History > 2011 > USA > Politics > U.S. Senate (I)

Hobbling the Fight Against Terrorism

December 7, 2011
The New York Times

Lawmakers from the House and Senate are working on provisions in the military budget bill that would take the most experienced and successful antiterrorism agencies — the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors — out of the business of interrogating, charging and trying most terrorism cases, and turn the job over to the military.

These new rules would harm the justice system and national security. They would hinder intelligence-gathering, make it harder to track down terrorists and make other countries less likely to cooperate.

Those are not our conclusions, although we strongly agree. They are the views of James Clapper, the director of national intelligence; Robert Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Lisa Monaco, the assistant attorney general for national security. The defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who used to run the intelligence services, has said that the military doesn’t want this responsibility. Lawmakers are ignoring them.

At issue are a series of amendments added by the House and the Senate to the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual military budget bill. They mandate military detention for most terrorism suspects (although they focus especially on Muslims). The House version would bar trying these prisoners in federal court, while the Senate version would make that very unlikely.

This means civilian law enforcement agencies with greater experience would be cut out and intelligence-gathering would be hobbled. Countries would be less likely to turn over prisoners to American authorities if they would land in military detention. Both versions of the bill would make the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a permanent symbol of injustice and cruelty around the world. Both leave open the possibility of subjecting American citizens to military detention without charge or trial.

These measures are not just bad policy, they are entirely unnecessary.

Federal authorities have jailed terrorists by the score since Sept. 11, 2001. The military tribunals created by President George W. Bush and modified by President Obama have not managed to try any of the major figures behind the 9/11 attacks, who remain in Guantánamo. Existing law covers capture and detention of prisoners in battle. The military does not want new powers to interrogate and investigate terrorist suspects, especially those arrested in the United States.

President Obama, who has more than shown his mettle in combating terrorism, has allowed conservatives from both parties to entirely dominate the issue of military detention and trial. Now he has finally spoken up and threatened to veto the military budget bill if it ends up looking like it does now.

We hope the House and Senate conferees will strip out the military detention and trial provisions, but we are pessimistic. Government and Congressional officials told us on Tuesday that members of Congress are not taking the veto threat seriously.

Vetoing the military budget would pose political risks for Mr. Obama. Signing provisions like the ones in the House and Senate versions into law would do lasting harm to the country.

    Hobbling the Fight Against Terrorism, NYT, 7.12.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/opinion/hobbling-the-fight-against-terrorism.html

Senate Approves Requiring Military Custody in Terror Cases

November 29, 2011
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Defying the Obama administration’s threat of a veto, the Senate on Tuesday voted to increase the role of the military in imprisoning suspected members of Al Qaeda and its allies — including people arrested inside the United States.

By a vote of 61 to 37, the Senate turned back an effort to strip a major military bill of a set of disputed provisions affecting the handling of terrorism cases. While the legislation still has several steps to go, the vote makes it likely that Congress will eventually send to President Obama’s desk a bill that contains detainee-related provisions his national-security team has said are unacceptable.

The most disputed provision would require the government to place into military custody any suspected member of Al Qaeda or one of its allies connected to a plot against the United States or its allies. The provision would exempt American citizens, but would otherwise extend to arrests on United States soil. The executive branch could issue a waiver and keep such a prisoner in the civilian system.

A related provision would create a federal statute saying the government has the legal authority to keep people suspected of terrorism in military custody, indefinitely and without trial. It contains no exception for American citizens. It is intended to bolster the authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which lawmakers enacted a decade ago.

The administration has strongly opposed the mandatory military custody provision, saying it “would raise serious and unsettled legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets.”

In recent days, several top national security officials — including the secretary of defense, Leon E. Panetta; the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper; and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, have voiced opposition to the proposal, as have several former counterterrorism officials from the Bush administration.

But among Republican senators, there was nearly unanimous support for keeping the detainee provisions in the bill: 44 Republicans voted for them, while two — Mark Kirk of Illinois and Rand Paul of Kentucky — voted to remove them.

By contrast, members of the Democratic caucus were deeply divided: 35 wanted to strip the detainee provisions from the bill, but 17 voted to keep them in it. About half of the Democrats who supported keeping the provisions were members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose chairman, Carl Levin of Michigan, shaped the package with Republicans.

“We are at war with Al Qaeda, and people who are determined to be part of Al Qaeda should be treated as people who are at war with us,” Mr. Levin said in the debate leading up to the vote.

Mr. Levin also said that he supported the use of civilian trials for some terrorism cases and said that the waiver in the bill would leave that option available to the administration. And he repeatedly quoted from a 2004 Supreme Court case approving the detention without trial of an American citizen captured in Afghanistan and accused of fighting with the Taliban.

Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat and a member of the Armed Services Committee who sponsored the unsuccessful proposal to strip the detainee proposals from the bill, warned that the provisions could “destabilize” counterterrorism efforts, “open the door to domestic military police powers and possibly deny U.S. citizens their due process rights.” He argued that lawmakers should slow down and revisit the issue later.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that the time had come for Congress to enact a statutory framework for how terrorism cases should be handled.

Mr. Graham also argued that detaining a terrorist for the purpose of interrogating him about planned attacks — even on domestic soil — should be viewed as a wartime act, not an exercise of “police” power that should raise any concerns about the military taking over law enforcement functions.

“I don’t believe fighting Al Qaeda is a law enforcement function,” Mr. Graham said. “I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys at home or abroad.”

    Senate Approves Requiring Military Custody in Terror Cases, NYT, 29.11.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/us/politics/senate-approves-military-custody-for-terror-suspects.html

Deficit Panel Members Seeking to Avoid Blame

November 8, 2011
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — Members of a Congressional panel on deficit reduction are no longer trying just to solve the nation’s fiscal problems. Some are desperately trying to avoid blame for the possible collapse of a process concocted by Senate leaders to break an impasse between those who want to raise taxes and those who would prefer to cut spending by focusing on entitlement programs.

After weeks of calculated silence, the two parties have begun shoving out rival versions of the same message: If the joint committee cannot reach agreement, the other side will be responsible.

Republicans, long opposed to tax increases, said Tuesday that they might allow $250 billion to $300 billion of additional tax revenue as part of a deal to shave $1.2 trillion from federal deficits over the next 10 years.

Democrats were quick to dismiss the offer because, they said, it came with a proposal that would permanently reduce individual income tax rates, including those for the most affluent Americans — a group that Democrats would like to see contribute more to deficit reduction.

Members of both parties said Tuesday that they saw a glimmer of hope that the panel could strike a deal and vote on its recommendations by the statutory deadline of Nov. 23, just two weeks off.

With Republicans resisting additional tax revenues until now, Democrats had refused to entertain significant savings in benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and a member of the committee, said that the latest Republican overture represented a “slight change.”

“I would not characterize it as substantial yet, but it is a change,” he said. “We have some distance to travel.”

Democrats said they worried that the ideas floated by Republicans like Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania might be largely a public relations gesture, to deflect Democratic complaints that Republicans were responsible for the current impasse.

Some of the new revenue under the Republican proposal would come from limiting tax breaks that primarily benefit upper-income households. Some would come from other sources like fees charged for government services, higher Medicare premiums for high-income people, sales of federal lands and surplus federal property, and perhaps oil drilling in part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a proposal that has failed to win broad Democratic support over the years.

Democrats pointed to the nontax revenue as evidence that Republicans were still not serious.

“The Republicans’ insistence on no new taxes was not working,” said a Democratic senator close to the negotiations. “So Republicans have now offered a tiny bit of tax revenue. To be serious, they must offer much more.”

A Democratic aide close to the talks said the latest Republican proposal was unacceptable because it would lower the top tax rate on the most affluent Americans to 28 percent in 2013, from the current 35 percent. Under existing law, the rate is scheduled to rise to 39.6 percent in 2013.

“This plan would provide the very wealthiest Americans with one of the largest tax rate cuts ever,” the Democratic aide said. “It’s a shell game — a thinly veiled attempt to appear to put revenue on the table while simultaneously removing far more with massive tax cuts for wealthy Americans. This plan is not a solution that Democrats or middle-class Americans would ever be willing to accept.”

Another Democratic aide said the proposal would be “a windfall for millionaires.”

A Republican close to the talks said it was Democrats who had been intransigent, demanding tax increases as part of any deal.

The House will not approve a bill that raises tax revenue unless it also reduces tax rates, the aide said, adding, “We put tax revenues on the table, and Democrats don’t know what to do.”

The Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 170 conservative House Republicans, immediately circulated a letter urging the committee not to support any tax increases. “With current levels of taxation already limiting economic growth, we believe that marginal rates must be maintained or lowered and that repeal of any tax credit or deduction be offset with an equal or greater tax cut,” the letter said.

The latest Republican proposal also calls for a gradual increase in the age of eligibility for Medicare, to 67 from 65, and the use of an alternative measure of inflation that would reduce annual cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security benefits.

The new measure of inflation would also be used to adjust income tax brackets and other tax code provisions. Some people would find themselves in higher tax brackets, and more income would be subject to taxation.

The Congressional Budget Office said these changes could reduce federal spending by more than $110 billion over 10 years and could generate $70 billion of additional revenue.

Creation of the panel, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, was originally recommended in July by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, concurred.

In a news briefing on Tuesday, Mr. McConnell said he suspected that “folks down at the White House are pulling for failure” by the panel, because an agreement would tend to disprove President Obama’s portrayal of Congress as dysfunctional.

Mr. Reid said Republicans on the committee appeared to be under the spell of Grover G. Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, who strenuously opposes tax increases.

Mr. Norquist is so influential that it seemed as if he were “elbowing his way into all these rooms where we’re having these meetings,” Mr. Reid said.

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said he had not been impressed with the panel’s efforts to cut spending.

“It seeks only to spend the country into bankruptcy a little slower,” Mr. DeMint said. “Rather than letting the country rack up $23.4 trillion of debt by 2021, the supercommittee hopes to keep it to $21.3 trillion. It’s the difference between speeding off a cliff at 91 miles per hour versus 100 miles per hour.”

 

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

    Deficit Panel Members Seeking to Avoid Blame, NYT, 8.11.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/us/politics/both-sides-on-deficit-panel-seeking-to-avoid-blame.html

Putting Millionaires Before Jobs

November 3, 2011
The New York Times

There’s nothing partisan about a road or a bridge or an airport; Democrats and Republicans have voted to spend billions on them for decades and long supported rebuilding plans in their own states. On Thursday, though, when President Obama’s plan to spend $60 billion on infrastructure repairs came up for a vote in the Senate, not a single Republican agreed to break the party’s filibuster.

That’s because the bill would pay for itself with a 0.7 percent surtax on people making more than $1 million. That would affect about 345,000 taxpayers, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, adding an average of $13,457 to their annual tax bills. Protecting that elite group — and hewing to their rigid antitax vows — was more important to Senate Republicans than the thousands of construction jobs the bill would have helped create, or the millions of people who would have used the rebuilt roads, bridges and airports.

Senate Republicans filibustered the president’s full jobs act last month for the same reasons. And they have vowed to block the individual pieces of that bill that Democrats are now bringing to the floor. Senate Democrats have also accused them of opposing any good idea that might put people back to work and rev the economy a bit before next year’s presidential election.

There is no question that the infrastructure bill would be good for the flagging economy — and good for the country’s future development. It would directly spend $50 billion on roads, bridges, airports and mass transit systems, and it would then provide another $10 billion to an infrastructure bank to encourage private-sector investment in big public works projects.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican of Texas, co-sponsored an infrastructure-bank bill in March, and other Republicans have supported similar efforts over the years. But the Republicans’ determination to stick to an antitax pledge clearly trumps even their own good ideas.

A competing Republican bill, which also failed on Thursday, was cobbled together in an attempt to make it appear as if the party has equally valid ideas on job creation and rebuilding. It would have extended the existing highway and public transportation financing for two years, paying for it with a $40 billion cut to other domestic programs. Republican senators also threw in a provision that would block the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing new clean air rules. Only in the fevered dreams of corporate polluters could that help create jobs.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, bitterly accused Democrats of designing their infrastructure bill to fail by paying for it with a millionaire’s tax, as if his party’s intransigence was so indomitable that daring to challenge it is somehow underhanded.

The only good news is that the Democrats aren’t going to stop. There are many more jobs bills to come, including extension of unemployment insurance and the payroll-tax cut. If Republicans are so proud of blocking all progress, they will have to keep doing it over and over again, testing the patience of American voters.

    Putting Millionaires Before Jobs, NYT, 3.11.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/opinion/the-senate-puts-millionaires-before-jobs.html

No Jobs Bill, and No Ideas

October 12, 2011
The New York Times

It was all predicted, but the unanimous decision by Senate Republicans on Tuesday to filibuster and thus kill President Obama’s jobs bill was still a breathtaking act of economic vandalism. There are 14 million people out of work, wages are falling, poverty is rising, and a second recession may be blowing in, but not a single Republican would even allow debate on a sound plan to cut middle-class taxes and increase public-works spending.

The bill the Republicans shot down is not a panacea, but independent economists say it would have a significant and swift effect on the current stagnation. Macroeconomic Advisers, whose forecasts are often used by the Federal Reserve, said it could raise economic growth by 1.25 percentage points and create 1.3 million jobs in 2012. Moody’s Analytics estimated new growth at 2 percentage points and 1.9 million jobs. Those economists say that Republican ideas for increasing growth would have no measurable effects in the next year.

The Republicans offer no actual economic plans, only tired slogans about cutting regulations and spending, and ending health care reform. The party seems content to run out the clock on Mr. Obama’s term while doing very little. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, accused Republicans of trying to “suffocate the economy” in hopes that the pain would work to their political advantage. They are doing little to refute that charge.

Their lack of serious ideas was on full display in both the Senate and the presidential debate on Tuesday night in New Hampshire. The debate was ostensibly about the economy, but when the freshest and most-talked-about idea is Herman Cain’s ridiculous “9-9-9” tax plan, it is clear that the economy they were debating is not the one Americans are forced to live in. Mr. Cain — whose rise in the polls says everything you need to know about the amateur-hour decline of his party — wants to replace all federal taxes with a 9 percent levy on corporate income, personal income and sales. As Bruce Bartlett, an economist who has worked in Republican administrations, recently wrote in The Times, it is a formula designed to cut taxes for the rich and increase them for the poor, raising the deficit and doing nothing for growth.

The other candidates were no less vacuous. Mitt Romney offered an ash heap of used ideas, saying he would push a balanced-budget amendment, cut back on regulations, and go chest to chest with China on trade. Rick Perry, when he could be stirred to speak, vowed to somehow put 1.2 million people to work in the energy industry, as if the whole country were Texas and drills could pop up on every block.

Republican candidates fear the Tea Party too much to acknowledge that economists are solidly behind government intervention to awaken growth. The jobs bill rejected by Republican leaders will now be reintroduced piece by piece, and Republicans are not likely to go along with much more than an extension of the payroll tax cut (which is opposed by Mr. Romney). But at least the record is increasingly clear who is advocating real ideas and who is selling an empty vessel.

    No Jobs Bill, and No Ideas, NYT, 12.10.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/opinion/no-jobs-bill-and-no-ideas.html

Congress Ends 5-Year Standoff

on Trade Deals in Rare Accord

October 12, 2011
The New York Times
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — Congress passed three long-awaited free trade agreements on Wednesday, ending a political standoff that has stretched across two presidencies. The move offered a rare moment of bipartisan accord at a time when Republicans and Democrats are bitterly divided over the role that government ought to play in reviving the sputtering economy.

The approval of the deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama is a victory for President Obama and proponents of the view that foreign trade can drive America’s economic growth in the face of rising protectionist sentiment in both political parties. They are the first trade agreements to pass Congress since Democrats broke a decade of Republican control in 2007.

All three agreements cleared both chambers with overwhelming Republican support just one day after Senate Republicans prevented action on Mr. Obama’s jobs bill.

The passage of the trade deals is important primarily as a political achievement, and for its foreign policy value in solidifying relationships with strategic allies. The economic benefits are projected to be small. A federal agency estimated in 2007 that the impact on employment would be “negligible” and that the deals would increase gross domestic product by about $14.4 billion, or roughly 0.1 percent.

The House voted to pass the Colombia measure, the most controversial of the three deals because of concerns about the treatment of unions in that country, 262 to 167; the Panama measure passed 300 to 129, and the agreement concerning South Korea passed 278 to 151. The votes reflected a clear partisan divide, with many Democrats voting against the president. In the Senate, the Colombia measure passed 66 to 33, the Panama bill succeeded 77 to 22 and the South Korea measure passed 83 to 15. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, voted against all three measures.

The House also passed a measure to expand a benefits program for workers who lose jobs to foreign competition by a vote of 307 to 122. The benefits program, a must-have for labor unions, passed with strong Democratic support. The Senate previously approved the measure.

Proponents of the trade deals, including Mr. Obama, Republican leaders and centrist Democrats, predict that they will reduce prices for American consumers and increase foreign sales of American goods and services, providing a much-needed jolt to the sluggish economy.

“At long last, we are going to do something important for the country on a bipartisan basis,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader.

However, Mr. Obama’s support for the measures has angered important parts of his political base, including trade unions, which fear job losses to foreign competition. Many Democrats took to the House floor Wednesday to speak in opposition to the deals.

“What I am seeing firsthand is devastation that these free trade agreements can do to our communities,” said Representative Mike Michaud, a Maine Democrat who once worked in a paper mill.

Both chambers raced to approve the deals before a joint Congressional session Thursday with the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak.

The revival of support for the deals, originally negotiated by the Bush administration five years ago, comes at a paradoxical political moment, when both conservative Republicans and the Occupy Wall Street protesters have taken antitrade positions, albeit for different reasons. In a debate among Republican presidential candidates Tuesday night, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, accused China of manipulating the value of its currency to flood the United states with cheap goods, while populist sentiment on the left opposes the trade agreements because of the potential for American job losses.

Mr. Obama cited similar concerns in criticizing the agreements during the 2008 presidential campaign, but he later embraced the deals as a key part of his agenda to revive the economy. To win Democratic support, the White House reopened negotiations with the three countries to make changes demanded by industry groups and unions, and insisted that the expansion of benefits for displaced workers be tied to passage of the trade agreements.

The benefits program was expanded in 2009 to include workers in service industries as well as manufacturing. The compromise negotiated this summer between the White House, House Republicans and Senate Democrats preserves most of the funding for the program.

Increased protections for American automakers in the South Korea deal won the support of traditional opponents of trade deals, including some Midwestern Democrats and the United Automobile Workers union. But scores of Democrats opposed the deal with Colombia, because they said it did not do enough to address the murders of dozens of union organizers in that country.

“Trade agreements should not be measured solely on how many tons of goods move across the border,” said Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat.

Economists generally predict that free trade agreements, which eliminate tariffs and other policies aimed at protecting domestic manufacturers, benefit all participating nations by creating a larger common market, increasing sales and reducing prices. But such deals also create clear losers, as workers lose well-paid jobs to foreign competition.

The White House and Republican leaders said that the three agreements would provide a big boost to the lagging American economy and put people back to work.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hailed the deals Wednesday as an important victory for American foreign policy. And she said she expected that the South Korea pact alone would create 70,000 American jobs. “By opening new markets to American exports and attracting new investments to American communities, our economic statecraft is creating jobs and spurring growth here at home,” Ms. Clinton said at a Washington event.

But the United States International Trade Commission, a federal agency that analyzed the deals in 2007, reported that that economic impact would be minimal because the three countries combined represent a relatively small market for American goods and services.

The modest projected increase in demand will come mostly from South Korea, the world’s 14th-largest economy, which will join a short list of developed nations that have free trade pacts with the United States, alongside Australia, Canada, Israel and Singapore.

The commission predicted that American farmers would benefit most, because of increased demand for dairy products and beef, pork and poultry. Conversely, it predicted that the pacts would eliminate some manufacturing jobs, particularly in the textile industry.

Opponents, including textile companies, said that the deals would harm the economy by undermining the nation’s industrial base. They argued that South Korean companies would benefit much more than American companies because they were gaining access to a much larger market.

These are the first deals to pass Congress since the approval of an agreement with Peru in 2007. The Bush administration had won approval for trade agreements with 14 countries before the Democrats regained Congress in 2008, but it was then unable to gain traction.

“It’s been five years in the making, but we are finally here,” said Representative Lynn Jenkins, a Kansas Republican, in a speech urging passage of the agreements.

    Congress Ends 5-Year Standoff on Trade Deals in Rare Accord, NYT, 12.10.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/business/trade-bills-near-final-chapter.html

Senate Reaches Deal to Avert Government Shutdown

September 26, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — The Senate reached a bipartisan spending agreement on Monday to avert a government shutdown, sidestepping a bitter impasse over disaster financing after federal authorities said they could most likely squeak through the rest of this week with the $114 million they had on hand.

After blocking one Democratic proposal, the Senate voted, 79 to 12, to approve a straightforward seven-week extension of financing for government agencies that were due to run out of money on Friday, simultaneously replenishing accounts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency that this summer’s string of natural disasters had nearly exhausted.

“It shows us the way out,” said Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, who said the plan should be satisfactory to both Democrats and Republicans. “It means we no longer have to fight.”

The discovery by FEMA that it had money for the week was the key to the breakthrough since it eliminated one of the main points of contention: whether to offset a quick infusion of funds to the agency with cuts elsewhere as House Republicans had insisted. Democrats in both the House and Senate said that approach would set a bad precedent.

While the Senate actions appeared to head off a government shutdown for a second time this year, the embarrassing fight over disaster aid pulled into sharp relief both the enduring, sinewy power of the Tea Party — and its deep impact on fiscal policy — and Democrats’ revived pugnacity as they press President Obama’s jobs plan through next year’s elections.

To ease potential objections, the Senate also passed, by voice vote, a measure to extend government financing for four days to allow time to work out the longer-term agreement when the House returns next week.

The House, whose members are back in their districts for a week’s recess, would have to sign off on any bill to keep the government running after the end of the fiscal year, since the Senate rejected the House Republican plan last week.

Senate officials hoped they could win quick consent on the four-day solution in a pro forma session of the House this week, calculating that House leaders would not want to be blamed for causing a shutdown by failing to consider a plan that received strong Senate support.

Democrats said they expected the House Republicans to concur with the Senate’s overall solution. “It is hard to see how House Republicans would reject this proposal,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York.

Even as they approved the financing arrangement, members of both parties said the that fight had gone too far.

“In my view, this entire fire drill was completely unnecessary,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “But I’m glad a resolution now appears to be at hand.”

As the Senate headed for its showdown, FEMA and administration budget officials informed lawmakers that the agency would likely be able to make disaster relief payments through the rest of the week. Mr. Reid’s staff then reached out to House Speaker John A. Boehner to discuss a short-term solution.

Democrats sought to frame the latest problem as one manufactured by House Republicans, who last week passed their own bill to provide $3.65 billion in disaster relief to FEMA partly paid for with cuts to loan programs to support energy-efficient cars and alternative energy.

Senate Democrats, who were displeased with the level of disaster aid as well as the cuts, rejected that bill on Friday. (Some Republicans also voted against the bill, on the ground that it did not make sufficient cuts to current-year spending.)

Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat from Louisiana and a central proponent of advancing the aid without corresponding cuts, repeatedly called the House position the “Cantor doctrine.” After a moderate earthquake rattled his state, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, almost immediately said any additional disaster aid spent this year would need to be offset with spending cuts.

Immediate emergency aid for natural disaster victims has historically been distributed without offsets in the budget. Congressional officials said the question of how to handle disaster aid was likely to be revisited this fall if the administration sought a special spending bill to cover disaster costs.

Mr. Reid batted away the idea that Republicans would seek offsets for disaster financing for the next fiscal year. “If they want to go through this again, they are looking for more losses,” he said. “Americans are just so upset.”

Twelve Republicans opposed the seven-week bill on Monday. Senator Roy Blunt, Republican from Missouri, said he voted against both bills Monday because “they would delay the process by punting back to the House” and because the second bill would provide less disaster relief for his state.

House Republican leaders, who were on the phone with members of their caucus on Monday night, could not give assurances that the Senate bill would find immediate acquiescence in their chamber. But they did seek to portray the bill as their victory.

“Washington Democrats attempted to grandstand and delay needed disaster relief to score political points,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner. “Republicans stood firm, and Senate Democrats have conceded that the spending level in the House-passed bill was the most responsible solution.”

Up next, Mr. Reid said: a trade bill.

 

Robert Pear contributed reporting.

    Senate Reaches Deal to Avert Government Shutdown, NYT, 26.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/politics/senate-to-vote-on-spending-bill-with-support-uncertain.html

Shutdown a Step Closer as Senate Blocks House Bill

September 23, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — An impasse between the House and Senate over a bill to keep the government open after Sept. 30 and provide financial aid to natural disaster victims got worse on Friday as the Senate easily shot down a House bill passed in the early hours of Friday morning.

House members, considering their work done, headed back to their districts for a week’s recess. The Senate adjourned for the weekend, planning to take the matter up again on Monday afternoon.

The Senate vote was 59 to 36 to set aside the latest House bill, with a handful of conservative Republicans joining with Democrats to deliver a quick and decisive rejection.

Democrats oppose the House measure on the grounds that it does not provide enough relief for disaster victims, and because that relief was offset by spending cuts to other programs near and dear to them; conservatives appeared to feel their House colleagues had failed to cut deeply enough.

The Senate action left Congress mired in an impasse with serious implications for the financing of federal agencies. The House and Senate had been scheduled to begin a week-long recess Friday. But without an agreement on a bill to pay for federal operations beginning Oct. 1, the government would run out of money before lawmakers returned unless some resolution was found.

With House members heading out of town, Speaker John A. Boehner said Friday that the only way to advance the legislation, which would replenish the nearly empty coffers of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and finance the federal government through mid-November, would be for the Senate to capitulate and accept the House bill.

“With FEMA expected to run out of disaster funding as soon as Monday, the only path to getting assistance into the hands of American families immediately is for the Senate to approve the House bill,” Mr. Boehner said. “This is no time for delay.”

But Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said he had been assured that FEMA had enough money to keep operating and set about scheduling further votes for next week. On Friday, a spokesman for President Obama expressed alarm at the inability of Congress to reach a deal.

“The members of Congress work for the American people,” said the spokesman, Jay Carney, in a briefing with reporters. “They work for the constituents who sent them here, in their districts and states. We are absolutely confident that the vast majority of those constituents are not asking very much when they insist that Congress perform the basic functions that they were sent here to perform, and that they do not let politics get in the way of what should be a relatively straightforward exercise of funding the government.”

He also criticized House Republicans for pushing a measure that the Senate opposed.

“The House Republicans once again passed something that they know can’t pass the Senate and therefore can’t become law, which is a perfect indication,” he said, that “the fever hasn’t broken.”

The latest version of the House bill, like the first, would partially offset the cost of disaster assistance by cutting a separate Energy Department loan program that promotes development of energy-efficient cars. This cut infuriates Democrats in the House and the Senate, who say the program is creating thousands of jobs at automakers and auto parts suppliers.

“The bill was wrong yesterday, the bill is wrong today,” Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said Thursday night on the House floor. “Virtually nothing has changed.”

The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, said Republicans were offering “the same old warmed-over stew that was rejected” on Wednesday.

Mr. Boehner had solicited the views of his colleagues at a meeting of the House Republican Conference, where lawmakers expressed frustration at the setback they suffered Wednesday on the bill to provide $3.65 billion in disaster relief.

In an effort to win over fiscal conservatives, Mr. Boehner told members of his caucus that the bill defeated Wednesday was the best deal they were going to get.

Representative Greg Walden, Republican of Oregon, who voted for the original bill, said: “If you are a conservative, it just gets worse from here. The Senate wants to spend a lot more.”

The Senate last week approved a bill that includes $6.9 billion of disaster assistance, nearly twice as much as the House bill.

Four dozen House Republicans defied party leaders and voted against the original bill. Many said they wanted deeper cuts in overall spending.

Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, said he had to stay true to his constituents.

“We promised that we would make serious cuts,” Mr. Gohmert said as he left the party caucus on Thursday. “We have not made serious cuts. I have to see serious cuts so I can keep my commitment to the people who elected me.”

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said it was imperative for the House to act swiftly, to address the pressing needs of disaster victims and to minimize the political risks to Republicans.

“Delay puts this on the Democrats’ playing field,” Mr. King said. “If there is a threat of a government shutdown or if there is a threat of people not getting disaster assistance, we are on the defense.”

Representative Jo Ann Emerson, Republican if Missouri, said, “Disaster assistance is absolutely critical for my district,” which suffered extensive flood damage earlier this year.

Mr. Boehner defended his decision to let the House vote Wednesday.

“I’ve always believed in allowing the House to work its will,” Mr. Boehner said Thursday. “I understood what the risk was yesterday. But why not put the bill on the floor and let the members speak? And they did.”

Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio, said Republicans were engaged in “a cynical ploy to set disaster victims against unemployed auto workers” who could benefit from the clean car program.

The fight over the stopgap spending bill came as a powerful House-Senate committee weighed options for sweeping changes in individual and corporate taxes.

Committee members from both parties said they wanted to lower business tax rates and eliminate or curtail some tax deductions and other tax breaks used by corporations.

“We don’t collect as much revenue as we should, due in part to the complex, inefficient and loophole-ridden tax code we’ve got,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio. “Most economists agree that fundamental corporate tax reform is going to produce more economic growth and therefore, as a consequence, more revenues.”

Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said, “I think we should lower our corporate rates very significantly.” But he said such changes would cause “big dislocations,” as “some industries would be hurt a lot” while others would benefit.

Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and co-chairwoman of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, said, “I think we all agree that our corporate tax code needs substantial reform.”

But she said “it’s important to coordinate reforms for individual and corporate taxes” because many businesses operate as “pass-through entities” and their income shows up on individual income tax returns.

How lawmakers could agree on huge changes in the tax code — when they could not agree on a bill to finance the government for just seven weeks — remained a mystery.

    Shutdown a Step Closer as Senate Blocks House Bill, NYT, 23.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/us/politics/impasse-grows-between-senate-and-house-over-spending.html

Scrutinizing Google’s Reign

September 18, 2011
The New York Times
By STEVE LOHR and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Google’s slogan may be don’t be evil, but a growing chorus of antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe want to know if the company has lived up to that creed.

This week, those concerns — especially whether Google gives its own businesses preferred placement in search results, thwarting competition and harming consumers — will have their most public airing to date, when Google’s chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, testifies before a Senate antitrust panel. Some of Google’s competitors will also testify.

The Senate proceeding is just one of an array of inquiries into Google’s behavior by various federal and state authorities in this country, as well as by regulators in Europe and Asia. And though the company and the times are different, there are echoes of a hearing before the same Senate body, the Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, 13 years ago and the last sweeping antitrust investigation of an American technology powerhouse, Microsoft. Later, the federal government, joined by 20 states, filed suit against Microsoft.

“Google is a great American success story, but its size, position and power in the marketplace have raised concerns about its business practices, and raised the question of what responsibilities come with that power,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who is a member of the antitrust subcommittee and who as the attorney general of Connecticut played a leading role among the states that sued Microsoft.

Today Google, like Microsoft then, is both admired and feared. Google has used the riches from its dominance in search and search advertising to expand into video distribution with YouTube, smartphone software with Android and Web browsers with Chrome. It has added online commerce offerings in local retail and restaurants, comparison shopping and travel, and folded them into its search engine, prompting complaints that Google is giving its businesses preferred placement in search results.

Google executives have consistently replied that its search results are the product of extensive user testing, and do not favor its own offerings. If users become dissatisfied with Google search results, the company argues, they will go elsewhere, to rival search engines like Microsoft’s Bing, sites that focus on specific products or services like Yelp, or social networks like Facebook.

“Using Google is a choice,” Amit Singhal, a senior engineering manager at Google, wrote on the company’s blog in June, after the Federal Trade Commission began its investigation. “And there are lots of other choices available to you for getting information.”

Competitors disagree. Yelp, the popular Web site for user reviews and recommendations for restaurants and other businesses, has noticed a difference in search rankings since Google established its own online businesses, said Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and chief executive of Yelp, which gets half its traffic from Google searches.

Two years ago, Google offered to buy Yelp, but the talks broke down. Last year, Google introduced Places, a Yelp-like service for listing businesses and collecting consumer reviews. A Google search for a restaurant often displays the Places entry — linked to a map, user reviews and other services — ahead of Yelp.

“Google develops its own in-house properties and it preferences those, so it’s leveraging its dominance in Web search,” he said.

Mr. Stoppelman, who is scheduled to testify at the Senate hearing on Wednesday, added, “When it comes to Web search, Google says you have great content, you rise to the top and that’s historically been true for us. But we do feel like that world is changing because Google has decided it’s not enough to own and dominate Web search.”

This month, Google acquired Zagat, the restaurant listing and review service, to strengthen its local commerce offering. Yelp is Zagat’s leading online rival.

Google, legal experts say, presents some challenges for the traditional doctrine of antitrust. The Microsoft case, too, required adapting antitrust principles to modern technology, and the complaint filed against the company was filled with technical computing terms like “cross-platform middleware” and “application programming interfaces.”

Yet Microsoft’s dominant product — the Windows personal computer operating system — was something consumers and companies paid for, as with any conventional good.

Google’s search service, by contrast, is “free and anyone who wants to use it can use it,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, an antitrust expert at the University of Iowa College of Law, so higher prices for consumers — a hallmark of competitive harm — is not an issue.

But in other ways, the accusations against Google fit comfortably into antitrust.

“If it is proven that Google discriminates in favor of its own online properties, you certainly have an antitrust issue,” Mr. Hovenkamp said.

While the technical ingredients may be different, the Google recipe is the same one used by Microsoft years ago, said Gary L. Reback, a lawyer at Carr & Ferrell who represents some of Google’s rivals.

The Microsoft case revolved around Netscape, maker of the first commercially successful Web browser, and the bullying tactics Microsoft used to thwart the threat it represented.

The browser was a new layer of software, running on top of a personal computer operating system, and developers wrote software to run on the browser. Thus the browser took on some functions similar to an operating system, potentially undermining the role and value of Windows.

“Web sites like Yelp and others in travel and shopping that help people find things are partial substitutes for Google in the same way that Netscape was a partial substitute for Windows,” said Mr. Reback, who also played a key part in the 1990s case against Microsoft.

Google’s expansion strategy beyond search is an effort to grab more online advertising dollars. Google pockets more than three-fourths of all search advertising dollars in the United States, and a higher share in many European markets.

Its share of total online ad revenue in America, including spending on larger graphic and video ads, is 41 percent, followed by Yahoo with 11 percent, Facebook with 7 percent and Microsoft with 6 percent, according to eMarketer, a research firm.

Advertising revenue, analysts say, is the prize on the Internet — the fuel that sustains services, competition and innovation.

Much of the economy may be languishing, but not in Silicon Valley, where start-ups are being created at a torrid rate, flourishing, it seems, in Google’s shadow. Facebook and Twitter, for example, are becoming powers in their own right

“The similarity between Google and Microsoft years ago is the potential for harm, the risk that a dominant company uses its power to disadvantage others,” said Mitchell Kapor, a longtime Silicon Valley technologist and investor. “But Google was born on the open Internet, and things are just generally far more open to innovators and start-ups than in the Microsoft era.”

And, as proof of the rapid turn of fortunes in technology, Microsoft is now the underdog, trailing well behind Google in search and search advertising, urging government officials to take action. Microsoft has met regularly with antitrust investigators in America and filed a complaint against Google in Europe this year.

“We appreciate the irony,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said in an interview earlier this year.

    Scrutinizing Google’s Reign, NYT, 18.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/technology/googles-to-face-congressional-antitrust-hearing.html

Charles Percy, Former Ill. Senator, Is Dead at 91

September 17, 2011
The New York Times
By ADAM CLYMER

Charles H. Percy, a former United States senator from Illinois and a moderate Republican who clashed with President Richard M. Nixon over Watergate and whose own presidential ambitions were stymied by Nixon’s resignation, died Saturday in Washington. He was 91.

His death was announced by the office of his son-in-law, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia. Mr. Percy had been treated for Alzheimer’s disease for many years.

A three-term senator, Mr. Percy went to Washington in 1967 after a strikingly successful career as a businessman. In 1949, at the age of 29, he was named president of Bell & Howell and then oversaw its rapid growth.

He also arrived in the capital grief-stricken: one of his daughters had been murdered during his 1966 campaign.

Mr. Percy was talked about as presidential material almost from the time he entered politics in 1964, when he ran for governor of Illinois; he narrowly lost to Otto Kerner Jr. The notion gained even wider currency in 1966, when, in an upset, he gained a Senate seat by defeating Paul H. Douglas, a respected three-term Democratic incumbent.

For many Republicans, Mr. Percy’s business background, Midwestern roots and moderate views in the increasingly liberal political climate of the 1960s made him an attractive alternative to the hard-right conservatism that voters had rejected in 1964 in the landslide defeat of Senator Barry Goldwater.

His good looks and elegant manner enhanced his appeal; Republicans retained fresh memories of their narrow presidential loss to the handsome John F. Kennedy in 1960.

In 1967, only three months into his first Senate term, Chuck Percy, as he was familiarly known, drew attention when he proposed legislation to create a private foundation to finance low-cost housing and foster home ownership among low-income families. Though the measure did not pass, it drew strong support from Republicans in both the House and the Senate.

The New York Times columnist James B. Reston called him “the hottest political article in the Republican Party.”

By the end of the year, he was considered a possible contender for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination; a Louis Harris poll in late 1967 put him ahead of President Lyndon B. Johnson in a head-to-head contest. But he declined to run and instead endorsed Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, another moderate.

Mr. Percy became closely identified with the more liberal wing of the party known as Rockefeller Republicans, so much so that his name became attached to them as well — “decent Chuck Percy Republicans,” as the writer Richard Ford described them in “The Lay of the Land,” his novel of suburban New Jersey.

Mr. Percy’s national stature was underlined when the endorsement of Rockefeller was treated as front-page news nationwide. The Times, making the announcement its lead article on July 26, 1968, described it as “counterbalancing” former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s endorsement of Nixon.

Mr. Percy briefly considered a bid for the White House only once. In June 1973, he formed an exploratory committee to look into a 1976 candidacy. But he closed it down after Nixon resigned in August 1974 and Vice President Gerald R. Ford became president. Within a week, Mr. Percy said Ford had gotten off to an excellent start and was likely to be nominated in 1976, as he was.

Mr. Percy’s clash with Nixon came in the spring of 1973 as the president was trying to contain the Watergate scandal, set in motion by the break-in at the offices of the Democratic opposition by a White House team of burglars and aggravated by the administration’s efforts to cover up the crime.

On May 1, the day after Nixon announced a staff shakeup and authorized a new attorney general to “make all decisions” relating to Watergate prosecutions, Mr. Percy proposed a Senate resolution demanding an independent prosecutor “of the highest character and integrity from outside the executive branch.”

Mr. Percy told the Senate: “A simple and very basic question is at issue: Should the executive branch investigate itself? I do not think so.”

His resolution was adopted without objection. Soon afterward, Nixon fumed to his cabinet that he would do all he could to make sure that Mr. Percy, who had already voted against two Nixon nominees for the Supreme Court, would never become president.

In 1977, after the election of President Jimmy Carter, Mr. Percy accused the White House budget director, Bert Lance, of backdating checks to gain tax deductions. Mr. Percy was the senior Republican on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and he and Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff, Democrat of Connecticut, the chairman, demanded that Mr. Lance resign or be fired because of that and accusations of banking crimes.

Mr. Lance resigned but was acquitted of all charges arising from the Senate inquiry. Mr. Percy later apologized for the backdating accusation.

Mr. Percy was proud of his recommendations for judicial appointments, especially that of John Paul Stevens, a former college classmate. Mr. Percy had persuaded him to take a seat on a federal appeals court in 1970 and then backed his nomination when Ford named him to the Supreme Court in 1975. Mr. Percy consulted bar associations and lawyer friends about appointments and said he never chose a political supporter for the bench.

Over his 18 years in the Senate, Mr. Percy averaged a 52 percent rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and only 30 percent from the American Conservative Union. With the party having moved steadily to the right since then, it was a rating few if any Republicans would receive today.

“Percy’s passing reminds us that today’s Republican Party is not your mother’s Republican Party,” said Thomas C. Mann, a Congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, adding that Mr. Percy had worked “comfortably” with Democrats.

“Perhaps the most significant change in American politics,” Mr. Mann said, “which has picked up with the most intensity in recent years, is the disappearance of moderate, pragmatic Republicans like Percy.”

Charles Harting Percy was born in Pensacola, Fla., on Sept. 27, 1919, the son of Edward Percy and the former Elizabeth Harting. He grew up in Chicago, where his father was a bank clerk. When the bank failed in the Depression and his father lost his job, the family went on relief, and Mr. Percy took several jobs as a child.

He graduated from the well-regarded New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill., then received a scholarship to attend the University of Chicago. There he ran a cooperative purchasing service for fraternities and sent money home to help his family. He was also the captain of the water polo team.

Mr. Percy was still a student when he began his association with Bell & Howell, taking summer jobs. The company hired him full time after he graduated in 1941. When war came later that year, he set up schools to teach military personnel how to use Bell & Howell movie cameras. He joined the Navy in 1943, training aviation personnel.

Rising quickly through the company’s ranks, he was named president on Jan. 12, 1949, an appointment that drew wide attention not least because of his age. But the company, based near Chicago in Skokie, Ill., prospered under him as it extended its reach in the consumer electronics market and went beyond making home-movie cameras, producing components for space photography as well. Annual sales were $13 million when he took over; when he left in 1963, they were more than $160 million.

Mr. Percy married Jeanne Valerie Dickerson in 1943. She died in 1947, and in 1950 he married Loraine Diane Guyer, who survives him. He is also survived by two children from his first marriage, Sharon Percy Rockefeller of Washington and Charleston, W.Va. (she is married to Senator Rockefeller), and Roger D. Percy of Seattle; two children from his second marriage, Gail Percy of Washington and Mark Percy of Newport Beach, Calif.; nine grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Another daughter, Sharon’s twin sister, Valerie, was bludgeoned to death in the family home in Kenilworth, Ill., during Mr. Percy’s 1966 campaign. She was 21. The police kept the case alive for more than 20 years but never identified a suspect. They did rule out burglary, however, since nothing was stolen, and said the intensity of the attack suggested that the killing had been committed by someone who knew Ms. Percy. Mr. Percy suspended his campaign for a couple of weeks but returned and won a solid victory over Mr. Douglas.

But just as Illinois voters had tired of Mr. Douglas by 1966, Mr. Percy was old goods by 1984. In a strong Republican year, with President Ronald Reagan campaigning for him, Mr. Percy could not overcome his Democratic opponent, Representative Paul M. Simon.

His position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee seemed remote to Illinois voters, as did his manner. The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal all described him as “pompous.”

Mr. Percy never persuaded conservatives to trust him, and some actually supported Mr. Simon in the hope that Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, would succeed him in the chairmanship. The Illinois economy was weak, and Mr. Simon won a narrow victory with 50.1 percent of the vote.

After his defeat, Mr. Percy lived in Washington and led a consulting firm that sought to help United States companies export their products.

A Christian Scientist, he read the Christian Science Bible Lessons every day into his 90s.

    Charles Percy, Former Ill. Senator, Is Dead at 91, NYT, 17.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/us/politics/charles-percy-former-illinois-senator-is-dead-at-91.html

Despite Talk of Taming Partisanship,

a Show of It for President’s Remarks

September 8, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — It was, for a moment, Bizzaro World, with Republicans giving the president of the United States a standing ovation, while Democrats, in large part, remained firmly fixed in their seats as he expressed his desire for new trade agreements.

And it was a brief respite for Representative Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican and majority leader. He had spent much of the day talking about the need for conciliation, but had, for the previous 20 minutes, become more and more agitated as the speech went on, furiously taking notes as President Obama ticked off a list of tax cuts and programs he claimed that Republicans had supported.

For all the talk about the need to tame partisanship, both chambers of Congress put on a relatively full display of it Thursday night, with Democrats hooting and clapping at Mr. Obama’s remarks about taxes, entitlement programs and teachers, and Republicans leading the charge when the talk turned to veterans and regulations.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was first into the chamber, wearing a lavender tie, tan and bright white smile. He was followed by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who was immediately set upon by a freshman Democrat, followed by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, who stood with his hands folded in front of him, pensive, speaking to few.

Unlike the State of the Union, when Democrats and Republicans sat together to show good will and cheer, members sat largely by party this time, as the room braced with anticipation for the speech. Oddly, former Representative David Wu of Oregon, a Democratic who resigned under the cloud of scandal before the August recess, sat with a young girl toward the back of the chamber, as others more or less avoided him.

Republicans were divided between those who criticized the president before he had uttered a word and those who reached with tentative hands toward an olive branch, citing the exhaustion of the American public with perpetual partisanship.

After the speech, Mr. Cantor said he liked some of the president’s proposals, including one to provide tax relief to small businesses, and would try to “peel off” such elements and pass them separately.

However, Mr. Cantor criticized Mr. Obama for not specifying how he would pay for the new initiatives. He also complained that the president had offered his proposals on a “take it or leave it” basis, presumably referring to Mr. Obama’s pledge to take his case “to every corner of this country,” beginning with Mr. Cantor’s hometown, Richmond, on Friday.

Representative Emanuel Cleaver II, Democrat of Missouri and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, hailed that part of the speech, saying it would “energize the base” of the Democratic Party and enhance the president’s prospects for re-election.

Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also had election plans in mind on Thursday, but with a different twist. Mr. Sessions sent a plan to all Republican House candidates, declaring the start of the 2012 campaign season and encouraging them to criticize the president often.

A handful of House and Senate Republicans decided the president’s speech did not merit their attendance at all, even though Speaker John A. Boehner discouraged boycotts.

“I have encouraged my colleagues to come tonight and to listen to the president,” Mr. Boehner told reporters. “He is the president of the United States and I believe that all members ought to be here to do this. Doesn’t mean they’re going to.”

There were some notable guests on hand though, many of them corporate chief executives — the presumed creators of jobs.

Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, invited Henry Juszkiewicz, the chief executive of the Gibson Guitar Corporation, to highlight the fact that two Gibson work sites had been raided by federal agents apparently in search of illegal, partly finished, wooden guitar fingerboard blanks from India. Since the visit, Mr. Juszkiewicz has become a walking, breathing, Republican talking point against excessive regulation.

The first lady, Michelle Obama, invited her own business people including Kenneth I. Chenault, the chairman of American Express.

The Republicans presented no official response to the president’s speech, with Mr. Boehner suggesting that his party did not want to get in the way of the desire of many Americans to watch the first game of the N.F.L season rather than be “forced to watch some politician they don’t want to listen to.”

Mr. Reid had scheduled a post-speech vote on a Republican resolution to disapprove the increase to the debt limit. It failed on its first procedural vote, with 52 Democrats opposed. The inconvenient vote had an icing-on-the-cake quality for Mr. Reid, as it forced Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, to stay in Washington rather than flee to his home state to watch the Saints-Packers N.F.L. season opener, as he had said he would.

 

Robert Pear contributed reporting.

    Despite Talk of Taming Partisanship, a Show of It for President’s Remarks, NYT, 8.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/us/politics/09scene.html

For Obama,

a ‘Moment’ Speech at a Time of Great Obstacles to Change

September 8, 2011
The New York Times
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

Enshrined in the mythology of the American presidency, there is something called a moment speech, an address to the nation so forceful and eloquent that it changes the way the country feels about its leadership and even itself.

Long before Barack Obama took office, many of his supporters and even a few of his critics thought he would be the kind of president who could give those kinds of speeches. Ever since he took office there have been many wondering why these kinds of speeches have not been coming, and whether the president’s hallmark reliance on calm, rational explanation needs more fire to galvanize the nation and persuade his adversaries. Thursday night’s address to Congress on job creation, coming as the prospect of a double-dip recession looms, seemed to be another chance for an address that would do those things.

But a moment speech is less about the speech than it is about the moment. And as interviews with political historians and citizens around the country on Thursday made clear, Mr. Obama was approaching the lectern in a moment that offered more obstacles than opportunities for bringing about real change.

Even in the strictest sense, the timing of the speech was inauspicious. After a partisan standoff over scheduling with the House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner, who asked the president to move his address from Wednesday night, the speech took place in a pre-prime-time slot shoved up against the start of the N.F.L. season.

But in more momentous ways, the president was facing serious disadvantages, some of his own making.

Speeches, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, are about context. Some of the most memorable and praised speeches — by Mr. Obama after the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, for example, or by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks — were delivered in moments of pronounced national grief or anxiety, when the country longed for a voice of reassurance.

Thursday’s jobs speech, on the other hand, comes after a season of nasty partisanship, a time where the country’s biggest threat seemed not to come from outside enemies or natural disasters but the inability of its own political leadership to get basic things done. The economy that the president is addressing is in crisis, but a crisis that has been excruciatingly prolonged, beaten out in a tiresome tempo of starts and stalls.

“The economy is a mess,” said Becky Wallard, 71, a retired teacher in Atlanta. “There’s no speech that can hide that.”

Even Mr. Obama’s defenders acknowledge that the political reality in Washington, with the committed opposition of a Republican Congress, makes the likelihood of bold action on the president’s part very slim.

“At this point, his speeches haven’t really been earth-shattering or made a major difference,” said Lily Wolk, 59, who was sitting at a Starbucks in Los Angeles and who said she was hopeful nonetheless. “I think that he’s got his hands tied.”

Some political historians and polling experts suggested that this was not a problem particular to Mr. Obama and that anyone maintaining that the president has lost some special magic, or was choosing not to use it, is simply misreading history.

Despite the insta-polls insta-punditry that usually follow on a big speech, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that addresses like this do not have a major impact on public opinion over the short or long term. There has been little major polling movement after other speeches in Mr. Obama’s presidency, including the State of the Union addresses and his speech on health care, and few think a speech on the economy would be an exception.

“It’s just illusory to think that presidents can provide a narrative that can make unemployment sound acceptable,” said George C. Edwards, a professor of political science at Texas A & M University and author of “On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit.”

Professor Edwards pointed out further that the kind of people who have not made up their minds about the president or his policies are the kind of people who are least likely to watch speeches like this. These voters would be moved almost exclusively by tangible results.

In this sense, Mr. Obama’s reputation as an orator could backfire among those who believe that his word-action ratio was askew, or that his famed professorial approach was unsuited to the dire times at hand.

“Supposedly the best way to convince Obama of anything is to say it’s the consensus of experts,” said David Morrell, 62, a library custodian in Atlanta who described himself as a dispirited Democrat, and who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008. “Everything that has been disastrous in this country has had a ton of experts behind it.”

Mr. Morrell added, “It doesn’t seem to be in his nature to bring up anything other than superficialities.”

Jean Garber, 75, a retiree in Denver put it more succinctly: “Too many speeches. Every time you turn around!”

Still, there are others, mainly supporters of the president, who believed that a strong voice of reassurance was more important than the policy details and that Mr. Obama was capable of delivering that reassurance.

“I think he recognizes that the country is so worried right now,” said Jonathan Lee, a physician from Norwood, Mass. “It’s more a matter of saying, ‘I recognize there is immense trouble.’ ”

Dr. Lee said the would not change his opinion: he was a committed backer of the president. Anyway, he added, he was probably going to watch the Red Sox game instead.

 

Reporting was contributed by Abby Goodnough, Ian Lovett, Dan Frosch, Robbie Brown, Emily S. Williams and Adrienne Hilbert.

    For Obama, a ‘Moment’ Speech at a Time of Great Obstacles to Change, NYT, 8.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/us/politics/09voters.html

Plan’s Focus

on Social Security Taxes Reflects Its Modest Ambitions

September 8, 2011
The New York Times
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

WASHINGTON — The centerpiece of President Obama’s job-creation plan, a proposal to further reduce Social Security taxes, is emblematic of a package of modest measures that some economists describe as helpful but not sufficient to lift the economy from its malaise.

In his speech on Thursday night, Mr. Obama asked Congress to cut the amount that workers must contribute toward Social Security benefits, extending an existing measure, and to reduce, for the first time, the matching payments that employers are required to make.

The cuts, which would deprive the government of about $240 billion in revenues next year, are the largest items in the president’s $447 billion job-creation plan, which includes payments to unemployed workers, incentives for companies that hire workers and increased federal spending on infrastructure. All of the measures will require the support of Congressional Republicans.

Cutting taxes is a time-honored strategy for stimulating growth. The formula is simple: Workers will spend more money when their paychecks grow, and companies will respond to that increased demand by hiring more workers, creating a cycle that increases the pace of growth.

Preliminary analyses of the White House plan estimate that the tax cuts could create more than 50,000 jobs a month, a significant boost considering that employment climbed by 35,000 jobs, on average, in each of the last three months. But even if Congress immediately agreed to pass the president’s entire plan, the economy is likely to continue to struggle. Companies must increase payrolls by about 100,000 people every month to keep pace with population growth.

Still, Joel Prakken, senior managing director at Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm, said that the benefits of creating more than half a million jobs next year should not be minimized. “It’s going to make the unemployment rate lower than it otherwise would be,” he said.

The other elements of Mr. Obama’s plan, however, highlight the challenges of doing more. Economists regard benefits for unemployed workers as among the most effective means of increasing growth because people without jobs tend to spend the money quickly. But Republicans generally oppose increased spending on social programs.

Infrastructure spending, by contrast, enjoys bipartisan support, but breaking ground on new projects can take a long time, delaying the impact on the economy.

The administration’s focus on payroll tax cuts, which became more ambitious in the days leading up to the speech, is an exercise in the art of the possible. While economists regard other kinds of measures as potentially more effective, the cuts would put money directly in the hands of consumers, and Republican leaders have indicated they are willing to consider the proposal.

Seeking to exploit that potential opening, the White House decided to considerably expand the scope of the cuts in the latter stages of planning.

The Social Security tax is paid in equal shares by workers and their employers. Both pay 6.2 percent of a worker’s annual income up to $106,800. The president’s plan would reduce the amount that workers pay by half, a savings of $1,500 for an employee who makes $50,000.

The current tax cut, set to expire in December, has reduced the tax to a rate of 4.2 percent. The new proposal would further reduce it to 3.1 percent in 2012.

In the present climate, however, there are significant reasons to doubt that consumers are honoring the predictions of economic models by taking that money and racing out to spend it.

Families are devoting a larger share of income to paying debts, which is important for the economy’s long-term health but does nothing to stimulate growth. Concern about future earnings also is weighing on many households, reducing their willingness to spend. A recent study found that 62 percent of households expect their income to stay the same or decline over the next year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the lowest level of confidence in 30 years.

“One striking aspect of the recovery is the unusual weakness in household spending,” the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Thursday in Minneapolis.

There is also broad disagreement among economists about the president’s companion proposal to give companies a tax break, too.

The plan is divided in two parts. The amount employers must pay also would be reduced by half on payrolls up to $5 million, a condition that the White House said would focus the benefits on small businesses. And the plan would waive all payroll taxes on increased spending on salaries — either for new hires or raises — up to the first $50 million in increased wages.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that a tax cut for employers would have a greater impact than a tax cut for workers. The nonpartisan office reported that every dollar in reduced taxes on employers would generate up to $1.20 in economic activity, while every dollar in reduced taxes on workers would generate up to 90 cents because workers tend to save a portion of their additional income.

Some independent economists, however, doubt that the tax cut will persuade companies to make significant hires because the primary issue remains a lack of demand. If a company cannot sell more sofas, it does not need more workers to make them, whether the cost of each new worker is $106,200, including employer payroll taxes, or only $100,000, if the tax cut is enacted. As a result, they argue, companies are even more likely than consumers to refrain from spending the money.

Mark Thoma, a University of Oregon economist, said that company tax cuts should be tied to hiring: “If they don’t spend the money on employees, you don’t get a demand-side effect.”

Studies of similar tax cuts in other countries suggest the truth lies in between. A 2008 study by the Government Institute for Economic Research in Finland, for example, found that companies shared about half the money from a payroll tax cut with workers in the form of higher wages.

The study also found, however, that there were “no significant effects on employment.”

Cutting payroll taxes does not affect the government’s obligation to pay benefits to older Americans. Indeed, the White House plan specifies that amounts not paid by workers and companies must be paid to Social Security from other sources of government revenue.

But some advocates, noting that temporary tax cuts have a history of becoming permanent, worry that reducing direct Social Security revenues could undermine political support for the program by making it seem more like a form of welfare.

The Social Security tax “creates a stake for every American working person in the system,” said Nancy Altman, co-director of the Social Security Works coalition. “If you start meddling with that you start to pull apart the political contract.”

    Plan’s Focus on Social Security Taxes Reflects Its Modest Ambitions, NYT, 8.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/us/politics/09tax.html

The Jobs Speech

September 8, 2011
The New York Times

With more than 14 million people out of work and all Americans fearing a double-dip recession, President Obama stood face to face Thursday night with a Congress that has perversely resisted lifting a finger to help. Some Republicans refused to even sit and listen. But those Americans who did heard him unveil an ambitious proposal — more robust and far-reaching than expected — that may be the first crucial step in reigniting the economy.

Perhaps as important, they heard a president who was lately passive but now newly energized, who passionately contrasted his vision of a government that plays its part in tough times with the Republicans’ vision of a government starved of the means to do so.

The president’s program was only a start, and it was vague on several important elements, notably a direct path to mortgage relief for troubled borrowers. And some of the tax cuts for employers may prove ineffective. Nonetheless, at $447 billion, the plan is large enough to potentially lower the unemployment rate and broad enough to be a significant stimulus.

As Mr. Obama pointed out, virtually every proposal on his agenda has been accepted over the years by Democrats and an earlier generation of Republicans that was not reflexively opposed to a recession-fighting fiscal policy. This generation is different, and the president’s challenge to purely partisan resistance was forceful and clear.

“The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy,” he said.

Though he went on too long, he was authoritative in demanding that Congress pass his plan quickly and in laying out its benefits for average Americans. He directly, even mockingly, challenged the increasingly nihilistic Republican view that government’s very presence is noxious. Just as Lincoln helped start the transcontinental railroad and land-grant colleges, he said, the two parties must together push the country past its economic crisis. Waiting for the next election will waste valuable time, he said.

“The people who sent us here — the people who hired us to work for them — they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months,” he said. “Some of them are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.”

At the core of his plan are two cuts in the payroll tax — one for employers and one for employees — that have long been embraced by Republicans. The employee cut would reduce the tax to 3.1 percent of income instead of the 4.2 percent negotiated last year. (It was 6.2 percent originally.) Although it could have been better targeted to low- and middle-income families, it will put money in people’s pockets quickly and increase consumer demand.

For employers, the plan would halve the payroll tax for most small and medium-size businesses and would provide an incentive for hiring by temporarily removing the tax for new employees (and on raises for existing ones). Companies would also get a $4,000 tax credit for hiring anyone out of work for more than six months. Unemployment insurance would be extended for five million people. Though Mr. Obama said more Americans would be able to refinance their homes at low interest rates, he did not say how.

The plan would provide $35 billion in state aid to prevent up to 280,000 teacher layoffs while hiring tens of thousands more, along with additional police officers and firefighters. It would create jobs to modernize 35,000 schools across the country. And it would accelerate $50 billion in improvements for highways, railroads, transit and aviation.

Though the plan would be paid for by more deficit reduction, he left those vital details until later. It was gratifying to hear him call for higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, but his warning of cuts to Medicare and Medicaid — lifelines to the most vulnerable — raised concerns about trading one important program for another.

We hope Mr. Obama keeps his promise to take his proposals all over the country. The need to act is urgent.

    The Jobs Speech, NYT, 8.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/opinion/president-obamas-jobs-speech.html

Obama Challenges Congress on Job Plan

September 8, 2011
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Mixing politically moderate proposals with a punchy tone, President Obama challenged lawmakers on Thursday to “pass this jobs bill” — a blunt call on Congress to enact his $447 billion package of tax cuts and new government spending, designed to revive a stalling economy and his own political standing.

Speaking to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama ticked off a list of measures that he emphasized had been supported by both Republicans and Democrats in the past. To keep the proposals from adding to the swelling federal deficit, Mr. Obama also said he would encourage a more ambitious target for long-term reduction of the deficit.

“You should pass this jobs plan right away,” the president declared over and over in his 32-minute speech, in which he eschewed his trademark soaring oratory in favor of a plainspoken appeal for action, stiffened by a few sarcastic political jabs.

With Republicans listening politely but with stone-faced expressions, Mr. Obama said, “The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy.”

Though Mr. Obama’s proposals — including an expansion of a cut in payroll taxes and new spending on public works — were widely expected, the package was substantially larger than predicted, and much of the money would flow into the economic bloodstream in 2012. The pace would be similar to that of the $787 billion stimulus package passed in 2009, which was spread over more than two years. Analysts said that, if passed, the package would likely lift growth somewhat.

While Republicans did not often applaud Mr. Obama,, party leaders greeted his proposals with uncharacteristic conciliation. Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, and other Republicans signaled a willingness to consider at least some of the measures, reflecting what some have described as anger in their home districts over the political dysfunction in Washington.

“The proposals the president outlined tonight merit consideration,” Speaker John A. Boehner said in a statement. “We hope he gives serious consideration to our ideas as well.”

Still, analysts said it was unlikely that the White House would win Congressional approval for many elements of the package.

For Mr. Obama, burdened by the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, the address crystallized the multiple challenges he faces, among them reviving a torpid economy with a Republican House that, however receptive some of its leaders appeared Thursday, has staked out a relentlessly confrontational course with the White House. The president must also shake off a perception, after so many speeches on the economy, that he has not delivered on the promise of his oratory.

After weeks on the defensive, however, Mr. Obama seemed to get off his back foot. He framed the debate over the economy as a tug-of-war between mainstream American values and a radical, antigovernment orthodoxy that holds that “the only thing we can do restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everyone’s money, let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own.”

With a difficult re-election bid looming, Mr. Obama declared that his vision would appeal to more voters. “These are real choices we have to make,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure I know what most Americans would choose. It’s not even close.”

At times, he edged into sarcasm. Promoting the extension in the payroll tax cut to Republicans, Mr. Obama said: “I know some of you have sworn oaths never to raise any taxes on anyone for as long as you live. Now is not the time to carve out an exception and raise middle-class taxes, which is why you should pass this bill right away.”

The centerpiece of the bill, known as the American Jobs Act, is an extension and expansion of the cut in payroll taxes, worth $240 billion, under which the tax paid by employees would be cut in half through 2012. Smaller businesses would also get a cut in their payroll taxes, as well as a tax holiday for hiring new employees. The plan also provides $140 billion for modernizing schools and repairing roads and bridges — spending that Mr. Obama portrayed as critical to maintaining America’s competitiveness.

The president insisted that everything in the package would be paid for by raising the target for long-term spending cuts to be negotiated by a special Congressional committee. He did not go through the arithmetic, but said he would send a detailed proposal to Congress in a week. Senior White House officials said the amount of increased spending cuts would hinge on how much of the plan gets through Congress.

Mr. Obama said most of his proposals had support from both parties, a contention that Republican leaders rejected. “There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation,” he said. “Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by Democrats and Republicans.”

After a summer consumed by bitter debate over how to reduce the debt and deficit, Mr. Obama kept his focus squarely on the need to create jobs. He acknowledged that the government’s role in fixing the problem was limited, but rejected the Republican argument that Washington’s major contribution would be to eliminate regulations.

“Ultimately, our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and our workers,” he said. “But we can help. We can make a difference. There are steps we can take right now to improve people’s lives.”

Still, even if every one of the proposals were passed by Congress — something that is extremely unlikely to happen — the measures would not solve the economy’s problems, forecasters say, though they would likely spur some growth.

And that encapsulates the quandary for Mr. Obama: so long as there is no evidence of improvement in the job market, his economic call to arms — backed by a familiar list of proposed remedies — may not resonate with an American public grown weary of stagnation and an unemployment rate stuck at 9.1 percent.

Even the scheduling of the speech set off a tempest when Mr. Boehner rejected Mr. Obama’s request to address Congress on Wednesday, the night of a Republican presidential debate. At Mr. Boehner’s request, the White House agreed to move the date to Thursday, which meant Mr. Obama had to wrap up his remarks before the New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers kicked off the N.F.L. season. As Mr. Obama was entering the chamber, microphones caught him assuring a lawmaker that his speech would not interfere with the game.

In setting out his program, Mr. Obama was, in effect, daring Republicans not to pass measures that enjoy support among independent voters and business leaders. If the Republicans refuse to embrace at least some of the measures, administration officials said, Mr. Obama will take them directly to the American public, portraying Congress as do-nothing and obstructionist.

“Maybe some of you have decided that those differences are so great that we can only resolve them at the ballot box,” Mr. Obama told the lawmakers. “But know this: the next election is fourteen months away. And the people who sent us here — the people who hired us to work for them — they don’t have the luxury of waiting fourteen months.”

    Obama Challenges Congress on Job Plan, 8.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/us/politics/09payroll.html

Transcript: Obama’s Speech to Congress on Jobs

September 8, 2011
The New York Times


The following is a transcript of President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress about jobs and the economy, as provided by the White House.

MR. OBAMA: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, and fellow Americans:

Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that’s made things worse.

This past week, reporters have been asking, “What will this speech mean for the President? What will it mean for Congress? How will it affect their polls, and the next election?”

But the millions of Americans who are watching right now, they don’t care about politics. They have real-life concerns. Many have spent months looking for work. Others are doing their best just to scrape by -- giving up nights out with the family to save on gas or make the mortgage; postponing retirement to send a kid to college.

These men and women grew up with faith in an America where hard work and responsibility paid off. They believed in a country where everyone gets a fair shake and does their fair share -- where if you stepped up, did your job, and were loyal to your company, that loyalty would be rewarded with a decent salary and good benefits; maybe a raise once in a while. If you did the right thing, you could make it. Anybody could make it in America.

For decades now, Americans have watched that compact erode. They have seen the decks too often stacked against them. And they know that Washington has not always put their interests first.

The people of this country work hard to meet their responsibilities. The question tonight is whether we’ll meet ours. The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy. (Applause.) The question is -- the question is whether we can restore some of the fairness and security that has defined this nation since our beginning.

Those of us here tonight can’t solve all our nation’s woes. Ultimately, our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and our workers. But we can help. We can make a difference. There are steps we can take right now to improve people’s lives.

I am sending this Congress a plan that you should pass right away. It’s called the American Jobs Act. There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation. Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans -- including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything. (Applause.)

The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple: to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working. It will create more jobs for construction workers, more jobs for teachers, more jobs for veterans, and more jobs for long-term unemployed. (Applause.) It will provide -- it will provide a tax break for companies who hire new workers, and it will cut payroll taxes in half for every working American and every small business. (Applause.) It will provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and if they hire, there will be customers for their products and services. You should pass this jobs plan right away. (Applause.)

Everyone here knows that small businesses are where most new jobs begin. And you know that while corporate profits have come roaring back, smaller companies haven’t. So for everyone who speaks so passionately about making life easier for “job creators,” this plan is for you. (Applause.)

Pass this jobs bill -- pass this jobs bill, and starting tomorrow, small businesses will get a tax cut if they hire new workers or if they raise workers’ wages. Pass this jobs bill, and all small business owners will also see their payroll taxes cut in half next year. (Applause.) If you have 50 employees -- if you have 50 employees making an average salary, that’s an $80,000 tax cut. And all businesses will be able to continue writing off the investments they make in 2012.

It’s not just Democrats who have supported this kind of proposal. Fifty House Republicans have proposed the same payroll tax cut that’s in this plan. You should pass it right away. (Applause.)

Pass this jobs bill, and we can put people to work rebuilding America. Everyone here knows we have badly decaying roads and bridges all over the country. Our highways are clogged with traffic. Our skies are the most congested in the world. It’s an outrage.

Building a world-class transportation system is part of what made us a economic superpower. And now we’re going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads? At a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in America? (Applause.)

There are private construction companies all across America just waiting to get to work. There’s a bridge that needs repair between Ohio and Kentucky that’s on one of the busiest trucking routes in North America. A public transit project in Houston that will help clear up one of the worst areas of traffic in the country. And there are schools throughout this country that desperately need renovating. How can we expect our kids to do their best in places that are literally falling apart? This is America. Every child deserves a great school -- and we can give it to them, if we act now. (Applause.)

The American Jobs Act will repair and modernize at least 35,000 schools. It will put people to work right now fixing roofs and windows, installing science labs and high-speed Internet in classrooms all across this country. It will rehabilitate homes and businesses in communities hit hardest by foreclosures. It will jumpstart thousands of transportation projects all across the country. And to make sure the money is properly spent, we’re building on reforms we’ve already put in place. No more earmarks. No more boondoggles. No more bridges to nowhere. We’re cutting the red tape that prevents some of these projects from getting started as quickly as possible. And we’ll set up an independent fund to attract private dollars and issue loans based on two criteria: how badly a construction project is needed and how much good it will do for the economy. (Applause.)

This idea came from a bill written by a Texas Republican and a Massachusetts Democrat. The idea for a big boost in construction is supported by America’s largest business organization and America’s largest labor organization. It’s the kind of proposal that’s been supported in the past by Democrats and Republicans alike. You should pass it right away. (Applause.)

Pass this jobs bill, and thousands of teachers in every state will go back to work. These are the men and women charged with preparing our children for a world where the competition has never been tougher. But while they’re adding teachers in places like South Korea, we’re laying them off in droves. It’s unfair to our kids. It undermines their future and ours. And it has to stop. Pass this bill, and put our teachers back in the classroom where they belong. (Applause.)

Pass this jobs bill, and companies will get extra tax credits if they hire America’s veterans. We ask these men and women to leave their careers, leave their families, risk their lives to fight for our country. The last thing they should have to do is fight for a job when they come home. (Applause.)

Pass this bill, and hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged young people will have the hope and the dignity of a summer job next year. And their parents -- (applause) -- their parents, low-income Americans who desperately want to work, will have more ladders out of poverty.

Pass this jobs bill, and companies will get a $4,000 tax credit if they hire anyone who has spent more than six months looking for a job. (Applause.) We have to do more to help the long-term unemployed in their search for work. This jobs plan builds on a program in Georgia that several Republican leaders have highlighted, where people who collect unemployment insurance participate in temporary work as a way to build their skills while they look for a permanent job. The plan also extends unemployment insurance for another year. (Applause.) If the millions of unemployed Americans stopped getting this insurance, and stopped using that money for basic necessities, it would be a devastating blow to this economy. Democrats and Republicans in this chamber have supported unemployment insurance plenty of times in the past. And in this time of prolonged hardship, you should pass it again -- right away. (Applause.)

Pass this jobs bill, and the typical working family will get a $1,500 tax cut next year. Fifteen hundred dollars that would have been taken out of your pocket will go into your pocket. This expands on the tax cut that Democrats and Republicans already passed for this year. If we allow that tax cut to expire -- if we refuse to act -- middle-class families will get hit with a tax increase at the worst possible time. We can’t let that happen. I know that some of you have sworn oaths to never raise any taxes on anyone for as long as you live. Now is not the time to carve out an exception and raise middle-class taxes, which is why you should pass this bill right away. (Applause.)

This is the American Jobs Act. It will lead to new jobs for construction workers, for teachers, for veterans, for first responders, young people and the long-term unemployed. It will provide tax credits to companies that hire new workers, tax relief to small business owners, and tax cuts for the middle class. And here’s the other thing I want the American people to know: The American Jobs Act will not add to the deficit. It will be paid for. And here’s how. (Applause.)

The agreement we passed in July will cut government spending by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years. It also charges this Congress to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in savings by Christmas. Tonight, I am asking you to increase that amount so that it covers the full cost of the American Jobs Act. And a week from Monday, I’ll be releasing a more ambitious deficit plan -- a plan that will not only cover the cost of this jobs bill, but stabilize our debt in the long run. (Applause.)

This approach is basically the one I’ve been advocating for months. In addition to the trillion dollars of spending cuts I’ve already signed into law, it’s a balanced plan that would reduce the deficit by making additional spending cuts, by making modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and by reforming our tax code in a way that asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share. (Applause.) What’s more, the spending cuts wouldn’t happen so abruptly that they’d be a drag on our economy, or prevent us from helping small businesses and middle-class families get back on their feet right away.

Now, I realize there are some in my party who don’t think we should make any changes at all to Medicare and Medicaid, and I understand their concerns. But here’s the truth: Millions of Americans rely on Medicare in their retirement. And millions more will do so in the future. They pay for this benefit during their working years. They earn it. But with an aging population and rising health care costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program. And if we don’t gradually reform the system while protecting current beneficiaries, it won’t be there when future retirees need it. We have to reform Medicare to strengthen it. (Applause.)

I am also -- I’m also well aware that there are many Republicans who don’t believe we should raise taxes on those who are most fortunate and can best afford it. But here is what every American knows: While most people in this country struggle to make ends meet, a few of the most affluent citizens and most profitable corporations enjoy tax breaks and loopholes that nobody else gets. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary -- an outrage he has asked us to fix. (Laughter.) We need a tax code where everyone gets a fair shake and where everybody pays their fair share. (Applause.) And by the way, I believe the vast majority of wealthy Americans and CEOs are willing to do just that if it helps the economy grow and gets our fiscal house in order.

I’ll also offer ideas to reform a corporate tax code that stands as a monument to special interest influence in Washington. By eliminating pages of loopholes and deductions, we can lower one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. (Applause.) Our tax code should not give an advantage to companies that can afford the best-connected lobbyists. It should give an advantage to companies that invest and create jobs right here in the United States of America. (Applause.)

So we can reduce this deficit, pay down our debt, and pay for this jobs plan in the process. But in order to do this, we have to decide what our priorities are. We have to ask ourselves, “What’s the best way to grow the economy and create jobs?”

Should we keep tax loopholes for oil companies? Or should we use that money to give small business owners a tax credit when they hire new workers? Because we can’t afford to do both. Should we keep tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires? Or should we put teachers back to work so our kids can graduate ready for college and good jobs? (Applause.) Right now, we can’t afford to do both.

This isn’t political grandstanding. This isn’t class warfare. This is simple math. (Laughter.) This is simple math. These are real choices. These are real choices that we’ve got to make. And I’m pretty sure I know what most Americans would choose. It’s not even close. And it’s time for us to do what’s right for our future. (Applause.)

Now, the American Jobs Act answers the urgent need to create jobs right away. But we can’t stop there. As I’ve argued since I ran for this office, we have to look beyond the immediate crisis and start building an economy that lasts into the future -- an economy that creates good, middle-class jobs that pay well and offer security. We now live in a world where technology has made it possible for companies to take their business anywhere. If we want them to start here and stay here and hire here, we have to be able to out-build and out-educate and out-innovate every other country on Earth. (Applause.)

And this task of making America more competitive for the long haul, that’s a job for all of us. For government and for private companies. For states and for local communities -- and for every American citizen. All of us will have to up our game. All of us will have to change the way we do business.

My administration can and will take some steps to improve our competitiveness on our own. For example, if you’re a small business owner who has a contract with the federal government, we’re going to make sure you get paid a lot faster than you do right now. (Applause.) We’re also planning to cut away the red tape that prevents too many rapidly growing startup companies from raising capital and going public. And to help responsible homeowners, we’re going to work with federal housing agencies to help more people refinance their mortgages at interest rates that are now near 4 percent. That’s a step -- (applause) -- I know you guys must be for this, because that’s a step that can put more than $2,000 a year in a family’s pocket, and give a lift to an economy still burdened by the drop in housing prices.

So, some things we can do on our own. Other steps will require congressional action. Today you passed reform that will speed up the outdated patent process, so that entrepreneurs can turn a new idea into a new business as quickly as possible. That’s the kind of action we need. Now it’s time to clear the way for a series of trade agreements that would make it easier for American companies to sell their products in Panama and Colombia and South Korea -– while also helping the workers whose jobs have been affected by global competition. (Applause.) If Americans can buy Kias and Hyundais, I want to see folks in South Korea driving Fords and Chevys and Chryslers. (Applause.) I want to see more products sold around the world stamped with the three proud words: “Made in America.” That’s what we need to get done. (Applause.)

And on all of our efforts to strengthen competitiveness, we need to look for ways to work side by side with America’s businesses. That’s why I’ve brought together a Jobs Council of leaders from different industries who are developing a wide range of new ideas to help companies grow and create jobs.

Already, we’ve mobilized business leaders to train 10,000 American engineers a year, by providing company internships and training. Other businesses are covering tuition for workers who learn new skills at community colleges. And we’re going to make sure the next generation of manufacturing takes root not in China or Europe, but right here, in the United States of America. (Applause) If we provide the right incentives, the right support -- and if we make sure our trading partners play by the rules -- we can be the ones to build everything from fuel-efficient cars to advanced biofuels to semiconductors that we sell all around the world. That’s how America can be number one again. And that’s how America will be number one again. (Applause.)

Now, I realize that some of you have a different theory on how to grow the economy. Some of you sincerely believe that the only solution to our economic challenges is to simply cut most government spending and eliminate most government regulations. (Applause.)

Well, I agree that we can’t afford wasteful spending, and I’ll work with you, with Congress, to root it out. And I agree that there are some rules and regulations that do put an unnecessary burden on businesses at a time when they can least afford it. (Applause.) That’s why I ordered a review of all government regulations. So far, we’ve identified over 500 reforms, which will save billions of dollars over the next few years. (Applause.) We should have no more regulation than the health, safety and security of the American people require. Every rule should meet that common-sense test. (Applause.)

But what we can’t do -- what I will not do -- is let this economic crisis be used as an excuse to wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades. (Applause.) I reject the idea that we need to ask people to choose between their jobs and their safety. I reject the argument that says for the economy to grow, we have to roll back protections that ban hidden fees by credit card companies, or rules that keep our kids from being exposed to mercury, or laws that prevent the health insurance industry from shortchanging patients. I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy. (Applause.) We shouldn’t be in a race to the bottom, where we try to offer the cheapest labor and the worst pollution standards. America should be in a race to the top. And I believe we can win that race. (Applause.)

In fact, this larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own -- that’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.

Yes, we are rugged individualists. Yes, we are strong and self-reliant. And it has been the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs that has made this economy the engine and the envy of the world.

But there’s always been another thread running throughout our history -- a belief that we’re all connected, and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party. But in the middle of a civil war, he was also a leader who looked to the future -- a Republican President who mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad -- (applause) -- launch the National Academy of Sciences, set up the first land grant colleges. (Applause.) And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.

Ask yourselves -- where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports? What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the G.I. Bill. Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance? (Applause.)

How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the Internet and the computer chip? What kind of country would this be if this chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? (Applause.) How many Americans would have suffered as a result?

No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another. And members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities. (Applause.)

Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight is the kind that’s been supported by Democrats and Republicans in the past. Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight will be paid for. And every proposal is designed to meet the urgent needs of our people and our communities.

Now, I know there’s been a lot of skepticism about whether the politics of the moment will allow us to pass this jobs plan -- or any jobs plan. Already, we’re seeing the same old press releases and tweets flying back and forth. Already, the media has proclaimed that it’s impossible to bridge our differences. And maybe some of you have decided that those differences are so great that we can only resolve them at the ballot box.

But know this: The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us here -- the people who hired us to work for them -- they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months. (Applause.) Some of them are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.

I don’t pretend that this plan will solve all our problems. It should not be, nor will it be, the last plan of action we propose. What’s guided us from the start of this crisis hasn’t been the search for a silver bullet. It’s been a commitment to stay at it -- to be persistent -- to keep trying every new idea that works, and listen to every good proposal, no matter which party comes up with it.

Regardless of the arguments we’ve had in the past, regardless of the arguments we will have in the future, this plan is the right thing to do right now. You should pass it. (Applause.) And I intend to take that message to every corner of this country. (Applause.) And I ask -- I ask every American who agrees to lift your voice: Tell the people who are gathered here tonight that you want action now. Tell Washington that doing nothing is not an option. Remind us that if we act as one nation and one people, we have it within our power to meet this challenge.

President Kennedy once said, “Our problems are man-made –- therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.”

These are difficult years for our country. But we are Americans. We are tougher than the times we live in, and we are bigger than our politics have been. So let’s meet the moment. Let’s get to work, and let’s show the world once again why the United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth. (Applause.)

Thank you very much. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

    Transcript: Obama’s Speech to Congress on Jobs, NYT, 8.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/us/politics/09text-obama-jobs-speech.html

Mark O. Hatfield,

Republican Champion of Liberal Causes, Dies at 89

August 8, 2011
The New York Times
By ADAM CLYMER

Mark O. Hatfield, a liberal Republican who challenged his party’s positions on the Vietnam War and on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution during his 30 years as a senator from Oregon, died on Sunday in Portland, Ore. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by Gerry Frank, a longtime aide.

Mr. Hatfield served in the Senate from 1967 to 1997, spending eight years as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. But he came out against the Vietnam War even earlier, while serving his second term as governor of Oregon.

At a meeting of the National Governors Association on July 28, 1965, as his colleagues rallied behind President Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. Hatfield said, “I cannot support the president on what he has done so far.” He complained that Johnson’s escalation of the war had American troops taking over South Vietnam’s responsibility “to win or lose.”

Citing “the deaths of noncombatant men, women and children,” he said the American bombing campaign “merits the general condemnation of mankind.”

At the time, a few prominent Democrats, including Senator Wayne Morse, a fellow Oregonian, were opposing the war. But Mr. Hatfield was the first prominent Republican to come out against it.

By the time he reached the Senate, opposition to the war was growing. In 1970 and 1971, he worked with Senator George S. McGovern, Democrat of South Dakota, on unsuccessful efforts to set a deadline for withdrawing American troops.

Mr. Hatfield said at a Washington prayer breakfast in 1973 that it was time for repentance for the “sin that scarred the national soul.” President Richard M. Nixon, who was in attendance, had just signed a cease-fire that ended the combat role for American forces.

Mr. Hatfield was a strong advocate of federal spending on medical research, motivated in part by his father’s Alzheimer’s disease and other relatives’ cancer. For his home state, he pushed for appropriations for the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, and he backed bigger budgets for the National Institutes of Health and the creation of the institutes’ Office for Rare Diseases Research. Medical research, he wrote in 2001, is one of the very few things “the government does extremely well.”

In March 1996, he told the Senate that with the end of the cold war, “the Russians are not coming,” alluding to the 1960s film comedy “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.” Instead, he said, “the greatest enemy we face today, externally, is the viruses that are coming, the viruses are coming.” Money being spent on the military should be shifted to human needs, he argued.

After he retired from the Senate, he remained a vocal advocate of spending at the health institutes, which named a facility for him, the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center.

Mr. Hatfield was one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate. Over his career, he averaged a 65 percent favorable rating from the liberal advocacy group Americans for Democratic Action.

Those stands often put him at odds with fellow Republicans. His most serious breach with the party’s senators came in 1995, when he cast the only Republican vote against a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget. His vote meant defeat for the measure, which had 66 votes, one short of the required two-thirds majority.

Mr. Hatfield had voted for a balanced-budget amendment in 1982, but changed his mind in 1986, saying that a new law requiring diminishing federal deficits had made him aware of serious problems the amendment would cause. When he cast that decisive vote in 1995, young Republican senators demanded that he be stripped of his appropriations chairmanship. But senior Republicans blocked that effort.

Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, described Mr. Hatfield’s manner as courtly and unpretentious, which he said appealed to Oregon voters, as did his willingness to break from Republican orthodoxy. “Oregon has always prized a flinty independence,” Mr. Ornstein said.

Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon, a Democrat, said Monday, “Senator Hatfield’s moral compass, independence and willingness to reach across the aisle are an inspiration to me and countless Oregonians.”

In 1982, Mr. Hatfield allied with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to campaign for a mutual United States-Soviet freeze on nuclear weapons. “I see all life as a part of God’s creation,” he told The Christian Science Monitor, “and I think it’s rather audacious and presumptuous of humankind to consider that it has the right to destroy creation, to destroy all life.” But the Senate rejected the freeze in 1983 and again the next year.

Mr. Hatfield’s experience in World War II focused his thinking. A Navy lieutenant, he commanded amphibious landing craft that took Marines ashore — and carried the wounded offshore — at the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

When the war ended, he was sent to Vietnam to ferry Chinese Nationalist troops to fight the Communists. He wrote his parents of observing “squalor” and people begging for food, conditions he blamed not on the Japanese, but on French colonialism.

“It has remained my conclusion that the Vietnamese people have been fighting for over 20 years for the cause of nationalism,” he reflected on that experience in a memoir, “Not Quite So Simple,” published in 1968. “They are fighting in the name of social, political and economic justice, and although we may believe their view of ‘justice’ to be false and devilish, it is a vision for which they are prepared to die.”

He was next sent to Japan, where, he told Sojourners Magazine in 1996: “One month after the bomb, I walked through the streets of Hiroshima and I saw the utter devastation in every direction from nuclear power.”

Mark Odom Hatfield was born in Dallas, Ore., on July 12, 1922. He graduated from Willamette University in Salem, Ore., in 1943. He taught political science there from 1949 to 1956 and was elected to the State Legislature in 1950. He was elected secretary of state in 1956 and governor, for the first of two terms, in 1958.

Mr. Hatfield worked well with a Democratic-led Legislature, concentrating on economic development. He brought industry to the state and helped local companies, especially the timber industry, supporting its requests for increased logging. He took credit for an increase of 138,000 jobs in his eight years, while taxes remained lower than in other West Coast states.

He also took leading roles in passing two state civil rights laws. At Willamette, he had had the task of driving the singers Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson to Portland after performances because Salem hotels would not admit blacks. As a legislator in 1953, he managed the passage of a public-accommodations bill to bar such discrimination. As governor, he backed a fair housing law.

He is survived by his wife, the former Antoinette Kuzmanich, whom he married on July 8, 1958; two sons, Mark O. Hatfield Jr. of Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and Charles Hatfield (known as Visko) of Bantam, Conn.; two daughters, Dr. Elizabeth Hatfield Keller of Portland, Ore., and Theresa Hatfield Cooney of Potomac, Md.; and seven grandchildren.

One blemish on his Senate career came in 1992, when the Senate Ethics Committee rebuked him for failing to disclose gifts from a former university president who had sought his support for a government grant. But the committee found that there had been no “quid pro quo” and said his handling of the grant requests, from the University of South Carolina, had been routine.

Mr. Hatfield, a prominent Baptist layman, frequently spoke before church groups, and his liberal positions were often criticized by religious conservatives. But in the Sojourners interview, he said he was not concerned about the movement’s influence on the Republican Party, calling it an “embarrassment.”

Instead, he said, “what I’m really concerned about is the impact it’s having on the cause of Christ — that somehow I’m going to come into a relationship with Christ by agreeing to their political agenda. That is not the key to salvation from the biblical teaching.”

 

Elizabeth A. Harris contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 8, 2011

An earlier version misstated the name of a university that benefited from Mr. Hatfield's support. It is Oregon Health and Science University, not Oregon Sciences and Health University.

    Mark O. Hatfield, Republican Champion of Liberal Causes, Dies at 89, NYT, 8.8.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/us/politics/08hatfield.html

Debt Bill Is Signed, Ending a Fractious Battle

August 2, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Tuesday to raise the government’s debt ceiling and cut trillions of dollars from its spending, concluding a long and fractious partisan battle just hours before the government’s borrowing authority was set to run out.

The bill, which passed 74 to 26, was immediately signed by President Obama, who took a final shot at his Republican opposition for what he called a manufactured — and avoidable — crisis. “Voters may have chosen divided government,” he said, “but they sure didn’t vote for dysfunctional government.”

Voters will render their verdicts on the merits of divided government next year, but its impact is now abundantly clear: the agenda of the 112th Congress will be dominated by continuous fighting over spending priorities and regulation, with a high bar for big debates on foreign policy and other domestic issues coming to the fore.

“When was the last time anybody said anything about Libya?” said Representative Phil Gingrey, a Republican from Georgia who was first elected in 2002. “This is the way it is going to be until the election.”

In the seven months since the change of power in the House, the Washington discourse has shifted almost completely from the decades-long battle between both parties over how to allocate government resources to jousting over the moral high ground on imposing austerity, with seemingly none of the political or practical motivations that have historically driven legislation.

Republicans, though controlling only one-third of the process through their majority in the House, appear to have firmly snagged the upper hand in the legislative dynamics, largely because of their unwillingness to sacrifice ground even when their stance threatens both the government’s ability to operate and pay its debts, and their own prospects for retaining their jobs.

“The difference is the intensity here,” said David R. Mayhew, a political science professor at Yale. “The Republicans have the Tea Party, and the Democrats don’t have anything of comparable animation on their side.”

Democrats, hamstrung in part by Congressional procedures and hewing to more traditional methods of compromise and negotiation, allowed Republicans to pull the center of debate much closer to their priorities.

“We could draw parallels and distinctions with other tumultuous times such as the Civil War,” Glen Browder, a former congressman from Alabama and professor emeritus at Jacksonville State University, said in an e-mail. “But I do believe that this is something different from most Democrat-Republican struggles in our recent history. The traditional game of politics in which the two sides contest over control of issues and decisions for core constituencies has erupted into an intense struggle with critical ideological/philosophical divisions about what America means and how America ought to work.”

The compromise over the debt ceiling, which the House passed on Monday, has been denounced by Democrats as being tilted too heavily toward Republican priorities, mainly because it does not raise any new revenues as it reduces budget deficits by at least $2.1 trillion in the next 10 years. But it attracted the votes of many Democrats, if only because the many months of standoff had brought the country perilously close to default.

On Tuesday evening, Moody’s Investors Service appeared to echo the mixed feelings in Congress about the deal, saying it was not going to immediately lower the government’s AAA credit rating but also officially signaled that it was prepared to downgrade it unless more is done to deal with the deficit.

The wrangling in Congress also laid bare divisions within both parties, with the final passage in the Senate relying on the votes of the remaining center of each party — 28 Republicans, 45 Democrats and one independent voted aye — with the most right- and left-leaning members left ultimately on the sidelines.

In the Senate, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Mike Lee of Utah, both Republican freshmen blessed by the Tea Party, voted against the bill, mirroring their counterparts in the House, including a third of that chamber’s freshmen.

On the left, six Democrats and one independent rejected the bill, arguing that it placed too much burden on middle- and lower-income Americans. Among the Democrats who opposed the measures were reliable liberals like Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, but also Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who voted in contrast to the senior member from her state, Senator Charles E. Schumer.

The last senator to vote Tuesday was Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, who conferred intensely for several minutes with Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, then voted yes, as he had done. Ms. Snowe, a moderate Republican who faces re-election next year, is already a target of Tea Party activists in her state.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, who played a central role in arriving at the ultimate compromise, said his party’s goal was “to get as much spending cuts as we could from a government we didn’t control.” Of the legislation, he said: “It may have been messy. It may have appeared to some that their government wasn’t working, but in fact the opposite was true.”

On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the conversation quickly shifted to a powerful new committee that will be created to recommend ways to reduce deficits by a total of at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Congressional leaders have two weeks to appoint the 12 members, who are supposed to come up with an ambitious deficit-reduction package by Nov. 23.

The committee, which many members will no doubt jockey to join, was the underlying cause of opposition to the bill by some on both sides. “I do not like the supercommittee,” said Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska. “It’s just a convoluted maze to do things in Washington the usual Washington way.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, presaged the next Congressional battle by rejecting the assertions of his Republican colleagues that the next phase would again exclude revenue increases, which the Democrats failed to include in the first round. “That’s not going to happen,” Mr. Reid said.

Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said the new joint committee “puts us in a much better position” to inject revenues into the debate.

Mr. Obama, too, called for an agreement that included new revenues, including higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans and the closing of corporate loopholes, saying he would fight for that approach as the Congressional commission considers what to recommend to Congress for an up-or-down vote before the end of the year, as the new law requires, or face steep cuts in programs dear to both parties.

Many Democrats believe their hand could actually be strengthened by the outcome of the debate. Because the agreement set the spending levels for next year’s budget, they believe a new round of fights will be averted.

However, each side will continue to have its own spending priorities, and those differences will be difficult to reconcile once the appropriators get down to the work of actual cuts. The frequent use among Republican senators of the filibuster will further complicate matters.

“If you hold one-half of one-third of the reins of power in Washington,” said Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, “and are willing to use and maintain that kind of discipline even if you will bring the entire temple down around your own head, there is a pretty good chance that you are going to get your way.”

 

Robert Pear contributed reporting.

    Debt Bill Is Signed, Ending a Fractious Battle, NYT, 2.8.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/us/politics/03fiscal.html

Senate panel slams Goldman in scathing crisis report

WASHINGTON | Wed Apr 13, 2011
8:49pm EDT
By Kevin Drawbaugh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the most damning official U.S. report yet produced on Wall Street's role in the financial crisis, a Senate panel accused powerhouse Goldman Sachs of misleading clients and manipulating markets, while also condemning greed, weak regulation and conflicts of interest throughout the financial system.

Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, one of Capitol Hill's most feared panels, has a history with Goldman Sachs.

He clashed publicly with its Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein a year ago at a hearing on the crisis.

The Democratic lawmaker again tore into Goldman at a press briefing on his panel's 639-page report, which is based on a review of tens of millions of documents over two years.

Levin accused Goldman of profiting at clients' expense as the mortgage market crashed in 2007. "In my judgment, Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled Congress," he said, reading glasses perched as ever on the tip of his nose.

A Goldman Sachs spokesman said, "While we disagree with many of the conclusions of the report, we take seriously the issues explored by the subcommittee."

The panel's report is harder hitting than one issued in January by the government-appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which "didn't report anything of significance," Republican Senator Tom Coburn said at the briefing.

More than two years since the crisis peaked, denunciations of Wall Street misconduct are less often heard on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers focused on fiscal issues. But Coburn joined Levin at Wednesday's bipartisan briefing, firing his own sharp attacks on the financial industry.

"Blame for this mess lies everywhere -- from federal regulators who cast a blind eye, Wall Street bankers who let greed run wild, and members of Congress who failed to provide oversight," said Coburn, the subcommittee's top Republican.

"It shows without a doubt the lack of ethics in some of our financial institutions who embraced known conflicts of interest to accomplish wealth for themselves, not caring about the outcome for their customers," he said.

The Levin-Coburn report criticized not only Goldman, but Deutsche Bank, the former Washington Mutual Bank, the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision and credit rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's.

"We will be referring this matter to the Justice Department and to the SEC," Levin said at the briefing, though he did not elaborate. A spokesman later said, "The subcommittee does not intend to reveal the specifics of any referral."

The report offered 19 recommendations for reform going beyond changes already enacted after the crisis in 2010's Dodd-Frank Wall Street and banking regulation overhaul.

Case studies from the go-go years of the real estate bubble formed the bulk of the report, which said a runaway mortgage securitization machine churned out abusive loans, toxic securities, and big fees for lenders and Wall Street.

It cited internal emails by Wall Street executives that described mortgage-backed securities underlying many collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, as "crap" and "pigs."

It said Washington Mutual -- which became the largest failed bank in U.S. history in 2008 -- embraced a high-risk home loan strategy in 2005 while its own top executives were warning of a bubble that "will come back to haunt us."

The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision -- which will be shut down and merged into another agency under 2010's Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul -- logged 500 serious deficiencies at Washington Mutual from 2003-2008, but no crackdown followed, the report said.

Mass downgrades of mortgage-related investments in July 2007 by Moody's and Standard & Poor's constituted "the most immediate cause of the financial crisis," it said.

Investment banks, it said, charged $1 million to $8 million in fees to construct, underwrite and sell a mortgage-backed security in the bubble, and $5 million to $10 million per CDO.

As for Goldman, the subcommittee said, the firm "used net short positions to benefit from the downturn in the mortgage market." It said Goldman designed, marketed, and sold CDOs in ways that created conflicts of interest with clients, while also at times providing the bank with profits "from the same products that caused substantial losses for its clients."

(Additional reporting by Lauren LaCapra and Kim Dixon; Editing Steve Orlofsky)

    Senate panel slams Goldman in scathing crisis report, R, 13.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/14/us-financial-regulation-report-idUSTRE73C8JR20110414

Deal at Last Minute Averts Shutdown;

$38 Billion in Cuts to Spending This Year

April 8, 2011
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders and President Obama headed off a shutdown of the government with less than two hours to spare Friday night under a tentative budget deal that would cut $38 billion from federal spending this year.

After days of tense negotiations and partisan quarrelling, House Republicans came to preliminary terms with the White House and Senate Democrats over financing the government for the next six months, resolving a stubborn impasse that had threatened to disrupt federal operations across the country and around the globe.

Speaker John A. Boehner, who had pressed Democrats for cuts sought by members of the conservative new House majority, presented the package of widespread spending reductions and policy provisions and won a positive response from his rank and file shortly before 11 p.m.

Both Democrats and Republicans proclaimed they had reached a deal and would begin the necessary steps to pass the bill and send it to Mr. Obama next week.

Democrats said that under the agreement, the budget measure would not include provisions sought by Republicans to limit environmental regulations and to restrict financing for Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions. But Mr. Boehner said in a statement that the agreement included a restriction on abortion financing in Washington.

“This has been a lot of discussion and a long fight,” Mr. Boehner said as he left the party meeting. “But we fought to keep government spending down because it really will in fact help create a better environment for job creators in our country.”

Speaking from the White House after the Republican meeting ended, Mr. Obama said that both sides gave ground in reaching the bargain and that some of the cuts accepted by Democrats “will be painful.”

“Programs people rely on will be cut back,” said Mr. Obama, who said Americans had to begin to live within their means. “Needed infrastructure projects will be delayed.”

The announcements capped a day of drama as lawmakers and members of the federal work force waited anxiously to see whether money for government agencies would run out at midnight.

“We didn’t do it at this late hour for drama,” Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, said. “We did it because it has been hard to arrive at this point.”

In the closed-door Republican session, according to people present in the room, Mr. Boehner described the plan as the best deal he could wring from Democrats and said the cuts — an estimated $38 billion in reductions — represented the “largest real dollar spending cut in American history.”

Although both sides compromised, Republicans were able to force significant spending concessions from Democrats in exchange for putting to rest some of the vexing social policy fights that had held up the agreement.

Because of the need to put the compromise into legislative form, Congressional leaders said the House and Senate would vote overnight to pass a stopgap measure financing the government through Thursday to prevent any break in the flow of federal dollars. The actual budget compromise would be considered sometime next week.

The Senate approved the stopgap measure by 11:20 p.m. and the House approved it after midnight. The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo saying normal government operations were back on track.

The developments came after Republicans and Democrats spent the day blaming each other for what could have been the first lapse in government services brought on by Congress in 15 years.

As the midnight deadline approached, efforts to finish a deal intensified, and Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner spoke by telephone to try to find an agreement.

“Both sides are working hard to reach the kind of resolution Americans desire,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, who had consulted closely with Mr. Boehner on strategy during the fractious talks. “A resolution is actually within reach. The contours of a final agreement are coming into focus.”

Mr. McConnell’s optimism could not disguise the fact that time was steadily slipping away, and testy leaders of the two parties were pushing hard to shape public perceptions of who was responsible for an impasse that threatened to have serious political repercussions — and to presage even more consequential fiscal showdowns in the months ahead. Democrats said Republicans were insisting on overreaching policy provisions; Republicans said it remained about money.

After nightlong negotiations that ended before dawn on Friday yielded no agreement, Senator Reid went on the offensive. He told reporters and said on the Senate floor that Mr. Boehner, the Senate Democrats and Mr. Obama had essentially settled on $38 billion in cuts from current spending, a figure that represented a substantial concession for Democrats.

But he said that Republicans were refusing to abandon a policy provision that would withhold federal financing for family planning and other health services for poor women from Planned Parenthood and other providers.

“This is indefensible, and everyone should be outraged,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “The Republican House leadership have only a couple of hours to look in the mirror, snap out of it and realize how truly shameful they have been.”

In a terse statement of his own to reporters, Mr. Boehner said there was “only one reason we do not have an agreement yet, and that is spending.” He asked, “When will the White House and when will Senate Democrats get serious about cutting spending?”

As the day went on, aides reported progress in attempts to reach an accommodation on the family planning provision. Even veteran anti-abortion Republicans, like Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, indicated a willingness to compromise, not wanting the party to be accused of shutting down the government over divisive social policy and diluting its new emphasis on cutting spending. Other Republicans, in interviews and statements, indicated that it was time to end the stalemate.

The dueling characterizations of the negotiations added to the frustration, extending far beyond the nation’s capital, among federal employees and the people who rely on their services, as they waited to find out whether serious disruptions were imminent, and how long they might last.

Despite the disagreement over what still divided the two parties, it was clear the dollar difference had been reduced considerably, to about $1 billion or $2 billion. That amount left some lawmakers and their constituents grappling to understand how the federal government could be shut down over such a relatively small sum. Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said he was embarrassed. “People across Virginia cannot understand why we can’t get this done,” he said.

Allies of Mr. Boehner, the veteran lawmaker in his first months as speaker, said he seemed to be pursuing a strategy of pushing the negotiations to the last possible tick of the clock to appease rank-and-file conservatives, who have been very reluctant to give an inch from the $61 billion in cuts approved by the House.

In a private party meeting Friday afternoon, Mr. Boehner told Republican lawmakers that he was fighting for all the cuts he could get, and regaled them with reports of how angry Mr. Obama was with him for the hard line he has taken in the talks — news that elated his membership.

Emerging from the meeting, Mr. Boehner called the negotiations “respectful,” but added: “We’re not going to roll over and sell out the American people like has been done time and time again in Washington.”

In the absence of a deal, Mr. Boehner again urged the Senate to pass a temporary House budget resolution that would finance the military for the balance of the fiscal year, cut $12 billion in spending from the current year’s budget and keep the rest of the government operating for another week, as Republicans in the House had voted to do.

“This is the responsible thing to do,” he told reporters.

Senate Democrats rejected that approach as a gimmick, and Mr. Obama said he would veto the resolution.

Mr. Reid, who at one news conference was surrounded by about three dozen Democratic senators in an unusual tableau, told reporters that the Senate would explore the possibility of a stopgap bill that would keep the government open for another week. But it was unlikely to clear procedural barriers.

It was an unusual Friday on Capitol Hill, a day when corridors are often empty of lawmakers who have left for the weekend. Instead, they milled about, and took the Senate floor to expound, as they nervously awaited news of an agreement or braced for the expiration of government financing. It was frustrating to some because most lawmakers were not privy to the high-level talks.

“I hope that negotiations are continuing by someone somewhere,” Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said as he spoke about six hours before funding would run out.

Lawmakers said they realized that the outcome of the negotiations would have implications not only for them, but also for the federal work force, the public, the economy and the nation’s image.

“We know the whole world is watching us today,” Mr. Reid said.


Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

    Deal at Last Minute Averts Shutdown; $38 Billion in Cuts to Spending This Year, R, 8.4.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/us/politics/09fiscal.html

Senate votes to repeal healthcare tax measure

WASHINGTON | Tue Apr 5, 2011
5:38pm EDT
Reuters
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bowing to pressure from business groups worried about an avalanche of paperwork, the Senate voted on Tuesday to rescind a tax-reporting requirement included in last year's healthcare overhaul law.

With bipartisan support, the Senate voted 87-12 to pass legislation sponsored by Republican Senator Mike Johanns that repeals a requirement for businesses and landlords to file a Form 1099 document with the Internal Revenue Service for purchases of goods and services exceeding $600 a year.

The tax filing requirement did not directly relate to healthcare but was intended to help pay for the healthcare law that is considered one of President Barack Obama's top legislative achievements.

The legislation earlier was passed by the House of Representatives and now goes to Obama, who is expected to sign it into law.

It was approved in Congress despite concerns by some Democrats to the way the $22 billion cost to the U.S. Treasury of repealing the tax-reporting provision is covered.

The bill adjusts the health insurance tax subsidies to be given to middle-income people under the healthcare law. It would require anyone who receives excessive tax subsidies for health insurance to pay back a greater share than currently required under the law.

The Form 1099 reporting provision was meant to improve tax compliance and help pay for the healthcare law. But small firms and the self-employed complained it would bury them in paperwork.

Lawmakers in both parties agreed that the tax reporting requirement should go.

But some Democrats argued that the payback provision for excessive subsidies would discourage individuals and small businesses from complying with the law's requirement that they obtain health insurance.

    Senate votes to repeal healthcare tax measure, R, 5.4.2011,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/05/us-us-senate-healthcare-tax-idUSTRE7347K120110405

Court Weighs the Power of Congress

February 22, 2011
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday in a case that touched on the most pressing constitutional question of the day: just how much power does Congress have to regulate matters ordinarily left up to the states? The fate of President Obama’s health care law will turn on how that question is answered.

But based on the justices’ comments, the lurid facts of the case and the odd posture in which it reached the court, the eventual decision will probably offer only limited guidance on the health care law’s prospects.

The case heard Tuesday, Bond v. United States, No. 09-1227, arose from a domestic dispute. Carol A. Bond, a Pennsylvania woman, did not take it well when she learned that her husband was the father of her best friend’s child. She promised to make her former friend’s life “a living hell,” and she drew on her skills as a microbiologist to do so.

Ms. Bond spread harmful chemicals on her friend’s car, mailbox and doorknob. The friend suffered only a minor injury.

Such matters are usually handled by the local police and prosecutors. In Ms. Bond’s case, though, federal prosecutors charged her with using unconventional weapons in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, a treaty concerned with terrorists and rogue states.

At the argument, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. suggested that Congress had gone too far. Suppose, he said, that Ms. Bond had “decided to retaliate against her former friend by pouring a bottle of vinegar in the friend’s goldfish bowl.”

“As I read this statute, Justice Alito said, “that would be a violation of this statute, potentially punishable by life imprisonment.”

Ms. Bond’s lawyer, Paul D. Clement, said that a chemical used by his client was not much more exotic than vinegar. “There is something sort of odd about the government’s theory that says that I can buy a chemical weapon at Amazon.com,” he said.

In her appeal to the federal appeals court in Philadelphia, Ms. Bond argued that Congress did not have the constitutional power to use a chemical weapons treaty to address a matter of a sort routinely handled by state authorities. She cited the 10th Amendment, which says that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

The appeals court ruled that Ms. Bond did not have standing to raise a 10th Amendment defense. Only states, it said, can invoke the amendment.

Federal prosecutors initially embraced that line of argument, but the Justice Department abandoned it in the Supreme Court, now saying that Ms. Bond was free to try to mount a defense based on the amendment.

Since Ms. Bond and her nominal adversary agreed on the central issue in the case, the court appointed a lawyer, Stephen R. McAllister, to argue for the position the government had disowned.

The outcome of the case on the standing point did not seem in much doubt on Tuesday.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., for instance, said it would be “pretty harsh” to forbid Ms. Bond from challenging her conviction on the ground that the law under which she was convicted exceeded Congressional authority.

But the justices struggled with two other distinctions. One was how to disentangle claims that Congress had exceeded its enumerated powers in Article I of the Constitution from ones based on the 10th Amendment. The other was whether there were at least some 10th Amendment claims that could be pressed only by states.

Justice Elena Kagan suggested that the case could be decided simply on the ground that Congress had exceeded the powers listed in Article I of the Constitution.

“Are there any peculiarly 10th Amendment claims that you’re making?” she asked Mr. Clement. He replied that Ms. Bond relied “principally” on the argument that Congress had exceeded its powers but that it was possible the 10th Amendment played a role as well.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy added that individuals had a role to play in cases that at first blush seem to implicate only a clash between federal and state sovereignty.

“Your underlying premise,” Justice Kennedy told Mr. McAllister, “is that the individual has no interest in whether or not the state has surrendered its powers to the federal government, and I just don’t think the Constitution was framed on that theory.”

    Court Weighs the Power of Congress, NYT, 22.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/us/politics/23scotus.html

Senate Rejects Repeal of Health Care Law

February 2, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats on Wednesday defeated a bid by Republicans to repeal last year’s sweeping health care overhaul, as they successfully mounted a party-line defense of President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement.

Challenges to the law will continue, however, on Capitol Hill and in the courts, with the United States Supreme Court ultimately expected to decide if the law is constitutional.

The vote was 47 to 51, with all Republicans voting unanimously for repeal but falling 13 votes short of the 60 needed to advance their proposal.

Lawmakers in both parties joined forces, however, to repeal a tax provision in the law that would impose a huge information-reporting requirement on small businesses. That vote was 81 to 17, with 34 Democrats and all 47 Republicans in favor.

Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, were absent.

Republicans said after the votes that they would persist in their efforts to overturn the law. Rejecting assertions that the repeal vote was a “futile act,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, declared, “These are the first steps in a long road that will culminate in 2012.”

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and a potential presidential candidate in 2012, noted that Republicans had just 40 votes when they opposed the health care bill last year, but that they had 47 as a result of winning seats in November.

“Elections do have consequences,” Mr. Thune said.

The vote to eliminate the tax provision offered a brief moment of consensus on a day otherwise characterized by angry partisan disagreement. In the latest reprise of last year’s fierce debate over the health care law, senators crossed rhetorical swords for hours of floor debate.

Republicans denounced the overhaul as impeding job creation and giving the government too big a role in the health care system. Democrats highlighted the law’s benefits, especially for the uninsured, and noted that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had projected that the law would reduce future deficits.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who is an ophthalmologist, cited the law’s requirement that nearly all Americans obtain insurance as evidence that it was unconstitutional and overly intrusive.

“If you can regulate inactivity, basically the non-act of not buying insurance, then there is no aspect to our life that would left free from government regulation and intrusion,” Mr. Paul said. He added, “From my perspective as a physician, I saw that we already had too much government involvement in health care.”

But Democrats hit back hard.

“The Republicans’ obsession with repealing the new health reform law is not based on budgetary considerations,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “It is based strictly on ideology. They oppose the law’s crackdown on abuses by health insurance companies and they oppose any serious effort by the federal government to secure health insurance coverage for tens of millions of Americans who currently have none.”

And Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat, lambasted Republicans for seeking repeal of the law without proposing an alternative.

“If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: ‘You know, you’re right. We have to reduce costs. We have a better way,’ and they offered a bill on the floor, well maybe we’d take a look at it,” Mr. Schumer said. “But they’re silent.” He added: “Easy to sit there and say, ‘repeal.’ What would you put in its place?”

The repeal measure, which was adopted overwhelmingly by the Republican-controlled House last month, was put forward by the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, as an amendment to an aviation industry bill that is now on the Senate floor.

The willingness of the majority Senate Democrats to allow a vote on the amendment reflected a deal among leaders of both parties to limit the parliamentary warfare and ease the procedural stalemates that have bogged down the Senate in recent years.

The openness to a vote also reflected confidence among Democrats that they would be able to defeat the amendment.

And they did, challenging the amendment on the grounds that it violated the budget resolution by increasing the deficit. To overcome that challenge, and win approval, Mr. McConnell needed the votes of 60 senators.

On the repeal of the tax provision, a similar challenge on budget grounds was easily surmounted. Republicans had criticized the provision, which would require businesses to file a 1099 tax form identifying anyone to whom they paid $600 or more for goods or merchandise in a year. Businesses would also be required to send copies of the form to their vendors, suppliers and contractors. The House is expected to support its repeal.

Because the tax provision was expected to result in increased tax revenue, Democrats had to come up with another way to generate the same money. The plan that was approved, sponsored by Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, rescinds $44 billion in unspent money appropriated by Congress. But it exempts the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration from those cuts.

    Senate Rejects Repeal of Health Care Law, NYT, 2.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/health/policy/03congress.html

Allying Ourselves With the Next Egypt

The New York Times
By JOHN KERRY

Washington

EVEN if the protests shaking Egypt subside in the coming days, the chaos of the last week has forever changed the relationship between the Egyptian people and their government. The anger and aspirations propelling a diverse range of citizens into the streets will not disappear without sweeping changes in the social compact between the people and the government — and these events also call for changes in the relationship between the United States and a stalwart Arab ally.

President Hosni Mubarak must accept that the stability of his country hinges on his willingness to step aside gracefully to make way for a new political structure. One of the toughest jobs that a leader under siege can perform is to engineer a peaceful transition. But Egyptians have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities.

Ushering in such a transformation offers President Mubarak — a great nationalist ever since his generation of young officers helped their country escape the last vestiges of British colonialism — the chance to end the violence and lawlessness, to begin improving the dire economic and social conditions in his country and to change his place in history.

It is not enough for President Mubarak to pledge “fair” elections, as he did on Saturday. The most important step that he can take is to address his nation and declare that neither he nor the son he has been positioning as his successor will run in the presidential election this year. Egyptians have moved beyond his regime, and the best way to avoid unrest turning into upheaval is for President Mubarak to take himself and his family out of the equation.

Further, he must guarantee that the election will be honest and open to all legitimate candidates and conducted without interference from the military or security apparatus and under the oversight of international monitors. The Egyptian people are demanding wholesale transformation, not window dressing. As part of the transition, President Mubarak needs to work with the army and civil society to establish an interim caretaker government as soon as possible to oversee an orderly transition in the coming months.

President Mubarak has contributed significantly to Middle East peace. Now it is imperative that he contribute to peace in his own country by convincing Egyptians that their concerns and aspirations are being addressed. If he demonstrates leadership and accomplishes those goals, he can turn the Arab world’s most populous country into a model for how to meet the demands for reform engulfing the region.

Given the events of the past week, some are criticizing America’s past tolerance of the Egyptian regime. It is true that our public rhetoric did not always match our private concerns. But there also was a pragmatic understanding that our relationship benefited American foreign policy and promoted peace in the region. And make no mistake, a productive relationship with Egypt remains crucial for both us and the Middle East.

To that end, the United States must accompany our rhetoric with real assistance to the Egyptian people. For too long, financing Egypt’s military has dominated our alliance. The proof was seen over the weekend: tear gas canisters marked “Made in America” fired at protesters, United States-supplied F-16 jet fighters streaking over central Cairo. Congress and the Obama administration need to consider providing civilian assistance that would generate jobs and improve social conditions in Egypt, as well as guarantee that American military assistance is accomplishing its goals — just as we are trying to do with Pakistan through a five-year nonmilitary assistance package.

The awakening across the Arab world must bring new light to Washington, too. Our interests are not served by watching friendly governments collapse under the weight of the anger and frustrations of their own people, nor by transferring power to radical groups that would spread extremism. Instead, the best way for our stable allies to survive is to respond to the genuine political, legal and economic needs of their people. And the Obama administration is already working to address these needs.

At other historic turning points, we have not always chosen wisely. We built an important alliance with a free Philippines by supporting the people when they showed Ferdinand Marcos the door in 1986. But we continue to pay a horrible price for clinging too long to Iran’s shah. How we behave in this moment of challenge in Cairo is critical. It is vital that we stand with the people who share our values and hopes and who seek the universal goals of freedom, prosperity and peace.

For three decades, the United States pursued a Mubarak policy. Now we must look beyond the Mubarak era and devise an Egyptian policy.


John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

    Allying Ourselves With the Next Egypt, NYT, 31.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/opinion/01kerry.html

Incumbent Senators Weigh Options

January 22, 2011
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — As veteran members of the Senate contemplate the future, they find themselves pondering a question memorably and musically posed by the Clash: Should I stay or should I go?

The answers have so far been mixed, with three senior senators — Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a Democrat; Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, a Republican; and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent — announcing in recent days that they will take the exit ramp when their terms are up.

Two others — Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida — made it clear that they intended to seek re-election despite potentially bruising races.

Other incumbents are being monitored for signs of their intent. Are they raising money and hiring staff members to prepare for another run? Or does a lack of political activity and a refusal to commit mean that they will bow out gracefully rather than endure a grueling campaign that could bring primary and general election challenges?

Democrats on the watch list include Senators Daniel K. Akaka of Hawaii, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jim Webb of Virginia. Among Republicans, who have only 10 seats to defend in 2012 compared with 23 for Democrats, party operatives and analysts are keeping their eyes on Senators John Ensign of Nevada and Jon Kyl of Arizona.

It used to be relatively rare that senators walked away from their exclusive club and from the perks and privilege conferred by membership. But remaining in the Senate now entails months of fund-raising, a steady glad-handing of often disgruntled voters and a harsh media environment — often with no guarantee of a return ticket to Capitol Hill.

“It is a personal judgment really,” said Mr. Lieberman, who announced that it was time to move on after 40 years in public service, 15 statewide elections, a vice-presidential run on the Democratic ticket and an abbreviated presidential bid of his own.

Mr. Lieberman, who was in serious danger of being squeezed from the right and from the left had he sought re-election, said he still found the Senate a place where, despite heightened partisanship, lawmakers could succeed on the basis of personal relationships. He concedes, however, that it can be quite different on the campaign trail.

“There is no question that certainly the campaigns are more costly, more negative, more personally demanding in that sense, and I am sure that is a factor for people,” he said. “I don’t think it was decisive for me.”

Mr. Conrad, who also faced a tough fight but said he was advised by strategists that he could prevail, found himself weighing the thought of raising money and campaigning full time against taking on the federal debt and energy independence in the next two years.

“That made it very easy,” Mr. Conrad said. “I want to spend my time working on those things and not just spending it on all the effort that goes into a re-election campaign.”

The rise of the Tea Party and a generally foul political mood means re-election is no longer a slam dunk for veteran incumbents. Four senior senators were defeated last year, and a handful of others — including two Democrats, Harry Reid of Nevada and Patty Murray of Washington, and a Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — survived close calls.

Democrats head into 2012 with twice as many seats to defend as Republicans, and some incumbents are in territory that proved unfriendly in the 2010 midterms. Mr. Kohl, for instance, would be seeking a fifth term in Wisconsin, where Senator Russ Feingold was beaten and Republicans picked up House seats.

Mr. Webb could find himself back up against George Allen, the Republican incumbent he narrowly defeated in 2006, and Virginia has taken a turn against Democrats since President Obama carried it in 2008.

In Nebraska, Mr. Nelson, a two-term senator and former governor, faces a potential backlash against his vote for the health care law and for his support of other elements of the Obama agenda, even though he has worked assiduously to showcase his independence.

Other Democrats are making clear that they will not duck what could be a tough fight. The other Senator Nelson — Bill, from Florida — announced last Wednesday that he was definitely going to run, in a state where he is currently the only Democrat holding statewide office.

“My brand of politics is also where Florida is,” Mr. Nelson told a group of reporters and editors, predicting that Mr. Obama could also carry the state again.

The fact that 2012 is a presidential year could change the environment for Democrats, with Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign presumably able to turn out party voters who sat out the midterm elections and contributed to Democratic losses.

But it isn’t just Democrats who are on the bubble.

Mr. Ensign of Nevada, who is caught up in an ethics scandal, said a few days ago that he anticipated a tough re-election, and he could always quit. Senator Orrin Hatch, a six-term Utah Republican, has said he is running for re-election. But his former colleague, Robert F. Bennett, was pushed aside by conservative forces last year, and Mr. Hatch could face the same threat.

In Indiana, Mr. Lugar, who helped steer the Obama administration’s nuclear arms treaty through the lame-duck session of Congress, acknowledged that he could run into Tea Party resistance. But he is forging ahead. “I’ve been fortunate to have very good health and spirits,” he said. “I’m grateful for that. I don’t take it for granted, but nonetheless, I’m excited about what I’m doing.”

The question is how many of his colleagues up for re-election are similarly excited.

    Incumbent Senators Weigh Options, NYT, 22.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/politics/23cong.html

Lawmakers Aiming to Increase Civility

January 16, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — A leader of the Senate Democrats and one of the Senate’s most conservative Republicans will sit together at the State of the Union speech next week in a gesture of unity.

A House Republican from Pennsylvania and a House Democrat from California said Sunday that they would work together to revisit federal and state laws on mental illness.

And the House speaker, John A. Boehner, used the phrase “job-destroying” instead of “job-killing” in reference to the Democrats’ health care overhaul in a speech to colleagues on Saturday — a subtle but pointed shift in tone, though not in substance.

As the House prepares to resume regular legislative business on Tuesday, the shooting in Arizona that killed six in a failed assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords has shifted the political dynamic in Washington and across the nation, with lawmakers embracing a new civility.

No one is suggesting that the fierce policy disagreements will disappear or that old animosities will not remain just beneath the new, courteous veneer. But lawmakers said they expected a leveling of the discourse on even the most divisive issues, like cutting spending, whether to raise the federal debt limit and the Republican measure to repeal the Democrats’ health care overhaul, which the House is set to vote on this week.

“I think the tenor on anything that happens in the House is going to be a little different,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 House Republican, told reporters at a Republican retreat that ended on Saturday in Baltimore.

Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said there was no retreat from a policy standpoint. “I think you’ll see a more civil debate than you would have had otherwise,” Mr. Flake said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “I’m not sure the substance of the debate will change that much.”

Of course, any change in the way lawmakers debate issues or interact with one another on the floor could be as short-lived as a 30-second ad in a primary campaign. And Republicans in the 112th Congress, newly in control of the House and a stronger force in the Senate, said they would still fight to undo much of the legislation that emerged from the 111th, in which Democrats held sway in both chambers.

But in interviews and television appearances over the weekend, lawmakers in both parties voiced clear recognition that the Arizona massacre has put them on notice that it is time to dial down the rhetoric with which they publicly express differences — even as many reiterated a belief that the gunman’s mental illness, not heated political rhetoric, was the core issue in the shooting.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat, and Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, a leading conservative, said Sunday that they would sit together at the State of the Union speech. The gesture, expected to be replicated by colleagues, stands to alter the seemingly timeless image of lawmakers on one side of the House chamber standing and applauding a president from their own party, while lawmakers on the other side sit stone-faced, their hands in their laps.

The centrist Democratic group Third Way initially proposed bipartisan seating at the president’s annual address on Jan. 25, and Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, urged members of Congress to embrace the idea, which Mr. Schumer said prompted him to reach out to Mr. Coburn.

“We hope that many others will follow us,” Mr. Schumer said, appearing with Mr. Coburn on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “Now, that’s symbolic, but maybe it just sets a tone and everything gets a little bit more civil.”

Mr. Schumer added: “We believe in discourse in America. We believe in strenuous discourse. We don’t sweep differences under the rug.

“Tom and I have real differences. But we can do it civilly. I will say, to Tom’s credit, we have disagreed on a whole lot of stuff, but he’s always been civil, he’s always been a gentleman. And that’s an example that people should follow — politicians and the media.”

Mr. Coburn said that the news media had focused too much on political rancor and that lawmakers on both sides simply needed to settle down to work. “Some of the problems in our country is we talk past each other, not to each other,” he said. “And Chuck and I have been able to work on multiple bills because we sit down, one on one, and work things out. And what we need to do is have more of that, not less of it.”

Among the potential issues to be addressed are gaps in laws intended to prevent those who are mentally ill or abuse drugs from buying guns.

Mr. Coburn noted that many questions had been raised about the mental state of Jared L. Loughner, the man accused in the Tucson attack, but that Mr. Loughner had never been brought to the attention of mental health authorities who might have prevented him from buying a weapon.

“Let’s fix the real problem,” Mr. Coburn, a strong proponent of gun rights, said, adding, “I’m willing to work with Senator Schumer and anybody else that wants to make sure people who are mentally ill cannot get and use a gun.”

Noting that Mr. Loughner had been rejected from the Army because of excessive drug use, Mr. Schumer said the drug use would have prevented him by law from buying a gun.

“But the law doesn’t require the military to notify the F.B.I. about that, and in this case they didn’t,” he said.

Mr. Schumer said he had written a letter to the Obama administration on Sunday urging that the military be required to notify the F.B.I. when it rejects someone for drug use and that that information be added to the F.B.I. database.

Representative Tim Murphy, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Representative Grace F. Napolitano, Democrat of California, who jointly founded the Congressional Mental Health Caucus, said they hoped to lead colleagues in revisiting state and federal policies related to mental illness.

“I believe this issue has touched the hearts of so many members of Congress, who are constantly stopping me and saying: ‘Is there something else we could have done? Is there something else we can do?’ ” Mr. Murphy said. “And I believe so.”

While Mr. Murphy and Ms. Napolitano are veteran lawmakers, some lawmakers said they saw potential for changing the culture of Congress, given the large number of freshmen — including 87 new Republicans — who do not have hard feelings or grudges from mistreatment during their days in the minority.

“This is a serious group,” said Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois, the chief deputy Republican whip, “and I think they are going to easily rise above some of the past injuries and sharp elbows and come with an expectation that the House of Representatives is going to convene to accomplish something rather than just settle old scores.”

As he adjusts to life in the House, one of those freshman, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, said he thought the shooting of Ms. Giffords had served to remind House members what they share with those in the other party.

“There will still be passion here,” he said. “But it has kind of humanized us to each other.”

    Lawmakers Aiming to Increase Civility, NYT, 16.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/politics/17cong.html

Among Women in Congress, a Bond of Friendship

January 13, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — Two arrived at Capitol Hill together, giddy and singled out as women to watch. Another congresswoman was a welcoming face who showed them the ropes in a place where there was not even a ladies’ room near the floor where they would vote.

Then there was the leader, a mother-hen type who made sure that some of the seats on the Armed Services Committee went to women, including the two new lawmakers. There was political plotting, and vacations by the lake. There was softball. There were double dates with their husbands, most recently with pizza.

The four were reunited in Arizona for a few moments on Wednesday night, as one of the women, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, flicked open an eye as the sound of her friends’ voices filled her hospital room.

“I think it was a combination, perhaps, of the unexpected but familiar that really prompted her to open her eyes and look around,” said Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., one of Ms. Giffords’s neurosurgeons, concerning what was apparently her reaction to the voices of her fellow lawmakers, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

While Ms. Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, has always had a good relationship with Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, her true Congressional women friends are Ms. Wasserman Schultz, who openly welcomed her, and Ms. Gillibrand, who was elected in 2006 with Ms. Giffords. When they met for their super-fast lunches and after-work drinks, they were often joined by Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, who was defeated last year.

“We met on our first day,” said Ms. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, who later went on to the Senate. “Not that many young women who run for Congress get elected, so I gravitated to her right away. She is somebody who is very kind and very smart.”

They talked policy, they talked work days and they also talked about managing their lives.

“Like all working moms, we do our best,” Ms. Gillibrand said, which means avoiding cocktail parties between 5 and 7 p.m. (bath time) or early morning meetings (school drop-off). Their husbands got along, too, which made it easy to have the occasional dinner date when the four were in town together, like the one last week at Matchbox, a popular pizza place in Washington favored by Ms. Giffords’s husband, Mark E. Kelly, who is an astronaut.

“We enjoy being there for each other,” Ms. Gillibrand said, “So when Debbie and I were allowed to visit Gabby, it meant so much to us to encourage her and to tell her how much we love her and how she is inspiring the whole country right now.”

There is not a lot of downtime for members of Congress, but some of theirs is spent playing softball to raise money for young women with breast cancer. Ms. Wasserman Schultz is a co-captain for the House on a Congressional women’s softball team, and Ms. Gillibrand serves as a co-captain for the Senate side.

“I don’t think I’d be talking out of school if I told you Kirsten and I are pretty good, and Gabby, not so much,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. “We have to really coax her to participate. Let’s just say she was in the process of skill building.”

Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, met Ms. Giffords through a legislative fellowship program, before the Arizona lawmaker came to Congress, and she campaigned for her in Tucson, eager to see her join the ranks. Ms. Giffords and Ms. Gillibrand were part of the “red to blue” Democratic Party strategy to get moderate Democrats to take over Republican districts.

Once Ms. Giffords got to Washington, she and Ms. Wasserman Schultz melded their families in leisure time, going to the last shuttle launching or vacationing in Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s home in New Hampshire. “We would go hiking, and our on our boat and cook dinners,” she said. “Mark’s children and my kids played together. It’s just really nice.”

In Congress, party is all, but gender can help. “There is a bond among the women in Congress that goes beyond party,” said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington, who remembers that women from both parties had a shower for her when her son Cole was born three years ago.

“There are experiences and issues that bond us together, and we understand that we are still deep in the minority in terms of being women,” she said. “We often work together on things that are important to women and children and families, and there is a unique opportunity that we have, being women, to work on these issues together. I think we all recognize it’s still challenging to win a race for Congress, period, and as women, we share a goal of getting more women elected.”

That is not to say that the women were constantly engaged in identity politics.

Ms. Giffords gave Ms. Pelosi, the Democratic leader, a Christmas ornament one year that she has kept. But that did not stop Ms. Giffords from voting against Ms. Pelosi this month when she sought, successfully, to keep her party’s top post.

But the women’s bonds thrive in many ways. Even their softball team is bipartisan, unlike the Congressional men who play against each other by party. “That has given us a nice opportunity to bond across bipartisan lines,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. “I think, in general, the women across the aisle are a bit more civil to each other. Maybe we will be the ones that lead by example.”

    Among Women in Congress, a Bond of Friendship, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/us/14women.html

Not Just for Lawmakers

January 11, 2011
The New York Times

Representative Peter King, a Republican of Long Island, has proposed a bill that would prohibit the carrying of a gun within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress or other high-profile government official. That’s a worthy notion, so far as it goes. But how about going a step further and prohibiting the carrying of a semiautomatic weapon around 9-year-old girls? Or 79-year-old women? Or any of the other victims who were shot down in the Tucson parking lot on Saturday?

Members of Congress are understandably worried about their own safety in the wake of the shooting rampage that was centered around Representative Gabrielle Giffords. It makes sense for the Capitol Police to work more closely with local law enforcement agencies to enhance security at lawmakers’ public events. But some of the ideas being proposed would have the effect of further distancing lawmakers from the people they represent — and elevate their safety above the 100,000 Americans who are shot or killed with a gun every year.

Representative James Clyburn, a Democrat of South Carolina, said that lawmakers should no longer be treated like everyone else at airport security checkpoints, though that inconvenience seems to have nothing to do with the shooting. Representative Robert Brady, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, has proposed making it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening violence against all federal officials, an idea dangerously full of potential First Amendment violations. Representative Dan Burton, a Republican of Indiana, even wants to enclose the public gallery above the House chamber in Plexiglas. These ideas are unlikely to make lawmakers or the public any safer. But if members are concerned that some of the 283 million guns now in the hands of American civilians might one day be turned on them — and they should be — there are many things they can do.

They can follow the advice given on Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, along with 10 other mayors, and begin restoring the nation’s gun control laws to sanity — for the protection of everyone. The most obvious first steps are to ban the extended-round magazines used in the Arizona shooting and tighten a nearly useless system of background checks.

They also can ensure that federal and state financing for outreach to the mentally ill is increased, not cut, in the budget battles to come. Jared Loughner, the man accused of the Arizona shootings, apparently received no mental health treatment, even though officials at his college were very concerned about his mental state.

Instead of hiding, lawmakers must reach out to their constituents and help calm a troubled political environment without fear or self-absorbed overreaction.

    Not Just for Lawmakers, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/opinion/12wed2.html

Threats to Lawmakers Rarely Lead to Charges

January 11, 2011
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON — In September 2009, a Veterans Affairs caseworker reported that a man had threatened to kill Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, and Representative Ciro Rodriguez, a Democrat, both of Texas, for failing to help him in a dispute over his retirement benefits.

In June 2009, a man called an aide to Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, and said that if she held a town hall meeting on immigration or nuclear energy — or if he saw her on the street — he would attack her.

And in May 2009, Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, was in a parking lot in his district when a man driving by shouted that the lawmaker had blood on his hands over the Iraq war, had a bulls-eye on his head and was going to die.

The result in all three cases was the same: federal prosecutors declined to charge the men because they apparently had no intention of carrying out the threats, Federal Bureau of Investigation files show.

As the F.B.I. investigates the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, a review of hundreds of cases involving threats to lawmakers from 2000 to 2009 demonstrates just how hard it is to discern the real threats from mere bluster.

So far, no reports have emerged that Ms. Giffords’s assailant ever directly communicated a threat to her or her staff. In fact, studies of assaults on public figures have found that attackers have almost never telegraphed their intentions to their targets or to the authorities ahead of time. That suggests that the threats to lawmakers are likely being made by people other than those they most need to worry about.

“The hunters are those that do not directly threaten,” said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine who consults with the F.B.I.

Law enforcement officials said that the authorities must take threats seriously and make sure there is no real peril. In most instances, lawmakers report incidents to the United States Capitol Police’s threat assessment division, which refers some to the F.B.I. for further investigation.

In a small number of cases, officials have concluded that the threats were serious enough to have the person committed to a mental institution — potentially disrupting later problems — or to pursue lesser charges. But most of the time, investigators have concluded that little actual risk of an attack existed.

A review of the documents shows that some common patterns emerge. Some cases involve mentally or emotionally disturbed people who make threats but appear to lack any intent or capacity to cause harm. Sometimes they had temporarily stopped taking psychiatric medications at the time of the threat, making it hard to establish any criminal intent.

In 2008, for example, an Idaho man sent a letter to William Sali, then a Republican representative, saying that if the congressman did not help stop a city from invoking eminent domain to take a church’s property for use by a hospital, he would “blow the hospital to hell and the city too.”

The man told the F.B.I. he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and had been having “medication issues” when he wrote the letter. He said he had no intention of committing any violent acts. Because he was not believed to be “a viable threat,” the case was closed.

Another common category consists of people who vented in an overheated way.

In February 2008, for example, an Alabama man sent an e-mail to a government agency threatening Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican then campaigning for president. The man, who owned several guns, later admitted sending the e-mail, saying he “was drunk when I wrote that one” and was upset at Mr. McCain for “not campaigning in Alabama as a Republican should be.” He apologized and promised to send no more threats.

And in June 2008, the F.B.I. investigated a man who sent a vulgar fax to Representative Louise M. Slaughter of New York that she viewed as threatening. He told the F.B.I. he had not intended to threaten her — and noted that he has “suffered three strokes, uses a cane to walk, and neither has the ability nor intention of physically harming Congresswoman Slaughter.”

The case was closed without charges. In an interview, Ms. Slaughter said that even if such investigations often did not result in prosecutions, she was relieved that the authorities saw them through — and at times stepped in to provide extra protection.

“There are a lot of people in the United States that have just abject hate for the government,” she said. “And we are part of it. And if we really are going to make a major difference here in addressing this problem, we have to convince citizens of the United States that this government is not their enemy.”

While attackers almost never telegraph their intentions ahead of time, they do often show signs of fixation on public figures against whom they harbor grievances — real or imagined — and often tell a friend or a relative that they might attack them, forensic psychologists say.

Richard A. Falkenrath, former deputy commissioner of counter-terrorism of the New York Police Department, said the files demonstrated the complexity of the authorities face in protecting public officials,.

“It is really hard,” Mr. Falkenrath said. “The vast majority of threats don’t amount to anything other than that — threats. It is that small few that keep you up at night and result in what we had in Arizona.”

    Threats to Lawmakers Rarely Lead to Charges, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/us/12security.html

When Congress Was Armed And Dangerous

January 11, 2011
The New York Times
By JOANNE B. FREEMAN


New Haven

THE announcement that Representatives Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Jason Chaffetz of Utah are planning to wear guns in their home districts has surprised many, but in fact the United States has had armed congressmen before. In the rough-and-tumble Congress of the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, politicians regularly wore weapons on the House and Senate floors, and sometimes used them.

During one 1836 melee in the House, a witness observed representatives with “pistols in hand.” In a committee hearing that same year, one House member became so enraged at the testimony of a witness that he reached for his gun; when the terrified witness refused to return, he was brought before the House on a charge of contempt.

Perhaps most dramatic of all, during a debate in 1850, Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi pulled a pistol on Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. (Someone eventually took it from his hand.) Foote had decided in advance that if he felt threatened, he would grab his gun and run for the aisle in the hope that stray shots wouldn’t hit bystanders.

Most famously, in 1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor so brutally that Sumner had to be virtually carried from the chamber — and did not retake his seat for three years. Clearly, wielded with brute force, a cane could be a potent weapon.

By the 1850s, violence was common in Washington. Not long after Sumner’s caning, a magazine told the story of a Michigan judge who traveled by train to the nation’s capital: “As he entered the main hall of the depot, he saw a man engaged in caning another ferociously, all over the room. ‘When I saw this,’ says the judge, ‘I knew I was in Washington.’”

In Congress, violence was often deployed strategically. Representatives and senators who were willing to back up their words with their weapons had an advantage, particularly in the debate over slavery. Generally speaking, Northerners were least likely to be armed, and thus most likely to back down. Congressional bullies pressed their advantage, using threats and violence to steer debate, silence opposition and influence votes.

In 1842, Representative Thomas Arnold of Tennessee, a member of the Whig Party, learned the hard way that these bullies meant business. After he reprimanded a pro-slavery member of his own party, two Southern Democrats stalked toward him, at least one of whom was armed with a bowie knife — a 6- to 12-inch blade often worn strapped to the back. Calling Arnold a “damned coward,” his angry colleagues threatened to cut his throat “from ear to ear.” But Arnold wasn’t a man to back down. Ten years earlier, he had subdued an armed assassin on the Capitol steps.

As alarming as these outbursts were, until the 1840s, reporters played them down, in part to avoid becoming embroiled in fights themselves. (A good many reporters received beatings from outraged congressmen; one nearly had his finger bitten off.) So Americans knew relatively little of congressional violence.

That changed with the arrival of the telegraph. Congressmen suddenly had to confront the threat — or temptation — of “instant” nationwide publicity. As Senator John Parker Hale of New Hampshire reminded his colleagues within minutes of the Foote-Benton clash, reports were “already traveling with lightning speed over the telegraph wires to the remotest borders of the Republic.” He added, “It is not impossible that even now it may have been rumored in the city of St. Louis that several senators are dead and weltering in their blood on the floor of the Senate.”

Violence was news, and news could spawn violence. Something had to be done, but what? To many, the answer was obvious: watch your words. As one onlooker wrote to the speaker of the House shortly after Sumner’s caning, “gentlemen” who took part in the debate over slavery should “scrupulously avoid the utterance of unnecessarily harsh language.” There was no other way to prevent the “almost murderous feeling” that could lead to “demonstrations upon the floor, which in the present state of excitement, would almost certainly lead to a general melee and perhaps a dozen deaths in the twinkling of an eye.”

Unfortunately, such admonitions had little effect. The violence in Congress continued to build until the outbreak of the Civil War.

Today, in the wake of an episode of violence against a member of Congress, we’re again lamenting the state of political rhetoric, now spread faster than ever via Twitter, Web sites, text messaging and e-mail. Once again, politicians are considering bearing arms — not to use against one another, but potentially against an angry public.

And once again we’re reminded that words matter. Communication is the heart and soul of American democratic governance, but there hasn’t been much fruitful discourse of late — among members of Congress, between the people and their representatives or in the public sphere. We need to get better at communicating not only quickly, but civilly.

Joanne B. Freeman, a professor of history at Yale, is at work on a book about violence in Congress.

    When Congress Was Armed And Dangerous, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/opinion/12freeman.html

Congress Weighs Enhanced Security Plan

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON, CHARLIE SAVAGE and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

This article is by Eric Lipton, Charlie Savage and Jennifer Steinhauer.

WASHINGTON — House lawmakers are considering adopting an enhanced security system that would ease the way for members of Congress to get more comprehensive protection at public appearances in their home districts.

Under the bipartisan proposal, the Capitol Police, which is charged with protecting lawmakers, would formalize its relationship with local police and sheriffs’ departments around the United States and jointly develop more standardized plans to deal with varying threat levels for town meetings or other public events, House officials said. Lawmakers could then ask the local police to execute the plans for certain events, a step now taken only on an ad hoc basis.

“The current system is based on reaction to a potential threat,” said Jamie Fleet, the Democratic staff director for the Committee on House Administration, which oversees security matters. “The new system will be more formalized — sitting down and planning a town hall or a ‘Congress in Your Corner’ event, changing the thinking of staff and lawmakers to ‘Am I doing this safely?’ ”

The answer to that question is a delicate one for members of Congress, who say they do not want to insulate themselves from constituents but also increasingly acknowledge anxiety about the volatile political climate. While security at the Capitol has intensified since the Sept. 11 attacks, there has been no comparative effort to increase protection of lawmakers outside Washington, particularly when they are at public events.

Even before the Arizona shooting on Saturday, which wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords and left six people dead, reported threats against lawmakers had been on the rise, jumping in the Senate alone to 49 incidents last year from about 30 each in 2008 and 2009, according to the Senate sergeant-at-arms. On Friday, for example, a Colorado man was arrested for threatening to set a fire around the office of Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado.

Increased security measures will be discussed at a Wednesday briefing about the Arizona attack for members of Congress. Law enforcement experts cautioned, though, that identifying threats that could prove difficult and that providing security for lawmakers at thousands of events every year might be impractical.

Some members of Congress said they were not sure if the attack should motivate any major security changes, pointing out that the last comparable event was in 1978, when a House member from California was killed.

“If we put every senator and congressman behind a thick brick wall and make them completely safe, we wouldn’t have the democracy we have today,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat and chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the Capitol Police. “So there has to be a balance.”

Mr. Schumer, who spoke at a senior center in New Rochelle on Monday after police officers did a sweep with a German shepherd and inspected cars in the parking lot, said the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms had been meeting with the chief of the Capitol Police to discuss whether any upgrades to security procedures or levels were necessary. But they have not yet made a proposal, he said.

Representative Dan Lungren, a California Republican who leads the House committee that oversees security, and Mr. Fleet, the Democratic House aide, agreed that the Capitol Police and local law enforcement authorities could never provide complete protection to lawmakers as they travel around the United States. But they said that if there was a more standardized system for requesting security at a district event, lawmakers would be more likely to take advantage of the service.

“You can have some reliance on a document of what they ought to do and members will get over any reluctance they might have,” Mr. Lungren said in an interview.

Currently, lawmakers are invited to contact the Capitol Police or sergeant-at-arms if they have been threatened, and the Capitol Police have a special threat assessment unit that evaluates security measures at a lawmaker’s office and recommends steps to improve it.

The Capitol Police force, which has about 1,600 officers, sometimes sends officers to districts with lawmakers. Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who just left the House, had a federal protective team with him last year after he received threats apparently related to his position on the health care overhaul. One came from a former Army officer, who was charged after saying he would “paint the Mackinac Bridge red” with the congressman’s blood.

Mr. Lungren said he routinely had a uniformed police officer with him at town-hall-style meetings.

But most members do not regularly request such protection. The glass on the front door to Ms. Giffords’s district office was smashed last March after the vote on the health care legislation, either after being hit with an object or some kind of pellet gun. But Ms. Giffords continued to go to public events without security.

“We were never so concerned about security that we ever canceled an event that I can recall in four years,” her spokesman, C.J. Karamargin, said Monday. “She has always prided herself on her openness and accessibility.”

But some lawmakers said the Arizona shooting should change attitudes in Congress.

“I think it needs to be a wake-up call for members who have treated security in a cavalier — their own personal security in a cavalier way,” Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, said on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “When I have town hall meetings, which I have regularly, and increasingly even, even very open public meetings, there are always officers present.”

    Congress Weighs Enhanced Security Plan, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11security.html

Reform and the Filibuster

January 2, 2011
The New York Times

The new Senate will face one of its most momentous decisions in its opening hours on Wednesday: a vote on whether to change its rules to prohibit the widespread abuse of the filibuster. Americans are fed up with Washington gridlock. The Senate should seize the opportunity.

A filibuster — the catchall term for delaying or blocking a majority vote on a bill by lengthy debate or other procedures — remains a valuable tool for ensuring that a minority of senators cannot be steamrollered into silence. No one is talking about ending the practice.

Every returning Democratic senator, though, has signed a letter demanding an end to the almost automatic way the filibuster has been used in recent years. By simply raising an anonymous objection, senators can trigger a 60-vote supermajority for virtually every piece of legislation. The time has come to make senators work for their filibusters, and justify them to the public.

Critics will say that it is self-serving for Democrats to propose these reforms now, when they face a larger and more restive Republican minority. The facts of the growing procedural abuse are clearly on their side. In the last two Congressional terms, Republicans have brought 275 filibusters that Democrats have been forced to try to break. That is by far the highest number in Congressional history, and more than twice the amount in the previous two terms.

These filibusters are the reason there was no budget passed this year, and why as many as 125 nominees to executive branch positions and 48 judicial nominations were never brought to a vote. They have produced public policy that we strongly opposed, most recently preserving the tax cuts for the rich, but even bipartisan measures like the food safety bill are routinely filibustered and delayed.

The key is to find a way to ensure that any minority party — and the Democrats could find themselves there again — has leverage in the Senate without grinding every bill to an automatic halt. The most thoughtful proposal to do so was developed by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, along with Tom Udall of New Mexico and a few other freshmen. It would make these major changes:

NO LAZY FILIBUSTERS At least 10 senators would have to file a filibuster petition, and members would have to speak continuously on the floor to keep the filibuster going. To ensure the seriousness of the attempt, the requirements would grow each day: five senators would have to hold the floor for the first day, 10 the second day, etc. Those conducting the filibuster would thus have to make their case on camera. (A cloture vote of 60 senators would still be required to break the blockade.)

FEWER BITES OF THE APPLE Republicans now routinely filibuster not only the final vote on a bill, but the initial motion to even debate it, as well as amendments and votes on conference committees. Breaking each of these filibusters adds days or weeks to every bill. The plan would limit filibusters to the actual passage of a bill.

MINORITY AMENDMENTS Harry Reid, the majority leader, frequently prevents Republicans from offering amendments because he fears they will lead to more opportunities to filibuster. Republicans say they mount filibusters because they are precluded from offering amendments. This situation would be resolved by allowing a fixed number of amendments from each side on a bill, followed by a fixed amount of debate on each one.

Changing these rules could be done by a simple majority of senators, but only on the first day of the session. Republicans have said that ramming through such a measure would reduce what little comity remains in the chamber.

Nonetheless, the fear of such a vote has led Republican leaders to negotiate privately with Democrats in search of a compromise, possibly on amendments. Any plan that does not require filibustering senators to hold the floor and make their case to the public would fall short. The Senate has been crippled long enough.

Reform and the Filibuster, NYT, 2.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/opinion/03mon1.html