Biden says debt limit must be raised because of ‘reckless’ policies under Trump – live | US news

Let’s talk the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation bill. These two pieces of legislation are key to the Biden agenda, and Democrats are at an impasse.

Joe Biden was frank when he said just two members in the Senate – centrist senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – are standing in the way of “closing the deal” among the Democrats. Manchin and Sinema, like their Republican colleagues, are balking at the large spending amount of the reconciliation bill. Meanwhile, the progressives of the Democratic party are arguing that infrastructure and reconciliation should be voted together to give reconciliation a better chance of passing as is.

“We have the American people very strongly on our side, we have the president of the United States on our side, we have 96% of the Democratic caucus of the House on our side, and we’ve got all but two senators on our side. We’re going to win this thing,” Senator Bernie Sanders said Sunday.

At today’s briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president will be going into virtual meetings with progressive members of the House, with “the recognition that this package is going to be smaller than originally proposed.”

“What he wants to hear from them is what their priorities are, what their bottom lines are, so he can play a constructive role going forward,” Psaki said. “I would expect that later this week, he will have another virtual meeting with members who might consider themselves more moderate.”

She continued by saying that the administration’s main objective “is getting this done and delivering for the American people and we will continue pressing forward until we get it done.”

“Yes, it requires senator Sinema and senator Manchin moving forward and supporting a path forward and it also requires agreement on what a package would look like,” she said. “The president will continue to work with a range of members from across the Democratic caucus.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki is at the podium for today’s press briefing.

Politico is reporting that a senior State Department official is abruptly leaving his role, marking his departure with a scathing internal memo criticizing the Biden administration and its continued use of a Trump-era policy to expel migrants from the southern border as illegal,” “inhumane” and “not worthy of this administration that I so strongly support.”

The policy in question is Title 42, which allows the administration to bar people from entering the country during a health crisis. Harold Koh, a senior adviser, wrote in the memo that he believed that Title 42 authority “continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (“refouler”) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti.”

“Title 42 permits customs officers, with supervisor approval, to identify persons who should be excepted from expulsion based on the totality of the circumstances, including consideration of significant law enforcement, office and public safety, humanitarian and public health interests,” Koh wrote. “But if Haiti is undeniably a humanitarian disaster area, the question should be: at this moment, why is this administration returning Haitians at all?

The Associated Press is reporting that Donald Trump has until 23 December to undergo questioning in a former Apprentice contestant’s defamation lawsuit over what he said in denying her sexual assault allegations.

Summer Zervos was one in a series of women who publicly accused Trump of sexual assaults or harassment years before in the runup to the 2016 presidential election. Zervos said that Trump subjected her to unwanted kissing and groping during meetings in 2007 at his New York office and at a California hotel where he was staying.

Trump retweeted a message that called her claims “a hoax” and described the women who accused him of sexual assault and harassment as “liars” trying to hurt his 2016 campaign’s chances.
Zervos sued, saying he hurt her reputation, and is seeking a retraction, an apology and unspecified damages.

Trump was weeks away from a January 2020 deposition deadline when he won a delay, arguing that sitting presidents couldn’t be sued in state courts.

After he left office this year, New York’s court of appeals said the question was moot. The case returned to a Manhattan trial court for both sides to continue gathering evidence.

Zervos, a California restaurateur, appeared on “The Apprentice” in 2006. Trump was then the host.

House majority leader Steny Hoyer issued a statement in support of Joe Biden and his rebuke on the Republicans over the debt limit:

“Preventing a senate vote on this critical legislation puts our economic recovery in jeopardy,” Hoyer said. “Americans across the country will suffer the consequences of Republican obstructionism if the United States defaults on its obligations by refusing to pay for what it has already bought. I call on Leader McConnell to allow a vote on cloture without delay so that Democrats can suspend the debt limit and prevent economic catastrophe.”

Speaking of senator Kyrsten Sinema, yesterday, Arizona activists followed her into a bathroom at Arizona State University, where Sinema is a lecturer, urging her to pass the $3.5tn infrastructure bill that she is holding up in negotiations.

Today, Sinema responded to the activists, saying it was “unacceptable”. “It is the duty of elected leaders to avoid fostering an environment in which honestly-held policy disagreements serve as the basis for vitriol — raising the temperature in political rhetoric and creating a permission structure for unacceptable behavior,” she said in a statement.”

Last week, activists in boats and kayaks paddled up to the yacht of senator Joe Manchin, another reconciliation bill holdout, to demand that he pass the bill.

When asked about what happened to Sinema at today’s address, Joe Biden said, “I don’t think they’re appropriate tactics, but it happens to everybody.”

“The only people it doesn’t happen to are people who have Secret Service standing around,” he quipped.

Another piece to the whole debt ceiling todo is the infrastructure bill and the $3.5tn reconciliation bill (also known as the Build Back Better Act).

Republicans have long balked at the amount of spending proposed by the Democrats in each of these key pieces of legislation for the Biden administration and are using them to justify voting against raising the debt limit – they’re saying the Democrats are spending too much domestically.

“Raising the debt limit is about paying off our old debt,” Biden made a point of saying in his debt ceiling address today. “It has nothing to do with any new spending or my plan for infrastructure or Build Back Better. Zero.”

The debt ceiling could be raised in the reconciliation process, but neither Biden nor majority leader Chuck Schumer are particularly fond of that approach. It’s complicated, and on top of that, Biden is already struggling with getting his party fully on board for the reconciliation bill.

Biden was short when asked today about his inability to convince everyone in his party to get behind the reconciliation bill: “I’ve been able to close the deal with 99% of my party,” he said. “Two. Two people. It’s still under way.”

The two? Centrist Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, of course. Read more about them here:

In his address today on the need to raise the debt limit, Joe Biden lambasted the Republicans and their use of the filibuster to stymie the Democrats.

“So let’s be clear, not only are Republicans refusing to do their job, they’re threatening to use their power to prevent us from doing our job: saving the economy from a catastrophic event,” Biden said. “I think quite frankly it’s hypocritical, dangerous and disgraceful.”

Though Biden publicly has yet to commit to ending the filibuster, as many in his party have been asking him to do, he went hard at the Republicans, telling them to stop with the filibuster and allow Democrats to move forward in raising the debt ceiling.

“We’re not expecting Republicans to do their part,” Biden said. “They made that clear from the beginning. We tried asking, to no avail. We’re just asking them to not use procedural tricks to block us from doing the job that they won’t do. A meteor is headed to crash into our economy. Democrats are willing to do all the work in stopping it. Republicans just have to let us do our job. Just get out of the way. If you don’t want to help save the country, just get out of the way so you don’t destroy it.”

Joe Biden says we must raise the debt limit in part because of the “reckless tax and spending policies under the previous Trump administration.”

“In four years, they incurred almost $8tn in additional debt, in bills we have to now pay off,” Biden said. “That’s more than a quarter of the entire debt incurred, now outstanding, in more than 200 years. Republicans in Congress raised the debt three times when Donald Trump was president, and each time with Democrat support. Now they won’t raise it.”

Joe Biden has taken the podium to speak about the debt ceiling and he’s coming in hot: “The United States is a nation that pays its bills and always has.”

Andrew Yang announced today that he was leaving the Democratic party to register as an independent.

Yang, who attracted a staunch following after his 2020 presidential run on a platform that celebrated math, nerdiness and a universal basic income, posted on his website that despite having been registered as a Democrat since 1995, he was “confident that no longer being a Democrat is the right thing”.

“Breaking up with the Democratic Party feels like the right thing to do because I believe I can have a greater impact this way,” he wrote. “

“My goal is to do as much as I can to advance our society,” Yang wrote. “There are phenomenal public servants doing great work every day – but our system is stuck. It is stuck in part because polarization is getting worse than ever.

“Many of the people I know are doing all of the good they can – but their impact is constrained. Now that I’m not a member of one party or another, I feel like I can be even more honest about both the system and the people in it.”

Yang lost the race for mayor of New York earlier this year as a Democrat.

Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis has been diagnosed with breast cancer, her husband, Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced.

“As she faces the most difficult test of her life, she will not only have my unwavering support but the support of our entire family, as well as the prayers and well wishes from Floridians across the state,” Ron DeSantis said in a statement.

Confused about why we’re still talking about the debt ceiling? Here’s a good breakdown about what’s going on and why you should care – and the role that the filibuster is playing in all this.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer just put out a letter to his colleagues reiterating that “we must get a bill to the President’s desk dealing with the debt limit by the end of the week.”

“We do not have the luxury to wait until October 18th,” Schumer wrote.

He said the refusal of the Republicans to extend the country’s debt limit and to “pay for the spending and debts incurred as a result of the bipartisan covid relief legislation passed during the Trump administration” is “a stark reminder of how absurd and partisan Republicans have made the process for raising the debit limit.”

Howdy, live blog readers.

Joe Biden heads back to Washington this morning from Wilmington with plans to deliver remarks in a few hours on the debt ceiling.

To recap: last week was yet another tense game of chicken in the realm of American politics. The US government avoided a partial federal shutdown when the Senate and the House of Representatives passed a bill to keep the government funded through 3 December – but in passing the bill, Democrats were forced to remove language that would have raised the debt ceiling.

There’s also the small matter of Biden’s domestic spending agenda, of course, as moderates and progressives in the Democratic party continue their tussle over price tags and policy priorities. The infrastructure bill, which is bipartisan, and the domestic spending proposals, which are not, are in question.

Much more to follow, of course, and more here: