President Joe Biden’s Approval Rating Dips To 50%, Lowest Since Taking Office

—Senate Democrats accused Republicans Wednesday of a“ shameless, cynical” ploy that would damage the economy and the government's credit rating after the chamber's GOP leader said his party would vote against raising the federal debt limit. In the latest chapter of a broad budget battle likely to linger well into autumn, Democrats reacted after Senate…

Tensions were rising as Republicans prepared to mount a filibuster over what they see as a rushed and misguided process. With Biden preparing to hit the road to rally support for his big infrastructure ideas— including some $3.5 trillion in a follow-up bill— restless Democrats say it's time to at least start debate on this first phase of his proposals.

—President Joe Biden marked six months in office on Tuesday with a crowded Cabinet meeting, a gathering meant to symbolize both a return to normalcy due to vaccines and a display of the federal government doing the people’ s business. The Cabinet members were packed tightly around a table for their first full meeting in the Cabinet room, with a group of journalists…

President Biden said Monday that“ no serious economist” is worried about long-term inflation, ignoring the bipartisan warnings of economists including Democratic former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, as the president tried to shore up his crumbling case for $4 trillion in new infrastructure spending. But Mr. Biden insisted the spike in inflation is…

At the start of July, Politico reported that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell would probably be reappointed. Major news outlets are reporting that President Joe Biden is considering whether to install a new chairman when Powell's current term expires in February, and might even be leaning in that direction. It's understandable that Biden would want…

The payments are part of the American Rescue Plan, the comprehensive relief package that President Joe Biden signed in March. Middle-class families and families working to join the middle class are all eligible to receive the full credit of $3,600 per child under age 6, and up to $3,000 per child ages 6 through 17. Families will receive up to $250 a month for each…

WASHINGTON- Talkers both, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders stayed for an hour in the Oval Office, just two former rivals for the White House now acting as potential partners, negotiating a compromise both could live with. The president gave his full backing, according to a senior White House aide and another person familiar with the private session, who spoke on…

—President Joe Biden made a quick foray to the U.S. Capitol hunting support for his multitrillion-dollar agenda of infrastructure, health care and other programs, a potential landmark achievement that would require near-unanimous backing from fractious Democrats. The president spent just under an hour at a closed-door lunch with Democratic senators in…

Yesterday's release of June's US CPI data revealed that annualized inflation has jumped from 5% the previous month to 5.4% in June, which is the highest rate it has reached for 13 years. The consensus forecast before the release was expecting an annualized rate of only 4.9%. Clearly, the rebound from the initial shock of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 is…

U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, R-Calif., recently introduced the Fair COLA for Seniors Act of 2021 to require Social Security to use the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly to calculate a “fairer cost of living adjustment” (COLA) for seniors.

Pressure on Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to step down will likely grow now that the court's session has ended. His retirement would allow President Joe Biden to nominate his successor and give Democrats another liberal justice, if confirmed. Supreme Court justices in the U.S. enjoy life tenure.

—Former President Donald Trump announced Wednesday he is filing suits against three of the country's biggest tech companies: Facebook, Twitter and Google, as well as their CEOs. The suits were filed in U.S. District Court for Florida's southern district. Trump was suspended from Twitter and Facebook after his followers stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6.

—More than $7,000 behind on rent, Tyesha Young had hoped a program in Louisiana would bail her out and allow her family to avert eviction in the coming weeks. But the 29- year-old mother of two from Jefferson Parish is still waiting to hear whether any of the $308 million available from the state for rental assistance and utility payments will give her a lifeline.

—In the past week alone, Nikki Haley regaled activists in Iowa, Mike Pence courted donors in California and Donald Trump returned to the rally stage, teasing a third campaign for the White House. But Republicans eyeing a White House run are wasting no time in jockeying for a strong position in what could emerge as an extremely crowded field of contenders.

—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will confer Wednesday with White House officials on next steps for President Joe Biden's nearly $4 trillion infrastructure plans as talks with Republicans see-saw in search of a potential deal. The White House's legislative team huddled in the Capitol basement Tuesday for another round…

—Congressional negotiators and the White House appear open to striking a roughly $1 trillion deal on infrastructure. Republicans have ruled that out, putting forward alternatives that Democrats find unacceptable. But the White House and key Democratic lawmakers oppose increasing the user fee that has traditionally funded road and bridge construction,…

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the revisions proposed by Manchin are a compromise, another step as Democrats work to shore up voting access and what President Joe Biden sees as“ a fight of his presidency.”. A top priority for Democrats seeking to ensure access to the polls and mail in ballots made popular during the pandemic, it is a opposed by…

WASHINGTON, June 5– The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non-profit public policy organization, issued the following news release:. The Biden Administration's Labor Department reported today that the United States added 559,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.8%. “The Labor Department's report Friday makes clear that rolling back the…

The White House billed the private meeting as more of a conversation with West Virginia GOP Sen. More than anything, the session in the Oval Office was seen through the political lens of the president and Republicans trying to show the public what Americans say they want- a willingness to work together, even if no deal is within reach. Biden and Capito had a “…

Shelley Moore Capito, the White House said ahead of the Wednesday afternoon session. Publicly the administration is making it clear it views next week as a make-or-break moment for the president's push toward a deal with Republicans. “He’ s appreciative and heartened by the good faith effort that we’ ve seen from Republican senators but as the president said last…

About a year has passed since the economy started to recover from the coronavirus recession, and the rebound so far is solid if not uniformly positive. When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and forced business lockdown measures, it precipitated a steep economic slide starting around February 2020. But activity began to recover quickly, with growth resuming in…

WASHINGTON- President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered U.S. intelligence officials to “redouble” their efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese laboratory. After months of minimizing that possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is joining worldwide pressure for…

Even a seemingly bipartisan effort to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol faces the blockade of Republican opposition in Congress. Rounding the first quarter of his presidency, the White House and Congress have been unable to meet key Memorial Day deadlines set by the administration on crucial priorities. The sweeping infrastructure…

Invest in America, a research group, and Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, surveyed more than 1,200 likely voters in mid-May, with 58% of those polled supporting Biden’ s spending plans, even if Democrats must pass them without Republican support. A majority of voters surveyed, 51% to 32%, prefer Biden’ s plans over a Republican infrastructure proposal…

—The Biden administration is facing new pressure to resolve a mystery that has vexed its predecessors: Is an adversary using a microwave or radio wave weapon to attack the brains of U.S. diplomats, spies and military personnel? Confirmation that a U.S. adversary has been conducting damaging attacks against U.S. personnel would unleash calls for a forceful…

WASHINGTON – Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and James Lankford R-Okla., introduced the Improving Access to Retirement Savings…

It is just a piece of the ongoing negotiation between the White House and congressional Republicans over the $2.25 trillion package of roadwork, social welfare programs and climate change policy that is being pushed by President Biden. “This is an approach that Congress has to return to because it works,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, Oregon…

A Trump-fortified conservative majority is making its presence felt at the Supreme Court by quickly wading into high-profile social issues that have been a goal of the right for decades. Now, with three appointees of former President Donald Trump on the nine-member court, longer-serving conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas can cobble…

Their former employers are hiring again- and some, like Uber and McDonald's, are offering higher pay- but workers remain hesitant. In March, U.S. job openings rose 8 percent to a record 8.1 million, but overall hiring rose less than 4 percent, according to government data. Workers like Mullins are one reason U.S. hiring slowed in April.

In addition to seeing higher inflation in real prices, a separate report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that consumers’ expectations for inflation were also at their highest levels in nearly a decade. The Fed survey indicated that Americans expect the inflation rate will be at 3.4 percent in a year, far higher than the long-term 2 percent rate…

A recent NBER paper took a close look at the political makeup of US federal bureaucracies and found that bureaucrats tend to perform worse when they are“ politically misaligned.”. First, there is concern about whether the US has a class of unelected bureaucrats in Washington who are insulated from democratic accountability. A recent paper out of the National…

The most recent IRS data indicates that the average federal income tax rate is just over 14%. It was a direct challenge to Trump, who claimed for several years that an audit prevented him from releasing his taxes— even though the IRS had mandated for more than four decades that the tax returns of a sitting president and vice president be audited.

—Luxury brands are already cashing in on promises of a 21st- century version of the“ Roaring' 20 s” in the United States, where hefty stimulus packages and an advanced vaccine campaign are accelerating post-pandemic recovery in high-end sales, according to a new study by Bain& Co. consultancy released on Monday. The rapidly rebounding U.S. economy together with…

And the share saying this was greatest among middle-income respondents, those making between $40,000 to $99,000 per year. Americans are forking over very little, according to calculations from Congress' nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. Households earning less than $75,000, on average, will pay nothing in federal income taxes; those earning between…

These and thousands of other social media posts along with conservative websites and commentators this week misleadingly painted President Joe Biden and his administration as catalysts of chaos— who not only mishandled the temporary shutdown of the nation’ s largest fuel pipeline on Friday— but engineered it. In reality, a ransom-seeking cyberattack, not a…

Pooled employer plans, plan portability and automatic enrollment in employer retirement plans were cited as three ways to make it easier for Americans to save more money for retirement as the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee held a hearing on “Retirement Security: Building a Better Future.”

Employers added a disappointing 266,000 jobs in April even as the number of new COVID-19 cases stayed low, more states lifted constraints and vaccinations accelerated. The gains fell well short of projections in a recovery that's expected to gather force through the summer, with a million or more jobs added each month. The unemployment rate rose from 6% to 6.1%…

—A top Federal Reserve official says the outlook for the U.S. economy is bright but the recent jobs report is a reminder that the path of the recovery is likely to be uneven and difficult to predict. The Fed has said it will not start raising interest rates until it has achieved maximum employment and annual prices gains that have not only hit the Fed's 2% target, but…

Senate Republicans said they are willing to spend more on President Biden’ s infrastructure plan than they initially suggested, ahead of a bipartisan White House meeting on the proposal this week. McConnell’ s $800 billion figure is significantly larger than the number Senate Republicans initially floated. The White House is proposing to spend $612 billion…

“People will come back to work if they’ re paid a decent wage,” Mr. Biden said in an address on the economy at the White House.“ My expectation is that, as our economy comes back, these companies will provide fair wages and safe work environments. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce blamed the $300- per-week federal jobless benefit for encouraging Americans to stay at home.

A short-lived Trump-era rule that made it easier for businesses like Uber and Lyft to classify workers as independent contractors officially ended Thursday after it was terminated by the Labor Department. “By withdrawing the Independent Contractor Rule, we will help preserve essential worker rights and stop the erosion of worker protections that would…