Playbook PM: Dem happy talk vs. reality

From: POLITICO Playbook - Wednesday Oct 27,2021 05:40 pm

Oct 27, 2021

By Ryan Lizza, Garrett Ross and Eli Okun

Presented by

DEMS SAY A DEAL IS WITHIN REACH — Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) said this morning that he and KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.) can “absolutely” agree to a deal today, giving renewed hope to Democrats that they can deliver President JOE BIDEN’s legislative agenda in the near future, Burgess Everett, Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris report.

— In a private meeting this morning, Speaker NANCY PELOSI told her Dem colleagues that reconciliation negotiations are “in pretty good shape.”

“It’s lamb eat lamb. There is no bad decision. We have to choose,” Pelosi said, according to a source familiar with her remarks.

— Manchin and Sinema were meeting with White House officials this morning (it ended around 12:45 p.m. after roughly two hours, per Burgess), fueling more talk that Dems were closing in on a deal.

CNN’s Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela): “Leaving meeting with WH officials, Sen. Joe Manchin said this on prospects for a deal: ‘It’s really up to the rest of the caucus.’ He later said: ‘Everyone has to participate.’ All Sen. Kyrsten Sinema would say is they are ‘doing great, making progress.’”

BUT, BUT, BUT — It still remains unclear exactly which provisions they’ll agree to include in the slimmed-down reconciliation package and, further, how progressives — and some moderates — will react. There’s a lot of confusion and angst over the revenue portion of the bill.

— In an interview with Playbook this morning, Sen. MARK WARNER (D-Va.), who is on the Finance Committee, laid out a detailed menu of revenue options that sounded like the kind of conversation legislators have at the beginning of the process, not the day it’s all supposed to be wrapped in a bow and presented as a final agreement.

To take one example, Warner, who has not been a big fan of the wealth tax, is pushing a proposal that he says would raise $250 billion by adjusting the 3.8% Medicare surtax that was part of Obamacare. 1:56 clip of Warner on the negotiations

— Meanwhile, Manchin has doubts about Sen. RON WYDEN’s (D-Ore.) new billionaire tax plan, per Burgess, Heather and Sarah: “Manchin said the tax on billionaires’ assets is ‘convoluted’ and instead pitched a ‘patriotic’ 15 percent tax on weal thy people. He said he did not want to target a certain class of people through the tax code.” The West Virginia senator also threw cold water on health care and paid leave proposals, citing concerns about the national debt.

— It’s not just the moderates. A very irritated Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.), when asked if there would be an agreement today, said, “I don’t know. But I don’t think so.”

Without naming them, he then said that Sinema and Manchin have “sabotaged” any agreement on taxes: “I’m not quite clear in terms of the revenue package. Every sensible revenue option seems to be destroyed. Should we raise corporate tax rates, personal income taxes for the very wealthy? Of course, we should. But at least one person in the caucus doesn’t want to do that. Should we demand that the billionaires have to pay their fair share of taxes? Yes. There’s another person who doesn’t want to do that. So it seems to me almost every sensible progressive revenue option that the president wants and the American people want, and that I want, seems to be sabotaged.”

Good Wednesday afternoon.

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VA. GOV RACE

SURGE IN EARLY VOTING — Election Day is next officially next Tuesday, but “more than 788,000 ballots had been cast in person and by mail as of Tuesday, more than four times the early turnout four years ago,” NYT’s Nick Corasaniti writes. “The surge in early voting signals that the sea change in voting habits in 2020 may forever alter elections around the country.” But along with this new attitude toward early voting comes a new set of challenges.

CONGRESS

WATCH: Where are Democrats in the tax hike fight? Once again, Democrats are scrambling to finance their spending bill after Sinema’s refusal to raise rates on high earners and major corporations. Democrats are building an entirely new tax regime on the fly, amid numerous questions over not only how it would work but whether it is even constitutional. This week, Brian Faler joins Ryan to break down whether Democrats can find alternative ways to pay for Biden's Build Back Better agenda.

FED UP — Senate Democrats are planning a new bill that would increase the oversight of Federal Reserve officials in response to the new ethics code that the bank released last week. The bill “would prevent Fed officials from trading individual stocks, but allow investments in diversified mutual funds, investment trusts and U.S. Treasury securities,” WSJ’s Michael Derby reports. “If enacted, the law would allow a window to sell prohibited securities, or officials could hold them while in office or place them in a blind trust.”

DISCLOSURE DUSTUP — The latest member of Congress to run up against federal disclosure laws is Rep. SUZAN DELBENE (D-Wash.), Insider’s Dave Levinthal reports. In early September, DelBene’s husband, KURT, sold between $5 million to $25 million of Microsoft stock. “What's less clear is whether DelBene, herself a former Microsoft executive who represents a district in Washington state, violated a federal conflict-of-interest law by disclosing this trade about six weeks after the fact.” By law, DelBene had until Oct. 3 to file her disclosure. But she didn’t do so until Oct. 15. But the House Ethics Committee says she’s in the clear, underscoring “the ambiguity and inconsistent interpretations,” of the STOCK Act, Levinthal writes.

ALL POLITICS

OFF THE DEEP END — Meridith McGraw has a must-read this morning on the thin-but-emerging fissure between Republicans who are pushing to enact voting restrictions across the country and those who, like Trump, are pushing false and preposterous conspiracy theories about elections.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — The Renew America Movement, a self-described “pro-democracy” group founded by current and former Republicans opposed to Trump, is releasing a list of the top GOP targets it wants to unseat in 2022. The list consists of members who Renew America says “have posed a threat to a healthy democracy and a well-functioning republic.” The 13 targets are House Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY, House Minority Whip STEVE SCALISE, and GOP Reps. ANDY BIGGS (Ariz.), DAN BISHOP (N.C.), LAUREN BOEBERT (Colo.), MADISON CAWTHORN (N.C.), MATT GAETZ (Fla.), BOB GOOD (Va.), PAUL GOSAR (Ariz.), JIM JORDAN (Ohio), BURGESS OWENS (Utah), SCOTT PERRY (Pa.) and MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (Ga.).

DEMS GET A NEW 2020 AUTOPSY — How did Democrats prevail in Nevada and Wisconsin in 2020? Democratic data firm Catalist is out with a new in-depth study of the election, write Scott Bland and Elena Schnieder, and their findings include some surprises: “Latinas drifted away from Democrats in Nevada at a higher rate than Latino men compared to the last presidential election; white voters who didn't graduate from college didn’t help Biden as much in Wisconsin as they did nationally; and first-time voters of color are not necessarily voting just for Democrats.” The report

INTRODUCING CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. GET A FIRST LOOK AT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.

THE PANDEMIC

THE LONG GAME — The White House has said that people who suffer from “long Covid” would qualify for federal disability protections and benefits. “But with no widely agreed-on method of diagnosing the ailment, those who believe they have long Covid are finding it difficult to qualify under a system that is unfamiliar and already tricky to navigate,” NYT’s Amanda Morris writes.

GOING GLOBAL — Merck has struck a deal with a U.N.-backed nonprofit that will “allow companies in 105 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, to sublicense the formulation” for its novel antiviral coronavirus pill, offering a reprieve for nations where vaccines are not readily available, NYT’s Stephanie Nolen reports.

VALLEY TALK

THE LATEST DROP — A new batch of Facebook documents, reported by AP’s Amanda Seitz, “provide a first-hand look at how Trump’s social media posts” in the wake of GEORGE FLOYD’s murder, “ignited more anger in an already deeply divided country that was eventually lit ‘on fire’ with reports of hate speech and violence across the platform. Facebook’s own internal, automated controls, meant to catch posts that violate rules, predicted with almost 90% certainty that Trump’s message broke the tech company’s rules against inciting violence. Yet, the tech giant didn’t take any action on Trump’s message.”

FTC VS. FACEBOOK — The FTC has “begun looking into disclosures that Facebook Inc.’s internal company research had identified ill effects from its products,” sources tell WSJ’s John McKinnon and Brent Kendall. “Officials are looking into whether Facebook research documents indicate that it might have violated a 2019 settlement with the agency over privacy concerns, for which the company paid a record $5 billion penalty, one of the people said.”

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

LIBERTY FACES NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT NONPROFIT STATUS — Liberty University President JERRY PREVO “told a top university official this year that he wanted the large Christian school to become a more effective political player with the goal of helping to influence elections,” according to a call recording shared with Michael Stratford and Brandon Ambrosino. “The comments by Prevo … raise new questions about the blurred line between education and politics at the university, which as a 501(c)(3) charity is not supposed to participate directly in political campaigns.”

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POLICY CORNER

THE NEW ECONOMY — Bloomberg’s Josh Eidelson takes a look at how the so-called “Great Resignation” and “Striketober” are playing into the hands of workers who are fighting for “unemployment reform that could translate into lasting leverage.”

HISTORY MAKING — The U.S. “issued its first passport with an ‘X’ gender designation — a milestone in the recognition of the rights of people who don’t identify as male or female — and expects to be able to offer the option more broadly next year, the State Department said Wednesday,” per AP’s Colleen Slevin in Denver.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF WAR ON DRUGS — HHS is aiming to address drug overdoses in a new strategy outlined by Secretary XAVIER BECCARA today, “committing more federal support for harm reduction techniques such as distribution of clean syringes and test strips used to check street drugs for hidden fentanyl,” WaPo’s Lenny Bernstein reports.

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

THE CHINA DILEMMA — Gen. MARK MILLEY, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is raising concerns about recent weapons tests in China amid the escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing, Bloomberg’s Peter Martin reports.

“‘I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that. It has all of our attention.’ Milley’s comments are the most significant acknowledgment by a U.S. official of reports that China’s military conducted possibly two hypersonic weapons tests over the summer, including the launch into space of an orbiting hypersonic weapon capable of carrying a nuclear payload.”

HOW IT HAPPENED — NYT’s Alan Rappeport has the inside details on how the global tax deal got done ahead of its completion this weekend in Rome. The push came over “Zoom calls from basements and a breakfast in Brussels” that proved pivotal between Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN and Irish Finance Minister PASCHAL DONOHOE, marking “a signature achievement for Ms. Yellen, who has spent the past eight months trying to persuade nations to agree on a global tax pact that sputtered during the Trump administration.”

MEDIAWATCH

HEADS UP — NBCUniversal News Group is taking over as the new media partner for the Aspen Ideas Festival, they announced today . The 2022 festival will take place from June 25 to July 1 in Aspen, Colo.

PLAYBOOKERS

SPOTTED at a party on Tuesday night celebrating the opening of Ice Miller’s new D.C. office: Reps. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Greg Pence (R-Ind.), Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), Jim Baird (R-Ind.), Trey Hollingsworth (R-Ind.) and Troy Balderson (R-Ind.), former Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio.), George Hornedo, Jarrod Loadholt, Tim Day, Lawren Mills and Brad Rateike, Raul Alvillar and Michael Coleman.

SPOTTED at a private screening of “No Time To Die,” hosted by Gloria Dittus and Story Partners at the AMC Georgetown on Tuesday night: Leslie Belcher, Janna Ryan, Mitch and Susan Bainwol, Rick and Gina Dearborn, Kelly Luger, Susan Neely, Kent Knutson and Chris and Amy Swonger.

TRANSITIONS — Dan Kammen is joining USAID’s Power Africa as a senior adviser for energy innovation. He is the James and Katherine Lau Distinguished Chair in Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley and is an EPA, DOE and USAID alum. … Neri Zilber has joined Israel Policy Forum as a policy adviser and primary podcast host. He’s a Tel Aviv-based journalist who covers Middle East politics. … Margarita Diaz is joining Blue State as a strategy director. She most recently was a digital engagement lead for the Biden-Harris transition and is a Kirsten Gillibrand and Hillary for America alum. …

… Stephanie Carlson is now deputy legislative director and ag policy adviser for Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). She most recently was legislative assistant for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). … Chanda Daniels is now digital director and press secretary for Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.). She most recently was associate comms manager at the International Women's Media Foundation and is also the co-founder of The Reclaim. … Brittany Mason is joining Argyle as a director in the D.C. office. She most recently was a senior account supervisor at Edelman.