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“Worse Than Patriots In Arms”: A Patriot Or A Profiteer, But You Can’t Be Both

This week, the three military contractors that do the most business with the Pentagon announced their quarterly profits for 2012. Their profits continue to grow while they push Washington, D.C. to protect their budgets at the expense of the rest of us.

Here’s the breakdown so far for this year:

This week’s announcement raises a fundamental question: Should people and companies be allowed to make huge profits from war? Even raising this question in today’s environment may seem trite, but we used to have different answers than those that prevail in modern-day Washington, D.C.

“I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt, May 22, 1940.

“Worse than traitors in arms are the men who pretend loyalty to the flag, feast and fatten on the misfortunes of the Nation while patriotic blood is crimsoning the plains of the South and their countrymen mouldering the dust.” –President Abraham Lincoln.

This last quote is particularly relevant to this week’s profit announcements. Lincoln referred to war profiteers making money by cheating the Union Army. Outrage at war profiteering during this period led to the passage of “Lincoln’s Law,” officially known as the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act is the very same law that two of the companies listed above, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, violated through price-fixing and double-billing the taxpayer, leading to their having to pay roughly $20 million in the first quarter of 2012 to settle suits brought by the U.S. government.

During Roosevelt’s time, the idea of a single contractor company making almost a billion dollars worth of profit in three months would have received short shrift. As Roosevelt’s quote above shows, the idea of people profiting from war’s “disaster” disgusted him, and during his presidency the Truman Committee relentlessly investigated and exposed war profiteers. The closest analogy in our time would be the Committee on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which found that up to $60 billion (as of September 2011) was lost to waste and fraud in military contracting in those conflicts.

And yet, despite this historical lack of patience for war profiteering, and despite the current record showing gross misconduct and waste, the U.S. government keeps shoveling taxpayer money at these huge corporations. Could it be that the $5 million in campaign donations and $32 million in lobbying dollars so far this election cycle from the military contractors keep Congress intentionally ignorant of the problem?

President George Washington knew a few things about war profiteers, and he didn’t mince words:

“There is such a thirst for gain [among military suppliers]…that it is enough to make one curse their own Species, for possessing so little virtue and patriotism.”

As long as we continue to allow the profit motive to play a role in America’s war, virtue and patriotism–to say nothing of peace–will continue to be in short supply.

 

By: Robert Greenwald, Co-Authored by Derrick Crowe, AlterNet, April 27, 2012

April 28, 2012 Posted by | Congress | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Minority Defeats The Majority”, Again: The Media Needs To Tell Readers The Truth About GOP Filibustering

The death-by-filibuster of the Buffett Rule in the Senate yesterday revealed, among other things, that the news media still has a ways to go in learning how to report on the era of the 60-vote Senate.

Most Americans, not surprisingly, do not realize that majorities can no longer get their way in the Senate. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that most key votes in the Senate were based on simple majority voting. Only since 1993 has constant filibustering been common, and only in 2009 did Republicans create a situation in which virtually everything requires a supermajority. Reporting in these circumstances is a bit tricky, but if you are going to tell the full story of a bill killed by filibuster, you need to report not just the outcome — a bill lost — but that majority sentiment was thwarted by a minority.

So, how did the major papers do yesterday? Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post had the word “filibuster” in their on-line front page headlines or teasers. The Post story does get the “F” word into her second paragraph, which is good. The Times story merely refers to the 60 votes the Democrats “needed” to pass the bill, without mentioning that the 60 votes were “needed” to break a GOP filibuster until way down in the eighth paragraph. Politico called it a “filibuster” in the second graf. But none of the three stories said explicitly that a minority of Senators defeated a majority.

CNN’s web story was particularly awful, reporting simply that “the Democrats fell nine votes short.” There was no mention of a filibuster, or that the “nine votes short” added up a 51 vote majority — so no one reading the story could deduce that a majority of the Senate favored the policy. The Los Angeles Times, in a broader story, also claimed that the Buffett Rule was blocked by “Republican-led opposition,” whatever that means. Again, no mention at all of a filibuster, or which way the majority voted.

None of this is good enough. Whether one supports the filibuster, opposes it, or (as I do) hopes for a middle course, it’s simply not informative enough to just say that something was “blocked” without explaining that it was blocked by a minority of Senators who deployed a filibuster.

The decision of the Republican minority to create the 60 vote Senate — and the willingness of the Democratic majority to go along with it — remains perhaps the most important single structural fact of Congressional procedure. It has been at least as important as any other factor in shaping Obama’s legislative agenda. And news organizations still aren’t telling readers and viewers the full truth about what’s happening.

 

By: Jonathan Bernstein, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, April 17, 2012

 

 

 

 

April 21, 2012 Posted by | Congress | , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

“Under The Money Tree”: Corporations Aren’t The Only Ones Benefiting From Low Corporate Taxes

If you are Exxon Mobil, Verizon or General Electric, chances are filing taxes over the past few years has been significantly less painful than for the average American.

And Sunlight Foundation senior fellow Lee Drutman says that’s because everyday Americans don’t have lobbyists on the hill fighting for them.

“If you think you wound up paying too much in taxes this year, maybe you ought to hire a lobbyist or two or 20,” Drutman writes in a recent report. A Sunlight Foundation study shows that of the country’s 200 largest corporations, the eight companies that dished out the most money for lobbying on Capitol Hill between 2007 and 2010 saw major savings in corporate taxes. Six of the companies even saw a more than 7 percent drop in their tax rate over the years.

AT&T for example, a company that spent more than $70 million on federal lobbying saw a 40.4 percent decrease in their rate, a more than $7 billion savings on corporate taxes. Northrop Grumman’s tax rate also decreased from nearly 33 percent to just over 20 percent after they doled out $57 million for lobbyists to pitch their causes on Capitol Hill.

All together the “Big Eight” paid $540 million for federal lobbying and saved over $11 billion in taxes. Drutman estimates the return on investment to be roughly 2,000 percent.

With all of the changes in tax code, it’s easy to see how companies can save so much in just a few years.

“In 2005, the President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform counted approximately 15,000 separate changes to the tax code since 1986,” Drutman said.

And the CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter, the country’s written tax code document, has more than doubled from 33,000 pages in the mid-1980s to more than 72,000 pages today.

However, corporations are not the only ones benefiting from low corporate taxes.

Drutman says that congressmen who sit on the House Ways and Means Committee, the congressional arm in control of tax regulation, receive about $250,000 more in fundraising contributions than their fellow lawmakers.

“Being on Ways and Means is like having Christmas every day,” says Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University and expert on influence in politics. “They barely have to raise any money. It rains down upon them. They are standing under the money tree.”

 

By: Lauren Fox, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World report, April 17, 2012

April 18, 2012 Posted by | Congress | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Bringing Back The Grease”: House Republicans Discuss Reviving Earmarks

The huge federal transportation bill was in tatters in early March when Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama posed a heretical idea for breaking through gridlock in the House.

In a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans, Rogers recommended reviving a proven legislative sweetener that became politically toxic a year ago.

Bring back earmarks, Rogers, who was first elected to Congress in 2002, told his colleagues.

Few members of Congress have been bold enough to use the “e” word since both the House and Senate temporarily banned the practice last year after public outcries about Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” and other pork barrel projects.

But as lawmakers wrestle with legislative paralysis, there are signs that earmarks – special interest projects that used to be tacked onto major bills – could make a comeback.

“I just got up … and did it because I was mad because they were talking about how we can’t get 218 votes,” Rogers told Reuters, referring to the minimum of 218 votes needed to pass legislation in the 435-member House.

“There was a lot of applause when I made my comments. I had a few freshmen boo me, but that’s okay. By and large it was very well embraced,” he added.

New Republican members backed by the Tea Party movement have railed against earmarks as a symbol of out-of-control government spending and unaccountable lawmakers.

Congress has another nine months to operate under an earmark ban, so discussions on lifting the ban are in their early stages, members and aides say.

But on the House side, where a splintered Republican majority is struggling to muster enough votes to pass bills, second thoughts about the earmark ban are “pretty pervasive,” said a senior aide.

Rogers’ remarks in the closed caucus meeting in early March were echoed by two other Republican lawmakers, Representatives Louie Gohmert and Kay Granger, according to some at the meeting.

House Speaker John Boehner, who pushed for the earmark ban, is considering forming a committee to study earmarks reforms, according to Rogers. Other sources also said that during the closed meeting, the speaker said he would consider reforms, and other leading Republicans did not shoot down the idea.

Boehner has acknowledged that the ban makes his job more difficult. In past years, one reason the sprawling transportation bill could move through Congress with bipartisan support was because thousands of lawmakers’ pet projects were tacked onto the bill, he has said.

But reviving earmarks is still so controversial that Boehner and other leaders are unlikely to publicly discuss it in an election year in which pork barrel spending is still under attack. The discussions so far appear to be among Republicans.

“The House did the right thing in instituting an earmark ban, and the American people strongly support it,” a Boehner spokesman said in response to questions.

In the Senate, Thad Cochran, the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee – an earmark gateway in the old days – told Reuters: “At some point there will surely be conversations about alternatives” to the earmark ban. He was quick to add that he has not tried to initiate the conversation.

Democrats agreed to banning earmarks after suffering big defeats in 2010 congressional elections and after President Barack Obama warned he would veto bills containing them.

But like Republicans, Democrats have differing views on keeping the ban. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is on record defending earmarks, saying elected representatives are more in touch with local needs than executive branch bureaucrats.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan budget watchdog group, said discussions about reviving earmarks suggest the desperation of a Congress in which stalled legislation is now routine.

The difficulties in passing bills are leading lawmakers to conclude the only answer is to “bring the political grease back into the system,” Ellis said.

BRING BACK THE GREASE

Political analysts have long referred to earmarks, or “member-directed funding” as it is sometimes known, as the grease enabling legislation to move through Congress.

Republican Representative Steven LaTourette, an 18-year House veteran, said the earmark ban “has affected discipline” within the party. “You can’t get 218 votes (out of 242 Republican House members) and part of that has to be if you can’t give people anything (earmarks), you can’t take anything away from them.”

If a member of Congress agrees with 90 percent of a pending bill but is “uncomfortable” with the other 10 percent, “Sometimes taking care of your district (with earmarks) made up for that 10 percent,” he said.

Some believe earmarks got a bad rap.

Public outrage focused on projects like the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere” connecting the Alaskan mainland with an isolated island, or a teapot museum in North Carolina.

Other earmarks have funded crucial projects, proponents say. One example is the “Predator” drone, the unmanned military aircraft used in Afghanistan and other hot-spots to target militants without jeopardizing U.S. soldiers’ lives, that came from a lawmaker’s request.

Both sides in the debate agree that before earmarks resurface, reforms are essential.

Earmarking was long controversial because many of the projects showed up in the fine print of legislation without warning and with little or no public debate.

Congressman Gohmert believes the solution is rules to keep spending on specific companies and projects from being “air dropped” into bills without oversight.

“We can be specific without having it be crony capitalism, monuments to me, bridges to nowhere,” Gohmert said.

Others propose limiting earmarks so that they only go to local or state government-backed projects or universities. And reforms should also break the links between campaign contributions and earmarked projects, members say.

In pitching earmarks, Gohmert and other Republican lawmakers and aides lament that the ban has been a boon to Democratic President Barack Obama, whose administration can still dole out projects as it sees fit.

“I think there’s a way that it can be done that we take back the purse strings that the Constitution gives us without just handing sacks of money to the president,” Gohmert said.

But even if momentum grows for an earmark revival, some members are unlikely to join in.

Representative Jim Jordan, who heads a conservative coalition in the House, told Reuters: “My read is that the ban on earmarks is where it needs to be.”

And Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican who wants a permanent ban, said earmarks should not be a tool for buying votes on important bills.

Pork barrel spending was “the bane of the American taxpayers’ existence.” he said.

 

By: Richard Cowan, Reuters, March 30, 2012

April 1, 2012 Posted by | Congress | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Openly And Repeatedly Mocked”: What The Supreme Court Thinks Of Congress

The Supreme Court spent the first part of the morning debating the “severability” question, and as Lyle Denniston reported, we learned a bit from the proceedings — most notably what the justices think of Congress.

The Supreme Court spent 91 minutes Wednesday operating on the assumption that it would strike down the key feature of the new health care law, but may have convinced itself in the end not to do that because of just how hard it would be to decide what to do after that.

A common reaction, across the bench, was that the Justices themselves did not want the onerous task of going through the remainder of the entire 2,700 pages of the law and deciding what to keep and what to throw out, and most seemed to think that should be left to Congress. They could not come together, however, on just what task they would send across the street for the lawmakers to perform. The net effect may well have shored up support for the individual insurance mandate itself.

Of particular interest was the justices’ opinions of Congress — it turns out, American voters aren’t the only ones who hold lawmakers in low regard — which was characterized as an institution incapable of creating a new health care law. Denniston added, “Scalia noted the problems in the filibuster-prone Senate. Kennedy wondered whether expecting Congress to perform was a reference to “the real Congress or the hypothetical Congress.”

I’d also note that Kagan complained at one point about “the complex parliamentary shenanigans that go on across the street.”

How dysfunctional is Congress? The legislative branch is now being openly and repeatedly mocked by Supreme Court justices during oral arguments — eliciting laughter from those in attendance.

Congress, they were laughing at you, not with you.

 

By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 28, 2012

March 30, 2012 Posted by | Congress, Supreme Court | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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