“Running Out Of Excuses”: Boehner’s ‘Trust’ Issues On Immigration
The odds of congressional success on immigration reform tend to swing wildly from one day to the next. Reform’s chances are either “likely” or a “long shot” depending on the latest quote, headline, hearing, poll, or rumor.
But this morning, the man who largely has the future of the policy in his hands made it sound as if immigration reform simply will not happen anytime soon.
House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that House leaders cannot move immigration reform legislation until President Barack Obama restores “trust” among Republicans.
But the GOP leader did not say what rebuilding that trust might entail.
The Speaker told reporters, “There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws. And it’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.”
Boehner added, “The president’s asking us to move one of the biggest bills of his presidency, and yet he’s shown very little willingness to work with us on the smallest of things.”
As a factual matter, some of this is just odd. Obama has generally shown overwhelming willingness to work with Congress on just about anything, large or small. There’s probably a reason Boehner didn’t mention any examples to bolster his argument.
But the real significance of the Speaker’s comments were their likely bearing on the immigration debate. As Boehner sees it, House Republicans aren’t confident that the Obama administration will enforce federal law, and as such, they don’t want to vote for reform. As the argument goes, even if Congress approves sweeping border-security measures intended to satisfy GOP lawmakers’ demands, Obama may simply blow off laws (or parts of laws) whenever it strikes his fancy.
Indeed, it’s not just Boehner making this argument. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) pushed the same case on the Sunday shows.
It’s a deeply flawed argument, though the motivation behind it is quite clear.
Note, if the argument sounds familiar, there’s a good reason – the “we can’t pass immigration reform because Obama’s an untrustworthy tyrant” tack first came up last summer. At the time, some congressional Republicans argued that a delay in the implementation of Affordable Care Act provisions was undeniable proof that “we have a president that picks and chooses the laws that he wants to obey and enforce. That makes him a ruler. He’s not a president, he’s a ruler.”
As we discussed at the time, the complaint isn’t persuasive. When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, the administration has some discretion in implementing various provisions. It’s not unusual and it’s not unique to health care. Plenty of parts of the Dodd/Frank financial-regulatory reform law were delayed, too. This has long been the norm, and using it as an excuse not to trust the entire executive branch on literally every issue is kind of silly.
As Brian Beutler wrote in July:
The administration isn’t unlawfully writing the employer mandate out of existence, just like it wouldn’t unlawfully refuse to send thousands of agents to the border if an immigration reform law required them to.
And because immigration reform will be a bipartisan law if it passes, Republicans in Congress will have less incentive to stand in the way if the implementation process reveals real problems with its drafting. Which means the administration won’t be left, as it is with the ACA, facing a suboptimal choice between implementing the law poorly or taking clunky administrative steps to smooth the process out.
So, if “we don’t trust Obama” is such a weak pretense for killing immigration reform, why are congressional Republicans so heavily invested in it? A few reasons, actually.
First, the GOP desperately hopes to convince the American mainstream that the president is an out-of-control, “lawless” radical. It’s not true – Obama’s actually a fairly moderate technocrat – but the manufactured narrative has become a convenient way for Republicans to raise money, rile up the base, and kill popular legislation.
Second, as a policy matter, it’s possible GOP lawmakers hope to use this excuse to tilt the policy playing field in their favor. As Greg Sargent noted on Monday, Republicans may very well insist that increased border security begin well in advance of any other part of immigration reform, insisting that it’s the only way for Obama to prove his “trustworthiness.” In other words, the legislation would give Republicans everything they want, with the understanding that other provisions could come later, once GOP lawmakers are satisfied the president isn’t a big liar.
And finally, let’s not lose sight of the blame game. Congressional Republicans, who have zero major legislative accomplishments since the 2010 midterms, are prepared to kill a popular, bipartisan immigration-reform effort that’s been endorsed by business leaders, labor leaders, economists, immigration advocates, and the faith community. If they refuse to pass legislation, as now appears likely, GOP leaders will need an extraordinary excuse to justify failure on this level.
According to Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan, that excuse effectively boils down to this: “Republicans don’t like Obama.” If they think that’ll work in persuading the public, they may want to consider a back-up plan.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 6, 2014
“Don’t Even Give Them A Fig Leaf”: Democrats Should Call The GOP’s Debt Ceiling Bluff
“We don’t want ‘nothing’ out of this debt limit,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in December.
With a deadline to raise the debt ceiling approaching this Friday (though Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said he can manage until the end of February), House Republicans are indeed talking about what they’d like in exchange for upping the nation’s borrowing limit. However, their internal talks aren’t going so well.
The GOP’s two leading ideas for handling the debt ceiling — tying it to a provision mandating the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, or one tweaking ObamaCare — fell apart Wednesday due to a lack of Republican support. Both would have included a one-year extension of the debt ceiling.
More from The Washington Post’s Robert Costa:
Both ideas were debated at a conference meeting and members expected the conference to coalesce around one of the plans by later this week.
That playbook soon fizzled, however, once GOP leadership aides fanned out throughout the Capitol to take the temperature of members about the plans. Instead of finding growing support, they found unease and complaints, with myriad concerns raised by the House’s right flank. [Washington Post]
Sound familiar?
It should. Republicans folded twice last year on their debt ceiling demands after realizing that threats to plunge the nation into potential financial chaos aren’t too popular with voters.
Just a few months ago, Republicans entered the debt ceiling and government funding talks with a fantastical list of demands. The ask rapidly shrank, though, when Democrats refused to budge. Yet House leadership, fearful of angering the party’s right wing, refused to give in either.
The plan backfired, and Republicans came away with nothing except historically low poll numbers:
For Republicans to think they have any more leverage now is just delusional.
President Obama has insisted that Congress send him a clean debt ceiling bill, meaning one free of any extraneous provisions. Public opinion is on his side. A recent CNN survey found that 54 percent of Americans would blame the GOP if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. Only 29 percent would blame Obama.
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly has a Plan B in the works that would swap the debt ceiling hike for the restoration of some military benefits. Yet there is no guarantee the plan could overcome the objections on the right, since it would technically raise spending, something anathema to Tea Partiers. And even if it were to somehow get the support of a majority of the GOP caucus, House Democrats reaffirmed Wednesday that they wouldn’t bargain, period.
The whole standoff is reminiscent of Rep. Marlin Stutzman’s (R-Ind.) oblivious remark about the debt ceiling standoff back in October: “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” Republicans want something, anything, in exchange for a debt ceiling vote, but they can’t even settle on what that something might be.
The bottom line is that since Republicans caved in the past, there’s no reason to believe they won’t cave again. Boehner himself admitted earlier this week that “there’s no sense picking a fight we can’t win.”
The GOP can’t win. Democrats should call that bluff and not even give them a fig leaf.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, February 6, 2014
“The ‘Lawless’ Presidencies Of Barack Obama And Ronald Reagan”: Consistency Must Count For Something, Otherwise It’s Hypocrisy
The headline emerging from last week’s SOTU address continues to be the President’s stated intent to go around Congress, where necessary, to effectuate elements of his agenda through the use of the executive order.
So grave is the situation—according to conservative leaders and pundits—Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) took to the airwaves this weekend to warn one and all that we now have “an increasingly lawless presidency.”
Tea Party firebrand, Rep. Steve King of Iowa, could not agree more.
Indeed, so concerned is King with Obama’s decision to order up a raise for those employed by federal contractors, he referred to the executive action granting the wage increase as a “constitutional violation”, adding “we’ve never had a president with that level of audacity and that level of contempt for his own oath of office.”
Still, a highly placed White House aide noted that there are a number of things “the President can unilaterally do,” stating that “With a hostile Congress that doesn’t show much sign of coming toward us on some of these issues, it behooves us to take the initiative when we can take it.”
There is, however, one thing I should point out regarding the sequencing of events set forth above.
While Paul Ryan and Steve King are certainly functioning in today’s highly charged political environment, the White House aide who made the statements regarding the President’s ability to do many a thing unilaterally—particularly when a hostile Congress is not cooperating with the president’s agenda—was none other than Gary L. Bauer, chief domestic policy advisor to President Ronald W. Reagan. What’s more, the statements were made in August of 1987 and were the direct result of the years of frustration Reagan had experienced at the hands of a Congress that simply would not get with his program.
Sound familiar?
Of course, nothing President Reagan did through the use of his executive order power could possibly match the severity of Obama’s attempt to get around an obstructionist Congress in order to accomplish his own agenda, right?
Not so much.
Do the words ‘National Security Agency’ ring a bell?
The NSA, of course, is the government body that has been collecting our phone and Internet data while spying on Americans and foreigners (including foreign leaders) in ways that have infuriated the very Republicans—along with just about everyone else—who hold Ronald Wilson Reagan up to be the icon of modern day conservatism.
As a result, you might be surprised to learn the following bit of history:
It was President Reagan’s infamous Executive Order 12333 (referred to as “twelve-triple-three”) that established and handed to the NSA virtually all of the powers under which the agency operates to this day—allowing the agency to collect the data that so many now find to be so offensive.
McClatchy describes Executive Order 12333 as follows:
“It is a sweeping mandate that outlines the duties and foreign intelligence collection for the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies. It is not governed by Congress, and critics say it has little privacy protection and many loopholes.”
If you view Reagan’s actions as an appropriate use of the executive order, Tea Party/GOP Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI) would beg to differ.
Speaking at a gathering hosted by the Cato Institute, Amash described Congressional hearings into the actions of the NSA as follows:
“Amash describes those briefings as a farce. Many times, he says, they focused on information that was available from reading newspapers or public statutes. And his account of trying to get details out of those giving the briefings sounds like an exercise in frustration:”
“So you don’t know what questions to ask because you don’t know what the baseline is. You don’t have any idea what kind of things are going on. So you have to start just spitting off random questions: Does the government have a moon base? Does the government have a talking bear? Does the government have a cyborg army? If you don’t know what kind of things the government might have, you just have to guess and it becomes a totally ridiculous game of 20 questions.”
Congressman Amash’s displeasure over Congress’ neutered role when it comes to the NSA does not stop him from frequently quoting the words of Ronald Reagan—despite Reagan’s responsibility for supplanting Congress in this regard—particularly when it comes to The Gipper’s declaration that “libertarianism is the heart and soul of conservatism.”
The use of the Executive Order has long been controversial, dating back to President Abraham Lincoln’s use of the device to suspend habeas corpus along the Philadelphia to Washington line in response to the assault on Union troops in Baltimore.
What made Lincoln’s move so dramatic is that the suspension of habeas corpus is placed by the Founding Fathers in Article I of the Constitution—the section that lays out the powers reserved for Congress.
However, as Jennifer Weber of the New York Times notes in her excellent piece on Lincoln’s use and abuse of power, the Founders “muddied the water” on just who could order a suspension of habeas corpus by writing, “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”
Whether you view Lincoln’s actions as a proper exercise of power by the Commander-In-Chief during a time of emergency, or blatant defiance of the Constitution by the President of the United States, I don’t recall too many modern Americans—Democrat, Republican or otherwise—referring to Abraham Lincoln as a “lawless” president.
Nor do I recall many of the Republicans who worship at alter of Ronald Wilson Reagan referring to him as a “lawless” president.
None of this is to say that Presidents Lincoln, Reagan, Obama—or the many other American presidents who have relied upon the executive order—are acting in obedience to our Constitution or that they are not. That is up to the Courts to decide.
What it is to say is that, once again, consistency must count for something.
If you disagree with what President Obama might have in mind to do through the use of the executive order, you may have constitutional authority to back you up. Indeed, I acknowledge my own concerns about presidents who go around Congress’ lawmaking authority by using the executive order, no matter how much I may disapprove of our current and recent incarnations of Congress.
However, to take the tact of accusing Mr. Obama of a “lawless presidency”, while lauding previous presidents who did the identical thing, is just so much more hypocrisy on the part of leaders like Congressman Ryan who are far more wedded to the process of scoring political points than they are to remaining true to history or governing with good intent.
Or could it be that people like Paul Ryan—a man who holds a great deal of power and responsibility in our government—are simply ignorant of our history and the subject matter upon which they deign to expound?
Either way, there is little comfort to be gained when our system is so disgustingly politicized that a president is accused of lawlessness when following in the very same footsteps of previous presidents hailed as some of the greatest heroes of the nation.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, February 3, 2014
“Is The GOP Giving Up Tea?”: It’s An Illusion For The GOP To Think Bashing Obamacare Is An Elixir
The botched rollout of the health-care law has called forth some good news: Republicans are so confident they can ride anti-Obamacare sentiment to electoral victory that they’re growing ever-more impatient with the tea party’s fanaticism. Immigration reform may be the result.
The GOP is looking like a person emerging from a long binge and asking, “Why did I do that?” The moment of realization came when last fall’s government shutdown cratered the party’s polling numbers. Staring into the abyss can be instructive. For the first time since 2010, the middle of the House Republican caucus — roughly 100 of its 233 members — began worrying less about primaries from right-wing foes and more about losing their majority status altogether.
Obamacare’s troubles reinforced the flight from the brink. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is telling his rank-and-file that they can win the 2014 elections simply by avoiding the stupid mistakes their more-ferocious colleagues keep urging them to make. In this view, the health insurance issue will take care of everything, provided Republicans end their tea party fling.
In fact, it’s an illusion for the GOP to think that bashing Obamacare is an elixir, especially if Democrats embrace and defend the law. Now that its benefits are fully kicking in, Republicans should be asked persistently, “Who do you want to throw off health insurance?”
Also: Do you want to go back to denying people coverage for preexisting conditions? And: What about those 3 million young adults now on their parents’ health plans? “Repeal Obamacare” is not as popular as it seems in GOP bastions. Some Republicans know this, which is why they are trying to cobble together much narrower alternatives to the law.
Nonetheless, some illusions are useful. Boehner is using them aggressively. The immigration principles he announced at his caucus’s retreat last week in Cambridge, Md., are a breakthrough because they are potentially more elastic than they sound. This is why many immigration reform advocates were elated, and why President Obama, sensing what was coming, offered not a hint of partisanship on the issue in his State of the Union address.
The principles have been loosely described as favoring the legalization of undocumented immigrants without a path to citizenship. But what the statement actually opposes is a “special path to citizenship” for the roughly 11 million who are here illegally. Everything hangs on the implications of that word “special.”
A bill barring a path to citizenship would be a nonstarter for Democrats — and it ought to be a nonstarter for Republicans and conservatives. Creating a vast population of legal residents who lack citizenship rights undercuts the rights of those who are already citizens. It would undermine the commitment of a democratic republic to equal treatment and self-rule.
But reform advocates inside and outside the Obama administration note that even without a “special” path, many immigrants, once legalized, could find ways of gaining citizenship eventually.
Changes in visa allocations, including more generous rules for the spouses and parents of citizens, could help as many as 4 million undocumented residents, as The Post’s Pamela Constable has reported. Republicans have already signaled openness to a path for “dreamers” — their numbers are estimated at between 800,000 and 1.5 million — who were brought to the United States illegally as children. The bill already passed by the Senate would put as many as 8 million people on a path to citizenship. A compromise that found “non-special” ways of reaching a number reasonably close to the Senate’s is now at least possible.
It’s also possible, of course, that Boehner could make a play to improve his party’s image with Latinos by appearing to be flexible at the outset but in the end appease hard-liners by balking on a final bill — and try to blame Democrats for not compromising enough. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) warned on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that passage of a bill was “clearly in doubt.”
But the GOP consists of more than the tea party. Both business interests and conservative evangelical leaders really want a reform law. Most of the intra-party tiffs have been over tactics: whether to use shutdowns or debt-ceiling fights to achieve shared objectives. The immigration battle, by contrast, will expose more fundamental rifts among party constituencies along philosophical lines.
None of this heralds the dawn of a new Moderate Republican Age. Shifts in the Republican primary electorate and the tea party insurgency dragged the party so far to the right that it will take a long time to bring it within hailing distance of the middle of the road. But change has to start somewhere, and the GOP’s slow retreat from the fever swamps may turn out to be one of Obamacare’s utterly unintended effects.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 2, 2014
“The Dawning Of Reality”: Chris Christie’s 2016 Access Lane Has Been Closed
Chris Christie was never going to be the president of the United States. That issue was settled long before gridlock set in on the lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge. The New Jersey governor’s record on the critical measures for any state executive bidding for the presidency in 2016—job creation and economic growth—were dismal, and his positions on economic and social issues were far too conservative to attract swing voters in a country that had already rejected John McCain and Mitt Romney.
What remained uncertain was whether a Republican Party that has not nominated a winning candidate with a name other than “Bush” since the 1980s would gamble on Christie. And that issue is now settled, as well.
Even before The New York Times reported on Friday that former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official David Wildstein, an old friend of the governor who gained his position with Christie’s blessing, has written a letter explaining that it was on “the Christie administration’s order” that access lanes to the bridge were closed—thus gridlocking Fort Lee, a city where the Democratic mayor had refused to endorse the Republican governor’s re-election bid—Republicans across the country were looking elsewhere.
After his re-election last fall, Christie led the Republican pack in national polls and polls from battleground states.
That’s over.
A Washington Post/ABC News survey released this week determined that Christie “appears to have suffered politically from the bridge-traffic scandal engulfing his administration.”
That’s polite newspeak for: Christie’s numbers among those most likely to support him have tanked.
In the Post poll, only 43 percent of Republicans viewed the governor favorably—not that much better than his favorable rating among Americans in general: 35 percent.
The survey found that Christie had sunk to a weak third-place position in the nomination race, with support from just 13 percent of Republican-leaning voters. The candidates who have benefitted most from the governor’s collapse—nationally known Republicans with big names and well-established histories—were soaring. Congressman Paul Ryan, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, who is looking a little more like a 2016 contender these days, was at 20 percent. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was at 18 percent.
Worse yet for Christie, his 13 percent support level was barely better than that found for Texas Senator Ted Cruz (12 percent), Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (11 percent.) and Florida Senator Marco Rubio (10 percent).
There was a line of analysis that suggested Christie—who after a marathon press conference three weeks ago, in which he tried and failed to explain himself, has pretty much avoided the media—might ride the storm out and get back into contention.
But reality has to be dawning on even the most ardent Christie enthusiasts, now that Wildstein’s lawyer has released the letter claiming that “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference.”
It is far too early to say where the inquiries and investigations of the bridge scandal—and all the other scandals that have arisen in its wake—will ultimately end up. It is far too early to speak in conclusive terms about what Christie knew, or when he knew it. But it should be clear by now that the sorting out of this governor’s troubles is going to take a very long time. Christie will be fighting in that time not to restore his presidential prospects but to regain the confidence of voters in his home state. Indeed, before this is done, he could well be fighting to retain the governorship through the end of his current term.
That’s not how a candidate secures the Republican nomination for president.
And that is why the time really has come to accept that Chris Christie’s brief period as a presidential prospect is absolutely finished.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, January 31, 2014
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