September, 21 2023, 02:36pm EDT
Chairman Sanders Statement on HELP Committee Bipartisan Passage of Historic Primary Care and Workforce Legislation
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, on Thursday issued the following statement after the committee passed the Bipartisan Primary Care and Health Workforce Act:
“Everyone in America understands that our health care system is broken and getting worse. Despite spending twice as much per capita as any other nation, millions of Americans are unable to access the primary care and dental care they desperately need and we have a massive shortage of doctors, nurses, dentists and mental health professionals.
“With today’s passage of bipartisan legislation in the Senate HELP Committee, we are beginning to address that crisis. I’m pleased this legislation passed with a strong bipartisan 14-7 vote.
“I especially want to thank Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) for his hard work on this legislation. Together, we will work with Senate leadership in the coming weeks to move this bill forward and ensure that millions more Americans can get the health care they deserve.”
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Green Groups Call US Electric Transmission Rules 'Major Leap Forward'
Experts celebrated the "critical step to ensuring our electric grid has the capacity and durability necessary to keep up with our clean energy ambition, meet climate goals, and guarantee affordable and equitable energy access for all."
May 13, 2024
Green groups on Monday praised U.S. regulators for finalizing rules that supporters say "will help accelerate the transition to a clean and equitable electric system by working to build more transmission capacity."
The two Democrats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved new transmission planning requirements. They and the sole GOP commissioner also advanced an order empowering FERC to greenlight permits for projects rejected or ignored by states.
"The new rules require utilities and regional grid operators to adopt 20-year plans that consider trends in technology and fuel costs, changes to resource mix and demand, more opportunities for state and utility collaboration, and extreme weather events, among other variables calculated by the 'best available data,'" the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) explained. The assessments must be revised every five years.
Sam Gomberg, the manager of transmission policy and a senior energy analyst at UCS, called the rules "a critical step to ensuring our electric grid has the capacity and durability necessary to keep up with our clean energy ambition, meet climate goals, and guarantee affordable and equitable energy access for all."
"I am pleased that FERC will require transmission planners to account for seven broadly recognized benefits of expanding transmission when determining whether to make investments," he said. "This, combined with FERC's inclusion of state-approved plans for utilities' changes in generation, moves the country to more just and reasonable planning standards."
Gomberg was far from alone in cheering the policy changes. Christine Powell, deputy managing attorney at Earthjustice and former commission adviser, said that "we applaud FERC for meeting the moment" and "look forward to engaging with FERC to center equity and environmental justice in transmission planning."
Cullen Howe, senior advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Sustainable FERC Project, stressed that "we urgently need every grid operator to determine where and what transmission lines to build. This rule brings everyone to the starting line for scaling up the clean energy transition."
"With climate-fueled disasters posing ever-greater challenges to the grid, this rule will help shape a power grid that optimizes the capabilities of clean energy while prioritizing reliability and affordability," Howe said. "In addition, FERC's backstop siting rule will help ensure that no one state can veto transmission lines that are in the general interest of the nation."
Quentin Scott, federal director for Chesapeake Climate Action Network, declared that "this announcement is a major leap forward to ease the bottlenecks that have slowed the clean energy revolution. These new federal rules will unleash the nearly 2000 gigawatts of clean energy in the transmission queue, putting us back on the pathway for 100% clean energy by 2035."
"When I talk with clean energy developers, their biggest challenge is certainty. The certainty of where they can build their projects, the certainty of how much their project will cost, and the certainty of their ability to connect to the grid. These latest FERC rules will provide that certainty," Scott added. He also urged Congress to "provide the financial incentives to expand transmission capacity."
"This rule will help shape a power grid that optimizes the capabilities of clean energy while prioritizing reliability and affordability."
Congress has already taken some action, as Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous highlighted, pointing to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed by President Joe Biden in 2022. He said as that law "continues to usher in the clean energy future through deployment of solar, wind, and battery storage, this transmission standard will allow utilities to deliver Americans clean, affordable electricity, even in the face of rising demand and extreme weather caused by climate change."
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other top Democrats joined advocacy organizations in lauding the rules, enacted as global temperatures continue to soar, underscoring the need to transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
"The clean energy incentives included in the Inflation Reduction Act have been a huge success but much of that success would be lost without the ability to bring power from places that generate renewable energy to communities all across the country," said Schumer. "A new historic advancement in our transmission policies is desperately needed, and the rules released by FERC today will go a long way to solving that problem."
"Last year, I pushed FERC to deliver a historic advancement in transmission policies that will lower costs and improve reliability by getting clean energy from where it is produced to where people live," he continued. "This is exactly what we need to see the clean energy revolution we catalyzed with the Inflation Reduction Act come to fruition. FERC's actions will help to fundamentally improve our power grid in the wake of the IRA."
The Senate leader and green groups welcomed the rules, but "the commission's sole Republican member, former Virginia regulator Mark Christie was not so effusive," notedHeatmap's Matthew Zeitlin. "He issued a harsh dissent to his colleagues' decision, likely previewing a judicial challenge from Republican-governed states."
"While the commission's chair, former District of Columbia Public Service Commissioner Willie Phillips, and its other member, NRDC alum Allison Clements, both Democrats, largely spoke about the rule in terms of reliability and reforming the planning process," Zeitlin reported, "Christie made it seem like a climate change policy in disguise that would function as a 'transfer of wealth' to wind, solar, and transmission developers."
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13% of 2020 Swing State Biden Voters Won't Be in 2024 Because of Gaza: Polls
The figure comes as part of a new set of polls that show former President Donald Trump narrowly leading Biden in 5 out of 6 crucial battleground states.
May 13, 2024
Approximately 13% of poll respondents in six swing states who voted for U.S. President Joe Biden in 2020 but would not vote for him again said that his foreign policy or Israel's war on Gaza were the most important issues determining their vote.
The figure comes as part of a new set of polls released Monday from The New York Times, Siena College, and The Philadelphia Inquirer that show former President Donald Trump narrowly leading Biden in 5 out of 6 crucial battleground states.
"We have warned that this would happen for months, and the Democratic Party didn't give a damn," author and organizer Daniel Denvir wrote on social media in response to the news.
The polls showed Trump leading Biden with registered voters by three percentage points in Pennsylvania, seven in Arizona and Michigan, 10 in Georgia, and a full 12 in Nevada. Only in Wisconsin did Biden edge ahead by two points. Biden won all of these states in 2020, but he could still win in 2024 if he secures Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and does not lose any other states he previously won. The results were slightly different for likely voters, with Trump narrowly leading in every state except for Michigan.
One voter the pollsters spoke to was 30-year-old Gerard Willingham, a Georgia web administrator who voted for Biden in 2020 but said he would vote for a third party candidate in 2024 because of Biden's response to Israel's war on Gaza.
"I think it's made quite a bit of difference in that it made me more heavily than in the past push toward voting for a third party, even if I feel that the candidates almost 100% won't win," Willingham said. "It's starting to reach into my moral conscience, I guess."
"Biden seems to get the blame for the war in Gaza. For the high cost of living, too."
The polling comes after Biden has spent the last seven months providing military, financial, and moral support for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as it wages a ground and air assault on Gaza that the International Court of Justice ruled could plausibly be a genocide. Only last week did Biden threaten to withhold certain weapons from Israel if it launches a full ground assault on Rafah, but several observers pointed out that Israel's incursions into Rafah so far should already qualify. Further, the poll was conducted from April 28 to May 9, so many respondents would have given their answers before Biden's May 8 remarks.
Palestinian rights and progressive activists have spent the primary season trying to persuade Biden to switch course on Gaza, launching "uncommitted" campaigns that won two delegates to the Democratic National Convention in the key swing state of Michigan. The poll provides further evidence that Biden's support for Israel's war is a real electoral liability.
"There is a cottage industry of political columnists who have said for months that these voters don't exist, only live in Brooklyn and Berkeley and on Twitter, TikTok, etc.," said Hamid Bendaas, communications director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project. "To the extent that Biden and his advisers are buying into it, they are costing him the election."
Gaza isn't the only—or even the primary—issue threatening Biden's reflection bid. A quarter of voters consider the economy and cost of living as their most important issues, and more than half of all voters rated the economy as "poor." Further, Biden actually lost more support overall from conservative and moderate Democrats.
Responding to the poll results, journalist Frank Bruni said that Biden needed to "wake up."
While Democratic Party insiders seem to believe that there is no way voters could ultimately prefer Trump's anti-abortion stance and authoritarian leanings, Bruni warned against "complacency."
He pointed out that Democratic senators in Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada did continue to poll ahead of their Republican opponents, suggesting that the problem is less with the Democratic Party overall than with Biden himself.
"Biden seems to get the blame for the war in Gaza. For the high cost of living, too," Bruni wrote.
"Regarding the economy, he has a story to tell—infrastructure investment, the CHIPS Act, low unemployment—and must tell it better, with an eye not on his liberal base, but on the minorities and young people who are drifting away from him," he advised. "That's the moral of the latest numbers: Take no voter for granted. And there's not a second to waste."
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UN Secretary-General Calls for Probe After Staffer Killed in Gaza
One U.N. staff member was killed and another was injured after an attack on their "clearly marked" vehicle.
May 13, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday reiterated his demand for a cease-fire in Gaza as he called for a full investigation into an attack on a "clearly marked" U.N. vehicle which killed one staff member and injured another in Rafah.
The U.N. did not identify the victims, but said the staff member who was killed worked for the U.N. Department of Safety and Security (DSS) and was the body's first international worker to be killed in Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave in October.
"The secretary-general condemns all attacks on U.N. personnel and calls for a full investigation," said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for Guterres. "He sends his condolences to the family of the fallen staff member. With the conflict in Gaza continuing to take a heavy toll—not only on civilians, but also on humanitarian workers—the secretary-general reiterates his urgent appeal for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire and for the release of all hostages."
Approximately 190 U.N. workers have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its attack. Until Monday all had been Palestinian nationals and most had worked for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which has provided aid and public services to Gaza since 1948 and is a top employer in the enclave.
"Humanitarian workers must be protected," said Guterres on social media.
The DSS employees had been traveling to European Hospital in Rafah, where about 1 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since October. About 300,000 people have fled the city in the past week amid Israel's long-feared invasion.
The attack on the U.N. vehicle comes weeks after Israel struck another clearly marked humanitarian convoy, killing seven international aid workers with the U.S. group World Central Kitchen.
Israel has also attacked humanitarian aid operations, firing on civilians who gathered around a convoy to get food as starvation took hold of the enclave due to the Israeli blockade on nearly all relief deliveries, and killing at least one U.N. worker at a food distribution center in Rafah in March.
Israel and its defenders in the Biden administration have repeatedly claimed the Israel Defense Forces are taking steps to prevent civilian deaths, even as the death toll has surged past 35,000. In October, as the IDF began its assault in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said publicly that he had "released all the restraints" on the military.
Author and Middle East policy expert Assal Rad asserted Monday that "you don't kill 190 U.N. staff, repeatedly kill aid workers in clearly marked vehicles, kill an unprecedented number of journalists, doctors, and medics, tens of thousands of civilians, and more than 14,000 children on 'accident.'"
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