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Plant-Based Burgers by Aliza Beer MS, RD, CDN

Political Crossfire Biden’s Big Mistake on the Infrastructure Deal

By Marc A. Thiessen

President Joe Biden’s big gaffe was not his threat to veto a $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal he had just reached with Republicans. It was accidentally saying out loud what everyone in Washington knows, but most Americans do not: that he has not compromised on infrastructure at all – and does not intend to do so.

Standing with Republican senators, Biden boasted that “neither side got everything they wanted in this deal.” That is untrue. Biden does plan to get everything he wants from the deal. While he walked back his veto threat, he is still insisting that Congress pass not one, but two infrastructure bills: the bipartisan agreement he negotiated with Republicans, and a second passed with only Democratic votes using the budget reconciliation process that includes everything he gave up in negotiations with those Republicans. “The president intends to sign both pieces of legislation into law,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated last Monday.

Sorry, that is not compromise. If he signs two bills, Biden has given up absolutely nothing. Quite the opposite, he not only gets everything he wanted, he also gets false credit for fulfilling his campaign promise to reach across the aisle and compromise.

So why is this a good deal for Republicans? Because it is not clear Democrats can pull this scam off. Indeed, by agreeing to a bipartisan deal, Republicans have thrown Democrats into disarray.

Just look at the chaos that has unfolded over the past few days. First, Biden came out to the White House driveway and praised the deal he struck with Republicans. Shortly after, he threatened to veto the deal he had just announced. Then, he issued an extraordinary eight-paragraph statement walking back that threat. Meanwhile,

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., contradicted Biden, threatening to kill his bipartisan deal unless the Senate first passed a Democrats-only package. “There ain’t gonna be no bipartisan bill, unless we have a reconciliation bill. … Plain and simple,” she said. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., piled on, tweeting, “Let me be clear: There will not be a bipartisan infrastructure deal without a reconciliation bill.” All this turmoil because Biden struck a bipartisan agreement with Republicans. Second, Pelosi’s reaction suggests she’s not confident Democrats can pass a reconciliation bill if Biden’s deal with Republicans gets approved. Before the deal, Biden’s plan was to use “infrastructure” as cover to pass all sorts of non-infrastructure spending – just as he used his “COVID-19 relief” bill to pass all sorts of non-COVID-19 spending. But by putting all the hard infrastructure spending into a bipartisan package, Republicans have taken away the sugarcoating from that reconciliation bill. Democrats will now have to pass trillions of dollars in liberal projects, and massive tax hikes to pay for it, without roads and bridges as cover. That complicates things for Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck

Schumer, D-N.Y. If Democrats try to pass a partisan reconciliation bill first – as Pelosi insists – then they will be killing the bipartisan infrastructure deal. But if they try to pass the bipartisan deal first, it’s not clear they will have the votes to pass a reconciliation bill. Are moderate Democrats really going to vote for a package of tax increases and spending unrelated to popular infrastructure projects? In the House, where Democrats have a razor-thin majority, just a few moderate defections could kill it. And in a 50-50 Senate, Schumer can afford zero defections. He needs a package that satisfies both Sanders and Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va. The outcome is far from assured.

Third, the Republicans who negotiated the bipartisan deal now look like the only adults in the room. By reaching a bipartisan agreement, they have shown that they are willing to compromise and work with Biden. They have also given their fellow Republicans something to vote for, without violating their core principles. If they had walked away, Democrats would have passed their entire infrastructure package using reconciliation – which would have forced Republicans to vote against funding roads and bridges. Now they can vote for all the popular elements of an infrastructure package without any of Biden’s non-infrastructure spending or tax increases. Moderate Democrats are left holding the bag for those.

Finally, Republicans have thwarted Schumer’s attempts to get rid of the filibuster by painting Republicans as obstructionist. They delivered for the two Democratic senators – Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – who have been pushing for bipartisan compromise, and whose votes they need to protect the filibuster. If that bipartisan deal fails because Democrats in Congress kill it, then Schumer and Pelosi will own that failure – and lose any justification for weakening or eliminating the filibuster.

How will this play out? No one knows for sure. But this much is certain: If Pelosi and Sanders are unhappy, then Republicans are in a much stronger position than they were before they struck a deal with Biden.

He not only gets everything he wanted, he also gets false credit for fulfilling his campaign promise to reach across the aisle and compromise.

Political Crossfire A Criminal Case Against a Huawei Executive Poses a Test for the Biden Administration

By David Ignatius

China is politically unpopular in Washington these days, and for good reason: Thursday’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party featured a strident threat from President Xi Jinping that China’s enemies will be impaled on a “Great Wall of steel” if they challenge Beijing.

The Biden administration’s counter to such bombast is to argue that it seeks the rule of law, contrary to Xi’s fulminations about “insufferably arrogant lecturing from those ‘master teachers’” in the United States. But making good on this promise of a rules-based order isn’t easy when China so routinely ignores legal standards at home and abroad.

An interesting test of this problem is a criminal case that has been pending for more than two years against Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, the global telecommunications giant. She was arrested by Canadian authorities, at the request of the Justice Department, as she arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, on December 1, 2018. The United States sought her extradition to face charges that she had concealed evidence from Huawei’s banker, HSBC, about the company’s activities in Iran that allegedly led HSBC to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran.

A Canadian court has been weighing the U.S. extradition request ever since. A judge there is expected to finish reviewing the evidence in August and rule by the end of the year. Meng has been detained in Vancouver, while her legal team maneuvers in Canada and the United States.

Was this a political case, a bargaining chip in the ongoing U.S. effort to combat Huawei and other big Chinese telecommunications companies? The Chinese certainly treated it that way. Nine days after Meng’s arrest, Chinese authorities detained two Canadians, former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, on charges of espionage. The “two Michaels,” as they’re known in Canada, are seen there as hostages in a Chinese attempt to force Meng’s release.

President Donald Trump unfortunately gave the Chinese ample reason to regard Meng as a pawn in a larger power play. Asked by Reuters during a December 11, 2018, interview whether he would intervene with the Justice Department in Meng’s case, Trump answered: “Whatever’s good for the country, I would do.” He said that if he decided her release would produce a big trade deal with China, “I would certainly intervene.”

That doesn’t sound like the rule of law but like the transactional power politics that Trump and Xi share as a guiding philosophy. This impression is reinforced by former national security adviser John Bolton, who writes in his memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” that Trump described Meng as “the Ivanka Trump of China” and seemed sympathetic to releasing her if he could get concessions from the Chinese.

Now, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is managing the extradition case, and it remains a political hot potato. Lawyers for Meng have talked with Biden Justice officials about the case, but there’s no sign of movement toward a settlement. Meanwhile, China becomes more unpopular every day on Capitol Hill because of its heavy-handed tactics against Hong Kong, Taiwan and its own Uyghur minority.

When it comes to Huawei, though, it’s important to avoid blurring issues. It seems clear that the company itself poses a potential national security threat to the United States and its allies if it dominates global 5G telecommunications. The Biden administration has been right to follow Trump in denying Huawei access to sensitive U.S. hardware and software. Maintaining U.S. primacy in key technologies is an absolute priority for whatever administration is in power.

The case against Meng should stand or fall on its own legal merits, rather than as proxy in this larger contest. Her lawyers raise some good questions about the Justice Department’s case. John Bellinger, a former State Department legal adviser retained by Huawei as an expert witness, argued in a May 2020 affidavit that the charge that Meng lied to HSBC about Huawei’s activities in Iran was “unsupported” by facts and that the bank-fraud charges against her were “unprecedented” in their reach.

Could a prosecutor be confident of winning a conviction in a U.S. court on the available evidence? Meng’s attorneys shared with me a 2013 PowerPoint presentation she made to the bank in which she explained Huawei’s operations in Iran and asserted that it operated there “in strict compliance with applicable laws, regulations and sanctions.” The Biden Justice Department will need to prove to a court that Meng committed fraud. That is as it should be.

We face a long contest with China. If that devolves into a battle of tit-fortat realpolitik, we’re likely to lose. The United States’ strength is that, in a lawless world, we play by the rules.

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