President Joe Biden touts his first 100 days in office at a rally held in Duluth on April 29, 2021. (Official Biden Twitter video)
The Biden administration is pitching Georgia on a $1.8 trillion plan aimed at helping families cover child-care costs via tax credits, boosting federal funds for college education and creating a national program for paid family leave.
Called the American Families Plan, the family-focused package awaiting consideration in Congress leans on hiking taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to fund higher child tax credits and earned-income tax credits for low-income families.
It contains dozens of proposals to extend lower health-insurance premiums to many Georgians, increase the minimum wage for child-care workers and kindergarten teachers, prop up funding for free school meals, cover two years of community college tuition and expand paid family leave.
The plan’s tax proposals would help cut taxes or provide credits for an estimated 80% of Georgia families while hiking taxes for fewer than 1% of residents who make up the state’s top earners, said Danny Kanso, a senior policy analyst with the nonprofit Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI).
“The tax measures in these recovery plans really present the greatest opportunity in a generation to cut child poverty and to rebalance the tax code in favor of working people and the middle class,” Kanso said at a news conference Thursday. “Altogether, those provisions far outweigh the revenue-raisers in these bills.”
GBPI representatives also said the plan would help thousands of Georgians maintain health coverage expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, keep shelves stocked for the roughly 57% of families relying on free and reduced-price school meals and boost educational opportunities in a state where two out of three residents lack a bachelor’s degree.
President Joe Biden touted his latest spending package at a rally last week in metro Atlanta where he pledged to avoid raising taxes on lower and middle-class families and urged supporters to back increased taxes on higher earners and companies.
“It’s about time the very wealthy and corporations start paying their fair share,” Biden said at a drive-in rally in Duluth. “It’s as simple as that.”
Republicans have largely slammed the president’s latest spending plan, noting it would add to a set of other high-dollar packages including $1.9 trillion in new COVID-19 emergency aid that Congress passed in March and a $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal Biden is also pushing.
“Make no mistake: Biden is seeking to make the public reliant on the government for every aspect of our lives,” U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-West Point, wrote in an op-ed this week in the Washington Examiner. “His unabashed ‘big government’ agenda would orient our economy and foreign policy around climate change, include massive tax hikes and pack the Supreme Court, to boot.”
If passed by Congress, Biden’s plan would run in tandem with tax cuts for Georgians and broader paid family leave that state lawmakers passed in the 2021 legislative session.
Gov. Brian Kemp recently signed bills to give Georgians a slight income-tax cut and let foster parents tap into a larger tax credit when adopting children. He also signed legislation allowing state employees and teachers to take up to three weeks of paid parental leave.
Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation Thursday allowing student athletes at Georgia colleges, universities and technical colleges to receive compensation for the use of their name, image and likeness.
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, came as schools and the NCAA reckon with a growing push to permit certain kinds of financial benefits for college athletes who are often the focus of lucrative advertising campaigns and video games.
Kemp, a University of Georgia (UGA) alumnus and advocate, said the new allowances on athlete compensation should help give the state a competitive edge in attracting talented players and students from within Georgia and beyond.
“I believe it sets Georgia on the path to accomplish something that quite honestly should have been done a long time ago,” Kemp said during a bill-signing ceremony at UGA Thursday.
“Thanks to [the bill], student athletes from across the country will have Georgia on their mind when they’re looking for a campus and a university that can give them a world-class education but also the chance to compete at the highest levels of college athletics.”
Under the bill, college athletes in Georgia will be required to take five hours of a financial literacy and life skills workshop to ready them for the added burdens of receiving compensation for sports performance.
Schools will also have the ability to require that student athletes pool their compensation and deposit the earnings in an escrow account, from which they cannot withdraw funds until at least one year after they graduate or leave school.
Additionally, the bill bars schools from offering cash or other incentives to high-school recruits and requires sports agents seeking to represent college athletes to obtain the same type of license needed to represent professional athletes.
The new pay rules take effect on July 1 and will remain in place until either mid-2025 or until Congress passes federal legislation allowing for nationwide college-athlete compensation. Several bills have already been introduced in Congress on athlete pay.
So far, the NCAA has largely resisted moves to permit compensation for student athletes, prompting several lawsuits challenging the organization’s authority to block student athletes from being paid despite also profiting from their skills.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments March 31 in a landmark case from California brought by former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston, who sued the NCAA and several college leagues in 2014 for not allowing compensation to pay for costs beyond what his scholarship covered. The court has not yet issued a ruling in the case.
Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation Wednesday allowing restaurants to sell curbside takeaway alcoholic beverages and distillers to sell liquor on their premises in Georgia.
The loosened rules on alcohol sales aim to give Georgia restaurants and alcohol vendors a boost after more than a year of weathering financial losses spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, which industry representatives estimate has wiped out roughly 20% of Georgia’s restaurants.
One measure Kemp signed Wednesday permits restaurants to sell patrons alcohol to-go in tightly sealed containers with takeout food. To-go drinks would also have to be stored in a glove box, locked trunk or behind the back seat while driving.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, follows legislation Kemp signed last year allowing deliveries of beer, wine and liquor to homes as the pandemic prompted fewer Georgians to dine out, battering local restaurants.
Kemp also signed a bill sponsored by state Rep. Mandi Ballinger, R-Canton, allowing Georgia distilleries to sell liquor for on-site consumption on any day that the city or county in which they are located allows such sales.. Similar on-site sales rules will also apply to malt-beverage brewers under the bill.
Kemp’s signing of the alcohol-focused legislation continued a bill-signing spree this week that saw him also ink legislation allowing state employees and teachers to take up to three weeks of paid parental leave, a bill lowering the age Georgia parents can adopt children from 25 to 21, and a measure toughening penalties for drivers and promoters engaged in illegal street racing.
Kemp signed a package of education bills this week giving veterans an easier path to become teachers and allowing private groups to donate grant funds to struggling public schools. He also signed legislation providing tax breaks to key industries.
The governor is set Thursday to sign legislation permitting Georgia athletes to earn compensation for the use of their “name, image or likeness” by the public, private or technical colleges they attend, pending student athletes complete a financial-literacy workshop and keep their earnings in an escrow account for at least one year after graduating or leaving school.
Kemp is also expected next week to sign high-profile legislation overhauling Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law that was spurred by public outrage over the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery outside Brunswick last year.
The list of candidates looking to unseat top Georgia incumbents is growing early ahead of the 2022 election cycle. (Photo by Beau Evans)
More candidates threw their hats in the ring Tuesday to run for top offices in Georgia’s 2022 elections including secretary of state and a suburban Atlanta congressional district.
State Rep. Bee Nguyen, D-Atlanta, launched her campaign against Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, adding to a growing lineup of Democrats vying to flip statewide seats following historic wins in Georgia’s presidential and U.S. Senate races during the 2020 cycle.
Republican Eric Welsh, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former Coca-Cola executive, also announced Tuesday he will compete for U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s 6th Congressional District seat, which she flipped to the Democrats in 2018 amid changing voter demographics in Atlanta’s suburbs.
The roster of candidates from both parties has been building in recent weeks for campaigns to unseat incumbent Republicans in statewide offices across the board including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, labor and insurance.
Nguyen is among the first Democratic candidates to kick off a challenge against Raffensperger, who has already drawn Republican primary competition from U.S. Rep. Jody Hice of Greensboro and former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle.
Welsh will look to run a more formidable campaign against McBath for the suburban congressional seat north of Atlanta, after former Republican U.S. Rep. Karen Handel lost the seat to Democrat McBath in 2018 and fell short of recapturing it last year.
McBath’s seat is one of two Democrats have flipped in recent years that Republicans are aiming to win back to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Republican emergency-room doctor Rich McCormick is already raising money for a rematch against Democratic U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in the 7th Congressional District northeast of Atlanta.
Gov. Brian Kemp, who is running for a second term in the governor’s office, has drawn Republican challengers in former Dekalb County CEO and state Rep. Vernon Jones, a Democrat turned Republican, and Appling County educator Kandiss Taylor.
Should he win the primary, Kemp is expected to face a possible rematch with 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams. Abrams has not yet announced whether she will run in 2022.
Several Republican candidates have also kicked off campaigns against Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who won a runoff in January alongside U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff to hand Democrats control of Congress.
Other high-profile Republicans who may be weighing campaigns against Warnock include U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson of West Point and former University of Georgia football star Herschel Walker, whom former President Donald Trump urged to run in March.
Further down the ballot, Republican Attorney General Chris Carr is set to square off against either Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan, an Atlanta attorney who launched her campaign last month, or Atlanta attorney and former prosecutor Charlie Bailey.
Democratic state Reps. Erick Allen of Smyrna and Derrick Jackson of Tyrone are both running to win Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan’s seat. Duncan’s office has signaled he may not seek reelection.
State Sen. Lester Jackson of Savannah and state Rep. William Boddie of East Point, both Democrats, are running against Republican Labor Commissioner Mark Butler. Democratic state Rep. Matthew Wilson of Brookhaven has challenged Republican Insurance Commissioner John King.
Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law Tuesday a package of education bills to give veterans an easier path to becoming teachers and allow private groups to donate grant funds to struggling public schools in Georgia.
The six-bill package also aims to boost teacher training at historically black colleges and universities, increase the share of state funding for charter schools, bolster mentorships for new teachers and allow schools to use vehicles other than school buses for student transportation.
The measures mark the latest moves by Kemp and backers in the General Assembly to show more support for Georgia teachers following passage of a new income-tax credit program to attract retired educators back to classrooms and a string of teacher pay raises approved in recent years.
“Today sends a message that brighter, more prosperous days start with putting our students and educators first,” Kemp said at a bill-signing ceremony at Kennesaw State University.
One measure sets up a teacher-training certification program for active or honorably discharged veterans who have earned bachelor’s degrees, met certain grade-point-average standards and passed a state educator ethics test.
The bill also allows Georgia’s teacher of the year to serve as an advisor to the state Board of Education, assigns mentors to help coach teachers with three years or less on the job who have low performance ratings, and creates training programs in alternative education and at historically black colleges and universities.
Two measures focus on Georgia charter schools by allowing local charter schools to take a larger share of the roughly $11 billion in state funds allocated for public schools annually and creating so-called “alternative charter schools” that focus on students with poor grades or at risk of dropping out.
Other bills create a nonprofit outlet for private groups and taxpayers to make donations to struggling schools, allow schools to contract with companies for energy-efficient installations and let schools use vehicles that are not school buses for transporting students in underserved areas.
Those measures follow separate legislation Kemp signed last month allowing teachers in 100 rural or low-performing schools picked annually by the state to apply for a $3,000 credit on their income taxes for up to five years if they teach certain subjects that students are struggling to learn.
The bills signed Tuesday were sponsored by Republican Sens. Russ Goodman of Cogdell, John Albers of Roswell, Jason Anavitarte of Dallas, Greg Dolezal of Cumming, Steve Gooch of Dahlonega and Tyler Harper of Ocilla.
