“A Bridge Too Far”: GOP Sees Background Checks As Too Much Paperwork
Before the Senate left for their spring recess, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made clear what he and his party expect of legislation to reduce gun violence. While he said several key provisions are negotiable, “[I]n order to be effective, any bill that passes the Senate must include background checks.”
At least on the surface, it would seem to be the most difficult provision to oppose. Expanded background checks enjoy extraordinary levels of public support, even among gun owners, and there are no constitutional concerns to speak of. Critics of the idea have generally been reduced to making up nonsense and conspiracy theories, unable to think of any substantive arguments.
It would seem, then, that expanded background checks would be the kind of measure that might actually pass. And yet, on the Sunday shows, Republican senators rejected the popular idea out of hand.
In this clip, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said closing the gun-show loophole is “a bridge too far” for most Senate Republicans. He added that the “paperwork requirements alone would be significant.”
The nation would like to reduce mass murders, but for some federal lawmakers, “paperwork requirements” have to take precedence?
Similarly, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was asked whether expanded background checks can survive in the Senate. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think it makes any sense. The current system is broken. Fix the current system.”
By “fix the current system,” Graham apparently envisions efforts to improve the existing background database while enforcing the law more diligently — that might be possible if Senate Republicans weren’t also blocking ATF from functioning effectively — all while leaving the massive gun-show loophole in place, on purpose.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 1, 2013
“Shifting Tectonics On Guns”: It’s No Longer The Simple Question Of Doing What’s Right Versus Doing What’s Expedient
As the Senate moves towards a vote on Harry Reid’s gun violence package, which now (after the excision of a renewed assault gun ban and high-capacity ammo clip restrictions) centers on a quasi-universal background check system for gun sales, there are a lot of shifting techtonics to keep in mind:
First, public opinion remains overwhelmingly in favor of universal background checks across just about every subset of the population. The opposition may be noisy and influential, and benefits from the perception that this is a “voting issue” only for opponents, but this is at present not a close call in terms of where the public stands.
Second, the near-unanimity of public opinion probably reflects the ironic fact that for many years a stronger background check system was the default-drive alternative offered by the NRA to every other gun measure. Yes, the gun lobby has been fighting to protect the “gun show loophole” to background checks for some time, and has quietly worked to undermine the system as it exists, but it’s still difficult for Lapierre and company to pretend it represents a deadly threat to the Second Amendment.
Third, we are in a period where the once-powerful force of red-state Democratic reluctance to make waves on “cultural issues” is waning. There are fewer red-state Dems to worry about, for one thing. For another, voter polarization and reduced ticket-splitting have made the route to survival for red- (and more often, purple-) state Democrats depend more on base mobilization than has been the case in the past.
This last factor remains important in the 60-vote Senate, however. Plum Line’s Greg Sargent runs the numbers this morning, and identifies five Democrats and three Republicans who are being cross-pressured by the usual NRA threats–but also by Michael Bloomberg’s lavishly funded upcoming ad campaign pushing back.
How individual senators, the two parties, and the White House calculate all these factors will largely determine what happens after the Easter Recess. But in this installment of the Gun Wars, it’s no longer quite the simple question of doing what’s right versus doing what’s expedient that it used to be.
By: Ed Kilgore, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 25, 2013
“A Disturbing Sign”: Why Are Some Leading Dems Getting Soft On An Assault Weapons Ban?
In the wake of the horrific mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, support for re-banning assault weapons grew exponentially inside and outside of the Beltway. It’s only natural when an AR-15 is used to slaughter twenty schoolchildren and six educators, only months after another was used to shoot seventy-one people inside a movie theater.
Yesterday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel—seen as recently as 2006 recruiting pro-gun Democrats to run in House races—said that Newtown was a “tipping point, a galvanization for action.” He’s now calling for an assault weapons ban, expanded background checks, and is ordering Chicago municipal pension funds to divest from all gun manufacturers.
Indeed, it was a tipping point. Five days after the shootings, President Obama stood in the White House briefing room and explicitly called for another assault weapons ban, and Vice President Joe Biden is expected to recommend one this week. Senator Dianne Feinstein announced she’d introduce a strong bill in the Senate, and all the pieces looked to be in place.
But in the past twenty-four hours, there have been disturbing signs of pre-emptive surrender by key Democrats on the assault weapons ban.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told a PBS affiliate in Las Vegas that he didn’t think the assault weapons ban could pass the House, and thus he wanted would “focus” on what could. His comments echoed many pro-gun talking points about Hollywood and violent video games, and Reid openly tried to throw cold water on the gun-control movement:
“We have too much violence in our society, and it’s not just from guns. It’s from a lot of stuff. And I think we should take a look at TV, movies, video games and weapons. And I hope that everyone will just be careful and cautious. […]
“Let’s just look at everything. I don’t think we need to point to anything now,” he said. “We need to be very cool and cautious. […]
“I think that the American people want us to be very cautious what we do. I think they want us to do things that are logical, smart, and make the country safer, not just be doing things that get a headline in a newspaper.”
On Monday, Representative Mike Thompson—appointed by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to head the House’s gun violence prevention task force—also signaled surrender on the assault weapons ban, according to Politico:
Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Democrats’ gun violence task force, said the magazine ban and universal registration requirement would be far more effective than an assault weapons ban without the political cost.
“Probably the most recognizable thing you can say in this debate is ban assault weapons,” Thompson said. “But the other two issues” – forbidding high-capacity ammunition magazines and requiring universal registration for gun purchases – “those two things have more impact on making our neighborhoods safe than everything else combined. Anytime you try and prohibit what kind of gun people has it generates some concern.”
It’s not that Reid and Thompson are necessarily wrong in their political calculus—maybe an assault weapons ban can’t pass the House.
But publicly dooming the effort before it starts is self-enforcing, and repeats a Democratic proclivity that has frustrated progressives to no end: heading into negotiations and votes with a pre-compromised position.
Americans favor an assault weapons ban 58-39, according to an ABC/Washington Post poll released Monday. The president is about to stick his neck out and propose it, and then push for it in the weeks to come. Moreover, as Thompson and Reid both correctly noted, it’s the headline-grabbing issue here: rampages with assault weapons are what is driving the momentum on gun control.
Democrats would naturally be wise to push forward aggressively on the ban, as they have mostly done up to this point. If they fail, they fail. At least they’d likely be able to wrest more concessions from the GOP on background checks and high-capacity magazine bans during the legislative battle, and potentially force Republicans into a difficult vote where they would effectively be supporting military style weapons on the street.
Yet, it appears Reid and Thompson—absolutely key figures in the legislative battles in the Senate and House respectively—want to drop the assault weapons ban from the legislative agenda. It’s not yet clear that they will, but even signaling a lack of confidence is damaging to both the legislative prospects for meaningful gun control, and for public attitudes and activist motivation. And it’s not the debate demanded by what happened in Newtown.
By: George Zornick, The Nation, January 15, 2013
“What’s A Speaker To Do”: Will The John Boehner-Eric Cantor Rift Blow Up The Fiscal Cliff Deal?
Here is how it was supposed to go –
After failing to get a fiscal cliff deal with the President through his own efforts, Speaker John Boehner turned the entire mess over to the Senate, promising that if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could put together a deal with the White House and Senate Democrats that could nail down a decisive amount of support from both parties, he would put such a bill to a vote before the entire House of Representatives.
With a vote of 89-8 in the Senate, clearly a decisive, non-partisan agreement was achieved meaning the bill produced would get an up or down vote on the floor of the House.
However, in the Speaker’s latest in a long line of political miscalculations, Boehner didn’t figure on Eric Cantor choosing this moment to stab him in the back.
Despite Boehner’s promise, it now appears that the GOP House caucus—led by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor—will force Boehner to break his promise by demanding that any bill put to a full vote of the House of Representatives include amendments to the Senate passed legislation. Should such an amended version pass, the bill would be sent back to the Senate where the amended legislation would have to be adopted by noon on Thursday. After that time, this Congress will have come to an end and all outstanding bills will die.
Not only would it be difficult to reassemble all of the Senators in time to deal with this—as they’ve all scattered to the winds in the belief that their work was done—anyone who knows Majority Leader Harry Reid knows that there is little chance that he would accede to the efforts of the House GOP to scuttle his deal.
How did Boehner not see this coming? Where is all that political acumen one is supposed to have when rising to the level of the Speaker of the House?
This is the same John Boehner who, just days ago, could have closed a deal on “Plan A”—a deal with the President that would have placed the threshold for tax increases at $400,000 (just $50,000 less than what was negotiated by Senate Minority Leader McConnell), delivered some $800 billion in spending cuts and very likely could have gotten into the package the chained CPI that would have lowered Social Security benefits, accomplishing a big entitlement win for Republicans.
Instead of just saying yes, Boehner elected to move forward with his Plan B option, calling for a tax increase on only those who earn in excess of one million dollars a year. The Speaker ended up with a big, fat goose egg when he was unable to gain the support of a majority of House Republicans to bring the measure to a full vote.
As a result of his political fumbling, rather than getting a “Plan A” that would have delivered dramatically more of what the Speaker wanted than what the Senate compromise ultimately provided, Boehner now finds himself fighting Rep. Cantor—ostensibly Boehner’s “number two”—just to be permitted to make good on his promise to bring the Senate version to the floor for an up or down vote—and it appears, at this point, that the Speaker is losing that fight.
So, what is a Speaker to do?
Assuming that the objection to the Senate bill in the GOP caucus is such that there are enough votes to require Boehner to bring the amended version to the floor (a majority of his conference if Boehner is to honor the Hassert Rule requiring that he only take bills to the floor that a “majority of the majority” support) , and knowing that the amended version would likely mean killing the deal and casting the country over the fiscal cliff, Boehner could seek enough of his own party members to join with Democrats in voting against the amended version, effectively stymying his own party’s efforts to pass an amended version of the bill.
Were such a measure to go down to defeat, Boehner could then put the original Senate bill to a vote and likely push it through with Democrats and Republicans voting in favor.
Should Boehner do this, it could very well come at the price of his Speakership which, given his poor display of political savvy these past few weeks, might be an appropriate result.
What is the moral to this story?
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives is supposed to be able to see the political ramifications of his or her actions and is expected to be able to explain these ramifications to members of his caucus who are less adept at seeing the consequences of their own actions—and we all know who I’m talking about.
Boehner’s failure to see what was coming and his total inability to make sure that the extremist wing of his GOP conference understood what was likely to happen, is an exercise in political malpractice. He should have taken the Plan A deal when he had the chance.
If the Senate bill is rejected by the House Republican caucus, and the cliff deal is allowed to die, you can forget all that leverage the Republicans expect to have when they attempt to hold the nation hostage in February in the next debt ceiling fight in the effort to get significant spending cuts.
In fact, it is highly likely you can forget the Republican party altogether when it comes to the United States Congress as it is difficult to believe that Americans will forget what the GOP put them through, even if the cliff is ultimately resolved in a way that protects most Americans from tax hikes.
If the House GOP screws up this compromise, I certainly wouldn’t want to have to run as a Republican in 2014.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, January 1, 2013
“Revenge Of The Nuts”: Republicans Threaten To “Shut Down The Senate” Over Filibuster Reform
In response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plan to reform the rules governing filibusters, Senate Republicans are threatening the highly ironic revenge of “[shutting] down the Senate.”
Manu Raju reports in Politico that Reid is considering a ban on the use of filibusters on “motions to proceed,” the process through which debate begins in the Senate. Reid also may reinstitute rules requiring filibustering senators to take the Senate floor and carry out a nonstop talking session (as in the famous movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.)
In order to change these rules, Raju reports that Reid may invoke the so-called “nuclear option,” using an obscure rule to change the Senate rules with just a 51-vote majority instead of the usual two-thirds. The Republican response has been furious:
Republicans are threatening even greater retaliation if Reid uses a move rarely used by Senate majorities: changing the chamber’s precedent by 51 votes, rather than the usual 67 votes it takes to overhaul the rules.
“I think the backlash will be severe,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), the conservative firebrand, said sternly. “If you take away minority rights, which is what you’re doing because you’re an ineffective leader, you’ll destroy the place. And if you destroy the place, we’ll do what we have to do to fight back.”
“It will shut down the Senate,” the incoming Senate GOP whip, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, told POLITICO. “It’s such an abuse of power.”
There are two major problems with the Republican response: first, Reid’s proposal would not threaten “minority rights” as Coburn asserts. Senators would still be allowed to filibuster after the debate begins, and — as long as they’re willing to stay on the floor and keep talking — they would still be allowed to indefinitely delay a vote unless stopped by a 60-vote majority.
Second, threatening to “shut down the Senate” is a perfect example of why filibuster reform is needed in the first place. Since Democrats claimed their Senate majority in 2007, they have had to overcome over 380 filibusters, more than at any other point in history. As Minority Leader Mitch McConnell famously explained, Senate Republicans’ only goal over the past four years has been blocking President Obama’s agenda, and to do so they have brought the Senate to a near-complete standstill by requiring a 60-vote supermajority to pass any legislation.
So John Cornyn’s threat that Senate Republicans will suddenly stop cooperating with Democrats and block any progress in the Senate shouldn’t concern Reid very much. After all, it would be nothing he hasn’t seen before.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, November 26, 2012
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