President Biden is set to announce his plan for additional fiscal stimulus today. Previous reports suggest that the new US stimulus package to be proposed by President Joe Biden calls for $3 trillion in new spending, although reports in the Washington Post raise the figure in Biden’s proposal to $4 trillion, which would be funded by tax increases of $3 trillion, up from the $1 trillion initially estimated.
Pablo Pardo (Washington) | According to the so-called ‘Bork Doctrine’, a company that has a dominant position in a market can benefit consumers. The Democratic Party has always been more reluctant to accept that thesis than the Republican Party. In recent years, that opposition has become tougher. So one would think that both for purely political reasons – to please the left wing of the Democratic Party – and for ideological principles – that opposition to the control of big business – Biden will not pass up the opportunity to trim the quasi-monopolies of the Internet giants.
Scott Lucas via The Conversation | As aspiration, the speech was pitch perfect. Biden rightly took on the present of America’s most serious domestic crisis since the Civil War. Coronavirus, the Capitol attack, economic loss, immigration, climate change and social injustice were confronted. But what distinguished the speech beyond the essential was the sincerity with which it was delivered. Since the election, there has been a commingling of Biden’s personal narrative of loss with the damage that America has suffered.
The appointment of the day will be in the United States, where Biden will take office as the country’s 40th President. Donald Trump will not attend the simple inauguration ceremony.The health and economic crises are Biden’s main challenges for the current legislature, including the approval of a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan. Just yesterday Janet Yellen, who will serve as Treasury Secretary in the Biden Administration, defended that stimulus plan in her speech at the Senate. “We must act big,” she said.
Monex Europe | The dollar has been regaining ground since yesterday amid concerns that President-elect Joe Biden’s $1.9tn stimulus plan may fail to win broad-based support, as Republican opposition is possible over the big-ticket spending. These concerns are reinforced by the voting procedure in the Senate: fiscal stimulus requires 3/5ths of the votes (60 votes) in order to pass. Among the elements in the proposal are direct payments of $1,400, on top of the $600 approved in December, $350bn for state and local governments, $160bn in vaccination funding, $130bn to help schools reopen, and additional employment benefits.
The attack on the Capitol may have threatened the lives of federal legislators and Capitol police officers, but the most it achieved was to interrupt, briefly, a ministerial procedure. But the question of real, lasting – and legal – accountability will fall to Biden, and his nominee for attorney general, Merrick Garland. They will decide whether to continue existing investigations and potentially start new ones.
Dolf Gielen and Morgan Bazilian via The Conversation | The global shift to clean energy will also have geopolitical implications for countries and regions, and this will have a profound impact on wider international relations. Kerry, with his experience as secretary of state in the Obama administration, and Biden’s plan to make the climate envoy position part of the National Security Council, may help mend these relations. In doing so, the U.S. may again join the wider community of countries willing to lead.
The Conversation | The American public has had its say and for the first time in a generation denied a sitting president a second term. President’s Trump’s tenure lasted just four years, but in that time he dragged policy on an array of key issues in a dramatic new direction. Joe Biden’s victory presents an opportunity to reset the White House agenda and put it on a different course. Three scholars discuss what a Biden presidency may have in store in three key areas: race, the Supreme Court and foreign policy.
Joe Biden, who was declared the winner in America’s presidential election on Saturday, would return the United States to the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization; rejoin the Iran nuclear deal if Iran complies with its terms; extend the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia; and end America’s support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Democrat candidate Joe Biden has overtaken President Donald Trump in the race for the state of Georgia, one of six still to be decided since Tuesday’s U.S. elections. According to the main media outlets, the former vice president’s lead over Trump is now just 917 votes, with 99 percent of the count completed. As it stands, Biden would have gathered 49.39 percent of the vote and the Republican candidate 49.37 percent. Currently, the Democrat candidate has 253 votes.