Washington Extra – Patriotic millionaires
As Democrats and Republicans hunkered down on opposite sides of the Capitol on Wednesday, showing no signs of a compromise on slashing the deficit, a group called the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength made its move.
Nearly 140 members wrote a letter to President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress to “do the right thing” and “raise our taxes.” Next they hit up the bipartisan “super committee,” laboring under a Nov. 23 deadline to reach agreement on the deficit or trigger unpalatable budget cuts.
One of the corporate patriots said if Congress ended Bush-era tax cuts it would affect him and his fellow millionaires in his group “about as much as a dead fly interrupts a picnic.”
Another added “those of us who can afford it should step up. That is our message to the super committee. We hope they listen.”
Yeah, well, good luck with that. With just a week to go and members expressing some pretty serious doubts about a deal, the super committee twelve sound like they can’t even listen to each other.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Deficit committee locked in budget stalemate
Let’s fight…
The overnight news of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s resignation sets up a global battle over who will succeed him in the IMF’s glass-and-steel headquarters in Washington. But, of course, that’s not the only fight in town.
The bipartisan group of budget negotiators now known as the Gang-of-Six-Minus-One is expected to meet today to try to salvage hopes of a budget compromise after a shouting match over Medicare sent Republican Senator Tom Coburn to the exit door.
Medicare is the third-rail political issue that recently had Republicans showing signs of retreating from House Budget Chief Paul Ryan’s Republican reform plan. Critics call it a blueprint for privatizing the federal government’s healthcare program for the elderly.
But all politics is local. And the national Medicare litmus test is likely to take place far from Washington.
A proxy war over Medicare-as-2012-campaign-issue is shaping up around next week’s special congressional election in one of New York’s most conservative districts, where the Ryan plan has given Democrats the chance for an upset. Conservative groups are pouring tons of money into the contest and veteran Capitol Hill staffers are expected to parachute in soon to help get out the vote.
The Medicare issue is the same albatross that started hanging out with Newt Gingrich this week, after the Republican White House candidate trashed the Ryan reform plan as right wing “social engineering.” The former House speaker apologized amid a storm of criticism from fellow conservatives. He’s since had “help” from potential presidential rival Sarah Palin, who in a TV appearance urged him not to back down in the face of … lamestream media criticism? hmmm … but who otherwise made sure she underscored his offending language.
Palin, who has been in and out of the spotlight in recent months, says she’s still considering a White House run. That could make for a nice rumble between her and Michele Bachmann, that other woman in Republican circles who rivals Palin as an outspoken darling of the Tea Party movement.
Live coverage: President Obama’s speech on debt reduction
President Obama will explain his vision for tackling the long-term U.S. deficit and debt in a speech in Washington at 1:35 p.m.
Obama family trip cancelled over budget deadlock
Add another victim to a looming federal government shutdown – a surprise Obama family outing to Williamsburg in Virginia, which was postponed on Friday after budget negotiations failed to break their deadlock.
The weekend get-away to the historically preserved 18th century colonial town had been kept under wraps, but was almost immediately in doubt after word of the trip trickled out.
Republicans and Democrats made little headway in budget talks, despite successive summons to the White House by President Barack Obama to move things along, and by Friday afternoon a shutdown looked increasingly unavoidable.
“The President will remain in Washington, D.C. this weekend as he continues to work with congressional leaders to reach an agreement on the budget,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “The First Family’s trip to Williamsburg has been postponed.”
Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama and family at White House)
Freebies offered for a shutdown budget
No work, no trash pick-up, no Circulator bus trips around town, but at least the “non-essential” federal employee can eat like a teenager in a buffet line if the federal government shuts down after the clock hits 12 tonight.
Federal and Washington D.C. government services not deemed essential will close if Congress fails to reach a budget deal before funds run out at midnight. But local restaurants and bars are offering some compensation — deals and freebies for government workers if Republicans and Democrats fail to reach agreement.
Taylor Gourmet is offering 10 percent off orders at its H St NE location starting at 12:01 a.m. to anyone who presents a government ID and says “Shut it down.” (And check out that photo!)
Z-Burger near Tenleytown tweeted that federal employees will receive a free burger on Monday if the government closes. Capitol hangout Union Pub posted on Facebook that if there’s a shutdown, government workers can get penny beers all week between 5 and 6 p.m.
Keep an eye on event sites, such as Metromix and DininginDC.net, and Twitter hashtags like #shutdowndeals for more specials and freebies.
See Reuters’ budget battle live-blog to keep up with what’s happening on the Hill.
Some people are thinking of different ways to express their feelings about a shutdown – for example a Facebook event for the protest-oriented: “If Boehner shuts down the government I am taking my trash to his house.”
Live coverage: Budget battle
Facing a midnight deadline, the White House and Congress are working furiously to break a budget deadlock and prevent a federal government shutdown that would idle hundreds of thousands of workers.
Washington Extra – Playing ball
The White House was clearly relieved to announce that at 6 a.m. GMT NATO took over the ball for running the military operation on Libya.
Not a minute too soon for members of Congress concerned that the United States could get bogged down in another war. “I sincerely hope that this is not the start of a third elongated conflict,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon said.
Republicans and Democrats say they want to play ball to prevent a government shutdown, but so far have not reached agreement on spending cuts.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said congressional leaders do not want a government shutdown and the public does not want to see spitball fights (we’d like to see polling on that).
Perhaps the two teams on Capitol Hill need to work it out on the ball field, like the “cricket diplomacy” being exercised by India and Pakistan.
No presidential first ceremonial pitch on this opening day of baseball season. Although that Bronx Zoo escapee which charmed 200,000 followers on Twitter with its cobra chit-chat made it to Yankee Stadium.
The real misssssing snake has been found (was it curled up in a ball?). Will it continue tweeting from captivity?
And today’s word from Washington is … stalemate
Congress has it. Gaddafi wants it. And President Obama is trying to figure out how best to avoid it. What is it? The answer: stalemate (noun \ˈstāl-ˌmāt\) … that unsatisfying state of affairs in which there can be no action or progress.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the four-star U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman, conceded the possibility of a stalemate in Libya way back on March 20, a day after U.S. forces and their allies started raining high explosives on Muammar Gaddafi’s military infrastructure and ground forces.
The acknowledgment raised worries that a stalemate would allow Gaddafi’s government to live to fight another day — in perpetuity – while delivering an embarrassing defeat to the U.S. and its allies.
The stalemate hobgoblin has haunted the U.S. debate on Libya ever since. The possibility is now increasingly palpable on the ground in Libya, where rag-tag rebel forces are demonstrating their inability to cope with pro-Gaddafi fighters, even as aircraft can be heard screaming overhead in prelude to the heavy thump of ordnance in the distance.
Obama and his advisers are said to be in a fierce debate about whether to arm the Libyan rebels in hopes of ejecting Gaddafi and avoiding a stalemate.
But Obama may face a more immediate stalemate threat at home. In Congress, the bombastic budget battle over government spending is not only pitting Democrats against Republicans, but Republicans against their newly minted Tea Party brethren. GOP rising star Marco Rubio, a Floridian Tea Party favorite, says he won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling unless it’s the last vote of its kind and accompanied by momentous tax, regulatory and fiscal reforms.
Do these things speak of dialogue? Perhaps two little children shall lead them.
Washington Extra – Sharp tongues
Democrats are trying a bit of divide-and-conquer strategy on Capitol Hill.
As another budget showdown looms, they are employing a tactic of trying to turn the Tea Party and the rest of the Republican ranks against each other.
It was made starkly clear when Senator Charles Schumer told fellow Democrats to portray Republican House Speaker John Boehner as boxed in by the Tea Party, and to criticize his spending cuts as extreme — “I always use the word extreme,” Schumer said, according to The New York Times’ blog “The Caucus.”
That strategy is not going to work very well now that its cover is blown.
Republicans were not about to let that slide. They accused Democrats of secretly wanting a government shutdown. “With No Plan to Force Washington to Live Within Its Means, Democrats Dig In With ‘Extreme’ Rhetoric to Mask Tacit Support for a Government Shutdown,” blared the headline on a National Republican Congressional Committee email.
Another kind of sharp-tongued creature is on the loose in New York City — the cobra at the Bronx Zoo that has turned into quite the silver-tongued tweeter of its essssssscapades….
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Boehner confident on getting budget deal, but admits it won’t be easy
House Speaker John Boehner, facing somewhat of a revolt in Republican ranks, says “it is not going to be easy” to craft and win passage of a bipartisan deal to cut spending and fund the government for the rest of this fiscal year.
But the top U.S. Republican said he remains confident that it will be done — somehow, some way.
“We never thought it was going to be easy,” Boehner said a day after the House passed a short-term funding bill that 54 of his 240 House Republican colleagues opposed.
Many of these Republicans — some veteran conservatives along with a number of newly elected lawmakers backed by the Tea Party — voted no because they felt that the $6 billion in proposed cuts over three weeks are woefully inadequate.
They also worry that the major policy changes they’re hoping to attach to a spending-cut bill this year will be thrown overboard. They include preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming and stopping implementation of President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul.
The Senate is expected to give final congressional approval to the House-passed measure by Friday, clearing the way for Obama to sign it into law. The House, Senate and the White House would then have until April 8 to reach agreement on another funding measure or face a government shutdown.
Democrats are hoping that Boehner leaves his Tea Party activists behind and cuts a deal with moderates to fund the government through Sept. 30.
This man makes me sick!! The only cuts that matter to him and the GOP are those that affect the poor and elderly. They take NOTHING from the rich.
Really?
Does anyone believe this kind of propaganda anymore?
If you want to donate money to charity or the state nobody would stop you…