“Spoiler Alert”: GOP Leaders Hope To Maintain Party Unity By Doing Nothing For The Rest Of The Year
The debt ceiling has been lifted, an omnibus spending bill has been passed, the farm bill is finished and a bipartisan budget has been signed by President Obama. All the must-pass legislation of this Congress, in other words, has been dealt with, leaving leaders in the House GOP with one big choice and three options.
The choice: What to do between now and November’s congressional elections.
The options:
- Push for immigration reform.
- Push for tax reform.
- Do absolutely nothing and hope that saying some combination of “Obamacare” and “Benghazi” every 30 seconds between now and November will be enough to maintain the Republican hold on the House and retake the majority in the Senate.
Spoiler alert! They’re going with option No. 3.
According to Robert Costa of the Washington Post, congressional GOP leadership has decided that in order to maintain party unity and put themselves in the best position to win in November, Republicans would be best off doing a whole lot of nothing for the next nine months.
“We don’t have 218 votes in the House for the big issues, so what else are we going to do?” California GOP Rep. Devin Nunes told Costa. “We can do a few things on immigration and work on our principles, but in terms of real legislating, we’re unable to get in a good negotiating position.”
While the GOP has a clear majority in the House, Nunes’ remarks reflect the divided nature of the Republican caucus, in which the Tea Party faction is too small to command a governing majority, but is large enough to keep less-conservative GOPers from getting anything done.
Republicans’ decision to wait out the remainder of 2014 is, according to GOP pollster and spinmeister Frank Luntz, “[A]n acknowledgment of where they stand, where nothing can happen in divided government so we may essentially have the status quo.”
“Significant immigration reform and fundamental tax reform are probably not going to happen,” he added.
That’s not to say that Republicans will literally do nothing, however. On the contrary, they plan to introduce a slew of bills that have no chance of passing but will supposedly win the support of undecided swing-voters. Costa reports that a bill to fully repeal and replace Obamacare is planned to be released in the spring or the summer, and that GOP leaders hope to introduce similarly DOA bills focused on jobs, energy and regulations.
“It’s a natural progression,” Minnesota Republican Rep. Vin Weber told Costa, speaking of the party’s new plan. “If you’re a Republican in Congress, you’ve learned that when we shut down the government, we lose. Now that we’ve had some success in avoiding another shutdown, our fortunes seem to be rising, so maybe we don’t want big things to happen.”
Now there’s a bumper-sticker. “Vote Republican in 2014: We don’t want big things to happen.”
By: Elias Isquith, Salon, February 18, 2014
“Christie’s Crisis Management”: The Governor Isn’t Navigating Those Perilous Waters Too Well
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has found himself in the midst of several ongoing scandals, and from a distance, it’s not at all clear he’s receiving the best possible advice. Indeed, according to the governor’s own office, Christie aides have gone rogue more than once lately.
There are no doubt plenty of experts in political crisis management who could help steer the governor through these perilous waters, but I talked with a knowledgeable friend this afternoon about the kind of advice Christie needs but doesn’t seem to be receiving.
First, it’s not a good idea for the governor to travel to a tropical resort while New Jersey residents are struggling with another snow storm – causing, among other things, roofs to collapse.
Second, it’s not a good idea for the governor to cancel a town-hall meeting with constituents, citing inclement weather, only to keep his commitment to travel to nearby New York City for a Republican fundraiser for the same evening.
Third, it’s not a good idea for the governor’s office to identify a potentially damaging witness and then go after his high-school antics through the national media.
Fourth, it’s not a good idea for the governor to hire a high-priced lawyer, have the taxpayers pick up the tab, and then sit back as he shamelessly tries to intimidate witnesses.
Fifth, it’s not a good idea for the governor to change his story as the controversies unfold.
Sixth, it’s not a good idea for the governor to keep pretending there may have been a traffic study.
And finally, it might be a good idea for the governor to look busy.
Christie can start by considering some reforms at the Port Authority.
Major structural reforms would require legislative approval in Albany and Trenton, which would be hard but definitely worth a try. New Jersey, for instance, could help matters by enacting the equivalent of a reform law approved in New York that, among other things, required board members to pledge to uphold their fiduciary duties to their agency’s mission, not to their patron in the governor’s mansion. Short of that, the two governors should make changes that could make the authority less political and more professional.
The Port Authority’s 12-member board of commissioners is appointed by the governors, six by each. They should be appointed on the basis of their professional qualifications, not political connections, as so often happens, and held to six-year term limits. Some holdovers have been there for more than 10 years.
Each commissioner should also publicly disclose potential conflicts of interest well before the authority makes its decisions. These potential conflicts should be regularly displayed on the Port Authority’s website. Commissioners have routinely been allowed to lobby for contracts that could affect personal businesses and, only later after the decision is made, would they formally recuse themselves in the official minutes. Their recusal in each case should be announced at the public board meeting.
It’d be a start, wouldn’t it?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 18, 2014
“An Epidemic Of Plutocrat Self-Pity”: Filthy Rich But Secretly Terrified, Inside The 1 Percent’s Sore-Winner Backlash
What explains the toxic mélange of entitlement and shame that’s driving the raging 1 percent sore-winner backlash? From Tom Perkins comparing the ultra-rich to Jews during “Kristallnacht,” to tycoon and newspaper-destroyer Sam Zell insisting “the top 1 percent work harder,” to investment banker Wilbur Ross proclaiming that “the 1 percent is being picked on for political reasons,” there’s an epidemic of plutocrat self-pity afoot. Just last week ex-CEO of Morgan Stanley John Mack told the media to “stop beating up on” CEOs Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein after they got obscene raises from JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.
The sore winner backlash is odd timing. There’s no longer any real movement to hike taxes on their income or their wealth, both of which are at all-time highs. President Obama has said an increase in tax rates is “off the table.” There’s no more discussion of the “Buffett Rule,” named for the Berkshire-Hathaway oracle who famously suggested his secretary should no longer pay higher rates than her boss.
Almost nobody talks about ending the “carried interest” loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay a shamefully low rate on much of what should be considered income; instead there’s a “boom in trusts passing carried interest to heirs,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Yes, they’ve figured out a way to pass that unfair advantage onto their heirs through new estate-tax dodges. Sadly, Occupy Wall Street has fizzled, so they can even enjoy Zuccotti Park unaccosted.
So why all the whining now? I read Kevin Roose’s buzzy “I crashed a secret Wall Street society” piece Monday morning looking for insight. You should read it if you haven’t. It’s a fun hate-read. You’ll come away thinking, if you don’t already, that a lot of these people are monsters.
Apparently the secret fraternity Kappa Beta Phi gathers the titans of Wall Street at the St. Regis once a year for a gala that celebrates their wealth and power and mocks the rest of us. New inductees to the fraternity are charged with putting on a variety show to entertain the long-tenured. The evening features all the standard bad behavior common to male societies, from sports teams to military units to the boys of the Bohemian Grove. Cross dressing? Check.
After cocktail hour, the new inductees – all of whom were required to dress in leotards and gold-sequined skirts, with costume wigs – began their variety-show acts.
Misogyny and homophobia? Check.
The jokes ranged from unfunny and sexist (Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Hillary Clinton and a catfish?” A: “One has whiskers and stinks, and the other is a fish”) to unfunny and homophobic (Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Barney Frank and a Fenway Frank?” A: “Barney Frank comes in different-size buns”).
Mocking the loser-outsiders, who paradoxically make their great wealth possible? Check.
One of the last skits of the night was a self-congratulatory parody of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” called “Bailout King.”
When Roose was discovered, he was ejected from the ballroom, and the story wound up in his new book, “Young Money,” a portrait of eight entry-level Wall Street traders, which came out today. The Kappa Beta Phi story was excerpted in New York magazine.
What the excerpt captured was the insularity and paranoia of plutocrats who band together to protect themselves from mostly imagined social approbation and self-doubt. As Paul Krugman has argued, they aren’t like the titans of yore who made things; they “push money around and get rich by skimming some off the top as it sloshes by.” They’ve gotten insanely wealthy mainly by rigging the rules of the game to privilege the world of finance, and it’s no wonder they’re worried the rest of us will someday figure that out.
The good news from Roose’s work? Among younger Wall Streeters, there’s more doubt than you might expect. The percentage of Ivy Leaguers going into investment banking straight out of college is dropping. Before it faded, Occupy Wall Street had an impact on some of his young subjects, Roose reveals. The bad news is, the people who have doubts about the morality of their enterprise, and about their own privilege, tend to leave, so that those who remain are particularly entitled and/or deluded.
Still, that nagging doubt helps explain the backlash. They project in order to protect themselves. Their self-defense gets ever louder.
Last week Tom Perkins doubled down on his plutocrat paranoia at the Commonwealth Club, insisting the more money you have, the more votes you should get. He later “clarified” his remarks by saying he was only warning about the dangers of the 50 percent of the country that doesn’t pay taxes nonetheless having the right to vote. It was an uglier version of Mitt Romney’s 47 percent remark. Neither Romney nor Perkins nor their many defenders seem to realize that the people who pay no taxes are either retirees, or low-wage workers who are paid so little they’re not taxed.
These men who rigged the rules of the game to make themselves obscenely wealthy are trying to convince themselves, and us, that they’re entitled to those rewards. If only there were a genuine political movement triggering their paranoia. Instead, it’s preemptive, a product of their buried guilt and practiced entitlement.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, February 18, 2014
“Political Gridlock’s Millions Of Victims”: It’s One Thing To Seek An Advantage At The Polls, Another To Make Innocent People Suffer
In an election year, there are always winners and losers. Rarely, however, are there so many victims.
Legislative gridlock, which was already bad enough, has devolved into a cynical, poisoned status. With a few obvious votes, Congress could improve the lives of millions of people — the unemployed, the undocumented, the uninsured. But instead of being helped, those in need are punished for nakedly political reasons.
It says a lot about this shameful state of affairs that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) , one of the most powerful and savvy officials in Washington, had to put his career on the line to win an increase in the federal debt ceiling. Failure to act would have caused a catastrophic default. No new government spending was involved; rather, the Treasury simply needed to pay for spending that Congress already had authorized. Raising the limit was a no-brainer.
Yet Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who continues to redefine the word “shameless,” almost led the nation into calamity by forcing Republican senators to go on record in favor of the increase. Since the GOP base has been told — wrongly — that refusing to hike the ceiling would somehow help get the debt under control, senators who voted to do the right thing risked a tea party challenge.
McConnell, who already faces a tough primary contest, sucked it up and did his duty. Cruz grinned and smirked during the vote, then presumably made preparations to receive a flood of tea party campaign cash for his anticipated presidential run.
At least Congress managed to avoid inflicting grievous harm on the entire nation. A number of subgroups have not been so fortunate.
The Americans most obviously suffering because of Congress’s unwillingness to do the right thing are the 1.7 million jobless workers who have lost their long-term unemployment benefits.
Democrats keep proposing legislation to extend those benefits, as has regularly been done in tough economic times. Republicans say they agree but insist — contrary to common practice — that the extension be paid for with cuts elsewhere in the budget.
Again, Republicans are wary of angering the party’s conservative base. It’s not so much a matter of increasing the deficit — a three-month extension would cost only $6 billion, and Democrats have proposed offsets — but that far-right dogma considers such payments a moral hazard that encourages idleness. Never mind that recipients of unemployment benefits, by definition, were employed until relatively recently and can demonstrate that they are actively looking for jobs.
The working poor are suffering unnecessarily as well. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 is far too low. In the past, Republicans have joined Democrats in voting for needed increases. In an election year, however, struggling wage-earners are out of luck.
The 11 million men, women and children who are in this country without documents are also victims of the calendar. President Obama and the entire congressional leadership agree that there is an urgent need for immigration reform.
The Senate has already passed a comprehensive bill that increases border security and offers the undocumented a path toward citizenship. Many observers believe there are enough votes in the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama for his signature. But because of the looming election, that proposition isn’t being tested.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would face a revolt in the conservative GOP caucus if he allowed Democrats and a few moderate Republicans to pass a comprehensive immigration bill. Boehner has established the precedent that he can use this maneuver to avert certain disaster — it’s how he got a “clean” debt-ceiling increase through the House. But his members will not abide being painted as “soft on immigration” in an election year.
Also unfairly punished are the millions of uninsured Americans seeking coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Despite the Republican Party’s best efforts, Obamacare is working. But it would work better if Congress would cooperate with Obama in making a host of technical adjustments to the program.
This sort of after-the-fact tinkering has been required for every big social program. But Republicans have so demonized Obamacare that collaborating in an effort to make it function more effectively would be, for the far-right base, tantamount to treason.
It’s one thing to seek an advantage at the polls. It’s another thing to make innocent people suffer for your ambition. Guilty members of Congress — and I’m specifically including you, Sen. Cruz — should hang their heads in disgrace.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 17, 2014
“Someone Orchestrated That”: Why Did Port Authority Police Tell Angry Motorists To Blame The Democratic Mayor Of Fort Lee?
We’ve learned quite a bit about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) scandals over the last couple of months, including the fiasco surrounding the George Washington Bridge lane closures, but there are some core, foundational questions that haven’t been answered. Indeed, these are questions neither the governor’s team nor any of its allies have made even the slightest effort to address.
It remains unclear, for example, exactly who conspired to use the power of the Christie administration to deliberately cripple a New Jersey community last September. It’s equally unclear why members of Team Christie hatched and executed their plot.
And then there’s the cover-up of the administration’s admitted misdeeds. It’s this third angle that garnered some attention over the weekend, including an interesting piece from the Bergen Record’s Mike Kelly, who reported that state investigators are asking a simple question: why did Port Authority police tell angry motorists to blame the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee?
That question, which has lingered for months, may no longer be dismissed as just a footnote in the controversy now enveloping the Christie administration over whether the traffic snarl that overwhelmed Fort Lee’s streets for parts of five days was really political retribution.
A special state legislative committee examining the scandal now plans to investigate whether the call-the-mayor instructions were really a way of getting the message to Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, that the crippling traffic jams were punishment for his failure to endorse the reelection of Governor Christie, a Republican who had been touted as a possible future presidential candidate.
“It appears that someone issued instructions or talking points,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the co-chairman of the special Assembly-Senate committee investigating the lane closure scandal. “Someone orchestrated that.”
Almost immediately after the Christie administration deliberately paralyzed Fort Lee, locals started demanding answers. For reasons that remain unclear, Kelly explained, Port Authority police officers at the scene told furious drivers they should call the mayor or borough officials.
The implication was hardly subtle: those looking for someone to blame should look at Sokolich. In reality, that didn’t make any sense, so why did the officers tell motorists something that wasn’t true? Or more to the point, who told the officers to convey false information?
This isn’t some tangent. To learn who was responsible is to better understand why Team Christie did this and who helped orchestrate the cover-up.
At this point, it’s still unclear why Port Authority police said what they said, but it’s clear state lawmakers looking into the scandal consider this important.
“It goes to the whole issue of abuse of power and efforts to conceal,” Wisniewski told Kelly. “It’s an important issue that we ultimately need to dive into.”
Meanwhile, MSNBC’s “Up with Steve Kornacki” moved the ball forward yesterday, too.
A Port Authority police officer with personal ties to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was at the George Washington Bridge when access lanes were closed last September and personally drove David Wildstein, the Christie appointee who supervised the closings, on a tour of the area as traffic brought it to a standstill.
Documents submitted to a New Jersey legislative committee by Wildstein also show that the officer, Lieutenant Thomas “Chip” Michaels, appears to have sent periodic text messages to Wildstein updating him on the effects of the lane closures and their crippling impact on the town of Fort Lee. In one message, on the first day of the lane closures, Michaels told Wildstein he might have an idea to “make this better.” It is not clear what he meant.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 17, 2014
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