Harris Prepares a New Economic Pitch

Plus: Congressional leaders' new plan to avoid a 'galactically stupid' shutdown ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ [The Fisc]( By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey Good evening! The last full-size Kmart store in the United States [is closing](. On a brighter note, the Philadelphia Phillies are playing right now with a chance to clinch the National League East division. Here’s what else is happening. Speaker Mike Johsnon (Reuters) Trying to Avoid 'Galactically Stupid' Shutdown, Congress Will Vote on 3-Month Funding Bill Congressional leaders announced plans Sunday to vote this week on a [bill](20-%20FINAL%20FOR%20INTRODUCTION.pdf) that would extend federal funding for 12 weeks, heading off a potential government shutdown on October 1 while pushing the battle over 2025 spending levels until after the election. House Speaker Mike Johnson reached a bipartisan, bicameral agreement with Democratic leaders over the weekend on a continuing resolution that would fund the government at current levels until December 20, with an additional $231 million for the Secret Service to boost protection for presidential candidates and $47 million for election-related expenses. The House is scheduled to take a procedural vote on the measure, known as a CR, on Monday. The bill does not include the SAVE Act, a controversial piece of legislation backed by Republicans that would require proof of citizenship to vote. Under pressure from fellow Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, Johnson last week attempted to pass a six-month funding extension that included the election measure, but the package failed to clear the House as 14 Republicans joined with nearly all Democrats to vote against it. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the stripped-down, bipartisan bill should enable Congress to avoid a shutdown. “If both sides continue to work in good faith, I am hopeful that we can wrap up work on the CR this week, well before the September 30 deadline," Schumer said in a statement Sunday. "The key to finishing our work this week will be bipartisan cooperation, in both chambers.” Final act of “failure theater”? Some of Johnson’s critics have complained about his inability to pass funding bills that reflect conservative values, including spending cuts and various culture war initiatives, but the narrow Republican majority in the House makes it all but impossible for Johnson to satisfy their demands. Nevertheless, Johnson — who would like to keep his job as speaker if Republicans hold the House in November — pushed ahead with the six-month CR, even though it was doomed from the start given Democratic control of both the Senate and the White House. In a letter to House Republicans Sunday, Johnson said that since “we fell a bit short of the goal line” on the longer funding bill, a new approach is necessary. “Our legislation will be a very narrow, bare-bones CR including only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.” Johnson noted that while the short-term funding bill is not what many Republican lawmakers wanted to see, it is the only “prudent” path to take so close to the election, even if some hardliners — including, apparently, Trump — would prefer to shut the government down. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice,” Johnson wrote. Some of Johnson’s critics haven’t been placated by his effort to appease the hardliners. “I refuse to be a thespian in this failure theater,” Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky said earlier this month as he announced his opposition to Johnson’s plan. “This is political theater. I'm going to call out both sides right here. It's all posturing. It's fake fighting. We all know where it ends up.” Like some of the other Republican lawmakers who have opposed Johnson’s effort, Massie said he wants to see real spending cuts and a balanced budget, rather than the continuing resolution and last-minute omnibus spending bills that Congress typically passes each year. “We've got some good theater. We've got great writers,” he said. “I wish they'd just come up with a new plot. It's the same plot every fiscal year.” Still, more moderate Republicans said they were happy to avoid the drama of a shutdown showdown so close to the election. “It’s, in my opinion, galactically stupid to do a government shutdown even after an election,” said Rep. Mike Garcia of California, per [NBC News](. “Before an election, it’s even worse. It’s self-immolating as a party if we do that right before an election.” What happens next: The House will attempt to approve the bill on an expedited basis, with a possible Senate vote later in the week. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, chair of the Appropriations Committee, called on lawmakers to push the legislation over the finish line. “This continuing resolution was a bipartisan compromise—let’s get it passed and ensure we avert a needless and disastrous government shutdown,” she said in a statement. “There are so many urgent national priorities that still must be addressed in our full-year funding bills. I will be working closely with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure we get the job done before the end of the year. Harris Prepares a New Economic Pitch to Voters With six weeks to go until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to make another economic pitch to voters, aiming to improve her standing on an issue where public perception still favors former President Donald Trump. Harris told reporters yesterday that she’ll give a speech this week “to outline my vision for the economy.” Her proposals this week will “aim to help Americans build wealth and set economic incentives for businesses to aid that goal,” Reuters [reports](. But don’t expect a slew of specifics: “The address will be more sweeping in tone rather than focused on any proposal or set of policy items,” Bloomberg [says]( citing an unnamed source familiar with Harris’s plans. Since launching her campaign in late July, she has pledged to lower costs, provide tax breaks for childcare, build more housing, raise the corporate tax rate and offer financial support to small businesses. “I’ve named it an opportunity economy,” she told reporters yesterday, adding that her plan “is about what we can do more to invest in the aspirations, the ambitions and the dreams of the American people while addressing the challenges that they face, whether it be the high price of groceries or the difficulty in being able to acquire home ownership for a number of reasons, including we don’t have enough houses to buy.” Harris’s focus on the economy comes as some undecided voters continue to say they want to hear more about how she would steer the economy — and as Democratic strategists debate whether she would benefit from laying out more policy details. Harris has surged to a slight lead over former Trump in national polls. She’s up by 5 percentage points in the new [NBC News poll]( and by 4 points in the latest from [CBS News/YouGov](. Harris appears to be slightly ahead in four of the seven battlegrounds, including the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. New polls from The New York Times and Siena College show Trump has a considerable edge in Arizona and also leads in Georgia and North Carolina. But the race remains incredibly close, and Harris continues to lag in some polls on the question of which candidate voters trust more on the economy — though she has closed the gap considerably compared to where President Joe Biden had been. The NBC poll found that more voters say Trump would be better than Harris at handling the economy, 50% to 41%, and better at dealing with inflation and the cost of living, 48% to 40%. Those margins, while still large, are much narrower than the 22-point advantage Trump had on the same questions in NBC polls earlier this year. And the latest [FT-Michigan Ross poll]( showed Harris leading Trump on the question of stewardship of the economy, 44% to 42%. The CBS News/YouGov poll found that 88% of registered voters say the economy will be a major factor in their vote, and 59% called the economy fairly bad or very bad, compared with 39% who said it is fairly good or very good. Still, that was a slight improvement from August, when the split was 62-35. Nearly 90% of likely voters who say the economy is good prefer Harris over Trump, and the vice president has closed the gap among likely voters who are emphasizing the economy. Trump led with those voters, 56% to 43%, in August, but his edge has now shrunk to six points, 53% to 47%. Trump to talk taxes: The former president is scheduled to give a speech in Savannah, Georgia, tomorrow “outlining his plan to lower taxes for American business owners and highlight the importance of buying American made goods for our economy.” Number of the Day: $65 Billion Novo Nordisk has sold nearly $50 billion worth of the weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy as of the second quarter of 2024, and the drugmaker is on track to rack up cumulative sales of $65 billion by the end of the year, Bloomberg’s Robert Langreth and Tanaz Meghjani [report](. Those eye-popping numbers could come into play on Tuesday at a [hearing]( led by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is expected to grill Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, the CEO of Novo Nordisk, about the “outrageously high prices for Ozempic and Wegovy.” One issue that may come up is the long-running claim by drugmakers that high prices are necessary to fund scientific breakthroughs. Langreth and Meghjani say that Novo Nordisk may have trouble defending that position, given the size of their revenues from just these drugs alone, which on an inflation-adjusted basis exceed “the $68 billion that Novo will have spent on all research and development since the mid-1990s, when the company started ramping up work on this class of drugs.” “The pharma industry has long argued that it needs big windfalls from successful drugs to offset the cost of many experimental treatments that fail during testing,” Langreth and Meghjani write, adding that their “findings suggest that this argument is running out of steam for Novo’s popular shots.” --------------------------------------------------------------- Send your feedback to yrosenberg@thefiscaltimes.com. And please encourage your friends to [sign up here]( for their own copy of this newsletter. --------------------------------------------------------------- Fiscal News Roundup - [Speaker Johnson Unveils Short-Term Spending Bill, Urges Members to Avoid Shutdown]( – CNN - [House to Take up New Funding Bill as Some Republicans Fear a 'Galactically Stupid' Shutdown]( – NBC News - [House Moves Toward Averting a Shutdown, Sidestepping a Trump Demand]( – Washington Post - [US Government Begins Preparations for a Partial Shutdown With One Week Until Deadline – Despite Agreement]( – CNN - [House Moves to Bolster Secret Service After Assassination Scares]( – Roll Call - [Trump, Harris to Turbocharge Economic Pitches at Dueling Events]( – Bloomberg - [Trumponomics: the Radical Plan That Would Reshape America’s Economy]( – Financial Times - [Details, Details: Trump Passes Up Chance to Spell Out His Economic Plans]( – Politico - [Harris to Release New Economic Proposals This Week on US Wealth Creation]( – Reuters - [Try to Understand the Weird Way the US Government Gets Money]( – CNN - [For Some Parents, Surging Child-Care Costs Could Determine How They Vote]( – Washington Post - [Analysts Say Market Forces Will Lower Cost of Obesity Drugs]( – Roll Call - [French PM Weighs Taxing Wealthy and Large Firms to Tackle Debt]( – Bloomberg - [The Fed Sees Its Inflation Fight as a Success. Will the Public Eventually Agree?]( – Associated Press Views and Analysis - [Project 2025 Is a Huge Blunder From Trump’s Allies]( – Aaron Blake, Washington Post - [The Biden-Harris Economic Success]( – Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, Wall Street Journal - [The Biden-Harris Economy Shines on Wisconsin]( – Matthew A. Winkler, Bloomberg - [Donald Trump’s Imaginary and Frightening World]( – Ashley Parker, Washington Post - [Trump’s Price Controls on Credit Cards]( – Wall Street Editorial Board - [Trump’s Biggest Problem Remains Trump]( – Stuart Rothenberg - [Donald Trump’s Imaginary and Frightening World]( – Ashley Parker, Washington Post - [Mapping 8 Paths to Victory for Harris and Trump in the 2024 Election]( – Lenny Bronner and Nick Mourtoupalas, Washington Post - [This Week in Bidenomics: Kamalanomics Looks Better]( – Rick Newman, Yahoo Finance - [Kamala Harris Is Not an Ideas Candidate]( – Christian Britschgi, Reason - [Trump Learned Nothing From the Obamacare Debate. Neither Did Vance]( – Paul Krugman, New York Times - [The Public Health Consequences of Public Housing Failures]( – Washington Post - [$50 Billion in Sales Make Ozempic and Wegovy Prices Tougher to Justify]( – Robert Langreth and Tanaz Meghjani, Bloomberg - [America’s Home Affordability Crisis Has a Solution. Lower Rates Isn’t It]( – Samantha Delouya, CNN - [We Finally Got a Rate Cut. Here’s What History Says Will Happen Next]( – Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN - [I’m a Doctor, and I’m Worried About What Comes Next for Our Health Care System]( – Danielle Ofri, New York Times Copyright © 2024 The Fiscal Times, All rights reserved. You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed at our website or through Facebook. The Fiscal Times, 399 Park Avenue 14th Floor, New York, NY 10022, United States Want to change how you receive these emails? [Update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe](