It’s Monday.
President Biden’s public schedule for Monday 03/20/2023:
| 9:30 AM | In-Town Pool Call Time The White House In-Town Pool |
| 10:25 AM | The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing; The Vice President attends Oval Office Closed Press |
| 1:00 PM Remarks | The President and The First Lady host a reception celebrating Nowruz; The Vice President and The Second Gentleman attend East Room Pooled for TV and Pre-Credentialed Media |
| 2:00 PM Press Briefing | Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre James S. Brady Press Briefing Room |
| 3:15 PM | The President and The First Lady welcome Jason Sudeikis and the cast of Ted Lasso to the White House to discuss the importance of addressing your mental health to promote overall well-being The White House Closed Press |
The White House posted the following statement this morning:
Today, Jill and I send our best wishes to everyone celebrating Nowruz across the United States and around the world—from the Middle East, to Central and South Asia, to the Caucasus, to Europe.
White House.gov. 03/20/2023.
The Nowruz holiday brings loved ones together around the Haft-Sin table to reflect on the year that has passed and renew hope for the year ahead. This year, Nowruz comes at a difficult time for many families, when hope is needed more than ever—including for the women of Iran who are fighting for their human rights and fundamental freedoms. The United States will continue to stand with them, and all the citizens of Iran who are inspiring the world with their conviction and courage. And together with our partners, we will continue to hold Iranian officials accountable for their attacks against their people.
As we welcome the season of spring—and the new growth and possibility it brings—we have decorated our Haft-Sin table at the White House to reflect our hopes for the new year. And, we join Americans everywhere in celebrating the diverse diaspora communities who continue to strengthen the fabric of our nation, generation after generation. To everyone celebrating, Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak—we wish you a peaceful and prosperous new year.
Reception celebrating Nowruz is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. D.C., time.
The press briefing is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. D.C., time.
President Biden has tweeted…
He’s got 1 tweet so far for Monday.
The White House tweeted on 03/12/2023:
We are going to dive right into Biden Bits from Friday, Saturday, & Sunday…
The Rest of St. Patrick’s Day Friday’s Tweet…
The YouTube is 27 minutes and 27 seconds long. President Biden begins his remarks at the 8 minute and 5 second mark. Taoiseach (PM) Leo Varadkar of Ireland begins his remarks at the 20 minute and 59 second mark. Their full remarks can be found here.
Prior to their bilateral meeting the leaders spoke with the press from the Oval Office. The YouTube pool spray was 3 minutes and 41 seconds long.
Their full remarks:
PRESIDENT BIDEN: Welcome. And it’s good to have you back in — in the Oval Office, Taoiseach, you know, especially on St. Patrick’s Day. And it’s a — it’s a big day in my grandparents’ household, our household. A big day here and I know a bigger day at home. But thank you very much.
And, you know, there is a — Yeats’s phrase about, you know, you think there is more — where a man’s most glory begins and ends is the glory to have such friends. Well, you’ve been a great friend. You’ve been a great friend to the United States.
And Ireland and the United States share a friendship and long, long traditions. And I don’t — I guess you do know, coming here as many times as you have, how many Americans look forward to St. Patrick’s Day.
And one of the — as millions of Americans of Irish heritage, we have a joke. And we have an event that I used to do as Vice President, and it’s now done up in the Hill, which it says, “We invite all of the friends of Ireland, all the Irish members of the Congress, and those that wish they were.”
So — but, you know, I want to thank you on a substantive matter: standing together on Ukraine. It means a great deal speaking out against Russia’s brutal aggression. And our deepening economic ties. We have a lot to talk about.
And, you know, I’ve spent some time with the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and I’ve very much — very strongly supported the — the Windsor Framework, which I know you do too. Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk about that.
And, for us, the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement is something that a very good friend of mine devoted a lot of his life to, George Mitchell, and we — that’s critical.
So I’m looking forward to meeting you and having our celebration together, and a lot to talk about.
The floor is yours.
TAOISEACH VARADKAR: Thank you. Thank you, President.
(Speaks Irish.) (No translation provided.)
So, first of all, thanks so much for inviting me to be here. I really appreciate the invitation. I really want to thank you for your help and support and understanding for our position on Brexit in recent years. It really made a difference. And we’ve got to a good place now, I think, with the Windsor Framework, where we can have an agreement that lasts, which is important for Northern Ireland and also important for British, Irish, and European relations.
I really profoundly want to thank you and America for your leadership in relation to Ukraine. I never thought we’d see a war like this happen in Europe in my lifetime. And America is at its best when it stands with its European partners to defend freedom and democracy. And thank you for that. And I know you’ll stay the course for us — with us, and we’ll stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.
And also, really looking forward to your visit. I promise you that we’re going to roll out the red carpet, and it’s going to be a visit like no other. Everyone is excited about it already. We’re going to have great crowds who would love to see you. And look forward to talking about some of the details a bit later.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: I look forward to that as well.
Thank you all.
White House.gov. 03/17/2023.
The White House posted the following meeting readout:
President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. held a bilateral meeting ahead of a St. Patrick’s Day celebration with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of Ireland at the White House. The leaders reaffirmed the historic ties and shared values that link the United States and Ireland, as well as the extraordinary bonds between our people. They discussed their countries’ shared commitment to continue supporting Ukraine in the face of Russia’s brutal aggression, with President Biden praising the generosity of the Irish people in hosting 80,000 people who have fled the conflict. They also talked about their cooperation on a range of other global issues. The leaders reaffirmed their steadfast support for the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement as we approach its 25th anniversary and welcomed the Windsor Framework as an important step in preserving the Agreement’s peace dividend. In addition, they discussed the robust trade and investment between our countries, as well as steps to strengthen the resilience of our economies.
White House.gov. 03/17/2023.
The verses shared:
I found a YouTube posted by Declan Walsh who gives some background on Seamus Heaney and The Cure at Troy. The video was posted in February 2021:
Google isn’t providing the context for the quote “Our island that was once settled and removed on the edge of Europe is now the bridge to the world.”
I did find remarks by President Biden from 03/16/2022, where he offers the same quote:
Eavan Boland, the late Irish poet, who fought — who taught here in America at Stanford University, she wrote of today’s Republic of Ireland. She said:
“Our island that was once
Settled and removed on the edge
Of Europe is now [the] bridge
To the world.”It has that capacity.
White House.gov. 03/16/2022.
I found Eavan Boland’s bio @Poetry Foundation.org.
The YouTube is 23 minutes and 46 seconds long. Their full remarks can be found here.
From the St. Patrick’s Day Shamrock Presentation remarks:
President Biden: The United States has benefited greatly from waves of immigration from the Ireland — the island of Ireland, who helped shape this nation: the Scottish-Irish of the 18th century; the Irish who came during the 19th century — century, like my ancestors, during the famine and beyond. And through the bravery in their blood and the honest sweat of their brow and the steadfast hearts, their work has borne centuries of fruit. And their values have been passed down, generation to generation, around countless Irish American dinner tables just like the one I grew up in.
Niall Horan former member of One Direction performed at the White House. The YouTube of his performance is split into two videos.
Heaven is 4 minutes and 33 seconds long.
Spancil Hill is 5 minutes and 54 seconds long.
He’s embarked on a successful solo career:
His first solo release This Town was also performed by him at the White House.
Sunday’s St. Patrick’s Day Friday Tweets:
From the St. Patrick’s Day Shamrock Presentation remarks:
The video snip is 59 seconds long.
President Biden: As the great-great-grandson of the Blewitts of County Mayo — and several are here today — (applause) — and the Finnegans of County Louth, who boarded coffin ships to cross the Atlantic more than 165 years ago; as the proud son of Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden: I wish you all a very, very happy St. Patrick’s Day. (Applause.) This gathering is a cherished tradition, a celebration to honor where we all have come from and where we’re heading. And it’s a time for us to tell stories, maybe share a few Irish — bits of Irish poetry, and not to live in some romanticized version of the past, but to reminder — remember what’s possible — what’s possible, as we recommit ourselves to the unfinished work that lies ahead of all of us.
President Biden: Let me end with this. Everything between Ireland and the United States runs deep: our joys, our sorrows, our passions, our drive, our dreams, our optimism. Even in the most difficult of moments, even in the darkest moments of descair [sic] — despair, we hold on to hope. Hope. We believe in a better tomorrow. We see a world not of a shrinking opportunity, but of unlimited possibilities. We see a future that knows no bounds.
Saturday’s Tweets…
His full statement:
As of this afternoon, all three of the leading insulin producers in America have agreed to substantially reduce their prices, following my calls to expand my $35 cap for seniors to all Americans. Sanofi is the latest company to recognize that charging hundreds of dollars for insulin that costs $10 to produce is just wrong, especially when the lives of so many children, parents, and grandparents depend on it.
My administration is working every day to bring working people and families more breathing room, and we won’t stop. Congress should still pass legislation to ensure everybody can get insulin for no more than $35 per month, along with a Junk Fee Prevention Act, and legislation to make childcare more affordable and accessible.
What Congress should not do is repeal laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, which would represent one of the biggest Medicare benefit cuts in history and raise costs for prescription drugs, health coverage, and home energy—all to give billionaires a tax cut.
Where Congress won’t work with me, I will continue to speak out and act on my own, just as I have to give millions of families life-changing breathing room on insulin costs. After the strongest two years of job growth and new small business applications in history, and with real progress against the inflation affecting countries around the world, I am more optimistic than ever that America’s best days are ahead.
White House.gov. 03/16/2023.
The Sanofi announcement can be found in Friday’s Biden Bits (03/17/2023).
Novo Nordisk announcement can be found in Wednesday’s Biden Bits (03/15/2023).
The Eli Lilly announcement can be found in Wednesday’s Biden Bits (03/01/2023).
The March 5th tweet got a Twitter users note…
The 03/05/2023 note was apparently added after post time for Biden Bits: To Confront Hard Truths. It was there we discover:
Remarks from Virginia (02/28/2023).
President Biden: Now, let me explain the national debt. You all know — we think we all know it. It’s the accumulated debt over 200 years. Every year it’s accumulated, over 200 years. The federal government has never, ever once reneged on that debt. We’ve never questioned our credit. And guess what? Let’s remember the last administration increased the federal debt by 25 percent. The 200-year debt — in four years, they increased it by 25 percent. Two hundred years.
*shrug*
The tweeted note sends us to…
The Balance Money.com (04/05/2022):
The U.S. budget deficit is how much more the federal government spends annually than it receives in revenue during that same time period.
The federal government’s budget for fiscal year 2022 estimated that the fiscal year 2022 budget deficit would be $1.15 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated by July 2021 that the fiscal year 2021 deficit would be $3 trillion. The budget deficit in 2020 was about $3.1 trillion, the largest in U.S. history.1
The national debt was at $28.4 trillion when fiscal year 2022 began on Oct. 1, 2021. On Feb. 14, 2022, the debt hit $30 trillion for the first time.2 Budget deficits add to the national debt; if that debt grows faster than gross domestic product (GDP), the debt-to-GDP ratio may get too large. Since a county’s debt-to-GDP ratio is often used to measure economic growth, a ballooning ratio could indicate a potentially destabilized economy.
1 Congressional Budget Office. “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2021 to 2031.”
2 Department of Treasury. “Debt to the Penny.”
The Balance Money.com. 04/05/2022.
And then we go to…
CNN.com (02/08/2023):
Cutting the deficit
Biden claimed his administration cut the federal deficit by “more than $1.7 trillion.”
“In the last two years, my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history.”
Facts First: Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 — but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under then-President Donald Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected when the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits.
Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics — an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency — told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021.National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote on the White House website in January that the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill “facilitated a strong economic recovery and enabled the responsible wind-down of emergency spending programs,” thereby reducing the deficit; David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, told CNN in October that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the recovery that has pushed the deficit downward. And Deese correctly noted that Biden’s signature legislation, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to bring down deficits by more than $200 billion over the next decade.
Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved.
CNN.com From CNN’s Daniel Dale. 02/08/2023.
Saturday’s add-on tweet comes from the White House fact-sheet; The Congressional Republican Agenda to Increase the Debt by Over $3 Trillion
The 184 page searchable PDF of “his budget” can be found here.
The tweet has a new note:
It’s not a helpful “note” if the one showed last night is now completely different.
CNN.Com =’s Fact-checking President Biden’s State of the Union speech (02/08/2023).
Fiscaldata.Treasury.gov =’s What is the national deficit? This is link is shared two times in the above note.
The tweet gotta note:
And again with the change in notes…
Today’s note…
Fact Check.org =’s Biden’s Tax Rate Comparison for Billionaires and Schoolteachers (02/16/2023).
PolitiFact.com =’s Joe Biden’s dubious math on the federal income tax burden (07/06/2022 rating False).
CNN.com =’s Daniel Dale Fact Check; Biden’s latest false statistical claims
The 184 page searchable PDF of “his budget” can be found here.
Sunday’s Tweets minus 1…
This morning the White House posted; FIVE-ALARM FIRE: The House Freedom Caucus’ Extreme Budget Proposal Endangers Public Safety
The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus has made their priorities clear: imposing devastating cuts to public safety and increasing costs for working- and middle-class families, all to protect and extend tax breaks skewed to the wealthy and big corporations. In fact, their tax cuts would be so expensive that their deep and harmful cuts would not reduce the deficit.
That’s in sharp contrast with the President’s Budget, which invests in America, lowers costs for families, protects and strengthens Medicare and Social Security, and reduces the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years, while ensuring no one making less than $400,000 per year pays a penny more in new taxes.
Combined with other commitments extreme MAGA House Republicans have already made, the extreme Freedom Caucus proposal will be a disaster for families in at least five key ways: endangering public safety, raising costs for families, shipping manufacturing jobs overseas and undermining American workers, weakening national security, and hurting seniors.
Last week, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that Congressional Republicans’ budget math doesn’t add up. CBO found that—in order to meet Congressional Republicans’ stated commitment to balancing the budget in 10 years without raising taxes on the wealthy or corporations, and without cutting Social Security, Medicare, defense, and some veterans’ benefits—Congressional Republicans would need to eliminate everything in the rest of the Federal budget.
The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal will be a five-alarm fire for families—including by endangering public safety. While the President’s Budget proposes smart investments to improve public safety, strengthen border security, and improve the safety of our transportation networks, extreme MAGA Republicans are pushing draconian cuts to these critical national priorities that would endanger Americans’ safety.
Their proposals will:
White House.gov. 03/20/2023.
- Make Our Border Less Secure The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal would eliminate funding for more than 2,000 Customs and Border Protection agents and officers and severely undermine our ability to secure the border and combat drug trafficking—allowing an additional 150,000 pounds of cocaine, nearly 900 pounds of fentanyl, nearly 2,000 pounds of heroin, and more than 17,000 pounds of methamphetamine into our country.
- Defund the Police and Make Communities Less Safe. The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal would eliminate funding for 11,000 FBI personnel, including agents who investigate crimes and keep guns out of the hands of felons and domestic abusers. Their plan would cut Federal support to 60 local law enforcement agencies, eliminating 400 local law enforcement positions, slash law enforcement, crime prevention and justice grants to local and state governments by an average of $30,000 per locality and $1 million per state. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) would have to implement a hiring freeze that would mean 190 agents, 130 Industry Operations Investigators, and 180 technical and support staff would be lost to attrition—and ATF’s entire workforce of over 5,000 personnel would have to take 36 furlough days, further undermining their operations. ATF agents are often some of the first federal law enforcement on the scene of a mass shooting to help local law enforcement identify at-large shooters.
- Scale Back Rail Safety Inspections. At a time when train derailments are wreaking havoc on community safety, the extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal would lead to 11,000 fewer rail safety inspection days next year alone, and 30,000 fewer miles of track inspected annually—enough track to cross the United States nearly 10 times. Since the Norfolk Southern train derailment, bipartisan Senators have called for more rail inspections, not fewer.
- Jeopardize Air Safety and Increase Airport Security Wait Times. The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal would shut down services at 125 Air Traffic Control Towers across the country—undermining safety at one third of all U.S. airports—and increase wait times at TSA security check points by an average of 30 minutes.
The 184 page searchable PDF of “his budget” can be found here.
1. Remarks by President Biden on Lowering Prescription Drugs Costs (03/15/2023).
2. Remarks by President Biden, Prime Minister Albanese of Australia, and Prime Minister Sunak of the United Kingdom on the AUKUS Partnership (03/13/2023).
3. Remarks by President Biden on Efforts to Reduce Gun Violence (03/14/2023).
4. See all the St. Patrick’s Day tweets posted above.
It took me way to long to remember when I found this photo last time, but find it I did…
From Monday’s Biden Bits (01/30/2023):
The photo was taken during President Biden’s visit to Just Q’in BBQ located in Cincinnati on 01/04/2023. The “t” in just is represented by a cross which the website explains; We glorify and honor God by providing authentic, well prepared food, while creating a warm and loving environment for all guests. Christian or non Christian, we want you to reap the benefits of our pursuit of excellence!
Biden Bits. 01/30/2023.
This is an Open Thread.
1 Trackback / Pingback
Comments are closed.