President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy meet on Wednesday to discuss the $31.4 trillion U.S. debt ceiling, a first test of how the two leaders will work together, or not, in a divided Washington.

The Democratic president and Republicans, who won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November’s elections, are locked in a standoff over raising the federal government’s borrowing cap.

Failure to reach a deal by June could lead to a default that would shake the global economy.

The Oval Office talks will likely serve as the opening bell for months of back-and-forth maneuvering. Neither side expects a solution to emerge from a single meeting.

Biden will ask McCarthy to release a specific budget plan and to commit to supporting the nation’s debt obligations, according to a White House memo seen by Reuters. Biden’s public schedule allows for nearly two hours for the men to interact starting at 3:15 p.m. ET (2015 GMT).

House Republicans want to use the debt ceiling as leverage to exact cuts in spending by the federal government, though they have yet to unite around any specific plan. The increase covers the costs of spending programs and tax cuts previously approved by Congress, and is usually voted in on a bipartisan basis.

The White House says it will discuss future federal spending cuts with Republicans, but only after the debt ceiling is lifted.

The 80-year-old president, a longtime former senator who served as vice president during a similar 2011 showdown that led to a historic downgrade of the federal government’s credit rating, enters the talks with what some of his aides believe is a strong hand that includes a narrow Senate majority, a party that is unified on this issue and a strong message for voters.

Speaker for less than a month, McCarthy, 58, leads a fractious House Republican caucus with a narrow 222-212 majority that has given a small group of hardline conservatives outsized influence.

Despite years of mingling with other Washington lawmakers, Biden has little personal history with McCarthy, who joined the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill under former Speaker John Boehner after Biden had already left to become Barack Obama’s vice president.

Just one in four Republicans serving in the House today held their seats in 2011, and some may not be fully aware of the risks of courting default, or the difficulties of negotiating in a divided government.

Unlike most other developed countries, the United States puts a hard limit on how much it can borrow, and Congress must periodically raise that cap because the U.S. government spends more than it takes in.

The 2011 crisis was resolved with a bipartisan deal that cut spending and raised the debt limit but left Obama administration officials smarting. Many felt they had given up too much and had still harmed the economy by letting talks persist.

McCarthy has less room to maneuver than his Republican counterpart in 2011 did. To win the speaker’s gavel, he agreed to enable any single member to call for a vote to unseat him, which could lead to his ouster if he seeks to work with Democrats. He also placed three hardline conservatives on the Rules Committee, which would allow them to block any vote on a compromise.

Biden seemed to question McCarthy’s ability to keep Republicans in line at a fundraiser in New York on Tuesday, calling McCarthy “a decent man, I think,” but noting the concessions he made to become speaker.

McCarthy, for his part, said Biden needed to be willing to make concessions to get a debt-ceiling increase through Congress, saying it would be “irresponsible” not to negotiate.

Moderate Republican Representative Don Bacon said Biden must not ignore the calls to constrain spending, now that Republicans control the House after two years out of power.

“The president refusing to negotiate is a non-starter. I think that’s the main message,” Bacon said. “You’re going to have to meet me halfway.”

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India’s Adani Enterprises (ADEL.NS) has called off its $2.5 billion share sale due to prevailing market conditions, the company said on Wednesday, days after a rout in its stocks following criticism by a U.S. short-seller.

“Given the unprecedented situation and the current market volatility the Company aims to protect the interest of its investing community by returning the FPO proceeds and withdraws the completed transaction,” the company said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Adani Group mustered support from investors for the share sale for Adani Enterprises, in what some saw as a stamp of investor confidence at a time of crisis.

But the selloff in Adani group stocks and bonds resumed on Wednesday, with shares in Adani Enterprises plunging 28% and Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSE.NS) dropping 19%, the worst day on record for both.

Former president Donald Trump and the Republican Party are driven by “the exact same things that drove the [Ku Klux] Klan movement of the 1920s,” according to Wesley Lowery, the former Washington Post reporter best known for winning the Pulitzer Prize after being arrested at a McDonald’s restaurant during a riot in Ferguson, Mo., and spending several minutes in jail.

“We have one political party that traffics in the same talking points as white supremacists, be it on immigration, be it on Muslims, be it on any number of issues, where the mainstream political rhetoric could be written by avowed racists,” Lowery said Jan. 24 during a National Press Club panel on the journalistic challenges of covering extremism.

Journalists need to be brave enough, he argued, to describe the Republican Party as a white supremacist movement without fear of being called “not objective” by critics who are also white supremacists. (Lowery is a vocal opponent of objectivity in journalism.) “I’ll be honest, I don’t think very much about the mantle of neutrality,” he said. “It’s either raining outside or it’s not raining outside. I’m not particularly interested in sounding neutral about which it is.”

The Republican Party is a “movement that is a mix of nativism, of anti-urbanism, of anti-cosmopolitanism, a fear of immigrants,” Lowery explained. “It’s the exact same things that drove the Klan movement of the 1920s. But to say that in public—the way that Newsbusters is going to headline the write-up of this panel is going to be that I compared Donald Trump to the Klan. Right? Now this is a literal true factual description. How can we understand our moment if we are not allowed to make any comparison or add any context?”

READ MORE: CBS Airs Puff Piece on Radical Left-Wing District Attorney of Crime-Ravaged San Francisco

The post WATCH: Award-Winning Journalist Compares Donald Trump, Republicans to Ku Klux Klan appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Critics slammed President Joe Biden on Monday for giving “free publicity” to General Motors with a tweet featuring the company’s electric Hummer. But the president’s promotion actually cost the company a pretty penny.

General Motors has paid Jeff Ricchetti, the brother of longtime Biden confidant and White House counselor Steve Ricchetti, $460,000 to lobby Congress and the White House on electric vehicle tax incentives since the president took office. Biden was promoting his administration’s electric vehicle tax credit with Monday’s tweet, which featured a photo of the president behind the wheel of a GMC Hummer EV Pickup Edition 1.

On my watch, the great American road trip is going to be fully electrified.

And now, through a tax credit, you can get up to $7,500 on a new electric vehicle. pic.twitter.com/n3iZ9etL4A

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 30, 2023

Biden’s tweet is the latest return on General Motors’ investment in Jeff Ricchetti. In April 2021, Biden hosted a summit with General Motors CEO Mary Barra. He followed that up with a November 2021 visit to the company’s electric vehicle plant, where he first promoted the fully electric Hummer, which boosted reservations for the vehicle by sevenfold.

Some critics questioned why Biden keeps giving “free publicity” to the electric Hummer, noting that it is not even eligible for the $7,500 tax credit he cited in his tweet. Research also shows that the $108,700 truck produces more carbon dioxide than a typical gas-powered sedan.

Biden’s repeat promotion of the electric Hummer renewed concerns from ethics experts over General Motors’s cozy relationship with the White House.

“Business just keeps getting better for the brother of Biden’s top aide,” Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told the Washington Free Beacon. “This pattern of unfettered access is the exact opposite of Biden’s pledge to ‘restore ethics in government.’”

It’s not clear how many Hummers General Motors sold as a result of the president’s tweet on Monday. General Motors spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan declined to share recent reservation information for the electric vehicle.

Through his firm, Ricchetti Incorporated, Jeff Ricchetti has lobbied Congress on behalf of General Motors for electric vehicle and charging station tax incentives and other climate policies that impact automobile manufacturers. In the first quarter of 2021, Ricchetti disclosed that he lobbied the Commerce Department on issues related to semiconductor supply. Weeks later, General Motors met with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to discuss semiconductors.

Ricchetti’s other lobbying clients include Amazon, the semiconductor manufacturer Applied Materials, and a number of technology and pharmaceutical companies. His firm has raked in nearly $6.5 million in lobbying fees since Biden took office, disclosures show.

“I’m not sure you could find a situation more emblematic of how the Swamp in D.C. works,” Protect the Public’s Trust director Michael Chamberlain told the Free Beacon. 

Ricchetti denies that he has benefited from his brother’s position in the White House.

“I do not lobby my brother and I have not even mentioned to him the names of clients that I currently represent,” he said in an April 2021 statement to CNBC. “For the better part of the last thirty years I have lobbied Members of Congress and their staff, and various individuals who have served in the successive Administrations. It is what I do for a living.”

Still, ethics experts have criticized Biden for allowing his top aide to work on the same issues as his lobbyist brother.

“Steve Ricchetti ought to completely recuse himself from any part of the legislation that his brother’s firm is lobbying on, and then have the White House not take calls from his brother,” said former White House ethics chief Richard Painter.

Jeff Ricchetti and the White House did not return requests for comment.

The post Brother of Top Biden Aide Seeing Green as President Gives ‘Free Publicity’ To Client appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

There is news about a person who goes by the name of George Santos — among others. Professional liar George Santos has temporarily stepped away from his committees. He made this declaration on Tuesday. He says it’s temporary. It is not.

Santos has been under mounting pressure. I cannot imagine what it is like to BE George Santos (shudder.) The bottom line is that he should never ever have been appointed to any committees. Santos is reported to have met with Kevin McCarthy Monday night. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall for THAT conversation?

McCarthy, who still acts like George Santos is a sane and normal human being, said this was the appropriate decision. I imagine McCarthy is relieved because he’s been taking heat nonstop for normalizing this creature of a million lies that doesn’t seem to be able to tell the truth if his life depended on it.

And one thing we know about good old Kevin is that appearances are everything these days. Kevin is doing a miserable job of appearances. George Santos has become the punchline and late-night joke, the butt of every joke, and he cannot seem to walk down the halls of Capitol Hill without reporters surrounding him.

Daily news of yet another Santos lie comes regularly. People sit and chuckle at Santos and wonder why his party refuses to say or do anything about the situation. All this, of course, cuts directly against the Republican’s outlandish message that they give a damn about the American people.

But the good news out of this is that this is the first of many tiny steps toward the disappearance of Santos. And disappear he will. I stand by my prediction in that regard. This swampy creature of lies will not have a choice in the matter. He is under huge scrutiny by just about everybody. I doubt he will last the year in Congress.

The post George Santos is already on the ropes appeared first on Palmer Report.

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• SoFi CEO Anthony Noto told Yahoo Finance he doesn’t support broad plans to cancel student debt.
• He said borrowers who can afford to pay back their loans should resume repayment.
• The student-loan payment pause is set to end 60 days after June 30, or 60 days after the lawsuits blocking the relief are resolved.

The leader of a major student-loan lender thinks it’s time borrowers get back to paying off their debt.

After releasing SoFi’s fourth quarter earnings results this week, CEO Anthony Noto joined Yahoo Finance to discuss the results, along with his outlook for the student-loan industry. He’s not a fan of broad proposals like President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers making less than $125,000.

“The programs that we don’t support are widespread programs that give to the rich or give to the wealthy or give to the people that are fully capable of paying back their student loans,” Noto told Yahoo Finance.

At the moment, Biden’s plan remains blocked due to two conservative-backed lawsuits, and millions of borrowers are entering a year of uncertainty with the Supreme Court set to hear arguments to the cases at the end of February. In the meantime, student-loan payments are on pause through 60 days after June 3o or 60 days after the litigation is resolved — but Noto thinks that’s too generous a policy and will “subsidize people that don’t need it.”

“We should absolutely fund those people that need the help,” he said. “We should forgive those people that need the help. But those… that are capable of paying need to be put back into payment, and they shouldn’t have their loans forgiven either.”

Biden also recently put another proposal on the table to reform income-driven repayment plans, including cutting undergraduate borrowers’ monthly payments in half and limiting interest from adding onto the principal balances. Noto said plans like that one are “really critical to helping people that have taken on too much student loan debt or, in some cases, were misled and they don’t have the ability to pay it back.”

Noto had previously expressed his belief that the student-loan payment pause should not continue for all borrowers. In March 2022, a few months before Biden extended the payment pause for his fourth time, Noto wrote in a blog post that Biden should fulfill his campaign pledge to cancel $10,000 in student debt, target the pause on payments only for those in “severe hardship,” and put the “affluent and capable” borrowers back into repayment.

“If the government needlessly extends the broad moratorium for a fourth time, not only will it add to the country’s inflation woes and unnecessarily give to the wealthy who are willing and able to repay their debts, but it will severely disrupt people’s ability to make long-term financial plans,” he wrote. 

While Biden’s administration has remained confident that its plan to cancel student debt is legal and will prevail in court, the White House said it is not considering any Plan B at the moment should the Supreme Court strike the relief down. An administration official told reporters on a press call last week that the 60 day period after the payment pause ends “should give us enough time after the Supreme Court rules to transition to the next phase of all of this.”

Still, some borrowers are concerned with the looming repayment. One borrower with $230,000 in student debt previously told Insider that he’s worried “the White House is so desperate to restart payments and get back to normal that they’ve forgotten that ‘normal’ is a decades-long debt sentence; either way, it will be an excuse to say they’d done all the can.”