Gingrich debt ceiling advice: make Obama responsible
Newt Gingrich says he “deeply opposed” to the proposal by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for resolving the debt ceiling impasse because it cedes too much power to President Obama.
“It’s basically a surrender,” Gingrich said Tuesday on the Fox News Channel, imploring congressional Republicans to stand firm in the standoff with Obama.
Obama said on CBS that he could not guarantee Social Security checks would go out early next month if there’s no deal to raise the debt ceiling before Aug. 2nd.
Gingrich, a former House speaker who squared off with Democrat Bill Clinton in a government spending showdown in 1995, had this advice for House Republicans on dealing with Obama: “Put the shoe back on his foot, make him responsible.” And don’t flinch.
“They’ve got to be courageous because this is hard business. This is history,” Gingrich said, defining the debt ceiling/spending cutting battle as an epic power struggle.
“That power struggle is as deep and as real as anything since the Civil War and you’ve got to have the courage to stand there and take the heat,” Gingrich said.
In 1995, Gingrich was the top House Republican in a showdown with then-President Bill Clinton over government spending. When Republicans in Congress refused to fund some federal agencies, parts of the government ran out of money and shut down. Instead of earning plaudits, Gingrich was blamed and Clinton won re-election in 1996.
Washington Extra – Comfort zones
Senators are talking. The president is talking. But whether they are talking at or with each other is another question.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled a Libya resolution so that senators could focus on debt issues this week, which after all was the reason why they cancelled recess.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell invited President Barack Obama to Capitol Hill to hear why a debt deal with tax increases won’t fly. And then he accepted an invitation from Obama to meet at the White House on Thursday with other congressional leaders.
Obama updated his schedule to comment on debt negotiations. He urged both parties to get out of their “comfort zones” and to leave ultimatums and political rhetoric at the door.
That’s a tall order, but herding everyone into the same room is at least a step.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Down to the wire…
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan expects his fellow Republicans to wait until the “last minute” to strike a deal that averts national default by raising the $14.3 trillion limit on the U.S. debt.
Failure to reach a deal could trigger a new global financial crisis, according to analysts and Democrats including President Barack Obama. But on Monday, the day the U.S. debt reached its current statutory limit, Ryan told an Illinois AM radio station that “we’re going to negotiate this thing probably up through July, that’s how these things go.”
“That’s how these things go” could place negotiations at the very doorstep of an Aug. 2 deadline, which is when the Treasury Department believes it will exhaust its bag of tricks for staving off a financial apocalypse.
Ryan’s comments came a day after Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell advised CNN’s viewers to see the approaching default deadline as a source of opportunity.
Meanwhile, inflation worries buttressed by still-way-high gas prices are driving U.S. states to consider making silver and gold coins legal tender. South Carolina is the latest to consider legislation to that effect, joining over two-dozen others in a trend that began this month in Utah.
What happens among the states often has a way of entering the circuitry of presidential politics, as Mitt Romney discovered with the healthcare reforms he championed in Massachusetts.
But at the moment, the presidential campaign debate is focused on Medicare, specifically the mini-GOP civil war between Newt Gingrich and Ryan over the latter’s Medicare reform plan. Newt, currently on the defensive, is being taken to the woodshed today by one of the strongest conservative voices in the United States: The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.
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CORRECTS POLL NUMBER ON OBAMA’S HANDLING OF ECONOMY
The United States is due to hit its $14.3 trillion debt limit today, and tensions are understandably on the increase with Republicans and Democrats wide apart on the budget deal the GOP wants in exchange for increasing the ceiling.
World markets and America’s economic future could be jeopardized if negotiators still have no deal when the Treasury Department runs out of tricks to stave off default.
But do those fears a crisis make?
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggests not. “Rather than thinking of this as a crisis, I think of it as an opportunity to come together and those talks are under way led by the vice president.”
Those talks are looking for ways to reduce the current annual U.S. budget deficit of $1.4 trillion and the mounting debt. McConnell also says any deal should be reviewed by Wall Street credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s, which has warned it could nix the AAA U.S. debt rating without a credible plan to tackle those pesky fiscal issues.
However, it’s not as if Wall Street and the federal government always see eye to eye, particularly on the regulatory side.
Bipartisanship on the White House menu
At a White House dinner with Senate and House leaders from both parties and their spouses, President Barack Obama got a standing ovation when he mentioned the demise of Osama bin Laden in his welcome.
“Last night, as Americans learned that the United States had carried out an operation that resulted in the capture and death of Osama bin Laden…” Obama said.
At that point, he was interrupted by the standing ovation.
“We were reminded again that there is a pride in what this nation stands for and what we can achieve that runs far deeper than party, far deeper than politics,” Obama continued after the applause subsided.
The Monday evening dinner had been on the books for a few weeks, but Obama said it could not have come at a more fitting time.
A day earlier, he had announced that bin Laden had been killed in a U.S. assault on a compound in Pakistan — ending a nearly decade-long manhunt.
Word that the hunt for the man behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was over — and that he was gone – brought Americans together in celebrations across the country.
White House shrugs off Obama comments caught on open microphone
The White House is shrugging off candid comments by President Barack Obama about private budget talks with Republicans. The next day’s message is — no big deal.
Obama was speaking to supporters at a political fund-raiser in Chicago after reporters left the room. But a microphone was accidentally left on and the comments were piped back to the White House press room and recorded by CBS News and ABC News.
Obama said he told House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell that they should not try to “sneak” through a provision on Planned Parenthood. “‘You guys want to have this debate? We’re happy to have that debate. We will have the debate on the floor of the Senate or the floor of the House. Put it in a separate bill. We’ll call it up. And if you think you can overturn my veto, try it,’” he said.
White House spokesman Jay Carney today told reporters “it’s not a problem, not an issue.”
Is the president embarrassed about anything that he said?
Carney: “Not at all.”
Regret?
Washington Extra – Some explaining to do
Critics say President Barack Obama has some explaining to do.
So tonight he plans to do just that in a speech on U.S. military involvement in Libya at the National Defense University.
One question clearly on people’s minds is when will it end? But clarity on that question is unlikely since Obama himself probably doesn’t know right now.
It’s turned into a NATO operation, which means more countries have more say in decisions — although obviously the United States remains a key player.
Republicans have plenty of questions for Obama. For example, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell wants to know: “What is the role of our military and military alliance in providing support to an opposition that we are only now beginning to understand?”
But most of all, members of Congress want Obama to state clearly that he will consult them on any future military operations.
We’ll see at 7:30 p.m. whether Obama’s speech offers answers or raises more questions.
One Washington day is not like another for Mr. Hu
China’s President Hu Jintao was feted with full fanfare at the White House on Wednesday, with a 21-gun salute, honor guards and a state dinner. Things might not be quite so fancy on Thursday when he goes to Capitol Hill.
There he will see Republican Speaker John Boehner in the House of Representatives, then cross the Capitol to meet Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Neither bothered to attend Wednesday’s state dinner.
Also attending the House and Senate meetings will be several other lawmakers who want a word with Hu about human rights in China, as well as China’s dealings with Iran and Chinese trade practices.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen plans to hand Hu an entire list of complaints in the form of a letter she sent to Obama ahead of the Chinese leader’s visit.
The letter from the Republican complains of Beijing’s “military posturing,” as well as reports that China allowed the trans-shipment of North Korean missile parts to Iran via Beijing aiport. It also calls for the closure of labor camps in China, the release of political prisoners, and “unrestricted religious freedom”.
Also attending the House meeting with Hu will be the former Speaker, now Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. The Chinese media once called her a “defender of arsonists, looters and killers” after she visited the Dalai Lama and criticized Chinese “oppression” in Tibet.
Another lawmaker Hu will see is Democrat Sander Levin, one of Congress’s many critics of China’s trade practices. When he was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee last year, he pushed a bill through the House that threatened trade sanctions on China in retaliation for Beijing’s currency manipulation.
Washington Extra – START not yet finished
So far, the U.S. Senate has spent six days debating New START — the strategic nuclear arms limitation treaty with Russia. Not so long, you say? Democrats are rushing it through? Well consider this, Congress has already spent longer on this agreement than it did on START I almost two decades ago — and the original is a much more complex treaty.
It is not just President Barack Obama and the Democrats who support this treaty. Former President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, supports it. So does Republican Condoleezza Rice and every other former secretary of state who is still alive. And the military? Well those folks really support it, just ask the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the uniformed officers in charge of nuclear security.
So what’s the problem?
“The American people don’t want us to squeeze our most important work into the final days of a session,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell argued. Republicans, it seems, think Obama and the Democrats just want to notch one last victory before Republicans take the House in January.
Russia’s foreign minister warned U.S. senators not to make changes to the treaty during debate because it might not just delay the deal, it could kill it altogether. Not exactly the Christmas present Obama was hoping for in 2010.
Here are our top stories from Washington today…
Arms treaty debate increasingly testy in Senate
Yes, that’s your strategy, isn’t it? Always change the subject back to the talking points you want to hammer at, regardless of the real topic. It shows how empty your arguments are when it comes to real discussion.
Some are saying that this Congress was the most productive since the 1960′s, despite the relentless obstruction of the regressive conservatives. That does give us all cheer, as do the monthly checks from my many progressive sponsors.
The Democrats will change the Senate rules to put a stop to the secret holds and other juvenile tactics of your regressive caucus. Mitch McConnell says if we think he was an obstructionist over the last two years, wait ’till next year. Should be fun.
Washington Extra – Whose bipartisanship?
The feeling appeared mutual when President Barack Obama shook hands with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell after signing the tax cut bill. It looked like the picture of what Obama called a “bipartisan effort.”
McConnell tried not to grin too much over the Republicans winning the war in their efforts to extend tax cuts to the wealthy.
But when it came to Capitol Hill Democrats, there wasn’t much display of unity with even Obama, let alone bipartisanship with the Republicans. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were no-shows at the bill signing.
(Lawmakers don’t miss bill signings if they can help it, it gives them a chance to show accomplishment… and get one of those presidential pens).
Vice President Joe Biden got the first mention in Obama’s remarks, McConnell and the Republican leadership in the Senate were second. Then Obama mentioned House Republican Dave Camp, followed by the Democrats on stage, starting with Senator Dick Durbin.
Obama said there were elements of the tax-cut bill that he, Democrats and Republicans each didn’t like, but, “that’s the nature of compromise, yielding on something each of us cares about to move forward on what all of us care about.”
Tackling the deficit will likely be even more difficult than the tax cut bill, Obama said, and he will be looking for more bipartisanship on that.
Gingrich led Republican Party down the cliff before and he is about to do it again. Obama is playing Republican leaders (seasoned fools) as only a Puppet Master can. No doubt Obama has few back up plans in his back pocket.