Biden urges Congress to pass Ukraine aid day after rare bipartisan passage of bill including child tax credits and tax breaks – US politics live

Biden urges Congress to pass Ukraine aid: ‘We must continue to help them’

Woven into the president’s prayer breakfast remarks was an appeal to Congress to continue aiding Ukraine.

As the second anniversary of the grinding war nears, Biden praised the Ukrainians people’s “incredible resolve and resilience against Putin’s aggression” and demanded of the members of Congress seated in the pews before him: “We must continue to help them.”

The White House’s request to send nearly $110bn in additional security assistance and aid to Ukraine has met sharp resistance from conservatives in Congress amid polls showing American support for the war effort waning. Efforts to replenish Ukraine’s war chest have been tied up with talks over a border security plan that appears to be on the brink of collapse.

Key events

Secretary Austin: ‘I did not handle this right’

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was contrite in a Pentagon press briefing this morning, his first since being rushed to the hospital with complications from prostate cancer surgery that he kept secret from the president and the public for several days.

“We did not handle this right and I did not handle this right,” Austin told reporters. “I should have told the President about my cancer diagnosis. I should have also told my team and the American public. And I take full responsibility.”

“We didn’t get this right,” he said in response to another question, insisting his decision not to inform the public was a matter of “privacy than secrecy.”

“I should have informed my boss,” Austin said, noting that he has apologized to the president.

A reporter noted that he arrived to the briefing in a golf cart and asked about his prognosis. Austin said it was the first time he rode in the cart, which he found “pretty neat” and that he was improving with physical therapy. “I won’t be ready for the Olympics,” he quipped.

Turning to the campaign trail, new polling shows Trump trouncing Haley in her “sweet state of South Carolina” where voters twice elected her governor. The state holds its primary on 24 February.

According to a brand new Washington Post/Monmouth University poll released this morning, Haley trails Trump 32% to 58% among potential Republican primary voters. The survey showed that both candidates have grown their support since the field narrowed to a head-to-head contest between the former South Carolina governor and the former president. In its September poll, nearly a third of likely primary voters planned to vote for a candidate other than Haley or Trump.

Perhaps more worrying for Haley, more South Carolina Republicans are confident that Trump would beat Biden in November than they are about Haley.

SOUTH CAROLINA GOP PRIMARY POLL: More Republican voters think Trump can beat Biden (71%) than say the same about Haley (63%). But Haley backers (32%) are much less confident about Trump’s chances than his own supporters (94%).@MonmouthPoll @PostPollshttps://t.co/3rxsKURIok

— MonmouthPoll (@MonmouthPoll) February 1, 2024

Electability is a key theme of Haley’s campaign, and she often points to polling that shows she would beat Biden by a wider margin than Trump would in a hypothetical general election match up.

Trump’s electability is a concern for some primary voters. It’s just that this group is nowhere near large enough to put Haley in striking distance of the front-runner,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Haley has been barnstorming the state, where her team argues she can reactive the coalition that elected her governor and if not beat Trump outright, at least significantly diminish his lead. But the party has undergone an enormous transition since she was first elected the “Tea Party governor” in 2012. Much of that change was driven by Trump, who now commands unwavering loyalty from the party’s base, including in South Carolina.

Taking a sharp turn from the prayer breakfast, it appears there will be no charges against the now-former Senate staffer who allegedly recorded himself having sex in a Capitol Hill hearing room not so far from where Bocelli serenaded the president this morning.

According to a statement from the US Capitol Police and shared on X by Punchbowl News, a comprehensive investigation into the incident, which occurred on 13 December in the Hart Senate Office Building, and consultation with local and federal prosecutors determined that “despite a likely violation of Congressional policy” there was currently “no evidence that a crime was committed.”

The staffer, who worked for senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, resigned after the video came to light. According to USCP, the ex-staffer invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and refused to speak to police about the episode. The statement notes that while the hearing room was closed to the public at the time of the incident, the staffer had access.

Biden also denounced the rise of antisemitism and Islamaphobia, which have spiked in the months since the 7 October attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.

“The challenge of our times reminds us of our responsibility as a nation to help each other, just and lasting peace delivered abroad and here at home,” Biden continued. “That’s why we’re fighting against the rise of anti-semitism and Islamophobia here in the United States all forms of hate, including those against Arab-Americans and South Asian Americans. This is a calling to stand against hate.”

The Biden administration has launched several investigations into hate incidents at academic institutions across the country as accusations of anti-semitism and Islamaphobia roil college campuses amid youth-led protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the Israeli hostages.

Many Arab Americans have voiced their fury with the president’s response to Israel-Gaza war. They have accused Biden of doing far too little to address Islamaphobia in America and to stop Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza that many critics argue amounts to a “genocide” against the Palestinian people.

Biden urges Congress to pass Ukraine aid: ‘We must continue to help them’

Woven into the president’s prayer breakfast remarks was an appeal to Congress to continue aiding Ukraine.

In his remarks, Biden offered prayers for the lives lost in Israel and Gaza and said his administration was working “day and night” to secure peace in the region. The president re-asserted Washington’s assessment that they key to lasting peace in the Middle East is a two-state solution.

We value and pray for the lives taken and for the families left behind and all those who are living in dire circumstances: the innocent men, women and children held hostage, or under bombardment or displaced not knowing where the next meal will come from, or if it will come at all. Not only do we pray for peace, we’re actively working for peace, security, dignity for the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. I’m engaged in this day and night, working as many of you in this room are to find the means to bring our hostages home, to ease humanitarian crisis and to bring peace to Gaza and Israel and enduring peace with two states for two peoples.

Biden also seemed to nod to the deep divisions over his policy toward Israel, which has sparked widespread calls for a ceasefire, which his administration has resisted, and hurt the president’s standing among young people and progressive Democrats.

“I also see the trauma, the death and destruction in Israel and Gaza,” Biden said, “and understand the pain and passion felt by so many here in America and around the world.”

Biden pays tribute to three US soldiers killed in Jordan drone attack

Biden started his remarks my honoring the three US servicemembers killed at a US base in Jordan in what the Biden administration has said was a drone attack from an Iran-backed militia.

Biden said he spoke with each of their families and would receive the dignified transfer of their bodies at Dover air force base on Friday.

“They risked it all,” Biden said. He also praised the “sacrifice and service to our country” of the dozens of servicemen and women who were injured in the attack. Under pressure to respond, Biden is weighing the perilous decision as he seeks to avoid dragging the US into a wider regional war.

Biden is now speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on Capitol Hill, where it should go without saying the former senator and avowed Catholic feels especially at home.

In the spirit of bipartisanship, he nodded to Speaker Mike Johnson, who he was squished next to in the pew. He also praised the earlier performance by Andrea Bocelli, comparing the Italian tenor’s voice to a “choir of heralded angels.” Biden appeared to wipe a tear away with a tissue when Bocelli sang Amazing Grace.

“I am an unadulterated fan of Bocelli,” Biden said whimsically. “God. He’s incredible.”

House passes $79bn tax package in rare moment of bipartisanship

Last night, the US House passed a nearly $79bn tax package that would expand the child tax credit for millions of lower-income families and revive a trio of tax breaks for businesses. Yes, that House – the Republican-controlled one that booted its Speaker and has repeatedly brought the US government to the brink of a shutdown while failing to do much legislating of consequence – that passed the tax bill on a vote of 357-70.

It was a rare moment of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill at a moment when the House is moving ahead with the impeachment charges against Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, and cross-party border talks near collapse, leaving aid for Ukraine and Israel in jeopardy.

Perhaps the trick to its success was the way the bill paired a long-term Democratic goal –enhancing the child tax credit, which was temporarily expanded during Covid and resulted in halving the child poverty rate in America – with a long-sought Republican one: the restoration of deductions for business research and development expenses as well as well as tax breaks aimed at expanding housing affordability and boosting manufacturing. It faced opposition from progressives who said the child tax credit enhancement fell well short of what was needed to slash child poverty and from conservatives who likened the expansion to “welfare by a different name.”

The legislation next goes to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where its prospects are unclear. Senate Republicans have indicated opposition to several aspects of the bill.

Here’s what else is happening today:

Joe Biden is about to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast on Capitol Hill. Then Biden will depart for Michigan where he will rally support from union members. The visit comes a day after Donald Trump held a roundtable discussion in Washington with leaders and rank-and-file members of the Teamsters union amid a brewing fight for the support of union workers, who have historically favored Democrats.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will take reporters’ questions aboard Air Force One en route to Detroit.
A new Monmouth University-Washington Post Poll found Trump leading Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina by a wide margin.
Border security negotiations continue on Capitol Hill but with House Speaker Mike Johnson declaring the yet-to-be-seen bill “dead on arrival,” it appears destined to fail.
Today is the first day of Black History Month. The Biden-Harris campaign is marking the day in a statement from co-chair and South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn: “As we celebrate Black History Month, we should remember: the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow were decided by just one vote. The power is in our hands to choose freedom and prosperity over chaos and vitriol.”