Live politics updates: Arizona Senate threatens contempt charge for Maricopa County officials over election audit
Transportation Secretary Buttigieg argues for Biden relief plan
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made the case for President Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief package during an interview Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week.”
“Each passing day the need for relief becomes more urgent, ensuring that we have the resources to defeat this virus, but also to support American working families,” he said, arguing that the sentiment also had broad appeal among Republicans outside of Washington. He added his hope that such support “will also show up among Republican legislators here in Washington, but of course, that’s what the next few days will show.”
While Buttigieg acknowledged that the administration might have to negotiate within the Democratic caucus over the threshold of eligibility for direct stimulus checks to Americans, the “bottom line is we’ve got to support as many Americans as we can as robustly as we can, and as quickly as we can. Time is of the essence,” he said.
“And part of what was a real struggle the last time we faced a major economic challenge in 2009, was a sense that there needed to – if there had been more political will in Washington to do more, the economy might have recovered more quickly,” Buttigieg said.
The secretary also discussed the need to build American infrastructure during the interview, contending that “we also have a historic moment on our hands where we’ve realized just how critical these needs are. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road.” He noted the favorable environment governments have right now to finance large works like infrastructure projects.
On whether Congress, especially congressional Republicans would cooperate on such a package, Buttigieg said, “the Congress has many constitutional duties. Those duties all run at the same time as each other but delivering on infrastructure for the American people is certainly part of that responsibility.”
– Matthew Brown
Yellen: Full employment expected by 2022 if Biden relief plan passed
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen predicts that President Joe Biden’s proposed COVID-19 relief package will put the American economy back at full employment by 2022.
“I would expect that if this package is passed, we would get back to full employment next year,” Yellen told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
The prediction comes as congressional Democrats and the White House prepare to pass much of Biden’s proposed plan through budget reconciliation, a process that allows Democrats to bypass the Senate’s filibuster rule and enact policies that only affect budgetary issues, like taxes and spending.
Yellen, like most Democrats in Washington, is arguing for a larger stimulus package to address the myriad economic and public health issues that she contends can only be addressed by federal intervention. “Our country is hurting right now, but we know what we need to do to help,” Yellen tweeted Thursday.
Citing analyses from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-nonpartisan government think tank, Yellen told CNN that “if we don’t provide additional support the unemployment rate is going to stay elevated for years to come.”
Most economists expect that, if current trends hold, the U.S. economy will return to full employment in 2024 or 2025. Yellen’s economic outlook is more optimistic based on the prediction that Biden’s relief package will buoy hurting sectors of the economy and speed vaccine rollout, which will allow the country to reopen.
Yellen, the first woman chair of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department, is a well-respected economist among liberals and conservatives in the field. Recently, Yellen joined Biden and Democratic senators to discuss the best economic policies to address the ongoing economic crisis. She also attended a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss relief for Black businesses with the Black Chambers of Commerce.
– Matthew Brown
Arizona Senate threatens contempt charge for Maricopa County officials over election audit
threatened to hold the supervisors, nearly all Republicans, in contempt for not responding to subpoenas asking for copies of all the county’s mail-in ballots and access to voting machines. The Senate wants to perform its own audit.
Some senators have even threatened to arrest the supervisors over the matter, and the body could vote on the contempt resolution as early as Monday.
If the lawmakers go ahead with this, it could be a first in Arizona history. No legislator interviewed could remember the Senate ever passing such a resolution.
State law requires counties to do two types of audits after an election: a hand count of ballots and a logic and accuracy test of voting machines.
For the hand count, the county examined ballots from 2% of vote centers, as well as 5,000 early ballots, and found that the county’s voting machines counted the ballots with 100% accuracy. Political parties appointed representatives to select which vote centers to audit, and they helped perform the hand count.
The logic and accuracy test also found that machines operated without error.
The Senate wants a more thorough hand count of ballots. And they want to do it themselves – or to choose who will.
