from Environment Forum:
How many politicians does it take to NOT change a light bulb?
Some stories, no matter how serious, are just joke-prone. So it was this week with the proposed U.S. BULB act, which aimed to repeal light bulb efficiency standards that became law in 2007. Sponsored by Joe Barton, a Texas Republican congressman, the BULB bill failed to receive the two-thirds vote of those present in the House of Representatives that would have been needed to suspend House rules and pass the measure.
That was the signal for Washington politicians, interest groups and some headline writers to crank up the pun-producing machinery:
"Lights out for GOP Energy Agenda?" in Politico;
"Republican bill to ban energy-saving lightbulbs fades" in the Guardian;
"Dim BULB Act's Rejection Victory for Common Sense" in a statement from Republicans for Environmental Protection;
And a statement on the "Failure of Dimwitted BULB Act in U.S. House" from the League of Conservation Voters.
The spokesman for California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, who was House speaker when a sweeping update of U.S. energy policy was signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush, outdid himself:
Republicans hold debt school for lawmakers
Pop quiz: What’s the debt limit?
As the August 2 deadline for raising borrowing authority nears, House Republican leaders have been holding a series of workshops for their 240 members to help “educate” them on the debt limit, according to senior aides.
In the past couple weeks, a few dozen House Republicans have attended each of the meetings to hear House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan discuss options for cutting spending and field questions about the debt limit.
“Any member (can) come in and have a presentation on debt limit,” one aide said, adding, “they can get facts and have a conversation about what it means.”
While lawmakers offer up ideas for deficit-cutting, a senior House Republican aide said there also is a discussion about “why do we need to raise the debt limit and what has happened in the past? There is that element of education” for a “cross-section” of Republican members.
Photo credit: Reuters/Chip East (National Debt Clock near New York’s Times Square), Reuters/Molly Riley (Republican members of 112th U.S. House of Representatives sworn into office, Jan. 5, 2011)
For more Reuters political news, click here.
Shake-up strikes House Republican legal team for gay marriage ban
After a week of questions and criticism, the legal team hired by Republicans in the House of Representatives to defend a law banning gay marriage suffered a shake-up of sorts on Monday when the law firm dropped the case and the lawyer who was going to lead the effort resigned from the firm.
Just a week ago Paul Clement, U.S. solicitor general during the Bush administration, and his firm King & Spalding signed up to work for Republicans trying to overturn a court ruling that found the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that defined marriage as between a man and a woman unconstitutional.
After criticism mounted from gay rights advocates, King & Spalding Chairman Robert Hays said the firm was dropping the case because of “vetting” issues.
“In reviewing this assignment further, I determined that the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate,” Hays said in a statement. “Ultimately I am responsible for any mistakes that occurred and apologize for the challenges this may have created.”
Clement quickly fired off his resignation letter to the firm, saying that if vetting was the problem, they should fix that rather than nix the client.
“I resign out of the firmly-held belief that a representation should not be abandoned because the client’s legal position is extremely unpopular in certain quarters,” Clement said in the letter. “Defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do.”
Clement immediately joined Bancroft PLLC as partner, a firm that was founded by Viet Dinh, the former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush and who was one of the main architects of the Patriot Act. He also agreed to continue representing the House Republicans.
As for Elizabeth Warren? Barney Frank says: “Let’s fight!”
Is President Obama up for a Senate confirmation fight over Elizabeth Warren? Maybe not right now. But that’s just the sort of rhetorical rumble Barney Frank would like to see.
The former Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who co-authored the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Warren might survive a confirmation battle.
His reasoning? “This is not just the left and the right. The Republican Party is united against healthcare and united against the environment. They’re not united against financial reform.”
Even more to the point: “The Tea Party people didn’t send people to Washington to defend derivatives. I think the fight over Elizabeth Warren would be worth having and I’m not sure how all the Republican senators would vote.”
Warren, of course, is the outspoken, bespectacled Harvard law professor who has struck fear in the hearts of bankers and their friends in Congress by pushing hard for consumer protection in the financial sphere.
Obama put her in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But he has not named her to head the operation, a post that would require confirmation in the Senate, where Democrats retain a slim majority. For now, she serves as a special advisor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
The confirmation fight Frank envisions sounds a bit like a fantasy match — a fantasy particularly for him, given that he sits in the House of Representatives and not the Senate.
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.
Then came social issues and ‘morality’…
The Tea Party’s November victories and the ensuing Republican drive for spending cuts are in large part the result of a political strategy that focuses tightly on fiscal and economic matters, while minimizing rhetoric on moral questions and social topics. But for how much longer can Republicans keep a lid on the culture war?
The 2012 presidential race, though lacking in declared GOP candidates, may be about to pry open a Pandora’s box bearing the name of social issues that have long divided Republican and independent ranks. And such an occurrence could work against the interests of fiscal conservatives, just as the GOP girds itself for a showdown with Democrats over spending cuts and the debt ceiling later this spring.
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, one of those Republicans who are running for president without actually running for president, tells NBC’s Today show that social conservatism is what built America and made it strong.
And if a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows 65 percent of GOP primary voters preferring candidates who focus more on the economy and the deficit, and less on social issues? ”I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he replies.
Even the battle of the budget shows signs of becoming a Republican morality fight.
Here’s Santorum speaking to social conservatives in Iowa: “…if what we’re doing to the next generation of America, this entitlement attitude, if that is not a moral issue, I don’t know what is…”
And Newt Gingrich: “…balancing the budget is an essentially moral, not economic question…”
If you listen to Republicans, you’ll hear plenty of proud boasts about how their priorities reflect the will of the American electorate.
And if you listen to the American electorate, you’ll hear something else entirely.
Budget-cutters take aim at nuclear modernization funds
In hardball negotiations over the START nuclear arms treaty last year, Senate Republicans wrested a commitment from the White House to redouble work to overhaul the nation’s nuclear infrastructure.
President Barack Obama agreed to spend an additional $5 billion over 10 years on the effort, including some $650 million in the 2011 fiscal year.
The funds would be used to refurbish facilities and upgrade technology to provide safer and more secure devices, for example by making it impossible for them to be detonated if they are stolen by extremist groups. Obama and Senate Democrats even agreed that if it became necessary to cut discretionary spending in the future, the funding for nuclear modernization would be considered on the same basis as defense spending, making it harder to trim.
Somebody should have told House Republicans.
House budget-cutters working on the resolution to fund the government through the end of the current fiscal year in September have eliminated the increased funding for nuclear modernization.
That’s not the last word on it though. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican who led the fight for nuclear modernization, says he will work to add the money back in when the Senate takes up the resolution.
“I’m confident that the commitments to fully fund the modernization program made by the president and leaders from the Senate Appropriations Committee during debate on START will bear fruit and enable us to work with our House colleagues to rectify this issue,” he said. For more Reuters political news, click here.
Pawlenty calls Tea Party push for more cuts “good news”
House Republican leaders may be concerned about turmoil among newly elected Tea Party colleagues who want bigger spending cuts. But potential Republican White House hopeful Tim Pawlenty sees only good news.
As the Conservative Political Action Conference prepares to hear from 2012 White House Wannabes, the former Minnesota governor tells NBC’s Today show that conservatives of every stripe should be proud.
“The good news is, and this is I think the story for CPAC and for conservatives more broadly, reducing government spending and dealing with the deficit and the debt is now mainstream,” he says.
“And so the fact that the Tea Party and others are pushing for more cuts, deeper cuts, faster reform, that’s a good thing. I don’t discount that, I applaud it.”
He is due to address CPAC on Friday.
Pawlenty says he is “a month or so” away from deciding whether to run for office. As a Minnesotan known for his mild manners, he faces a considerable challenge at winning recognition against Republican rock stars like Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
But Pawlenty sounds undaunted: “As people get to know me, I tend to get support. I got elected and reelected in probably the most liberal state in the country as a Republican.”
Republicans have a preoccupation with cutting programs that affect women and their children. They are proposing cutting $758 million from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which amounts to about a 6 percent cut to a program providing food assistance to low-income women and their infants.
They are cutting $210 million from Maternal and Child Health Block Grants, which amounts to about a 33 percent cut in a program giving low-income pregnant women, mothers and their children access to health care.
They are cutting $27 million from the Poison Control Center, which would essentially eliminate a program supporting local poison control centers and funding a hotline directing residents to their local poison control office, despite the fact that poisoning disproportionately affects children, with half the exposures at the National Poison Control Center last year occurring to children younger than six.
Republicans want to cut $1.1 billion from community health centers. In 2008, about one-third of community health center patients were children.
Good news for Tim Pawlenty. Look at him smile.
These cuts will do absolutely nothing but have extremely detrimental effects on those who need the targeted programs the most. They don’t even add up to 1% of the federal budget. This shows the callousness of the GOP’s approach to budgeting, which leaves huge parts of the federal budget like the Pentagon immune to cuts while taking an axe to non-defense discretionary spending that serves far more people, and does far more for them.
And on the second day, they read…
Day Two of Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives was highlighted with a reading of the 223-year-old Constitution — the document that formed the American government and guides it to this day.
It’s often a raucous scene on the House floor. Today, it was raucous in the visitors’ gallery, when a woman calling herself “Theresa” disrupted the recitation of the Constitution at the exact point in which a lawmaker read that the president must be a “natural born citizen.”
“Except Obama,” Theresa inserted as her own 28th Amendment to the Constitution and invoking Jesus. It may have been the most prominent performance so far by “birthers,” who claim Barack Obama has no right to be in office because they believe he was born in Africa and not Hawaii.
Republicans staged the reading of the 4,400-word Constitution — not counting the 27 amendments — in part as a gesture to Tea Party activists who helped them win big in the November elections, and in part to cue up Friday’s debate to repeal “Obamacare,” the healthcare reforms Democrats enacted last year.
UPDATE: Elizabeth Wydra, chief counsel at Constitutional Accountability Center, wrote at The Huffington Post that the Republican gesture was actually not the “Tea Party moment” they hoped for because all the original words weren’t read, but rather it involved what she considers an “edited” version with portions such as on slavery omitted.
Interesting. So we asked the new Speaker’s office. Spokesman Michael Steel (different spelling from RNC chairman) responded: “The entire Constitution was read. The portions in the original text related to slavery were eliminated by the 14th amendment, I believe. That was quite a number of years ago.”
A recitation of the Constitution is also intended to remind lawmakers of their solemn pledge to be faithful to the hallowed document. And it’s part of House Speaker John Boehner’s promise to make his chamber a more functional, civil place to do business, after years of partisan bickering.
The birthers have absolutely no case! Even if for the sake of conversation President Obama was born in Africa. Obama was born of an American woman. Therefore he is an American citizen no matter what soil he was physically born in. Take for another example an american woman on a two week vacation in Canada. The mother gives birth to her child in Canada. That child is born from an American therefore it is a natural citizen of America and is still eligible to be president. The birthers are just an ignorant group that are just mad that their candidate didn’t win in 2008. If you don’t like obama, at least come up with legitmate reasons why you think he shouldnt be president.
A Senate Christmas tale
(UPDATES with new Reid comments).
Christmas bells are ringing. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t seem to be listening. Much to the chagrin of staffers and more than a few senators, Reid is threatening to keep the Senate in session until Christmas Eve and beyond to finish all the legislative work that Congress failed to complete before the November elections.
That amounts to just about a whole year’s worth of lawmaking. Congress never got around to passing any of the 12 spending bills that fund the government. So the Senate is expected to take up a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill after senators voted to extend Bush-era tax cuts by two years and extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed for a year.
Reid earlier this week said “…we are going to complete our work, no matter how long it takes, in this Congress.”
Republican Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to fight the spending bill and Senator Jon Kyl suggested a Christmas reality check.
“It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out … frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate, not just the senators themselves but all of the staff,” Kyl said.
Reid was not about to take questioning of his Christmas spirit quietly.
You can say what you want…and you can spin it, as usual, to your point of view…after all, you are paid for your diatribes…
As you know, this is the worst slaughter for the democrats since the 1930′s. No matter who you spin it, the American people do not want government to intrude in their lives…and they spoke loud and clear…
You have been wrong for over two years. You were so smug and confident for so long. I told you what the American people would do and they did it. They totally rejected this congress and this president. If the American people wanted this progressive agenda, they would have kept this bunch in power…they didn’t…
You are wrong..about everything you have written. I was right and I am right.
So long chump.
The Grande Old Party is for sale.