As Congress prepares to head home at the end of the week for its August recess, the White House is ready to step into the spotlight.
Lawmakers will end their session with major spending bills still in limbo ahead of the Sept. 30 government funding deadline, and President Biden on Monday added a further challenge when he threatened to veto a proposed spending bill for military construction and veterans’ affairs, arguing that House Republicans are pursuing a partisan spending proposal that deviates from an agreement struck during debt ceiling talks. In a separate statement, the administration said Biden would veto a proposed agriculture spending bill, citing similar concerns that it contained deeper cuts than were agreed upon earlier this year.
House Republicans had an opportunity to engage in a productive, bipartisan appropriations process, but instead, with just over two months before the end of the fiscal year, are wasting time with partisan bills that cut domestic spending to levels well below the [Fiscal Responsibility Act] agreement and endanger critical services for the American people,” the White House said in a statement of administration policy.
The compromise agreement reached between Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was intended, the White House said, to protect “vital programs” from “draconian” cuts House Republicans proposed (The Hill). Members of the House Freedom Caucus are seeking further cuts to this cycle’s spending bills, and House leadership has signaled that they will cut spending levels even further than the amount laid out by the Appropriations Committee. However, the Senate is pursuing its own funding bills with higher spending levels, so the bills House Republicans are considering are unlikely to be approved and are intended to stake out a negotiating position (Roll Call).
McCarthy threw a new punch at Biden on Monday night, suggesting that House Republicans may try to impeach him. “We’ve only followed where the information has taken us,” the Speaker told Fox News, referring to GOP investigations involving unsubstantiated accusations that Hunter Biden’s international business dealings roped in then-Vice President Biden. “This is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed,” McCarthy told Sean Hannity (The Hill). House conservatives are pressuring McCarthy for a floor vote to try to expunge former President Trump’s impeachments.
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Monday’s announcement marked an impassioned start to a major White House week that is set to highlight both Biden and Vice President Harris, who is leaning further into a typical vice-presidential role: that of a White House rapid responder. As The Hill’s Alex Gangitano and Brett Samuels report, when Tennessee Republicans moved to expel state Democratic lawmakers who protested at the state Capitol over gun violence, the White House sent Harris to Nashville to call out GOP tactics. And when Florida passed controversial new educational guidelines for how issues like slavery should be taught in schools, it was Harris who was quickly on a flight to Jacksonville.
The vice president appears eager to step into the role as she and Biden prepare for what could be an intense, mudslinging 2024 campaign next year. But the role also comes with its risks, with polls consistently showing many Americans hold an unfavorable view of the first woman and person of color to serve as vice president — yet strategists say it could also be a good thing when it comes to her own political future.
“If you think about her political position, she’s thinking about Joe Biden being reelected and then she’s running four years from now,” said one strategist who has worked on Democratic campaigns. “So a role where she’s attacking Ron DeSantis, [former President] Trump and others is perfect because it gives her a lot of visibility with the base and the people who will be deciding the next nominee.”
Harris got another opportunity to amplify the White House message Monday, when she urged members of the largest Hispanic civil rights group in the country to stand against extremists at the UnidosUS 2023 annual conference in Chicago. Biden and Harris’s focus on race and civil rights stands in stark contrast to Republican candidates, who have minimized or sidestepped issues of race beyond their individual biographies.
Harris’s trip to the Windy City continued a month-long series of events to gain the support of key Democratic groups, including Latino and Black voters. On the itinerary are a trip to Indianapolis to Delta Sigma Theta’s conference, three separate trips to Chicago, the NAACP conference in Boston this Friday and the Women’s Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Orlando. (Chicago Sun-Times and The Boston Globe).
Biden has a busy week: Today he and Harris will designate a national monument in honor of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley — both of whom served as catalysts for the civil rights movement. The new monument will be established across three locations in Illinois and Mississippi in an effort to protect places that tell Till’s story and reflect the activism of his mother, who was instrumental in telling the story about her son’s 1955 murder in Mississippi at age 14 (NPR).
The president will host Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the White House on Thursday (The Hill), and later that day will deliver remarks at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium at the National Archives. He is scheduled to visit Maine on Friday, where he will promote the administration’s “Bidenomics” campaign message (Portland Press Herald).
