“We Did Something Constructive Today”: The New Republican Definition Of Constructive Is What You Can Block And Destroy
We talked at length yesterday about the failure of the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (or “THUD”) appropriations bill in the House — a move that sent the Republican budget process into chaos — so it’s only fair to note what happened to the Senate version of the same bill.
In short, nothing good.
Early on Thursday afternoon, a few hours before the start of a month-long summer recess, the U.S. Senate held a doomed vote on a $44 billion package of transportation and housing funds. The vote was 54-43, six short of cloture, most Republicans making sure that the bill with the accidentally perfect name of THUD (Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development) went down in flames for now.
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, whose work on a gun control amendment this year gave him the temporary glow of a centrist, walked from the Senate to a special, open live-streamed meeting of the Republican Study Committee, all about the Obama administration’s scandals. Anyone watching the Tea Party Patriots-sponsored feed could hear Toomey tell a colleague that “we did something constructive today” in the Senate.
“We denied cloture on the THUD bill,” said Toomey. “I told you we’d kill it, and we did.”
We talk from time to time about the post-policy nihilism that’s come to define so much of Republican politics, and this is rather striking example.
The Senate’s THUD bill was expected to pass with relative ease. It had bipartisan support; it was pulled together responsibly; and it sailed through the committee process as non-controversial bills should. As Joan McCarter explained, “The transportation funding bill has always been a non-controversial, reliable bipartisan effort, because there was something tangible in it for every member of Congress to take home: jobs, infrastructure improvements, a display of federal dollars at work for their constituents. That’s all changed.”
And not for the better.
After the House Republicans killed their own version of the bill, GOP leaders feared a moderate, bipartisan THUD package would give Senate Dems the upper hand in a conference committee. What’s more, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was eager to prove how right-wing he is to conservatives back home, so he lobbied Republicans who supported the bill to change their mind.
The result? A bill that was supposed to be approved easily was killed with a filibuster — which in Pat Toomey’s mind, is evidence of doing “something constructive.”
The larger point, of course, is that policymakers used to have a less ridiculous definition of what “constructive” means. Not too long ago, members of Congress used to think they did “something constructive” when they, you know, passed a bill. Or maybe reached a compromise. Or perhaps struck some sort of deal.
The hallmark of post-policy nihilism is the belief that policy outcomes and substantive governing are largely irrelevant. Officials have begun defining themselves solely by what they can block and destroy, rather than what they can accomplish, even if that means opposing what they support.
And that’s not good.
What’s more, as McConnell panics about his re-election bid, this dynamic is likely to become more common. Yesterday, for example, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) hoped to see the Senate pass the bipartisan bill, but quickly found herself on the losing side of a McConnell broadside.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the panel that wrote the $54 billion transportation bill, appeared to grope for an explanation for why Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) worked so hard to kill her legislation.
Asked if McConnell’s upcoming primary fight with a tea party challenger might have something to do with the pressure, Collins told POLITICO: “I can’t speculate on why. All I can tell you is he has never worked harder against a member of his own party than he did against me today.”
For context, note that Collins and McConnell have worked together for 16 years — and she’s “never” seem him work this hard to beat another Republican.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 2, 2013
“The GOP Roadblock To Repairs”: With Limited Time And Opportunity, Republican Infrastructure Intransigence Strikes Again
In 2005, the World Economic Forum ranked America’s infrastructure Number 1 in the world for “economic competitiveness.” Only eight short years later, the U.S. occupies 14th place. Instead of leading our global competitors in planning, staying current and building a transportation system for the 21st century, we have continued to invest at the same rate (in real inflation-adjusted dollars) as we did in 1968.
By way of example, Canada spends 4 percent of its GDP on transportation, investment and maintenance, with China spending 9 percent. The U.S. spends only 1.7 percent.
More than 69,000 of America’s bridges are deemed structurally deficient, more than 11 percent of all the bridges in our country. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. would need to invest $3.6 trillion between now and 2020 just to keep its infrastructure in “good” repair.
As a nation, our cities have become more congested, our commutes more delayed and our companies less productive. According to UPS, five minutes of daily delay for its trucks adds up to $100 million lost annually.
President Obama has long understood that investments made to our nation’s infrastructure will create jobs here in America that can’t be outsourced or replaced overseas. Interestingly, this is the same dynamic that has united two bitter enemies, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, around their mutual quest to see Congress appropriate more funding for infrastructure projects.
Even Republicans seem to understand the need, or at least they have indicated so at times. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said, “Everybody knows we have a crumbling infrastructure. Infrastructure spending is popular on both sides. The question is how much are we going to spend.” Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., once claimed, “If you’re a Republican and you want to create jobs, then you need to invest in infrastructure that will allow us to create jobs.”
This week, President Obama proposed to cut corporate taxes and to invest in infrastructure projects to boost American jobs, all while being “revenue neutral.” These are concepts that have been championed by Republicans in the past, but generally ignored in recent times.
Unfortunately, true to form, the GOP backlash was immediate, claiming Obama’s plan offered them no concessions at all. McConnell said on the floor, “The plan, which I just learned about last night, lacks meaningful bipartisan input,” and thus he will oppose it. As the president suggested in a recent interview with the New York Times, “there’s almost a kneejerk habit right now that if I’m for it, then they’ve [Republicans in congress] got to be against it.”
So, once again, Congress is at a standstill while it admires our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. Seemingly, Republican leadership would rather put up roadblocks than work with the president to build and restore some of our nation’s fundamental structural needs to remain economically competitive – operative roads, bridges, dams, levees and rails. There are only 61 days left before the next government shutdown and nine legislative working days on the calendar in September. This limited time and opportunity will require leaders from both sides to step forward and work efficiently to pass the necessary legislation to get this country back on track.
Perhaps, while members of Congress are away in August, they will actually remember what they were for before they were against it.
By: Penny Lee, U. S. News and World Report, July 31, 2013
“Your Call Republicans”: Either Job Creation Is The Top Priority Or It Isn’t
I’d very nearly given up trying to convince the political world that sequestration cuts still matter. But then yesterday, something changed my mind.
For those who still care about the policy that was designed to hurt the country on purpose, there’s been quite a bit of news lately, all of it showing the sequester doing what it was intended to do. In addition to the voluminous list of documented problems, just over the last few days we’ve gotten a better sense of the ways in which the policy is hurting the military, public schools, parks, and the justice system. The poor and minorities are disproportionately suffering.
Did the political world care about these stories? Not really. Generally speaking, the slow-motion disaster on auto-pilot just keeps plodding along, with little more than indifference from the Beltway.
So what made yesterday different? This did.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday estimated that keeping the spending cuts from sequestration in place through fiscal 2014 would cost up to 1.6 million jobs.
Canceling the cuts, on the other hand, would yield between 300,000 to 1.6 million new jobs, with the most likely outcome being the addition of 900,000, the CBO said.
The full CBO report, requested by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), is online here.
And why might this part of the sequestration story matter, even after the other elements of the story were largely ignored? Because it offers the political world an important test.
A month ago, several congressional Republican leaders, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), insisted publicly that job creation is their “number one priority.” If those claims were true, I have good news — now they can prove they meant it.
After all, we now have independent confirmation that this one policy, if it remains in place, will cost the nation about 1.6 million jobs through next year. End the policy, on the other hand, and the U.S. economy adds 900,000 jobs.
For those who say the job market is their “number one priority,” this is what’s commonly known as a “no-brainer.”
Let’s make this incredibly simple for Congress: either job creation is your top priority or it isn’t. If it is, then the House and Senate could take five minutes, scrap the sequester, and help the U.S. job market. A lot.
Is it really that simple? Well, yes, actually it is that simple.
But won’t that mean slightly higher spending levels? And won’t that mean slightly less deficit reduction?
Perhaps, but either job creation is your top priority or it isn’t. If someone says, “I’d like to end the sequester, but not if it means increased spending and higher deficits,” then we know, in a very literal sense, that the jobs are not their “number one priority.”
It’s a straightforward, binary choice. Your call, Republicans.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 26, 2013
“Cold And Unfeeling”: Who Knew, Republicans Don’t Like The Republican Party Either
You know who doesn’t seem to like the Republican Party very much? Republicans.
A couple of new polls were released today which in part detailed voter dissatisfaction with the GOP and its roots. First up is a Washington Post-ABC News poll that asked Republicans and GOP-leaning independents whether the party is on the right or wrong track. An astounding 52 percent of Republicans see their party as being on the wrong track, while only 37 percent see it as on the right one. By contrast, Democrats have a net favorable view of their party, with the favorable/unfavorable split at 72-21.
Similarly, a new survey from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for Stan Greenberg and James Carville’s Democracy Corps showed that Democrats are happier with their party than GOPers. The Greenberg poll finds 79 percent of Democrats have a “warm, favorable” feeling about their party as opposed to 11 percent with a “cold, unfavorable feeling,” while 63 percent of Republicans have a warm feeling for their party against 23 percent with a cold feeling. “One of the things that emerges here is how negative Republicans are about their own party,” Greenberg told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this morning.
Greenberg’s poll sketches out some of the party’s fault lines, identifying key elements of the GOP coalition and repeatedly noting where the sizable chunk of moderate GOP voters (25 percent of the party) is often at odds with the more dominant evangelicals (30 percent) and tea party supporters (22 percent), as well as true independents (people who don’t lean toward one party or the other). So, for example, 85 percent of evangelical Republicans and 93 percent of tea party-supporting Republicans “strongly disapprove” of President Obama, while only 54 percent of moderate Republicans do and 40 percent of independents.
Or while 82 percent of the evangelical Republicans are “strongly” unfavorable of gay marriage, only 37 percent of moderate Republicans and 29 percent of independents feel that way. And while 64 percent of evangelicals and 58 percent of tea party Republicans are “strongly favorable” toward pro-life groups, only 24 percent of moderate Republicans and 17 percent of independents agree. Or while 71 percent of tea party supporting Republicans feel strongly favorable toward the NRA, only 34 percent of moderate GOPers and a like number of independents feel that way.
Perhaps most tellingly, only half of self-described moderate Republicans said that they mostly vote for the GOP, as compared to 82 percent of evangelical Republicans and 90 percent of tea party Republicans.
So it seems fair to assume that some level of the internal GOP dissatisfaction comes from these Republican moderates who are out of step with their party and are a sizable enough chunk for it to register in polls, but not sizable enough to take control.
I think there’s another factor at work, however: Republicans don’t like the party because Republicans don’t like the party. Take the two sides struggling for control over the party’s direction: The very conservative evangelical-tea party faction that seems most intent on enforcing philosophical purity through primaries and the alliance of moderates and conservative pragmatists who look at demographics and look at the gap between swing voters and conservatives and worry about how the GOP is going to win a national election again.
On the one hand you have moderates and pragmatists unhappy with the direction of the party, either because they disagree with the dominant ideology or – in the case of pragmatic conservatives – the way it’s being packaged. On the other hand, you have unreconstructed ideological conservatives who dominate the party but also endlessly warn themselves and their allies about how its “establishment” can’t be trusted, must be purged and is composed entirely of “squishes” intent on capitulating to President Obama’s authoritarian encroachments.
One side, in other words, sees the GOP for what it is and hates it and the other sees what they need it to be – an establishment straw man ready to betray the glorious conservative revolution – and also hates it.
No wonder Republicans don’t like the Republican Party.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, July 23, 2013
“Radioactive Stuff”: The Bravery Of President Obama’s Trayvon Martin Speech
The political risks in the President speaking at length about Trayvon Martin and his feelings about the continuing challenges of being a black man in modern America were innumerable.
This is radioactive stuff. It doesn’t matter that he’ll never again be up for election. Obama still has years left in office and a hyperpartisan political environment to navigate. He’s become something of an invisible-hand President, often working back channels, because if he sticks a flag in the ground and demands action, congressional Republicans will then see greater incentive in defeating it. There was no policy proposal attached, but race remains such a key part of American political life that speaking about it so bluntly and at the same time with great nuance could widen the already vast political chasm. Validating black pain, asserting that profiling is real and saying that history is not an excuse but an honest part of why we are in the place we’re in are dangerous stuff when one party depends on a multiracial coalition and the other is almost entirely white and the demographic trends of America show whites becoming a minority within a few decades.
It was a treacherous speech politically because for one part of the divide the answer to black pain is: get over it, as Representative Andy Harris recently said. Racism is in the past, white privilege is a myth, profiling is a ghost: Doesn’t Obama’s election prove we’re beyond all that? The President knows better. He asked, in his 19-minute address, that black pain be acknowledged, that internalized bias be taken seriously, that history be understood as not done with us yet.
The assertion that blacks are hallucinating or making excuses or lying when we talk about the many very real ways white privilege and racial bias and the lingering impact of history impact our lives is painful. It adds insult to injury to attack all assertions of racism and deny its continued impact or existence. The right acts as though decades of rejection of the vast majority of the black electorate is evidence of some sort of plantation thinking rather than the inevitable response to the southern strategy and policies and rhetoric blacks find insulting. What do you mean “Stand your ground” or voter ID or immigration reform or the entitlement debate has racial tones? You’re injecting race! Playing the race card! It is like signal jamming: attack the transmission because you cannot win an argument that admits its existence. To these folks, George Zimmerman is a victim (several essays have spoken of all this as the lynching of Zimmerman). To them, race had nothing to do with this trial and now Obama has become the Race Baiter in Chief. Now he can be attacked on entirely new ground: as an apologist for black victimhood or a shameless stoker of racial division or maybe a neo–Black Panther.
Politically speaking, Obama took that risk because the spiritual or moral risk of saying nothing was too great. To have the microphone and the intellect and the personal experience and a community of citizens in pain — to have all that and say nothing would be a dereliction of duty. It would mean that the black President had somehow been cowed into not speaking deeply about blackness at a moment of national strife because it was, what, too controversial? Perhaps Zimmerman’s acquittal was the only verdict possible given the paucity of evidence and the jury instructions shaped by “Stand your ground” which give so much leeway to self-defenders who feel afraid even if, as the judge instructed, “the danger is not real.”
But Obama knew we cannot understand the pain many feel around this verdict by narrowing the lens and seeing this as an isolated incident, isolated from American history, isolated from American racial norms. We are in pain now because once again we’ve been told black bodies are worth less and we are not full Americans, and fear of black bodies is reasonable and it’s our problem to manage. Obama delicately touched on all that so there’s deep, cathartic power in the President reaching down from his perch to say, I could have been Trayvon, any of us could. And perhaps unsaid though, not unheard, is this: He could’ve been me. No one would’ve thought Barry from the Choom Gang would become President. Who’s to know what Trayvon would’ve become? I am optimistic about the brother’s imaginary future even as I admit that institutional racism would’ve been an anchor weighing him down. But I’m growing more cynical about my country. Even as a boy lies dead and a President says, I too have been profiled, part of the nation still speaks of race as a flimsy playing card they rebuke. Forgive me for wondering if Obama was right when he said we’re moving forward.
By: Toure, Time Magazine, July 22, 2013
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