The Wyden-Smith tax plan, Cruz’s unfunny Cancun joke, Pritzker’s eyebrow-raising presser
The Wyden-Smith tax plan, Cruz’s unfunny Cancun joke, Pritzker’s eyebrow-raising presser
The proposal faces hurdles from both parties in both chambers. Plus: Senators take first step to avoid a shutdown and a Bernie Sanders-backed Israel resolution fails to make it to the floor.
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill, an independent newsletter delivering fresh reporting and unique insights on Congress, campaigns, politics and more directly to your inbox. I’m Michael Jones.
Tonight, I’ve got everything you need to know on a new bipartisan plan that would revive the poverty-reducing Child Tax Credit, perspective from a Texas Democratic strategist on that bizarre (and unfunny) Cancun joke to his constituents as they braced for a deep freeze, and intel on why Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois is such an effective surrogate for the Biden campaign (and possible successor to the president).
But first things first, let’s review the day on Capitol Hill:
⇢ House Republican leaders, who by dint of their slim majority control the floor schedule, canceled votes today due to inclement weather. The Rules Committee still met this afternoon to tee up a border resolution and two abortion bills. The first votes of the week are expected tomorrow on a half-dozen suspension bills that were scheduled for today.
⇢ The Senate is currently voting to advance a bill that will ultimately contain the legislative text for a continuing resolution Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer(D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced on Sunday to keep the government open beyond the first funding expiration date this Friday.
The short-term extension will maintain the current staggered structure with one deadline on March 1 for four of the dozen appropriations bills and the other on March 8 for the remaining eight. (President Biden’s State of the Union address is scheduled between both deadlines on March 7.)
Schumer said in a floor speech on Tuesday that he hoped to pass the CR by Thursday (any one senator can object to an expedited timeline; without cooperation from the full Senate, the CR can’t pass until Sunday, well after the expiration of the first government funding deadline on Friday at midnight).
⇢ Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) lost a floor vote to force consideration of a resolution that would have directed the State Department to report on any human rights violations that may have occurred using US equipment in the Israel war against Hamas in Gaza.
The vote was forced under Section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act and pushed back by Democratic leadership by almost 90 minutes to accommodate Sanders, who experienced a flight delay. Critics of the resolution in the Senate and at the White House said they opposed it because they didn’t want to send a message of diminishing trust to Israel.
“We should all want this information. If you believe the war has been indiscriminate, as I do, then we must ask this question,” Sanders said ahead of the vote. “If you believe Israel has done nothing wrong, then this information should support that belief.”
⇢ The White House was pretty uneventful too, with a lid—the term that alerts reporters President Joe Biden won’t be making any more public appearances, coming shortly after 10 a.m. Biden received his daily intelligence briefing and spoke with Chancellor Olaf Scholz this morning about Ukraine and the Middle East. WH readout of the call
Vice President Kamala Harris received briefings and had internal staff meetings.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby conducted the daily press briefing on Zoom instead of in person due to the snow.
⇢ Wednesday happenings: President Biden will host the four top congressional leaders and key committee leaders and ranking members to discuss the $106 billion emergency national security funding request he submitted to Congress in October. The request has been stalled on Capitol Hill since then over opposition from House and Senate conservatives to additional Ukraine funding and a demand from those factions for harsher border security measures.
Senate Democrats will host and attend a briefing ahead of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade on the fallout from the Dobbs decision, which overturned the federal right to abortion care in 2022. The Roe anniversary is next Monday.
Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) will give her first Senate floor speech on the importance of young people as the future of America. Butler was appointed to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein by Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom last October. The former president of EMILYs List is the first Black LGBTQ+ person to serve in the Senate.
Keep reading for the rest of my notebook on the tax plan, Cruz and Pritzker:
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