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March 30, 2023
Punchbowl News Presents
Introducing Tech – our newest policy vertical. From high-profile interviews with industry influencers & policymakers to key lobbying updates, Punchbowl News Tech will be your go-to for timely technology insights.
PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
It’s Thursday morning.
Breaking overnight: NYT: “The Russian authorities said on Thursday that they had detained an American journalist, Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal correspondent based in Moscow, accusing him of espionage.”
Congress has gotten off to a very slow start this year. Glacially slow. But Wednesday was one of those frantic days that overwhelm Capitol Hill every now and again.
To summarize: The Senate voted for the first time in decades to rescind war powers granted to the president; a billionaire businessman was grilled over his “union busting” tactics by a Senate chair, who was himself accused of becoming a millionaire while in office; and two House members got into a screaming match about the horrific Nashville school shooting.
One GOP senator blocked another GOP senator from trying to ban TikTok; Congress agreed that the Covid-19 pandemic is over; a Democratic Senate chair publicly threatened to sue a Democratic administration; someone secretly tried to record a Senate GOP lunch; and there’s another fox lurking around on the Capitol grounds.
With all this happening, we’re going to focus on three topics in today’s issue: Repeal of the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force against Iraq; TikTok’s future; and an unhappy Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). We’ll first discuss the treacherous path for AUMF repeal in the House, then tackle the other two.
The Senate’s vote on Wednesday to repeal the 1991 and 2002 Iraq AUMFs was a moment years in the making for Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.).
Young has consistently challenged GOP orthodoxy when it comes to congressional war powers, and he’s won over an impressive contingent of Republicans who helped lead to the blowout 66-30 final vote. Three Senate Republican freshmen — Ted Budd of North Carolina, J.D. Vance of Ohio and Eric Schmitt of Missouri — joined with an eclectic mix of 15 other GOP senators to back repeal.
But the effort is far from over.
In the GOP-controlled House, Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) wants to take a different approach. McCaul is looking to use the repeal of the Iraq AUMFs as a chance to rewrite and modernize the post-9/11 AUMF. Namely, McCaul wants to give the president the authority to go after Iran “proactively.”
“It’s frankly a sign of weakness to Iran to be doing this without any sort of replacement,” McCaul told us. “I’d be in favor of the 2001 repeal, and I have a replacement. We should update it with the modern threats.”
This would be a herculean feat and would require a negotiation with the Senate, as well as with the Biden administration. The White House has said it’s open to rewriting the 2001 AUMF, but those talks are longer-term.
What’s more, Republicans and Democrats have deep disagreements over the best way to handle the Iranian proxies operating in Iraq and Syria. The groups often attack U.S. troops. If the GOP-controlled House tries to add Iran-related provisions — all of which were voted down as amendments in the Senate — it’s likely a poison pill.
Young, meanwhile, agrees that the 2001 AUMF should be updated, but he believes the House will find that to be “a pretty complicated process.” Young was deeply involved in the Senate’s past efforts to modernize the 2001 AUMF. He and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) made a conscious decision not to use repeal of the Iraq AUMFs to “address all of our war powers concerns” in one fell swoop.
“We discovered that we should take one step at a time,” Young told us. “And I expect [the House] will decide the same thing. But that’s up to them, of course.”
For his part, McCaul emphasized that while he would use the committee process to alter the underlying legislation, Speaker Kevin McCarthy could decide to simply put the Senate’s repeal bill on the House floor.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the House Rules Committee chair, is also the lead Republican sponsor of the House version of Young’s bill. Cole told us he would “seriously consider” anything McCaul wants to propose, and he generally favors using the normal committee process to mark up the legislation.
“It may take a little bit longer,” Cole said. “But we’re talking about something that’s taken 20 years to get rid of, so if it takes another month or two that’s fine.”
One of the reasons for the impasse is the fact that the Senate never took up the Iraq AUMF repeal bill during the last Congress. The Democratic-controlled House passed a bill doing just that, however.
“If [the Senate] had done it in the 117th Congress, it’d be over,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), the Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Democrat, told us.
Another option to get the measure to Biden’s desk would be to attach it to the annual defense policy bill as an amendment. McCarthy has promised an open amendment process on that legislation, so it’s a real possibility.
— Andrew Desiderio, John Bresnahan and Heather Caygle
Join us: Punchbowl News Founders Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman will interview House Problem Solvers Caucus Co-Chairs Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) on Thursday, April 20, at 9 a.m. ET. The group will discuss challenges facing small business owners. This conversation is the first in a three-part series, Small Business, America’s Future. RSVP now!
HILL TOK
TikTok supporters plot path forward
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s bipartisan House grilling last week was a P.R. disaster for the Chinese-owned company. Yet for Democrats opposed to banning the app, the episode was an effective recruiting tool to bring more lawmakers onto their side.
Even as Congress marches forward on anti-TikTok legislation, more prominent liberals and some staunch conservatives are speaking out against efforts to ban the embattled app.
In recent days, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Summer Lee (D-Pa.) – in addition to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Fox host Tucker Carlson – have come out against legislation targeting TikTok.
To be clear, there’s still widespread bipartisan distrust of TikTok. Many lawmakers are concerned that the Chinese Communist Party can access U.S. users’ data and believe the app poses a national security threat.
But the uptick in TikTok allies is a notable change from the universal condemnation seen during the widely-watched House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.
On Wednesday, Paul blocked a unanimous consent request from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to approve a TikTok ban. Paul said banning the app would violate the First Amendment. Paul’s effort was backed online by FreedomWorks, the conservative outside group.
TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said the company’s path forward includes continuing to highlight “our progress in implementing Project Texas to address national security concerns.” This initiative — a plan to house TikTok’s U.S. data on Oracle servers in Texas — was panned during last week’s House hearing.
“We will continue to work with lawmakers, stakeholders, and our peer companies on solutions that address the industry-wide issues of privacy and safety,” Oberwetter added.
Progressives offered a variety of rationales for opposing a TikTok ban. Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) told us the fact that there hasn’t been a congressional security briefing on TikTok’s threats indicates the threat isn’t clear.
A common refrain from Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), Pocan and Garcia is that the focus on TikTok ignores wider questions of data privacy abuses by other social media companies.
“I’m not trying to be the TikTok guy,” Frost told us. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do this holistically and let’s look at all social media.”
Others lawmakers say the sense of community fostered by TikTok and its estimated 150 million U.S. users needs to be protected.
“I’m getting a lot of colleagues coming up to me that want to sit down and learn more. They agree with me. They’re going to speak out on their own. So AOC is just the beginning,” Bowman said.
House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, who wouldn’t rule out Congress pursuing a ban, told reporters he thinks the difference in viewpoint among Democrats is likely generational, not ideological.
And progressive Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) shared a cautionary tale for anyone looking to make quick assumptions about individuals’ support for TikTok. Even young people, the app’s most common users, don’t agree on what to do.
“I don’t have a position on it yet,” Balint said. “[But] my 15-year-old son is adamant that we should ban TikTok.”
— Max Cohen
2024 LANDSCAPE
Manchin lashes out at the Biden administration once again
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) isn’t very happy with the Biden administration.
Manchin first threatened on Wednesday to sue the Treasury Department over its handling of highly-anticipated guidance on electric vehicle tax credits mandated under the Inflation Reduction Act, his signature legislative achievement.
The West Virginia Democrat then voted in favor of a GOP-authored resolution disapproving of the Biden administration’s controversial “Waters of the United States” rule. The White House said President Joe Biden will veto the resolution.
And to wrap up his day, Manchin wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Betrayal.”
In his op-ed, Manchin said that “unelected ideologues, bureaucrats and appointees” are working to “subvert” the Inflation Reduction Act by writing rules and guidance that deviate sharply from what Congress intended. The president alone can stop this, Manchin warned.
Manchin also called on the president “to sit down with fiscally minded Republicans and Democrats to negotiate common-sense reforms to out-of-control fiscal policy.” Biden has refused to negotiate with Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the debt limit and government spending until House Republicans offer their own budget plan, and that’s not happening soon.
In an interview, Manchin said he “had nothing to do with the headline” but stands by everything else in the WSJ article. For Manchin, how the Inflation Reduction Act is rolled out goes directly to his own credibility since he was so closely involved in drafting it.
The 75-year-old Manchin – who hasn’t announced whether he’ll run again in 2024 – has been critical of a number of the administration’s recent moves. He’s accused the administration of having a “radical policy agenda” and complained the White House “panders to climate activists.”
In a March 10 Houston Chronicle opinion piece, Manchin announced that as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, he won’t confirm a top Interior Department nominee even though he’d supported her in the past.
White House aides downplayed the tension with Manchin. “We have a strong and productive relationship with Senator Manchin. We are proud of the Inflation Reduction Act and our shared goals it achieves,” one White House official told us.
The EV tax credits controversy is complicated, but it goes to the heart of Manchin’s grievances with the White House.
Former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta – who Manchin has bashed – is now serving as a senior Biden adviser for clean energy innovation and implementation. Podesta is helping the Treasury Department draft guidance that spells out which electric vehicles will be eligible for the $7,500 tax credit called for under the IRA. That highly-anticipated guidance – originally due in December – will be released Friday.
Manchin sought to bolster U.S. EV manufacturers and supply chains by limiting the IRA’s full tax credits to North American companies. But with China controlling much of the world’s EV production – including batteries and the materials used to build them — Manchin is worried that the Biden administration will fail to use the Treasury guidance as leverage to force more EV production to the United States.
Yet carmakers fear that EV sales will suffer if the Treasury Department sharply limits who gets the tax credits, even if that means Chinese companies benefit. And the Biden administration wants emission reductions from wider EV use. There’s also grumbling that Manchin’s efforts in drafting this portion of the IRA language was flawed.
Here’s a good Washington Post story explaining the controversy.
– John Bresnahan
PRESENTED BY META
THE CAMPAIGN
McCarthy’s big day, Gonzales’ Q1 numbers, and EMILYs List backs Slotkin
News: Speaker Kevin McCarthy has made a big effort in recent weeks to get House Republicans to pony up to the party’s 32 vulnerable lawmakers.
To that end, Republicans will donate more than $8 million this morning to those 32 lawmakers. McCarthy will send $4 million, and rank-and-file Republicans will send another $4.5 million. NRCC Chair Richard Hudson has rounded up most of this cash.
In the first quarter of 2023, McCarthy transferred $7 million to the NRCC and $4 million to vulnerable House GOP incumbents.
Scoop: Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) raised $1.2 million this quarter and has the same amount in the bank as he gears up for re-election.
There’s been some chatter that Gonzales may not run for re-election, so this should put that to rest.
Gonzales’ haul includes more than $100,000 from his fellow House Republicans. The second-term lawmaker won by 17 points in 2022. Gonzales has attracted a number of Republican primary challengers so far.
One of Gonzales’ primary challengers, Victor Avila, met with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz) at the Capitol Hill Club on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the meeting. That could create some tensions inside the GOP conference.
Avila, a retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent, has repeatedly attacked Gonzales over his positions on immigration.
Biggs’ office didn’t respond to our request for comment.
Also: EMILYs List, the liberal group dedicated to supporting women candidates, is endorsing Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in the Michigan Senate primary. The endorsement is yet another sign of Slotkin’s institutional support as she appears to be clearing the field. Check out the full EMILYs List endorsement here.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson passed on a Senate run last week. The open seat is being created by Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s (D-Mich.) upcoming retirement.
— Jake Sherman, Max Cohen and Mica Soellner
PRESENTED BY META
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Punchbowl News Presents
Introducing Tech – our newest policy vertical. From high-profile interviews with industry influencers & policymakers to key lobbying updates, Punchbowl News Tech will be your go-to for timely technology insights.
Read our first Tech Quarterly now