Not even Rumsfeld escapes TSA’s clutches

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Even former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld isn’t immune to the probing hands of Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
(TMZ)
The folks at the Transportation Security Agency have been taking a beating this week on the Hill for some 25,000 security breaches at the nation’s airports since 2001. They’ve been hammered in the past for being overly aggressive in patting down even elderly people.

Now, thanks to TMZ, the online celebrity gossip site, it seems even the venerable former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, 79, was deemed a possible threat and patted down Wednesday afternoon at Chicago’s O’Hare airport as he tried to board a flight. Rumsfeld was reportedly “all smiles” during the hands-on event.

Rumsfeld, linking to the TMZ report and photos, tweeted Thursday that he had been “en route to Grand Rapids, Mich., to attend the funeral of one of America’s most beloved first ladies, Betty Ford,” when the manhandling, so to speak, occurred.

In another tweet, he noted, “It takes those of us with two titanium hips and a titanium shoulder a bit longer to get through TSA.”

You know, it looks like he’s having too good a time.

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Not even Rumsfeld escapes TSA’s clutches

0

Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
Tags:


Even former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld isn’t immune to the probing hands of Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
(TMZ)
The folks at the Transportation Security Agency have been taking a beating this week on the Hill for some 25,000 security breaches at the nation’s airports since 2001. They’ve been hammered in the past for being overly aggressive in patting down even elderly people.

Now, thanks to TMZ, the online celebrity gossip site, it seems even the venerable former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, 79, was deemed a possible threat and patted down Wednesday afternoon at Chicago’s O’Hare airport as he tried to board a flight. Rumsfeld was reportedly “all smiles” during the hands-on event.

Rumsfeld, linking to the TMZ report and photos, tweeted Thursday that he had been “en route to Grand Rapids, Mich., to attend the funeral of one of America’s most beloved first ladies, Betty Ford,” when the manhandling, so to speak, occurred.

In another tweet, he noted, “It takes those of us with two titanium hips and a titanium shoulder a bit longer to get through TSA.”

You know, it looks like he’s having too good a time.

Follow In the Loop on Twitter

Read more at PostPolitics

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Romney: Cut, cap, balance to end ‘emergency’

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, has been under pressure to weigh in on the debt-limit negotiations in Washington, but before Thursday had not focused on the issue. He has, however, signed a “Cut, Cap, Balance” pledge endorsed by a number of Republican lawmakers, as the White House and congressional leaders try to negotiate a debt-ceiling increase in time to avoid the prospect of defaulting on Aug. 2.

He said Thursday he would make cuts to discretionary spending. “I’d divide that between those things we have to do and those things we don’t have to do. And those thiings we don’t have to do, I’d cut pretty dramatically,” he said.

As Romney began his remarks, he took at jab at President Obama.

“Did you see I got a big plate of peas? I ate all my peas,” he said, referring to Obama’s comment that it was time to “eat our peas” on the debt. “Now it’s the president’s turn to cut federal spending.

Before Romney arrived for his first of three events here Thursday, his campaign escalated its assault on Obama’s economic policies, releasing a provocative new video featuring an emotional testimonial from a struggling New Hampshire real estate broker.

The film, the latest installment in Romney’s “Obama Isn’t Working” campaign, centers on Packy Campbell, who said his Rochester firm, RSA Realty Development, had been devastated by the recession. The video cuts between dark shots of an empty conference room and Campbell talking to the camera.

“At this point, it’s just my wife and I left here in the business, but at one point we had about 35 employees,” Campbell, a former Republican state representative and a 2008 McCain supporter, says in the film.

“I paint a lot of houses, a lot of apartments myself,” he adds. “If you ever paint with somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing, it’s like sooner or later you say, ‘Hey, stop, you’re making a mess, you’re getting paint everywhere.’ And that’s kind of what the government’s doing to the economy right now.”

Romney plans to meet with Campbell and tour his business’s Rochester office Thursday afternoon, following his economic speech to the Portsmouth Rotary Club. Romney will hold a town hall meeting later Thursday afternoon in Derry.

Romney has used similar testimonials in the past to attack Obama’s economic record, trying to place the blame for high unemployment and declining home values squarely on the president.

The latest campaign video opens with footage of Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008, saying Democrats “measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage. Whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma.”

Then the film flashes the words, “THREE YEARS LATER,” and cuts to Campbell’s testimonial. Campbell, a father of five, says he wants to take his children on a summer vacation to Disney World. But he says he can’t.

“Last week was ground zero for me, you know,” he says in the film. “I had to file my own personal bankruptcy. I had to close my business. For me, I look at holding onto my business and not giving up and working through my bankruptcy and continuing to show up every day.”

Thursday marked Romney’s first of three days of campaigning in New Hampshire. On Friday, he will stump in the state’s remote North Country, where he plans to talk about the economy at a roundtable with community leaders in Berlin. Romney will be back on the trail Sunday, attending a NASCAR race at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, where he plans to meet with drivers in the infield.

Romney starts the race with a heavy advantage in New Hampshire. He has a vacation home here and has been a regular presence in the state since his 2008 campaign.

Romney is staking his hopes on winning the New Hampshire primary, making almost weekly visits here and largely avoiding trips to Iowa and South Carolina, the other two early states where social conservatives have relatively more sway in the nominating contest.

To coincide with Romney’s visit Thursday, one of his opponents, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, announced the endorsement of former state senator Bruce Keough, who had served as Romney’s New Hampshire co-chairman in the 2008 race. Keough will serve on Pawlenty’s national policy committee and on his New Hampshire steering committee. Keough’s defection is hardly a surprise, as he had a public falling out with Romney.

Romney, meanwhile, countered by adding another elected official to his list of New Hampshire backers. State Sen. Jim Rausch officially endorsed Romney on Thursday.

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Romney: Cut, cap, balance to end ‘emergency’

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
Tags:

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, has been under pressure to weigh in on the debt-limit negotiations in Washington, but before Thursday had not focused on the issue. He has, however, signed a “Cut, Cap, Balance” pledge endorsed by a number of Republican lawmakers, as the White House and congressional leaders try to negotiate a debt-ceiling increase in time to avoid the prospect of defaulting on Aug. 2.

He said Thursday he would make cuts to discretionary spending. “I’d divide that between those things we have to do and those things we don’t have to do. And those thiings we don’t have to do, I’d cut pretty dramatically,” he said.

As Romney began his remarks, he took at jab at President Obama.

“Did you see I got a big plate of peas? I ate all my peas,” he said, referring to Obama’s comment that it was time to “eat our peas” on the debt. “Now it’s the president’s turn to cut federal spending.

Before Romney arrived for his first of three events here Thursday, his campaign escalated its assault on Obama’s economic policies, releasing a provocative new video featuring an emotional testimonial from a struggling New Hampshire real estate broker.

The film, the latest installment in Romney’s “Obama Isn’t Working” campaign, centers on Packy Campbell, who said his Rochester firm, RSA Realty Development, had been devastated by the recession. The video cuts between dark shots of an empty conference room and Campbell talking to the camera.

“At this point, it’s just my wife and I left here in the business, but at one point we had about 35 employees,” Campbell, a former Republican state representative and a 2008 McCain supporter, says in the film.

“I paint a lot of houses, a lot of apartments myself,” he adds. “If you ever paint with somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing, it’s like sooner or later you say, ‘Hey, stop, you’re making a mess, you’re getting paint everywhere.’ And that’s kind of what the government’s doing to the economy right now.”

Romney plans to meet with Campbell and tour his business’s Rochester office Thursday afternoon, following his economic speech to the Portsmouth Rotary Club. Romney will hold a town hall meeting later Thursday afternoon in Derry.

Romney has used similar testimonials in the past to attack Obama’s economic record, trying to place the blame for high unemployment and declining home values squarely on the president.

The latest campaign video opens with footage of Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008, saying Democrats “measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage. Whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma.”

Then the film flashes the words, “THREE YEARS LATER,” and cuts to Campbell’s testimonial. Campbell, a father of five, says he wants to take his children on a summer vacation to Disney World. But he says he can’t.

“Last week was ground zero for me, you know,” he says in the film. “I had to file my own personal bankruptcy. I had to close my business. For me, I look at holding onto my business and not giving up and working through my bankruptcy and continuing to show up every day.”

Thursday marked Romney’s first of three days of campaigning in New Hampshire. On Friday, he will stump in the state’s remote North Country, where he plans to talk about the economy at a roundtable with community leaders in Berlin. Romney will be back on the trail Sunday, attending a NASCAR race at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, where he plans to meet with drivers in the infield.

Romney starts the race with a heavy advantage in New Hampshire. He has a vacation home here and has been a regular presence in the state since his 2008 campaign.

Romney is staking his hopes on winning the New Hampshire primary, making almost weekly visits here and largely avoiding trips to Iowa and South Carolina, the other two early states where social conservatives have relatively more sway in the nominating contest.

To coincide with Romney’s visit Thursday, one of his opponents, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, announced the endorsement of former state senator Bruce Keough, who had served as Romney’s New Hampshire co-chairman in the 2008 race. Keough will serve on Pawlenty’s national policy committee and on his New Hampshire steering committee. Keough’s defection is hardly a surprise, as he had a public falling out with Romney.

Romney, meanwhile, countered by adding another elected official to his list of New Hampshire backers. State Sen. Jim Rausch officially endorsed Romney on Thursday.

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U.S. cyber approach ‘too predictable’ for one top general

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Hours later, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III presented a strategy whose thrust, he said, is defensive and focused on “denying the benefit of an attack.”

To illustrate the growing threat, Lynn disclosed that in March, the Defense Department discovered that a foreign intelligence service had hacked into a defense contractor’s system and stolen 24,000 computer files related to a weapons system under development, one of the largest known cyberattacks targeting the U.S. military.

Lynn did not name the contractor or the government behind the intrusion but said the Pentagon was reviewing whether the weapons system needed to be redesigned.

The Defense Department’s newly unveiled strategy relies on deploying sensors, software and special signatures, or lines of code, that detect and stop intrusions before they affect operations.

“If an attack will not have its intended effect, those who wish us harm will have less reason to target us through cyberspace in the first place,” Lynn said.

Cartwright, in his remarks to defense reporters, suggested that stronger deterrents would be needed. “We are supposed to be offshore convincing people if they attack, it won’t be free,” he said, adding that adversaries should know that the United States has “the capability and capacity to do something about it.”

Cartwright, who appeared with Lynn at a news conference after the strategy rollout, described the cyber plan as a first step. “This starts us down the path of building out both our defenses and our awareness skills,” he said. Eventually, he added, more aggressive cyber tactics, as well as legal and diplomatic measures, would be needed to “raise the price” of attacking.

Over the past year, President Obama had asked Cartwright several times whether he would be willing to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Washington Post reported in May, but Obama later turned to another candidate. Cartwright is leaving office this summer.

Stewart A. Baker, a former National Security Agency general counsel, in a blog post likened the Pentagon’s new cyber plan to a nuclear deterrent strategy of building more fallout shelters. “This is at best a partial strategy,” he wrote. “The plan as described fails to engage on the hard issues, such as offense and attribution and, well, winning.”

Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), co-founder of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, said that the plan was a good start but that key areas were missing. “What are acceptable red lines for actions in cyberspace? . . . Does data theft or disruption rise to the level of warfare, or do we have to see a physical event, such as an attack on our power grid, before we respond militarily?”

Lynn said that the United States has not yet been hit by an act of cyber war and that there was deterrent value in remaining ambiguous about what would constitute one. But ultimately, he said, it is the president and Congress that would decide that the human or economic damage is severe enough to consider a cyber event an act of war. He said the Pentagon would take the lead only if, in the “judgment of the leadership of the country, it required a military response.”

Cartwright, at the news conference, said the disabling of computerized patient records at a hospital such that the patients cannot be treated would be a violation of the law of armed conflict. “Then you have proportional responses” that can be undertaken, he said, without specifying which or by whom.

But when it comes to an act of war, he said, “it’s in the eye of the beholder.”

Staff writer Jason Ukman contributed to this report.

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U.S. cyber approach ‘too predictable’ for one top general

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
Tags:

Hours later, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III presented a strategy whose thrust, he said, is defensive and focused on “denying the benefit of an attack.”

To illustrate the growing threat, Lynn disclosed that in March, the Defense Department discovered that a foreign intelligence service had hacked into a defense contractor’s system and stolen 24,000 computer files related to a weapons system under development, one of the largest known cyberattacks targeting the U.S. military.

Lynn did not name the contractor or the government behind the intrusion but said the Pentagon was reviewing whether the weapons system needed to be redesigned.

The Defense Department’s newly unveiled strategy relies on deploying sensors, software and special signatures, or lines of code, that detect and stop intrusions before they affect operations.

“If an attack will not have its intended effect, those who wish us harm will have less reason to target us through cyberspace in the first place,” Lynn said.

Cartwright, in his remarks to defense reporters, suggested that stronger deterrents would be needed. “We are supposed to be offshore convincing people if they attack, it won’t be free,” he said, adding that adversaries should know that the United States has “the capability and capacity to do something about it.”

Cartwright, who appeared with Lynn at a news conference after the strategy rollout, described the cyber plan as a first step. “This starts us down the path of building out both our defenses and our awareness skills,” he said. Eventually, he added, more aggressive cyber tactics, as well as legal and diplomatic measures, would be needed to “raise the price” of attacking.

Over the past year, President Obama had asked Cartwright several times whether he would be willing to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Washington Post reported in May, but Obama later turned to another candidate. Cartwright is leaving office this summer.

Stewart A. Baker, a former National Security Agency general counsel, in a blog post likened the Pentagon’s new cyber plan to a nuclear deterrent strategy of building more fallout shelters. “This is at best a partial strategy,” he wrote. “The plan as described fails to engage on the hard issues, such as offense and attribution and, well, winning.”

Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), co-founder of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, said that the plan was a good start but that key areas were missing. “What are acceptable red lines for actions in cyberspace? . . . Does data theft or disruption rise to the level of warfare, or do we have to see a physical event, such as an attack on our power grid, before we respond militarily?”

Lynn said that the United States has not yet been hit by an act of cyber war and that there was deterrent value in remaining ambiguous about what would constitute one. But ultimately, he said, it is the president and Congress that would decide that the human or economic damage is severe enough to consider a cyber event an act of war. He said the Pentagon would take the lead only if, in the “judgment of the leadership of the country, it required a military response.”

Cartwright, at the news conference, said the disabling of computerized patient records at a hospital such that the patients cannot be treated would be a violation of the law of armed conflict. “Then you have proportional responses” that can be undertaken, he said, without specifying which or by whom.

But when it comes to an act of war, he said, “it’s in the eye of the beholder.”

Staff writer Jason Ukman contributed to this report.

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Rebekah Brooks resigns from Murdoch’s News International

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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The phone hacking scandal roiling Great Britain has cast a new light on billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his outsize influence on political life in that country and around the world. (July 15)

The phone hacking scandal roiling Great Britain has cast a new light on billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his outsize influence on political life in that country and around the world. (July 15)

Gallery


Rupert Murdoch’s empire: A look at media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s business ventures over the years.

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Timeline

News of the World scandal


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Rebekah Brooks resigns from Murdoch’s News International

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Video

The phone hacking scandal roiling Great Britain has cast a new light on billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his outsize influence on political life in that country and around the world. (July 15)

The phone hacking scandal roiling Great Britain has cast a new light on billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his outsize influence on political life in that country and around the world. (July 15)

Gallery


Rupert Murdoch’s empire: A look at media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s business ventures over the years.

Timeline

Timeline

News of the World scandal


View timeline


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A rock star on the campaign trail, Bachmann wields little influence on the Hill

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner are trying to pass a misnomer to the public about the debt ceiling. (July 13)

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner are trying to pass a misnomer to the public about the debt ceiling. (July 13)

Graphic

Which federal programs would you choose to pay?

Which federal programs would you choose to pay?


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A rock star on the campaign trail, Bachmann wields little influence on the Hill

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Video

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner are trying to pass a misnomer to the public about the debt ceiling. (July 13)

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner are trying to pass a misnomer to the public about the debt ceiling. (July 13)

Graphic

Which federal programs would you choose to pay?

Which federal programs would you choose to pay?


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Palin political committee spent tens of thousands on bus trip

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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But the total for the trip is likely much more, because many bills came in after the June 30 filing deadline, Sarah PAC treasurer Tim Crawford said in an interview. In addition, many other expenses associated with the trip, such as photography, videography, Internet fundraising and airfare, are more difficult to account for. (One item in the report describes $6,999 paid to an air charter company called Republican Presidential Travel on June 9, at the tail end of “One Nation.”)

The details of the Palin committee’s expenditures for the first six months of the year came out on the same day that the National Park Service issued an official reply to Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who had written Park Service Director John Jarvis in early June for an accounting of whether the Palins received special treatment or whether taxpayer resources were spent to accommodate them.

In his response, Jarvis said that the Palins were not asked to obtain permits to their visits to the national parks because the stops “were personal, family visits.”

“The governor was not looking to hold an event, give a speech, or conduct any other activity that would require a National Park Service permit,” Jarvis wrote. “They also told us that they were not publishing her schedule in advance. However, given the significant media attention, and the large ‘branded’ bus in which the family would be traveling, it was clear that these would not be the typical family visits that we see most days in most national parks.”

For that reasons, Jarvis said, the agency did what it often does for celebrities: accommodated the Palins to minimize disruption not only for them but for other visitors to the parks she visited.

“For example, at Gettysburg” National Military Park, Jarvis wrote, “because the museum tends to be busier later in the day, the Gettysburg Foundation offered an early tour by its non-government staff to avoid interfering with the visits of as many people as possible. At Independence [National Historical Park in Philadelphia], Governor Palin and her family walked through the Liberty Bell Center with other visitors.”

Jarvis continued: “All parks used on-duty staff during Governor Palin’s visits. No overtime was incurred or paid. The visits were short, and upon her departure, all NPS employees directly involved in her visit immediately returned to regularly scheduled assignments.”

Palin billed her “One Nation” trip as nothing more than a family vacation complete with kids, grandparents and many hours on Interstate 95.

But there was nothing typical about this vacation, which attracted endless national attention and ignited widespread speculation about whether the popular conservative was testing the waters for a presidential campaign. The trip is expected to resume in the Midwest this summer, but it has been delayed in part because Palin was called for jury duty in Alaska and must report to the local courthouse each morning for the rest of July or until she is placed on a jury.

The bus tour required a good deal of planning and preparation by the historic sites that received her. Although they didn’t ask for it, Palin and her family received VIP treatment just about everywhere they went: a private guided tour of Mount Vernon, early admission into the National Archives, and private tours at all of the federally managed National Park Service properties they visited, including a 10-person escort of national parks employees and New York City police officers at the Statue of Liberty.

The Palins also bypassed long lines and avoided crowded exhibit rooms — and hitched a ride to the statue on a National Park Service boat from New Jersey, avoiding the often hours-long wait for the public boat from Lower Manhattan.

In his letter, Blumenauer described Palin’s trip as a “partisan political tour” that provided her with “personal and political” benefits. On Thursday, Blumenauer spokesman Derek Schlickeisen said: “Not every American family had a federal PAC to pay for their family vacations.”

In the FEC report, SarahPAC reported raising a total of nearly $1.7 million during the first six months of the year and having $1.4 million on hand on June 30.

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Palin political committee spent tens of thousands on bus trip

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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But the total for the trip is likely much more, because many bills came in after the June 30 filing deadline, Sarah PAC treasurer Tim Crawford said in an interview. In addition, many other expenses associated with the trip, such as photography, videography, Internet fundraising and airfare, are more difficult to account for. (One item in the report describes $6,999 paid to an air charter company called Republican Presidential Travel on June 9, at the tail end of “One Nation.”)

The details of the Palin committee’s expenditures for the first six months of the year came out on the same day that the National Park Service issued an official reply to Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who had written Park Service Director John Jarvis in early June for an accounting of whether the Palins received special treatment or whether taxpayer resources were spent to accommodate them.

In his response, Jarvis said that the Palins were not asked to obtain permits to their visits to the national parks because the stops “were personal, family visits.”

“The governor was not looking to hold an event, give a speech, or conduct any other activity that would require a National Park Service permit,” Jarvis wrote. “They also told us that they were not publishing her schedule in advance. However, given the significant media attention, and the large ‘branded’ bus in which the family would be traveling, it was clear that these would not be the typical family visits that we see most days in most national parks.”

For that reasons, Jarvis said, the agency did what it often does for celebrities: accommodated the Palins to minimize disruption not only for them but for other visitors to the parks she visited.

“For example, at Gettysburg” National Military Park, Jarvis wrote, “because the museum tends to be busier later in the day, the Gettysburg Foundation offered an early tour by its non-government staff to avoid interfering with the visits of as many people as possible. At Independence [National Historical Park in Philadelphia], Governor Palin and her family walked through the Liberty Bell Center with other visitors.”

Jarvis continued: “All parks used on-duty staff during Governor Palin’s visits. No overtime was incurred or paid. The visits were short, and upon her departure, all NPS employees directly involved in her visit immediately returned to regularly scheduled assignments.”

Palin billed her “One Nation” trip as nothing more than a family vacation complete with kids, grandparents and many hours on Interstate 95.

But there was nothing typical about this vacation, which attracted endless national attention and ignited widespread speculation about whether the popular conservative was testing the waters for a presidential campaign. The trip is expected to resume in the Midwest this summer, but it has been delayed in part because Palin was called for jury duty in Alaska and must report to the local courthouse each morning for the rest of July or until she is placed on a jury.

The bus tour required a good deal of planning and preparation by the historic sites that received her. Although they didn’t ask for it, Palin and her family received VIP treatment just about everywhere they went: a private guided tour of Mount Vernon, early admission into the National Archives, and private tours at all of the federally managed National Park Service properties they visited, including a 10-person escort of national parks employees and New York City police officers at the Statue of Liberty.

The Palins also bypassed long lines and avoided crowded exhibit rooms — and hitched a ride to the statue on a National Park Service boat from New Jersey, avoiding the often hours-long wait for the public boat from Lower Manhattan.

In his letter, Blumenauer described Palin’s trip as a “partisan political tour” that provided her with “personal and political” benefits. On Thursday, Blumenauer spokesman Derek Schlickeisen said: “Not every American family had a federal PAC to pay for their family vacations.”

In the FEC report, SarahPAC reported raising a total of nearly $1.7 million during the first six months of the year and having $1.4 million on hand on June 30.

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Minnesota governor, GOP lawmakers agree to end shutdown

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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The agreement to end the shutdown came after Dayton reluctantly acceded to Republican demands not to raise any taxes to balance the state’s two-year budget and to embrace a deal the GOP had proposed just before the shutdown.

Dayton, who wanted to include a tax increase on the state’s top 2 percent of wage earners as part of the mix to close the funding gap, said the refusal of GOP legislators to budge left him with little choice but to go along with their alternative.

The plan would balance the state’s budget by cutting programs, delaying state aid to local school districts and borrowing against future tobacco company settlement payments.

“Despite my serious reservations about your plan, I have concluded that continuing the state government shutdown would be even more destructive for too many Minnesotans,” Dayton said in a letter to GOP legislative leaders. “Therefore, I am willing to agree to something I do not agree with — your proposal — in order to spare our citizens and our state from further damage.”

Dayton did ask Republicans to back off of their proposals to shrink state government employment by 15 percent in each agency. He also called for policy proposals favored by the GOP to be shelved for the rest of the year. In earlier talks, GOP leaders had pressed for abortion and stem-cell research restrictions, as well as stricter voter identification laws.

Dayton also called for Republican support in passing at least $500 million in bond sales to finance work on publicly owned buildings, including work at state colleges and universities, prisons and public-works facilities.

Those conditions caused some consternation among Republicans, whose leaders, nonetheless, agreed to the framework outlined by Dayton. “We believe the caucus will ultimately support this,” Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch (R) said.

Some Democratic lawmakers were also dissatisfied. “No way can I support this awful ‘compromise’ further tanking schools, deeper debt, kicking the whale down the road,” wrote state Rep. Mindy Greiling (D).

Dayton’s communications director, Katharine Tinucci, stressed that the agreement was a compromise by both sides. “The true sense of a compromise is that no one’s happy,” she said in a statement. “It’s not a win or a loss for any of the politicians involved.”

The battle in Minnesota echoes the ongoing fight over federal spending. As in Washington, Minnesota Republicans refused to consider any new taxes during the partisan wrangling. The fight caused nonessential parts of the state government to close after the new fiscal year began July 1.

Although critical services such as state police and prisons remained in operation, the shutdown closed state parks, made business licenses unobtainable and caused the layoff of more than 20,000 state employees. A rating agency also lowered Minnesota’s bond rating, increasing future borrowing costs for the state.

Republican lawmakers rebuffed several compromise offers from Dayton, who searched futilely for a way to end the impasse without totally abandoning his original position.

“If something works, you keep doing it,” said Larry Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist. “Right now it feels like the Republicans have a winning formula, and it keeps generating concessions for them. They have found a bargaining style that satisfies their hard conservative base and has the Democrats on the defensive.”

Jacobs explained that the shutdown put more pressure on Democrats than Republicans, because of the growing antipathy toward government felt by many Republicans and their fervent belief that taxes and government stifle economic growth.

“For the governor, this was an existential crisis,” Jacobs said. “But many Republicans are so dubious about government and the role it plays that they view this in purely tactical terms.”

Using a shutdown to put pressure on Democrats is “not a lesson that I would say to anybody,” Speaker of the House Kurt Zellers (R) said. “We did not want a shutdown in the first place. We wanted a lights-on bill that would keep the government funded at 70 or 80 percent while we worked this out.”

Zellers viewed the apparent resolution as a Republican victory. “From the standpoint of whether there’s a tax increase or not, absolutely,” he said. “Is there more spending than we wanted? Absolutely.”

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Minnesota governor, GOP lawmakers agree to end shutdown

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
Tags:

The agreement to end the shutdown came after Dayton reluctantly acceded to Republican demands not to raise any taxes to balance the state’s two-year budget and to embrace a deal the GOP had proposed just before the shutdown.

Dayton, who wanted to include a tax increase on the state’s top 2 percent of wage earners as part of the mix to close the funding gap, said the refusal of GOP legislators to budge left him with little choice but to go along with their alternative.

The plan would balance the state’s budget by cutting programs, delaying state aid to local school districts and borrowing against future tobacco company settlement payments.

“Despite my serious reservations about your plan, I have concluded that continuing the state government shutdown would be even more destructive for too many Minnesotans,” Dayton said in a letter to GOP legislative leaders. “Therefore, I am willing to agree to something I do not agree with — your proposal — in order to spare our citizens and our state from further damage.”

Dayton did ask Republicans to back off of their proposals to shrink state government employment by 15 percent in each agency. He also called for policy proposals favored by the GOP to be shelved for the rest of the year. In earlier talks, GOP leaders had pressed for abortion and stem-cell research restrictions, as well as stricter voter identification laws.

Dayton also called for Republican support in passing at least $500 million in bond sales to finance work on publicly owned buildings, including work at state colleges and universities, prisons and public-works facilities.

Those conditions caused some consternation among Republicans, whose leaders, nonetheless, agreed to the framework outlined by Dayton. “We believe the caucus will ultimately support this,” Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch (R) said.

Some Democratic lawmakers were also dissatisfied. “No way can I support this awful ‘compromise’ further tanking schools, deeper debt, kicking the whale down the road,” wrote state Rep. Mindy Greiling (D).

Dayton’s communications director, Katharine Tinucci, stressed that the agreement was a compromise by both sides. “The true sense of a compromise is that no one’s happy,” she said in a statement. “It’s not a win or a loss for any of the politicians involved.”

The battle in Minnesota echoes the ongoing fight over federal spending. As in Washington, Minnesota Republicans refused to consider any new taxes during the partisan wrangling. The fight caused nonessential parts of the state government to close after the new fiscal year began July 1.

Although critical services such as state police and prisons remained in operation, the shutdown closed state parks, made business licenses unobtainable and caused the layoff of more than 20,000 state employees. A rating agency also lowered Minnesota’s bond rating, increasing future borrowing costs for the state.

Republican lawmakers rebuffed several compromise offers from Dayton, who searched futilely for a way to end the impasse without totally abandoning his original position.

“If something works, you keep doing it,” said Larry Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist. “Right now it feels like the Republicans have a winning formula, and it keeps generating concessions for them. They have found a bargaining style that satisfies their hard conservative base and has the Democrats on the defensive.”

Jacobs explained that the shutdown put more pressure on Democrats than Republicans, because of the growing antipathy toward government felt by many Republicans and their fervent belief that taxes and government stifle economic growth.

“For the governor, this was an existential crisis,” Jacobs said. “But many Republicans are so dubious about government and the role it plays that they view this in purely tactical terms.”

Using a shutdown to put pressure on Democrats is “not a lesson that I would say to anybody,” Speaker of the House Kurt Zellers (R) said. “We did not want a shutdown in the first place. We wanted a lights-on bill that would keep the government funded at 70 or 80 percent while we worked this out.”

Zellers viewed the apparent resolution as a Republican victory. “From the standpoint of whether there’s a tax increase or not, absolutely,” he said. “Is there more spending than we wanted? Absolutely.”

Continue Reading

The big questions on FEC day

0

Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
Tags:

Today is the last day for federal candidates to file their second quarter financial reports, and The Fix has got your hook-up.

We know most of the presidential numbers have already been announced, but there is plenty left to be discovered today, from Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) much-anticipated fundraising numbers down to some early incumbent-versus-incumbent matchups in the House.

Keep an eye on The Fix for all the latest. But to get you started, here are some of the big questions that will be answered:

* Can Bachmann match the hype? The Bachmann campaign’s decision to give very little indication of their fundraising numbers could either pan out very well or very poorly. So far, it seems to have only upped the ante as far as how much she is expected to have raised, and that could be a dangerous expectations game.

At this point, if she doesn’t finish second in the GOP presidential primary behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s $18.5 million and ahead of the $4.5 million raised by Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (whose number was upped after initially being announced as $4.2 million), it will register as a disappointment among most observers.

Indeed, it may come to that, as CBS News cites a source close to the campaign putting the number at $4 million, including a $2 million transfer from her House campaign. Bachmann’s team wouldn’t confirm those numbers late Thursday.

Keep in mind, though – Bachmann didn’t officially launch her campaign until late June, and she didn’t pick up momentum until after the debate June 13 in New Hampshire. Even if you’ve caught the attention of lots and lots of conservatives looking for a fresh face, that’s still only two weeks in which she was considered a real contender.

By the same token, this is a woman who raised $1.7 million for her HOUSE campaign in the first quarter, so she should have a much bigger number than that.

* What’s in Obama’s report? We know the topline numbers for President Obama — $47 million for his campaign and $38 million raised for the Democratic National Committee — but a lot will be revealed when the actual report is filed, including who is bundling money for him, what percentage of money he raised from small-dollar donors and how much he has spent building up his 2012 infrastructure.

On small-dollar donors, for instance, Obama’s campaign has said that 98 percent of donations came in at $250 or less, but it hasn’t said what percentage of the total money raised came from those small donors. (Indeed, a promotion that asked for $5 contributions to enter a raffle for dinner with the president likely inflated those numbers.)

The document itself will be upwards of 15,000 pages, so it will take time to comb through.

* Do GOP Senate candidates assert themselves? Republicans are counting on winning four seats and re-taking the majority in the Senate in 2012. To do that, though, they’ll need money. And in a few states, GOP candidates will need to prove they can raise funds.

Among those with something to prove are Attorney General Jon Bruning in Nebraska, former state treasurer Sarah Steelman and Rep. Todd Akin in Missouri, and former congresswoman Heather Wilson and Lt. Gov. John Sanchez in New Mexico.

The GOP already got some good news when Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) announced an outstanding $2.3 million raised. In Virginia, meanwhile, former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine raised nearly as much, giving his party renewed hope of holding that seat.

Nebraska and Missouri are pretty close to must-wins for the GOP in 2012, so the fundraising of the GOP field in those two states will be especially key. If the GOP can count on winning those two seats, plus North Dakota, and it holds all its seats, it would be in a 50-50 tie with Democrats.

* Can House GOP freshman pick it up? The huge class of freshman House Republicans didn’t exactly get out of the gate quickly in the first quarter, raising significantly less than its Democratic counterparts did after big Democratic waves in 2006 and 2008.

With Democrats now saying that the majority is winnable in 2012 and the GOP’s Medicare reform proposal weighing down the party, the onus is on those Republicans to raise the money to fight back against those attacks.

* Who’s raising more money in member-versus-member races? The most interesting House races of 2012 will likely be the ones that feature two members of Congress thrust into running against each other thanks to redistricting. We know some of their totals already – Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa), for example, had a huge $580,000 quarter as he prepares to face Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa), and Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) raised a very strong $474,000 for his matchup with Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.).

In other cases, members who are getting a raw deal from redistricting may decide to throw in the towel, in which case they will likely turn in a small fundraising report.

If you want to know who else could face such a matchup, check out our Friday Line from last week.

Bachmann’s husband says clinic does help gays turn straight, but only upon request: Bachmann’s husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Thursday that, while the couple’s clinic does offer to help turn gay people straight — otherwise known as “reparative therapy” — that is not the focus of its practice, and it only does so at the patient’s request.

Bachmann said a gay rights activist who recorded a video showing a counselor trying to push him toward heterosexuality was given the treatment he asked for.

“This individual came to us under a false pretense,’’ he said. “The truth of the matter is, he specifically asked for help.’’

Bachmann also said such treatment is only done when requested.

“Will I address it? Certainly we’ll talk about it,” he said. “Is it a remedy form that I typically would use? … It is at the client’s discretion.”

Reparative therapy is a controversial subject, especially in professional medical circles.

Wallace: Bachmann flake question was fair: In an interview with Don Imus yesterday, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace said that the question he apologized for asking Bachmann last month was legitimate — if poorly phrased.

Wallace asked Bachmann in a late June interview, “Are you a flake?” Bachmann responded that the question was insulting, and Wallace later apologized in a video.

“I thought that the topic was perfectly legitimate and I certainly would do it again. The topic was basically that she has said some questionable comments, things that were demonstrably wrong over the past,” Wallace said. “I certainly had no intention to be disrespectful and I certainly was not saying, ‘You are a flake.’ What I was basically saying was, ‘How do you respond to the perception that you are a flake?’ But it came out wrong.”

Fixbits:

Rep. Mazio Hirono (D-Hawaii) outraised former congressman Ed Case (D-Hawaii) in the second quarter. Both are running for retiring Sen. Daniel Akaka’s (D-Hawaii) seat.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) raised $900,000 in the second quarter and has $2.9 million on hand for what will be a tough reelection campaign.

Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) raised $511,000 for his Senate campaign.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) opine on spending in the Post.

Romney finally weighs in on the debt ceiling, calling for a balanced budget amendment.

There’s talk of canceling the president’s 50th birthday party, which just happens to fall on the day after the debt limit is supposed to be hit.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has irritated tea partiers with his proposal to give Obama the ability to raise the debt limit, signs the Cut, Cap and Balance pledge.

Bachmann announces her campaign team.

Bob Vander Plaats
stands by the “Marriage Vow.”

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) accuses Obama of lying.

Bachmann hits Whoopi Goldberg in a fundraising letter.

Fix-approved “Friday Night Lights” airs its last episode tonight.

Must-reads:

“McConnell leaves door open to McConnell ‘back-up plan’ on debt limit” — Felicia Sonmez, Washington Post

“Minnesota governor, GOP lawmakers agree to end shutdown” — Michael A. Fletcher and Rachel Weiner, Washington Post

“GOP ‘young gun’ Cantor draws controversy, ire” — Nancy Cordes, CBS News

“Democrats attack Romney PACs” — Dan Eggen, Washington Post

Continue Reading

The big questions on FEC day

0

Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
Tags:

Today is the last day for federal candidates to file their second quarter financial reports, and The Fix has got your hook-up.

We know most of the presidential numbers have already been announced, but there is plenty left to be discovered today, from Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) much-anticipated fundraising numbers down to some early incumbent-versus-incumbent matchups in the House.

Keep an eye on The Fix for all the latest. But to get you started, here are some of the big questions that will be answered:

* Can Bachmann match the hype? The Bachmann campaign’s decision to give very little indication of their fundraising numbers could either pan out very well or very poorly. So far, it seems to have only upped the ante as far as how much she is expected to have raised, and that could be a dangerous expectations game.

At this point, if she doesn’t finish second in the GOP presidential primary behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s $18.5 million and ahead of the $4.5 million raised by Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (whose number was upped after initially being announced as $4.2 million), it will register as a disappointment among most observers.

Indeed, it may come to that, as CBS News cites a source close to the campaign putting the number at $4 million, including a $2 million transfer from her House campaign. Bachmann’s team wouldn’t confirm those numbers late Thursday.

Keep in mind, though – Bachmann didn’t officially launch her campaign until late June, and she didn’t pick up momentum until after the debate June 13 in New Hampshire. Even if you’ve caught the attention of lots and lots of conservatives looking for a fresh face, that’s still only two weeks in which she was considered a real contender.

By the same token, this is a woman who raised $1.7 million for her HOUSE campaign in the first quarter, so she should have a much bigger number than that.

* What’s in Obama’s report? We know the topline numbers for President Obama — $47 million for his campaign and $38 million raised for the Democratic National Committee — but a lot will be revealed when the actual report is filed, including who is bundling money for him, what percentage of money he raised from small-dollar donors and how much he has spent building up his 2012 infrastructure.

On small-dollar donors, for instance, Obama’s campaign has said that 98 percent of donations came in at $250 or less, but it hasn’t said what percentage of the total money raised came from those small donors. (Indeed, a promotion that asked for $5 contributions to enter a raffle for dinner with the president likely inflated those numbers.)

The document itself will be upwards of 15,000 pages, so it will take time to comb through.

* Do GOP Senate candidates assert themselves? Republicans are counting on winning four seats and re-taking the majority in the Senate in 2012. To do that, though, they’ll need money. And in a few states, GOP candidates will need to prove they can raise funds.

Among those with something to prove are Attorney General Jon Bruning in Nebraska, former state treasurer Sarah Steelman and Rep. Todd Akin in Missouri, and former congresswoman Heather Wilson and Lt. Gov. John Sanchez in New Mexico.

The GOP already got some good news when Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) announced an outstanding $2.3 million raised. In Virginia, meanwhile, former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine raised nearly as much, giving his party renewed hope of holding that seat.

Nebraska and Missouri are pretty close to must-wins for the GOP in 2012, so the fundraising of the GOP field in those two states will be especially key. If the GOP can count on winning those two seats, plus North Dakota, and it holds all its seats, it would be in a 50-50 tie with Democrats.

* Can House GOP freshman pick it up? The huge class of freshman House Republicans didn’t exactly get out of the gate quickly in the first quarter, raising significantly less than its Democratic counterparts did after big Democratic waves in 2006 and 2008.

With Democrats now saying that the majority is winnable in 2012 and the GOP’s Medicare reform proposal weighing down the party, the onus is on those Republicans to raise the money to fight back against those attacks.

* Who’s raising more money in member-versus-member races? The most interesting House races of 2012 will likely be the ones that feature two members of Congress thrust into running against each other thanks to redistricting. We know some of their totals already – Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa), for example, had a huge $580,000 quarter as he prepares to face Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa), and Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) raised a very strong $474,000 for his matchup with Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.).

In other cases, members who are getting a raw deal from redistricting may decide to throw in the towel, in which case they will likely turn in a small fundraising report.

If you want to know who else could face such a matchup, check out our Friday Line from last week.

Bachmann’s husband says clinic does help gays turn straight, but only upon request: Bachmann’s husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Thursday that, while the couple’s clinic does offer to help turn gay people straight — otherwise known as “reparative therapy” — that is not the focus of its practice, and it only does so at the patient’s request.

Bachmann said a gay rights activist who recorded a video showing a counselor trying to push him toward heterosexuality was given the treatment he asked for.

“This individual came to us under a false pretense,’’ he said. “The truth of the matter is, he specifically asked for help.’’

Bachmann also said such treatment is only done when requested.

“Will I address it? Certainly we’ll talk about it,” he said. “Is it a remedy form that I typically would use? … It is at the client’s discretion.”

Reparative therapy is a controversial subject, especially in professional medical circles.

Wallace: Bachmann flake question was fair: In an interview with Don Imus yesterday, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace said that the question he apologized for asking Bachmann last month was legitimate — if poorly phrased.

Wallace asked Bachmann in a late June interview, “Are you a flake?” Bachmann responded that the question was insulting, and Wallace later apologized in a video.

“I thought that the topic was perfectly legitimate and I certainly would do it again. The topic was basically that she has said some questionable comments, things that were demonstrably wrong over the past,” Wallace said. “I certainly had no intention to be disrespectful and I certainly was not saying, ‘You are a flake.’ What I was basically saying was, ‘How do you respond to the perception that you are a flake?’ But it came out wrong.”

Fixbits:

Rep. Mazio Hirono (D-Hawaii) outraised former congressman Ed Case (D-Hawaii) in the second quarter. Both are running for retiring Sen. Daniel Akaka’s (D-Hawaii) seat.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) raised $900,000 in the second quarter and has $2.9 million on hand for what will be a tough reelection campaign.

Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) raised $511,000 for his Senate campaign.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) opine on spending in the Post.

Romney finally weighs in on the debt ceiling, calling for a balanced budget amendment.

There’s talk of canceling the president’s 50th birthday party, which just happens to fall on the day after the debt limit is supposed to be hit.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has irritated tea partiers with his proposal to give Obama the ability to raise the debt limit, signs the Cut, Cap and Balance pledge.

Bachmann announces her campaign team.

Bob Vander Plaats
stands by the “Marriage Vow.”

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) accuses Obama of lying.

Bachmann hits Whoopi Goldberg in a fundraising letter.

Fix-approved “Friday Night Lights” airs its last episode tonight.

Must-reads:

“McConnell leaves door open to McConnell ‘back-up plan’ on debt limit” — Felicia Sonmez, Washington Post

“Minnesota governor, GOP lawmakers agree to end shutdown” — Michael A. Fletcher and Rachel Weiner, Washington Post

“GOP ‘young gun’ Cantor draws controversy, ire” — Nancy Cordes, CBS News

“Democrats attack Romney PACs” — Dan Eggen, Washington Post

Continue Reading

Sarah Palin and the debt limit debate

0

Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
Tags:



(BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS)

“There are departments that can be revamped and some bills that can wait. And, again, it’s our president’s job, as the leader of the executive branch, to prioritize and administer those dollars that Congress has allocated. And our president obviously isn’t capable of doing that, because he has no plan that he can even put forward to say here are my priorities.”

–Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R)

Potential presidential candidate Sarah Palin popped up on the Sean Hannity Show on Wednesday night, making a series of somewhat contradictory statements about the battle over the national debt ceiling.

 “If I were in Congress, I would not vote to incur more debt,” she asserted. But she also said, “We cannot default.” But then she also said: “We cannot afford to retreat right now.”

 Eventually, she got around to making the point above, saying the president simply has to prioritize what bills he is going to pay, “revamp” some departments and so forth. She made it sound all so very easy.

 As we have written, there is substantial debate over what the Obama administration can or cannot do once the putative Aug. 2 deadline is reached, especially regarding the disbursement of Social Security checks. The most impressive analysis thus far was published by The Bipartisan Policy Center, a report written Jay Powell, a former top Treasury official in the George H.W. Bush administration. He makes it clear this would be uncharted and very difficult territory.

But Palin’s statement also suggests she has a fundamental misunderstanding of the debt limit, which we will explore.

 

The Facts

 The debt limit was originally crafted to make life easier for Congress. Before World War I, Congress literally had to cast a vote every time Treasury borrowed money to make purchases authorized by Congress (such as tanks). In 1917, Congress decided to do away with the cumbersome procedure and simply gave blanket approval for most types of borrowing. To keep a check on the executive branch, Congress established a limit.

But this is not the same as a credit card limit, a frequently used analogy. A credit card limit prevents someone from making more purchases. You may want to buy that $1,000 refrigerator but if you only have $500 left on your credit card, tough luck—unless you round up some cash.

 In this case, Congress has already authorized the expenditures for fiscal year 2011. In many cases, the products, so to speak, have already been purchased, and now the bills are coming due. If the United States government does not pay for these items (which includes interest on the national debt), then it goes in default.

 We have had trouble coming up with a real-life equivalent, but here’s stab at it. Suppose the son of a millionaire was told he could spend $100,000 in a year, and not only that, but he was told exactly how he needed to spend the money.   (That’s the fiscal year appropriations bills passed by Congress.). At the same time, the parent told the son the bills would not be paid after a certain date unless he got additional permission to pay them. (That’s the debt limit.)

 In other words, the money has been spent, but an arbitrary ceiling has been set for how much can be paid. If it doesn’t make much sense, it is not supposed to.  But it is the exact opposite of a credit card limit or any such similar analogy.

 As the Government Accountability Office puts it in its useful primer on government debt: 

“The debt limit does not control or limit the ability of the federal government to run deficits or incur obligations. Rather, it is a limit on the ability to pay obligations already incurred. While debates surrounding the debt limit may raise awareness about the federal government’s current debt trajectory and may also provide Congress with an opportunity to debate the fiscal policy decisions driving that trajectory, the ability to have an immediate effect on debt levels is limited.”

 Palin further confuses matters when she says, “it’s our president’s job, as the leader of the executive branch, to prioritize and administer those dollars that Congress has allocated.” Under the Constitution,  the executive branch cannot spend money that has not been appropriated by Congress. But with the debt ceiling, Congress has allocated no more dollars for payments, even though it has appropriated the money to be spent.

 Palin also said, “there are departments that can be revamped and some bills that can wait.” Actually, it takes time—and the approval of Congress—to “revamp” departments. As for delaying some bills, we guess she means that the United States has to stiff a few creditors. The technical term for that is “default.”

 Much as politicians like to compare the government’s budget to the family budget, this is going too far. In tough economic times, some families do indeed delay paying some bills in order to make payments deemed more important, such as the mortgage. Eventually that can harm the family’s credit rating, which the current impasse threatens to do to the prized AAA rating now held by the United States.

 

 The Pinocchio Test

 We concede that American politicians have a long history of playing politics with the debt rating. Given his current rhetoric, President Obama, in particular, should feel ashamed at his posturing on the debt limit in 2006, when he voted not to raise the debt limit. (He since has said such “a political vote” was a mistake.)

 As then Sen. Obama put it, in words that seem to echo Palin’s language today: “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills.”

 (An aside: Obama also noted “it took 42 Presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt. This [Bush] administration did more than that in just five years.” The debt has risen under Obama by nearly $4 trillion in less than three years. Oops.)

 But past rhetoric by other politicians, even the president, is no excuse for continuing to mischaracterize the debt limit. Palin either has a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue or she purposely is being misleading.

 

Three Pinocchios

 

(About our rating scale)

 

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook

More on PostPolitics.com

Palin’s PAC spent tens of thousands on bus trip

Obama’s mother had health insurance, according to biography

GOP dissent complicates path to resolving debt-ceiling crisis

Watch Sarah Palin on the Hannity Show

Continue Reading

Sarah Palin and the debt limit debate

0

Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
Tags:



(BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS)

“There are departments that can be revamped and some bills that can wait. And, again, it’s our president’s job, as the leader of the executive branch, to prioritize and administer those dollars that Congress has allocated. And our president obviously isn’t capable of doing that, because he has no plan that he can even put forward to say here are my priorities.”

–Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R)

Potential presidential candidate Sarah Palin popped up on the Sean Hannity Show on Wednesday night, making a series of somewhat contradictory statements about the battle over the national debt ceiling.

 “If I were in Congress, I would not vote to incur more debt,” she asserted. But she also said, “We cannot default.” But then she also said: “We cannot afford to retreat right now.”

 Eventually, she got around to making the point above, saying the president simply has to prioritize what bills he is going to pay, “revamp” some departments and so forth. She made it sound all so very easy.

 As we have written, there is substantial debate over what the Obama administration can or cannot do once the putative Aug. 2 deadline is reached, especially regarding the disbursement of Social Security checks. The most impressive analysis thus far was published by The Bipartisan Policy Center, a report written Jay Powell, a former top Treasury official in the George H.W. Bush administration. He makes it clear this would be uncharted and very difficult territory.

But Palin’s statement also suggests she has a fundamental misunderstanding of the debt limit, which we will explore.

 

The Facts

 The debt limit was originally crafted to make life easier for Congress. Before World War I, Congress literally had to cast a vote every time Treasury borrowed money to make purchases authorized by Congress (such as tanks). In 1917, Congress decided to do away with the cumbersome procedure and simply gave blanket approval for most types of borrowing. To keep a check on the executive branch, Congress established a limit.

But this is not the same as a credit card limit, a frequently used analogy. A credit card limit prevents someone from making more purchases. You may want to buy that $1,000 refrigerator but if you only have $500 left on your credit card, tough luck—unless you round up some cash.

 In this case, Congress has already authorized the expenditures for fiscal year 2011. In many cases, the products, so to speak, have already been purchased, and now the bills are coming due. If the United States government does not pay for these items (which includes interest on the national debt), then it goes in default.

 We have had trouble coming up with a real-life equivalent, but here’s stab at it. Suppose the son of a millionaire was told he could spend $100,000 in a year, and not only that, but he was told exactly how he needed to spend the money.   (That’s the fiscal year appropriations bills passed by Congress.). At the same time, the parent told the son the bills would not be paid after a certain date unless he got additional permission to pay them. (That’s the debt limit.)

 In other words, the money has been spent, but an arbitrary ceiling has been set for how much can be paid. If it doesn’t make much sense, it is not supposed to.  But it is the exact opposite of a credit card limit or any such similar analogy.

 As the Government Accountability Office puts it in its useful primer on government debt: 

“The debt limit does not control or limit the ability of the federal government to run deficits or incur obligations. Rather, it is a limit on the ability to pay obligations already incurred. While debates surrounding the debt limit may raise awareness about the federal government’s current debt trajectory and may also provide Congress with an opportunity to debate the fiscal policy decisions driving that trajectory, the ability to have an immediate effect on debt levels is limited.”

 Palin further confuses matters when she says, “it’s our president’s job, as the leader of the executive branch, to prioritize and administer those dollars that Congress has allocated.” Under the Constitution,  the executive branch cannot spend money that has not been appropriated by Congress. But with the debt ceiling, Congress has allocated no more dollars for payments, even though it has appropriated the money to be spent.

 Palin also said, “there are departments that can be revamped and some bills that can wait.” Actually, it takes time—and the approval of Congress—to “revamp” departments. As for delaying some bills, we guess she means that the United States has to stiff a few creditors. The technical term for that is “default.”

 Much as politicians like to compare the government’s budget to the family budget, this is going too far. In tough economic times, some families do indeed delay paying some bills in order to make payments deemed more important, such as the mortgage. Eventually that can harm the family’s credit rating, which the current impasse threatens to do to the prized AAA rating now held by the United States.

 

 The Pinocchio Test

 We concede that American politicians have a long history of playing politics with the debt rating. Given his current rhetoric, President Obama, in particular, should feel ashamed at his posturing on the debt limit in 2006, when he voted not to raise the debt limit. (He since has said such “a political vote” was a mistake.)

 As then Sen. Obama put it, in words that seem to echo Palin’s language today: “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills.”

 (An aside: Obama also noted “it took 42 Presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt. This [Bush] administration did more than that in just five years.” The debt has risen under Obama by nearly $4 trillion in less than three years. Oops.)

 But past rhetoric by other politicians, even the president, is no excuse for continuing to mischaracterize the debt limit. Palin either has a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue or she purposely is being misleading.

 

Three Pinocchios

 

(About our rating scale)

 

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook

More on PostPolitics.com

Palin’s PAC spent tens of thousands on bus trip

Obama’s mother had health insurance, according to biography

GOP dissent complicates path to resolving debt-ceiling crisis

Watch Sarah Palin on the Hannity Show

Continue Reading

Obama still pushing for ‘big deal’ on debt

0

Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
Tags:

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Graphic

Which federal programs would you choose to pay?

Which federal programs would you choose to pay?

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As bond-rating agencies warn they could soon downgrade U.S. debt, the U.S. Treasury secretary warns default is looming and an increasingly frustrated President Barack Obama is giving crisis deficit talks a deadline. (July 14)

As bond-rating agencies warn they could soon downgrade U.S. debt, the U.S. Treasury secretary warns default is looming and an increasingly frustrated President Barack Obama is giving crisis deficit talks a deadline. (July 14)

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Obama still pushing for ‘big deal’ on debt

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Posted on : 15-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Which federal programs would you choose to pay?

Which federal programs would you choose to pay?

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As bond-rating agencies warn they could soon downgrade U.S. debt, the U.S. Treasury secretary warns default is looming and an increasingly frustrated President Barack Obama is giving crisis deficit talks a deadline. (July 14)

As bond-rating agencies warn they could soon downgrade U.S. debt, the U.S. Treasury secretary warns default is looming and an increasingly frustrated President Barack Obama is giving crisis deficit talks a deadline. (July 14)

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Politicians hunt and fish for the big bucks

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(TROY MABEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS) – Idaho’s not a bad place for fly fishing. If you’re a devotee, and you’re inclined to contribute to Sen. Mike Crapo, this is your lucky summer.


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Democrats win Wisconsin primaries

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Posted on : 13-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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All six Wisconsin Democrats won their recall primaries today, easily fending off challenges from “protest” candidates put forward by Republicans to delay the general elections.

All six official Democrats have been projected as winners by the Associated Press. Only one race was at all close, the one between schoolteacher Shelly Moore (D) and 2010 Republican Assembly candidate Issac Weix in the primary to take on Sen. Sheila Harsdorf. Every other Democrat is projected to win by double-digits.

After recall elections were triggered against six Republican state senators over the state’s contentious collective bargaining law, Republicans launched “protest” candidates in each primary to give their incumbents more time to campaign. The general elections were pushed back from today to Aug. 9.

“The voters of Wisconsin have rejected the Republicans’ dirty tricks, despite their best efforts to turn out voters in these primaries for fake candidates,” said Democratic Party spokeswoman Gillian Morris.

In the race to take on Sen. Robert Cowles, former Brown County executive Nancy Nusbaum defeated retired GOP assemblyman Otto Junkerman. In the race to take on Sen. Alberta Darling, state Rep. Sandy Pasch (D) defeated Gladys Huber. In the race to take on Sen. Dan Kapanke, state Rep. Jennifer Schilling defeated young Republican activist James Smith. In the race to take on Sen. Randy Hopper, Deputy Oshkosh Mayor Jessica King (D) defeated retiree John Buckstaff. In the race to take on Sen. Luther Olsen, state Rep. Fred Clark (D) defeated Rollin Church.

Several Republican candidates and local parties were at least hoping for an upset. Wisconsin has open primaries, so it was possible for Republicans to vote for the “protest” candidates in these races. But the state GOP maintained from the outset of the recalls that the only purpose of the “protest” challenges was to delay — not prevent — a race.

“Now that self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives have set $500,000 of taxpayer money on fire in fake primaries that served no purpose beyond their ‘do-anything’ quest to maintain power, voters will have a chance to put the brakes on Scott Walker and his extreme agenda in legitimate elections on August 9th,” said Kelly Steele, a spokesman for the pro-union PAC We Are Wisconsin, in a statement.

Three Democratic state senators also face recalls this summer. Next Tuesday is the general election against state Sen. Dave Hansen (D) and Republican primaries to take on Democratic state Sens. Robert Wirch and Dave Hansen. If Democrats net three wins, they will take back the state Senate.

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House GOP fails to turn off new standards for light bulbs that some see as issue of freedom

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Posted on : 13-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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For many Republicans, those newfangled curly fluorescent light bulbs were the last straw, pushed by an overreaching government that’s forcing people to buy health insurance, prodding them to get more fuel-efficient cars and sticking its nose into too many places.

Their legislation would have kept the marketplace clear for the cheap, energy-wasting bulbs that have changed little since Thomas Edison invented them in 1879.

For most Democrats, it’s an exasperating debate that, just like the old incandescent bulbs being crowded out of the market, produces more heat than light.

The standards in question do not specifically ban the old bulbs but require a higher level of efficiency than the classics can produce, essentially nudging them off store shelves over the next few years. Four of Edison’s descendants said the great inventor would be mortified to see politicians trying to get the nation to hang on to an outdated technology when better bulbs are available.

The standards have not been particularly contentious before now. They were crafted in 2007 with Republican participation and signed into law by President George W. Bush. People seem to like the new choices and the energy savings they bring, polling finds.

But now they have become a symbol of a much larger divide in Washington over the size and reach of government itself. The new bulbs suggest to some conservatives that big government is running amok.

“Now the government wants to tell consumers what type of light bulb they use to read, cook, watch television or light their garage,” said Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas.

“I’m not opposed to the squiggly tailed CFLs,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, a driving force behind the effort to save the old incandescents and the sponsor of the bill to overturn the standards. But making the old bulbs go away “seems to me to be overkill by the federal government.”

Republicans said people who now buy a bulb for 30 or 40 cents shouldn’t be forced to pay $6 for a fluorescent bulb or more for LED (light-emitting diode) lighting.

“If you are Al Gore and want to spend $10 for a light bulb, more power to you,” Barton said. He exaggerated the cost of most energy-efficient bulbs and neglected to mention that they last years longer than old incandescent bulbs, which convert about 90 percent of the energy they consume as electricity into heat, and only 10 percent into light.

Republican presidential contender Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota complained earlier this year that, under President Barack Obama, “we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy.”

The Obama administration, which opposes Barton’s bill, says the lighting standards that are being phased in will save nearly $6 billion in 2015 alone. The Energy Department says upgrading 15 inefficient incandescent bulbs in a home could save a homeowner $50 a year. Lighting accounts for about 10 percent of home electricity use.

The White House says the standards drive U.S. innovation, create manufacturing jobs and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

Incandescent bulbs are not disappearing. Today’s energy-savings choices include incandescent lighting that is more efficient, and more expensive to purchase, than the old standbys.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., held up a new Sylvania incandescent that meets the efficiency standards and costs $1.69. “You don’t have to buy one of those funny-looking new light bulbs,” he said.

Under existing rules, new bulbs will have to be 25 to 30 percent more efficient than traditional incandescent models. As of Jan. 1, 2012, inefficient 100-watt bulbs will no longer be available at most stores. Also on the way out are traditional 75-watt bulbs in 2013 and 40-watt and 60-watt versions in 2014.

The National Resources Defense Council said that when the law is fully implemented in 2020, energy costs will be reduced by 7 percent or about $85 a household every year. It said the more efficient bulbs will eliminate the need for 33 large power plants.

The advocacy group presented statements from Edison’s kin in support of the new standards. “Edison would certainly have recognized that the wave of the future — profits — is to make it better, cheaper and, yes, cleaner and more efficient,” said Barry Edison Sloane, a great-grandson.

Said Robert Wheeler, a great-nephew: “The technology changes. Embrace it.”

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire drops bid to buy British Sky Broadcasting amid hacking furor

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  • ( BBC / Associated Press ) - In this image from a BBC television interview aired Tuesday July 12 2011, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaks during an interview. Brown on Tuesday accused Rupert Murdochs newspapers of employing criminals to obtain confidential information about his family, his private financial affairs and the lives of ordinary people who were at rock bottom. Browns furious denunciation of the politically powerful News International papers came a day after questions were raised about how The Sun newspaper obtained confidential information in 2006 that Browns infant son Fraser had cystic fibrosis.
  • ( Tim Ireland/PA / Associated Press ) - Britains Prime Minister David Cameron speaks at the start of a cabinet meeting held at the Royal Mint in Llantrisant, south Wales Tuesday July 12, 2011. The phone hacking scandal has confirmed a widely held belief that premier David Cameron lacks a killer political instinct and leadership skills. Its also fueled public irritation about Camerons friendships with a media elite who are now implicated in a criminal investigation.
  • ( Lefteris Pitarakis / Associated Press ) - US businessman Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones Company and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, arrives a house where Rupert Murdoch was staying in central London, Tuesday, July 12, 2011. Hinton was the executive chairman of the embattled News International, the corporate umbrella of News of the World, before taking the position at News Corp.-owned Dow Jones. His tenure coincided with much of the hacking and police payoffs that led to the British tabloids closure last week.
  • ( Sang Tan / Associated Press ) - Rebekah Brooks Chief executive of News International arrives at News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdochs residence in central London, Tuesday, July 12, 2011. British tabloid newspaper News of the World closed Sunday, July 12, 2011, after accusations of hacking into the mobile phones of various crime victims, celebrities and politicians.

( BBC / Associated Press ) – In this image from a BBC television interview aired Tuesday July 12 2011, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaks during an interview. Brown on Tuesday accused Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers of employing criminals to obtain confidential information about his family, his private financial affairs and the lives of ordinary people who were at “rock bottom.” Brown’s furious denunciation of the politically powerful News International papers came a day after questions were raised about how The Sun newspaper obtained confidential information in 2006 that Brown’s infant son Fraser had cystic fibrosis.


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Janice Hahn wins California special election

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Posted on : 13-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Janice Hahn
(Reed Saxon – AP Photo)
Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn (D) beat back a surprisingly strong challenge from businessman Craig Huey (R) in a nasty fight for an open congressional seat in California. With all the votes counted, Hahn beat Huey 55 percent to 45 percent, or 41,585 votes to 34,636.

Hahn called the victory bittersweet, because of her mother’s death on the eve of her victory. She told the Associated Press that the loss of her mother “was devastating to me, so it was the strength of the thousands of volunteers who were campaigning for me that carried me across the finish line.”

Democrats were worried about losing this special election, held to replace former Rep. Jane Harman (D), even though a large majority of voters in the district are registered Democrats. Voter turnout in southern California in July is always going to be low (it was 22 percent Tuesday), and Huey poured nearly $900,000 of his own money into the race.

The evangelical direct-mail marketer shocked observers by making it into the race at all. California has just switched to “jungle primaries,” in which the top two vote-getters face off in the general regardless of party affiliation. In a district where Democrats have an 18-point registration advantage, it was a surprise to see a Republican make it into the runoff.

“Congresswoman-elect Hahn has earned the confidence of the voters of her district; tonight, she has the full congratulations of the entire House Democratic Caucus,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming her to Congress and to working with her to make progress for the American people.”

The congressional seat came open when Harman resigned to become head of a think tank. Both Huey and Hahn went negative early and often–with Huey tying Hahn to gang members, and Hahn accusing Huey of radical social views and scams against senior citizens.

Hahn’s victory means another special election to fill her city council seat. Firefighter Pat McOsker announced his candidacy last night.

While a Republican win here would have been seen as a coup for the GOP, special elections occur under such unique circumstances that they have little predictive power.

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Grover Norquist, the anti-tax enforcer behind the scenes of the debt debate

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President Obama spoke about stalled negotiations with Congress to raise the debt ceiling and what he feels is holding up progress. (July 13)

President Obama spoke about stalled negotiations with Congress to raise the debt ceiling and what he feels is holding up progress. (July 13)

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Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proposed a back-up plan that would allow Congress to raise the debt ceiling with just a one-third of votes.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proposed a “back-up plan” that would allow Congress to raise the debt ceiling with just a one-third of votes.

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Pawlenty, Bachmann, Romney and the Iowa marriage pledge

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Campaign 2012: Michele Bachmann: Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann has made a name for herself among conservative activists, but her ability to deliver for her district remains to be seen.


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GOP indecision on 2012 may give Rick Perry a ‘huge opening’

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Can President Obama keep paying Social Security benefits even if the debt ceiling is reached?

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Posted on : 13-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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(Charles Dharapak/AP)

“I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”

— President Obama, July 12, 2011

 ***

“So are we really going to start paying interest to Chinese who hold Treasuries and we’re not going to pay folks their Social Security checks?”

— President Obama, June 30, 2011

 

The president’s language has evolved on whether $23 billion Social Security checks will get paid on Aug. 3, the day after the administration says the U.S. government will reach the debt limit.

 Last week, at a news conference, he suggested the Treasury could not make Social Security payments if it wanted to keep paying interest to bond holders and not default on the debt. Tuesday, in an interview with CBS News, he added some caveats — that there was no “guarantee” or that there “may” not be enough money.

 (If you look at the full exchange, which is at the bottom of this column, you will see Obama never directly answers a question about Social Security checks. He dodges it by saying, “This is not just a matter of Social Security checks. These are veterans’ checks, these are folks on disability and their checks. There are about 70 million checks that go out.”)

 Clearly, if the debt limit is reached, the nation’s finances would be pretty rocky. The Bipartisan Policy Center recently issued an interesting report that looks day by day at how much money would be going into the government and how much is committed to go out. On Aug. 3, for instance, the daily inflow is estimated to be $12 billion, compared to $32 billion in committed spending that day (most of which would be the Social Security checks.)

 But what if there is a way to keep paying Social Security benefits, despite hitting the debt ceiling?

 

The Facts

 The answer to this question is highly technical. The Bipartisan Policy Center report, which looked closely at the problem, is silent on this issue. We queried the administration about this when Obama made his statement last week, and got a confusing answer. In effect, we were told, the answer is complex but as a practical matter is no, because there would not be enough cash to pay benefits.


But others, including Jason J. Fichtner, a former deputy Social Security administrator during the Bush administration now at George Mason University, believes this explanation is unsatisfactory. He notes that Social Security holds $2.6 trillion in special-issue Treasury securities. Those bonds are part of the $14.3 trillion debt amassed by the U.S. government, and benefits are paid out of those securities.

 So, the theory goes, if Treasury redeemed the needed Social Security bonds, and issued new marketable Treasury bonds to make good on the Social Security bonds, it would be a one for one swap and the debt ceiling would not be increased.

 There is a technical wrinkle involving the fact that payroll taxes that are collected are supposed to be immediately turned into Treasury securities, but there could be ways around that, such as putting the monies in a noninterest bearing account, as during the 1985 debt crisis. “Although some of the Secretary’s actions appear in retrospect to have been in violation of the requirements of the Social Security Act, we cannot say that the Secretary acted unreasonably given the extraordinary situation in which he was operating,” the General Accounting Office later concluded.

 “I’m now 99.9 percent positive that Treasury has legal authority to pay Social Security benefits in both cases of a government shutdown and hitting the debt limit, since the payment of benefits shouldn’t affect the debt limit because it reduces the trust funds to the exact extent that it increase publicly-held debt,” Fichtner said. “What I don’t know is whether Treasury has to pay benefits if it chooses not to.”

 Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research who has derided “the phony crisis” of Social Security, also believes the checks could keep flowing. “I would think that they could legally pay Social Security by reducing the obligations of the fund,” he said. “It no doubt would be a huge political issue.”

Still, during the 1996 debt limit crisis, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin announced that Treasury did not have sufficient funds to pay Social Security benefits. Congress rushed to pass a special law that said the Social Security benefits did not count against the debt limit. Was this designed to pressure the Republican-led Congress, or had even a shrewd operator like Rubin run out of options? However, Congress later that year passed a law, 121-104, that codified Treasury’s authority to use Social Security trust funds to pay benefits and administration expenses in the event a debt ceiling is reached, which could give the administration the authority they need in the current crisis.

The Congressional Research Service has also explored this question in a series of reports this year. The answer is unfortunately inconclusive and buried in a footnote: “Under normal procedures Treasury pays Social Security benefits from the General Fund and offsets this by redeeming an equivalent amount of the trust funds’ holdings of government debt. In order to pay Social Security benefits, and depending on the government’s cash position at the time, Treasury may need to issue new public debt to raise the cash needed to pay benefits. Treasury may be unable to issue new public debt, however, because of the debt limit. Social Security benefit payments may be delayed or jeopardized if the Treasury does not have enough cash on hand to pay benefits.”

However, if Treasury can use the Social Security bonds to pay Social Security bonds, potentially that could open up the question of whether other nonmarketable securities – such as $700 billion in Civil Service funds – could be temporarily redeemed to raise cash. However, the legal link between these funds and other functions of government does not appear as strong as between Social Security trust funds and Social Security benefits.

Late Tuesday night, however, the Treasury Department cast serious doubt on whether it was feasible to keep paying Social Security benefits if the debt limit had been breached.

“This type of financial engineering is untested, may not work, and is of questionable legality,” a Treasury official told us. “It is not feasible for Treasury to borrow from the public, each day, the precise amount of Social Security payments due without breaching the debt limit. In addition, it is questionable whether it is legal to redeem Social Security trust fund assets in advance of payments. Moreover, this presumes that Treasury will have full access to the financial markets if the debt limit is not raised.”

 The Pinocchio Test

 The president obviously does not want to show all of his cards in this high-stakes game of poker. Raising the specter of not issuing Social Security checks is designed to raise pressure on Republicans, but could also cause angst among the elderly.

 At this point the answer is unclear but we become suspicious when politicians begin to use “may,” rather than speak in definitive sentences. If Treasury has the ability to keep paying Social Security benefits, even if the debt limit is reached, the Obama administration should make that clear. The Treasury Department’s new statement begins to add some clarity. We will keep watching how the president speaks about this issue.

 

Verdict Pending

 

 

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Obama raises record-breaking $86 million

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Posted on : 13-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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President Obama’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee together raised a whopping $86 million in the second quarter of 2011, campaign manager Jim Messina announced in an early morning online video sent to supporters.

Obama’s re-election campaign collected $47 million, while the president raised another $38 million for the DNC via a joint fundraising committee that allows donors to write a single check that is then divvied up between the two entitites.

The haul far surpasses the goal Messina set for the campaign’s national finance committee of collecting a combined $60 million between April 1 and June 30.

“It’s a monumental achievement,” Messina said.

Obama’s total is more than the $35 million raised this past quarter by all the Republican presidential candidates combined (although Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann has not yet reported her fundraising). The GOP is lagging in fundraising, a problem made more acute by Obama’s success. By this point in 2007, 10 GOP presidential hopefuls had collectively raised more than $118 million. Obama had raised $58.9 million over two quarters.

Details on Obama’s haul won’t be publicly available until Friday, but according to Messina, the average contribution was $69, 98 percent of donors gave less than $250 and more than 552,462 people have contributed to the joint committee.

“We did this from the bottom up,” Messina said. “We didn’t accept one single dollar from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs.”

Obama advisers have privately told donors that they hope to raise more than the $750 million raised by the campaign in 2008. The president could well become the first politician to raise over a billion dollars for a campaign.

Despite Obama’s massive fundraising advantage, Messina still argued that the president was the underdog in need of help. “We have reason to be proud of what we’ve built so far, but it’s going to get tougher from here,” he said in the video. “GOP outside spending for 2012 could be as much as $500 million.”

Read more on PostPolitics.com

Fact Checker: Can Obama keep paying Social Security benefits if the debt ceiling is reached?


GOP indecision on 2012 may give Rick Perry a ‘huge opening’


West Wing briefing: Should Obama back McConnell’s debt ceiling proposal?

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Obama raises record-breaking $86 million

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Posted on : 13-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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President Obama’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee together raised a whopping $86 million in the second quarter of 2011, campaign manager Jim Messina announced in an early morning online video sent to supporters.

Obama’s re-election campaign collected $47 million, while the president raised another $38 million for the DNC via a joint fundraising committee that allows donors to write a single check that is then divvied up between the two entitites.

The haul far surpasses the goal Messina set for the campaign’s national finance committee of collecting a combined $60 million between April 1 and June 30.

“It’s a monumental achievement,” Messina said.

Obama’s total is more than the $35 million raised this past quarter by all the Republican presidential candidates combined (although Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann has not yet reported her fundraising). The GOP is lagging in fundraising, a problem made more acute by Obama’s success. By this point in 2007, 10 GOP presidential hopefuls had collectively raised more than $118 million. Obama had raised $58.9 million over two quarters.

Details on Obama’s haul won’t be publicly available until Friday, but according to Messina, the average contribution was $69, 98 percent of donors gave less than $250 and more than 552,462 people have contributed to the joint committee.

“We did this from the bottom up,” Messina said. “We didn’t accept one single dollar from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs.”

Obama advisers have privately told donors that they hope to raise more than the $750 million raised by the campaign in 2008. The president could well become the first politician to raise over a billion dollars for a campaign.

Despite Obama’s massive fundraising advantage, Messina still argued that the president was the underdog in need of help. “We have reason to be proud of what we’ve built so far, but it’s going to get tougher from here,” he said in the video. “GOP outside spending for 2012 could be as much as $500 million.”

Read more on PostPolitics.com

Fact Checker: Can Obama keep paying Social Security benefits if the debt ceiling is reached?


GOP indecision on 2012 may give Rick Perry a ‘huge opening’


West Wing briefing: Should Obama back McConnell’s debt ceiling proposal?

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Maryland immigrant tuition bill goes to voters

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A Maryland law that would give in-state tuition breaks to illegal immigrant students at public colleges seems headed to voters as a referendum after a successful petition drive by its opponents.

Maryland’s version of the DREAM Act would have assured lower resident tuition rates for illegal immigrants at state universities. The cumulative savings — or costs, depending on one’s perspective — amount to an estimated $40,000 per student in a four-year program.

Opponents of the law today reached the necessary 100,000 signatures to throw the measure back to voters as a referendum in November 2012, according to my colleague Aaron C. Davis. The law would have taken effect this month.

Maryland’s law ran counter to a national trend. At least three states — Arizona, Colorado and Georgia — have moved to deny in-state tuition to illegal immigrants since 2006. At least 10 states, including California and Texas, have laws that grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, but several repeal efforts are underway.

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New study shows how terrorist activities are evolving

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Ex-Goldman Sachs official may pursue lawsuit against SEC

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‘Flexibility’ may help states meet key part of health-care law

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‘Flexibility’ may help states meet key part of health-care law

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CIA moves to protect key analyst in bin Laden raid

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The Hunt for Osama bin Laden


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CIA moves to protect key analyst in bin Laden raid

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The Hunt for Osama bin Laden


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Six months into chairmanship, Issa isn’t what either side expected

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Posted on : 12-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Six months into Issa’s tenure as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, neither side’s predictions have proved quite right — although they still disagree about whether he’s doing a good job. And the congressman has been surprised by the experience.

“There’s more job than I expected,” Issa said in an interview last week. “With the limited resources that we have . . . we’ve done about 80 hearings and forums [but] what you find is it’s not even half of what we should have looked into or what we should do. We have a huge backlog.”

Issa helped set the bar high, saying in early January that Obama’s was “one of the most corrupt administrations” of modern times. If that were true, it seemed to follow, scandals should be easy to find.

That has not been the case, though Issa is particularly proud of the work his committee has done on Operation Fast and Furious, a controversial venture by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that targeted Mexican gun traffickers but has been linked to the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Issa has also proposed a broad overhaul of the U.S. Postal Service that would eliminate Saturday mail delivery. And he has pushed to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in workforce costs across the federal government.

“Issa’s style is much more focused than the media perceived it would be. And the White House wanted to make him into something he isn’t,” said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), who chairs an oversight subcommittee.

Although the committee has produced few major investigative breakthroughs, McHenry said it has been hitting “the singles and doubles” that could eventually build into something larger.

“Expectations that you would have an immediate ‘aha’ moment are removed from reality,” he said.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), another subcommittee head, said “there’s a learning curve” for a new chairman but predicted that many of the investigations the committee has underway would bear real fruit by next year.

Democrats paint a different picture.

“Frankly, I think the jury is still out on what kind of chairman he wants to be,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (Va.), a member of the oversight panel. “At times we see the statesman Darrell Issa and other times he has reverted to the very petty, partisan Darrell Issa.”

During Issa’s short tenure, Democrats have compiled a long list of complaints, including the topics he chooses to investigate as well as the way he handles subpoenas and minority witnesses.

They think Issa suffers not from a lack of resources but a lack of focus. He doesn’t have to investigate everything, they argue, and would be better served diving into the details of a few major issues rather than flitting around a larger universe of topics.

“When I read the [mission] of the committee, I agree with every word of it. I just want to do it,” Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the oversight panel, said, referring to the committee’s broad investigative mandate. He added that the panel could be much more effective if Issa sought the cooperation of Democrats rather than striking out on his own.

Issa disputed that notion, saying that Democrats have been obstructionists.

“It’s for the majority to lead,” he said. “It’s for the minority to ask to be included, to work in an inclusive fashion. . . . My hand is out there and it’s open, but every time we’re doing an investigation which we determine is important, [Democrats] are there saying we shouldn’t be doing it.”

Issa has suffered at least one high-profile embarrassment. In March, he fired spokesman Kurt Bardella after it emerged that Bardella had leaked e-mails from journalists to a New York Times reporter working on a book about the culture of Washington.

The incident shed unflattering light on Bardella’s hyper-aggressive efforts to draw media attention to his boss, including the aide’s acknowledgment to the New Yorker magazine that his goal was “to make Darrell Issa an actual political figure.” Coincidentally or not, Issa has been less visible since then.

“I certainly thought he was going to be very aggressive and partisan. He was looking for news attention,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a former chairman of the oversight panel. “But he has lowered his profile. . . . I thought he would be a lot more visible than he has been to date.”

Issa said he has deliberately sought less attention for himself all year to draw more for the work of his subcommittee chairmen. But that doesn’t mean he has become shy.

“If we have an opportunity to drive the message, we go where we can drive the message,” he said. “That’s not going to change.”

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Six months into chairmanship, Issa isn’t what either side expected

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Posted on : 12-07-2011 | By : staffwriter | In : Feeds, us news, washington post, washington post politics
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Six months into Issa’s tenure as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, neither side’s predictions have proved quite right — although they still disagree about whether he’s doing a good job. And the congressman has been surprised by the experience.

“There’s more job than I expected,” Issa said in an interview last week. “With the limited resources that we have . . . we’ve done about 80 hearings and forums [but] what you find is it’s not even half of what we should have looked into or what we should do. We have a huge backlog.”

Issa helped set the bar high, saying in early January that Obama’s was “one of the most corrupt administrations” of modern times. If that were true, it seemed to follow, scandals should be easy to find.

That has not been the case, though Issa is particularly proud of the work his committee has done on Operation Fast and Furious, a controversial venture by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that targeted Mexican gun traffickers but has been linked to the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Issa has also proposed a broad overhaul of the U.S. Postal Service that would eliminate Saturday mail delivery. And he has pushed to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in workforce costs across the federal government.

“Issa’s style is much more focused than the media perceived it would be. And the White House wanted to make him into something he isn’t,” said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), who chairs an oversight subcommittee.

Although the committee has produced few major investigative breakthroughs, McHenry said it has been hitting “the singles and doubles” that could eventually build into something larger.

“Expectations that you would have an immediate ‘aha’ moment are removed from reality,” he said.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), another subcommittee head, said “there’s a learning curve” for a new chairman but predicted that many of the investigations the committee has underway would bear real fruit by next year.

Democrats paint a different picture.

“Frankly, I think the jury is still out on what kind of chairman he wants to be,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (Va.), a member of the oversight panel. “At times we see the statesman Darrell Issa and other times he has reverted to the very petty, partisan Darrell Issa.”

During Issa’s short tenure, Democrats have compiled a long list of complaints, including the topics he chooses to investigate as well as the way he handles subpoenas and minority witnesses.

They think Issa suffers not from a lack of resources but a lack of focus. He doesn’t have to investigate everything, they argue, and would be better served diving into the details of a few major issues rather than flitting around a larger universe of topics.

“When I read the [mission] of the committee, I agree with every word of it. I just want to do it,” Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the oversight panel, said, referring to the committee’s broad investigative mandate. He added that the panel could be much more effective if Issa sought the cooperation of Democrats rather than striking out on his own.

Issa disputed that notion, saying that Democrats have been obstructionists.

“It’s for the majority to lead,” he said. “It’s for the minority to ask to be included, to work in an inclusive fashion. . . . My hand is out there and it’s open, but every time we’re doing an investigation which we determine is important, [Democrats] are there saying we shouldn’t be doing it.”

Issa has suffered at least one high-profile embarrassment. In March, he fired spokesman Kurt Bardella after it emerged that Bardella had leaked e-mails from journalists to a New York Times reporter working on a book about the culture of Washington.

The incident shed unflattering light on Bardella’s hyper-aggressive efforts to draw media attention to his boss, including the aide’s acknowledgment to the New Yorker magazine that his goal was “to make Darrell Issa an actual political figure.” Coincidentally or not, Issa has been less visible since then.

“I certainly thought he was going to be very aggressive and partisan. He was looking for news attention,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a former chairman of the oversight panel. “But he has lowered his profile. . . . I thought he would be a lot more visible than he has been to date.”

Issa said he has deliberately sought less attention for himself all year to draw more for the work of his subcommittee chairmen. But that doesn’t mean he has become shy.

“If we have an opportunity to drive the message, we go where we can drive the message,” he said. “That’s not going to change.”

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