“In The Thicket Of Fine Print”: Elizabeth Warren Rips NRA And GOP For “Keeping The Game Rigged”
Senator Elizabeth Warren (R-MA) used her speech at the Consumer Federation of America Thursday to make a wide-ranging argument defending the role of government and ripping Republicans and the National Rifle Association for intentionally keeping the American public in the dark.
After calling out the NRA’s “armies of lobbyists [that] are fighting to rig the system so that the public remains in the dark,” the senior senator from Massachusetts attacked the organization’s efforts to stop public research into gun violence.
“If as many people were dying of a mysterious disease as innocent bystanders are dying from firearms, a cure would be our top priority,” Warren said. “But we don’t even have good data on gun violence. Why? Because the NRA and the gun industry lobby made it their goal to prevent any serious effort to document the violence.”
Her defense of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which she first conceived and helped create as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, was especially pointed.
“This agency is about making consumer credit clear — no more hiding tricks and traps in a thicket of fine print. It is about letting consumers see the deal — and not worrying about the things they can’t see,” Warren said.
Senator Warren discussed the creation of the CFPB in a 2010 speech at the Consumer Federation of America that you can watch here.
Republicans have praised the work of CFPB director Richard Cordray, who President Obama installed via recess appointment after the GOP blocked his nomination. But they are blocking him again because they are bent on increasing congressional oversight of the bureau, while weakening its power.
“Blocking Rich Cordray is about keeping the game rigged, keeping the game rigged so that consumers remain in the dark — and a few bad actors can rake in big profits,” Warren said.
Republicans are basically working to void a federal law simply because they don’t like it. And by abusing the filibuster, they’ll likely be effective.
Senator Warren called out this unprecedented obstruction at Cordray’s nomination hearing:
“What I want to know is why every banking regulator since the Civil War has been funded outside the Appropriations process, but unlike the consumer agency, no one in the United States Senate has held up confirmation of their directors demanding that that agency or those agencies be redesigned.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, March 14, 2013
“Obstructionist-In-Chief”: It’s Past Time To Make Mitch McConnell Pay
There’s been no end to the grief Mitch McConnell’s taken for his declaration early in Barack Obama’s first term that his party’s top goal was to make Obama a one-term president. Ironically, though, the failure of McConnell and the GOP to realize their goal may be the best thing he has going for him as 2014 approaches.
McConnell has been the Senate minority leader since 2006, succeeding Bill Frist just as the party lost its majority in the chamber. Twice in his tenure – in 2010 and again in 2012 – Republicans have seemed poised to win back the majority only to fall short thanks to a combination of counterproductive primary results and a national image problem that turned off swing voters in key races. As ’14 approaches, Republicans are again looking at a favorable map, though it would take some big breaks for them to overcome the Democrats’ current 55-45 advantage. But McConnell himself has a much simpler concern: saving his own job.
The Kentuckian, who turns 71 on Wednesday, has never exactly been beloved in his home state, where voters have moved closer to the GOP in recent years but are still more than willing to vote Democratic. In his first campaign, back in 1984, McConnell scored an upset over incumbent Democrat Walter Huddleston by a fraction of a point, a victory owed entirely to Ronald Reagan’s formidable coattails. When McConnell last faced the voters, in 2008, he held on by 6 points against Democrat Bruce Lunsford – this on the same day that John McCain carried Kentucky by 16 points. And in early polling for ’14, he’s running under 50 percent and leading Ashley Judd, the Kentucky native and Hollywood actress who is edging closer to a candidacy, by a high single-digit margin.
Senate leaders have become irresistible targets for the rival party’s activists in recent years. The trend was kicked off in 2004, when Republicans made toppling Democratic leader Tom Daschle one of their top priorities. The GOP recruited a top-notch candidate, John Thune, poured millions into his coffers and even coaxed then-Majority Leader Bill Frist into coming to South Dakota on Thune’s behalf – a violation of a tradition of party leaders refraining from each other’s home state battles. The gambit worked and Daschle was defeated in a close race. Democrats then made a serious run at McConnell in ’08, although Majority Leader Harry Reid stayed away from Kentucky during the race, and Republicans made Reid their No. 1 Senate target in ’10; if GOP primary voters hadn’t insisted on nominating the erratic, self-destructive Sharron Angle, Reid would likely have been felled.
And now it’s McConnell’s turn to face a full-court press from the other party. Already, a liberal group has aired an anti-McConnell ad in Kentucky, criticizing the minority leader for his opposition to a new assault weapons ban. Under any circumstance, grass-roots Democrats would be excited over the prospect of giving McConnell a fight. But his emergence as the face of reflexive Republican opposition to Obama and his agenda has only ratcheted up the left’s resolve to make him pay.
The question is whether they can actually beat him. The good news for Democrats is that Kentucky isn’t quite the Republican bastion it’s often thought of as. Sure, it’s voted Republican by lopsided margins in the last four presidential elections, but Bill Clinton did manage to carry it twice in the 1990s. It also boasts an impressive run of Democratic governors. The state’s top job is now held by Steve Beshear, a second-term Democrat, and only three Republicans (Ernie Fletcher, Louie Nunn and Simeon Willis) have held it over the last 70 years. Democrats also control one of the state’s two legislative chambers, and while no Democrat has won a U.S. Senate race since Wendell Ford in 1992, the party has come close a few times: In addition to McConnell’s 6-point scare in ’08, Republican Jim Bunning only narrowly fended off Daniel Mongiardo in 2004 and Scotty Baesler in 1998.
So Kentucky is willing to vote Democratic, McConnell has never set the world on fire at the ballot box, and after 30 years of incumbency a change message could be a formidable weapon against him. Plus, as my colleague Alex Seitz-Wald wrote on Tuesday, Tea Party groups in Kentucky – which mobilized behind Rand Paul in 2010 to defeat McConnell’s protégé, Trey Grayson, in a Senate primary – are threatening to challenge McConnell in a primary, which could force him farther to the right and away from the general election mainstream.
And now the bad news for Democrats: There’s reason to believe that Kentucky has moved farther to the right – and grown more hostile to the national Democratic Party – since President Obama came to office. Nationally, Obama’s popular vote margin was down last November from its ’08 level, but Kentuckians turned against him particularly hard. In ’08, he lost the state by 16 points, but last November the margin was 22. To put that in some perspective, that’s even worse than Walter Mondale fared in Kentucky in 1984, when he lost the state by 21 points amid a 19-point national landslide defeat. Obama’s unpopularity in the state was driven home last spring, when a majority of the state’s counties voted for “uncommitted” over the president in the Democratic primary. Since Obama became president, Democrats have also lost one of their House seats in the state, leaving them with just one.
Race has clearly played a role in Kentucky’s Obama-phobia, as it has in other swaths of Appalachia. The Obama administration’s supposed “war on coal” is a big factor too. These attitudes aren’t likely to dull in the next 21 months, which will give McConnell a chance to survive simply by linking his opponent to the president. Already, an attack ad from a Karl Rove affiliated group is bashing Judd as “an Obama-following radical Hollywood liberal.” Judd was an active campaigner for Obama last year and was a delegate (from Tennessee) for him at the Democratic convention. She’s also spoken out against mountain top coal mining, which could play right into the GOP’s “war on coal” theme.
There’s also the matter of Judd herself. She has Kentucky roots, comes from a famous country music family, and is a visible and vocal presence at University of Kentucky basketball games. So she has some serious ammunition to fight charges of carpetbagging. And she’ll obviously be able to raise a ton of money. But Republicans have some ammunition of their own, to portray her as a cultural elite who’s too close to Obama. Judd’s candidacy would attract national attention and money, but it’s not clear she’s the best option for Democrats. If she runs, though, the nomination will probably be hers.
One look at his electoral history shows that McConnell has been ripe for a serious challenge for years. He’s going to get it next year. If he survives, ironically enough, he’ll have the president to thank for it. Without the Obama boogeyman to run against, he wouldn’t have much else going for him.
By: Steve Kornacki, Salon, February 20, 2013
“An Especially Demanding Day”: More Disingenuous GOP Obstruction
Chuck Hagel isn’t the only Obama nominee Senate Republicans are raking through the coals for dubious political reasons.The President’s pick to head the Treasury, Jack Lew, is getting his own hazing.
Although it got less publicity than Hagel’s hearing, Lew, too, faced a torrent of tough questions during his first round of confirmation hearings before the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month. Now, this week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the number two Republican on the panel, is stepping up the pressure.
Yesterday, he asked Committee Chairman Max Baucus to postpone a vote on Lew’s confirmation until the he answers more of Grassley’s questions (a request Baucus denied).
At issue for Grassley is a series of loans provided to Lew in the early 2000s, especially one for $1.4 million in 2002 from New York University, where Lew served as executive vice president. Lew said the loan was to help pay for housing and was part of his compensation package, but couldn’t recall some of the details Grassley demanded.
The Republican says he is not pleased, suggesting in a statement that Lew has not been forthcoming in answering his questions.
But, as a Democrat close to Finance Committee points out, Grassley hasn’t exactly availed himself of every opportunity he’s been offered to question Lew.
Grassley was the only member of the Senate Finance Committee who refused to meet with Lew one-on-one ahead of the hearings, a common practice for presidential nominees. And Grassley left Lew’s hearing after the opening round of questions.
“If he had so many concerns and unanswered questions, why wouldn’t he stay and ask them?” the source, who asked to remain nameless, asked.
Lew has answered 444 questions submitted to him in writing, which is many more than any Treasury nominee in history. From Bob Rubin under Bill Clinton, to current outgoing Secretary Tim Geithner, the Senate has asked a combined total of 405 questions — fewer than Lew alone.
For his part, Grassley asked 26 questions of Lew, but just 3 of Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and none of his Bush predecessor, John Snowe.
A spokesperson for Grassley did not immediately return a request for comment, but he has previously denied any political motivations.
UPDATE: On missing the hearing and asking 26 questions, a Grassley spokesperson explains: “Between dealing with the death of a staff member and serving as Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on immigration, Senator Grassley had an especially demanding day… Finance Committee members asked an average of 18.5 questions each; 26 is hardly out of line.”
The spokesperson continued: “Sen. Grassley declined to meet with Mr. Lew prior to the committee’s hearing, as he’s done with several other nominees. Nominees often can’t talk about substantive issues in such meetings because they haven’t formed views, they cite unfamiliarity with the specific issue, or they can’t discuss pending issues because of the sensitivity of their unconfirmed positions. That’s the case in many of Mr. Lew’s answers to the written questions posed by senators, and that was the case with a wide variety of his verbal answers at the nomination hearing. Even if Sen. Grassley had met with Mr. Lew and discussed Mr. Lew’s background, such as the loan from New York University and money in the Caymans, Sen. Grassley still would have wanted those questions answered in writing so there’s a permanent record for other senators and the public to view.”
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, February 21, 2013
“A Pattern Of Timidity”: Press Yawns While Partisan Republicans Shred Cabinet Confirmation Process
Reporting on the contentious, drawn-out political battle surrounding President Obama’s decision to pick Republican Chuck Hagel to be his next secretary of defense, Politico recently noted the extraordinary partisan acrimony the confirmation process has produced.
With Republicans adopting an unprecedented obstructionist strategy to block a premier cabinet post by lodging all kinds of threats to “hold” the confirmation or even to try to deny Hagel a Senate vote, Politico concluded the controversy meant problems for party leaders, including Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI).
“Levin faces a conundrum,” Politico reported. “He can force a party-line vote on Hagel, but that could damage the committee’s longtime bipartisan spirit.”
This makes no sense.
By launching a drawn out campaign against Hagel, Republicans have torn up decades worth of tradition on the Senate Armed Services Committee in terms of working across party lines to confirm secretaries of defense. But according to Politico it’s the Democratic chairman who faces a “conundrum” over the lack of “bipartisan spirit” in the Senate. It’s the Democrat who has to deal with the “damage” done by Republican maneuvers.
Sometimes it seems the Beltway press will do anything to avoid blaming Republicans for their wildly obstructionist ways. It’s a pattern of timidity that has marked Obama’s time in Washington, D.C. Indeed, the press for years now has insisted on providing no framework with regards to the radical ways that now define the GOP.
By refusing to hold Obama’s opponents accountable, and by actually making media stars out of the ones who actively obstruct, the press simply encourages the corrosive behavior. (By the way, this is the same Beltway press corps that has routinely blamed Obama for not successfully changing the tone in Washington.)
Both in terms of Republican obstructionist behavior and the press’ unwillingness to call it what it is, the trend has reached its pinnacle with the current confirmation mess. And it’s getting worse. Fox News this week reported Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) was threatening to block a confirmation vote on Jack Lew, selected by the president to be the next secretary of treasury.
Discarding centuries worth of advise-and-consent tradition (i.e. the winning president picks his cabinet), Republicans have radically rewritten the cabinet confirmation rulebook while journalists have stood quietly by, not bothering to inform news consumers about the dramatic shift taking place. Instead, the press treats it all as being commonplace; as just more partisan bickering.
And when not downplaying the ramifications or erroneously suggesting Obama’s “picking fights” with “controversial” cabinet picks like Hagel, journalists have bungled the story altogether, giving Republicans political cover in the process.
Appearing on Fox News on Monday to discuss the Hagel impasse and the various hurdles Republicans keep putting up while plotting ways to put off his confirmation vote, Roll Call’s associate political editor David Drucker said, “Everybody argues it’s politics, but everybody does it.” He claimed the party out of power often does this for key cabinet positions.
False.
I understand that political journalists operate under the constant threat of the Liberal Media Bias mob that the GOP Noise Machine perpetually whips up. Pointing out the Republican’s radical path of obstructionism would certainly draw the wrath of the right-wing. But sometimes that’s the price reporters have to pay for practicing journalism. And this week journalism does not mean simply reporting that Republicans continue to try to delay and block high-level cabinet appointees. It means reporting that it’s never been done with this frequency before in modern American history.
The endless, never-before-seen attacks on Obama’s Cabinet choices (and would-be choices, such as Susan Rice who was preemptively attacked; an unheard of partisan strategy) have been going on for months now since Election Day. But we’ve only recently begun to see efforts by journalists to include context regarding how unusual the Republican confirmation behavior has been.
From Politico:
But the filibuster threat — reiterated Monday by Sen. Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee — would make Hagel just the third Cabinet nominee in history to require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster on the Senate floor. The other two nominees were President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 choice to head his Commerce Department, C. William Verity, and President George W. Bush’s 2006 choice of Dirk Kempthorne to be secretary of the interior.
So this kind of obstructionism is abnormal but it’s not entirely new, Politico seemed to suggest, noting recent Republican presidents have faced similarly dug-in Democratic opponents when trying to fill out their cabinets.
Not quite.
In the case of Reagan, it was a group of Republican senators who threatened to filibuster Reagan’s Commerce pick because he wasn’t sufficiently conservative. And with regards to Bush’s pick of Kempthorne to head Interior, there was Capitol Hill chatter about a Democratic hold being placed on his confirmation, but in the end it didn’t amount to anything.
Looking back at the news coverage, the Beltway press never took seriously the idea that either Kempthorne’s or Verity’s confirmation would be blocked or that a major battle was brewing. In the end, Verity won 84 votes of support and Kempthorne was easily confirmed on a Senate voice vote.
All of which means we’ve never seen anything like the coordinated, dubious efforts by outside conservative groups and Republican members in Congress to block Hagel’s confirmation. (Or to make sure Rice was never nominated.) As Sen. Levin noted yesterday, we’ve never seen a secretary of defense nominee like Hagel be asked to provide detailed financial information about non-profit organizations that have paid him in the past.
It’s all unheard of. But if you turn on cable news you’ll hear a Beltway editor claim “everybody does it.”
They didn’t. Until now.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, February 13, 2013
“Lipstick On A Pig”: A New GOP, Or Just A Cosmetic Touchup?
Maybe the party is finally over.
Meaning not simply the Grand Old Party, but more specifically the bacchanal of the bizarre and carnival of crazy to which it has lately devolved. So obvious has this devolution become that even Republican stalwarts have been heard to decry the parody of a party the GOP has become.
Except now we see signs suggesting maybe a corner has been turned. There was, for example, that surprising bipartisan consensus on immigration reform, which one would have thought about as likely as a Ted Nugent concert on the White House lawn. And Politico reports that Karl Rove has started a Super PAC whose mission is to keep the more … ahem, colorful candidates from winning Republican primaries. Politico also quotes what it calls a high-profile strategist who said party leaders are now trying to “marginalize the cranks, haters and bigots” they until recently portrayed as courageous truth tellers.
There’s more. Fox “News,” for many years the communications arm of the GOP, just ditched two of its fieriest firebrands: Dick Morris and Sarah Palin, who, like Linus in the pumpkin patch, kept assuring true believers of the Great Pumpkin of a Mitt Romney victory. This comes as Fox, though it still has numbers CNN would kill for, sees its ratings fall to a 12-year low among a key demographic. A new Public Policy Polling survey finds trust in Fox at the lowest level in the short (four years) history of the survey.
Then there is Bobby Jindal. The Louisiana governor, widely considered a rising star of the GOP, has, since the election, been preaching with evangelistic zeal that Republicans must “stop being the stupid party,” which could be a reference to Herman Cain, presumably still poring over a map looking for “U-beki-beki-beki-becki-stan-stan;” or to Michele Bachmann, perhaps still searching out terrorists in the office of the Secretary of State. Or to any of a series of GOP candidates who made statements on rape so spectacularly ignorant they would stun even the men in those dusty places where wives are bought like cattle.
So yes, signs are plentiful that something is afoot among the Republicans. But what does it mean?
One might hope it signifies the party’s decision to abandon its alternate universe, offer reasonable alternatives to those voters not convinced that any one party or ideology has all the answers. One might hope it means an orderly retreat from the hard edge of coded racism, gay bashing, Mexican electrocuting, anti-intellectualism and fact avoidance that has been passed off as wisdom in recent years. One might hope it means a return of grownups, pragmatism, reason — and reasonableness.
One might hope.
But one might be well advised to gird that hope with wariness, given that this is the same party whose leaders, as reported on PBS’ Frontline, held a meeting in 2009 and chose obstructionism as a political strategy. Note that, even while repeating his “stupid party” admonition at a GOP meeting in Charlotte last month, Jindal assured his audience this did not mean rethinking or even moderating the party’s hardcore — and frankly, out-of-touch — stands on issues such as abortion and marriage equality.
No, he explained, he’s talking about changing the packaging — not what’s in it. Putting lipstick on the proverbial pig, in other words.
That will inevitably disappoint those longing for a new GOP. One hopes the party’s soul searching eventually leads it to understand the need for evolution. It should not — and does not need to — become simply a pale imitation of the other party. But it also should not — and better not — settle for being simply a prettied-up version of the extremist outlier it has become.
Because you know what you call a pig with lipstick on? A pig with lipstick on.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo, February 10, 2013
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