by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : The US Senate has approved a short-term spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown during the holidays, but it does not include funds demanded by US President Donald Trump to build the wall along the Mexico border.
The bill, pushed by the Republicans and supported by the Democrats, includes funds to finance the administration for seven weeks from Friday midnight — when the current ones expire — till February 8.
The House of Representatives is expected to approve the bill on Thursday so that Trump can sign it, Efe news reported.
Trump has not yet stated whether he supports the spending bill as it does not include $5 billion he had demanded for the border wall with Mexico.
In fact, at a meeting last week with Democrat leaders in the Congress, Trump said he would be proud to force a government shutdown if the wall were to be financed.
With the approval of the budget, negotiation on funding for the wall would be postponed to 2019 when the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives and can thereby block it easily.
Earlier this year, Trump faced two government shutdowns for lack of funds: The first was in January which lasted for three days while the second in February went on for only a few hours.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, World
San Francisco : The US senate has voted to reinstate a ban on Chinese telecom company ZTE which prevents it from buying US components and using US software despite President Donald Trump’s attempts to lift sanctions on the firm, the media reported.
The Senate has passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act which included an amendment to stop Trump’s deal allowing US companies to trade with ZTE.
Several Republican and Democratic Senators said their vote related to national security issues after numerous intelligence warnings about ZTE this year.
“The legislation which is considered crucial for continuing defense funding, was passed with 85-10 votes, one of a handful of times the Republican-controlled Senate has deviated from a Trump policy,” Business Insider reported on Tuesday.
Mark Warner, Vice-Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee had tweeted that the Senate had “blocked” the Trump administration from making a “bad deal with ZTE”.
“The amendment is not guaranteed to become law. The bill will now need to be reconciled with a House version — where the amendment could be stripped out — voted through both the House and the Senate and signed into law by Trump,” the report added.
The Shenzhen-headquartered telecommunications firm was hit with a trade ban by the US Commerce Department for seven years after failing to follow through with a punishment for violating sanctions on Iran and North Korea.
That ban essentially shut down ZTE, which relies on US parts like Qualcomm processors.
However, on Trump’s orders, the administration made a deal earlier this month to end ZTE’s sanctions in exchange for a $1 billion fine.
ZTE, which employs 70,000 people in China, described the move by the US regulators to cut it off from its US parts suppliers as a “death sentence”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US Senate and House Republicans have struck an agreement on a sweeping tax-cut bill that, if passed, would be the first major piece of legislation signed by President Donald Trump, the media reported.
Senate Republican leaders shared the details of the revamped bill with members of their conference on Wednesday and Speaker Paul Ryan updated his colleagues later in the day, reports The Hill magazine.
“I’m confident we’ll pass the bill next week,” Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn, a member of the Senate-House negotiating conference, told reporters.
Republican leaders plan to hold an initial procedural vote on December 18, a final Senate vote on December 19 and then send the measure to the House for final passage.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell heralded the development as something that would boost the middle class.
“We want to take more money out of Washington’s pocket and put more money into the pockets of the middle class. I’m confident the conference committee will finalize a bill that does just that,” he tweeted.
Senate negotiators convinced their House counterparts to preserve two important middle-class tax breaks: the deduction on student loan interest and the exclusion for tuition waivers received by graduate students, reports The Hill magazine.
The bill would also cap the popular mortgage interest deduction at $750,000, a midpoint compromise between the Senate and House bills.
Negotiators were still working on how many tax brackets to set, said congressional aides. Republican senators said they expected the final bill to tilt toward the seven brackets they passed in their version.
Lawmakers were rushing to get the bill done before the Christmas holiday.
The legislation will repeal the federal mandate requiring people to buy insurance – a core piece of ObamaCare.
The bill also would give some relief to people in high-tax areas by allowing them to deduct up to $10,000 in state and local taxes.
Meanwhile, a provision to set a corporate alternative minimum tax – which would have raised $40 billion over 10 years – has been stripped out.
—IANS
