Democratic congressional leaders signaled Sunday they’re willing to consider raising the federal debt limit during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress, while both chambers of Congress remain safely in Democratic hands.
Dealing with the debt limit now instead of only a few weeks or days before the Treasury Department is projected to run out of borrowing room would be a break from Congress’ past pattern. But it also would let Democrats deprive Republicans of the chance to leverage it in the next two years if they win the House by holding an increase hostage for GOP priorities.
“We’ll see what they contend that they want to do. But our best shot I think is to do it now,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.
“Again, winning the Senate gave us a lot of leverage for how we go forward if we don’t do it in the lame duck. But my hope would be that we could get it done in the lame duck.” [snip]
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), fresh off of declaring victory for Senate Democrats Saturday night, was a bit more cautious, possibly reflecting the political and time constraints dealing with the debt limit his chamber would face.
“The debt ceiling, of course, is something that we have to deal with. And it’s something that we will look at over the next few weeks,” he said at a news conference in New York City.
One prominent Senate Democrat, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), came out in favor raising the limit sooner than later, writing in The New York Times that Democrats should boost it “to block Republicans from taking our economy hostage next year.”
For Democrats, the choice may well come down to whether the House falls, as expected, into Republicans hands and by what margin. GOP control would allow Republicans to withhold action on an increase or a temporary suspension unless Biden and Senate Democrats agreed to Republican demands, like trimming Social Security or Medicare spending.
Former President Donald Trump repeatedly told his onetime White House chief of staff, John Kelly, that he wanted the Internal Revenue Service to investigate his political foes, Kelly told The New York Times.
Among the people Trump wanted to “get the I.R.S. on” were former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Kelly told the newspaper.
“I would say, ‘It’s inappropriate, it’s illegal, it’s against their integrity and the I.R.S. knows what it’s doing and it’s not a good idea,’” Kelly said he told Trump, according to the Times.
“Yeah, but they’re writing bad things about me,” Trump responded, according to Kelly.
McCabe and Comey, both fierce critics of Trump, were ultimately selected by the Internal Revenue Service for an intensive tax audit. The Times noted earlier this year that the odds of any one person being selected for the audit are about one in 30,600, raising questions about how two of Trump’s most visible critics were both selected.
The IRS denied any “politically motivated audits” in a statement to CNN earlier this year, and Kelly told the Times he believes that he guided Trump away from seeking out such investigations during his tenure as chief of staff.
Still, the head of the IRS, Charles Rettig, asked a watchdog to investigate the decision to conduct audits on the pair earlier this year.
A leading sanitation company is accused of employing dozens of children to clean the killing floors of slaughterhouses during graveyard shifts, the Department of Labor announced.
Packers Sanitation Services, Inc., or PSSI, a company contracted to work at slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities throughout the county, allegedly employed at least 31 kids — one as young as 13 — to work overnight cleaning shifts at three facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.
Those practices would violate the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits “oppressive child labor” and minors from working in any kind of hazardous employment, according to the complaint. The Department of Labor’s Child Labor Regulations designates many roles in slaughterhouse and meatpacking facilities as hazardous for minors.
In the court filing, U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh asked the Federal District Court of Nebraska to issue a temporary restraining order and nationwide preliminary injunction against the company to stop it from employing minors while the Labor Department continues its investigation.
Initial evidence indicates the company may also employ more kids under similar conditions at 400 other sites across the country, in addition to the 31 minors employed at three sites that investigators already confirmed, according to the complaint.
Prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, and make them serve part of their judgement cleaning the killing floors on the graveyard shift themselves, preferably with Q-tips.
