“The Nature Of His Public Service”: John Boehner’s Plan To Hurt The Country On Purpose
Sequestration cuts, we learned yesterday, continue to undermine the U.S. economy severely, and are quickly losing support of the congressional Republicans who pushed for the policy in the first place. As the GOP budget strategy unravels, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said yesterday the sequester is “unrealistic,” “ill-conceived,” and a policy that “must be brought to an end.”
For now, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) doesn’t give a darn.
Speaker John A. Boehner came before the mics on Thursday, and he made one thing clear: The sequester is here to stay until the White House gets serious about spending cuts.
“Sequestration is going to remain in effect until the president agrees to cuts and reforms that will allow us to remove it,” the Ohio Republican said to reporters in his weekly news conference. “The president insisted on the sequester none of us wanted, none of us like it, there are smarter ways to cut spending.”
It’s frightening how little Boehner understands about this policy. He’s the Speaker of the House, for goodness sake.
First, the president didn’t “insist on the sequester.” That’s just crazy.
Second, if “none of us” want this stupid policy, it’s within Boehner’s power to stop the cuts that are hurting the country on purpose. For reasons that only make sense to him, the Speaker refuses.
Third, Boehner’s argument is that he’ll stop deliberately undermining the country when Obama “agrees to cuts and reforms.” But Obama has already approved $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, and offered Republicans even more. So far, GOP officials have offered no comparable concessions.
And finally, there’s the problem Boehner doesn’t like to talk about: he has no alternative.
In effect, he’s saying, “When Obama agrees to make me happy, I’ll agree to end the pain.” And what would make Boehner happy? He won’t say — Obama is supposed to just offer Republican goodies, in the hopes that the House Speaker will eventually say he’s satisfied and turn off the policy that’s hurting the country on purpose.
Maybe Boehner should take a moment to consider how he defines the nature of “public service.” Does he seriously believe he’s acting in the nation’s best interests by pushing a policy both parties hate and is clearly undermining economic growth and job creation?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 1, 2013
“Mitch McConnell Is Congress: It’s Hard Out There For An Obstructionist Minority Leader
To many people, a poll released today by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling probably came as a surprise. Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader in the Senate, is shown trailing his challenger, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, by a point. But he’s a Republican in a conservative state, and one of the leaders of his party. How could he be in danger of losing?
For starters, Grimes looks to be a serious opponent. Her father is a well-known former state senator, she’s already won a statewide campaign, and she’s made some terrific videos with her grandmothers, tapping into Kentucky’s substantial pro-grandma vote. But that’s not the real source of McConnell’s problems. While one might think that the more important and influential a senator is in national politics the easier time he’d have winning re-election, the opposite is true, especially at a time like this.
Almost 40 years ago, political scientist Richard Fenno identified a curious phenomenon among voters: they hate Congress, but love their congressman. Congress is seen as corrupt, incompetent, venal, beset by infighting among competing interests each driven by its own bad faith. But Congressman Smith? Why, he’s our boy! He went to the same high school as my cousin. I saw him at the Fourth of July parade. He helped my buddy’s grandma get her Social Security check. He got money for the new bridge over the river. That’s a big reason why even when Congress is incredibly unpopular, almost all incumbents-over 95 percent in some years-get re-elected.
And it isn’t just the personal connections that drive this phenomenon, it’s also the media. A friend of mine wrote his dissertation on the way members of Congress are covered in local media, and what he found is that unless you get embroiled in a scandal, the coverage is almost all positive. The local papers and TV stations will run your picture when you cut the ribbon at the senior center you obtained funding for, or seek out your sage words on whatever the issue of the day is, but they rarely write anything critical about you.
But if you’re Mitch McConnell, you don’t get the benefit of that glowing coverage, because you’re in the news all the time for your role in national issues. The people of Kentucky don’t get a different view of McConnell than people anywhere else, and what they see is a guy who, pretty much by his own admission, is one of the prime forces creating and sustaining congressional gridlock and all other manner of Washington dysfunction. Other voters might have the liberty to hate Congress but love their senator, but Mitch McConnell is Congress.
The truth is that McConnell has never been hugely popular in Kentucky. He’s not a particularly lovable guy, even though he is one of the shrewdest and most ruthless politicians you’ll ever encounter. I’d hesitate to bet against him. But don’t be surprised if he ends up losing next year.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 1, 2013
“The GOP Roadblock To Repairs”: With Limited Time And Opportunity, Republican Infrastructure Intransigence Strikes Again
In 2005, the World Economic Forum ranked America’s infrastructure Number 1 in the world for “economic competitiveness.” Only eight short years later, the U.S. occupies 14th place. Instead of leading our global competitors in planning, staying current and building a transportation system for the 21st century, we have continued to invest at the same rate (in real inflation-adjusted dollars) as we did in 1968.
By way of example, Canada spends 4 percent of its GDP on transportation, investment and maintenance, with China spending 9 percent. The U.S. spends only 1.7 percent.
More than 69,000 of America’s bridges are deemed structurally deficient, more than 11 percent of all the bridges in our country. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. would need to invest $3.6 trillion between now and 2020 just to keep its infrastructure in “good” repair.
As a nation, our cities have become more congested, our commutes more delayed and our companies less productive. According to UPS, five minutes of daily delay for its trucks adds up to $100 million lost annually.
President Obama has long understood that investments made to our nation’s infrastructure will create jobs here in America that can’t be outsourced or replaced overseas. Interestingly, this is the same dynamic that has united two bitter enemies, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, around their mutual quest to see Congress appropriate more funding for infrastructure projects.
Even Republicans seem to understand the need, or at least they have indicated so at times. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said, “Everybody knows we have a crumbling infrastructure. Infrastructure spending is popular on both sides. The question is how much are we going to spend.” Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., once claimed, “If you’re a Republican and you want to create jobs, then you need to invest in infrastructure that will allow us to create jobs.”
This week, President Obama proposed to cut corporate taxes and to invest in infrastructure projects to boost American jobs, all while being “revenue neutral.” These are concepts that have been championed by Republicans in the past, but generally ignored in recent times.
Unfortunately, true to form, the GOP backlash was immediate, claiming Obama’s plan offered them no concessions at all. McConnell said on the floor, “The plan, which I just learned about last night, lacks meaningful bipartisan input,” and thus he will oppose it. As the president suggested in a recent interview with the New York Times, “there’s almost a kneejerk habit right now that if I’m for it, then they’ve [Republicans in congress] got to be against it.”
So, once again, Congress is at a standstill while it admires our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. Seemingly, Republican leadership would rather put up roadblocks than work with the president to build and restore some of our nation’s fundamental structural needs to remain economically competitive – operative roads, bridges, dams, levees and rails. There are only 61 days left before the next government shutdown and nine legislative working days on the calendar in September. This limited time and opportunity will require leaders from both sides to step forward and work efficiently to pass the necessary legislation to get this country back on track.
Perhaps, while members of Congress are away in August, they will actually remember what they were for before they were against it.
By: Penny Lee, U. S. News and World Report, July 31, 2013
“Big Money Begets Massive Influence”: How The Koch Brothers Are Buying Silence Without Spending A Dime
Between buying elections, billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch shop for big pieces of American media and culture. And, hey, why not?
We already knew of the Kochs’ efforts to buy Tribune Company, the parent of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, among other major newspapers. Then, last week, The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer took a thoughtful, in-depth look at the machinations that led New York’s PBS station, WNET, to pull from the air a documentary critical of David Koch, one of the station’s biggest funders. The story raises plenty of questions about the extent to which the public owns public media and the role of money in the arts and culture (see anything at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater lately?). But it also provides a rare intimate look at what happens when big money begets massive influence, often without a dime changing hands.
Mayer describes the fate of two documentary films. One took on income disparities in America by profiling the inhabitants of one tony Park Avenue building — including David Koch. Under pressure, WNET aired the film but, in a highly unusual concession, offered Koch airtime to rebut it after it aired. The second film, “Citizen Koch,” made by the very talented, Academy Award nominated team of Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, explored the influence that Koch and others like him have on our elections in the post-Citizens United world. But in the face of Koch’s wrath, the film’s distributor, a public television player with a history of gutsy moves, uncharacteristically lost its stomach for the fight and dumped the film entirely. Regardless, Koch decided to not give a hoped-for gift after the first film aired. Without lifting a finger or even taking out his checkbook, Koch cast a pall over the documentary film world.
The process that led to “Citizen Koch” being pulled from the airwaves illustrates exactly the point that Lessin and Deal’s film makes: Money can not only buy action in our democracy, it can also buy silence. As former Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer points out in the film, “Sometimes it’s a check. Sometimes it’s the threat of a check. It’s like having a weapon. You can shoot the gun or just show it. It works both ways.”
Koch and his brother Charles, both billionaire industrialists, pledged to spend a whopping $400 million on the 2012 elections, the overwhelming majority of it on behalf of Republican candidates. But that doesn’t just mean that Republicans are jumping to please the brothers — it means that many of those in positions of influence, regardless of their political leanings, need to take into account whether or not it’s worth the trouble of unnecessarily antagonizing the Kochs. Just as the public is unlikely to hear about the film PBS didn’t run, it’s almost impossible to know about the principled progressive stands that our allies in government decided not to take.
Koch’s billions are a formidable political weapon, even without owning any influential newspapers. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, it’s a more powerful weapon than ever, and we know it’s having an impact even when they don’t choose to deploy them. The result is a distorted government that responds to the whims of billionaires more easily than the needs of ordinary Americans.
As activists work to undo the damage being done by Citizens United, one of our main challenges is reminding voters of the dangerous, invisible effects that decision has on the country. It’s a remarkable irony that by trying to hide a film about the danger of money in politics, the Kochs may have made it clearer than ever before.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post, July 31, 2013
“The Fever Isn’t Breaking”: Those Most Adamant For Change In The GOP Will Mainly Want A More Feverous Party
After ignoring a couple of useless polls about GOP rank-and-file interest in nonspecific “change,” I was happy to dig into a new Pew survey that shows the rightward pressure on Republican leaders that’s now been part of the landscape since at least 2008.
Now it’s important to note two things about the survey right off the bat. First, it includes Republican “leaners,” who probably boost the number of self-identified “moderates” in the survey, and also the number of those who don’t regularly participate in Republican primaries. And second, when it asks Republicans what direction they want the party to take, it’s not always clear how they perceive the party’s current direction.
If, like me, you think the GOP has been on a fairly steady ideological bender from the moment John McCain started getting heckled on the 2008 campaign trail for not being vicious enough, then the fact that a 54/40 majority of the rank-and-file want their party to “move in a more conservative direction” is more than a little alarming. Similarly, the finding that 35% of Republicans believe party leaders have “compromised too much” with Democrats while another 32% think they have “handled it about right” takes on an entirely different complexion if you feel, as I do, that GOPers in Washington are achieving historic levels of mindless obstructionism. On specific issues, the assumption that current Republicans positions are already pretty extreme means 60% of Republicans want to stay that way or get more extreme on abortion; 75% feel that way about immigration; 87% on government spending; and 79% on guns. But I am sure some pundits will look at the same numbers and say that with the exception of “government spending” and perhaps immigration, roughly equal numbers want the party to move left or right. It’s all about how you view the status quo. On immigration, there is a legitimate reason to wonder which “party leaders” poll respondents have in mind in urging them to become more conservative. Even in the Senate, we sometimes forget, Republicans voted against the Gang of Eight bill by a 32-14 margin.
In any event, there’s not much comfort in this poll for those who are looking for signs that the “fever is breaking.” Yes, there’s less rank-and-file identification with the Tea Party than there was in 2010, but since there is very little actual disagreement (only 11% of Republicans in this poll) with the Tea Folk, that may simply reflect the belief of some that the Tea Party is the Republican Party. Since some observers are already looking at Chris Christie as a potential fever-breaker, it’s notable that in this poll his standing is a lot iffier than that of other named potential ’16ers (a favorable/unfavorable ratio of 47/30, which, as TNR’s Nate Cohn points out, is worse than Mitt Romney ever performed in a similar poll during his high-wire run to the GOP nomination). If, as we have every reason to expect based on turnout patterns and the ’14 landscape, Republicans have a non-disastrous midterm cycle, there’s no reason to believe Republicans are going to demand massive changes in messaging or strategy, and every reason to suspect those most adamant for change will mainly want a more feverous party.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 31, 2013
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