It’s Tuesday.
There are 5 days until Halloween!!!
For Tuesday, October 26th, 2021, President Biden has received his daily brief. This morning he participated virtually in the annual U.S.-ASEAN Summit. This afternoon he will have lunch with the Vice President. Tonight he will campaign with former Governor Terry McAuliffe.
This morning prior to the virtual summit the White House released the following fact sheet:
President Biden will announce the intent to provide up to $102 million in new initiatives to expand the U.S.-ASEAN Strategic Partnership during the October 26 U.S.-ASEAN Summit, reflecting the Biden-Harris Administration’s deep commitment to ASEAN’s central role in the U.S. vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific.
U.S.-ASEAN Health Futures: The United States is committed to leading the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States intends to provide up to $40 million in new efforts to accelerate joint research, strengthen health system capacity, and develop the next generation of human capital in health through the U.S.-ASEAN Health Futures initiative. These efforts build on the more than $3.5 billion the United States has invested in supporting public health in ASEAN over the past 20 years. The Health futures initiative will both help address the current pandemic and strengthen ASEAN’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to future zoonotic and other infectious disease outbreaks. The Initiative’s activities may include the following:
White House.gov. 10/26/2021.
- Expand USAID’s ASEAN Public Health Emergency Coordination System (APHECS) to support ASEAN member states’ response to COVID-19 and other public health emergencies through a regional framework to guide coordination and communication in public health emergencies.
- Provide grants for emerging infectious disease research in ASEAN between U.S. scientists and early-career scientists in Southeast Asia, including a focus on promoting gender equity in this field.
- Support projects to help control tuberculosis transmission related to cross-border and migration issues by developing transnational reporting systems and national action plans on tuberculosis.
- Partner with regional hospitals through a new CDC cooperative agreement to detect and contain emerging infectious disease threats before spread occurs.
- Promote cooperation to develop, implement, and enforce regulations and best practices to reduce risks of disease transmission from wildlife and strengthen mechanisms for monitoring, early warning, surveillance, prevention, and control of zoonotic diseases.
- Expand the U.S.-ASEAN Health Futures Alumni Network through capacity building with programs including the flagship skills training program for young leaders (YSEALI), the Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Emergency Management Fellowship, and Fulbright U.S.-ASEAN programs.
- Provide USAID assistance to strengthen convergence of pharmaceutical standards and product quality in ASEAN.
- Share information and strengthen networks to detect and combat high-threat antibiotic-resistant pathogens and vectors, prevent antimicrobial resistance, and enhance technical exchanges on health and emerging pandemic threats.
- Transform ASEAN states’ health workforces and university public health curricula and train the next generation of health professionals through multi-disciplinary approaches through the One Health Workforce – Next Generation project.
- Enhance engagement through an ASEAN-U.S. Health Ministerial.
U.S.-ASEAN Climate Futures: The United States intends to provide up to $20.5 million for a new U.S.-ASEAN Climate Futures initiative dedicated to tackling the climate crisis and keeping the urgent goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach. The Initiative’s activities may include the following:
White House.gov. 10/26/2021.
- Launch the U.S.-ASEAN Climate Action Program to support ASEAN’s environment and sustainable development through climate change research, coordination, and innovation and improved Nationally Determined Contributions implementation.
- Partner with ASEAN member state communities through the USAID Clean Air Catalyst program to better understand local pollution sources and identify solutions that lead to sustained progress on cleaner, healthier air.
- Enhance climate adaptation through the USAID SERVIR Mekong initiative with NASA, which harnesses remote sensing technology and open data to help address development challenges related to a changing climate.
- Expand smart power efforts through USAID’s new Southeast Asia Smart Power Program to decarbonize and strengthen the region’s power system by increasing regional energy trade and accelerating the deployment of clean energy technologies.
- Invest in USAID’s new Sustainable Fish Asia project to strengthen ASEAN’s regional role in fisheries, address gender and labor concerns, enhance fisheries trade and compliance, and promote tools for combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
- Launch the Smart Transport Asia program to support best practices and state-of-the-art techniques to improve transportation systems and fuel economy standards, increase the use of clean transport technologies, and reduce energy consumption and emissions.
- Establish a Smart Cities Business Innovation Fund to help cities in ASEAN develop and adopt innovations that support the transformative changes needed to address current and future urban challenges.
- Elevate engagement through an ASEAN-U.S. Environment and Climate Change Ministerial and continued ASEAN-U.S. Energy Ministerials. The first ASEAN-U.S. Energy Ministerial was held in September 2021.
U.S.-ASEAN Economic Futures: The Biden Administration continues efforts to promote economic growth and opportunity and build back better from the economic damage wrought from the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States plans to provide $10 million in new loans and the intent to provide up to an additional $10 million in new funding to support U.S.-ASEAN cooperation on trade and innovation. The Initiative’s activities may include the following:
White House.gov. 10/26/2021.
- Expand USAID’s support to the ASEAN Single Window to foster the global development of interoperable Single Window systems to facilitate trade across the Pacific and adopt international best practices in customs technology.
- Launch a U.S.-ASEAN Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Program (STIC) to support innovative projects, support the digital economy, and facilitate connections between public and private laboratories, academia, policy makers, industries, and business associations in the United States and ASEAN.
- Provide funds through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to Integra Partners Fund II L.P., a venture capital fund focused on making impact investments in Southeast Asia in early-stage, impact-oriented technology investments that address a significant supply and demand gap in financial services, insurance, and healthcare.
- Enhance transportation engagement through an ASEAN-U.S. Transportation Ministerial.
Billion Futures: The United States is committed to our combined one billion people and is announcing plans to provide $16 million in education-related loans, $1.5 million for English language teacher training, and the intent to provide up to $4 million in new funding to promote gender equality and equity. The Initiative’s activities may include the following:
White House.gov. 10/26/2021.
- Support ASEAN’s gender programs and initiatives such as the ASEAN Gender Mainstreaming Strategic Framework and ASEAN’s Women, Peace, and Security agenda.
- Launch a new DFC loan portfolio guarantee with Pintek, an Indonesia-based digital lender facilitating educational loans for vocational training and higher education.
- Provide a 20-year DFC loan to support Fulbright University Vietnam (FUV) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s first independent, non-profit liberal arts university.
- Strengthen people-to-people ties with ASEAN countries through the new “English Teacher Training Plus” initiative to enhance national capacity for English language teaching in ASEAN countries.
- Enhance engagement and promote gender equality, equity, and empowerment through an ASEAN-U.S. Ministerial on Women.
The last sentence; The President looks forward to working with Congress to support these important initiatives.
The below YouTube is 2 minutes and 47 seconds long. His full remarks can be found here.
UPDATE: They have pulled the video. I have no idea how come.
The White House issued the following readout:
President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. today joined leaders of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) member states and the ASEAN Secretary General for the annual U.S.-ASEAN Summit. He reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to strengthening our partnership with ASEAN as well as to its centrality and applauded the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific.
The President underscored the enduring commitment of the United States to the region and pledged to deepen our cooperation to take on the challenges of our time, which includes working with our allies and partners to defend against threats to the international rules-based order and to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.
The President announced the intent to provide up to $102 million in new initiatives to expand the U.S.-ASEAN Strategic Partnership to support the region’s recovery from COVID-19, address the climate crisis, promote economic growth, and develop human capital. Additionally, President Biden underlined the importance of the strategic partnership between the United States and ASEAN, highlighting new efforts to expand high-level U.S.-ASEAN cooperation in health, climate, energy, transportation, and gender empowerment. He reiterated the U.S. commitment to ending the COVID-19 pandemic and building back better to prepare for the next, including making available more than 40 million vaccine doses and more than $200 million in emergency health and humanitarian assistance to ASEAN member states to fight COVID-19. He urged bold action to strengthen health systems and health security, mitigate the climate crisis and reaffirmed U.S. support to build back better and drive a green recovery.
He also expressed grave concerns about the military coup and horrific violence in Burma and called on the country’s military regime to immediately end the violence, release those unjustly detained, and restore Burma’s path to democracy. He expressed support for ASEAN efforts to hold the Burmese military regime accountable to the Five Point Consensus.
White House.gov. 10/26/2021.
President Biden has not tweeted so far for Tuesday.
UPDATE 2: President Biden has now tweeted one time for Tuesday:
See everything above the Tuesday tweet.
When Biden Bits was published for Monday, President Biden had tweeted 2 times. He added 7 tweets giving him a Monday Tweeting Total of 9 tweets and 0 retweets.
I got nothing. I mean to be fair, from my little dabble between personal experience working for a CPA at tax time and with Google…
Fact-checking the above is complicated because a company has different tax advantages over an individual. Individual tax rates vary by income bracket. And so on it goes.
This doesn’t even take into account that I don’t have near enough experience to determine if or what a teachers tax rate is…
He mentioned the higher tax-rate in remarks from October 5th, 2021.
It’s simple. If you’re working here at this facility or your spouse is a teacher or a firefighter, there’s no reason why — combined — why millionaires and billionaires in this country should be paying at a lower tax rate than you do. Hear me again now: a lower tax rate.
A police officer or teacher, a union crane operator, and a nurse — they paid a higher tax rate — a higher tax rate than a significant portion of the major corporations in America and the super wealthy.
White House.gov. 10/05/2021.
The YouTube is 24 minutes 34 seconds long. His full remarks can be found here.
President Biden: Look, we haven’t passed the transformation — the transformative infrastructure bill for a decade. Think about this: How many times, under the former guy, did we have — we had “Infrastructure Week”? Not a single thing happened. We need to get this done.
President Biden: That’s why I resolved that we have to, once again, build America from the bottom up and the middle out. I’ve never seen a time in American history when the middle class did well and the wealthy didn’t do very well. But I’m tired of trickle-down. Trickle-down doesn’t — hasn’t worked so much for the last 15 years for working-class and middle-class folks. That’s why I proposed two critical pieces of legislation being debated back in Washington right now. These bills are not about left versus right, or moderate versus progressive, or anything else that pits an Amer- — one American against one another. These bills are about competitiveness versus complacency — competitiveness versus complacency. They’re about expanding opportunity, not opportunity denied. They’re about leading the world or continuing to let the world pass us by.
The tweet is not a direct tweet from quote in yesterday’s remarks…
President Biden: So, to everyone here today, especially Governor Murphy and other dedicated officials here today, thank you for showing us what’s possible. Because when we make these investments, there’s going to be no stopping America. We will own the future.
The next two tweets are unrelated to his above remarks…
During Friday’s press briefing White House Press Secretary offered trip details on the President’s upcoming trip to Europe:
On Thursday, the President and First Lady will travel to Rome, Italy.
White House.gov. 10/22/2021.
On Friday, the President will visit Vatican City and have an audience with His Holiness Pope Francis. They will discuss working together on efforts grounded in respect for fundamental human dignity, including ending the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling the climate crisis, and caring for the poor.
On Saturday and Sunday, the President will participate in the G20 Leaders’ Summit. We will have more on individual bilateral engagements in the run-up to the summit.
And from Rome, the President will travel to Glasgow, United Kingdom, from November 1st through 2nd, to participate in the World Leader Summit at the start of the COP26, the 26th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was in today’s early press briefing to discuss more information on the upcoming trip. There will be information tomorrow.
The daily press briefing happened at 10 a.m. D.C., time.
This is an Open Thread.
