The House is in a committee work week again this week, and will reconvene next Tuesday, May 11th at 6:30 p.m. for votes. Today, the House will hold two hearings as the appropriations process begins to ramp up. At 1 p.m. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will testify before a House Appropriations subcommittee and 2 p.m. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will also testify before a House Appropriations subcommittee
The Senate is in recess this week, and will convene at 4:00 p.m. today for a brief pro forma session. The Senate will reconvene next Monday, May 10th at 3:00 p.m. when it will proceed to Executive Session and resume consideration of Executive Calendar #69, Andrea Joan Palm, to be Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services.
President Joe Biden on Thursday will visit Louisiana, which has backed Republicans in federal elections for the past two decades, to tout his plans to invest in water and storm projects in cities that have been battered by hurricanes. Biden will visit both the decidedly liberal-leaning city of New Orleans, still scarred 15 years after Hurricane Katrina, and deeply conservative Lake Charles, a city of 77,000 with a major refinery and petrochemical plants, which was slammed by Hurricanes Laura and Delta last year. The visits are the latest stop in the White House’s “Getting America Back on Track Tour,” to promote Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure spending plan and a $1.8 billion education and child-care proposal. In Lake Charles Biden will speak in front of a 70-year-old bridge that is over 20 years past its designed lifespan. Biden plans to tour one of New Orleans’ aging facilities that houses water purification equipment and turbines for drainage pumps, which help pump out water during storm events. “Storm-hardening” projects that invest in dams and levees are a potentially popular idea in a Gulf Coast state increasingly threatened with extreme weather that scientists blame on climate change.
Even as he engages with Republicans in Washington, Biden is trying to sell their voters on the idea that higher corporate taxes can provide $115 billion for roads and bridges and hundreds of billions of dollars more to upgrade the electrical grid, make the water system safer, rebuild homes and jump-start the manufacturing of electric vehicles. He’s proposing to pay for his plan by undoing the 2017 tax cuts signed into law by President Donald Trump and raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. Biden contends his programs would bolster the middle class and make the country stronger than tax cuts for big companies and CEOs. Biden hinted at the theme when answering questions from reporters after a Wednesday speech at the White House that also emphasized his separate $1.8 trillion plan for education and children to be funded by higher taxes on the very wealthiest Americans.
Today, the White House released fact sheets to highlight nationwide need and impact of the American Families Plan.
Adam S. Olsen, Washington, D.C.
