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Tag: roy blunt
Republicans and child tax credit

WATCH: GOP Senator Schooled By Fox News Host On Child Tax Credit

When Republican senators appear on Fox News or Fox Business and rail against the Build Back Better Act — including the child tax credit — they can usually expect the host to agree with their talking points. Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, however, got a surprise during a December 26 appearance on Fox News Sunday(formerly hosted by Chris Wallace) when guest host Mike Emanuel demonstrated that the child tax credit reduces poverty.

Blunt told Emanuel, “We doubled the child tax credit just a handful of years ago, and we need to look at that if that is no longer meeting the need of moving kids out of poverty. But families that make $150,000, for instance, aren’t in poverty in Missouri. I don’t think they’re in poverty almost anywhere in the United States.”

But Emanuel had plenty of data in support of the child tax credit, telling Blunt, “According to the Urban Institute, continuing the benefit could have a significant impact on child poverty, reducing child poverty to about 8.4 percent from 14.2 percent, a fall of roughly 40 percent. Is that a compelling argument to extend it?”

Emanuel also told the Missouri Republican, “Another argument for the child tax credit is it would bolster financial security and spur economic growth in Missouri by reducing taxes on the middle class and those striving to break into it. How do you respond?”

Blunt, however, never really answered Emanuel’s question, slamming the Build Back Better Act as “Build Back Broker” and describing Democrats’ support of the child tax credit as a “gimmick.”

Although the Build Back Better Act has passed in the House, it has been stalled in the Senate — and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, during a Fox News Sunday appearance on December 19, declared that he is still a “no” vote on the BBB Act. It remains to be seen whether or not President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress will be able to come up with a new, altered version of BBB that Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another centrist Democrat and key swing vote, will agree to support — and what a new version of the bill will propose with the child tax credit.

Watch The Entire Interview Below:

Article reprinted with permission from Alternet

Aviva Okeson-Haberman

My Daughter Was Murdered And My Senators Don’t Give A Damn

Reprinted with permission from DC Report

My oldest daughter was shot in the head in April while reading in her Kansas City apartment by someone who aimed through her first-floor window. Aviva lived for two more days, kept alive by machines until her brain swelled enough that she could be pronounced brain dead.

I watched as a doctor removed Aviva from the ventilator to see if she could breathe on her own, the final test, and then recorded the rising amount of carbon dioxide in her blood. My daughter was 24 and had her whole life ahead of her — or should have.

NRA-funded Republicans like Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley, my senators in Missouri, care more about pimping for the gun industry than the murders of their constituents. They have made our country a killing ground where any of us can be told that their daughter is in a hospital miles away and expected to die.

President Joe Biden asked Congress for only a modest five percent increase in funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Biden has nominated David Chipman to run the agency, a nomination that's in trouble because of opposition from the NRA and other gun groups. Biden has said he wants to ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Anti-gun violence groups would like to see:

Rising Murder Rates

Homicide rates in our country have largely declined since the early 1990s. But those rates rose about 30 percent in large cities in 2020, according to the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice. Kansas City was not included because researchers "were unable to validate incident-level data to published … data," said research specialist Ernesto Lopez.

The national jump in 2020 could eclipse the 1968 record jump of 12.7 percent when final numbers are released. In the first six months of 2021, the number of homicides in large cities rose by 16 percent, or 259 more deaths,compared with 2020.

Researchers Richard Rosenfeld and Thomas Abt wrote that the pandemic, protests and other factors appear to have created a perfect storm in our country to push killings to record levels. Violent crime rates did not increase in other countries.

So far this year, more than 28,000 people have been killed in our country by guns, according to the Gun Violence Archive. More than 43,570 were killed last year. More than half the gun deaths were suicides.

Mass shootings spiked 47 percent in 2020, compared with 2019. Five hundred and thirteen people died in 611 shootings. Another 2,543 were injured. The initial hospital costs of firearm injuries are estimated at more than $1 billion a year.

'Numb to the Numbers'

"We are numb to the numbers," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) at a hearing in March on gun violence. "Unless we are personally touched, it's just another statistic."

When Durbin spoke these words, my daughter was still alive.

I learned Aviva had been shot after receiving a message on Twitter and drove through the rain to reach Truman Medical Center shortly before midnight. There my daughter was intubated and still, unable to see or hear the people crying over her. I learned in a phone call in a parking lot that she was expected to die.

Aviva, an idealistic public radio reporter less than two years out of college, lived in Kansas City's Santa Fe neighborhood, once the home of Walt Disney and baseball great Satchel Paige.

Now liquor stores nearly outnumber neighborhood churches. A Kansas City Star article described sex workers loitering two blocks from a police department building. People living in disadvantaged minority neighborhoods such as Santa Fe are particularly at risk of being shot.

During the pandemic, gun sales have soared. About one fifth of all Americans who bought guns last year were first-time buyers. About 39 percent of American households own guns.

California researchers looked at the increase in gun buys and didn't find a relationship between the excess gun buys and the increase in shootings, except shootings in domestic violence.

Gun company profits soared, too. Smith & Wesson had the most successful fiscal year since it was founded in 1852 by Horace Smith and D.B. Wesson, making more than $252 million in profit. Ammunition manufacturer Ammo Inc. is building a new factory in Wisconsin.

Our country has more firearms than people. Americans make up less than five percent of the world's population, but we own about 45 percent of the world's privately held firearms. Americans are 25 times more likely to be killed by a gun than people in other wealthy countries.

Biden's ATF is trying to regulate ghost guns, so named because criminals can buy kits to make firearms that can't be traced. Almost 24,000 suspected ghost guns were found by police at potential crime scenes from 2016 to 2020, including in 325 homicides or attempted homicides.

Bryan Muehlberger's 15-year-old daughter Gracie Anne, a high school freshman, was killed with a ghost gun in November 2019 at her California school. Another student shot her in the back. The bullet punctured her left lung, and Gracie drowned in her own blood.

"I just remember saying, you know, like, 'Please, no. Don't – don't tell me the bad news please,'" Muehlberger said.

Assault Ban Expired

Since 1994, when President Bill Clinton signed the crime bill that included a 10-year ban on the sale of assault weapons, Congress has not passed any major laws restricting access to weapons. The ban expired in 2004. A study published in April found that 30 mass shootings that killed 339 people and injured 1,139 could have been prevented if the ban had remained.

NRA-funded Republicans are helping the gun industry profit. House Republicans are pressuring the Biden administration to drop its proposed ghost gun rule. Our nation's lawmakers have even blocked the ATF from making a searchable database to trace weapons used in my daughter's killing and other crimes.

Our nation's federal system for tracing guns is so bad that even the online card catalog of a small-town public library is more advanced.

In Texas, where the NRA wanted to reorganize after it filed for bankruptcy, people will be able to carry a gun without a permit or training starting September 1. At least 20 other states, including Missouri, have similar laws.

The NRA spent $16.3 million to try to reelect Trump and $12.2 million across 145 congressional races, helping to reelect Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)

Tillis, who has taken more than $4.4 million from the NRA, ranks fourth among senators receiving NRA campaign donations, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Ernst with more than $3.1 million is seventh; Cornyn, who has accepted almost $79,000, is 35th.

In Missouri, which has an average of 1,074 guns deaths a year, Blunt is a lifetime member of the NRA. He is third among our nation's senators taking cash from the NRA with more than $4.5 million. Blunt, whose son has served on the NRA board, has opposed federal funding to study gun violence and voted against banning gun magazines holding more than 10 bullets.

Hawley, Missouri's junior senator, is one of the politicians named in a lawsuit filed by Giffords, a nonprofit founded by former Congresswoman and gun victim Gabby Giffords, against the Federal Election Commission. The lawsuit said the NRA used a network of shell corporations to illegally coordinate spending millions with the campaigns of Trump, Hawley, and at least five other federal candidates.

Hawley has been in office less than three years, but he is 15th among senators taking NRA cash with almost $1.4 million in donations.

Sen. Joe Manchin

In Leaked Tape, Manchin Says What He Really Thinks About Filibuster

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

In a private call on Monday that was obtained by The Intercept, Joe Manchin (D-WV) talked to major political donors during a meeting organized by the group No Labels, which The Intercept describes as a big money operation co-founded by former Sen. Joe Lieberman "that funnels high-net-worth donor money to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans."

Interestingly, Manchin seemed open to filibuster reform -- a private stance that contradicts his public one.

"The call included several billionaire investors and corporate executives, among them Louis Bacon, chief executive of Moore Capital Management; Kenneth D. Tuchman, founder of global outsourcing company TeleTech; and Howard Marks, the head of Oaktree Capital, one of the largest private equity firms in the country," write The Intercept's Lee Fang and Ryan Grim. "The Zoom participant log included a dial-in from Tudor Investment Corporation, the hedge fund founded by billionaire Paul Tudor Jones. Also present was a roster of heavy-hitting political influencers, including Republican consultant Ron Christie and Lieberman, who serves as a representative of No Labels and now advises corporate interests."

Manchin told the meeting's attendees that he needed help getting Republicans to vote in favor of a January 6 commission in order to strip the "far left" of their best argument against the filibuster.

With regard to Missouri GOP Sen. Roy Blunt, Manchin said, "Roy Blunt is a great, just a good friend of mine, a great guy."

"Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that'd be nice and it'd help our country," Manchin continued. "That would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we're going to have another vote on this thing. That'll give me one more shot at it."

Read the full report over at The Intercept.

January 6 pro-Trump riot at the Capitol.

Senate’s Report On Jan. 6 Is Only The Beginning


Reprinted with permission from Roll Call

The details are scary, but not surprising to some of us.

Capitol Police intelligence officers had warnings as early as December 21 of what was going to happen on January 6 at the Capitol: Pro-Trump protesters were planning to "bring guns" and other weapons to confront the police — the "blue" that conservatives swear they "back." Lawmakers were in danger of being trapped and harmed while doing the job they were elected to do, certifying the election of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. (though quite a few Republicans shamefully failed even that routine task post-insurrection). Conspirators giddily shared maps and discussed entry points.

And nothing.

A few Capitol Police command officers did get some information, which they failed to share widely. According to the department's statement: "Neither the USCP, nor the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, Metropolitan Police or our other law enforcement partners knew thousands of rioters were planning to attack the U.S. Capitol. The known intelligence simply didn't support that conclusion."

Known intelligence? Anyone paying attention to the social media bragging of self-styled "militia" members, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, red-state secession groupies, white supremacists and their ilk could have figured it out. Those swept up in QAnon delusions and Donald Trump's "big lie" of a stolen election excitedly posted travel plans and loving photos of weaponry, all shiny and ready for action. The dry run of a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., where a woman was killed, happened in 2017 — and that was over a statue. And just last year, armed Michigan militia members swarmed a state capital and plotted to kidnap a governor.

In preparation for the insurrection, Trump himself issued a pretty vivid invitation, one of several: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th," he tweeted on December 19. "Be there, will be wild!"

No wonder rank-and-file officers felt betrayed.

An Appalling Failure

Any patriotic American, one who believes in democracy and sane leadership and the U.S. Constitution, should read the joint report from the Senate Rules and Administration and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees and be appalled at the intelligence and communications failures that led to loss of life, more than a hundred serious injuries and lasting trauma, and at the Confederate flags and racial slurs hurled at law enforcement putting their own lives on the line.

For an American who happens to be a minority, too much looks familiar — the lack of serious accountability for too many perpetrators, the encouragement by irresponsible leaders who see political advantage in stoking resentment, the effort to say, "Nothing to see here," which means a repeat as sure as night follows day.

Sadly predictable was the planning revealed in a January 5 internal document obtained by CQ Roll Call. Despite all the evidence that members of a mob would be, at Trump's urging, marching on the Capitol to prevent electoral votes from being counted, despite a January 3 warning that "Congress itself is the target," the Civil Disturbance Unit of the Capitol Police viewed counterprotesters as the major threat.

It recalls the civil rights protests of the 1960s, when peaceful protesters were considered the "agitators" and were treated accordingly and brutally, while the jeering and violent white crowds got a pass from law enforcement. Heck, my brother was arrested — twice — for sitting in at whites-only diners. Back then, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was the protesters' enemy. Today's FBI director, Christopher Wray, testified this year that his agency had not seen "any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribing to antifa in connection with the 6th" and has warned that white supremacist violence is the top domestic terror threat.

But old habits die hard. Envisioning and preparing for the dangers of a predominantly white crowd carrying weapons while seeking to "cancel" Black and brown voters from Detroit, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia by any means necessary is still a reach for a lot of people in power, especially those who agree with the rioters' cause.

We know what the mob can do.

And still, not much. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the leaders of the Rules Committee, are expected to propose legislation to give Capitol Police the power to summon the National Guard and to increase the department's funding.

But Republicans in Congress have blocked a bipartisan commission to answer the questions that remain, paralyzed by the fact that Trump, and more than a few of their own members, might be implicated on paper. The word "insurrection" is nowhere to be seen in the report, which showed little interest in the role of white supremacist groups, many of whose members see Jan. 6 not as a loss but as an opening salvo.

Doing The Mob's Work

Using the "big lie" to do in state legislatures what the pro-Trump mob could not, Republicans are using their clout to make it harder for certain Americans to vote — minorities, the poor, students, the disabled, those who work long shifts and can't wait for hours in line, those who depend on same-day registration and drop boxes. And when those American voters do manage to overcome every obstacle, a partisan observer can harass them, and an appointed official can declare their ballots null and void.

For those arrested for taking part in an insurrection, let's just say the loudest proponents of taking personal responsibility are spewing excuses that make "the dog ate my homework" look credible. They were either in the wrong place at the wrong time or brainwashed by internet conspiracies. Or they were just following the orders of "Dear Leader."

Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman, prominently pictured roaming the Capitol on January 6, had his mommy defending him and repeating election fraud lies. Does she also cut up the organic food he insisted on being served in jail into little pieces before feeding him by hand?

They feel protected, and why not? They have American history and a political party on their side, ready to put a treasonous insurrection in the rearview mirror. So many don't think what happened on Jan. 6 will touch them. Worse, many sympathize with those who see a more inclusive America as a threat.

With Trump on his vengeance tour spreading that message, aided and abetted by GOP politicians willing to look the other way, expect the worst.

Minorities and their civil rights may be the first in jeopardy. But don't be fooled. Those bent on violently undermining democracy won't stop there. They never do.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. Follow her on Twitter @mcurtisnc3.