U.S. Government & governance February 2024 –

9-11 September
Johnson forced to delay vote on stopgap funding plan as GOP opposition rises
The speaker said they’ll delay the vote until next week as they work to quell Republican opposition and “build consensus.”
The measure has crumbled amid mounting criticism from conservatives, defense hawks and other Republican factions, and it’s unclear that more time will help save the bill unless leaders make drastic changes. House GOP leaders have been already been whipping the bill, and nearly a dozen Republicans have publicly said they plan to vote against it. The package would fund the government through March 28 and is combined with legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, known as the SAVE Act.
While a government shutdown at month’s end is still unlikely and unwanted by congressional leaders, it’s the latest episode of Johnson’s repeated struggles this year to muster enough support to pass GOP spending bills, thanks to many of the same problems currently plaguing his conference.
Trump: GOP shouldn’t fund government without ‘assurances on Election Security’
(The Hill) Former President Trump on Tuesday appeared to call on his party to block government funding if legislation does not include “assurances on Election Security.”
The government will shut down Oct. 1 unless Congress agrees to a funding bill by the end of this month.
Congress returns to Washington for a three-week preelection sprint
Avoiding a government shutdown remains the biggest item on the to-do list before this fall’s elections.
(Politico) Lawmakers are fully back in Washington for the first time in more than a month with a familiar dilemma: Ducking a government shutdown weeks away from a pivotal election.
What else is on the to-do list: In non-spending matters in the House, Republicans will be moving a number of China-related bills this week. Meanwhile, the Senate continues to press ahead on judge confirmation votes, with one scheduled Monday and another later in the week.
One other thing to watch: The Senate should be returning to full strength once again with the swearing in of Sen.-designee George Helmy (D-N.J.). He’ll replace former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who resigned after his conviction on federal corruption charges.
House Republicans prepare doomed 6-month stopgap funding patch
House GOP leaders are hoping to put swing-district Democrats in a bind over a proof-of-citizenship add-on to the spending legislation.
By Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes
Speaker Mike Johnson’s stopgap spending plan is slated to clear its first test Monday, but its fate on the House floor is still far from certain.
The chamber’s Rules Committee kicked off a meeting Monday afternoon to prepare to send the funding bill to the House floor, likely on Wednesday. The legislation would punt a government shutdown deadline, currently scheduled to hit on Oct. 1, into the end of March, and includes a conservative-favored bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Johnson’s six-month funding punt, known as a continuing resolution or a CR, represents House Republicans’ opening offer in the sprint to avoid a government shutdown, one the Democratic-controlled Senate will surely reject. Right now, it’s unclear if it can even pass the House, since Democratic support will be scarce and the number of GOP holdouts is uncertain.
Republicans threaten to hold up funding the government unless Congress makes voting harder
As early as Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) intends to hold a vote on a funding bill that includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which is supposed to crack down on illegal voting in national elections, despite scant evidence that this is a problem. Noncitizen voting is already a serious crime — punishable by prison, removal from the United States and a permanent bar on admission to the country. The legislation would require documentary proof of citizenship for people to register and cast ballots, including mail-in voting. This would add a barrier to electoral participation that would probably result in many legitimate voters being deterred and legitimate votes not being counted.

Elon Musk, government efficiency expert? That is one really bad idea.
By Adam Lashinsky, former executive editor of Fortune
Musk effectively hasn’t run a business that didn’t benefit from or work with various government entities.
(WaPo) Most first-blush criticism of Trump’s typically slapdash proposal, aired in an economic policy speech last week in New York, has focused on potential conflicts of interest if Musk were to head a commission focused on eliminating inefficiencies in Washington. That’s because the certainty of conflicts, not merely their possibility, are many.
NASA is the largest customer for Musk’s rocket-ship company, SpaceX. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulates an often contentious and dismissive Tesla, Musk’s electric-vehicle company. The Federal Trade Commission keeps watch over Twitter, which Musk bought and renamed X. The Food and Drug Administration plays a critical role in deciding whether Musk’s start-up Neuralink can implant computer chips in the brains of paralyzed humans. (Note to conspiracy theorists concerned that Anthony S. Fauci and Bill Gates wanted to inject chips into people’s heads: They didn’t. Musk does.)
This is just a partial list. But it gets to a central irony of Trump wanting Musk’s help running the government. A real estate developer turned TV personality, Trump long benefited from tax loopholes and the generosity of the federal bankruptcy code to build and protect his debt-fueled fortune. But he was a piker compared with Musk. The tech entrepreneur joins a long line of Silicon Valley pseudo libertarians who kvetch about the government — while assiduously accepting its handouts.
7 September
Donald Trump could turn Elon Musk into an American oligarch
(Politico) Musk’s potential foray into government would represent a striking development for the billionaire.
Former President Donald Trump’s plan to have Elon Musk lead a government efficiency commission would vault the world’s richest man to an unprecedented role: American oligarch.
The details of the commission and Musk’s involvement are still vague, but any formal role in government would give greater influence to the billionaire owner of Tesla, Space X, satellite company Starlink and the social media platform X — signature ventures that have benefited from federal contracts, tax credits and government incentives.

15 August
Robert Reich: How to stop Musk
… Americans, too, are being subject to lies and bigotry on Musk’s X — and not just because Musk fired the entire staff that had been keeping such filth off the platform; Musk is also reposting and encouraging some of it.
Musk recently released an AI chatbot that falsely told tens of millions of Americans that “the ballot deadline has passed” in several swing states, including the battlegrounds of Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, among others.
Evidence is mounting that Russia and other foreign agents are using X to disrupt this year’s presidential race, presumably in favor of Trump. Musk refuses to take any action.
What to do about Musk? I’ve suggested that advertisers boycott X. Now Musk is suing advertisers for doing this, arguing that they’re violating antitrust laws.
It’s time to get tough with Musk. Here are some suggestions.
First, the Federal Trade Commission should demand that Musk take down lies that are likely to endanger individuals or threaten our democracy, and if he does not, sue him under Section 5 of the FTC Act.
Musk’s free-speech rights under the First Amendment don’t take precedence over the public interest. Seven weeks ago, the Supreme Court said federal agencies may pressure social media platforms to take down misinformation — a technical win for the public good (technical because the court based its ruling on the plaintiff’s lack of standing to sue).
The U.S. government — and we taxpayers — have additional power over Musk, if we’re willing to use it: The U.S. should terminate its contracts with him, starting with Musk’s SpaceX.

1 July

Hypothetical question to legal scholars: So, can Biden, as an official act, round up the entire Trump campaign team, and Trump himself, and hold them in Federal prison pending trial, until February, then resign, and be immune to prosecution?

Immunity Ruling Escalates Long Rise of Presidential Power
Beyond Donald J. Trump, the decision adds to the seemingly one-way ratchet of executive authority.
By Charlie Savage
(NYT) “The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in an outraged dissent joined by the court’s other two liberals. “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
Before Nixon was forced to step down, executive power had been surging for decades. As World War II bled into the early Cold War, presidents of both parties began acting more unilaterally, especially in matters of national security, while claiming constitutional rights to keep information secret from Congress and the courts.
The historian Arthur C. Schlesinger Jr. famously described this pattern as “the imperial presidency” in a 1973 book. The surge peaked with Nixon, who later summed up his philosophy of executive power as “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
The trend briefly flagged in the mid-1970s because of Watergate, the Vietnam War and a congressional investigation that uncovered domestic intelligence abuses by administrations of both parties. In this period, Congress tried to restore checks and balances with a series of new laws and oversight actions.
But starting with the Reagan administration in the 1980s, those restraints began to erode again. Ronald Reagan and his team sought to push an activist conservative policy agenda in the face of resistance from a Congress long controlled by Democrats.

26 April
IRS Direct File Pilot Exceeds Usage Goal, Receiving Positive User Ratings and Saving Taxpayers Money
140,803 Taxpayers Filed Their Taxes Directly with the IRS for Free as users claimed more than $90 million in refunds and saved an estimated $5.6 million in tax preparation fees
Heather Cox Richardson April 26, 2024
…the Treasury Department announced that the pilot program of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that enabled taxpayers to file their tax returns directly with the IRS for free had more users than the program’s stated goal, got positive ratings, and saved users an estimated $5.6 million in fees for tax preparation. The government had hoped about 100,000 people would use the pilot program; 140,803 did.
Former deputy director of the National Economic Council Bharat Ramamurti wrote on social media, “Of all the things I was lucky enough to work on, this might be my favorite. You shouldn’t have to pay money to pay your taxes. As this program continues to grow, most people will get pre-populated forms and be able to file their taxes with a few clicks in a few minutes.” Such a system would look much like the system other countries already use.

21 April
How Mike Johnson Got to ‘Yes’ on Aid to Ukraine
Intelligence, politics and personal considerations converted the Republican speaker, who had largely opposed aid to Ukraine as a rank-and-file member, into the key figure pushing it through Congress.
(NYT) He huddled with top national security officials, including WILLIAM J. BURNS, the C.I.A. director, in the Oval Office to discuss classified intelligence. He met repeatedly with broad factions of Republicans in both swing and deep red districts, and considered their voters’ attitudes toward funding Ukraine. He thought about his son, who is set to attend the U.S. Naval Academy in the fall.
And finally, when his plan to work with Democrats to clear the way for aiding Ukraine met with an outpouring of venom from ultraconservatives already threatening to depose him, Mr. Johnson, an evangelical Christian, knelt and prayed for guidance.
Mr. Johnson’s decision to risk his speakership to push the $95 billion foreign aid bill through the House on Saturday was the culmination of a remarkable personal and political arc for the Louisiana Republican. It was also an improbable outcome for a man plucked from relative obscurity last fall by the hard right — which had just deposed a speaker they deemed a traitor to their agenda — to be the speaker of a deeply dysfunctional House.

10 April
Speaker Johnson to meet with Trump, offers Marjorie Taylor Greene advisory role as own job teeters
(AP) — His job on the line, House Speaker Mike Johnson is dashing to Florida to meet with Donald Trump this week and has offered far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene a seat on his own “kitchen cabinet” as he draws closer to the MAGA forces that now dominate the GOP.
The sudden moves Wednesday come as the House hit a standstill, thrown into chaos once again.
The House Republicans are tearing themselves apart, unable to work together to push party priorities through Congress yet watching their majority fritter away the days without a cohesive agenda or much to show for their 15 months in power.
Johnson was unable to pass a national security surveillance bill that was tanked by his own Republican majority shortly after Trump pushed them to “kill” it. But at the same time, the speaker was being warned off partnering with Democrats on that bill and others, including aid for Ukraine, or risk Greene calling a snap vote that could oust him from the speaker’s office.

26 March

The WaPo Editorial Baltimore’s tragic bridge collapse is a test for American leadership
casts the challenge posed by the accident in a positive light. Let us hope it is widely read and heeded along with President Biden’s statement
— Biden: We will do all it takes to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge: President Joe Biden today vowed that the federal government would provide all the resources Baltimore needed to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge after it collapsed in the early hours of the morning. He said he plans to visit the disaster site and stressed that there was no indication that there was intentionality behind the devastating collapse. “We’re going to send all the federal resources they need as we respond to this emergency. I mean all the federal resources — we’re going to rebuild that port together,” Biden said in the Roosevelt Room, before departing the White House for a trip to North Carolina.

23 March
Weekend read The Fractured Superpower
(Foreign Affairs) This week, the Supreme Court cleared a controversial Texas immigration law, which would give Texas officials the authority to arrest and deport migrants accused of entering the country illegally—only to have an appellate court block it hours later. The Biden administration has challenged the law, known as SB4, on the grounds that it would interfere with the federal government’s ability to enforce U.S. immigration laws. The clash between Texas and federal officials may prove a litmus test of the balance of power between the federal government and states, which have grown more powerful amid intensifying partisan polarization.
The trend toward increasing state power will have far-reaching consequences not only for domestic politics but also for U.S. foreign policy, write Jenna Bednar and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar. How leaders in Washington, the courts, and local governments approach this shift, Bednar and Cuéllar warn, “will determine whether state-level action becomes a source of resilience or a destabilizing force for Americans and the world.” The Fractured Superpower –Federalism Is Remaking U.S. Democracy and Foreign Policy (September 2022)
20 March
Appeals court seems skeptical of Texas’ argument for immigration law
(NBC) The court temporarily paused the enforcement of the law late Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court said hours earlier that it could take effect.
12 March
Supreme Court extends freeze on controversial Texas immigration law

23 March
Biden Signs Final Bill to Fund the Government, Ending Shutdown Fears
The president signed a $1.2 trillion spending package that passed early on Saturday morning, narrowly avoiding a shutdown.
President Biden signed a $1.2 trillion spending package on Saturday, putting an end to the prospect of a government shutdown after the legislation passed a rushed series of congressional votes with bipartisan support and landed on his desk just after 2 a.m.
The government faced a potential shutdown if the measure was not signed into law before midnight on Friday. But as the Senate vote ticked past that hour, the White House released a statement saying that federal officials at the Office of Management and Budget had “ceased shutdown preparations” in anticipation of imminent Senate passage and signing by Mr. Biden.
In a statement, the president said that the measure’s approval was “good news for the American people.” But he alluded to the months of drawn-out negotiations that preceded the last-minute approvals, saying that the agreement was “a compromise” and that “neither side got everything it wanted.”

20 March
Details of $1.2 Trillion Spending Bill Emerge as Partial Shutdown Looms
Tucked inside a massive measure to fund the government through the fall are several initiatives sought by members of both parties. Aides are still writing the legislative language.
Congressional aides raced on Tuesday to draw up the text of a bipartisan $1.2 trillion spending deal to fund the government through September.
While President Biden, Republicans and Democrats have all endorsed the agreement, they had yet to release its details and it was not clear whether Congress would be able to complete action on it in time to avert a brief partial government shutdown over the weekend.
Still, lawmakers in both parties were already touting what they would get out of the legislation, which wraps six spending measures into one huge package.
“The final product is something that we were able to achieve a lot of key provisions and wins and a move in the direction that we want, even with our tiny, historically small majority,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday.

8 March
The State of the Union: Biden fights back
William A. Galston, Ezra K. Zilkha Chair and Senior Fellow – Governance Studies
(Brookings) In a fighting State of the Union address, much of which could have been delivered at a campaign rally, President Joe Biden directly criticized his predecessor more than a dozen times and drew lines that he hopes will define the 2024 presidential election. He was an unabashed liberal on social policy, a populist nationalist on economic policy, and a traditional postwar internationalist on foreign policy.
President Joe Biden directly criticized his predecessor more than a dozen times and drew lines that he hopes will define the 2024 presidential election.
Biden’s forceful delivery was meant to signal that he is not too old to serve out a second term, which most Americans currently think he is.
The defense of democracy against autocracy at home and abroad was a central theme of the speech, which depicted Donald Trump as a threat to both.
Biden presented a lengthy laundry list of liberal proposals on health care, education, housing, education, and taxes.

4 March
The President’s Inbox Recap: Governance of Artificial Intelligence
The United States is behind its peers when it comes to regulating artificial intelligence (AI).
(Council on Foreign Relations) … China, the European Union, and the United States have put forth a “triad” of different AI governance approaches. China has imposed strong oversight measures on the country’s AI systems and models. The European Union’s approach “follows a long pattern now of Europe having led in rights-centric and risk-focused digital governance.” The U.S. government, however, has mostly been hands-off when it comes to AI governance.
AI governance in the United States right now is being driven by the private sector. Biden issued an executive order last October calling for government action on AI regulation. Congress, however, has yet to pass significant AI regulations. In the past, most of the innovation in AI came from investments from the government. Today, innovation comes from private companies. Kat argued “there is this real concern that the development of AI has been so divorced from government that the government now has very little control over how that AI is being developed and rolled out into the world.” This is a problem because “corporate governance is designed to manage investor risk.” It is not, however, “designed to manage or to govern societal risk, and in fact, may be antithetical to it.”