Now that Congress has signed off on the debt deal, Daniel Stone looks at the political fallout—from President Barack Obama’s reelection prospects to the Tea Party’s power in the U.S. House.
Profiles in sleaze and courage: The Los Angeles Times opines on the differences between Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, who staged a triumphant return this week, and Oregon Democrat David Wu, who slunk away for home after yet another sex scandal.
The Senate is expected to approve emergency bipartisan legislation later today to allow the government to borrow more. Speechwriter and author Michael Cohen, writing for Politico, laments that the months-long debate for raising the debt ceiling — once a formality — provides a glimpse of the death of effective politics.
What we have seen over the past few weeks is the continuing erosion of the notion that political compromise, the linchpin of our democratic system, is the key to effective legislating and policymaking. Hostage-taking has replaced deal making in Washington with potentially devastating consequences for the political system.
Click here for the entire analysis.
It seems being loose with the truth is becoming contagious. In its never-ending quest to separate fact from fiction, Politifact offers these nuggets:
• Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, now a commentator on Fox News and a potential Republican presidential candidate for 2012, said earlier this week while hawking his new book that President Barack Obama grew up in Kenya. Check the facts here.
• Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, locked in a budget battle with unions and Democratic senators, said the state is broke. Check the facts here.
• Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, no stranger to wild and unsubstantiated comments, said Michelle Obama has 43 people on her staff, compared to just three for Nancy Reagan. Check the facts here.
It seems both sides of the Wisconsin budget debate are being a little loose with the truth. Check the validity of some claims here.
Republicans spent most of 2010 campaigning on the promise to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act signed into law last year. The “repeal” part could come as early today with what is viewed as a largely symbolic vote in the GOP-controlled House. No one expects any potential overhaul to advance beyond the House without a plan to replace it, and so far Republicans have offered few specifics on that part of their campaign pledge.
Polls find the public divided over the law and whether it should be repealed. A recent Associated Press-GfK survey found a 43 percent plurality wants the law changed so that it does more to re-engineer the health care system. About one in four said it should be repealed completely. Fewer than one in five in the AP poll said the law should be left as it is and 10 percent want to change it to do less. So the common theme underneath the rhetoric seems to be to keep the good parts and replace the bad ones — if Democrats and Republicans can agree to do that.
Andrew Leonard of Salon has this take:
But here are a couple of things we do know right now, and which Republican legislators, in particular, we should be paying close attention to. Popular opposition to reform seems to be weakening, insurers are backing away from their opposition, and the healthcare industry itself, right now, is one of the major sources of job growth in the U.S. economy, 10 months after the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land. The longer such trends continue, the harder it will be for Republicans to sustain their campaign to throttle reform.
Freshman Rep, Bobby Schilling, R-17, favors portions of the Affordable Care Act, such as allowing adult children to remain on their parents’ health care plan until age 26 and the provision making it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage to someone with a pre-existing condition. That falls in line with a growing number of Americans who agree with those provisions, along with the mandate for insurance companies to spend at least 80 to 85 percent of premiums on medical services, rather than on administrative costs. There are a lot of provisions for businesses that most people think should be retooled or eliminated entirely.
Salon’s list of 10 things people should know about the Affordable Care Act.
The 112th Congress will be sworn in an noon Washington time today, and opinions differ on the impact of Republicans regaining control of the House after being out of power for four years.
Much of what Republicans do will be symbolic, given that Democrats still control the Senate and the White House. But the quick action will allow Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the incoming speaker, and House Republicans to follow through on campaign pledges and to try to establish their party as a bulwark against what they see as an out-of-control government.
After all, the proposal to cut legislators’ budgets by 5 percent will make only a tiny dent in the federal budget, the vote to repeal the health care reform law is widely expected to be dead on arrival when it makes it to the Senate, and detractors dismiss the planned reading of the Constitution on the House floor as a publicity stunt.
But according to incoming Republican House freshmen and the small-government adherents who fueled their rise to power, these first steps that the new Congress plans on taking have real and potentially far-reaching implications.
An editorial by the New York Times:
Those who had hoped to see a glimpse of the much-advertised Republican plan to revive the economy and put Americans back to work will have to wait at least until party leaders finish their Beltway insider ritual of self-glorification. Then, they may find time for governing.
An editorial from the Wall Street Journal:
John Boehner takes the Speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi today, and the transfer represents much more than a change in partisan control. It marks perhaps the sharpest ideological shift in the House in 80 years, and it could set the stage for a meaningful two-year debate over the role of government and the real sources of economic prosperity.
We say “could” because much depends on which Republican Party chooses to show up. Will it be the incumbent-protection and business interest-group machine that prevailed under the final years of Tom DeLay? Or will it remember that the real sources of it power and legitimacy are the tea party activists and independents who voted for Republicans in November? So far the signs suggest the latter, but the forces of Beltway inertia are formidable and will weigh on the drive to change the politics of K Street perks and payoffs.
Howard Kurtz, writing for The Daily Beast, suggest every presidential race attracts its share of ego-tripping attention-mongers who revel in the all-too-brief spotlight. He provides a list of long-shot and no-shot Republican candidates who are making noise about running for president in 2012.
In the immortal words of “Saturday Night Live” character Rosanna Rosanna Danna: “Never mind.”
It seems some conservative Republican lawmakers are having some second thoughts about the idea of banning earmarks after campaigning extensively on the issue and being elected to change the way things are done in Washington. Campaign rhetoric, meet reality.
Indeed, many Republicans are now worried that the bridges in their districts won’t be fixed, the tariff relief to the local chemical company isn’t coming and the water systems might not be built without a little direction from Congress.
So some Republicans are discussing exemptions to the earmark ban, allowing transportation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and water projects. While transportation earmarks are probably the most notorious — think “Bridge to Nowhere” — there is talk about tweaking the very definition of “earmark.”
That about-face didn’t take long, did it? Sorta like telling the American people that reducing the federal deficit was the No. 1 issue and then insisting on adding $700 billion to the deficit by extending tax cuts.
Republicans also have granted a congressman known as the “Prince of Pork” the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee, which certainly would appear to be a contradiction if reducing earmarks was a true goal.
Lew Prince, a managing partner of Vintage Vinyl, an independent music store in St. Louis, says the theory that more tax cuts for the rich will create jobs at small businesses — a huge rallying cry for the rich and those who represent the rich — is “ridiculous.”
When tax-cut lobbyists tell you that small business owners will use the money saved from lower tax rates to hire someone, they’ve got it backward. Either they’ve never run a small business, or they’re trying to mislead you. … So, if Congress wants to help my company — and other small businesses — create jobs, it should support tax and economic policies that boost broad-based consumer income and spending.
Prince points to a Wall Street Journal report that showed the administration of President George W. Bush had the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records in 1939. The Bush administration, with all of its tax cuts, created just 1.1 million jobs net, while the Clinton administration created 22.7 million.
In the wake of last week’s election debacle, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post asks the question: Would we be better off under a President Hillary Clinton?
Would unemployment have been lower under a President Hillary? Would the Democrats have lost fewer seats on Tuesday? It’s impossible to know. But what can be said with confidence is that Clinton’s toolkit is a better match for the current set of national woes than they were for 2008, when her support for the Iraq war dominated the campaign.
Back then, Clinton’s populist appeal to low-income white voters, union members and workers of the Rust Belt was not enough to overcome Obama’s energized youth vote. But Clinton’s working-class whites were the very ones who switched to the Republicans on Tuesday.
Frank Rich of the New York Times reasons that no one can win an election without a coherent message. He suggests that President Obama, despite his administration’s genuine achievements, didn’t have one. On the other hand, Republicans don’t have one either, and that could make things interesting if Obama decides to apply a little Harry Truman.
Obama has a huge opening here — should he take it. He could call the Republicans’ bluff by forcing them to fill in their own blanks. He could start by offering them what they want, the full Bush tax cuts, in exchange for a single caveat: G.O.P. leaders would be required to stand before a big Glenn Beck-style chalkboard — on C-Span, or, for that matter, Fox News — and list, with dollar amounts, exactly which budget cuts would pay for them. Once they hit the first trillion — or even $100 billion — step back and let the “adult conversation” begin!
Better still, the president should open this bargaining session to the full spectrum of his opposition. As he said at his forlorn news conference on Wednesday, he is ready to consider policy ideas “whoever proposes them.” So why not cut to the chase and invite Congressional Tea Party heavyweights like Jim DeMint, Rand Paul and Michele Bachmann (seen at left) to the White House along with the official G.O.P. leadership? They will offer the specifics that Boehner and McConnell are too shy to divulge.
DeMint published a book last year detailing his view that Social Security be privatized to slow America’s descent into socialism. Paul can elaborate on his ideas for reducing defense spending and cutting back on drug law enforcement. Bachmann will explain her plans for weaning Americans off Medicare.
