Industrial Production Unexpectedly Plunged In September
U.S. industrial production has fallen for two consecutive months, data from the Federal Reserve showed Monday.
The total output of utilities, mines, and factories in the U.S. dropped 1.3 percent in September and 0.1 percent in August, the Federal Reserve reported.
That is far worse than economists expected. The consensus forecast was for 0.2 percent growth in September, according to Econoday.
The August number was revised down from the preliminary report of 0.4 percent growth.
The Federal Reserve reported Monday that nearly half, or six-tenths of a percentage point, of the September contraction was attributable to hurricane Ida.
Manufacturing fell 0.7 percent in September, in large part because of a 7.2 percent decline in auto manufacturing. A shortage of semiconductors has forced car makers to slow production.
But even excluding the auto industry, production declined. Factor output less autos fell 0.3 percent, the Fed said.
Utilities fell 3.6 percent. Mining production, which includes oil wells, declined 2.3 percent.
Capacity utilization declined by one percentage point to 75.2 percent. That is about 4.4 points below the long-term average.
Gov. Abbott blasts Biden's 'catastrophic open border policies' for migrant crisis
Brooks: We’re Debating Spending $3.5 Trillion and Boosting Demand While There Are Supply Chain Issues Because Demand Outpaces Supply
On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks argued that if the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill passes, it will increase demand, and because the supply chain problems are due to demand outpacing supply, there is a risk that the reconciliation bill will “create even more inflation.”
Brooks said the economic problems are a “pretty significant” headache for Biden.
He added, “The worrying thing for me is the inflation rate is much higher than many economists said. And it’s in real estate. It’s — rental is going up. Housing costs are just skyrocketing. And when you have rents going up and you have wages going up as fast as they are, then that leads to long-term inflation. And the worry, for me, this whole supply chain problem is caused by supply and demand. There’s incredible amounts of demand. Because people were locked down for a year-and-a-half, and there’s not so much supply because the factories were shut and the ports were shut. And we now have huge demand. We’re about probably, possibly, to spend another $3.5 trillion, pour that into the economy. That’s going to further increase demand and possibly further increase inflationary pressures. And so, for the people trying to pass this reconciliation bill and the infrastructure bill, it has to be a bit of concern that they’re about to create even more inflation. And so, I’m not sure Biden is to blame, but it does have some policy effects on how we talk about these gigantic bills.”
Brooks later stated that inflation worries “are an argument for phasing in a lot of the things they want to do and make it a little slower, so you don’t get this big burst of demand.”
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GOP Rep. Taylor: Biden’s ‘Outrageous’ Immigration Policy ‘Has Turned the Border Patrol into Border Processing’
Monday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends First,” Rep. Van Taylor (R-TX) slammed President Joe Biden for his “outrageous” border policy.
According to Taylor, Biden “has turned the Border Patrol into border processing” through his “terrible decisions.”
“It’s really just incredible. The Biden administration created this crisis through terrible decisions. I mean, you know, day one, President Biden said, ‘Hey, we are not building the wall, we are going to stop deporting people using Title 42,’ and furthermore, he said, ‘We are going to end the Remain in Mexico policy.’ And those decisions made on the first day of his administration have created a tremendous crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. I was there last week, and it’s outrageous the lack of security that he has created, the humanitarian crisis, the health care crisis. He has turned the Border Patrol into border processing.”
Taylor highlighted the influx of crime, drugs and COVID-19-positive immigrants entering the country due to the Biden administration.
“It’s absolutely staggering what a bad job the Biden administration is doing,” he lamented. “And this is just, you know, barely a band-aid — I mean, lipstick on the pig, if you will, just not an effort to fix the problem.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
IF YOU THINK LIFE IN AMERICA IS BLEAK NOW, WAIT AND SEE WHAT IT WILL BE FOR YOUR CHILDREN! THIS IS THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY OF BRIBES SUCKING POLITICIANS AT WORK.... JUST NOT FOR YOU!
This, along with the disastrous job situation where upwards of 7.5 million unemployed workers have been cut off jobless benefits, millions are at risk of being thrown out of their homes with the lapsing of the national eviction moratorium, accompanied with skyrocketing home and rental costs that are bound to drive both an immiseration and radicalization of the working class.
Soaring food prices drive hunger around
the world
The 2021 Global Hunger Index (GHI), published on Thursday, revealed soaring levels of hunger among the poor and working populations around the globe.
The foreword, written by the heads of Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide, the organizations responsible for the GHI, stated that the report “points to a dire hunger situation, a result of the toxic cocktail of the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasingly severe and protracted conflicts.”
Rising food prices are a critical contributing factor in the growth of world hunger over the past year. Rapidly mounting inflation and the disruption of the supply chain networks of global capitalism are driving up the prices of all basic consumer goods. The U.S. Energy Information Authority reported that nearly half of all US households who use natural gas to heat their homes will pay an average of 30 to 50 percent more this winter for heating than last year.
Cars line up for food at the Utah Food Bank’s mobile food pantry at the Maverik Center Friday, April 24, 2020, in West Valley City, Utah [Credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer]
Real hourly earnings for American workers have fallen 1.9 percent since January. Workers in countries around the globe confront a similar situation, one that has become unlivable. Increasingly unable to pay rent, purchase adequate food, obtain fuel, they are being driven into struggle.
They confront a social system, capitalism, that exploits them, overworks them, and then leaves them without the basic necessities of life. The producers of the world’s goods find themselves without the means of survival. Nowhere is this more palpable than with the skyrocketing levels of world hunger.
The GHI report on hunger appears a week after the United Nations held a high-level event, Action in Support of Preventing and Ending Famine Now. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Director-General Qu Dongyu told the assembly, “Today we face unprecedented food crises on multiple fronts. Starvation and hunger-related deaths are a present reality. ... As we near the end of 2021, the situation has continued to deteriorate.”
The report stated that hunger remained at “serious, alarming, or extremely alarming levels in nearly 50 countries” and noted that “after decades of decline, the global prevalence of undernourishment ... is increasing.”
Three factors, according to the GHI, drive the rising levels of world hunger, which have driven 41 million people to “the very edge of famine”—“conflict, climate change, and the economic devastation brought on by Covid-19.”
Fueled by inflation and the economic dislocation caused by the pandemic, world food prices are soaring. The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI), which measures change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, reported in September that prices were 32.8 percent higher than they had been a year prior. The prices of the most basic staples rose even more sharply; wheat was up 41 percent and maize 38 percent from September 2020.
These figures contain immense misery. According to an article published in Nature Food in July, three billion people could not afford a healthy diet before the pandemic. Soaring food prices, and rising prices of consumer goods generally, have markedly worsened the situation. While 43 percent of the world’s population could not afford a healthy diet prior to COVID-19, by the end of 2020 the numbers had risen to 50 percent.
A 32 percent rise in the price of food has a profound impact on the poor. In underdeveloped countries, a majority of the population will spend somewhere from 40 to 60 percent of household income on food. The poorest 20 percent of the population in the United States spent from 30 to 40 percent of household income on food. Rising prices either mean an inability to pay rent and other expenses or cuts in the quality and overall calories of the food consumed.
The mass hunger and malnutrition confronting a substantial portion of the world’s working class is a social catastrophe, not a natural one. It is an immense crime which has been committed by the capitalist class around the globe.
The three factors driving world hunger identified by the GHI—conflict, the economic dislocation of the pandemic and climate change—are all the results of the irrational and rapacious character of capitalism.
The sharp rise in world hunger over the past year is above all a result of the criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic by capitalist governments around the globe. The FAO cited “food price spikes, movement restrictions that limit market and pastoralist activities alike, rising inflation, decreased purchasing power” among the economic effects of the pandemic on world food consumption.
There are now 2.37 billion people in the category of “food insecure.” Most subsist on one or two small meals a day of inadequate nutrition, often simply a grain extended with a meager source of fat and a vegetable.
Around the world, working parents go hungry to ensure that there is food on their children’s plates. They invent ways of extending their food. They find ways to cook scraps. They dull hunger pains with instant coffee. They eat rice with a pinch of fish paste and a smear of vegetable oil.
Basic necessaries in much of the world are sold in small units as it is all that most can afford. Rice is purchased by the cup; oil in a small tied-off plastic bag.
The problems of malnutrition and hunger confront the working class in even the richest country in the world. American inner cities are food deserts, where the nearest source of healthy food is often miles away and inaccessible by public transit. All that is available at a nearby liquor store are Spam and Frosted Flakes. Lines form outside food banks often stretching for a block. One in five Americans relied on food bank assistance in 2020.
Every day more than seven hundred million people, 8.8 percent of the world’s population, go to bed on an empty stomach, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). Hunger and malnutrition mean shortened life expectancies, stunted mental development, the premature death of loved ones; it means widows and orphans and childless parents.
The crisis of the pandemic, the drive of the capitalist class to force workers back into the factories, and the soaring cost of food and other basic goods are fueling an explosive growth in the global class struggle. Workers around the world are beginning to move, in opposition to the capitalist class and in defiance of the corporatist trade unions that have for decades strangled their struggles. They are engaged in a fight for their lives in a struggle over how society’s resources will be allocated.
The vast wealth of humanity, the product of our collective labor, is enough to feed, clothe, shelter and provide a rich and meaningful life to every human on this planet.
These immense resources, however, are controlled by a handful of billionaires and the super-rich, who have parasitically profited off the exploitation of the world’s working class and who squander this wealth. They have grown richer in the pandemic. Over the course of 2020, the world’s billionaires brought in an additional $1.9 trillion in personal wealth.
Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos compete with each other to take vanity flights to space, while a majority of the world’s population cannot afford a healthy diet. Society can afford to feed everyone on earth, but it cannot afford the billionaires.
Biden Crash is Here (AVOID these 5 STATES)
Supply Chain Crisis Has Schools Scrambling to Feed Students
The Biden administration’s failure to successfully fight the coronavirus and the ensuing supply chain crisis has trickled down to school cafeterias, as food workers struggle to get meals for students on the table.
In Oakland County, Michigan, Sara Simmerman, a food and nutrition supervisor, said the district is still getting Little Caesars pizzas for its 8,600 students, but the rest of the supplies it needs are stalled.
A satellite kitchen got only 35 of 400 cases of food it had ordered at one point. A few days later, 700 cases arrived on one day.
“You never know what you’re going to get,” Simmerman said. “It’s amazing how many kids want to eat salad when you don’t have lettuce.”
The Guardian reported on the unprecedented lack of supplies for U.S. consumers, the media outlet advancing the Biden administration narrative that the supply chain issue is global, thus not the failure of White House policies:
Like most districts across the country, Huron Valley is facing unprecedented food and labor shortages caused by what supply chain experts say is nearing a “global transport systems collapse.” Experts say as the economy reopened after lockdowns, many industries – including those involved in delivering food and supplies to schools – have faced increased demand they can’t meet.
Many predict the backlog of orders could extend throughout the rest of the school year. Forced to adapt their meal programs to a grab-and-go system last year when schools shut down for remote learning, school nutrition departments are now scrambling to find menu items and enlisting front office staff and school administrators to serve meals. They’re adapting their menus almost daily, depending on deliveries, and putting off equipment purchases to make up for higher prices on food and supplies.
A nationwide shortage of long-haul truckers is one piece of the complex puzzle that determines whether Los Angeles students get applesauce or schools across Michigan’s Oakland county offer chocolate milk.
“Deliveries of goods and foods are extremely delayed,” Lieling Hwang, assistant director of nutrition services for the Long Beach Unified School District in California, the Guardian report said. “It now takes an average of eight weeks to receive an item that previously showed up in two to three weeks.”
“Typically, these deliveries are coming in short, as well,” Hwang said.
That means middle and high school students are no longer getting their favorite “spicy cheese crunchers” or whole wheat croissants that used to be offered for breakfast sandwiches, Hwang said.
The Guardian reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently approved $1.5 billion in assistance to help school nutrition operations keep up with rising food prices. The money will be used to provide schools with fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy products.
Congress passed legislation to make all school lunches free for this year in the wake of the pandemic.
“We’ve been told it may even get worse before it gets better,” Simmerman said.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com.
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Don’t be fooled by Joe Biden
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Chris Hedges | NAFTA, Clinton, and Obama BETRAYED Americans... and Joe Biden was right there with the worst of them!
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Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
Study finds 90 percent of Americans would make 67 percent more without last four decades of increasing income inequality
25 September 2020
A new study from the RAND Corporation, “Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018,” written by Carter Price and Kathryn Edwards, provides new documentation of the profound restructuring of class relations in America over the last 40 years.
The study, which looks at changes in pre-tax family income from 1947 to 2018, divided into quintiles of the American population, concludes that the bottom 90 percent of the population would, on average, make 67 percent more in income—every year (!)—had shifts in income inequality not occurred the last four decades.
In other words, any family that made less than $184,292 (the 90th percentile income bracket) in 2018 would be, on average, making 67 percent more. This amounts to a total sum of $2.5 trillion of collective lost income for the bottom 90 percent, just in 2018.
Furthermore, the study concludes, that had more equitable growth continued after 1975 (a date they use as a shifting point), the bottom 90 percent of American households would have earned a total of $47 trillion more in income.
Given that there were about 115 million households in the bottom 90 percent of the US in 2018 population (out of a total of 127.59 million in 2018), that would mean that each of these households would, on average, be $408,696 richer today with this lost income.
To reach these conclusions, the authors break down historical real, pre-tax, income into different quintiles of the population (bottom fifth, second fifth, third fifth, fourth fifth, highest fifth). Looking at the period between 1947 and 2018, they divide the years based on business cycles (booms and busts of the economy).
Growth in Annualized Real Family Pre-tax, Pre-Transfer Income by Quantile from RAND, “Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018,” by C. Price and K. Edwards.
Their data quantitatively expresses the restructuring of class relations that began at the end of the post-WWII boom. Facing intensified economic crisis, automation, and global competition, the US ruling class undertook an aggressive campaign of deindustrialization, slashing wages and clawing back benefits won in the previous period by explosive struggles of the working class, while simultaneously funneling money to financial markets, expanding the wealth and income of both the upper and upper-middle class.
As the data shows, while the bottom 40 percent of American households made significant percentile increases to their income, relative to the top 5 percent, for the 20 years between 1947 and 1968, in the 40 years from 1980 to the present, this trend was reversed. In 1980-2000, the bottom 40 percent of the population experienced a net income gain significantly below that of the top 5 percent. It must be noted that because these are percentile increases, the absolute differences between the gains of the rich versus the poor is far larger.
Furthermore, not included in this data is wealth. In the last 40 years, and especially the last 10 to 20 years, the stock market has become the principal means through which the top 10 percent of the population has piled up historic levels of wealth.
Significantly, the data from 2001 to 2018 shows a sharp slowdown in income gains for all sections of American society as per capita GDP growth slowed and US capitalism experienced a historic decline. However, while the income of the top 5 percent of the population may have only grown by about 2 percent between 2008 and 2018, the wealth of the top percentiles of the population exploded. For example, according to data from the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, the wealth of the top 1 percent of the population increased from almost $20 trillion in the first quarter of 2008, just before the worst of the financial crisis, to almost $33 trillion at the beginning of 2018.
By using the data, the authors come up with a set of counterfactual incomes based on what would be the different income brackets in 2018 without a shift in income distribution. The top 1 percent, instead of making on average $1,384,000 would make $630,000. The 25th percentile, instead of making $33,000 would make $61,000.
Data source: RAND; Graphics by Marry Traverse for Civic Ventures; as published in TIME Magazine
The authors of the study also make several other important observations by breaking down their data on the basis of location, education, and race.
Over 40 percent of mothers with children ages 12 and under are now food insecure in the US
Kevin Reed
A blog post on the website of The Hamilton Project has revealed that hunger in the US has expanded to historically unprecedented proportions since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among households with young children.
Reporting on evidence from two surveys, The Hamilton Project shows that by the end of April 2020, more than 20 percent of all US households and over 40 percent of mothers with children under the age of 13 were experiencing food insecurity. These figures are between two and five times greater than they were in 2018, when food insecurity data was last collected.
Households and children in the surveys are considered food insecure if a respondent “indicates the following statements were often or sometime true”:
· The food we bought just didn’t last and we didn’t have enough money to get more.
· The children in my household were not eating enough because we just couldn’t afford enough food.
Lauren Bauer, a fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution who specializes in social and safety net policies, wrote in her blog post on Wednesday, “Rates of food insecurity observed in April 2020 are also meaningfully higher than at any point for which there is comparable data” from 2001 to 2018.
A woman clutches a child while waiting with hundreds of people line up for food donations, given to those impacted by the COVID-19 virus outbreak, in Chelsea, Mass., Tuesday, April 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Further placing the present ability of families to put food on the table in historical context, Bauer writes, “Looking over time, particularly to the relatively small increase in child food insecurity during the Great Recession, it is clear that young children are experiencing food insecurity to an extent unprecedented in modern times.”
Bauer explains that the surveys conducted their own national sampling of mothers in late April by asking the same questions used by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in previous food insecurity studies.
Significantly, Bauer also explains that the USDA aggregates a battery of questions on access to food from the Current Population Survey in 2018. If the nearly two-to-one ratio between the percent of mothers with children under the age of 12 who had food insecure children in their household and the percent of families with children who were not eating enough because they couldn’t afford enough food were maintained today, the “17.4 percent [of] children not eating enough would translate into more than a third of children experiencing food insecurity.”
The Hamilton Project (THP) is a Democratic Party economic policy think-tank associated with the Brookings Institution. Launched in 2006, the THP featured then-Senator Barack Obama as a speaker at its founding event, who called the organization “the sort of breath of fresh air that I think this town needs.”
The publication of the US hunger data is part of an initiative by THP to push for increases in government spending on national food programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.
However, the Democratic Party proposal to increase food stamp benefits by 15 percent is being considered as a temporary measure “for the duration of the economic crisis,” according to the New York Times. In any case, the increase is still insufficient to provide the poor what they need to adequately feed their families, with the average monthly benefit of $239 going up by $36 to $274 under the Democrats’ proposal.
Meanwhile, with tens of millions who have lost their jobs during the pandemic unable to collect unemployment benefits due to delays and backlogs in government systems that are ill-equipped to handle the increase in applications, the same kind of bureaucratic mismanagement is certainly to be expected in the present wave of SNAP assistance applications.
Along with every social program over the past four decades, federal food stamp assistance has been attacked by Democratic and Republican administrations alike as “welfare” that is undeserved by those receiving it. Before the pandemic, President Trump boasted that he forced 7 million people off of food stamps since taking office and the Congressional Republicans were working on a plan to further reduce eligibility and expand work requirements to qualify for the benefit.
The return of mass hunger in America is an inevitable product of the response of the US government and ruling establishment to the pandemic, which has been a mixture of utter indifference to the suffering caused by the health crisis and outright cruelty toward the working class, poor and elderly who have been attacked by COVID-19 infection and death as well as the deprivation associated with the economic crisis.
Clearly, the staggering magnitude of the impact of the pandemic on families has been revealed by the findings of The Hamilton Project food insecurity study. As dire circumstances confronting millions of people persist and deepen, the crisis is pointing directly to social convulsions that have not been seen in the US since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Sixty million in US relied on food
banks in 2020
Sixty million people in the United States, nearly 1 in 5, received assistance from food banks and similar organizations in 2020 according to the nonprofit Feeding America, representing a 50 percent increase over the prior year. According to a research brief by The Conversation, the sharpest increase in the rate of food insufficiency was among so-called middle-income households, households that make $50,000 to $75,000 per year, rising from 0.98 percent to 1.48 percent.
Cars line up for food at the Utah Food Bank’s mobile food pantry at the Maverik Center Friday, April 24, 2020, in West Valley City, Utah [Credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer]
Food insufficiency increased among Americans at all income levels according to The Conversation’s analysis of Census Bureau survey data after April 23. American households earning less than $50,000 have the highest level of food insufficiency, with each lower income bracket tracking with a higher level, with 4.4 percent of those under $25,000 food insecure. That is, this is a problem that affects primarily the working class.
Food insufficiency, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), “is a more severe condition than food insecurity and measures whether a household generally has enough to eat. In this way, food insufficiency is closer in severity to very low food security than to overall food insecurity.”
As defined by the USDA, “Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.” The USDA reports that overall food insecurity has rose in the US from 9.5 percent of the population as of April 23, 2020, to 13.4 percent as of December 21, 2020.
As of the end of August, according to the US Census Bureau’s weekly Household Pulse survey, more than 7 percent of all households and 9 percent of households with children said they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat.
Feeding America also projected that 54 million Americans didn’t have enough food to eat in 2020, a 46 percent increase over 2019.
As of March 2021 more than 42 million Americans received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, an increase of 5 million from the previous March.
While Congress passed a 15 percent increase to SNAP benefits at the end of last year, which it later extended, this is set to expire September 30, the end of FY 2021. A reassessment of the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan,” which is used to determine SNAP benefits, is set to take effect October 1 as a result of the 2018 Farm Bill, passed under the Trump administration, which stipulates a readjustment of payments for the first time since 2006 according to the USDA.
The Thrifty Food Plan will translate into an average $11 monthly increase over the current assistance program, from $240 to $251, despite the end of some federal benefits to SNAP, though with inflation factored in, using 2020 to 2021 numbers on the Minneapolis Fed’s inflation calculator, it will actually amount to a 68 cent decrease. The average amount will drastically decrease in 2022 to $169 a month before inflation if remaining federal pandemic assistance provisions for SNAP are allowed to expire according to USDA, though the decrease in real terms is likely to be far larger as inflation is expected to continue and accelerate.
According to the key findings section on a USDA study released before July 4 this year “88 percent of SNAP participants reported facing some type of barrier to achieving a healthy diet throughout the month.”
The second point states that, “The most common barrier overall, reported by 61 percent of SNAP participants, was the affordability of foods that are part of a healthy diet.”
The annual projected cost of the Thrifty Food Plan is a mere $20 billion, one-sixth the cost of the $120 billion transferred every month from the Fed to Wall Street, or about 2.8 percent of the $715 billion 2022 US military budget being requested by the Biden administration.
Furthermore, food prices are skyrocketing. The Consumer Price Index for food has increased to 2.7 percent for 2021 compared to 2020, with large increases seen in some food groups.
USDA forecasts for wholesale beef, farm-level eggs, farm-level wheat and flour prices were revised upwards this month. Beef is predicted to increase between 17 and 20 percent in 2021 based on data currently available this month, with the same for pork, with wheat rising between 33 and 36 percent and poultry with a 16 to 19 percent increase.
This, along with the disastrous job situation where upwards of 7.5 million unemployed workers have been cut off jobless benefits, millions are at risk of being thrown out of their homes with the lapsing of the national eviction moratorium, accompanied with skyrocketing home and rental costs that are bound to drive both an immiseration and radicalization of the working class.
The growth of hunger during the pandemic is a damning exposure of the incapability of capitalism to provide for even the most basic of social needs and an objective expression of the need for the working class to expropriate the wealth of the capitalist oligarchs and to put it towards the needs of the vast majority of the population.
Biden’s plan would hurt Americans, she said. “What scholars found specifically when they looked at the [1980] impact of Cubans in South Florida is that the wages of American workers who were competing for unskilled or less skilled jobs went down significantly … The usual suspects will benefit — the employers who will have a labor surplus and will get away with paying low wages, [and] the slumlords who can fill up their substandard affordable housing.”
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Jim Banks Reveals the ‘Mind-Blowingly Corrupt’ Carveouts in $3.5 Trillion Infrastructure Bill
96
Alex Wong/Getty Images
13 Oct 20210
14:42
Rep. Jim Banks (R-SC), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), detailed many of the most radical aspects of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill.
Biden has gambled his legislative majority on passing two infrastructure bills, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation infrastructure bill, otherwise known as the Build Back Better Act.
Democrats hope to pass their mammoth, $3.5 trillion legislation through reconciliation, which allows the Senate to pass legislation with only a simple majority.
Although Democrats have not agreed to the final tenets of the legislation, Americans can see the tentative details of the Democrats’ marquee legislation.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), released an exhaustive list of some of the most radical aspects of the Democrats’ “socialist takeover bill.”
Banks’ press release hopes to serve as messaging House Republicans can use to rally against Biden’s marquee bill.
The RSC contended in a press release Tuesday that Democrats plans to hide the bill text to prevent Americans from knowing how radical the bill is.
“They’ve played ‘hide the ball’ with the bill text so as not to tip off the public as to what they’re putting in their bills. Then, they bring it to the floor and tout some poll numbers and scare their members into voting for it,” the RSC wrote.
The RSC noted the bill would:
1. Perpetuates labor shortage: Continues welfare benefits without work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents at a time where there are 10.1 million job openings—more openings than there are people looking for work.
2. Commissions a climate police: Democrats stuffed $8 billion into the bill to commission a cabal of federally funded climate police called the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) who will conduct progressive activism on taxpayers’ dime (pages 8, 21, and 926).
3. Pushes Green New Deal in our public schools: Requires funding for school construction be used largely on enrollment diversity and Green New Deal agenda items (page 55).
4. Pushes Green New Deal in our universities: Democrats include a $10 billion “environmental justice” higher education slush fund to indoctrinate college students and advance Green New Deal policies (page 1,935).
5. Forces faith-based child care providers out: The bill blocks the ability of many faith-based providers from participating in the childcare system and will lead to many of their closures (page 280).
6. Hurts small and in-home daycares: Requires pre-K staff to have a college degree. (page 303)
7. Includes new incentives for illegal immigration: Illegal immigrants will be eligible to take advantage of Democrats’ new ‘free’ college entitlement (page 92) as well be eligible for additional student aid (page 147) and the enhanced child tax credit (page 1,946).
8. Includes legislative hull for Biden’s vaccine mandate: Increases OSHA penalties on businesses that fail to implement the mandate up to $700,000 per violation and includes $2.6 billion in funding for the Department of Labor to increase enforcement of these penalties (page 168).
9. Gives unions near-total control: The bill includes insane prohibitions that would bind employers’ hands in union disputes and dangerously tilt the balance of power, subjecting employers to penalties that exempt union bosses and officials… among other things this bill would prevent employers from permanently replacing striking workers (page 175). It coerces businesses to meet union boss demands by increasing Fair Labor Standards Act penalties by an astronomical 900% (page 168).
10. Makes unions bigger and more powerful: The bill would subsidize union dues that would only serve to strengthen the influence of union bosses and not American workers (page 2323).
11. Pushes Democrats’ wasteful and confusing school lunch agenda: $643 million for, among other things, “procuring…culturally appropriate foods” (page 333).
12. Furthers radical abortion agenda: Does not include the Hyde amendment and would mandate taxpayers pay for abortions (page 198) & (page 336).
13. Drives up costs on Americans’ utility bills: Issues a punitive methane tax (page 367) and includes a tax on natural gas up to $1,500 per ton that could cost the American economy up to $9.1 billion and cost 90,000 Americans their jobs (page 368).
14. Includes dangerous & deadly green energy mandate: Effectively forces Americans to get 40% of their energy from wind, solar and other unreliable forms of energy within 8 years (page 392). Reliance on these energy sources has proven deadly.
15. Includes kickbacks for the Left’s green energy special interest network: $5 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” (page 377) and another $100 billion in green energy special interest subsidies, loans and other carve outs.
16. Gives wealthy Americans tax credits: $222 billion in “green energy” tax credits will be given to those who can afford expensive electric vehicles and other “green” innovative products (page 1832).
17. Furthers Democrats’ social justice agenda: Includes “equity” initiatives throughout the bill and, in one instance, Democrats inserted “equity” language into a title which should have been focusing on the maintenance of the United States’ cyber security efforts (page 897).
18. Grants amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants: House Democrats have included in their reconciliation bill a plan to grant amnesty to around 8 million illegal immigrants at a cost of around $100 billion over ten years that would largely be spent on welfare and other entitlements (page 901). Trillions more would be spent long term on their Social Security and Medicare.
19. Opens border even wider: The bill would waive many grounds for immigration inadmissibility, including infection or lack of vaccination status during a Pandemic, failure to attend removal proceedings in previous immigration cases, and the previous renouncement of American citizenship. DHS may also waive previous convictions for human trafficking, narcotics violations, and illegal voting (page 903).
20. Increases visa limit: At least 226,000 family-preference visas would be administered each year (page 905).
21. Grants fast-tracked green cards for those seeking middle-class careers in America: Language included in the bill exempts certain aliens from the annual green card statutory limits and has been described as a “hidden pipeline for U.S. employers to flood more cheap foreign graduates into millions of middle-class careers needed by American graduates” (page 910).
22. Includes pork for Nancy Pelosi: $200 million is earmarked for the Presidio Trust in Speaker Pelosi’s congressional district (page 933).
23. Increases energy dependence on OPEC, Russia and China: The bill prohibits several mineral and energy withdrawals (page 979). It overturns provisions included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that authorized energy production in the Arctic that will result in 130,000 Americans losing their jobs and $440 billion in lost federal revenue (page 983) and the mineral withdrawals it prohibits would, ironically, include minerals necessary for renewable energy sources (pages 934, 940, 943).
24. Exacerbates the chip shortage: The bill would mandate the conversion of the entire federal vehicle fleet from internal combustion engines to electric engines at a time when there is a global microchip shortage and crippled supply chains (page 1,043).
25. Democrats’ feckless China bill is included: Concepts from the insanely weak Endless Frontier Act included, including $11 billion in research funding that will likely result in American intellectual property going to China (page 1079 – 1081).
26. Chases green energy pipe dreams: $264 million to the EPA to conduct research with left-wing environmental justice groups on how to transition away from fossil fuels (page 1063).
27. Fixes “racist” roads and bridges: Adds a nearly $4 billion slush fund that would help left-wing grassroots organizations that, among other things, want to tear down and rebuild or otherwise alter infrastructure deemed “racist” (page 1183).
28. Punishes red states for failing to adopt Green New Deal provisions: Mandates “consequences” for conservative states that don’t meet the radical Left’s “green” climate standards while at the same time adding nearly $4 billion for “Community Climate Incentive Grants” for cooperating states (page 1179).
29. Includes new massive, bankrupting entitlement: The new paid leave entitlement would mandate workers get 12 weeks of paid leave and would cost $500 billion over ten years according to the CBO (page 1245). It would apply to those making up to half a million dollars a year (page 1254).
30. Advances a totalitarian and paternalistic view of the federal government: Includes grants for organizations to treat individuals suffering from “loneliness” and “social isolation.”
31. Further detaches individuals from employment and more reliant on government handouts: The bill spends $835 billion on welfare through manipulating the tax code [not including the expansions of Obamacare subsidies] (page 1943).
32. Tax benefits for the top 1%: The bill will possibly lift the SALT deduction cap meaning many of the top 1% wealthiest Americans would pay less in taxes.
33. Tax credit for wealthy donors who give to woke universities: The bill creates a new tax credit program that gives tax credits worth 40% of cash contribution that are made to university research programs (page 2094).
34. Expands worst parts of Obamacare: Obamacare’s job-killing employer mandate will become more severe by adjusting the definition of “affordable coverage” to mean coverage that costs no more than 8.5 percent of income rather than current law’s 9.5 percent of income (page 2041).
35. Increases taxes on Americans at every income level: $2 trillion in tax hikes will fall on those making under $400,000 per year, contrary to what the White House says. Individuals at all income levels will be affected (Ways and Means GOP).
36. Lowers wages for working families: The corporate tax rate will increase by 5.5%, meaning American companies will face one of the highest tax burdens in the world. According to analysis, two-thirds of this tax hike will fall on lower- and middle-income taxpayers (page 2110).
37. Penalizes marriage: The bill would permanently double the EITC’s marriage penalty on childless worker benefits (page 2036).
38. Imposes crushing taxes on small business: Guts the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act small business deductions that reduced pass-through entity taxes to keep them comparable to taxes imposed on corporations (page 2235) as well as hammer small businesses that file as individual tax earners with the 39.6% rate (page 2221) and Obamacare’s 3.8% tax on net investment income.
39. Crushes family businesses and farms: The bill would impose a 25% capital gains rate (page 2226) and makes alterations to the Death Tax including cutting the Death Tax exemption in half (page 2240).
40. Violates Americans’ financial privacy: $80 billion slush fund to hire an 87,000-IRS-agent army to carry out the Biden administration’s plan to review every account above a $600 balance or with more than $600 of transactions in a year. (page 2283).
41. Increases out of pocket costs for those who rely on prescription drugs: The bill repeals the Trump-era Rebate Rule which passes through rebates directly to consumers at the point of sale (page 2465).
42. Imports policies from countries with socialized medicine: The bill includes healthcare policies imported from systems in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom—all countries that have government-run healthcare systems (page 2349).
The bill also has other lesser-known provisions, including:
· $5 million per year for the Small Business Administration for an entrepreneurial program for formerly incarcerated individuals.
· $2.5 billion for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to award competitive grants or contracts to local governments, community-based organizations, and other groups to support “intervention strategies” to reduce community violence.
“Each of these 42 bullets is enough to vote against the bill. Taken together—it’s mind-blowingly corrupt. We need to loudly oppose it,” Banks charged in the release.
He added, “Democrats are scattered. The Biden agenda is in question. It’s the perfect opportunity to build public sentiment against this bill. The American people need us to be the vanguard against the Left’s radical plans.”
“It’s not an understatement to say this bill, if passed, will fundamentally change our country forever—Americans will wake up in a few years and wonder what happened to their freedom. We can’t let that happen,“ Banks concluded.
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
Biden Crash is Here (AVOID these 5 STATES)
Biden’s Chief of Staff Touts Pay Raises, Mayorkas Imports Low-Wage Workers
President Joe Biden’s chief of staff is claiming credit for pay raises — while Biden’s border chief is also allowing roughly one million illegal foreign workers to take Americans jobs at lower wages this year.
“The unemployment rate is below 5% for the first time in 15 months … Employers have to compete for workers, driving wages UP!,” tweeted Ron Klain, Biden’s powerful chief of staff and long-time aide.
But Klain’s colleague, homeland security chief Alejandro Mayorkas, is reducing pressure on employers by reviving legal immigration, admitting more economic migrants to make asylum claims, and also telling employers that they can illegally hire illegal migrants without risk of legal penalties.
Klain’s comment was a response to criticism from GOP congressman Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX).
“I think they actually believe that their immigration policies have no downside for American workers,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He continued:
People believe all kinds of ludicrous things, and it’s in their interest to believe the absurdity that letting in hundreds of thousands of additional illegal aliens on top of the million legal immigrants has no negative consequences for less-skilled American workers. I think they actually believe it … [and] I think they’re lying to themselves rather than knowingly plotting a false communication strategy.
Klain’s boss, Joe Biden, has applauded the goal of a “tight labor market” that exists when there are many more job openings than willing workers.
In a May 28 speech, Biden explained his support for the long-standing and very popular goal of wage growth in a tight labor market:
Rising wages aren’t a bug; they’re a feature. We want to get — we want to get something economists call “full employment.” Instead of workers competing with each other for jobs that are scarce, we want employees to compete with each other to attract wrk. We want the — the companies to compete to attract workers.
[…]
Well, wait until you see what happens when employers have to compete for workers. Companies like McDonald’s, Home Depot, Bank of America, and others — what do they have to do? They have to raise wages to attract workers. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Biden’s description of a tight labor market is backed by a report from Goldman Sachs — which also credits President Donald Trump’s 2020 curbs on migration for rising wages in 2021.
“Early retirements, the 2020 [legal] immigration collapse, and lingering mismatch will likely mean that a 3.5% unemployment rate—our forecast for end-2022—would imply a tighter labor market than it did last cycle,” said the company’s October 4 report. “As a result, we expect wage growth will remain at about 3¾% in 2022,” the report predicts.
However, Goldman’s public report does not mention Mayorkas’ss highly visible migration, which is likely to deliver one million extra workers by the end of 2021. Instead it predicts a one million shortfall in willing workers:
We estimate that the current labor shortage will ease considerably this fall—especially following the expiration of federal UI benefits programs in September—but still project an over 1mn [million] hit to the labor force from early retirees and other labor force exits at end-2022.
Mayorkas’ss semi-open-border policies are smuggling many foreign workers into Americans’ national labor market.
The migrant inflow is minimizing employers’ need to hire or train Americans — especially mothers with small children, people with disabilities, ex-convicts, or recovering drug addicts. Migration also reduces the pressure on coastal investors to hire young people living far from the coasts, such as in Sen. Joe Manchin’s West Virginia or Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky.
On October 12, for example, Mayorkas told employers that he would not enforce the popular laws against the hiring of illegal workers unless the CEOs also underpaid or abused their foreign workers.
Since January, Mayorkas has processed several hundred thousand legal immigrants and revived multiple blue-collar and myriad white-collar visa worker programs that were shut down by former President Donald Trump. He has also allowed at least 400,000 working-age migrants through the southern border and stood by as at least 400,000 working-age migrants sneaked past the border agents who now process Mayorkas’s economic migrants.
Mayorkas has also welcomed roughly 150,000 young migrants who slip in via the “Unaccompanied Alien Children” loophole. A clear majority of these migrants are male and claim to be 16 or 17, and are coming to the United States to get jobs.
The New York Times Review reported September 27:
Looming over the many problems with this cramped and temporary form of integration is the debt that most of these young people have incurred to bring them to the promised land. The family of one young woman I interviewed for this article paid $18,000 to the coyotes who escorted her across two countries to get to the US; once delivered, she was responsible for paying them back. In Victoria’s case, her uncle put her to work in his restaurant the day after she arrived. Migrating teenagers are expected to contribute financially from the benefits of the opportunity afforded them, and their worth is measured, in part, by how they suffer the loss of family, community, and country without complaint.
…
A 2020 ProPublica investigation of child labor in Illinois found unaccompanied minors among teenage migrants working in factories and food-processing plants, in clear violation of the program’s stated policy.
The legal immigrant and illegal migrant inflows have inflated the new 2021 labor supply by almost 50 percent, assuming that roughly 3.5 million Americans have joined the labor force since January.
Biden’s pro-corporate inflation of the labor supply is ignored by establishment media outlets. But foreigners recognize the administration’s welcome and are walking through the border to accept Biden’s offer of Americans’ lower-wage jobs:
Meanwhile, monetary inflation has risen to five percent, effectively wiping out many of the 5 percent pay raises that Klain boasted about.
Breitbart News reported on October 13:
The price of food at home jumped 1.2 percent in September, a historically huge gain for a single month and three times the inflation rate recorded in August. Compared with a year ago, the price of food at home is up 4.6 percent, the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index indicates.
…
The prices of full-service [restaurant] meals are up 5.2 percent compared with a year ago, while prices of limited-service meals—fast food places—are up 6.7 percent.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This pocketbook opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity that Americans owe to each other.
Nationwide, migration is deeply unpopular because of its economic impact. It damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, raises their rents, curbs their productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, and wrecks their democratic, equality-promoting civic culture. It also pushes people towards addiction, and minimize the incentive for employers to help them break them out:
EXCLUSIVE: CBP to Report Record of Nearly 2 Million Migrants Encountered in 2021
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is set to report just under 2 million migrant encounters nationwide for the recently ended Fiscal Year 2021. The number of migrants encountered by Border Patrol agents and CBP officers jumped 202 percent over the previous year’s roughly 647,000.
CBP Officers and Border Patrol agents encountered nearly 1.96 million migrants nationwide during FY21 which ended on September 30, according to a highly placed source operating under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. A document from the agency reviewed by Breitbart Texas revealed the record-breaking level of migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico Border.
Of the nearly 1.96 million migrants encountered, more than 1.66 million, a new record for Border Patrol, were migrants apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents at the southern, northern, and coastal borders. This represents an increase of 310 percent over the previous year’s 405,000 migrants.
The report for FY21 set a new record for the apprehension of migrants by Border Patrol agents for the nine southwest border sectors. The previous apprehension record of 1.64 million was set in FY2000, Breitbart Texas reported in late September.
Of the nearly 2 million migrants encountered by CBP and Border Patrol in FY2021, nearly 1.6 million took place following changes in immigration and border security policy following the Biden inauguration.
Single adult migrants accounted for more than 1.3 million of the total encounters, the report is expected to reveal. This is up from just under 537,000 the year before — an increase of nearly 146 percent. Of those, more than 616,000 came from Mexico and nearly 315,000 came from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
Family units accounted for the second-largest demographic of migrants encountered with just under 484,000 — an increase of more than 545 percent. More than 275,000 of those came from the Northern Triangle nations.
Encounters with Unaccompanied Minors also jumped by more than 333 percent. CBP officers and agents encountered more than 148,000 unaccompanied minors — up from only 34,000 the year before. Of those, more than 114,000 came from the Northern Triangle countries.
The numbers reported above do not include an estimated 400,000 migrant “got-aways.” The number is determined by counting migrants who ultimately escape apprehension after being observed by surveillance systems. Border Patrol agents also use traditional sign-cutting techniques to spot footprints. It is not a perfect investigative method, however, and sources say the actual got-away count is usually higher.
In a news interview on September 26, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the increase in apprehensions is nothing new. Mayorkas told Fox News’ Chris Wallace, “We are certainly seeing a large number here this year, but in 2019, we saw a large number. In 2014, in 2010. This is nothing new,” he says.
The statement contradicts the reality that the total number of migrant apprehensions along the southwest border with Mexico is higher than any recorded yearly apprehension statistic, dating to 1925 when 22,199 migrants were arrested by the Border Patrol–mostly on horseback.
Editor’s Note: The numbers cited from the source are preliminary numbers and could change slightly before the official report is published by CBP.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
Half-Ton of Meth Seized at Texas Border Crossing
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers interdicted a shipment of more than 1,100 pounds of methamphetamine at an international border crossing in South Texas. The attempted smuggling incident took place at the Pharr International Bridge Cargo Facility.
CBP officers assigned to the international cargo facility in Pharr, Texas, on October 9 observed a commercial tractor-trailer approaching for inspection as it attempted to enter the United States from Mexico. During an initial interview, the officer referred the driver to a secondary inspection station for further screening, according to information obtained from CBP officials in South Texas.
The officers subjected the tractor-trailer rig to a non-intrusive imaging inspection and a cursory search from a K-9 trained to detect drugs and human cargo. The initial inspection led officers to carry out a physical search of the trailer.
During the search, the officers found 468 packages determined to be methamphetamine. The officers report the weight of the drugs to be 1,179.47 pounds. They estimated the street value of the methamphetamine to be $16,512,400.
“This massive load of methamphetamine will not reach our city streets thanks to our CBP officers and their great teamwork and utilization of all available tools and resources,” said Port Director Carlos Rodriguez, Hidalgo/Pharr/Anzalduas Port of Entry.
The officers seized the drugs and the tractor-trailer. The case is now being investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face
