MNI POLITICAL RISK ANALYSIS - US Daily Brief
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MNI POLITICAL RISK ANALYSIS - US Daily Brief 20-12-22
By Adam Burrowes
The White House
09:50 ET 14:50 GMT President Biden receives his Daily Briefing
Elections Countdown:
❖ 2024 Presidential Election: 686 days
January 6 Committee
The January 6 Committee held its final public meeting yesterday, issuing criminal referrals
against former President Donald Trump and accusing four Republican lawmakers, including
speaker-elect Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), of ethical violations for their refusal to comply with
subpoenas to testify before the panel.
• The panel accused Trump of inciting an insurrection and conspiracy to defraud the
United States and advised the Department of Justice to pursue an unprecedented
criminal indictment of a former US president.
The panel also issued criminal referrals against five of Trump’s associates, including his chief
of staff Mark Meadows, and lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
• The committee also released an executive summary of the panel’s final report which
is expected to be released in full on Wednesday. The report states: “None of the events
of January 6th would have happened without [Trump].”
• The New York Times: “For Trump, the coming week will be among the most
consequential of his political career. Another House committee will meet today to
discuss whether to release Trump’s tax returns. The events shine a spotlight on
Trump’s refusal to cede power and on a subject he has guarded for decades: the actual
size of his personal wealth and his sources of income.”
• White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to be drawn on the
committee decision: “The committee has been doing important bipartisan work to get
to the truth of what happened on that very day so we can make sure that that doesn't
happen again. So, I'll leave it there.”
Government Funding
Congressional appropriators have released the final 4,155-page text of the USD1.66 trillion
Fiscal Year 2023 omnibus spending package.
• Punchbowl writes, “The big question now is can Congress pass this massive package.
Senate leaders will need a time agreement with GOP conservatives to get this
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Business Address – MNI Market News, 5th Floor, 69 Leadenhall Street, London, EC3A 2 BG
measure through the chamber by the end of the week. That will be the biggest drama
of the next couple days. The other thing to watch is a huge winter storm bearing down
on the Midwest and East Coast. With Christmas on Sunday, that could be a major
challenge for lawmakers looking to get home.”
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said in a statement: “A
continuing resolution into the New Year does not provide assistance to Ukraine or help to
communities recovering from natural disasters. The choice is clear. We can either do our jobs
and fund the government, or we can abandon our responsibilities without a real path forward.”
• Both Republicans and Democrats have claimed wins in the final package. Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-KY) yesterday pointed at the big increase in
defence spending and relatively modest increase in non-defence spending as a GOP
win.
• McConnell: “The administration wanted to cut funding for our armed forces after
inflation while massively increasing spending on nondefense. Republicans have taken
the president’s bizarre position and flipped it on its head.”
• McConnell said the bill “provides a substantial real-dollar increase to the defence
baseline and a substantial real-dollar cut to the non-defence, non-veterans baseline.”
The final package includes ~USD$45 billion in additional aid for Ukraine – significantly higher
than the amount requested by the White House.
• For Democrats, legislating a FY23 omnibus this week will allow Democrats to set
spending priorities for the next year before a more obstinate House of Representatives,
led by Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), applies a greater level of scrutiny to the Democrat
agenda next year.
Although non-defence spending was increased less than defence spending, the omnibus
contains ~USD$5 billion for Democrat social spending projects including health, low-income
heating assistance, and law enforcement.
• One of President Biden’s central policy drives, the PACT Act, has been supplemented
by a USD$21 billion increase for veterans’ health care.
Also included is Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) Electoral Count
Reform Act, which limit’s the vice president’s role in certifying the Electoral College count to
ensure that a scenario like that which played out followed the 2020 president election.
• Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) bill to ban Chinese owned social media app TikTok
from government devices has also been included in the final bill.
Congressional Business
The House is out
The Senate will meet at 09:00 ET 14:00 GMT
Committee Schedule –
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Business Address – MNI Market News, 5th Floor, 69 Leadenhall Street, London, EC3A 2 BG➢ 13:00 ET 18:00 GMT: HOUSE Ways and Means Committee: Consideration of: • Documents
protected under Internal Revenue Code section 6103. (Former President Donald Trump’s tax
returns)
Republican News
The House Ways and Means Committee will meet today at 15:00 ET 20:00 GMT for a closed-
door session to vote on whether to publicly release former President Donald Trump’s tax
returns which were provided to the committee in November following a multi-year legal battle.
• Presidential candidates are not required by law to release their tax returns but have
done so voluntarily in the past.
• Ranking member of the committee Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) will lead a press
conference ahead of the vote to warn against making the returns public, saying that it
could set a dangerous precedent for privacy.
• The committee will be under Republican control in January, so this week is the last
opportunity for Democrats to publicly release the records.
Democrats are weighing up how to proceed after a New York Times expose claimed New
York rep-elect George Santos had fabricated many of the components of his personal and
professional history.
• Politico: “Democrats are pondering how far to go in their condemnation. Should he be
referred to the House Ethics Committee? (Almost certainly.) Should they call for his
resignation before he is sworn in? (Some say yes.) Should they call for his expulsion
after he’s sworn in? (Probably, but with the GOP in charge it won’t work.) Or should
they try to prevent him from being sworn in at all?”
Robert Zimmerman, the Democrat who lost to Santos in November said: “I will not play any
role in overturning the election results. It was egregious when it happened two years ago, and
I will not play any role in that. These are all good questions, but they are best investigated by
the Ethics Committee, the FEC and U.S. attorney’s office.”
• Incoming Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement: “George Santos is
a woefully unqualified Extreme MAGA Republican who is clearly unfit to serve. If Mr.
Santos is indicative of what we can expect from the new Republican Congress, the
American people are in for a rough ride.”
Russia
US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price told reporters yesterday that the US will be
watching very closely for signs that Belarus is preparing to cooperate more closely with Russia
following a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarussian President
Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk yesterday.
• The meeting has raised fears that Russia may apply pressure of Belarus to participate
in a second offensive in northern Ukraine, although Lukashenko and Putin dismissed
this notion in a press conference with Putin.
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Business Address – MNI Market News, 5th Floor, 69 Leadenhall Street, London, EC3A 2 BG• Price said, of Putin’s claim he has intention to influence Belarusian policy, that any
suggestion from Putin stating Russia has no designs on the sovereignty of its
neighbours, “has to be treated as the height of irony coming from a leader who is
seeking at the present moment, right now, to violently absorb his other peaceful next-
door neighbour.”
Lukashenko said: “I would like to emphasize this feature once again: no one, except us,
governs Belarus. We must always proceed from the fact that we are a sovereign state and
independent.”
• Price: We saw Russian forces mass inside what should have been sovereign
Belarusian territory. We’ve seen attacks launched from what should be sovereign
Belarusian territory. And now we hear these comments from President Putin and from
Lukashenka, but I think the track record speaks much louder than anything these two
leaders could say… we’re going to continue to watch very closely, and the fact that
we’ve watched very closely has led us to see very clearly the level of complicity, the
level of cooperation between the Lukashenka regime and the Kremlin.”
Trade
United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai outlined "defend[ing] [US] values and
economic interests" as the key US trade objective for 2023, at a Council on Foreign Relations
event yesterday.
• Tai said: "An important part of realizing our vision for human-centric trade is realigning
our trade policies toward China... The loss of jobs, income, and manufacturing
capabilities that accompanied a surge in low-priced imports from China has been real
and devastating. For too long, the PRC’s unfair policies and practices undercut
American prosperity...."
Tai continued: "To vigorously defend our values and economic interests, we need a new
playbook on China that serves our interests, and we will continue to press the PRC on its
state-centered and non-market trade practices."
• Tai also criticised the World Trade Organisation’s recent ruling that the US violated
trade rules with Trump-era steel and aluminum tariffs saying the body, “is getting itself
on very, very thin ice… [because it] “gets deep into creating requirements and
parameters for what is or is not a legitimate national-security decision.”
• She said the WTO “should not get into the business of second-guessing the national-
security decisions that are made by sovereign governments. It is the responsibility of
governments to bring integrity to their decisions on national security.”
Poll of the Day
President Biden is finishing the year on an approval surge. This week has seen Biden achieve
his best net-approval rating since December last year.
• The recent uptick in approval reflects the strong Democrat performance at the
midterms and a calamitous month suffered by former President Donald Trump which
saw his brand of Republicanism largely rejected at the ballot box and legal cases
continue to stack up.
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Business Address – MNI Market News, 5th Floor, 69 Leadenhall Street, London, EC3A 2 BGFigure 1: President Biden Approval Rating
Source: RealClearPolitics
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