“Social Security Faces Threat From ‘Ideological War'”: Republicans Manufacturing A Crisis’ To Hide Their Real Intent
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a message to supporters yesterday, warning of a real threat to Social Security. By any fair measure, she’s right.
“We’ve known for years that Social Security Disability Insurance is set to run low in 2016, and most people assumed that another bipartisan reallocation was coming,” the senator wrote. “But now, thanks to the Republican ideological war on our most important national safety net, disabled Americans could suddenly face a 20% cut in their Social Security checks next year.”
Let’s recap for those just joining us. The Social Security system provides disability payments to Americans who want to work but can’t for health reasons. For generations, when the disability-insurance program runs short on funds, Congress transfers money from elsewhere in the Social Security system to prevent benefit cuts. The solution, sometimes called “reallocation,” has never been especially controversial – in fact, it’s been done 11 times over the last seven decades.
But last month, congressional Republicans adopted a rule change that makes it almost impossible to approve the usual, straightforward fix. GOP lawmakers seem to want to create the conditions for a crisis.
All of which led to an important Senate hearing yesterday.
Carolyn Colvin, acting commissioner for the Social Security Administration, urged senators to act first to avert the crisis at hand and then begin serious negotiations on finding a longer-term solution. She said the threatened cut in disability payments – about 19 percent – would be a “death sentence” for many of the poorest recipients, but time and again, she refused to opine on more concrete options going forward.
When Colvin read aloud the president’s six principles for future reforms, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was scornful. “That’s a set of principles that makes sure we do absolutely nothing meaningful,” Graham said. “If that’s the president’s plan, we’ll never get there.”
And by “meaningful,” it appears Graham and other Senate Republicans are waiting for the White House to propose cuts to Social Security. (Ironically, President Obama was open to modest Social Security cuts as part of a grand bargain with GOP lawmakers, but Republicans have refused to consider any possible concessions and effectively ruled out the possibility of a compromise.)
The Politico report added that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the Senate Budget Committee’s ranking member, “angrily accused the GOP of ‘manufacturing a crisis’ to hide its intent to resurrect past proposals to cut Social Security benefits and privatize the system.”
This has the benefit of being true. Addressing the upcoming shortfall in the disability-insurance program should be easy. Republicans are ensuring that it’s not, hoping to exploit a manufactured crisis to force Social Security cuts they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get.
Indeed, the literal name for yesterday’s hearing for the GOP-led committee was, “The coming crisis: Social Security Disability Trust Fund Insolvency.” There would be no crisis, and no threat of insolvency, if Republicans hadn’t already ruled out the straightforward solution lawmakers have relied on for decades.
Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) said yesterday, “I’m hoping the president will take an active role in this.” Expect more of this kind of rhetoric: Republicans will feign outrage over Obama refusing to offer far-right solutions the GOP-led Congress considers acceptable.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, February 12, 2015
“The Republican Congress Is A Mess”: Boehner; Senate Democrats Need To ‘Get Off Their …’
GOP House leaders emerged from a Republican Conference meeting Wednesday with a persistent refrain on Department of Homeland Security funding: The House has done its job; it’s time for the Senate to act.
During their weekly Republican leadership press conference, Speaker John Boehner repeatedly called on the Senate to take up the House-passed DHS funding bill, which Senate Democrats have repeatedly blocked the chamber from considering.
“You know, in the gift shop out here, they’ve got these little booklets on how a bill becomes a law,” a fired-up Boehner said, as camera shutters clicked away. “The House has done its job! Why don’t you go ask the Senate Democrats when they’re going to get off their ass and do something?!”
When Boehner was asked if this standoff with the Senate was how he planned for the DHS bill to play out — Senate Republicans now insist it’s on House Republicans to send over a new bill — Boehner said the process was working “exactly” the way he envisioned it.
“The House did its job,” Boehner said. “We won the fight to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and to stop the president’s unconstitutional actions. Now it’s time for the Senate to do their work.”
But if they don’t, does Boehner ever intend on throwing the Senate a lifeline?
“The House has done its job,” Boehner said. “It’s time for the Senate to do theirs.”
Time and again, Republican members trickling out of the Wednesday morning conference meeting stubbornly repeated some variation of Boehner’s new favorite line: The House did its job, now it’s the Senate’s turn.
During conference Wednesday, members heard from two of their former House colleagues now in the Senate: Cory Gardner of Colorado and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.
But instead of Gardner and Moore Capito quelling the House insistence that the Senate act, the two freshmen senators got an earful that they weren’t doing enough.
According to Rep. Ron DeSantis of Florida, one member in the conference meeting told the senators they shouldn’t be letting the Senate go home on the weekend.
DeSantis said there were ways Republicans could pressure Senate Democrats — simultaneously noting he’s “not an expert on kind of how the Senate’s run” — and he said the sense among the public was that Senate Republicans weren’t doing enough.
In a mocking tone, DeSantis said the Senate’s attitude was, “‘OK, have a vote, OK, you don’t have 60, OK, we got to move on to something else now.’”
House members simply aren’t satisfied with the Senate’s effort on the House-passed DHS bill, which would block President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration. And House Republicans aren’t moving off their position that the Senate take up their bill. That insistence was typified Wednesday in one particularly iron-willed exchange between Budget Chairman Tom Price and a reporter.
“The speaker’s position, and our position, is that the House has already acted; it’s time for the Senate to act,” the Georgia Republican said Wednesday morning.
Asked if the more likely option then was for a continuing resolution or for a shutdown, Price said the option was for the Senate to act.
Presented with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s comments Tuesday that it was “obviously” up to the House to send over a new bill, Price was emphatic. “The House has acted,” he said, content to leave it at that.
But Rebecca Shabad, a reporter for The Hill, was not content to leave it at that. She asked if Price thought the House might have to act again. “It’s up to the Senate to act,” Price replied.
Asked again if a CR was more likely, given the short amount of time before a DHS shutdown on Feb. 28, Price resorted to a similar line. “The House has acted. It’s up to the Senate to act,” he said.
And that’s the official position from House Republicans: They’re not budging.
A similarly obstinate back-and-forth is playing out between Boehner and McConnell in the press. Boehner continues to insist the DHS funding bill is up to the Senate, while McConnell points to three failed votes to proceed to the legislation.
When Boehner was asked about the constantly evolving McConnell-Boehner relationship Wednesday, he didn’t say much.
“I love Mitch,” Boehner said. “He has a tough job to do, and so do I.”
And that was that.
Adam Jentleson, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) later issued the following statement on Boehner’s comments:
“We know Speaker Boehner is frustrated but cursing is not going to resolve the squabbling among Republicans that led to this impasse. Democrats have been clear from day one about the way out of this mess: take up the clean Homeland Security funding bill which Republicans signed off on in December – and which is ready to come to the Senate floor – pass it, and move on. If Republicans want to debate immigration policy next, Democrats are happy to have that debate.
“Neither Speaker Boehner nor Senator McConnell appears willing to do the right thing and stand up to the extremists in their caucus like Senator Ted Cruz who have led us here. As we speak, Senator McConnell is on the verge of wasting three entire weeks that could have been used to pass a clean Homeland Security bill simply because he is unwilling to stand up to Senator Cruz.
“The Republican Congress is a mess, pure and simple. Democrats are happy to help our Republican colleagues resolve their problems but the first step is for Republican leaders to do the right thing and pass a clean bill to fund Homeland Security.”
By: Matt Fuller, The National Memo, February 11, 2015
“Drag-Racing Off A Political Cliff”: Republicans Attack Immigrants While Putting America In Danger
The House of Representatives’ Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, which is really a law seeking the mass deportations of undocumented people, including children, died on the Senate floor, victim of arithmetic certainty.
Mathematical reality seems to be a challenge to the GOP House majority. While most Americans have heard about the 60-vote rule in the U.S. Senate that impacts most legislation — the cloture/filibuster, as it is commonly known — House Republicans insist in passing bills that cannot make that threshold, and are subsequently dismayed that their legislation dies an ignominious death.
Yet once again, and this would now seem to be par for the course for Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) House, Republicans have passed a bill that, with zero support of Senate Democrats, failed to meet the basic 60-vote threshold — three times.
It has been clear for some time that Democrats will not support the liquidation of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Moreover, should such a bill pass by some deus ex machina event, the president would veto it.
So why insist on passing a bill that cannot become law? One must assume that the potency of a quixotic quest to achieve the impossible is irresistible to many members of the Republican caucus in the House. Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) seemed to insist that two plus two does not equal four when he told The Hill that “There’s not a Plan B, because this is the plan.”
In other words, after the mass deportation bill crashed and burned in the Senate, the House has no other plan, no other path forward to fund America’s shield from terrorism, Homeland Security.
Showing the triumph of ideology over logic, The Hill further reports that Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said before the Senate vote that: “[M]any of us agree that we should stand behind the one bill that we sent over there. Most of us feel that way. … Anything less than that, we’re not going to get any better result anyway. So why not just go for what’s really right?”
Of course, the obvious “better result” would be not to put America’s security at risk, and instead pass a clean DHS funding bill that would keep the nation safe. Immigration can always be tackled as a separate issue by the Republican-controlled Congress.
In fact, Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) recently told me on my radio show that the House leadership has given immigration-reform Republicans encouragement to develop a set of sweeping immigration reform bills. So at least in the pro-arithmetic wing of the Republican Caucus, there is a reality-based path forward to deal with immigration without the perennial government shutdown threat — implicit in Scalise’s “not a Plan B” comment — that has become Republicans’ go-to tactic for forcing through their agenda when they fail to muster the votes necessary to pass legislation in both chambers.
It would be refreshing to see the big House Republican majority have as much passion for governing as they do for deportation. As Americans look at our society, polling clearly suggests that bread-and-butter issues dominate the agenda of the people. The economy, of course, and education, healthcare and the sense of economic insecurity that hangs like a shadow over most American families are the issues that should be tackled by a giant majority with ambitions to govern for more than two years.
I have yet to see one poll in which Americans rank mass deportations of undocumented immigrants as a top priority. Moreover, it’s hard to imagine that Americans favor such deportations over the continued funding and smooth operation of the country’s principal anti-terrorist agency, DHS.
Ironically, the party that has claimed the mantle of being the true fighters against a global jihadist threat is willing to drag-race off a political cliff to deport people rather than fund Homeland Security.
This is a choice that has both practical and symbolic resonance. The practical impact is obvious: Even one day, contrary to Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart’s (R-Fla.) jaunty declaration otherwise, when DHS is not funded is one day too many. Republicans willfully weakening America’s national security would be irresponsible, bordering on seditious.
And the political and symbolic effects would also be notable. Will Americans easily forget that Republicans bet with their safety, indeed the safety of the nation, for the unachievable policy goals of deporting millions of people?
Perhaps we’re seeing here the inherent weakness of a Republican majority so divided among ideologies and passions that it is literally incapable of governing for the benefit of the nation.
At the very least, we are witness to the fact that even GOP leaders such as Rep. Scalise are a little weak on the universal truths of basic arithmetic.
By: Fernando Espuelas, Univision America Host; THe Blog, The Huffington Post, February 6, 2015
“It’s Time To Amend The Constitution”: Orrin Hatch Is Third In Line To The Presidency!
The swearing-in of a new Congress is often marked by precipitous climbs and sudden tumbles. Last week, former Senate Minority Obstructionist Mitch McConnell realized his lifelong ambition of becoming majority leader; his rival Harry Reid backslid to his old role in the minority (though not before a less figurative fall sprinkled a little injury over the insult); and more than a dozen Republican senators took over as committee chairs, which contributed such marvelous ironies as global warming skeptic James Inhofe becoming America’s top gatekeeper for environmental legislation.
One of the most consequential changes, however, has passed virtually without comment. Coinciding with the rise of the new Republican majority in the upper chamber, Utah’s archconservative Senator Orrin Hatch is now the Senate president pro tempore. That means that he’s been transformed overnight from a minority-party graybeard to third in line to the presidency.
Most Americans probably didn’t realize that the good people of Beaver, Daggett, and Juab Counties had selected a possible future president for the rest of the country back in 2012, when they reelected Hatch to a seventh term. He is now the second Republican, behind Speaker John Boehner, in line to succeed the Democratic president and vice president in the event of their deaths, incapacitations, or resignations. Here is convincing proof, even more than the vice presidencies of Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle were, that the voters, our political parties, and America’s entire system of government don’t really take the issue of presidential succession seriously.
It almost never matters who the Senate president pro tempore is. The position is basically a constitutional quirk arising from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the body occasionally had to call on a designated lawmaker to substitute for its normal presiding officer, the vice president. That function declined in importance over the last 60 years as veeps began to embrace a larger role outside the Senate. Thereafter a tradition arose to entrust the meager duties of the office (you get to sign legislation and administer oaths) to the longest-serving member of the majority party. That practice has frequently—one might even argue necessarily—resulted in the appointment of enfeebled old men from small states, often not of the president’s own party, to a position just a few heartbeats away from the big office.
Hatch is 80 years old, and he takes over the job from the comparatively spry Pat Leahy, a 74-year-old from Vermont. The two presidents pro tempore before Leahy were Hawaii’s Daniel Inuoye and West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, both of whom died in office at the ages of 92 and 86, respectively. Keep in mind that the oldest president in history, Ronald Reagan, left the White House at 77 already showing signs of the Alzheimer’s disease that would swiftly put an end to his public life. It’s flatly dangerous to put men of such advanced years anywhere near the Oval Office without the kind of rigorous medical vetting that presidential candidates receive during campaigns; if they assumed control over the government, it would almost certainly occur during a time of national crisis that would tax their abilities to the extreme.
Even if Hatch’s health and faculties could be guaranteed, his ascent would still mean the retroactive disenfranchisement of tens of millions of Democratic voters nationwide in favor of a vastly smaller group of some 600,000 Hatch voters from his home state—this at a time when national unity would be of paramount importance. This is doubly true of Boehner, a perfectly capable man whose entire congressional district consists of less than 800,000 people.
It may seem fanciful (or morose) to speculate on the subject of succession. After all, no Speakers outside of The West Wing have risen to replace a fallen president, let alone Senate presidents pro tempore. But we’ve lived far more dangerously than we ought to be comfortable with. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln originated in a plot to decapitate the government by also killing the vice president and secretary of state—one that very nearly succeeded. To pick an example of more recent vintage, United Airlines Flight 93 came within a forty-minute flight delay of wrecking the United States Capitol or White House. After 9/11, the joint Brookings/AEI Continuity of Government Commission issued a set of recommendations to help our succession process better reflect an age of global threats that strike without warning. Its counsel—to cut congressional and more junior cabinet secretaries out of the picture, as well as establish protocols for the appointment of temporary members of Congress and the judiciary—has gone thus far unheeded.
The group’s best suggestion was its most provocative: Instead of concentrating our entire crop of possible successors within the small area around Washington, where they are clearly vulnerable to a devastating act of terrorism, the president should select a small group of prominent Americans around the country who could be regularly briefed and prepared to step into power should the need arise. These figures—state governors, former cabinet officials, or other successful government administrators—could even be put forward by candidates during a presidential election, giving the public the partial opportunity to review and approve the choices (and providing political reporters and strategists with even more fodder). In the name of prudence, democracy, and a better news cycle, we should implement this plan—and for the same reasons, we should get elderly, out-party members of Congress some other ceremonial job.
By: Kevin Mahnken, The New Republic, January 16, 2015
“This Is Progress?”: The Unbearable Whiteness Of Congress
Cue the confetti: The new Congress sworn in on Tuesday is the most diverse in our nation’s history!
That would truly be a milestone to celebrate—until you see what that record “diversity” actually means. Ready? The breakdown of the 114th Congress is 80 percent white, 80 percent male, and 92 percent Christian.
That’s really diverse if, say, you are comparing our new Congress to the white supremacist group House Majority Whip Steve Scalise once addressed. It’s like Congress is stuck in a time warp: While our calendars read 2015, theirs reads more like 1955.
Look, I don’t care if you are a liberal or a conservative. It’s impossible to make the claim that our Congress accurately reflects the demographics of our nation. And it’s not missing by a little but a lot. If Congress accurately reflected our nation on the basis of race, about 63 percent would be white, not 80 percent. Blacks would hold about 13 percent of the seats and Latinos 17 percent.
But what do we really see? The new Senate has only two black senators. That statistic is even more striking given that earlier this week the first black person ever elected to the Senate, Edward Brooke, was laid to rest. Brooke won his seat in 1966 and served two terms. How far has Congress really evolved on race when in 50 years it has gone from one black senator to two? (Even the arguably more democratic House is only at 10 percent black members.)
Latinos, the fastest growing minority group in America, are even more underrepresented in Congress. They hold 3 percent of the Senate and a little over 7 percent of the House.
And let’s look at religion. Congress is now 92 percent Christian, resembling more to a papal enclave than our religiously diverse nation. The latest Pew Poll found that nearly 20 percent of Americans identify as atheist, agnostic, or not being affiliated with any religion. Yet there’s only one member of Congress, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), who openly acknowledges she’s not a member of any religious group.
OK, let’s put race, ethnicity, and religion aside and address the most glaring underrepresentation in Congress of any group: women. This Congress will welcome more women than ever before at 19 percent of the House and 20 percent of the Senate. So what percentage of America is female? It’s 51 percent.
Even internally in the House, women are not getting their fair shake. While 19 percent of the House is female, just one woman will get to chair one of its 20 committees.
There are various reasons—some rather complex, some rather base—why our Congress doesn’t come close to reflecting the demographics of our nation. One that affects all the groups is that Congress moves slowly, and I don’t mean just on passing legislation. Historically the reelection rate for members of Congress is in the area of 95 percent. The benefits of incumbency are quite potent, especially in the all-important area of raising campaign funds. This is likely the single biggest reason why you don’t see Congress evolve demographically more quickly. (Term limits could be a prescription to speed change along.)
Minority communities also have had to deal with the issue of “racial gerrymandering,” where congressional districts are designed either to dilute the strength of a minority community, known as “cracking,” or over-concentrate them, known as “packing.” While “packing” will lead to the guarantee of a few seats in Congress, it also can reduce the opportunities for minority candidates, says Arturo Vargas, executive director of the Latino group NALEO. Finding the “sweet spot” between packing and cracking, he says, is central to creating more districts that provide minorities the opportunity to be elected to Congress.
And then comes the issue of women in Congress. The United States now ranks 98th in the world for the percentage of women serving in its national legislature, behind Indonesia and Kenya.
Why are so few women serving in our Congress? Studies have offered us a few reasons, some contradictory. One found that women have less interest in seeking elected office, with 48 percent of the men surveyed having considered a career in politics but only 35 percent of women. Partly this was due to women receiving less encouragement to go into politics and having lower self-confidence about running for Congress.
But in the case of black women, another study found no lack of interest. Rather, black women are not recruited to run because party bigwigs view them as being less electable and less likely to raise the campaign dollars needed to mount an effective campaign than white women or men.
With all that said, representation of each of these respective communities has increased in the new Congress. But as Vargas noted, “Progress never comes fast enough.”
So what would happen if our Congress accurately, or at least more closely, reflected our nation’s demographics? Would our Congress be less dysfunctional? That feels like the old Catskills joke that ends with the punch line “It can’t get any worse!”
But people in the underrepresented groups might see Congress as truly being representative of who they are and their views, as opposed to seeing it as an institution still dominated by the old guard. That could (possibly) lead to a Congress that’s more responsive. And that’s good for all of us, regardless of our race, religion, ethnicity, or gender.
By: Dean Obeidallah, The Daily Beast, January 9, 2015
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