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A new twist emerged in the semi-regular debt-limit debate, which is looming as I write.
A union of government employees on Monday sued Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden to try to stop them from complying with the law that limits the government’s total debt, which the lawsuit contends is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit comes just weeks before the government could default on the federal debt if Congress fails to raise the borrowing limit. Financial markets have become increasingly nervous about the potential for default, with economists warning that a failure to raise the debt limit could trigger a global financial crisis.
On Tuesday, Biden will meet with the top Republicans and Democrats in Congress to seek a potential breakthrough. The two sides not surprisingly remain far apart. Republicans have demanded steep spending cuts as the price of agreeing to raise the debt limit. Biden has argued that the debt ceiling, which applies to borrowing the government has already done, shouldn’t be used as leverage in budget talks.
The lawsuit, filed by the National Association of Government Employees, says that if Yellen abides by the debt limit once it becomes binding, possibly next month, she would have to choose which federal obligations to actually pay. Some analysts have argued that the government could prioritize interest payments on Treasury securities. That would ensure that the United States wouldn’t default on its securities, which have long been regarded as the safest investments in the world and are vital to global financial transactions.
But under the Constitution, the lawsuit argues, the president and Treasury secretary have no authority to decide which payments to make because the Constitution grants spending power to Congress. Doing so, it contends, would violate the Constitution’s separation of powers.
“Nothing in the Constitution or any judicial decision interpreting the Constitution,” the lawsuit states, “allows Congress to leave unchecked discretion to the President to exercise the spending power vested in the legislative branch by canceling, suspending, or refusing to carry out spending already approved by Congress.”
The NAGE represents about 75,000 government employees who it says are at risk of being laid off or losing pay and benefits should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling. The debt limit, currently $31.4 trillion, was reached in January. But Yellen has since used various accounting measures to avoid breaching it.
Congress eyes new rules for tech: What’s under consideration?
Most Democrats and Republicans have put away the tribalism on the issue of regulating the biggest technology companies, agreeing that the federal government should better oversee them.
How that should be done is another story.
Should TikTok be banned? Should younger children be kept off social media? Can the government make sure private information is secure? What about brand new artificial intelligence interfaces? Or should users be regulating themselves, leaving the government out of it?
Tech regulation is gathering momentum on Capitol Hill as concerns skyrocket about China’s ownership of TikTok and as parents navigating a post-pandemic mental health crisis have grown increasingly worried about what their children are seeing online. Lawmakers have introduced a slew of bipartisan bills, boosting hopes of compromise. But any effort to regulate the mammoth industry would face major obstacles as technology companies have fought interference.
Noting that many young people are struggling, President Joe Biden said in his February State of the Union speech that “it’s time” to pass bipartisan legislation to impose stricter limits on the collection of personal data and ban targeted advertising to children.
“We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit,” Biden said.
Tech companies have aggressively fought any federal interference, and they have operated for decades now without strict federal oversight, making any new rules or guidelines that much more complicated.
Read the full story here.
U.S. to propose new rules for airline cancellations, delays
The Biden administration is working on new regulations that would require airlines to compensate passengers and cover their meals and hotel rooms if they are stranded for reasons within the airline’s control.
The White House said President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would announce the start of the rulemaking process Monday.
The rulemaking pledge continues a push by the Democratic administration to require airlines to improve customer service, and it comes just weeks before the start of the peak summer travel season.
The aim of the rules would be, for the first time, to require airlines to pay compensation beyond a ticket refund and to cover expenses that consumers incur, including rebooking on another flight, if the airline causes a cancellation or significant delay.
Airline-caused cancellations include flights scrubbed for mechanical issues with the plane or lack of a crew.
Airlines for America, which represents the biggest carriers, said in a statement that airlines have no incentive to delay or cancel flights. The trade group said more than half of cancellations in 2022 and 2023 have been caused by “extreme weather” or air traffic control outages.
“Carriers have taken responsibility for challenges within their control and continue working diligently to improve operational reliability,” including hiring more workers and reducing their schedules, the group said.
After the pandemic hit, airlines paid tens of thousands of workers to quit or retire early, but they have added about 118,000 workers since November 2020 and now have 5% more employees than before the pandemic, according to Transportation Department figures.
There is no certainty if or when the Transportation Department might publish final rules around new compensation for travelers. The rule-making process can take months or years.
Read the story here.
Cheugy Facebook users what now?
As we say in the business, the Associated Press buried the lead.
Cheugy?
In a story about Facebook’s future, Gen Z youngster says, “When I think about Facebook, I like ugh, like cheugy, older people, like parents posting pictures of their kids, random status updates and also people fighting about political issues.”
Cheugy (pronounced chew-gee), this Gen Xer read today, can be used to describe someone who is out of date or trying too hard. And while a lot of cheugy things are associated with millennial women, according to the New York Times, the term can be applied to anyone of any gender and any age.
If you’re cheugy and you know it, clap your hands.
Well, as far as Facebook is concerned about young women like Devin Walsh, company officials say it’s not dead. Facebook says it’s also not simply for “old people,” as Ms. Walsh asserts.
AOL was once a powerful too, but its user base has aged and now an aol.com email address is little more than a punchline in a joke about technologically illiterate people of a certain age.
Not so fast on Facebook, says on analyst who notes that the site’s younger users have been dwindling but doesn’t see Facebook going anywhere, at least not any time soon.
“The fact that we are talking about Facebook being 20 years old, I think that is a testament of what Mark [Zuckerberg] developed when he was in college. It’s pretty incredible. It is still a very powerful platform around the world.”
Read the full story here.