“A Cudgel For The Oil Industry”: Chevron’s Lobbyist Now Runs The Congressional Science Committee
For Chevron, the second-largest oil company in the country with $26.2 billion in annual profits, it helps to have friends in high places. With little fanfare, one of Chevron’s top lobbyists, Stephen Sayle, has become a senior staff member of the House Committee on Science, the standing congressional committee charged with “maintaining our scientific and technical leadership in the world.”
Throughout much of 2013, Sayle was the chief executive officer of Dow Lohnes Government Strategies, a lobbying firm retained by Chevron to influence Congress. For fees that total $320,000 a year, Sayle and his team lobbied on a range of energy-related issues, including implementation of EPA rules under the Clean Air Act, regulation of ozone standards, as well as “Congressional and agency oversight related to offshore oil, natural gas development and oil spills.”
Sayle’s ethics disclosure, obtained by Republic Report, shows that he was paid $500,000 by Chevron’s lobbying firm before taking his current gig atop the Science Committee.
In recent months, the House Science Committee has become a cudgel for the oil industry, issuing subpoenas and holding hearings to demonize efforts to improve the environment. Some of the work by the committee reflect the lobbying priorities of Chevron.
In December, the Science Committee, now chaired by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), held yet another hearing to try to discredit manmade global warming. In August, the committee issued the first subpoena in twenty-one years, demanding “all the raw data from a number of federally funded studies linking air pollution to disease.”
Though Chevron has gone to great lengths to advertise a lofty environmental record, the company continues to break air pollution laws while quietly backpedalling on its prior commitments to renewable energy. A Bloomberg News investigation reported that Chevron estimated that its biofuel investments would return only 5 percent in profits, a far cry from the 15 percent to which the oil giant is accustomed, and quietly moved to shelve renewable fuel units of the company. In California, Chevron is battling the newly created cap-and-trade system for carbon pollution. And in states across the country, Chevron has lobbied and provided financial support to a range of right-wing nonprofits dedicated to repealing carbon-cutting regulations, including the low-carbon fuel standard.
Earlier this year, Dow Lohnes’ lobbying practice merged with Levick, a public affairs firm.
By: Lee Fang, The Nation, February 21, 2014: This post was originally published at RepublicReport.org
“Lacking The Will, Not The Votes”: Yet Another Year Of A Do-Nothing Republican Congress
Election Day 2014 is 258 days away, which in political terms, is an extraordinarily long time. In theory, in 258 days, policymakers in Washington could identify several national priorities, consider worthwhile legislation, and pass meaningful bills into law.
But Robert Costa makes clear in a new report that for House Republicans, the year that is just now getting underway is already effectively over. Three weeks after President Obama presented a fairly ambitious agenda to Congress in a State of the Union address, the GOP House majority fully expects to get nothing done between now and November.
After a tumultuous week of party infighting and leadership stumbles, congressional Republicans are focused on calming their divided ranks in the months ahead, mostly by touting proposals that have wide backing within the GOP and shelving any big-ticket legislation for the rest of the year.
Comprehensive immigration reform, tax reform, tweaks to the federal health-care law – bipartisan deals on each are probably dead in the water for the rest of this Congress.
“We don’t have 218 votes in the House for the big issues, so what else are we going to do?” said Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), an ally of House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio).
I feel like this assumption – legislating simply isn’t feasible because major bills can’t get 218 votes in the lower chamber – comes up quite a bit. Note that Boehner recently told Jay Leno, “I like to describe my job as trying to get 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to pass a bill. It’s hard to do.”
Except, it’s not that hard to do.
What we’re hearing isn’t an explanation for inaction and passive indifference towards governing, but rather, an excuse. GOP leaders look at their to-do list and wistfully imagine how nice it would be to tackle priorities like immigration and tax reform, but they quickly do imaginary head-counts and throw up their arms in disgust. As Nunes put it, “We don’t have 218 votes in the House for the big issues, so what else are we going to do?”
It doesn’t have to be this way.
If House Republican leaders brought the popular, bipartisan immigration reform bill to the floor, it’d likely get 218 votes. If they brought the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to the floor, it’d have a decent shot at 218, too. The same goes for a minimum-wage increase and a variety of other measures that the public would be glad to see.
The missing ingredient isn’t votes. It’s political will.
It’s precisely why House Democrats are increasingly invested in discharge petitions – if only a sliver of House Republicans agreed to help bring popular bills to the floor for an up-or-down vote, Dems believe Congress can do more than spin its wheels for the next 258 days.
It is, to be sure, a longshot, and discharge petitions very rarely work. But the alternative is yet another year of a do-nothing Congress.
Postscript: Costa’s piece also quoted former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), who said, “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.”
That’s quite an inspiring message: “Vote GOP 2014: We only shut down the government once, not twice.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, 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
“Don’t Bank On It”: Can Republicans Govern If They Win In 2014?
What’s the worst-case scenario for Republicans in November? Maybe victory.
A Republican takeover of the Senate is somewhere between plausible and very likely. (If you want more exact predictions, you have to provide a less volatile political climate.) So for argument’s sake, let’s assume Republican candidates roll to victory from Alaska to North Carolina. The Democrats’ 54-46 Senate majority is supplanted by a narrower Republican majority, with Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell or someone of nearly equal skill installed as majority leader.
The Republicans would then control both the House and the Senate. In the Senate, the most enthusiastic partisans in the new majority would be eager to dispense with the filibuster on legislation, allowing bills to pass on party-line Republican votes. Let’s assume that happens, too.
What exactly would they do with these newfound powers?
They wouldn’t pass a jobs bill because they don’t want President Barack Obama to gain credit for an improving economy. Besides, they’ve convinced themselves that jobs bills don’t work — at least until a Republican occupies the White House.
What about health care legislation? Jonathan Bernstein parses the prospects on his blog. According to a CBS News poll in January, only 34 percent of Americans support repealing Obamacare; it would be a nonstarter even if the health care and insurance industries weren’t already too far down the Obamacare road. If Republicans took the plunge to create legislation, the real-world impacts of their proposals would be scored by the Congressional Budget Office and outside policy groups. It’s hard to imagine what Republicans could devise that would satisfy their ideological needs without undermining health security for millions while increasing the deficit. There’s a reason they keep talking about health care but never get around to doing anything.
How about immigration? Senate legislation drafted by Republicans would look nothing like the bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Senate last June. Senate Democrats would have little incentive to support a vastly more conservative bill, which would rely even more on employment enforcement and militarization of the border while offering far-less-generous terms to undocumented immigrants. Under such circumstances, House Democrats would surely abandon House Republicans to their own devices, as well.
Without Democratic votes, the House cannot pass anything more comprehensive than an immigration crackdown. The fate of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. would be unresolved at best. The political failure would be a fiasco, further undermining Republicans among Hispanic and Asian voters while simultaneously opening the door to another round of nativist big-talk among Republican presidential hopefuls. (The U.S. Chamber of Commerce would express its heartfelt disappointment, then funnel millions of dollars to Republican incumbents.)
The party’s internal conflicts would all be exacerbated by a Senate takeover. Imagine, for example, how much leverage a narrow Republican majority would grant to Senator Ted Cruz — and the chaos that could ensue.
In its current incarnation, the party is more or less an anti-tax lobby grafted to a Sons of the Confederacy chapter. Genuine areas of policy consensus among Republicans are few — spending cuts for the poor, tax cuts for the rich and promotion of incumbent dirty energy industries at the expense of Obama’s green agenda. None of these is popular. (Although in coal and oil states the energy reversal would be welcome. Keystone, too, if its construction is not already underway in 2015.) All would face probable Obama vetoes.
What’s left? Entitlement reform? The Republicans’ elderly base is not eager for changes in Medicare or Social Security. That leaves culture warrior stuff, mostly. New abortion restrictions, perhaps? One last lunge against gay rights? Not much electoral magic there.
The party’s capacity to please its right-wing cultural base, its anti-tax, anti-regulatory donor base and a slim majority of American voters is almost nonexistent. Democratic control of the Senate has shielded Republicans both from their own divisions and from the unpopularity of their causes.
Indeed, it’s possible that the Boschian hellscape over which John Boehner presides in the 113th Congress could actually get uglier and more bizarre if Republicans win the Senate in the 114th. I’m not sure even these Republicans deserve that.
By: Francis Wilkinson, The National Memo, February 11, 2014
“Overrated, Useless Fools”: Why This Congress Will Never Achieve Anything Significant
As I wrote last month and also several other times over the past five or so years, “comprehensive immigration reform” — defined as a bill making it possible for currently undocumented residents to earn legal status and/or citizenship — can’t happen now because Republicans control the House of Representatives, conservatives control the Republican Party, and conservatives oppose granting legal status to undocumented immigrants. It’s a very simple calculation, and most discussions of the political status of immigration reform could start and end with some variation on that explanation.
But people need something to talk about, and politicians need reasons to go on Sunday shows. Elected officials need to “signal” to important donors and interest groups that they are doing everything in their power to enact the preferred policies of those important donors and interest groups. There is really more incentive for Republicans to talk about immigration reform than to actually pass it. Obviously lots of Republicans do sincerely want immigration reform to pass. But those Republicans don’t have a majority in the House, and until that changes, immigration reform will be practically politically impossible.
Last month, Speaker of the House John Boehner said he was confident that immigration reform could pass this year. That confidence lasted a few weeks. By the end of last week, the GOP had settled on an adequate excuse for declining to pursue their recently announced immigration “list of principles”: They can’t do anything at all because they don’t trust President Obama.
Which, fine. It’s a pretty lame excuse, but Speaker Boehner was not going to say, “I don’t have the clout or the power to unilaterally force a plurality of xenophobes and cowards ensconced in safe white districts to support a major Democratic policy priority.” Republicans were going to blame Democrats no matter what.
The flaw in their excuse, obviously, is that it leaves the GOP open to the line Sen. Chuck Schumer used on Sunday: If Obama is the problem, then Congress can pass a reform bill that won’t go into effect until 2017, when there will be a new president.
“It’s been a tough week for immigration,” he said. “But all three, many of the Republicans have said the following — Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, even Jim DeMint — they have said that they want to do immigration reform, but they don’t trust the President to enforce the law, particularly the enforcement parts. So there’s a simple solution.”
Unfortunately, coming up with a clever workaround to the arbitrarily chosen GOP excuse won’t change the fact that the arbitrarily chosen GOP excuse is only being used to distract from intractable political reality. Addressing the made-up problem won’t fix the actual one. Schumer gets points for “calling Boehner’s bluff,” but Boehner will not now be like, “well, fair point, you got me, now I guess we have to pass this bill.”
Still, it was a fun couple of weeks of once again debating whether immigration reform would pass soon! Perhaps members of Congress play this elaborate game — hyping major legislation, walking it back, calling out one another’s “bluffs” — mainly to keep the political class occupied.
It has become incredibly difficult even to pass the recurring omnibus bills — like the farm bill, which took a few years to make it through the House, and the transportation bill, which will likely cause Congress to melt down in acrimony and dysfunction once again later this fall — that Congress uses to keep the government funded and operating. The idea that new initiatives and major reforms might be possible with this Congress is just fantasy. Comprehensive tax reform? Immigration reform? “Entitlement reform”? Various politicians will claim, over the next few months, that all of those things and more could happen before the next Congress is sworn in. They will be wrong, but the political press, in need of something to talk about, will take the idea seriously for a while anyway.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, February 10, 2014
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