Another Republican President, Another Recession.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday that despite the strong job gains last month, Congress still needs to “go big” by passing President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package to get millions of people back to work sooner.

In an interview with the PBS NewsHour on Friday, Yellen said Biden’s package should not be trimmed just because the February jobs report showed 379,000 new jobs had been created, the best showing since October.

At that pace it would still take the country more than two years to get back to full employment, she said. But with the administration’s package, she said the country could see a return to full employment by next year.

“It is a big package but I think we need to go big now, and we can afford to go big,” Yellen said. “The most important thing is to get our economy back on track and to help people get their lives back in order to make sure this pandemic does not permanently scar our workforce.”

Yellen said the unemployment rate, which fell to 6.2% in February, was overstating the improvement in the labor force because it does not count the 4 million people who have stopped looking for work and have dropped out of the job market. She said the real unemployment rate is 10%.

After House approval last week, the Senate is now debating the $1.9 trillion relief package with supporters trying to keep Democrats on board in the 50-50 chamber since no Republican is expected to vote for the measure.

Asked about turmoil in U.S. financial markets over the past two weeks, as interest rates have started rising, Yellen said she does not view that development as a sign investors are starting to worry inflation is getting out of hand. She said the rise in rates is a sign that prospects for the economy are starting to improve as more people are vaccinated and Biden’s fiscal package makes its way through Congress.

The Federal Reserve “does have the tools to address inflation if it becomes a problem but I don’t see markets ... worried about that,” Yellen said.

Yellen also said that Biden remains strongly committed to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The administration will be looking for other legislation later this year where the proposal can be included, after the Senate parliamentarian ruled it could not be part of the relief bill, she said.

The administration is working on a “Build Back Better” measure to boost spending on infrastructure that will also be used to address problems of racial inequality by increasing support for job training and education, she said. The administration also wants to deal with other issues, such as paid leave and child care, she said.

The national debt, which has grown to levels not seen since the end of World War II in terms of its relationship to the total economy, is not a threat at the moment given that interest rates, even though they have risen, still remain at historically low levels, she said.

“The spending we are doing now is arguably helping our debt path by getting our economy back on track,” Yellen said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in Congress are making the politically brazen bet that it’s more advantageous to oppose President Joe Biden’s ambitious rebuild America agenda than to lend support for the costly $2.3 trillion undertaking for roads, bridges and other infrastructure investments.

Much the way Republicans provided no votes for the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, they plan to sit on the sidelines for this next big lift by the White House, forcing Democrats to take full ownership of the massive package of spending and corporate tax hikes that Biden wants approved over the summer. The tension could mount this week as Biden shows no signs adjusting to satisfy Republican leaders, instead appealing directly to their constituents for support.

“I think the Republicans’ voters are going to have a lot to say about whether we get a lot of this done,” Biden told reporters at the White House.

That leaves Biden and congressional Republicans on a collision course, the outcome of which could define the parties and his presidency. The GOP strategy is reminiscent of the Obama-era blockade that helped sour voters on the Democratic president more than a decade ago. Then and now Republicans are intent on saddling Democrats with responsibility for all the taxes and spending to come, much as they did the 2009 rescue after the economic crisis, framing it as government overreach that piles on debt.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell set the defining tone for his party when he flatly declared last week he will fight Biden’s agenda “every step of the way.”

But it’s not at all certain the GOP playbook that worked more than a decade ago will produce the same political gains this time around. Voters appear tired of the partisan stalemate in Washington, live amid the country’s run-down spots and signal they are initially supportive of Biden’s approach to governing, at least on the virus aid package.

Recent polling by The Associated Press-NORC Public Research Center found Americans have responded favorably to the president’s approach, with 73% approving of his handling of the pandemic. That includes about half of Republicans.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of Senate GOP leadership, said Sunday a smaller package of about $615 billion, or 30% of what Biden is proposing, could find bipartisan backing from Republicans if the White House found a way to pay for it without raising the corporate tax rate. He pointed to potential user fees on drivers and others.

“There’s an easy win here,” Blunt said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Rather than shy from a new era of big government, Democratic leaders in Congress are embracing it, believing they can bypass the GOP blockade on Capitol Hill and make the case directly to Americans hungry for investments in homes, communities and livelihoods, especially as China and other rival countries make advancements.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared Biden’s plan to the far-reaching aims of presidents before him — from Thomas Jefferson’s efforts to build the Erie Canal to Teddy Roosevelt’s designs on a national park system.

“Now, in this century, President Biden is undertaking something in the tradition of thinking big,” Pelosi said at a news conference.

Progressives want Biden to go even bigger. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Sunday he expects more funding to combat climate change and is pushing to include his own proposal to expand Medicare with dental, vision and hearing aid care for seniors.

“Now is the time to begin addressing our physical infrastructure and our human infrastructure,” Sanders said on CNN.

As Congress hunkers down to begin drafting the legislation for Biden’s proposal, both parties will be put the test.

In the House, lawmakers will be invited to submit requests for projects in their home districts — roads and other infrastructure that could be “earmarks” eligible for federal funds. It’s a way to entice bipartisan participation and ensure the funds are spent on agreed-upon needs.

Republicans will be forced to either participate or disengage, often with pressure from elected officials and other constituents clamoring for funds to upgrade sewers, airports and countless other infrastructure systems.

Peppered in Kentucky with questions about money that could be potentially flowing for home-state road, bridge and housing projects after the president unveiled his plan, McConnell batted them back one by one.

Biden’s package “is not going to get support from our side,” McConnell said.

Asked about the McConnell’s comment, Biden smiled Friday while speaking to reporters at the White House and asked if the Republicans are arguing the country doesn’t need the infrastructure — or if the Republicans “decide that we need it but they’re not going to pay for it?”

Biden also pressed whether Republicans are opposed to cleaning up lead pipes in homes, schools and day care centers.

“What do you think would happen if they found out all the lead pipes were up at the Capitol?” Biden asked.

At the same time, Democrats and Republicans will be faced with the politically difficult vote of raising corporate taxes to pay for all the spending, bucking the business community that is largely against Biden’s plan to permanently hike the rate corporations pay from 21% to 28%.

Both parties view it as an almost existential battle over competing political views: The Democrats who believe in the power of government to take the lead solving the nation’s problems; the Republicans who put their faith in the private sector to drive solutions.

On Capitol Hill, it’s also a battle over which party will control Congress.

After Barack Obama was elected in 2008, McConnell famously said his goal was to make him a one-term president. This time around the Republican leader appears to have a shorter-term goal at hand — he wants to win back the now evenly split 50-50 Senate.

“They’re so close to the majority in 2022, they can taste it,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist.

Democrats have Senate control because their party’s vice president, Kamala Harris, can cast a tie-breaking vote. In the House, the Democratic majority is holding on with just a handful of seats.

“They really don’t want to give Biden wins,” Conant said.

Democrats, uncertain about their political prospects, are taking no chances, legislating as if they are on borrowed time.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has set in motion a potential process that would allow Biden’s package to advance without the typical 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans. Instead, it could be approved with a simple 51-vote majority.

Pelosi has set a July 4 goal for House votes, but acknowledges that ambitious timeline may slip.

“The sooner we can get the legislation done, the sooner we can allocate the resources,” she said.

The goal, she said, was “to get the job done as soon as possible.”

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Rozetta Dotson worked two jobs to scrape together the money to pay down a delinquent tax debt on the Kansas City, Kansas, home she owns with her husband, Ricky. Then the pandemic hit, she lost her second job and Ricky got COVID-19.

The Black homeowners kept paying what they could toward the taxes while waiting to talk to a judge about a new payment agreement. Then she found out her house was up for auction online.

“We just felt like it was a scam, like they were trying to take our property and my husband said we felt like we were targeted, you know, because we are living in a predominantly Black neighborhood and they were doing everything they could to cause us to lose our house,” she said.

The Dotsons are among those in historically Black neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kansas, who risk losing their homes amid the pandemic as delinquent property tax sales resume under a practice critics decry as racist and government officials laud for revitalizing communities.

“It is a reverse redlining that is racist. And I don’t use that word a lot, but that is the only thing, I mean, it is classism and racism to socially and economically deprive people of color who live in a particular part or who have acquired a foothold in a particular part of Wyandotte County,” said state Sen. David Haley, a Black Democrat, who has tried to help some residents in his hometown keep their houses.

Officials with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, acknowledge delinquent parcels up for tax sale are predominantly in Black neighborhoods. The county — whose population of 165,000 is about 23% Black, 30% Latino and 40% white — typically has 2,200 properties for sale annually at its three tax auctions, far more than other large Kansas counties.

Wyandotte County says it auctions residential property as soon as the law allows — when taxes are three years behind. It says the goal is to put properties into “responsible hands” to improve the appearance of neighborhoods.

A lot of the properties don’t sell at auction, and the county then gets them through the Wyandotte County Land Bank, a public authority that now has about 3,500 properties — nearly all of them acquired through tax foreclosures.

Katherine Carttar, local director of economic development, said the county decided to be more proactive with delinquent property taxes about three years ago and to use the land bank more as a way to rebuild neighborhoods. At a virtual conference last year touting its successes, she showed slides featuring now-renovated homes and credited the program with raising property values and the county’s tax base.

Critics say Wyandotte County has a disproportionately high number of delinquent tax sales compared with the rest of the state, and that the effort deprives residents of hard-fought gains in communities that for generations have faced discrimination.

Wyandotte County, where 21% of residents live in poverty, has whole city blocks of foreclosed property for future redevelopment. Displaced property owners get no compensation, Haley noted.

Carttar says most properties in the land bank have been long abandoned. The upcoming online delinquent tax sale lists 43% of properties as vacant.

The practice comes against the national backdrop of a wealth gap between white and Black households. The “first rung of the wealth building ladder” is homeownership, said Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive research group.

Nearly 72% of white Americans owned their own homes in 2017, compared with just slightly more than 42% of Black families, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Here we are during a pandemic where the racial impact of the pandemic has not been equal. It has been disproportionately borne by Black and brown people and there is a huge risk of evictions and foreclosures coming out of the pandemic once the various moratoriums are lifted,” Collins said. “So it might be a time not to pursue aggressive tax sales.”

The two Black county commissioners who represent neighborhoods hard hit by the sales did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press.

In the Dotsons’ case, Haley noticed that their house was on the auction list and alerted them. They went to pay the full $2,300 in delinquent taxes the day of the sale, but were told it was too late, Rozetta Dotson said.

They eventually got their home back — by paying back taxes plus legal fees for the attorney for the real estate company that had bought it. The total was $5,200.

Haley successfully warned another Black resident, Karen Pitchford-Knox, that the house where she’d grown up was on the auction block this January. When Pitchford-Knox’s mom died in 2016, she inherited the house as well as more than $5,000 in delinquent property taxes. She got behind on her payment plan after losing her job during the pandemic.

Pitchford-Knox had about two weeks to — as she put it — “beg, borrow and steal from Peter and Paul” the $1,000 for the taxes.

“I most definitely do feel they are targeting Black homes,” she said, noting she knew three other Black women whose homes were on auction lists. “I feel it is like Black female homeowners and Black seniors.”

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hanimmal said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/01/landlord-tenant-eviction-moratorium-pandemic/?itid=hp-top-table-main-0430bView attachment 4893422

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mooray said:

Man, what a mess, but I kinda blame Trump and Biden for their corporation feeding stimulus payments. The stimulus should have been targeted to the people that truly need it, with renters/landlords being able to setup automatic rent payments, even if at a reduced rate.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Hundreds of Gov. Tony Evers’ priorities, including legalizing marijuana and raising $1 billion in taxes, were going to be killed Thursday by the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee as it begins the process of writing the next state budget.

Republicans are essentially scrapping the Democratic governor’s entire two-year spending proposal and instead building off the current budget, which the GOP-controlled Legislature passed two years ago without a single Democratic vote and Evers signed into law.

The Joint Finance Committee will vote to remove nearly 400 of Evers’ proposals. On the issues that remain, Republicans will build the budget based not on what Evers wanted, but instead on what is current law.

The items Republicans are killing would have brought in $3.4 billion to the state, mostly through higher taxes on capital gains and manufacturers, and by accepting federal Medicaid expansion. That alone would have saved the state $1.6 billion, when including federal money that would have come to Wisconsin.

Evers, in a Thursday letter to Republican leaders, called their plans to gut his budget “ill-advised.” He singled out their anticipated killing of Medicaid expansion, and the loss of $1.6 billion, which he said will “jeopardize our state’s ability to bounce back from this pandemic.”

Republicans for years have resisted accepting full Medicaid expansion. Evers’ plan would allow about 90,000 people to be eligible for BadgerCare Plus, a move Democrats have long pushed for only to be blocked by Republicans.

Other proposals that Republicans planned to kill included legalizing and taxing marijuana; raising the minimum wage to $10.15 per hour by 2024; restoring public workers’ collective bargaining rights that were lost in the Act 10 law; suspending enrollment in the private school voucher program; and creating a so-called red flag law that would allow guns to be seized from people deemed to be a danger by courts.

Republicans say the budget they will write will likely include a tax cut of some sort, but they haven’t given details. They are also calling on Evers to give them more details about how he intends to spend $3.2 billion in one-time federal stimulus money coming to the state. Evers has revealed some details, but not all of his intentions for the money, which is solely under his discretion to spend.

Evers, in his letter to Republicans, said the one-time federal money was designed to provide immediate relief to businesses and individuals hurt most by the coronavirus pandemic, which is why he was moving ahead to spend it quickly. It’s not intended to replace state money for ongoing programs that are funded in the state budget, he said.

Evers noted that he has released general areas where he intends to spend the federal money while he waits for guidance from the federal government on details about how it can be used. He also said he would be willing to meet with Republicans, as they requested, to discuss his plans.

Thursday’s meeting of the budget committee is the first where it takes votes on the two-year spending plan that runs from July through mid-2023. The full Legislature will likely vote on the budget in June or July, and then Evers can make significant changes with his broad veto power.

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hanimmal said:

Republicans stopping 90k people from being able to access Medicare and blocking the legalization of marijuana in Wisconsin.
https://apnews.com/article/business-government-and-politics-81413cf328328ffc2869eda8363d9bbc
View attachment 4895647



Why do people still vote these idiots Republican trolls into office?

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hanimmal said:

The Republicans are all in on stopping any ability to actually shore up the infrastructure that has been lacking any real investment in for decades while pretending like Trump's first three years were economically worse than Obama's last three years.

They are so concerned about inflation now that they want to snatch up all those economically stressed properties for cheap.

Also interesting is that they are pulling the 'gas lines' troll when it is their buddies over in Russia that attacked our pipelines causing this problem.

Anyway, screw Moscow Mitch.

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DIY-HP-LED said:

Biden should say that in a speech to the nation. The gas lines are caused by the Republican's allies, the Russians! These clowns allied themselves with the Russians in an attack on America FFS, it wasn't just Trump who committed treason.

Joe should tell it like it is and call the bunch of them fucking traitors and tie these cocksuckers to the Russians with handcuffs, since they are already joined at the hip. Why not, they want to impose a Putin like government on America and are following the Russian model and taking their help while giving them aid and comfort. It's not like there isn't plenty of evidence, how do you think McConnell got the nick name Moscow Mitch? McCarthy and others were repeating Russian propaganda after being warned, all the pre election trips to Russia by many top republicans, the hundreds of Russian contacts, the list goes on forever FFS.

Joe should wash his hands of these fuckers, if he can't draw a few of them away from what they have become. Give them a last chance to come onside, a warning, then go at them with both fists and whatever power he possesses. They are traitors to the nation and constitution, Joe is president and has a duty to perform.

Perhaps he is waiting for the split in their ranks that the pundits are speaking of, but one thing is very clear, these people are traitors to the constitution and nation and they support insurrection and sedition.

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hanimmal said:

The only problem is that Biden specifically said he is not going to have anything to do with the DOJ. He is not going to politicize them, so we really don't have a clue what is being done or not atm.

This is decades of work that the Republicans and their super rich donors like the Koch's helped them set up that Trump and the Russians utterly exposed due to their getting caught. 2022 is more important to secure another Democratic sweep because it is not going to be a fast easy fix.

This shit is infected us down to the local election level. People need to wake up and not allow the noise to stop them from understanding how important it is to vote in every election and to be very informed on who it is running.

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The Biden administration has scrambled to devise a way to keep paying heightened unemployment benefits to an estimated 3.4 million Americans who stand to lose them soon in Republican-led states, but Labor Department officials have come to believe that the law does not allow them to do so.

With a federal intervention now unlikely, jobless Americans in at least 22 states including Arizona, Ohio and Texas are set to see their payments fall by $300 each week — or be wiped out entirely — as GOP governors try to force people back to work in response to a potential national labor shortage.

Federal officials have been reviewing whether they could mandate that states continue paying their unemployed workers, preserving a series of coronavirusstimulus programs dating to last spring. That includes Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which provides weekly aid to self-employed workers and others who labor on behalf of gig economy companies such as Uber.

But Labor Department officials have come to believe that the government cannot legally force states to administer these benefits, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. Nor can Washington circumvent Republican governors by administering unemployment checks on its own or through cooperating agencies in other states, the sources said.

A more formal determination on the matter from the Labor Department is expected soon.

McConnell, White House clash on potential worker shortage as labor pressures intensify

Even if the Labor Department had the authority, the agency probably would face significant legal and logistical hurdles in distributing the aid swiftly, one of the officials said. The federal government most likely cannot erect a system to review unemployment claims and dole out weekly sums before the stimulus aid is set to expire in early September — a complex task involving a web of technology and personnel that has flummoxed many state agencies despite decades of experience.

The Labor Department’s analysis probably will disappoint lawmakers including Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who over the past week have called on the agency to ensure those who are out of work don’t face further financial hardship. Labor advocates similarly had pushed the Biden administration to take action, arguing that it has the legal obligation and ability to continue administering PUA because of the wording in the stimulus law, known as the Cares Act, that authorized it.

Instead, federal officials believe that any solution probably must come from Congress, where Republicans have argued that months of generous federal aid have deterred people from returning to work. The political obstacles mean there is little recourse left for the approximately 3.4 million Americans nationwide who stand to see their checks slashed starting in June. The numbers could further change when the U.S. government reports its latest claims information on Thursday.

The financial burden could fall hardest on nearly 2.3 million workers who are at risk of seeing their benefits eliminated entirely. That includes Americans who have been out of work for so long that they have exhausted state aid as well as those who are self-employed, who traditionally cannot collect unemployment checks. The number probably will change in the weeks before GOP-led states implement the cuts starting in June and July, months before the programs were supposed to expire.

White House grapples with reports of labor shortage, inflation as recovery picks up steam

In explaining their terminations, Republican governors nationwide have pointed to lower-than-expected hiring numbers in April as evidence of a worker shortage. Major business groups have sided with them, as organizations including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce contend that high unemployment payments are to blame — and have in response called on Congress to roll back the benefits.

The White House, for its part, maintains that the unemployment stimulus aid has not contributed to a crunch in hiring. Democrats and labor experts say the market instead is far more complicated: Some Americans are reluctant to return to workplaces they see as unsafe or jobs they consider to be underpaid, for example, while others have struggled to find adequate child care.

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The Treasury Department on Thursday announced a plan to raise an additional $700 billion through new tax compliance measures, a potentially key source of revenue for the Biden administration’s multitrillion-dollar spending proposals.

In a 22-page report, Treasury officials identified a number of policies to increase enforcement aimed at closing the “tax gap” between what taxpayers owe to the federal government and what they actually pay. These include increased reporting requirements, new tools for auditors, massively increasing the Internal Revenue Service’s budget, and new rules on cryptocurrency, among other measures.

Some of the changes — such as billions of dollars in additional spending at the IRS — would require congressional approval, and many Republicans have long tried to shrink the agency. But the White House said the proposed investments would pay off by allowing the agency to collect the taxes that are due.

Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis estimated that the changes could bring in an additional $700 billion in tax collections over the next decade, as well as $1.6 trillion in the decade after that. Treasury said Thursday that the current tax gap is about $600 billion per year, although IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig recently said the number could exceed $1 trillion. Even partly closing that gulf could go a long way toward paying for President Biden’s spending proposals, which include trillions of dollars for infrastructure, child care, manufacturing and other domestic spending priorities.

Biden’s sweeping — and fluid — tax plans are making some congressional Democrats nervous

“At the crux of these proposals is a commitment to revitalizing tax enforcement,” Treasury’s paper states. “Working to close the tax gap reflects a commitment to ending our two-tiered tax system, one where most American workers pay their full obligations, but high earners who accrue income from opaque sources often do not.”

Treasury’s estimates face skepticism from many tax experts, and some of their new enforcement mechanisms could face political blowback among lawmakers. Treasury’s plan states that audit rates “will not rise relative to recent years” for those earning less than $400,000 per year, which is in line with the president’s campaign pledge not to raise taxes on middle-class taxpayers but may blunt the effectiveness of Treasury’s plan. Increasing IRS enforcement is considered politically easier than other measures, such as raising taxes, but will expose the administration to criticism that it is basing its plans on estimates that are more rosy than realistic.

In particular, the administration’s estimates may face skepticism from the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeper for congressional legislation. The CBO has said similar ideas to increase IRS enforcement could raise hundreds of billions of dollars but not the kind of money the administration is banking on. The Penn Wharton Budget Model has found that the administration’s IRS plan would raise less than $500 billion. Administration officials told reporters Thursday that they recognized the difficulties of getting the plan through Congress. Treasury previously released a summary of its IRS enforcement proposal as a way to pay for Biden’s “American Families Plan,” one of the White House’s two main domestic spending priorities.

“I think there is no way under the sun they can get $700 billion. They will be very pleased if they get $250 billion,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican policy analyst and former director of the CBO. “This is just completely unrealistic.”

The United States collected a little more than $3 trillion in revenue in 2020, but spent more than $6 trillion. As a result, the U.S. budget deficit last year eclipsed more than $3 trillion, by far the biggest one-year gap in American history. These numbers were significantly elevated because of the emergency spending authorized to confront the coronavirus pandemic.

Beefing up IRS enforcement could help address some of that gap, the Treasury report said. The key part of the tax compliance proposal is to increase the size of the IRS budget by about $80 billion over a decade, nearly increasing its size by 50 percent. Some of that funding would go to significantly increase the number of IRS agents and personnel, after the tax agency’s budget was cut by about 20 percent because of changes pushed by congressional Republicans.

Treasury says its plan would lead to the hiring and retention of 5,000 new enforcement personnel. It would in particular allow the IRS to hire “specialized” enforcement staff, particularly by funding the IRS divisions focused on scrutinizing large corporations and “global high-wealth and high-income individuals.”

The funding would also include about $6 billion for modernizing the IRS’s information technology systems and security funding. The Treasury report said “the IRS defends against approximately 1.4 billion sophisticated cyberattacks” each year. The funding would also help the administration implement its expansive tax credit programs, such as a new child benefit for tens of millions of American parents.

Increasing the IRS budget would require congressional approval, and although Democrats are largely supportive, the GOP is expected to oppose the change.

White House seeks to make massive boost to IRS enforcement centerpiece of new spending plan

The second key proposal is to strengthen requirements surrounding what banks must tell the IRS about their customers. The agency would then use the additional information provided by the banks to “better target enforcement activities,” Treasury said Thursday, a measure in particular aimed at improving voluntary compliance through a deterrence effect.

Steve Rosenthal, a tax expert at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center think tank, has raised questions about the administration’s reporting requirement plan and argues that it would cast too wide a net, by targeting not just the kinds of firms where underreporting is common but a much wider set of firms than would be useful or necessary.

“The assertion that rich guys are cheating to this level is unsupported by the literature,” Rosenthal said.

The third and fourth parts of the plan involve overhauling outdated IRS technology — some of which dates to the 1960s — so it is better at identifying tax evasion, as well as new penalties on tax preparers who “commit or abet” tax fraud.

Treasury’s plan would also target cryptocurrency as part of its enhanced reporting requirements, with cryptocurrency companies required to provide the IRS with more financial information. The reporting requirements would affect businesses receiving cryptocurrency with a fair market value of more than $10,000.

It described cryptocurrency and virtual currency as a “significant concern,” adding that they had grown to $2 trillion in market capitalization.

“Cryptocurrency already poses a significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion,” the report said.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency had been extremely volatile this year, with some rocketing in value only to slide markedly and suddenly.

Treasury officials have emphasized that their efforts are aimed at reversing the decline in scrutiny of particularly high-income taxpayers and businesses. Audit rates for corporations with more than $20 billion in assets fell from 98 percent in 2010 to 50 percent in 2018, Treasury’s report said. Taxpayers earning more than $10 million faced audit rates of 19 percent in 2010 but just 7 percent in 2018. Audit rates declined for taxpayers broadly, but the decline in audits for the rich was particularly pronounced.

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Prices were up by 3.6 percent in April compared to a year ago, continuing a trend of rising inflation, although economic policymakers say the increases aren’t here to stay.

Data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday showed that prices rose 0.6 percent in the past month.
However, consumer spending fell 0.1 percent in April compared to March, after adjusting for inflation, as stimulus running through the economy began to slow down.

The latest inflation data is unlikely to rattle the Federal Reserve, which is charged with keeping prices stable and unemployment low. Fed leaders have argued for months that a rise in inflation will be temporary, and that prices will simmer down as the economy reemerges from the pandemic. Rather than rush to raise interest rates and slow down the recovery, the Fed is urging patience so that the labor market has time to recover.

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In April Americans’ after-tax income slid 15.1 percent from the record level it hit in March, when hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus payments goosed U.S. bank accounts, after adjusting for inflation. In March, income had jumped an eye-popping 22.7 percent compared to February. So while after-tax income slipped in April, it has trended upward in the longer run, as stimulus checks and unemployment benefits continued to arrive in April but at lower levels.

Powered in part by this government-assisted income surge, consumer spending recovered completely from the Covid crisis in March, after adjusting for inflation. Consumers account for almost 70 percent of the U.S. economy and their spending whims have long powered U.S. economic growth.

But while consumers are finally shelling out just as much per month as they did before the recession, spending in April 2021 looks very different than it did just 14 months earlier, before the crisis. Spending on goods — everything from private planes to window panes — recovered within a month or two and has been in record territory ever since.

Spending on services, such as parking fees and surgeries, rose 0.6 percent in April from the previous month but remained 4.7 percent below its prepandemic level as fears of the virus remain widespread and some high-traffic brick-and-mortar firms struggle to regain their footing.

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Yet there are signs for optimism. Julia Coronado, president of Macropolicy Perspectives and a former Fed economist, said the gradual shift back towards services spending will help the economy find its footing. Workers in service-sector jobs will keep going back on the payrolls, and pressure will ease on the “overheated goods sector,” where supply chain backlogs triggered higher prices.

“People are going to the dentist, getting their hair done, reupping their gym memberships, going out to eat and taking vacations,” Coronado said. “It is a transition that will take all summer though and the Fed will be patient to see the recovery through to where it is more balanced and can better stand on its own.”

What are Americans making for dinner? Reservations.

A few weeks ago, a different measure of inflation, the consumer price index showed an even higher inflation figure: 4.2 percent. That index tends to be higher than the figure in today’s release, which is the measure of inflation watched most closely by the Federal Reserve.

The two measures are similar, and both indexes calculate prices based on a bucket of goods. But the baskets aren’t identical and some prices of goods get heavier weights than others.

The consumer price index released earlier this month is based on a survey of what households buy, while the figures released Friday are based on surveys of what businesses are selling. Furthermore, the consumer price index only captures out-of-pocket expenses and wouldn’t reflect costs that aren’t paid for directly, like medical care covered by insurance or Medicaid. Those costs would be included in Friday’s data.

The surge in both indexes was due in part to their point of comparison: Last April, prices and spending plunged as the nation locked down in fear of the novel coronavirus. In comparison to that unusual low, economists say, it is not surprising that this April’s numbers look unusually high.

What used cars tell us about the risk of too much inflation hitting the economy

Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell and others give a few reasons for why inflation is on the upswing, and why the Fed isn’t worried about bringing it down too soon. Consumer demand for goods and services — from airline tickets to restaurant reservations — is rebounding as people unleash pent-up savings. Meanwhile, the supply side of the equation is struggling to catch up. Those bottlenecks are expected to ease as factories ramp back up to full capacity and workers come back on the payrolls. But it won’t happen right away.

Economists also expect inflation figures to taper off in the year to come, as the super-low readings from the pandemic’s early days shift out of the calculation.

The Biden administration also expects that inflation will rise over the coming months before tapering off to more sustainable levels. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that “as the economy gets back online it’s going to be a bumpy process.”

“I don’t think this is endemic inflation,” Yellen said.

Many Republicans disagree with the Fed and White House. They argue that the Fed will be behind the curve once it decides inflation has climbed too far past its annual 2 percent target. The GOP also blames overspending from the Biden administration for overheating the economy.

Former treasury secretary Larry Summers, an early critic of the administration’s stimulus plan, also doubled down on his inflation concerns this week. In a Washington Post op-ed, Summers wrote that “the primary risk to the U.S. economy is overheating — and inflation.”

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