Washington Extra – Proposals to nowhere
A line kept cropping up in our stories from Washington today, something along the lines of “unlikely to be passed in Congress.”
President Obama went out to Falls Church, Virginia to tout his $5 billion to $10 billion plan to help homeowners refinance. The proposal, sketched out in last week’s State of the Union address, could provide relief to many locked into high rates by their homes’ sagging value. But it doesn’t look like it will overcome Republican opposition.
Democrats also introduced today the “Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012,” longhand for the “Buffett Rule” that Obama also raised in his address last week. The idea is that millionaires would pay a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate. It has almost no chance of passage in a Republican-controlled House that has sworn off tax increases.
Sure, this kind of political theater is part of the Washington spectacle. But we thought it was best to tell readers to sit back and enjoy the show – rather than start making plans for the future.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Washington Extra – A man and his dog
Here’s a modern-day twist on Harry Truman’s quip “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” If you, the president, have called John Boehner and urged him to compromise on extending the payroll tax deal by two months, then all that’s left to do is go out Christmas shopping with your dog.
That’s what President Obama did today, taking Bo, the only family member who hasn’t gone to Hawaii, to a pet store in a Virginia strip mall.
Bo made friends with a brown poodle named Cinnamon, prompting a warning from his master “Okay, Bo, don’t get too personal here.” Aw, Mr President, let the First Dog enjoy his time out in the real world.
The shopping excursion was a way to bide time while Washington waits for Speaker Boehner’s next move. The president pledged to work with Congress on a one-year extension. That may well be enough for Boehner to stand down, especially with fellow Republicans and conservatives criticizing him and the House for holding out on a tax cut.
We are hearing whispers on Capitol Hill that a deal could be quick to come on Thursday. Stay tuned for a possible wrap on Congress 2011. Or, conversely, watch for the president’s next holiday outing with Bo.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Washington Extra – Home for the holidays
There will be no vacation for you, Congress, until you get your work done. That was the stern message from President Obama today. But it probably wasn’t his warning that pushed Democrats and Republicans to get back to serious negotiations to finish the year’s business. More likely, it was fear of voter backlash.
For the third time this year, Americans were hearing about the threat of a government shutdown because Democrats and Republicans could not strike a deal on some basic legislation –a spending bill needed to fund many government agencies beyond Friday. After a flurry of meetings on Capitol Hill, we received word that the deal was near.
Separate negotiations on the legislation to extend a payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits also seemed to gather pace after days of distractions and setbacks. If the negotiators are successful, Congress’ work might all be done by the weekend.
And then lawmakers can go home for the holidays with their mission accomplished. But by taking the country to the brink once again, it would come as no surprise if they still got hit with some backlash back home.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Washington Extra – Blame to go around
A Reuters Ipsos poll shows the blame for the failure shared fairly equally among the political parties and the president. Just over one in five respondents (22 percent) blame all three (Democratic and Republican lawmakers as well as Obama) the most — slightly more than the 19 percent who blame both parties’ lawmakers but not the president.
For 13 percent of respondents, Obama alone is blamed most, better than the 18 percent who just blame Republicans but worse than the 7 percent who blame the Democratic lawmakers alone. And while Congress suffers the most in the public’s eye, with 51 percent taking a less favorable view of Capitol Hill in the wake of the failure, Obama’s standing drops for 35 percent of those polled.
While Obama can run from this unpopular Congress, he cannot hide from voters when it comes to the country’s debt crisis. A full 87 percent of the poll respondents said they were very or fairly concerned about the super committee’s failure. If there is anything to console him in this poll, it might be that Americans still think he has the best chances of solving the debt crisis when compared to his possible Republican contenders in 2012.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Americans blame all sides for debt committee failure: poll Americans blamed the failure of Washington’s debt “super committee” on Republican and Democratic lawmakers and President Barack Obama, although more than a third said it lowered their opinion of the president, according to Reuters/Ipsos poll results on Tuesday. Eighteen percent blamed Republican lawmakers most for the committee’s failure to reach agreement on a plan to reduce the U.S. budget deficit and 13 percent blamed Obama most.
For more of this story by Patricia Zengerle, read here.
Let’s put the “For 24 months, the Dems controlled all 3 branches of government” talking point into a little historical context, shall we?
In 2001 the CBO showed the United States is on track to pay off the entirety of its national debt within a decade.
From 2001 to 2009, with support from congressional Republicans, George Bush ran enormous deficits, adding nearly $5 trillion to the debt.
In 2002 Dick Cheney declares, “Deficits don’t matter.” Congressional Republicans agreed, approving tax cuts, two wars, and Medicare expansion without even trying to pay for them.
In 2009 Barack Obama inherited $1.3 trillion deficit from George Bush; Republicans immediately moved to condemn Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility.
In 2009 (the beginning of this 24 month “monopoly over government” the right likes to talk about) Congressional Democrats unveiled several domestic policy initiatives, including health care reform, cap and trade, and the DREAM Act all of which would lower the deficit. The GOP opposed ALL of them, while continuing to push for deficit reduction.
In September of 2010, Obama’s first fiscal year, the deficit shrank by $122 billion. Republicans again condemned Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility.
In October of 2010, S&P endorsed the nation’s AAA rating with a stable outlook, saying the United States looks to be in solid fiscal shape for the foreseeable future.
In November 2010, Republicans won a U.S. House majority, citing the need for fiscal responsibility. The first thing they did was demand extension of Bush tax cuts, relying entirely on deficit financing. And the GOP continued to accuse Obama of fiscal irresponsibility.
In March 2011, Congressional Republicans declared their intention to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage — a move without precedent in American history — until a massive debt-reduction plan was approved.
By August 2011, S&P downgraded U.S. debt, citing the Republicans’ refusal to consider new revenues. Republicans rejoiced and blamed Obama for fiscal irresponsibility.
So now it’s the end of 2011, and the Supercomittee is deadlocked – over what? Democrats called for a balanced plan that required shared sacrifice, and Republicans refused. GOP members freely admit that they weren’t prepared to compromise on tax revenue — indeed, their “offers” demanded that Dems accept more tax cuts, making the debt problem worse, on purpose — dooming the entire process.
Opinion polling on the outcome shows a slightly higher percent blaming Republicans for the failure to reach a compromise. I’m surprised it was even close.
Washington Extra – Turkey talks
The good news? Thanksgiving will not be interrupted by eleventh-hour negotiations by the “super committee” to strike a deal to cut the burgeoning deficit. After months of work, the 11 men and one woman called it quits today. Their statement said “it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement.” No mention of the word on everyone’s tongues: failure.
Even in the early days of the super committee, we are learning, hope was in short supply. At one of the early breakfast meetings, members kept saying how hard it would be to reach agreement. South Carolina’s Democratic Representative James Clyburn said to his fellow panel members: “Do you want to know what’s hard? Desegregating South Carolina in the 1950s. I met my wife in jail.”
Right now, it’s hard to believe this Congress “can build on this committee’s work,” as the committee co-chairs said hopefully in their statement. There seems to be little faith left on the Hill. Just look at the harsh words from Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, who said the panel’s failure “represents yet another regrettable milestone in Congress’s steady march toward abject ineffectiveness.”
As our grade school grammar teachers would remind us, turkeys are done and people are finished. And the super committee? Done. Over. History.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
US deficit panel fails to reach deal U.S. lawmakers abandoned their high-profile effort to rein in the country’s ballooning debt in a sign that Washington likely will not be able to resolve a dispute over taxes and spending until 2013. Republican and Democratic members of a 12-member congressional “super committee” said they were unable to resolve their significant differences as they ran up against a deadline to deliver a plan that would cut U.S. deficits by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
For more of this story by Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan, read here.
Meet John Boehner – powerful politician, ‘simple guy’
The most powerful Republican in America mows his own lawn, had youthful aspirations of becoming a salesman and quietly convinced two know-it-all lawmakers to vote “yes.”
House Speaker John Boehner revealed these and other aspects about himself during a question-and-answer session after a high-profile speech Thursday to the Economic Club of Washington.
Drawing laughter from the crowd, Boehner also made it clear he has no interest in running for vice president, a job that requires attending plenty of foreign funerals.
“I have enough trouble going to funerals of people I know,” said Boehner, known for easily breaking into tears. “I’m a pretty simple guy,” said Boehner, who’s led his party’s charge to shrink the U.S. government since taking the gavel in January as House speaker.
“People ask me if I’m having fun? Hell no, I’m not having fun. But I’m glad I’m here,” Boehner said. “I rely on being straight up with people.”
Some time back, Boehner said he had to deal with two House Republican freshmen, “young whipper snappers who seemed to have all the answers,” and who opposed him on a certain matter.
“I brought them in my office, closed the door … looked at them and said, ‘Boys, I’m not going to open it until you say yes. It could take 30 seconds, 30 minutes … three hours,’ “ Boehner recalled. “It took about 45 minutes.”
U.S. House ends historic page program
They have been a ubiquitous presence in the U.S. Capitol since the early 1800′s. Some have even gone on to become members of Congress. But as of September 1, there will be no more young, earnest-looking young men and women in blue uniforms delivering messages and documents to members of the House of Representives.
House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi announced on Monday that the House page program will end on August 31. They’ve been replaced by the BlackBerry, the Internet and other electronic delivery and instant messaging services.
“Dozens of pages were once needed on the House floor to deliver a steady stream of phone messages to members – but today are severely underutilized, as members are typically contacted directly via BlackBerries and similar devices,” they wrote.
The program employs about 70 high school students at any given time and the costs, up to $80,000 annually per page, are hard to justify, the leaders wrote.
The pages for the most part blend into the background of the Capitol. But some infamous sex scandals involving lawmakers and the young pages brought about reforms in 1983 that established an oversight board for the program and set up a new dormatory for them.
Despite the changes, the program has still been marred by scandal. In 2006, Republican Representative Mark Foley was forced to resign after reports that he had sent sexually explicit Internet messages to a former page.
The Senate page program will continue. The first Senate page was appointed by Daniel Webster in 1829.
What about the Bobby Baker scandal under the Johnson Administration conveniently white washed by the great phony Sam Irwin?
Well, come August 3rd Boehner will have a tear jerk story to tell about how he couldnt sit around for another 8 years of spendimg when Bush 2 did so much to balance the budget build a fence around mexico, free the people of Iraq, Afghanistan. Pakistan, Iran, and the great state of denial.
from Environment Forum:
As if 2007 never happened?
If four years is a lifetime in politics, it's an eternity in climate change politics. Events in Washington this week might make climate policy watchers wonder if 2007 really happened.
At issue is the decision by American Electric Power to put its plans for carbon capture and storage on hold, due to the weak economy and the lack of a U.S. plan to limit emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide. Read the Reuters story about it here.
Carbon capture and storage, or CCS for short, has been promoted as a way to make electricity from domestic coal without unduly raising the level of carbon in the atmosphere. Instead of sending the carbon dioxide that results from burning coal up a smokestack and into the air, the plan was to bury it underground. But that costs money and requires regulatory guarantees, and neither are imminent in the United States. Legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions bogged down on Capitol Hill a year ago and has not been re-introduced.
Sarah Forbes of World Resources Institute called AEP's decision "a surprise, but not a shock."
"Given that U.S. climate legislation stalled last summer, companies have less incentive to move forward with CCS, which has proven difficult to advance at scale," Forbes said in a statement.
Compare that to what happened in 2007. Senators Barbara Boxer, John Warner and Joe Lieberman joined forces that year to focus attention on climate change and were able to shepherd a carbon-limiting bill to the Senate floor the next year, the farthest any such measure has gotten in the United States. Al Gore, the former vice president and perennial climate campaigner, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nations' Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change for bringing climate change to public attention.
On Groundhog Day of that year (why did they pick February 2?) the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment report on what was likely to happen in a warming world. The report forecast more severe weather, worse heat waves, dramatic droughts, wildfires and floods, rising seas and melting glaciers. It also famously said, with 90 percent certainty, that climate change was under way and that human activities contribute to it.
Why does no one talk about the fly ash slurry (water and coal ash waste)containment field that failed and flooded the town of Kingston, Tn.? The facts have been made public through the Freedom of Information Act.
Forty-some other coal fired power plants through out the U.S. are at risk for similar failure. Power plant and coal mine operators are concerned about their investments and would like to continue to mine and burn coal. However, to address the problems of excess CO2 and ignore the dangers of waste that is created is myopic at best and more likely a willful omission by government officials who stand to benefit financially from the preservation of these industries.
The nuclear power industry presents the same problem, what to do with the waste. Solutions that only address half of the problem are not solutions at all. They are an attempt to dupe the public into spending a lot of money for infrastructure that would in the short run allow the coal and nuclear industries to proliferate. In the end we will have ecological disasters like Chernobyl and Kingston all around the globe.
U.S. religious leaders urge moral solution to debt talks
Don’t balance the U.S. budget on the backs of the poor and sick, religious leaders said, suggesting that their churches’ charity work is already overstretched and social havoc could result if the government’s social safety net is abandoned.
Representatives from Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and interfaith groups and churches expressed their collective disappointment with the tone of blame in the debt debate between President Obama and congressional negotiators.
The faith groups have organized a vigil alongside the U.S. Capitol and released a letter appealing to the president and Congress to consider the poor and vulnerable in their negotiations.
“The middle class are being crushed. The poor see no hope from getting up from the doldrums of despair and whole communities are facing struggles with joblessness, crime, addictions, violence, and lack the basic necessities of food, shelter, clothing, and adequate education. While these struggles exist in communities, we are witnessing our president and Congress engaging in political posturing, while bickering for power and control,” Rev. Herbert Nelson of the Presbyterian Church USA said.
“It’s time for people of faith to step up and say we as Americans can do better,” The Reverend Canon Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches said. She could not believe Americans would abandon the poor to “maintain tax loopholes,” illustrating the support among the faith leaders for more revenues favored by Democrats. However, they also pointed to the need to examine the defense budget for savings.
The concern, Nelson said, should be that social havoc could follow draconian budget cuts. “Poverty isn’t going to be contained,” he said. “No bars on windows, no gated communities are going to stop people desperate to feed their families.”
Nelson said he has spoken to people with wealth who are willing to pay more in taxes if it would help people, and he said he was surprised at the resistance to the rich paying more.
Few would defend the integrity and ethics of most of our elected leaders. Yet such qualities of the highest order are precisely what the American People have called for, for two decades now. As long as the Oligarchs(bankers) maintain their patrons in congress(democrats and republicans), I have no expectation of anything resembling moral conduct regarding public policy to come from Washington.
