The federal budget deficit was $738 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2021 (CBO)

The federal budget deficit was $738 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2021, the Congressional Budget Office estimates—$348 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last year. Outlays were 23 percent higher and revenues were 1 percent higher from October through January than during the same perod in fiscal year 2020.

Senator Richard C. Shelby, who formerly chaired the powerful Appropriations Committee, announced Monday that he will retire when his term ends in 2022. (Washington Post)

Shelby, 86, was first elected to the House in 1978 as a Democrat and won election to the Senate in 1986. He switched parties to become a Republican in 1994.

He has been a master of steering projects to his home state and also adept at cutting deals with Democrats. He is the fourth Senate Republican to announce his retirement in 2022, and the race to replace him will become another test for the direction of the GOP in the post-Trump era.

Increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would cut employment by 1.4 million, bit it would also reduce the number of Americans below the poverty line by 900,000, according to a study released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. (Wall Street Journal)

The CBO study said that if the $15 minimum wage bill that Democrats in Congress have proposed were passed, 17 million U.S. workers, or about 10% of the labor force, would have their pay increased because they would otherwise earn less than the federal minimum wage. A further 10 million workers who earn slightly more than $15 an hour could also potentially gain pay increases, the study said.

CoreLogic is predicting that 2021 could be even bigger for home sales than 2020. (CoreLogic)

The construction of new homes is important to meet the shelter needs of America’s expanding population. CoreLogic public records data show that closings on single-family new-home sales were up 12% year-over-year in the six months before the pandemic hit. The pandemic derailed closings last spring, but only temporarily. [Figure 1] Completions of one-family homes rebounded by summer, remained brisk the rest of 2020, and were the highest annual total since 2007.

Could Amazon workers unionize? Thousands of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama are set to begin voting in a union election that could alter the relationship between the nation’s second-largest employer and its hourly workers. (Wall Street Journal)

Organizers have said forming a union would allow workers to collectively bargain over safety standards, training, breaks, pay and other benefits. Those topics have been at the center of disputes between Amazon and its workforce sprawled across hundreds of facilities. Some employees have complained about what they say is a grueling workload and how the company monitors employees through an internal tracking system and cameras.

Biden’s trade policy proposals and personal choices continue to look more and more like Trump’s. What’s going to be interesting to watch is if both sides can admit this and work together or will Trump Derangement Syndrome and Biden Derangement Syndrome be too strong? (New York Times)

Instead, his trade staff may focus more on ensuring that American trade rules are adequately enforced and that they promote rather than impede other parts of Mr. Biden’s agenda, including fighting climate change and encouraging domestic investment. The picks include several key staff members to congressional Democrats who helped to revise and pass the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That suggests that a major task in the coming months will be ensuring that the North American Free Trade Agreement’s successor, which raises labor standards and requires new unions at Mexican factories, is fully put in place and enforced.

For the record, I hope it fails because I think restrictive trade deals and protectionism aka crony capitalism are horrible policies that make everyone poorer. However, the rise of populism on both sides has created a consensus on this, unfortunately.