After weeks of quarrels and qualms and then 11th-hour horse-trading, Republicans revealed their huge national tax rewrite late Friday, along with announcements of support that all but guarantee approval next week.

The legislation would slash tax rates for big business and lower levies on the richest Americans in a massive $1.5 trillion bill that the GOP plans to pass through Congress before the year-end break. Benefits for most other taxpayers would be smaller.

“This is happening. Tax reform under Republican control of Washington is happening,” House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin told rank-and-file members in a conference call. “Most critics out there didn’t think it could happen. … And now we’re on the doorstep of something truly historic.”

According to the 1,097-page bill, today’s 35 percent rate on corporations would fall to 21 percent, the crown jewel of the measure for many Republicans. Trump and GOP leaders had set 20 percent as their goal, but added a point to free money for other tax cuts that won over wavering lawmakers in final talks.

Party’s first achievement of 2017

The legislation represents the first major legislative achievement for the GOP after nearly a full year in control of Congress and the White House. It’s the widest-ranging reshaping of the tax code in three decades and is expected to add to the nation’s $20 trillion debt. The debt is expected to soar by at least $1 trillion more than it would without the tax measure, according to projections.

Support is now expected from all Senate Republicans, ensuring narrow approval. Democrats are expected to oppose the legislation unanimously.

“Under this bill, the working class, middle class and upper middle class get skewered while the rich and wealthy corporations make out like bandits,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “It is just the opposite of what America needs, and Republicans will rue the day they pass this.”

The bill would drop today’s 39.6 percent top rate on individuals to 37 percent. The standard deduction, used by about two-thirds of households, would be nearly doubled.

Those who itemize their taxes face mixed results. The $1,000-per-child tax deduction would grow to $2,000. The bill makes a smaller amount — $1,400 — available to families even if they owe no income tax. The money would come in the form of a tax refund, which is why it’s called a “refundable” tax credit. In an earlier verison of the bill, the amount was $1,000.

But the deduction that millions use in connection with state and local income, property and sales taxes would be capped at $10,000. Deductions for medical expenses that lawmakers once considered eliminating would be retained.

Only on Friday did Republicans cement support for the major overhaul, securing endorsements from wavering senators.

Rubio, Corker relent

Marco Rubio of Florida relented in his high-profile opposition after negotiators expanded the child tax credit, and he said he would vote for the measure next week.

Rubio had been holding out for a bigger child tax credit for low-income families. After he got it, he tweeted that the change was “a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker.”

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the only Republican to vote against the Senate version earlier this month, made the surprise announcement that he would back the legislation. Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has repeatedly warned that the nation’s growing debt is the most serious threat to national security.

Although he deemed the bill far from perfect, he said it was a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

“I realize this is a bet on our country’s enterprising spirit, and that is a bet I am willing to make,” Corker said.

Members of a House-Senate conference committee signed the final version of the legislation Friday, sending it to the two chambers for final passage next week. They have been working to blend the different versions passed by the two houses.

Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate, including two ailing senators who have missed votes this past week.

John McCain of Arizona, 81, is at a Washington-area military hospital being treated for the side effects of brain cancer treatment, and Thad Cochran, 80, of Mississippi had a non-melanoma lesion removed from his nose earlier this week. GOP leaders are hopeful they will be available next week.
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Two titans of U.S. business have come together to demand that Congress find an immediate solution for DACA recipients, whose legal immigration status will come to an end in March without intervention.

Charles Koch, chairman and chief executive of Koch Industries, and Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, wrote in an opinion piece published Thursday in The Washington Post that “we strongly agree that Congress must act before the end of the year to bring certainty and security to the lives of dreamers. Delay is not an option. Too many people’s futures hang in the balance.”

Dreamers is another term for participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has protected undocumented young people who were brought to the U.S. as children and provided them with work permits.

President Donald Trump ended the DACA program in September although it will not begin to phase out until March, 2018.

His action put the ball in Congress’ court to find a long term solution for dreamers.

In their op-ed piece, the two CEOs note that both of their companies employ DACA recipients. “We know from experience that the success of our businesses depends on having employees with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. It fuels creativity, broadens knowledge and helps drive innovation.”

Koch Industries encompass a variety of companies including manufacturing and refining of oil and chemicals. Forbes Magazine lists Koch as the second largest privately held company in the U.S. Apple is the world’s largest information technology company, producing such familiar products as the iPhone and the Mac computers.

‘Firmly aligned’ on DACA issue

Koch and Cook are as different politically as their companies. Deeply conservative, Charles Koch has made significant financial contributions to rightwing causes and mostly Republican candidates. Tim Cook has been more bipartisan in his donations but did host a fundraiser for Democrat Hillary Clinton when she was running for president.

“We are business leaders who sometimes differ on the issues of the day,” the two concede in their piece. “Yet, on a question as straightforward as this one, we are firmly aligned.”

Congress seems unlikely to provide a DACA solution by the end of the year.

While some Democrats have remained firm in linking the spending legislation to a measure that would allow nearly 800,000 DACA immigrants to continue to work and study in the United States, the effort seems to have lost momentum.

Speaking Wednesday to a group of DACA recipients, Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois said he wished he could “tell you that we’re totally confident we can get it done. I can’t say that. I don’t want to mislead you.” Durbin is a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act which would protect DACA recipients.

Republican lawmakers have maintained that there is no reason to act on DACA in 2017.

“There is no emergency. The president has given us until March to address it,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week program. “I don’t think Democrats would be very smart to say they want to shut down the government over a nonemergency that we can address anytime between now and March.”

But that was said before a major Republican donor urged immediate action.

“We have no illusions about how difficult it can be to get things done in Washington, and we know that people of good faith disagree about aspects of immigration policy,“ Koch and Cook write.

“By acting now to ensure that dreamers can realize their potential by continuing to contribute to our country, Congress can reaffirm this essential American ideal.

“This is a political, economic and moral imperative.”

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump has touted progress on slashing federal regulations, which he says cost America trillions with no benefit. Speaking Thursday from the White House, the president said his administration had exceeded its goal of removing two federal regulations for every new one, by removing 22 for every new one. Opponents have criticized some of the deregulation, especially dismantling of the net neutrality rules that guarantee equal access to the internet. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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An 800-foot-tall (244-meter) centerpiece is coming to Detroit’s resurgent downtown as the city continues to build momentum about three years after exiting the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

The 58-story building dominating the local skyline will rise on the site of the iconic J.L. Hudson department store, whose 1983 closing epitomized Detroit’s economic downfall.

“When we lost Hudson’s, it symbolized how far Detroit had fallen,” Bedrock Detroit real estate founder Dan Gilbert said Thursday during a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new building. “When it was imploded in 1998 it was a very sad day for a lot of people.”

One of four projects

But the bad times for downtown appear to be largely over. Bedrock Detroit’s $900 million, two-building project will include a 58-story residential tower and 12-floor building for retail and conference space. Up to 450 residential units can be built in the tower.

It is one of four projects representing a $2.1 billion investment in downtown by the Detroit-based commercial real estate firm. Altogether, the projects are expected to create up to 24,000 jobs in a city that desperately needs them and generate $673 million in new tax revenue.

Mayor Mike Duggan’s office has spearheaded redevelopment programs targeting a number of city neighborhoods, but Detroit’s growth is most evident in greater downtown, where office space now is limited and available apartments are tough to come by.

A ribbon-cutting was held in August for an $860 million sports complex just north of downtown. The 20,000-seat Little Caesars Arena is the new home of the Detroit Red Wings and Pistons. It will anchor a 50-block neighborhood of offices, apartments, restaurants and shops.

A 6.6-mile-long light rail system launched earlier this year along Woodward Avenue, downtown’s main business thoroughfare.

Microsoft move

Software maker Microsoft announced in February that it plans to move its Michigan Microsoft Technology Center next year from the suburbs to downtown. In 2016, Ally Financial opened new offices downtown that the financial services company said eventually would be occupied by more than 1,500 employees and contractors.

“Bedrock building on the Hudson’s site will be an important addition to the community and the vitality and prosperity of downtown,” said John Mogk, a Wayne State University law professor whose work has included policy on economic development issues.

“It will act as an important centerpiece for continuing the overall downtown development … but much more has to be done for the entire city to feel a resurgence.”

Many residents poor

However, much work remains for a city where many residents are still poor.

Detroit’s unemployment rate was about 8 percent in April, yet far below the more than 18 percent unemployment rate during the city’s 2013 bankruptcy filing.

The city’s 2016 poverty rate was just more than 35 percent, the highest among the nation’s 20 largest cities and more than double the national poverty of 14 percent. A family of four is considered living in poverty if its annual earnings are less than $24,563.

Downtown construction projects such as the work at the Hudson’s site can help change that, some say.

“What a shame that anybody should be unemployed in Detroit when we have a need for skilled trades,” Gilbert said. “We like to say Detroit is located at the intersection of muscle and brains. We need brains to sort this all out … somebody still has to build stuff. We still need muscle.”

While Bedrock’s new building would be Detroit’s tallest, rising above the 727-foot (222-meter) Renaissance Center along the city’s riverfront, it still would be far shorter than some other U.S. towers.

One World Trade Center in New York measures 1,776 feet (541 meters). Chicago’s Willis Tower hits 1,451 feet (442 meters), while the Empire State Building in New York climbs to 1,250 feet (381 meters).

​Iconic Hudson’s

Although the 25-story Hudson’s building was once the nation’s tallest department store, it measured only about 400 feet (122 meters). It was far more famous for what was inside.

When Detroit was humming along and leading the nation in car production, the store was where auto executives and assembly line workers shopped. From household goods to clothing and furs and many things in between, it was a primary downtown destination.

There were 50 display windows, 12,000 employees and 100,000 customers per day. But as shopping tastes shifted to expansive suburban malls and Detroit’s population tumbled by more than 600,000 people between the 1950s and 1980, Hudson’s lost its luster.

“Building something of significant magnitude on the old site will provide a good deal of good feelings by older generations,” Mogk said.
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Severe natural gas shortages are hitting businesses and residents across China’s industrial heartland as an unprecedented government effort to clean up an environment devastated by decades of unbridled growth backfires.

Factories are closing or operating at reduced capacity, business profits are shrinking as supply chains are disrupted, and people are shivering through subzero temperatures without adequate heating at home, according to interviews conducted across the region last week.

The gas shortages, which have sent prices soaring nationwide, have undermined a sweeping campaign to switch millions of households and thousands of businesses from coal to natural gas in north China this winter, part of long-running efforts to clean the region’s toxic air.

Much of the gasification of the region, involving more than 4 million homes, was rapidly launched by local authorities acting on their own initiatives in response to calls by the central government to control air pollution.

But the plan appears to have been overly ambitious.

Despite the installation of gas lines and boilers for factories and homes across the northeast, supply has been hampered by insufficient infrastructure to bring the fuel to the industrial region and store it, according to Liang Jin, an independent analyst previously with the oil and gas consultancy JLC.

And in some areas, many homes have yet to get the gas boilers needed for heating.

The gas plan was also implemented as China tries this winter to reduce production from polluting industries like steel and cut back on the use of diesel trucks. That has raised concerns about whether the anti-pollution campaigns may hit economic growth.

​Hebei not ready

Interviews with business owners, families, utilities and gas producers in Hebei province highlighted the problem and suggested that many cities were unprepared to cope. Hebei is adjacent to Beijing, and its factories are often blamed for much of the pollution that often cloaks the capital in the winter.

Xue Huabing, who owns a small floor-tile factory in rural Hebei, said compliance with the new environmental standards means he has only been able to operate for four months this year.

After moving from coal to natural gas and reopening in September, the factory halted production again in October as gas prices soared.

“The price of gas is 6-7 yuan per cubic meter, up from 2 yuan last year,” Xue told Reuters by phone. “If we open, we are going to run at a loss.” He added that it was also difficult for him to secure gas supplies.

Gas prices up

Domestic liquefied natural gas prices have jumped more than 70 percent since mid-November, hitting record highs above 8,000 yuan per ton this month, according to market.yeslng.com, an online exchange for domestic gas supplies.

High prices are raising production costs in industrial cities like Baoding and Shijiazhuang in Hebei province, with knock-on effects for retailers and wholesalers downstream, business owners said.

The gas shortages are also now being felt in southern China, where local governments are sounding the alarm, and some companies are closing down or slowing production.

Growth is hurting

“I think there already has been an impact from the campaign on growth,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist at Capital Economics in Singapore, referring to the anti-pollution drive. “We saw quite a sharp slowdown in October data.”

At Zheng Wenmin’s shop selling kitchen fixtures in Shijiazhuang, a city of 10 million and Hebei’s capital, business is down more than 20 percent this year. Disruptions to housing construction, which has slowed amid the crackdown on pollution, mean fewer people are decorating new homes, she said.

“The prices we pay our suppliers are much higher, and the supply is unstable because factories are shut down or have to cut production,” Zheng said.

China could lose nearly half a percentage point of gross domestic product growth this winter if it sticks to its pollution-reduction targets, Capital Economics has estimated.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they start getting worried” about slowing growth soon, said Evans-Pritchard.

Signs of a slowdown are being seen. Shijiazhuang’s economy expanded 7.1 percent in the first nine months of the year, slowing from 7.8 percent over the same period last year, city government data showed.

Heavy industrial output contracted 2.4 percent year-on-year in the first ten months of the year, which compared with 4.5 percent growth in 2016.

The Shijiazhuang city government, Hebei provincial government, and the Ministry of Environmental Protection did not respond to requests for comment. The Hebei Development and Reform Commission declined to comment.

​Pipelines, storage needed

Most of China’s gas is produced offshore and in the far west of the country. Getting enough gas to the industrial northeast to meet surging demand is a major challenge because of a shortage of pipelines, as well as facilities that would allow the storage of fuel in the summer for use in winter.

To address the shortages the government is speeding up the construction of a pipeline bringing gas from Russia, according to state media reports.

“I don’t think the government can fix the problem within the next three to five years,” said Liang, the gas analyst. “For this year, the Hebei government is facing a supply shortage of 2 billion cubic meters.”

​A cold winter

Residents in Hebei are also bracing for a colder winter, with temperatures forecast to plunge deeper below zero.

In a dusty village on the outskirts of Baoding, Zhang Xu, 31, said her two young sons were getting sick more often this winter from sleeping in their cold bedroom.

“My older son is always asking me why it is so cold in the house, and all I can do is put them in sweaters,” Zhang said.

New bright yellow gas pipelines installed by the local government snake conspicuously through Zhang’s village. But in most homes, like Zhang’s, the government has not yet installed gas boilers, and some residents said they had been secretly burning coal left from last winter to keep themselves warm.

Facing the reality that many people in the northeast did not have gas heating, the Ministry of Environmental Protection recently reversed course and said residents could temporarily burn coal.

Despite the upheaval, most residents and businesses interviewed said they believed something had to be done about pollution, but took issue with how measures were being implemented.

“The skies are blue, but it’s the common people that have to pay the price,” said Zheng, the shopowner.
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Brazilian builder Odebrecht transferred $4.8 million to companies linked to Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski between 2004 and 2012, some of which was paid to a company Kuczynski controlled when he held senior government roles, according to a document the company sent to Congress.

In a brief recorded message broadcast on local radio program RPP after lawmakers made the contents of the document public on Wednesday, Kuczynski denied wrongdoing but did not deny the transfers took place.

Kuczynski’s office declined further comment.

Odebrecht declined to comment. A source in the company who spoke on condition of anonymity said the document seen by Reuters was authentic.

​Documents contradict denials

The transfers shown in the document contradicted Kuczynski’s previous denials about his ties to Odebrecht and prompted some lawmakers in the opposition-controlled Congress to call for his resignation.

Odebrecht is at the center of Latin America’s biggest graft scandal and has admitted to paying about $30 million in bribes to officials in Peru over a decade, including during the 2001-2006 term of ex-President Alejandro Toledo, when Kuczynski was finance minister and prime minister.

After Odebrecht’s public acknowledgement a year ago, Kuczynski repeatedly denied ever taking money from Odebrecht or having any professional connections to the company.

But on Saturday Kuczynski announced on a local radio program that he once worked as a financial adviser for an Odebrecht project when he did not hold public office; he did not mention the company that paid him.

‘I have nothing to hide’

According to the document sent to Congress, Odebrecht made seven transfers totaling about $780,000 to Kuczynski’s company Westfield Capital Ltd between 2004 and 2007, including about $60,000 when Kuczynski worked in Toledo’s Cabinet and the government awarded several contracts to Odebrecht. Later, between 2008 and 2012, Odebrecht paid about $4 million to First Capital Inversiones Y Asesorias.

Kuczynski has previously said that First Capital belongs to his friend and Chilean business partner, Gerardo Sepulveda.

Kuczynski was the sole director of Westfield Capital, according to his sworn declaration on the presidency’s website.

Kuczynski has not appeared in public since his radio interview on Saturday. He said on RPP on Wednesday that he had decided to heed Congress’ repeated calls to explain any connections he had with Odebrecht to an investigative committee.

“I’ve never favored any company. I’m willing to clarify everything that needs to be clarified before Congress and prosecutors because I have nothing to hide,” Kuczynski said on RPP, without taking any questions from journalists.

Opposition calls for resignation

A spokesman for Popular Force, the opposition party that holds a majority of seats in Peru’s single-chamber Congress, slammed Kuczynski.

“The country, Mr. Kuczynski, is tired of your lies and doesn’t want any more explanations. The country hasn’t just lost its trust in you, but in your government as well,” Daniel Salaverry, the spokesman, told a news conference.

In a televised plenary session late on Wednesday, hard-line Popular Force lawmaker Hector Becerril called for Kuczynski to resign, calling the transferred funds “camouflaged bribes.” An independent lawmaker also called for Kuczynski to step down.

A source in the attorney general’s office said prosecutors investigating Odebrecht in Peru were probing Kuczynski’s relationship with the company but could not name him as a suspect until his term and presidential immunity end.

Toledo, the former president under whom Kuczynski worked, has been accused of taking a $20 million bribe from Odebrecht in exchange for help in securing lucrative highway contracts.

Toledo has denied the charges. Authorities in Peru are seeking his extradition from the United States.
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Nebraska’s main anti-pipeline group is trying to rally opposition to the TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL project’s recently approved route through the state, tracking down landowners it says were not given a voice in the regulatory process.

If it succeeds, Bold Nebraska could throw up new roadblocks to the controversial project to move Canadian oil to U.S. refineries, backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, by pressing regulators to revisit TransCanada’s application, or by suing if they refuse.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission issued an approval for Keystone XL to pass through the state in late November, removing the last big regulatory obstacle for the long-delayed project. But the commission’s approval was not for the route TransCanada had singled out in its application, but for an alternative that shifts it closer to an existing pipeline right-of-way that affects scores of new landowners.

Bold Nebraska 

Jane Kleeb, the head of Bold Nebraska, which has been fighting the pipeline for years, held the first of a series of meetings with these new landowners Wednesday.

“We hope to begin the education process with landowners so they understand this is a lifetime easement for a one-time payment,” she told Reuters. “We aim to engage at least 20 percent of the new landowners in the legal landowner group.” 

About 75 landowners and other citizens crammed the meeting in the community center in the small college town of Seward to meet with Kleeb and other pipeline opponents.

Lee Gloystein said he was not happy upon learning that the approved route would go thought his family’s farm. “It’s been in our family since the 1800s,” he said. “And we don’t want it to be disturbed or the water to be disturbed.”

Bold Nebraska already has about 100 landowners who live along the pipeline’s original proposed route signed up against Keystone XL. They include a number of ranchers and farmers worried that spills could pollute their land and the massive Ogallala Aquifer, a source of drinking water and irrigation for a large swath of the central United States.

Jim Carlson, a landowner whose Holt County farm is on the original Keystone XL route, told those at Wednesday’s meeting that he initially was happy the route would cross his land because he could profit from selling TransCanada an easement. But he said he changed his mind after studying the potential environmental harm from a spill. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said.

​Controversial pipeline

The project has been a lightning rod of controversy since it was proposed a decade ago, with environmentalists making it a symbol of their broader fight against fossil fuels and global warming.

TransCanada says the pipeline would be good for the economy and could be run safely. The company said it had about 90 percent support among landowners for the proposed route, but had not yet negotiated support along the approved route.

TransCanada would need to use eminent domain law to gain access to land for which it could not reach an agreement.

Demonstrating opposition along the approved route could add heft to anti-pipeline efforts. Lawyers for opponents of the line argued at a hearing Tuesday that Nebraska regulators had no authority to approve the “alternative” path, and was only allowed to rule on the proposed route.

TransCanada seeks to head off challenges

TransCanada, meanwhile, requested that the public service commission allow it to amend its application retroactively to head off legal challenges. The commission is considering TransCanada’s request.

Trump handed TransCanada a federal permit for the 1,180-mile (1,899-km) pipeline in March, reversing a decision by former President Barack Obama in 2015 to block it on environmental grounds.
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