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History > 2012 > USA > Politics (VI)
Republicans Must Support
Public
Financing for Contraception
December
27, 2012
The New York Times
By JULEANNA GLOVER
Washington
TWO weeks ago, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a potential Republican
presidential candidate in 2016, proposed making oral contraceptives available
“over the counter.” This was a remarkable — and wholly positive — postelection
development. It is just the sort of bold thinking the Republican Party needs to
overcome its reputation for being unsympathetic to women’s concerns. (Last
month, President Obama won the women’s vote by a margin of 10 percentage
points.)
Making the party more appealing to women, however, should not — and need not —
involve undermining the most basic Republican values. In the case of childbirth,
the Republicans’ primary commitment is to the pro-life cause — and hence to
reducing the number of abortions in the country. But abortion opponents should
be pro-contraception, since making contraception as affordable and available as
possible reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus abortions.
In fact, historically, Republican lawmakers have voted to maintain or increase
financing for the Title X Family Planning Program, which was enacted in 1970
under President Richard M. Nixon and currently provides about $300 million a
year to state and local organizations for contraceptive care for low-income
women. According to a 2009 Congressional Research Service report, Title X
prevents almost a million unwanted pregnancies each year.
But in 2011 and 2012, the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of conservatives
in the House of Representatives, proposed defunding Title X. The reason?
Twenty-five percent of Title X funds go to Planned Parenthood, which not only
provides contraceptive care but noisily advocates for abortion rights. Though
federal law prohibits the use of Title X funds for abortions, the close
association between Planned Parenthood and the abortion-rights movement has
discouraged Republicans from channeling funds to the organization. This creates
a serious public-relations problem for the Republicans. By trying to defund
Planned Parenthood, Republicans can seem unsympathetic not just to abortion, but
also to the plight of low-income and underinsured women who receive
contraceptive care through the group’s clinics.
Throughout my career, I have worked with leaders of the pro-life movement. I
have campaigned for Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, worked with the
activist Phyllis Schlafly and for the conservative thinker Bill Kristol, as well
as for Vice President Dick Cheney. In 1999, when Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of
New York City, who supports abortion rights, formed a committee to explore a
Senate run, I sought and won special dispensation from my pro-life mentors. (He
was planning a run against Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the first lady, so that
was easy.) I now work with a champion of the conservative movement, John
Ashcroft, a former senator from Missouri who was attorney general under
President George W. Bush. While my pro-life credentials are in good order, I
urge my fellow Republicans to rethink our approach to pro-life advocacy.
Like Mr. Jindal, I believe we need to empower women to avoid unplanned
pregnancies. Encouraging abstinence among young women is positive and necessary,
but not enough. Supporting Title X is critical to reducing unwanted pregnancies.
Pro-life Republicans must strive to ensure that no woman finds herself pregnant
because she cannot afford effective contraception, as these women will either
have abortions or give birth under Medicaid coverage, which increases the burden
on taxpayers.
Maintaining a federal role in contraceptive care for low-income women is a far
more moral, empathetic and fiscally responsible approach to the problem of
unwanted pregnancies than simply condemning abortion — notwithstanding
conservative principles of personal responsibility and limited government. If
every woman who wanted reliable contraceptive care got it, irrespective of
income, we should expect that abortion services would substantially decrease.
This would not only reduce government spending on Medicaid — a dollar spent on
contraceptive care is associated with a $2 to $6 reduction in health care costs
— but, more important, avert the tragedy and anguish involved in abortion. And
it would empower women to decide for themselves when they want to have children,
advance their education or pursue career opportunities.
In the next round of budget proposals, the Republican-controlled House should
take the opportunity to outflank President Obama and the Senate Democrats by
proposing a budget that increases the baseline financing for Title X. At the
same time, to make their pro-life position emphatically clear, they should vote
on a bill denying federal funds to any group that performs abortions. The moral
and financial costs of restricting contraceptive access far outweigh
conservative concerns motivating Republicans’ recent opposition to Title X.
We pro-life advocates need to lead the Title X charge. Mr. Jindal’s proposal for
over-the-counter contraceptives is an excellent policy objective, but it is
likely to take years of study before the Food and Drug Administration could
clear such sales. In contrast, increasing Title X funding would be an immediate
step that the Republican Party could take to reach out to women. Through
promoting wider access to contraceptives in this way, Republicans would be
making a tangible effort to reduce the number of abortions — which was our real
goal all along.
Juleanna
Glover is a Republican strategist and an adviser to the National Campaign
to Prevent
Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Republicans Must Support Public Financing for Contraception, NYT, 27.12.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/opinion/republicans-must-support-public-financing-for-contraception.html
Time to Confront Climate Change
December 27, 2012
The New York Times
Four years ago, in sharp contrast to the torpor and denial of
the George W. Bush years, President Obama described climate change as one of
humanity’s most pressing challenges and pledged an all-out effort to pass a
cap-and-trade bill limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Then came one roadblock after another. Congress did not pass a climate bill,
cap-and-trade became a dirty word, and, with the 2012 elections approaching,
climate change disappeared from the president’s vocabulary. He spoke about green
jobs and clean energy but not about why these were necessary. In the immediate
aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, he spoke only obliquely about the threat of rising
seas and extreme weather events, both of which scientists have linked to a
warming climate.
Since his re-election, Mr. Obama has agreed to foster a “conversation” on
climate change and an “education process” about long-term steps to address it.
He needs to do a good deal more than that. Intellectually, Mr. Obama grasps the
problem as well as anyone. The question is whether he will bring the powers of
the presidency to bear on the problem.
Enlisting market forces in the fight against global warming by putting a price
on carbon — through cap-and-trade or a direct tax — seems out of the question
for this Congress. But there are weapons at Mr. Obama’s disposal that do not
require Congressional approval and could go a long way to reducing emissions and
reasserting America’s global leadership.
One imperative is to make sure that natural gas — which this nation has in
abundance and which emits only half the carbon as coal — can be extracted
without risk to drinking water or the atmosphere. This may require national
legislation to replace the often porous state regulations. Another imperative is
to invest not only in familiar alternative energy sources like wind and solar
power, but also in basic research, next-generation nuclear plants and
experimental technologies that could smooth the path to a low-carbon economy.
Mr. Obama’s most promising near-term strategy may be to invoke the Environmental
Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act to limit emissions from
stationary sources, chiefly power plants.
The agency has already taken a step in that direction by proposing strict
emission standards for new power plants that virtually ensure that no new
coal-fired plants will be built unless they capture their carbon emissions,
which would require employing new technologies that have not been proved on a
commercial scale. But that leaves the bigger problem of what to do with existing
coal-fired power plants, which still generate roughly 40 percent of the nation’s
power and obviously cannot be shut down quickly or by fiat.
The Natural Resources Defense Council recently proposed an innovative scheme
that would set overall emissions targets but let the individual states — and the
utilities that operate in them — figure out how to meet them by making their
boilers more efficient, switching to cleaner fuels or by subsidizing energy
efficiency and encouraging reduced consumption by individuals and businesses.
Any such regulations are likely to be strongly opposed by industry and will
require real persistence on the administration’s part. If Mr. Obama takes this
approach, he will certainly need a determined leader at E.P.A. to devise and
carry out the rules. Lisa Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator who on Thursday
announced her resignation after four productive years in one of the federal
government’s most thankless jobs, was just such a leader.
She suffered setbacks — most notably the White House’s regrettable decision to
overrule her science-based proposal to update national health standards for
ozone, or smog. But she accomplished much, including tougher standards for power
plant emissions of mercury and other air toxics, new health standards for soot,
and, most important, her agency’s finding that carbon dioxide and five other
gases that contribute to global warming constituted a danger to public health
and could thus be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
That ruling, known as the endangerment finding, made possible the
administration’s historic new emissions standards for cars and light trucks. It
also provided the basis for the first steps toward regulating emissions from new
power plants, and, possibly, further steps requiring existing plants to reduce
global warming pollution.
In 2009, at the climate summit meeting in Copenhagen, Mr. Obama pledged to
reduce this country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels
by 2020. This seemed an impossible goal once Congress rejected the cap-and-trade
bill. But the increased use of cheap natural gas, the new fuel standards, the
mercury rules and other factors have already put this country on track for a 10
percent reduction by 2020.
By some estimates, reaching the 17 percent goal is well within Mr. Obama’s
grasp. He has the means at hand to seize it.
Time to Confront Climate Change, NYT,
27.12.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/opinion/time-to-confront-climate-change.html
Events
Recall a More Bipartisan Era,
and
Highlight Gridlock of Today
December
21, 2012
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON
— If Friday’s memorial service for one of this country’s long-serving senators
was a somber recollection of a bipartisan era that once was, the rest of the day
was a frenetic reminder of the political gridlock that now grips the capital.
At the National Cathedral, the nation’s political leaders eulogized Senator
Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, who died this week at 88 after more than 50 years in
Congress. President Obama said he learned from Mr. Inouye “how our democracy is
supposed to work.”
Across town, democracy was, at best, showing its gritty side as it ground along
angrily, noisily and slowly: A weary Speaker John A. Boehner admitted failure in
his efforts to avert a fiscal crisis with a bill to increase taxes on
millionaires but asserted that his job was not at risk; a top National Rifle
Association official bluntly challenged Congress to embrace guns at schools, not
control them; and Mr. Obama bowed to the reality that Republicans had blocked
his first choice to be the next secretary of state.
Though it has been 45 days since voters emphatically reaffirmed their faith in
Mr. Obama, the time since then has shown the president’s power to be severely
constrained by a Republican opposition that is bitter about its losses, unmoved
by Mr. Obama’s victory and unwilling to compromise on social policy, economics
or foreign affairs.
“The stars are all aligning the wrong way in terms of working together,” said
Peter Wehner, a former top White House aide to President George W. Bush. “Right
now, the political system is not up to the moment and the challenges that we
face.”
House Republicans argue that voters handed their members a mandate as well,
granting the party control of the House for another two years and with it the
right to stick to their own views, even when they clash strongly with the
president’s.
And many Republicans remember well when the tables were turned. After Mr. Bush’s
re-election in 2004, Democrats eagerly thwarted his push for privatization of
Social Security, hobbling Mr. Bush’s domestic agenda in the first year of his
second term.
New polls suggest that Mr. Obama’s popularity has surged to its highest point
since he announced the killing of Osama bin Laden. In the latest CBS News
survey, the president’s job approval rating was at 57 percent.
But taken together, events suggest that even that improvement in the polls has
done little to deliver the president the kind of clear authority to enact his
policies that voters seemed to say they wanted during the election.
Even some of the president’s closest advisers said they were surprised by the
ferocity of the Republican opposition.
“It’s kind of a stunning thing to watch the way this has unfolded, at least to
date,” said David Axelrod, one of Mr. Obama’s longtime advisers. “The question
is, how do you break free from these strident voices?”
Friday’s wrangling crystalized the challenges that Mr. Obama faces as he
prepares to begin a second term next month.
In Mr. Boehner, the president has a potential deal-making partner who is unable
to rally House Republicans behind his own plans, much less any agreement he
might cut with Mr. Obama. In a news conference on Friday morning, Mr. Boehner
essentially admitted he was running out of ideas to avert big tax increases and
spending cuts early next year.
“How we get there,” Mr. Boehner told reporters, “God only knows.”
Just minutes later, officials with the National Rifle Association made clear
what House Republicans had been whispering all week: The president’s call for
gun control in the wake of the Connecticut shooting is likely to run into
tremendous opposition.
Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the firearm group, made clear
the N.R.A. would not support the president’s call for gun control, recommending
instead a “school shield” program of armed security guards at the nation’s
schools as well as a national database that could track the mentally ill.
At the same time, Mr. Obama officially named Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts
as his choice to lead the State Department — a decision the president was forced
to make after Republicans effectively blocked his preferred choice, Susan E.
Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations.
Ms. Rice, a longtime confidante of Mr. Obama’s, was never formally nominated,
but it was no secret inside the White House that the president would have liked
her to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton early next year. But even on the heels of
his electoral victory, Mr. Obama was unable to overcome Republican opposition —
led by Senator John McCain, the man he defeated for the presidency in 2008 — to
her nomination.
There are still 10 days left in which Mr. Obama might reach some sort of
arrangement with Congress on averting a fiscal crisis that some predict could
plunge the nation back into recession.
In an evening news briefing, Mr. Obama proposed a scaled-back deal that might
avert fiscal crisis while putting off the major philosophical arguments for
another day. He said he hoped lawmakers could cool off, "drink some eggnog, have
some Christmas cookies and sing some Christmas carols" before coming back to
Washington.
"Now is not the time for more self-inflicted wounds," Mr. Obama pleaded as he
left town for a Hawaii holiday vacation. "Certainly not those coming from
Washington."
In another 31 days, Mr. Obama will deliver his second Inaugural Address,
providing him the opportunity to make his case to the American public on the
direction he wants to take them in a second term. A few weeks after that, he
will give his State of the Union address, which he has already promised to use
in part as a call for new gun control laws.
Tom Daschle, a former Democratic majority leader in the Senate, said he feared
Washington would remain paralyzed on taxes and other issues until the country
truly faces a crisis.
“I worry that it’s going to take that kind of a condition to bring people to the
reality that they can’t mess around here anymore,” Mr. Daschle said.
On Friday, Mr. Obama was more hopeful.
“This is something within our capacity to solve,” he insisted, even as he left
Washington without even the outlines of a deal in place.
Events Recall a More Bipartisan Era, and Highlight Gridlock of Today, NYT,
21.12.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/us/politics/
still-bitter-about-election-republican-opposition-unwilling-to-compromise-with-president.html
Obama’s
Gun Test
December
17, 2012
The New York Times
By ROGER COHEN
LONDON —
President Obama made a good speech in Arizona almost two years ago after a lone
gunman — another troubled young American male wielding a semiautomatic weapon —
killed six people and wounded many others, including Representative Gabrielle
Giffords.
His theme was American reconciliation worthy of the hopes of a nine-year-old
girl killed that day. But he also sounded a steely note: “We cannot and will not
be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old
assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.”
The president has uttered more moving words, and shed tears, since a 20-year-old
gunman — having murdered his mother and grabbed her ample arsenal — blasted his
way into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, last week and slaughtered
20 children aged 6 and 7, as well as six members of staff. Again Obama spoke of
prayer and community. Again he made the vague promise of “meaningful action to
prevent more tragedies like this.”
The Newtown slaughter is many things: evil, unconscionable, literally
unbearable. Who can look into the innocent eyes of 20 first-graders and execute
them? The temptation is to say only a monster, but of course the answer is a
human being.
The way to curtail humans’ ineradicable potential for evil is not soaring
rhetoric or heartfelt prayer, but effective laws that govern the interaction of
citizens in society. The horror of Newtown is a political failure. It is a
failure of American will. That will is personified by the president. Michael
Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, was right to chide Obama: “He’s the commander
in chief as well as the consoler in chief.”
And command he should on gun control. The issue centers on a handful of words
adopted 221 years ago. The Second Amendment reads (every facet of it, including
the punctuation, is disputed): “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall
not be infringed.”
This single sentence has become the rickety basis of an ideology backed by the
millions-strong gun lobby. It holds that the right of individuals to bear arms
is indivisible from the essence of American liberty. Any attempt to curtail that
right is somehow anti-American. In this view, the gun becomes guarantor of vigor
and democracy: Feeble Europeans cede their rights to Big Government (their new
religion) whereas tough God-fearing Americans believe their government should
serve them.
Europeans look on in incomprehension. In many respects European and American
cultures intertwine. They diverge over guns and God. The United States has more
guns and does more God — a sign of vitality and the absence of European cynicism
to some Americans, but a dangerous combination in the eyes of Europeans.
What does young Adam Lanza, armed with a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle,
have to do with anything “well regulated,” or with a “Militia,” or with
“security,” or with a “free State” or with “the people”?
Nothing.
The Second Amendment cannot be an untrammeled gun license, the passport to the
kind of unregulated ownership of weapons that facilitates mass shootings. James
Madison had order in mind not mayhem.
Yet, between Obama’s Arizona speech and this massacre, U.S. gun laws have become
less not more restrictive. Old assumptions have not been “challenged” but
reinforced. The gun culture runs deep.
Ever since his much-criticized remarks about rural folk “clinging to” guns and
God — seen as patronizing liberal snobbery — Obama has been passive (his word)
on the gun issue. But these 20 dead children in a year of repeated mass
shootings demand that he now push hard to make access to guns “well regulated” —
through thorough background checks, waiting periods to allow such investigations
to happen, referees for would-be buyers, restrictions on the weapons available
and whatever legislation really supports “the security of a free State.”
Responsible gun owners would only benefit. The United States would not be turned
overnight into Europe by stripping the Second Amendment of the anti-historical
confabulations that have made life far more dangerous for America’s children
than it need be.
When young children are slaughtered en masse, it is a moment of reckoning for
any society. To dismiss this as the act of a madman is unacceptable when it
forms part of a pattern, part of a culture. The question to ask is not whether
stricter laws would have prevented this but whether current laws and attitudes
enabled it.
Even the Nazis struggled with the enormity of slaughtering children. To overcome
the psychological barrier in the Baltic states in 1941, they often hired local
police or militias to kill Jewish kids. The subsequent gas chambers were
designed for efficiency. They were also a means to avoid doing what Lanza did:
look doomed children in the eye.
Fine words and lofty prayer pack up like cheap umbrellas in a storm. What is
needed is the political resolve to confront a scourge. Newtown has become a
decisive test of whether second-term Obama is different. The signs are not good.
His Newtown speech did not contain two essential words: guns and laws.
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Obama’s Gun Test, NYT, 17.12.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/global/obamas-gun-test.html
‘These
Tragedies Must End,’ Obama Says
December
16, 2012
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and PETER BAKER
NEWTOWN,
Conn. — President Obama vowed on Sunday to “use whatever power this office
holds” to stop massacres like the slaughter at the school here that shocked the
nation, hinting at a fresh effort to curb the spread of guns as he declared that
there was no “excuse for inaction.”
In a surprisingly assertive speech at a memorial service for the 27 victims,
including 20 children, Mr. Obama said that the country had failed to protect its
young and that its leaders could no longer sit by idly because “the politics are
too hard.” While he did not elaborate on what action he would propose, he said
that “these tragedies must end.”
The speech, a blend of grief and resolve that he finished writing on the short
Air Force One flight up here, seemed to promise a significant change in
direction for a president who has not made gun issues a top priority in four
years in office. After each of three other mass killings during his tenure, Mr.
Obama has renewed calls for legislation without exerting much political capital,
but the definitive language on Sunday may make it harder for him not to act this
time.
“No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent
every senseless act of violence in our society,” he said. “But that can’t be an
excuse for inaction.” He added that “in the coming weeks I’ll use whatever power
this office holds” in an effort “aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”
“Because what choice do we have?” he added. “We can’t accept events like this as
routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such
carnage? That the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such
violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price
of our freedom?”
Mr. Obama, speaking on a stark stage before a table of votive candles for each
victim, mixed his call to action with words of consolation for this bereaved
town. When he read the names of teachers killed defending their students, people
in the audience gasped and wept.
The service came as new details emerged about the terrifying moments at the
Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday. Authorities said Sunday that the gunman,
Adam Lanza, shot his mother multiple times in the head before his rampage at the
school and that he still had hundreds of rounds of ammunition left when he
killed himself. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut said Mr. Lanza shot himself
as the police were closing in, suggesting that he may have intended to take more
lives had he not been interrupted.
The president’s trip here came amid rising pressure to push for tighter
regulation of guns in America. The president offered no specific proposals, and
there were no urgent meetings at the White House over the weekend to draft
legislation. Administration officials cautioned against expecting quick,
dramatic action, especially given the end-of-the-year fiscal crisis consuming
most of Mr. Obama’s time.
But the administration does have the makings of a plan on the shelf, with
measures drafted by the Justice Department over the years but never advanced.
Among other things, Democrats said they would push to renew an assault rifle ban
that expired in 2004 and try to ban high-capacity magazines like those used by
Mr. Lanza in Newtown. The president also said he would work with law enforcement
and mental health professionals, as well as parents and educators.
The streets outside the memorial service and the airwaves across the nation were
filled with voices calling for legislative action. By contrast, the National
Rifle Association and its most prominent supporters in Congress were largely
absent from the public debate.
“These events are happening more frequently,” Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the
independent from Connecticut, said here before the service began, “and I worry
that if we don’t take a thoughtful look at them, we’re going to lose the pain,
the hurt and the anger that we have now.”
Governor Malloy said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” that when someone can
burst into a building with “clips of up to 30 rounds on a weapon that can almost
instantaneously fire those, you have to start to question whether assault
weapons should be allowed to be distributed the way they are in the United
States.”
The grieving in this small New England town, aired nonstop on national
television, adding emotional energy to the pressure on a newly re-elected
Democratic president who has largely avoided the issue during four years in the
White House. Mr. Obama has long supported the restoration of the assault weapon
ban, which first passed in 1994 only to set off a backlash among supporters of
gun rights that helped cost Democrats control of Congress. Given that political
history, he has never made a robust, sustained lobbying effort for it.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, appearing on the NBC program “Meet the
Press,” all but demanded that Mr. Obama confront the prevalence of firearms in
the nation. Mr. Bloomberg, an independent who gave his support to the president
shortly before the November election partly on the basis of gun control, bluntly
said he expected more of Mr. Obama.
“It’s time for the president to stand up and lead,” he said. “This should be his
No. 1 agenda. He’s president of the United States. And if he does nothing during
his second term, something like 48,000 Americans will be killed with illegal
guns” in the next year.
Mr. Bloomberg added that it was no longer enough that Mr. Obama shared his
position on banning assault weapons. “The president has to translate those views
into action,” he said. “His job is not just to be well-meaning. His job is to
perform and to protect the American public.”
While the Sunday programs were filled with politicians, mainly Democrats like
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, demanding stronger gun control,
supporters of gun rights were noticeably absent. David Gregory, the moderator of
“Meet the Press,” said his program invited 31 senators who support gun rights to
appear on Sunday. “We had no takers,” he said.
The National Rifle Association’s headquarters was closed Sunday and a spokesman
could not be reached. A spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the
Republican minority leader, said he had no comment, while Representative Eric
Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, could not be reached.
Robert A. Levy, chairman of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute and one of
the organizers behind a Supreme Court case that in 2008 enshrined a Second
Amendment right for individuals to own guns, said Sunday that with more than 250
million guns already in circulation in the United States, restrictions on new
weapons would make little difference. He said by e-mail that tough gun laws did
not stop a mass shooting in Norway or regular violence in places like the
District of Columbia.
“I’m skeptical about the efficacy of gun regulations imposed across the board —
almost exclusively on persons who are not part of the problem,” he said. “To
reduce the risk of multivictim violence, we would be better advised to focus on
early detection and treatment of mental illness. An early detection regime might
indeed be the basis for selective gun access restrictions that even the N.R.A.
would support.”
Attention focused mainly on Mr. Obama, who has shied away from a major push on
gun control, even after events like the shooting of Representative Gabrielle
Giffords in Tucson last year and the mass killing at a movie theater in Aurora,
Colo., this year. Some Democrats said the number of children involved in the
Newtown massacre might change the dynamic but only if the president seizes the
moment.
“Nothing’s going to happen here unless Obama decides to put it front and
center,” said Steve Elmendorf, who was a top Democratic congressional aide in
1994 when lawmakers passed the now-expired assault weapon ban. “He’s not running
for re-election. This is one of those moments where you have to decide, ‘I’m not
going to sit here and examine the politics and I’m going to do what’s right.’ ”
In the interfaith ceremony here, clergy members quoted from Psalm 23, a Hebrew
memorial chant and a Muslim prayer. The Rev. Matthew Crebbin, senior minister of
the Newtown Congregational Church, said the message of the service was that
“these darkest days in the life of our community will not be the final words
heard from us.”
Some of the children in the audience of 1,700 clutched stuffed puppies handed
out to them by the Red Cross. Some talked excitedly to one another about the
coming holidays, their laughter a counterpoint to the sorrow of the service that
followed.
In his 19-minute remarks, Mr. Obama said he had been reflecting on whether
“we’re doing enough to keep our children, all of them, safe from harm.” He
concluded: “If we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing
enough.”
He concluded with biblical references and said the town reminds Americans of
what should really matter. “Let the little children come to me, Jesus said, and
do not hinder them,” Mr. Obama said. “For such belongs to the kingdom of
Heaven.”
He then slowly read the names of the children who were killed on Friday as some
in the audience sobbed, a haunting roll call of a class that will never convene
again.
“God has called them all home,” the president said. “For those of us who remain,
let us find the strength to carry on.”
Mark Landler
reported from Newtown, Conn., and Peter Baker from Washington.
‘These Tragedies Must End,’ Obama Says, NYT, 16.12.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/us/politics/bloomberg-urges-obama-to-take-action-on-gun-control.html
With Gap Wide and Time Short, Obama and Boehner Meet
December
13, 2012
The New York Times
By JONATHAN WEISMAN and JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON
— With time running short to work out a deal to avert a year-end fiscal crisis,
President Obama called Speaker John A. Boehner to the White House on Thursday
evening to try to move talks forward even as pessimism mounted that a broad deal
could be struck that bridges the substantial gap between the parties on taxes
and entitlements like Medicare.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner met for less than an hour, not an encouraging sign,
with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner joining the talks. Afterward, as
they did following a Sunday meeting, White House and Congressional aides issued
near-identical statements saying only that “the lines of communication remain
open.”
Before the meeting, a senior administration official struck a downbeat note,
saying, “we are in the same place — Boehner has not given on revenue and has not
identified any cuts that he wants in exchange for rates.”
“They have only moved backwards since the beginning,” the official said of the
Republicans.
According to another administration official, the White House hastily set up the
meeting Thursday afternoon, hoping to prompt some progress before Mr. Boehner
returned home to Ohio for the weekend. Earlier in the day, Mr. Boehner dug in on
demands that Mr. Obama lay out more concrete cuts to Medicare and other
entitlements as the price for tax increases on the rich.
The speaker’s tone — and the hostile White House response — raised the level of
pessimism that a wide-ranging agreement could be reached quickly to head off
hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic tax increases and spending cuts
beginning next month. Adding to the sense that the two sides might not come
together, rank-and-file Republicans said the leadership had not begun laying the
groundwork for a major concession on taxes.
But Mr. Boehner pointedly did not rule out a vote before the end of the year on
legislation to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class — and in so
doing allow tax cuts on incomes over $250,000 to expire.
“The law of the land today is that everyone’s income taxes are going to go up
Jan. 1,” Mr. Boehner said. “I’ve made it clear that I think that’s unacceptable,
but until we get this issue resolved, that risk remains.”
Little more than two weeks are left before the nation goes over the so-called
fiscal cliff, and neither Mr. Boehner nor Mr. Obama has budged from core
demands.
The president continues to insist on an immediate increase in the top two
income-tax rates as a condition for further negotiations on spending and
entitlement changes. If Mr. Boehner insists on further spending cuts, White
House officials say, he must lay out his specific demands, something he has so
far declined to do.
Mr. Boehner has offered to raise his opening bid of $800 billion in increased
tax revenue over 10 years, but only if the president makes a significant
commitment to overhaul entitlements and slow their growth. The White House’s
opening bid committed to pressing for changes next year to federal health care
programs that would save $400 billion over 10 years. Mr. Boehner wants a far
larger pledge and a firm commitment that Mr. Obama will put his political weight
behind substantive changes to Medicare and the tax code.
The president, Mr. Boehner said, appears intent on squandering “a golden
opportunity to make 2013 the year that we enact fundamental tax reform and
entitlement reform to begin to solve our country’s debt problem and, frankly,
revenue problem.”
But Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said the president was “willing
to make tough choices on the spending side — to reduce our spending as part of a
broad package that includes cuts in discretionary spending, savings from our
entitlement programs and increased revenues that are borne by those in this
country who can most afford it.”
Even as Mr. Boehner pressed Mr. Obama to specify reductions in spending for
Medicare and other entitlement benefit programs, the Republicans continued to be
mute on what reductions they favor.
Republicans are not proposing the sort of program overhauls — making Medicare a
voucherlike system, and turning Medicaid into a lower-cost block grant to the
states — that have been part of their House budgets for the past two years,
sponsored by Representative Paul D. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman
and Mitt Romney’s running mate in the presidential race. In any case, the Ryan
budgets delayed the changes so they would not save much in the next 10 years.
And as many Democrats recall, Republicans attacked Mr. Obama and Congressional
Democrats in the campaign for having approved Medicare reductions of $716
billion over a decade as part of the 2010 health care law.
Washington now faces three potential outcomes to the fiscal impasse, lawmakers
from both parties say. A broad deal could be reached in which some taxes go up
immediately and some cuts are secured to stop the broader tax increases and halt
the across-the-board tax cuts — and to lock in targets for entitlement savings
and revenue produced by changes in tax policy revenue to be worked out next
year.
If no deal is reached, Republicans are increasingly talking about a more hostile
outcome in which the House passes legislation that extends tax cuts for the
middle class, sets relatively low tax rates on dividends, capital gains and
inherited estates, and cancels the across-the-board defense cuts, but leaves in
place across-the-board domestic cuts. Then House Republicans would engage in
what Mr. Boehner, in a private meeting last week, called “trench warfare,” a
running battle with the president on spending, first as the government
approaches its statutory borrowing limit early next year, then in late March,
when a stopgap government spending bill runs out. But such legislation might not
be able to pass the Senate, leaving the country no closer to a resolution.
Finally, many Republicans say it is now possible that the government will plunge
into the fiscal unknown. Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North
Carolina, said Mr. Boehner had given Republicans no indication “that he’s going
to budge.”
“He’s not going to raise rates in any way, shape or form,” he said. “That has
not changed.”
Republicans who have advocated giving in on rate increases now say the party
appears to be preparing for the worst. Representative Charles Bass, a New
Hampshire Republican who lost his re-election bid last month, said the pain for
Republicans would not be immediate because the tax increases would not be
apparent to most Americans that fast.
But “by the third or fourth week of January, their life will be so miserable,”
he said, “their life will be so unbearable, they’ll just want to get done with
it.”
With Gap Wide and Time Short, Obama and Boehner Meet, NYT, 13.12.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/us/politics/obama-and-boehner-to-meet-again-on-fiscal-talks.html
The Truly Grand Bargain
December 3,
2012
The New York Times
By DAVID BROOKS
Sometimes
you have to walk through the desert to get to the Promised Land. That’s the way
it is for Republicans right now. The Republicans are stuck in a miserable
position at the end of 2012, but, if they handle things right, they can make
2013 an excellent year — both for their revival prospects and for the country.
First, they have to acknowledge how badly things are stacked against them. Polls
show that large majorities of Americans are inclined to blame Republicans if the
country goes off the “fiscal cliff.” The business community, which needs a deal
to boost confidence, will turn against them. The national security types and the
defense contractors, who hate the prospect of sequestration, will turn against
them.
Moreover a budget stalemate on these terms will confirm every bad Republican
stereotype. Republicans will be raising middle-class taxes in order to serve the
rich — shafting Sam’s Club to benefit the country club. If Republicans do this,
they might as well get Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comments printed on T-shirts
and wear them for the rest of their lives.
So Republicans have to realize that they are going to cave on tax rates. The
only question is what they get in return. What they should demand is this: That
the year 2013 will be spent putting together a pro-growth tax and entitlement
reform package that will put this country on a sound financial footing through
2040.
Republicans should go to the White House and say they are willing to see top tax
rates go up to 36 percent or 37 percent and they are willing to forgo a
debt-ceiling fight for this year.
This is a big political concession, but it’s not much of an economic one.
President Obama needs rate increases to show the liberals he has won a
“victory,” but the fact is that raising revenue by raising rates is not that
much worse for the economy than raising revenue by closing loopholes, which
Republicans have already conceded.
In return, Republicans should also ask for some medium-size entitlement cuts as
part of the fiscal cliff down payment. These could fit within the framework
Speaker John Boehner sketched out Monday afternoon: chaining Social Security
cost-of-living increases to price inflation and increasing the Medicare Part B
premium to 35 percent of costs.
But the big demand would be this: That on March 15, 2013, both parties would
introduce leader-endorsed tax and entitlement reform bills in Congress that
would bring the debt down to 60 percent of G.D.P. by 2024 and 40 percent by
2037, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Those bills would work their
way through the normal legislative process, as the Constitution intended. If a
Grand Bargain is not reached by Dec. 15, 2013, then there would be automatic
defense and entitlement cuts and automatic tax increases.
Both parties say they are earnest about fundamental tax and entitlement reform.
This deal would force them to think beyond the 10-year budget window and put
credible plans on the table to address the long-term budget problems while there
is still time. No more waiting for the other guy to go public with something
serious. The ensuing debate would force voters to face the elemental truth —
that they can only have a government as big as they are willing to pay for. It
would force elected officials to find a long-term pro-growth solution as big as
Simpson-Bowles.
Republicans could say to the country: Hey, we don’t like raising tax rates. But
we understand that when a nation is running a $16 trillion debt that is
exploding year by year, everybody has to be willing to make compromises and
sacrifices. We understand that the big thing holding the country back is that
the political system doesn’t function. We want to tackle big things right now.
The year 2013 would then be spent on natural Republican turf (tax and
entitlement reform) instead of natural Democratic turf (expanding government
programs). Democrats would have to submit a long-term vision for the country
that either reduced entitlement benefits or raised middle-class taxes, violating
Obama’s campaign pledge. Republicans would have to face their own myths and
evasions, and become a true reform and modernization party.
The 2012 concession on tax rates would be overshadowed by the 2013 debate on the
fiscal future. The world would see that America is tackling its problem in a way
that Europe isn’t. Political power in each party would shift from the
doctrinaire extremists to the practical dealmakers.
Besides, the inevitable package would please Republicans. The House would pass a
conservative bill. The Senate would pass a center-left bill. The compromise
between the two would be center-right.
It’s pointless to cut a short-term deal if entitlement programs are still
structured to bankrupt our children. Republicans and Democrats could make 2013
the year of the truly Grand Bargain.
The Truly Grand Bargain, NYT, 3.12.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/opinion/brooks-the-truly-grand-bargain.html
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