A high altitude balloon floats over Billings, Mont., on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023. The U.S. is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted over U.S. airspace for a couple days, but the Pentagon decided not to shoot it down due to risks of harm for people on the ground, officials said Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023. The Pentagon would not confirm that the balloon in the photo was the surveillance balloon. (Larry Mayer/The Billings Gazette via AP)
Republicans criticized President Joe Biden’s response to the suspected Chinese spy balloon that U.S. military fighter jets shot down Saturday.
China claimed the balloon, which had been seen flying over Montana earlier last week, was only meant for observing weather conditions. The Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed the move to destroy the balloon was a “clear overreaction and serious violation of international practice.”
Biden was briefed on the balloon Wednesday but it was not shot down until it was flying over water Saturday, in part, because of the potential damage caused by debris.
"The president will always put the safety and security of the American people first," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday. "We are tracking closely and keeping all options on the table."
Republicans criticized the administration for waiting so long to shoot it down.
“I will be demanding answers and will hold the admin accountable for this embarrassing display of weakness,” Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said.
Sen. Marco Rubio, lead Republican on the Intelligence Committee, similarly said it sent the wrong message to the rest of the world.
“The message embedded in this to the world is we can fly a balloon over airspace of the United States of America and they won’t be able to do anything about it to stop us,” Rubio said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also criticized the president.
McConnell said in a statement Sunday that "this balloon could have been shot down right away without endangering Americans or Canadians.”
“This was a reminder of the PRC's brazenness and President Biden missed the opportunity to defend our sovereignty, send a message of strength, and bolster deterrence," he added.
But Democrats defended the administration's actions.
“We sent a clear message to China that this is not acceptable. We protected civilians. We gained more intelligence while protecting our own sensitive information,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “The bottom line here is that shooting down the surveillance balloon over water wasn't just the safest option but it was the one that maximized our intelligence payload.”
A group of eight congressional leaders on intelligence committees will receive a classified briefing this week on China and the surveillance balloon.
Senators will receive a classified briefing on February 15 with the latest intelligence on the balloon as the United States searches for debris off the South Carolina coast.
Coming off a 2021 campaign where the prices of Bitcoin, Ether, and other cryptocurrencies reached unpreceded levels, Bitwise Asset Management CIO Matt Hougan and OpenNode Co-Founder & CTO João Almeida join Cheddar News' Crypto Craze: The Year of the Token to discuss the ways the crypto market can soar even higher in 2022.
The Cowboy State has become one of the world's top tax havens, according to the Pandora Papers, a trove of more than 11.9 million documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and The Washington Post. The papers reveal, among other things, how ultra-wealthy people from around the world move money into the U.S., invest, and spend it under a shroud of secrecy. Allison Tait, University of Richmond law professor, joined Cheddar to talk about Wyoming's laidback tax laws, their impact on the nation's economy, and provided some details on the financial arrangement known as the "cowboy cocktail."
Carlo and Baker preview President Biden's address to the nation as Omicron becomes the new dominant Covid strain. Plus, Trump gets booed for getting his booster and the White House gets a new puppy.
China and Russia are saying they want to work closer together in different areas after a recent call between Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. What are the implications of a close partnership between Beijing and Moscow? Cheddar News breaks things down with expert Hagar Chemali.
Michele Schneider, Partner and Director of Trading Research & Education for MarketGauge.com, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where she says the spread of the Omicron variant and Jerome Powell's comments following the latest Fed decision are spooking investors heading into the weekend.
Carlo and Baker wrap up another week discussing the latest explosion in new Covid cases in the Northeast, President Biden's stalled agenda and more. Plus, Love, Hate, Ate featuring the question: why did movie dialogue get so hard to understand?
Since July 2021, families with children have received monthly payments from the federal government as part of the expanded child tax credit, a policy that may be expiring this month. Megan Curran, policy director at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, joined Cheddar News to discuss.
During the pandemic, student loan debt repayment was put on pause amid an unprecedented crisis. However, on February 1, 2022, the schedule is set to resume, and currently it looks as though the Biden administration has no plans to extend it. Cody Hounanian, the executive director of the Student Debt Crisis Center, spoke to Cheddar about why he believes the loan collection pause needs to at least be extended as borrowers are still struggling with the resurgent pandemic and inflation. "There's really no good economic or policy or political reason as far as why they're focused on getting payments started now," Hounanian said. "We surveyed 33,000 people with student loans last month. Nine out of 10 told us that they are not ready to resume payments."
