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Hundreds of New Hampshire families could see their childcare endangered due to provisions in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better spending plan that penalizes religious education.

The $1.7 trillion social safety net spending plan includes funding for early childhood education and childcare centers, a feature its booster are quick to tout. The White House pledges “universal preschool for all 3- and 4-year olds,” and taxpayer-funded subsidies to many families to keep child care costs “no more than 7 percent of income.” 

However, the bill also places multiple mandates on childcare facilities that accept the funding. For example, they must raise the salaries of their workers to those commensurate with the average elementary school teacher in their area, which would mean more than doubling them in most cases. Economist Casey Mulligan at the University of Chicago estimates the bill’s regulations would raise costs by 80 percent.

And then there’s the bill’s bias against religious and faith-based daycare.

At issue is a provision mandating all providers comply with federal nondiscrimination statutes, which would end up excluding many child care facilities associated with religious organizations and churches.

Bevin Kennedy, the development and communications cabinet secretary for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, said that means the state’s six Catholic childcare centers could be left out.

“There are six Catholic childcare providers throughout New Hampshire that serve the needs of hundreds of families across the state. The Build Back Better Act in its current form contains new funding for pre-K services, but it makes it virtually impossible for many faith-based child care providers to participate in receiving these funds because of explicit obligations that numerous religions and faith communities cannot meet,” Kennedy said.

Last week, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, along with dozens of other faith-based groups across the religious spectrum, sent a letter to congressional leaders calling out the discrimination baked into the spending bill.

“The faith community has always affirmed that parents should choose the best environment for care and education of their children. The current Build Back Better Act provisions would severely limit the options for parents, suffocate the mixed delivery system for child care and pre-kindergarten, and greatly restrict the number of providers available for a successful national program,” the letter states. 

New Hampshire federal delegation, including Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas, and Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jean Shaheen, fully back the BBB spending plan.

The problem with the bill, according to the letter, is any organization that receives federal funding would be required to meet the federal government’s non-discrimination requirements, without any exemptions for religious groups. 

Kennedy said the Build Back Better bill’s lack of a religious exemption is a change from past federal funding plans.

“Although the federal funding provision at issue has the laudable goal of increasing the availability of pre-K services, the measure is drafted in such a way that many pre-K programs cannot even participate,” she said.

Early childcare is vital to the many low-income Granite States families served by the church, as it allows parents to work to support their families, according to Kennedy.

“The Diocese of Manchester has serious concerns about these provisions, as our childcare centers are imperative to enabling many families to work, including many low-income parents or guardians providing for their families,” Kennedy said.

Churches and religious organizations provide a disproportionate amount of low-cost daycare for low-income families. As Mulligan points out, “churches and other faith-based institutions have a natural cost advantage in child care because church facilities would otherwise sit unused on weekdays, when the demand for care is greatest. Build Back Better would squander this advantage by financing capacity expansions only at nonreligious competitors.”

More than half of American families using pre-kindergarten and early child care services get their care through a religious-based organization or providers.

Granite State U.S. Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas have a reputation for being loyal Democratic Party soldiers. But on one of the hottest political issues of the moment — cash payouts to immigrant families separated at the border — they have both broken with President Joe Biden and progressives in their party.

At issue is the Biden Justice Department’s current negotiations with the ACLU and other immigrant advocates over a proposal to pay perhaps as much as $450,000 in reparations to illegal immigrants who were separated from their children during the Trump administration.

First asked about the reports, Biden called them “garbage,” adding “That’s not gonna happen.”

But just three days later, on November 6, Biden reversed his stance and claimed any such taxpayer-funded payments were a moral obligation. “If in fact, because of the outrageous behavior of the last administration, you coming across the border, whether it was legal or illegal, and you lost your child, you lost your child! … you deserve some kind of compensation no matter what the circumstance. What that will be, I have no idea,” Biden said.

The Trump administration separated around 5,500 children from their families when they were caught illegally crossing the border. At the reported $450,000 per child, the settlement will be close to $2.5 billion.

It’s a position embraced by pro-immigration advocates and social-justice organizations — but rejected by Kuster and Pappas.

“Absolutely not. I don’t support any kind of settlement like that,” Pappas told radio host Jack Heath on Wednesday.

Pappas is heading into an uphill reelection fight once the new map for the First Congressional District is complete in the spring. With a likely GOP advantage in a newly-drawn district, supporting payouts to undocumented migrants is politically problematic.

The next day, Kuster echoed Pappas’ position on the same radio show.

“That’s not happening. The president has said that’s not happening,” Kuster mistakenly told Heath.

With New Hampshire Republicans turning her district even more Democrat-leaning (no Republican has carried it since 2010), Kuster is believed to have a safe seat, despite her unimpressive polling. However, it’s possible a national Republican wave election could break against Kuster, particularly with Biden polling in the 30s in swing states like New Hampshire.

A recent NBC News poll found Americans trust Republicans more on border security than Democrats by a 27-point margin, their largest advantage among 13 areas polled. In the most recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, Americans said they’d prefer to be represented by a Republican in Congress over a Democrat by a margin of 51 to 41 percent. That’s the largest GOP advantage in the generic preference question in the history of the poll.

“If you’re a Democrat and President Biden won your seat by 16 points, you’re in a competitive race next year,” House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) recently declared. “You are no longer safe.”

Kuster and Pappas aren’t just abandoning the Biden administration’s position, they are also moving to the right of immigrant activists and progressives with their position. 

Eva Castillo, director of the New Hampshire Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees, said the families are owed something for the resulting trauma.

“I think they should pay the families something,” Castillo said. “It was a callous decision on the part of the government, the least we could do is pay them for their pain and suffering,” she said.

The ACLU, which is suing the government over the separations, also agrees that families ought to be compensated.

“For the sake of these families, the Biden administration must repair the harms inflicted by family separation and ensure such an atrocity never happens again,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project wrote.

While illegal border crossings have been trending downward since July, the number of migrants apprehended at the U.S. southern border in October is 128 percent higher than October 2020, when Trump was still president, according to data released this week by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). July saw more than 213,000 border crossings, a 20-year high.

The Green Bridge in Woodstock, N.H. is not an impressive sight. A small, insignificant structure — it’s only 30 feet wide and about half the length of a football field —  it isn’t economically vital or historically significant.

In other words, it was the perfect place for President Joe Biden.

New Hampshire Public Radio described the Woodstock bridge as “rickety,” and that’s a pretty good description of the Biden presidency at the moment as well. Everything about Biden’s visit to New Hampshire Tuesday, like the sad, little bridge where he gave his speech, felt patched together.

Unfortunately, the $1 trillion in infrastructure spending won’t fix that, either.

As a light snow fell around him, Biden stumbled over the names of the candidates he came to boost (“Amy Kuster”), stumbled through the facts he came to pitch and gave the sort of stumbling delivery we’ve come to expect from a president who turns 79 on Saturday — just three years younger than “red-listed” bridge he came to rescue.

About halfway through his speech, Biden acknowledged the modesty of his message.

“This isn’t esoteric. This isn’t some gigantic bill,” Biden said. “It’s about what happens to ordinary people, conversations around kitchen tables — as profound as they are ordinary.

“How do I cross the bridge in a snowstorm?” Biden asked. “No, really — think about it. What happens when the bridge collapses and there’s a fire on the other side? It’s going to take 10 miles longer to get to the fire. What does it mean if a school bus or logging truck can’t cross? I mean, this is real stuff, folks.”

Right.

If you’ve listened in to any “conversations around the kitchen table” in New Hampshire lately, it’s likely you haven’t heard much about ten-mile detours or rickety bridges. Instead, you’ve probably encountered table-pounding anger over rising prices. Over reports the cost of heating a home in New Hampshire could nearly double this winter. And over the general frustration of dealing with a COVID crisis that President Biden promised to end but instead has mishandled.

Last year, Joe Biden told America, “I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m going to shut down the virus.”

Today, Biden’s pushing mandates to get workers fired from their jobs, COVID restrictions are once again on the rise, and the virus isn’t close to being “shut down.” The president who embraced an FDR-style re-making of America is instead standing in a rural New Hampshire outpost promising a few, small repairs.

This national moment require far more. Inflation hitting 30-year highs is a huge problem that can endanger the entire economy. And while it’s not the Great Depression, the “Great Resignation” — Americans quitting their jobs in record numbers amid a worker shortage crisis and supply-chain crunch — is a massive economic threat as well.

But other than the price tag, there was nothing “massive” in Biden’s message. There is no obvious connection between the roads, bridges and broadband he was bragging about on the bridge, and the gas prices and empty shelves folks are worrying about back home.

WMUR asked Woodstock resident Guy Hoover about Biden’s message.

“I’m paying $4 a gallon for propane, which is $2 a gallon in most places, to heat my home. I’m on a fixed income, I’m on Social Security, and the way things are going right now, I’m going to have to go and get help to heat my home this winter.”

Sure, for a small state like New Hampshire, $2 billion in new federal funds is a lot of money. And Granite Staters stuck with lousy cell service will be happy for any improvements.

But nobody in New Hampshire will go to bed tonight worrying about potholes and bridge repairs. Not when inflation is rising faster than wages, and store shelves are as empty as Biden’s promises that another trillion or three in federal spending won’t send prices even higher. Not to mention 2 million illegal border crossings, the Afghanistan fiasco, the threat from China, etc. etc.

“When you see these projects starting,” Biden said as he stood on that small, rickety bridge, “I want you to feel what I feel: pride.”

Americans would like to feel that way when they see their president, too.

At the moment, alas, that appears to be a bridge too far.

President Joe Biden picked New Hampshire as the first stop on his national tour to promote the $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending package. Based on the polls, he’s not doing local Democrats any favors.

“The bill I’m about to sign is proof that despite the cynics, Democrats and Republicans can come together and deliver results,” Biden said at Monday’s White House signing ceremony. The spending proposal garnered the votes of 19 Republicans in the U.S. Senate, 13 in the House, and is polling well with the general public. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds 63 percent of Americans support Washington spending $1 trillion “on roads, bridges and other infrastructure.”

Unfortunately, just 41 percent of Americans in that same poll approve of the job Biden is doing in office. Among independents, 45 percent strongly disapprove. And about 50 percent of suburban voters give Biden a “thumbs down,” too.

In swing states like New Hampshire, the numbers are even worse. When ABC News looked at results in the eight states believed to have the most competitive U.S. Senate races, including New Hampshire, they found Biden’s overall job approval rating was a dismal 33 percent.

Biden’s numbers are killing the polls for the rest of his party. As ABC News reported last weekend, the GOP’s 10-point margin in the “generic ballot” question is the largest in the 40 years the network has asked the question.

The Green Bridge in Woodstock, N.H.

One of the Democrats being hurt by Biden’s sagging polls is Sen. Maggie Hassan, who’s expected to appear with Biden when he stops by a bridge in Woodstock, N.H. to promote the trillions in spending Democrats have passed so far this year. In last month’s poll from the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Hassan had a 44 percent approval rating — identical to Biden’s.

By comparison, independent Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, who hasn’t backed away from opposing some of the more progressive policies of his fellow Democrats, has an approval rating in West Virginia 28 points higher than Biden’s.

It’s just another data point in the growing evidence that Granite State Democrats’ performance in 2022 is likely to closely track that of the party as a whole. And every appearance by Biden will help more closely tie local Democrats like Hassan and U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas to the president and the national party.

Not everyone believes that is bad news.

“It is significant that President Biden has picked New Hampshire for his first stop after signing the infrastructure legislation,” veteran N.H. Democratic strategist Jim Demers told NHJournal. “It highlights the importance of bipartisanship, it’s been a long time since such a significant vote included the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.

“And the backdrop of the Green Bridge in Woodstock symbolizes one important aspect of the bill, funding for roads and bridges all across the country, many that have been in dangerous disrepair for years. Infrastructure has been talked about in Washington for a long time but you have to hand it to President Biden, he got it done.”

Hassan has tried to build on the bipartisan message, too. Her press releases are filled with the “B” word — sometimes four such press announcements celebrating ‘bipartisanship’ in a single day. But Hassan has largely voted with her party leadership, including on the latest trillion-dollar spending package. And there are already Democrat-funded ads touting her support for the “Build Back Better” social welfare/green energy policy spending proposal the House is expected to pass this week.

And then there’s that most problematic of questions around the president’s visit: What’s the point?

Partisans will debate the various elements of the bipartisan infrastructure bill Biden signed on Monday. But what do billions for roads, bridges, broadband and electric car chargers have to with the issues Granite Staters are actually worried about: inflation, energy prices and the worker shortage?

New Hampshire has among the highest percentage of homes heated by oil and propane in the nation. They’re looking at price hikes this winter of 50 percent or more. What is the Biden administration doing to drive those costs down?

New Hampshire has one of the lowest rates of unemployment and employers are running ads pleading for workers to return to the workforce. And Joe Biden is coming to New Hampshire to brag about spending billions to create even more competition for scare workers?

The same with inflation, which isn’t going to be helped by increased government demand for goods and services. That’s the Biden pitch?

Once again, this infrastructure spending may be needed. It may be a smart investment. But it’s almost entirely unconnected from the voters’ priorities of the moment. It’s as if your house is on fire, and Joe Biden pulls into the driveway in a new car he says was a great deal. It may be. But it won’t help put out the fire.

Hassan will be standing right by President Biden at the Woodstock Bridge. How is this a winning strategy in a state where Biden’s approval has collapsed and not a single elected Democrat has 50 percent statewide approval? Heading into a midterm election in which the GOP has record-setting polls?

“What else can she do?” a Granite State Democratic strategist told NHJournal. “Her fate is tied to Biden and the Democrats. It’s too late to pull a ‘Manchin.’ She has to count on the calendar — there’s still a year until the election.”

At least one Republican agrees. “A year is an eternity in politics,” says GOP strategist Tom Rath. “She’ll be tougher than folks think.”

She’ll need to be. The last time a GOP wave hit New Hampshire, the 2010 backlash to Obamacare, Republicans won the U.S. Senate and both House seats. Wildly-popular Democratic Gov. John Lynch held on with less than 53 percent of the vote.

And even Hassan’s biggest boosters concede: She’s no John Lynch.

U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster stood in the White House Rose Garden Monday moments before President Joe Biden was due to sign the $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending, celebrating the spending.

“A billion dollars coming to New Hampshire for roads and bridges and highways, we’re even going to get rail back to New Hampshire,” Kuster said in a video posted to Twitter.

As Kuster spoke, the United States Marine Corps Band played “76 Trombones” from the Broadway show, “The Music Man,” about a con artist who made big promises he couldn’t keep.

Kuster and the rest of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation celebrated Biden’s signing of the bill, citing the investments in roads and bridges, as well as broadband internet for rural areas like New Hampshire, public transportation expansion, and investments in clean drinking water.

“This bill has so many elements that will be game-changers for our families and our economy,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan.

Hassan is facing a potentially tough reelection bid despite presumed front-runner Gov. Chris Sununu bowing out of the race last week. Polls show Biden’s spending package is popular, even if the president himself is not.

Rep. Chris Pappas, whose congressional career faces possible extinction thanks to Republican-led redistricting, also supported the spending plan.

“I’m pleased the president has signed this legislation into law, and I look forward to beginning the work of repairing our infrastructure,” he said.

Both Pappas and Kuster’s poll ratings dipped into negative territory in the latest New Hampshire Institute of Politics poll, a first for both of them. Pappas was at 42 percent favorable to 46 percent unfavorable, Kuster landed at 40 percent to 46 percent.

The only Democrat not facing reelection this year, Sen. Janne Shaheen, touted her role in crafting the spending legislation.

“As a lead negotiator, I fought to ensure New Hampshire priorities were front and center: that includes investments to upgrade our water infrastructure – including robust support to combat PFAS contamination – and to bring high-speed internet to every corner of our state,” she said.

Backing the nominally bipartisan infrastructure plan, which had 13 Republican House votes, is risky for the three incumbents facing voters next year. Biden is underwater with Granite State voters, according to the most recent polling data. His recent polling average is 42 percent approve/52 percent disapprove. As Gallup reports, “Currently, 34 percent of independents approve of the job Biden is doing, the lowest of his term to date. His approval among independents has fallen a total of 21 points since June, including nine points since August.”

Biden is also trying to push through his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better social safety net spending package that includes spending on daycare, cash payments to parents, and green energy policies. Given a 30 percent spike in inflation, a majority of New Hampshire voters may not want to see all of that spending. Only 37 percent of Granite Staters want the “Build Back Better” multi-trillion-dollar spending package to pass, while 40 percent would like to see both spending bills killed, according to the polls.

And a Scott Rasmussen poll taken in August, before inflation become a top-tier issue, found 59 percent of voters nationwide believe increased government spending leads to inflation. Only 14 percent disagreed.

Less than 48 hours after Gov. Chris Sununu announced his support for a legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate on private businesses, a federal court has already stepped forward to rule against Biden’s plan.

The ruling “foreshadows an uphill battle” for the mandate policy, according to the New York Times, and it’s the latest indicator that Sununu has once again put himself in the center of the political bell curve on the politics of COVID-19.

When New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella announced his decision to join an 11-state lawsuit challenging Biden’s federal vaccine mandate, Sununu quickly gave his public endorsement.

“COVID vaccines are the most effective tool we have to protect ourselves and our community from this virus,” Sununu said. “But as the head of state, I recognize the limitations of government in mandating this personal medical decision. President Biden has created a loophole to facilitate this overreach, which is why I fully support the Attorney General’s decision to sign on to this lawsuit.”

New Hampshire Democrats have been criticizing Sununu’s opposition to mandates, in particular his reluctance to impose mandates on local school districts regarding COVID policy, since the pandemic began. Sununu has consistently said that, while he believes the vaccines are safe, effective, and the best way out of the pandemic, he generally opposes mandates as a public policy.

Formella’s office announced Friday that New Hampshire joined with Missouri, Arizona, Nebraska, Montana, Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, and Wyoming, along with several private businesses and organizations in a challenge to an “emergency” Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule to force employers to require workers to get vaccinated or undergo regular testing.

Formella also believes that the vaccines are safe, effective, said in a statement on the lawsuit that the mandates are the problem, not the vaccines.

“The new Emergency Temporary Standard issued by OSHA is illegal and would impose significant burdens on New Hampshire businesses and their employees. We are therefore obligated to take action to protect the interests of our state’s citizens and businesses,” Formellla said.

At least 27 states have filed lawsuits challenging the rule in several circuits.

In a separate legal action, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana temporarily halted the mandate after a conglomeration of businesses groups, religious groups, advocacy organizations and several other states filed a petition on Friday with the court, arguing that the administration had overstepped its authority.

The Fifth Circuit panel said the judges were blocking the regulation “because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate.”

Some legal experts, like UCLA Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, call the mandate blatantly unconstitutional.

“It undermines the Constitution’s balance between Congress and the president and between the federal and state governments,” Yoo said. “Congress has not vested the president with the power to govern every aspect of every office and factory in the nation, and even if it had, such a grant of sweeping power would violate the very division of authority between the national and state governments.”

(Yoo is perhaps best known for writing the legal justification for the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation tactics against Al-Qaeda detainees during the George W. Bush administration.)

And attorney Dan McLaughlin, who writes legal analysis for National Review, says the administration’s decision to announce the “emergency” OSHA rules in September, but not have them take effect until January, will hurt their case.

“The Biden administration could have a very hard time explaining to the [SCOTUS] chief justice why it is entitled to assert emergency powers that exist to address ‘immediate’ threats, then do nothing with them for four months.”

Nonetheless, the Biden administration says they’re going to keep pushing the mandates.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told ABC’s “This Week” it’s full steam ahead.

“The president and the administration wouldn’t have put these requirements in place if they didn’t think that they were appropriate and necessary, and the administration is certainly prepared to defend them,” Murthy told host Martha Raddatz.

Are they playing politics? They may want to re-read their polls. Since mid-September, polling has shown that Americans are, at best, split on the issue of mandates. A recent Economist-YouGov poll reports that only 52 percent of registered voters back Biden’s mandates, while 43 percent are opposed.

Here in the Granite State, a slim majority oppose the vaccine mandates, 52- 46 percent, according to a New Hampshire Institute of Politics poll.

And a new Rasmussen Research poll found 52 percent of likely voters say they support workers refusing to comply with workplace requirements to get COVID-19 vaccines. Just 38 percent oppose it.

And then there’s the question of whether, after Biden expends the political capital to push them, the mandates will still be needed in January. Many health experts predict COVID-19 is winding down due to the prevalence of vaccines and the Delta wave that largely infects the unvaccinated. With vaccines approved for children aged 5 to 11, and a new Pfizer drug that can prevent 90 percent of hospitalizations of the infected, COVID-19 may be in the rearview in a few months.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the FDA said on Twitter the government has already been successful in rolling out the vaccines, and mandates are not the way to reach the unvaccinated.

“As a fight over the federal OSHA mandate unfolds, we should remember 80.5% of responsible adults 18+ already had at least one dose of Covid vaccine,” Gottlieb wrote. “What level do we need to get to? What will the OSHA provision accomplish? And were there less divisive ways to achieve these goals?”

The Biden administration continues to defend a proposal for the IRS to monitor every bank account with $600 or more in total transactions every year. It’s a policy the American Banking Association (ABA) has condemned and the New Hampshire Bankers Association calls intrusive, complicated. and burdensome.

And yet while opposition is growing across the political spectrum, here in New Hampshire the entire delegation has no comment about the plan to monitor small-dollar bank accounts. That includes Sen. Maggie Hassan, who sits on the Finance Committee, where news of the IRS rule was first revealed.

Under the plan, banks and other financial institutions would be required to annually report customers’ account inflows and outflows to the IRS if they totaled more than $600 in a year. The White House has estimated the policy, which would apply to bank, loan, and investment accounts, would cost Americans about $46 billion a year.

“We believe the proposed IRS reporting requirements are extremely expansive, will intrude into the lives of nearly every individual with a bank account, will be complicated and burdensome for the industry to implement, and will disproportionately burden our community banks,” said Kristy Merrill, president of the NH Bankers Association.

The ABA calls it, “an expansive new tax information reporting regime that would directly impact almost every American and small business with an account at a financial institution. This proposal would create significant operational and reputational challenges for financial institutions, increase tax preparation costs for individuals and small businesses, and create serious financial privacy concerns.

“We urge members to oppose any efforts to advance this ill-advised new reporting regime,” the group said in a letter to Congress.

Members are responding. Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee and Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs sent a letter to leadership calling it a “misguided proposal” that “would violate law-abiding taxpayers’ privacy and place onerous new reporting requirements on financial institutions.”

The Biden proposal came to light in written testimony to the Senate Finance Committee from IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig in June. New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan is a member of that committee.

Hassan has declined repeated requests for comment on the plan, and she didn’t sign the Finance Committee letter opposing it.

Meanwhile, next door in Maine, lawmakers have introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives urging Senators Susan Collins (R), Angus King (I), and the rest of Maine’s congressional delegation to block the banking scheme.

And, says Rebeca Romero Rainey of the Independent Community Bankers of America, the American people don’t like this plan either.

“An ICBA poll conducted by Morning Consult found 67 percent of voters oppose requiring financial institutions to report customer account information to the IRS, while consumers are speaking with more than 400,000 messages to their members Congress in opposition,” Rainey said in a statement. “The IRS reporting proposal is an invasion of consumers’ privacy, a violation of Americans’ due process, a data security risk amid the agency’s ongoing tax return leak investigation, and a threat to bipartisan efforts to reduce the unbanked population by driving more Americans out of the banking system and toward predatory lenders.”

Critics have also noted the IRS’s “troubling record of failing to protect certain confidential taxpayer information and abusing its authority, specifically the targeting of conservative political groups, this proposal would undermine trust in the financial system and, in turn, reduce financial inclusion.”

In 2013, the Obama administration’s IRS was caught targeting conservative organizations, denying or drastically slowing their attempts to create advocacy organizations beginning in 2010. In 2017, the IRS issued an apology as part of a court-approved settlement.

Another concern is the rule would have “an outsized impact on credit unions serving rural communities” like those in much of New Hampshire, according to Jim Nussle, president and CEO of the Credit Union National Association.

“This proposal is deeply concerning for America’s credit unions and their 120 million members. From the massive 2014 data breach at the Office of Personnel Management to this year’s IRS leak of federal tax returns, the federal government’s checkered history of warehousing personal data underscores the dangerous impracticality of this policy proposal.”

Nevertheless, the Biden administration is pushing ahead. Yellen defended the policy during a Senate Banking Committee hearing Thursday.

“I think it’s important to recognize that we have a tax gap that’s estimated at $7 trillion over the next decade,” Yellen said. “That is taxes that are due and are not being paid to the government that deprive us of the resources that we need to do critical investments to make America more productive and competitive.”

Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis pushed back.

“Well, $600 threshold is not usually where you’re going to find the massive amount of tax revenue you think Americans are cheating you out of,” she replied, adding: “Are you aware of how unnecessary this regulatory burden is? Do you distrust the American people so much that you need to know when they bought a couch? Or a cow?”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Rep. Annie Kuster, and Rep. Chris Pappas all declined to comment.

If you woke up New Year’s Day feeling guilty about all those last-second charitable solicitations you ignored, it might ease your conscience to know you aren’t alone. Just ask Liz Warren.

On the campaign trail, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tirelessly attacks the greed and self-interest of America’s wealthy, the “millionaires and billionaires” who, she claims, are “waging war on America’s middle class.”

“It’s time for the millionaires to pay their fair share!” Warren demands.

But when it comes to spreading the wealth to charitable causes and community service, Warren is one of the millionaires who apparently hasn’t gotten the message.

According to the tax returns Warren has posted on her campaign website, she and her husband Bruce Mann have earned more than $10 million since 2008, but they’ve rarely donated more than 4 percent of their income to charitable causes. For example, in 2014 Warren earned more than $1.6 million but gave just 2.7 percent to charity. The following year she took in nearly $1.2 million, but donated just 2.3 percent.

All that changed, however, in 2017 when Warren was preparing to formally enter the presidential race. That year her charitable donations suddenly spiked to 8.4 percent, leading some to speculate that her newfound generosity was more about electability than philanthropy. In 2018, she donated 5.5 percent of her income to charity.

Exclude her “presidential primary” years, and Warren donated an average of just 3.5 percent of her millions in income to charitable causes. That number is low for the average American in her income bracket (the average millionaire donates nearly twice that amount), and it sounds particularly ungenerous given her political platform of income redistribution, trillion-dollar tax increases and “you didn’t build that!” rhetoric.

And yet compared to her fellow 2020 progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Warren’s the Oprah Winfrey of the Democratic field.

In 2016, Sanders donated just $10,600 of his $1 million income — around 1 percent — to charity. His total household donations since 2009 manage to get him to the two percent level.

According to analysis by Forbes magazine, the least charitable Democrat is also the poorest: Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Despite his progressive bona fides, including a “paid” volunteerism program,  Buttigieg has donated just 1 percent of his income to charity since 2009.

And then there’s former Vice President Joe Biden, who made headlines in 2008 when Barack Obama tapped him to be his running mate it was discovered the Bidens had donated just $3,690 to charity over the course of an entire decade. He’s since raised that number to six percent, much of it donated to Biden family foundations.

Thus far the issue of charitable giving hasn’t come up on the campaign trail, perhaps because Democratic primary voters are also less likely to support charitable causes themselves.

According to multiple studies, Americans on the left are less charitable than their Republican counterparts. States that supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 were, on average, less generous in their charitable giving than those carried by Donald Trump.

Arthur C. Brooks, a social scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School and author of the book on charitable giving Who Really Cares says his research finds, “People who favor government income redistribution are significantly less likely to donate to charity than those who do not.”

Data from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy show that a smaller percentage of Americans are donating to charity each year, but overall donations are rising. In fact, over this same 2009-2017 period during which millionaire candidates like Warren and Sanders give so little, total U.S. donations to charity rose by nearly $100 billion, from $314 billion to $410 billion.

The same “millionaires and billionaires” whose greed is allegedly endangering our democracy are giving more to charity and community service. Even as progressive politicians give so little.

There are exceptions, most notably Sen. Cory Booker. The former Mayor of Newark has donated nearly half a million dollars — about 11 percent of his income — to charity over the past decade. Unfortunately, Democratic primary voters aren’t being as generous toward his campaign and Sen. Booker continues to linger around 2 percent in the polls.

From free healthcare for illegal immigrants to paying off everyone’s student loan debt, Elizabeth Warren has lots of plans for taxpayer-funded generosity. American voters may want to ask why her charity doesn’t begin at home.

He was 6 feet tall and had an athlete’s build. He played football in high school and was active in sports throughout college. He spent one summer as a lifeguard at a local pool.

But after he graduated college in the spring of 1968 and became eligible for the draft and —possibly — combat duty in Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that let him avoid military service.

No, not bone spurs. Asthma.

And his name was Joe Biden.

Just a few months before President Donald Trump received his now-infamous diagnosis of “bone spurs in the heels,” former high school football star Biden got the same 1-Y draft deferment for “asthma as a teenager.” It was one of five deferments Biden received (the same number as notorious GOP “draft dodger” Dick Cheney) and allowed him to avoid being drafted at the height of the war. The year 1968 was one of the bloodiest of the Vietnam conflict with 296,406 Americans drafted into military service — the second-highest during the war.

Joe Biden’s 1966 yearbook photo.

Fifty-one years after the Summer of Love, the draft records of the sitting president, and at least one of the Democrats who want to replace him, are issues in the 2020 campaign.  In recent weeks, two of the military veterans in the race — Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton — have been highlighting Trump’s draft record and their own military service.

“You have somebody who thinks it’s all right to have somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled to do it. That is an assault on the honor of this country,” Buttigieg told ABC’s This Week. He served in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, spending six months in Afghanistan.

Moulton, a former Marine officer who served in Iraq, also accused Trump of dodging the draft. “I’d like to meet that American someday who went to Vietnam in Donald Trump’s place,” Moulton said. “I hope he’s still alive.”

Military veterans running on their record of service is nothing new. And criticism of an opponent’s military background — or lack thereof — isn’t unusual either, as the Bill Clinton and John Kerry campaigns can attest. But by highlighting Trump’s record, they’re also turning a spotlight on other candidates who were eligible for service during the Vietnam War, including Biden.

In fact, some Democratic strategists believe that’s their true goal.

“They’re not talking about Donald Trump. They’re talking about Joe Biden,” one long-time Democratic activist told InsideSources.

The Moulton campaign, which was the first to highlight the draft issue, denies any intra-party purpose. “Seth is running to take on Donald Trump and has been leading the field in challenging him directly as commander-in-chief,” Moulton campaign spokesperson Matt Corridoni told InsideSources. “There’s nothing more to read into this than Trump is a draft dodger and Seth is a decorated four-tour combat veteran who is calling the president out.”

The Biden and Buttigieg campaigns declined repeated requests for comment. But it’s naïve to think that raising the issue of Trump’s Vietnam-era behavior isn’t going to blow back on Biden.

DID BIDEN DODGE THE DRAFT?

There’s no denying that, by all appearances, the Joe Biden of 1968 was the picture of health.  During his time at Archmere Academy, Biden excelled at sports.  And while he once falsely claimed he played for the University of Delaware football team, he considered playing on the team (he chose to focus on his double-major in history and political science instead, he says) and he was active in intramural sports.

As the Associated Press noted in 2008, “Promises to Keep,” Biden’s best-selling memoir,  “never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school.”

Video of Joe Biden playing football as a teen

Biden frequently tells the story of his decision to spend a summer home from college working as the only white lifeguard at a pool predominately used by black residents. His goal was to learn more about the community, in part because he already had political ambitions.

One incident from that summer stands out: How Biden had to wrap a six-foot length of metal chain around his arm to face off against a knife-wielding local tough who went by the name “Corn Pop.”

“You might cut me, Corn Pop, but I’m going to wrap this chain around your head before you do,” Biden told him. Strong words, but he was a healthy, high school football player who could back them up. Biden and Corn Pop resolved their differences without violence and, according to Biden, became poolside friends.

Just six years later, at the height of the fighting in Vietnam, that same poolside athlete avoided mandatory military service due to “asthma as a teenager.”

Joe Biden’s high school yearbook from Archmere Academy

Does this prove that Biden was dishonest or made a false claim? No. But a similar story from Donald Trump was enough for Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D- Wis.), who was wounded while serving in Iraq,  to label President Trump a “coward.”

“@realDonaldTrump got his deferments for the wrong thing. They shouldn’t have been for his disappearing, imaginary bone spurs — they should have been for that yellow streak down his back. At least that would have been a real condition,” Duckworth tweeted on Wednesday.

Based on the lack of media coverage and interviews with Democratic primary voters, it appears that few potential Biden supporters even know about his draft deferments. And even if they did, would it matter?

“The Vietnam War is ancient history in the Democratic Party,” veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum told InsideSources.  “The war was unpopular then and it’s unpopular now. The idea that someone didn’t want to go or [like Sen. Bernie Sanders] was a conscientious objector, that’s not going to keep them from winning the nomination.”

And a new Politico/Morning Consult poll of registered Democrats found that more than half didn’t believe it was important for their party’s nominee to be a veteran. Only a third of Democrats said military service by their nominee was important at all.

The question is particularly problematic for Blake Bassett, an Army veteran and co-founder of Veterans for Joe Biden. Bassett told InsideSources his group is unaffiliated with the Biden campaign and that he started it after seeing a photo of Biden giving money to a homeless veteran at a Washington, D.C. movie theater.

“I really thought it showed strength of character, and I knew he was thinking about running for office, so we created the organization in the hopes that we could somehow influence that in a small way,” Bassett said. “And we have since been trying to bolster the support amongst the veteran community for Joe Biden.”

And what about the “strength of character” in 1968? What would Bassett say to someone questioning Biden’s decision not to serve?

“I would say that there are a lot of different ways to serve, right? Going to Vietnam is one of them.  Teaching America’s youth is another. And running for office and implementing policies that are for the greater good, that’s another way to serve.

“Joe Biden is a very strong advocate of the military and veterans, despite having not served,” Bassett said.

Combat medic and former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives Amelia Keane is more direct.

“I certainly don’t agree with someone taking a deferment and to avoid service to their country, particularly when they have aims of public service at the time,” she told InsideSources. “They should do their full duty to the country, and if there is a draft, they should make every effort to serve their time just like other Americans had to do.”

Until recently Keane was head of the influential New Hampshire Young Democrats, who’ve been wooed by the young military veterans in the race like Buttigieg, Moulton and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.  At the same time, military issues have thus far taken a back seat to both economic issues like Medicare For All and social issues like abortion.

And Shrum adds one more data point to ponder:

“No Vietnam veteran has ever been elected President of the United States.”

To some observers, Joe Biden’s climate proposal announced in New Hampshire on Tuesday is a rebuttal to previous reports that he would seek the “middle ground” on climate policy. Instead, Biden’s $5 trillion plan for tax hikes, tariffs, and government enforcement mechanisms is now the “middle ground” in the current climate debate inside a Democratic Party that has shifted well to the Left.

Progressives sense the momentum they’ve seized on the climate issue. Just hours after Biden released his plan, the activist group Sunrise Movement sent out an email taking credit for Biden’s decision to abandon his moderate stance on climate. “The Movement leads, Biden follows,” the email began.

“Last month, when Joe Biden’s advisers said he would find a ‘middle ground’ on climate policy, we made clear that was unacceptable.

“We sparked national outrage and this morning we saw that pay off: Biden put out a comprehensive climate plan that calls for a ‘Clean Energy Revolution’… Journalists are also now reporting that Joe Biden will sign the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge.”

Biden’s published policy is certainly more aggressive than his campaign rhetoric. Among other things, “The Biden Plan For A Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice” calls for:

• A 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions no later than 2050
• $1.7 trillion in new federal spending
• Tax hikes on businesses and corporations
• ‘Tariffs’ on foreign countries who don’t take sufficient action on climate
• Some form of “price or tax on carbon dioxide pollution” by 2025 to raise energy costs.

“In some ways, Mr. Biden’s plan goes even further than the Green New Deal,” according to the New York Times.

Not to be outdone, on the same day Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed $2 trillion dollars in direct spending for her “Green Apollo Program” and “Green Marshall Plan.”

Meanwhile, former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.) has called for $5 trillion over 10 years to combat climate change, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has a $9 trillion plan to cut emissions.

Environmental activists in New Hampshire certainly like what they’re seeing. ECHO Action NH has been pushing candidates at the state and national level to reject contributions from Big Oil. “Any candidate who is unwilling to extract themselves from their relationship with the fossil fuel industry will not meet our high level of expectations for climate action candidates,” Stephanie Scherr, the group’s executive director, tells NHJournal. “ECHO Action has been meeting with presidential candidates regularly. We have been pleased with our conversations with many candidates whose messages are in line with our own.”

Embracing Green New Deal politics promoted by groups like ECHO Action (Biden calls the GND  “a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face”) may appeal to affluent, suburban liberals, but working-class Democrats are starting to pick up on the inevitable impact these policies would have on labor unions.

Which raises the question: Why?

Why has Biden, who has worked so hard and had so much success as the moderate alternative in the progressive-dominated 2020 field, allowed himself to be pushed so far left on climate policy?

Coming to New Hampshire to announce his proposal, for example, is problematic given the state already pays some of the highest energy prices in the country. A kilowatt of electricity is about 60 percent more expensive in the Granite State than the national average.

In addition, a recent NHJournal poll asked New Hampshire voters how much more in utility costs they are willing to pay to achieve climate policy goals. Almost half said they were unwilling to pay even a single penny more, while just 17 percent would  pay $50 or more a month to fight global warming.

Is this really the issue where Biden should plant his far-Left flag?

John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, thinks so. His organization recently released a poll showing that climate change is a high-priority issue for Democratic primary voters. “[Our] polling demonstrates that voters will demand that the Democratic nominee make climate action a top priority and key pillar of her or his platform,” Podesta said.

Morning Consult polling April 2019

Perhaps. But Gallup has been polling Americans on their most important issues for years and in May 2019, just 4 percent of voters ranked it as number one. An April Morning Consult poll of Democratic primary voters found just 8 percent said climate policy was their highest priority.

Green energy proposals like Biden’s have high price tags, raise serious questions about their economic impact and threaten every homeowner with higher energy bills.  In exchange, they motive what appears to be a small segment of the overall electorate, one that’s already solidly in the Democratic camp.

Biden may have let himself be pushed into a corner.