“Oh, The Irony!”: Holder Suddenly Enjoys The GOP’s ‘Love’ And ‘Affection’
It was six months ago that Attorney General Eric Holder announced his retirement, though he said he would stay on until President Obama nominated, and the Senate confirmed, his successor at the Justice Department. Given the scope of Republican opposition to Holder – the phrase “unbridled disgust” comes to mind – it seemed likely GOP lawmakers would rush Holder out the door.
Little did we know at the time that Republican senators would prepare to keep the A.G. around indefinitely.
Holder spoke this morning at the Center for American Progress, where he heard a few intentional laughs about his unique professional circumstances.
“There is no place I’d rather be in my closing days as Attorney General than here with you all. Well, at least these should be my closing days.
“Given the Senate’s scheduling and delays in considering Loretta Lynch’s nomination for a vote, it’s almost as if the Republicans in Congress have discovered a new fondness for me! I’m feeling love there that I haven’t felt for some time. Where was all this affection over the last six years?”
To borrow a Homer Simpson line, it’s funny because it’s true.
Six weeks after Holder announced his departure, Obama introduced U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch as his nominee as the nation’s next Attorney General. Republicans, eager to rid themselves of Holder and impressed with Lynch’s sterling credentials and qualifications, seemed to embrace the president’s choice.
It was easy to imagine at the time that the new year would begin with a new Republican-led Congress and a new Attorney General. Instead, for reasons that even they can’t fully explain, GOP lawmakers have found a way to keep Holder in the same position they ostensibly want him to leave.
Remember, Senate Democrats could have tried to rush Lynch through the confirmation process during the lame-duck session late last year – before Dems lost their majority status – but Republicans implored Democrats not to. The power should rest with the incoming majority, GOP senators said.
The outgoing Democratic majority obliged, expecting Republicans to be at least somewhat responsible. After all, there were no substantive objections to Lynch and the GOP was desperate to see Holder go. Republicans had a built-in incentive to act reasonably.
And yet, here we are. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his team have subjected Lynch to the longest delay of any A.G. nominee in history – for reasons they haven’t even tried to explain – and this week, McConnell even broke his word about bringing Lynch’s nomination to the floor for a vote this week.
The irony is under-appreciated: Republicans wanted Holder to step down, and he did. Republicans wanted Obama to nominate an uncontroversial successor, and he did. Republicans wanted Democrats not to vote on Lynch in the lame-duck session, and they obliged.
Months later, the Senate’s GOP majority can’t quite bring itself to do what Republicans say they want to do. In fact, as far as McConnell & Co. are concerned, they hope to defeat Lynch – again, for reasons they’ve struggled to articulate – raising the prospect of Republicans keeping Holder at his current post until January 2017.
Can you really blame the Attorney General for asking facetiously, “Where was all this affection over the last six years?”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 18, 2015
“Republicans Can Kiss Medicare Privatization Goodbye”: GOP Has A Vice Grip On The House, A Much More Tenuous Grasp Of The Senate
For the last four years Republicans have used their small power perch in the House of Representatives to prime members for the day when they’d control the whole government. During each of those years, House Republicans passed a budget calling for vast, contentious reforms to Medicare, Medicaid, and other support programs. Republicans proposed crushing domestic spending to pay for regressive tax cuts and higher military spending, and then went further by laying out specific structural reforms to popular government spending programs.
Today they control the Senate as well, which represents significant progress toward their goal of complete control over the government. But as Republicans inch toward that goal they’re also growing less committed to their ideas.
Senate Republicans will not include detailed plans to overhaul entitlement programs when they unveil their first budget in nearly a decade this week, according to GOP sources… The GOP budget would balance in 10 years, according to GOP lawmakers familiar with the document, but it will only propose savings to be achieved in Medicare and Medicaid, without spelling out specific reforms as Ryan and House Republicans did in recent budgets.
House Republicans can proceed as they have in years past and pass a controversial budget of their own, but based on this report, it looks like the Senate isn’t inclined to reciprocate. The simplest explanation for the commitment gap is that the GOP has a vice grip on the House, but a much more tenuous grasp of the Senate. Leaving Medicare privatization out of the budget is a simple way to make life easier for embattled GOP incumbents in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and elsewhere.
But that basic political calculation speaks to a much bigger structural impediment facing the kinds of policies conservative activists want to see. The farther and farther you zoom out from the gerrymandered districts most House Republicans represent, the more difficult it becomes to build political support for the House Republican budget. At the swing state level it’s very hard. At a national level it’s probably impossible.
Back in 2012, Republicans hoped to skip directly from controlling the House alone to controlling everything. If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan had won, the party would’ve been well prepared to implement the kinds of policies Ryan had trained his foot soldiers in Congress to vote for. Instead, the slower process of expanding majorities has exposed basic weaknesses in their position.
In 2012, Grover Norquist could, with some authority, declare: “We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget…. We just need a president to sign this stuff.”
That line of thinking doesn’t hold up anymore. Can Republican presidential candidates run on privatizing Medicare if Senate candidates down the ballot can’t be seen supporting those kinds of reforms? Could they successfully spring a big entitlement devolution on the public in 2017 if they don’t campaign on it aggressively in 2016? George W. Bush tried that in 2005 and it blew up in his face. There’s no reason to think it wouldn’t play out the same way again.
By; Brian Beutler, The New Republic, March 16, 2015
“Boehner’s Pointless Leadership”: Wasting Everybody’s Time, He Has No One To Blame But Himself
House Speaker John Boehner needs to decide whether he wants to be remembered as an effective leader or a befuddled hack. So far, I’m afraid, it’s the latter.
Boehner’s performance last week was a series of comic pratfalls, culminating Friday in a stinging rebuke from the House Republicans he ostensibly leads. Boehner (R-Ohio) wasn’t asking for much: three weeks of funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which was hours from shutting down. He came away, humiliated, with just seven days’ worth of operating money for the agency charged with keeping Americans safe from terrorist attacks.
By any standard, the whole situation is beyond ridiculous. The government of the world’s leading military and economic power cannot be funded on a week-to-week basis. There’s no earthly excuse for this sorry spectacle — and no one to blame but Boehner.
As everyone knows, the speaker is being stymied by far-right conservatives who insist on using the Homeland Security funding measure as a vehicle to protest President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. And as everyone except those far-right conservatives knows, this is a self-defeating exercise in utter futility. The Senate won’t pass these immigration provisions. The president won’t sign them into law. For the House conservatives, this is not a winnable fight.
Boehner knows this. He also knows that the sprawling government department in charge of airport security, border protection and a host of other vital tasks has to be funded. And he knows that while failing to pass an appropriations bill would impact many Homeland Security functions, the agency charged with implementing Obama’s immigration orders — the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — gets about 95 percent of its funding from application fees, meaning it would be largely unaffected.
Finally, Boehner knows that a clean Homeland Security funding bill without the ridiculous immigration measures would surely pass the House. But he has refused to do his duty and bring such a bill to the floor.
We’re supposed to feel sorry for him. We’re supposed to boo-hoo about the fact that his majority refuses to fall in line — and might even take away his gavel if he dares to face reality. Mr. Speaker, would you please get over yourself?
When Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) held that job, she faced a similar impasse in 2007 over a funding bill for the Iraq War. Pelosi and most Democrats in Congress were, at that point, vocal opponents of the war. However, it was unthinkable to leave the troops without adequate funding. Democrats managed to push through both chambers an appropriations bill that specified a timetable for troop withdrawals. George W. Bush vetoed it.
So Pelosi swallowed hard and did what was necessary. She ended up bringing a funding bill — with no timetables — to the floor, and it was approved with the votes of Republicans and moderate Democrats. Pelosi voted against it, knowing it would pass.
“I am the speaker of the House,” she told reporters that day. “I have to take into account something broader than the majority of the majority of the Democratic caucus.”
When do we hear words like that from Boehner? Never.
He does eventually bow to reality, but not before a lot of pointless brinkmanship that wastes everybody’s time. There are those who argue that standing with the far right in these lost causes somehow strengthens Boehner’s hand as speaker. Really? To me, he seems to be demonstrating, again and again, that every time the children throw a tantrum, they’ll get to stay up all night watching television and eating candy.
Immigration is a matter of principle for conservatives. Everyone gets that. But guess what? It’s also a matter of principle for liberals and moderates. Whose principles triumph depends on arithmetic: Who has the votes to pass a bill or override a veto? In this case, the winner is Obama.
What amazes me is that Boehner had the perfect opportunity to declare victory and get the Homeland Security funding mess behind him. Last month, a federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked Obama’s executive actions on immigration. I think it’s likely that the judge’s order will eventually be reversed. But in the meantime, Boehner could have said, “See, our view about presidential overreach has been vindicated. Now we’ll let the courts take it from here.”
But no. Instead, Boehner knowingly led House Republicans up a blind alley.
One major theme for the Democratic presidential nominee next year, obviously, will be sharp criticism of the GOP-controlled Congress. At this rate, the Republican nominee will be tempted to join in.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 2, 2015
“Talk About A Hot Mess!”: Attempting To Blow Up Hostages Is NOT Governing
Talk about a hot mess! Just try unravelling the lunacy contained in this article by Sarah Mimms. As best as I can understand it, she is suggesting that perhaps Sen. Tom Cotton has come up with a new way for the “conservative firebrands” to blow up hostages in light of the fact that Republican leadership is thwarting their attempts to do so via the legislative process.
Just look at Cotton. His letter criticizing the administration’s attempts to craft a deal with Iran—and his relentless pursuit of signatures from conservative and establishment Republicans—has driven the conversation in the Senate all week and has 2016 candidates clamoring to join his effort. Cotton, with a few mere months under his belt in the upper chamber, arguably holds more power on the issue of Iran right now than Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and, perhaps, even McConnell himself.
Whether he can translate that into legislative victory remains to be seen, but Cotton is creating a model that conservatives hope to follow. But by getting out ahead of the issue, Cotton has forced leadership to include him in the conversation from the start, rather than having to try to outmaneuver the establishment in a floor fight after the fact.
Mimms alludes to previous legislative battles where conservatives tried to shut down the government over funding of Obamacare or deny DHS funding over executive actions on immigration only to eventually be thwarted by Republican leadership’s mastery of the “rules” of the legislature.
But its really not that complicated. Leadership had to amend legislation in a way that attracted enough votes (including Democrats) to actually get passed. That’s called “governing” – something about which those conservative firebrands seem to be completely oblivious.
But this is the paragraph where Mimms really got me scratching my head with a “whuuuu?”
What’s often lost in those fights is that on the biggest issues facing Republicans, conservatives and their leadership are on the same page. The difference is in how and when to fight those battles. If it were possible to gut the Affordable Care Act or overturn Obama’s “executive amnesty,” as conservatives term it, leaders would have done so by now.
She’s right…on most of these issues Republicans are on the same page. But the difference isn’t about “how or when to fight those battles.” It’s that as long as Barack Obama is in the White House and Republicans can’t put together a veto-proof majority to roll back his policies, it can’t be done – not unless you are willing to blow up the hostage. THAT’S the big difference between those she calls “conservatives” and the Republican leadership.
Ever since our founding, politicians have gone to Washington and found it difficult to accomplish their agenda. That’s because our Constitution sets it up that way. Actual governing requires working with the opposition, negotiation and compromise. What Mimms and these conservatives are trying to come up with is a way to avoid all that.
If you are looking for a culprit that could destroy our democracy, you need look no further than those who continue to threaten to blow shit up if they don’t get their way. Sen. Cotton tried to find a new way to do that with the Iranian negotiations. It’s pretty clear by now that he has failed. Rather than cheer him on, those who value our democratic process should be breathing a sigh of relief.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, March 14, 2015
“Republicans Return To Tax Cut Fantasyland”: Every Argument Republicans Have Made In Last 20 Yrs About Taxes Have Been Wrong
One surprising thing about the campaign Mitt Romney ran in 2012 was that cutting taxes, a theme you might have expected from someone of his profile, wasn’t at the center of it. Perhaps wary of getting painted, even more than he already was, as the representative of the rich, Romney proposed a tax cut plan that was, by Republican standards anyway, rather modest. But those were the bad old days—tax-cut fever is back in the GOP, with a vengeance. From Bloomberg’s Richard Rubin:
The campaign for the Republican nomination for president is poised to become a race to the biggest tax cut.
More than a dozen candidates are vying for attention from donors and the party’s base voters, and they aren’t letting the U.S. budget deficit get in their way.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida kicked off the competition with his plan to boost economic growth by slashing taxes on investments, wages and business income. Even the plan’s proponents concede it would reduce tax collections by at least $1.7 trillion in the first decade, largely favoring the top 1 percent of Americans over the middle class.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky says he will propose the biggest tax cut in U.S. history. Rick Perry and Rick Santorum, both considering repeat presidential campaigns, ran on reducing taxes four years ago and would be expected to do so again.
The shrinking deficit—it’s less than half of what it was four years ago—creates an opening for Republicans to return to the tax-cut politics that propelled Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush into the White House.
“It focuses on the right question at the right time, which is: How will we grow more rapidly?” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said of the proposal Rubio released last week with Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Holtz-Eakin acknowledged that the tax cuts require spending reductions to keep the deficit in check.
Holtz-Eakin is not just wrong about that, but wrong in two separate ways. First, how we grow more rapidly is not at all the right question. The question everyone is asking now is how we spread the gains of a growing economy more widely. And second, even if the question were how to grow more, tax cuts would not be the answer.
You have to admire one thing about the Republican perspective on this issue: their unflagging insistence, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, that the best and perhaps only way to affect the economy is by adjusting the tax rate paid by wealthy people. Here’s a quick history review of the last two decades: In 1993, Bill Clinton signed a budget that included tax increases. Republicans unanimously said it would bring a “job-killing recession.” It didn’t; in fact, almost 23 million jobs were created during Clinton’s two terms. Then George W. Bush got elected and signed two rounds of enormous tax cuts. Republicans promised these cuts would super-charge the economy. They didn’t; job growth was weak throughout Bush’s term. Then at the end of 2012, the deal ending the “fiscal cliff” allowed the top income tax rate to revert back to what it had been during the Clinton years. Republicans grumbled that this increase would hamper job growth. That didn’t happen either; in the two years since, the economy has created 5 million jobs.
In other words, the Republicans’ essential theory about upper income taxes—increasing them destroys jobs and smothers growth, while cutting them explodes growth and creates huge numbers of jobs—is not just wrong, but demonstrably, obviously, spectacularly wrong. Yet they keep saying it.
The reason isn’t all that difficult to concern. For conservatives, cutting upper-income taxes isn’t a practical imperative, it’s a moral imperative. It’s just the right thing to do. Taxes are an inherent moral evil, and taxes on those who have proved their industriousness and virtue by being rich are the most profound moral evil of all. This is a very different argument from the practical one, which says that if we cut taxes for the wealthy then good things will happen to everyone as a consequence.
Republicans know that the moral argument has appeal to only a very small number of Americans, mainly those would benefit directly from upper-income tax cuts. So the practical argument is the one they must offer, even if it happens to be utterly false.
So here’s the question they ought to be asked: “Every argument Republicans have made in the last 20 years about taxes has turned out to be wrong. Now you’re saying if we cut upper-income taxes, it will produce terrific growth. Why would that be true now when it hasn’t been true before?”
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, March 13, 2015
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