March, 23 2017, 02:45pm EDT
Approval of Disastrous Keystone XL Pipeline Imminent
WASHINGTON
In a reversal of yet another Obama administration environmental action, reports surfaced today that the Trump administration will approve the Keystone XL pipeline by Monday. The State Department, now headed by former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, will apparently grant a permit for the pipeline.
"The Keystone XL pipeline is a disaster for people, wildlife and the planet," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "The Trump administration is taking us dangerously off course by approving this dirty, dangerous pipeline. We don't have four years to wait to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and avoid a climate catastrophe."
Keystone XL would carry up to 35 million gallons of oil every day from Canada's tar sands -- one of the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive energy sources in the world -- to refineries in Texas.
The 1,700-mile pipeline would cross rivers, streams and wetlands that are a source for drinking water for people and provide habitat for at least 20 rare and endangered species, including whooping cranes, pallid sturgeons, interior least terns and piping plovers. Since 1986 pipeline accidents have spilled an average of 76,000 barrels per year, or more than 3 million gallons of oil and other substances.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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Alarm Raised Over Wall Street Titan at SSA
"Nothing in Mr. Bisignano's career suggests that he understands the unique needs of older and disabled Americans," said the Alliance for Retired Americans' leader.
Dec 06, 2024
Critics of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's pick to run the Social Security Administration, Frank Bisignano, warned this week that the Wall Street veteran may not be the best choice to run an agency that provides one of America's most important social safety nets.
"President-elect Trump has nominated financial software CEO and GOP donor Frank Bisignano to head the agency that administers Social Security benefits for some 70 million Americans. If confirmed, Bisignano will be accountable—not to corporate boards or stockholders—but to the American people, who depend on their Social Security benefits and pay for them over a lifetime of work," said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, in a Thursday statement.
Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said in a statement that "nothing in Mr. Bisignano's career suggests that he understands the unique needs of older and disabled Americans."
"We are also concerned that his decades on Wall Street will leave SSA with a cheerleader for risky schemes like allowing investment firms and crypto corporations to gamble with the trust funds and benefits that Americans paid for and earned through a lifetime of work," Fiesta added.
Bisignano was previously an executive at Shearson Lehman Brothers and also held positions at JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. During his tenure at the firm First Data Corp., he was listed as the second-highest paid CEO in the U.S. in 2017, per The New York Times. Bisignano is currently the president and CEO of Fiserv (which merged with First Data Corp. in 2019), a payments and financial technology firm.
"Frank is a business leader, with a tremendous track record of transforming large corporations. He will be responsible to deliver on the Agency's commitment to the American People for generations to come!" Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this week.
If confirmed, Bisignano would oversee an agency with more than 1,200 field offices and almost 60,000 employees, according to the Times, and his nomination comes at a time when money in Social Security's trust funds, a reserve that is used to make sure recipients get their full payment, could be entirely depleted by 2035.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers on Thursday signaled a willingness to target Social Security and other mandatory programs after meeting with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the duo that President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to lead a new commission tasked with slashing federal spending and regulations.
In reaction to Bisignano's nomination, Wisconsin state Sen. Chris Larson (D-7) quipped on X: "Why leave a $28 million/yr gig to work in government? My prediction: to cut Social Security."
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AOC Launches Bid to Fight Trump as Top Democrat on House Oversight Committee
As ranking member, Ocasio-Cortez said she would balance the committee's focus "on the incoming president's corrosive actions and corruption with a tangible fight to make life easier for America's working class."
Dec 06, 2024
Hoping to help lead a congressional panel that could be in a position to hold President-elect Donald Trump accountable to the American public in the coming years, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday notified her colleagues that she is officially seeking the top Democratic seat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
"I write to you today to seek your support to serve as ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability in the 119th Congress," the New York Democrat wrote in a letter to the Democratic caucus. "This is not a position I seek lightly. The responsibility of leading Democrats on the House Oversight Committee during Donald Trump's second term in the White House is a profound and consequential one."
With Republicans set to take control of the House in January, the committee will be led by a Republican; Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) currently chairs the panel.
But if Democrats win the House in 2026, the top Democrat on the committee would have subpoena power and be in a position to launch investigations into the Trump administration.
Ocasio-Cortez has sat on the committee since taking office in 2019, and was named by Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to serve as vice ranking member in the current Congress. In her letter to colleagues, the congresswoman said she and Raskin "meticulously planned out the committee's strategy to combat the majority's partisan agenda and amplify the priorities of House Democrats."
"Even in the minority, we have leveraged the committee's substantial talent to empower our membership, derail the majority's attempts to launch baseless impeachment proceedings against President Biden, and defang other efforts by the majority to weaponize the committee's investigatory power for partisan purposes often designed to amplify misinformation," she wrote. "We also successfully experimented beyond the traditional committee process with a series of shadow hearings to educate the public on a range of key issues that cut through the noise of the current information landscape and spoke directly to the American people."
The grassroots progressive organizing group Our Revolution noted that Ocasio-Cortez has garnered attention for her pointed questioning of witnesses in Oversight hearings, including Trump's former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, Tom Homan. In 2019 she confronted Homan, who has been named "border czar" for the incoming administration, about his role in Trump's family separation policy in an exchange that went viral.
"These are the kinds of messages we need EVERYONE to see if we're going to stop Trump and his far-right agenda," said Our Revolution in an email to supporters on Friday. "AOC got into Congress in the first place by primarying the Democratic establishment, so she's not afraid to stand up to her own party. But that also means that it's going to take massive public pressure on Democrats to put her in this role over more senior members of the party."
Ocasio-Cortez will face Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) in the election for ranking member. Connolly has served in Congress since 2008 and previously ran for the chairmanship in 2022.
Raskin, who is running to be ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has not endorsed either colleague.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) offered his support for Ocasio-Cortez on Friday, telling NBC News, "AOC is very collaborative on the committee and helps lift up all members. She has been so passionate about the work of this committee for two years as vice chair, and we need progressives moving into leadership in our Congress and country to enact a working-class agenda. I'm all in for her."
Another lawmaker said the outspoken progressive is "exactly what the committee needs."
"She's phenomenal," the lawmaker told Politico. "She's someone that's gonna take the energy of new members coming in and take on Donald Trump. And I think that's what we need at this point."
On the podcast "Pod Save America," co-host and former Obama administration staffer Dan Pfeiffer expressed excitement over Ocasio-Cortez's leadership bid and called her "probably the best communicator in the Democratic Party right now."
Some establishment Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), suggested to Politico that they would support Connolly.
The Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which has close ties to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), is expected to make recommendations for committee leaders in the coming weeks. The House Democrats will then vote on ranking members.
In her letter on Friday, Ocasio-Cortez said she aims to balance the committee's focus "on the incoming president's corrosive actions and corruption with a tangible fight to make life easier for America's working class."
"I will lead by example by always keeping the lives of everyday Americans at the center of our work," she wrote. "We must do all that we can, now, to mark a different future for the American people—one that inspires us to reject the siren calls of division, corruption, and authoritarianism through a shining example of a government that works for the people, by the people—one that sees their struggles and fights for them, not just the powerful and the wealthy."
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Will Trump Tax Cuts for the Rich Blow a Hole in the 'Rock-Solid Labor Market' Left by Biden?
"If he pursues trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy and implements the proposals to slash public investments that people like Musk have championed, the labor market will surely deteriorate and workers will suffer."
Dec 06, 2024
Job figures released Friday showed that the U.S. labor market rebounded strongly last month following a storm-ravaged October, with the economy adding 227,000 jobs and average hourly earnings rising by a higher-than-expected 0.4%.
But observers warned that the economic agenda of President-elect Donald Trump and the incoming Republican Congress—particularly the massive tax cut package they plan to ram through early next year—could undermine job market progress made under the Biden administration in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis.
"The Biden administration is handing off a rock-solid labor market after their strategic investments strengthened our economy and ushered in the fastest recession recovery on record," said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative. "President-elect Trump would do well to continue to invest in the workers and communities that have powered this resilience."
"But if he pursues trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy and implements the proposals to slash public investments that people like [Elon] Musk have championed," Owens added, "the labor market will surely deteriorate and workers will suffer the consequences of these choices."
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, similarly warned Friday that "while Democrats delivered a historic recovery with millions of new jobs under President Biden, Donald Trump and his far-right allies want to take us backward."
"Trump's promises are nothing but a con," said Boyle. "He's pushing middle-class tax hikes while handing massive breaks to his billionaire donors, just like he's done before. Families like mine know the truth: Trump would sell out millions of workers in a heartbeat to line the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. House Democrats won't stand by while Trump sabotages our economy. We'll fight to protect the progress we've made and ensure working families continue to come first."
"Don't let them fool you. His plan of vengeance to deport millions of undocumented workers and impose tariffs will not create jobs."
The U.S. economy has added an average of 173,000 jobs monthly over the past three months, Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould noted in an analysis of the new Labor Department figures.
"Nominal wage growth held steady at 4.0% over the year," Gould observed. "This rate is in line with the pace of productivity improvement over the last year and a stubborn low labor share of corporate sector income. Importantly, it means that real average wages continue to rise as they have the last 18 months."
The new data came as congressional Republicans and Trump's billionaire-dominated transition team and Cabinet choices continued to map out their agenda for the coming year, with tax cuts at the center.
"Their top objective is to extend the 2017 Trump tax law and prevent $3.3 trillion in tax breaks from expiring at the end of 2025," NBC Newsreported earlier this week, detailing GOP plans to pass a "huge party-line bill" via the filibuster-proof reconciliation process.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis published Wednesday detailed how an extension of soon-to-expire provisions of the 2017 tax law—a measure that disproportionately benefited the rich—would shrink the U.S. economy, bolstering concerns about the potentially damaging impacts of the Trump-GOP agenda.
Prior to the November election, the research firm Moody's Analytics warned that a Republican sweep would likely mean "the economy suffers a recession beginning in mid-2025," resulting in 3.2 million fewer jobs and a higher unemployment rate by the end of Trump's four-year term.
Moody's argued that Trump's push for tariffs, corporate tax cuts, and the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would broadly harm the economy, driving up inflation and pushing down Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and job growth.
While corporations would likely "navigate things reasonably well" under a Republican-dominated government, Moody's said, ordinary households would "do less well financially."
"The typical American household's real after-tax income is approximately $2,000, or 1.4%, lower by the end of Trump’s term in this scenario than in the baseline," the firm projected.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, said in a statement Friday that Trump "was the first president since World War II to leave office with fewer jobs than when his administration started."
"And his disastrous policies will hurt our economy once again," said Heinrich. "Don't let them fool you. His plan of vengeance to deport millions of undocumented workers and impose tariffs will not create jobs. It will not support our manufacturers, farmers, or small businesses. And it certainly will not grow our economy. It will only create an unmitigated disaster for everyday Americans who will struggle to make ends meet."
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