March 22, 2024

Friday, March 22, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

Thinking about the issue of housing.

Biden Suggests a Bigger Federal Role to Reduce Housing Costs.

A new report focuses on the prolonged struggle to build affordable housing across America and suggests federal incentives to help.

Economists in the Biden administration are calling for more aggressive federal action to drive down costs for home buyers and renters, taking aim at one of the biggest economic challenges facing President Biden as he runs for re-election.

The policy proposals in a White House report being released on Thursday include what could be an aggressive federal intervention in local politics, which often dictates where homes are built and who can occupy them. The administration is backing a plan to pressure cities and other localities to relax zoning restrictions that in many cases hinder affordable housing construction.

That recommendation is part of a new administration deep dive into a housing crisis, decades in the making, that is hindering the president’s chances for a second term. The proposals, included in the annual Economic Report of the President, could serve as a blueprint for a major housing push if Mr. Biden wins a second term.

The report includes a suite of moves meant to reduce the cost of renting or buying a home, while encouraging local governments to change zoning laws to allow development of more affordable housing.

“It’s really hard to make a difference in this space, in this affordable housing space, without tackling land use regulations,” Jared Bernstein, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview.

Mr. Bernstein added that administration officials believed many local leaders were encouraging a bigger federal role in zoning reform — which can help override objections from local groups that oppose development. “I feel like we’re kicking through more of an open door now than we ever have before,” he said.

The report is full of statistics illustrating why housing has become an acute source of stress for American families and an electoral liability for Mr. Biden.

The administration has acknowledged that it has limited power over local zoning rules, which tend to dictate the design and density of homes in particular neighborhoods. Most of the president’s recommendations for expanding supply involve using the federal budget as a carrot to encourage local governments to allow more building — including adding low-income housing and smaller starter homes.

Such policies are unlikely to be put into law this year, with an election ahead and Republicans in control of the House.

But the focus on housing, and the endorsement of a comprehensive set of policies to increase its supply and affordability, could serve as a blueprint for a potentially bipartisan effort on the issue if Mr. Biden wins re-election. It could also add momentum to a housing reform movement that is well underway in state legislatures around the country.

The report documents how, over the past decade, home prices have significantly outpaced wage growth for American families. That has pushed ownership out of reach for middle-income home shoppers and left lower-income renters on the brink of poverty.

A quarter of tenants — about 12 million households — now spend more than half their income on rent. Prices are so high that if a minimum-wage employee worked 45 hours a week for a month, a median rent would consume every dollar he or she made.

Behind all this, the report said, is a longstanding housing shortage. The lack of housing has become a rare point of agreement among Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

The shortage is the product of decades of failing to build enough homes, a trend that worsened after the 2008 financial crisis. It has been exacerbated by the rising cost of construction along with the many local zoning and land use rules that make housing harder and more expensive to build. These rules also limit what kinds of units can go where, for instance by making it illegal to build apartments in single-family neighborhoods.

The lack of affordable housing particularly hurts lower-income families and couples starting out. Millions of lower-cost apartments have essentially disappeared over the past decade, either through rising rents or by falling into disrepair. At the same time, smaller and lower-cost “starter homes” are a shrinking share of the market.

Over the past several years, a bipartisan group of legislators in both red and blue states have pushed dozens of state laws to limit cities’ control over development. The report cheered them and noted the administration’s efforts to encourage such reforms, including the Housing Supply Action Plan, which was released two years ago.

Mr. Biden has focused heavily on housing in recent weeks, in part to show voters he is fighting to lower one of their major monthly costs. Privately, his aides have expressed hope that Federal Reserve interest rate cuts this year will drive down mortgage rates and possibly home prices, if a new supply of homes hits the market in response.

Publicly, Mr. Biden has seized on the initiative, calling on lawmakers to pass big federal investments in housing supply and tax credits for people buying homes.

“If inflation keeps coming down — and it’s predicted to do that — mortgage rates are going to come down as well, but I’m not going to wait,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday in Las Vegas. “I’m not going to wait.” (New York Times).

Freeing Americans from the Sisyphean burden of student debt.

Biden Approves $5.8 Billion in Additional Student Debt Cancellation.

The incremental relief brings the canceled total to $143.6 billion for nearly four million Americans.

The Biden administration continued its effort to extend student debt relief on Thursday, erasing an additional $5.8 billion in federal loans for nearly 78,000 borrowers, including teachers, firefighters and others who largely work in the public sector.

To date, the administration has canceled $143.6 billion in loans for nearly four million borrowers through various actions, fixes and federal relief programs. That’s the largest amount of student debt eliminated since the government began backing loans more than six decades ago, but it’s still far less than President Biden’s initial proposal, which would have canceled up to $400 billion in debt for 43 million borrowers but was blocked by the Supreme Court.

The latest debt erasures apply to government and nonprofit employees in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which can eliminate their balance after 120 payments. The P.S.L.F. program, which was plagued with administrative and other problems, has improved in recent years after the administration made a series of fixes.

“For too long, our nation’s teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters and other public servants faced logistical troubles and trap doors when they tried to access the debt relief they were entitled to under the law,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said.

Since those October 2021, more than 871,000 public service and nonprofit workers have received debt cancellation totaling $62.5 billion; before that, just 7,000 had reached forgiveness since the program was created more than 15 years ago.

Starting next week, borrowers who are set to receive the latest round of debt cancellation through the P.S.L.F. program will receive an email notification from Mr. Biden — a reminder of his administration’s work just eight months before the presidential election.

An additional 380,000 federal borrowers in the P.S.L.F program who are on track to have their loans forgiven in less than two years will receive emails from the president notifying them that they will be eligible for debt cancellation if they continue their public service work within that period.

Many of these borrowers have been helped by programsthat tried to address past errors that may have failed to credit individuals for payments. As a result, many borrowers received account adjustments, or additional credits, pushing them closer to the repayment finish line.

Millions of borrowers with certain types of loans are still eligible for some of those adjustments, but they will need to apply to consolidate those loans by April 30 to qualify.

“There are a lot of people who need to consolidate by this deadline to benefit and potentially access life-changing student loan relief,” said Abby Shafroth, co-director of advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center. They include borrowers with privately held loans in the Federal Family and Education Loan, Perkins Loan and Health Education Assistance Loan programs, she added. (People with direct loans or loans held by the Education Department don’t need to do anything to have their payment counts adjusted; it happens automatically.)

Besides P.S.L.F., the administration has extended relief through a variety of other federal relief programs: About 935,500 borrowers were approved for $45.6 billion in debt cancellation through income-driven repayment plans, which base monthly payments on a borrower’s earnings and household size. After a set period of repayment, usually 20 years, any remaining debt is erased.

Another 1.3 million people had $22.5 billion wiped out through the federal borrower defense program, which provides relief to those defrauded by their schools. (New York Times).

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This may prove to be the most important Trump story of the week.

Quite shocking.

Trump Told Pence Certifying Election Would Be ‘Career Killer,’ Valet Testified.

Vice President Mike Pence officiating over the electoral vote confirmation on the night of Jan. 6, 2021. A White House valet testified that President Donald J. Trump had pressured Mr. Pence to overturn the election and stewed about his refusal to do so for hours after violence broke out.

President Donald J. Trump warned his vice president against failing to overturn the 2020 election results, according to an account by the White House valet by his side on Jan.

The threat from President Donald J. Trump to his vice president, Mike Pence, was clear and direct: If you defy my effort to overturn the 2020 election by certifying the results, your future in Republican politics is over.

“Mike, this is a political career killer if you do this,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Pence by phone on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, according to the White House valet who was with the president for much of the day and told Congress he had overheard the conversation.

The testimony of Mr. Trump’s valet, provided to the now-defunct House Jan. 6 Committee in 2022 but not previously released publicly, offers a rare firsthand look into the former president’s behavior in the hours before, during and after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol seeking to halt the certification of President Biden’s victory.

In the valet’s account, laid out in a transcript obtained by The New York Times, an agitated Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence to overturn the election and stewed about Mr. Pence’s refusal for hours after violence engulfed Congress. Told that a civilian had been shot outside the House chamber amid the mob attack, he recalled, Mr. Trump appeared unconcerned.

“I just remember seeing it in front of him,” the valet said of a note card Mr. Trump was given bearing news of the casualty as he watched the riot unfold on television. “I don’t remember how it got there or whatever. But there was no, like, reaction.”

As unflattering as portions of the aide’s testimony were to Mr. Trump, he did not confirm some of the more graphic and damning claims made by witnesses in front of the Jan. 6 committee.

For instance, the valet said he did not remember hearing Mr. Trump use vulgar language in describing his view that Mr. Pence was a coward, or agree with rioters who were chanting for Mr. Pence to be hanged. And he did recall hearing the president ask about contacting top officials on the possibility of dispatching the National Guard to Capitol Hill — though there is no indication that he ever followed through.

“Did you hear the president say that?” a staff investigator for the House Jan. 6 committee asked the valet, inquiring about reports that Mr. Trump had called Mr. Pence an expletive meant to refer to a wimp.

“I did not — no, sir,” the valet responded.

Mr. Trump himself has not disputed using that language, and Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff testified that Ms. Trump had told her that Mr. Trump had an “upsetting” conversation with Mr. Pence and that the president had accused him of cowardice, using “the ‘p’ word.” The valet also acknowledged that he wasn’t with the president at all times, and that he had left the Oval Office during a portion of Mr. Trump’s call with Mr. Pence.

At another point, the valet was asked whether he remembered “any comments that the president or anybody around him made with respect to those chants, ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ ”

He answered that he recalled the refrain, “but I don’t remember any comments from the president or anybody on staff.”

Mr. Trump has previously defended the rioters’ use of the chant, telling ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that “the people were very angry,” and calling that anger “common sense.”

House Republicans furnished the transcript to The Times after they obtained it from the White House, which was reviewing and redacting it along with a handful of others provided by the House Jan. 6 committee. The copy reviewed by The Times is heavily redacted, and the valet is referred to simply as “a White House employee.”

For more than a year since winning control of the House, Republicans have been investigating the work of the Jan. 6 committee, looking for signs of bias. They have suggested that the panel did not release certain transcripts because they contradict some of the testimony from a prominent witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an aide to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time. While much of her testimony has been corroborated, Ms. Hutchinson acknowledged that in some cases she was relying on secondhand or thirdhand accounts of events in her testimony to the panel.

“It took a whole lot of work to get these,” Representative Barry Loudermilk, a Republican of Georgia who is leading the G.O.P.’s investigation, said of the transcript of the valet’s testimony and a batch of others he obtained from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Loudermilk conceded there was “some testimony in it that may not be favorable to Trump,” but he added: “We’re putting it all out there, not doing what the select committee did, and putting things out there that will be favorable to our side.”

In court filings, though, federal prosecutors who have charged Mr. Trump with crimes for his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election have said some of the committee’s transcripts were subject to confidentiality agreements, and those were sent to the White House and Secret Service for review and redactions before they could be released. Federal prosecutors said they had provided these “sensitive, nonpublic transcripts” to Mr. Trump and his legal team, according to a court filing last year.

Representative Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chaired the House Jan. 6 committee, said nothing in the valet’s account changes the essential facts of what his panel uncovered about Mr. Trump’s role in summoning supporters to Washington to challenge the election results and doing nothing to stop their attack at the Capitol.

“Despite Mr. Loudermilk’s attempts to rewrite the violent history of Jan. 6, the facts laid out in the select committee’s final report remain undisputed — and nothing substantive was left out nor hidden,” he said. “While the valet did not witness everything that happened in the White House that day, the testimony confirms Trump’s indifference to the violence and his anger at Vice President Pence for performing his duty under the Constitution.”

The valet also shed more light on how Mr. Trump’s White House had devolved into dysfunction during his final weeks in office. He said Mr. Trump was often “frustrated,” “upset” and “mad” at Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel who frequently served as a check on some of the former president’s more extreme impulses — so much so that the valet asked aides to keep the lawyer away from the president at lunchtime to avoid upsetting him.

The valet also confirmed Mr. Trump’s penchant for tearing up documents and other material given to him, which by the law governing presidential records are supposed to be preserved.

“That’s typically what he would do once he’s finished with a document,” the valet said of Mr. Trump. “But that was his sign of, like, he was done reading it, and he would just throw it on the floor. He would tear everything — tear newspapers, tear pictures.”

The valet also testified that Mr. Trump expressed an interest on Jan. 6 in speaking to General Mark A. Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi about sending the National Guard to the Capitol — a step that has been a matter of much dispute given the hourslong delay in the troops’ eventual arrival.

Mr. Loudermilk said it was that aspect of the valet’s account that caught his eye.

“That stood out to me like, ‘OK, this is totally in contrast to what we’ve seen, and I’ve never seen this before.’ And so that’s when we started digging,” Mr. Loudermilk said.

Ultimately, though, Mr. Trump made no such call, General Milley told the House panel.

The valet also testified about the contrast between the reaction of White House staffers and Mr. Trump as the riot was underway.

After he returned from giving a speech to a raucous crowd at the Ellipse, Mr. Trump was informed that “they’re rioting down at the Capitol,” the valet recalled.

“And he was, like, ‘Oh, really?’ And then he was like, ‘All right, let’s go see,’” and went to watch the violence on television.

The valet spoke of a sense of “disbelief” and then panic that fell over the staff.

“It was like, ‘What are we going to do?’ ” He said officials were “running around pretty much — running from office to office and all over the place,” while Mr. Trump appeared calm.

Hours later, though, the president was still stewing about Mr. Pence.

“Me and him, I think close to the end of the day, he just mentioned that Mike let him down,” the valet said. “And that was it.” (New York Times).

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Want to hear a decent human being?

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Will Andy Kim become the Democratic Senator from New Jersey? Chances are improving.

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