ATLANTA – Georgia House Speaker David Ralston is continuing to lobby the federal government not to attach strings on the $350 billion in the American Rescue Plan earmarked for state and local governments.
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen dated Thursday, Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, cited language in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill Congress passed this week that prohibits states from using any of the aid money to “either directly or indirectly” offset reductions in net tax revenue.
Thursday’s letter followed similarly worded missives the speaker sent on Wednesday to President Joe Biden and members of Georgia’s congressional delegation.
The American Rescue Plan, which Biden signed into law on Thursday, threatens two bills now before the General Assembly, Ralston wrote.
One of the measures would give Georgians a tax cut of $140 million by raising the standard deduction on state income taxes. The other would extend a tax credit for families who adopt a child out of foster care.
“As secretary of the treasury, it will fall to your department to interpret this act and promulgate rules and regulations,” the speaker wrote. “I pray you will protect the states by ameliorating the impact of this flawed law and respect our right to budget responsibly.”
In the letter, Ralston cited an editorial in The Wall Street Journal criticizing the provision as potentially a violation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s “anti-commandeering” doctrine, which prohibits Congress from using federal funds to coerce states.
“Even if the tax cut ban doesn’t meet the court’s legal test of coercion, it’s still an egregious affront to constitutional federalism,” the paper’s editorial board wrote.
The relief bill includes $8.1 billion for Georgia. The state will receive $4.6 billion of that directly, while the rest is earmarked for local governments.
Georgia’s two Democratic U.S. senators voted for the legislation, as did all six Democrats in the state’s U.S. House delegation. All eight of the delegation’s Republicans opposed it.
Rev. Raphael Warnock (front) campaigns with Stacey Abrams (back) on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – The 2022 election cycle has come early.
National Republican groups are already targeting Georgia Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s seat, less than two months after he took office following a historic win in January.
On Thursday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) — a premier fundraising arm backed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — launched an ad campaign condemning Warnock’s support for the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan Congress passed this week.
Warnock, who is Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator, declined to respond to the GOP-led ad on Thursday. He has framed the latest aid package as a boon for Georgians across the state who have struggled for a year to cope with the tough economic and social troubles wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Help is on the way,” Warnock said on Twitter Thursday shortly after President Joe Biden signed the relief package. “I’ll say it again: ‘Thank God for Georgia.’ ”
Warnock also noted the federal package includes aid for Black farmers in Georgia, following up on a pledge he made to minority agriculture workers during his 2020 campaign for Senate.
The ad marks a gearing-up for Republican operatives aiming to seize back the Senate seat held by Warnock, who must seek reelection in 2022 to a full six-year term.
Warnock ousted Republican former Sen. Kelly Loeffler in January to serve out the remaining two years of retired Sen. Johnny Isakson’s six-year term. Isakson stepped down at the end of 2019 as he battled cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
Electoral wins on Jan. 5, 2020 by Warnock and his Democratic co-campaigner, Sen. Jon Ossoff, flipped both of Georgia’s Senate seats to the Democrats for the first time in nearly two decades.
Their upset wins also handed Democrats control of both chambers in Congress and the White House, paving the way for another round of COVID-19 relief pushed by the Biden administration to gain final passage.
Biden, a Democrat who defeated former Republican President Donald Trump by 11,779 votes in Georgia during the 2020 general election, is scheduled to visit Atlanta next Friday (March 19) for a so-called “Help Is Here” tour to promote the newly enacted COVID-19 relief package he signed shortly after it passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Before I took office, I promised you that help was on the way,” Biden said on Twitter after the signing. “Today, I signed the American Rescue Plan into law, and can officially say: help is here.”
Republican lawmakers say the bill is bloated with a Democratic wish-list of financial relief benefiting undocumented persons, an abortion-rights agenda and aid to state governments run by Democratic governors.
“The people of Georgia did not expect the Democrats to respond to COVID by shipping billions of dollars to illegal immigrants, violent criminals and [New York] Governor [Andrew] Cuomo,” said the NRSC’s chairman, GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. “Sadly, that’s exactly what Senator Warnock did.”
Democratic backers of the plan point out $300 billion will be sent directly to city and county governments, including public schools, marking a new payment round that skirts state oversight, unlike previous packages passed since March of 2020.
They highlight Georgia’s share of the new relief funds will hand the state more than $8 billion in COVID-19 aid, of which a large chunk would go straight to struggling city and county governments and give them more flexibility to shore up their pandemic-struck budgets.
“With the final passage of the American Rescue Plan in the House of Representatives today, Georgians are one step closer to getting the help they need to overcome the unprecedented public health and economic crises we face,” said Scott Hogan, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia.
“Georgia’s Democratic congressional delegation has been at the forefront of the fight to deliver big, bold relief to Americans, and with this bill’s passage, Democrats are fulfilling the promises made to Georgians to send direct payments, aid small businesses, ramp up vaccinations, and help schools reopen.”
The national criticism of Warnock’s vote in favor of the COVID-19 relief comes as Georgia’s top Republican leadership also slammed the aid plan’s details, even as they eye bids to shore up state political power in 2022.
Gov. Brian Kemp, who is seeking re-election in 2022, has called Georgia’s share of the latest relief round too paltry compared to the money pots for New York and California.
House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, has also savaged the relief package, on grounds that it would restrict state and local governments from cutting taxes and backfilling funding gaps with federal dollars.
Meanwhile, the field is wide open in 2022 for Georgia Republican candidates to challenge Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Already, his opponent in the last election, Loeffler, has announced plans to run a grassroots group meant to motivate conservative Georgians, akin to successful Democratic mobilization efforts overseen by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who will likely wage a second campaign fight for governor against Kemp in 2022.
Former Sen. David Perdue, who lost to Ossoff in the Jan. 5 runoff, toyed with the idea of running for his old seat but declared last month he would not do so.
The federal “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021” gained final passage in Congress on Wednesday by a vote of 220-211, with all but one Democrat supporting it and all of the Republicans voting “no.”
The relief plan includes $1,400 economic stimulus checks for Americans earning up to $75,000 a year and couples earning up to $150,000 annually, an extension of $300-per-week in unemployment benefits, aid to state and local governments, funds to help schools reopen safely and an expanded federal child tax credit.
It also provides new funding for small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program and additional funding to administer COVID-19 vaccines and expand testing and contact tracing.
Georgia’s six U.S. House Democrats voted in favor of the legislation. The state’s eight House Republicans opposed it.
Georgia Supreme Court Presiding Justice David Nahmias
ATLANTA – David Nahmias was unanimously elected by his colleagues on the Georgia Supreme Court Thursday to become the court’s chief justice starting July 1.
Current Chief Justice Harold Melton announced last month that he would be stepping down from the court this summer after serving on the court for 16 years.
Nahmias, currently the court’s presiding justice, was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 2009 by then-Gov. Sonny Perdue to fill a vacancy. Georgia voters then elected Nahmias to a six-year term in 2010 and reelected him in 2016.
Before joining the court, Nahmias was U.S. attorney for the Atlanta-based Northern District of Georgia. Before that, he served as a senior member of the U.S. Justice Department.
The DeKalb County native earned his undergraduate degree at Duke University and his law degree from Harvard Law School, where he served on the Law Review with former President Barack Obama and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Nahmias went on to serve as a law clerk to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
In his new role as chief justice in Georgia, Nahmias will lead the state’s judicial branch and act as the Supreme Court’s spokesman. He also will chair the Georgia Judicial Council, the policymaking body for the judicial branch.
Georgia chief justices serve one four-year term.
Also on Thursday, the justices unanimously elected Justice Michael Boggs to succeed Nahmias as presiding justice.
ATLANTA – First-time unemployment claims in Georgia rose last week for the second week in a row, even as jobless claims nationwide were on the decline.
Unemployed Georgians filed 28,387 initial claims last week, up 2,940 from the previous week, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday. Nationwide, first-time unemployment claims fell by 42,000 during the week to 712,000.
On the positive side, the labor department also reported Thursday that unemployment in Georgia fell slightly in January to 5.1%, a drop of 7.4% since the coronavirus pandemic began a year ago and 1.2% below the national jobless rate for January.
Meanwhile, the labor department began gearing up to implement the extended unemployment benefits contained in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that gained final passage in Congress on Wednesday. President Joe Biden then signed the bill on Thursday.
The legislation will extend the $300-per-week unemployment supplements Americans have been receiving for an additional 25 weeks. Without the new bill, those benefits were due to expire this month.
“If the … [U.S. Department of Labor] issues guidance on the extensions that does not include significant programming adjustments, we do not anticipate interruptions in payments for those currently receiving [Unemployment Insurance] benefits,” Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday.
“We will meet with the [federal labor department] … to review the details of the implementation and subsequently update our system and programs.”
Since COVID-19 took hold in Georgia in March of last year, more than $19.3 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits have been paid out to nearly 4.5 million Georgians, more than during the nine years before the pandemic combined.
The job sector that accounted for the most initial unemployment claims in Georgia last week was accommodation and food services with 5,336 claims. The administrative and support services job sector was next with 2,922 claims, followed by manufacturing with 2,811.
More than 206,000 job listings are online at https://bit.ly/36EA2vk for Georgians to access. The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume and assisting with other reemployment needs.
ATLANTA – Substance-abuse centers would not be allowed to pay third parties to procure patients under legislation the Georgia House of Representatives passed unanimously Thursday.
Senate Bill 4, sponsored by state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, cleared the Georgia Senate last month. It would make illegal what is known as “patient brokering.”
The practice has been on the rise as the emphasis on addressing substance abuse has shifted from criminalizing the behavior to treating it, said Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, who carried the bill in the House.
“A lot of aspects of this industry are shady,” he said. “There are always some bad players.”
Rep. Shelly Hutchinson, D-Snellville, is a mental health and substance abuse services provider.
“I’m contacted constantly to offer referrals for a fee,” she said. “This is a problem that really needs to be addressed in Georgia.”
The bill also criminalizes fraudulent and excessive medical testing, including overbilling for multi-panel drug screening.
“Some testers are breaking it into separate tests and billing accordingly,” Reeves said. “That’s just wrong.”
The bill sets fines and prison sentences that would rise in severity depending on the number of patients involved. The maximum penalty would be up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000 per violation for patient brokering involving 20 or more patients.
Fraudulent testing would be a misdemeanor subject to a jail sentence of up to one year and a fine of up to $1,000 per violation.
Because the House Insurance Committee offered Senate Bill 4 as a substitute to the original version, it now must go back to the Senate before it can gain final passage.
