Happy Tuesday! The Philadelphia Phillies last night turned a triple play — and did so in a fashion that hasn’t been seen in 95 years. They also just happen to have the best record in baseball.
Here’s some other notable news.
House Republicans Release Plan to Cut DOJ, FBI Funding
House Republicans on Tuesday released a proposed spending package for fiscal year 2025 that would cut funding for the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Commerce Department. The bill is likely to be the subject of heated battles.
The annual spending bill, released by the House Appropriations Committee, lays out House GOP spending goals for the Justice and Commerce Departments as well as federal science funding. It would provide just over $78 billion across the federal departments and agencies it covers, a cut of roughly $1.3 billion, or 2%, according to Republicans on the Appropriations Committee.
That includes about $36.5 billion for the Justice Department — a cut of nearly $1 billion, or 3%, compared with 2024. President Joe Biden had requested some $3 billion more.
The House plan would also reduce the FBI’s funding by $367.7 million (3.5%) compared with 2024. The $10.3 billion it would provide for the FBI is more than $1 billion shy of President Joe Biden’s request. The House Republican bill also would prevent the bureau from moving ahead with its plan to build a new headquarters after the Biden administration in November announced plans for new construction in Maryland. That decision followed years of arguments and jockeying between Maryland and Virginia over the headquarters plans. A government funding deal passed earlier this year included $200 million for construction of the new FBI site.
Conservatives have taken aim at the Justice Department and the FBI as Republicans seek to push back against the criminal prosecutions of former President Donald Trump, which they claim are politically motivated abuses of power.
“This bill prioritizes fiscal sanity and the liberties of the American people,” said Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican. “It halts the weaponization of the federal government against its citizens and enhances congressional oversight to ensure taxpayer dollars are used responsibly.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland called the proposed cuts drastic and unacceptable. “This effort to defund the Justice Department and its essential law enforcement functions will make our fight against violent crime all the more difficult. It is unacceptable,” he said in a speech in Cleveland.
The spending bill does not look to specifically target the Justice Department’s prosecutions of Trump by a special counsel — at least not yet.
“In addition to not explicitly targeting special counsel Jack Smith, the bill also doesn’t delve into the state-level cases against Trump or go after grant funding to those offices, such as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis,” Politico’s Jordain Carney and Jennifer Scholtes write. “That doesn’t mean the GOP’s push to punish Trump’s prosecutors is over. The bill is all but guaranteed to attract a litany of hot-button amendments, including a revived fight over Trump’s legal battles, once it gets to the House floor.”
The bill also would provide $9.8 billion for the Commerce Department, a cut of about $980 million. Science funding, on the other hand, would see a roughly $500 million increase (or about 1%) to nearly $34.5 billion. NASA would get a $300 million increase to $25.2 billion, while the National Science Foundation would get a boost of about $200 million, lifting its funding to $9.26 billion.
The bottom line: This bill is expected to get a vote on the House floor late next month, but it has no real chance of becoming law given the expected opposition of Senate Democrats and the White House.
Courts Block Parts of Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan
A pair of federal judges on Monday blocked key parts of the Biden administration’s new student loan repayment plan that provides faster loan forgiveness and lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers.
The rulings from federal judges in Kansas and Missouri are directed at the Department of Education’s Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, loan repayment plan, which was launched last summer and has roughly 8 million enrollees.
A group of Republican-led states sued to stop the plan, which has an estimated 10-year cost of between $156 billion and $475 billion, charging that the Biden administration exceeded its authority in approving new standards and procedures for loan forgiveness. Many of the same states also sued to overturn the Biden administration’s previous attempt to forgive student loans for millions of borrowers, an effort estimated to cost roughly $400 billion that was rejected by the Supreme Court a year ago.
The SAVE program was scheduled to take full effect on July 1, but now some components are on hold. A rule that would have reduced required monthly loan payments from 10% of a borrower’s income to 5% is suspended as a result of the Kansas decision, as is a plan to reduce the repayment time for borrowers with loans exceeding $12,000. The Missouri ruling effectively prevents the Department of Education from approving any new loan forgiveness for program enrollees.
Still, parts of the SAVE program will remain in effect, and the roughly 400,000 borrowers who have already received $5.5 billion of loan forgiveness through the plan are not affected by the court decisions.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who led a coalition of seven states in their suit against the government, said the rulings are in line with the Constitution. “Only Congress has the power of the purse, not the president,” he said in a statement. “Today's ruling was a huge win for the rule of law, and for every American who Joe Biden was about to force to pay off someone else's debt.”
In a statement, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the Biden administration would “vigorously defend” the SAVE program. “We strongly disagree with the Kansas and Missouri District Court rulings, which block components of the SAVE Plan that help student loan borrowers have affordable monthly payments and stay out of default,” he said. “President Biden, Vice President Harris, and I remain committed to our work to fix a broken student loan system and make college more affordable for more Americans. ... We will continue to provide this long-overdue relief, no matter how many times Republican elected officials and their allies try to stop us.”
The bottom line: Parts of the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan are now on hold and will remain so until the litigation is resolved. The program will likely remain in limbo until after the election this fall.
Quote of the Day: Clinton’s Debate Tips and Quips
“It is a waste of time to try to refute Mr. Trump’s arguments like in a normal debate. It’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are. He starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather. … Yet expectations for him are so low that if he doesn’t literally light himself on fire on Thursday evening, some will say he was downright presidential.”
− Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, in which she notes that she is the only person to have debated both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden (the former when she was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 and the latter as a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2008).
Clinton urges people watching Thursday night’s debate between the two men to “pay attention to how the candidates talk about people, not just policies,” but also to keep the stakes of the election in mind.
“This time, expect Mr. Trump to blame Mr. Biden for inflation but avoid answering questions about his own economic plans. He has to deflect or lie because his proposals — tax cuts for the superrich, gutting the Affordable Care Act, deporting millions of workers and slapping across-the-board tariffs on everyday goods — would exacerbate inflation, raise costs for American households and cause a recession,” Clinton writes. “That’s not my prediction; it’s from Wall Street’s Moody’s Analytics. Experts at the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that Mr. Trump’s tariffs alone would mean, in effect, a $1,700 tax increase each year for the average American family — or more.”
Fiscal News Roundup
- House GOP Passes on Using Funding Bills to Target Trump Prosecutors — for Now – Politico
- House GOP Unveils DOJ Funding Bill After Promising Crackdown on ‘Weaponization’ – The Hill
- Business Fumes as Democrats Blast GOP for Blocking Corporate Tax Credits – The Hill
- The Uncertain Future of Biden’s Student Loan Repayment Plan, Explained – Washington Post
- Surgeon General Declares Gun Violence a Public Health Crisis – New York Times
- Larry Summers Says the Fed and Investors Are ‘Badly Wrong’ on Inflation’s Path – MarketWatch
- Hedge Fund Billionaire Drops Suit vs. IRS Over Tax Leak as Agency Apologizes – Politico
- Public Funds for Religious Charter School Would Be Unconstitutional, Oklahoma High Court Says – Associated Press
- Mail-Order Drugs Were Supposed to Keep Costs Down. It’s Doing the Opposite – Wall Street Journal
- Trump Handed Plan to Halt US Military Aid to Kyiv Unless It Talks Peace With Moscow – Reuters
- The Price of Each B-21 Bomber Is Likely Going Up – Defense One
- Popular Obesity Drugs Show the Divide Between ‘the Haves and the Have-Nots’ – New York Times
- Infant Death Rate Spiked in Texas After Restrictive Abortion Law, Study Finds – Washington Post
Views and Analysis
- The Biden-Trump Debate Will Lay Bare a Fateful National Crossroads – Stephen Collinson, CNN
- Trump’s Tax Plans Would Wreck the Economy for the Middle Class – Matthew Yglesias, Bloomberg
- In Rarity, Trump Vows to Slash Federal Investments in Education – Steve Benen, MSNBC
- The Deep, Generational Skepticism That’s Influencing the 2024 Race – Philip Bump, Washington Post
- ‘Name the Members of Your First Cabinet’: How to Make CNN’s Debate More Fun – Jeff Greenfield, Washington Post
- Egregious Pentagon Delays Reflect Problem the Military Is Just Starting to Solve – Washington Post Editorial Board
- Paul Singer Is Pitching Wall Street's Own Brand of MAGA – Simone Foxman, Emily Birnbaum and Jeff Green, Bloomberg
- The Housing Market Is Weird and Ugly. These 5 Charts Explain Why – Ben Casselman, New York Times