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History > 2014 > USA > U.S. Congress > Senate (I)
In Final Spending Bill,
Salty Food and Belching Cows
Are Winners
DEC. 14, 2014
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — Health insurance companies preserved their tax
breaks. Farmers and ranchers were spared having to report on pollution from
manure. Tourist destinations like Las Vegas benefited from a travel promotion
program.
Also buried in the giant spending bill that cleared the Senate on Saturday and
is headed to President Obama for his signature were provisions that prohibit the
federal government from requiring less salt in school lunches and allow schools
to obtain exemptions from whole-grain requirements for pasta and tortillas.
The watered-down standards for school meals were a setback for the first lady,
Michelle Obama, who had vowed to fight “until the bitter end” for tougher
nutrition standards. But they were a victory for food companies and some local
school officials, who had sought changes in regulations that are taking effect
over several years.
When an omnibus spending bill pops onto the floor of the House or
the Senate in the waning days of a congressional session, some lawmakers
invariably express surprise and outrage at special-interest provisions stuffed
into the package.
Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio and a senior member of the House
Appropriations Committee, criticized the $1.1 trillion spending measure as “a
Christmas tree bill,” decorated with “dangerous and unwelcome, nongermane
riders.”
Such favors often have a long lineage. Lobbyists and lawmakers have, in many
cases, been working on them for months or years. Some of this year’s provisions
originated as free-standing bills, languished on their own and were then revived
in the spending package. Others block regulations that have been proposed,
adopted and sometimes upheld in court.
The School Nutrition Association, representing cafeteria directors, welcomed the
bill’s language on sodium and whole grains. The lower sodium standards would
have been “extremely difficult to achieve,” and the government needs more
research before compelling schools to make such costly changes, said the
association, which receives financial support from food companies.
Republicans like Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the committee
chairman, said the riders were needed to halt wasteful spending and “overreach”
by agencies that generate rules harmful to the economy.
A typically arcane provision of the bill provides relief to nonprofit Blue Cross
and Blue Shield plans, which have special tax breaks that were threatened by the
Affordable Care Act.
Blue Cross is not mentioned by name in the relevant section of the 2015 spending
bill, titled “Modification of treatment of certain health organizations.” But
the deduction in question is available only to Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans,
which have been lobbying Congress for a clarification since the Affordable Care
Act was signed in 2010.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association scored several victories that require
the government to keep its regulatory hands off farms and ranches.
The bill says the government cannot require farmers to report “greenhouse gas
emissions from manure management systems.” Nor can it require ranchers to obtain
greenhouse gas permits for “methane emissions” produced by bovine flatulence or
belching. The Environmental Protection Agency says on its website that
“globally, the agriculture sector is the primary source” of methane emissions.
The spending bill requires the E.P.A. to withdraw a new rule defining how the
Clean Water Act applies to certain agricultural conservation practices. It also
prevents the Army Corps of Engineers from regulating farm ponds and irrigation
ditches under the Clean Water Act.
“This is a major victory for farmers and ranchers, who consistently tell many of
us that they are concerned about the potential of the E.P.A. and the Army Corps
of Engineers’ overreach into their operations,” Representative Mike Simpson,
Republican of Idaho, said.
The bill renews a travel promotion program championed by the Senate majority
leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, and by Las Vegas casinos.
“From the Las Vegas Strip to our pristine natural treasures like Lake Tahoe,
tourists from all over the world want to visit Nevada,” Mr. Reid said, and the
legislation encourages them to do so.
But Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, blasted this as “corporate welfare.”
“Last I checked,” Mr. Cruz said, “casinos were very profitable endeavors that
didn’t need the taxpayers helping them out.”
The bill provides more than $550 billion for national defense, including money
for warplanes, missiles and submarines. But mundane military matters also drew
attention. The bill is accompanied by a “joint explanatory statement” that gives
thousands of directives to federal agencies.
One directive deals literally with boots on the ground. It orders the Defense
Logistics Agency to re-examine the way it defines “small business” when buying
boots and other military footwear. A supplier can qualify for advantages as a
small business if it has no more than 1,000 employees. The number doubled in
2012.
Lawmakers fear that the new size standards could harm “true small businesses”
and “the domestic supply base for military footwear.” Michigan’s congressional
delegation sought the legislative directive in response to concerns expressed by
a Michigan company, Bates Footwear, which supplies combat boots and dress shoes
to the military.
Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit research
group that tracks federal spending, said the bill bestowed favors on all sorts
of constituencies.
“Authors of the bill and lobbyists behind these provisions know they are in
there,” Mr. Ellis said. “But the public will not find out about most of them for
weeks or months, if ever.”
Congress supposedly forswore spending earmarks several years ago, after federal
largess led to several scandals. But lawmakers can still steer money in less
conspicuous ways.
For example, the 2015 spending bill authorizes additional money for an unnamed
“heritage area” specified in Section 157 of title I of Public Law 106-291. That
section of the law, enacted 14 years ago, established a national heritage area
in Wheeling, W.Va., to celebrate the area’s role in American history.
A version of this article appears in print on December 15, 2014, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: In Final Spending Bill, Salty Food and
Belching Cows are Winners.
In Final Spending Bill, Salty Food and
Belching Cows Are Winners,
NYT, 14.12.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/us/politics/
in-final-spending-bill-salty-food-and-belching-cows-are-winners.html
Senate Panel
Faces New Obstacle
to Release of Torture Report
DEC. 5, 2014
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI
and CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday faced a
new obstacle in its efforts to make public its report on the torture of
prisoners once held by the Central Intelligence Agency after last-minute
warnings from the Obama administration that the report’s release could ignite
new unrest in the Middle East and put American hostages at risk.
The warnings were delivered on Friday during a phone call between Secretary of
State John Kerry and Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads
the committee. According to congressional officials, Mr. Kerry warned that
allies were concerned that the report could incite violence in the Middle East.
Ms. Feinstein had planned to make the report public next week, but it is
uncertain whether the call from Mr. Kerry would affect that timetable.
The exchange between Mr. Kerry and Ms. Feinstein is just the latest turn in the
protracted dispute over the Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the
detention and interrogation of C.I.A. prisoners during the Bush administration,
an investigation that set out to examine the efficacy of the brutal
interrogation methods.
The committee voted this year to release the 6,000-page report’s executive
summary, but the release has been held up for months because of tense
negotiations between the committee and the Obama administration over how much of
the report would be declassified. It is unclear why Mr. Kerry waited until just
before the report was scheduled to be released to sound alarms, since there has
long been concern within the American intelligence agencies about the potential
global impact of the report’s findings.
Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, said Mr. Kerry “called his former
colleague to discuss the broader implications of the timing of the report’s
release because a lot is going on in the world, and he wanted to make sure that
foreign policy implications were being appropriately factored into timing.” She
added, referring to the Islamic State extremist group, “These include our
ongoing efforts against ISIL and the safety of Americans being held hostage
around the world.”
The phone call between Mr. Kerry and Ms. Feinstein was first reported by
Bloomberg View.
Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, said the administration backed making
the report public next week. “The president has long advocated the declassified
release of this report, so we certainly welcome the news from the committee that
they’re planning to do so next week,” Mr. Earnest said.
Some Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee said they saw no reason to
delay the release of the report and noted that there has been a stream of
objections to making it public.
“It is hardly surprising that there is an 11th-hour objection to releasing this
vital report because there have been objections at every hour for quite some
time,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “My own view is that many
Americans will be deeply angered when they read this report about misdeeds and
mistakes and out-and-out falsehoods. It is critically important that this report
not be pushed under the rug, buried before the American people have a chance to
see it.”
With control of the Senate about to change hands, there has been rising concern
among Democrats that the report’s Republican opponents could move to shelve it
once they gain control of the Intelligence Committee in January. This has given
new urgency to the push by Ms. Feinstein and other Democrats to finish
negotiations with the Obama administration and make the report public.
If there are any new delays, Mr. Wyden noted there is an obscure Senate
procedure that could be used to declassify the report. Senator Mark Udall, a
Colorado Democrat who sits on the panel, has suggested that he, too, would
consider taking action on the Senate floor to ensure that the report is made
public.
On Friday, his office issued a statement saying that, “Senator Udall remains
committed to getting the truth out about the C.I.A.’s misguided, brutal and
ineffective detention and interrogation program.”
A spokeswoman for the State Department said Friday that it has directed all
American diplomatic facilities overseas to examine security arrangements in
advance of the report’s release “to ensure that our personnel, our facilities,
and our interests are prepared for the range of reactions that might occur.”
A version of this article appears in print on December 6, 2014, on page A10 of
the New York edition with the headline: Senate Panel Faces New Obstacle to
Release of Torture Report.
Senate Panel Faces New Obstacle to Release of
Torture Report,
NYT, 5.12.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/us/politics/
new-obstacle-to-senate-panels-release-of-cia-torture-report.html
Dark Money Helped Win the Senate
NOV. 8, 2014
The New York Times
SundayReview | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The next Senate was just elected on the greatest wave of secret,
special-interest money ever raised in a congressional election. What are the
chances that it will take action to reduce the influence of money in politics?
Nil, of course. The next Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has long been
the most prominent advocate for unlimited secret campaign spending in
Washington, under the phony banner of free speech. His own campaign benefited
from $23 million in unlimited spending from independent groups like the National
Rifle Association, the National Association of Realtors and the National
Federation of Independent Business.
The single biggest outside spender on his behalf was a so-called social welfare
group calling itself the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, which spent $7.6
million on attack ads against his opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes. It ran more
ads in Kentucky than any other group, aside from the two campaigns.
What is its social welfare purpose, besides re-electing Mr. McConnell? It has
none. Who gave that money? It could have been anyone who wants to be a political
player but lacks the courage to do so openly — possibly coal interests,
retailers opposed to the minimum wage, defense contractors, but there’s no way
for the public to know. You can bet, however, that the senator knows exactly to
whom he owes an enormous favor. The only name associated with the group is Scott
Jennings, a deputy political director in the George W. Bush White House, who
also worked for two of Mr. McConnell’s previous campaigns.
The $11.4 million spent anonymously for Mr. McConnell, though, didn’t even make
him the biggest beneficiary of secret donations, a phenomenon that grew
substantially in this election cycle. In the 2010 midterms, when this practice
was just getting started, $161 million was spent by groups that did not disclose
donations. In this cycle it was up to at least $216 million, and 69 percent of
it was spent on behalf of Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics.
In Colorado, at least $18 million in dark money was spent on behalf of Cory
Gardner, the Republican newly elected to the Senate; $4 million was spent on
behalf of Senator Mark Udall, the Democratic incumbent. In North Carolina, $13.7
million in secret donations was spent for Thom Tillis, the new Republican
senator; $2.6 million went to Senator Kay Hagan, who was ousted.
Dark money wasn’t the only type of spending that polluted the cycle; this year
there were 94 “super PACs” set up for individual candidates, all of which are
attempts to bypass federal limits and allow big givers to support the candidates
of their choice. (These donations have to be disclosed.) Of the $51.4 million
these groups spent, 57 percent were on behalf of Democrats. Overall, of the
$525.6 million in independent expenditures this cycle (excluding party
committees), about 57 percent was for Republicans.
That money wasn’t just spent on attack ads. As Nicholas Confessore of The Times
reported, it was used for tracking opponents and digging up damaging
information, and expanding the ground game to turn out voters. Republicans used
the money to set up a “research” group called America Rising, which existed only
to sell embarrassing information and footage about Democratic candidates to
Republican campaigns and super PACs.
Political operatives say this year was just a dress rehearsal for 2016, when
there will be even more money, much of it secret, all benefiting the interests
of the richest and best connected Americans. Given big money’s influence on
Tuesday, the chances for limiting it are more distant than ever.
A version of this editorial appears in print on November 9, 2014,
on page SR10 of the New York edition with the headline: Dark Money Helped Win
the Senate.
Dark Money Helped Win the Senate, NYT,
8.11.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/opinion/sunday/
dark-money-helped-win-the-senate.html
Negativity Wins the Senate
NOV. 5, 2014
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Republicans would like the country to believe that they took
control of the Senate on Tuesday by advocating a strong, appealing agenda of job
creation, tax reform and spending cuts. But, in reality, they did nothing of the
sort.
Even the voters who supported Republican candidates would have a hard time
explaining what their choices are going to do. That’s because virtually every
Republican candidate campaigned on only one thing: what they called the failure
of President Obama. In speech after speech, ad after ad, they relentlessly
linked their Democratic opponent to the president and vowed that they would put
an end to everything they say the public hates about his administration. On
Tuesday morning, the Republican National Committee released a series of
get-out-the-vote images showing Mr. Obama and Democratic Senate candidates next
to this message: “If you’re not a voter, you can’t stop Obama.”
The most important promises that winning Republicans made were
negative in nature. They will repeal health care reform. They will roll back new
regulations on banks and Wall Street. They will stop the Obama administration’s
plans to curb coal emissions and reform immigration and invest in education.
Campaigning on pure negativity isn’t surprising for a party that has governed
that way since Mr. Obama was first sworn in. By creating an environment where
every initiative is opposed and nothing gets done, Republicans helped engineer
the president’s image as weak and ineffectual. Mitch McConnell, who will be the
Senate’s new majority leader, vowed in 2009 to create “an inventory of losses”
to damage Mr. Obama for precisely the results achieved on Tuesday.
Mr. McConnell was assisted in this goal by the president’s own second-term
stumbles — most notably the disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act last
year, an indecisive foreign policy, and revelations of domestic surveillance and
improper veterans care. Republicans were also able to exploit nativist fears
about immigrant children crossing at the southern border and some initial
troubles in responding to the first domestic cases of Ebola.
In some races, missteps by the Democrats helped Republicans. In Iowa,
Representative Bruce Braley may have cost himself the race by making a
belittling comment about farmers. In Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes didn’t
establish a reputation for candor when she refused to discuss her previous votes
for president.
Virtually all Democratic candidates distanced themselves from Mr. Obama and
refused to make the case that there has been substantial progress on jobs and
economic growth under this administration.
But Republicans also had little to say about reviving the economy, and their
idea of creating jobs seems to be limited to building the Keystone XL oil
pipeline, cutting taxes further and crying “repeal Obamacare” at every
opportunity.
In theory, full control of Congress might give Republicans an incentive to reach
compromise with Mr. Obama because they will need to show that they can govern
rather than obstruct. They might, for example, be able to find agreement on a
free-trade agreement with Pacific nations.
But their caucuses in the Senate and the House will be more conservative than
before, and many winning candidates will feel obliged to live up to their
promises of obstruction. Mr. McConnell has already committed himself to opposing
a minimum-wage increase, fighting regulations on carbon emissions and repealing
the health law.
“Just because we have a two-party system doesn’t mean we have to be in perpetual
conflict,” Mr. McConnell said in his victory speech. As the new Senate leader,
he must now prove those are not empty words.
A version of this editorial appears in print on November 5, 2014,
on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Negativity Wins the
Senate.
Negativity Wins the Senate, NYT, 5.11.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/opinion/negativity-wins-the-senate.html
Riding Wave of Discontent,
G.O.P. Takes Senate
Election Results:
Republicans Win Senate Control
With at Least 7 New Seats
NOV. 4, 2014
The New York Times
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
and ASHLEY PARKER
Resurgent Republicans took control of the Senate on Tuesday
night, expanded their hold on the House, and defended some of the most closely
contested governors’ races, in a repudiation of President Obama that will
reorder the political map in his final years in office.
Propelled by economic dissatisfaction and anger toward the president,
Republicans grabbed Democratic Senate seats in North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa,
West Virginia, Arkansas, Montana and South Dakota to gain their first Senate
majority since 2006. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a shrewd Republican
tactician, cruised to re-election and stood poised to achieve a goal he has
pursued for years — Senate majority leader.
An election that started as trench warfare, state by state and district by
district, crested into a sweeping Republican victory. Contests that were
expected to be close were not, and races expected to go Democratic broke
narrowly for the Republicans. The uneven character of the economic recovery
added to a sense of anxiety, leaving voters in a punishing mood, particularly
for Democrats in Southern states and the Mountain West, where political
polarization deepened.
The biggest surprises of the night came in North Carolina, where the Republican,
Thom Tillis, came from behind to beat Senator Kay Hagan, and in Virginia. There,
Senator Mark Warner, a former Democratic governor of the state, was thought to
be one of the safest incumbents in his party, and instead found himself clinging
to the narrowest of leads against a former Republican Party chairman, Ed
Gillespie.
Those contests were measures of how difficult the terrain was for Democrats in
an election where Republicans put together their strategy as a referendum on the
competence of government, embodied by Mr. Obama.
House seats where Democrats had fought off Republican encroachment for years
were finally toppled. Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, was easily re-elected in
Wisconsin, a state that voted twice for Mr. Obama. In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott,
once considered endangered, finished the night on top. And states that had
seemingly been trending Democratic, like Colorado and Iowa, fell into Republican
hands.
With at least a nine-seat gain and most likely more, House Republicans will have
close to 245 seats, the largest Republican majority since the Truman
administration.
“Barack Obama has our country in a ditch, and many of his lieutenants running
for the Senate were right there with him,” said Reince Priebus, chairman of the
Republican National Committee. “The punishment is going to be broad, and it’s
going to be pretty serious.”
The breadth of the Republican victories also reset the political
landscape ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign. And it left Mr. Obama with a
decision to make: Will he move toward Republicans in his final years in areas of
common interest, such as tax reform and trade, or will he dig in and hope
Republican overreach will give his party a lane for a comeback?
“Just because we have a two-party system doesn’t mean we have to be in perpetual
conflict,” vowed Mr. McConnell, in a victory speech.
White House officials accepted the overture and said Mr. Obama had invited the
bipartisan leadership of Congress to the White House on Friday.
For Republicans, the victories piled up, winning not only Senate Democratic
seats they were expected to take — Montana, West Virginia, South Dakota and
Arkansas — but also in states that were supposed to be close. Representative
Cory Gardner, a Republican, crushed Senator Mark Udall in Colorado. In Georgia,
the Democrat Michelle Nunn, daughter of former Senator Sam Nunn, was widely
expected to force David Perdue, a Republican businessman, into a runoff for the
Senate seat of Saxby Chambliss, a retiring Republican. Instead, Mr. Perdue won
more than half the vote to take the race outright.
Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, also fended off the independent
challenger Greg Orman, who just weeks ago appeared headed to victory.
And for Democrats, it could get worse. Votes were still being tallied in Alaska,
where Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat, was trying to hold back the wave. Senator
Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana was able to force her strongest Republican foe,
Representative Bill Cassidy, into a Dec. 6 runoff. But the combined vote of the
top two Republicans in the race easily eclipsed hers.
“I think it’s a message from the American people about their concern about the
direction of the country, and the competency of the current administration,”
said Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, vice chairman of the National Republican
Senatorial Committee. “Most people have voted to end the dysfunction and to get
back to legislating on issues that will help them and their families, and I
think that’s something that both parties need to listen to.”
And in the panhandle of Florida, Gwen Graham, daughter of a former Democratic
senator and governor, defeated Representative Steve Southerland, a Tea Party
favorite.
But those high notes were swamped by the lows for the president’s party. In
Arkansas, Representative Tom Cotton, a freshman Republican and an Iraq War
veteran, defeated Senator Mark Pryor, despite the efforts of former President
Bill Clinton.
In Colorado, Mr. Udall tried to replicate the storied ground game that helped
propel his Democratic colleague, Senator Michael Bennet, to an unexpected
victory in 2010. He was not even close, and drew further criticism for running a
campaign that some felt was too focused on abortion rights and contraception.
And in West Virginia, Representative Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, won the
Senate seat long held by Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, to become that state’s
first female senator and the first Republican elected to the Senate from West
Virginia since 1956. In Iowa, Joni Ernst also made history by becoming the first
woman to be elected in that state’s congressional delegation.
Two years after handing Democrats broad victories, voters again seemed to be
reaching for a way to end Washington inertia. Yet the results on Tuesday may
serve only to reinforce it. Voters appeared unsure of just what they wanted,
according to surveys. Among those who voted for a Democrat, only one out of
eight expressed an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party. Republican
voters were more conflicted; among those who voted Republican, one of four
viewed the party unfavorably.
Mr. Obama is left with the prospect of finding a new path to work with
Republicans, something for which he has shown little inclination, and
Republicans must find a way to demonstrate they are more than the party of “no.”
Even though a record $4 billion poured into the election — from the campaigns,
parties and outside groups for advertising and other candidate support — the
money did little to stir enthusiasm as the campaign set a more dubious mark for
its low levels of voter interest.
Even the president conceded the steep climb his allies faced.
“This is possibly the worst possible group of states for Democrats since Dwight
Eisenhower,” Mr. Obama told a Connecticut public radio station on Tuesday.
“There are a lot of states that are being contested where they just tend to tilt
Republican.”
Democratic midterm losses during the Obama presidency now rival those of both
Richard M. Nixon in 1974 and Bill Clinton in 1994 as the most destructive to his
party’s political standing in Congress in the post-World War II era. It was a
stunning reversal for the president, who was the first Democrat since Franklin
D. Roosevelt to twice win a majority of the national vote.
“The top issue is not jobs and the economy; it’s ending gridlock in Washington,”
said Mr. Portman. “Second, there is a desire to hold the administration
accountable for incompetence on issues like ISIS and Ebola. I don’t think those
goals are inconsistent.”
With the political climate and the electoral map playing to their decided
advantage, Republicans were determined not to relive the elections of 2010 and
2012, when infighting between establishment Republicans and Tea Party insurgents
damaged the party’s brand and elevated candidates who could not win.
From the beginning, party officials decided to take sides when fierce primary
challenges emerged. The party establishment crushed challengers to Mr. McConnell
in Kentucky, and to Senators Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and Lamar
Alexander in Tennessee.
The establishment also sent reinforcements to help Senator Thad Cochran eke out
a runoff victory against a Tea Party firebrand in Mississippi; cleared the
Republican field for Mr. Gardner in Colorado; and backed winning primary
candidates in Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Alaska.
Democrats tried to distance themselves from the president’s health care law and
economic policies, despite signs that both may be working. In Colorado, Mr.
Udall relied on the playbook that propelled his Colorado colleague and
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman, Senator Michael Bennet, to
victory in 2010, speaking almost exclusively about abortion rights and
contraception. That cost him the endorsement of The Denver Post, which
castigated him for an “obnoxious, one-issue campaign.”
Lost was Mr. Udall’s work in the Senate opposing Mr. Obama’s policies on
security surveillance and privacy.
In Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, considered a strong challenger to Mr.
McConnell, lost some support when she refused to say whether she voted for Mr.
Obama, and ran a risk-averse campaign.
But mainly, Democrats were working off a map heavily tilted toward Republicans
in states like West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana, Arkansas and Alaska, in a
year when disengaged, frustrated voters and Mr. Obama’s low approval ratings
were inevitably going to be a millstone.
Correction: November 4, 2014
An earlier version of a slide show that appeared with this article on the home
page and politics section of NYTimes.com misstated the office of Jeanne Shaheen.
She is in the Senate, not the House. An earlier version of this article also
misstated the location of a town where one woman voted. It was Salem, N.H., not
Salem, Mass.
A version of this article appears in print on November 5, 2014, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: G.O.P. Takes Senate, Riding Voter Anger.
Riding Wave of Discontent, G.O.P. Takes
Senate, NYT, 4.11.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/us/politics/midterm-elections.html
Howard H. Baker Jr.,
‘Great Conciliator’ of Senate,
Dies at 88
JUNE 26, 2014
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
Howard H. Baker Jr., a soft-spoken Tennessee lawyer who served
three terms in the Senate and became known as “the great conciliator” in his
eight years as the chamber’s Republican leader, died on Thursday at his home in
Huntsville, Tenn. He was 88.
His death was announced on the Senate floor by the Republican leader, Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky, who called him “one of the Senate’s most towering
figures.”
Mr. Baker found his greatest fame in the summer of 1973, when he was the ranking
Republican on the special Senate committee that investigated wrongdoing of the
Nixon White House in the Watergate affair. In televised hearings that riveted
the nation, he repeatedly asked the question on the minds of millions of
Americans: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”
The question, or variations on it, became a national catchphrase.
Mr. Baker described his political philosophy as “moderate to moderate
conservative.” Friendly and unfailingly courteous, he was popular with lawmakers
in both parties, a kind of figure almost unrecognizable on Capitol Hill today.
Schooled in the art of compromise by his own powerful father-in-law, Senator
Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, Mr. Baker was heir to a centrist Republican
tradition and then its standard-bearer.
He opposed school busing for integration as “a grievous piece of mischief,” yet
he supported fair-housing and voting-rights legislation. He championed fiscal
conservatism but favored big Pentagon budgets. And when the Watergate affair
thrust him into the national limelight, he exhibited a willingness to look hard
at the actions of a president from his own party.
Mr. Baker was not above herding feuding partisans into a room and keeping them
there until they came to an agreement, often one that he had helped write. By
his lights, the Senate aisle was something that often had to be bridged.
“He’s like the Tennessee River,” his stepmother, Irene Bailey Baker, once said.
“He flows right down the middle.”
Mr. Baker was also ambassador to Japan for four years and White House chief of
staff for one. He made two tries for the presidency. But he will be remembered
as, quintessentially, a man of the Senate.
He served there from January 1967 to January 1985. He was the minority leader
from 1977 to 1981, then majority leader after his party took over the Senate in
the 1980 elections. As majority leader, a post he held for four years, he helped
pass President Ronald Reagan’s first-term tax cuts. He later helped Reagan
weather the Iran-contra scandal.
As a member of the public works committee, Mr. Baker helped draft the Clean Air
Act of 1970 and the Water Pollution Control Act amendments of 1972. But by his
reckoning, he made his biggest contribution to the environment right in his own
backyard: the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, created by
Congress in 1974.
The park, a 125,000-acre national park that overlaps Tennessee and Kentucky,
protects the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Mr. Baker and Senator John
Sherman Cooper, Republican of Kentucky, were the main Senate backers of the
park. Speaking to a television interviewer late in his life, Mr. Baker said,
“I’ll be remembered longer for Big South Fork than anything else.”
Howard Henry Baker Jr. was born on Nov. 15, 1925, in the Cumberland Mountain
town of Huntsville, a Republican-leaning region of Tennessee that had resisted
secession at the time of the Civil War. His grandfather was a judge, and his
grandmother was the first woman to serve as sheriff in Tennessee.
His mother, Dora, died when he was 8. Three years later, his father married
Irene Bailey. Howard Baker Sr. was a congressman from Tennessee from 1951 until
his death in January 1964, whereupon his wife was elected to fill out the
balance of his term.
Howard Jr. was a champion debater in elementary school. After graduating from a
military academy in Chattanooga in 1943, he entered a Navy officer-training
program and studied electrical engineering at the University of the South and
Tulane University. He did a brief tour of duty as a lieutenant, junior grade, on
a PT boat in the South Pacific as World War II was ending.
After the war, he switched from engineering to law, earning his bachelor’s and
law degrees from the University of Tennessee. He prospered in both civil and
criminal law and invested profitably in banking and real estate. During his
father’s first term in Congress, he met Joy Dirksen, the daughter of Senator
Dirksen. They married in 1951.
Joy Dirksen died of cancer in 1993. Three years later, Mr. Baker married former
Senator Nancy L. Kassebaum of Kansas, the daughter of Gov. Alfred E. Landon of
Kansas, the 1936 Republican nominee for president. She survives him, as do a
son, Darek; a daughter, Cissy Baker; four grandsons; a sister, Mary Stuart; and
a half-sister, Beverly Patestides.
Mr. Baker’s first Senate campaign ended in defeat. In 1964, he ran to fill the
unexpired term of Senator Estes Kefauver, who had died the previous summer. He
tried to distance himself from the presidential campaign of Senator Barry M.
Goldwater of Arizona, yet he ran on stances more conservative than those he
would embrace later — promising to fight federal interference in local education
and civil rights issues, for instance.
“I was a young man in his first race, which was a tumultuous campaign,” he said
later in explaining his platform.
Mr. Baker lost to the more liberal Ross Bass, but he attracted more votes than
any previous Tennessee Republican in a statewide election. Two years later, he
ran for the Senate again, against Gov. Frank G. Clement, who had beaten Mr. Bass
in the Democratic primary. This time, he took more moderate stances, supporting
fair-housing laws, for example.
Mr. Baker was endorsed by some newspapers that Mr. Clement had alienated. And
Richard M. Nixon, who was trying to make friends as he positioned himself to run
for president in 1968, campaigned across Tennessee on Mr. Baker’s behalf.
Mr. Baker cut into the traditionally Democratic vote, especially among blacks
and young people, and won with 56 percent of the overall vote. He became the
first Republican to win a Senate election in Tennessee.
As a newcomer to the Senate, he pushed for loosening the shackles of the
seniority system to give new legislators more influence. In so doing, he defied
not only Senate tradition but also Senator Dirksen.
After Mr. Dirksen died in 1969, Mr. Baker ran to succeed him as party leader. He
lost to Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, who had nearly a decade’s more
seniority. Undiscouraged, Mr. Baker challenged Mr. Scott two years later and
lost again, albeit by a smaller margin.
When the Senate voted unanimously to form a bipartisan committee to investigate
the Watergate burglary and other wrongdoing during the presidential campaign of
1972, Mr. Scott insisted that Mr. Baker be the panel’s ranking Republican on the
ground that every senator in their party had recommended him.
There was also talk that Mr. Scott was happy to put Mr. Baker in a spot that was
potentially embarrassing, given Mr. Baker’s past friendship with Nixon, as
punishment for having challenged him.
In any event, Mr. Baker’s performance on the Watergate committee made him a
figure of national prominence, as his calm, lawyerly manner complemented the
folksiness of the committee chairman, Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr., Democrat of
North Carolina.
Before the 1976 election, Mr. Baker hoped that President Gerald R. Ford would
pick him for his running mate. Instead, Mr. Ford selected Senator Bob Dole of
Kansas, a far more partisan Republican and sharp-tongued campaigner. (Unlike Mr.
Dole, Mr. Baker never seemed consumed by politics. He liked tennis and golf and
was an avid photographer.)
In 1980, Mr. Baker made a brief run for the presidency, finishing third in the
New Hampshire primary, behind Reagan and George Bush. When it became clear that
Reagan would win the nomination, Mr. Baker let it be known that he would like to
be the vice-presidential candidate.
But Republican conservatives blocked him. The same qualities that had made him
such an effective legislator — the willingness to break with party ideology and
work with the opposition — made him unpopular with the party’s ascendant right
wing. Mr. Baker had supported civil rights legislation, the Equal Rights
Amendment and the treaty ceding the Panama Canal to Panama, much to the
annoyance of conservatives.
Mr. Baker retired from the Senate after the 1984 elections. His wife, Joy, was
being treated for cancer, and he was believed to be wearying from the pace of
the Senate. He joined the law firm of Vinson & Elkins, where he reportedly
earned close to $1 million a year. In recent years, he was senior counsel to
Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, a Tennessee law firm founded by
his grandfather.
In 1984, Reagan awarded Mr. Baker the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
There was talk that Mr. Baker might run for president again, in 1988. Instead,
he gave up his post with the law firm to accept Reagan’s request to become White
House chief of staff early in 1987. People who knew Mr. Baker said the move
demonstrated two things: his loyalty to country and party, and his lack of a
burning desire to be president.
At the time, the Reagan White House was reeling from disclosures that several
members of the administration had arranged sales of weapons to Iran, then used
some of the proceeds to finance the opponents, or “contras,” of the left-wing
government in Nicaragua. The dealings, contrary to the expressed will of
Congress as well as the administration’s own policies, raised questions about
Reagan’s loose management style and even his awareness of events.
Mr. Baker was credited with helping to get the administration back on track, in
part by improving relations with Capitol Hill — although he first had to dispel
a widespread impression that he much preferred the Senate to the other side of
Congress. (He had once said in jest that there were two things he did not
understand: “the Middle East and the House of Representatives.”)
Mr. Baker’s easier personal style was a relief to White House aides who had
worked under the previous chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, a hard-driving former
Marine and Wall Street executive who had clashed with Congress and with the
first lady, Nancy Reagan.
But Mr. Baker had his frustrations as chief of staff. The president’s
conservative advisers grumbled that Mr. Baker was too accommodating to Congress.
More liberal politicians, on the other hand, complained that he had failed to
persuade the president to be accommodating enough.
In late 1987, Mr. Baker lost a battle with Attorney General Edwin H. Meese III
over a Supreme Court vacancy. Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. was retiring, and
Reagan’s first choice to succeed him, the conservative and controversial Judge
Robert H. Bork of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit, was rejected by the Senate.
Mr. Baker thought the next nominee should be less polarizing, or else the
president might be embarrassed again. At a tense private meeting, he urged
Reagan to pick Judge Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit. Instead, the president took the advice of Mr. Meese and
nominated Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the District of Columbia Circuit, who was
considered more conservative.
Judge Ginsburg’s candidacy soon collapsed amid revelations that he had smoked
marijuana in his youth, and Judge Kennedy was named to the Supreme Court after
all. But vindicated or not, Mr. Baker never had as much influence with Reagan as
did Mr. Meese, the president’s old friend from California and ideological soul
mate.
When he resigned on June 14, 1988, Mr. Baker cited the continuing concerns over
his wife’s health. But there was no denying that he had said, just over a year
before, that he would stay to the end of the Reagan presidency.
Mr. Baker was the United States ambassador to Japan for four years beginning in
early 2001. In 2005, he became an adviser to Citigroup on international issues.
In 2007, he and three other former Senate leaders founded the Bipartisan Policy
Center, which promotes bipartisan solutions to the nation’s problems. The others
were Mr. Dole and the Democrats George J. Mitchell, of Maine, and Tom Daschle,
of South Dakota.
Some fascinating “what ifs” attached to Mr. Baker’s years in Washington. Just
before becoming Reagan’s White House chief of staff, for instance, he turned
down an offer to head the C.I.A.
More intriguingly, he was rumored to be under consideration as Nixon’s running
mate in 1968. Had Nixon selected him and gone on to win the election, and had
Mr. Baker remained on the ticket for the Nixon landslide victory of 1972, Mr.
Baker would have become president when Nixon resigned in 1974.
Or would Vice President Baker have been close enough to Nixon, and shrewd enough
about the White House inner circle, to prevent the misdeeds of Watergate, or at
least halt the cover-up in time to preserve the Nixon presidency?
Instead, Nixon tapped Gov. Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland. When Mr. Agnew resigned
the vice presidency in 1973 amid a corruption scandal stemming from his time as
governor, Nixon chose Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to replace him,
and Ford succeeded Nixon.
And on the morning of Oct. 29, 1971, Nixon offered Mr. Baker a nomination to the
Supreme Court, according to White House tape recordings made public in 1998. Mr.
Baker told Attorney General John N. Mitchell, who had tendered Nixon’s offer,
that he wanted to remain in the Senate.
Think it over, Mr. Mitchell urged.
Mr. Baker did. He called Mr. Mitchell back later that day and told him that he
would rather stay in the Senate, but that he would accept the court nomination
“if the president insists.”
“Well,” Mr. Mitchell said, “we don’t want a reluctant candidate. Besides, he has
already chosen Bill Rehnquist.”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on June 27, 2014, on page A1 of the
New York edition with the headline: ‘Great Conciliator’ of Senate Who Cast Hard
Eye on Nixon.
Howard H. Baker Jr., ‘Great Conciliator’ of
Senate, Dies at 88, NYT, 26.6.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/us/politics/
howard-h-baker-jr-great-conciliator-of-senate-dies-at-88.html
A
Surveillance Bill That Falls Short
MAY 22,
2014
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
A year ago,
it would have been unimaginable for the House to pass a bill to curtail the
government’s abusive surveillance practices. The documents leaked by Edward
Snowden, however, finally shocked lawmakers from both parties into action,
producing promises that they would stop the government from collecting the
telephone data of ordinary Americans and would bring greater transparency to its
domestic spying programs.
Unfortunately, the bill passed by the House on Thursday falls far short of those
promises, and does not live up to its title, the U.S.A. Freedom Act. Because of
last-minute pressure from a recalcitrant Obama administration, the bill contains
loopholes that dilute the strong restrictions in an earlier version, potentially
allowing the spy agencies to continue much of their phone-data collection.
Still, the bill finally begins to reverse the trend of reducing civil liberties
in the name of fighting terrorism, as embodied in various versions of the
Patriot Act. And if the Senate fixes its flaws, it could start to rebuild
confidence that Washington will get the balance right.
The bill moves the collection of phone data from the government to the phone
companies, where it belongs. It limits the ability of the National Security
Agency to request calling records more than two contacts away from a terrorism
suspect, rather than allowing it to go through the records of anyone even
tangentially connected to a suspect. It requires that opinions or orders from
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court be made public, unless they would
clearly expose intelligence sources or harm national security. Even then,
summaries of the opinions would have to be provided.
An earlier version of the bill, approved by two committees, went much further.
It said bulk collection of records would be limited to a specific “person,
entity, or account,” forcing intelligence agents to tell the phone companies
exactly whose records they wanted and ending fishing expeditions. But after
those committee votes, administration officials went behind closed doors and
demanded changes. The new bill adds more search terms, and makes it clear that
the list is no longer limited.
Privacy advocates said the N.S.A. could use the changed language to demand
records for an entire ZIP code, state or region. Administration officials say
they don’t intend to do that, but their record of exploiting legal loopholes
doesn’t provide much confidence. “If we leave any ambiguity at all,” said Zoe
Lofgren, Democrat of California, “we have learned that the intelligence
community will drive a truck through that ambiguity.” The bill, she said, will
not actually end bulk collection.
The changes demanded by the White House would also weaken the provision allowing
Internet companies to report how often the government made requests of their
data. (Most of those companies now say they can no longer support the bill.) And
the role of declassifying court decisions would go from the attorney general to
the director of national intelligence, the last person who should do it.
Several leading senators have said they want a stronger bill, and may do a
better job of resisting the administration. Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of
the Judiciary Committee, wants a strong advocate for civil liberties to argue in
the surveillance court (as opposed to simply filing briefs, as the current bill
allows) along with other reforms. There is still time for Congress to show that
it is serious about reining in the nation’s runaway spies.
A version of
this editorial appears in print on May 23, 2014,
on page A22 of
the New York edition with the headline:
A Surveillance
Bill That Falls Short.
A Surveillance Bill That Falls Short, NYT, 22.5.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/opinion/a-surveillance-bill-that-falls-short.html
Republican Disdain for the Jobless
January 5,
2014
The New York Times
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
One of the
first votes the Senate plans to take when it returns Monday is on restoring
unemployment benefits to 1.3 million people who lost them on Dec. 28. It’s hard
to imagine a more important action for those who have been out of work the
longest and for the economy.
And what’s at the top of the House’s agenda? Yet another vote to undermine the
health care reform law. (In this case, a bill to impose unnecessary security
requirements on the health care website, though there is not the slightest
indication of security problems.)
Nothing could show the priorities of the two chambers — and the slog that lies
ahead this year — better than these votes. At one end of the Capitol, lawmakers
are actually trying to help people in deep financial distress, continuing a
vital Washington practice. The other end is holding a meaningless symbolic vote,
designed solely to embarrass the Obama administration and continue its
politically motivated attacks on the health law.
The jobless benefits wouldn’t even be an issue if Republicans had agreed to
extend them last month, at the same time that the budget agreement was being
negotiated. The bill proposed by Senate Democrats would extend benefits for
three months to those who lost them, at a cost of $6.5 billion. It is not clear
that it will get the 60 votes needed to defeat the expected Republican
filibuster, and its chances are even worse in the House.
But it is still worth trying. As Gene Sperling, director of the White House’s
National Economic Council, noted recently, it’s been more than 50 years since
the government cut off emergency unemployment insurance when the rate of
long-term joblessness was even half the current level.
Republicans are insisting the cost be “offset,” which means they want some other
program cut to pay for the benefits. (They would never consider offsetting it by
reducing a tax loophole for the rich.) But with the deficit falling sharply,
this benefit does not need to be offset because of the positive effect it would
have on the economy. Extending benefits through the end of 2014 would help
create 200,000 jobs, the White House estimated — one reason the House would
rather change the subject.
Republican Disdain for the Jobless, NYT, 5.1.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/opinion/republican-disdain-for-the-jobless.html
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