November 15, 2021

Infrastructure Bill Signing and President Biden: Live Updates - The New York Times

President Biden at the White House on Friday.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

President Biden on Monday will celebrate a key victory in his legislative agenda — and the fulfillment of a central promise of his 2020 campaign — by signing into law a $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill at the White House, surrounded by lawmakers from both parties who backed the measure.

But the moment of good will and cooperation is likely to be fleeting for the president, who just hours later will spend several hours in a virtual summit with President Xi Jinping of China as the two leaders confront the growing tensions between their countries.

The rest of Mr. Biden’s agenda, including a separate $1.85 trillion social spending bill, remains locked in a procedural brawl among members of his own party in Congress. The effort to untangle those competing interests also resumes Monday, ahead of the Thanksgiving recess next week.

White House officials are bracing for an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, expected this week, that will indicate whether the spending in the sprawling bill will be entirely offset by new tax revenue — something that moderate Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate have demanded.

Some officials are nervous that the C.B.O. will determine that stepped up enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service will not generate the hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue that Mr. Biden’s administration has predicted. That would make it harder to claim that the spending is paid for.

And across town, at a federal courthouse in Washington, Stephen K. Bannon, who served as the chief strategist for President Donald J. Trump, surrendered to the authorities after a federal grand jury indicted him for contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Mr. Bannon’s legal troubles underscored the ongoing battle confronting the Biden administration about whether and how to hold Mr. Trump and his allies accountable for the lives that were lost on Jan. 6 and for the attempt to subvert the normal democratic process of counting votes in a presidential election.

White House officials are hoping that the bipartisan scene at the bill signing on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday provides a bit of a respite from the challenges that face the president. Officials said that Republicans from both chambers who voted for the infrastructure measure would be at the White House to watch it become law.

During his campaign for president, Mr. Biden promised that he would be able to win the support of Republicans and Democrats for his policies. That message resonated with voters after four years in which Mr. Trump clashed spectacularly with Democrats.

But much of Mr. Biden’s legislation so far has been passed with little support from the opposing party. His $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package was passed in the Senate and the House without any Republican support. And his social spending plan, known as Build Back Better, is likely to pass with only Democratic votes.

That reality made the bipartisan passage of the infrastructure measure in the House and Senate sweeter for Mr. Biden and his aides in the White House.

The ceremony on Monday will be followed by a burst of presidential travel aimed at showing the American people real examples of how the new law will pump money into the economy and provide good-paying jobs by upgrading roads, bridges, lead pipes, broadband and other infrastructure.

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden is expected to travel to New Hampshire, where he will give remarks at a bridge over the Pemigewasset River that is in critical need of rehabilitation. The following day, he will visit a General Motors electric vehicle assembly plant in Detroit.

Stephen K. Bannon, who served as a senior aide to former President Donald J. Trump, turned himself in to the authorities on Monday morning, three days after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to provide information to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Mr. Bannon arrived at the F.B.I.’s Washington field office at around 9:30 a.m., where he surrendered to the authorities.

“On Monday, November 15, Stephen K. Bannon self-surrendered to the F.B.I. Washington Field Office and was arrested and processed on two counts of contempt of Congress,” the F.B.I. said in a statement.

He is expected to make his initial appearance in federal magistrate court on Monday afternoon before Judge Robin M. Meriweather.

While the court proceeding is expected to be swift, with Mr. Bannon entering his plea, it kicks off what could be a lengthy battle between a member of Mr. Trump’s inner circle and the federal government, as it seeks to enforce a congressional subpoena.

Mr. Bannon, 67, had declined last month to comply with subpoenas from the House select committee seeking testimony and documents from him. The House then voted to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress, and referred the matter to the Justice Department.

Mr. Trump has directed his former aides and advisers to invoke immunity and refrain from turning over documents that might be protected under executive privilege.

After the referral from the House in Mr. Bannon’s case, F.B.I. agents in the Washington field office investigated the matter. Career prosecutors in the public integrity unit of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington determined that it would be appropriate to charge Mr. Bannon with two counts of contempt, and the Justice Department announced on Friday that a grand jury had indicted Mr. Bannon on those charges.

One contempt count is related to Mr. Bannon’s refusal to appear for a deposition, and the other is for his refusal to produce documents for the committee.

The committee issued subpoenas in September to Mr. Bannon and several others who had ties to the Trump White House, and it has since issued scores of subpoenas to other allies of the former president.

In a report recommending that the House find Mr. Bannon in contempt, the committee repeatedly cited comments Mr. Bannon made on his radio show on Jan. 5 — when he said “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow” — as evidence that “he had some foreknowledge about extreme events that would occur the next day.”

Investigators have also pointed to a conversation Mr. Bannon had with Mr. Trump on Dec. 30 in which he urged him to focus his efforts on Jan. 6. Mr. Bannon also was present at a meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington on Jan. 5, when plans were discussed to try to overturn the results of the election the next day, the committee has said.

While many of those who received subpoenas have sought to work to some degree with the committee, Mr. Bannon claimed that his conversations with Mr. Trump were covered by executive privilege despite not having worked in the White House for years at the time of the Jan. 6 riot.

The indictment of Mr. Bannon also raised questions about similar potential criminal exposure for Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff.

Before the Justice Department announced the indictment of Mr. Bannon, Mr. Meadows, a former House member from North Carolina, failed to meet a deadline on Friday for complying with the House committee’s request for information.

The leaders of the House committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, have said they will now consider pursuing contempt charges against Mr. Meadows.

With President Biden poised to sign the sweeping $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Monday, officials from the Transportation Department and state governments across the country have identified priority projects that have been put off for years and may now move ahead, such as repairing hundreds of aging bridges and building dozens of new or extended rail lines.

But the bill will also fund a number of other broad initiatives such as expanding broadband internet in rural corners of the country and cleaning up heavily polluted Superfund sites. In total, the measure contains $550 billion in new funds to be spread around different areas of need. Here are some of the areas covered.

$47 billion for climate resiliency.
New funding aimed at combating wildfires and preparing coastal regions for more frequent hurricanes and flooding.
$7.5 billion for electric vehicles.
Increasing the availability of charging stations across the country, which is part of Mr. Biden’s pledge to build 500,000 stations nationwide.
$15 billion for removing lead service lines.
Modernizing water systems to address contaminated drinking water that has affected multiple large population centers.
$66 billion for rail.
A significant investment in Amtrak, which has a major maintenance backlog, as well as funding for new rail lines and upgrades to existing ones.
$73 billion for the electricity grid.
Upgrades to the country’s power systems that, among other things, will help the grid carry renewable energy.
$2 billion for underserved rural areas.
A grant program aimed at expanding transportation projects in rural areas.
$65 billion for broadband.
Funding to provide high-speed internet access to hard-to-reach populations, including Native American communities.
$21 billion for environmental projects.
Increased funds for cleaning up abandoned mines, contaminated waterways and other polluted sites overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chamber’s longest-serving member, announced on Monday that he would retire at the end of his term rather than seek re-election in 2022, closing out nearly half a century of service in Congress.

Mr. Leahy, 81, who was elected in 1974 at age 34 after working as a prosecutor, announced his decision at a news conference at the Vermont State House in Montpelier.

“It is time to put down the gavel — it is time to pass the torch to the next Vermonter,” Mr. Leahy said, speaking in the same room where he announced his first campaign for the Senate. “It is time to come home.”

Mr. Leahy’s departure is unlikely to alter the partisan makeup of the Senate given that Vermont is a solidly Democratic state; President Biden won with 65 percent of the vote there last year. But it will rob the chamber of an institutional figure who has come to embody its traditions and the comity that defined it in a bygone era.

“It is hard to imagine the United States Senate without Patrick Leahy,” said Representative Peter Welch, the lone Vermont Democrat in the House, who is widely seen as a possible successor to the senator. “No one has served Vermont so faithfully, so constantly, so honestly and so fiercely as Patrick.”

The only sitting senator who served during President Gerald R. Ford’s term, Mr. Leahy is the first and only registered Democrat to be elected to represent Vermont in the Senate. He recently became the fourth longest-serving senator in American history, and finishing his term at the end of 2022 will make him the third longest-serving.

Mr. Leahy serves as president pro tempore of the Senate, a role reserved for the majority party’s most senior member that puts him third in line to the presidency. He is also the chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees government funding.

That seniority meant that Mr. Leahy played a unique role in the second impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. After fleeing the Senate chamber as rioters stormed the building during the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory, Mr. Leahy both presided over the trial and served as a juror, ultimately voting to convict Mr. Trump.

In his news conference, Mr. Leahy reflected on the granular legislative work of more than four decades in the Senate. He spoke about the bills he shepherded through to support forestland and farmland in Vermont, increase nutrition assistance across the country and help the victims of the Vietnam War.

And he spoke about the legislation and the judicial appointments — including every sitting member of the Supreme Court — that he oversaw first as a member and then as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Leahy also gained prominence for his push to curtail domestic surveillance after the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes — work that led to him being targeted in the anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill.

“Representing you in Washington is the greatest honor,” he said on Monday. “I’m humbled, and always will be, by your support. I’m confident in what the future holds.”

“It has been such a great part of our lives,” he concluded, standing beside his wife, Marcelle, who could be seen dabbing her eyes as supporters applauded. His office circulated his remarks announcing the “decision he and Marcelle have made about 2022.”

Mr. Leahy has expressed mounting frustration in recent years with the gridlock that has stymied most legislation in Congress, often complaining to reporters during the tensest moments in negotiations that bills should just be put on the floor for an up-or-down vote. He is a lead sponsor of legislation to expand voting rights protections, which Republicans have blocked repeatedly this year through filibusters.

While he has kept up a steady stream of work in the Senate, where the average age is about 64, Mr. Leahy’s health has faltered at times recently. In January, shortly after opening the impeachment proceedings, he was briefly taken to the hospital for observation after he reported not feeling well.

“Very few in the history of the United States Senate can match the record of Patrick Leahy,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader. “He has been a guardian of Vermont and more rural states in the Senate, and has an unmatched fidelity to the Constitution and rule of law.”

Mr. Schumer expressed confidence that the seat would remain in Democratic hands. Senator Bernie Sanders, 80, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, will become Vermont’s senior senator upon Mr. Leahy’s retirement.

Mr. Leahy’s announcement means that the top two positions on the Appropriations Committee will be vacated at the end of 2022. Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the panel’s top Republican and a close friend of Mr. Leahy’s, is also retiring.

But Mr. Leahy vowed that he would oversee the completion of the dozen annual spending bills to keep the government funded. He joked on Monday that his approach at the helm of the Appropriations Committee “was simple: help all states in alphabetical order, starting with the letter V — Vermont.”

“I’m sure he would agree one great way to honor him would be to make sure this year’s appropriations bills are signed into law as soon as possible,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, another senior Democrat on the Appropriations panel, said on Twitter.

Born almost blind in one eye, Mr. Leahy found photography to be an outlet and is known to carry a camera on Capitol Hill, snapping photos of both his colleagues and the journalists who roam the hallways.

Outside the Capitol, Mr. Leahy is known as a fan of Batman, and he has made appearances in the franchise’s films, including confronting Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Knight.”

He also takes great pride in the prized real estate that comes with being the most senior senator, often taking visitors, reporters and colleagues to his private hideaway office in the Capitol to marvel at the breathtaking views of the Washington Monument and the National Mall.

President Biden and President Xi Jinping of China will meet for more than three hours in a virtual summit on Monday evening as the United States seeks to engage in what the administration calls “intense competition” with China while preventing serious conflict.

Since becoming president, Mr. Biden has spoken twice with Mr. Xi, but they have not met in person this year. Administration officials said the virtual meeting was meant to reassure both sides that misunderstandings and miscommunications would not lead to unintended clashes.

A senior U.S. official told reporters on Sunday that the president would emphasize the need to keep “communication lines open” as the two countries confront disagreements over issues like the future of Taiwan, the militarization of the South China Sea and cybersecurity.

Mr. Biden has repeatedly suggested that it should be possible to avoid active military engagement with China, even as the United States engages in vigorous competition with Beijing and continues to confront the Chinese leadership on several significant issues.

But the call, which was initiated at Mr. Biden’s request, reflects his administration’s deep concern that the chances of keeping conflict at bay may be diminishing.

Members of Mr. Biden’s team have been guarded about what topics he intends to raise with Mr. Xi on Monday. The senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the meeting, broadly outlined a few of the issues that were likely to come up.

The official said Mr. Biden planned to address several points of disagreement, including China’s human rights abuses, America’s commitment to defending Taiwan, China’s support of its state-based industries and its policies regarding cybertechnologies.

Also on the agenda are areas in which Chinese and American interests appear to be aligned, including efforts to combat global warming. But the administration official said that Mr. Biden would make clear to Mr. Xi that working to prevent climate change was not a “favor” to the United States, but rather a decision by China to act in its own best interests.

It was unclear whether Mr. Xi intended to raise other issues, such as U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods or the recent U.S. deal to provide nuclear submarines to Australia. The senior official said that Mr. Biden was not planning to raise those topics unless Mr. Xi mentioned them.

The official declined to say whether the two leaders would discuss the possibility of U.S. representation at the 2022 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Beijing in February.

Biden administration officials have said they believe the U.S.-China relationship is in a new phase that is more dynamic and complex than it has been in years past. But it remains unclear how Mr. Biden will try to accomplish his goals when previous administrations tried and failed to make good on similar agendas.

President Barack Obama tried a similar balancing act with the Chinese, securing a commitment from Mr. Xi to avoid militarizing the South China Sea — a threat to international travel through the area — and to reduce cyberconflicts between the two countries.

Since then, China has built up its military presence in the South China Sea, and cyberclashes have intensified.

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s pledge to fully pay for his $1.85 trillion social policy and climate spending package depends in large part on having a beefed up Internal Revenue Service crack down on tax evaders, which the White House says will raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.

But an upcoming assessment by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is likely to undercut the administration’s position by casting doubt on the amount of money that a more muscular I.R.S. would actually bring in.

As Democrats prepare for a final push to pass the spending legislation this week, the White House is bracing lawmakers for a disappointing tally from the budget office, which is likely to find that the cost of the overall package will not be fully paid for with new tax revenue over the coming decade. That includes the administration’s plans to boost I.R.S. funding by $80 billion, which Treasury says could bring in $400 billion over the next decade as a bolstered enforcement staff ramps up audits on corporations and the rich. The budget office is expected to assume a much lower haul, according to White House and Treasury officials — possibly less than $200 billion over 10 years.

The C.B.O. tends to believe that the tax collection prowess of more enforcement agents will wane over time, while the White House assumes that taxpayers will become more compliant with the I.R.S. when they see tax dodgers facing consequences.

Such estimates are crucial to Mr. Biden’s ability to get the next leg of his agenda through Congress. Lawmakers have to rely on the budget office’s so-called score, which estimates whether the spending will add to the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years.

A disappointing assessment that shows the bill adding to the deficit could pose another big challenge for Mr. Biden’s domestic policy legislation, which is already facing steep hurdles in the House and Senate. A group of moderate Democrats in the House have said that they want to see an assessment from the budget office before moving forward with the legislation. And some lawmakers have expressed concerns about whether the bill is fiscally responsible, with Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a key swing vote, expressing concern that the package could add to the national debt and stoke further inflation.

Because Democrats are using a budget procedure called reconciliation to pass the bill with a simple majority, they cannot afford to lose a single vote in the Senate and no more than three votes in the House.

The administration’s ability to raise taxes to pay for the spending has already run into resistance. Mr. Manchin and other moderate Democrats have opposed efforts to sharply raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans. That has left the Biden administration increasingly reliant on capturing uncollected tax revenue from the $7 trillion “tax gap” to pay for a sweeping expansion of child care, health and climate initiatives.

The proposal to give the I.R.S. an additional $80 billion over a decade has drawn fierce resistance from Republicans, right-leaning advocacy groups and banks, who have warned that an empowered tax collection agency will be weaponized against conservatives and target ordinary taxpayers.

The Biden administration has insisted that audit rates for people earning less than $400,000 per year would not rise, but that a large expansion of the nation’s social safety net could be funded just by collecting tax revenue that is already owed to the government.

The big question is: How much money is there for the taking?

A preliminary assessment by the budget office earlier this year suggested the administration was being overly optimistic and that those who had avoided paying taxes in the past would adjust their activities to continue evading the I.R.S.

“C.B.O. expects taxpayers to adapt to the I.R.S.’s enforcement activities and adopt new ways of evading detection, so an enforcement activity may have a lower return in later years,” the budget office said in September.

Bracing for the shortfall, senior Biden administration officials are urging lawmakers to disregard the budget office assessment of the enforcement proposal. They argue that the budget office is being overly conservative in its calculations, failing to properly credit the return on investment of additional I.R.S. resources and overlooking the “deterrent effects” that a more aggressive tax collection agency would have on tax cheats.

“In this one case, I think we’ve made a very strong empirical case for C.B.O. not having an accurate score,” Ben Harris, Treasury’s assistant secretary for economic policy, said in an interview. “The question is would they rather go with C.B.O. knowing C.B.O. is wrong or would they want to target the best information they could possibly have.”

Mr. Harris described the discrepancy as a methodological shortcoming. He said that it was “patently absurd” that bolstering the enforcement capacity of the I.R.S., which has been depleted for years, would not compel taxpayers to be more compliant. The C.B.O. also predicts that the “return on investment” of giving the I.R.S. more money will decline over time, while Treasury disagrees.

The C.B.O. has been releasing its assessments of the House Democrats’ legislation in parts and has been racing to get an overall number to lawmakers ahead of a possible vote this month. Most of the estimates are expected to be in line with White House projections, but the I.R.S. measure is likely to be an outlier.

The I.R.S. has for years been a favorite target of Republicans, who have accused the agency of political bias and worked to starve it of funding. From 2010 to 2020, funding for the I.R.S. declined by about a fifth and its enforcement ranks fell by 30 percent, making it difficult to pursue audits and legal fights against well-financed tax evaders.

In recent weeks, Republicans in congress have expressed growing alarm about the prospect of an empowered I.R.S.

“The I.R.S. will double in size,” Representative Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania, said last month. “It will be more involved in the day-to-day lives of every American. And the result will be an invasion of privacy and the heavy hand of the government squeezing out smaller, more local businesses.”

The Biden administration believes that doubling the enforcement staff at the I.R.S. will go a long way toward combating tax dodgers.

Charles P. Rettig, the I.R.S. commissioner who was picked for the job by former President Donald J. Trump, said last week the agency was long overdue for a financial infusion. He said the agency has fewer auditors than at any time since World War II.

“If given the resources we need, we will be able to make a sizable dent in noncompliance over several years,” Mr. Rettig wrote in a Washington Post opinion article. “A properly funded and trained workforce will also have a significant deterrent effect on cheating.”

A separate proposal that would also have required banks to report more information about the finances of their customers to the I.R.S. has so far been left out of the legislation amid backlash over privacy concerns. The Biden administration is still pushing for a more narrow version of that proposal to be included in a final bill.

Douglas Elmendorf, who directed the C.B.O. from 2009 to 2015, said that estimating the returns on additional I.R.S. enforcement was challenging because large funding infusions to the agency had little precedent and it was difficult to quantify the “indirect effects” of more auditors. He said lawmakers should take that into account when setting policy.

“I think Congress should always look beyond the budget estimate when deciding what to do about legislation,” Mr. Elmendorf said.

With slim majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats could need to find other ways to pay for their plans if they are not ready to rely on the I.R.S.

John Koskinen, the former I.R.S. commissioner in the Obama and Trump administrations, said that it was unfortunate that the proposals to fund the agency became so politicized. He suggested that it was not so far-fetched that an agency that already collects more than $3 trillion a year could capture another $40 billion annually if it was properly staffed and modernized.

“When you under-fund the I.R.S., it’s just a tax cut for tax cheats,” Mr. Koskinen said.

source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/15/us/infrastructure-bill-signing

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Infrastructure Bill Signing and President Biden: Live Updates - The New York Times

Bannon Surrenders to Authorities

Stephen K. Bannon, a former aide to Donald Trump, turned himself in at the F.B.I.’s Washington field office, three days after he was indicted on contempt of Congress charges after refusing to provide information to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.