The conversation between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris begins at 8 PM CT.

In Philadelphia Tuesday night, both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are looking to make their mark on history in a city bursting with it.

When the presidential debate kicks off, it will be the first – and perhaps only – conversation between the two major party candidates.

“People are waiting to see how Kamala will do,” said University of Texas at Tyler Professor of Public Administration Dr. Ken Wink. “I think they’re also waiting to see if Trump can defend his record as president.”

“I think Kamala Harris wants to show that Trump doesn’t have the temperament to be president, and Trump wants to show that Kamala Harris is not really qualified in a sense of being president based on her past performances,” Wink added.

The economy has consistently polled as an important issue for voters in this year’s election, and the Biden administration has faced criticism over its handling of the economy particularly after inflation hit a four-decade high in 2022.

“Harris has to be able to articulate that the worst is behind us in terms of the economy and yet we all still feel the effects of inflation, there’s no doubt about that,” said Wink. “I think that is the big policy issue that could go either way and both candidates need to do well on that issue.”

When asked during an interview with CNN late last month about her policy shifts, Harris said her “values have not changed.”

“That is an interesting quote, and I wonder if Trump will attack her truthfulness or veracity on those changes of issue positions,” said Wink.

Trump has questioned Harris’ racial identity, after expressing doubt over former President Barack Obama’s country of birth.

Criticism from the Democratic Party persuaded President Joe Biden to drop out of the race following June’s presidential debate in Atlanta.

“If people can see a pretty clear winner, and the polls swing, you know, as much as two percent toward one candidate or the other, that could very well be decisive in the election.” Wink added.

He also said that the vote share from third party candidates could impact the race, even though Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no longer seeking the White House.

56 days remain until election day. Early voting in Texas begins on Oct. 21, and the last day to register to vote is Oct. 7.

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The new policy platform on the Harris campaign’s website comes 50 days after Biden exited the race.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign just released a new page on its website titled, “Issues,” which includes a 23-point policy platform that comes following weeks of criticism over its absence. 

Pressure has been building on the Harris campaign to put up a policy platform on its website, similar to how former President Donald Trump and others have done in the past. Upon its release this week, however, the platform was met with even more criticism over a lack of specifics.

In particular, one conservative immigration hawk took issue with the policy platform’s failure to clarify Harris’ stance on border wall funding, and whether she still views illegal border crossings as a civil enforcement issue — or rather, a criminal one.

“The Harris campaign finally has an ‘Issues’ page, but — on immigration, at least — there’s no there, there,” Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital. “She doesn’t say if she’d build more border barriers. She doesn’t say whether she still wants to decriminalize border-jumping. The statement just repeats the vacuous nonsense about the ‘bipartisan’ Senate border bill, which was drafted by the Biden-Harris DHS to codify its unlawful schemes to import more illegal aliens.”

Despite indicating a potential Harris-Walz administration would “bring back the bipartisan border security bill,” the new online policy platform did not indicate where Harris stands on funding additional border wall construction. Republicans have pointed to Harris’ public support for the failed bipartisan border bill as evidence she now backs a border wall after once calling it a “medieval vanity project.” 

But Harris campaign officials have said the border bill did not include any new money for border wall construction — it just extended the timeline to spend funds appropriated during Trump’s last year as president. The bill, however, has limits to ensure the money is spent on border barriers.

“Americans should believe Harris’ prior statements and current policies as Vice President,” Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told Fox News Digital in a statement Tuesday. “She has previously stated numerous times that she opposes a border wall. And on day one of the Biden-Harris Administration, they halted construction of the border wall system.”

Meanwhile, while running for president in 2019, Harris indicated during a nationally televised debate that she would not go after illegal border crossings. In a segment on ABC’s “The View,” she reiterated her stance in a riff with the late-Sen. John McCain’s daughter, Meghan. 

“I would not make it a crime punishable by jail,” Harris said. “It should be a civil enforcement issue but not a criminal enforcement issue.”

“Harris repeatedly said during her CNN interview that her values have not changed,” Ries highlighted in her statement to Fox News Digital. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the criticism from Krikorian and others about a lack of specifics in its new online policy platform, but did not receive a response.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called the new policy platform “a late-night, half-ass, wish list of policies.” 

“If Kamala really wanted to lower costs and secure the border — why did she cast the tie-breaking vote to cause inflation and support the war on our energy industry, and why is she allowing an invasion of illegal immigrants through our southern border as we speak?”

Not long after the Harris campaign’s “Issues” page was added to its website, social media users pointed out that the new web page contained metadata with language urging voters to reelect President Joe Biden, according to The New Republic. The Biden language was quickly removed, but not before leaving the impression that the Harris campaign copied and pasted from Biden’s documents, the outlet reported.

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The economy, a key issue for voters as the November 5 presidential election draws nearer, will have a starring role in the debate tonight between the two candidates, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump. 

About 8 in 10 adults tell CBS News that the economy is a major factor in their choice at the polls, outpacing issues such as abortion and climate change. 

Each candidate will seek to convince voters that their proposals will lead to better economic conditions, ranging from bigger paychecks to lower inflation. And CBS News polling shows that Trump may have an edge with inflation-weary consumers, with about 4 in 10 voters saying prices are likely to go down if he wins — twice as many as those who believe the same would be the case with a Harris victory. 

“[I]nflation and the high cost of living are deeply impacting lower- and middle-income Americans,” said Liza Landsman, the CEO of Stash, a financial services firm that polled consumers ahead of the debate, in a statement. “What the study did shed sharper light on is how vastly different individuals’ perceive their economic condition depending on their political view.”

For instance, about 7 in 10 Trump supporters told Stash they are deeply concerned about inflation, compared with 2 in 10 Harris voters, the study found.

Economists largely rate the current economy as good, albeit with some weak spots, such as a slowing labor market. But about 42% of Americans incorrectly believe the U.S. is currently in a recession, down from about 48% last year, a new MassMutual survey found. 

“Sometimes it is difficult to separate out various doom-and-gloom factors when it is hitting your wallet directly,” Paul LaPiana, a certified financial planner and head of brand, product and affiliated distribution with MassMutual, told CBS MoneyWatch.

Even so, a number of Wall Street economists are predicting that Harris’ policies are likely to result in stronger economic growth for the U.S., while warning that Trump’s combination of tariffs and tax cuts could both spur inflation while causing the deficit to mushroom by trillions. 

Here’s what to know about three key economic issues that could influence voters. 

Inflation and grocery costs

Inflation has sapped household budgets since 2021, when prices started rising due to the impact of the pandemic, which disrupted global supply chains and prompted the federal government to pump trillions into the economy. (Both Presidents Trump and Biden signed large spending bills into law during the pandemic, authorizing stimulus payments and extra unemployment aid, among other supports).

To temper inflation, the Federal Reserve responded by hiking interest rates to their highest point in 23 years. That’s paying off, with government data on Wednesday expected to show that inflation cooled to 2.6% on an annual basis in August, its lowest since March 2021, according to financial data firm FactSet.

But lower inflation doesn’t mean that prices have come down; instead, it simply means that the rate of price hikes have moderated from their pandemic peak. 

The candidates are likely to discuss their plans to address inflation, which remains a key issue for voters given that grocery costs remain 21% higher than they were prior to the pandemic. That means a cart of groceries in 2020 that cost $150 would now set you back by $182, or $32 more at the register.

Harris has vowed to tackle grocery costs by enacting the first federal law against price gouging by food suppliers and retailers. But economists say they’re skeptical such a law could make much of an impact. 

Trump, meanwhile, has pledged to end the “inflation nightmare.” But his policies, which include adding tariffs to all imported goods, would likely fuel inflation and reverse some of the progress of the last two years, some economists say.

What the candidates are pledging on taxes 

Both Harris and Trump have already made some tax pledges, with Harris vowing to increase the corporate tax rate and Trump proposing a steep cut, taking it down to 15% from its current 21%. 

Trump also wants to extend his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — his 2017 law that reduced tax rates for most individuals but provided the biggest benefits to the nation’s richest families. Many of those cuts are due to expire at the end of 2025. Trump’s vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, has also floated the idea of a bigger Child Tax Credit.

Harris, meanwhile, wants to enact more generous tax benefits, such as a $6,000 Child Tax Credit for parents of newborns and a bigger Earned Income Tax Credit. One analysis from the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model found that her proposals would help more low- and middle-income families than Trump’s.

“If Democrats sweep, personal and corporate taxes and benefit spending will likely rise,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in September 3 research report. “If Republicans sweep, they will likely stay mostly unchanged.”

Housing and the American Dream 

Housing remains out of reach for millions of Americans who are now priced out of home-buying due to high mortgage rates and housing prices. 

Harris has proposed providing $25,000 in down payment assistance for Americans who have paid their rent on time for two years, with more support for first-generation homeowners. She’s also proposing tax incentives for builders of starter homes, with the goal of widening the housing supply and lowering home prices.

Trump, meanwhile, has proposed making federal land available to help with housing supply, but his campaign hasn’t offered any details. He’s also vowed to deport between 15 million to 20 million undocumented workers, which he’s blamed for increasing housing demand and pushing up prices.

But the surge in home prices preceded the recent jump in undocumented workers, the New York Times reported. And deporting so many workers, many of whom work in construction, could jeopardize the workforce that builds homes. 

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The debate was heavily focused on US domestic matters—even when questions were on international affairs, both candidates sought to bring the issues back to domestic politics and policies.  

Of most relevance to Australia was the lack of interest in this region. Other than passing references—in heavily political contexts—neither the media nor the candidates raised China in any meaningful way. Notwithstanding the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, China is the most significant issue globally. 

Without China being prioritised by the two candidates or media today, we can only hope that the next administration will be struck by the realities of Beijing as the pacing military and technological threat to our livelihoods and way of life. Australia and partners like Japan, the Quad and NATO, will need to work together to ensure the next administration is focused on competing with and countering China, and does so by viewing China as a strategic rival first and not as an economic partner. 

Given the next president will immediately face a world in conflict, a further debate that is limited to foreign policy and held before the November election would be best for both US voters and America’s partners. 

On China—Bethany Allen, head of program for China investigations and analysis, and Daria Impiombato, analyst 

While the moderators never asked about China, the topic came up unprompted within the first few minutes of the debate with Harris accusing Trump of inviting ‘trade wars’ but then adding the former President ‘sold us out’ to China. In a sense this focus was not surprising because the Trump administration’s tough turn on China was one of the most significant and controversial foreign policy shifts of his term. The Biden-Harris administration has also made competition with Beijing a key platform. 

More surprising was that, other than brief references, the issue of how to manage China strategically and in the context of potential flashpoints such a Taiwan and the South China Sea did not come up at all. 

Harris and Trump went on to spar over tariffs, microchips and the pandemic response, with Harris accusing the Trump administration of allowing the sale of chips to China that served to modernise the People’s Liberation Army. Trump’s retort that the US ‘barely make any chips anymore’ and that it is Taiwan instead that’s selling them to China again demonstrated the economic lens with which he views these issues.  

This is in line with his latest stances on Taiwan, as he has repeatedly stated that the island should pay the US to defend it, and that they have ‘stolen’ the chip manufacturing business from American companies. Harris, instead, opted to focus on the CHIPS Act and her intention to win the competition with China especially on technology and artificial intelligence. 

On Alliances—Eric Lies, analyst 

What stood out, in particular for US allies the world over, was Trump’s refusal to answer the question as to whether he believes Ukraine should win in the war against Russia. Instead, he repeatedly stated that he would end the war as president-elect. A key element of deterrence is convincing potential adversaries that if they choose violence, they will be met with resolve. Responses like Trump’s, which put Ukraine and Russia on a false equivalence, corrode that confidence in US security promises and will likely make allies in the Indo-Pacific nervous, while emboldening China’s revanchist activities. 

In contrast, Harris unequivocally stated her support for allied efforts within Europe, and how she intends to continue those efforts should she be elected. It meant that a clear foreign policy difference came through between the two candidates—a more isolationist, transactional foreign policy on the one hand and an alliance-driven policy on the other.  

On Ukraine and China—Malcolm Davis, senior analyst 

On Ukraine, Harris clearly demonstrated that she understood the potential implications of a Russian victory in Ukraine. Noting that if such an outcome were realised, ‘Putin would have his eye on the rest of Europe’. This is an accurate interpretation of the stakes at play. In contrast, Trump failed to deliver a convincing response, simply saying ‘he’d get on the phone to Putin and Zelensky’. 

The risk is therefore that a second Trump Administration could reduce support for Ukraine and increase the likelihood of delivering Putin a decisive strategic victory. 

On China, both candidates avoided any real discussion of the defence and national security implications of a rising China. Instead, they focused on trade relations. Whichever candidate wins in November, however, there is a chance that they will be confronted with a major crisis with Beijing over Taiwan. This is an issue that is far more important to the United States than tariffs. 

Generally, the debate avoided any real discussion on critical and emerging technologies and the importance of maintaining US leadership. In fact, as the ASPI Critical Technology tracker shows, China now holds a dominance in high-impact research that was once held by the US. Both candidates should have dealt more with this important issue and will need to do so as president. 

On Disinformation and Migration—Mike Copage, head of the Climate and Security Policy Centre 

As the world grapples with the prospect of AI driving mis and dis-information in democracies, the debate highlighted how vulnerable American political discourse has become to the spread of disinformation without it. Pressed by moderators that there’s no evidence to back claims by vice-presidential candidate JD Vance that Haitian illegal immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Trump responded that he knew it was true because he heard it from ‘people on television’. While ridiculous at face value, the real and serious consequences of a former President and current candidate repeating clearly false, racist and anti-immigrant claims cannot be ignored. The violence perpetuated following the spread of anti-immigrant misinformation in the United Kingdom demonstrates how far that can lead without responsible leadership. 

On the Media and China—Greg Brown, senior analyst, Washington DC 

Harris had a solid showing defined by poise without policy articulation. Her supporters will feel emboldened by the strategy to distance herself from the present Administration—noting during the debate that she was neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump. 

President Trump had a weaker night—notwithstanding his zingers like ‘wake the President (Biden) up at four o’clock in the afternoon’—and appeared rambling at times. He missed opportunities to attack Harris effectively. 

As usual, the debate moderators (in this case ABC News) and voters were the losers.   

The lone foreign policy issue mentioned with any repetition was migration though with a heavy domestic lens. And neither candidate provided any sense of the drivers of, let alone policy responses to, the weaponization of mass migration. The passing references by both candidates regarding Iran, Ukraine and Russia were pedestrian. 

China, the ​supposed pacing challenge and threat, received little attention. Nor did we have a discussion of the Pentagon’s budget priorities, tariffs as tools of economic warfare, how to revive the US defence industrial base, let alone to US interests across the Pacific. 

On Asia-Pacific—Raji Pillai Rajagopalan, resident senior fellow 

While understandably focused on domestic issues, it was still surprisingly how little interest there was on foreign policy in the presidential debate. Considering the growing chaos the next president will have to deal with, that was unfortunate. 

America’s China and Indo-Pacific policy was not mentioned, nor were any other aspects of foreign and security policy in any detail. We heard only some broad outlines to which we were already familiar, such as a Trump Administration that will be suspicious of its partners because of the worry that America is being exploited, that will be more open to deal-making with adversaries such as Russia, China and North Korea, irrespective of the character of their behaviour and that will potentially raise tariff barriers with wide-ranging economic effects globally. 

On the Democrat side, Vice President Harris reiterated she would strengthen partnerships and stand up to authoritarian leaders, which is a more positive starting point, but all said without much detail. 

From a foreign policy perspective, it was clearly not a substantive debate. Leaving out everything from narrow issues of nuances to nuclear policy to broad issues such as relative commitment to different theatres like Europe, Middle East and Indo-Pacific. 

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Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump traded blows in the first presidential debate of the 2024 race — clashing over issues including abortion, economy and foreign wars.

Fox News proposes second presidential debate

US news channel Fox Newssaid it proposed to hold a second presidential debate in October. 

The channel, which largely caters to a conservative viewership, said it had sent letters to the campaigns for both Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican rival Donald Trump, before Tuesday night’s debate. 

This invitation aside, Harris’ campaign has already offered a rematch while Trump did not commit to it. 

“The reason you do a second debate is if you lose, and they lost,” he told Fox News host Sean Hannity in the spin room after the first debate. “But I’ll think about it.”

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WASHINGTON — Most of the candidates in this year’s 2024 Republican race for the presidential nomination mirror hard-line immigration policies set by the front-runner, former President Donald Trump.

What were once considered far-right policies are now common talking points among the GOP candidates. That includes support for building a wall along the Southern U.S.-Mexico border and ending birthright citizenship for American-born children of undocumented immigrants — a protection that is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Candidates also have argued for the reinstatement of Title 42, a pandemic-era immigration policy that immediately expelled migrants and barred them from claiming asylum. The policy was ended by the Biden administration earlier this year, but GOP candidates have argued that it should be revived because of the high number of migrants claiming asylum.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seen an increase in encounters with migrants at the U.S. Southern border, according to its data. In fiscal year 2022, there were nearly 2.4 million encounters with migrants, and in fiscal year 2023, which ended on Oct. 1, there were nearly 2.5 million encounters with migrants at the Southern border.

GOP candidates calling for increased border security have also pointed to the opioid crisis and illicit fentanyl that is smuggled into the U.S. More than  150 people die each day from overdoses related to fentanyl, a topic in the most recent GOP presidential debate.

Most fentanyl — about 90% — is seized by border officials at ports of entry, and more than 70% of people smuggling those drugs are U.S. citizens, according to James Mandryck, a CBP official.

Here’s where the Republican presidential candidates stand on U.S. immigration policy:

Former President Donald J. Trump

Trump’s current policies build from his first term, such as expanding the “Muslim travel ban,” which was an executive order he signed in 2017 that banned travel to seven predominantly Muslim countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Courts granted immigration attorneys who sued a nationwide temporary injunction on the ban, but in 2018 the Supreme Court upheld the third version of the executive order, which included barring travelers from Venezuela and North Korea. President Joe Biden rescinded the travel ban.

At an October campaign rally in Iowa, Trump said he would expand that Muslim ban to also include an “ideological screening” of immigrants coming into the U.S. and will ban anyone who is a “communist, Marxist or fascist” who is sympathetic to “radical Islamic terrorists” and people who do not “like our religion.”

The U.S. does not have a state religion and was founded on the principles of religious freedom.

At a late November campaign rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Trump stated he would undertake mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. There are roughly 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. Trump has also said he wants to place those immigrants in camps as they await deportation.

Trump has pledged to reinstate the “remain in Mexico” policy from his administration and send U.S. military to the Southern border.

The “remain in Mexico” policy forced asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their applications were being processed, which many immigration advocates criticized because it put those asylum seekers in harm. The Biden administration tried to get rid of the policy, but federal courts kept it in place until the Supreme Court ruled that the White House had the authority to end it.

Trump would also end a policy used by U.S. enforcement agencies that allows migrants awaiting their asylum hearings in court to live in the U.S., rather than be held at a detention facility.

Trump in addition has said during the campaign that he would end birthright citizenship through an executive order. Trump made the same promise while he was in office, but never acted on it.

Trump’s immigration policies during his first term were met with outcry from Democrats and advocates. They also opposed his attempts to end an Obama administration program that protects undocumented children brought into the country, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Federal courts halted the ending of DACA.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

DeSantis has said he supports policies similar to Trump’s, such as wanting to end birthright citizenship, reestablish the remain in Mexico policy and send U.S. military to the border.

During a trip to the border in the summer, DeSantis also backed mass deportations, allowing for the use of deadly force against suspected drug traffickers at the border and the indefinite detention of migrant youth — a violation of the Flores agreement that says undocumented youth cannot be detained for more than 20 days.

In that speech in Eagle Pass, Texas, DeSantis compared the border to a home invasion.

“If someone was breaking into your house, you would repel them with the use of force, right?” he said. “But yet if they have drugs, these backpacks, and they’re going in, and they’re cutting through an enforced structure, we’re just supposed to let ’em in? You know, I say use force to repel them. If you do that one time, they will never do that again.”

DeSantis also wants to continue building the border wall and use funds to do so by taxing money that migrants send home to Mexico.

In the third GOP presidential debate, DeSantis reiterated he would handle the U.S.–Mexico border by sending the military there and would authorize the use of deadly force for anyone crossing the border without authorization.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley

Haley said she would handle the border by ending trade relations with China, because the chemicals used to make fentanyl are shipped from China and made in Mexico by cartels. She would add 20,000 more border patrol and ICE agents and pull federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities, which limit cooperation with the federal government over immigration enforcement.

States that have sanctuary cities and counties include California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont and Washington.

Also like Trump, Haley said she would end a U.S. policy that allows migrants awaiting their asylum hearings in court to live in the U.S. rather than be held at a detention facility. Immigration courts currently have a more than 2-million-case backlog. 

During the third GOP presidential debate, Haley took a swipe at the Biden administration’s move to reinstate Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for nearly 500,000 Venezuelans, allowing them to live and work in the United States.

“It’s just going to have more of them come,” she said of Venezuelans, and instead advocated for placing sanctions on Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy 

Ramaswamy, who is one of the few candidates with no government experience, does not have an immigration platform on his campaign site, but has called for sending the U.S. military to the border.

On various interviews with Fox News, he’s alluded to sending U.S. troops into Mexico if the country does not get drug cartels under control. “We will come in and get the job done ourselves,” he said in a Fox News interview in September.

He has also called for the ending of birthright citizenship, even though he was born in Ohio to parents who were both noncitizens. His mother later became a citizen, but his father is not. He has also called for the mass deportation of U.S. citizens who were born from undocumented parents.

Ramaswamy has called for gutting H-1B visa programs for temporary workers, even though, he, a former pharmaceutical executive, and his own company have used them, as reported by Politico. H-1B visas allow U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in tech and other specialized jobs.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

Christie does not have any information on his immigration stance on his official website, but in debates and interviews he has stressed the way to handle the fentanyl crisis is to secure the Southern border and to treat addiction as a disease, such as the need for treatment centers.

In the most recent GOP presidential debate, he said he wants to increase technology at ports of entry and increase the number of border officials. Christie said if he is elected president, he would sign an executive order to send National Guard members to ports of entry.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson

While the former governor did not qualify for the most recent GOP presidential debate, he has one mention on his campaign’s website of immigration. He says he backs state-based visas.

“A one-size-fits-all approach does not adequately serve America’s varied industries and regional economies,” according to his campaign website.

The policy would allow states to design their own non-immigrant visa criteria, such as fees, employment requirements and renewal processes for visas.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum

During an interview with Forbes, Burgum said he supports sending the National Guard to the U.S. Southern border, which is something he’s done as governor. During his time in office, he also signed into law the Office of Legal Immigration to address workforce challenges in North Dakota.

Burgum has also acknowledged challenges to seasonal agriculture workers and tech employees and the “red tape” in U.S. immigration law.

Pastor and entrepreneur ​​Ryan Binkley

Binkley is the CEO of a merger and acquisitions advisory firm and a senior pastor at the Create Church based in Dallas, Texas.

On his campaign website, Binkley stated he would reorganize the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to prioritize border security. He supports physical barriers along the Southern border and also wants to end sanctuary cities as well as the current program that allows asylum seekers to remain in the U.S. while they await their immigration hearings.

Binkley outlined his plan for border security that — if approved by Congress — would authorize $10 billion until fiscal year 2028 for technology at ports of entry and provide $25 billion in barriers and technology until fiscal year 2031.

Binkley would also allow DACA recipients to be eligible for a conditional permanent residence status for up to 10 years. Under his plan, those DACA recipients could become lawful permanent residents if they obtain a college or graduate degree, serve in the U.S. military for three years or are employed and working for four years. He would also extend in-state tuition for DACA recipients.

Binkley would also extend a legal pathway to citizenship for some TPS holders who have been continually present in the U.S. for three years as of March 2021. It would extend to TPS holders from  El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, but the cutoff date would not include those from Venezuela, Afghanistan, Haiti and Ukraine.

He has also called for a “Dignity Plan,” for undocumented immigrants, who would be required to pass a background check, pay any taxes owed, pay fines that total to $5,000 over seven years, and remain in good standing.

Those who complete the program would have two pathways to remain legally in the U.S. The first path allows those who complete the “Dignity Plan” to apply every five years for a lawful status and the second path allows for a lawful permanent resident status to those who learn English, pass a civics test and participate in volunteer work.

Source : Colorado News Line

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In the wake of Hamas’ deadly attacks on Israel, former President Donald Trump is turning to a strategy he employed during the 2016 campaign of using terror abroad – and fears of future attacks on American soil – to push for hard-line immigration policies in the United States.

During a Monday rally in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Trump renewed his pledge to reinstate his controversial travel ban that targeted predominantly Muslim countries as he sought to link the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza with US border security. He also asserted, without evidence, that the “same people” perpetrating violent attacks in Israel were entering the US through “our totally open southern border,” before speculating that some people crossing the border may be planning an “attack” on the US.

The former president’s rhetoric harks back to his 2016 presidential campaign and his first term in office, when he used fears over terror attacks stateside to block immigrants and refugees from predominantly Muslim countries.

During the 2016 cycle, Trump’s campaign called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in the wake of the December 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, by suspected ISIS sympathizers. He also condemned the Obama administration’s approach to combating ISIS after then-President Barack Obama declared that the terrorist organization had been “contained” one day before the group claimed responsibility for a series of deadly coordinated attacks throughout Paris in November 2015.

“We have leadership who doesn’t know what they’re doing,” Trump said after those attacks.

Within days of taking office in January 2017, Trump signed an executive order for the initial travel ban, which blocked citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – from entering the country for 90 days.

The ban sparked protests at airports across the country and drew several legal challenges. The Supreme Court upheld the third iteration of the ban in 2018. President Joe Biden revoked the travel ban after he took office in 2021.

Since launching his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump has vowed to bring the ban back if elected and to expand it to include “communists and Marxists.”

Trump argued Monday that such a ban would prevent attacks similar to the ones launched in Israel over the weekend by the Palestinian militant group Hamas from happening in the US.

Trump is not the first Republican candidate to link terrorism fears and border security. Republicans raised fears of ISIS terrorists crossing into the US from the southern border during the 2014 midterm elections. Ahead of the 2018 midterms, Trump asserted, without evidence, that migrant caravans heading to the US from Central America had “unknown Middle Easterners” mixed in with the groups.

This election cycle, GOP candidates have been focused on a different threat: fentanyl. Some Republican presidential hopefuls have said they would use military force to combat drug trafficking at the border and vowed to address China’s role in producing the chemicals that cartels use to manufacture the drug. But a few candidates have joined Trump in drawing parallels between the attacks in Israel and safety in the US.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that people who intend to harm Americans might cross the southern border.

“You have to recognize that if that can happen in Israel, what do you think can happen in our country with an open border where 7 million people at a minimum have come through illegally?” he said at a campaign stop in Pocahontas, Iowa.

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has also sought to tie Israel’s war with Hamas to US-Mexico border policy.

“What we read about in the papers is how could this have happened with the intelligence failures and the security that Israel has on its own borders,” Ramaswamy said Sunday in Manchester, New Hampshire. “And those are important questions that are yet to be answered and will hopefully be answered in the coming weeks. But the No. 1 self-reflection of this country is that if it can happen over there, it can certainly happen over here in this country.”

In a social media post Tuesday, Ramaswamy wrote that America “should use the attacks on Israel as a wake-up call” and said he plans to visit the US-Mexico border on Friday.

Most of the Republican presidential candidates have focused their response to the Hamas attacks on hammering the Biden administration for the recent prisoner release deal with Iran, which included the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian frozen funds.

Trump asserted Monday that the deal had caused the current violence in Israel, in addition to money Iran has made in oil sales and “our country’s perceived weakness with an incompetent and corrupt leader.”

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said it was “irresponsible” for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to not link the Hamas attack to the prisoner release deal.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott accused the Biden administration of being “complicit” in the attack and called on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to testify on the $6 billion transfer before the Senate Banking Committee, on which he is the top Republican.

And DeSantis announced Tuesday that he is planning to roll out legislation during Florida’s upcoming legislative session to increase sanctions on Iran and block Iranian business in the state.

The Biden administration has said that funds from the prisoner release deal went directly to Qatar, and Iran can only access the funds for humanitarian purposes.

Source : CNN

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The committee, which saw its mission as essential to saving US democracy, will hold a last public meeting and is expected to call on the Justice Department to charge Trump and potentially some allies over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election in one of the darkest periods in modern politics.

Criminal referrals would be a symbolic move since the committee has no power to initiate legal proceedings itself. The Justice Department has its own federal investigation into January 6, 2021, now overseen by a special counsel. But, if merited by troves of evidence collected in hundreds of interviews and a summer of dramatic televised hearings, referrals would represent a moment of stark accountability for January 6. The historic recommendation of a prosecution against an ex-president would also lay down a marker for future elections and renegade presidents after an attack on democracy with no parallel.

Yet the fractured state of US politics and Trump’s incessant efforts to distort the truth about 2020, even as he launches a new White House bid, leave the committee clouded by familiar questions over its effectiveness, legitimacy and legacy as it contemplates its fateful final act.

The panel is expected to be wiped out next month by an incoming Republican House majority featuring scores of lawmakers who voted not to certify the last presidential election and who still whitewash that day of infamy nearly two years later.

But before then, the panel is expected to release its final report on Wednesday. There could be another moment of vulnerability and embarrassment on Tuesday for the ex-president when the Democrat-led House Ways and Means Committee meets to discuss what, if anything, to do with his tax returns that it finally received after a years-long court battle.

A picture of presidential incitement and negligence

In its highly produced hearings, the committee – with its seven Democrats and two Republicans who split with their own party to take part – painted scenes of horrific violence and intense efforts by Trump to steal Joe Biden’s presidency.

A Capitol Police officer told how she had slipped on spilled blood during the melee caused when the ex-president’s mob smashed its way into the Capitol. A mother and daughter who worked as election workers in Georgia described how they faced racist threats after Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, accused them of vote stealing. Rusty Bowers, the outgoing Republican speaker of the Arizona state House, testified that Trump’s calls for him to meddle with the election were “foreign to my very being.”

Often, it was Republicans – some who were with Trump in the West Wing on January 6 – who courageously testified about his assault on the Constitution, including Cassidy Hutchinson. The ex-aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows recalled, “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”

From the moment that conservative retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig warned in a June committee hearing that Trump and supporters still posed “a clear and present danger to American democracy,” it’s been clear the panel believes that Trump was in the middle of an alleged election-stealing conspiracy. With that in mind, it would be surprising if the 45th president, who earned his second impeachment over the insurrection, was not referred to the DOJ for the possibility of criminal action.

The case against Trump

Each committee hearing was a piece in a broad case against Trump. The panel sought to show he lost the 2020 election, that he knew that Biden won and that there was not significant fraud but that he sought to overturn the result by harassing election workers and inducing state GOP officials to steal votes.

Furthermore, the committee contended in its hearings that Trump also helped to plot a nefarious scheme to use fake electors to subvert the election in Congress. When those efforts failed, after then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to wield powers he did not have, the committee argued that Trump called a mob to Washington and incited a vicious attack on the Capitol. Then, committee members argued, his inaction as the violence raged amounted to desecrating his sworn duty to protect Congress, the Constitution and the rule of law.

“This is someone who in multiple ways tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist. This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the January 6 committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what it is.

A referral would hike pressure on the DOJ

Yet the committee is not in control of the ultimate fate of its work. While referrals of Trump and allies would be a huge moment, the panel cannot compel the Justice Department to open a prosecution of a former president whose 2024 campaign guarantees the divisions sparked by January 6 will fester in another US election.

The committee is looking at three potential and rarely tried criminal charges against the former president, including insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the federal government, sources told CNN last week. The committee has also weighed referrals or other action against Trump allies, such as attorney John Eastman and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who were allegedly involved in a fake elector scheme. And Schiff said on Sunday the panel would also consider possible ethics and legal sanctions against others, including Republican lawmakers who defied committee subpoenas.

One question hanging over the congressional committee, however, is whether the higher standard of evidence required by a court could lead prosecutors to believe it would be hard to convict the former president. While the committee’s hearings were packed with evidence suggesting a weeks-long pattern of wrongdoing by Trump, witnesses and evidence were not subjected to the kind of challenge and cross-examination seen in court, so it’s hard to judge the strength of any criminal case over Trump.
Questions cloud the committee’s legacy

All of these caveats about the work of the panel raise these questions.

Was the committee a high-profile act of public accounting that will ultimately be forgotten once it is swept away by the House GOP majority?

Could the act of sending criminal referrals to the DOJ risk furthering the perception of politicization of separate investigations into the aftermath of January 6?

Will an impression that Trump is being hounded by any referrals nearly two years after he left office help rally Republicans to his misfiring 2024 campaign?

And do Americans as a whole, at a time of national strain amid high inflation and the aftermath of a once-in-a-century pandemic, really care about events that rattled US democracy nearly two years ago?

On the first question, committee members – including Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney, who lost her seat in Wyoming over her determination to hold Trump to account – have long argued that it is performing a service for posterity and have left a strong impression they want to fatally damage his future political hopes.

“Every American must consider this,” Cheney said at one of the committee’s public hearings, in July. “Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”

The refusal of many of Cheney’s fellow Republicans to even acknowledge the ex-president’s conduct suggests that her effective sacrifice of her career in the House GOP may be in vain. Certainly, there was little sense during the compelling hearings that the public was as transfixed with this act of accountability as it was, for instance, with the Senate Watergate hearings in the 1970s that helped lead to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Today’s polarized times and the power of conservative media to distort what really happened on January 6 may help explain this dichotomy.

Still, Americans rejected many of Trump’s midterm candidates in swing state races who had amplified his false claims of 2020 election fraud, suggesting some desire to protect American democracy.

It is impossible to quantify how the committee’s work affected voters in November. But it kept evidence of Trump’s insurrection in the news all this year, even as the ex-president launched a new campaign seen by many observers as a way to cast the probes into his conduct as politically motivated persecution. This is especially valuable as some pro-Trump Republicans, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, escalate their attempts to distort what happened in the unprecedented attack on the Capitol.

How the committee may help the DOJ

Although the committee’s days are numbered, its work may live on. One of special counsel Jack Smith’s two criminal probes into Trump is looking at events surrounding January 6, and prosecutors could use the masses of testimony and other evidence that the committee has unearthed. Once the final report is released on Wednesday, the panel is expected to start releasing transcripts from the more than 1,000 interviews it conducted.

“This is a massive investigation that the committee has undertook. Huge amounts of evidence, a huge amount of witnesses being identified,” former federal prosecutor Shan Wu told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom” on Saturday.

“I think it’s the detail that accompanies the referrals themselves and the report that will give a roadmap to DOJ. DOJ has been kind of late to this party and they are playing catch-up but that detail could be very helpful to them and will put a lot of pressure on them as well.”

Whatever its immediate impact on Trump, the 2024 presidential race and the Justice Department, the culmination of the committee’s work marks a pivot in history when Americans faced a choice whether to confront an unprecedented effort by an aberrant commander in chief to overrule the voice of the people and the chain of peaceful transfers of power from one president to the next.

If nothing else, future generations will be able to judge the determination of the panel members, especially its two Republicans, and the courage of witnesses who told the truth to try save democracy.

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who, like Cheney, served on the committee in defiance of his party and will not be returning to Congress, explained his actions in seeking to hold Trump to account in his retirement speech on the House floor last week.

“Unfortunately we now live in a world where a lie is Trump’s truth, where democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism,” the Illinois Republican said.

“If we, America’s elected leaders, do not search within ourselves for a way out, I fear that this great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history.”

Source: Cable News Network

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Enrollment in Medicaid surged 30% to more than 83 million people during the pandemic, after Congress basically barred states from kicking people out of the program for the duration of the federal public health emergency declared in response to Covid.

Tucked inside a more than 4,000-page, $1.7 trillion bill that funds the federal government through September is a provision that would eliminate the Medicaid coverage protections from the public health emergency. Instead, states could start terminating recipients’ coverage in April 2023 if they no longer meet the program’s eligibility criteria.

“As of April 1, Medicaid agencies conducting redeterminations for people enrolled in the program can result in a termination of Medicaid coverage,” said Jack Rollins, director of federal policy at the National Association of Medicaid Directors. “Whereas right now since the Covid-19 public health emergency started, states were not allowed to terminate Medicaid coverage.”

Congress has to pass the legislation by Friday in order to avoid a government shutdown.

The public health emergencyi, first declared in January 2020 by the Trump administration, has been renewed every 90 days since the pandemic began. The powers activated by the emergency declaration have had a vast impact on the U.S. health-care system, allowing hospitals to act more nimbly when infections surge and Medicaid to keep millions enrolled in its public health insurance.

The Health and Human Services Department has estimated that about 15 million people will lose coverage through Medicaid once the enrollment protections are no longer in place and states review individuals’ eligibility based on the criteria used before the pandemic. Medicaid is the federal insurance program for the poor and those who lose their health insurance because they can’t work due to a disability.

“It’s important to contextualize that Medicaid coverage loss doesn’t necessarily mean health insurance coverage loss,” Rollins said. “Many of those folks will be transitioning to other sources of coverage.”

People generally lose Medicaid coverage if their income rises and falls outside the program’s parameters. Rollins said most people who are disenrolled for this reason starting in April will probably transition to coverage in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. HHS estimates that about a third of those who will lose Medicaid coverage will qualify for tax credits for marketplace insurance.

But some people are disenrolled even though they remain eligible for Medicaid because they either don’t receive their renewal notice, can’t provide documentation required by the state, or they don’t submit the documents by the deadline, among other reasons. HHS has estimated that 6.8 million people will lose Medicaid coverage even though they remain eligible for the program

“There has to be a process for renewing coverage or re-determining coverage and disenrolling people who are no longer eligible,” said Jennifer Tolbert, a Medicaid expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“The key is to do this in a way that minimizes to the extent possible coverage losses among people who remain eligible,” Tolbert said.

The legislation requires states to make a good faith effort to contact the individual whose eligibility is under review through more than one communication method. States cannot terminate someone’s Medicaid coverage on the basis of returned mail alone in response to outreach efforts.

“We’re trying to ensure that states do have the most up-to-date contact information for their enrollees,” Rollins said. “Because we know that without accurate contact information, that increases the likelihood of inappropriate or unnecessary coverage loss and that is something that we are working to avoid.”

Republican governors on Monday called on the Biden administration to end the Covid public health emergency in April so their states can start disenrolling people who no longer meet Medicaid eligibility requirements, arguing that the costs of higher enrollment in the program is too high.

However, Tolbert said KFF found that states spent about $47 billion to cover the additional Medicaid enrollees through September 2022 while they received $100 billion federal funds.

“The costs were more than covered by the enhanced federal funding,” Tolbert said.

Source: Consumer News and Business Channel

The post Millions at risk of losing Medicaid in the spring under provision tucked inside $1.7 trillion federal spending bill appeared first on Policy Print.

House Republicans are plotting tactics for their new majority and weighing how to use their leverage to enact a laundry list of demands, with many zeroing in on an issue with enormous economic implications: Raising the nation’s borrowing limit.

It’s an issue confronting House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is rounding up the votes to win the House speaker race and facing pressure from some of his colleagues to more forcefully detail how he plans to handle the sensitive topic before they decide whether to support him on January 3 for the most powerful position in Congress.

In interviews with CNN, more than two dozen House GOP lawmakers laid out their demands to avoid the nation’s first-ever debt default, ranging from new immigration policies to imposing deep domestic spending cuts. And several Republicans flatly said they would oppose raising the borrowing limit even if all their demands were met, making McCarthy’s narrow path even narrower.

“I’m a no, no matter what,” Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, said of raising the debt ceiling.

Despite Congress suspending the nation’s borrowing limit three times when Donald Trump was president, even under all-GOP control of Washington, lawmakers say it is highly uncertain how the matter will be dealt with in a divided Congress next year – reminiscent of the furious battles between House Republicans and Barack Obama’s White House that put the country on the brink of economic disaster.

For McCarthy, the debt ceiling debate will represent one of his most difficult balancing acts if he’s elected speaker: He would need to work with Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden to cut a deal and avoid economic catastrophe without angering his emboldened right flank for caving into the left. And unlike other bills in the GOP House that will die in the Democratic-led Senate, a debt ceiling increase is one of the few must-pass items awaiting the new Congress – something many Republicans see as critical leverage.

Some Republicans say it is incumbent upon McCarthy to spell out his strategy on the issue before they decide if they will support him in the speakership race – when the California Republican can only afford to lose four GOP votes. In one private meeting with a member of the House Freedom Caucus, McCarthy was urged to take a harder public stance on the coming policy issues for next year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“Several (House Freedom Caucus) members have made spending a main issue,” one GOP lawmaker who has been critical of McCarthy told CNN.

Rep. Scott Perry, the leader of the hardline Freedom Caucus, confirmed it’s an issue that has been broached with McCarthy as he has been wooing members ahead of next month’s vote.

“Debt ceiling has been a conversation that has been perennial in every single conversation or meeting around here since I’ve been here,” the Pennsylvania Republican said in an interview.

But some moderate Republicans – whom McCarthy needs to protect in order to keep their fragile majority in 2024 – have expressed uneasiness over using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, risking both a catastrophic default and the political blame, especially if Republicans push for cuts to popular entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. Republicans remember 2011 all too well when a proposal from then-Rep. Paul Ryan to overhaul Medicare became fodder for attacks that depicted him rolling an elderly lady in a wheelchair off a cliff.

“We shouldn’t put the United States in a position to default on our debt, clearly,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican. “But I also think every member of Congress needs to acknowledge that the $32 trillion debt is not in our national interest.”

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee said the debt ceiling increase is part of a discussion “we should have had a long time ago – to talk about some structural solutions.”

But he added: “I think the vast majority of responsible legislators realize this is money already spent and that we can never put the United States in a default position.”

Other Republicans, however, argue that the fears of going off the fiscal cliff are overblown.

“I don’t fear not raising the debt ceiling, because if we didn’t raise the debt ceiling, all that would mean we’d have to cut discretionary spending so we stop spending more than we’re taking in,” said Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, an anti-McCarthy Republican. “That’s a panic here in Washington because we’re so beholden to spending.”

Indiana Rep. Greg Pence added of raising the debt limit: “It’s a no.”

McCarthy told CNN in an interview before the midterm elections that he wouldn’t raise the borrowing limit without getting some sort of spending cuts in return, though he was light on specifics.

“If you’re going to give a person a higher limit, wouldn’t you first say you should change your behavior, so you just don’t keep raising and all the time?” McCarthy asked. “You shouldn’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna let you keep spending money.’ No household should do that.”

Fears over a stalemate

Democrats had hoped to raise the debt ceiling in the current lame-duck session of Congress, but they’re running out of time and there’s little political will to do so since the borrowing limit won’t need to be raised until next year some time. The Treasury Department declined to comment when asked when the debt ceiling would need to be raised again, though Goldman Sachs indicated in an analysis that “funds could run dry as soon as July and as late as October.”

Before that point, the divided Congress will need to act, even as the White House has made clear its opposition to attaching strings to the debt ceiling hike – namely if it involves cuts to Medicare or Social Security.

“Telling the middle class out of the gate, before the new Congress has even begun, that working to override their will and hollow-out the benefits they have earned throughout their lives is a stone-cold nonstarter,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.

Still, conservatives, eager to use their newly found leverage, have already begun to outline what concessions they want from Democrats.

Rep. Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican, wants to see cuts to both discretionary and mandatory spending, including entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. But he said no one currently drawing benefits should be impacted, and that the structural reforms should be designed to make the programs more solvent for future generations.

“There are benefits – Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits – that people paid into it or were promised,” Duncan said. “But there are other welfare programs in the Farm Bill, the nutrition title. All of that needs to be addressed. Because truly they’re the drivers of some of the spending.”

Even though debts spiked under Trump and Republicans raised few objections to rising deficits, Republicans say Biden’s push for more spending on his domestic priorities has forced them to toughen their demands ahead of the next debt limit increase.

“Border Security and getting rid of all the Covid spending that we don’t need,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, when asked about his demands for raising the debt ceiling.

Others were just as emphatic.

“Hell no,” Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said when asked if he’d support a clean debt ceiling hike without slashing discretionary programs at federal agencies and mandatory spending, which includes entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.

“There’s a lot of fat and garbage that’s way off the mission that we can cut,” Roy said.

Good, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, wants Republicans to use their leverage in the debt ceiling fight to push for other policy changes. The Freedom Caucus, a band of roughly 40 Trump-aligned Republicans, is known for using hardball tactics on the House floor to pull legislation to the right – and McCarthy needs the support from nearly all of those members to win the speakership.

“There’s other things that we as Republicans should be fighting for as part of that, things like ending the vaccine mandate, securing the border, restoring Trump’s energy policies,” Good said.

But some Republicans have signaled there may be no scenario in which they’re willing to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

“I’m not sure I’ve seen anything that’s going to be able to convince me to raise the debt ceiling,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, a former Freedom Caucus chief who is also opposing McCarthy for speaker. “This place does nothing but create mounting structural deficits that are huge, which in turn grows the national debt, and we don’t have a plan to bring it down. Why would we lift it again?”

That’s a proposition that has Democrats worried.

“McCarthy has said he may well use the debt limit as a leverage. That’s very high stakes to use debt limit, which would plunge us and the world economy into a tailspin,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat and the outgoing House majority leader.

How McCarthy plans to approach the various looming fiscal showdowns next year has begun to factor into the speaker race. Last month, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina pledged to oppose McCarthy on the floor, citing McCarthy’s refusal to support a seven-year balanced budget.

Norman was among a cross section of Republicans who recently met with McCarthy in his office to discuss a package of rules changes.

Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said the group also talked about upcoming budget battles, “how to deal with the relationship with the Senate,” and “how to push bills out of the House of Representatives with the most conservative votes that we can possibly get.”

While the prospect of a high-stakes fiscal showdown has put members in both parties on edge, some Republicans believe cooler heads will prevail.

“Just the maximum,” said Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, when asked what he wanted for a debt ceiling hike. “And I have faith in Kevin McCarthy that he will achieve it.”

Source: Edition.CNN

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