“Congress Goes Postal”: A Full Agenda Of Futile Symbolic Votes, On The Rare Occasions It’s In Session
Congress is gone. Yeah, I miss them, too.
All the members are off on a five-week recess, after which they’ll return for a few days, then go away again, then hobble back as lame ducks. This is going to do terrible things to the Congressional approval rating, which had climbed all the way up to 17 percent at one point this year. Now it’s sunk to BP oil spill level, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re back to the point where poll respondents say they have a more favorable attitude toward “the U.S. becoming communist.”
You are probably wondering what your elected officials have been up to. Well, the best news is that House and Senate leaders worked out a plan to avoid a government shutdown for six more months by agreeing to just keep doing whatever it is we’re doing now.
This is known as “kicking the can down the road.” Failure to kick the can down the road can lead to “falling off the fiscal cliff.” There are so many of these crises looming that falling off a cliff should be reclassified as an Olympic event.
Just this week, Congress failed to protect the Postal Service from tumbling, and the service defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment for future retiree health benefits. It was the first time that the U.S. mail system failed to meet a financial obligation since Benjamin Franklin invented it.
The Postal Service has multiple financial problems, and, earlier this year, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to deal with them. It would not have fixed everything, or even resolved the question of whether the strapped agency would be allowed to discontinue Saturday mail delivery as a cost-savings measure. “It’s not perfect,” admitted Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, one of the sponsors.
At this point, the American public has been so beaten down by Congressional gridlock that “it’s not perfect” sounds fine. In fact, we’d generally be willing to settle for “it’s pretty terrible, but at least it’s something.”
The Senate plan would have definitely been preferable to the Postal Service default, which could be followed by an all-purpose running-out-of-cash later this fall. Carper was pretty confident that if the House passed a postal bill of any stripe, the two sides could work out a compromise during the long August vacation. That would presumably be a watered-down version of imperfection, which, as I said, is exactly what we’re currently dreaming about.
But the House leadership wouldn’t bring anything up for a vote. Speaker John Boehner never said why. Perhaps he was afraid voters would blame his members for the closing of underused post offices. There is nothing Congress cares more about than post offices, 38 of which the House has passed bills to rename over the past 18 months.
So, no Postal Service bill. You can’t deal with every single thing, and the House had a lot on its to-do list, such as voting to repeal the Obama health care law on 33 separate occasions.
Meanwhile, the national farm program was teetering on the cliff.
The farm bill has long been a classic Congressional compromise, combining aid to agriculture with the food stamp program, so there’s pretty much something for everybody. The Senate recently voted 64 to 35 to approve a new five-year authorization, which reformed some of the most egregious bad practices, like paying farmers not to grow crops. It was, I hardly need mention, not perfect.
Then, the House Agriculture Committee passed a bipartisan farm bill itself. Yes! In the House, people! Everybody was on board!
Then, the House leadership refused to allow it to go up for a vote. Boehner told reporters, “no decision has been made” about what to do next, without giving any hint as to when said decision might be coming along.
The problem appears to be Tea Party hatred for the food stamp program. But who knows? Boehner isn’t saying. Maybe his members want the power to rename the farms.
The House Agriculture Committee chairman, Frank Lucas, just kept making sad little noises. Lucas is from Oklahoma. His state is having a terrible drought. It’s been more than 100 degrees there forever. As a gesture of appeasement, the leadership did allow passage of a narrow bill providing disaster relief to cattle and sheep ranchers. The Senate dismissed it as too little, too late.
Meanwhile, several attempts to get a bill passed on cybersecurity for the nation’s power grid, water supply and financial systems failed entirely.
Maybe Congress will pick up the ball when it comes back to town for a couple of weeks this fall before the election. But it already has a full agenda of futile, symbolic votes plus the crucial kicking the can down the road.
Maybe it’s possible to have a negative approval rating.
By: Gail Collins, Op Ed Columnist, The Washington Post, August 3, 2012
“Mitt Romney Passes Wind”: He’s Perfectly Happy To Maintain Subsidies For The Oil Industry
What happens when the preferences of the economic base meet the preferences of the ideological base?
Mitt Romney was in Colorado yesterday, where some people aren’t too pleased with him. This week he came out in opposition to an extension of the wind-power production tax credit (PTC), which is set to expire at the end of the year. The tax credit helps make wind power competitive and is credited with enabling the creation of thousands of jobs in manufacturing and construction. This is almost certainly not going to be a huge issue in the campaign, but it does reveal some interesting things about where Romney is vis-a-vis the Republican Party. On one side, you have the parochial economic interests of many Republican members of Congress and some very well-heeled Republican economic constituency. On the other, you have the purely knee-jerk reaction of Tea Party types to anything hippies might like. Guess where Mitt comes down?
Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee passed an extension of the credit with bipartisan support. The PTC has support from members of Congress from both parties who have wind projects in their states, and a number of prominent Republicans like Chuck Grassley have urged Romney to change his position. There are thousands of jobs at stake; as Phyllis Cuttino of the Pew Clean Energey Program writes, “This uncertainty has put off investors and led to boom-and-bust cycles in the industry: Wind installations have declined by 73 to 93 percent in years without a PTC. Because of the long timelines (wind projects can take nine to 16 months from groundbreaking to power generation), investors seeking new wind projects must look two to three years into the future to decide whether the costs and benefits warrant investment. As we’ve seen in the past, investors are wary of supporting new projects if the availability of the tax credit is uncertain.” That brings up a peculiar footnote to this issue: Some of the biggest beneficiaries of this tax break are banks like Goldman Sachs, which is investing heavily in clean energy and so has a substantial stake in the PTC being renewed.
But when the issue came up, Mitt Romney’s spidey-sense, with which he tunes into every whim and grunt from Republican-base voters, began to tingle. Let’s dispense with the idea that anyone on either side has a principled position on these kind of tax credits that they hold to irrespective of the activity that the tax credit supports. In the case of liberals, there’s no hypocrisy involved: We’ll freely admit that there are some things government should support, and in a case like renewable energy, some of these industries need a boost in their early stages in order to become competitive. Part of government’s job is to create the conditions where the market can operate freely, efficiently, and justly. All of us (well, most of us) would agree that if we got all our energy from renewables and that energy was affordable, that would be better than our current situation, in which most of our energy comes from sources that have substantial environmental costs in both their extraction and their use. The question is what we’re willing to do in order to approach that better world, and liberals believe that some tax credits for renewables are a perfectly reasonable part of the price. We also assume that these tax credits are finite and that as the industry matures they can be phased out.
Conservatives, on the other hand, claim that they believe in the free market and that industries should rise or fall on their own merits without any help from government. But in practice, their opinions on particular cases show no adherence to this principle they allegedly hold. Instead, they favor tax credits for industries they like for one reason or another and oppose them for industries they don’t like. In the past few years, opinions on energy have become one more culture-war marker for conservatives, with people gleefully chanting “Drill baby drill!” at Republican rallies and leaders like Rush Limbaugh waging holy war against electric cars, for no particular reason other than liberals like renewable energy, and they hate liberals. So Mitt Romney is perfectly happy to maintain subsidies for the oil industry but opposes subsidies for the wind-power industry. There isn’t some fundamental principle about the relationship of industry and government at work here. He’s just channeling the opinions of his party, as always.
For a long time, it seemed that whenever there was a direct conflict between the preferences of the GOP’s economic base and its grassroots ideological base, preference went to the economic base. Those conflicts were rare—part of the great trick the economic base pulled was convincing the grassroots base that if Jesus returned tomorrow, he’d favor cutting the capital gains tax. I doubt Romney feels particularly strongly about this. But his default impulse, at least for the moment, is to do whatever he thinks the most extreme Tea Partier would prefer. As I said yesterday, it’s almost as though he doesn’t realize the primaries are over.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 3, 2012
“Voter Registration Drives”: Federal Court Blocks Most Of Texas Voter Suppression Law
A federal judge in Galveston on Thursday partially blocked new Texas registration laws that critics say amount to vote suppression because they prevent large voter registration drives.
U.S. District Judge Gregg Costa blocked the state from enforcing five provisions of the laws that its defenders say are aimed at preventing voter fraud.
“Today’s ruling means that community groups and organizations like Voting for America and Project Vote will be able to run community voter registration drives in Texas,” plaintiff’s attorney Chad Dunn said. “These drives are important to reaching the millions of Texans, including three-quarters of a million African-Americans and 2 million Latinos, who are eligible but still not registered to vote.”
Dunn represents two Galveston County residents and the nonprofit voter registration group Voting for America, an affiliate of the nonpartisan Project Vote based in Washington, D.C.
“They don’t care how you vote as long as you get registered and participate,” Dunn said.
The plaintiffs sued Galveston County Tax Assessor-Collector Cheryl Johnson and Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade
“It was a scholarly opinion, he obviously put a lot of thought into it, but I am very disappointed by the outcome,” Johnson said. State officials could not be reached for comment.
Costa granted a preliminary injunction on five sections of the law until a trial on whether the entire law violates the plaintiffs’ civil rights and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.
Key Points
Under the ruling, the state may no longer require that deputy voter registrars live in Texas, a law Voting for America said prevented it from organizing voter registration drives.
It also may not prevent deputy registrars from registering voters who live outside their county; prevent organizations from firing or promoting employees based on the number of voters registered; prevent organizations from making photocopies of completed voter registration forms for their records; or prevent deputy registrars from mailing completed applications.
Johnson said allowing groups to copy registration applications could violate privacy rights.
“I intend to start calling state representatives tomorrow to change the content of voter registration applications,” she said. Johnson wants social security numbers, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers removed.
“Is there going to be a huge increase in voter fraud? I hope not,” she said, adding that her office would redouble its scrutiny of completed registration forms.
The plaintiffs had asked Costa to block eight sections of the law enacted in 2011 so that they could register voters before the national election in November. Costa declined to block enforcement of laws that make it a criminal offense for a deputy registrar to submit a partially completed form, a restrictive training requirement, and a requirement that deputy registrars wear an identification badge. He left the legality of those laws to be decided at trial.
Appeal Possible
Dunn said the attorney general could appeal the injunction to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Dunn, who has represented Democrats in redistricting lawsuits, said the Legislature’s redistricting plan, photo identification bill and registration requirements are evidence of voter suppression.
“This Legislature will do anything to prevent Texans from voting,” Dunn said.
By: Harvey Rice, Chron.com, August 3, 2012
“Polarized, Inefficient and Unproductive”: Congressional Brinkmanship Threatens Economic Recovery
Congress’s job approval rating has slowly ticked up over the past six months—reaching a whopping 16 percent in the first half of July, with 78 percent disapproving. However, even these dismal numbers may be giving Congress too much credit, especially if legislators don’t act soon to avoid the looming fiscal cliff.
The scenario is eerily reminiscent of last spring, when political deadlock over the federal budget threatened a government shutdown before an 11th-hour deal was struck. Such political wrangling risked the loss of 800,000 jobs and the curtailment of crucial public services such as mortgage, passport, and loan processing—not to mention a massive disruption of a fragile economic recovery.
And another similar scenario just a few months later was the battle over the federal debt ceiling, gambling the possibility of another government shutdown. The haphazard deal reached during that policy fight, which failed to produce long-term practical solutions, laid the groundwork for what the country faces today.
The risks of the impending fiscal cliff are similar, if not graver. If current fiscal policy is allowed to take effect, the United States economy will simultaneously experience across-the-board income tax hikes and deep, automatic spending cuts of billions of dollars at the end of this year. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, these policies combined will contribute to lower incomes and higher unemployment numbers, slowing economic growth in 2013 to a mere 0.5 percent—and sending America into a double-dip recession.
The general assumption is that lawmakers will not let it get to that point; spending measures will be passed and tax cuts will be extended—though how much and for whom remains undecided. We all need to be asking when this is going to happen.
The 112th Congress has been called the most polarized, inefficient, and unproductive Congress in the 236-year history of the United States; and if they’re trying to fight that image, it sure is hard to tell. Legislators have shown little political will to act before the November presidential elections, dangerously close to the December 31 deadline when the first of a series of tax cuts will expire.
Such political brinkmanship is detrimental to the business environment and to a weak economic recovery. Small businesses are particularly hard hit by the uncertain climate created by Washington, and the threat of substantial tax increases has done nothing to ease fears. According to a Chamber of Commerce poll in July, over half of small business owners cite economic uncertainty as their top concern. Only 20 percent of those surveyed expected to hire in 2013.
This is bad news—with real implications for American prosperity. Small businesses are the key to economic recovery, spurring the majority of job creation. But to hire, business owners need the assurance of a stable investment environment in which they can secure returns. Regardless of whether America falls off the fiscal cliff, Congress’s behavior is already having detrimental effects on business and employment expectations. Amid discouraging jobs and industry reports, this political game is not something we can afford.
Lawmakers must realize that their gridlocked partisanship is hurting a nation already struggling. The 112th Congress has five months left in its term. Is it too naïve to hope things might change?
By: Steve Zelnak, U. S. News and World Report, August 3, 2012
“Tax Returns And Now Tax Policy”: Mitt Romney’s Two Front Tax-Withholding
You’d think Mitt Romney’s campaign would be happy about the report this week by the Tax Policy Center—the demands for the former Massachusetts governor to release more of his tax returns have finally been quieted. Of course they’re none too pleased that the obsession with his making public more tax returns has been replaced by calls for him to release more of his tax plans.
Romney’s tax plan contemplates an across the board 20 percent tax cut, among other things. He and his people swear that the plan would be revenue neutral—it would not cause the budget deficit to further balloon—because while he cut rates he would also close loopholes. Which ones? He has pointedly not said, and scoffed whenever any independent groups tried to run the numbers to figure out how his plan would work. “It can’t be scored because those kind of details have to be worked out with Congress and we have a wide array of options,” he told CNBC in March. How could he be sure that his tax plan is revenue neutral if the details haven’t been worked out yet? You’ll just have to trust him on this.
But the new Tax Policy Center blows this argument out of the water—they ran the numbers and figured out that no matter which numbers Romney plugs in (even magical, supply-side, dynamic scoring numbers), there aren’t enough loopholes to close to pay for the tax cuts. The result would be what the New York Times’s Paul Krugman calls Dooh Nibor—reverse Robin Hood economics: Rob from the middle class to pay the wealthy.
Romney’s team has flailed around trying to discredit the Tax Policy Center, calling the group’s credibility into question (though Romney-cons cited it as authoritative earlier in the campaign) and arguing that it doesn’t take into account the special economic growth mojo of tax cuts (it in fact does). Here’s what they haven’t done: release the missing details that make his plan add up. Maybe that’s because they haven’t worked out the details yet (so how do you know the numbers will add up?). Or maybe it’s because the details involve numbers of Romney’s own invention which defy the ordinary laws of arithmetic and exist at a frequency which can only be heard by dogs traveling down the highway at high speeds while strapped to the roofs of cars. That would actually answer a few questions.
Romney’s two front tax-withholding—not giving an inch more on his tax returns or his tax plans—reminds me of the old aphorism attributed to Abraham Lincoln that it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. It seems like the Romney campaign is updating and adapting the sentiment for modern politics. They’re testing whether it’s better to be silent and thought to be hiding something damaging than to fully disclose and remove all doubt.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, Washington Whispers, August 3, 2012
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