No holiday from masks, tests as omicron surges -- Dec. 23 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

As omicron tightens its grip, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Monday declared a state of emergency.

Once again, masks are required indoors in such places as churches, gyms and grocery stores, regardless of vaccination status. Masks are not yet required in restaurants and bars in the nation’s capital, as they are in New York and Los Angeles.

“I think we’re all tired of it. I’m tired of it, too,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said, announcing the mask mandate will last until Jan. 31. “But we have to respond to what’s happening in our city and what’s happening in our nation.”

The mayor is correct. What’s happening is nearly three-fourths of the new coronavirus cases in the United States are now from the highly transmissible omicron variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. Coronavirus daily case totals are at their highest level since last summer.

There is no statewide mask mandate in Virginia, but the Virginia Department of Health recommends masks be worn indoors in communities with substantial or high COVID-19 transmission.

More than 800,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19. Public health officials knew the coronavirus mutates and new variants were likely. Still,  fast-spreading omicron caught nearly everyone by surprise last month.

Much remains unknown, including whether the illness omicron causes is less severe than the delta variant’s, and what the long-term effects of even a mild case may be.

The first death in the United States related to omicron was announced Monday. The victim was an unvaccinated man in his 50s with an underlying health condition in Houston, authorities said.

So, while we all feel coronavirus fatigue, we find ourselves on the verge of another  New Year having to rally again to fight an insidious, unpredictable virus.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who died this year, once said you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might wish you had.

It’s wrong that Americans have had to stand in line for hours for coronavirus tests, as they have in some parts of the country. Other nations have long been able to supply their residents with free, at-home test kits.

The Biden administration is now rushing to make available, starting next month, 500 million free, rapid, in-home coronavirus test kits. The government is opening more testing and vaccination sites, deploying military medical teams to overwhelmed hospitals, and plans to expand hospital capacity.

These are important changes that remind us we are not in the same place we were a year ago. Last year during the holidays we glimpsed the hope of vaccinations as the end of the pandemic. This year, we known the pandemic is still with us, and we are lucky if all we must endure are its inconveniences.

Mask and vaccination mandates cannot be partisan when the virus is bipartisan. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, who both are vaccinated and boosted, tested positive for COVID-19, as did Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, and a cancer survivor.

Breakthrough COVID-19 cases are common. President Joe Biden, 79, sat near someone on Air Force One the other day who later tested positive.

Most breakthrough cases seem to be mild, which is why Biden is urging every eligible American to get fully vaccinated and boosted.

And yet, when former President Donald Trump said Sunday in Texas he had received a booster, some in the audience booed. That’s a sad commentary on the misguided, ill-informed, anti-vax crowd.

Fortunately, there are no plans for lockdowns or a widespread return to remote schooling. We are learning to live with uncertainty.

Wearing an effective mask, such as the N95, getting vaccinated and boosted, and tested if we feel sick or are exposed to someone with COVID-19 are steps all of us can take to protect ourselves and others.

Those who feel their personal liberty is abridged by mask mandates can do something about it: They can stay home, off public transportation and out of public places.

As much as we Americans don’t like rules or mandates, especially rules that change, we must live in the real world. We all want the pandemic to end. We also want our families, friends and ourselves to be around next year. Be vigilant.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Should non-working parents benefit? New Child Tax Credit revives welfare debate --July 15, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

It’s Christmas in July. The federal government this week began sending millions of families monthly cash payments through the new, expanded Child Tax Credit.

Through the end of the year, all but the wealthiest families with children will receive $250 a month per child ages six to 17 and $300 a month for each child under six.

Most parents will receive the payments as direct deposits and will take the remainder as a credit when they file their 2021 taxes next year.

“The Child Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan provides the largest Child Tax Credit ever and historic relief to the most working families ever – and most families will automatically receive monthly payments without having to take any action,” the White House says online.

Families will, that is, if all goes as planned. With 90% of the nation’s 74 million children eligible, this is a massive undertaking.

Sen. Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, hailed the expanded tax credit as “the most transformative policy to come out of Washington since F.D.R. that will effectively cut in half child poverty in this country.”

And it is a huge change in the way the country helps not just the poor but most American families. Since President Bill Clinton signed bipartisan welfare reform legislation 25 years ago, most parents have needed to work to receive benefits. The expanded tax credit goes to families even if the parents don’t work or pay taxes.

It’s a temporary program just for 2021, enacted to help families and the economy hurt by the pandemic. President Joe Biden wants to extend it for another five years and congressional Democrats want to make it permanent.

Biden bucks are popular with recipients – and they vote. But are cash payments the best ticket out of poverty? Some experts warn welfare entitlements can be a tender trap that locks families into dependency.

“If the child tax credit expansion is permanently enacted, it would destroy the foundations of welfare reform. This increased cash benefit without work would take more low-income Americans out of the workforce,” Robert Rector, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, wrote in an essay.

The advance Child Tax Credit boosts the existing credit from $2,000 per child for working parents.

Payments will be based on a family’s latest tax return with no limit on the number of children covered, although children must be citizens with Social Security or tax identification numbers. Those who don’t pay taxes can sign up online.

Families are eligible for the full advance credit if they have an adjusted gross income of up to $150,000 for a couple or $112,500 for a single parent or head of household. The expanded credit phases out for parents with higher incomes, but many are still eligible for the regular Child Tax Credit, in effect since 2018 but scheduled to end after 2025.

Examples on the White House website of how the new credit works include “Alex and Casey,” a lawyer and hospital administrator who are married with two children and make $450,000. The high-income couple won’t qualify for the new credit, but they will still receive the regular credit of $2,000 per child.

One could argue that people of such means should not receive any Child Tax Credit, which should be targeted to those most in need. But that point is rarely heard amid the clamor over non-working parents.

“By next tax season, some households with no working adults will receive more than $10,000 in these payments. No work required. Just free money on top of America’s existing safety net,” Sen. Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, wrote last month in an essay on Real Clear Politics. He favors expanding the credit for working families only.

In 1996, ending “welfare as we know it” was a bipartisan goal and the bipartisan law Clinton signed ended welfare as an entitlement. The law also mandated work for welfare recipients, limited the time someone could receive benefits, and cracked down on deadbeat dads, among other things.

Clinton insisted welfare would no longer be a political issue, and politicians would not be able to attack each other or the poor.

He was right, but only for a while.

With businesses and Republicans up in arms about unemployment benefits reducing the incentive to work, extending the expanded Child Tax Credit for non-working parents likely will be a hot political issue well into the 2022 campaign.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

What if? Presidential hopefuls unveil plans -- Aug. 22, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Score one for the animals.

If he’s elected president, Democratic hopeful Julián Castro will end the horrible practice of euthanizing domestic cats and dogs in shelters.

Castro, former Housing and Urban Development secretary and mayor of San Antonio, released his Protecting Animals and Wildlife – or PAW -- Plan Monday.

He also would make animal abuse a federal crime, prohibit bringing big game trophies into the country and reverse President Donald Trump’s actions to weaken the Endangered Species Act that protects plants and animals from extinction.

Democrats’ No. 1 job for 2020 is sending Trump back up the escalator at Trump Tower, and Labor Day signals a new campaign phase.

Voting will begin in five months – with the Iowa caucuses Feb. 3 and New Hampshire primary Feb. 11. 

So candidates are switching from “Hello” and “No!” – that is, introducing themselves and reacting to Trump’s continual tweet machine – to “I will” -- presenting their own plans.

Just as Trump has tried to obliterate through executive actions much of what President Barack Obama accomplished, the next president could roll back much of Trump’s executive actions.

Several Democratic candidates pledge to revoke the Trump-approved permits for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, for example.

Castro, who also has plans for education, immigration, homeland security and housing, may be a long shot for the White House, but he’s among at least 10 contenders who will appear onstage in the next round of Democratic debates Sept. 12 and 13. The deadline for making the cut is Aug. 28.

Saving pets’ lives isn’t as high profile a campaign issue as gun control or Medicare for All, but it’s smart in Democratic primaries to stand up for animals and the planet.

About one in three Americans believe animals should have the same rights as humans, a 2015 Gallup poll found. About four in five Americans support the Endangered Species Act, an Ohio State University study reported last year.

Other candidates are also staking out high ground. Beto O’Rourke, who represented El Paso in Congress, hopes to restart his campaign in the aftermath of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, by going big on gun control.

O’Rourke released his plan Aug. 16 to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. He also would force owners to sell some weapons back to the government or pay a fine, create a new gun licensing and registration system and expand background checks.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey is pushing for “baby bonds,” federally funded savings accounts for each newborn that would be structured to close the wealth gap.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has offered a slew of proposals, released two new ones this week. Her plan to help native Americans has drawn praise from Indian Country.

She and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont each offered proposals to reform the criminal justice system – as have several others, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend.

The time for straight talk also apparently has arrived. When Sanders announced his plan in South Carolina, he said, “This state is a state which has an even more broken criminal justice system than the country, and the country is pretty bad.”

As some Democrats reassess Biden because of his recent gaffes, his wife stressed her husband’s top selling point.

“You may like another candidate better, but you have to look at who is going to win,” Jill Biden said this week in New Hampshire. “Your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.”

Jill Biden, who teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College, also added: “And if education is your main issue, Joe is that person.”

As we approach the end of the beginning of the 2020 campaign, time may be running out for candidates still struggling to connect.

Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, who has not yet qualified for the next debate, promotes yoga, mindfulness and wellness practices to help war veterans heal and to bring down prescription use and health care costs generally.

Promising to be the “Zen president,” Ryan told CNN Aug. 14 that after Trump, Americans will want a president with the “quality of equanimity in rocky times.”  

He very well could be right.

But it’s through their plans and straight talk that Democrats hope to break away from the pack.   

© Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Measure presidential age in ideas, not years -- July 25, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

How old is too old to be president? Ronald Reagan settled the question 35 years ago with a zinger.

President Reagan, a Republican seeking his second term, and former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential nominee, met Oct. 21, 1984, for their second debate.

Reagan, 73, had not had a good first debate, and veteran Baltimore Sun diplomatic correspondent Henry Trewhitt raised the age issue:

“You already are the oldest president in history. And some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall yet that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?”

“Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt,” Reagan smoothly replied, “and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Everybody broke out laughing, including Mondale, a mere lad of 56.

Mondale told his wife he lost the election that night. There were many reasons Reagan swept to victory, winning every state except Mondale’s Minnesota, but the much replayed “youth and inexperience” soundbite didn’t hurt.

It’s hard to imagine an elder candidate’s snappy comeback line having the same effect ever again, considering what we know now. Five years after leaving office, Reagan wrote a letter telling the world he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Critics questioned whether he had been slipping during his second term in the White House, though loyal staff said he showed no signs of dementia.  

Now, President Donald Trump, 73, is the oldest president ever. Age is again a campaign issue as several top Democratic presidential contenders are also septuagenarians. Former Vice President Joe Biden is 76, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is 77 and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is 70.

Critics question Trump’s mental health, although he insists he’s “a very stable genius.”

Attacking Biden, Trump says he himself looks younger and is more mentally sharp than Biden.

For his part, Biden said if Trump doesn’t stop making cracks about his age, he’ll challenge the president to a push-up contest. I’d watch that.

Age inevitably factors into the Democrats’ nomination process. Pete Buttigieg, 37, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, likes to say he won’t reach the age Trump is now until 2054. Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, 50, plays up skateboarding. 

If Democrats choose the safe and experienced Biden to go against Trump, Biden will need to project youth and vitality through his appearance and, more importantly, through his ideas.

It’s possible, as Sanders showed in 2016, for a party elder to attract a youthful following with bold, new ideas.

But first Biden must deal with his past, and when the Democrats meet for a second round of debates Tuesday and Wednesday, his record will also be on display.  

In the first debate, Biden seemed flummoxed by the attack by California Sen. Kamala Harris on his opposition to federal busing decades ago. Biden also has been criticized for pushing, as a senator in 1994, a crime bill now seen as draconian.

Setting a new course, Biden Tuesday proposed a sweeping plan to eliminate the death penalty, decriminalize marijuana and stop putting people in prison for drug use alone.

But New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, 50, tweeted: “It’s not enough to tell us what you’re going to do for our communities, show us what you’ve done for the last 40 years. You created this system.”

Sanders and Warren each have plans to erase student debt, which plagues millions of Americans, and provide free higher education.

Such policies are good politics. More younger voters turned out to vote in 2018 than in previous midterms, the Census Bureau reports. In 2020, one in 10 eligible voters will be members of Generation Z – born after 1995, the Pew Research Center projects.  

Young voters tend to vote Democratic. If they turn out strongly, as they have in recent presidential elections, they could make a difference for Democrats.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

McConnell sets Green New Deal trap -- Feb. 14, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been in the Senate longer than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has been alive.

That imbalance became clear Tuesday as McConnell set up a vote to make Democrats pay for their reckless embrace of the Green New Deal.

McConnell, who turns 77 Wednesday, arrived in the Senate in 1985. Ocasio-Cortez was born in 1989.

At 29, she is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, a wizard at social media with 3.1 million Twitter followers. A video of her House Oversight and Reform Committee “Lightning Round” take-down at the of lax ethics and campaign finance rules is an internet sensation.

But her rollout of the much-anticipated Green New Deal was a disaster.

To recap, her office released and then retracted a frequently-asked-questions sheet that included the goals of economic security for people “unwilling to work,” and eventually ridding the country of flatulent cows, airplanes and various industries.

None of those ideas is in the actual resolution, H. Res. 109, but they were the first many people heard about the Green New Deal. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t help matters when she falsely said there were “doctored” FAQ versions on the internet.

The resolution is non-binding but would indicate support to set the federal government on the path of a “10 year national mobilization” to fight climate change and remake the economy.

Among the goals: “Meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.” It also guarantees jobs, education, food and health care for everyone.

Such sweeping changes need serious consideration with months, if not years, of hearings, and compromises. By rushing out a resolution in her first month in office, Ocasio-Cortez delighted her fans but walked into a trap.

The conservative media and President Donald Trump quickly blasted the Green New Deal as ridiculous.

“It sounds like a high school term paper that got a low mark,” Trump said at a campaign rally in El Paso. “I really don’t like their policy of taking away your car, of taking away your airplane rights, of ‘Let’s hop a train to California,’ or you’re not allowed to own cows anymore!”

Ocasio-Cortez rightly could have said her manifesto wouldn’t do any of those things. It doesn’t include any specific proposals. But she lobbed her response by tweet: “Ah yes, a man who can’t even read briefings written in full sentences is providing literary criticism of a House Resolution.”

Meanwhile, McConnell, a veteran of many political wars, was setting the trap.

He looked like the cat that swallowed the canary when he announced the Senate would vote on the Green New Deal resolution. A resolution identical to Ocasio-Cortez’s was introduced by Sen. Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts.

“We’ll give everybody an opportunity to go on record and see how they feel about the Green New Deal,” McConnell told reporters. 

Mischievous Mitch used to say he would only bring measures to the floor that would get Trump’s signature. This time he means to get Democrats on the record so Republican candidates can hammer them during 2020 campaigns.

Half a dozen Democratic senators are running for president, and nearly a dozen Democrats face tough Senate re-election bids.

The botched rollout has made more than Ocasio-Cortez look amateurish. So too do the presidential hopefuls who jumped on the bandwagon. 

Six cosponsors are announced or likely presidential contenders -- Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who may run again, is also a cosponsor.

In contrast, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 78, a wily congressional veteran who came to the House in 1987, has kept the Green New Deal at arm’s length.

“It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive,” Pelosi told Politico. “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”

Pelosi saw early what’s now dawning on less savvy Democrats: The Green New Deal wasn’t ready for prime time. It created a political opening for Republicans and a liability for Democrats.   

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Congress must stop Trump from firing Mueller -- March 22, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Why does he act so guilty? What does he have to hide? What does Vladimir Putin have on him?

Those are questions being raised by Republicans as well as Democrats as President Donald Trump seems poised to end special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian tampering in the 2016 election. 

“When you are innocent . . . act like it,” Rep. Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, urged the president Sunday on “Fox News Sunday.”

“If you’ve done nothing wrong, you should want the investigation to be as fulsome and thorough as possible,” said Gowdy, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.  

Sen. Lindsey Graham warned firing Mueller would “probably” be an impeachable offense. Graham should know. He was one of the House managers of the impeachment case against President Bill Clinton in 1998. 

If Trump were to fire Mueller, “I can’t see it being anything other than a corrupt purpose,” Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said Tuesday on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.

Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, tweeted: “Special Counsel Mueller has served our country with honesty and integrity. It is critical he be allowed to complete a thorough investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election – unimpeded.”

Fine words. Now it’s time for Congress to pass stalled legislation to protect the work of special counsels, including Mueller.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to release, after classified material is redacted, their report that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, a finding they announced March 13. Democrats on the committee strongly oppose release, saying Republicans ended the investigation prematurely.

Until now, many GOP members of Congress have said legislation to protect special counsels was unnecessary because Trump would never fire Mueller.

But Trump is reshaping his legal team, hiring Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney who claims the FBI and Justice Department framed Trump. And last weekend Trump launched tweets attacking Mueller personally.

“The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime,” he tweeted. The Mueller probe is “a total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!”

John Dowd, Trump’s personal attorney, said Saturday it was time to shut down the Mueller probe, although he later claimed he was only speaking for himself. He resigned Thursday, reportedly because Trump was ignoring his advice.

White House lawyer Ty Cobb said in a statement Sunday: “The White House yet again confirms that the president is not considering or discussing the firing” of Mueller.

But Trump’s calling out Mueller by name was a barrage too far. The timing was also suspect, coming just after Mueller reportedly subpoenaed financial records of the Trump Organization.

“Unfortunately, the statements and actions from the president and his lawyer over the weekend have led me to believe that the special counsel is now at real, immediate risk of being removed, and I believe the Senate needs to pass legislation to ensure that does not happen,” Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat and cosponsor of a bipartisan bill with Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said Monday.

The Special Counsel Integrity Act would create a judicial review process to prevent the removal of special counsels without good cause.

Another bill, the Special Counsel Independence Protection Act, would permit the firing of a special counsel only if a federal court found “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or other good cause for removal.”

Introduced by Graham in the Senate, it has three Democratic cosponsors, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

Companion bills for both bills have been introduced in the House. One bill by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, has 130 cosponsors, all Democrats, including Reps. A. Donald McEachin and Don Beyer of Virginia.

The bills had hearings in the respective Judiciary committees but are stalled.

Trump seems eager to shut Mueller down or at least to discredit his findings. Republicans as well as Democrats say Mueller should be allowed to complete his investigation.

Members of Congress must do their work so Mueller can do his.

© 2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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