Search Results for: at least

Empty U.S. House chambers.

Politico:

With the country teetering on this fiscal cliff of deep spending cuts and sharp tax hikes, the philosophical differences, the shortened timetable and the political dynamics appear to be insurmountable hurdles for a bipartisan deal by New Year’s Day.

Hopes of a grand-bargain – to shave trillions of dollars off the deficit by cutting entitlement programs and raising revenue – are shattered. House Republicans already failed to pass their “Plan B” proposal. And now aides and senators say the White House’s smaller, fall-back plan floated last week is a non-starter among Republicans in Senate – much less the House.

On top of that, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday that the nation would hit the debt limit on Dec. 31, and would then have to take “extraordinary measures” to avoid exhausting the government’s borrowing limit in the New Year.

Adds the Washington Post:

If anything, hope for success appeared to have dimmed over the Christmas holiday. The Republican-controlled House last week abdicated responsibility for resolving the crisis, leaving all eyes on the Senate. But senior aides in both parties said Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have not met or even spoken since leaving town for the weekend…

With no sign of urgency, aides in both parties predicted that failure was not just a possibility – it was rapidly becoming the most likely outcome. No significant movement was expected Thursday: Obama was scheduled to be in the air traveling back from his Hawaiian holiday for a good portion of the day, and the Senate wasn’t set to convene for votes until the evening.

Even if some miraculous breakthrough in the Senate could be achieved, another round of winter weather in the Washington, D.C. area this weekend could well disrupt air travel, making it difficult for House members to reconvene in time for a vote before the new year–and that assumes the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is a body capable of passing anything the President would be able to sign. After the failure before Christmas by Speaker John Boehner to pass his “Plan B” alternative measure, a red-on-red disaster abetted by at least two Colorado Republican members of Congress, dysfunction seems to be the rule.

The public is becoming increasingly, undeniably aware of who is to blame for the impasse, as a poll released yesterday shows once again–Huffington Post reports:

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats got a moderate boost in approval ratings for their handling of the crisis. Obama’s rating on the negotiations rose to a majority 54 percent, while approval for Democratic leaders in Congress jumped to 45 percent. Republicans did not see similar gains, with their number holding nearly steady at 26 percent. [Pols emphasis]

Any shift in approval didn’t appear to affect the desire for bipartisan deal-making. Just 22 percent of people said either side should stick to its principles, while 68 percent called for a compromise.

And this is the key: President Barack Obama has already compromised. A casual look at the offers the President has made, both increasing the threshold of income at which higher tax rates would apply, as well as offering entitlement rate-of-growth cuts that have genuinely upset liberal Democrats, and there’s no question which side has offered more to get a deal. We don’t really think the administration can offer much more without putting itself in a situation similar to that faced by Boehner–a fact made even clearer by the intense public opposition to cutting institutions like Social Security and Medicare. One small upshot is that as the scale of what can be achieved with an intransigent GOP-controlled House diminishes, so do the cuts.

Politically, it’s critical to understand that this is not 2009. There is no upwelling of conservative opposition brewing as was the case with the then-incipient “Tea Party.” The country has been through years of exactly this kind of obstruction and brinkmanship since Republicans retook control of the House in 2010. The voters want solutions. They are tired of rhetoric. What the polls show is a growing fatigue with Republican intransigence, and a growing understanding that it is Republican intransigence at the heart of much of their frustration with government.

It is not “bias” to acknowledge when one side is plainly losing.

Between now and New Year’s Eve, Colorado Pols is recapping the top ten stories in Colorado politics from the 2012 election year.

Late on a Wednesday evening in January, Denver police attempted to stop a vehicle not far from the state capitol with legislative license plates they had observed driving erratically. The vehicle didn’t stop immediately, but proceeded several blocks before coming to an awkward stop near a bar frequented by state legislators, lobbyists, journalists and staff called Prohibition.

From that moment, the career of Republican Rep. Laura Bradford of Collbran began to unravel. Early reports from the Denver Police Department–later retracted under less-than-forthcoming circumstances–indicated that Bradford may have evaded arrest for driving under the influence by invoking legislative immunity granted to lawmakers during the legislative session.

Rep. Bradford was immediately stripped of her committee chair, and effectively made persona non grata in her caucus by Speaker Frank McNulty until she was “cleared” by the Denver Police Department and a subsequent ethics committee inquiry of wrongdoing (at least wrongdoing pertaining to abuse of her position). Bradford, despite her initial contrition over the incident, felt that she was being unfairly treated by McNulty throughout the process, and even briefly threatened to defect to Democrats–a lethal prospect for the GOP’s one-seat House majority.

In the end, though many questions about the conduct of both Rep. Bradford and responding Denver police officers remain unanswered, she was cleared; but not before her erratic response to the situation had rendered her politically nonviable in the eyes of Republicans both in Denver and her district. In March, Bradford announced she would not seek re-election.

The story of Laura Bradford has an amusing epilogue: Bradford’s Republican successor in HD-54, Rep.-elect Jared Wright of Fruita, has already perhaps set a new standard for disgrace on the campaign trail that nonetheless did not prevent victory. Wright, exposed as a lazy and dishonest police officer who lived embarrassingly beyond his taxpayer-funded means and was begged by fellow Republicans to pull out of the race, may be about to make former Rep. Bradford’s brush with scandal and intra-party intrigue a pleasant memory by comparison.

On the upside, it might not be as big a deal now, in a Republican minority.

The Washington Post updates on the latest fiscal cliff gamesmanship:

Negotiations between Boehner and President Obama have made significant progress in recent days, with Boehner agreeing to the idea of raising tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, and Obama saying he could accept tax increases for households earning $400,000 or more per year. That threshold is a concession from the president’s campaign pledge to raise rates on those earning at least $250,000, but it remains unacceptable to many Republicans…

Boehner said the plan that Obama offered him on Monday evening “cannot be considered balanced,” because it includes significantly more in new tax revenue than in proposed spending cuts. He told reporters he would consider a deal “balanced” if it include spending reductions that are equal to revenue increases.

White House spokesman Jay Carney rejected the Plan B approach. “It can’t pass the Senate and therefore will not protect middle class families, and does little to address our fiscal challenges with zero spending cuts,” Carney said in a statement. “The President is hopeful that both sides can work out remaining differences and reach a solution so we don’t miss the opportunity in front of us today.”

The latest compromise offer from the Obama administration of adopting a more restrictive rate of growth in federal benefits relative to the cost of living is upsetting to many Democrats, as is the proposal to raise the threshold of income above which the Bush tax cuts would expire to $400,000. However, the Obama administration appears to have rejected the idea of raising the eligibility age for Medicare, a line drawn by many liberal Democrats in these negotiations.

But as Politico reports, the substantial concessions Obama made, to the point of provoking quite a bit of grumbling from the left in his own party this morning, are still not enough:

Boehner is seeking big cuts to entitlement programs, but said they don’t have to take hold until 2013. Specifically, the Ohio Republican said an increase in the Medicare eligibility age could be implemented then, Boehner told reporters.

“There are a lot of issues on the table. That issue has been on the table, off the table, back on the table. It’s an issue for discussion. But I don’t believe it’s an issue that has to be dealt with by the end of the year. It is an issue, I think if Congress were to do entitlement reform next year and tax reform as we envision, if there is an agreement, that issue would certainly be open to debate in that context.”

…Obama and Boehner are still a considerable distance apart on taxes. Obama wants to increase tax rates on income over $400,000. Boehner wants the threshold to be set at $1 million; the House GOP proposal would keep the lower Bush-era rates in place for income brackets below that. In essence, Boehner is seeking $1 trillion in revenue and $1 trillion in cuts – but he doesn’t think the president is willing to get there.

The only thing we can add to this discussion is a new CBS poll out today showing only 17% of the public approves of how Republicans are handling the latest round of high-stakes fiscal negotiations. That poll says fully 69% support allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on income over $250,000–a threshold less generous to the rich than Obama’s latest offer–while a smaller majority opposes cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare to get to a deal.

Politically, the winning side to be on is, for lack of a better word, obvious. Obama has gone as far with this latest offer as can possibly be expected, to the point of legitimately aggrieving the left of his party by restricting the future growth of benefits. If Boehner and his unpopular House can’t accept this offer, all we can say is they are richly earning their miserable poll numbers.

Excerpted from Rep. Scott Tipton’s newsletter to constituents yesterday:

House Republicans remain insistent on budget cuts before looking to increase taxes, while Obama is calling for an extension of the current tax structure for all but the nation’s highest earners, households with more than $250,000 in income and individuals with more than $200,000. Those taxpayers would see their marginal income tax rates increase from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, as well as see increased rates on capital gains and inheritance taxes. U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., wants to know where and how additional revenue from higher taxation would be spent, and how it would reduce spending, his office said…

It seems obvious to us that asking how “additional revenue” will “reduce spending” is kind of oxymoronic, but it at least re-emphasizes the point that Tipton is against spending.

Sort of, based on the very next point in his newsletter:

U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., asked federal agricultural officials Monday to ease restrictive insurance guidelines on farmers in the San Luis Valley given the lingering drought. Tipton expressed his concern in a letter to USDA’s Risk Management Agency, stating that agency guidelines would limit farmers in the Multiple Peril Crop Insurance Program from filing claims because of less water being available.

We did some checking on this: for fiscal year 2004, for which we found a report, the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation collected $928 million in premiums, subsidized (meaning taxpayers covered) $2 billion in premiums, and incurred $3.2 billion in losses. The program’s total budget in FY 2004 was $3.4 billion. Here’s a little more historical detail from the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics:

Government outlays for the federal crop insurance program exceeded $9.2 billion between 1980 and 1990. Over this period, indemnity outlays totaled over $7.1 billion while premiums collected from producers were only $3.8 billion. This corresponds to net losses (excluding administrative costs) that exceed $3.3 billion and implies that, on average, farmers received $1.88 in indemnities for each $1 of premiums paid (i.e., a loss ratio of 1.88).

It’s not like we’re going to deny relief to San Luis Valley farmers, but isn’t somebody going to ask how easing payouts from already generous farm subsidy “insurance” will “cut spending?” This is a lot like Tipton’s praise for the new solar power plant in Alamosa funded by the same loan guarantee program that funded Solyndra, a company Tipton routinely vilifies.

And why doesn’t Tipton feel as strongly about your grandmother’s health care, again? It would be one thing if Tipton was consistent about “cutting spending,” something only a few members of the “Tea Party” class of 2010 can say they have been. Tipton’s problem is not wrongheaded principle, but a sense that there’s no principle at work at all.

The Hill, noted for the record last week:

Nearly half of Republican voters say that ACORN – the community organizing group that closed in 2010 – aided in stealing the 2012 election for President Obama, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

The survey, conducted by Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling, found that 49 percent of GOP voters believe that the president did not legitimately win reelection because ACORN interfered with the vote. A full 50 percent of Republicans said Democrats engaged in some sort of voter fraud.

More from Public Policy Polling’s election aftermath polling memo:

Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they no longer care to be a part of the United States. 25% of Republicans say they would like their state to secede from the union compared to 56% who want to stay and 19% who aren’t sure.

One reason that such a high percentage of Republicans are holding what could be seen as extreme views is that their numbers are declining. Our final poll before the election, which hit the final outcome almost on the head, found 39% of voters identifying themselves as Democrats and 37% as Republicans. Since the election we’ve seen a 5 point increase in Democratic identification to 44%, and a 5 point decrease in Republican identification to 32%. [Pols emphasis]

“Swastika Guy,” circa February 2009.

Almost from the moment President Barack Obama took office, the opposition to his agenda took on an extreme, overheated sense of urgency on the right. Political rhetoric on the right evoked a sense of desperation trending toward outright rebellion–generally based on false, and often hysterical, predictions of what Obama’s agenda would mean for the country.

This irrational radicalization of the grassroots right wing reached its peak during the passage of health care reform legislation and the 2010 election cycle. The fact is, “Obamacare” as finally passed by Congress and signed into law is a far cry from true left-wing aspirations for health care reform, and has more in common with conservative proposals for reforming health care from the Heritage Foundation (or Mitt Romney) than anything one can legitimately call “socialized medicine.” This resulted in a situation where liberal base Democrats were nonplussed by Obama for “giving away too much,” while the right wing painted Obama as a “communist” unfettered by objective facts about his very much centrist actual policies.

Today, their failure is evident everywhere. The intense four-year campaign to irrationally vilify Obama is bankrupt. Only a declining number of hardcores (see poll) are not aware of this.

But those hardcores aren’t going away. Indeed, they think they define “true conservatism.”

We’re not saying this one poll is gospel, but a drop in Republican self-identification, if it’s corroborated and if it continues, could portend an historic re-alignment–real upheaval in the party, or perhaps even a new party to represent the half of America with ideologically conservative predispositions. Among many Democrats at least, there’s a sense that the GOP is permanently marginalizing itself, hastening an irrelevance for political conservatism that many even on the left would say doesn’t fairly represent the views of our ideologically divided nation.

If that’s what must happen, the question is, how many elections will it take? The answer is almost certainly more than the one we just finished. It’s not going to be pretty. The traditional Republican core of wealthy business interests has always required a coalition with other popular movements to survive, but they chose poorly in subsidizing the “Tea Party”–the latest iteration of the John Birch radical right they used to be much better about keeping at arm’s length.

Like we said last week, Republican elites who would like nothing more than to euthanize the “Tea Party” now that it is no longer useful can’t do so–because as this poll indicates, the irrational grassroots they whipped into a froth in 2010 have a life of their own. This is their base now.

And if it is pushing the GOP out of the American mainstream, nobody is stopping it yet.

Our friend Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post with his latest “Worst Week in Washington.”

The Gadsden flag is flying at half-staff this past week.

The tea party – that plucky insurgent movement that, as recently as two years ago, began trying to reshape the Republican Party and politics more generally – finds itself flailing as 2012 draws to a close, buffeted by infighting, defeats and a broad struggle to find a second act…

The movement needs to decide whether it can survive as an outside force or whether it can become more aligned with the GOP without sacrificing the principles on which it was founded.

As evidence of the “Tea Party’s” dilemma, Cillizza cites the resignation of Sen. Jim DeMint to run the Heritage Foundation, the reported decline of FreedomWorks under allegations of mismanagement, and the loss of committee assignments by certain freshmen members of Congress aligned with the movement. The establishment GOP is, fair to say, over them.

But weren’t they always? Top-down declarations of the “Tea Party’s” demise leave out something important–the fact that the “Tea Party” was never a top-down movement.

Now, it’s true that the “Tea Party” shares, in large part, its origin with the very same Republican strategists in Washington who are now declaring them out of style. Organizations like FreedomWorks provided critical back-end support for budding “Tea Party” and so-called “9.12” groups ahead of their zenith of influence in the 2010 elections. But the fact is, those strategists didn’t create the “Tea Party”–and now that it exists, they can’t kill it, at least not without severely harming their own future prospects. The biggest reason for this is that the “Tea Party” is the Republican base, but with a new self-identification that is not under control of the Party.

Because they have no central structure, you can’t say in a blanket way that “The Tea Party” has problems. You might be able to say that grassroots conservatism has problems, but that’s not the same thing–and the reality of that is far more threatening to the Republican Party as a viable political entity. It was necessary to create the “Tea Party” to provide a home for right-wing base voters who railed against perceived failings in both parties, but would surely vote Republican.

Today, the tail may no longer wag the dog, but the GOP establishment still needs their base.

So no, we can’t really agree that the “Tea Party” had the worst week. It may turn out to be the politicians who thought they could ever “control” an irrational and headless movement.

A New York Times story today is making supporters of the recently-passed Amendment 64, the initiative legalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana in Colorado, freshly nervous:

Senior White House and Justice Department officials are considering plans for legal action against Colorado and Washington that could undermine voter-approved initiatives to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in those states, according to several people familiar with the deliberations.

Even as marijuana legalization supporters are celebrating their victories in the two states, the Obama administration has been holding high-level meetings since the election to debate the response of federal law enforcement agencies to the decriminalization efforts.

Marijuana use in both states continues to be illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act. One option is to sue the states on the grounds that any effort to regulate marijuana is pre-empted by federal law. Should the Justice Department prevail, it would raise the possibility of striking down the entire initiatives on the theory that voters would not have approved legalizing the drug without tight regulations and licensing similar to controls on hard alcohol…

This story doesn’t say that the Obama administration has made a decision to sue to stop Amendment 64–it seems to be more about weighing options, and heavy lobbying from law enforcement interests no doubt happy to encourage the prospect of a crackdown. On the other hand, as this story explains well, Obama faces political problems from such a crackdown, since legalization is most popular among liberal base Democrats.

Despite the consternation this story is stoking among legalization supporters, we would advise patience–this article describes meetings that one should fully expect are taking place, since understanding the range of options is the Justice Department’s job. It doesn’t necessarily mean the will of Colorado and Washington voters is about to be thwarted from above, or that the provisions regarding personal possession versus commercial regulation won’t be dealt with separately. Amendment 64 was written to be “severable,” making it harder (at least in theory) to invalidate the entire amendment if one section is struck down.