“GOP Lawmakers Hit The Ground Running To The Far-Right”: House Republican Leaders Still Haven’t Mastered The Art Of Vote-Counting
In the weeks immediately following the 2014 midterm elections, there was an enormous amount of talk about the need to avoid “poisoning the well.” The point seemed to be, policymakers should be cautious about picking political fights in order to avoid partisan rancor in the new Congress.
Clearly, those concerns have been thrown out a Capitol Hill window.
House Democrats on Wednesday knocked down a GOP bill that would have delayed a key Wall Street reform known as the Volcker Rule, stunning Republican leaders who had expected it to pass with ease. […]
The bill would have allowed banks to hang onto billions of dollars in risky collateralized loan obligations for two additional years by amending the Volcker Rule, which is part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The rule bans banks from speculating in securities markets with taxpayer funds, requiring them to dump their CLO holdings. A Volcker Rule delay would be a major boon to the nation’s largest banks.
Note, a majority of the House voted for the measure, but because Republican leaders brought the bill up under the suspension calendar, it needed a two-thirds majority to pass. It fell far short.There are a few ways to look at yesterday’s failure. The first, of course, is that House Republican leaders still haven’t mastered the art of vote-counting. The second is that GOP lawmakers clearly remain committed to using their power to do Wall Street’s bidding.
But even putting that aside, let’s not miss the forest for the trees: on only the second day of the new Congress, House Republicans immediately turned their attention to a controversial proposal, backed by financial-industry lobbyists. These guys really aren’t wasting any time.
Indeed, it’s amazing to see just how aggressive the new Republican majority has been since taking its oath of office on Tuesday.
Barring crisis conditions, the start of a new Congress can generally be compared to the start of new school year: folks like to get settled in before tackling a lot of work. On Capitol Hill, some members, especially the freshmen, are still unpacking and learning their way around.
And it’s against this backdrop that House Republicans this week are voting to undermine the Volcker Rule, undermine Social Security, undermine the Affordable Care Act, approve the Keystone pipeline, and impose irresponsible “dynamic scoring” rules – all in the first three days.
It’s one thing when lawmakers furiously try to get stuff done before the end of a Congress – they tend to move quickly when facing an inflexible deadline – but the House GOP majority seems desperate to get this new Congress off to a fast, far-right start, just for the sake of doing so.
What’s more, we’re not even going to touch the newly introduced legislation – including major new abortion restrictions proposed yesterday – which will be considered in the weeks and months to come. I’m just talking about measures on the House floor this opening week.
E.J. Dionne Jr. reminded us this morning, “This will be no ordinary Congress.” Republicans are eager to prove this prediction true.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, January 9, 2014
“The Price Of Steve Scalise’s Silence”: Duke’d Out, The More He Keeps Silent, The More Credibility He Loses As Majority Whip
John Boehner was reelected House Speaker yesterday by his Republican colleagues despite some dissenting members. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, however, has been in a survival struggle since late December, when a brave, young blogger, Lamar White Jr., reported on a 2002 event in which the Congressman met with a white supremacist group formed by David Duke, Louisiana’s most famous closet Nazi.
Scalise quickly called the speech “a mistake I regret,” condemned hate groups and then hid in a cocoon of silence. As Boehner and other House leaders circled the wagons for Scalise, the silence stretched a week over the New Year’s holiday when media lights were low.
But Scalise’s silence made it worse for a Republican Party perennially accused of catering to bigots on the fringe by creating a news vacuum filled by Duke, a media hound wallowing in the newfound attention. Duke’s media appearances raise the stakes for Scalise’s long-term survival. GOP House members–like the proverbial Three Wise Monkeys who resort to see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak no-evil platitudes—waited for it all to go away. Politico has reported that some Republican donors see Scalise as damaged goods.
If so, he has his silence — on top of poor judgment — to blame.
Rep. Cedric Richmond of New Orleans, a black and the lone Democrat in the state’s congregation, did him a huge favor. “I don’t think Steve Scalise has a racist bone in his body,” he said.
If that’s the case, Scalise’s decision as a 37 year old state representative to accept the spring 2002 invitation from two well-known Duke operatives, Kenny Knight and Howie Farrell, to speak at Duke’s European-American Unity and Rights Organization, makes even less sense.
Why did Farrell and Knight want him there? And why did Scalise agree to such a risky venue?
Scalise could have easily said, “Sorry, boys, this one’s too hot.” Or he could’ve given a more deceptive excuse. He knew that a public appearance with Duke could be disastrous.
Duke was a state representative whose neo-Nazi alliances were disgorged in media reports during his run for governor in 1991. (He lost in a landslide to Edwin Edwards.) Duke’s Nazi stigma made him toxic to most politicians. Scalise, 26, saw that.
But after winning 55 percent of the white vote, Duke had a database of supporters some politicians coveted. In 1999, Scalise was in the legislature when the media savaged Gov. Mike Foster over the news that he had paid Duke $150,000 for his supporters list in the 1995 election. Speculation raged that Duke agreed not to run as part of the deal, though it was never proven.
Foster wasn’t prosecuted, either, but the FBI began probing Duke’s fundraising. In the late ‘90s, he spent extensive periods in Europe, giving anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial speeches at neo-fascist venues. The FBI raided his home in 2000 with an affidavit questioning his use of $200,000 from his white supremacist fundraising.
That was news Scalise could not have missed. Scalise never would have spoken to EURO had Duke been there in person.
“Duke was in Russia—for his fourth visit since 1995,” wrote Leonard Zeskind, author of “Blood and Nationalism,” in an article for the Swedish Monitor, on Duke’s travels in the late 1990s. “He spent the next two years traveling across Europe (East and West) and the Arab countries of the Middle East. He established a home base in Italy. In France, Duke had his picture taken with Jean-Marie Le Pen.”
By speaking to EURO, Scalise did a favor to Kenny Knight, a former neighbor who has been falling over himself in the last few days by giving utterly contradictory statements to various media in a buffoon’s carnival of damage control.
Duke meanwhile crowed to the Washington Post that Knight “would keep Scalise up to date on my issues” – all while Steve Scalise kept mum.
The $150,000 Duke got from Foster could not have supported the European lifestyle; the sources of Duke’s money remain a mystery.
Scalise’s speech in 2002 lent some legitimacy to Duke, who spoke that day by video link from Russia. The juxtaposition planted a story of association on websites that touted both men for their talks. It all went unnoticed until the report by White.
Ten months after the speech, in March 2003, Duke came back to Louisiana, pled guilty to federal charges of tax and mail fraud, and agreed to a $10,000 fine for abuses of the nonprofit fundraising that facilitated his travel, including gambling trips to Gulfport and Las Vegas. He also admitted to filing a false income tax statement.
After a year in prison, Duke resumed his travels. In 2006, he spoke at a conference in Iran, maintaining his drumbeat: “The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder.”
Meanwhile, Scalise moved up the ladder.
At a press conference today with Scalise, Speaker Boehner again defended him. Scalise spoke briefly, adding little of substance, saying that the people back home know him best.
“I reject any form of bigotry, bigotry of all kinds. I’ll refer you back to our statement. I think that’s where the story ends,” said Scalise.
But someone who knows Scalise from back home, Urban League President and former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, co-authored a letter to Scalise sent today from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in Washington, and made available to The Daily Beast.
The letter seeks a meeting to discuss a pattern of Scalise’s votes on certain issues, noting that he was one of six state legislators to vote against a Martin Luther King holiday, and did so two years after his EURO appearance. “You apparently took a similar position involving the naming of a U.S. Post Office for Louisiana civil rights icon, the Honorable Lionel Collins,” the letter states, “a pioneering civil rights lawyer and the first African-American judge in Jefferson Parish.”
Who among Scalise’s constituents could possibly care if he supported naming a post office for a black judge who died in 1988?
Kenny Knight for one. And David Duke for another.
As New Orleans Advocate columnist Stephanie Grace recalls from a conversation years ago, Scalise touted himself as David Duke without the baggage.
Now, Duke is Scalise’s baggage.
Duke has jumped into field-day mode, rising to Scalise’s defense on CNN with Michael Smerconish. “I did not contribute to him, he did not contribute to me,” Duke said. He also bragged about earning a PhD, a point Smerconish did not question.
The “doctorate” Duke claims is from an anti-Semitic Ukranian “diploma mill” as described by the State Department.
“What Duke actually got at Ukraine’s Interregional Academy of Personnel Management is a ‘Kandidat Nauk’ degree, which ranks below a full doctorate,” wrote Heidi Beirch in a Southern Poverty Law Center 2009 Intelligence Report. “It was awarded to Duke for a thesis entitled ‘Zionism as a Form of Ethnic Supremacism’ and was the second degree given Duke by the university, which had earlier handed the former Klan boss an honorary degree.”
Duke is cynically making sport of Scalise by expressing his support for him, dropping hints of blackmail by naming other House members he claims to know, should Scalise lose his post.
“Scalise was ambitious to the point of reckless opportunism when it came to catering to Duke and his base,” says Tulane professor emeritus Lawrence Powell, author of “Troubled Memory,” a history of the 1991 election and its impact on a Holocaust survivor in New Orleans.
“If Scalise denounces Duke he may alienate some of his local base. But the more he keeps silent, the more credibility he loses as Majority Whip.”
In his brief appearance today, Scalise never mentioned Duke. Does he fear repercussions for doing so? Or has the see and hear and speak-no-evil stance of the Republican House persuaded him that he is in the clear?
By: Jason Berry, The Daily Beast, January 7, 2015
“GOP Image And Reputation”: Scalise’s Vote Against MLK Day Gains New Relevance
The totality of an official’s record always matters. This week, for example, it would be easier for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) to overcome the controversy surrounding his appearance at a white-supremacist event in 2002 if he had an otherwise sterling record on issues related to civil rights.
That’s not quite the case. Andrew Prokop noted last night:
…Scalise does not have a record of friendliness to African-American causes. When the Louisiana House voted on making Martin Luther King Day a holiday in 2004, 90 members were in favor and Scalise was one of the six against.
Note, as a Republican state lawmaker, Scalise clearly knew the King holiday was going to be approved, but he made a point of voting against it anyway.
To be sure, there are other notable Republicans who rose to national prominence after voting against a day honoring MLK. Former Vice President Dick Cheney (R), for example, voted against the King holiday as a member of Congress in 1978. Five years later, Cheney changed his mind.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also voted against it in 1983, though in 1999, he said on “Meet the Press,” “We all learn, OK? We all learn. I will admit to learning, and I hope that the people that I represent appreciate that, too. I voted in 1983 against the recognition of Martin Luther King…. I regret that vote.”
Scalise, however, voted against the holiday in 2004.
Does this add an unfortunate wrinkle to the Louisiana Republican’s defense? It’s not unreasonable to think it does.
In the larger context, I saw some suggestions overnight that Republican politics is indifferent to racial division, so the Scalise controversy shouldn’t come as a surprise and won’t be consequential. There’s ample evidence to the contrary.
In 2002, for example, Trent Lott’s praise for Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist platform cost him his role as Senate Majority Leader.
Last year, when Rep. Steve King used racially charged rhetoric about Latino immigrants, Speaker Boehner called the right-wing Iowan an “a**hole.”
Earlier this year, the Republican establishment was quite concerned about Chris McDaniel’s Senate campaign in Mississippi in light of McDaniel’s role at a neo-Confederate and pro-secessionist conference.
In other words, the party is concerned about its image and reputation when it comes to race. The question is whether or not Steve Scalise’s controversy is considered a real threat to that reputation.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 30, 2014
“There’s A New Twist This Time”: To GOP Congress, As Usual, It’s Welfare On The Chopping Block
Congress loves to be Scroogey when it comes to helping the poor at Christmastime. Last year, it let an unemployment extension for the long-term jobless expire during the holidays. That was right after food-stamps were cut. This year, a bare-bones welfare program will continue into the New Year without being updated. For some, it’s a mixed blessing: This Congress would likely cut the program even more rather than fix its problems.
In late 2010, Tea Party Republicans first stormed into the House of Representatives with their budget-cutting agenda, one of the first items they nominated for the chopping block was a component of the program once known as welfare.
The program was a $25 billion emergency fund that passed in the stimulus act and encouraged employers to hire low-income workers by subsidizing their salaries through welfare-to-work funds. Throughout 2009 and 2010, it had created 250,000 jobs in 37 states, including conservative states like Mississippi, and was widely popular because it helped bolster employment during the economic downturn.
Despite the program’s popularity, Congress let it die in September 2010. So it was ironic a couple of months later when the Tea Partiers were railing against it—it had already expired.
And that’s how fights over virtually all aspects of the program once known as welfare go. Welfare recipients have had to meet work requirements to receive their checks ever since President Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform law in 1996, and those paychecks are meager: in most states, the average family will receive between $200 and $400, clocking in between 20 and 30 hours of work activities and applying for as many as 20 jobs a week. Yet stereotypes of the program as a large handout to moochers who don’t have jobs remain, and the program is always among the first that the public and conservatives would sacrifice to budget cuts.
And so as the year ends, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, as what we call welfare is officially known, is not being reauthorized again this year. The bill expired way back in 2010. Congress keeps funding it through continuing resolutions, but TANF’s existence has been year-to-year, and supporters of the social safety net have always preferred full reauthorization.
But there’s a new twist: Now, many progressives and policymakers who care about the poor are ironically happy that TANF isn’t being reauthorized again this year. The reason? These folks fear that reauthorizing the bill will hand Republicans who control the house—and as of January, the Senate—the opportunity they’ve been waiting for—to gut it.
The program already operates at a minimum level. In 1997, the first year after the law was passed, state governments spent 70 percent of the funds provided through the program on cash assistance for families. Now they only spend about a quarter of their money by directly helping families, and they send the rest of the money on other welfare-related programs or use it to close holes in their own budgets. Critics noted this led to the program’s lackluster response to the economic crisis. In 2011, only 27 percent of families living in poverty were receiving welfare assistance.
Among the fears are that House Republicans will try to eviscerate funding—which in 2013 totaled about $16.5 billion for the welfare program. The House budget chair, the Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, wants to turn all safety-net programs into a giant block grant to the states—he says it would maintain the programs’ current levels of funding but most experts believe funding would ultimately dwindle and serve fewer families.
Republicans showed their gleeful willingness to go after safety-net programs when they tried to slash food stamps by more than half. And when President Barack Obama attempted to provide waivers to states so that they could be more flexible in how they administered welfare-to-work and do less paperwork for the federal government, Republicans accused him of gutting the work requirements. So not only are Republicans likely to cut funding, but they would also resist any changes that might actually make the program run better.
This is why progressives are just as happy to see TANF not be reauthorized. However, there’s a downside to that. Only eight states have raised the amount of money that families get to keep pace with inflation, which is why so many families in so many states get so little money. Reauthorizing the bill could force states to readjust the formulas they use to determine benefits so that families get more.
The stimulus program that helped low-income Americans find employment during the recession—the one the Republicans were so proud to claim credit for cutting—could be reauthorized as well. While the economy has been inching toward recovery, the long-term unemployed and low-income Americans are still struggling to find good jobs that pay well, and increased welfare funds designed to employ them could bolster the economy again.
There are other programs, including those designed to help states serve their clients better, that have expired or gotten lost in the shuffle. Many advocates want those changed, adjusted, or bolstered, and the only way to do that is to open up the bill and reauthorize it.
Instead, conservatives still view the fact that Americans need help from the government as a disaster, and are more likely to cut benefits than to think about helping them. It was a Republican Congress working with a Democratic president that succeeded in passing the welfare reform bill the first time. But this time around, advocates are too worried Republicans will do something unprecedented, like they did with food stamps—which is try to tear the program completely apart.
By: Monica Potts, The Daily Beast, December 26, 2014
“Another ‘Price’ To Pay”: New Budget Committee Chief; Time For A New Debt-Ceiling Standoff
Almost immediately after the 2014 elections, the conventional wisdom among much of the Beltway media was that power would change Republicans for the better. By taking control of both chambers of Congress, the argument went, GOP lawmakers would have no choice but to become a responsible governing party. They would prove, at long last, that they’re capable of acting like grown-ups.
Just one month later, there’s already ample evidence that those assumptions about Republican maturity were completely wrong.
Republican Tom Price, the incoming House Budget Committee chairman, said his party could demand steep spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling next year, the most provocative comments by a senior GOP member to date on how negotiations could play out.
The Georgia congressman, during an hour-long briefing with reporters Friday, said the expected mid-2015 debate over whether to raise or suspend the debt ceiling offered Republicans an opportunity to make a sizable imprint on government policy.
The far-right Georgian added that he wants to see Republicans bring back the so-called “Boehner rule” – an arbitrary policy that demands a dollar in cuts for every dollar increase in the debt limit – that even Republicans recognized as ridiculous a couple of years ago.
“I prefer to think about it as opportunities and pinch points,” Price said, apparently using “pinch points” as a euphemism for “causing deliberate national harm.”
It’s worth emphasizing that Price isn’t some random, fringe figure, shouting from the sidelines – the Georgia Republican next month will fill Paul Ryan’s shoes as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
In other words, it matters that Price envisions a strategy in which Republicans threaten to hurt Americans on purpose unless Democrats meet the GOP’s demands.
That said, Price would be wise to start lowering expectations – his intention to create a deliberate crisis will almost certainly fail.
The gist of the plan is effectively identical to the scheme hated by House Republicans in 2011. Next year, the Treasury Department will alert Congress to the fact that it’s time to borrow the funds necessary to pay for the things Congress has already bought. As Price sees it, the GOP-led Congress will tell the Obama administration, “We’ll cooperate, but only if you slash public investments. If not, we’ll default on our debts, crash the economy, and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States.”
Why Price or anyone else would want to slash public investments right now – hurting the economy, just as the recovery gains steam – is a bit of a mystery.
Regardless, the problem with this ridiculously dangerous and politically violent scheme is that President Obama has already said he won’t play the GOP’s game. Indeed, earlier this year, Republican leaders suggested they would once again hold the debt ceiling hostage, but the White House called their bluff and refused to pay any ransom.
Soon after, Republicans backed down, and a new precedent was set.
Hostage crises only work when there’s a credible threat. In this case, Democrats have to actually believe that Republicans would do deliberate harm to the country unless Dems paid a ransom. But once Obama realized that GOP leaders had no intention of crashing the economy on purpose, the fear disappeared and the incentive to hold the nation hostage again vanished with it.
On Friday, Tom Price said in effect, “Maybe we can go back to the way things were in 2011?” And the polite response from the Oval Office and sensible adults everywhere will be, simply, “No.”
Let’s not forget that incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently explained, “There will be no government shutdown or default on the national debt.” And with those simple words, it became quite obvious that attempts to exploit the debt ceiling won’t work because Republicans won’t follow through on their threats to harm the hostage.
Someone probably ought to explain all of this to the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 15, 2014
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