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Presented by Amazon: POLITICO's must-read briefing on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. | | | | | |  | | By Eli Okun and Garrett Ross | | | NEW — President JOE BIDEN is heading to Kentucky on Wednesday to survey damage from the recent tornadoes, the White House announced. He’ll get a briefing in Ft. Campbell before visiting Mayfield and Dawson Springs. THE SHADOW PRESIDENT SPEAKS — Ahead of his talk with Biden this afternoon — which will be a phone call, per WaPo’s Seung Min Kim — Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) sounded not particularly close to getting on board with the BBB. He told reporters he still has big concerns about several aspects of the bill. Among his qualms: — The length of programs. “If it’s whatever plan it will be, pre-K, child care and in-home care, then it should be 10 years, it shouldn’t just be one year here, three years here, five years there. And I think it’d be very transparent for the public to see exactly what they’d be getting for what we’re spending for 10 years.” Changing these time frames would amount to a major reworking of the bill. — Debt. “Whatever Congress is considering doing, they should do it within the limits of what we can afford. … Whatever we raise, I want to ensure there’s money going towards paying down debt, we have to start taking care of our debt and be responsible. And then if we don’t, we’re not transparent and accurate, then where does the money come from?” He also called the CBO score “very sobering.” — Inflation. “It’s real, it’s not transitory. It’s alarming. It’s going up, not down.” The takeaway: “Sounds like he’s in absolutely no hurry to move forward,” NBC’s Garrett Haake reported. The best news for Democrats is probably that Manchin didn’t say explicitly he wants to delay consideration/passage of the bill (though he certainly indicated he doesn’t want to rush it). More from Burgess Everett … Watch his comments Biden told reporters today that he doesn’t plan to link the effects of climate change and the Kentucky tornadoes to the necessity of passing climate legislation when he talks to Manchin. In other Manchin news … The West Virginian has deflected conflict-of-interest criticism from the left over his family’s business and his climate change votes by saying he’s had a blind trust for decades. But WaPo’s Michael Kranish and Anna Phillips reveal in a new investigation : “contrary to his public statements, documents filed by the senator show the blind trust is much too small to account for all his reported earnings from the coal company,” and he signed a sworn statement saying he was aware of his share of the firm worth over $1 million. Ethics experts tell the Post that Manchin’s statements are misleading or even outright lies. (Manchin’s office says he’s fully in compliance with Senate rules.) | | A message from Amazon: The Economic Policy Institute reports that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift up to 3.7 million — including an estimated 1.3 million children — out of poverty.
Amazon sees the need to do more.
Here’s how the company’s industry-leading wages and benefits, like health care on day one, impact employees. | | | SPEAKING OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST — Insider has written a spate of stories this year about members of Congress failing to disclose financial transactions. Now a team led by Dave Levinthal is out with the first installment from a five-month investigative project, “Conflicted Congress,” revealing that dozens of members have violated federal conflict-of-interest laws. They also have a rating of every member of Congress on conflicts and transparency. Click to see the 14 worst offenders A COUPLE MORE BBB BITES … — Capping insulin prices is one of Democrats’ marquee planks in the BBB. But Senate Republicans may try to torpedo the change by using the “Byrd rule” to prevent it from applying to Americans with private insurance, WaPo’s Dan Diamond reports . Now many Senate Republicans who have backed efforts to reduce insulin prices before may be forced to decide between challenging the policy priority and handing Democrats a politically popular victory. The uninsured, on the other hand, won’t benefit either way, prompting progressive criticism. — Opposition from Sen. CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO (D-Nev.) to a nicotine tax in the BBB has scuttled the change in the latest Senate Finance Committee draft text. Cortez Masto had raised concerns that the tax would hit poor people hardest, per NBC’s Sahil Kapur. Good Monday afternoon. Time’s 2021 Person of the Year is ELON MUSK. POLITICS ROUNDUP THE NEW POWER CENTERS — State supreme courts are playing a bigger role than ever before in the ongoing redistricting process, thanks to partisan bickering, nonpartisan reforms and a weakened federal role, Ally Mutnick reports . That invests quite a bit of power in the usually low-profile judicial bodies, which could give Democrats a boost in states like North Carolina and Pennsylvania but shore up Republican gerrymanders in states like Wisconsin. Notably, Ally writes, “while some of these judges campaign for their position, many of them are appointed, meaning the decisions come from the hands of unelected arbiters.” 2022 WATCH — Speaker NANCY PELOSI is wading into the crowded Maryland governor’s race on behalf of former DNC Chair TOM PEREZ, whom she endorsed in the primary this morning. More from WaPo — As MEHMET OZ takes on the Pennsylvania Senate race, “The Dr. Oz Show” will officially come to an end Jan. 14, per Variety. THE WHITE HOUSE NEW ON THE SCHEDULE — This afternoon, Biden is signing a new executive order aimed at slashing red tape to make government services work better for people on tax filings, electronic health records, passport renewals and more. Details from Spectrum News | | | | JOIN TUESDAY FOR A WOMEN RULE 2021 REWIND AND A LOOK AHEAD AT 2022: Congress is sprinting to get through a lengthy and challenging legislative to-do list before the end of the year that has major implications for women’s rights. Join Women Rule editor Elizabeth Ralph and POLITICO journalists Laura Barrón-López, Eleanor Mueller, Elena Schneider and Elana Schor for a virtual roundtable that will explore the biggest legislative and policy shifts in 2021 affecting women and what lies ahead in 2022. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH LATEST DEVELOPMENT — The Jan. 6 panel is delaying BILL STEPIEN’s deposition as he engages with the committee, ABC’s Ben Siegel reports. POLICY CORNER KNOWING GURBIR GREWAL — The SEC’s new enforcement head wants to crack down on Wall Street wrongdoers, and his extensive experience in government distinguishes him from the corporate lawyers who have often filled the role, WSJ’s Dave Michaels writes in a Grewal profile. “We can’t arrest them,” he tells the WSJ. “We can get them out of the industry.” But Grewal’s tough talk has prompted some concern in the industry that he’ll be overzealous with punishment. IMMIGRATION FILES — Thirty-four more asylum-seekers were sent to Mexico this weekend, more than doubling the number of people so removed since a court mandated that the Biden administration restore the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, per CBS’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez. THE PANDEMIC SHOCKING STATISTIC — More than a year and a half into the pandemic, one in every 100 older Americans has died from Covid-19, per NYT’s Julie Bosman, Amy Harmon and Albert Sun. They account for about three-quarters of all deaths in the country, with that share rising recently. “In both sharp and subtle ways, the pandemic has amplified an existing divide between older and younger Americans.” MANDATE DEBATE — Struggling with labor shortages and in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling, some major hospital networks around the country are backpedaling on Covid vaccine mandates, report WSJ’s Robbie Whelan and Melanie Evans. BEYOND THE BELTWAY THE LATEST IN KENTUCKY — At a news conference this morning, Kentucky Gov. ANDY BESHEAR said the latest death toll from the recent devastating tornadoes is 64. At least another 105 people remain unaccounted for. More from the Louisville Courier-Journal | | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | AMERICA AND THE WORLD PULLOUT FALLOUT — The Pentagon won’t punish anyone for the misbegotten August drone strike in Afghanistan that killed 10 civilians, NYT’s Eric Schmitt reports, as Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN accepted the recommendations of top commanders not to penalize those involved. It’s in line with how the military has handled most civilian casualty incidents, but the move has already prompted some outrage in a situation where “[a]lmost everything senior defense officials asserted in the hours, days and weeks after the Kabul drone strike turned out to be false.” — In a rare interview, Afghanistan’s foreign minister tells AP’s Kathy Gannon that the Taliban has no issues with the U.S. and wants the Biden administration to unfreeze billions of dollars in funds for the country. AMIR KHAN MUTTAQI also said he doesn’t foresee cooperating with the U.S. to fight the Islamic State. MEDIAWATCH DISINFORMATION DIGEST — Politicians’ email lists are an under-examined source of political misinformation, pumping baseless or outright untrue claims directly into people’s inboxes, NYT’s Maggie Astor reports . In an experiment, the NYT signed up for the campaign email lists of hundreds of members of Congress. They found plenty of misinformation on both sides, but much more from Republicans — in a whopping 15% of emails, compared to 2% for Democrats. The big picture is that the emails “illuminate how ubiquitous misinformation has become among Republicans, fueled in large part by former President Donald J. Trump.” YEAR IN REVIEW — Democrats’ pandemic relief law, the Texas winter blackouts, DEREK CHAUVIN’s conviction, the Florida condo collapse and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan were among the news stories that broke through to the most Americans, Morning Consult’s Eli Yokley finds in an analysis of the year’s surveys. Democrats were generally more tuned into the news than Republicans, except on rising gas prices. PLAYBOOKERS MEDIA MOVES — Claudine Ebeid is joining The Atlantic to lead audio as executive producer. She most recently was a senior editor of news projects at the NYT, and is an NPR alum. Andrea Valdez is also moving from SVP of audience strategy to a managing editor in the newsroom. ENGAGED — Samantha Summers, senior manager of government affairs at Albertsons Companies, and David Kemp, a research analyst at the Cato Institute, got engaged this weekend at the back of the Lincoln Memorial. They met while working at Cato in 2017. 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