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Congress isn’t going to save the housing market

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More than 580,000 Americans are homeless. The median sale price for a home has just <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS">surpassed $400,000</a>. Homeownership is <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/2040-us-will-experience-modest-homeownership-declines-black-households-impact-will-be-dramatic">on the decline</a>.
This, by all accounts, is a national emergency — and one House Democrats had proposed $330 billion to tackle as part of their Build Back Better plan. This package was both a once-in-a-generation investment and also barely enough to scratch the surface. Now, even those proposed investments are being <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/22/pelosi-housing-aid-social-spending-516852">cut down as part of negotiations over the final package</a>.
Perhaps more worrisome is the apparent lack of willingness to tackle the root of the problem.
When Covid-19 hit last year, officials took groundbreaking steps to help keep people in their homes — a <a href="https://www.vox.com/21569601/eviction-moratorium-cdc-covid-19-congress-rental-assistance-rent-crisis">nationwide eviction moratorium</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22429430/renters-rent-relief-eviction-moratorium-housing-market">tens of billions in rent relief</a>, and state and local protections too. Plans from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22369761/biden-infrastructure-american-jobs-act-housing-prices-rents-bubble-race-to-the-top">White House</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/22382212/housing-prices-supply-klobuchar-portman-senate-grants-biden">different</a> <a href="https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/young-reintroduces-yes-in-my-backyard-act-to-encourage-communities-to-cut-regulations-and-increase-housing-supply">senators</a> highlighted that they were willing to take bold action to increase housing supply in a country facing a <a href="http://www.freddiemac.com/research/insight/20210507_housing_supply.page">3.8 million housing unit deficit</a>.
Then the housing portion of the Build Back Better plan was floated. And it became clear that while some in Congress were willing to make substantial investments, very few were willing to tackle the fundamental problem that was making homes so expensive in the first place: lack of supply.
Yes, it’s easier to try to help people afford something expensive than to try and make it less expensive to begin with. But many of the policies that try to subsidize housing can actually make it more expensive. “What you really need if you want to lower those new home prices, is you need to build more homes — and there’s not that much of that in this bill,” says Paul Williams, a fellow at the Jain Family Institute.
I spoke with Williams about what the new, cheaper plan Democrats are coalescing around could mean for people looking around the housing market and finding very few options, and for people struggling with the basic need to obtain shelter.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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<h4>Jerusalem Demsas</h4>
So the housing proposal in Build Back Better — what’s in that?
<h4>Paul Williams</h4>
The Build Back Better housing plan really addresses decades of under-investments in affordable housing and housing supply at the lower end of the market, which is something the government traditionally has been needed to support in order to correct market failures at the lower end. So the big bucket items in the Build Back Better plan are:
<ul>
<li>Investments in the public housing capital backlog. This is public housing that we invested in over the decades, then cut funding for in the ’90s, and now those buildings have two decades of deferred maintenance and there’s all these problems in these buildings. [The funding is] so that they don’t literally fall apart.</li>
<li>Another big bucket item is housing choice vouchers and project-based vouchers, which are two rental assistance programs that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) runs. One of them is the tenant gets the voucher that they can use to help pay their rent and the other goes to a building and then all the tenants who live in that building get rental assistance.</li>
<li>Another big bucket is investments in the <a href="https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/comm_planning/htf">Housing Trust Fund</a> and the home investment partnership program, which are basically grants which can be used as grants or loans to contribute to new affordable housing production projects.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Jerusalem Demsas</h4>
Over the last year, we’ve seen a lot of attention paid to the housing crisis. On one end, there are tenants struggling to stay housed as they were hit hard by the economic effects of Covid-19. And on the other, there’s been a really hot housing market where homeownership seems to be a dying dream for millennials and historically disadvantaged groups. How well do you think these big buckets you’ve outlined address these two concerns?
<h4>Paul Williams</h4>
I think that the biggest-ticket items in the original proposal were really about either creating or preserving existing affordable housing at the lower end of the market. It’s the people at the very lower end of the market who are least able to weather the storm [of Covid-19]. And that’s where most of these investments lie: in preserving those existing lower-end units and creating new ones.
On the homeowner side, there’s a piece in this proposal that is downpayment assistance for first-time homebuyers. You know, it’s a difficult thing because housing prices are really hot right now, but the lending that’s actually happening is like almost 80 percent to people with credit scores above 760. So it’s all people with very high incomes and very low debt loads. And this is with extremely low mortgage rates. So, downpayment assistance in a lot of places isn’t really going to help people break into this really hot housing market.
What you really need if you want to lower those new home prices is you need to build more homes — and there’s not that much of that in this bill.
<h4>Jerusalem Demsas</h4>
Yeah, it seemed earlier this year that there was <a href="https://www.vox.com/22369761/biden-infrastructure-american-jobs-act-housing-prices-rents-bubble-race-to-the-top">energy around exclusionary zoning reform</a>. [Exclusionary zoning laws, which range from banning multifamily housing to requiring certain numbers of parking spaces in or near homes, artificially constrain the number of homes built in an area.]
There were proposals from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22369761/biden-infrastructure-american-jobs-act-housing-prices-rents-bubble-race-to-the-top">Biden administration</a> and <a href="https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2021/4/amy-klobuchar-has-a-plan-to-build-more-housing">Sen. Amy Klobuchar</a> and there were <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/blog/2021/06/17/exclusionary-zoning-its-effect-on-racial-discrimination-in-the-housing-market/">blog posts coming out from the Council of Economic Advisors</a> about how much restrictive zoning was responsible for a lot of our housing affordability woes.
What happened there?
<h4>Paul Williams</h4>
In the original proposal, there was around $5 billion for a carrot incentive program for local municipalities. The idea being you can get a small amount of money from the HUD if you hire some planners and have them do a zoning study. And then if you implement some of those changes, you could get even more money.
So I don’t personally think that the amounts that are in there are really going to swing the pendulum for a lot of jurisdictions, particularly those with some of the most egregious policies. I don’t really see what was in the package originally as a game changer.
<h4>Jerusalem Demsas</h4>
The package has been in negotiations for a while, and there are several proposed cuts to the housing portion. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/22/pelosi-housing-aid-social-spending-516852">Reporting</a> seems to indicate everything gets cut — public housing, rental assistance vouchers, the housing trust fund, etc. — except for downpayment assistance, which actually goes up from $10 billion to $15 billion.
This seems to be a tendency of Congress’s. Earlier this year, I covered a memo that the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22535542/housing-crisis-shortage-biden-wally-adeyemo">Treasury Department wrote to policymakers</a> and Congress in particular, essentially pleading with them to focus on increasing housing supply. I talked about why Congress is much more willing to engage on demand-side policies [giving people money to afford something expensive] rather than on supply-side policies [making expensive things less expensive]. Do you have any thoughts about this?
<h4>Paul Williams</h4>
Yeah, that’s an interesting point. I agree, Congress is often more willing to engage on the demand side than the production side, and that can lead to increased prices if we don’t also build more — especially for the low-income people we’re trying to help with these programs.
Downpayment assistance, I think there’s potentially an inflationary impact of that or some impact on actual home prices particularly in places where a lot of people are eligible for this program and there’s a lot of [housing] scarcity and not a lot of construction happening.
With the vouchers, this is something that people have talked about, this question of how do we make our housing voucher program such that everyone who is eligible can actually get it. Right now, the program is only funded such that <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/7/9/21316912/joe-biden-housing-plan-section-8">one-fifth of the people who are eligible actually get it</a>. Everyone else is in this potentially decades-long line.
One issue with making it universal is that you give everybody this assistance [without increasing the supply of rental housing], and then you may see rents starting to go way up. And there’s a couple of things that can push back on that: If you have production that keeps pace with new rental assistance, then you’re pushing back on that. And then in cities where you have rent regulations that can keep annual rent increases from going up exorbitantly, you can also push back on that.
<h4>Jerusalem Demsas</h4>
Focusing on housing production elements of this bill, one area where we could see increased production is in public housing. But as you mentioned earlier, public housing funds have been deficient for a very long time, so we have this <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/7/22/22586701/housing-aging-public-housing-section-8">massive capital backlog</a>. That means that even with the original proposal to spend $80 billion on this, almost all of that would have gone toward just repairing those buildings — and now that seems to have been cut.
Can you talk a little about what the capital backlog has meant in real terms for people living in public housing?
<h4>Paul Williams</h4>
So just to kind of frame it with the history. In 1998, as part of a slew of welfare reforms that President Bill Clinton’s administration moved through Congress, the Quality Housing Act really shifted the way that HUD funded public housing. The result of all these changes together was the capital expenditures have been in precipitous decline since 1999.
Some of that has been alleviated by public housing authorities taking units out of public housing ... but the vast majority have not been, and the result is that these buildings are just going to fall apart around these people. This is <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/10/18/22724808/democrats-senate-disadvantage-shor-klein">potentially the last time Democrats are going to have full control of Congress</a> and the presidency for, some people say, a decade.
There’s no alternative here. We have to fix these buildings.
<h4>Jerusalem Demsas</h4>
And every once in a while, the lack of safety makes pretty big news. We hear about fires in public housing where <a href="https://www.startribune.com/cedar-riverside-high-rise-fire/565785691/">people have actually died</a>, and the lack of capital investments was the key factor. We also see kids growing up with lead paint in the walls — which is essentially poison to them.
This is a situation where the federal government has taken ownership of a housing structure and has let people live in absolutely dire conditions where we would encourage someone to sue if this was the private market and their landlord was allowing the situation to deteriorate to this extent.
<h4>Paul Williams</h4>
Yes. And I’d also add that these public housing capital investments and with the Housing Trust Fund, this new money for production and rehab means there is a lot of movement from public housing authorities and nonprofit developers who are building affordable housing to do carbon-neutral, full-electric projects.
At NYCHA [New York City Housing Authority], they got a grant to develop their own new <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/9/24/22691392/heat-pumps-cooling-air-conditioner-heating">heat pump technology</a> that would be fully electric type of heating and cooling systems for the buildings. This is technology that does not yet exist on the market so their hope is to get this working and deploy it portfolio-wide across all of their buildings.
I think it’s important not to underestimate the impact that public sector procurement has on these kinds of long-term changes we need for climate change. It’s not just in vehicles, it’s also in buildings and housing.
<h4>Jerusalem Demsas</h4>
We’ve talked a little bit about the need to fix the existing public housing stock. And while that’s very important, we’re so far behind on capital expenditures that likely none of that money would actually [meaningfully be spent on] creating new units of affordable housing. It appears that the best chance for that in this bill is in the Housing Trust Fund dollars. How does that work?
<h4>Paul Williams</h4>
Yeah, the Housing Trust Fund and the home investment partnerships exist to plug all the [financing] holes because there are so many projects that come very close to getting funded and then can’t get that last piece funded, and the project falls apart. The Housing Trust Fund in particular is targeted toward the very low end of the rental market — so, very low-income and extremely low-income households.
<h4>Jerusalem Demsas</h4>
One of the things that’s really shocking to me is that despite all of the pain we’ve seen over the last year when it comes to lack of housing, Congress is still not even really tackling this problem. It just indicates to me how much many of these lawmakers still don’t really believe that they’re responsible for fixing the underlying problems in the housing market. And I wonder, do you think this sort of “housing policy is local” disease is going to persist?
<h4>Paul Williams</h4>
It definitely would be a shift for the federal government to say, “We have a serious stake in this issue and we’re going to wield a stick to do something about it.” The federal government has not really done that in relation to what are framed as local planning issues. I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that a lot of these local planning issues actually have serious national macro-level impacts on who’s able to access housing for a cost they can afford.
So I think that the case is becoming more and more clear — as this problem gets worse and worse — that there is a role for the national government to do something about it.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/10/27/22747115/build-back-better-housing-infrastructure-plan">https://www.vox.com/2021/10/27/22747115/build-back-better-housing-infrastructure-plan</a>

vox Congress isn’t going to save the housing market

More than 580,000 Americans are homeless. The median sale price for a home has just surpassed $400,000 . Homeownership is on the decline . ...

How well can an AI mimic human ethics?

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When experts first started raising the alarm a couple decades ago about <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/21/18126576/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-safety-alignment">AI misalignment</a> — the risk of powerful, transformative artificial intelligence systems that might not behave as humans hope — a lot of their concerns sounded hypothetical. In the early 2000s, AI research had still produced <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/6323/chapter/11#215">quite limited returns</a>, and even the best available AI systems failed at a variety of simple tasks.
But since then, AIs have gotten quite good and much cheaper to build. One area where the leaps and bounds have been especially pronounced has been in <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21355768/gpt-3-ai-openai-turing-test-language">language and text-generation AIs</a>, which can be trained on enormous collections of text content to produce more text in a similar style. Many startups and research teams are training these AIs for all kinds of tasks, from writing code to producing advertising copy.
Their rise doesn’t change the fundamental argument for AI alignment worries, but it does one incredibly useful thing: It makes what were once hypothetical concerns more concrete, which allows more people to experience them and more researchers to (hopefully) address them.
Take <a href="https://delphi.allenai.org/">Delphi</a>, a new AI text system from the Allen Institute for AI, a research institute founded by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
The way Delphi works is incredibly simple: Researchers trained a machine learning system on a large body of internet text, and then on a large database of responses from participants on Mechanical Turk (a paid crowdsourcing platform popular with researchers) to predict how humans would evaluate a wide range of ethical situations, from “cheating on your wife” to “shooting someone in self-defense.”
The result is an AI that issues ethical judgments when prompted: Cheating on your wife, it tells me, “is wrong.” Shooting someone in self-defense? “It’s okay.” (Check out this <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/20/22734215/ai-ask-delphi-moral-ethical-judgement-demo">great write-up</a> on Delphi in The Verge, which has more examples of how the AI answers other questions.)
The skeptical stance here is, of course, that there’s nothing “under the hood”: There’s no deep sense in which the AI actually understands ethics and uses its comprehension of ethics to make moral judgments. All it has learned is how to predict the response that a Mechanical Turk user would give.
And Delphi users quickly found that leads to some glaring ethical oversights: Ask Delphi “should I commit genocide if it makes everybody happy” and it answers, “<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/20/22734215/ai-ask-delphi-moral-ethical-judgement-demo">you should</a>.”
For all its obvious flaws, I still think there’s something useful about Delphi when thinking of possible future trajectories of AI.
The approach of taking in a lot of data from humans, and using that to predict what answers humans would give, has proven to be a powerful one in training AI systems.
For a long time, a background assumption in many parts of the AI field was that to build intelligence, researchers would have to explicitly build in reasoning capacity and conceptual frameworks the AI could use to think about the world. Early AI language generators, for example, were <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/09/the-next-big-breakthrough-in-ai-will-be-around-language">hand-programmed with principles of syntax</a> they could use to generate sentences.
Now, it’s less obvious that researchers will have to build in reasoning to get reasoning out. It might be that an extremely straightforward approach like training AIs to predict what a person on Mechanical Turk would say in response to a prompt could get you quite powerful systems.
Any true capacity for ethical reasoning those systems exhibit would be sort of incidental — they’re just predictors of how human users respond to questions, and they’ll use any approach they stumble on that has good predictive value. That might include, as they get more and more accurate, building an in-depth understanding of human ethics in order to better predict how we’ll answer these questions.
Of course, there’s a lot that can go wrong.
If we’re relying on AI systems to evaluate new inventions, make investment decisions that then are taken as signals of product quality, identify promising research, and more, there’s potential that the differences between what the AI is measuring and what humans really care about will be magnified.
AI systems will get better — a lot better — and they’ll stop making stupid mistakes like the ones that can still be found in Delphi. Telling us that genocide is good as long as it “makes everybody happy” is so clearly, hilariously wrong. But when we can no longer spot their errors, that doesn’t mean they’ll be error-free; it just means these challenges will be much harder to notice.
A version of this story was initially published in the Future Perfect newsletter. <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/d/A2BA26698741513A">Sign up here to subscribe!</a>
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2021/10/27/22747333/artificial-intelligence-ethics-delphi-ai">https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2021/10/27/22747333/artificial-intelligence-ethics-delphi-ai</a>

vox How well can an AI mimic human ethics?

When experts first started raising the alarm a couple decades ago about AI misalignment — the risk of powerful, transformative artificial ...

Shirin Ghaffary, Meredith Haggerty, Caroline Houck, Rebecca Jennings, Sara Morrison, Terry Nguyen, and Alanna Okun Promoted at Vox

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Swati Sharma, Vox editor-in-chief; Julia Rubin, Vox editorial director of culture & features; and Ryan McCarthy, Vox editorial director for politics, policy, & society; and Samantha Oltman, editor of Recode today announced several promotions across Vox. The new roles listed below for Shirin Ghaffary, Meredith Haggerty, Caroline Houck, Rebecca Jennings, Sara Morrison, Terry Nguyen, and Alanna Okun reflect Vox’s mission of providing clarity to its audience, and contextualizing the biggest stories — on topics ranging from tech regulation to internet culture to the retail landscape — in approachable, helpful, and informative ways.
Shirin Ghaffary has been promoted to senior correspondent, and her beat is now more focused: She’ll report on social media policy and its intersection with politics. In her four+ years at Recode/Vox, she’s covered social media platforms, Big Tech companies, and tech labor movements by breaking big news, reporting ambitious investigative features, and writing smart and timely analysis. She also co-hosted the Google season of our Land of the Giants narrative podcast series.
Meredith Haggerty has been promoted to senior editor of culture. Meredith joined the company six years ago as Racked’s features editor, and also helped launch The Goods as a deputy editor. She has been a crucial leader on The Goods, publishing high-impact pieces like Alex Abad-Santos’s SoulCycle feature and projects that span the newsroom like this summer’s consumerism package. She has such sharp instincts when it comes to culture coverage — both big and small C — and we’re excited to have her lead the culture team.
Caroline Houck has been promoted to senior deputy editor, policy & politics. In every role she’s had at Vox, from her job as part-time weekend editor in 2018 through her work as deputy Washington editor, Caroline has risen to the moment when big news hits while keeping our coverage on track and organized behind the scenes. Over the past few months, she coordinated our coverage of the Afghanistan withdrawal, bringing clarity to readers at an exceptionally chaotic moment. Her thoughtful edits, sharp news judgment and empathetic management has shaped our coverage across a range of beats — from housing to the Supreme Court to foreign affairs.
Rebecca Jennings has been promoted to senior correspondent. Her reporting on internet culture — and particularly the intersection of internet culture, fame, and money — is essential. We are so excited to build out her weekly newsletter and experiment in audio, as well as have her continue her ambitious longform text work chronicling where we spend our attention now.
Sara Morrison has been promoted to senior reporter, and her beat is changing: She’ll cover antitrust scrutiny and regulation of Big Tech. Since she joined Recode/Vox two years ago to cover privacy and personal data for the Open Sourced project, Sara has published excellent stories on privacy issues, but she’s also shown she can write sharp, accessible pieces about a gamut of complicated topics, like Section 230, cybersecurity, and the Jan. 6 capitol riots.
Terry Nguyen has been promoted to the next level of staff reporter. Terry has done such valuable work during her first two years at Vox, reporting on everything from fashion behemoth Shein to Instagram activism to misinformation in the Asian American community. We are thrilled to see her dive even deeper into her newly refined beat covering retail and commerce, and to help explain the mechanisms behind the purchases we make.
Alanna Okun has been promoted to senior editor of The Goods. Alanna initially came to Vox Media as the essays editor for Racked, and she helped launch The Goods as a deputy editor. She has been a guiding force for the section, from running our marquee series The Best Money I’ve Ever Spent (including an audio version! and a pre-pandemic IRL event!) to editing stellar longform work from Rebecca Jennings, as well as her hit internet culture newsletter. She will continue to advise the Vox fellowship program.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/10/27/22749021/shirin-ghaffary-meredith-haggerty-caroline-houck-rebecca-jennings-sara-morrison-terrynguyen-promoted">https://www.vox.com/2021/10/27/22749021/shirin-ghaffary-meredith-haggerty-caroline-houck-rebecca-jennings-sara-morrison-terrynguyen-promoted</a>

vox Shirin Ghaffary, Meredith Haggerty, Caroline Houck, Rebecca Jennings, Sara Morrison, Terry Nguyen, and Alanna Okun Promoted at Vox

Swati Sharma , Vox editor-in-chief; Julia Rubin , Vox editorial director of culture & features; and Ryan McCarthy , Vox editorial direc...

Biden’s Plan B for the climate crisis, explained

After a major setback on a historic package of climate legislation, President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress are scrambling to find other ways to slash US emissions. As they race to create a Plan B for an escalating climate crisis, they stand to learn a lot from the Obama era — a history that’s littered with similar setbacks and climate policies that never saw the light of day.
One of the most impactful climate policies that Congress has ever considered, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22579218/clean-energy-standard-electricity-infrastructure-democrats">clean electricity payment program</a> (CEPP), is on the chopping block. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/heres-what-manchin-told-the-biden-team-on-climate-2/">says he will not support</a> a bill that penalizes coal and natural gas for the outsized role they play in US pollution. Democrats can’t pass their budget bill, the Build Back Better Act, without his support, and its size and scope has been shrinking.
Meanwhile, a key window for progress is closing: Top Democrats have promised to hammer out a domestic climate deal by the time Biden speaks at a pivotal United Nations <a href="https://www.vox.com/22714800/cop26-un-climate-change-conference-glasgow-explained">climate conference in Glasgow</a>, which begins October 31. If Congress fails to enshrine key climate policies as federal laws, Biden’s Plan B includes executive orders and major regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/climate/biden-climate-plan.html">reported</a>.
The problem is that executive actions aren’t an ideal substitute for federal laws, and may last only as long as Biden’s presidency. EPA regulation also “tends to lag [behind] the technological realities,” meaning it may only modestly nudge the economy in a new direction, Jesse Jenkins, an environmental engineering professor at Princeton University, told Vox. It’s also vulnerable to intervention by the Supreme Court.
In some respects, Democrats have been here before. Under President Barack Obama, a similar political bind in Congress made his climate actions weaker and open to reversal. “I am not sure there are easy ways to avoid the pitfalls the Obama administration faced in taking regulatory action on climate change,” Matto Mildenberger, a University of California Santa Barbara political scientist who has written on the <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/carbon-captured">history of US climate policy</a>, told Vox.
Democrats have options left. The <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/climate-spending-in-reconciliation-could-near-600b/">$500 billion</a> Democrats have promised for climate funding would represent historic congressional investment, and roughly a third of the funding in the possible Build Back Better plan. But it still would not make up for the policies that have been cut. If the past is any guide, their best chance is to throw the kitchen sink at the climate crisis, consistently and relentlessly, on every level of government.
To make sweeping and lasting progress, they’ll need to outdo the Democrats of the Obama era by pushing not only for executive and state action, but also funding for smaller climate policies that can fill what experts described as the “CEPP-sized hole” in the budget bill. If Democrats do that, Mildenberger still believes the US could manage to have a “world-leading” climate agenda.
Obama’s strategy for tackling climate change counted on Congress passing a bipartisan bill, which would have capped climate pollution and created a market for trading credits. Success depended on the support of wary Democrats as well as some Republicans. By summer 2010, Obama appointees admitted they didn’t have the votes in the Senate. The bill quietly died that summer, and the path to passing a federal law closed when Tea Party-backed Republicans swept the midterm elections.
As the New Yorker <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/as-the-world-burns">reported</a> at the time, “Obama said that he knew ‘the votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months.’ He never found them, and he didn’t appear to be looking very hard.”
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<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1635407624_6398_119948" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22957499,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fQRi6S3bEpIYpC50zGB1Rs4KnNI=/0x0:3000x2100/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CC1-5YZoBphztnc39oUnJqkmRtM=/0x0:3000x2100/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-n1qmfB22tsmKx3ZOQAOQPc_ixw=/0x0:3000x2100/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pJLhij7WDzSdhGF42bpdtFc5D8Y=/0x0:3000x2100/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jAIYvItgs1Fsg0tl3D5S3lmGFhA=/0x0:3000x2100/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_lUz1xq38-cnyuYGSfy_erj_2FY=/0x0:3000x2100/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aGYXv9Z0avGPP1jNv6Ux7SmuQwE=/0x0:3000x2100/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tn-aUAWc_PV2YjIbBHGn4tqgoVw=/0x0:3000x2100/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/trD4L_yyFgY5kQF585jhElST0AA=/0x0:3000x2100/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3000" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Z24fMhsntLJr-PuYmhM9tZJp2bo=/0x0:3000x2100/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dp_LDb6Ros5_NY0Q2tI9pa5t0l8=/0x0:3000x2100/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/g7BEzlv0v3J84ItZu5FwduR6LNk=/0x0:3000x2100/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Eafb-z7dWZXuj2ZaXWm-rBcYLTc=/0x0:3000x2100/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZKqdtwKWIrJO4699xDJIf_QX6Ns=/0x0:3000x2100/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uLEoxUuEtQRG_QFuHqHvna9ZZWc=/0x0:3000x2100/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Yj6FbNi-m9yn6CFxSq8zdzGocOk=/0x0:3000x2100/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zYGE5u2HfUKj5R7He2d-acznPK8=/0x0:3000x2100/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QWMl23jfWGL4_aSgJiKtriePm78=/0x0:3000x2100/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LMs_Zqlmn3j7WG_4bRnn_os5yxM=/0x0:3000x2100/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2100):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957499/GettyImages_171493829.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>President Barack Obama unveiled his climate change plan in 2013, at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Key portions of his plan were undone by the Supreme Court and President Donald Trump.</figcaption>
<cite>Alex Wong/Getty Images</cite></figure>
</div>
The Obama administration didn’t charge ahead to find other ways to deliver pollution cuts, at least not right away. Climate activists spent the subsequent years accusing Obama of “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/21/how-far-obamas-message-on-climate-change-has-come/">climate silence</a>,” according to the Washington Post. It wasn’t until his 2013 State of the Union that he made his lengthiest <a href="https://grist.org/politics/obama-if-congress-wont-act-on-climate-change-i-will/">comments</a> on climate change in years and promised: “If Congress won’t act soon … I will … with executive actions.”
By summer 2013, well into Obama’s second term, the administration was pushing forward with a new <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/25/fact-sheet-president-obama-s-climate-action-plan">comprehensive strategy</a> for tackling climate change, relying primarily on executive and regulatory action to clean up power and transportation emissions. For the first time, a president began to realign the executive branch, especially the EPA, to issue landmark standards for cleaner cars, power plants, and methane from gas operations.
But Obama was not able to replicate what Congress could have accomplished. As ambitious as his first-ever coal regulations seemed at the time, for example, they were <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-supreme-court-blocks-obama-s-clean-power-plan/">halted</a> by the Supreme Court before taking effect. Even without them, utilities ended up keeping pace with most targets on their own, showing how moderate the regulations were.
There are other reasons that a new wave of EPA action won’t be as powerful as federal climate legislation. Regulations still take time to draft and finalize and are frequently challenged in court. The Supreme Court swung to the right under former President Donald Trump and seems even more <a href="https://www.vox.com/22675986/supreme-court-term-roe-wade-gun-rights-anti-discrimination-laws-october-2021">skeptical</a> of the EPA’s powers.
In hindsight, the Obama administration arguably miscalculated the odds that its climate policy would outlast his presidency. The office of Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN), who sponsored the clean electricity plan, told Vox that politicians can’t take for granted that all climate policies will last. Smith’s staff said that Biden’s Plan B must find other ways to cut emissions, even as Manchin insists on cuts and the bill’s price tag keeps shrinking.
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<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1635407624_726_119949" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22957571,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dLWFVVFCIHV-V8MReC3s4LRS8z4=/0x0:6366x4244/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/beQIhiYUhtKlQZlPzlKqFdVDm1s=/0x0:6366x4244/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/61ptBI3mfkG5zPpG2VZNjUxyZF4=/0x0:6366x4244/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ppt2TukGr-RuQr_cqId2bHr3bzc=/0x0:6366x4244/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/f1lsDRgD49GNU1kIn5T_HNmMJog=/0x0:6366x4244/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-VBK-Dm1P6UbJWbEYHeQHKhEiW0=/0x0:6366x4244/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KzZsRsFc3VWlfIep81iRrl-lvyQ=/0x0:6366x4244/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/F0goKmnczVT04Z61QH8x2f940u4=/0x0:6366x4244/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4Z_3m_5wSxibcHTS5pH0Oz2NquY=/0x0:6366x4244/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="6366" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DIy79oHaenDz3AO27R6k_fENrrg=/0x0:6366x4244/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CvqnhSmkE2ydyQu9HgFJKjcYPXg=/0x0:6366x4244/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uWUb9kZj1ZQo98B6nVibtNuv3Gk=/0x0:6366x4244/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EmTnEwI2bR8tKDNuAII4xjjy4zw=/0x0:6366x4244/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fy2siodIqm2jvbLrkcrcHEKcfLY=/0x0:6366x4244/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YxNeuxCj3LpwnUB6IwuRl3mqP5A=/0x0:6366x4244/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vKtCZ7Fxc-ZQ0DFIDj-39WKeBCo=/0x0:6366x4244/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9hqo9jmkOjrOfL13aG9_QJBQ5D4=/0x0:6366x4244/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QtoDuy1hiWMlyz7Ij8FqjkWa4as=/0x0:6366x4244/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3piY71Ykuzlro3oZD9GJUcf0JQo=/0x0:6366x4244/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:6366x4244):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22957571/GettyImages_1236140050.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) speaks at the Economic Club of Washington in Washington, DC, on October 26. He has opposed major climate provisions in Democrats’ budget bill.</figcaption>
<cite>Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images</cite></figure>
</div>
Obama-era Democrats left other climate policies in a precarious place: For example, key tax breaks for <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=19251">wind</a> and <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36212">solar</a> energy repeatedly expired throughout the 2000s and were only renewed after the fact, slowing gains in the two renewable energy sectors. Even when Democrats controlled Congress during Obama’s presidency, these credits received short-term extensions. And by waiting until Obama’s second term to roll out key climate regulations for the power sector and transportation, the administration took a risk that some wouldn’t be finalized before the next administration, making it that much easier for the incoming Trump to halt.
Trump <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-climate-change-business-environment-and-nature-government-and-politics-5bb7bb2de2f8ecdfe90f40762297ddda">easily blocked</a> <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23112016/donald-trump-obama-environmental-regulations-deregulation-epa/">methane rules</a> for existing oil and gas facilities because they were still being drafted. “There are tiers of executive actions, each of which have different relative permanency,” <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/28/politics/trump-executive-action-obama/index.html">CNN explained</a> in 2016. And finalized rules take longer for an incoming president to reverse than rulemaking that’s still underway.
The Biden White House’s climate strategy in 2021 may end up not so different from the course of the Obama administration. Obama, facing the reality of a gridlocked Congress, relied on executive action to push the country forward on climate. And when Trump reversed course on climate policy, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cities-and-states-are-picking-up-trumps-slack-on-climate/">some states</a> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-08-21/california-auto-emissions-deal">tried to continue</a> their <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/09/undaunted-by-trump-thousands-of-climate-activists-are-meeting-to-plan-their-next-move/">own shifts</a> toward clean energy.
Still, Democrats can learn from this history and take action in three important ways: 1) pushing the executive branch to quickly finalize regulations of the biggest emitters, such as coal-fired power plants and oil and gas producers; 2) writing climate standards into their subsidies for other polluting sectors, like industry, transportation, and buildings; and 3) updating the Build Back Better budget bill so that it funds every possible incremental way to close the gap in emissions.
They also have to remember what has changed: The political movement urging climate action is far bigger than it was a decade ago. The problem is, the warnings in climate science of inaction are also more dire. The Biden administration will have to outdo the Obama administration in the pace and the scale of its ambitions.
A decade of inaction by Congress has now cost the world precious time to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change. A global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, enshrined in the 2015 Paris agreement, could slip through our fingers in a matter of years, according to the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/05/1092842">World Meteorological Organization</a> and <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/08/1097362">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a>. Every fraction of a degree of warming can claim lives and livelihoods as it ripples through ecosystems, water supplies, agriculture, and more.
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/25/climate/world-climate-pledges-cop26.html">The US is making progress, but not quickly enough</a>. Domestic climate pollution has fallen by less than <a href="https://rhg.com/research/preliminary-us-emissions-2020/">22 percent</a> between 2005 and 2020. After rejoining the Paris climate agreement this year, Biden announced a new target: cutting US climate pollution by at least 50 percent by 2030.
The best way of ensuring the US reaches this target, climate experts told Vox, would be ambitious congressional action. Federal laws could transition the electricity sector off fossil fuels and replace gas-guzzling cars with electric vehicles.
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<aside><q>“Even with what some would view as moderate congressional action, there is still a pathway to meeting the target”</q></aside>
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Now that the Senate appears to have sunk its best single weapon against climate change, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22579218/clean-energy-standard-electricity-infrastructure-democrats">clean electricity payment program</a>, the White House is falling back on a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/climate/biden-climate-plan.html">three-pronged approach</a>” to meet its goal.
One prong still depends on Congress passing historic clean energy funding as part of the Build Back Better Act (albeit a smaller package than the White House wanted). The second relies on the White House preparing ambitious regulations of electricity, transportation, a natural gas production. And the third prong depends on states — especially the 25 that are already committed to climate action — ramping up energy efficiency, fuel standards, and clean energy to match the most ambitious regions in the nation.
This Plan B will be difficult to pull off, and is less ambitious than climate activists had hoped for. A clean electricity policy would have accounted for <a href="https://repeatproject.org/docs/REPEAT_Preliminary_Report_102021.pdf">roughly 25 percent</a> of the package’s pollution cuts, according to a Princeton Zero Lab analysis from Jenkins and his colleagues. Democrats may also scrap their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/us/politics/manchin-climate-budget.html">second major climate proposal</a>, a plan to fine oil and gas producers for methane pollution, from the Build Back Better Act. <a href="https://www.vox.com/22613532/climate-change-methane-emissions">Methane is a potent greenhouse gas</a> that, over the short term, warms the planet even more than carbon dioxide.
Other powerful levers in the fight against climate change, like a carbon tax or specific penalties on fossil fuels, are just as unlikely to make it into the final plan. So the final infrastructure package and budget bill likely won’t make as big of a dent in climate pollution as many Democrats once hoped.
But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost for US climate action. “Even with what some would view as moderate congressional action, there is still a pathway to meeting the target,” John Larsen, climate director of the energy research firm Rhodium Group, told Vox. “It’s just going to mean that there needs to be sustained effort by other parts of the federal system and state level to really follow through.”
In a Monday speech in New Jersey, Biden projected optimism that his Build Back Better agenda is “going to address the root cause of ever-increasing extreme weather and destruction.”
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1635407624_3858_119950" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22957796,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ArS6aJVQlnCTJkC1DLubfYqLXhE=/0x0:6000x4000/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:6000x4000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/ructure in order to decarbonize by 2050, according to <a href=" https:="" />a landmark Princeton study. As Steve Cicala, an economics professor at Tufts University, <a href="https://epic.uchicago.edu/area-of-focus/decarbonizing-the-us-economy-with-a-national-grid/">recently told me</a>, solar and wind are now the cheapest forms of electricity generation in some parts of the country. But those cost declines only matter if the largest power markets are connected—via new transmission!—to those areas.”</picture>
<picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1635407624_3858_119950" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22957796,"ratio":"*"}'>The group We ACT for Environmental Justice suggested the funding should be used to clean up highway pollution that disproportionately affects communities of color — for example, by increasing funding for clean cars and zero-emissions heavy-duty trucks.</picture>
<picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1635407624_3858_119950" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22957796,"ratio":"*"}'>Meanwhile, Mildenberger suggested, funding for nuclear power would ensure that the US doesn’t lose the <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/">20 percent</a> of its carbon-free energy that currently comes from nuclear. Otherwise, that electricity could be replaced with gas and coal.</picture>
<picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1635407624_3858_119950" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22957796,"ratio":"*"}'>Biden will need to multitask to make his Plan B work, Larsen said. “If any one component were not to take place in the timeframe that we’re talking about, then something else is going to have to happen,” he said. “That could be additional regulations, it could be new states that are leading; it could be future congressional action. But you would need to see other actions somewhere else to make up the difference.”</picture>
</figure>
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22738414/democrats-manchin-climate-reconciliation-plan-b">https://www.vox.com/22738414/democrats-manchin-climate-reconciliation-plan-b</a>

vox Biden’s Plan B for the climate crisis, explained

After a major setback on a historic package of climate legislation, President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress are scrambling to find oth...

Why the US is always hitting a “debt ceiling”

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/515x1IQMc80hdXxanfk2ZG8sOxE=/0x38:1920x1043/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942374/thumb_clean.jpg" /></div>
Nearly every year since 2011, America seems to teeter on the edge of a crisis as the national debt comes dangerously close to hitting the “debt ceiling,” and the president and Congress fight over raising it. The “debt ceiling” is really just a limit on how much debt the country can take on. While the US isn’t the only country to have one, it is the only country to have legislation that regularly puts it on the brink of economic disaster.
The current US debt is nearing $29 trillion. That’s a trillion with a T. Is that too much? And who does it affect?
Want to know what the US national debt is as of right now? The Treasury keeps a <a href="https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/debt-to-the-penny">daily record</a>.
Americans and American companies own 35.6 percent of US debt while foreign investors own 25 percent. Chinese investors used to have the largest share, but Japanese investors actually own more now. The Treasury also updates the <a href="https://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt">foreign investor totals</a> every month for public viewing.
You can find this video and the entire library of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA">Vox’s videos on YouTube</a>.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/10/27/22736792/congress-president-hitting-us-debt-ceiling">https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/10/27/22736792/congress-president-hitting-us-debt-ceiling</a>

vox Why the US is always hitting a “debt ceiling”

Nearly every year since 2011, America seems to teeter on the edge of a crisis as the national debt comes dangerously close to hitting the “...

A Shocking Poll Out of France

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was forced to admit Tuesday that the Biden administration is shipping planeloads of illegal immigrant children to New York City and elsewhere in the middle of the night after photos and footage was captured by <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/10/18/biden-secretly-flying-underage-migrants-into-ny-in-dead-of-night/">The New York Post.</a>
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The practice has been ongoing, with destinations not limited to New York, prompting Fox News reporter Peter Doocy to confront Psaki on it.
“Why is the administration flying thousands of migrants from the border to Florida and New York in the middle of the night?” Doocy asked.
“Well, I’m not sure that’s in the middle of the night. But let me tell you what’s happening here,” replied Psaki, prompting Doocy to point out that 2am is the middle of the night.
Psaki continued, “It is our legal responsibility to safely care for unaccompanied children until they can be swiftly unified with a parent or a vetted sponsor. And that’s something we take seriously.”
“As a part of the unification process, our Office of Refugee Resettlement facilitates travel for children in its custody to their families or sponsors across the country,” she added.
Psaki then admitted that “in recent weeks, unaccompanied children pass through the Westchester airport, which I think is what you’re referring to, in route to their final destination to be unified with their parents or vetted sponsor.”
“It’s no surprise that kids can be seen traveling through states, not just New York. It’s something that we’re also working to unite children with their family members or vetted sponsors in other parts of the country as well,” Psaki further admitted.
Watch:
Meanwhile, First Lady Jill Biden recently spoke at an event promoting the school of a donor whose non-profit <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/jill-biden-visit-school-illegal-immigrants-avoid-arrests">instructs illegal immigrants on how to avoid arrest.</a>
“El Centro’s nonprofit arm has published a series of videos on how illegal immigrants can avoid arrests, with tips such as ignoring ICE agents during any interactions and contacting ‘a member of the community who does have status,'” Fox News reported.
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Strength. Community. Passion.
Those were the words I wrote down during an inspiring charla today with <a href="https://twitter.com/SBAIsabel?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SBAIsabel</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/RepDavids?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RepDavids</a>, and members of the Latino community in Kansas City, KS.
Thank you El Centro Academy for Children for all you do and for being our gracious hosts today. <a href="https://t.co/a0IPmqRfhu">pic.twitter.com/a0IPmqRfhu</a>
— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) <a href="https://twitter.com/FLOTUS/status/1448063320846704646?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 12, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Texas Senator Ted Cruz has introduced legislation dubbed the “<a href="https://www.cruz.senate.gov/newsroom/in-the-news/sen-cruz-introduces-stop-the-surge-act-to-hold-pres-biden-and-democrat-colleagues-accountable-for-ignoring-their-man-made-border-crisis" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Stop the Surge Act,”</a> which seeks to ensure that “Democrats face the disaster of their policies and the humanitarian misery they are causing” through normalising illegal immigration.
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Democrats need to face the disaster of their policies and the humanitarian misery they are causing.
That’s why I’ve introduced a bill to create new ports of entry in places like Greenwich, Martha’s Vineyard, Rehoboth Beach, and Palo Alto. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BidenBorderCrisis?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BidenBorderCrisis</a> <a href="https://t.co/VaqYlbqXuT">pic.twitter.com/VaqYlbqXuT</a>
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz/status/1450469399614345218?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 19, 2021</a></blockquote>
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In a statement, Cruz urged that “For the past ten months, President Biden and his administration have willingly surrendered the United States’ southern border to dangerous criminal cartels, with no thought given to the South Texas border communities like McAllen and Del Rio, which are running low on resources from dealing with this massive influx of illegal immigrants.”
The statement continues, “That’s why today I am introducing this crucial legislation to alleviate the massive overload at the southern border by establishing new ports of entry in Democrat-led communities such as North Hero, Vermont, where Bernie Sanders spends his summers, and Martha’s Vineyard, where Democrat elites host their cocktail parties.”
Labelling the surge at the border a “horrific humanitarian crisis,” Cruz further urged “If Washington Democrats had to endure even a fraction of the suffering South Texas families, farmers, ranchers, and small businesses have had to face, our nation’s immigration laws would be enforced, the wall would be built, and the Remain in Mexico policy would be re-implemented.”
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source <a href="https://summit.news/2021/10/27/a-shocking-poll-out-of-france/">https://summit.news/2021/10/27/a-shocking-poll-out-of-france/</a>

revolution summit A Shocking Poll Out of France

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was forced to admit Tuesday that the Biden administration is shipping planeloads of illegal immigrant ...