Tag Archives: congress

America Stuck in Neutral

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There’s not much to say about the disgusting failure of the United States Senate to muster sixty votes to expand background checks for gun purchases that hasn’t been said already. Suffice it to say that if we can’t even agree to close a loophole that allows dangerous people such as felons and certified nutcases to purchase firearms through a legal seller, there can be no better example of our country’s abysmal dysfunction.

I’m not a big fan of Maureen Dowd but a recent column on President Obama’s failure to use his office effectively to get a better result on the gun bill did resonate with me. To some extent I accept the sharp rebuttal from his defenders that it’s unfair to blame Obama when the real problem is a radical GOP that provided just five votes for the expanded background checks and only one (Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois) for bans on assault weapons and large capacity magazines. The fact remains, however, that in addition to the four Democrats who voted down the expanded background check, ten also failed to support a ban on high capacity magazines and fifteen the banning of assault weapons – both of which were used in the mass shooting of children and teachers at Newtown.

Yet just four months into his second term, the president overall seems to have reached a dead end, and with him the country. The goals he set out in his most recent State of the Union address are laudable and dead right for the country – universal pre-school, significant investments in infrastructure and scientific/technological research and development to name a few key ones – but seem completely out of reach in the current political environment. And the president has suffered from a number of self-inflicted wounds as well.

In the debt ceiling debacle of 2011, for example, which yielded the monstrosity that is sequestration, it is clear he miscalculated the willingness of Republicans to tolerate steep across the board defense cuts which, in turn, led him to agree to omit tax increases from the automatic trigger, as he had originally proposed. We now have harsh cuts to worthwhile programs in the discretionary budget that disproportionately affect children and the poor. To add insult to injury, Democrats have retreated the first time the public at large actually felt the pain of sequester cuts and, in the process, handed the GOP a significant victory.

Another example is the fiscal cliff negotiations wherein he effectively held all the cards yet won a paltry $600 billion in new revenues; inequities such as the favorable tax rates enjoyed by hedge fund managers and the likes of Mitt Romney on his unearned income remain.

And the president seems almost passive in the face of the outrageous refusal of Senate Republicans to allow his nominations for federal district and appellate court vacancies and even some agency heads an up or down vote. Added to which is the fact that he has been slow to send up nominees for many such appointments. Things will hardly get better in the future as Republicans become increasingly confident of gaining control of the Senate in next year’s midterm elections. This does not bode well should a Supreme Court vacancy arise.

That the country is stuck in neutral is indisputable. And while it’s possible another Democratic incumbent with keener political and negotiating skills could have done better, you really have to wonder how much difference it would have made. The GOP has moved so far to the right it really has become a radical party, home to anti-tax and pro-gun zealots as well as Tea Party fanatics. It is clearly more intransigent and obstructionist with a Democrat in the White House now than it was even in the Bill Clinton years; to the point of a willingness to be destructive to the country’s economic interests if doing so furthers its ideological aims.

The reason is not hard to see in considering the yawning chasm between Blue and Red America, a development even the vapid editorial writers of The Washington Post have noted. And the GOP, driven by a base that brooks no compromise, will have ample opportunities for even more mischief in the days to come, what with the debt ceiling looming again. And next year when Obamacare kicks in and suffers inevitable teething troubles, the situation will be just ripe for exploitation by a party that couldn’t care less if millions of Americans don’t have adequate health insurance.

Like I said, with Democrats trying to move us forward and Republicans taking every opportunity to drag us back, we are stuck in neutral.

And what does all this presage? Merely that if you think things are bad now, just wait.

Some beacons of light amidst the darkness on guns

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Even as we lose our way at the national level in the quest for stronger firearm controls in the wake of the Newtown massacre and the appalling level of gun violence in America, the legislatures and governors of a handful of states have demonstrated political courage and leadership in passing sensible restrictions on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and tougher background checks on gun buyers.

Kudos to New York, Connecticut, Colorado, and Maryland (the latter’s to be signed into law shortly). All of them deserve enormous credit but Colorado, in particular, should be singled out for praise because, as the resident of another western state, I know how especially tough it is to overcome the opposition of gun zealots in this region. Here in Washington, for example, efforts to pass meaningful changes recently met with a dismal and shameful failure.

Laudable as the efforts of individual states are, however, they cannot substitute for tougher national regulations and here the picture is bleak and becoming bleaker. In the US Senate, the bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are unlikely to even get a vote, but are dead anyway whether they do or not. The expanded background check’s fate is uncertain but the NRA’s opposition to even that commonsense measure means it faces an uphill fight.

In fact, if any bill at all emerges from the Senate, it’s likely to be so watered down and toothless as to be virtually worthless. And then the GOP-led House will probably kill or change it so drastically that it will make things worse rather than better.

By acting in a meaningful way, New York, Connecticut, Colorado and Maryland have remembered and honored the victims of gun violence in America, including the small children and their teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary whose awful deaths were the catalyst for change. Shame on Congress for its failure to do the same.

Kudos to Whole Foods on GMI. Now where are other major grocery chains?

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The decision by Whole Foods Market to label all products with genetically modified ingredients within 5 years is a very welcome if overdue one. Now other retail grocery chains should follow suit.

GMI labeling is popular with the public and objections to it don’t hold water. For example:

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the trade group that represents major food companies and retailers, issued a statement opposing the move. “These labels could mislead consumers into believing that these food products are somehow different or present a special risk or a potential risk,” Louis Finkel, the organization’s executive director of government affairs, said in the statement.

Mr. Finkel noted that the Food and Drug Administration, as well as regulatory and scientific bodies including the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association, had deemed genetically modified products safe.

It seems the Grocery Manufacturers Association has a surprisingly low opinion of the public in suggesting that they could be confused by too much information. I guess the GMA believes Americans are dumber than residents of the European Union, for example, since the latter already insist on such labeling?

And the fact that genetically modified ingredients have been deemed safe is not in dispute. The sole issue is whether consumers have the right to know whether their food has been produced the old fashioned way, i.e. more or less naturally, or not.

The GMA and others in the food production industry would prefer that we all continue to live in a fog of ignorance about the reality behind the production of food in America. This surely extends to the shamefully inhumane conditions under which animals are raised so that we can buy our meats and dairy products cheaply. This is an issue that has been highlighted for me by a good friend who is passionate about it. And you know what? She’s right and I’m glad she did because it was something I had barely thought about before. For example, if we each understood clearly that a typical egg-laying hen spends her life in a factory occupying a space barely larger than her own body, some of us at least might gag on our next omelet.

You can be sure that lobbyists for agricultural business interests will ensure that congress continues to dodge the regulation bullet both in terms of food labeling and ensuring that farm animals are treated humanely. Any meaningful reform will only come from the grass-roots – that means us, primarily through our buying habits.

Whole Foods and its customers have taken a positive step and I applaud them for it, but we have a long way to go.

Gun Fight at Obama’s State of the Union Address

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Both sides of the aisle have invited guests to President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight to highlight their positions on controversial gun-control measures put forth in congress.

On the safe-and-sane side we have representation by victims of gun violence who are in favor of congress implementing reasonable laws to require background checks for all gun purchases and setting up a federal database to track gun sales and registrations. (from Politico)

The White House and Democratic lawmakers have invited more than 30 shooting victims or their surviving family members and friends to attend Obama’s speech, including several people tied to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), severely wounded in a Jan. 2011 shooting, will be there. And first lady Michelle Obama will be accompanied by the parents of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old Chicago teenager shot to death last month, shortly after she took part in the inaugural parade.

On the unsafe-and-insane side we have those who oppose nearly all proposed gun-control laws, because guns don’t kill people. Crazy people kill people. Among their ranks is Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) who has threatened to impeach President Obama if he carries out any executive orders that call for stricter action against people who lie on gun-sale background checks, strike limits on federal research into gun use, order tougher penalties against gun trafficking, and give schools flexibility to use grant money to improve safety.

And…

[Stockman] has offered a ticket to the State of the Union to Ted Nugent — whose criticism of the president once resulted in a sitdown with the Secret Service.

And what was it he said that prompted a visit by the Secret Service?

“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year,” Nugent said, according to a video that the NRA posted on YouTube. “If you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house in this vile, evil, America-hating administration, I don’t even know what you’re made out of.”

No matter, Stockman says:

“I am excited to have a patriot like Ted Nugent joining me in the House Chamber to hear from President Obama,” and “after the Address I’m sure Ted will have plenty to say.”

Nugent Gun Nut

I can’t wait to hear what Terrible Ted the Obama Hater has to say. And I’ll bet the Secret Service, who will no doubt be standing close by, can’t wait either.

Update:

Madman in the House

My reaction? I’m not allowed to do that because I’m supposed to keep my pants on. My reaction for the masses? It pains me to honestly give you my reaction. I just don’t believe a word the man says. I’ve heard this predictable, flowery, feel-good speech of denial before.

Watch here.

Obama and the People vs. Republicans and Norquist and the 2%

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There was a very clear argument during the presidential campaign about how to fix the debt problem. Romney called for massive tax cuts that would mainly benefit the extremely wealthy and then raise revenue with unspecified closures of loopholes to make up the difference. Studies by non-partisan groups that study tax policy showed there was no way Romney’s plan would work. Obama called for raising tax rates on the wealthy and a balanced approach to closing the budget gap that would not result in harmful cuts to government investment in education, research, and infrastructure. The public voted for Obama and the Democratic agenda in overwhelming numbers.

Here are some facts about the results of the November 6th elections:

  • Obama received over 4 million more votes than Romney – a million more votes than Bush’s received in his win over Kerry.
  • Obama got 332 electoral votes for his re-election, and Bush got 286 for his re-election.
  • Democratic Senators received ten million more votes than their Republican opponents.
  • Democratic House candidates received a million more votes than their Republican opponents, but Republicans won the House. (This has happened only four other times in the history of our nation: in 1914 and 1942 the Democrats won with fewer votes and in 1952 and 1996 the Republicans won with fewer votes).

There’s nothing wrong with presidents using their victories to push their agenda’s forward. Bush tried to use the political capital he thought he gained when he was re-elected to push through a very unpopular plan to privatize Social Security. He failed.

Obama is now using his political capital to push through a tax plan that includes increasing taxes on the rich. The results of the election show that voters support Obama’s plan, and polls show that his plan has popular support with more than 60% of people in favor of it, so by all rights he should prevail.

So why do Republicans refuse to compromise with Democrats in tax-reform negotiations? Well around 95% of them signed Grover Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes under any circumstances. He’s one player in the political arena that controls an entire party. He says that Republicans who break their pledge will have a hard time getting re-elected because he will make sure voters know who voted to raise taxes and who didn’t. He’ll use his leverage to replace those who defy him with candidates that will adhere to his pledge like the gospel and won’t think “impure thoughts”.

So rather than serving the American people by compromising with Democrats, they remain obstinate and continue to hold the current middle-class tax rates hostage for their demand of not increasing tax rates on the top 2%. So who are the Republicans serving? Grover Norquist for sure and, by serving him, they are making the rich richer, and that’s really the only reason their party exists.

GOP intransigence and blackmail may be about to bear fruit

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The GOP had a plan in 2009: Bitterly oppose and obstruct every policy initiative the Obama administration and congressional Democrats proposed, create tumult and crises, then blame Obama and the Democrats for the gridlock which, they could then argue, would be fixed only by electing a Republican president to break the paralysis.

For their plan to work, GOP congressional leaders Mitch McConnell of the Senate and John Boehner in the House required three essential elements: party discipline in the congress, a rabid base that supported their intransigence and an inattentive and largely uninformed electorate.

Imposing party discipline has rarely been a problem for Republicans and so it has proved over the last 4 years even with the very occasional flashes of independence displayed early on by the so-called “moderate” Maine women (Senators Snowe and Collins).

And with the Tea Party now the driving force of the GOP, McConnell/Boehner had an extremist base that not merely supported the strategy but punished anyone deemed a compromiser. Such conservative icons as Richard Lugar of Indiana paid the price.

Finally, a huge swath of the American electorate either failed to see what was going on or simply dismissed it as politics as usual. It wasn’t.

In all the years I’ve lived in the US I cannot remember a time when one of the two major parties so blatantly put its interests before those of the country to discredit a president of the other party and, ultimately, regain the White House.

The beauty of the American political system we’ve always been told is that compromise is an essential feature. But there is no spirit of compromise in today’s GOP. Or rather, the word is only used in connections with an expectation that Democrats will compromise with a President Romney and GOP congressional leaders; conversely, the latter will never do the same for a re-elected Obama.

There is an underlying element of blackmail in this strategy. In effect the GOP is making clear they will render the country ungovernable under a Democratic president. And they are willing to wreak great damage to the country if necessary; we saw an example of this clearly with the actions of House Republicans in the negotiations over raising the nation’s debt limit in 2011. And they are now threatening as much for the looming “fiscal cliff” as it has come to be known.

And it’s working. Ezra Klein in The Washington Post cites the shameful (my word not Klein’s) endorsement of two newspapers which supported Obama in 2008 and have now endorsed Romney for 2012 precisely because they see continuing gridlock with Obama and the GOP leadership, but the possibility of compromise if Romney wins the White House.

The conservative pseudo-intellectual David Brooks in The New York Times explicitly makes the case for Romney in citing the virtual impossibility of congressional Republicans meeting Obama half-way. Of course in doing so, he dishes out his usual cloud-cuckoo palaver about Romney’s likely tack to the center, magically dragging along congressional Republicans as he does so. Sure he will.

Republicans are confident they will prevail in large part because, unlike themselves, Democrats are not a reckless, destructive force willing to tolerate harm to the country through governmental failure or inertia. And they’re right.

Yet there is great peril in all this for the country. To vindicate the GOP strategy is to encourage repeat performances whenever a Democrat wins the presidency. To blackmail the country into electing a GOP president or face governmental paralysis will effectively disenfranchise the half of the electorate that doesn’t share the GOP’s narrow and mean-spirited ideology, one which would move us inexorably towards a survival of the fittest society.

More importantly, it would fundamentally undermine the very foundation of the American form of government and conceivably usher in what looks more like a parliamentary system where one party can rule. And we know which one that will be.

Up to now, Americans have failed to recognize today’s Republican Party for the extremist and destructive force it represents. And it is well past time for the American people to wake up and deliver the electoral blow that is the only way to pull it back to the mainstream.

Who Are Mitt Romney’s Freeloading 47% and How did they Get Here?

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The 47% of people who did not pay federal income tax is made up of the elderly, the disabled, the those earning military pay, and even some millionaires, but the largest portion of those who do not pay the tax are the working poor. They don’t pay federal taxes because of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The idea that lead to the Earned Income Tax Credit orginated with conservative economist Milton Friedman. He proposed a transfer of funds to every citizen that he called a negative tax. If the transfer was set at $6,000 per person per year, then a family of four with no other income sources would have $24,000 to live on. Congress did not like the idea of giving everyone the transfer payment because they believed it would result in too many freeloaders.

Congress took Friedman’s idea and applied it to only those who work. The idea was to encourage people to work, but provide subsidies to those who work for low pay. The law was passed in 1975, and President Ronald Reagan praised it:

Millions of working poor will be dropped from the tax rolls altogether. The bill I’m signing today is not only an historic overhaul of our tax code and a sweeping victory for fairness, it’s also the best anti-poverty bill, the best pro-family measure and the best job creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.

The Tax Policy Center concluded that the law accomplished its goal of bringing more people into the labor market.

The Newt Gingrich controlled House worked with President Bill Clinton in the nineties to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit in their efforts to “end welfare as we know it.” Clinton signed the bill in 1997.

President George W. Bush pushed through a huge tax cut in 2001 that moved even more lower-income people off the federal tax rolls. His massive 2003 tax cut was aimed at the wealthy and drastically cut their taxes – some even as far a zero. Bush’s doubling of the $500 Child Tax Credit moved even more off the the tax rolls. (Yes it’s true, not all of his tax breaks targeted the wealthy.)

When Mitt Romney said to Neil Cavuto on Fox News last night: “I know some believe that government should take from some to give to the others. I think that’s an entirely foreign concept,” did he insult all the former Republicans that helped enact the Earned Income Tax Credit? Oh my God! Ronald Reagan must have been a foreigner! Has anyone checked his birth certificate?

Seriously though, Republicans pushed through most of the tax laws that cut taxes for 47% of Americans to zero, so when Romney says the idea that our government should redistribute wealth is a foreign, just what party does he think he represents? How stupid does he think we are? Does he think he can get away with running as the Republican candidate for President and complain that 47% of Americans pay no income tax when his party that was instrumental in bringing that about?

Based on all he’s said and done in the past few weeks, one could very well think he is a stupid man, but I don’t really think is. I think he knows quite well that what’s fueling our long-term debt is that, in addition to redistributing tax payments to the working poor, the Republicans also gave away trillions of dollars of tax cuts to the super rich. I also think he knows  our social safety net is here to stay, so if he wants to change the tax code to run surpluses, he has to do what Bill Clinton did: Arithmetic. He won’t do it though, because the Paul Ryan/Tea Party faction of his party won’t let him.

Mitch McConnell Rolls the Dice on two tax bills in the Senate and Loses to the Democrats

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Mitch McConnell went off his meds today – his vote blocking meds. He gambled on two significant tax votes today that pitted the Republican plan to extends tax cuts for the very wealthy against the Democratic plan that calls for letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire at the end of this year. McConnell bet that that the Democrats would fold, like they usually do, and come over to his side. Surprise! They didn’t. The Republican plan was voted down 45-54 and the Democratic plan passed 51-48. The Washington Post reports:

The votes capped a surprising day that began with McConnell announcing that he would waive procedural hurdles and permit the Senate to hold an up-or-down vote on the measure, in exchange for an agreement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to call a vote on the Republican bill, as well.

McConnell acknowledged the unusual nature of his decision — Democratic aides could not recall another occasion when McConnell permitted a simple majority vote on a contentious issue. McConnell said his goal was to force vulnerable Democrats to support a plan to raise taxes less than four months before the Nov. 6 ballot.

McConnell thought he could once again hold tax breaks for the middle class hostage in exchange for extending Bush’s lavish tax cuts for the rich. The Senate used this rare opportunity to express their will with a vote, and they sided with President Obama.

John Boehner is set to hold a House vote next week on a plan that extends the tax cuts for everyone, including the rich. He of course argues that no taxes should ever be raised. It doesn’t matter that raising taxes on the wealthy to pre-Bush levels will add $800 billion to $1 trillion to the treasury over the next decade, providing funds for infrastructure rebuilding and education. What matters is keeping in place a tax code that redistributes wealth from the middle class to the super rich.

If the House Republicans reject the proposal that raises taxes on the top 2% that was approved by both President Obama and the Senate, and the Democrats hold their ground in the House (I know… that’s a big if) then the public will clearly see that it was the Republican Party that was responsible for increasing taxes on all Americans, not just the richest 2% of them.

Will any Republicans in the House turn on Boehner and their de facto leader of Republican tax policy, Grover Norquist, and side with the president, the senate, and the majority of Americans?

Call me crazy, but my money is on the Democrats this time around.

When it comes to Obamacare, are Americans able to tell Fact from Fiction anymore?

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Polling suggests that two thirds of Americans want to see all or part of the Affordable Care Act thrown out by the Supreme Court, the most unpopular provision being the individual mandate.

Many of these are, of course, Republicans whose opposition is mostly mindless: They’re against it on principle because, well, it was pushed by President Obama and a Democratic Congress and that’s enough in itself. The rest are among the 31% of Americans who even after two years still seem to have no clue what’s in the bill according to the Pew Research Center. And this includes many who would benefit the most from the law, as highlighted by the New York Times.

It is simply mind-boggling to have that much ignorance in the country on a major piece of legislation that will benefit all of us in one way or another two years after it was enacted.

Particularly troubling is the extent of opposition to the individual mandate even as other polling shows strong support from many of the same people for keeping popular provisions such as barring insurance companies from excluding people with pre-existing conditions. Which begs the question: Do these Americans actually understand how insurance works?

For example, would we compel an automobile insurance company to take on an uninsured motorist who’s just had a prang and then expect them to pay for the damage? Of course not; so how can we require a medical insurance firm to do likewise for a willfully uninsured individual who has just discovered he’s ill. And if we did, what the heck would happen to our insurance premiums? Yes, they’d skyrocket and, furthermore, such a mandate would drive most insurance companies entirely out of the individual market quicker than you can say “pre-existing condition”. And this isn’t guesswork either. We have empirical evidence from states who tried it, including my own state of Washington.

The Affordable Care Act is our last chance to reform the private medical insurance market to make it work for all of us, not just for the industry. And the individual mandate is the pillar which supports the rest of it. Don’t be fooled by the plethora of articles from those who suggest that much of the law’s provisions will survive without it – they won’t.

If two thirds of Americans truly oppose the individual mandate, then two thirds of Americans are idiots, although as Greg Sargent explains in The Washington Post most of them will never know what they missed.

Republican Congressmen should be Ashamed of their Obstructionist, Job Killing, Economy Busting Tactics

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It’s hard to find a silver lining in the latest job numbers but one thing that struck me was that lay-offs in the public sector and the construction industry were particularly stark.

Nobel-prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has long argued until he’s blue in the face that the United States has suffered from its own austerity policy in the laying off of hundreds of thousands of public sector workers including teachers, law enforcement officers, fire fighters and the rest; in doing so we have shot ourselves in the foot, or really both feet. Not only have we lost their valuable services, but also their buying power to buoy both their local community economies and the overall national economy.

In the 2009 stimulus bill, Obama and the Democrats recognized the critical need for construction project spending, and helping state and local governments who were, and are, hamstrung by state constitutions that forbid deficit spending. If the 2009 stimulus suffered from one deficiency it was that it should have been bigger and had more spending and less tax breaks, a necessary concession to win the support of a handful of moderate Republicans in the Senate. Nevertheless, it helped the construction industry and states, counties and municipalities to weather the worst of the initial economic meltdown; but they have suffered grievously since stimulus money dried up. Mitt Romney says the stimulus didn’t help and actually made things worse; another of his infamous lies.

It has been obvious for some time that the recovery from this recession was going to be slower and more painful than in the past and could yet stall from factors beyond anyone’s control, such as the debt crisis in Europe. Obama and the Democrats have, therefore, pushed for a second stimulus that would, among other things including another bunch of tax breaks, boost spending on infrastructure and aid to state and local government.

Unfortunately, this isn’t 2009. Then with a stronger Democratic presence in congress, Democrats were able to surmount even Mitch McConnell’s obstructionism in the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority. However, in 2010 the electorate, in its infinite wisdom, put the GOP in charge of the House and increased McConnell’s power in the Senate, thereby making further stimulus of the sort that would really boost the economy impossible.

In 2012, the GOP would much rather blather on about deficits, about which they actually care not one wit, rather than help with possible solutions to our economic woes. Helping Americans to keep or find jobs seems to be their lowest priority; indeed, they act as though they’re happy to tank the economy if it will sink Obama and the Democrats. And the sad thing is that with an electorate that is grumpy and not well informed, they may get their wish.

The truth is, however, that while Obama may shoulder the blame for a struggling economy, it’s the congressional GOP which bears far more responsibility.