Another Republican President, Another Recession.

hanimmal said:

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-eviction-rental-assistance-539e1e1155d0e51eced4ae96e6e8cd14View attachment 5089773

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WASHINGTON (AP) — For more than a year, the Food and Drug Administration lacked a permanent head when the agency was central in the battle against COVID-19. Once President Joe Biden nominated Dr. Robert Califf to head the agency, it took the Senate three months to confirm him.

The political battles over Califf’s nomination highlight the difficulties that Biden faces in filling key positions throughout his administration.

The vacancies in high-ranking positions across the executive branch could put a drag on Biden’s ability to fight the pandemic, implement the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law and boost the economy with inflation levels at a 40-year high.

“Without leadership and experts, we’ve seen departments increasingly stressed,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “There is a struggle to get appropriations done, there is talk about defaulting on the debt ceiling,” she said, adding that unfilled jobs affect the government’s fiscal position and the president’s overall agenda.

The nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which works to make government more effective, points to 70 high-ranking positions across the government without a confirmed nominee, including at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department and the Transportation Department.

The White House blames gridlock from Republicans in a sharply divided Senate, but it also has not submitted nominations for many of the open positions.

The White House says the Biden administration has nominated 569 people, of whom 302 have been confirmed and 247 are waiting to go through the confirmation process. That’s out of 1,200 civilian positions requiring Senate confirmation.

In Biden’s first year, the Senate confirmed 41% of his nominations, according to the Partnership for Public Service. In comparison, 75% of George W. Bush’s nominees were confirmed in his first year, compared with 69% for Barack Obama and 57% for Donald Trump.

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The group is calling for a reduction in the number of Senate-confirmed nominees, stating that vetting and disclosure requirements are increasingly complex, and delays in the Senate confirmation process grow with each transition.

“Would it be better if it could happen faster? Yes,” said former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. “Ideally the confirmation process would be streamlined.” But he added that there needs to be accountability for these important positions and a process for questioning nominees about how they would do the job.

Lew was confirmed by the Senate less than two months after he was nominated by Obama.

What the vacancies mean for some of Biden’s policy priorities:

CREATING FISCAL POLICY

At the Treasury Department, at least five Senate-confirmed positions are unfilled, including the undersecretary for international affairs and treasurer of the U.S.

A Treasury Department without an international affairs head will make Secretary Janet Yellen’s hope to lead the implementation of a global corporate taxation agreement increasingly difficult.

Lew told The Associated Press that having Senate-confirmed people with prior policymaking and government experience on staff will at least fill in the gaps where vacancies exist.

“If you look at the Treasury team, starting at the very top, you have the secretary and and deputy secretary with deep experience in policymaking,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of career talent, which makes transitions go more smoothly.”

The key to filling empty seats, he said, “is getting the congressional process to work better.”

FIGHTING THE PANDEMIC

At the Department of Health and Human Services, two major science agencies remain without permanent Senate-confirmed leadership at a time as the administration struggles with its communications on the pandemic and the country might be reopening.

One of the agencies is the FDA. Califf’s nomination had stalled for months in the Senate in part due to his consulting work for pharmaceutical companies and allegations that he had failed to effectively regulate addictive opioids. He was narrowly confirmed last week to the post, which he had held briefly under Obama.

The National Institutes of Health is also missing a director, although budget uncertainty is currently a bigger concern, said Ellie Dehoney a top policy expert with Research!America, a nonprofit that advocates for national spending on health and medical research.

“They are constrained because they are under an old budget and they can’t launch new programs very easily,” she said.

Staff morale remains steady nonetheless. “What we have heard around NIH is a desire to stay and particularly to see through this pandemic,” Dehoney said.

IMPLEMENTING INFRASTRUCTURE PLANS

At the Transportation Department, acting heads are in place at the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, two of the three agencies at the forefront of promoting roadway safety, even as the department launches a new national strategy to stave off record increases in traffic fatalities. The third agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is awaiting full Senate confirmation of Steven Cliff, Biden’s pick to head the agency, after a committee approved the nomination Feb. 2.

The department also lacks a nominee for head of the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and will soon have a vacancy as well for head of the Federal Aviation Administration after Stephen Dickson steps down on March 31.

At the highway agency, deputy administrator Stephanie Pollack, a former state transportation secretary in Massachusetts, is key in implementing provisions of Biden’s new infrastructure law, such as helping to issue guidance to states on use of billions in highway money and distribute competitive grants to promote traffic safety.

At the motor carrier agency, which regulates the trucking industry, Biden lost his pick for administrator after Meera Joshi left to take a post in New York Mayor Eric Adams’ administration. The department recently shifted its deputy assistant secretary for safety policy, Robin Hutcheson, to serve as the agency’s acting administrator.

Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state safety offices, expressed concern about the ability of the acting heads to effectively get work done.

Acting leaders typically have fewer staff around them and tend to be less publicly visible, he said. Currently the motor carrier agency has a number of proposed truck safety regulations yet to complete and is also working on changes to ease congestion in the U.S. supply chain. The highway agency, meanwhile, stands at the forefront of prodding states and localities to embrace changes to road design and speed limits to help curtail deaths.

EXPLORING GUN CONTROL

Early in his presidency, Biden nominated David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but the former ATF agent and gun control advocate faced opposition in the Senate and was seen as one of the administration’s most contentious nominees. The nomination was withdrawn.

The withdrawal continued a pattern for both Republican and Democratic administrations with the politically fraught position since it was made confirmable in 2006. Since then, only one nominee, former U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones, has been confirmed. Jones made it through the Senate in 2013 but only after a six-month struggle. Jones was acting director when Obama nominated him in January 2013.

Trump’s nomination of Chuck Canterbury, a former president of the Fraternal Order of Police, was withdrawn in 2020 over Republican concerns about his gun rights stance.

“Our collective view here is that the blocking of a fully qualified, experienced former ATF agent from serving in that role certainly is something Republicans didn’t have to take the step to do, but here we are,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. She did not blame Democrats, who also said they would not vote for him. “So, we have to nominate a new person. And when the president finds the right person, I’m sure he’ll be prepared to do that.”

MacGuineas, of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said a “failure to govern” is to blame for the slowed nomination process.

“People have been nominated who are too controversial to be nominated, or the White House knows they’re going to be held up,” she said. “The way we are organized right now is highly inefficient with Congress highly polarized.”

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hanimmal said:

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-coronavirus-pandemic-health-business-executive-branch-473c0e65d77d558e0b30b0c035a487e7
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Clogged U.S. ports are being given access to nearly $450 million in federal money from President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law as part of the administration’s recent stepped-up efforts aiming to ease supply chain congestionand lower prices for American consumers.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday announced the availability of a first batch of competitive grants for ports that will be double last year’s amount annually for five years. The grants are aimed specifically at reducing bottlenecks that have slowed the flow of goods to store shelves and pushed up costs.

The grants are among several pots of money under the $1 trillion law that the department intends to steer toward providing mid-term and long-term relief to the nation’s supply chain, which administration officials described as somewhat outdated and broken. Still, acknowledging that the upgrades will take time, Biden officials have largely shied away from any assurances that Americans could see clear and demonstrable changes to their lives before the 2022 midterm elections.

JOE BIDENhttps://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-europe-prices-pete-buttigieg-c6cfdfdcb12d30d0473443e7b5d05781

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U.S. ports will have until May to apply for the grants, which will be awarded by fall.

“We’re proud to announce this funding to help ports improve their infrastructure — to get goods moving more efficiently and help keep costs under control for American families,” Buttigieg said.

The Transportation Department was releasing this week a one-year report that assesses the supply chain and how best to fix gaps. Administration officials said the report urges better government cooperation and data-sharing with the private sector and pledges up to billions of dollars more from federal grant programs later this year to promote smoother rail, water and truck transportation and build out warehouse capacity.

Last year, the department took interim steps to unclog the supply chain and limit inflation pressures, awarding $241 million in grants including $52.3 million to help boost rail capacity at the port in Long Beach, California. It has strived to move major ports to longer work days and improve recruitment and retention in the trucking industry.

Biden has acknowledged potential added pain to consumers if U.S. sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine end up limiting Russia’s exports of oil and natural gas and causing global energy prices to soar. Separately, Biden on Tuesday announced new U.S. investments to boost domestic production of minerals used for electronics including electric vehicles, smartphones and appliances, part of a bid to reduce U.S. reliance on China.

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hanimmal said:

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-europe-prices-pete-buttigieg-c6cfdfdcb12d30d0473443e7b5d05781
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Roger A. Shrubber said:

the economy of this country and several others have been artificially manipulated for decades now, by "experts" who had never attempted to manipulate economies this large for anywhere near this long...so in reality the "experts" were guessing out of their asses...and now reality is crashing their artificial bubble.
global recession is here...i would strongly suggest we quit trying to "make it better" and allow it to self correct before we fuck it up worse...no more propping up weak industries, no more subsidies for unworkable models in any industry, no more tax breaks for bad businesses in cities that just want the jobs to put on their financial reports, and don't care that they're shitty jobs that no one actually wants, and they're only filled by desperate people with little alternatives. this is where the insanely inflated stock market has taken us...to the brink of world disaster

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captainmorgan said:

It's a bandage on a traumatic amputation. The global trading economy is changing drastically and financial crises are happening in all the players home countries. I don't see a great crash coming like 1929, with everything inter connected across the globe it may be more of a great unwinding. Not sure the result will be any different, it may just take longer. I thought the pandemic would speed things up but governments threw a lot of money at the situation and slowed it down for now. I'm not optimistic about how people will handle the changes because I think the changes will be drastic, everyone but the rich will be adjusting to a much lower standard of living, the party is over for mass consumption. The wild card in all this is how the masses will react to it, it usually ends in wars.

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hanimmal said:

I don't think that this is right though. Generally the 'experts' might get a couple weeks worth of what it is that they are saying needs to be done before the Republicans start crying and stop the Democrats ability to deliver what the 'experts' are saying is needed, just like what you are suggesting in this post.

There is no reason to let everything melt, other than laziness and lack of fortitude.

The global recession has been here since spring of 2020, and actually in industries like manufacturing since 2019. Trump funneled hundreds of billions into his buddies pockets and Biden had to come back and actually stabilize the states/cities.


We need to restructure anyways, we have been doing things really wastefully for hundreds of years now. Luckily the technology is here to actually help provide far better solutions, so I am not so sure about a much lower standard of living being necessary.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

this is a prime opportunity to restructure not just the countries failing infrastructure, but it's failing business practices. Big agriculture continues unsustainable practices, dooming future generations to a dustbowl that will make 1930 look like a gentle spring rain. the use of pesticides continues to kill insects vital to the pollination of a lot of crops. gmo crops and selectively bred crops leave whole sectors open to disaster when a blight or other problem hits those crops, which will have NO defense against them.
the government needs to get with big ag and make the deserts bloom, miles of irrigation ditches in the deserts, covered with solar panels to cut down on evaporation, and provide clean power. "free range" farms, with minimal use of drugs, and maximum use of natural feeds, where animals aren't crammed together in unsanitary conditions that themselves require the use of antibiotics to stop the spread of infections that wouldn't be a problem if the animals weren't in the shitty conditions they're in...
and that's just one industry out of thousands.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

this is a prime opportunity to restructure not just the countries failing infrastructure, but it's failing business practices. Big agriculture continues unsustainable practices, dooming future generations to a dustbowl that will make 1930 look like a gentle spring rain. the use of pesticides continues to kill insects vital to the pollination of a lot of crops. gmo crops and selectively bred crops leave whole sectors open to disaster when a blight or other problem hits those crops, which will have NO defense against them.
the government needs to get with big ag and make the deserts bloom, miles of irrigation ditches in the deserts, covered with solar panels to cut down on evaporation, and provide clean power. "free range" farms, with minimal use of drugs, and maximum use of natural feeds, where animals aren't crammed together in unsanitary conditions that themselves require the use of antibiotics to stop the spread of infections that wouldn't be a problem if the animals weren't in the shitty conditions they're in...
and that's just one industry out of thousands.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of children in America living in poverty jumped dramatically after just one month without the expanded child tax credit payments, according to a new study. Advocates fear the lapse in payments could unravel what they say were landmark achievements in poverty reduction.

Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy estimates 3.7 million more children were living in poverty by January — a 41% increase from December, when families received their last check. The federal aid started last July but ended after President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill stalled in the sharply divided Congress. Payments of up to $300 per child were delivered directly to bank accounts on the 15th of each month, and last week marked the second missed deposit of the year.

The Columbia study, which combines annual U.S. Census data with information from the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey bulletins, found that the monthly child poverty rate increased from 12.1% in December to 17% in January. That’s the highest level since December 2020, when the U.S. was grappling with high unemployment and a resurgence of COVID-19. Black and Latino children experienced the highest percentage point increases in poverty — 5.9% and 7.1% respectively.

Megan Curran, policy director for the Center on Poverty and Social Policy, said the sudden spike shows how quickly the payments became core to household financial stability for millions of families after only six months.

“It really had a huge impact right off the bat,” Curran said. “We saw food insecurity drop almost immediately as soon as the payments started ... all of that progress that we made could now be lost.”

Curran said the increase in children living in poverty could also partially reflect rising prices.

The new numbers represent a serious setback from the original goals of the child tax credit program, which ambitiously sought to cut nationwide child poverty in half. As part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package last year, the existing child tax credit program was massively reshaped, boosting the amount of the payments, greatly expanding the pool of eligible families and delivering the money in monthly installments designed to be incorporated into day-to-day household budgets.

The program extended payments of $250-per-month for children ages 6 through 17 and $300-per-month for those under 6 to most families in the country, at an annual cost of about $120 billion. The goal was to put discretionary cash in the hands of parents along with the freedom to spend it as they saw fit month-to-month.

Republican lawmakers are generally unified in opposition to the expanded tax credit — describing it as excessive, inflationary and a disincentive to work. But when it was originally passed, many Democrats openly declared their intention to make the payments a permanent anchor of the American social safety net.

The goal for the Democratic-held Congress was to keep the program running, and fight about its future months from now, armed with data and millions of anecdotes about the tax credit’s benefits.

Instead the 50-member Democratic bloc in the Senate collapsed from within, with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin holding out on his vote for weeks before finally refusing to endorse Biden’s social spending package. Manchin cited his opposition to the child tax credit’s massive price tag among his reservations with the bill.

Earlier this month, Manchin called negotiations on Biden’s Build Back Better bill “ dead.”

Democratic New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, one of the expanded child tax credit’s strongest advocates, said Wednesday in a statement to The Associated Press that nearly all the children in his state benefited from the credit and that letting it expire was “a moral failure.”

An informal survey conducted of families by the nonprofit advocacy group ParentsTogether Action found a similarly immediate impact to the lapsed child tax credit payments for respondents, with roughly 1 in 5 families surveyed reporting they could no longer afford housing or enough food for their kids.

Allison Johnson, the organization’s campaign director, said the child tax credit payments were designed so parents would “not have to make these really hard choices,” she said.

The end to the deposits makes it nearly impossible for needy families, who may be struggling to pay down debt or cope with major expenses, to develop financial stability or momentum, Johnson said.

“This lack of clarity is super difficult for people. It makes them unable to plan for things,” she said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy ended 2021 by expanding at a brisk 7% annual pace from October through December, the government reported Thursday in a slight upgrade from its earlier estimate as businesses stepped up their restocking of supplies.

For all of 2021, the nation’s gross domestic product — its total output of goods and services — jumped by 5.7%, the fastest calendar-year growth since a 7.2% surge in 1984 in the aftermath of a brutal recession.

So far this year, though, the outlook for the economy has dimmed considerably in the face of accelerating inflation, higher borrowing rates, anxious financial markets and the likelihood of a serious military conflict caused by Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine.

Snarled supply chains, with resulting shortages of parts and goods, are also disrupting businesses. And American households this year won’t be receiving the government stimulus aid that they did last year — money that helped drive brisk consumer spending in 2021.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that the U.S. economy will slow to growth of 4% this year. But the economy could weaken further if the Federal Reserve’s forthcoming interest rate hikes end up significantly slowing Americans’ borrowing and spending.

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The Fed’s ultra-low rates had nurtured the rapid expansion that quickly followed the pandemic recession of 2020. But high inflation has forced the Fed to reverse course, with a succession of rates hikes expected to begin next month.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and its likely fallout on world energy markets — also adds to the uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook.

The economy’s growth in the final quarter of 2021 was driven by a 33.5% jump in business investment as companies worked to replenish their inventories. In fact, inventory restocking accounted for 70% of the fourth-quarter growth.

Also contributing to the upgraded estimate of growth in the October-December quarter were stronger business investment and state and local government spending, offset slightly by modestly weaker consumer spending.

For all of 2021, consumer spending surged 7.9%, the fastest such growth since 1946. But it slowed to an annual pace of 3.1% in the October-December quarter as an uptick in coronavirus cases, which has now faded, kept more Americans at home and away from restaurants, travel destinations and entertainment venues.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 80% of the billions of dollars in federal rental assistance aimed at keeping families in their homes during the pandemic went to low-income tenants, the Treasury Department said Thursday.

It also concluded that the largest percentage of tenants receiving pandemic aid were Black followed by households. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Treasury found that more than 40% of tenants getting help were Black and two-thirds of recipients were female-headed households. The data was consistent with what Treasury saw throughout the year.

“This is money that flows from Treasury to every state and territory in the country, and we really have seen a real focus on delivering these dollars,” said Noel Andrés Poyo, the deputy assistant secretary for Community Economic Development at Treasury. “It has been encouraging from my point of view to see states that are very diverse and to see these agencies lean into something really hard, it was really tough to stand up these programs, this data reflects where the need was.”

According to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, those most likely to face eviction are low-income women, especially women of color. Domestic violence victims and families with children are also at high risk for eviction.

CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

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“It’s really encouraging to see so much of the rental assistance reaching those most in need: women, Black renters, and low-income households in particular,” Peter Hepburn, a research fellow at the Eviction Lab, said. “These are the groups that face highest risk of eviction and who were most severely affected by the economic impacts of the pandemic. They’re the ones that this money was meant to help.”

Lawmakers approved $46.5 billion in Emergency Rental Assistance last year. After early challenges getting the funds out, the pace of distribution has picked up significantly in recent months. Throughout 2021, over $25 billion has been spent and obligated. That represents 3.8 million payments to households, Treasury said Thursday.

The agency’s findings on beneficiaries showed their efforts to reach low income communities the past year had paid off.

Among other things, Treasury recommended states and localities make applications multi-lingual and introduced flexible guidelines that allow tenants to self-attest for their income. It also targeted harder-to-reach communities and worked to promote the rental assistance program in Black and Spanish media.

“A year later, Treasury is pleased to report that the vast majority of rental assistance has gone to keeping the lowest-income families in their homes during the pandemic,” Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement. “This wasn’t by accident, and we continue to use every lever to ensure these funds are distributed equitably and encourage state and local grantees to increase ease of access.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will launch a major overhaul of nursing home quality in his State of the Union speech, White House officials said Monday, outlining a series of measures long sought by advocates and opposed by the industry.

Taken together, the more than 20 separate steps would raise the bar on staffing and quality, increase government oversight, continue efforts to keep COVID-19 out of nursing homes, and shine a spotlight on a growing trend toward investor-owned, for-profit facilities.

One major missing element: New sources of federal financing to pay for the ambitious upgrade.

“Overall these are very positive developments,” said Harvard health policy professor David Grabowksi, who tracks long-term care. “If you ask the industry, they’ll tell you this will put them out of business. If you ask an advocate, they’ll say there’s plenty of money in the system. I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.”

Nursing home residents represent a disproportionate share of deaths in the coronavirus pandemic, and the Biden administration has also been working to develop home- and community-based care as an alternative.

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

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The cornerstone of Biden’s nursing home plan is a new requirement for minimum staffing standards. He’s ordering the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to conduct a study on staffing and publish proposed regulations within a year.

Experts say staffing levels are the single most important marker for nursing home quality, and many facilities lack sufficient numbers of nurses, nursing assistants and other workers involved in providing direct care to patients. The coronavirus pandemic has led to many workers leaving the industry, even as nursing homes raised wages, so a new federal staffing requirement may take time to put into place.

Lawmakers in Congress have been debating legislation to require minimum staffing standards for facilities that accept payment from Medicare and Medicaid, as virtually all do. The original plan was to include staffing requirements in Biden’s domestic agenda bill, but with that legislation stalled the administration seems to be shifting to using its regulatory powers to bring about changes.

Biden’s plan also calls for moving nursing homes toward private rooms for their residents, directing federal regulators to explore how to phase out living arrangements that house three or more residents in the same room.

“Despite the tens of billions of federal taxpayer dollars flowing to nursing homes each year, too many continue to provide poor, substandard care that leads to avoidable resident harm,” said a White House policy document that outlined Biden’s plan.

There was no immediate reaction from the major nursing home industry groups.

Beefed-up oversight is another priority for Biden. His plan calls for increasing the nursing home inspection budget by $500 million, a boost of nearly 25%. Nursing home inspections are generally carried out by the states, following guidelines from Medicare. Biden is planning to revamp a special inspection program that focuses on low-performing facilities, to raise fines on nursing homes that fail to improve and, if necessary, cut off Medicare and Medicaid payments.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the problems of nursing homes, a neglected part of the health care system. More than 200,000 residents and staff of long-term care facilities have died, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. While nursing home residents and staff account for a tiny share of the U.S. population, they have accounted for more than 1 in 5 deaths.

Biden’s plan calls for the government to keep a focus on vaccinating and boosting nursing home residents and staff, along with regular testing. While the omicron wave saw increased cases and deaths in nursing homes, facilities were largely spared a repeat of last winter’s grim experience.

With infection control considered a chronic problem at many facilities, Biden is directing Medicare to strengthen requirements that the nursing homes employ on-site infection prevention specialists.

More than half of the nation’s nursing homes are owned by for-profit companies, and the administration wants to shine a spotlight on a growing trend of private equity firms snapping up ownership of facilities.

The White House said the private equity stake in the industry grew from $5 billion in 2000 to more than $100 billion by 2018.

“Too often, the private equity model has put profits before people, a particularly dangerous model when it comes to the health and safety of vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities,” the White House policy document said.

Officials said federal agencies will be directed to examine the role of private equity investors in the nursing home industry “and inform the public when corporate entities are not serving their residents’ best interests.”

Advocates were cheered by the White House announcement.

“This plan is a major step forward for quality and safety in our nation’s nursing homes,” said Terry Fulmer, president of the nonprofit John A. Hartford Foundation, which works to improve long-term care. “It will be essential that it get implemented quickly and monitored closely for the improvements we need now.”

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Drumminghead said:

The tile of this post aged well.

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Drumminghead said:

The tile of this post aged well.

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