Climate Action, U.S. Manufacturing, and Economic Growth

Build Back Better Act/Spending Bill: 

January 31: Breyer retirement latest complication for Biden spending bill

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s plans to retire have thrown another curveball into the winding efforts to get the cornerstone of President Biden’s agenda passed in what could be the final months Democrats have full control of Congress. Appointing Breyer’s replacement to the court is an undeniable win for Biden and the Democrats, some of whom had pleaded for the 83-year-old justice to step down and make way for a younger judge to cement the liberal wing of the bench. But the timing of the announcement, nine months before the midterm elections, could make it more difficult for Biden and Democratic leaders to negotiate and get his signature climate and social spending proposal, Build Back Better, passed and signed into law. While nothing expressly prevents the White House from trying to get the spending package finished before the Supreme Court vote, it will be complicated to do so once Biden unveils his nominee, given the attention the confirmation process will soak up.

The bill has run into hurdle after hurdle in the Senate once it passed the House. The White House has not laid out a specific timeline on which it wants to pass the climate and social spending package. The White House has been quiet about engagements with Manchin on the climate and social spending package.

Biden has twice in recent speeches leaned on Congress to pass a China competitiveness bill, though the White House has declined to weigh in on whether aides want to see it passed before a revised Build Back Better bill. In a bid to maintain some momentum for the bill, Biden met with CEOs from major companies, including Ford, General Motors, and Microsoft, to discuss the Build Back Better proposal on Wednesday, just after the news broke about Breyer's retirement.

January 29: Can Democrats Pass Their Build Back Better Agenda?

Far more often a presidential agenda just fades into the backdrop of political noise as a midterm election approaches, dying for all intents and purposes many months before Senate leaders are forced to pronounce that the issue won't get a vote even if they promise to keep fighting. That brings us to the fate of President Biden's Build Back Better agenda - a multitrillion-dollar

The House and Senate return next week after the painful defeat earlier this month on another key item on President Biden's agenda - a voting rights bill - with a plate full of items Democrats plan to focus on. Biden and Democrats continue to insist that they are still pushing for the roughly $2 trillion Build Back Better legislation, but no one has laid out a timeline for reconsidering what had been the focal point of their efforts most of last year. Clearly, Democrats prefer to cobble together a less expensive Build Back Better bill that could win Manchin's support.

The model Biden allies might point to now is the early 2010 decision by Democrats to pass the final version of the ACA, despite political debacles in the 2009 gubernatorial races and the critical loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat that left them short of a 60-vote majority. In her Jan. 21 letter, Pelosi mentioned the massive Build Back Better included a little-discussed provision that could address mounting fears of crime.

Environmental:

January 31: 23 House Democrats call for Biden to keep full climate funds in Build Back Better

Twenty-three Democratic members of Congress on Monday called on to ensure that any amended version of the Democratic reconciliation bill retains its current climate and resiliency provisions. The members, led by Rep. Mike Levin, noted a number of extreme weather events and natural disasters that have occurred in just the two months since the House passed its version of the package, including a tornado that killed at least 78 people in Kentucky.

"The $555 billion in climate investments that passed the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the Build Back Better Act will help our nation meet the test of cutting climate pollution in half by 2030, a goal that you set and that science and justice require. As the deadly and devastating consequences of the climate crisis made clear throughout 2021, the time for transformational climate action is right now," the members wrote.

The signers included members associated with the centrist wing of the party and members considered to be particularly at risk in the 2022 midterms. In December, Sen. Joe Manchin declared after months of negotiations that he could not back the bill in its current form. Although Manchin has frequently clashed with progressives on energy and environmental issues, he has signaled willingness to back the bill's climate provisions.

"I think that the climate thing is one that we probably can come to an agreement much easier than anything else," Manchin said earlier in January, referencing which of the package's components he would be willing to support.

Economy:

January 30: Stocks rally to end a dismal January, but S&P 500 still posts worst month since March 2020

Stocks surged for a second day Monday to wrap up a rough January, as investors snapped up some of the tech shares that have been battered all month. Despite the two-day relief rally, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite posted their worst months since the onset of the pandemic, as investors braced for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates multiple times this year.

The S&P 500 rose 1.89% to 4,515.55, closing out the month down 5.3%. That's its worst month since the 12.5% loss in March 2020 and its biggest January decline since 2009. The index still ended down 8.9% for January, its worst month since March 2020.

“Between the amount of volumes that we saw and the massive swings that we saw in markets, the volatility really felt like it had a crescendo,” Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities, told CNBC.

“Crescendos usually happen when you’ve got a massive amount of capitulation and everything is for sale,” Hogan added. "For most of the month, we would see money coming out of growth but going into cyclical. Then that would unwind and growth would catch a bit. That was all true until this past week. We've seen a bit of the aftermath of that storm, and that seems to be more stabilization."

Last week, the Fed indicated that it will likely start raising rates in March to combat historically high inflation. Markets are now pricing in at least five quarter-percentage-point interest rate hikes in 2022.

January 28: Biden calls for return of US manufacturing, touts infrastructure law during Pittsburgh visit

On Friday made the case for U.S. manufacturing as a way to rebuild the economy while on a visit to Pittsburgh, Pa. "From day one, every action I've taken to rebuild the economy has been guided by one principle: make it in America. Like we used to. No one knows that better than all the folks here in Pittsburgh," he said at Carnegie Mellon University.

Biden went to Pittsburgh to deliver remarks about the administration's focus on strengthening supply chains, revitalizing American manufacturing, and creating good-paying union jobs, including through the bipartisan infrastructure law. Hours before he left the White House for the Keystone State, a bridge collapsed in Pittsburgh, and he added a stop to visit the site.

"You know that to build a truly strong economy, we need a future that's made it America. That means using products, parts, materials, built right here in the United States of America. It means bringing manufacturing back, jobs back, building supply chains here at home, not outsourcing abroad, so we have better jobs and lower prices here," he said in his remarks.

During his visit to the site of the Fern Hollow Bridge that collapsed hours earlier, he met with local officials and emergency responders, saying that the infrastructure bill is going to fix all of Pittsburgh's vast number of bridges. The infrastructure bill will invest at least $1.6 billion in Pennsylvania's bridges, including $327 million in the fiscal year 2022 for bridge repairs in the state, the president said.

"I never knew Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had more bridges than any other city in the world," Biden said, noting that he is a Pennsylvania native.

January 28: U.S. Consumer Spending Fell 0.6% in December Amid Inflation, Omicron

Consumer outlays declined by 0.6% in December from the prior month, the first decrease since last winter, the Commerce Department said Friday. The spread of the Omicron variant, higher prices, and supply-chain issues prompted consumers to start their holiday shopping earlier this year, she said, which also hurt spending in December. The easing of consumer spending comes despite strength in other areas of the economy.

The unemployment rate was a low 3.9% in December and workers' wages grew, while U.S. gross domestic product increased at a strong 6.9% annual rate in the final quarter of 2021, as consumers front-loaded holiday spending and businesses restocked shelves after months of pandemic-related disruptions.

Services spending rose 0.5% in December, primarily due to increased spending on healthcare as the Omicron variant spread. Goods spending fell 2.6% in December amid supply-chain bottlenecks and consumers starting their holiday shopping earlier. Economists largely forecast growth will be weak in the first quarter of this year, but they predict consumer spending will rebound once the current Omicron wave of Covid-19 infections tapers off.

January 27: U.S. Economy Grew 1.7% in 4th Quarter, Capping a Strong Year

Gross domestic product - the broadest measure of the nation's production of goods and services - expanded by 1.7 percent in the final three months of 2021 after adjusting for inflation, the Commerce Department announced Thursday. Consumer prices increased 7 percent in the year through December.

As recently as last February, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that it might take until 2024 to reach the current unemployment rate of 3.9 percent, down from a peak of 14.7 percent in April 2020. But many Americans who were working before the pandemic have left the labor market - at least for now - and employers struggling to fill jobs have increased wages, one factor cited for fueling inflation.

Real disposable personal income decreased by 5.8 percent in the fourth quarter, and the personal saving rate - the percentage of overall disposable income that goes into savings each month - dropped to 7.4 percent from 9.5 percent in the third quarter.

Spending on goods was up only 0.5 percent - after declining in the third quarter - while outlays on services increased 4.7 percent. Can inflation affect the stock market? Rapid inflation typically spells trouble for stocks.

January 26: Democrats Renew Push to Pass Industrial Policy Bill to Counter China

House Democrats unveiled a 2,900-page bill on Tuesday evening that would authorize $45 billion in grants and loans to support supply chain resilience and American manufacturing, along with providing billions of dollars in new funding for scientific research. One major difference is that while the Senate bill invests heavily in specific fields of cutting-edge technology, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, the House bill places few stipulations on the new round of funding, other than to say that it should go toward fundamental research.

Stephen Ezell, the vice president for global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a policy group that receives funding from telecommunications and tech companies, called the House bill "Not sufficient to enable the United States to win the advanced technology competition with China." He argued that the focus on advanced technology in the Senate-passed bill would do more to increase American competitiveness.

Much of the foreign policy legislation added by Democrats to the House bill is focused on climate change; the House measure would also authorize $225 million over five years to bolster the State Department's military training and education programs in the Indo-Pacific region. Few Republicans are expected to support the House bill, though some of the measures included in the legislation have previously garnered bipartisan support.

House lawmakers had privately derided the Senate bill as riddled with pet projects, citing provisions as diverse as a new round of funding for NASA and a ban on the sale of shark fins. The House bill also includes a slew of measures that appear to have little to do with manufacturing and global competitiveness, including provisions authorizing marine mammal research, efforts to conserve coral reefs, and a $4 billion contribution to the United Nations-led Green Climate Fund. David McCabe contributed reporting.

Annual Spending Bill: 

January 30: Schumer puts pressure on lawmakers as shutdown deadline nears

Senate Majority Leader is applying pressure to lawmakers to make headway on annual government spending legislation, with just weeks to go before current funding is set to lapse. Schumer said in floor remarks on Monday that he plans to sit down with Democratic lawmakers later this week "To discuss the state of negotiations" to pass an omnibus package to fund the government within the next few weeks.

Lawmakers have until Feb. 18 to strike an agreement on spending for the fiscal year 2022, which began in October under a temporary continuing resolution passed last month that allows the government to remain funded under the previous year's spending levels. To prevent a shutdown next month, lawmakers have the option of passing another continuing resolution on or before the mid-February deadline if they aren't able to pass an omnibus. Leaders are ramping up pressure for a larger bipartisan spending deal for fiscal 2022.

In his floor remarks on Monday, Schumer said lawmakers will "Workday and night to bring a funding package together, avoid a shutdown, and make sure Congress fulfills this basic duty to the American people." 

If Congress fails to pass a spending deal for fiscal 2022 and instead opts for a continuing resolution, it will mark the third such time the body has had to resort to such measures since spending negotiations for the fiscal year began last year.

For Fun:

Lunar New Year 2022: Welcoming the Year of the Tiger

Lunar New Year festivities can often last for up to 15 days, with different tasks and activities taking place over that period. (In China, it's also referred to as the Spring Festival.) So how is the Lunar New Year traditionally celebrated? It all begins about a week ahead of the new year.

On the 26th day of the last lunar month -- January 28 this year -- festive cakes and puddings are made. The word for cakes and puddings is "gao" in Mandarin or "go" in Cantonese, which sounds the same as the word for "tall," meaning eating them is believed to lead to improvements and growth in the coming year. (If you haven't prepared your own "go" yet, here's an easy recipe for turnip cake, a beloved Lunar New Year dish.)

Then, a big cleanup is done in homes on the 28th day, which was January 30 this year. The aim here is to rid your home of any bad luck that's accumulated over the past year. A big family reunion dinner is usually held on Lunar New Year's Eve, which falls on January 31 this year. The menu is carefully chosen to include dishes associated with luck, including fish (the Chinese word for it sounds like the word for "surplus"), puddings (symbolizes advancement), and foods that look like gold ingots (like dumplings).

Though many Western nations refer to the Lunar New Year/Spring Festival holiday as Chinese New Year, bear in mind it's celebrated not just in Chinese communities but in other Asian countries, including Vietnam and South Korea. Countries that observe Lunar New Year often offer three to seven days of public holidays but celebrations aren't complete until the 15th day of the first lunar month, also known as the Lantern Festival.

People are expected to visit relatives and friends in the early days of the new year -- except for the third day of the month. Day three of Lunar New Year (which falls on February 3 this year) is named "chi kou," or red mouth. It's believed that arguments are more likely to happen on this day, so people will visit temples and avoid social interactions.

There are plenty of other rules and superstitions attached to the Lunar New Year. For instance, don't wash or cut your hair on the first day of the new year. Why? The Chinese character for hair is the first character in the word for prosper. Therefore washing or cutting it off is seen as washing your fortune away. Do, however, wear red. It's associated with luck and prosperity. (Read more Lunar New Year dos and don'ts here.)

Throughout the 15-day festival, hosts usually prepare candy boxes and snacks for their guests. Married couples are expected to hand out red packets filled with money to children and unmarried adults to wish them luck.