дальше...

As Democrats in the House of Representatives geared up finally to hold the much-awaited vote on President Biden’s expansive social spending bill, they knew a particular member of their caucus could not be counted on: Congressman Jared Golden of Maine.

The American flag is so firmly embedded in our national culture that it’s impossible to imagine any alternatives to it. But the Stars and Stripes wasn’t the first flag flown by Americans after breaking away from the British Empire, and the Patriot activists drew up a wide variety of ensigns and banners to proclaim their independence. The Massachusetts legislature even decreed that its forces would adopt a flag already used by George Washington’s ships: a white background with a green pine tree... Читать дальше...

Is a new dawn breaking in the fight against the global pandemic? Now that two major pharmaceutical firms have filed for emergency use authorization for new antiviral pills, we may soon have some valuable arrows in our quiver to fight Covid-19. Per company reports, a short course of Merck’s molnupiravir regimen reduces hospitalizations among infected patients by 50 percent; Pfizer’s Paxlovid curbed admissions by an eye-popping 89 percent—and neither treatment group reported any deaths. The Biden... Читать дальше...

More than two months after U.S. combat troops formally withdrew from Afghanistan, ending a disastrous and failed 20-year war, one might expect that the war drums of U.S. foreign policy commentators would be getting a rest. Instead, a new potential target has been identified: a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

“If I must join Alexander Hamilton, the first person who attempted to be censured by this House,” intoned Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, “then so be it.”