The far-right US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is facing backlash after complaining that her elected position’s salary is “too low”.

Earlier this week, the Republican Representative from Georgia appeared on journalist Glenn Greenwald’s podcast and expressed concern about her congressional salary, which according to public records is $174,000 annually.

Greene told Greenwald: “Becoming a member of Congress has made my life miserable. I made a lot more money before I got here. I’ve lost money since I’ve gotten here.”

“It’s not a life that I think is like something that I enjoy because I don’t enjoy it,” added Greene, who had previously owned a CrossFit affiliate gym in Georgia before being elected to Congress in 2020.

Additionally, Greene complained about the amount of time her congressional work consumes, saying: “The nature of this job, it keeps members of Congress and Senators in Washington so much of the time, too much of the time … that we don’t get to go home and spend more time with our families, our friends … or maybe just be regular people because this job is so demanding. It’s turned into practically year-round.”

She continued: “For those of us in the House of Representatives, we have to run for Congress every two years. So you’re practically campaigning nearly the entire time that you’re here serving as a Representative.”

Greene’s comments have faced swift backlash online.

“Feel free to step aside if it isn’t too cushy of a job for you @RepMTG. Millions of us won’t mind. #stopwhining,” one Twitter user wrote, tweeting at her account.

Someone else tweeted: “Griping Greene you don’t get to serve the Constitution and its people expecting to profit. Get a part time job or better yet, just quit.”

Another user added: “Really? Being in Congress isn’t supposed to be about money. And I guarantee you make more per year than most of your constituents. If you don’t like the life and job, stop running for office.”

Greene – who has previously voiced support for the far-right conspiracy group QAnon and made racist, antisemitic and anti-Muslim remarks – also told Greenwald that people have harassed her since working on Capitol Hill.

The congresswoman said: “I have people come up to me and say crazy things to me out of the blue in public places that they believe because they read it on the internet or saw it on some news show about me.”

Sunday Snark And Toons

It’s Sunday morning and it’s c-c-cold here!  It’s even colder in New York!  I have just two Sunday snarklets today, and a few ‘toons, and then I shall return you to the business of enjoying the rest of your Sunday while I growl a bit longer! One piece in The Guardian caught my eye last night … first I laughed, then I growled.  Marge Greene, the highly unqualified second-term congresswoman from…

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Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 16, 2023

By David Himmel

• I’m really glad we’re past the point in our zeitgeist where The Black Eyed Peas are everywhere.

• Setting up a new computer has a way of opening your eyes to new ways of thinking. Or, or… and hear me out… you can just put the same settings in place and keep on trucking the way you have been.

• Most hotel conference center carpeting makes the floor look like it has pink eye. Funny that the industry remains in agreement of that design choice.

• I sound naive saying this, I know, and while I’m not an economist, I might be on to something here, so please, keep reading… The salaries of members of Congress should be reflective of the dollars put toward social programs. So, the more people they help, the more money they earn. And don’t make the budget argument. It doesn’t hold up. Budgets and money are only as real as we believe them to be. We can go ahead and make more and say it’s got value. Everyone will believe it because everyone already believes it.

• Living through gray Chicago winters doesn’t make you tough. It makes you resilient against the truth that you’re living in a depressing hellscape.

• Waking up unsure of how you got to bed or even what time you made your way to it while being stone-cold sober is a truly incredible feeling. I assume.

Hot take: In the event of a government shut-down, every congress-person should become ineligible for reelection because they have proven they are incapable of effectively governing the nation.

President Trump is asking everyone to forward this message to a minimum of 20 people, and ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in the United States will have the message. This is an idea that should be passed around, regardless of political party.

The TRUMP Rules: Congressional Reform Act of 2017

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office. And, no more perks go with them.

2. Congress (past, present, & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress must purchase their own retirement plan, just as ALL Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people (i.e. NO MORE INSIDER TRADING!!!).

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congress made all these contracts by and for themselves.

Serving in Congress is an honor and privledge NOT a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators should serve their term(s), then go home and go back to work … not get all kinds of freebies.

NO WONDER THEY’RE FIGHTING EVERYTHING HE TRIES! 🤔

Elizabeth Warren on weaponized budget models

In yesterday’s essay, I broke down the new series from The American Prospect on the hidden ideology and power of budget models, these being complex statistical systems for weighing legislative proposals to determine if they are “economically sound.” The assumptions baked into these models are intensely political, and, like all dirty political actors, the model-makers claim they are “empirical” while their adversaries are “doing politics”:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/04/cbo-says-no/#wealth-tax

Today edition of the Prospect continues the series with an essay by Elizabeth Warren, describing how her proposal for universal child care was defeated by the incoherent, deeply political assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office’s model, blocking an important and popular policy simply because “computer says no”:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-04-04-policymakers-fight-losing-battle-models/

When the Build Back Better bill was first mooted, it included a promise of universal, federally funded childcare. This was excised from the final language of the bill (renamed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill), because the CBO said it would cost too much: $381.5b over ten years.

This is a completely nonsensical number, and the way that CBO arrived at it is illuminating, throwing the ideology of CBO modeling into stark relief. You see, the price tag for universal childcare did not include the benefits of childcare!

As Warren points out, this is not how investment works. No business leader assesses their capital expenditures without thinking of the dividends from those investments. No firm decides whether to open a new store by estimating the rent and salaries and ignoring the sales it will generate. Any business that operates on that basis would never invest in anything.

Universal childcare produces enormous dividends. Kids who have access to high-quality childcare grow up to do better in school, have less trouble with the law, and earn more as adults. Mothers who can’t afford childcare, meanwhile, absent themselves from the workforce during their prime earning years. Those mothers are less likely to advance professionally, have lower lifetime earnings, and a higher likelihood of retiring without adequate savings.

What’s more, universal childcare is the only way to guarantee a living wage to childcare workers, who are disproportionately likely to rely on public assistance, including SNAP (AKA food stamps) to make ends meet. These stressors affect childcare workers’ job performance, and also generate public expenditures to keep those workers fed and housed.

But the CBO model does not include any of those benefits. As Warren says, in a CBO assessment, giving every kid in America decent early childhood care and every childcare worker a living wage produces the same upside as putting $381.5 in a wheelbarrow and setting it on fire.

This is by design. Congress has decreed that CBO assessments can’t factor in secondary or indirect benefits from public expenditure. This is bonkers. Public investment is all secondary and indirect benefits — from highways to broadband, from parks to training programs, from education to Medicare. Excluding indirect benefits from assessments of public investments is a literal, obvious, unavoidable recipe for ending the most productive and beneficial forms of public spending.

It means that — for example — a CBO score for Meals on Wheels for seniors is not permitted to factor in the Medicare savings from seniors who can age in their homes with dignity, rather than being warehoused at tremendous public expense in nursing homes.

It means that the salaries of additional IRS enforcers can only be counted as an expense — Congress isn’t allowed to budget for the taxes that those enforcers will recover.

And, of course, it’s why we can’t have Medicare For All. Private health insurers treat care as an expense, with no upside. Denying you care and making you sicker isn’t a bug as far as the health insurance industry is concerned — it’s a feature. You bear the expense of the sickness, after all, and they realize the savings from denying you care.

But public health programs can factor in those health benefits and weigh them against health costs — in theory, at least. However, if the budgeting process refuses to factor in “indirect” benefits — like the fact that treating your chronic illness lets you continue to take care of your kids and frees your spouse from having to quit their job to look after you — then public health care costings become indistinguishable from the private sector’s for-profit death panels.

Child care is an absolute bargain. The US ranks 33d out of 37 rich countries in terms of public child care spending, and in so doing, it kneecaps innumerable mothers’ economic prospects. The upside of providing care is enormous, far outweighing the costs — so the CBO just doesn’t weigh them.

Warren is clear that there’s no way to make public child care compatible with CBO scoring. Even when she whittled away at her bill, excluding millions of families who would have benefited from the program, the CBO still flunked it.

The current budget-scoring system was designed for people who want to “shrink government until it fits in a bathtub, and then drown it.” It is designed so that we can’t have nice things. It is designed so that the computer always says no.

Warren calls for revisions to the CBO model, to factor in those indirect benefits that are central to public spending. She also calls for greater diversity in CBO oversight, currently managed by a board of 20 economists and only two non-economists — and the majority of the economists got their PhDs from the same program and all hew to the same orthodoxy.

For all its pretense of objectivity, modeling is a subjective, interpretive discipline. If all your modelers are steeped in a single school, they will incinerate the uncertainty and caveats that should be integrated into every modeler’s conclusions, the humility that comes from working with irreducible uncertainty.

Finally, Warren reminds us that there are values that are worthy of consideration, beyond a dollars-and-cents assessment. Even though programs like child care pay for themselves, that’s not the only reason to favor them — to demand them. Child care creates “an America in which everyone has opportunities — and ‘everyone’ includes mamas.” Child care is “an investment in care workers, treating them with respect for the hard work they do.”

The CBO’s assassination of universal child care is exceptional only because it was a public knifing. As David Dayen and Rakeen Mabud wrote in their piece yesterday, nearly all of the CBO’s dirty work is done in the dark, before a policy is floated to the public:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-04-03-hidden-in-plain-sight/

The entire constellation of political possibility has been blotted out by the CBO, so that when we gaze up at the sky, we can only see a few sickly stars — weak economic nudges like pricing pollution, and not the glittering possibilities of banning it. We see the faint hope of “bending the cost-curve” on health care, and not the fierce light of simply providing care.

We can do politics. We have done it before. Every park and every highway, our libraries and our schools, our ports and our public universities — these were created by people no smarter than us. They didn’t rely on a lost art to do their work. We know how they did it. We know what’s stopping us from doing it again. And we know what to do about it.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

[Image ID: A disembodied hand, floating in space. It holds a Univac mainframe computer. The computer is shooting some kind of glowing red rays that are zapping three US Capitol Buildings, suspended on hovering platforms. In the background, the word NO is emblazoned in a retrocomputing magnetic ink font, limned in red.]

never ask a woman her age, a man his salary, or new jersey congressional candidates what happened in the woods

I guess ole Ted doesn't know what pays his congressional salary. Maybe he doesn't care because corporations pay him so much more. Either way, he is still a fucking idiot!

"Congressional salaries are $174,000. That pay has not increased since 2009; in real dollars, salaries are the lowest they’ve been since 1955. Our health insurance is purchased on the Affordable Care Act exchange. We pay 30% of the premium; the House of Representatives pays 70%, similar to most workplace insurance plans. ... Mandatory pensions take up 4.4% of the salary.... two residences are required; votes keep House members in Washington, D.C., about a hundred days each year. No housing allowance or per diem is paid, and no tax deduction for business housing is permitted. ...

Juxtapose these facts against the misconception that people become rich by serving in Congress. ... Congress is full of multimillionaires for the same reason that the NBA is full of tall people. It’s easier to get recruited and win with such advantages. Serving in Congress does not pad your bank account any more than playing basketball adds inches to your height. While we might accept physical attributes in athletes as natural or desirable, wealth does not give a better perspective for politics. It undercuts the purpose of representative democracy.

Americans rightfully fume that congressmembers trade stocks, convinced that insider information is misused, but we refuse to squarely address the harm that comes from representatives having such wealth in the first place. From 2019 to 2022, over 130 members of the House of Representatives each traded over $100,000 of stock. To trade that dollar volume in a year, these folks are either addicted day traders who cannot manage their money (much less our economy), or—and this is the reality—they own stocks worth many multiples of what they traded.

Representatives who are my peers in age and years of political service—like Cindy Axne, Mike Garcia, Ashley Hinson, Ro Khanna, Tom Malinowski, Blake Moore, Kim Schrier, and Mikie Sherrill—have each traded over $1 million while in office. In my life before Congress, I knew that people with net worths in the tens of millions were not my peers. Pretending they are in Congress is an indignity."

From I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan by US Rep Katie Porter

Sen. Bernie Sanders said late Tuesday night that it was time to "put up or shut up" for any U.S. lawmaker who claims to fight for the working class as he and other progressives in Congress vowed to insert paid sick leave into a labor agreement between railway workers and the nation's rail companies.

With a vote in the U.S. House as early as Wednesday morning, Sanders was asked by MSNBC host Chris Hayes whether Congress has the authority to mandate that sick leave—the final key demand of railway workers unions who have battling the carriers for months—be added to the deal that congressional lawmakers have been asked by President Joe Biden to force through as a way to avert a strike by the workers that would have huge impacts on the national economy.

"Congress has the power to come up with an agreement in order to protect the economy," said Sanders. While he said that he doesn't know anybody who wants a strike—and acknowledged that such a work stoppage would hurt the broader economy—Sanders said the "bottom line" in this fight is quite clear.

"The bottom line," said Sanders, "is that the American people and workers throughout this country are profoundly disgusted by the kind of corporate greed that we are seeing. Everybody knows that billionaires are getting richer, working people are struggling, corporate profits are at an all-time high, and they're making goods unaffordable for ordinary Americans—that's the overall reality. And what you're seeing in the rail industry is that phenomenon in spades."

Citing statistics that show the major rail carriers have made an estimated $21 billion in profits over the last three quarters, another $25 billion in stock buybacks to enrich their wealthy investors, and multi-million dollar salaries to top executives, Sanders slammed the fact that the railway workers themselves "have zero—underline zero—guaranteed sick leave."

Watch the full interview:

On Tuesday night, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) introduced an amendment in the House that would add seven paid sick days to the labor contract proposal that was negotiated with the assistance of the White House earlier this year, but subsequently rejected by a number of the railway unions for lack of sick leave. With the strike deadline looming, Biden on Monday angered many rank-and-file union members and outside progressives by asking Congress to force through the previous contract deal without pushing for the inclusion of sick leave.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday backed Biden's call to push through a vote on the contract "with no poison pills or changes to the negotiated terms," but in a Dear Colleague letter issued Tuesday evening she adjusted that course by indicating that two votes would be held, explaining to members:

• First, we will consider the strike-averting legislation to adopt the Tentative Agreement, as negotiated by the railroad companies and labor leaders.

• Next, we will have a separate, up-or-down vote to add seven days of paid sick leave for railroaders to the Tentative Agreement.

• Then, we will send this package to the Senate, which will then go directly to President Biden for signature.

With Sanders vowing to fight for the same kind of inclusion in the Senate, reporting from Capitol Hill indicated that there may be enough Republican support for adding the paid sick leave to bypass the 60-vote threshold and overcome a filibuster in the upper chamber.

Asked if he thought he could get the ten necessary votes from the GOP in the Senate, Sanders said, "Well, who knows?" as he mentioned that Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the party caucus' whip, has indicated "significant" support for the amendment among Republicans.

"Look, you have a number of Republicans who claim—claim—to be supporters of the working class," he added. "Well, if you are a supporter of the working class how are you going to vote against the proposal which provides guaranteed paid sick leave to workers who have none right now? So I am cautiously optimistic that we can get this done."

Asked by Hayes if this represents a "put your money where your mouth is" moment for a Republican Party that has tried to claim the mantle of being the authentic blue-collar party, Sanders nodded in agreement.

"Put up or shut up," said Sanders. "If you can't vote for this, to give workers today—who really have hard jobs, dangerous jobs—if you can't give them paid sick leave, don't tell anybody that you stand with working families."

January 2024: Spitting In The Eye Of The Conspiracy

My queen's lone surviving brother called in today from Harrisburg, PA. Amongst other things, he was worried because Memphis, or The City as I call it, had been declared the murder capital of the United States according to whatever bogus source had hit his ears & local representatives were calling for the governor to dispatch the national guard to Memphis. After a little research, I discovered all this angst was based off a statement made by our (as in my queen & me) state congressional representative, Brent Taylor, back in November 2023. To be clear, my queen & I were part of the one-third of voters who voted for his opponent. Taylor represents District 31 which is divided five ways between part of Memphis (including our neighborhood which was added to the district several years ago thanks to state Republican gerrymandering), Lakeland (a white flight community), Germantown (a white flight community), Collierville (a white flight community) & a portion of unincorporated Shelby County including Eads, TN where Taylor resides (also a white flight enclave). Memphis is good enough for them to earn their inflated salaries in but not good enough to live in. Prior to Taylor, we were represented by the rightfully indicted Brian Kelsey. Note that the unincorporated part of Shelby County where Taylor resides fought to be unincorporated from Memphis a few years ago so his "concern" about Memphians reads hollow. You might ask why all these suburban white flight communities exist. The simple answer is desegregation in the Seventies & they've been pushing out further since then. Technically speaking, Olive Branch & Southaven in Mississippi have become white flight communities from Memphis in relatively recent years. All this is part of a larger & ongoing narrative in Tennessee, to paint Memphis as a lawless, dangerous city because we are an African-American majority city that doesn't vote Republican. If you haven't figured out by now, the Republican party, at least in the former Confederate states, is the party of the Old South. I walked outside for an hour on Saturday & for about 2 hours on Sunday. If the prevailing narrative was true, I'd be dead twice over with no wallet & no shoes on my feet. Don't buy it. There is a community where you live right now, no matter where you are in the world, that is steeped in bad press. Look closer. Ask yourself, who profits... who has something to gain? The answer might be complicated & might make you question yourself but embrace the complications. Despite what we learned reading myths & religious verses, existence is complicated. There are some of us humans who are lost to corruption & it can be easy to give in to hardening our hearts but, as a believer whose had his fair share of heart crushing betrayals, I ask you to trust your gut but never lose hope. There is a day that I dream of where like-minded brothers & sisters embrace & say "you were not alone." I don't know that I will see that day but my heartfelt wish is the younger generation will.

I recognize that some folks who come to my blog are looking for an escape. You just want to look at garden photos. I get it. I have posts for that. This one isn't one of them. Above all else, this blog is about me. That people agree or disagree with me or are comfortable or uncomfortable with what I post is immaterial. This is me spitting my ideas & images at the universe. If others find value in it, then maybe me wandering in thought helped someone somewhere. At the end of our days, that's the best any of us can hope from our humble but difficult existence. Keep safe.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/eu-fears-that-trump-s-return-to-power-could-collapse-nato-nyt  Looks like your dream will come true when Trump wins next year. He will destroy NATO and it is the only security EU has so European democracies will collapse. Trump will make US fascist. Told you it will be work camps next. Does it matter if it will be the right or the left when both are always building work camps? How else will they solve the climate and overpopulation problem? Russia made the first move when they gave US and NATO the Ultimatum back in December 2021. 

I'm struggling to understand something here. Make my 'dream' come true? The ENTIRE United States systems is built on imperialism, genocide, white supremacy, militarization, colonialism, among many other axis's of oppression. People are beyond sick and tired of the way these structures continue to suppress and oppress people around the world and in their 'own' country. Especially when nearly a trillion dollars go to funding a military that could be allocated and used to help people in the US have proper housing, access to food and medical resources, life saving care and medication, and overall a better standard of living.

A lot of us already live in capitalistic hellscapes. What do I have, or most people for that matter have to be consistently happy about (on philosophical and literal levels here) because so many of us are struggling to survive. Even in liberal governments, I know multiple people who have more than one job, and some of those people are actually working full-time or are on a salary. Grocery prices are also expected to go up AGAIN next year in Canada. And the way the government has been accountable here about this? Sending a few grocery rebates (while not even taking account of people in Northern communities -especially Indigenous communities everywhere in this settler state, which have been impacted by this for decades). There is a food security and housing crisis here too, and we're run by a liberal government, and the conservative party will evidently make things worse too, just to make things clear that this struggle is everywhere.

Also, when Trump was voted in, it was only then so many white women rallied because things were now starting to effect them -something Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks and folks in the disability justice movement HAVE been saying all along. There are too many American politicians who don't care because they're paid at the end of the day. I can think of a handful of exceptions in Congress, Congressional Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, to name a few. But to say that it's going to crash and burn thanks to the VERY people who have been saying this whole system is corrupt to the core is just wild to me. There will always be bigots who vote, over 70 million who love Trump and have defended him. There will also be people who vote for Biden, despite all he has done, too. There are also alternatives like Claudia De La Cruz and Karina Garcia, and rather then see them as 'taking away votes,' but as one of the many things you can do to say that these are the people in postions of power and advocate for them, but you're stuck in this in a bipartisan model and it really isn't reflexive and accountable to ongoing issues people have been facing in the US for years, but also being tired of their imperialistic violence. And want real change.

I'm also one SINGLE voice on this matter, so to put this entirely on me is something I'm truly at a loss for words for. Because when someone tries to argue 'but it's the lesser evil here,' then I sincerely ask you to unpack a sentiment like that.

The federal indictment against Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., was unsealed Wednesday ahead of his first court appearance on federal charges. 

A 13-count indictment was made public Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York charging the congressman with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.

The indictment was returned Tuesday under seal by a federal grand jury sitting in Central Islip, New York. Santos was arrested Wednesday morning and will be arraigned in the afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlene R. Lindsay at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York. He currently is being held at that federal courthouse. 

"This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations," U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. "Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself. He used political contributions to line his pockets, unlawfully applied for unemployment benefits that should have gone to New Yorkers who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and lied to the House of Representatives. My Office and our law enforcement partners will continue to aggressively root out corruption and self-dealing from our community’s public institutions and hold public officials accountable to the constituents who elected them."

‘SERIAL LIAR’ GOP REP'S RE-ELECTION BID SETS SOCIAL MEDIA ABLAZE: ‘FUNNIEST PRIMARIES’

Santos, who also goes by Anthony Devolder, unsuccessfully ran in 2020 to represent New York’s Third Congressional District but was victorious his second time around in 2022. He was sworn in on Jan. 7, 2023, a mere days after the New York Times exposed that Santos allegedly fabricated larges swathes of his resume, including that he had worked for two major Wall Street firms, graduated from Baruch College and had descended from a Holocaust survivor. The Times reported Santos was also facing pending fraud charges in his native Brazil. 

In January, the local Nassau County GOP demanded Santos resign, namely taking issue with the freshman congressman lying over his Jewish ancestry, but he refused. And House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, hanging onto a narrow Republican majority, said Santos would be removed if a House Ethics probe revealed he violated campaign finance laws. 

"As a retired NYPD Detective, I am confident the justice system will fully reveal Congressman Santos' long history of deceit, and I once again call on this serial fraudster to resign from office," Rep. Anthony D'Esposito, a fellow Republican freshman congressman whose district borders Santos', said in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

Asked by Fox News Wednesday about Santos' indictment, Rep. Marcus Molinaro, R-N.Y., remarked in the corridors of Capitol Hill, "I can't wait for him to be gone." 

Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., expressed a similar sentiment off camera. 

The DOJ indictment alleges that at the height of the pandemic in 2020, Santos applied for and received unemployment benefits while he was earning an annual salary of $120,000 from a Florida investment firm and running for Congress in New York. He alleged received more than $24,000 in unemployment insurance benefits from the New York State Department of Labor. 

NY REPUBLICAN REP. GEORGE SANTOS TO RECUSE HIMSELF FROM COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS, SOURCES SAY

His alleged behavior continued during his second run for Congress when he is accused of pocketing tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and used that money laundered into his own bank accounts to pay down personal debts and buy designer clothing. Santos is also accused of lying on House financial disclosures about income and dividends earned through Devolder Organization LLC, based out of Florida, and unemployment benefits. 

House GOP leadership used their weekly press conference Wednesday to blast the Biden administration ahead of the expiration of Title 42 later this week but also responded to questions about Santos. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-L.A., noted that Santos no longer is serving on committees, saying that "in America, there is a presumption of innocence, but there are serious charges, and he’s going to have to go through the legal process." 

"But we’re going to continue to work to root out fraud. And there’s lots of it. We’re talking about tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud in many federal programs," Scalise continued. "We pointed this out. I mean they’re not even checking social security numbers. So you’ve got reports of people even in foreign countries getting taxpayer money for things that should only be available to Americans who are coming on hard times. Not to go to drug cartels or to people who want to just bill the system. And so I hope Democrats will support us in rooting out fraud, but they haven’t shown an interest in it so far." 

"As I’ve said from the very beginning on questions on this subject, this legal process is going to play itself out. Unfortunately, this is not the first time a member of Congress from either party has been indicted," Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said. "There are a set of rules. And as the Majority Leader stated, he voluntarily had stepped down from his committees. We are committed to making sure that we root out any fraud when it comes to unemployment pandemic assistance. And we’re working to have support from our conference. And it’s good policy, and we urge the Democrats to vote in support of it." 

Santos' court appearance is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET. 

By Jessica Corbett

Common Dreams

Aug. 10, 2023

"Why is the Biden administration trying to rob itself of a clear opportunity to protect American workers and the economy from being roiled by MAGA saboteurs?" asked the head of the Revolving Door Project.

A government watchdog on Thursday called out the Biden administration for attempting to kill a lawsuit filed in May by a union representing about 75,000 workers across U.S. agencies that challenges the federal debt ceiling law.

"Why is the Biden administration trying to rob itself of a clear opportunity to protect American workers and the economy from being roiled by MAGA saboteurs?" asked Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project.

A federal judge canceled plans to hear arguments for the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) case when President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans who were holding the economy hostage announced a negotiated deal to suspend the nation's borrowing limit until 2025—signed into law in early June as the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA).

Biden then ordered his aides to create a working group intended to prevent similar crises in the future. As the White House said last month, "Now that the latest debt ceiling crisis is behind us, it is necessary to explore all legal and policy options to prevent Congress from ever again holding hostage the full faith and credit of the United States."

Now, as Government Executive reported earlier this week, even though "federal employees are still facing the prospect of delayed paychecks when the debt ceiling is reinstated in 2025," the U.S. Department of Justice "asked Judge Richard Stearns of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to dismiss the case, suggesting the FRA has made the case moot and NAGE members lack standing because their claims are 'wholly speculative.'"

Hauser said that "the Justice Department's notion that the federal employees' claims of injury are 'wholly speculative, as they depend on a future chain of events that may never occur,' is absurd: The crisis is scheduled to recur precisely on January 1, 2025, as it has recurred repeatedly this century."

"In the meantime, uncertainty continues to trouble hundreds of thousands of federal workers, who have no guarantee of how their jobs, salaries, and pensions will be affected," he noted. "Indeed, the stance that [Attorney General] Merrick Garland's Justice Department is advancing creates an unfortunately sound case against workers considering taking a job in what has become an unstable federal government."

During the drawn-out fight earlier this year, as Republicans in Congress signaled their willingness to force the first-ever U.S. default despite warnings of a resulting economic catastrophe, Biden even suggested that while he wasn't planning to invoke the 14th Amendment—which states that the validity of the nation's public debt "shall not be questioned"—to end the current crisis, he would be open to challenging the debt ceiling law in the future.

"Rather than use the existing case as a means to that end, however, the administration is seeking to have it dismissed. The Justice Department declined to weigh in further on the merits of the case, reducing its argument only to the union's lack of standing," Government Executive explained, noting that a hearing on the motion to dismiss the case is set for August 29.

Hauser said that "after calling for just such a case to be brought, the Biden administration now fights it, demonstrating a truly remarkable willingness to shoot itself in the foot."

"The administration has every authority to take a different tack in this lawsuit and make space for the constitutionality of the debt limit to be worked out in the famously slow-moving U.S. legal system before the clock runs out on preventing the next crisis," he stressed.

The NAGE complaint names as defendants Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in their official capacities.

Biden is seeking reelection next year and is expected to face the Republican nominee; former President Donald Trump is currently leading a crowded field of GOP candidates in spite of his legal issues, including the recent indictment related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss, which led to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.