In an early sign of changing White House relations with the new Congress since Republicans took control of the House in January, President Joe Biden issued the first veto of his presidency on Monday.
This action serves as a warm-up for more important conflicts with GOP legislators over government spending and the debt ceiling. To stop the government from taking into account environmental effects or the possibility of legal action when making investment decisions for people’s retirement plans, Biden sought to kill a Republican-authored bill.
Midway through his tenure, as he deals with a GOP-controlled House that is ready to turn back some of his policy accomplishments and look into his administration and family, Biden took a more combative stance with his first veto.
Biden’s situation is made more difficult by the fact that a number of Democratic senators in conservative areas will be up for reelection the following year, giving them a political incentive to separate themselves from the White House.
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Biden’s Veto Defends ESG Rule
The proposal that Biden rejected would have effectively reintroduced a prohibition placed in place under Trump that forbade government retirement plan managers from taking into account issues like climate change, social repercussions, or active legal cases when making investment decisions.
The Biden administration’s recent decision to approve the Willow oil project, a sizable and contentious drilling project in Alaska, infuriated environmentalists, who may feel better now that the veto has been issued.
The so-called environmental, social, and governance investments, however, are criticized for allocating funds based on political objectives, such as the fight against climate change, rather than on generating the highest returns for savers. Republicans in Congress who supported the legislation claimed that social or environmental factors are just another manifestation of being “awake.”
Biden’s veto will probably be overruled. With only three Democrats in Congress joining Republicans on the issue—one in the House and two in the Senate—it is uncertain whether a two-thirds majority in both chambers could be cobbled together to override Biden’s veto.
Senators. John Tester of Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia joined Rep. Jared Golden of Maine as the only other Democrats in the House to endorse the resolution. While Tester and Manchin are both up for reelection in 2018, Republicans have made Golden a constant target of their efforts to get him removed from his conservative district.
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