The Man Seems Hardly Human - Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
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| WHITE HOUSE |
White House criticizes Interior-EPA funding: The White House criticized the funding measure for the
Interior Department, EPA and other agencies, H.R. 6147 (115), which is being considered by the House this week — but
it stopped short of a veto measure. The Interior-Environment part of the
"minibus" measure would offer about 25 percent more to the agencies
than the administration's budget blueprint did. The White House praised funding
for water infrastructure, energy development and wildfire response, but
criticized EPA funding for categorical grants for states. More from Pro
Energy's Annie Snider here.
[POLITICO's Morning Agriculture, July 19, 2018]
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| MICHELLE OBAMA |
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| HEALTHCARE |
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| READ |
A
Warning About the Next Crisis from Leaders Who Battled the Last One
Three top officials who
helped steer the U.S. through the financial crisis a decade ago warned Tuesday
that, while the banking system has clearly been strengthened, policymakers
might find it harder to deal with the next crisis.
At a recent round-table
discussion with reporters at the Brookings Institution, Former Fed Chair Ben
Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner
expressed concern than policymakers would be more constrained, and have weaker
emergency powers, in responding to the next large-scale crisis. "Better defenses,
weaker arsenal," said Geithner, according to USA Today.
The three also voiced
concerns about the dangers of rising deficits and mounting national debt.
Bernanke: The
former Fed chair “criticized the deficit-ballooning tax cuts and spending
increases agreed to by President Donald Trump and Congress as ill-timed,”
Bloomberg’s Rich Miller reports. “Bernanke noted that they come as the
country is at or near full employment. He also voiced concern about the
longer-term consequences of rapidly rising government debt.”
Geithner: "I
think the deficit fever of '09 through '13 was mistimed," the former
Treasury secretary said, according to USA Today, noting that deficit concerns
served to reduce stimulus spending that might have helped speed the recovery.
"I say the new complacency about the larger deficits is mistimed,
too."
Paulson: “If
we don’t act, that is the most certain fiscal or economic crisis we will have,”
the Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush said of the national
debt. “It will slowly strangle us.” Paulson also said that now, when the
economy is growing, is the best time to address “some of the persistent
structural issues that are going to determine our long-term economic
competitiveness.” Those issues, he said, include the deficit, immigration,
income disparities and what automation and globalization are doing to wages. [The Fiscal Times, July 18, 2018]
A bipartisan group of 149 House members is
telling Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to put the efforts of his department
somewhere other than an investigation into whether imports of automobiles
constitute a national security risk. "We support the Department of
Commerce as it seeks a level playing field for our manufacturers and workers in
the global marketplace and penalizes bad actors," the lawmakers wrote in
a letter Wednesday.
[POLITICO's Morning Transportation, July 19, 2018]
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| BUDGET |
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| STEVE BANNON |
GOODLATTE TO TECH: DO BETTER — In his opening
remarks, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) offers praise for
steps taken by the companies while calling on them to provide a more
fleshed-out rationale behind their decisions. "Since our last hearing,
we've seen numerous efforts by these companies to improve transparency,"
he says, according to a copy of the remarks obtained by MT. "Conversely,
we've also seen numerous stories in the news of content that's still being
unfairly restricted." The chairman points to an incident where a quote on
"merciless Indian Savages" from the Declaration of Independence
was flagged as hate speech on Facebook as a sign
the companies can still improve how they handle content online.
— Disputed claim: The tech companies say they
are not filtering content based on users' political leanings and emphasize
their belief in an open exchange of ideas online, according to prepared
testimony posted on the panel's website. "Our policies do not target
particular political beliefs," YouTube global head of public policy
Juniper Downs says in her remarks. Addressing allegations that
Twitter has silenced conservative voices, the company's newly minted senior
strategist for public policy, Nick Pickles, calls the claims "unfounded and
false." "Our purpose is to serve the conversation, not to make value
judgments on personal beliefs," he says.
— "Freedom of expression is one of our core values, and
we believe that the Facebook community is richer and stronger when a broad
range of viewpoints is represented," Monika Bickert, Facebook's global
head of policy management, says in her testimony . The social network
made a similar argument last week amid criticism of its decision to allow
far-right website InfoWars, a known purveyor of conspiracy theories, to
continue operating on its platform. While Bickert stresses that Facebook is
"taking steps to reduce the spread of false news," she insists that
"discussing controversial topics or espousing a debated point of view is
not at odds with our Community Standards" — a position that's likely to
leave lawmakers on both sides of the aisle unsatisfied. [POLITICO's Morning Tech, July 17, 2018]
TODAY: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with Recode's Kara Swisher for the
Recode Decode podcast, with the interview set to drop this morning, according
to Vox Media. [POLITICO's Morning Tech, July 18,
2018]
TRUMP TAPS THE NEW SAM CLOVIS: President
Donald Trump on Monday evening nominated Scott Hutchins to be USDA
undersecretary for research, education and economics — the position
Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis had been selected for before withdrawing
from consideration last fall. Hutchins is the global head of integrated field
sciences for Corteva Agriscience, the new name of the agriculture division of
DowDuPont. Hutchins, also an adjunct professor at the University of Nebraska,
would serve as USDA's top scientist if he is confirmed by the Senate.
Clovis never received a confirmation hearing after prompting
several controversies, particularly around his skepticism of climate science
and his apparent lack of the scientific credentials legally required for the
undersecretary post. Clovis also came under scrutiny over his past inflammatory
comments about blacks, women and progressives.
He ultimately withdrew from consideration in early
November after George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser
whom Clovis had supervised, struck a plea deal on charges that he lied to FBI
investigators about his communications with Russia-linked contacts. But Clovis
stayed on as an adviser at the USDA until he left the administration in early May to return
home to Iowa after serving as USDA's liaison to the White House for more than a
year. [POLITICO's Morning Agriculture, July 17,
2018]
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| CLIMATE CHANGE |
AMERICA'S PLEDGE STILL WORKING ON PLEDGES: Michael
Bloomberg and California Gov. Jerry Brown, the co-chairs of climate
organization "America's Pledge," have unveiled a preview of the
report they will release at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco
in September, detailing "bottom-up" opportunities for climate action
sans federal leadership. The list is familiar: boosting renewables,
accelerating coal retirements, retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency,
electrifying building energy use, accelerating electric vehicle adoption,
phasing out HFCs, preventing methane leaks at the wellhead, reducing methane
leaks in cities, reducing emissions from land and starting carbon markets.
Vice Chairman Carl Pope said the group still
plans to debut a quantitative analysis outlining what state and local
governments are already doing, what they have committed to and what they are
keying up. "We have every reason to believe the rest of the world is
watching this very closely," Pope said, noting that the U.N.'s top climate
official, Patricia Espinosa, mentioned the group and summit by name at the
Vatican earlier this month. Read it here. [POLITICO's Morning Energy,
July 17, 2018]
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| RUSSIAN AGENT |
On the day a Russian agent is charged with infiltrating
the NRA, the Trump administration announces the NRA and similar groups can keep
the identity of their donors totally secret https://t.co/uTVTxUoZO7
— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) July 17, 2018
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| BERNIE SANDERS |
SQUARING THE CIRCLE: Bank of America
announced Monday that its second-quarter earnings rose by a full third, fueled
by both higher interest rates and lower taxes because of last year's Tax Cuts
and Jobs Act. Currently the second-largest bank in the U.S. by assets, Bank of
America noted that it paid not even 60 percent the taxes it paid in 2017's
second quarter — $1.71 billion to $3.015 billion, as The Wall Street
Journal noted.
But from a sheer tax perspective, this is also interesting —
Bank of America didn't mention anything about a tax expense caused by last
month's online sales tax decision from the Supreme Court. Wells Fargo just
logged a $481 million loss because of the Wayfair opinion,
perhaps because of potential corporate income tax liabilities at the state
level — even though the Supreme Court case was focused on whether states should
have more power to collect sales tax from out-of-state retailers.
So why would one big bank have Wayfair expenses,
and not another? Stephen Kranz, a tax attorney at McDermott Will and Emery,
wouldn't speak to those specific cases. But he did tell Morning Tax that
generally there were a lot of variables that might influence how a company
responds to Wayfair, and there was likely good reason for some
companies to take another look at where they might owe taxes. "From a true
technical tax standpoint, what I would say is: the Wayfair decision does not
distinguish between different tax types," Kranz said. "As a result,
it is clearer that economic nexus is likely the law of the land
everywhere." [POLITICO's Morning Tax, July
17, 2018]
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