“Something To Talk About”: The Deep, Real Spending Cuts Already Passed
The prospect of cutting Medicare benefits in a “fiscal cliff” deal has prompted an outcry from concerned liberals. But whether or not legislators actually end up raising the Medicare age or paring back Social Security payments, domestic benefits and services—ranging from veterans’ health care and low-income housing to Head Start programs—are going to get squeezed over the next 10 years.
Last year’s debt-ceiling agreement included $1.5 trillion in cuts to discretionary programs through 10-year spending caps that are already in effect. According to a new analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the domestic programs subject to the spending caps will face a $615 billion shortfall if they keep their benefits and services at 2012 levels. If such, they’ll be forced to scale back unless Congress decides otherwise—and right now, the Republicans want even less money spent on these domestic programs, not more.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’s Richard Kogan breaks down the impact of the new spending caps:
We estimate that, with the funds available under the caps, the federal government will fall about $350 billion short over the next ten years of delivering the same level of benefits and services for NDD programs as it did in 2012. This is because: (1) the costs of a number of key programs, especially VA medical care, are projected to grow substantially, and (2) Congress relied on certain temporary savings measures to meet the 2012 caps that it cannot repeat in the future. Furthermore, it would take an additional $265 billion over the next ten years to account for general population growth, which affects NDD programs ranging from Head Start to home-delivered meals for the elderly. In total, it would require $615 billion above what the caps allow to maintain the same level of benefits and servicesper person as in 2012.
It’s a good reminder of the trade-offs that we have already made in the name of deficit reduction, which have received little attention amid the hand-wringing over the fiscal cliff. And, as Kogan points out, these domestic programs still remain vulnerable to further cutting. House Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) has already proposed $300 billion in further cuts to discretionary programs, though he hasn’t specified how they’d be carried out. And unlike the defense programs that face big cuts, these domestic programs don’t have deep-pocketed industry lobbyists to help shield them.
By: Suzy Khimm, The Washington Post Wonkblog, December 9, 2012
“Leading From Behind”: Could John Boehner Lose The House Speaker’s Gavel?
Think Congress is dysfunctional during these fiscal-cliff negotiations? What if John Boehner can’t even get enough House Republican votes next month to be reelected as speaker?
Far-fetched? Perhaps. But at least one conservative group says Boehner’s hold on the speaker’s gavel should not be viewed as a done deal. It is launching an all-out effort aimed at about 100 House Republicans to see if it can find at least 17 of them angry enough, and bold enough, to block Boehner’s reelection when the new Congress commences on Jan. 3.
“With Boehner basically out there promoting a tax hike and removing conservatives from key committees, these are not good precedents for the next two years,” Ned Ryun, whose father, Jim Ryun, was a representative for Kansas, complained to the National Journal on Thursday.
Ned Ryun is president and CEO of American Majority, a Virginia-based group that says it has trained thousands of conservative activists and also says that it embraces but predates the Tea Party movement. He is getting attention with a blog he posted on Wednesday — not so much because he says Boehner should be fired as speaker, but because he says the conservative movement could actually accomplish that goal under House rules and that it does not have to be a “fairy-tale” wish.
Boehner, whose last two years as speaker already have been mired in grousing from conservative groups, is again being hit this week from the far right over his counteroffer in fiscal-cliff negotiations with the White House to raise $800 billion in revenue by closing special-interest loopholes and tax deductions. Some groups are casting this as his seeming openness to breaking a promise not to raise taxes.
Adding to that anger has been other news this week that the speaker and his House GOP steering committee had purged four conservatives from their coveted committee seats, at least three of whom have been butting heads with party leaders over government spending and the federal deficit. This just weeks after Boehner had pleaded for unity in a private conference call to fellow House Republicans on the day after the Nov. 6 election.
For this anger to result in Boehner losing his speaker’s gavel, explained Ryun to National Journal on Thursday, enough conservative members need to show “some guts” and publicly rebel.
He says his group is looking at a list of about 100 conservatives whom they will try to persuade to step up, go public with their disappointment in Boehner, and show they are willing to take the risks and potential punishment Boehner has already shown he will dish out if such an effort fails.
In fact, there was already some murmuring within the House Republican conference itself about potential maneuvering in the upcoming speaker election as a way to express conservative discontent, say House GOP sources familiar with such talks.
But each of those who spoke — all on the condition they not be identified — also underscored that they’ve seen no concerted effort yet to organize anything beyond some conservatives saying they might simply vote “present” instead of specifically for Boehner. Even doing that would bring potential punishment from top leaders, because the votes are public.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel responded on Thursday by pointing out that the Ohio Republican last month “was honored to be selected by the House Republican Conference to be its candidate for speaker.” In fact, there was only one other candidate nominated in that closed-door process. And the nomination by Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, of former Speaker Newt Gingrich did not even receive a seconding. But there was no actual roll-call vote, and Boehner was selected by acclamation.
For their part, House Democrats reelected Nancy Pelosi as their leader, and also their nominee to be speaker.
Under normal circumstances, Boehner’s reelection as speaker on Jan. 3 should be automatic. House Republicans are set to enter the new Congress holding 234 seats and the Democrats will have 200 seats (one of the House’s total 435 seats is to be vacant with the resignation last month of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois). But the linchpin of the conservative “oust-Boehner” strategy being floated rests on the requirement that to be elected as speaker, a candidate must receive an “absolute majority” of all House member votes cast for individuals.
And as confirmed in the details contained in a Congressional Research Service analysis dated Jan. 6, 2011, titled, “Speakers of the House: Elections, 1913-2011,” a concerted effort by as few as 17 House conservatives could — in fact — throw this normally routine reelection process for Boehner into turmoil.
“Members normally vote for the (speaker) candidate of their own party conference, but may vote for any individual, whether nominated or not,” states the CRS report. “To be elected, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of all the votes cast for individuals. This number may be less than a majority (now 218) of the full membership of the House, because of vacancies, absentees, or members voting “present.”
In short, with Jackson having retired, as few as 17 House Republican members now can deny Boehner an “absolute majority” of the total 434 expected votes on Jan. 3, if all the Democrats back Pelosi.
The CRS report goes on to note that the elected speaker has always been a sitting member of the House, but the Constitution does not require that to be so. As a result, Republicans upset with Boehner aren’t limited to voting for Pelosi, or even another Republican, but almost anyone as a symbolic alternative.
“If no candidate receives the requisite majority, the roll call is repeated until a Speaker is elected.
Since 1913, this procedure has been necessary only in 1923, when nine ballots were required before a speaker was elected, states the report.
On Thursday, one House Republican member, who described himself during the interview as a conservative, said he has not been approached by any colleagues about such a maneuver but has heard discussion about it from other sources. He insisted he would not go along with such a ploy — but he also said that if Boehner were to not be elected on the first ballot, it would be tantamount to a “no confidence vote.” He said that would likely lead to some energetic closed-door conferences to iron out differences, “or even pick a new leader.”
This lawmaker said that in such a scenario, he did not believe either Majority Leader Eric Cantor nor Majority Whip Kevin Smith would be selected by the conference as its new nominee — “because they are all functioning as one team.”
Meanwhile, a senior House Democratic aide appeared to relish such talk, saying it indicates Boehner’s leadership team “is going to have to work their butts off and call in every chit to make sure he wins what should normally be just a boring vote.”
“If Speaker Boehner wants to purge independent, bold conservatives — I think it’s time he gets fired as speaker,” blogged Ryun. “Not only for the purge. He has failed to effectively win negotiations with President Obama and appointed moderate committee chairs. To the public, Boehner may appear radical, but in reality he proposes milquetoast policies, like the tax hikes he proposed this week.”
By: Billy House, The Atlantic, December 6, 2012
“Incrediably Stupid Joe Walsh”: Life Of The Mother Is Never A Reason For Abortion
During a televised debate Thursday on Chicago’s WTTW, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) reiterated his opposition to abortion in any circumstance. It’s similar to the Republican Party’s national platform, which doesn’t have any exceptions for abortion in the case of rape or incest. Walsh is taking it a step further — banning abortion to save the life of the mother.
“I’m pro life without exception. Understand though, that when we talk about exceptions, we talk about rape, incest, health of a woman, life of a woman. Life of the woman is not an exception,” he said.
Tammy Duckworth, Walsh’s Democratic opponent in Illinois’ 8th congressional district race immediately denounced Walsh, saying the incumbent congressman would let a woman die rather than permit her access to abortion. Walsh contradicted her, saying she was unfair.
Walsh didn’t have time to explain his stance more fully during the event, and reporters questioned him afterward. CNN says Walsh claimed “there’s no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing, with advances in science and technology. Health of the mother has been, has become a tool for abortions any time under any reason.”
When questioned by WGN radio, Walsh seemed to indicate that women no longer face life threatening pregnancies: “Absolutely. With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance.”
Walsh’s biological knowledge of women’s reproductive health is off, notes the Huffington Post, which points to statistics from the National Institutes of Health. One risk women may face during pregnancy is a life threatening ectopic pregnancy; this occurs when a fetus forms outside the uterus. The fetus cannot survive. The NIH estimates an ectopic pregnancy can “occur in 1 in every 40 to 1 in every 100 pregnancies”.
Walsh’s statement is reminiscent of controversial Missouri Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). Earlier this year, Akin triggered an uproar by remarking that women can’t get pregnant if they’re raped. He said, “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”. Akin later apologized, saying he “misspoke” by failing to communicate the empathy he has for rape and abuse victims.
Update at 1:41 p.m. ET. Pregnancy Not ‘Risk-Free Life Event’:
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement about this issue a short while ago. They say Walsh’s comments are simply not accurate. Pregnancy, they say, is “not a risk-free life event.”
The statement continues:
“Despite all of our medical advances, more than 600 women die each year from pregnancy and childbirth-related reasons right here in the US. In fact, many more women would die each year if they did not have access to abortion to protect their health or to save their lives.”
These inaccurate comments are yet another reason why The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ (The College) message to politicians is unequivocal: Get out of our exam rooms.”
By: Korva Coleman, NPR, October 19, 2012
“The Rise Of The Super Rich”: GOP Congress Really Does Make The Rich Richer
Are you rich and want to get richer? Vote Republican! The stronger the GOP is in Congress, the larger the share of wealth the top 1 percent controls, according to a new study in the October issue of American Sociological Review, which confirms what we figured all along — there’s a direct connection between the rightward shift of Congress and the upward advance of the richest Americans’ net worths.
From 1949 through 2008, the impact of a 1 percentage point increase in the share of seats held by Republicans in the House (a little over five seats) raised the top 1 percent’s income share by about .08 percentage points.
“At first glance, this might seem negligible,” said Thomas Volscho, a sociologist at CUNY-College of Staten Island who co-authored the study. But it’s not. “Given that the estimated national income in 2008 was more than $7.8 trillion, an increase of only 1 percent in Republican seat share would raise the income of the top 1 percent by nearly $6.6 billion. That equates to about $6,600 per family in the top 1 percent.”
The ASR study, “The Rise of the Super-Rich,” looks at the experience of the 1 percent from just after World War II to 2008 and identifies several other factors that have propelled the top tier’s rise. The fact that the uber wealthy have gotten richer much faster than lower-income brackets has been well documented and helped spark the Occupy movement, but this research looks at the role that policy and other variables have played.
Beyond politics, Volscho and Kelly found that the decline of private-sector union membership, and the increasing financializing of the economy — which has heightened the impact of financial-asset bubbles — were also key contributors to income inequality and the rise of the 1 percent. Over the 60 years the paper studied, a 1 percentage point decrease in union membership among private sector workers was linked to a more than 0.4 percentage point increase in the income share of the super-rich.
But the most surprising finding of the study may be the impact a GOP Congress has on income inequality. “Based on our analysis, Democrats appear to favor an economic system that produces more egalitarian outcomes even before any redistribution occurs,” the study concludes. “In essence, the market is not completely beyond the influence of politics and policy, and it is not just in the realm of explicit redistribution that political parties produce divergent distributional outcomes. Political decisions in part ‘make the market.”
Interestingly, the party affiliation of the president did not significantly impact the wealth share of the top 1 percent. Volscho told Salon he was surprised by that finding. Instead, it’s Congress that has the bigger impact. “It was surprising, but not. Because if you look at, in 1995, the Republican takeover over Congress, that’s when you started to see the spike in the top 1 percent,” he said. “They had been doing well since around 1980, but not as well as around 1995. And the stock market boom started in 1995 as well, but we took that into consideration and that had an independent effect.”
The study doesn’t get into specific policies that impact income inequality much, calling for further research on the subject, but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to make some pretty good guesses. Republicans (with help from Democrats, no doubt) have pushed tax cuts that disproportionately impact the wealthy, opposed redistributive programs, decreased financial regulation, which allowed for the explosion of financial speculation, cut education funding, etc. “There are so many things, appointments, heads of agencies, mundane policies and regulations that filter down from Congress into government agencies that potentially can aid the very rich,” Volscho said.
But a Republican president like Mitt Romney could help in that they would “make that pro-1 percent legislation flow through so much quicker,” Volscho said. Of course, this isn’t too surprising — polls consistently show that Americans think Romney and the GOP would do more to help the wealthy. Now social science shows they’re right!
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, October 2, 2012
“Michele Bachmann In Danger”: The Voters May Just Pray Her Away
Despite her national fan base and a massive war chest, Rep. Michele Bachmann may be in more danger than most suspect, with a new poll showing her lead diminished to just 2 points. Independent voters have swung against her by nearly 20 points in just two months, from a 4 percent advantage to a 15 point disadvantage. The internal poll, conducted by Democratic pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner at the behest of Democrat Jim Graves’ campaign and shared with Salon, shows that Bachmann’s favorability rating has tumbled since their last survey in mid-June, and finds Graves gaining ground with independents as his name recognition grows.
Overall, the poll shows Bachmann leading Graves 48-46 percent, within the margin of error. The race has moved significantly among independents, with a 20-point net shift toward Graves, from a 41-45 percent disadvantage in June to a 52-37 percent lead now. Among independents, Bachmann’s favorability rating has slipped 4 points while her unfavorability rating has jumped 7 points. Overall, she’s viewed mostly negatively. Among all voters, 40 percent give her a positive job rating, while a sizable 57 percent give her a negative one, with a plurality of 35 percent giving the most negative answer possible — “poor.”
Graves’ campaign manager (and son) Adam Graves told Salon that the numbers show his candidate is well positioned to beat Bachmann. “Obviously, we’re very excited about it. The first thing that’s notable is that obviously her recent comments, the stories that she’s created for herself, have really hurt her among folks in the middle,” he said. Bachmann, who had tried to keep a lower profile after aborting her presidential bid, grabbed headlines this summer for her implication that Muslims in the U.S. government may be secret agents of the Muslim Brotherhood.
As we argued last month, Graves has the best shot at beating Bachmann of any Democrat since the congresswoman was first elected in 2006, thanks in large part to the absence of a third-party candidate. In previous races, those candidates have captured as much as 10 percent of the vote, siphoning votes away from the challenger. While some observers were skeptical that much of that 10 percent would break toward a Democrat, the Graves campaign said the new poll shows clearly that that fear has not materialized, as independents are moving toward its candidate.
The poll also show that Graves’ name ID in the district has jumped 20 points, though he’s still largely unknown at 38 percent. Meanwhile, Bachmann is known by 99 percent of voters. That will make it harder for Bachmann to change people’s perceptions about her, while Graves should be able to influence people who do not yet have an opinion of him. “If every time we pick up 20 percent on voter ID, we pick up 20 percent of the independents, then by the time we’ve reached a place where we’re happy with 80 percent ID or whatever, we realize that we’re going to be in a position to win,” Adam Graves said. ”This race is neck-and-neck.”
There’s been no other public polling of the district, though it’s reasonable to assume that the Bachmann campaign has commissioned its own surveys. The fact that none have been released suggests that Bachmann’s numbers also do not bode well for her. Meanwhile, she underperformed in her Republican primary last month.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, September 10, 2012
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