Tuesday, October 08, 2013 2:44:04 AM
A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning
"You are here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare. This is a fight we can win." SENATOR TED CRUZ, speaking in August to a Heritage Action gathering in Dallas
Michael Stravato for The New York Times
Graphic
House Republican Efforts to Repeal or Weaken the Health Care Law
As part of a multipronged conservative effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, House Republicans have voted dozens of times to kill all or part of the law. The chart shows House votes that Republican leaders identified as containing at least some provision weakening the health care law.
The New York Times
Source: Clerk of the House; House Republican leadership
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/06/us/politics/06convervatives-graphic.html
DRIVING FORCES
David Koch of Americans for Prosperity, Michael A. Needham of Heritage Action and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III played roles in the health law fight.
From Left: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images; Doug Mcschooler/Associated Press; Mike Theiler/Getty Images
SOWING DOUBT
A site by Americans for Prosperity, which has spent $5.5 million recently on television ads critical of the health care law.
Americans for Prosperity
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MIKE McINTIRE
Published: October 5, 2013
WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html ] was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare [ http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/ryanriebe/joint-letter-on-sequester-savings ],” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.
“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”
Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.
To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.
With polls showing Americans deeply divided over the law, conservatives believe that the public is behind them. Although the law’s opponents say that shutting down the government was not their objective, the activists anticipated that a shutdown could occur — and worked with members of the Tea Party [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html ] caucus in Congress who were excited about drawing a red line against a law they despise.
A defunding “tool kit [ http://www.teapartypatriots.org/2013/09/get-your-defunding-obamacare-toolkit/ ]” created in early September included talking points for the question, “What happens when you shut down the government and you are blamed for it?” The suggested answer was the one House Republicans give today: “We are simply calling to fund the entire government except for the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.”
The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.
The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight. Included was $5 million to Generation Opportunity, which created a buzz last month with an Internet advertisement showing a menacing Uncle Sam figure popping up between a woman’s legs during a gynecological exam [at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92205081 and preceding and following].
The groups have also sought to pressure vulnerable Republican members of Congress with scorecards keeping track of their health care votes; have burned faux [ http://burnoccard.fwsites.org/ ] “Obamacare cards” on college campuses; and have distributed scripts for phone calls to Congressional offices, sample letters to editors and Twitter and Facebook offerings for followers to present as their own.
One sample Twitter offering — “Obamacare is a train wreck” — is a common refrain for Speaker John A. Boehner.
As the defunding movement picked up steam among outside advocates, Republicans who sounded tepid became targets. The Senate Conservatives Fund [ http://www.senateconservatives.com/ ], a political action committee dedicated to “electing true conservatives,” ran radio advertisements against three Republican incumbents.
Heritage Action ran critical Internet advertisements in the districts of 100 Republican lawmakers who had failed to sign a letter by a North Carolina freshman, Representative Mark Meadows, urging Mr. Boehner to take up the defunding cause.
“They’ve been hugely influential,” said David Wasserman, who tracks House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “When else in our history has a freshman member of Congress from North Carolina been able to round up a gang of 80 that’s essentially ground the government to a halt?”
On Capitol Hill, the advocates found willing partners in Tea Party conservatives, who have repeatedly threatened to shut down the government if they do not get their way on spending issues. This time they said they were so alarmed by the health law that they were willing to risk a shutdown over it. (“This is exactly what the public wants,” Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, said on the eve of the shutdown.)
Despite Mrs. Bachmann’s comments, not all of the groups have been on board with the defunding campaign. Some, like the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity [ http://americansforprosperity.org/ ], which spent $5.5 million on health care television advertisements [ http://americansforprosperity.org/michigan/newsroom/afp-launches-new-tv-ad-tricias-story/ ] over the past three months, are more focused on sowing public doubts about the law. But all have a common goal, which is to cripple a measure that Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and leader of the defunding effort, has likened to a horror movie.
“We view this as a long-term effort,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity. He said his group expected to spend “tens of millions” of dollars on a “multifront effort” that includes working to prevent states from expanding Medicaid [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicaid/index.html ] under the law. The group’s goal is not to defund the law.
“We want to see this law repealed,” Mr. Phillips said.
A Familiar Tactic
The crowd was raucous at the Hilton Anatole, just north of downtown Dallas, when Mr. Needham’s group, Heritage Action, arrived on a Tuesday in August for the second stop on a nine-city “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour.” Nearly 1,000 people turned out to hear two stars of the Tea Party movement: Mr. Cruz, and Jim DeMint, a former South Carolina senator who runs the Heritage Foundation.
“You’re here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare,” declared Mr. Cruz, who would go on to rail against the law on the Senate floor in September with a monologue that ran for 21 hours. “This is a fight we can win.”
Although Mr. Cruz is new to the Senate, the tactic of defunding in Washington is not. For years, Congress has banned the use of certain federal money to pay for abortions, except in the case of incest and rape, by attaching the so-called Hyde Amendment to spending bills.
After the health law passed in 2010, Todd Tiahrt, then a Republican congressman from Kansas, proposed defunding bits and pieces of it. He said he spoke to Mr. Boehner’s staff about the idea while the Supreme Court, which upheld the central provision, was weighing the law’s constitutionality.
“There just wasn’t the appetite for it at the time,” Mr. Tiahrt said in an interview. “They thought, we don’t need to worry about it because the Supreme Court will strike it down.”
But the idea of using the appropriations process to defund an entire federal program, particularly one as far-reaching as the health care overhaul, raised the stakes considerably. In an interview, Mr. DeMint, who left the Senate to join the Heritage Foundation in January, said he had been thinking about it since the law’s passage, in part because Republican leaders were not more aggressive.
“They’ve been through a series of C.R.s and debt limits,” Mr. DeMint said, referring to continuing resolutions on spending, “and all the time there was discussion of ‘O.K., we’re not going to fight the Obamacare fight, we’ll do it next time.’ The conservatives who ran in 2010 promising to repeal it kept hearing, ‘This is not the right time to fight this battle.’ ”
Mr. DeMint is hardly alone in his distaste for the health law, or his willingness to do something about it. In the three years since Mr. Obama signed the health measure, Tea Party-inspired groups have mobilized, aided by a financing network that continues to grow, both in its complexity and the sheer amount of money that flows through it.
A review of tax records, campaign finance reports and corporate filings shows that hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised and spent since 2012 by organizations, many of them loosely connected, leading opposition to the measure.
One of the biggest sources of conservative money is Freedom Partners, a tax-exempt “business league” that claims more than 200 members, each of whom pays at least $100,000 in dues. The group’s board is headed by a longtime executive of Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by the Koch brothers, who were among the original financiers of the Tea Party movement. The Kochs declined to comment.
While Freedom Partners has financed organizations that are pushing to defund the law, like Heritage Action and Tea Party Patriots, Freedom Partners has not advocated that. A spokesman for the group, James Davis, said it was more focused on “educating Americans around the country on the negative impacts of Obamacare.”
The largest recipient of Freedom Partners cash — about $115 million — was the Center to Protect Patient Rights, according to the groups’ latest tax filings. Run by a political consultant with ties to the Kochs and listing an Arizona post office box for its address, the center appears to be little more than a clearinghouse for donations to still more groups, including American Commitment and the 60 Plus Association, both ardent foes of the health care law.
American Commitment and 60 Plus were among a handful of groups calling themselves the “Repeal Coalition” that sent a letter in August urging Republican leaders in the House and the Senate to insist “at a minimum” in a one-year delay of carrying out the health care law as part of any budget deal. Another group, the Conservative 50 Plus Alliance, delivered a defunding petition with 68,700 signatures to the Senate.
In the fight to shape public opinion, conservatives face well-organized liberal foes. Enroll America, a nonprofit group allied with the Obama White House, is waging a campaign to persuade millions of the uninsured to buy coverage. The law’s supporters are also getting huge assistance from the insurance industry, which is expected to spend $1 billion on advertising to help sell its plans on the exchanges.
“It is David versus Goliath,” said Mr. Phillips of Americans for Prosperity.
But conservatives are finding that with relatively small advertising buys, they can make a splash. Generation Opportunity, the youth-oriented outfit behind the “Creepy Uncle Sam” ads, is spending $750,000 on that effort, aimed at dissuading young people — a cohort critical to the success of the health care overhaul — from signing up for insurance under the new law.
The group receives substantial backing from Freedom Partners and appears ready to expand. Recently, Generation Opportunity moved into spacious new offices in Arlington, Va., where exposed ductwork, Ikea chairs and a Ping-Pong table give off the feel of a Silicon Valley start-up.
Its executive director, Evan Feinberg, a 29-year-old former Capitol Hill aide and onetime instructor for a leadership institute founded by Charles Koch, said there would be more Uncle Sam ads, coupled with college campus visits, this fall. Two other groups, FreedomWorks, with its “Burn Your Obamacare Card” protests, and Young Americans for Liberty, are also running campus events.
“A lot of folks have asked us, ‘Are we trying to sabotage the law?’ ” Mr. Feinberg said in an interview last week. His answer echoes the Freedom Partners philosophy: “Our goal is to educate and empower young people.”
Critical Timing
But many on the Republican right wanted to do more.
Mr. Meese’s low-profile coalition, the Conservative Action Project, which seeks to find common ground among leaders of an array of fiscally and socially conservative groups, was looking ahead to last Tuesday, when the new online health insurance marketplaces, called exchanges, were set to open. If the law took full effect as planned, many conservatives feared, it would be nearly impossible to repeal — even if a Republican president were elected in 2016.
“I think people realized that with the imminent beginning of Obamacare, that this was a critical time to make every effort to stop something,” Mr. Meese said in an interview. (He has since stepped down as the coalition’s chairman and has been succeeded by David McIntosh, a former congressman from Indiana.)
The defunding idea, Mr. Meese said, was “a logical strategy.” The idea drew broad support. Fiscal conservatives like Chris Chocola, the president of the Club for Growth, signed on to the blueprint. So did social and religious conservatives, like the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition.
The document set a target date: March 27, when a continuing resolution [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/federal_budget_us/index.html ] allowing the government to function was to expire. Its message was direct: “Conservatives should not approve a C.R. unless it defunds Obamacare.”
But the March date came and went without a defunding struggle. In the Senate, Mr. Cruz and Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, talked up the defunding idea, but it went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled chamber. In the House, Mr. Boehner wanted to concentrate instead on locking in the across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration, and Tea Party lawmakers followed his lead. Outside advocates were unhappy but held their fire.
“We didn’t cause any trouble,” Mr. Chocola said.
Yet by summer, with an August recess looming and another temporary spending bill expiring at the end of September, the groups were done waiting.
“I remember talking to reporters at the end of July, and they said, ‘This didn’t go anywhere,’ ” Mr. Needham recalled. “What all of us felt at the time was, this was never going to be a strategy that was going to win inside the Beltway. It was going to be a strategy where, during August, people would go home and hear from their constituents, saying: ‘You pledged to do everything you could to stop Obamacare. Will you defund it?’ ”
Heritage Action, which has trained 6,000 people it calls sentinels around the country, sent them to open meetings and other events to confront their elected representatives. Its “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour,” which began in Fayetteville, Ark., on Aug. 19 and ended 10 days later in Wilmington, Del., drew hundreds at every stop.
The Senate Conservatives Fund, led by Mr. DeMint when he was in the Senate, put up a Web site in July called dontfundobamacare.com [ http://dontfundobamacare.com/ ] and ran television ads featuring Mr. Cruz and Mr. Lee urging people to tell their representatives not to fund the law.
When Senator Richard M. Burr, a North Carolina Republican, told a reporter [ http://thehill.com/video/senate/313673-sen-burr-sen-lees-proposal-to-defund-obamacare-dumbest-idea-ive-ever-heardhttp://thehill.com/video/senate/313673-sen-burr-sen-lees-proposal-to-defund-obamacare-dumbest-idea-ive-ever-heard ] that defunding the law was “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” the fund bought a radio ad to attack him. Two other Republican senators up for re-election in 2014, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were also targeted. Both face Tea Party challengers.
In Washington, Tea Party Patriots, which created the defunding tool kit, set up a Web site, exemptamerica.com [ http://exemptamerica.com/ ], to promote a rally last month showcasing many of the Republicans in Congress whom Democrats — and a number of fellow Republicans — say are most responsible for the shutdown.
While conservatives believe that the public will back them on defunding, a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority — 57 percent — disapproves of cutting off funding as a way to stop the law.
Last week, with the health care exchanges open for business and a number of prominent Republicans complaining that the “Defund Obamacare” strategy was politically damaging and pointless, Mr. Needham of Heritage Action said he felt good about what the groups had accomplished.
“It really was a groundswell,” he said, “that changed Washington from the outside in.”
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Related
News Analysis: The Benefits of Intransigence (October 6, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/sunday-review/the-benefits-of-intransigence.html
Related in Opinion
Paul Krugman: The Boehner Bunglers (October 7, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/opinion/krugman-the-boehner-bunglers.html
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© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]
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A U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman’s Fall
A closed sign hangs at the entrance to the U.S. Treasury building in Washington D.C. on Oct. 3, 2013. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew has said the government will have only $30 billion of cash left by Oct. 17 to meet its commitments.
Julia Schmalz/Bloomberg
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., leaves a press conference after telling reporters that Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Republicans are the obstacle to ending the government shutdown crisis, at the Capitol on Oct. 3, 2013.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Video [embedded]
Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer and co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., talks about the "dysfunction" in Washington and the potential impact of a U.S. debt default on the economy. He speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop."
(Source: Bloomberg)
By Yalman Onaran - Oct 6, 2013 10:55 PM CT
Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen.
Failure by the world’s largest borrower to pay its debt -- unprecedented in modern history -- will devastate stock markets from Brazil to Zurich, halt a $5 trillion lending mechanism for investors who rely on Treasuries, blow up borrowing costs for billions of people and companies, ravage the dollar and throw the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression. Among the dozens of money managers, economists, bankers, traders and former government officials interviewed for this story, few view a U.S. default as anything but a financial apocalypse.
The $12 trillion of outstanding government debt is 23 times the $517 billion Lehman owed when it filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008. As politicians butt heads over raising the debt ceiling, executives from Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Warren Buffett to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd C. Blankfein have warned that going over the edge would be catastrophic.
“If it were to occur -- and it’s a big if -- one would expect a series of legal triggers, potentially transmitting the default to many other markets,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., the world’s largest fixed-income manager. “All this would add to the headwinds facing economic growth. It would also undermine the role of the U.S. in the world economy.”
Lehman Aftermath
The U.S. stock market lost almost half its value in the five months following Lehman’s failure. The country had its worst recession since the Great Depression (INDU), taking the global economy down with it. Unemployment (USURTOT) surged to 10 percent, the highest in three decades.
Another depression was prevented only by unprecedented action by the Federal Reserve, which pumped $3 trillion into the financial system. The U.S. Treasury provided about $300 billion of capital for the nation’s banks.
“If we miss an interest payment, that would blow Lehman out of the water,” said Tim Bitsberger, a former Treasury official under President George W. Bush and now a New York-based managing director at BNP Paribas SA. “Lehman was an isolated company, and now we are talking about the U.S. government.”
Buffett has asked politicians to stop using the debt limit as a weapon in policy debates. Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman urged employees to contact their congressmen to remind them about the “unacceptable consequences” of a default.
‘Nuclear Bombs’
“It should be like nuclear bombs, basically too horrible to use,” Buffett, 83, said in an interview published by Fortune magazine last week.
One unexpected consequence of Lehman’s collapse was the seizing up of the repurchase agreement, or repo, market -- a form of secured, short-term borrowing used by Wall Street banks and investment firms. Many of Lehman’s trading counterparts discovered the collateral they believed was backing their loans wasn’t there to grab as rules allowed. That scared investors in the rest of the market, closing off other trades and leading to fire sales of securities and further price declines.
A government default could freeze the repo market more than Lehman’s collapse because U.S. debt forms its backbone. At least $2.8 trillion of Treasuries serve as collateral for repo and reverse-repo loans, according to Fed data.
‘Holy Cripes’
In the event of a default, Treasuries might no longer be eligible as collateral for repo agreements, according to James Kochan, Wells Fargo Funds Management LLC’s chief fixed-income strategist. The cheap funding for the holdings lowers the yields demanded on the investments, and unwinding the positions could amplify losses for lenders and borrowers.
If Treasuries were ejected from the market, “Well, holy cripes,” Kochan said in an interview.
In 2011, the last time Congress was gridlocked over the extension of the debt ceiling, repo rates rose as money-market funds pulled back because they didn’t want the risk of holding a security in default.
“A lot of this is about fear of the unknown,” said Scott Skyrm, a former head of repo and money markets for Newedge USA LLC and author of “The Money Noose: Jon Corzine and the Collapse of MF Global.” “There is no upside to being in the market in that environment, so people pull out.”
The U.S. didn’t default on its debt in 2011. Republicans and Democrats reached a last-minute deal to raise the borrowing limit. Even so, the posturing hurt consumer confidence and wiped out $6 trillion of value from global stocks.
Historical Lessons
While none of the people interviewed for this story expect the world’s largest economy to default this time either, most say the chances of it happening now are higher than in the past.
“It would be insane to default, but it’s no longer a zero-percent probability,” said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund who teaches economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a columnist for Bloomberg View.
The U.S. hasn’t defaulted since 1790, when the newly formed nation deferred until 1801 interest obligations on debt it assumed from the states, according to “This Time Is Different,” a history of financial crises by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
Technical Default
In 1979, the U.S. was late to make payments on about $122 million of bills, in part because of “severe technical difficulties” that the Treasury said stemmed from a word-processing failure, according to the Financial Review’s August 1989 issue. While payments were made after a short delay, including with interest for tardiness, the hiccup caused yields to rise by half a percentage point and stay there for months.
A default today could be deemed “technical” because it would be the result of the government’s unwillingness to pay, not its ability, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts including Alex Roever said in a report last week.
In a technical default, only the prices of Treasury bonds that mature or have coupon payments would fall, according to the analysts. Money-market funds wouldn’t be forced to sell government bonds, and the Fed probably would continue accepting them as collateral for emergency cash.
That distinction is nothing more than an effort to downplay the danger of default, according to MIT’s Johnson. Sovereign defaults are always about the political will to pay because most governments can print money to make payments if they want to, Johnson said.
Insufficient Funds
Labeled technical or not, a default is still a default, said Jim Grant, founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.
“People have typically turned to Treasuries as a safe haven, but what will happen when they realize it’s not safe anymore,” said Grant, who has followed interest rates since the 1970s. “Financial markets are all confidence-based. If that confidence is shaken, you have disaster.”
Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew has said the government will have only $30 billion of cash left by Oct. 17 to meet its commitments. Those can run as high as $60 billion a day, which means the Treasury will need to borrow more to meet its liabilities, Lew said. Goldman Sachs expects the Treasury’s cash balance to be depleted by Oct. 31 and “possibly quite a bit sooner,” analysts at the bank wrote in an Oct. 5 report.
The Treasury has $120 billion of short-term bonds coming due on Oct. 17, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. An additional $93 billion of bills are due on Oct. 24. On the last day of the month, $150 billion needs to be paid back, including two-year and five-year notes that mature. The total due from Oct. 17 through Nov. 7 is $417 billion.
Fed Support
While some expect a 2013 default will drive up yields only on Treasury securities coming due, others including former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman see a wider impact in bond yields, pushing up borrowing costs.
“That would be higher interest costs over some considerable period of time for the U.S. and for U.S. taxpayers,” said Altman, who’s chairman of New York-based investment bank Evercore Partners Inc.
The yield on 10-year U.S. bonds dropped to a two-month low of 2.58 percent on Oct. 3. While short-term bill rates and the cost to insure against a default have risen, volatility in Treasuries has fallen, a sign that investor confidence in the Federal Reserve’s bond-purchase program is outweighing worries over the budget battle.
Rating Downgrade
Some point to Standard & Poor’s 2011 downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, which led to an increase in Treasury prices, not a drop. Even after the rating was lowered by one level to AA+ from AAA, investors continued buying U.S. government bonds as they flocked to safety, according to Joe Davis, chief economist at Vanguard Group Inc.
A downgrade to default rating would be different, said Peter Tchir, founder of New York-based TF Market Advisors. Investors, structured vehicles, collateral agreements, derivatives contracts and other trading covenants have ratings-based rules that could force the replacement of Treasuries in a trade or portfolio, he said.
“Once the system starts to break down related to settlement and payments, then liquidity disappears, as we saw after Lehman,” Tchir said. “Perhaps the things we’re worried about now will be fine after a U.S. default, but who knows what others will not be.”
‘Create Chaos’
Treasuries are among the most popular forms of collateral pledged at derivatives clearinghouses, including the one owned by CME Group Inc. (CME), the world’s largest futures market. Government agencies such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which use interest-rate swaps and derivatives to hedge mortgage portfolios, would be affected by a downgrade because it could lower their counterparty ratings and result in more collateral being demanded by trading partners.
“We can’t even imagine all the things that might happen, just like Henry Paulson couldn’t imagine all the bad things that might happen if he let Lehman go down,” said Bill Isaac, chairman of Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp and a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., referring to the former U.S. Treasury secretary. “It would create chaos in financial markets.”
Capital Shortfalls
Higher borrowing costs could slow the housing recovery. If 30-year mortgage rates climbed to 6.5 percent from 4.5 percent, a borrower who can now afford the monthly payment on a $200,000 loan would only be able to take on about $160,000 of debt when buying a property, forcing down sale prices.
It would be “bad -- both for affordability and for consumer confidence,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist for Trulia Inc., an online property-listing service.
Banks would have to write down securities on their books that are losing value and face capital shortfalls, according to MIT’s Johnson.
“The government wouldn’t have the cash to rescue the banks this time either,” Johnson said.
About half of the U.S. debt is held by foreign governments, central banks and other overseas investors, according to Treasury data. A default would throw those holdings into question as well as the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, Johnson said. During the 2011 debt-ceiling scare, foreign investors shunned Treasury auctions for about three months, according to data compiled by JPMorgan.
China, Japan
China is the largest [foreign/non-U.S., see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=65552869 and preceding and following] holder of U.S. Treasuries, with $1.3 trillion in July, according to Treasury data. Japan follows [as second-lagest foreign/non-U.S. holder] with $1.1 trillion.
Even if Treasury prices aren’t affected by a default, the damage in other markets could be devastating. U.S. stocks fell 7 percent in one day when Congress rejected the government’s bank-rescue package in 2008, before passing it a few days later.
The market shocks would be enough to tip the U.S. back into recession and drag the world economy down, according to Desmond Lachman, a fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. The event could prove to be the trigger that reverses a weak and fragile recovery, said William Cunningham, head of credit portfolios for the investment arm of Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. Lehman’s collapse was a similar spark, he said.
“Is this the straw among other things that tips an economy without drivers of growth back down into a negative spiral?” Cunningham said.
War Rooms
While a short-lived default might be fixed without major damage to the global economy, drawing a line between short and long isn’t easy, according to Evercore’s Altman.
“If you missed an interest payment by two hours, the markets might look entirely beyond that and forgive you,” Altman said. “If you miss an interest payment by two days, four days, six days, that’s a different story. It’s very difficult to be scientific about this.”
During the final days of Lehman Brothers, Wall Street firms set up war rooms to chart the potential impact of the firm’s demise and prepare strategies to cope with the consequences. Their scenarios, which focused on credit-default swaps, didn’t forecast the contagion that quickly spread after the bankruptcy.
Now, some banks are preparing contingency plans for a possible U.S. default, such as stocking retail branches with more cash, the New York Times reported last week. Those preparations might prove useless once again.
“Nobody knows what would happen if there were a default because the reality is there’s never been even a technical default in the U.S.,” said Russ Koesterich, chief investment strategist at BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager. “Everyone’s flying blind.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Yalman Onaran in New York at yonaran@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net; Christine Harper at charper@bloomberg.net
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Related
QuickTake
So What Exactly Is the Debt Ceiling, and Where Did It Come From?
http://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/the-debt-ceiling/
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©2013 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-07/a-u-s-default-seen-as-catastrophe-dwarfing-lehman-s-fall.html [with comments]
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Cruz urges GOP to use debt ceiling fight for Obamacare changes
October 6, 2013
Legislation raising the debt ceiling is among the best leverage that Congress has to rein in the White House and should include changes to the nation's new health insurance system, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."
Cruz said that in addition to dismantling Obamacare, Republicans should also look for a "significant" plan to reduce new spending and avoid new taxes. ...
[...]
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57606227/cruz-urges-gop-to-use-debt-ceiling-fight-for-obamacare-changes/ [with comments]
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How The Government Shutdown Will End: 'The Market Is Just Going to Smash Us'
House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, left, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, third from left, leave the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2013.
(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 10/05/2013 10:10 am EDT | Updated: 10/07/2013 11:30 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- With Congress unable to move, the end to the standoff in the nation's capital over Obamacare and funding the government is looking ever more certain to come down to a battle over the nation's debt limit -- and an epic smackdown from the global market.
Friday, all sides made clear they are not willing to move. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Republicans will not budge unless Democrats start negotiating over President Barack Obama's health care law. "This isn't some damn game. All we want is to sit down and have a discussion," Boehner said.
Democrats and the president said they will talk only after the GOP releases its chokehold on government funding and the economy by letting the House vote on a six-week funding bill that the Senate passed. "If Speaker Boehner will simply allow that vote to take place, we can end this shutdown," Obama said.
The shutdown is an economic drain that has dragged down consumer confidence by 14 points, according the Gallup. Economists say failing to raise the debt limit of $16.7 trillion [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/debt-limit-showdown_n_3950890.html ] -- forecast to be reached on Oct. 17 -- would be a catastrophe.
And lawmakers are starting to fear nothing but an economic near-cataclysm will break the impasse in the House.
"I'm apprehensive that we're looking at at least a couple of weeks until we bump up against the debt ceiling and the market is an outside force that pistol whips us into our senses," said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who has already begun preparing for the showdown by circulating a letter -- with nearly all the Democrats signing on -- calling for a clean raising of the limit.
However, Welch was not sure even presenting a unified front would move Republicans -- including those who are sympathetic.
"Ultimately what will get them to move is the market reaction. The market is just going to smash us for our congressional abstinence," he said. "At that point they'll cave. And Boehner knows that."
The question is why is has to be that way. Some Republicans who are fed up with the standoff agree with Democrats on the cause -- the tea party, currently led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
And they say the showdown won't end until Boehner stops listening to Cruz and company, dubbed "lemmings" by frustrated Boehner loyalist Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).
"The lemmings, they're followers. They're just waiting for the next guy in front of the mic, or the the next guy that's on TV. And they're going to run out and follow them. Because they're anti-leadership," Nunes told reporters this week. "They have never followed any leadership plan. Now all of a sudden, the leadership has adopted their plan, and we're fully implementing their strategy and plan, which I think is actually a lack of a strategy. It's not a plan."
Democrats like Welch agree completely with Nunes' point.
"What you have now is a minority in the Republican Party in one house of Congress saying, 'Shutdown and default unless we get our way,'" Welch told HuffPost. "They know it won't be passed by the Senate; they know it won't be signed by the president. So they say, 'Well, instead of winning elections in the Senate, instead of winning the presidency, we're gong to burn down the U.S. economy.'"
"The irony is that John Boehner, who is a man of the institution, said his speakership was about trying to return to regular order, and I happen to believe he was quite serious about that," Welch said. "But there's nothing that will destroy regular order more than the tactic of shutdown and the tactic of default. He's now essentially turned over the whole institutional legitimacy of the House to guys in the extreme wing of his party who have no respect for regular order."
Given the stakes, Republicans and some observers have asked why Democrats are not at least willing to come up with some sort of fig leaf or small compromise.
For Democrats there are two reasons. First, the "clean" funding bill that the House leaders refuse to bring to a vote was already a compromise that Democrats made to get the vote in first place. It's a short-term budget that accepts sequestration-level spending cuts.
"The Democrats are accepting the Republican budget number, and we don't like that, so this has actually been a victory for the Republicans on the budget," Welch said.
But the bigger reason is that, as a senior aide told HuffPost privately Friday in order to speak candidly on negotiations, Democrats see the standoff as an institutional crisis in which, if they give in, Congress will be beholden to the most determined minority on every important piece of legislation where the side that is willing to do the most damage wins.
Welch said he hopes Boehner and the more moderate members of his caucus will not let that happen.
"If we default, that will be a signal that we've gone from dysfunction to disintegration," he said. "I talk to lots of my Republican colleagues and friends, and they're dismayed."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/government-shutdown-debt-limit_n_4049056.html [with embedded video report, and (over 5,000) comments]
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Boehner Hews to Hard Line in Demanding Concessions From Obama
Speaker John A. Boehner, at the Capitol on Saturday, said on Sunday that there would be no vote to reopen the government.
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
By JACKIE CALMES and JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: October 6, 2013
WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner stood his ground on Sunday alongside the most conservative Republicans in Congress, insisting that the House would not vote to finance and reopen the government or raise the nation’s borrowing limit without concessions from President Obama on the health care law.
“The fact is, this fight was going to come one way or the other,” Mr. Boehner said on the ABC News program “This Week,” adding, “We’re in the fight.”
With his hard line, Mr. Boehner reaffirmed that the stalemate with the White House over the six-day-old government shutdown was now compounded by an even more economically risky fight over raising the government’s borrowing limit by Oct. 17 to pay for bills already incurred.
Most of the government remains shuttered with no end in sight, and markets and businesses are growing increasingly fretful over the chaos that could result from the first government default on its debt.
Both houses of Congress will be back in session on Monday afternoon after making no progress toward breaking the budget deadlock last week. With Mr. Boehner and other Republicans expanding their demands from changes in the health care law, which was passed in 2010, to broader budget reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, senior administration officials said the White House would challenge them to propose specific savings they want from Medicare. On Sunday, Mr. Boehner disputed those lawmakers — Democrats as well as some Republicans — who have said a bipartisan majority exists in the House to approve the money needed to run the government in the new fiscal year, which began last Tuesday, if the speaker would defy his most conservative Republican colleagues [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html (first item this post)] and allow a vote on the spending measure with no conditions, a so-called clean bill.
“There are not the votes in the House to pass a clean C.R.,” he said on the ABC program, referring to a continuing resolution to provide money for military and domestic programs.
The speaker’s assessment that he did not have the votes to pass a clean budget bill was contradicted by members of both parties. “I’m positive that a clean C.R. would pass,” said Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York.
“If it went on the floor tomorrow, I could see anywhere from 50 to 75 Republicans voting for it,” he added. “And if it were a secret ballot, 150.”
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democratic leader, was just as blunt in a telephone interview. “Nobody believes that,” he said of the speaker’s comment.
Mr. Schumer challenged Mr. Boehner to put a clean budget bill on the floor and prove that he is right. He called the speaker’s remarks “a step back.”
“I’m hearing from my Republican colleagues that this is a strategy going nowhere that’s hurting them and hurting the country,” he added, noting that several Republicans have approached him recently asking him to help broker a deal that ends the shutdown. “What they’re saying to me is we’ve got to help Boehner find a way out of this,” Mr. Schumer said.
Mr. Boehner also said the House would not pass an essential increase in the debt limit without concessions from Mr. Obama. Republicans have said in recent days that Mr. Boehner had privately assured them that he would not allow a breach of the debt limit, though it was unclear how far he would be willing to go to avoid it.
In his television appearance, he said firmly, “We’re not going to pass a clean debt-limit increase.”
“I told the president, ‘There’s no way we’re going to pass one,’ ” he added. “The votes are not in the House to pass a clean debt limit. And the president is risking default by not having a conversation with us.”
Describing the negotiations he wanted with Mr. Obama, Mr. Boehner seemed to shift from demands that the president agree only to defund or delay his signature health care law — a nonnegotiable condition, as Mr. Obama sees it — to calling once again for deficit reduction talks that would result in savings from Medicare in particular.
Mr. Obama has proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term savings in the entitlement programs, including Social Security, but only if Republicans agree to raise additional revenues by closing tax loopholes for wealthy individuals and some corporations.
Mr. Boehner ruled that out. “We’re not raising taxes,” he said.
On the budget impasse, the speaker acknowledged that in July he had gone to the Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and offered to have the House pass a clean financing resolution. His proposal would have set spending levels $70 billion lower than Democrats wanted, but would have had no contentious add-ons like changing the health care law.
Democrats accepted, but they say that Mr. Boehner then reneged under pressure from Tea Party conservatives.
“I and my members decided the threat of Obamacare” was so great, Mr. Boehner said, “that it was time for us to take a stand. And we took a stand.”
For the administration, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew appeared on four Sunday talk shows to keep the pressure on Republicans to raise the debt limit.
Mr. Lew, speaking on the CNN program “State of the Union,” emphatically reiterated the administration’s legal opinion that Mr. Obama cannot constitutionally raise the debt ceiling by himself if Congress fails to act.
“There is no option that prevents us from being in default if we’re not paying our bills,” Mr. Lew said, rejecting the idea that the president could invoke a constitutional power or take some other action. Mr. Obama has also ruled that out.
Mr. Lew, who wrote to Congress on Tuesday to say he had used his last “extraordinary measure” to manage federal accounts in ways to buy time, reiterated that the government would most likely have about $30 billion available on Oct. 17.
“And $30 billion is a lot of money, but when you think about the cash flow of the government of the United States, we have individual days when our negative or positive cash flow is $50 or $60 billion,” he said on CNN. “So $30 billion is not a responsible amount of cash to run the government on.”
“It’s very dangerous,” he added. “It’s reckless.”
Mr. Lew dismissed questions about why Mr. Obama would not negotiate with House Republicans over the debt limit. The president has said that increasing the borrowing authority is a basic Congressional responsibility under the Constitution, and not one for which lawmakers can extract ransom — in this case the demand that he defund or delay his health care law.
“The president wants to negotiate,” Mr. Lew said on Fox News. “Congress needs to do its job, and we then need to negotiate.”
*
Related
Cruz’s 21-Hour Speech Fueled a Ratings Jump at C-Span2 (October 7, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/business/media/c-span2-ratings-soar-during-cruzs-marathon-speech.html
Give Us This Day, Our Daily Senate Scolding (October 7, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/us/politics/senate-chaplain-shows-his-disapproval-during-morning-prayer.html
In Military City, Government Reassurances Are Little Comfort (October 7, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/us/politics/in-military-city-government-reassurances-are-little-comfort.html
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© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/us/politics/obama-aide-urges-lawmakers-to-raise-debt-ceiling.html
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No One Understands Strategy To Avoid Debt Ceiling Crisis, Sorry Y'all
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) leaves the House Republican Conference meeting in the basement of the Capitol to speak to the media on Friday.
10/05/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/debt-ceiling-strategy_n_4046100.html [with comments]
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Harry Reid: John Boehner's 'A Coward'
10/04/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/harry-reid-john-boehner_n_4044324.html [with (over 10,000) comments]
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Your Sunday Shutdown Reader #1: In Defense of Boehner
'How many times do we have to refight the Civil War?'
Oct 6 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/your-sunday-shutdown-reader-1-in-defense-of-boehner/280316/
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Let Me Explain How Extortion Works, Republicans
We got to explain this to you?
By Jonathan Chait
10/4/2013 at 12:43 PM
Yesterday, a couple of news outlets reported that John Boehner has privately told colleagues he will let Democrats vote for a bill to raise the debt ceiling rather than allow default. That would seem to severely crimp Boehner’s ability to threaten Democrats with default. Today, some Republican House members assure National Review [ http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/360402/boehner-vows-fight-debt-ceiling-jonathan-strong ] that, no, no, the threat is still somehow there:
“We are not going to default on the U.S. debt. We never have, we never will. If anybody defaults, it’ll be the president, who doesn’t write the check. But the speaker was very clear today that, while we’re not going to default, but there will be a negotiation. Even though the president says there will not be, there will be,” said Representative Phil Roe of Tennessee.
Boehner argued “the media is wrong,” said Representative John Fleming of Louisiana, and that Boehner’s insistence that the government will not default on its debts “shouldn’t be misconstrued as saying we’re not going to challenge Democrats in that debate.”
They’re either obscuring, or failing to understand, how threats work. Of course, threats often employ a level of obtuseness. But ultimately, there’s either a threat, or there isn’t. Suppose a couple of gentlemen from the Soprano family stop by your coffee shop and urge you to contribute to the local Merchant’s Protective Cooperative:
[video ( http://videos.nymag.com/video/The-Sopranos-Its-Over-For-The-L ) of the YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz0uEzRSWXw , as embedded]
They’re proposing a negotiation for some auxiliary security services. The question is what happens if the negotiation fails. The Sopranos are saying that the best alternative to a negotiated agreement is that they will beat up the manager. Likewise, the Republicans want to have a negotiation over Obamacare and other aspects of fiscal policy under the premise that failure to reach a deal Republicans like will lead to the world economy melting down. The Republicans are currently contemplating [ http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/360413/emerging-offer-robert-costa ] a "negotiation" that isn't as grandiose as killing Obamacare but is definitely not anything Democrats would agree to without a gun to their head:
There will be a “mechanism” for revenue-neutral tax reform, ushered by Ryan and Michigan’s Dave Camp, that will encourage deeper congressional talks in the coming year. There will be entitlement-reform proposals, most likely chained CPI and means-testing Social Security; there will also be some health-care provisions, such as a repeal of the medical-device tax, which has bipartisan support in both chambers.
So, tax cuts and cuts to retirement programs, and no new revenue? What would make Obama sign that, other than a threat of default?
If the alternative to a fiscal agreement is, instead, that the debt ceiling is lifted, the world economy does not melt down, and the status quo remains in place, then that’s a different thing. You can still have a negotiation. Likewise, a coffee shop manager can still discuss if the Soprano goons have any useful supplemental security services to offer. The Republicans are saying now that they won’t melt down the world economy, but they will have a negotiation. Well, sure. But a negotiation is not a shakedown. Pretending the two are the same doesn’t make it so.
Copyright © 2013, New York Media LLC
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/let-me-explain-how-extortion-works-republicans.html [with comments]
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Governing by Blackmail
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 5, 2013
SUPPOSE President Obama announced:
Unless Republicans agree to my proposal for gun control, I will use my authority as commander in chief to scuttle one aircraft carrier a week in the bottom of the ocean.
I invite Republican leaders to come to the White House and negotiate a deal to preserve our military strength. I hope Republicans will work with me to prevent the loss of our carrier fleet.
If the Republicans refuse to negotiate, I will be compelled to begin by scuttling the U.S.S. George Washington in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, with 80 aircraft on board.
In that situation, we would all agree that Obama had gone nuts. Whatever his beefs with Republicans, it would be an inexcusable betrayal to try to get his way by destroying our national assets. That would be an abuse of power and the worst kind of blackmail.
And in that kind of situation, I would hope that we as journalists wouldn’t describe the resulting furor as a “political impasse” or “partisan gridlock.” I hope that we wouldn’t settle for quoting politicians on each side as blaming the other. It would be appropriate to point out the obvious: Our president had tumbled over the edge and was endangering the nation.
Today, we have a similar situation, except that it’s a band of extremist House Republicans who are deliberately sabotaging America’s economy and damaging our national security — all in hopes of gaining leverage on unrelated issues.
The shutdown of government by House Republicans has already cost at least $1.2 billion, with the tab increasing by $300 million a day [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/opinion/kristof-excuses-excuses-excuses.html ]. Some estimates are much higher than that.
The 1995 and 1996 shutdowns cost the country [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/opinion/the-cost-of-the-shutdown.html ] $2.1 billion at today’s value, and the current one is also likely to end up costing billions — a cost imposed on every citizen by House Republicans, even as members of Congress pay themselves.
The government shutdown and risk of default also undermine America’s strength around the world. It’s not just that 72 percent of the intelligence community’s civilian work force [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/shutdown-makes-us-more-vulnerable-to-terrorist-attacks-intelligence-officials-warn/2013/10/02/a65b9266-2b86-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html ] has been furloughed. It’s not simply that “the jeopardy to the safety and security of this country will increase” daily, according to James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence.
Nor is it just that the White House telephone number is now answered with a recording that says to call back when government is functioning again. It’s not simply that several countries have issued travel advisories about visiting America. It’s not just that we’re mocked worldwide, with the French newspaper Le Monde writing [ http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2013/10/01/jefferson-reveille-toi-ils-sont-devenus-fous_3487686_3232.html ]: “Jefferson, wake up! They’ve gone crazy!”
Rather, it’s that America’s strength and influence derive in part from the success of our political and economic model. When House Republicans shut our government down and leave us teetering on the abyss of default, we are a diminished nation. We have less influence. We have less raw power, as surely as if we had fewer aircraft carriers.
Some Americans think that this crisis reflects typical partisan squabbling. No. Democrats and Republicans have always disagreed, sometimes ferociously, about what economic policy is best, but, in the past, it was not normal for either to sabotage the economy as a negotiating tactic.
In a household, husbands and wives disagree passionately about high-stakes issues like how to raise children. But normal people do not announce that if their spouse does not give in, they will break all the windows in the house.
Hard-line House Republicans seem to think that their ability to inflict pain on 800,000 federal workers by furloughing them [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/us/politics/us-government-shutdown.html ] without pay gives them bargaining chips. The hard-liners apparently believe that their negotiating position is strengthened when they demonstrate that they can wreck American governance.
The stakes rise as we approach the debt limit and the risk of default — which the Treasury Department notes [ http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl2178.aspx ] could have an impact like that of the 2008 financial crisis and “has the potential to be catastrophic.” Astonishingly, Republican hard-liners see that potential catastrophe as a source of bargaining power in a game of extortion: We don’t want anything to happen to this fine American economy as we approach the debt limit, so you’d better meet our demands.
In this situation, it strikes a false note for us as journalists to cover the crisis simply by quoting each side as blaming the other. That’s a false equivalency.
The last time House Republicans played politics with this debt limit, in 2011, Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit rating [ http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/articles/en/us/?assetID=1245316529563 ]. In the long run, that may mean higher debt payments and higher taxes.
My opening example of a president scuttling naval ships was ludicrous. No one would do that. But if we default because of extremist House Republicans, the cost could be much greater to our economy and to our national security than the loss of a few aircraft carriers.
© 2013 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/governing-by-blackmail.html
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John Kerry Warns Congress: Think 'Long And Hard' About Government Shutdown's Global Message
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attends a joint news conference with U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013.
10/05/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/john-kerry-government-shutdown_n_4049758.html [with comments]
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Sense Of Unease Growing Around The World As U.S. Government Looks Befuddled
10/05/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/world-us-government_n_4047613.html [with (over 11,000) comments]
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Rest Of The World Thinks Congress Is A ‘Laughing Stock' For Government Shutdown
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx)
10/04/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/government-shutdown-international_n_4039527.html [with comments]
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APEC Forum 2013: With No Obama, Other Leaders Take Main Stage
10/07/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/apec-forum-2013-no-obama_n_4056673.html [with embedded video report "Obama Absence at Apec 'Does Matter'", and comments]
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Putin: Obama APEC No-Show 'Justified'
10/07/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/putin-obama-apec-no-show-justified_n_4056725.html [with embedded video report "Obama to Miss Apec Leader Summit", and comments]
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The Shutdown Crew Takes a Big Bite Out of U.S. Geopolitics
By William Bradley
Posted: 10/04/2013 3:42 pm
Add this to the "accomplishments" of the far right government shutdown crew: Removing President Barack Obama from the board at a crucial geopolitical moment.
In contrast to a number of other geopolitical areas, especially of late, the Obama administration does have a coherent and concerted set of moves underway in the Asia-Pacific Pivot strategy, which Obama announced [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/darwinian-obama-goes-post_b_1102939.html ] in November 2011. Significant progress has been made in developing alliances and laying the ground work for our big geopolitical pivot from fateful over-engagement with the Islamic world to heightened engagement with the rising Asia-Pacific (My Pivot archive here [ http://www.newwestnotes.com/2012/07/14/the-pivot-archive-in-formation/ ].)
As China claims sovereignty over nearly the entire South China Sea, one of the world's most strategically significant bodies of water, overawing its much smaller and weaker neighbors there, and pushes its claims in the East China Sea against Japan, much has been done to bring most countries in the region into alignment with the U.S., diplomatically, militarily, and economically.
Obama's latest trip to the Asia-Pacific was to provide some cherries on top for some new deals, move others forward, and establish him as a regular in Asian summitry, both at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in Indonesia and the annual East Asia Summit in Brunei. You can be sure that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin won't be missing.
While negotiations continue on a Trans Pacific Partnership agreement on trade and investment that notably excludes China, much of the developmental work on the Asia-Pacific Pivot, which is to see the majority of U.S. military power shifted to the region, has been fronted by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. He's in the midst of yet another lengthy trip to the region, this time to South Korea and Japan, and has been joined by Secretary of State John Kerry. The secretary of state will represent the U.S. at the upcoming summits in Obama's absence. Why Kerry? Because the State Department is historically the highest ranking Cabinet department. (But you can bet that most countries prefer a visit from the secretary of defense, who controls a vastly larger apparatus.)
Before canceling his time at the summits in Indonesia and Brunei, Obama first canceled his trips to Malaysia and the Philippines. This was to have been Obama's very first trip to the Philippines, where I think he can be very popular.
The latter cancellation comes at an especially bad time, as the U.S. and Philippines are close to what are essentially new basing agreements for U.S. forces and Obama's presence would make the deal go down quite well with most of the Filipino people. Given America's imperial past in the colony it won during the Spanish-American War of 1898, and kept during a brutal war of suppression against Philippine rebels, America always has need of treading carefully in the Philippines, which became a close ally during World War II but later chafed at America's heavy military footprint.
Rather than simply re-establish the huge U.S.-branded permanent naval and air bases at Subic Bay and Clark Field, the U.S. is continuing the notion it hit upon earlier with Australia and Singapore of establishing an ongoing "rotational presence" at host country bases it happens to share while moving American units in and out on regular deployments.
It is different from the old way, yet it is much like the old way as well, which is why an Obama charm offensive makes it all go down much smoother.
That's just one aspect of the shuffle on new bases, which of course are key to keeping U.S. forces -- mainly Navy and Air Force, with some Marines sprinkled across the map for rapid deployment and Army units focused as they are on the Korean Peninsula -- forward deployed in the theater.
With Obama stuck in Washington dealing with the bizarre government shutdown, Kerry linked up with Hagel in Tokyo this week for a "2+2? meeting with their Japanese counterparts. What came of that is a significant upgrade to the longstanding U.S.-Japan security treaty, involving new radar to keep an eye on North Korea, new drones to surveil the South China Sea and elsewhere in the Western Pacifiic, help from Japan in moving Marines from Okinawa to other parts of the Pacific, and more expansive patrolling.
I'm told there's more to come on this -- pertaining to major tensions with China in the East China Sea and the new Japanese administration's intention to make one of the planet's best armed forces more geared to expeditionary operations, in contravention of Japan's MacArthur-dictated constitution calling for "Self Defense Forces" only -- but perhaps not now with Obama absent.
Hagel began his latest major Asia-Pacific Pivot trip in South Korea, where he celebrated a key Korean War 60th anniversary and discussed shift of some command and control functions to the host country, which has wanted the U.S. to handle all that.
South Korea has developed a dependency because of the constant North Korean threat. North Korea has one of world's largest ground forces and rockets to devastate Seoul. The Korean Peninsula is somewhat atypical in the Asia-Pacific where distance creates a very different dynamic than we've experienced in the Middle East and Central Asia, and of course requires a much greater focus on naval forces. The Korean Peninsula, in contrast, is more like the Middle East where everything is jammed together and threats are more immediate and intimate.
This is why the Army is so important in Korea, whereas it's mobility-oriented services in the the Navy and Marines most everywhere else, with of course the Air Force very involved as well.
The right sort of attention from Obama can help smooth things with longstanding Korean allies, but not if he's absent.
And those are things I know about. There are undoubtedly other things that were in play for Obama.
This entire Obama trip was a major part of the Asia-Pacific Pivot strategy, putting a bright sheen on relationships and groundwork painstakingly spun up over the past year and more.
Not that the people behind this shutdown, mostly knee-jerk isolationists who imagine that the State Department is some mass dispenser of foreign aid, have any sense of such things. Nor, evidently, do elements of the two-dimensional conventional media which covers this stuff, as seen in this Politico [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/government-shutdown-obama-asia-trip-97685.html ] piece. The writer has no sense of what is going on with the trip itself, treating it, complete with inane comments from an ex-Clinton White House press secretary, as some sort of junket.
The Chinese, alarmed by the Pivot, which they see as a set of moves to contain their rising power, know better.
For Beijing, this government shutdown is good. In fact, President Xi just undertook high-profile visits this week to Indonesia and Malaysia, countering the now absent Obama.
The US looks shaky, with an ever more dysfunctional government, increasingly unable to carry out its basic functions, much less comprehend and support a sophisticated global strategy.
As for the rule of law championed by the U.S., much to the irritation of Chinese leaders who see all the talk as a smokescreen for intervention in the American interest, no matter how wackily conceived, what's going on in Washington now looks like anything but the rule of law. What it looks like, one Chinese analyst said to me, is "a partial coup."
After all, this is all happening because one dominant faction in one political party which controls part of one branch of government is trying to block "Obamacare," something which has little to do with the basic fiscal decisions on the table.
It is trying to win through political blackmail what it lost when the controversial health care plan was passed by Congress and signed by the president, when the Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional, and when Obama won the 2012 presidential election in which the law was a major issue.
For China's neighbors, the devil they know, closer, very rich and on the rise militarily, may be the more stable alternative. After all, they know that China's view of history is long view. Ours? Last decade.
And in his travel around the world as China builds global influence in its relentless rise to superpower status, President Xi isn't pinned down by the machinations of a minority of a minority.
Ironically, the minority of a minority which just slowed one of America's biggest bipartisan geopolitical moves is itself a declining minority. Even with its aficionados holding so much sway in the House of Representatives, a September 26th Gallup Poll survey [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/164648/tea-party-support-dwindles-near-record-low.aspx ] finds national support for the far right Tea Party at its second lowest level ever, just 22 percent.
America is being judged by what's going on in the Washington clown show. The right-wing faction behind it is like the proverbial barking dog that catches the car -- no idea what to do now. And almost certainly no real grasp of the trouble it's causing.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/the-shutdown-crew-takes-a_b_4045356.html [with comments]
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Hillary Clinton: Government Shutdown Shows 'Scorched Earth' Politics
NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 25: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting on September 25, 2013 in New York City. Timed to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly, CGI brings together heads of state, CEOs, philanthropists and others to help find solutions to the world's major problems.
(Photo by Ramin Talaie/Getty Images)
By KEN THOMAS
10/05/13 04:33 AM ET EDT
CLINTON, N.Y. (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton is deriding the partial government shutdown, saying dysfunction and gridlock are emblematic of too many people in politics choosing "scorched earth over common ground."
The former senator and secretary of state said during a speech Friday night at Hamilton College in upstate New York that it was difficult to recall a time when "politicians were willing to risk so much damage to the country to pursue their own agendas."
Clinton described some of the lessons she learned during her time in the Senate and at the State Department, contrasting it with the budget battle engulfing Congress and the White House and a looming deadline to raise the nation's debt limit.
"Today, too many in our politics choose scorched earth over common ground. Many of our public debates are happening in what I like to call an evidence-free zone, where ideology trumps data and common sense," she said. "That is a recipe for paralysis, not progress."
Recalling shutdowns during the mid-1990s, Clinton noted that her husband worked with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to find a way to reopen the government. Neither side got everything it wanted, she said, but it led to a balanced budget and economic growth.
Clinton said the stalemate could have repercussions around the globe, noting that the shutdown had forced President Barack Obama to cancel his trip to Asia for meetings with world leaders. "Russia is there. China is there. We're not there," Clinton said, arguing that it could affect the way the U.S. is perceived around the globe.
Polls show Clinton would be the leading contender for the White House in 2016 if she decides to seek the presidency again. The Hamilton address, before 5,800 people jammed into the college's field house, offered glimpses of a possible campaign.
Clinton received loud applause at several points during her speech and question-and-answer session and shook hands with dozens of students and others along a blue partition after the event. Some stretched out their smart phones to take a picture of the former first lady.
Hamilton's president, Joan Hinde Stewart, said the college's speaker series had brought to campus former President Bill Clinton, prime ministers, secretaries of state and other leaders. "Never yet a future president, but there's a first time for everything," Stewart said to cheers.
Clinton avoided any talk of another White House campaign, but she spoke of the need to promote trade around the globe and to help young people find jobs.
"We need to be thinking together again, not fighting the same old stale arguments," Clinton said. "I worked with Republicans and Democrats. I worked with business leaders and labor leaders, anybody with a good idea. So let's think about how we're going to spur growth again."
Describing lessons she learned as the nation's top diplomat, Clinton said that after a decade of war and financial crisis, "the United States remains the indispensable nation."
"For me this isn't even a question. We have to lead. I hear all the talk about America needs to pull back and not be so active. That's not the world I've seen," she said.
Clinton said that after traveling the world, "my faith in our country is deeper. Our optimism about our future is strong. But we're not going to get there by accident or hoping for it. We're really going to have to work hard, we're going to have to make this country work for all of us again."
Concluding her remarks, Clinton urged the audience, "Let's take this country that has given so much to people like us, the greatest force for peace and progress that the world has ever known and resolve we are going to pull together."
She added: "We are going to get out of the evidence-free zone. We're going to start looking at the facts. We're going to roll up our sleeves. We're going to solve our problems together. We're going to build a kind of future that our children and our grandchildren deserve."
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/hillary-clinton-government-shutdown_n_4050199.html [with comments]
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Your Sunday Shutdown Reader #2
Only one thing is harder than agreeing on blame for the current morass. That is imagining a way out.
Oct 7 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/your-sunday-shutdown-reader-2/280322/
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Pentagon Furloughs: Most Of Its 400,000 Civilian Employees Ordered Back To Work
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel speaks to the traveling press about the U.S. government shutdown, at his hotel in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2013.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
By ROBERT BURNS
10/05/13 01:51 PM ET EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is ordering most of its approximately 400,000 furloughed civilian employees back to work.
The decision by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is based on a Pentagon legal interpretation of a law called the Pay Our Military Act.
That measure was passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama shortly before the partial government shutdown began Tuesday.
The Pentagon did not immediately say on Saturday exactly how many workers will return to work. The Defense Department said "most" were being brought back.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/pentagon-furloughs_n_4050135.html [with comments]
*
Hagel's Back-to-Work Order
The Defense Secretary has announced that most civilian defense workers will now be exempt from the government shutdown furlough.
Oct 5 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/hagels-back-to-work-order/280312/ [with comments]
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Fox News Falls For Fake Obama Story
Published on Oct 5, 2013 by MMFA Alt. Channel
Fox & Friends Saturday criticized President Obama for offering to personally pay for a "museum of Muslim culture" during the government shutdown, a claim that originated from a satire website. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/05/fox-falls-for-fake-story-about-obama-personally/196304 [ http://mm4a.org/1fQXFBP ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-bHEF6goF4 ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/fox-news-anna-kooiman-obama-parody_n_4053994.html [with embedded video report including the pertinent portion of the above YouTube, and (over 4,000) comments]; the original fake story at http://nationalreport.net/obama-uses-money-open-muslim-museum-amid-government-shutdown/ [with comments]
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Senator Cruz, Meet Senator McCarthy
By Steven Conn
Posted: 10/06/2013 5:57 pm
As the nation holds its breath hoping that Republican "moderates" in the House of Representatives will somehow prevail and vote to re-open the government, Geoffrey Kabaservice wrote a very useful piece in the New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/opinion/the-moderates-who-lighted-the-fuse.html (a bit more than half-way down at/see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92710614 and preceding and following) about those self-same "moderates."
Kabaservice reached back almost 20 years to the last time GOP zealots shut the government and reminded us that it was "moderates" that put the Gingrich Gang in power in 1995 in the first place.
Those moderates, Kabaservice points out, admired Gingrich's combative style and his win-at-all-costs tactics. Tired of cooperating with Democrats as a loyal opposition they decided that wanted to wield power and flex their partisan muscles instead.
But that sorry moment in American history was not the first time the GOP centrists fell in the thrall of their own extremist impulses. Ted Cruz, meet Joe McCarthy.
Joseph McCarthy came to Washington to represent Wisconsin in the US Senate in 1947 not carrying much of an agenda beyond his own self-promotion. Frustrated in his first two years that no one much paid attention to him, McCarthy was persuaded by some advisors to pick up the "communist issue." In February 1950, McCarthy gave his now infamous "I have a list" speech in Wheeling, West Virginia and he was off.
We all know the rough outline of the story that then followed. McCarthy gave his name to a period of paranoid hysteria which ruined careers and wrecked lives. And amidst the chaos he created, McCarthy became a much-quoted and a much-in-demand media celebrity. Which was his primary goal in the first place.
McCarthy was an odious political figure without question. But no one politician, even a US Senator, can dominate the politics of an era without a lot of help. And McCarthy got it from his more mainstream colleagues. Republican leaders in the Senate, like Robert Taft, quietly encouraged McCarthy or tacitly approved of him. After all, his antics did damage to Democratic politicians and seemed to go over with the public. By 1954, McCarthy's public approval rating was over 50 percent.
Even President Dwight Eisenhower, who found McCarthy personally repellent, found him politically useful. He refused to challenge McCarthy directly trying instead to take the high road: "I will not get down in the gutter with that guy," Eisenhower said, which also meant that he did nothing to rein McCarthy in.
McCarthy imploded in the spring 1954 after he held hearings where he attacked the leadership of the army. He rambled, he bullied, he lied, he made things up, and it was all broadcast on the new medium of television. Exasperated, army attorney Joseph Welch asked, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" The question was purely rhetorical. McCarthy had no decency, he never did, and Americans saw it all on TV. McCarthy's poll ratings plummeted. Only then did the Senate get around to censuring him for his behavior.
Which brings us to the junior senator from Texas and the Tea Party kids he is leading like the Pied Piper over in the House.
Like McCarthy and Gingrich, the extremist minority now calling the shots on Capitol Hill are the creation of a larger group of pusillanimous Republican law makers who kept quiet while the Tea Party took over and now find themselves too scared or confused to speak up.
There is clearly a pattern here, a genealogy that runs from McCarthy to Gingrich to Cruz. The problem, if you care about the Republican Party, is that they have lost far more battles than they have won since 1932. Alf Landon ran against FDR in 1936 by promising to repeal Social Security; in 1964 Barry Goldwater crusaded against the Civil Rights Act in his campaign against Lyndon Johnson. Both candidates were routed. Likewise, last year Mitt Romney campaigned to kill the Affordable Care Act and he didn't do so well either.
Since the New Deal, much of Republican political program has been deeply unpopular with a consistent majority of Americans -- whether the economic policies to shift money from the middle to the top, or policies to despoil the environment, or the laws that intrude on women's reproductive freedom. Political extremism -- from the communist witch hunts of the 1950s to the government-is-coming-to-get-you hysteria we have now -- has proved a useful distraction from a political agenda that many Americans don't like.
As demagogues go, Ted Cruz is no Joe McCarthy, at least not yet. Cruz's performance in the current budget shenanigans would seem to prove the wisdom of Karl Marx when he wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
But with Congress ground to a halt because of its lunatic fringe, Republicans would do well to remember what journalist Edward R. Murrow said in 1954 about McCarthyism: "No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices."
Steven Conn [ http://history.osu.edu/directory/conn23 ] teaches history at Ohio State University. His most recent book is "To Promote the General Welfare: The Case for Big Government [ http://www.amazon.com/To-Promote-General-Welfare-Government/dp/0199858551 ]" (Oxford University Press).
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-conn/senator-cruz-meet-senator_b_4054538.html [with comments]
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Why Obama Doesn't Care If He's Winning or Losing the PR Battle
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Now that he doesn't have to face voters again, it's about fixing the government.
Garance Franke-Ruta
Oct 4 2013, 6:59 PM ET
You can spin a lot of things in a campaign that's a war of words and ideas, but it's a lot harder to spin a government shutdown about which Americans have increasingly direct personal experience.
Friday's campaign-style back-and-forth over who said what and who cares more about the suffering American people during the shutdown started with an anonymous senior administration official's declaration, quoted and paraphrased by the Wall Street Journal [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579113781436540284.html ], that "'We are winning .... It doesn't really matter to us' how long the shutdown lasts 'because what matters is the end result.'"
"This isn’t some damn game!" House Speaker John Boehner exclaimed in reply, even though he knows that whatever the on-the-ground consequences, there is a lot of gamesmanship involved in apportioning blame. The early public finger-pointing over the shutdown may not be as important as the eventual strategy for getting out of what many Republicans, Democrats, and agency officials privately expect will be a protracted government closure, now that the debate over funding the government has begun to bleed into the debate over raising the debt limit. But that doesn't mean either side is willing to abandon it, either.
And for all the accusations of gloating hurled at the White House today, I heard something very different from senior administration officials Thursday: an awareness that Obama doesn't have to get elected again, and that that has freed him to take politically risky positions in the service of dragging the American political system out of chaotic and destabilizing patterns. As senior administration officials portrayed it, Obama has been working throughout the course of this year to rightsize the presidency. He sought Congress's approval for a military strike in Syria, even though the national-security establishment thought he should have just acted. For the president, it was about creating a precedent for war-making powers. (What followed, I should note, didn't exactly go smoothly.)
Negotiations on the debt limit, however, would weaken the office of the presidency, weaken democracy, and virtually guarantee a default in 2014 or the next time the debt limit needs to be increased, according to White House thinking. By sanctioning the threat of default to get things through the political process that wouldn't get through on their merits, Obama would be helping to create a new procedural tactic in American democracy that could nullify the outcome of elections by giving fresh powers to minority factions.
Today's Gallup tracking poll data [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/gallup-daily-obama-job-approval.aspx ] showing support for Obama again reaching a nadir -- 41 percent approval to 52 percent disapproval -- makes clear just how much is at stake for his presidency here. No matter how much the present stand-off hurts Republicans, there's no question but that it hurts him, too. Naturally every politician will seek to both win policy fights and cast himself as winning tough debates on deeply held beliefs, but for now at least it sounds like the president is willing to bear a certain amount of decline in public perception if he can take debt-limit increases off the table as a political bargaining tool.
“I was at the White House the other night, and listened to the president some 20 times explain to me why he wasn’t going to negotiate," Boehner said Friday.
I suspect we are all going to hear that a lot more in the days ahead. That doesn't mean there won't be conversations. It just means that they won't be about making unrelated policy as a condition for a debt-limit increase.
"I'm happy to have negotiations, but we can't do it with a gun held to the head of the American people," Obama said during a lunchtime visit to Taylor Gourmet near the White House. Meanwhile, when it comes to the shutdown, "Nobody's winning," Obama said. "We should get this over with as soon as possible."
Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/why-obama-doesnt-care-if-hes-winning-or-losing-the-pr-battle/280300/ [with comments]
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Yes, the White House Is ‘Winning’
By Jonathan Chait
10/4/2013 at 11:01 AM
The shutdown news of the day so far is that a White House official boasted to The Wall Street Journal [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579113781436540284.html ], “We are winning ... It doesn't really matter to us" how long the shutdown lasts "because what matters is the end result.” This is a sort of gaffe, partly true and partly false. The government shutdown has a non-zero-sum result, in that it hurts lots of Americans. It’s also a zero-sum contest between the parties. Now, one of the ways you win the zero-sum contest is by not declaring you’re winning the zero-sum contest and thus opening yourself to the charge of indifference to the negative-sum effects.
Still, it is true that the Obama administration is winning the zero-sum contest. One way to measure this is polling, which already shows [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/10/03/fox_news_poll_suggests_that_gop_may_not_be_completely_winning_shutdown_fight.html ] movement toward the Democratic side. Another way to measure it is that Republicans, who have spent months refusing any budget deal, are suddenly desperate to make a budget deal. A flurry of Republican proposals have been leaked or floated by or to Politico [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/government-shutdown-cr-house-senate-97793.html ( http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=595E8906-5E01-427C-BFAE-E44727AD6A72 )], Jonathan Ward [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/gop-sequester-entitlement_n_4039761.html ], and Republican adviser Yuval Levin [ http://nationalreview.com/corner/360339/non-grand-bargain-yuval-levin ].
Republicans are looking to make a budget deal now because they want to escape the political nightmare they’ve created for themselves. They blustered into a shutdown that corrodes their party brand and cracks the door to flip the House, which ought to be otherwise impregnable in a low-turnout midterm election. They can’t figure out how to back down without winning concessions the Democrats have no incentive to give them. Then they need to lift the debt ceiling, where they’ve raised even loftier expectations, and where the Democrats are even more determined not to be held hostage. Their only way out is to fold everything into a negotiation, give the Democrats something, and hold up whatever they win as a trophy that made it all worthwhile.
For reasons I plan to delve into next week, I don’t find any of the offers leaked so far attractive on their merits, as you’d expect from an opening bid. But the larger problem is that none of them grapple with the procedural crisis. Obama’s view, which I share, is that the debt ceiling fight is far more important not only than the specific policies on the table, or even the catastrophic economic consequences of a debt breach. It’s a fight to preserve the Constitutional order.
And conservatives have resolutely refused to grapple with that fact. They have floated a few half-hearted [ http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/29/democrats-have-fought-debt-ceiling-hikes-many-times/ ], and easily refuted [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/30/no_democrats_never_really_held_the_debt_limit_hostage.html ], claims that Congress has previously used the debt ceiling as a threat to extract concessions. Mostly, they have just treated the debt-ceiling crisis like an ordinary budget standoff.
Now, maybe they simply have no principled objection to this method. I’ve seen no conservatives, anywhere, actually question the morality of debt-limit extortion. (Apparently, if Democrats in 2007 had held the debt ceiling hostage unless President Bush rescinded his tax cuts, the entire conservative world would have objected to their policy goals but defended their methods. Who knew?)
But the bigger problem here is that conservatives are not acknowledging the Democrats’ belief. It’s not a pose. They genuinely think, regardless of the merits of the ransom demand, they can’t give in, both for the national long-term interest and on moral principle. Conservatives are acting like the problem here is that they asked for a bit too much to begin with, and want to start haggling down the price. The price isn’t the issue. If the conservative goal is to create the illusion of winning something for the debt ceiling, then they’ll come back next time to win more, and Democrats can’t allow that.
Copyright © 2013, New York Media LLC
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/yes-the-white-house-is-winning.html [with comments]
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Far-Right Republicans Could Hit A Tipping Point As Support Falters
By Ashley Alman
Posted: 10/07/2013 12:33 am EDT | Updated: 10/07/2013 12:44 pm EDT
Tension is brewing in the Republican Party as the federal government shutdown enters its seventh day and far-right members of the GOP show no sign of letting up.
The shutdown -- which has already affected hundreds of thousands of federal employees and hit critical government programs -- is bringing the Republican Party to a boiling point, angering GOP fundraisers and throwing a wrench in the works for the upcoming 2014 elections.
“People are totally annoyed,” one GOP fundraiser told the Washington Post [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/longtime-gop-donors-unnerved-by-shutdown-strategy/2013/10/05/a95b3dac-2d04-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html ].
Backers of American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS -- two influential Republican fundraising groups -- attended a conference in Washington D.C. over the weekend. According to the Post, many attendees had similar concerns: they wanted to see the end of Obamacare just as much as the next conservative, but not at the cost of a government shutdown.
“It appears that we’ve got a bunch of crazies running around — one from Texas and some from other places,” Al Hoffman Jr., former finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, told the Post. “I love the idea of defunding Obamacare. However, I don’t think it’s going to happen until we have a majority in the Senate and in the House.”
“I oppose Obamacare as much as anyone else does, but this is not the way to repeal it,” Bobbie Kilberg, a Republican operative who has worked for Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, said to the Post.
Members of the Republican party [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/peter-king-ted-cruz_n_4029384.html ] have voiced concerns over the "Ted Cruz wing of the party": Tea party-backed members who have relentlessly pushed defunding Obamacare at the cost of a government shutdown. Now, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and their colleagues are jeopardizing the party's funding.
“There are a lot of major donors who feel that until the Republican Party can field people who have a vested opinion of what to do and to do it in a prompt and efficient way, we’re going to withhold giving money,” Hoffman told the Post, saying the freeze could affect “a lot of current far-right Republicans.”
The shutdown fallout could also clear the way for more center-right candidates. Tea party-backed candidates are losing the support [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/some-tea-party-congressmen-find-signs-of-political-backlash-at-home/2013/10/06/d13d698a-2d27-11e3-b139-029811dbb57f_story.html ] they once had at home. Their backers are disappointed in their unwillingness to compromise and refusal to collaborate.
“The traditional governing wing of the Republican Party is fed up with this dysfunction, this ‘no’ to everything, this refusal to engage the other side to find solutions," Steven C. LaTourette [id.], a former Republican congressman from Ohio, told the Post.
The glory days for the tea party could be coming to an end.
“All the energy in the Republican Party the last few years has come from the Tea party," said Vin Weber [id.], a former Republican congressman from Minnesota. "The notion that there might be some energy from the radical center, the people whose positions in the conservative mainstream are more center-right but who are just furious about the dysfunctionality of government — that’s different.”
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/far-right-republicans_n_4055431.html [with (approaching 4,000) comments]
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With Traditional GOP Allies Defecting, Big Business Takes Sides With Obama
Newscom
Charles Babington And Jim Kuhnhenn
October 2, 2013, 8:47 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Having failed to persuade their traditional Republican allies in Congress to avert a government shutdown, business leaders fear bigger problems ahead, and they're taking sides with a Democratic president whose health care and regulatory agenda they have vigorously opposed.
President Barack Obama is embracing the business outreach, eager to employ groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street CEOs to portray House Republicans as out of touch even with their long-established corporate and financial patrons.
Yet, the partial closing of the government and the looming confrontation over the nation's borrowing limit highlight the remarkable drop in the business community's influence among House Republicans, who increasingly respond more to tea party conservatives than to the Chamber of Commerce.
On Wednesday, Obama is hosting chief executives from the nation's 19 biggest financial firms. Moreover, the Chamber of Commerce has sent a letter to Congress signed by about 250 business groups urging no shutdown and warning against a debt ceiling crisis that they say could lead to an economically disastrous default.
The divide between some GOP lawmakers and the corporate groups that have helped shape the Republican agenda in the past is partly a result of a legacy of the Wall Street bailouts of 2008-09 and a changing communication and campaign finance landscape that has weakened the roles of corporate donors and of the major political parties.
Interviews with House Republicans from all regions of the country demonstrate the corporate community's waning clout. Most of these lawmakers say local business owners and chambers of commerce have not raised the potential economic downside of a government shutdown or debt default.
Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, like many of his colleagues, said the overwhelming message he hears from business owners is their dislike of Obama's health care overhaul, which is at the center of Congress' impasse and the government shutdown. Likewise, Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said he mostly hears business owners complain "about the negative effects of 'Obamacare' upon their ability to do business and hire people."
When Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., was asked if he had heard business groups express fears of a government shutdown's economic impact, he replied: "No. And it wouldn't make any difference if I did."
Still, major business groups are raising alarms, citing the economic cost of a shutdown and warning of even more serious consequences if Congress doesn't act quickly to raise the $16.7 trillion borrowing limit, which the government is expected to hit around mid-October.
The letter circulated by the Chamber of Commerce urges lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling "in a timely manner and remove any threat to the full faith and credit of the United States government." It also acknowledges Republican fears over the unsustainable growth of major benefit programs such Medicare and Social Security and the need for a more business-friendly tax system.
But in a rejection of the tactics of House Speaker John Boehner, the letter urges Congress to pass first a short-term spending bill, then raise the debt ceiling, "and then return to work on these other vital issues."
That advice is being ignored by the GOP-led House.
"There is an element of the more independent, tea party coalition Republicans that, frankly, don't listen to very many people," said John Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan and now president of the Business Roundtable, one of the groups that signed the chamber letter. "They are on a mission, often defined on the basis of their view of the world, and they aren't paying very much attention to what this means beyond maybe their own districts."
Concerned, the Chamber of Commerce is preparing to participate in political primaries, protecting friendly lawmakers from conservative challengers. "Clearly we're getting to a point where we need a Congress that's going to be productive, proactive and create a stable environment for economic growth and job creation," said Scott Reed, a Republican political consultant who is advising the chamber on its strategy.
A changing environment has given conservatives plenty of tools to challenge establishment Republicans by using new technology and social media to organize and mobilize highly motivated voters. Campaign finance laws have also given donors a greater playing field that is not limited to the political parties.
What's more, the bank bailouts of 2008 and 2009 soured the public, which resulted in a new wave of populist Republicans in 2010 driven by a decentralized tea party movement that was not beholden to the GOP establishment.
As a result, said Kevin Madden, a former senior House Republican leadership aide and an adviser to Mitt Romney' presidential campaign, the political parties, congressional committee chairmen and big donors no longer wield the clout they once did.
"Now it's more of a bottom-up model, where you see these grass-roots organizations and grass-roots voters are now empowered and they feel they have a stronger voice," he said. "There is less of an emphasis on the parties. They used to have much more outsize control over who the candidates were and what party discipline was. Now a lot of that is gone."
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., emphasized that point. "I'm from a district that pretty much ignores Washington," he said. "If you say government is going to shut down, they say, 'OK, which part can we shut down?'"
© 2013 Associated Press
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/with-traditional-gop-allies-defecting-big-business-leaders-take-sides-with-obama [with comments]
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Rand Paul: Obama 'Irresponsible' To Suggest U.S. May Default
10/06/2013
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said [ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3032608/vp/53201035#53201035 ] Sunday that President Barack Obama is "irresponsible" for suggesting the U.S. may default on its debts.
"It's irresponsible of the president and his men to even talk about default," Paul said during an appearance on NBC's "Meet The Press." "There is no reason for us to default."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/rand-paul-obama_n_4053787.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 4,000) comments]
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John Boehner: 'The Path We're On' Leads To Default
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/john-boehner-default-debt-ceiling_n_4053537.html [with embedded video report, and (over 25,000) comments]
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Obama Expects Debt Ceiling Will Be Raised By Congress
President Barack Obama speaks about the government shutdown and debt ceiling during a visit to to M. Luis Construction, which specializes in asphalt manufacturing, concrete paving, and roadway reconstruction, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013, in Rockville, Md.
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/obama-debt-ceiling_n_4049829.html [with (over 11,000) comments]
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Rep. Ted Yoho: US Default “Would Bring Stability to World Markets”
Animal vet to economic expert in a single year. That’s the magic of Teabaggerism.
October 7, 2013
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42602_Rep._Ted_Yoho-_US_Default_Would_Bring_Stability_to_World_Markets [with comments]; http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-ted-yoho-government-shutdown-is-the-tremor-before-the-tsunami/2013/10/04/98b5aa8c-2c3c-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html [with comments]
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Ted Cruz Gets Some Government Shutdown Cheers
10/05/13
HOUSTON (AP) — Thanks to Texas' new senator, Dale Huls is out of a job — at least for now. Yet Huls has never been prouder that he voted for him.
"Without Ted Cruz this doesn't happen," said Huls, a NASA systems engineer who was among roughly 3,000 federal employees furloughed from Houston's Johnson Space Center after tea party Republicans triggered the partial government shutdown.
"This is something Americans have to get used to," said Huls. "Even if it affects your livelihood, you've got to stand up."
Perhaps more than anywhere else, Texas embodies the factors behind the shutdown: big government and the rebellion against it.
The state is one of the richest beneficiaries of federal spending, with its sprawling military bases, Gulf Coast seaports and more than 1,200-mile border with Mexico, which help account for more than 131,500 full-time federal employees. Only California, Virginia and the District of Columbia have more.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/ted-cruz-government-shutdown_n_4050000.html [with comments]
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John Boehner Claims He Doesn't Have Votes For Clean Continuing Resolution Bill
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/john-boehner-continuing-resolution_n_4053175.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 9,000) comments]
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President Obama to John Boehner: 'prove' you don't have the votes
By JENNIFER EPSTEIN
10/7/13 1:27 PM EDT Updated: 10/7/13 2:13 PM EDT
President Barack Obama called Monday on the House to hold a vote on a clean government funding bill, after Speaker John Boehner said over the weekend that the bill wouldn’t pass.
If Boehner and his colleagues are saying there aren’t enough votes, “then they should prove it,” Obama said while visiting the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters in Washington.
The president’s comments came after Boehner said Sunday that “there are not the votes in the House to pass a clean CR,” even though various counts estimate that more than 20 Republicans would join with the vast majority of Democrats in voting in favor of a no-strings-attached funding bill.
“The truth of the matter is there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end the shutdown immediately with no partisan strings attached. The House should hold that vote today,” Obama said, daring Boehner to take action.
But, he said, Boehner hasn’t brought the clean continuing resolution to the House floor because “the doesn’t apparently want to see the government shutdown end at the moment unless he’s able to extract concessions.”
Obama also repeated his call for Congress to raise the debt ceiling without attaching other demands “so the Treasury can pay the bills that Congress has already spent — that’s what most Americans do,” he said. “This is something routine. It’s been done more than 40 times since Ronald Reagan was president. It has never before been used in the kind of ways that the Republicans are talking about using it right now. We can’t threaten an economic catastrophe in the midst of budget negotiations.”
Once the government shutdown ends and the debt ceiling is lifted, “I am eager and ready to sit down and negotiate with Republicans on a whole range of issues,” Obama said, responding to Republicans including Boehner who have attacked him for being unwilling to negotiate on either issue.
“I have said from the start of the year that I’m happy to talk to Republicans about anything related to the budget,” he said. “What I’ve said is that I cannot do that under the threat that if Republicans don’t get 100 percent of their way, they’re going to either shut down the government or they’re going to default on America’s debt.”
Boehner’s office didn’t immediately respond to the president’s calls for a vote on a clean CR, though as Obama arrived at FEMA, his team did note that the Democrat-led Senate has yet to vote on a piecemeal bill to fund FEMA. The White House has said that Obama will veto all piecemeal government funding bills.
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obama-to-boehner-prove-you-dont-have-the-votes-97931.html [with embedded video of Obama's comments reported in the last part of the above (the above YouTube, of Obama's separate comments directly to the headline, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_he5AroTcy4 ) (Obama's complete remarks next below), and comments]
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President Obama Delivers Remarks at FEMA Headquarters
Published on Oct 7, 2013 by The White House
President Obama visited FEMA Headquarters in washington, D.C. to thank employees for their work responding to weather events around the country and discuss the ongoing government shutdown. October 7, 2013.
*
Remarks by the President at FEMA Headquarters
FEMA Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
October 07, 2013
12:30 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: I’m here at FEMA for a couple of reasons. First of all, I want to thank Craig Fugate and his entire team, and the incredible workers who are here at FEMA. They are having to, under less than optimal situations, still respond to Mother Nature, which doesn’t stop just because the government has shut down.
I wanted to get initially a briefing on what had happened with Hurricane Karen, became Tropical Karen, and then fortunately dissipated, so we dodged a bullet there. In the meantime, we’re on tornado watch here in the Mid-Atlantic states because of severe weather patterns. And we’ve got blizzards up north, we’ve got some weather patterns in the middle of the country that we’re still monitoring. And so I just want to say thank you to all of you for the incredible work that you’re doing.
I think it’s important to understand that the people here at FEMA have been doing everything they can to respond to potential events. Here at FEMA, they’re in touch with their state and local partners in case resources are needed. FEMA remains prepared for natural disasters year around, with supplies pre-positioned in distribution centers across the country.
But their job has been made more difficult. Thanks to the folks at FEMA, we were prepared for what might have happened down in Florida. Nevertheless, the government is still shut down, services are still interrupted, and hundreds of thousands of hardworking public servants, including many FEMA professionals, are still furloughed without pay, or they’re not allowed to work at all.
So Craig was just explaining to me here at FEMA -- about 86 percent of the FEMA workforce is furloughed. In response to the potential event that might have happened down in Florida and along the coasts, Craig called back 200 of those workers. Keep in mind, calling them back doesn’t mean they were getting paid, it just means they had the privilege of working without pay to make sure that they were doing everything they can to respond to the potential needs of their fellow citizens.
Now that this particular storm has dissipated, Craig is going to have to re-furlough at least 100 of those folks who were called back. So think about that. Here you are, somebody who’s a FEMA professional dedicated to doing your job; at a moment’s notice you’re willing to show up here in case people got in trouble and respond to them, even though you’re not getting paid, even though you don’t have certainty. And now you’re being put back on furlough because the government is shut down. That’s no way of doing business.
That, by the way, just speaks to the day-to-day emergencies that may come up and that is FEMA’s job to respond to. Craig was also explaining the fact that when it comes to training first responders, for example, we have on a weekly basis already scheduled training for first responders that now have to be rescheduled. It will probably end up ultimately costing the government more money for us to put those things back together again. And so not only is this shutdown hurting FEMA workers, not only is it making it more difficult for us to respond to potential natural disasters, but it may actually end up costing taxpayers more than it should.
Right now, Congress should do what’s in the best interest of the economy and the American people, and that’s move beyond this manufactured crisis and work together to focus on growth, jobs, and providing the vital services that Americans all across the country depend on, including the services that FEMA provides.
I heard a lot of talk over the weekend that the real problem is, is that the President will not negotiate. Well, let me tell you something -- I have said from the start of the year that I’m happy to talk to Republicans about anything related to the budget. There’s not a subject that I am not willing to engage in, work on, negotiate, and come up with common-sense compromises on.
What I’ve said is that I cannot do that under the threat that if Republicans don’t get 100 percent of their way, they’re going to either shut down the government or they are going to default on America’s debt so that America for the first time in history does not pay its bills. That is not something I will do. We’re not going to establish that pattern.
We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of further harm to our economy and middle-class families. We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of a prolonged shutdown until Republicans get 100 percent of what they want. We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of economic catastrophe that economists and CEOs increasingly warn would result if Congress chose to default on America’s obligations.
Now, the other thing I heard over the weekend was this notion that Congress doesn’t have the capacity to end this shutdown. The truth of the matter is there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end this shutdown immediately, with no partisan strings attached. The House should hold that vote today. If Republicans and Speaker Boehner are saying there are not enough votes, then they should prove it. Let the bill go to the floor and let’s see what happens. Just vote. Let every member of Congress vote their conscience and they can determine whether or not they want to shut the government down.
My suspicion is -- my very strong suspicion is that there are enough votes there. And the reason that Speaker Boehner hasn’t called a vote on it is because he doesn’t, apparently, want to see the government shutdown end at the moment unless he’s able to extract concessions that don't have anything to do with the budget. Well, I think the American people simply want government to work. And there’s no reason that there has to be a shutdown in order for the kinds of negotiations Speaker Boehner says he wants to proceed. Hold a vote. Call a vote right now, and let’s see what happens.
The second thing Congress needs to do is to raise the debt ceiling next week so the Treasury can pay the bills that Congress has already spent. That's what most Americans do if they buy something -- if they buy a car or if they buy a house, if they put something on a credit card, they understand they’ve got to pay the bills.
This is something routine. It’s been done more than 40 times since Ronald Reagan was President. It has never before been used in the kind of ways that the Republicans are talking about using it right now. We can't threat an economic catastrophe in the midst of budget negotiations.
So authorize the Treasury to pay America’s bill. Pass a budget, end the government shutdown, pay our bills, and prevent an economic shutdown.
And as soon as that happens, I am eager and ready to sit down and negotiate with Republicans on a whole range of issues: How do we create more jobs? How do we grow the economy? How do we boost manufacturing? How do we make sure our kids are getting a first-class education? All those things will be on the table. I'm happy to talk about health care; happy to talk about energy policy; how do we deal with our long-term fiscal situation.
All those things I've been eager and anxious to talk to Republicans about for the last seven months, and I've put out a budget that specifically lays out my vision for how we're going to grow this economy. And I expect the Republicans should do the same, and we can negotiate it. But we shouldn’t hurt a whole bunch of people in order for one side to think that they’re going to have a little more leverage in those negotiations.
Last point I'm going to make: The bill that is being presented to end the government shutdown reflects Republican priorities. It’s the Republican budget. The funding levels of this short-term funding bill, called the CR, is far lower than what Democrats think it should be. Nevertheless, Democrats are prepared to put the majority of votes on to reopen the government. So when you hear this notion that Democrats aren't compromising -- we're compromising so much we're willing to reopen the government at funding levels that reflect Republican wishes, don't at all reflect our wishes.
For example, here at FEMA, they’re still subject to the sequester, so even before the shutdown they were having trouble making sure that everybody was staying on the job and fulfilling all of their various functions. We need to get that sequester lifted that's been hanging over the head of the economy and federal agencies during the course of this entire year.
This short-term legislation to reopen the government doesn’t even address that. That has to be done in a broader budget framework.
So Democrats have said we are willing to pass a bill that reflects the Republicans’ priorities in terms of funding levels. That's a pretty significant compromise. What we're not willing to do is to create a permanent pattern in which unless you get your way the government is shut down or America defaults. That's not how we do business in this country, and we're not going to start now.
So, again, I want to thank everybody at FEMA here for the extraordinary work that you're doing. You show each and every day that you take your responsibilities seriously. You do your jobs with consummate professionalism. And hopefully you're setting a good example for members of Congress. They need to be doing the same thing. And if they do, then there’s no reason why we all can't move forward and make sure that we're taking care of America’s business.
Thank you very much, everybody.
END
12:41 P.M. EDT
*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5-zvRTxBRg [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/10/07/president-obama-call-vote-right-now ]; http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/10/07/remarks-president-fema-headquarters
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Devin Nunes Denies Backing 'Clean' Funding Bill To Avert Shutdown, But He Did -- And We've Got It On Tape
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)
10/07/2013
[the audio (embedded):
https://soundcloud.com/samsteinhp/nunes
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/devin-nunes-clean-cr-shutdown_n_4059229.html [with comments]
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Government Shutdown: Democrats Actually Hated The 'Clean' Funding Plan
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) speaks at a press conference on the government shutdown on Friday. Also pictured are Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
10/05/2013
WASHINGTON -- Democrats have not done a good job explaining how they have compromised in the government shutdown fight, insisting they will not negotiate dismantling Obamacare in a funding bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has lately been making the point that the short-term spending bill that the House now refuses to give a vote was the result of a compromise cut with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). The basic deal was that Democrats would accept the GOP's sequester-level spending levels to buy time to fund the rest of the year.
Lost in all the rhetoric is that Democrats faced serious backlash from their base for cutting that deal.
"We got hammered," said one Senate Democratic aide.
For instance, the Center For American Progress, stocked with former Obama administration staffers, lambasted the deal after it leaked in a lengthy paper, titled "The Dirty Truth About Boehner’s ‘Clean’ Continuing Resolution [ http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/budget/report/2013/09/10/73749/the-dirty-truth-about-boehners-clean-continuing-resolution/ ]."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/government-shutdown-democrats_n_4046715.html [with (over 4,000) comments]
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Government Shuts Down, But Midwest Lawmakers Say It's Not Their Fault
In this July 19, 2013, file photo, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder speaks during a news conference in Detroit.
10/06/13
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Republicans in the Midwest would like you to know something about the government shutdown that closed the national parks and put 800,000 workers on the street: They had nothing to do with it. Please don't blame them.
That message spilled out of the offices of state legislators, and even governors, in public statements, tweets and interviews as politicians outside Washington scrambled to insulate themselves from the partisan turmoil that sent repercussions across the country.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/government-shuts-down_n_4053916.html [with comments]
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Ted Cruz Says He Has 'Not Remotely' Hurt Republican Image With Shutdown Fight
By Matt Sledge
Posted: 10/06/2013 10:31 am EDT | Updated: 10/06/2013 11:46 pm EDT
Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) rejected the suggestion that members of his own party are unhappy with him for pursuing a fight over Obamacare into a government shutdown.
Asked by host Candy Crowley whether his actions have "hurt the Republican Party brand," Ted Cruz said no.
"Not remotely, but I also think far too many people are worried about politics" in the shutdown fight, Cruz said.
Cruz repeated several times his claim that he didn't want the government to shut down, and he bemoaned the "nasty partisan jabs from Democrats" over his role in the shutdown.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/ted-cruz-republicans-shutdown_n_4053493.html [with embedded video, and (approaching 8,000) comments]
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Republican Shutdown Politics
By Joe Peyronnin
Hofstra Journalism Professor
Posted: 10/04/2013 3:50 pm
"This isn't a damn game!" House Speaker John Boehner said Friday at a news conference on the budget stalemate that has led to the government shutdown. Really Mr. Speaker? The government shutdown is, in fact, a direct result of political gamesmanship by the Republicans.
Let's start with Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the Narcissus of Capitol Hill. No one loves Senator Ted Cruz more than, well, Ted Cruz. And it is no wonder. This man holds himself in the highest esteem, walks with swagger, and drips with ambition. Throughout his lifetime, all of his actions, associations and alliances have been undertaken solely for the advancement of Ted Cruz.
He is clearly far smarter than your average tea-party Congressmen, so he is leading them around by their noses on his little ego trip. And they love it because they each get to fulfill their lifelong dream of destroying the federal government, which they believe is at the root of all this country's problems. They are elected from gerrymandered districts that are filled with white hyper-conservative citizens who can be mobilized at the drop of an anti-Obama epithet.
Meanwhile, Cruz has the admiring backing of Fox News and conservative radio talk-show hosts, who are promulgating lies and distortions about the shutdown to rally their rabid extreme Republican base. The more outlandish the criticism on these right-wing outlets, the more the audience loves it. (Just don't try to take their federal benefits away!)
Tea-Party Republicans are downright giddy that they have forced the federal government to shut down. "We're very excited," said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Mn). "It's exactly what we wanted, and we got it." Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Ks) observed, "America's been a little astonished by us doing the right thing in the last few days here in the House."
Nonetheless, the wiser Republican leadership has been flummoxed by the negative public opinion the party has received because of the Cruz-driven strategy to shut the government down unless the Affordable Care Law, or Obamacare, is defunded. Word of dissension in the party ranks has only added to the party's image problems. Leaders have been scrambling to change the optics, to somehow shift blame to President Barack Obama and the Democrats.
So it was particularly noteworthy when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul, both Kentucky Republicans, were caught in an embarrassing conversation on the Senate floor by a Kentucky TV station. They were talking about political messaging strategy.
Paul approached McConnell following his CNN interview. McConnell began by warning Paul he was "wired up here." But that didn't stop Paul, who was eager to share a powerful revelation that had come to him. "I just did CNN and I just go over and over again 'We're (Republicans) willing to compromise. 'We're willing to negotiate.' I think... I don't think they (Democrats) poll tested we won't negotiate. I think it's awful for them to say that over and over again," Paul said.
McConnell responded, "Yeah, I do too and I, and I just came back from that two-hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly." McConnell was apparently referring to the meeting earlier this week between President Obama and the Congressional leadership.
Paul added, "I think if we keep saying 'We wanted to defund it (Obamacare). We fought for that and that we're willing to compromise on this,' I think they can't, we're gonna, I think... well I know we don't want to be here, but we're gonna win this, I think." So while neither Congressmen is happy with the shutdown, they now both think they will "win" this debate by shifting blame to the Democrats, whose position they can summarize as "they don't want to negotiate" on the budget or debt ceiling.
This, of course, assumes that most Americans don't know that Democrats have already agreed to huge budget cuts, basically continuing the "sequester" levels that have already been disruptive to government agencies and services. Or that Democrats have consistently said they will negotiate after a budget bill is passed and the debt ceiling is raised; or that Democrats have said they are willing to make some adjustments in the Affordable Care Act.
Meanwhile, Republicans have consistently said they will never agree to a new budget, or to raise the debt ceiling, unless Obamacare is defunded. The House has voted 42 times along party lines to defund Obamacare. But the Senate has reaffirmed its support each time. So Republicans have wasted precious time and valuable taxpayer dollars trying to eliminate a law that was passed by Congress, signed by the president, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and that President Obama was reelected on by a sizable margin.
Instead of passing even a short-term budget, so 800,000 federal employees can immediately go back to work, and services can be restored to poor and needy Americans of all ages, Republicans are focused on winning the battle in the court of public opinion. Instead of agreeing to raise the debt limit, and avoiding a global economic calamity, Republicans are trying to win the perception game.
Speaker Boehner, your protestations about this not being a game are empty because of the actions you and your party have so far taken. All America can see the games Republicans are playing. It is time for you to do the right thing for the country, and to show courage and leadership, bring the senate-approved budget to the floor for a vote.
(And don't forget what happened to Narcissus [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_(mythology) ].)
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-peyronnin/republican-shutdown-polit_b_4045856.html [with comments]
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Cuccinelli shuns Cruz limelight
Cuccinelli avoided being photographed with Cruz at the gala.
10/5/13
RICHMOND, Va.— That was awkward.
In the clearest sign yet of the potent effect of the government shutdown on the Virginia governor’s race, Republican Ken Cuccinelli avoided being photographed with Ted Cruz at a gala they headlined here Saturday night—even leaving before the Texas senator rose to speak.
Backstage, a source said, Cuccinelli urged Cruz to work with Democrats to end the federal shutdown. But he did not make that point, or even acknowledge Cruz, in short public comments to some 1,100 social conservatives.
Cruz has become the face of GOP intransigence, and the conservative attorney general’s effort to distance himself from congressional Republicans reflects how damaging Cuccinelli realizes a prolonged shutdown may be for his campaign.
For his part, Cruz heaped praise on his “friend” Cuccinelli and argued passionately in a 54-minute speech that their party can still win the messaging fight over the shutdown if the people just speak out loudly enough.
[...]
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/cuccinelli-shuns-cruz-limelight-97888.html [with comments]
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Dennis Ross, GOP Rep: 'Pride' Is Why Republicans Won't Budge On Government Shutdown
Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.)
WASHINGTON -- With the government shutdown in its fifth day, many Republicans have conceded the fight is no longer about Obamacare. Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) added his name to the list on Saturday, saying the matter now boils down to "pride."
“Republicans have to realize how many significant gains we’ve made over the last three years, and we have, not only in cutting spending but in really turning the tide on other things," Ross told The New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/in-an-upside-down-week-some-conservatives-find-favor-for-government.html?pagewanted=all (second below)]. "We can’t lose all that when there’s no connection now between the shutdown and the funding of Obamacare."
"I think now it’s a lot about pride," he added.
The fight over keeping the government open began with Republicans insisting that any funding bill include anti-Obamacare provisions, starting with a full-fledged campaign led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to defund the health care law. When that plan was rejected by the Senate, House Republicans offered a series of spending bills that continued to chip away at Obamacare; their final offer [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/30/house-gop-shutdown-2013_n_4018547.html ] included a one-year delay of the law's individual mandate and a ban on federal health care subsidies to members of Congress and their staffs.
Ross told Bloomberg that Republicans had "lost the [continuing resolution] battle [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/dennis-ross-cr-obamacare_n_4046284.html ]."
"We need to move on and take whatever we can find in the debt limit," he said.
But many of his colleagues, particularly in the House GOP's right flank, have refused to back down. Comments made by Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) last week [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/obama-gop-shutdown_n_4037502.html ] underscore Ross' suggestion that many Republicans believe what's at stake is no longer a matter of policy but one of pride.
"We're not going to be disrespected ... We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is," Stutzman said.
The Indiana Republican later apologized, saying he had "carelessly misrepresented" the budget debate.
House Republicans have pushed a series of targeted spending bills to fund parts of the government, notably those that have received the most attention, such as the National Institutes of Health, Veterans Affairs, and parks and museums. The White House and Senate Democrats have rejected the piecemeal approach [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/government-shutdown-solution_n_4031663.html ], pointing out that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has the votes [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/clean-funding-bill_n_4031784.html ] to reopen the entire government.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/dennis-ross-government-shutdown_n_4050231.html [with embedded video report, and (nearly 10,000) comments]
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Dem Rep Blasts GOP Shutdown Stalemate: 'So We Sit Here Until They Figure Out They F*ck*n' Lost'
U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) speaks during a news conference June 12, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
10/05/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/jim-mcdermott-gop-shutdown_n_4049873.html [with comments]
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Some in G.O.P. Try to Pick and Choose Amid Spending Fight
After the House voted to guarantee back pay for federal workers on Saturday, Jackson and Riley Marulis, 11 and 13, urged an end to the government shutdown.
Drew Angerer for The New York Times
Video [embedded]
The Cost of the Shutdown by the Numbers
Video [embedded]
Obama Defends the Health Care Law
Video: Government Shutdown Coverage
http://www.nytimes.com/video/playlist/government-shutdown/100000002475711/index.html
From left, Representatives Steve Scalise and Todd Rokita, both Republicans, and Nita Lowey and Rosa DeLauro, both Democrats. House members are sparring over a Republican proposal that would finance programs like the National Institutes of Health and the Park Service while much of the government remains closed.
From left, Win Mcnamee/Getty Images; Harry Hamburg/Associated Press; Charles Dharapak/Associated Press; Alex Wong/Getty Images
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
Published: October 5, 2013
WASHINGTON — Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, a hard-core leader of House conservatives who helped force a government shutdown in a fight over the scope of federal health care spending, sent out a statement on Wednesday bragging that the House had voted to “fully fund the National Institutes of Health.”
On Thursday, Representative Todd Rokita of Indiana, who was swept to power in the Tea Party [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html ] wave of 2010, stepped up to a microphone in the basement of the Capitol to recount his son’s struggles with a severe disability.
“Families, faith communities, associations and neighbors can take care of us better than government programs can,” he said. “But government should be there to help.”
“Science,” he added, “is a gift.”
Much of the federal government shut down on Tuesday [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/politics/congress-shutdown-debate.html?pagewanted=all ] because of a clash between Congressional Republicans and President Obama in which Republicans sought to tie further government financing to delaying or crippling his health care law [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html ]. Beneath the mechanics lie deeper philosophical disagreements about spending, taxation and the size and scope of government.
But the week’s events have blurred the divide. Republican leaders have offered mixed messages on the cause of the shutdown, and the House floor has played host to a parade of bills to restore government functions piece by piece, accompanied by rhetorical flourishes from ardent conservatives extolling the role of government in civic life and the selflessness of civil servants.
Representative Dennis A. Ross, a Florida Republican who was also elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave, said the party risked losing a fight over the scale of government while waging a quixotic war against the health care law. Though much of the government is shut down, he said, the Affordable Care Act, which is financed by its own appropriations, is moving forward unimpeded.
“Republicans have to realize how many significant gains we’ve made over the last three years — and we have, not only in cutting spending but in really turning the tide on other things,” Mr. Ross said. “We can’t lose all that when there’s no connection now between the shutdown and the funding of Obamacare.”
“I think now it’s a lot about pride,” he said.
In one breath on Friday, Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said the fiscal impasse was about bringing “fairness to the American people under Obamacare” and about doing “something about our spending problem.”
And the central principle of Tea Party conservatism, an aggressive attack on government programs, has given way among a growing number of Republicans to a full-throated defense of federal functions as varied as national parks and nutrition programs for the impoverished.
On Friday evening, House Republicans voted unanimously to authorize $6.5 billion in new spending on the supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children.
And in a rare weekend session, the House voted 407 to 0 on Saturday on a bill to guarantee that federal workers — once denigrated by conservatives as overpaid and underworked — will receive back pay once the government reopens.
At a hearing in 2011, Mr. Ross, the chairman of the House subcommittee on the federal work force, the Postal Service and labor policy, charged that “federal employees on average earned $101,628 in total compensation in 2010, nearly four times more than the average private-sector worker.”
On Saturday, those workers were suddenly selfless civil servants: nurses and doctors saving lives, emergency workers braving natural disasters and NASA scientists exploring the frontiers of space.
“This has been an Orwellian week in which white is black and black is white,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia.
The budget deficit, in fact, has been one of the lowest priorities. Republicans first pressed to eliminate the health care law, a move that would actually have swelled the debt over time. (The Affordable Care Act’s tax increases and spending cuts, mainly to Medicare [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicare/index.html ], put it in the black.) When that failed, they scaled back their ambitions to eliminating a tax on medical devices that helps pay for the law, which would add $30 billion in red ink but do nothing to stop the law and what many conservatives see as government overreach.
After defending such actions by saying they were taking aim at a major new government program, House Republicans set about reassembling the government they had shut down, piece by piece. Programs that conservatives had tolerated at best were suddenly lavished with praise: nutrition assistance for women and children, federal medical research, national parks, the Smithsonian Institution, even the government of the District of Columbia, which was authorized to spend money to pick up Washington’s trash, maintain its needle exchange program for intravenous drug users and even implement the health care law.
“We have bigger items to fight over now than needle exchange programs in D.C.,” said Representative John Fleming, a Louisiana Republican who was once one of the fiercest supporters of taking a hard line on the shutdown. “I just think that is not as important as funding the N.I.H., funding the V.A., getting the government back open.”
Asked how he could choose between enrolling children in federal cancer trials or returning them to Head Start classrooms, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, said, “That’s coming as well.”
“We ought to be working as hard as we can to open the parts of the government we all agree on,” Mr. Cantor said — which turns out to be quite a lot of the government.
A Head Start vote will come in the next week, along with bills to finance border security and enforcement, nuclear weapons security and development, Indian education and health services, education assistance for districts with large federal installations, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress oppose these piecemeal bills. Republicans cannot pick and choose what programs to finance and what programs to starve, they say, and reopening the most sensitive programs would relieve the political pressure on Republicans to reopen the government as a whole.
The House votes to restore financing to parts of the government followed efforts over two years to cut some of the very programs Republicans are now trying to rescue. The automatic spending cuts known as sequestration, which began in March and are now defended by most Republicans, cut $1.55 billion from the National Institutes of Health budget in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30. The spending bill for federal medical research in the 2014 fiscal year would have cut programs in the Labor Department and the Health and Human Services Department by 22 percent — cuts so deep that Republican leaders did not even try to get them approved by the full House.
The House appropriations bill for the National Park Service would cut $343 million, or 13 percent, from the budget requested by the president, and $240 million from last year’s level.
“It takes serious chutzpah for Republicans to portray themselves as the defenders of N.I.H., parks and other critical services they gutted through sequestration and proposed cutting further for 2014,” said Representative Nita M. Lowey of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
The House’s agriculture bill, which similarly did not get a vote in the full chamber, would have cut the president’s request for the women, infants and children nutrition program by $488 million, even more than the $333 million sliced by sequestration.
Friday’s debate over that financing bill brought Democrats practically to apoplexy.
“Are we meant to believe that today they have come to Jesus, or is this just politics?” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut sputtered on the House floor.
To moderate Republicans, the current debate might be a break from the relentless cutting that followed the Republican return to power in the House. Conservatives have been winning the argument on spending: the last fiscal year was the first time since 1996 that spending at the discretion of Congress fell in non-inflation-adjusted terms.
But the piece-by-piece examination of programs seems to be yielding a new appreciation for the federal government’s role.
“There’s a difference,” said Representative Patrick Meehan, Republican of Pennsylvania, “between wanting to have a smaller government and wanting to have no government.”
*
Related
House Approves Back Pay for Furloughed Workers (October 6, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/house-gop-to-take-up-pay-issue-for-workers.html
*
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/in-an-upside-down-week-some-conservatives-find-favor-for-government.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/in-an-upside-down-week-some-conservatives-find-favor-for-government.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Lee Terry Needs His Salary During Government Shutdown To Pay For His 'Nice House'
10/04/2013
Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) said this week that there is no way he's giving up his salary during the government shutdown.
"Dang straight [ http://www.omaha.com/article/20131004/NEWS/131009431 ]," he said when asked by the Omaha World-Herald Bureau whether he would keep his paycheck.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/lee-terry-government-shutdown-nice-house_n_4044511.html [with embedded video report "Constituents React To GOP Congressman's Paycheck Comment", and (over 5,000) comments]
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Lee Terry Apologizes For Refusing To Give Up Salary During Shutdown To Pay For His 'Nice House'
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/lee-terry-salary_n_4054283.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Savannah Guthrie: Americans Are 'Disgusted' By Shutdown 'Antics'
By Katherine Fung
Posted: 10/06/2013 3:21 pm EDT | Updated: 10/07/2013 12:48 pm EDT
Savannah Guthrie subjected Senator Rand Paul to a series of tough questions about the government shutdown on Sunday's "Meet the Press."
The government has been shut down since Tuesday as a result of the standoff over Obamacare in Congress. Paul and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were recently caught on a hot mic [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/rand-paul-mitch-mcconnell-hot-mic_n_4036591.html ] discussing their messaging efforts to avert blame for the shutdown.
Guthrie grilled Paul about the comments on Sunday, saying, "Do you in Washington, do all of you have any idea how totally disgusted the American people are with these antics?"
Paul said it was a "legitimate" concern. "Government should never shut down if we're doing our job appropriately, so really, what we need to be saying is why are we not passing spending bills the way we should do it," he continued.
Guthrie continued to hold his feet to the fire, asking him in succession:
"Do you take any responsibility for the tone, for your part in this?"
"Do you think this strategy, shutting down the government, which two-thirds of Americans don't like as a tactic even if they don't like Obamacare, do you think that's potentially undercutting the Republicans' chances of winning something beyond the House of Representatives, either the Senate or the White House?"
"If [Democrats] like it being closed, why would you fall into that trap?"
"Will Republicans let this country go into default?"
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/savannah-guthrie-rand-paul-meet-the-press_n_4054169.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Bob Schieffer Challenges John Cornyn On Obamacare
By Alana Horowitz
Posted: 10/06/2013 5:05 pm EDT | Updated: 10/07/2013 12:49 pm EDT
'Face The Nation' host Bob Schieffer grilled Republican Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) on the government shutdown on Sunday.
Cornyn repeatedly blamed President Obama for refusing to negotiate on defunding or delaying the Affordable Care Act in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and ending the government shutdown. Cornyn referred to the president as "AWOL."
"Don't Republicans also have to do their job?" Shieffier shot back. "[It's] almost like I’m going to throw a brick through your window unless you give me $20."
Cornyn disagreed, saying that "Ted [Cruz] and I share the concern about what Obamacare is doing to our economy."
The CBS host responded: "But that's besides the point. The law has been passed. Why not keep the government running and then everybody can sit down and decide what they want to do about it?"
Cornyn again tried to lay the blame on Democrats for not allowing Obamacare cuts to be part of a shutdown solution, but Schieffer quickly cut him off.
"Senator, isn’t there something wrong when you say "I won’t fund the government unless I can attach my personal wish list to the legislation every time we vote? I’d love to see the government find a cure for cancer, but I don’t think you can say I’m not going to pass and pass any funds for the rest of the government until the NIH finds a cure for cancer. I mean, isn’t that just kind of the same thing here?"
Sunday marks the sixth day since the government shutdown began, with Democrats and Republicans [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/john-boehner-default-debt-ceiling_n_4053537.html ] barely any closer to a compromise.
Watch the 'Face The Nation' exchange above [embedded], and read more about the shutdown here [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/government-shutdown_n_4042676.html ].
h/t ThinkProgress [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/10/06/2739081/schieffer-cornyn-debt-shutdown-ceiling/ ]
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/bob-schieffer-john-cornyn_n_4054600.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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GOP Rep. Cory Gardner's Claim That Obamacare Makes His Insurance Plan Too Expensive Gets Challenged
By Andrea Rael
Posted: 10/04/2013 6:09 pm EDT | Updated: 10/04/2013 6:09 pm EDT
Just days before the government shut down, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) went before the House of Representatives [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk9w_CDz7hg (next below)]
"Just a couple weeks ago, despite the president’s promise that if you liked your insurance you could keep it, my family received a letter in the mail that our insurance plan is being cancelled -- cancelled because of the president’s health care bill," Gardner, who opted out of the congressional health insurance plan and uses a private insurer, told KDVR last week [ http://kdvr.com/2013/10/04/gardner-wont-corroborate-higher-premiums-under-obamacare-claim/ ]. “We were paying about $650 a month for our plan. And the plan that’s most similar to replace it through our current provider goes up by 100 percent more, so it’s from $650 to $1,480.”
But Neil Waldron, the chief marketer for Gardner's insurance provider Rocky Mountain Health Plans told The Colorado Independent [ http://www.coloradoindependent.com/144301/gardners-insurer-he-can-go-on-the-exchange-get-a-bronze-plan ] that under Obamacare, Gardner would be able to find a comparable plan.
“Probably one of our medal plans would be best. Without knowing particulars, I’d say the cheapest plan available to the congressman would be our Bronze Plan. Looks like that might be in the price range he’s paying now,” Waldron told The Colorado Independent.
CNN's Crossfire [ http://crossfire.blogs.cnn.com/ ] host Stephanie Cutter [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmqsrcfkz0k (following the headline, as embedded)] also challenged Gardner on his claim that a comparable plan would push his insurance up by 100 percent.
"I looked up what's happening in Colorado," Cutter said. "Now you make too much money to qualify for the tax credit, but the median income in Colorado is somewhere around $57,000. You make more than that, so a family of four who can get the tax credit, they can buy a silver plan -- which is a very good plan, much better than what's being offered right now -- for $718 with the tax credit that they will be eligible for, they will only pay $388 per month. So why is that a bad deal?"
Gardner, and the House GOP, have voted to defund Obamacare over 40 times.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/cory-gardner-insurance_n_4045733.html [with comments]
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Urging Patience, Obama Says Problems With Health Care Sites Reflect Demand
Graphic
Opening Week of Health Exchanges
The Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces opened on Tuesday. Technological problems prevented some people from creating accounts, comparing plans or learning whether they qualify for a federal subsidy to help pay for coverage. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have created their own exchanges, and the federal government is managing a marketplace in 34 states. By Friday, the federal exchange reported 8.6 million unique visitors to its Web site. Below is a look at how the state exchanges did.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/04/us/opening-week-of-health-exchanges.html
Interactive Map
Where Poor and Uninsured Americans Live
The 26 Republican-dominated states not participating in an expansion of Medicaid are home to a disproportionate share of the nation’s poorest uninsured residents. Eight million will be stranded without insurance.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/02/us/uninsured-americans-map.html
By JACKIE CALMES
Published: October 5, 2013
WASHINGTON — President Obama urged Americans who have flocked to the new government-run Web marketplaces for health insurance policies not to give up because of the technical problems attributed to greater-than-anticipated demand. Fixes are under way, he said.
Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Associated Press released on Saturday, said he did not have any figures to counter scattered reports that just a very small number of people have succeeded in signing up for insurance coverage since state and federal Web sites began enrollment on Tuesday for the so-called insurance exchanges. Those are a central part of Mr. Obama’s health care law, which was passed in 2010 to extend coverage to those who do not get insurance benefits on the job.
People “definitely shouldn’t give up,” Mr. Obama said. Citing the slow start to a similar program for Massachusetts residents several years ago, the president predicted that when the six-month window for enrollment ends in March, “we are going to probably exceed what anybody expected in terms of the amount of interest that people had.”
House Republicans — who forced a shutdown of the federal government, which also started on Tuesday, by demanding that the health care law be defunded or delayed as a condition for their approving financing for the government in the new fiscal year — were quick to jump on the snags as validation of their opposition to the program.
Yet Mr. Obama and other Democrats have countered that public demand caused technical problems with the new state and federal Web sites, evidence of the popularity of what the health care program has to offer.
“The interest way exceeded expectations, and that’s the good news,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “It shows that people really need and want affordable health care” from insurers that have bid to compete in the insurance exchanges.
As for the problems that frustrated many of the millions who have visited the Web sites, Mr. Obama said help was on the way. “Folks are working around the clock and have been systematically reducing the wait times,” he said.
With the health care law at the center of the continuing budget dispute between the White House and the Republican-led House, Mr. Obama reiterated that he would negotiate with Republican leaders only once they agreed to finance the government and increase the nation’s borrowing limit, which will be reached on Oct. 17.
Referring to Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama said: “What I’ve said to him is we are happy to negotiate on anything. We are happy to talk about the health care law, we’re happy to talk about the budget, we’re happy to talk about deficit reduction, we’re happy to talk about investments. But what we can’t do is keep engaging in this sort of brinksmanship where a small faction of the Republican Party ends up forcing them into brinksmanship to see if they can somehow get more from negotiations by threatening to shut down the government or threatening America not paying its bills.”
The president also repeated, as many Republicans have acknowledged, that the House could pass measures both to finance and reopen the government and increase the nation’s borrowing limit, averting a catastrophic default, if Mr. Boehner would allow votes.
Both sides say that House Democrats and more moderate Republicans would provide the majority support needed to send both measures to Mr. Obama to be signed.
With the more troublesome deadline looming for raising the debt limit, Mr. Obama did not explicitly rule out taking some unilateral action to increase it — though senior administration officials have.
“I don’t expect to get there,” he said, citing news reports that Mr. Boehner has privately told House Republicans that he would not allow a breach of the debt ceiling to occur.
*
Related
In Practice: Shutdown Din Obscures Health Exchange Flaws (October 4, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/news/affordable-care-act/2013/10/04/shutdown-din-obscures-health-exchange-flaws/
Your Money: Questions Often Asked About Health Law (October 5, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/your-money/estimating-income-and-other-questions-on-the-health-care-plan.html
*
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/obama-urges-patience-with-insurance-exchanges.html
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The Uninsured Are Spread Throughout Red States, Too
Booklets outlining health insurance options for Californians is seen at a Senior Information & Resource Fair in South Gate, California September 10, 2013.
(ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
The people who stand to gain the most from the health care law don't live in just Democratic House districts.
By Ronald Brownstein
October 3, 2013
The big irony behind the scorched-earth Republican offensive against President Obama’s health care law is that its expansion of coverage to the uninsured would benefit House districts represented by Republicans nearly as much as those represented by Democrats.
In the confrontation that precipitated this week’s government shutdown, the near-universal refrain of Republican House members has been that they will “do whatever we can, as much as we can, to protect the people of our districts from the harmful effects of this law,” as Rep. James Lankford of Oklahoma put it. Regardless of what other provisions they consider harmful, that posture unavoidably means House Republicans are seeking to “protect” a surprisingly large number of their constituents from the right to obtain health insurance with federal assistance.
Recently released census data show that, on average, the share of residents without insurance is almost as high in districts represented by House Republicans as in those represented by Democrats. Slightly more Republicans (107) than Democrats (99) represent districts where the uninsured percentage is above the national average. Even about half of the 80 conservative members whose letter hatched the strategy of funding government only if Obama agreed to defund the 2010 Affordable Care Act represent districts where the uninsured share exceeds the national average.
This dynamic underscores how thoroughly ideology is trumping interest as Republicans convert the budget and debt showdowns into their Thermopylae for blocking Obamacare. Because so many House Republicans represent districts with low coverage levels, these members are effectively seeking to prevent a substantial flow of federal dollars not only to uninsured individuals in their communities but also to hospitals, doctors, and other providers who now are delivering significant levels of uncompensated care. “This is really an ideological stand—and in American politics, it [eventually] tends to be more about economic self-interest,” says Robert Blendon, a Harvard School of Public Health professor who studies public opinion and health care.
The near-convergence of insurance availability in Democratic and Republican districts reflects American politics’ ongoing class realignment. In Congress, Democrats represent an upstairs-downstairs coalition of well-educated, largely white suburban districts and heavily minority, mostly urbanized lower-income districts. Republicans represent many affluent places but rely increasingly on exurban and rural districts crowded with older and noncollege whites, many of whom lack insurance.
Using data from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, released last month, my colleague Michael Mellody ranked all 435 districts by their share of uninsured residents. Heavily minority Democratic seats dominated the list’s top rung, but many Republican districts in blue-collar and rural areas placed in the upper half, too. For instance, in the Appalachian-tinged North Carolina district of Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, who spearheaded the anti-Obamacare letter, nearly 27 percent of the working-age population (ages 18-64), and about 18 percent of the total, lack health insurance. In Lankford’s Oklahoma City-based district, 28 percent of working-age people and 20 percent of all residents lack insurance. “We have organizers in Waco, Jacksonville, and the Cincinnati suburbs, and in those places they are doing the same things we are doing in more-urban areas,” says Anne Filipic, president of Enroll America, a nonprofit group backing the law.
The Uninsured by Congressional District
Congressional districts with the highest percentage of uninsured are in the Southwest and tend to be in areas with a large Hispanic population. Massachusetts has the lowest percentage of uninsured due to its state-run health insurance, which has been in place since 2006.
[interactive/zoomable national map embedded]
Interactive by BRIAN McGILL; Source: Census Bureau, American Community Survey
In all, census data show that 15.6 percent of residents in the average Democratic district are uninsured, compared with 14.1 percent in the average GOP district. Likewise, the share of working-age people who lack insurance is nearly as high in GOP districts (19.9 percent) as in Democratic ones (21.7 percent). On both measures, virtually identical numbers of Democrats and Republicans represent districts where the uninsured share of the population exceeds the national average by at least 10 percent. And, reflecting the GOP’s growing downscale tilt, the share of whites without insurance is actually higher in the average Republican district (11.1 percent) than in the typical Democratic one (10.2 percent).
These numbers suggest that time is the pivot in this struggle. Republicans understandably feel emboldened now, while the law faces implementation challenges and broad public skepticism. But if Obama holds firm through 2016—as top advisers insist he will—the incentive for more GOP members could gradually shift from ideology to interest. Hospitals, doctors, and the uninsured themselves in red districts may quickly grow accustomed to the federal dollars that will flood in to expand coverage after Jan. 1. “Once they are in, it is going to be [almost] impossible to take insurance away from them,” one senior White House aide predicts.
Most House Republicans represent such safe districts that their electoral calculations probably won’t change much even if more of their voters receive federally assisted insurance. But it may be tougher to ignore the institutional demands from local medical interests benefiting from expanded insurance coverage that lightens their load of uncompensated care. “You have hospitals, doctors, and pharmacists who all say [to them], ‘Take the money,’ ” Blendon notes.
That mounting pressure is why Blendon joins those who believe that if Republicans can’t uproot the law soon, they never will. Judging by the ferocity of the confrontation, the key players on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue share his conviction.
This article appears in the October 5, 2013, edition of National Journal Magazine as Uninsured See Red.
Copyright © 2013 by National Journal Group Inc.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/innovations-in-health/the-uninsured-are-spread-throughout-red-states-too-20131003 [with comments] [also at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/where-are-the-uninsured-americans-who-will-benefit-from-obamacare/280283/ (with comments)]
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Without Health Insurance: Those Left Behind
Jeannie Phan
Letters
Published: October 6, 2013
*
To the Editor:
“Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/health/millions-of-poor-are-left-uncovered-by-health-law.html?pagewanted=all ]” (front page, Oct. 3) reminded me of my discovery 35 years ago — shortly after being appointed commissioner of Maine’s Health and Human Services Department — that states had wide latitude in shaping their Medicaid programs. Income eligibility, scope of services and reimbursement rates were largely left to the states to determine. Generally, the Northern-tier states opted for more generous benefits and the Southern states for fewer. Just like today.
Geography matters, with access to medical care profoundly influenced by where you live. Are citizens of Mississippi citizens of Mississippi first — or citizens of America first? Would the states even need to be involved if an efficient way could be found to treat all citizens equally from coast to coast, allowing them the same medical benefits wherever they live? Actually, for those over 65, it’s been done already and is called Medicare.
MICHAEL PETIT
President, Every Child Matters
Washington, Oct. 3, 2013
*
To the Editor:
The news that Obamacare is failing to provide poor African-Americans across the United States with health benefits is not surprising when considered within our nation’s history.
The signature program of the modern welfare state, Social Security, excluded agricultural and domestic workers, mostly black groups of laborers, when it was signed in 1935. Many states have chosen not to participate in parts of the Affordable Care Act that would have expanded Medicaid to millions of poor black citizens. In both cases, arguments can be made that race was or was not a key factor in the decisions.
But regardless of motives, the consequence persists: 150 years after emancipation, African-Americans still lack access to social welfare programs that millions of other Americans enjoy.
MARCUS SCHWARZ
Los Angeles, Oct. 3, 2013
*
To the Editor:
I was very disappointed by the headline “Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law.” As it happens, most of these people are not left uncovered by the health law; they are left uncovered by Republican governors’ refusal to opt in to the law. It’s a critically important distinction, and the headline should have acknowledged it.
JACK LERNER
Los Angeles, Oct. 3, 2013
The writer is a clinical associate professor of law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
*
To the Editor:
The Supreme Court deserves the blame for the atrocity you describe in which a huge number of the poorest Americans are deprived of the benefits of Obamacare. The court gave states the right to choose to participate in the old Medicaid program, which covered far fewer people, without joining the new one. This is nonsense: there’s only one Medicaid program, and Congress, which created it, logically has the right to set its terms.
For the first time in history, the court decreed that states have the power to revise a federal spending program. This is the court at its worst: terrible legal reasoning leading to serious harm to millions of people.
ANDREW KOPPELMAN
Chicago, Oct. 3, 2013
The writer is a professor of law at Northwestern University and the author of “The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform [ http://www.amazon.com/Tough-Constitution-Assault-Health-Reform/dp/0199970025 ].”
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To the Editor:
Not only will millions of low-income people be left uninsured, but the working poor among them will see their tax dollars providing health care to people on Medicaid in other states. Here’s a thought: why do we need Medicaid? Why not end Medicaid, reconfigure the Affordable Care Act premium subsidy program to include all low-income people, and put the money we now give the states for Medicaid into funding the subsidies?
The rules would be the same for all Americans, no matter in which state they reside. People would be free to choose their own coverage. And the states would no doubt be relieved not to have to administer indigent health care. Everyone wins.
BARBARA HARTLEY
Benson, Ariz., Oct. 3, 2013
The writer is a family doctor.
*
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/opinion/without-health-insurance-those-left-behind.html
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You Might Hate Obamacare, But It's Saved These People's Lives
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/i-am-obamacare-_n_4046470.html [with (over 9,000) comments]
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Rich People Just Care Less
By DANIEL GOLEMAN
October 5, 2013, 2:25 pm
Turning a blind eye. Giving someone the cold shoulder. Looking down on people. Seeing right through them.
These metaphors for condescending or dismissive behavior are more than just descriptive. They suggest, to a surprisingly accurate extent, the social distance between those with greater power and those with less — a distance that goes beyond the realm of interpersonal interactions and may exacerbate the soaring inequality in the United States.
A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power. This tuning out has been observed, for instance, with strangers in a mere five-minute get-acquainted session, where the more powerful person shows fewer signals of paying attention, like nodding or laughing. Higher-status people are also more likely to express disregard, through facial expressions, and are more likely to take over the conversation and interrupt or look past the other speaker.
Bringing the micropolitics of interpersonal attention to the understanding of social power, researchers are suggesting, has implications for public policy.
Of course, in any society, social power is relative; any of us may be higher or lower in a given interaction, and the research shows the effect still prevails. Though the more powerful pay less attention to us than we do to them, in other situations we are relatively higher on the totem pole of status — and we, too, tend to pay less attention to those a rung or two down.
A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain. In 2008, social psychologists from the University of Amsterdam and the University of California, Berkeley, studied pairs of strangers telling one another about difficulties they had been through, like a divorce or death of a loved one. The researchers found that the differential expressed itself in the playing down of suffering. The more powerful were less compassionate toward the hardships described by the less powerful.
Dacher Keltner [ http://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/dacher-keltner ], a professor of psychology at Berkeley, and Michael W. Kraus [ http://www.psychology.illinois.edu/people/mwkraus ], an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, have done much of the research on social power and the attention deficit.
Mr. Keltner suggests that, in general, we focus the most on those we value most. While the wealthy can hire help, those with few material assets are more likely to value their social assets: like the neighbor who will keep an eye on your child from the time she gets home from school until the time you get home from work. The financial difference ends up creating a behavioral difference. Poor people are better attuned to interpersonal relations — with those of the same strata, and the more powerful — than the rich are, because they have to be.
While Mr. Keltner’s research finds that the poor, compared with the wealthy, have keenly attuned interpersonal attention in all directions, in general, those with the most power in society seem to pay particularly little attention to those with the least power. To be sure, high-status people do attend to those of equal rank — but not as well as those low of status do.
This has profound implications for societal behavior and government policy. Tuning in to the needs and feelings of another person is a prerequisite to empathy, which in turn can lead to understanding, concern and, if the circumstances are right, compassionate action.
In politics, readily dismissing inconvenient people can easily extend to dismissing inconvenient truths about them. The insistence by some House Republicans in Congress on cutting financing for food stamps and impeding the implementation of Obamacare, which would allow patients, including those with pre-existing health conditions, to obtain and pay for insurance coverage, may stem in part from the empathy gap. As political scientists have noted, redistricting and gerrymandering have led to the creation of more and more safe districts, in which elected officials don’t even have to encounter many voters from the rival party, much less empathize with them.
Social distance makes it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our own.
Freud called this “the narcissism of minor differences,” a theme repeated by Vamik D. Volkan [ http://www.vamikvolkan.com/ ], an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who was born in Cyprus to Turkish parents. Dr. Volkan remembers hearing as a small boy awful things about the hated Greek Cypriots — who, he points out, actually share many similarities with Turkish Cypriots. Yet for decades their modest-size island has been politically divided, which exacerbates the problem by letting prejudicial myths flourish.
In contrast, extensive interpersonal contact counteracts biases by letting people from hostile groups get to know one another as individuals and even friends. Thomas F. Pettigrew [ http://pettigrew.socialpsychology.org/ ], a research professor of social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, analyzed more than 500 studies on intergroup contact. Mr. Pettigrew, who was born in Virginia in 1931 and lived there until going to Harvard for graduate school, told me in an e-mail that it was the “the rampant racism in the Virginia of my childhood” that led him to study prejudice.
In his research, he found that even in areas where ethnic groups were in conflict and viewed one another through lenses of negative stereotypes, individuals who had close friends within the other group exhibited little or no such prejudice. They seemed to realize the many ways those demonized “others” were “just like me.” Whether such friendly social contact would overcome the divide between those with more and less social and economic power was not studied, but I suspect it would help.
Since the 1970s, the gap between the rich and everyone else has skyrocketed. Income inequality is at its highest level in a century. This widening gulf between the haves and have-less troubles me, but not for the obvious reasons. Apart from the financial inequities, I fear the expansion of an entirely different gap, caused by the inability to see oneself in a less advantaged person’s shoes. Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.
Daniel Goleman [ http://danielgoleman.info/? ], a psychologist, is the author of “Emotional Intelligence [ http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/055338371X ]” and, most recently, “Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence [ http://www.amazon.com/Focus-The-Hidden-Driver-Excellence/dp/0062114867 ].”
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Related Posts from Opinionator
Wrong Side of History
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/wrong-side-of-history/
How Did Conservatives Get This Radical?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/how-did-conservatives-get-this-radical/
How Dr. King Shaped My Work in Economics [Stiglitz]
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/how-dr-king-shaped-my-work-in-economics/
The New Economic Risk: Complacency
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/the-new-economic-risk-complacency/
Is This a Government Which I See Before Me?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/is-this-a-government-which-i-see-before-me/
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The Great Divide is a series about inequality.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-great-divide/
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© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/rich-people-just-care-less/ [with comments]
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Why the Government Shutdown Is Unbiblical
By Jim Wallis
Posted: 10/03/2013 2:04 pm
One of the most depressing things I heard on the first day of the government shutdown was that it was a record fundraising day for both parties. Washington, D.C., is no longer about governing; it is just about winning and losing. But the people who will lose the most during a government shutdown -- and then an impending United States government default on paying its debts -- are those who live day-to-day on their wages, those at the lower end of the nation's economy, and the poorest and most vulnerable who are always hurt the most in a crisis like this. And what happens to those people is the focus of the faith community; that is our job in politics -- to talk about what happens to them. Faith leaders have been meeting to discuss what we must do in response to this political crisis brought on by absolute political dysfunction.
The government shutdown seems to have gotten the attention of the nation. And if this ends in a default on our debt, the potentially catastrophic crashing of the economy will certainly wake us up. The only positive I see in this crisis is that the right issues -- the moral issues -- might finally get our attention.
Let me make myself clear on the politics here: Debates over fiscal matters -- budgets, taxes, and spending -- are supposed to take place within the political process, in negotiations, compromises, conferences between the Senate, House, and White House, and settled by elections. We can't use government shutdowns and debt repayments as bargaining chips in these debates. Most political leaders I know, both Republicans and Democrats, believe in government and governing. They may differ over how big or small or limited, but they are not hostile to government itself.
The issues here are deeper than politics now; they are moral, and, I would argue, theological. Too often our political affiliation drives our theological worldview instead of our theology driving our politics. The Bible speaks clearly about the role of government, and that is what really is being challenged here. It's time for those people of faith who want to shut down the government to read their Bibles. Because pressuring the nation to shut down the government, instead of keeping debate within the political process, is contrary not only to our best political traditions, but also to what our Scriptures say. And underlying this current crisis, there is a clear hostility to government itself, government per se, from a group of political extremists that I believe is unbiblical. It is a minority of our elected officials who are demonstrating their anti-government ideology. But that extreme minority has captured their party and the political process, and has driven the nation into dangerous crisis based upon fear.
This kind of crisis should cause people of faith to fast and pray and read their Bibles. And whether or not you are a person of faith, you might find it interesting to see what the Bible says about the mess we are now in.
The biblical purpose of government is to protect from evil and to promote the good -- protect and promote. Government is meant to protect its people's safety, security, and peace, and promote the common good of a society -- and even collect taxes for those purposes. Read Romans 13 by the apostle Paul and other similar texts. The Scriptures also make it clear that governmental authority is responsible for fairness and justice and particularly responsible to protect the poor and vulnerable. Read Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, the Psalms, and even the book of Kings to see that God will judge kings and rulers (governments) for how they treat the poor. And it wasn't just the kings of Israel who were held accountable for the poor, but also the kings of neighboring countries -- all governments. That's what the Bible says; so let me be as clear as I can be.
There are two ways the political extremists are being unbiblical. First, to be hostile to the role of government is unbiblical according to the Scriptures. Second, because of their hostility to government, many of those who are promoting this crisis are also hostile to the poor, who are supposed to be protected by the government. They blame the poor for their poverty instead of asking how government can protect the most vulnerable and even help lift them out of poverty.
The facts and the faces of those who suffer first and worst from these crises must be lifted up -- and that is the role of the faith community. Already, thousands of children are losing their Head Start programs, mothers with children are losing WIC (Women, Infants, and Children program), and many of those most dependent on their paychecks are now losing them.
Jeremiah, speaking of King Josiah, said, "He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well." The subsequent line is very revealing: "'Is that not what it means to know me?' declares the Lord" (Jer. 22:16). Of Solomon, the Scriptures say, through the words of the queen of Sheba, "Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king to execute justice and righteousness" (1 Kings 10:9). Psalm 72 begins with a prayer for kings or political leaders: "Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. ... May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor" (Ps. 72:1-4).
There is a powerful vision for promoting the common good here, a vision of prosperity for all the people, with special attention to the poor and to "deliverance" for the most vulnerable and needy.
That vision of "common good" is what we have lost, and there is nothing more important in our public life than to find it again.
For people of faith, government is never ultimate but needs to play the important and modest role of servant. The criteria for evaluation and judgment of civil authority is whether it is serving the people, whether it is guarding their security, whether it is maintaining a positive and peaceful social order, whether it is helping to make the lives of its citizens better, and, in particular, whether it is protecting the poor. To be opposed to government per se, especially when that opposition serves the ultimate power of other wealthy and powerful interests, is simply not a biblical position. Transparency, accountability, and service are the ethics of good government. "Of the people, by the people, and for the people" is still a good measure and goal of civil authority.
But people of faith will ascribe ultimate authority only to God, to whom civil authority will always be accountable.
Jim Wallis is president of Sojourners [ http://sojo.net/ ]. His book, On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned About Serving the Common Good [ http://ongodsside.com/ ], is now available [ http://www.amazon.com/On-Gods-Side-Religion-Politics/dp/1587433370 ]. Watch the Story of the Common Good here [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9pdXzJB1l0 ].
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/why-the-government-shutdo_b_4038418.html [with comments]; the YouTube, as embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otRopS2TUHA
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Re: Gov. Shutdown; An Appeal to Paul Krugman and the NY Times: Stop Being Polite, It's Time to Expose Extremist Religion's Threat to Our Democracy
By Frank Schaeffer
Posted: 10/07/2013 7:21 am
For almost 9 years I've been warning Huffington Post readers of the danger religious right fundamentalist activism is to our country. With the advent of the shutdown I'm tempted to say "I told you so." The shutdown is the religious right's biggest "victory" and a loss for the rest of us that threatens everything we love. But it's not all "their" fault. Some of our best and brightest dropped the ball too. Our chattering classes have been too polite about religion, in fact mostly silent.
For instance, someone I admire very much -- Paul Krugman -- and the New York Times have unintentionally sinned against their readers. They are far too tolerant of the evil of religion-gone-bad. They are being overly polite about the horrible effect religion and evangelical fundamentalist religion in particular, has had on our American "shutdown" politics. They are analyzing the shutdown but offering no solutions because they duck the truth. Until Krugman and the Times editorial board and the rest of the media, attack the religious extremist root cause of the shutdown nothing can change.
Krugman's latest brilliant column in the Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/opinion/krugman-the-boehner-bunglers.html ] illustrates my point handily. I'll reproduce some of it here and add what he was too polite to say. Maybe I'm more attuned to what Krugman won't say -- that right wing religion has become right wing politics -- because I was once an evangelical leader with a famous evangelical father (religious right founder Francis Schaeffer [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Schaeffer ]). I fled. But I remember.
One other thing, I know from experience: Not all evangelicals or Roman Catholics are of the right or part of the problem. For instance my friend and Huffington Post columnist Jim Wallis [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/ ], or the people running the Wild Goose Festival [ http://wildgoosefestival.org/ ] with their in-gathering of progressive believers are on the side of sanity and compassion. But the good guys don't run the religion show in America.
What Krugman did not say is the heart of the story of why sane America can't come to grips with what has happened to us.
Krugman writes:
The main answer, which only the most pathologically "balanced" reporting can deny, is the radicalization of the Republican Party. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it last year in their book, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/its-even-worse-than-it-looks-how-the-american-constitutional-system-collided-with-the-new-politics-of-extremism-by-thomas-e-mann-and-norman-j-ornstein/2012/04/30/gIQA2ohKsT_story.html ]," the G.O.P. has become "an insurgent outlier -- ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."
True, but to help readers understand why this is so you'd need to tell the truth: Mann and Ornstein's description is a perfect description of the religious right evangelical and conservative Roman Catholic base that has worked for and voted in the Republican extremists. Let me rephrase. The evangelical Protestant movement ever since it became the anti-feminist, anti-science and anti-public education party has been an insurgent outlier -- ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
The only reason that the Republican Party has become resistant to facts is that it's most ardent mass of voters is blind to reality because of their religious beliefs. As I show in my new book on religious delusion American style, And God Said, "Billy!" [ http://www.amazon.com/And-God-Said-Billy-ebook/dp/B00F3O69Q2 ], exploring the roots of religious delusion is the only way to understand contemporary American politics.
Krugman writes:
But there's one more important piece of the story. Conservative leaders are indeed ideologically extreme, but they're also deeply incompetent. So much so, in fact, that the Dunning-Kruger effect [ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201006/when-ignorance-begets-confidence-the-classic-dunning-kruger-effect ] -- the truly incompetent can't even recognize their own incompetence -- reigns supreme.
True enough, but that level of counter intuitive incompetence can't be understood until you take into account the religious commitment to non-"worldly" values of the religious right and their radical Roman Catholic outliers. To the evangelicals incompetence is a godly virtue. Do the work "in the Lord's way." Eschew "worldly" values, like reason, and look for miracles as the route to blessing and victory.
Krugman writes:
To see what I'm talking about, consider the report [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?pagewanted=all (the first item in this post)] in Sunday's Times about the origins of the current crisis. Early this year, it turns out, some of the usual suspects -- the Koch brothers, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation and others -- plotted strategy in the wake of Republican electoral defeat. Did they talk about rethinking ideas that voters had soundly rejected? No, they talked extortion, insisting that the threat of a shutdown would induce President Obama to abandon health reform.
True. But again, all evangelicals ever do is plot strategy to sell their myth-based theology to a world that is fact-orientated. And so do the right wing Roman Catholic intellectuals like Krugman's colleague at Princeton, professor Robert George, who (according to the Times) has been plotting strategy [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/magazine/20george-t.html?pagewanted=all ] against president Obama now through an entire presidency in order to push for a no-contraceptive zone for Catholic institutions as a means to put the president at odds with all religious people.
Strategy to sell myths (say Roman Catholic "Natural Law [ http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v23n2/how_roman_catholic_neocons.html ]" or evangelical faith in a literal 6 day creation) is the only tactic fundamentalists have. Look at their home school movement. It isn't about education. It is all a strategy to keep their children away from people who might present the facts to them about everything from global warming to evolution to birth control. It is about strategy not about truth. The Koch brothers know that their mass of right wing voters are fundamentalists (with a few Ayn Rand followers in the libertarian wing thrown in). That's all that is left.
Religion has so gutted the GOP that the sole remaining strategy is always the same: to be the party of extreme religion but to try and not look that way. Krugman and the Times and the media in general only help the GOP perpetuate the lie that they are a normal political party by ignoring the religion at the heart of the GOP mess.
Krugman writes:
Even more remarkable, in its way, was the response of House Republican leaders, who didn't tell the activists they were being foolish.
Yes, but the traditional moderate GOP leaders have learned to bite their tongues for years now. Their prime voters, their activists and their foot soldiers are the same people who believe what they see in the Creation Museum. What else can the GOP leadership do but get into the practice of never saying what's true?
Krugman writes:
Many people seem perplexed by the transformation of the G.O.P. into the political equivalent of the Keystone Kops -- the Boehner Bunglers? Republican elders, many of whom have been in denial about their party's radicalization, seem especially startled. But all of this was predictable.
It has been obvious for years that the modern Republican Party is no longer capable of thinking seriously about policy. Whether the issue is climate change or inflation, party members believe what they want to believe, and any contrary evidence is dismissed as a hoax, the product of vast liberal conspiracies [ http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-paul-believes-in-an-inflation-conspiracy-theory-here-are-all-the-reasons-why-its-wrong-2012-2 ].
For a while the party was able to compartmentalize, to remain savvy and realistic about politics even as it rejected objectivity everywhere else. But this wasn't sustainable. Sooner or later, the party's attitude toward policy -- we listen only to people who tell us what we want to hear, and attack the bearers of uncomfortable news -- was bound to infect political strategy, too.
Yes, but it's also inexplicable without naming names. The evangelicals like Billy Graham and the magazine he founded (Christianity Today) made magical thinking respectable in modern 20th century America. Then the religious right took things to another level.
Billy -- who I grew up knowing and who visited our home -- avoided politics after getting burned by his close association with Nixon. But in a sort of allegory of what befell all evangelicals, as the Washington Post noted [ http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2010/05/the_franklin_graham_crusade.html ] , his son Franklin became one of the most extreme of the new breed of far right activists. (As I mentioned in another article here in HuffPo [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/franklin-graham-religious_b_838863.html ] , I met Franklin several times while we were both coming of age as the sons of religious leaders.)
In writing "Whether the issue is climate change or inflation, party members believe what they want to believe, and any contrary evidence is dismissed as a hoax, the product of vast liberal conspiracies" Krugman described the evangelical movement as taken over by the likes of Franklin Graham with his gay-bashing, pro-Sarah Palin crusades. Not attacking the delusional thinking at the heart of this political fiasco is like trying to describe what led to World War Two without mentioning fascism. It is a dereliction of journalistic duty.
Krugman writes:
Unfortunately for all of us, even the shock of electoral defeat wasn't enough to burst the G.O.P. bubble; it's still a party dominated by wishful thinking, and all but impervious to inconvenient facts.
And just why is the GOP "all but impervious to inconvenient facts"? What does Krugman think that people are like who are indoctrinated from their mother's knee forward with a literal view of the Bible? Did you expect people who believe Noah carted all the dinosaurs onto the ark to also be able to think out policy issues or elect people who can think clearly? It's time to be rude and to ask where these folks go to church and attack what they hear there, rather than give a pass to dumb religion. Dumb religion is seriously threatening this country.
Krugman writes:
Meanwhile, the government is shut, and a debt crisis looms. Incompetence can be a terrible thing.
True, but there's another kind of incompetence. It comes from the squeamish niceties of smart educated secular people like Krugman who are too polite to do us much good. Religion gone badly is dangerous. Our elite media folks need to tell the truth.
As Krugman said, "the government is shut, and a debt crisis looms." Man up Krugman, NYT editors et al and tell us plainly why this is so. The problem isn't the GOP. The problem is what the mass of extremist GOP voters believe.
Church and state are no longer separated. They have been folded into one deadly destructive, economy-threatening entity by the Republicans. It's time to stop being any less forcefully truth-telling about religion than we are about politics. The shutdown is a slow motion religious extremist attack on America no less deadly that a suicide vest attack. It's time to call these people out on their own terms for what they believe before they take us all down with them.
Frank Schaeffer [ https://www.facebook.com/frank.schaeffer.16 ] is a writer. His latest book And God Said, "Billy!" [ http://www.amazon.com/And-God-Said-Billy-ebook/dp/B00F3O69Q2 ] explores the roots of religious delusion.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/re-gov-shutdown-an-appeal_b_4056548.html [with comments]
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The Radical Christian Right and the War on Government
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talks to reporters.
AP/J. Scott Applewhite
By Chris Hedges
Posted on Oct 6, 2013
There is a desire felt by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, to destroy the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment, radically diminish the role of government to create a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and force a recalcitrant world to bend to the will of an imperial and “Christian” America. Its public face is on display in the House of Representatives. This ideology, which is the driving force behind the shutdown of the government, calls for the eradication of social “deviants,” beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once these “deviants” are removed, other “deviants,” including Muslims, liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will also be ruthlessly repressed. The “deviant” government bureaucrats, the “deviant” media, the “deviant” schools and the “deviant” churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these “deviants” will be annulled. “Christian values” and “family values” will, in the new state, be propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless indoctrination.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International [ http://www.purifyingfire.org/ministries.htm ] ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism [ http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dominionism ] or Christian Reconstructionism. This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.
The cult of masculinity, as in all fascist movements, pervades the ideology of the Christian right. The movement uses religion to sanctify military and heroic “virtues,” glorify blind obedience and order over reason and conscience, and pander to the euphoria of collective emotions. Feminism and homosexuality, believers are told, have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian right, is a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Antichrist, attacking hypocrites and ultimately slaying nonbelievers. This cult of masculinity, with its glorification of violence, is appealing to the powerless. It stokes the anger of many Americans, mostly white and economically disadvantaged, and encourages them to lash back at those who, they are told, seek to destroy them. The paranoia about the outside world is fostered by bizarre conspiracy theories, many of which are prominent in the rhetoric of those leading the government shutdown. Believers, especially now, are called to a perpetual state of war with the “secular humanist” state. The march, they believe, is irreversible. Global war, even nuclear war, is the joyful harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms billions of apostates to death.
Dominionists believe they are engaged in an epic battle against the forces of Satan. They live in a binary world of black and white. They feel they are victims, surrounded by sinister groups bent on their destruction. They have anointed themselves as agents of God who alone know God’s will. They sanctify their rage. This rage lies at the center of the ideology. It leaves them sputtering inanities about Barack Obama, his corporate-sponsored health care reform bill, his alleged mandated suicide counseling or “death panels” for seniors under the bill, his supposed secret alliance with radical Muslims, and “creeping socialism.” They see the government bureaucracy as being controlled by “secular humanists” who want to destroy the family and make war against the purity of their belief system. They seek total cultural and political domination.
All ideological, theological and political debates with the radical Christian right are useless. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. Its adherents are using the space within the open society to destroy the open society itself. Our naive attempts to placate a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to it that we too have “values,” only strengthen its supposed legitimacy and increase our own weakness.
Dominionists have to operate, for now, in what they see as the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They work with the rest of us only because they must. Given enough power—and they are working hard to get it—any such cooperation will vanish. They are no different from the vanguard described by Lenin or the Islamic terrorists who shaved off their beards, adopted Western dress and watched pay-for-view pornography in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack. The elect alone, like the Grand Inquisitor, are sanctioned to know the truth. And in the pursuit of their truth they have no moral constraints.
I spent two years inside the Christian right in writing my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America [ http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461 ].” I attended services at megachurches across the country, went to numerous lectures and talks, sat in on creationist seminars, attended classes on religious proselytizing and conversion, spent weekends at “right-to-life” retreats and interviewed dozens of followers and leaders of the movement. Though I was sympathetic to the financial dislocation, the struggles with addictions, the pain of domestic and sexual violence, and the deep despair that drew people to the movement, I was also acutely aware of the dangerous ideology these people embraced. Fascist movements begin as champions of civic improvement, communal ideals, moral purity, strength, national greatness and family values. These movements attract, as has the radical Christian right, those who are disillusioned by the collapse of liberal democracy. And our liberal democracy has collapsed.
We have abandoned our poor and working class. We have created a government monster that sucks the marrow out of our bones to enrich and empower the oligarchic and corporate elite. The protection of criminals, whether in war or on Wall Street, is part of our mirage of law and order. We have betrayed the vast and growing underclass. Most believers within the Christian right are struggling to survive in a hostile world. We have failed them. Their very real despair is being manipulated and used by Christian fascists such as the Texas senator. Give to the working poor a living wage, benefits and job security and the reach of this movement will diminish. Refuse to ameliorate the suffering of the poor and working class and you ensure the ascendancy of a Christian fascism.
The Christian right needs only a spark to set it ablaze. Another catastrophic act of domestic terrorism, hyperinflation, a series of devastating droughts, floods, hurricanes or massive wildfires or another financial meltdown will be the trigger. Then what is left of our anemic open society will disintegrate. The rise of Christian fascism is aided by our complacency. The longer we fail to openly denounce and defy bankrupt liberalism, the longer we permit corporate power to plunder the nation and destroy the ecosystem, the longer we stand slack-jawed before the open gates of the city waiting meekly for the barbarians, the more we ensure their arrival.
© 2013 Truthdig, LLC
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_radical_christian_right_and_the_war_on_government_20131006 [with comments]
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/04/1244320/-TIME-Magazine-s-Cover-M-a-j-o-r-i-t-y-R-u-l-e [with comments]; http://www.flickr.com/photos/25976845@N06/10093228445/sizes/l/in/photostream/ , via http://www.flickr.com/photos/25976845@N06/10093228445/
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"You are here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare. This is a fight we can win." SENATOR TED CRUZ, speaking in August to a Heritage Action gathering in Dallas
Michael Stravato for The New York Times
Graphic
House Republican Efforts to Repeal or Weaken the Health Care Law
As part of a multipronged conservative effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, House Republicans have voted dozens of times to kill all or part of the law. The chart shows House votes that Republican leaders identified as containing at least some provision weakening the health care law.
The New York Times
Source: Clerk of the House; House Republican leadership
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/06/us/politics/06convervatives-graphic.html
DRIVING FORCES
David Koch of Americans for Prosperity, Michael A. Needham of Heritage Action and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III played roles in the health law fight.
From Left: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images; Doug Mcschooler/Associated Press; Mike Theiler/Getty Images
SOWING DOUBT
A site by Americans for Prosperity, which has spent $5.5 million recently on television ads critical of the health care law.
Americans for Prosperity
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MIKE McINTIRE
Published: October 5, 2013
WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html ] was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare [ http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/ryanriebe/joint-letter-on-sequester-savings ],” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.
“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”
Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.
To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.
With polls showing Americans deeply divided over the law, conservatives believe that the public is behind them. Although the law’s opponents say that shutting down the government was not their objective, the activists anticipated that a shutdown could occur — and worked with members of the Tea Party [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html ] caucus in Congress who were excited about drawing a red line against a law they despise.
A defunding “tool kit [ http://www.teapartypatriots.org/2013/09/get-your-defunding-obamacare-toolkit/ ]” created in early September included talking points for the question, “What happens when you shut down the government and you are blamed for it?” The suggested answer was the one House Republicans give today: “We are simply calling to fund the entire government except for the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.”
The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.
The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight. Included was $5 million to Generation Opportunity, which created a buzz last month with an Internet advertisement showing a menacing Uncle Sam figure popping up between a woman’s legs during a gynecological exam [at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92205081 and preceding and following].
The groups have also sought to pressure vulnerable Republican members of Congress with scorecards keeping track of their health care votes; have burned faux [ http://burnoccard.fwsites.org/ ] “Obamacare cards” on college campuses; and have distributed scripts for phone calls to Congressional offices, sample letters to editors and Twitter and Facebook offerings for followers to present as their own.
One sample Twitter offering — “Obamacare is a train wreck” — is a common refrain for Speaker John A. Boehner.
As the defunding movement picked up steam among outside advocates, Republicans who sounded tepid became targets. The Senate Conservatives Fund [ http://www.senateconservatives.com/ ], a political action committee dedicated to “electing true conservatives,” ran radio advertisements against three Republican incumbents.
Heritage Action ran critical Internet advertisements in the districts of 100 Republican lawmakers who had failed to sign a letter by a North Carolina freshman, Representative Mark Meadows, urging Mr. Boehner to take up the defunding cause.
“They’ve been hugely influential,” said David Wasserman, who tracks House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “When else in our history has a freshman member of Congress from North Carolina been able to round up a gang of 80 that’s essentially ground the government to a halt?”
On Capitol Hill, the advocates found willing partners in Tea Party conservatives, who have repeatedly threatened to shut down the government if they do not get their way on spending issues. This time they said they were so alarmed by the health law that they were willing to risk a shutdown over it. (“This is exactly what the public wants,” Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, said on the eve of the shutdown.)
Despite Mrs. Bachmann’s comments, not all of the groups have been on board with the defunding campaign. Some, like the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity [ http://americansforprosperity.org/ ], which spent $5.5 million on health care television advertisements [ http://americansforprosperity.org/michigan/newsroom/afp-launches-new-tv-ad-tricias-story/ ] over the past three months, are more focused on sowing public doubts about the law. But all have a common goal, which is to cripple a measure that Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and leader of the defunding effort, has likened to a horror movie.
“We view this as a long-term effort,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity. He said his group expected to spend “tens of millions” of dollars on a “multifront effort” that includes working to prevent states from expanding Medicaid [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicaid/index.html ] under the law. The group’s goal is not to defund the law.
“We want to see this law repealed,” Mr. Phillips said.
A Familiar Tactic
The crowd was raucous at the Hilton Anatole, just north of downtown Dallas, when Mr. Needham’s group, Heritage Action, arrived on a Tuesday in August for the second stop on a nine-city “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour.” Nearly 1,000 people turned out to hear two stars of the Tea Party movement: Mr. Cruz, and Jim DeMint, a former South Carolina senator who runs the Heritage Foundation.
“You’re here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare,” declared Mr. Cruz, who would go on to rail against the law on the Senate floor in September with a monologue that ran for 21 hours. “This is a fight we can win.”
Although Mr. Cruz is new to the Senate, the tactic of defunding in Washington is not. For years, Congress has banned the use of certain federal money to pay for abortions, except in the case of incest and rape, by attaching the so-called Hyde Amendment to spending bills.
After the health law passed in 2010, Todd Tiahrt, then a Republican congressman from Kansas, proposed defunding bits and pieces of it. He said he spoke to Mr. Boehner’s staff about the idea while the Supreme Court, which upheld the central provision, was weighing the law’s constitutionality.
“There just wasn’t the appetite for it at the time,” Mr. Tiahrt said in an interview. “They thought, we don’t need to worry about it because the Supreme Court will strike it down.”
But the idea of using the appropriations process to defund an entire federal program, particularly one as far-reaching as the health care overhaul, raised the stakes considerably. In an interview, Mr. DeMint, who left the Senate to join the Heritage Foundation in January, said he had been thinking about it since the law’s passage, in part because Republican leaders were not more aggressive.
“They’ve been through a series of C.R.s and debt limits,” Mr. DeMint said, referring to continuing resolutions on spending, “and all the time there was discussion of ‘O.K., we’re not going to fight the Obamacare fight, we’ll do it next time.’ The conservatives who ran in 2010 promising to repeal it kept hearing, ‘This is not the right time to fight this battle.’ ”
Mr. DeMint is hardly alone in his distaste for the health law, or his willingness to do something about it. In the three years since Mr. Obama signed the health measure, Tea Party-inspired groups have mobilized, aided by a financing network that continues to grow, both in its complexity and the sheer amount of money that flows through it.
A review of tax records, campaign finance reports and corporate filings shows that hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised and spent since 2012 by organizations, many of them loosely connected, leading opposition to the measure.
One of the biggest sources of conservative money is Freedom Partners, a tax-exempt “business league” that claims more than 200 members, each of whom pays at least $100,000 in dues. The group’s board is headed by a longtime executive of Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by the Koch brothers, who were among the original financiers of the Tea Party movement. The Kochs declined to comment.
While Freedom Partners has financed organizations that are pushing to defund the law, like Heritage Action and Tea Party Patriots, Freedom Partners has not advocated that. A spokesman for the group, James Davis, said it was more focused on “educating Americans around the country on the negative impacts of Obamacare.”
The largest recipient of Freedom Partners cash — about $115 million — was the Center to Protect Patient Rights, according to the groups’ latest tax filings. Run by a political consultant with ties to the Kochs and listing an Arizona post office box for its address, the center appears to be little more than a clearinghouse for donations to still more groups, including American Commitment and the 60 Plus Association, both ardent foes of the health care law.
American Commitment and 60 Plus were among a handful of groups calling themselves the “Repeal Coalition” that sent a letter in August urging Republican leaders in the House and the Senate to insist “at a minimum” in a one-year delay of carrying out the health care law as part of any budget deal. Another group, the Conservative 50 Plus Alliance, delivered a defunding petition with 68,700 signatures to the Senate.
In the fight to shape public opinion, conservatives face well-organized liberal foes. Enroll America, a nonprofit group allied with the Obama White House, is waging a campaign to persuade millions of the uninsured to buy coverage. The law’s supporters are also getting huge assistance from the insurance industry, which is expected to spend $1 billion on advertising to help sell its plans on the exchanges.
“It is David versus Goliath,” said Mr. Phillips of Americans for Prosperity.
But conservatives are finding that with relatively small advertising buys, they can make a splash. Generation Opportunity, the youth-oriented outfit behind the “Creepy Uncle Sam” ads, is spending $750,000 on that effort, aimed at dissuading young people — a cohort critical to the success of the health care overhaul — from signing up for insurance under the new law.
The group receives substantial backing from Freedom Partners and appears ready to expand. Recently, Generation Opportunity moved into spacious new offices in Arlington, Va., where exposed ductwork, Ikea chairs and a Ping-Pong table give off the feel of a Silicon Valley start-up.
Its executive director, Evan Feinberg, a 29-year-old former Capitol Hill aide and onetime instructor for a leadership institute founded by Charles Koch, said there would be more Uncle Sam ads, coupled with college campus visits, this fall. Two other groups, FreedomWorks, with its “Burn Your Obamacare Card” protests, and Young Americans for Liberty, are also running campus events.
“A lot of folks have asked us, ‘Are we trying to sabotage the law?’ ” Mr. Feinberg said in an interview last week. His answer echoes the Freedom Partners philosophy: “Our goal is to educate and empower young people.”
Critical Timing
But many on the Republican right wanted to do more.
Mr. Meese’s low-profile coalition, the Conservative Action Project, which seeks to find common ground among leaders of an array of fiscally and socially conservative groups, was looking ahead to last Tuesday, when the new online health insurance marketplaces, called exchanges, were set to open. If the law took full effect as planned, many conservatives feared, it would be nearly impossible to repeal — even if a Republican president were elected in 2016.
“I think people realized that with the imminent beginning of Obamacare, that this was a critical time to make every effort to stop something,” Mr. Meese said in an interview. (He has since stepped down as the coalition’s chairman and has been succeeded by David McIntosh, a former congressman from Indiana.)
The defunding idea, Mr. Meese said, was “a logical strategy.” The idea drew broad support. Fiscal conservatives like Chris Chocola, the president of the Club for Growth, signed on to the blueprint. So did social and religious conservatives, like the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition.
The document set a target date: March 27, when a continuing resolution [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/federal_budget_us/index.html ] allowing the government to function was to expire. Its message was direct: “Conservatives should not approve a C.R. unless it defunds Obamacare.”
But the March date came and went without a defunding struggle. In the Senate, Mr. Cruz and Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, talked up the defunding idea, but it went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled chamber. In the House, Mr. Boehner wanted to concentrate instead on locking in the across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration, and Tea Party lawmakers followed his lead. Outside advocates were unhappy but held their fire.
“We didn’t cause any trouble,” Mr. Chocola said.
Yet by summer, with an August recess looming and another temporary spending bill expiring at the end of September, the groups were done waiting.
“I remember talking to reporters at the end of July, and they said, ‘This didn’t go anywhere,’ ” Mr. Needham recalled. “What all of us felt at the time was, this was never going to be a strategy that was going to win inside the Beltway. It was going to be a strategy where, during August, people would go home and hear from their constituents, saying: ‘You pledged to do everything you could to stop Obamacare. Will you defund it?’ ”
Heritage Action, which has trained 6,000 people it calls sentinels around the country, sent them to open meetings and other events to confront their elected representatives. Its “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour,” which began in Fayetteville, Ark., on Aug. 19 and ended 10 days later in Wilmington, Del., drew hundreds at every stop.
The Senate Conservatives Fund, led by Mr. DeMint when he was in the Senate, put up a Web site in July called dontfundobamacare.com [ http://dontfundobamacare.com/ ] and ran television ads featuring Mr. Cruz and Mr. Lee urging people to tell their representatives not to fund the law.
When Senator Richard M. Burr, a North Carolina Republican, told a reporter [ http://thehill.com/video/senate/313673-sen-burr-sen-lees-proposal-to-defund-obamacare-dumbest-idea-ive-ever-heardhttp://thehill.com/video/senate/313673-sen-burr-sen-lees-proposal-to-defund-obamacare-dumbest-idea-ive-ever-heard ] that defunding the law was “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” the fund bought a radio ad to attack him. Two other Republican senators up for re-election in 2014, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were also targeted. Both face Tea Party challengers.
In Washington, Tea Party Patriots, which created the defunding tool kit, set up a Web site, exemptamerica.com [ http://exemptamerica.com/ ], to promote a rally last month showcasing many of the Republicans in Congress whom Democrats — and a number of fellow Republicans — say are most responsible for the shutdown.
While conservatives believe that the public will back them on defunding, a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority — 57 percent — disapproves of cutting off funding as a way to stop the law.
Last week, with the health care exchanges open for business and a number of prominent Republicans complaining that the “Defund Obamacare” strategy was politically damaging and pointless, Mr. Needham of Heritage Action said he felt good about what the groups had accomplished.
“It really was a groundswell,” he said, “that changed Washington from the outside in.”
*
Related
News Analysis: The Benefits of Intransigence (October 6, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/sunday-review/the-benefits-of-intransigence.html
Related in Opinion
Paul Krugman: The Boehner Bunglers (October 7, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/opinion/krugman-the-boehner-bunglers.html
*
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]
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A U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman’s Fall
A closed sign hangs at the entrance to the U.S. Treasury building in Washington D.C. on Oct. 3, 2013. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew has said the government will have only $30 billion of cash left by Oct. 17 to meet its commitments.
Julia Schmalz/Bloomberg
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., leaves a press conference after telling reporters that Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Republicans are the obstacle to ending the government shutdown crisis, at the Capitol on Oct. 3, 2013.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Video [embedded]
Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer and co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., talks about the "dysfunction" in Washington and the potential impact of a U.S. debt default on the economy. He speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop."
(Source: Bloomberg)
By Yalman Onaran - Oct 6, 2013 10:55 PM CT
Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen.
Failure by the world’s largest borrower to pay its debt -- unprecedented in modern history -- will devastate stock markets from Brazil to Zurich, halt a $5 trillion lending mechanism for investors who rely on Treasuries, blow up borrowing costs for billions of people and companies, ravage the dollar and throw the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression. Among the dozens of money managers, economists, bankers, traders and former government officials interviewed for this story, few view a U.S. default as anything but a financial apocalypse.
The $12 trillion of outstanding government debt is 23 times the $517 billion Lehman owed when it filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008. As politicians butt heads over raising the debt ceiling, executives from Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Warren Buffett to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd C. Blankfein have warned that going over the edge would be catastrophic.
“If it were to occur -- and it’s a big if -- one would expect a series of legal triggers, potentially transmitting the default to many other markets,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., the world’s largest fixed-income manager. “All this would add to the headwinds facing economic growth. It would also undermine the role of the U.S. in the world economy.”
Lehman Aftermath
The U.S. stock market lost almost half its value in the five months following Lehman’s failure. The country had its worst recession since the Great Depression (INDU), taking the global economy down with it. Unemployment (USURTOT) surged to 10 percent, the highest in three decades.
Another depression was prevented only by unprecedented action by the Federal Reserve, which pumped $3 trillion into the financial system. The U.S. Treasury provided about $300 billion of capital for the nation’s banks.
“If we miss an interest payment, that would blow Lehman out of the water,” said Tim Bitsberger, a former Treasury official under President George W. Bush and now a New York-based managing director at BNP Paribas SA. “Lehman was an isolated company, and now we are talking about the U.S. government.”
Buffett has asked politicians to stop using the debt limit as a weapon in policy debates. Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman urged employees to contact their congressmen to remind them about the “unacceptable consequences” of a default.
‘Nuclear Bombs’
“It should be like nuclear bombs, basically too horrible to use,” Buffett, 83, said in an interview published by Fortune magazine last week.
One unexpected consequence of Lehman’s collapse was the seizing up of the repurchase agreement, or repo, market -- a form of secured, short-term borrowing used by Wall Street banks and investment firms. Many of Lehman’s trading counterparts discovered the collateral they believed was backing their loans wasn’t there to grab as rules allowed. That scared investors in the rest of the market, closing off other trades and leading to fire sales of securities and further price declines.
A government default could freeze the repo market more than Lehman’s collapse because U.S. debt forms its backbone. At least $2.8 trillion of Treasuries serve as collateral for repo and reverse-repo loans, according to Fed data.
‘Holy Cripes’
In the event of a default, Treasuries might no longer be eligible as collateral for repo agreements, according to James Kochan, Wells Fargo Funds Management LLC’s chief fixed-income strategist. The cheap funding for the holdings lowers the yields demanded on the investments, and unwinding the positions could amplify losses for lenders and borrowers.
If Treasuries were ejected from the market, “Well, holy cripes,” Kochan said in an interview.
In 2011, the last time Congress was gridlocked over the extension of the debt ceiling, repo rates rose as money-market funds pulled back because they didn’t want the risk of holding a security in default.
“A lot of this is about fear of the unknown,” said Scott Skyrm, a former head of repo and money markets for Newedge USA LLC and author of “The Money Noose: Jon Corzine and the Collapse of MF Global.” “There is no upside to being in the market in that environment, so people pull out.”
The U.S. didn’t default on its debt in 2011. Republicans and Democrats reached a last-minute deal to raise the borrowing limit. Even so, the posturing hurt consumer confidence and wiped out $6 trillion of value from global stocks.
Historical Lessons
While none of the people interviewed for this story expect the world’s largest economy to default this time either, most say the chances of it happening now are higher than in the past.
“It would be insane to default, but it’s no longer a zero-percent probability,” said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund who teaches economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a columnist for Bloomberg View.
The U.S. hasn’t defaulted since 1790, when the newly formed nation deferred until 1801 interest obligations on debt it assumed from the states, according to “This Time Is Different,” a history of financial crises by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
Technical Default
In 1979, the U.S. was late to make payments on about $122 million of bills, in part because of “severe technical difficulties” that the Treasury said stemmed from a word-processing failure, according to the Financial Review’s August 1989 issue. While payments were made after a short delay, including with interest for tardiness, the hiccup caused yields to rise by half a percentage point and stay there for months.
A default today could be deemed “technical” because it would be the result of the government’s unwillingness to pay, not its ability, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts including Alex Roever said in a report last week.
In a technical default, only the prices of Treasury bonds that mature or have coupon payments would fall, according to the analysts. Money-market funds wouldn’t be forced to sell government bonds, and the Fed probably would continue accepting them as collateral for emergency cash.
That distinction is nothing more than an effort to downplay the danger of default, according to MIT’s Johnson. Sovereign defaults are always about the political will to pay because most governments can print money to make payments if they want to, Johnson said.
Insufficient Funds
Labeled technical or not, a default is still a default, said Jim Grant, founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.
“People have typically turned to Treasuries as a safe haven, but what will happen when they realize it’s not safe anymore,” said Grant, who has followed interest rates since the 1970s. “Financial markets are all confidence-based. If that confidence is shaken, you have disaster.”
Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew has said the government will have only $30 billion of cash left by Oct. 17 to meet its commitments. Those can run as high as $60 billion a day, which means the Treasury will need to borrow more to meet its liabilities, Lew said. Goldman Sachs expects the Treasury’s cash balance to be depleted by Oct. 31 and “possibly quite a bit sooner,” analysts at the bank wrote in an Oct. 5 report.
The Treasury has $120 billion of short-term bonds coming due on Oct. 17, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. An additional $93 billion of bills are due on Oct. 24. On the last day of the month, $150 billion needs to be paid back, including two-year and five-year notes that mature. The total due from Oct. 17 through Nov. 7 is $417 billion.
Fed Support
While some expect a 2013 default will drive up yields only on Treasury securities coming due, others including former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman see a wider impact in bond yields, pushing up borrowing costs.
“That would be higher interest costs over some considerable period of time for the U.S. and for U.S. taxpayers,” said Altman, who’s chairman of New York-based investment bank Evercore Partners Inc.
The yield on 10-year U.S. bonds dropped to a two-month low of 2.58 percent on Oct. 3. While short-term bill rates and the cost to insure against a default have risen, volatility in Treasuries has fallen, a sign that investor confidence in the Federal Reserve’s bond-purchase program is outweighing worries over the budget battle.
Rating Downgrade
Some point to Standard & Poor’s 2011 downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, which led to an increase in Treasury prices, not a drop. Even after the rating was lowered by one level to AA+ from AAA, investors continued buying U.S. government bonds as they flocked to safety, according to Joe Davis, chief economist at Vanguard Group Inc.
A downgrade to default rating would be different, said Peter Tchir, founder of New York-based TF Market Advisors. Investors, structured vehicles, collateral agreements, derivatives contracts and other trading covenants have ratings-based rules that could force the replacement of Treasuries in a trade or portfolio, he said.
“Once the system starts to break down related to settlement and payments, then liquidity disappears, as we saw after Lehman,” Tchir said. “Perhaps the things we’re worried about now will be fine after a U.S. default, but who knows what others will not be.”
‘Create Chaos’
Treasuries are among the most popular forms of collateral pledged at derivatives clearinghouses, including the one owned by CME Group Inc. (CME), the world’s largest futures market. Government agencies such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which use interest-rate swaps and derivatives to hedge mortgage portfolios, would be affected by a downgrade because it could lower their counterparty ratings and result in more collateral being demanded by trading partners.
“We can’t even imagine all the things that might happen, just like Henry Paulson couldn’t imagine all the bad things that might happen if he let Lehman go down,” said Bill Isaac, chairman of Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp and a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., referring to the former U.S. Treasury secretary. “It would create chaos in financial markets.”
Capital Shortfalls
Higher borrowing costs could slow the housing recovery. If 30-year mortgage rates climbed to 6.5 percent from 4.5 percent, a borrower who can now afford the monthly payment on a $200,000 loan would only be able to take on about $160,000 of debt when buying a property, forcing down sale prices.
It would be “bad -- both for affordability and for consumer confidence,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist for Trulia Inc., an online property-listing service.
Banks would have to write down securities on their books that are losing value and face capital shortfalls, according to MIT’s Johnson.
“The government wouldn’t have the cash to rescue the banks this time either,” Johnson said.
About half of the U.S. debt is held by foreign governments, central banks and other overseas investors, according to Treasury data. A default would throw those holdings into question as well as the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, Johnson said. During the 2011 debt-ceiling scare, foreign investors shunned Treasury auctions for about three months, according to data compiled by JPMorgan.
China, Japan
China is the largest [foreign/non-U.S., see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=65552869 and preceding and following] holder of U.S. Treasuries, with $1.3 trillion in July, according to Treasury data. Japan follows [as second-lagest foreign/non-U.S. holder] with $1.1 trillion.
Even if Treasury prices aren’t affected by a default, the damage in other markets could be devastating. U.S. stocks fell 7 percent in one day when Congress rejected the government’s bank-rescue package in 2008, before passing it a few days later.
The market shocks would be enough to tip the U.S. back into recession and drag the world economy down, according to Desmond Lachman, a fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. The event could prove to be the trigger that reverses a weak and fragile recovery, said William Cunningham, head of credit portfolios for the investment arm of Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. Lehman’s collapse was a similar spark, he said.
“Is this the straw among other things that tips an economy without drivers of growth back down into a negative spiral?” Cunningham said.
War Rooms
While a short-lived default might be fixed without major damage to the global economy, drawing a line between short and long isn’t easy, according to Evercore’s Altman.
“If you missed an interest payment by two hours, the markets might look entirely beyond that and forgive you,” Altman said. “If you miss an interest payment by two days, four days, six days, that’s a different story. It’s very difficult to be scientific about this.”
During the final days of Lehman Brothers, Wall Street firms set up war rooms to chart the potential impact of the firm’s demise and prepare strategies to cope with the consequences. Their scenarios, which focused on credit-default swaps, didn’t forecast the contagion that quickly spread after the bankruptcy.
Now, some banks are preparing contingency plans for a possible U.S. default, such as stocking retail branches with more cash, the New York Times reported last week. Those preparations might prove useless once again.
“Nobody knows what would happen if there were a default because the reality is there’s never been even a technical default in the U.S.,” said Russ Koesterich, chief investment strategist at BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager. “Everyone’s flying blind.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Yalman Onaran in New York at yonaran@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net; Christine Harper at charper@bloomberg.net
*
Related
QuickTake
So What Exactly Is the Debt Ceiling, and Where Did It Come From?
http://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/the-debt-ceiling/
*
©2013 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-07/a-u-s-default-seen-as-catastrophe-dwarfing-lehman-s-fall.html [with comments]
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Cruz urges GOP to use debt ceiling fight for Obamacare changes
October 6, 2013
Legislation raising the debt ceiling is among the best leverage that Congress has to rein in the White House and should include changes to the nation's new health insurance system, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."
Cruz said that in addition to dismantling Obamacare, Republicans should also look for a "significant" plan to reduce new spending and avoid new taxes. ...
[...]
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57606227/cruz-urges-gop-to-use-debt-ceiling-fight-for-obamacare-changes/ [with comments]
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How The Government Shutdown Will End: 'The Market Is Just Going to Smash Us'
House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, left, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, third from left, leave the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2013.
(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 10/05/2013 10:10 am EDT | Updated: 10/07/2013 11:30 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- With Congress unable to move, the end to the standoff in the nation's capital over Obamacare and funding the government is looking ever more certain to come down to a battle over the nation's debt limit -- and an epic smackdown from the global market.
Friday, all sides made clear they are not willing to move. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Republicans will not budge unless Democrats start negotiating over President Barack Obama's health care law. "This isn't some damn game. All we want is to sit down and have a discussion," Boehner said.
Democrats and the president said they will talk only after the GOP releases its chokehold on government funding and the economy by letting the House vote on a six-week funding bill that the Senate passed. "If Speaker Boehner will simply allow that vote to take place, we can end this shutdown," Obama said.
The shutdown is an economic drain that has dragged down consumer confidence by 14 points, according the Gallup. Economists say failing to raise the debt limit of $16.7 trillion [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/debt-limit-showdown_n_3950890.html ] -- forecast to be reached on Oct. 17 -- would be a catastrophe.
And lawmakers are starting to fear nothing but an economic near-cataclysm will break the impasse in the House.
"I'm apprehensive that we're looking at at least a couple of weeks until we bump up against the debt ceiling and the market is an outside force that pistol whips us into our senses," said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who has already begun preparing for the showdown by circulating a letter -- with nearly all the Democrats signing on -- calling for a clean raising of the limit.
However, Welch was not sure even presenting a unified front would move Republicans -- including those who are sympathetic.
"Ultimately what will get them to move is the market reaction. The market is just going to smash us for our congressional abstinence," he said. "At that point they'll cave. And Boehner knows that."
The question is why is has to be that way. Some Republicans who are fed up with the standoff agree with Democrats on the cause -- the tea party, currently led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
And they say the showdown won't end until Boehner stops listening to Cruz and company, dubbed "lemmings" by frustrated Boehner loyalist Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).
"The lemmings, they're followers. They're just waiting for the next guy in front of the mic, or the the next guy that's on TV. And they're going to run out and follow them. Because they're anti-leadership," Nunes told reporters this week. "They have never followed any leadership plan. Now all of a sudden, the leadership has adopted their plan, and we're fully implementing their strategy and plan, which I think is actually a lack of a strategy. It's not a plan."
Democrats like Welch agree completely with Nunes' point.
"What you have now is a minority in the Republican Party in one house of Congress saying, 'Shutdown and default unless we get our way,'" Welch told HuffPost. "They know it won't be passed by the Senate; they know it won't be signed by the president. So they say, 'Well, instead of winning elections in the Senate, instead of winning the presidency, we're gong to burn down the U.S. economy.'"
"The irony is that John Boehner, who is a man of the institution, said his speakership was about trying to return to regular order, and I happen to believe he was quite serious about that," Welch said. "But there's nothing that will destroy regular order more than the tactic of shutdown and the tactic of default. He's now essentially turned over the whole institutional legitimacy of the House to guys in the extreme wing of his party who have no respect for regular order."
Given the stakes, Republicans and some observers have asked why Democrats are not at least willing to come up with some sort of fig leaf or small compromise.
For Democrats there are two reasons. First, the "clean" funding bill that the House leaders refuse to bring to a vote was already a compromise that Democrats made to get the vote in first place. It's a short-term budget that accepts sequestration-level spending cuts.
"The Democrats are accepting the Republican budget number, and we don't like that, so this has actually been a victory for the Republicans on the budget," Welch said.
But the bigger reason is that, as a senior aide told HuffPost privately Friday in order to speak candidly on negotiations, Democrats see the standoff as an institutional crisis in which, if they give in, Congress will be beholden to the most determined minority on every important piece of legislation where the side that is willing to do the most damage wins.
Welch said he hopes Boehner and the more moderate members of his caucus will not let that happen.
"If we default, that will be a signal that we've gone from dysfunction to disintegration," he said. "I talk to lots of my Republican colleagues and friends, and they're dismayed."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/government-shutdown-debt-limit_n_4049056.html [with embedded video report, and (over 5,000) comments]
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Boehner Hews to Hard Line in Demanding Concessions From Obama
Speaker John A. Boehner, at the Capitol on Saturday, said on Sunday that there would be no vote to reopen the government.
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
By JACKIE CALMES and JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: October 6, 2013
WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner stood his ground on Sunday alongside the most conservative Republicans in Congress, insisting that the House would not vote to finance and reopen the government or raise the nation’s borrowing limit without concessions from President Obama on the health care law.
“The fact is, this fight was going to come one way or the other,” Mr. Boehner said on the ABC News program “This Week,” adding, “We’re in the fight.”
With his hard line, Mr. Boehner reaffirmed that the stalemate with the White House over the six-day-old government shutdown was now compounded by an even more economically risky fight over raising the government’s borrowing limit by Oct. 17 to pay for bills already incurred.
Most of the government remains shuttered with no end in sight, and markets and businesses are growing increasingly fretful over the chaos that could result from the first government default on its debt.
Both houses of Congress will be back in session on Monday afternoon after making no progress toward breaking the budget deadlock last week. With Mr. Boehner and other Republicans expanding their demands from changes in the health care law, which was passed in 2010, to broader budget reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, senior administration officials said the White House would challenge them to propose specific savings they want from Medicare. On Sunday, Mr. Boehner disputed those lawmakers — Democrats as well as some Republicans — who have said a bipartisan majority exists in the House to approve the money needed to run the government in the new fiscal year, which began last Tuesday, if the speaker would defy his most conservative Republican colleagues [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html (first item this post)] and allow a vote on the spending measure with no conditions, a so-called clean bill.
“There are not the votes in the House to pass a clean C.R.,” he said on the ABC program, referring to a continuing resolution to provide money for military and domestic programs.
The speaker’s assessment that he did not have the votes to pass a clean budget bill was contradicted by members of both parties. “I’m positive that a clean C.R. would pass,” said Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York.
“If it went on the floor tomorrow, I could see anywhere from 50 to 75 Republicans voting for it,” he added. “And if it were a secret ballot, 150.”
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democratic leader, was just as blunt in a telephone interview. “Nobody believes that,” he said of the speaker’s comment.
Mr. Schumer challenged Mr. Boehner to put a clean budget bill on the floor and prove that he is right. He called the speaker’s remarks “a step back.”
“I’m hearing from my Republican colleagues that this is a strategy going nowhere that’s hurting them and hurting the country,” he added, noting that several Republicans have approached him recently asking him to help broker a deal that ends the shutdown. “What they’re saying to me is we’ve got to help Boehner find a way out of this,” Mr. Schumer said.
Mr. Boehner also said the House would not pass an essential increase in the debt limit without concessions from Mr. Obama. Republicans have said in recent days that Mr. Boehner had privately assured them that he would not allow a breach of the debt limit, though it was unclear how far he would be willing to go to avoid it.
In his television appearance, he said firmly, “We’re not going to pass a clean debt-limit increase.”
“I told the president, ‘There’s no way we’re going to pass one,’ ” he added. “The votes are not in the House to pass a clean debt limit. And the president is risking default by not having a conversation with us.”
Describing the negotiations he wanted with Mr. Obama, Mr. Boehner seemed to shift from demands that the president agree only to defund or delay his signature health care law — a nonnegotiable condition, as Mr. Obama sees it — to calling once again for deficit reduction talks that would result in savings from Medicare in particular.
Mr. Obama has proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term savings in the entitlement programs, including Social Security, but only if Republicans agree to raise additional revenues by closing tax loopholes for wealthy individuals and some corporations.
Mr. Boehner ruled that out. “We’re not raising taxes,” he said.
On the budget impasse, the speaker acknowledged that in July he had gone to the Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and offered to have the House pass a clean financing resolution. His proposal would have set spending levels $70 billion lower than Democrats wanted, but would have had no contentious add-ons like changing the health care law.
Democrats accepted, but they say that Mr. Boehner then reneged under pressure from Tea Party conservatives.
“I and my members decided the threat of Obamacare” was so great, Mr. Boehner said, “that it was time for us to take a stand. And we took a stand.”
For the administration, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew appeared on four Sunday talk shows to keep the pressure on Republicans to raise the debt limit.
Mr. Lew, speaking on the CNN program “State of the Union,” emphatically reiterated the administration’s legal opinion that Mr. Obama cannot constitutionally raise the debt ceiling by himself if Congress fails to act.
“There is no option that prevents us from being in default if we’re not paying our bills,” Mr. Lew said, rejecting the idea that the president could invoke a constitutional power or take some other action. Mr. Obama has also ruled that out.
Mr. Lew, who wrote to Congress on Tuesday to say he had used his last “extraordinary measure” to manage federal accounts in ways to buy time, reiterated that the government would most likely have about $30 billion available on Oct. 17.
“And $30 billion is a lot of money, but when you think about the cash flow of the government of the United States, we have individual days when our negative or positive cash flow is $50 or $60 billion,” he said on CNN. “So $30 billion is not a responsible amount of cash to run the government on.”
“It’s very dangerous,” he added. “It’s reckless.”
Mr. Lew dismissed questions about why Mr. Obama would not negotiate with House Republicans over the debt limit. The president has said that increasing the borrowing authority is a basic Congressional responsibility under the Constitution, and not one for which lawmakers can extract ransom — in this case the demand that he defund or delay his health care law.
“The president wants to negotiate,” Mr. Lew said on Fox News. “Congress needs to do its job, and we then need to negotiate.”
*
Related
Cruz’s 21-Hour Speech Fueled a Ratings Jump at C-Span2 (October 7, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/business/media/c-span2-ratings-soar-during-cruzs-marathon-speech.html
Give Us This Day, Our Daily Senate Scolding (October 7, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/us/politics/senate-chaplain-shows-his-disapproval-during-morning-prayer.html
In Military City, Government Reassurances Are Little Comfort (October 7, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/us/politics/in-military-city-government-reassurances-are-little-comfort.html
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© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/us/politics/obama-aide-urges-lawmakers-to-raise-debt-ceiling.html
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No One Understands Strategy To Avoid Debt Ceiling Crisis, Sorry Y'all
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) leaves the House Republican Conference meeting in the basement of the Capitol to speak to the media on Friday.
10/05/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/debt-ceiling-strategy_n_4046100.html [with comments]
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Harry Reid: John Boehner's 'A Coward'
10/04/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/harry-reid-john-boehner_n_4044324.html [with (over 10,000) comments]
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Your Sunday Shutdown Reader #1: In Defense of Boehner
'How many times do we have to refight the Civil War?'
Oct 6 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/your-sunday-shutdown-reader-1-in-defense-of-boehner/280316/
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Let Me Explain How Extortion Works, Republicans
We got to explain this to you?
By Jonathan Chait
10/4/2013 at 12:43 PM
Yesterday, a couple of news outlets reported that John Boehner has privately told colleagues he will let Democrats vote for a bill to raise the debt ceiling rather than allow default. That would seem to severely crimp Boehner’s ability to threaten Democrats with default. Today, some Republican House members assure National Review [ http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/360402/boehner-vows-fight-debt-ceiling-jonathan-strong ] that, no, no, the threat is still somehow there:
“We are not going to default on the U.S. debt. We never have, we never will. If anybody defaults, it’ll be the president, who doesn’t write the check. But the speaker was very clear today that, while we’re not going to default, but there will be a negotiation. Even though the president says there will not be, there will be,” said Representative Phil Roe of Tennessee.
Boehner argued “the media is wrong,” said Representative John Fleming of Louisiana, and that Boehner’s insistence that the government will not default on its debts “shouldn’t be misconstrued as saying we’re not going to challenge Democrats in that debate.”
They’re either obscuring, or failing to understand, how threats work. Of course, threats often employ a level of obtuseness. But ultimately, there’s either a threat, or there isn’t. Suppose a couple of gentlemen from the Soprano family stop by your coffee shop and urge you to contribute to the local Merchant’s Protective Cooperative:
[video ( http://videos.nymag.com/video/The-Sopranos-Its-Over-For-The-L ) of the YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz0uEzRSWXw , as embedded]
They’re proposing a negotiation for some auxiliary security services. The question is what happens if the negotiation fails. The Sopranos are saying that the best alternative to a negotiated agreement is that they will beat up the manager. Likewise, the Republicans want to have a negotiation over Obamacare and other aspects of fiscal policy under the premise that failure to reach a deal Republicans like will lead to the world economy melting down. The Republicans are currently contemplating [ http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/360413/emerging-offer-robert-costa ] a "negotiation" that isn't as grandiose as killing Obamacare but is definitely not anything Democrats would agree to without a gun to their head:
There will be a “mechanism” for revenue-neutral tax reform, ushered by Ryan and Michigan’s Dave Camp, that will encourage deeper congressional talks in the coming year. There will be entitlement-reform proposals, most likely chained CPI and means-testing Social Security; there will also be some health-care provisions, such as a repeal of the medical-device tax, which has bipartisan support in both chambers.
So, tax cuts and cuts to retirement programs, and no new revenue? What would make Obama sign that, other than a threat of default?
If the alternative to a fiscal agreement is, instead, that the debt ceiling is lifted, the world economy does not melt down, and the status quo remains in place, then that’s a different thing. You can still have a negotiation. Likewise, a coffee shop manager can still discuss if the Soprano goons have any useful supplemental security services to offer. The Republicans are saying now that they won’t melt down the world economy, but they will have a negotiation. Well, sure. But a negotiation is not a shakedown. Pretending the two are the same doesn’t make it so.
Copyright © 2013, New York Media LLC
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/let-me-explain-how-extortion-works-republicans.html [with comments]
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Governing by Blackmail
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 5, 2013
SUPPOSE President Obama announced:
Unless Republicans agree to my proposal for gun control, I will use my authority as commander in chief to scuttle one aircraft carrier a week in the bottom of the ocean.
I invite Republican leaders to come to the White House and negotiate a deal to preserve our military strength. I hope Republicans will work with me to prevent the loss of our carrier fleet.
If the Republicans refuse to negotiate, I will be compelled to begin by scuttling the U.S.S. George Washington in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, with 80 aircraft on board.
In that situation, we would all agree that Obama had gone nuts. Whatever his beefs with Republicans, it would be an inexcusable betrayal to try to get his way by destroying our national assets. That would be an abuse of power and the worst kind of blackmail.
And in that kind of situation, I would hope that we as journalists wouldn’t describe the resulting furor as a “political impasse” or “partisan gridlock.” I hope that we wouldn’t settle for quoting politicians on each side as blaming the other. It would be appropriate to point out the obvious: Our president had tumbled over the edge and was endangering the nation.
Today, we have a similar situation, except that it’s a band of extremist House Republicans who are deliberately sabotaging America’s economy and damaging our national security — all in hopes of gaining leverage on unrelated issues.
The shutdown of government by House Republicans has already cost at least $1.2 billion, with the tab increasing by $300 million a day [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/opinion/kristof-excuses-excuses-excuses.html ]. Some estimates are much higher than that.
The 1995 and 1996 shutdowns cost the country [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/opinion/the-cost-of-the-shutdown.html ] $2.1 billion at today’s value, and the current one is also likely to end up costing billions — a cost imposed on every citizen by House Republicans, even as members of Congress pay themselves.
The government shutdown and risk of default also undermine America’s strength around the world. It’s not just that 72 percent of the intelligence community’s civilian work force [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/shutdown-makes-us-more-vulnerable-to-terrorist-attacks-intelligence-officials-warn/2013/10/02/a65b9266-2b86-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html ] has been furloughed. It’s not simply that “the jeopardy to the safety and security of this country will increase” daily, according to James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence.
Nor is it just that the White House telephone number is now answered with a recording that says to call back when government is functioning again. It’s not simply that several countries have issued travel advisories about visiting America. It’s not just that we’re mocked worldwide, with the French newspaper Le Monde writing [ http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2013/10/01/jefferson-reveille-toi-ils-sont-devenus-fous_3487686_3232.html ]: “Jefferson, wake up! They’ve gone crazy!”
Rather, it’s that America’s strength and influence derive in part from the success of our political and economic model. When House Republicans shut our government down and leave us teetering on the abyss of default, we are a diminished nation. We have less influence. We have less raw power, as surely as if we had fewer aircraft carriers.
Some Americans think that this crisis reflects typical partisan squabbling. No. Democrats and Republicans have always disagreed, sometimes ferociously, about what economic policy is best, but, in the past, it was not normal for either to sabotage the economy as a negotiating tactic.
In a household, husbands and wives disagree passionately about high-stakes issues like how to raise children. But normal people do not announce that if their spouse does not give in, they will break all the windows in the house.
Hard-line House Republicans seem to think that their ability to inflict pain on 800,000 federal workers by furloughing them [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/us/politics/us-government-shutdown.html ] without pay gives them bargaining chips. The hard-liners apparently believe that their negotiating position is strengthened when they demonstrate that they can wreck American governance.
The stakes rise as we approach the debt limit and the risk of default — which the Treasury Department notes [ http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl2178.aspx ] could have an impact like that of the 2008 financial crisis and “has the potential to be catastrophic.” Astonishingly, Republican hard-liners see that potential catastrophe as a source of bargaining power in a game of extortion: We don’t want anything to happen to this fine American economy as we approach the debt limit, so you’d better meet our demands.
In this situation, it strikes a false note for us as journalists to cover the crisis simply by quoting each side as blaming the other. That’s a false equivalency.
The last time House Republicans played politics with this debt limit, in 2011, Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit rating [ http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/articles/en/us/?assetID=1245316529563 ]. In the long run, that may mean higher debt payments and higher taxes.
My opening example of a president scuttling naval ships was ludicrous. No one would do that. But if we default because of extremist House Republicans, the cost could be much greater to our economy and to our national security than the loss of a few aircraft carriers.
© 2013 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/governing-by-blackmail.html
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John Kerry Warns Congress: Think 'Long And Hard' About Government Shutdown's Global Message
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attends a joint news conference with U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013.
10/05/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/john-kerry-government-shutdown_n_4049758.html [with comments]
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Sense Of Unease Growing Around The World As U.S. Government Looks Befuddled
10/05/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/world-us-government_n_4047613.html [with (over 11,000) comments]
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Rest Of The World Thinks Congress Is A ‘Laughing Stock' For Government Shutdown
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx)
10/04/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/government-shutdown-international_n_4039527.html [with comments]
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APEC Forum 2013: With No Obama, Other Leaders Take Main Stage
10/07/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/apec-forum-2013-no-obama_n_4056673.html [with embedded video report "Obama Absence at Apec 'Does Matter'", and comments]
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Putin: Obama APEC No-Show 'Justified'
10/07/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/putin-obama-apec-no-show-justified_n_4056725.html [with embedded video report "Obama to Miss Apec Leader Summit", and comments]
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The Shutdown Crew Takes a Big Bite Out of U.S. Geopolitics
By William Bradley
Posted: 10/04/2013 3:42 pm
Add this to the "accomplishments" of the far right government shutdown crew: Removing President Barack Obama from the board at a crucial geopolitical moment.
In contrast to a number of other geopolitical areas, especially of late, the Obama administration does have a coherent and concerted set of moves underway in the Asia-Pacific Pivot strategy, which Obama announced [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/darwinian-obama-goes-post_b_1102939.html ] in November 2011. Significant progress has been made in developing alliances and laying the ground work for our big geopolitical pivot from fateful over-engagement with the Islamic world to heightened engagement with the rising Asia-Pacific (My Pivot archive here [ http://www.newwestnotes.com/2012/07/14/the-pivot-archive-in-formation/ ].)
As China claims sovereignty over nearly the entire South China Sea, one of the world's most strategically significant bodies of water, overawing its much smaller and weaker neighbors there, and pushes its claims in the East China Sea against Japan, much has been done to bring most countries in the region into alignment with the U.S., diplomatically, militarily, and economically.
Obama's latest trip to the Asia-Pacific was to provide some cherries on top for some new deals, move others forward, and establish him as a regular in Asian summitry, both at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in Indonesia and the annual East Asia Summit in Brunei. You can be sure that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin won't be missing.
While negotiations continue on a Trans Pacific Partnership agreement on trade and investment that notably excludes China, much of the developmental work on the Asia-Pacific Pivot, which is to see the majority of U.S. military power shifted to the region, has been fronted by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. He's in the midst of yet another lengthy trip to the region, this time to South Korea and Japan, and has been joined by Secretary of State John Kerry. The secretary of state will represent the U.S. at the upcoming summits in Obama's absence. Why Kerry? Because the State Department is historically the highest ranking Cabinet department. (But you can bet that most countries prefer a visit from the secretary of defense, who controls a vastly larger apparatus.)
Before canceling his time at the summits in Indonesia and Brunei, Obama first canceled his trips to Malaysia and the Philippines. This was to have been Obama's very first trip to the Philippines, where I think he can be very popular.
The latter cancellation comes at an especially bad time, as the U.S. and Philippines are close to what are essentially new basing agreements for U.S. forces and Obama's presence would make the deal go down quite well with most of the Filipino people. Given America's imperial past in the colony it won during the Spanish-American War of 1898, and kept during a brutal war of suppression against Philippine rebels, America always has need of treading carefully in the Philippines, which became a close ally during World War II but later chafed at America's heavy military footprint.
Rather than simply re-establish the huge U.S.-branded permanent naval and air bases at Subic Bay and Clark Field, the U.S. is continuing the notion it hit upon earlier with Australia and Singapore of establishing an ongoing "rotational presence" at host country bases it happens to share while moving American units in and out on regular deployments.
It is different from the old way, yet it is much like the old way as well, which is why an Obama charm offensive makes it all go down much smoother.
That's just one aspect of the shuffle on new bases, which of course are key to keeping U.S. forces -- mainly Navy and Air Force, with some Marines sprinkled across the map for rapid deployment and Army units focused as they are on the Korean Peninsula -- forward deployed in the theater.
With Obama stuck in Washington dealing with the bizarre government shutdown, Kerry linked up with Hagel in Tokyo this week for a "2+2? meeting with their Japanese counterparts. What came of that is a significant upgrade to the longstanding U.S.-Japan security treaty, involving new radar to keep an eye on North Korea, new drones to surveil the South China Sea and elsewhere in the Western Pacifiic, help from Japan in moving Marines from Okinawa to other parts of the Pacific, and more expansive patrolling.
I'm told there's more to come on this -- pertaining to major tensions with China in the East China Sea and the new Japanese administration's intention to make one of the planet's best armed forces more geared to expeditionary operations, in contravention of Japan's MacArthur-dictated constitution calling for "Self Defense Forces" only -- but perhaps not now with Obama absent.
Hagel began his latest major Asia-Pacific Pivot trip in South Korea, where he celebrated a key Korean War 60th anniversary and discussed shift of some command and control functions to the host country, which has wanted the U.S. to handle all that.
South Korea has developed a dependency because of the constant North Korean threat. North Korea has one of world's largest ground forces and rockets to devastate Seoul. The Korean Peninsula is somewhat atypical in the Asia-Pacific where distance creates a very different dynamic than we've experienced in the Middle East and Central Asia, and of course requires a much greater focus on naval forces. The Korean Peninsula, in contrast, is more like the Middle East where everything is jammed together and threats are more immediate and intimate.
This is why the Army is so important in Korea, whereas it's mobility-oriented services in the the Navy and Marines most everywhere else, with of course the Air Force very involved as well.
The right sort of attention from Obama can help smooth things with longstanding Korean allies, but not if he's absent.
And those are things I know about. There are undoubtedly other things that were in play for Obama.
This entire Obama trip was a major part of the Asia-Pacific Pivot strategy, putting a bright sheen on relationships and groundwork painstakingly spun up over the past year and more.
Not that the people behind this shutdown, mostly knee-jerk isolationists who imagine that the State Department is some mass dispenser of foreign aid, have any sense of such things. Nor, evidently, do elements of the two-dimensional conventional media which covers this stuff, as seen in this Politico [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/government-shutdown-obama-asia-trip-97685.html ] piece. The writer has no sense of what is going on with the trip itself, treating it, complete with inane comments from an ex-Clinton White House press secretary, as some sort of junket.
The Chinese, alarmed by the Pivot, which they see as a set of moves to contain their rising power, know better.
For Beijing, this government shutdown is good. In fact, President Xi just undertook high-profile visits this week to Indonesia and Malaysia, countering the now absent Obama.
The US looks shaky, with an ever more dysfunctional government, increasingly unable to carry out its basic functions, much less comprehend and support a sophisticated global strategy.
As for the rule of law championed by the U.S., much to the irritation of Chinese leaders who see all the talk as a smokescreen for intervention in the American interest, no matter how wackily conceived, what's going on in Washington now looks like anything but the rule of law. What it looks like, one Chinese analyst said to me, is "a partial coup."
After all, this is all happening because one dominant faction in one political party which controls part of one branch of government is trying to block "Obamacare," something which has little to do with the basic fiscal decisions on the table.
It is trying to win through political blackmail what it lost when the controversial health care plan was passed by Congress and signed by the president, when the Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional, and when Obama won the 2012 presidential election in which the law was a major issue.
For China's neighbors, the devil they know, closer, very rich and on the rise militarily, may be the more stable alternative. After all, they know that China's view of history is long view. Ours? Last decade.
And in his travel around the world as China builds global influence in its relentless rise to superpower status, President Xi isn't pinned down by the machinations of a minority of a minority.
Ironically, the minority of a minority which just slowed one of America's biggest bipartisan geopolitical moves is itself a declining minority. Even with its aficionados holding so much sway in the House of Representatives, a September 26th Gallup Poll survey [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/164648/tea-party-support-dwindles-near-record-low.aspx ] finds national support for the far right Tea Party at its second lowest level ever, just 22 percent.
America is being judged by what's going on in the Washington clown show. The right-wing faction behind it is like the proverbial barking dog that catches the car -- no idea what to do now. And almost certainly no real grasp of the trouble it's causing.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/the-shutdown-crew-takes-a_b_4045356.html [with comments]
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Hillary Clinton: Government Shutdown Shows 'Scorched Earth' Politics
NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 25: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting on September 25, 2013 in New York City. Timed to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly, CGI brings together heads of state, CEOs, philanthropists and others to help find solutions to the world's major problems.
(Photo by Ramin Talaie/Getty Images)
By KEN THOMAS
10/05/13 04:33 AM ET EDT
CLINTON, N.Y. (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton is deriding the partial government shutdown, saying dysfunction and gridlock are emblematic of too many people in politics choosing "scorched earth over common ground."
The former senator and secretary of state said during a speech Friday night at Hamilton College in upstate New York that it was difficult to recall a time when "politicians were willing to risk so much damage to the country to pursue their own agendas."
Clinton described some of the lessons she learned during her time in the Senate and at the State Department, contrasting it with the budget battle engulfing Congress and the White House and a looming deadline to raise the nation's debt limit.
"Today, too many in our politics choose scorched earth over common ground. Many of our public debates are happening in what I like to call an evidence-free zone, where ideology trumps data and common sense," she said. "That is a recipe for paralysis, not progress."
Recalling shutdowns during the mid-1990s, Clinton noted that her husband worked with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to find a way to reopen the government. Neither side got everything it wanted, she said, but it led to a balanced budget and economic growth.
Clinton said the stalemate could have repercussions around the globe, noting that the shutdown had forced President Barack Obama to cancel his trip to Asia for meetings with world leaders. "Russia is there. China is there. We're not there," Clinton said, arguing that it could affect the way the U.S. is perceived around the globe.
Polls show Clinton would be the leading contender for the White House in 2016 if she decides to seek the presidency again. The Hamilton address, before 5,800 people jammed into the college's field house, offered glimpses of a possible campaign.
Clinton received loud applause at several points during her speech and question-and-answer session and shook hands with dozens of students and others along a blue partition after the event. Some stretched out their smart phones to take a picture of the former first lady.
Hamilton's president, Joan Hinde Stewart, said the college's speaker series had brought to campus former President Bill Clinton, prime ministers, secretaries of state and other leaders. "Never yet a future president, but there's a first time for everything," Stewart said to cheers.
Clinton avoided any talk of another White House campaign, but she spoke of the need to promote trade around the globe and to help young people find jobs.
"We need to be thinking together again, not fighting the same old stale arguments," Clinton said. "I worked with Republicans and Democrats. I worked with business leaders and labor leaders, anybody with a good idea. So let's think about how we're going to spur growth again."
Describing lessons she learned as the nation's top diplomat, Clinton said that after a decade of war and financial crisis, "the United States remains the indispensable nation."
"For me this isn't even a question. We have to lead. I hear all the talk about America needs to pull back and not be so active. That's not the world I've seen," she said.
Clinton said that after traveling the world, "my faith in our country is deeper. Our optimism about our future is strong. But we're not going to get there by accident or hoping for it. We're really going to have to work hard, we're going to have to make this country work for all of us again."
Concluding her remarks, Clinton urged the audience, "Let's take this country that has given so much to people like us, the greatest force for peace and progress that the world has ever known and resolve we are going to pull together."
She added: "We are going to get out of the evidence-free zone. We're going to start looking at the facts. We're going to roll up our sleeves. We're going to solve our problems together. We're going to build a kind of future that our children and our grandchildren deserve."
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/hillary-clinton-government-shutdown_n_4050199.html [with comments]
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Your Sunday Shutdown Reader #2
Only one thing is harder than agreeing on blame for the current morass. That is imagining a way out.
Oct 7 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/your-sunday-shutdown-reader-2/280322/
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Pentagon Furloughs: Most Of Its 400,000 Civilian Employees Ordered Back To Work
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel speaks to the traveling press about the U.S. government shutdown, at his hotel in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2013.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
By ROBERT BURNS
10/05/13 01:51 PM ET EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is ordering most of its approximately 400,000 furloughed civilian employees back to work.
The decision by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is based on a Pentagon legal interpretation of a law called the Pay Our Military Act.
That measure was passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama shortly before the partial government shutdown began Tuesday.
The Pentagon did not immediately say on Saturday exactly how many workers will return to work. The Defense Department said "most" were being brought back.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/pentagon-furloughs_n_4050135.html [with comments]
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Hagel's Back-to-Work Order
The Defense Secretary has announced that most civilian defense workers will now be exempt from the government shutdown furlough.
Oct 5 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/hagels-back-to-work-order/280312/ [with comments]
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Fox News Falls For Fake Obama Story
Published on Oct 5, 2013 by MMFA Alt. Channel
Fox & Friends Saturday criticized President Obama for offering to personally pay for a "museum of Muslim culture" during the government shutdown, a claim that originated from a satire website. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/05/fox-falls-for-fake-story-about-obama-personally/196304 [ http://mm4a.org/1fQXFBP ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-bHEF6goF4 ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/fox-news-anna-kooiman-obama-parody_n_4053994.html [with embedded video report including the pertinent portion of the above YouTube, and (over 4,000) comments]; the original fake story at http://nationalreport.net/obama-uses-money-open-muslim-museum-amid-government-shutdown/ [with comments]
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Senator Cruz, Meet Senator McCarthy
By Steven Conn
Posted: 10/06/2013 5:57 pm
As the nation holds its breath hoping that Republican "moderates" in the House of Representatives will somehow prevail and vote to re-open the government, Geoffrey Kabaservice wrote a very useful piece in the New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/opinion/the-moderates-who-lighted-the-fuse.html (a bit more than half-way down at/see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92710614 and preceding and following) about those self-same "moderates."
Kabaservice reached back almost 20 years to the last time GOP zealots shut the government and reminded us that it was "moderates" that put the Gingrich Gang in power in 1995 in the first place.
Those moderates, Kabaservice points out, admired Gingrich's combative style and his win-at-all-costs tactics. Tired of cooperating with Democrats as a loyal opposition they decided that wanted to wield power and flex their partisan muscles instead.
But that sorry moment in American history was not the first time the GOP centrists fell in the thrall of their own extremist impulses. Ted Cruz, meet Joe McCarthy.
Joseph McCarthy came to Washington to represent Wisconsin in the US Senate in 1947 not carrying much of an agenda beyond his own self-promotion. Frustrated in his first two years that no one much paid attention to him, McCarthy was persuaded by some advisors to pick up the "communist issue." In February 1950, McCarthy gave his now infamous "I have a list" speech in Wheeling, West Virginia and he was off.
We all know the rough outline of the story that then followed. McCarthy gave his name to a period of paranoid hysteria which ruined careers and wrecked lives. And amidst the chaos he created, McCarthy became a much-quoted and a much-in-demand media celebrity. Which was his primary goal in the first place.
McCarthy was an odious political figure without question. But no one politician, even a US Senator, can dominate the politics of an era without a lot of help. And McCarthy got it from his more mainstream colleagues. Republican leaders in the Senate, like Robert Taft, quietly encouraged McCarthy or tacitly approved of him. After all, his antics did damage to Democratic politicians and seemed to go over with the public. By 1954, McCarthy's public approval rating was over 50 percent.
Even President Dwight Eisenhower, who found McCarthy personally repellent, found him politically useful. He refused to challenge McCarthy directly trying instead to take the high road: "I will not get down in the gutter with that guy," Eisenhower said, which also meant that he did nothing to rein McCarthy in.
McCarthy imploded in the spring 1954 after he held hearings where he attacked the leadership of the army. He rambled, he bullied, he lied, he made things up, and it was all broadcast on the new medium of television. Exasperated, army attorney Joseph Welch asked, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" The question was purely rhetorical. McCarthy had no decency, he never did, and Americans saw it all on TV. McCarthy's poll ratings plummeted. Only then did the Senate get around to censuring him for his behavior.
Which brings us to the junior senator from Texas and the Tea Party kids he is leading like the Pied Piper over in the House.
Like McCarthy and Gingrich, the extremist minority now calling the shots on Capitol Hill are the creation of a larger group of pusillanimous Republican law makers who kept quiet while the Tea Party took over and now find themselves too scared or confused to speak up.
There is clearly a pattern here, a genealogy that runs from McCarthy to Gingrich to Cruz. The problem, if you care about the Republican Party, is that they have lost far more battles than they have won since 1932. Alf Landon ran against FDR in 1936 by promising to repeal Social Security; in 1964 Barry Goldwater crusaded against the Civil Rights Act in his campaign against Lyndon Johnson. Both candidates were routed. Likewise, last year Mitt Romney campaigned to kill the Affordable Care Act and he didn't do so well either.
Since the New Deal, much of Republican political program has been deeply unpopular with a consistent majority of Americans -- whether the economic policies to shift money from the middle to the top, or policies to despoil the environment, or the laws that intrude on women's reproductive freedom. Political extremism -- from the communist witch hunts of the 1950s to the government-is-coming-to-get-you hysteria we have now -- has proved a useful distraction from a political agenda that many Americans don't like.
As demagogues go, Ted Cruz is no Joe McCarthy, at least not yet. Cruz's performance in the current budget shenanigans would seem to prove the wisdom of Karl Marx when he wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
But with Congress ground to a halt because of its lunatic fringe, Republicans would do well to remember what journalist Edward R. Murrow said in 1954 about McCarthyism: "No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices."
Steven Conn [ http://history.osu.edu/directory/conn23 ] teaches history at Ohio State University. His most recent book is "To Promote the General Welfare: The Case for Big Government [ http://www.amazon.com/To-Promote-General-Welfare-Government/dp/0199858551 ]" (Oxford University Press).
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-conn/senator-cruz-meet-senator_b_4054538.html [with comments]
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Why Obama Doesn't Care If He's Winning or Losing the PR Battle
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Now that he doesn't have to face voters again, it's about fixing the government.
Garance Franke-Ruta
Oct 4 2013, 6:59 PM ET
You can spin a lot of things in a campaign that's a war of words and ideas, but it's a lot harder to spin a government shutdown about which Americans have increasingly direct personal experience.
Friday's campaign-style back-and-forth over who said what and who cares more about the suffering American people during the shutdown started with an anonymous senior administration official's declaration, quoted and paraphrased by the Wall Street Journal [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579113781436540284.html ], that "'We are winning .... It doesn't really matter to us' how long the shutdown lasts 'because what matters is the end result.'"
"This isn’t some damn game!" House Speaker John Boehner exclaimed in reply, even though he knows that whatever the on-the-ground consequences, there is a lot of gamesmanship involved in apportioning blame. The early public finger-pointing over the shutdown may not be as important as the eventual strategy for getting out of what many Republicans, Democrats, and agency officials privately expect will be a protracted government closure, now that the debate over funding the government has begun to bleed into the debate over raising the debt limit. But that doesn't mean either side is willing to abandon it, either.
And for all the accusations of gloating hurled at the White House today, I heard something very different from senior administration officials Thursday: an awareness that Obama doesn't have to get elected again, and that that has freed him to take politically risky positions in the service of dragging the American political system out of chaotic and destabilizing patterns. As senior administration officials portrayed it, Obama has been working throughout the course of this year to rightsize the presidency. He sought Congress's approval for a military strike in Syria, even though the national-security establishment thought he should have just acted. For the president, it was about creating a precedent for war-making powers. (What followed, I should note, didn't exactly go smoothly.)
Negotiations on the debt limit, however, would weaken the office of the presidency, weaken democracy, and virtually guarantee a default in 2014 or the next time the debt limit needs to be increased, according to White House thinking. By sanctioning the threat of default to get things through the political process that wouldn't get through on their merits, Obama would be helping to create a new procedural tactic in American democracy that could nullify the outcome of elections by giving fresh powers to minority factions.
Today's Gallup tracking poll data [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/gallup-daily-obama-job-approval.aspx ] showing support for Obama again reaching a nadir -- 41 percent approval to 52 percent disapproval -- makes clear just how much is at stake for his presidency here. No matter how much the present stand-off hurts Republicans, there's no question but that it hurts him, too. Naturally every politician will seek to both win policy fights and cast himself as winning tough debates on deeply held beliefs, but for now at least it sounds like the president is willing to bear a certain amount of decline in public perception if he can take debt-limit increases off the table as a political bargaining tool.
“I was at the White House the other night, and listened to the president some 20 times explain to me why he wasn’t going to negotiate," Boehner said Friday.
I suspect we are all going to hear that a lot more in the days ahead. That doesn't mean there won't be conversations. It just means that they won't be about making unrelated policy as a condition for a debt-limit increase.
"I'm happy to have negotiations, but we can't do it with a gun held to the head of the American people," Obama said during a lunchtime visit to Taylor Gourmet near the White House. Meanwhile, when it comes to the shutdown, "Nobody's winning," Obama said. "We should get this over with as soon as possible."
Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/why-obama-doesnt-care-if-hes-winning-or-losing-the-pr-battle/280300/ [with comments]
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Yes, the White House Is ‘Winning’
By Jonathan Chait
10/4/2013 at 11:01 AM
The shutdown news of the day so far is that a White House official boasted to The Wall Street Journal [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579113781436540284.html ], “We are winning ... It doesn't really matter to us" how long the shutdown lasts "because what matters is the end result.” This is a sort of gaffe, partly true and partly false. The government shutdown has a non-zero-sum result, in that it hurts lots of Americans. It’s also a zero-sum contest between the parties. Now, one of the ways you win the zero-sum contest is by not declaring you’re winning the zero-sum contest and thus opening yourself to the charge of indifference to the negative-sum effects.
Still, it is true that the Obama administration is winning the zero-sum contest. One way to measure this is polling, which already shows [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/10/03/fox_news_poll_suggests_that_gop_may_not_be_completely_winning_shutdown_fight.html ] movement toward the Democratic side. Another way to measure it is that Republicans, who have spent months refusing any budget deal, are suddenly desperate to make a budget deal. A flurry of Republican proposals have been leaked or floated by or to Politico [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/government-shutdown-cr-house-senate-97793.html ( http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=595E8906-5E01-427C-BFAE-E44727AD6A72 )], Jonathan Ward [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/gop-sequester-entitlement_n_4039761.html ], and Republican adviser Yuval Levin [ http://nationalreview.com/corner/360339/non-grand-bargain-yuval-levin ].
Republicans are looking to make a budget deal now because they want to escape the political nightmare they’ve created for themselves. They blustered into a shutdown that corrodes their party brand and cracks the door to flip the House, which ought to be otherwise impregnable in a low-turnout midterm election. They can’t figure out how to back down without winning concessions the Democrats have no incentive to give them. Then they need to lift the debt ceiling, where they’ve raised even loftier expectations, and where the Democrats are even more determined not to be held hostage. Their only way out is to fold everything into a negotiation, give the Democrats something, and hold up whatever they win as a trophy that made it all worthwhile.
For reasons I plan to delve into next week, I don’t find any of the offers leaked so far attractive on their merits, as you’d expect from an opening bid. But the larger problem is that none of them grapple with the procedural crisis. Obama’s view, which I share, is that the debt ceiling fight is far more important not only than the specific policies on the table, or even the catastrophic economic consequences of a debt breach. It’s a fight to preserve the Constitutional order.
And conservatives have resolutely refused to grapple with that fact. They have floated a few half-hearted [ http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/29/democrats-have-fought-debt-ceiling-hikes-many-times/ ], and easily refuted [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/30/no_democrats_never_really_held_the_debt_limit_hostage.html ], claims that Congress has previously used the debt ceiling as a threat to extract concessions. Mostly, they have just treated the debt-ceiling crisis like an ordinary budget standoff.
Now, maybe they simply have no principled objection to this method. I’ve seen no conservatives, anywhere, actually question the morality of debt-limit extortion. (Apparently, if Democrats in 2007 had held the debt ceiling hostage unless President Bush rescinded his tax cuts, the entire conservative world would have objected to their policy goals but defended their methods. Who knew?)
But the bigger problem here is that conservatives are not acknowledging the Democrats’ belief. It’s not a pose. They genuinely think, regardless of the merits of the ransom demand, they can’t give in, both for the national long-term interest and on moral principle. Conservatives are acting like the problem here is that they asked for a bit too much to begin with, and want to start haggling down the price. The price isn’t the issue. If the conservative goal is to create the illusion of winning something for the debt ceiling, then they’ll come back next time to win more, and Democrats can’t allow that.
Copyright © 2013, New York Media LLC
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/yes-the-white-house-is-winning.html [with comments]
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Far-Right Republicans Could Hit A Tipping Point As Support Falters
By Ashley Alman
Posted: 10/07/2013 12:33 am EDT | Updated: 10/07/2013 12:44 pm EDT
Tension is brewing in the Republican Party as the federal government shutdown enters its seventh day and far-right members of the GOP show no sign of letting up.
The shutdown -- which has already affected hundreds of thousands of federal employees and hit critical government programs -- is bringing the Republican Party to a boiling point, angering GOP fundraisers and throwing a wrench in the works for the upcoming 2014 elections.
“People are totally annoyed,” one GOP fundraiser told the Washington Post [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/longtime-gop-donors-unnerved-by-shutdown-strategy/2013/10/05/a95b3dac-2d04-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html ].
Backers of American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS -- two influential Republican fundraising groups -- attended a conference in Washington D.C. over the weekend. According to the Post, many attendees had similar concerns: they wanted to see the end of Obamacare just as much as the next conservative, but not at the cost of a government shutdown.
“It appears that we’ve got a bunch of crazies running around — one from Texas and some from other places,” Al Hoffman Jr., former finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, told the Post. “I love the idea of defunding Obamacare. However, I don’t think it’s going to happen until we have a majority in the Senate and in the House.”
“I oppose Obamacare as much as anyone else does, but this is not the way to repeal it,” Bobbie Kilberg, a Republican operative who has worked for Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, said to the Post.
Members of the Republican party [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/peter-king-ted-cruz_n_4029384.html ] have voiced concerns over the "Ted Cruz wing of the party": Tea party-backed members who have relentlessly pushed defunding Obamacare at the cost of a government shutdown. Now, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and their colleagues are jeopardizing the party's funding.
“There are a lot of major donors who feel that until the Republican Party can field people who have a vested opinion of what to do and to do it in a prompt and efficient way, we’re going to withhold giving money,” Hoffman told the Post, saying the freeze could affect “a lot of current far-right Republicans.”
The shutdown fallout could also clear the way for more center-right candidates. Tea party-backed candidates are losing the support [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/some-tea-party-congressmen-find-signs-of-political-backlash-at-home/2013/10/06/d13d698a-2d27-11e3-b139-029811dbb57f_story.html ] they once had at home. Their backers are disappointed in their unwillingness to compromise and refusal to collaborate.
“The traditional governing wing of the Republican Party is fed up with this dysfunction, this ‘no’ to everything, this refusal to engage the other side to find solutions," Steven C. LaTourette [id.], a former Republican congressman from Ohio, told the Post.
The glory days for the tea party could be coming to an end.
“All the energy in the Republican Party the last few years has come from the Tea party," said Vin Weber [id.], a former Republican congressman from Minnesota. "The notion that there might be some energy from the radical center, the people whose positions in the conservative mainstream are more center-right but who are just furious about the dysfunctionality of government — that’s different.”
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/far-right-republicans_n_4055431.html [with (approaching 4,000) comments]
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With Traditional GOP Allies Defecting, Big Business Takes Sides With Obama
Newscom
Charles Babington And Jim Kuhnhenn
October 2, 2013, 8:47 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Having failed to persuade their traditional Republican allies in Congress to avert a government shutdown, business leaders fear bigger problems ahead, and they're taking sides with a Democratic president whose health care and regulatory agenda they have vigorously opposed.
President Barack Obama is embracing the business outreach, eager to employ groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street CEOs to portray House Republicans as out of touch even with their long-established corporate and financial patrons.
Yet, the partial closing of the government and the looming confrontation over the nation's borrowing limit highlight the remarkable drop in the business community's influence among House Republicans, who increasingly respond more to tea party conservatives than to the Chamber of Commerce.
On Wednesday, Obama is hosting chief executives from the nation's 19 biggest financial firms. Moreover, the Chamber of Commerce has sent a letter to Congress signed by about 250 business groups urging no shutdown and warning against a debt ceiling crisis that they say could lead to an economically disastrous default.
The divide between some GOP lawmakers and the corporate groups that have helped shape the Republican agenda in the past is partly a result of a legacy of the Wall Street bailouts of 2008-09 and a changing communication and campaign finance landscape that has weakened the roles of corporate donors and of the major political parties.
Interviews with House Republicans from all regions of the country demonstrate the corporate community's waning clout. Most of these lawmakers say local business owners and chambers of commerce have not raised the potential economic downside of a government shutdown or debt default.
Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, like many of his colleagues, said the overwhelming message he hears from business owners is their dislike of Obama's health care overhaul, which is at the center of Congress' impasse and the government shutdown. Likewise, Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said he mostly hears business owners complain "about the negative effects of 'Obamacare' upon their ability to do business and hire people."
When Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., was asked if he had heard business groups express fears of a government shutdown's economic impact, he replied: "No. And it wouldn't make any difference if I did."
Still, major business groups are raising alarms, citing the economic cost of a shutdown and warning of even more serious consequences if Congress doesn't act quickly to raise the $16.7 trillion borrowing limit, which the government is expected to hit around mid-October.
The letter circulated by the Chamber of Commerce urges lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling "in a timely manner and remove any threat to the full faith and credit of the United States government." It also acknowledges Republican fears over the unsustainable growth of major benefit programs such Medicare and Social Security and the need for a more business-friendly tax system.
But in a rejection of the tactics of House Speaker John Boehner, the letter urges Congress to pass first a short-term spending bill, then raise the debt ceiling, "and then return to work on these other vital issues."
That advice is being ignored by the GOP-led House.
"There is an element of the more independent, tea party coalition Republicans that, frankly, don't listen to very many people," said John Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan and now president of the Business Roundtable, one of the groups that signed the chamber letter. "They are on a mission, often defined on the basis of their view of the world, and they aren't paying very much attention to what this means beyond maybe their own districts."
Concerned, the Chamber of Commerce is preparing to participate in political primaries, protecting friendly lawmakers from conservative challengers. "Clearly we're getting to a point where we need a Congress that's going to be productive, proactive and create a stable environment for economic growth and job creation," said Scott Reed, a Republican political consultant who is advising the chamber on its strategy.
A changing environment has given conservatives plenty of tools to challenge establishment Republicans by using new technology and social media to organize and mobilize highly motivated voters. Campaign finance laws have also given donors a greater playing field that is not limited to the political parties.
What's more, the bank bailouts of 2008 and 2009 soured the public, which resulted in a new wave of populist Republicans in 2010 driven by a decentralized tea party movement that was not beholden to the GOP establishment.
As a result, said Kevin Madden, a former senior House Republican leadership aide and an adviser to Mitt Romney' presidential campaign, the political parties, congressional committee chairmen and big donors no longer wield the clout they once did.
"Now it's more of a bottom-up model, where you see these grass-roots organizations and grass-roots voters are now empowered and they feel they have a stronger voice," he said. "There is less of an emphasis on the parties. They used to have much more outsize control over who the candidates were and what party discipline was. Now a lot of that is gone."
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., emphasized that point. "I'm from a district that pretty much ignores Washington," he said. "If you say government is going to shut down, they say, 'OK, which part can we shut down?'"
© 2013 Associated Press
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/with-traditional-gop-allies-defecting-big-business-leaders-take-sides-with-obama [with comments]
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Rand Paul: Obama 'Irresponsible' To Suggest U.S. May Default
10/06/2013
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said [ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3032608/vp/53201035#53201035 ] Sunday that President Barack Obama is "irresponsible" for suggesting the U.S. may default on its debts.
"It's irresponsible of the president and his men to even talk about default," Paul said during an appearance on NBC's "Meet The Press." "There is no reason for us to default."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/rand-paul-obama_n_4053787.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 4,000) comments]
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John Boehner: 'The Path We're On' Leads To Default
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/john-boehner-default-debt-ceiling_n_4053537.html [with embedded video report, and (over 25,000) comments]
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Obama Expects Debt Ceiling Will Be Raised By Congress
President Barack Obama speaks about the government shutdown and debt ceiling during a visit to to M. Luis Construction, which specializes in asphalt manufacturing, concrete paving, and roadway reconstruction, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013, in Rockville, Md.
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/obama-debt-ceiling_n_4049829.html [with (over 11,000) comments]
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Rep. Ted Yoho: US Default “Would Bring Stability to World Markets”
Animal vet to economic expert in a single year. That’s the magic of Teabaggerism.
October 7, 2013
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42602_Rep._Ted_Yoho-_US_Default_Would_Bring_Stability_to_World_Markets [with comments]; http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-ted-yoho-government-shutdown-is-the-tremor-before-the-tsunami/2013/10/04/98b5aa8c-2c3c-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html [with comments]
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Ted Cruz Gets Some Government Shutdown Cheers
10/05/13
HOUSTON (AP) — Thanks to Texas' new senator, Dale Huls is out of a job — at least for now. Yet Huls has never been prouder that he voted for him.
"Without Ted Cruz this doesn't happen," said Huls, a NASA systems engineer who was among roughly 3,000 federal employees furloughed from Houston's Johnson Space Center after tea party Republicans triggered the partial government shutdown.
"This is something Americans have to get used to," said Huls. "Even if it affects your livelihood, you've got to stand up."
Perhaps more than anywhere else, Texas embodies the factors behind the shutdown: big government and the rebellion against it.
The state is one of the richest beneficiaries of federal spending, with its sprawling military bases, Gulf Coast seaports and more than 1,200-mile border with Mexico, which help account for more than 131,500 full-time federal employees. Only California, Virginia and the District of Columbia have more.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/ted-cruz-government-shutdown_n_4050000.html [with comments]
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John Boehner Claims He Doesn't Have Votes For Clean Continuing Resolution Bill
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/john-boehner-continuing-resolution_n_4053175.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 9,000) comments]
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President Obama to John Boehner: 'prove' you don't have the votes
By JENNIFER EPSTEIN
10/7/13 1:27 PM EDT Updated: 10/7/13 2:13 PM EDT
President Barack Obama called Monday on the House to hold a vote on a clean government funding bill, after Speaker John Boehner said over the weekend that the bill wouldn’t pass.
If Boehner and his colleagues are saying there aren’t enough votes, “then they should prove it,” Obama said while visiting the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters in Washington.
The president’s comments came after Boehner said Sunday that “there are not the votes in the House to pass a clean CR,” even though various counts estimate that more than 20 Republicans would join with the vast majority of Democrats in voting in favor of a no-strings-attached funding bill.
“The truth of the matter is there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end the shutdown immediately with no partisan strings attached. The House should hold that vote today,” Obama said, daring Boehner to take action.
But, he said, Boehner hasn’t brought the clean continuing resolution to the House floor because “the doesn’t apparently want to see the government shutdown end at the moment unless he’s able to extract concessions.”
Obama also repeated his call for Congress to raise the debt ceiling without attaching other demands “so the Treasury can pay the bills that Congress has already spent — that’s what most Americans do,” he said. “This is something routine. It’s been done more than 40 times since Ronald Reagan was president. It has never before been used in the kind of ways that the Republicans are talking about using it right now. We can’t threaten an economic catastrophe in the midst of budget negotiations.”
Once the government shutdown ends and the debt ceiling is lifted, “I am eager and ready to sit down and negotiate with Republicans on a whole range of issues,” Obama said, responding to Republicans including Boehner who have attacked him for being unwilling to negotiate on either issue.
“I have said from the start of the year that I’m happy to talk to Republicans about anything related to the budget,” he said. “What I’ve said is that I cannot do that under the threat that if Republicans don’t get 100 percent of their way, they’re going to either shut down the government or they’re going to default on America’s debt.”
Boehner’s office didn’t immediately respond to the president’s calls for a vote on a clean CR, though as Obama arrived at FEMA, his team did note that the Democrat-led Senate has yet to vote on a piecemeal bill to fund FEMA. The White House has said that Obama will veto all piecemeal government funding bills.
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obama-to-boehner-prove-you-dont-have-the-votes-97931.html [with embedded video of Obama's comments reported in the last part of the above (the above YouTube, of Obama's separate comments directly to the headline, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_he5AroTcy4 ) (Obama's complete remarks next below), and comments]
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President Obama Delivers Remarks at FEMA Headquarters
Published on Oct 7, 2013 by The White House
President Obama visited FEMA Headquarters in washington, D.C. to thank employees for their work responding to weather events around the country and discuss the ongoing government shutdown. October 7, 2013.
*
Remarks by the President at FEMA Headquarters
FEMA Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
October 07, 2013
12:30 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: I’m here at FEMA for a couple of reasons. First of all, I want to thank Craig Fugate and his entire team, and the incredible workers who are here at FEMA. They are having to, under less than optimal situations, still respond to Mother Nature, which doesn’t stop just because the government has shut down.
I wanted to get initially a briefing on what had happened with Hurricane Karen, became Tropical Karen, and then fortunately dissipated, so we dodged a bullet there. In the meantime, we’re on tornado watch here in the Mid-Atlantic states because of severe weather patterns. And we’ve got blizzards up north, we’ve got some weather patterns in the middle of the country that we’re still monitoring. And so I just want to say thank you to all of you for the incredible work that you’re doing.
I think it’s important to understand that the people here at FEMA have been doing everything they can to respond to potential events. Here at FEMA, they’re in touch with their state and local partners in case resources are needed. FEMA remains prepared for natural disasters year around, with supplies pre-positioned in distribution centers across the country.
But their job has been made more difficult. Thanks to the folks at FEMA, we were prepared for what might have happened down in Florida. Nevertheless, the government is still shut down, services are still interrupted, and hundreds of thousands of hardworking public servants, including many FEMA professionals, are still furloughed without pay, or they’re not allowed to work at all.
So Craig was just explaining to me here at FEMA -- about 86 percent of the FEMA workforce is furloughed. In response to the potential event that might have happened down in Florida and along the coasts, Craig called back 200 of those workers. Keep in mind, calling them back doesn’t mean they were getting paid, it just means they had the privilege of working without pay to make sure that they were doing everything they can to respond to the potential needs of their fellow citizens.
Now that this particular storm has dissipated, Craig is going to have to re-furlough at least 100 of those folks who were called back. So think about that. Here you are, somebody who’s a FEMA professional dedicated to doing your job; at a moment’s notice you’re willing to show up here in case people got in trouble and respond to them, even though you’re not getting paid, even though you don’t have certainty. And now you’re being put back on furlough because the government is shut down. That’s no way of doing business.
That, by the way, just speaks to the day-to-day emergencies that may come up and that is FEMA’s job to respond to. Craig was also explaining the fact that when it comes to training first responders, for example, we have on a weekly basis already scheduled training for first responders that now have to be rescheduled. It will probably end up ultimately costing the government more money for us to put those things back together again. And so not only is this shutdown hurting FEMA workers, not only is it making it more difficult for us to respond to potential natural disasters, but it may actually end up costing taxpayers more than it should.
Right now, Congress should do what’s in the best interest of the economy and the American people, and that’s move beyond this manufactured crisis and work together to focus on growth, jobs, and providing the vital services that Americans all across the country depend on, including the services that FEMA provides.
I heard a lot of talk over the weekend that the real problem is, is that the President will not negotiate. Well, let me tell you something -- I have said from the start of the year that I’m happy to talk to Republicans about anything related to the budget. There’s not a subject that I am not willing to engage in, work on, negotiate, and come up with common-sense compromises on.
What I’ve said is that I cannot do that under the threat that if Republicans don’t get 100 percent of their way, they’re going to either shut down the government or they are going to default on America’s debt so that America for the first time in history does not pay its bills. That is not something I will do. We’re not going to establish that pattern.
We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of further harm to our economy and middle-class families. We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of a prolonged shutdown until Republicans get 100 percent of what they want. We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of economic catastrophe that economists and CEOs increasingly warn would result if Congress chose to default on America’s obligations.
Now, the other thing I heard over the weekend was this notion that Congress doesn’t have the capacity to end this shutdown. The truth of the matter is there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end this shutdown immediately, with no partisan strings attached. The House should hold that vote today. If Republicans and Speaker Boehner are saying there are not enough votes, then they should prove it. Let the bill go to the floor and let’s see what happens. Just vote. Let every member of Congress vote their conscience and they can determine whether or not they want to shut the government down.
My suspicion is -- my very strong suspicion is that there are enough votes there. And the reason that Speaker Boehner hasn’t called a vote on it is because he doesn’t, apparently, want to see the government shutdown end at the moment unless he’s able to extract concessions that don't have anything to do with the budget. Well, I think the American people simply want government to work. And there’s no reason that there has to be a shutdown in order for the kinds of negotiations Speaker Boehner says he wants to proceed. Hold a vote. Call a vote right now, and let’s see what happens.
The second thing Congress needs to do is to raise the debt ceiling next week so the Treasury can pay the bills that Congress has already spent. That's what most Americans do if they buy something -- if they buy a car or if they buy a house, if they put something on a credit card, they understand they’ve got to pay the bills.
This is something routine. It’s been done more than 40 times since Ronald Reagan was President. It has never before been used in the kind of ways that the Republicans are talking about using it right now. We can't threat an economic catastrophe in the midst of budget negotiations.
So authorize the Treasury to pay America’s bill. Pass a budget, end the government shutdown, pay our bills, and prevent an economic shutdown.
And as soon as that happens, I am eager and ready to sit down and negotiate with Republicans on a whole range of issues: How do we create more jobs? How do we grow the economy? How do we boost manufacturing? How do we make sure our kids are getting a first-class education? All those things will be on the table. I'm happy to talk about health care; happy to talk about energy policy; how do we deal with our long-term fiscal situation.
All those things I've been eager and anxious to talk to Republicans about for the last seven months, and I've put out a budget that specifically lays out my vision for how we're going to grow this economy. And I expect the Republicans should do the same, and we can negotiate it. But we shouldn’t hurt a whole bunch of people in order for one side to think that they’re going to have a little more leverage in those negotiations.
Last point I'm going to make: The bill that is being presented to end the government shutdown reflects Republican priorities. It’s the Republican budget. The funding levels of this short-term funding bill, called the CR, is far lower than what Democrats think it should be. Nevertheless, Democrats are prepared to put the majority of votes on to reopen the government. So when you hear this notion that Democrats aren't compromising -- we're compromising so much we're willing to reopen the government at funding levels that reflect Republican wishes, don't at all reflect our wishes.
For example, here at FEMA, they’re still subject to the sequester, so even before the shutdown they were having trouble making sure that everybody was staying on the job and fulfilling all of their various functions. We need to get that sequester lifted that's been hanging over the head of the economy and federal agencies during the course of this entire year.
This short-term legislation to reopen the government doesn’t even address that. That has to be done in a broader budget framework.
So Democrats have said we are willing to pass a bill that reflects the Republicans’ priorities in terms of funding levels. That's a pretty significant compromise. What we're not willing to do is to create a permanent pattern in which unless you get your way the government is shut down or America defaults. That's not how we do business in this country, and we're not going to start now.
So, again, I want to thank everybody at FEMA here for the extraordinary work that you're doing. You show each and every day that you take your responsibilities seriously. You do your jobs with consummate professionalism. And hopefully you're setting a good example for members of Congress. They need to be doing the same thing. And if they do, then there’s no reason why we all can't move forward and make sure that we're taking care of America’s business.
Thank you very much, everybody.
END
12:41 P.M. EDT
*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5-zvRTxBRg [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/10/07/president-obama-call-vote-right-now ]; http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/10/07/remarks-president-fema-headquarters
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Devin Nunes Denies Backing 'Clean' Funding Bill To Avert Shutdown, But He Did -- And We've Got It On Tape
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)
10/07/2013
[the audio (embedded):
https://soundcloud.com/samsteinhp/nunes
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/devin-nunes-clean-cr-shutdown_n_4059229.html [with comments]
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Government Shutdown: Democrats Actually Hated The 'Clean' Funding Plan
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) speaks at a press conference on the government shutdown on Friday. Also pictured are Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
10/05/2013
WASHINGTON -- Democrats have not done a good job explaining how they have compromised in the government shutdown fight, insisting they will not negotiate dismantling Obamacare in a funding bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has lately been making the point that the short-term spending bill that the House now refuses to give a vote was the result of a compromise cut with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). The basic deal was that Democrats would accept the GOP's sequester-level spending levels to buy time to fund the rest of the year.
Lost in all the rhetoric is that Democrats faced serious backlash from their base for cutting that deal.
"We got hammered," said one Senate Democratic aide.
For instance, the Center For American Progress, stocked with former Obama administration staffers, lambasted the deal after it leaked in a lengthy paper, titled "The Dirty Truth About Boehner’s ‘Clean’ Continuing Resolution [ http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/budget/report/2013/09/10/73749/the-dirty-truth-about-boehners-clean-continuing-resolution/ ]."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/government-shutdown-democrats_n_4046715.html [with (over 4,000) comments]
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Government Shuts Down, But Midwest Lawmakers Say It's Not Their Fault
In this July 19, 2013, file photo, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder speaks during a news conference in Detroit.
10/06/13
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Republicans in the Midwest would like you to know something about the government shutdown that closed the national parks and put 800,000 workers on the street: They had nothing to do with it. Please don't blame them.
That message spilled out of the offices of state legislators, and even governors, in public statements, tweets and interviews as politicians outside Washington scrambled to insulate themselves from the partisan turmoil that sent repercussions across the country.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/government-shuts-down_n_4053916.html [with comments]
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Ted Cruz Says He Has 'Not Remotely' Hurt Republican Image With Shutdown Fight
By Matt Sledge
Posted: 10/06/2013 10:31 am EDT | Updated: 10/06/2013 11:46 pm EDT
Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) rejected the suggestion that members of his own party are unhappy with him for pursuing a fight over Obamacare into a government shutdown.
Asked by host Candy Crowley whether his actions have "hurt the Republican Party brand," Ted Cruz said no.
"Not remotely, but I also think far too many people are worried about politics" in the shutdown fight, Cruz said.
Cruz repeated several times his claim that he didn't want the government to shut down, and he bemoaned the "nasty partisan jabs from Democrats" over his role in the shutdown.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/ted-cruz-republicans-shutdown_n_4053493.html [with embedded video, and (approaching 8,000) comments]
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Republican Shutdown Politics
By Joe Peyronnin
Hofstra Journalism Professor
Posted: 10/04/2013 3:50 pm
"This isn't a damn game!" House Speaker John Boehner said Friday at a news conference on the budget stalemate that has led to the government shutdown. Really Mr. Speaker? The government shutdown is, in fact, a direct result of political gamesmanship by the Republicans.
Let's start with Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the Narcissus of Capitol Hill. No one loves Senator Ted Cruz more than, well, Ted Cruz. And it is no wonder. This man holds himself in the highest esteem, walks with swagger, and drips with ambition. Throughout his lifetime, all of his actions, associations and alliances have been undertaken solely for the advancement of Ted Cruz.
He is clearly far smarter than your average tea-party Congressmen, so he is leading them around by their noses on his little ego trip. And they love it because they each get to fulfill their lifelong dream of destroying the federal government, which they believe is at the root of all this country's problems. They are elected from gerrymandered districts that are filled with white hyper-conservative citizens who can be mobilized at the drop of an anti-Obama epithet.
Meanwhile, Cruz has the admiring backing of Fox News and conservative radio talk-show hosts, who are promulgating lies and distortions about the shutdown to rally their rabid extreme Republican base. The more outlandish the criticism on these right-wing outlets, the more the audience loves it. (Just don't try to take their federal benefits away!)
Tea-Party Republicans are downright giddy that they have forced the federal government to shut down. "We're very excited," said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Mn). "It's exactly what we wanted, and we got it." Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Ks) observed, "America's been a little astonished by us doing the right thing in the last few days here in the House."
Nonetheless, the wiser Republican leadership has been flummoxed by the negative public opinion the party has received because of the Cruz-driven strategy to shut the government down unless the Affordable Care Law, or Obamacare, is defunded. Word of dissension in the party ranks has only added to the party's image problems. Leaders have been scrambling to change the optics, to somehow shift blame to President Barack Obama and the Democrats.
So it was particularly noteworthy when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul, both Kentucky Republicans, were caught in an embarrassing conversation on the Senate floor by a Kentucky TV station. They were talking about political messaging strategy.
Paul approached McConnell following his CNN interview. McConnell began by warning Paul he was "wired up here." But that didn't stop Paul, who was eager to share a powerful revelation that had come to him. "I just did CNN and I just go over and over again 'We're (Republicans) willing to compromise. 'We're willing to negotiate.' I think... I don't think they (Democrats) poll tested we won't negotiate. I think it's awful for them to say that over and over again," Paul said.
McConnell responded, "Yeah, I do too and I, and I just came back from that two-hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly." McConnell was apparently referring to the meeting earlier this week between President Obama and the Congressional leadership.
Paul added, "I think if we keep saying 'We wanted to defund it (Obamacare). We fought for that and that we're willing to compromise on this,' I think they can't, we're gonna, I think... well I know we don't want to be here, but we're gonna win this, I think." So while neither Congressmen is happy with the shutdown, they now both think they will "win" this debate by shifting blame to the Democrats, whose position they can summarize as "they don't want to negotiate" on the budget or debt ceiling.
This, of course, assumes that most Americans don't know that Democrats have already agreed to huge budget cuts, basically continuing the "sequester" levels that have already been disruptive to government agencies and services. Or that Democrats have consistently said they will negotiate after a budget bill is passed and the debt ceiling is raised; or that Democrats have said they are willing to make some adjustments in the Affordable Care Act.
Meanwhile, Republicans have consistently said they will never agree to a new budget, or to raise the debt ceiling, unless Obamacare is defunded. The House has voted 42 times along party lines to defund Obamacare. But the Senate has reaffirmed its support each time. So Republicans have wasted precious time and valuable taxpayer dollars trying to eliminate a law that was passed by Congress, signed by the president, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and that President Obama was reelected on by a sizable margin.
Instead of passing even a short-term budget, so 800,000 federal employees can immediately go back to work, and services can be restored to poor and needy Americans of all ages, Republicans are focused on winning the battle in the court of public opinion. Instead of agreeing to raise the debt limit, and avoiding a global economic calamity, Republicans are trying to win the perception game.
Speaker Boehner, your protestations about this not being a game are empty because of the actions you and your party have so far taken. All America can see the games Republicans are playing. It is time for you to do the right thing for the country, and to show courage and leadership, bring the senate-approved budget to the floor for a vote.
(And don't forget what happened to Narcissus [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_(mythology) ].)
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-peyronnin/republican-shutdown-polit_b_4045856.html [with comments]
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Cuccinelli shuns Cruz limelight
Cuccinelli avoided being photographed with Cruz at the gala.
10/5/13
RICHMOND, Va.— That was awkward.
In the clearest sign yet of the potent effect of the government shutdown on the Virginia governor’s race, Republican Ken Cuccinelli avoided being photographed with Ted Cruz at a gala they headlined here Saturday night—even leaving before the Texas senator rose to speak.
Backstage, a source said, Cuccinelli urged Cruz to work with Democrats to end the federal shutdown. But he did not make that point, or even acknowledge Cruz, in short public comments to some 1,100 social conservatives.
Cruz has become the face of GOP intransigence, and the conservative attorney general’s effort to distance himself from congressional Republicans reflects how damaging Cuccinelli realizes a prolonged shutdown may be for his campaign.
For his part, Cruz heaped praise on his “friend” Cuccinelli and argued passionately in a 54-minute speech that their party can still win the messaging fight over the shutdown if the people just speak out loudly enough.
[...]
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/cuccinelli-shuns-cruz-limelight-97888.html [with comments]
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Dennis Ross, GOP Rep: 'Pride' Is Why Republicans Won't Budge On Government Shutdown
Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.)
WASHINGTON -- With the government shutdown in its fifth day, many Republicans have conceded the fight is no longer about Obamacare. Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) added his name to the list on Saturday, saying the matter now boils down to "pride."
“Republicans have to realize how many significant gains we’ve made over the last three years, and we have, not only in cutting spending but in really turning the tide on other things," Ross told The New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/in-an-upside-down-week-some-conservatives-find-favor-for-government.html?pagewanted=all (second below)]. "We can’t lose all that when there’s no connection now between the shutdown and the funding of Obamacare."
"I think now it’s a lot about pride," he added.
The fight over keeping the government open began with Republicans insisting that any funding bill include anti-Obamacare provisions, starting with a full-fledged campaign led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to defund the health care law. When that plan was rejected by the Senate, House Republicans offered a series of spending bills that continued to chip away at Obamacare; their final offer [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/30/house-gop-shutdown-2013_n_4018547.html ] included a one-year delay of the law's individual mandate and a ban on federal health care subsidies to members of Congress and their staffs.
Ross told Bloomberg that Republicans had "lost the [continuing resolution] battle [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/dennis-ross-cr-obamacare_n_4046284.html ]."
"We need to move on and take whatever we can find in the debt limit," he said.
But many of his colleagues, particularly in the House GOP's right flank, have refused to back down. Comments made by Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) last week [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/obama-gop-shutdown_n_4037502.html ] underscore Ross' suggestion that many Republicans believe what's at stake is no longer a matter of policy but one of pride.
"We're not going to be disrespected ... We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is," Stutzman said.
The Indiana Republican later apologized, saying he had "carelessly misrepresented" the budget debate.
House Republicans have pushed a series of targeted spending bills to fund parts of the government, notably those that have received the most attention, such as the National Institutes of Health, Veterans Affairs, and parks and museums. The White House and Senate Democrats have rejected the piecemeal approach [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/government-shutdown-solution_n_4031663.html ], pointing out that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has the votes [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/clean-funding-bill_n_4031784.html ] to reopen the entire government.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/dennis-ross-government-shutdown_n_4050231.html [with embedded video report, and (nearly 10,000) comments]
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Dem Rep Blasts GOP Shutdown Stalemate: 'So We Sit Here Until They Figure Out They F*ck*n' Lost'
U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) speaks during a news conference June 12, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
10/05/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/jim-mcdermott-gop-shutdown_n_4049873.html [with comments]
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Some in G.O.P. Try to Pick and Choose Amid Spending Fight
After the House voted to guarantee back pay for federal workers on Saturday, Jackson and Riley Marulis, 11 and 13, urged an end to the government shutdown.
Drew Angerer for The New York Times
Video [embedded]
The Cost of the Shutdown by the Numbers
Video [embedded]
Obama Defends the Health Care Law
Video: Government Shutdown Coverage
http://www.nytimes.com/video/playlist/government-shutdown/100000002475711/index.html
From left, Representatives Steve Scalise and Todd Rokita, both Republicans, and Nita Lowey and Rosa DeLauro, both Democrats. House members are sparring over a Republican proposal that would finance programs like the National Institutes of Health and the Park Service while much of the government remains closed.
From left, Win Mcnamee/Getty Images; Harry Hamburg/Associated Press; Charles Dharapak/Associated Press; Alex Wong/Getty Images
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
Published: October 5, 2013
WASHINGTON — Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, a hard-core leader of House conservatives who helped force a government shutdown in a fight over the scope of federal health care spending, sent out a statement on Wednesday bragging that the House had voted to “fully fund the National Institutes of Health.”
On Thursday, Representative Todd Rokita of Indiana, who was swept to power in the Tea Party [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html ] wave of 2010, stepped up to a microphone in the basement of the Capitol to recount his son’s struggles with a severe disability.
“Families, faith communities, associations and neighbors can take care of us better than government programs can,” he said. “But government should be there to help.”
“Science,” he added, “is a gift.”
Much of the federal government shut down on Tuesday [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/politics/congress-shutdown-debate.html?pagewanted=all ] because of a clash between Congressional Republicans and President Obama in which Republicans sought to tie further government financing to delaying or crippling his health care law [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html ]. Beneath the mechanics lie deeper philosophical disagreements about spending, taxation and the size and scope of government.
But the week’s events have blurred the divide. Republican leaders have offered mixed messages on the cause of the shutdown, and the House floor has played host to a parade of bills to restore government functions piece by piece, accompanied by rhetorical flourishes from ardent conservatives extolling the role of government in civic life and the selflessness of civil servants.
Representative Dennis A. Ross, a Florida Republican who was also elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave, said the party risked losing a fight over the scale of government while waging a quixotic war against the health care law. Though much of the government is shut down, he said, the Affordable Care Act, which is financed by its own appropriations, is moving forward unimpeded.
“Republicans have to realize how many significant gains we’ve made over the last three years — and we have, not only in cutting spending but in really turning the tide on other things,” Mr. Ross said. “We can’t lose all that when there’s no connection now between the shutdown and the funding of Obamacare.”
“I think now it’s a lot about pride,” he said.
In one breath on Friday, Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said the fiscal impasse was about bringing “fairness to the American people under Obamacare” and about doing “something about our spending problem.”
And the central principle of Tea Party conservatism, an aggressive attack on government programs, has given way among a growing number of Republicans to a full-throated defense of federal functions as varied as national parks and nutrition programs for the impoverished.
On Friday evening, House Republicans voted unanimously to authorize $6.5 billion in new spending on the supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children.
And in a rare weekend session, the House voted 407 to 0 on Saturday on a bill to guarantee that federal workers — once denigrated by conservatives as overpaid and underworked — will receive back pay once the government reopens.
At a hearing in 2011, Mr. Ross, the chairman of the House subcommittee on the federal work force, the Postal Service and labor policy, charged that “federal employees on average earned $101,628 in total compensation in 2010, nearly four times more than the average private-sector worker.”
On Saturday, those workers were suddenly selfless civil servants: nurses and doctors saving lives, emergency workers braving natural disasters and NASA scientists exploring the frontiers of space.
“This has been an Orwellian week in which white is black and black is white,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia.
The budget deficit, in fact, has been one of the lowest priorities. Republicans first pressed to eliminate the health care law, a move that would actually have swelled the debt over time. (The Affordable Care Act’s tax increases and spending cuts, mainly to Medicare [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicare/index.html ], put it in the black.) When that failed, they scaled back their ambitions to eliminating a tax on medical devices that helps pay for the law, which would add $30 billion in red ink but do nothing to stop the law and what many conservatives see as government overreach.
After defending such actions by saying they were taking aim at a major new government program, House Republicans set about reassembling the government they had shut down, piece by piece. Programs that conservatives had tolerated at best were suddenly lavished with praise: nutrition assistance for women and children, federal medical research, national parks, the Smithsonian Institution, even the government of the District of Columbia, which was authorized to spend money to pick up Washington’s trash, maintain its needle exchange program for intravenous drug users and even implement the health care law.
“We have bigger items to fight over now than needle exchange programs in D.C.,” said Representative John Fleming, a Louisiana Republican who was once one of the fiercest supporters of taking a hard line on the shutdown. “I just think that is not as important as funding the N.I.H., funding the V.A., getting the government back open.”
Asked how he could choose between enrolling children in federal cancer trials or returning them to Head Start classrooms, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, said, “That’s coming as well.”
“We ought to be working as hard as we can to open the parts of the government we all agree on,” Mr. Cantor said — which turns out to be quite a lot of the government.
A Head Start vote will come in the next week, along with bills to finance border security and enforcement, nuclear weapons security and development, Indian education and health services, education assistance for districts with large federal installations, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress oppose these piecemeal bills. Republicans cannot pick and choose what programs to finance and what programs to starve, they say, and reopening the most sensitive programs would relieve the political pressure on Republicans to reopen the government as a whole.
The House votes to restore financing to parts of the government followed efforts over two years to cut some of the very programs Republicans are now trying to rescue. The automatic spending cuts known as sequestration, which began in March and are now defended by most Republicans, cut $1.55 billion from the National Institutes of Health budget in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30. The spending bill for federal medical research in the 2014 fiscal year would have cut programs in the Labor Department and the Health and Human Services Department by 22 percent — cuts so deep that Republican leaders did not even try to get them approved by the full House.
The House appropriations bill for the National Park Service would cut $343 million, or 13 percent, from the budget requested by the president, and $240 million from last year’s level.
“It takes serious chutzpah for Republicans to portray themselves as the defenders of N.I.H., parks and other critical services they gutted through sequestration and proposed cutting further for 2014,” said Representative Nita M. Lowey of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
The House’s agriculture bill, which similarly did not get a vote in the full chamber, would have cut the president’s request for the women, infants and children nutrition program by $488 million, even more than the $333 million sliced by sequestration.
Friday’s debate over that financing bill brought Democrats practically to apoplexy.
“Are we meant to believe that today they have come to Jesus, or is this just politics?” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut sputtered on the House floor.
To moderate Republicans, the current debate might be a break from the relentless cutting that followed the Republican return to power in the House. Conservatives have been winning the argument on spending: the last fiscal year was the first time since 1996 that spending at the discretion of Congress fell in non-inflation-adjusted terms.
But the piece-by-piece examination of programs seems to be yielding a new appreciation for the federal government’s role.
“There’s a difference,” said Representative Patrick Meehan, Republican of Pennsylvania, “between wanting to have a smaller government and wanting to have no government.”
*
Related
House Approves Back Pay for Furloughed Workers (October 6, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/house-gop-to-take-up-pay-issue-for-workers.html
*
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/in-an-upside-down-week-some-conservatives-find-favor-for-government.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/in-an-upside-down-week-some-conservatives-find-favor-for-government.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Lee Terry Needs His Salary During Government Shutdown To Pay For His 'Nice House'
10/04/2013
Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) said this week that there is no way he's giving up his salary during the government shutdown.
"Dang straight [ http://www.omaha.com/article/20131004/NEWS/131009431 ]," he said when asked by the Omaha World-Herald Bureau whether he would keep his paycheck.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/lee-terry-government-shutdown-nice-house_n_4044511.html [with embedded video report "Constituents React To GOP Congressman's Paycheck Comment", and (over 5,000) comments]
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Lee Terry Apologizes For Refusing To Give Up Salary During Shutdown To Pay For His 'Nice House'
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/lee-terry-salary_n_4054283.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Savannah Guthrie: Americans Are 'Disgusted' By Shutdown 'Antics'
By Katherine Fung
Posted: 10/06/2013 3:21 pm EDT | Updated: 10/07/2013 12:48 pm EDT
Savannah Guthrie subjected Senator Rand Paul to a series of tough questions about the government shutdown on Sunday's "Meet the Press."
The government has been shut down since Tuesday as a result of the standoff over Obamacare in Congress. Paul and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were recently caught on a hot mic [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/rand-paul-mitch-mcconnell-hot-mic_n_4036591.html ] discussing their messaging efforts to avert blame for the shutdown.
Guthrie grilled Paul about the comments on Sunday, saying, "Do you in Washington, do all of you have any idea how totally disgusted the American people are with these antics?"
Paul said it was a "legitimate" concern. "Government should never shut down if we're doing our job appropriately, so really, what we need to be saying is why are we not passing spending bills the way we should do it," he continued.
Guthrie continued to hold his feet to the fire, asking him in succession:
"Do you take any responsibility for the tone, for your part in this?"
"Do you think this strategy, shutting down the government, which two-thirds of Americans don't like as a tactic even if they don't like Obamacare, do you think that's potentially undercutting the Republicans' chances of winning something beyond the House of Representatives, either the Senate or the White House?"
"If [Democrats] like it being closed, why would you fall into that trap?"
"Will Republicans let this country go into default?"
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/savannah-guthrie-rand-paul-meet-the-press_n_4054169.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Bob Schieffer Challenges John Cornyn On Obamacare
By Alana Horowitz
Posted: 10/06/2013 5:05 pm EDT | Updated: 10/07/2013 12:49 pm EDT
'Face The Nation' host Bob Schieffer grilled Republican Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) on the government shutdown on Sunday.
Cornyn repeatedly blamed President Obama for refusing to negotiate on defunding or delaying the Affordable Care Act in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and ending the government shutdown. Cornyn referred to the president as "AWOL."
"Don't Republicans also have to do their job?" Shieffier shot back. "[It's] almost like I’m going to throw a brick through your window unless you give me $20."
Cornyn disagreed, saying that "Ted [Cruz] and I share the concern about what Obamacare is doing to our economy."
The CBS host responded: "But that's besides the point. The law has been passed. Why not keep the government running and then everybody can sit down and decide what they want to do about it?"
Cornyn again tried to lay the blame on Democrats for not allowing Obamacare cuts to be part of a shutdown solution, but Schieffer quickly cut him off.
"Senator, isn’t there something wrong when you say "I won’t fund the government unless I can attach my personal wish list to the legislation every time we vote? I’d love to see the government find a cure for cancer, but I don’t think you can say I’m not going to pass and pass any funds for the rest of the government until the NIH finds a cure for cancer. I mean, isn’t that just kind of the same thing here?"
Sunday marks the sixth day since the government shutdown began, with Democrats and Republicans [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/john-boehner-default-debt-ceiling_n_4053537.html ] barely any closer to a compromise.
Watch the 'Face The Nation' exchange above [embedded], and read more about the shutdown here [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/government-shutdown_n_4042676.html ].
h/t ThinkProgress [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/10/06/2739081/schieffer-cornyn-debt-shutdown-ceiling/ ]
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/bob-schieffer-john-cornyn_n_4054600.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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GOP Rep. Cory Gardner's Claim That Obamacare Makes His Insurance Plan Too Expensive Gets Challenged
By Andrea Rael
Posted: 10/04/2013 6:09 pm EDT | Updated: 10/04/2013 6:09 pm EDT
Just days before the government shut down, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) went before the House of Representatives [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk9w_CDz7hg (next below)]
and announced that he and "thousands of Coloradans" have had their health care plans cancelled because of Obamacare.
"Just a couple weeks ago, despite the president’s promise that if you liked your insurance you could keep it, my family received a letter in the mail that our insurance plan is being cancelled -- cancelled because of the president’s health care bill," Gardner, who opted out of the congressional health insurance plan and uses a private insurer, told KDVR last week [ http://kdvr.com/2013/10/04/gardner-wont-corroborate-higher-premiums-under-obamacare-claim/ ]. “We were paying about $650 a month for our plan. And the plan that’s most similar to replace it through our current provider goes up by 100 percent more, so it’s from $650 to $1,480.”
But Neil Waldron, the chief marketer for Gardner's insurance provider Rocky Mountain Health Plans told The Colorado Independent [ http://www.coloradoindependent.com/144301/gardners-insurer-he-can-go-on-the-exchange-get-a-bronze-plan ] that under Obamacare, Gardner would be able to find a comparable plan.
“Probably one of our medal plans would be best. Without knowing particulars, I’d say the cheapest plan available to the congressman would be our Bronze Plan. Looks like that might be in the price range he’s paying now,” Waldron told The Colorado Independent.
CNN's Crossfire [ http://crossfire.blogs.cnn.com/ ] host Stephanie Cutter [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmqsrcfkz0k (following the headline, as embedded)] also challenged Gardner on his claim that a comparable plan would push his insurance up by 100 percent.
"I looked up what's happening in Colorado," Cutter said. "Now you make too much money to qualify for the tax credit, but the median income in Colorado is somewhere around $57,000. You make more than that, so a family of four who can get the tax credit, they can buy a silver plan -- which is a very good plan, much better than what's being offered right now -- for $718 with the tax credit that they will be eligible for, they will only pay $388 per month. So why is that a bad deal?"
Gardner, and the House GOP, have voted to defund Obamacare over 40 times.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/cory-gardner-insurance_n_4045733.html [with comments]
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Urging Patience, Obama Says Problems With Health Care Sites Reflect Demand
Graphic
Opening Week of Health Exchanges
The Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces opened on Tuesday. Technological problems prevented some people from creating accounts, comparing plans or learning whether they qualify for a federal subsidy to help pay for coverage. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have created their own exchanges, and the federal government is managing a marketplace in 34 states. By Friday, the federal exchange reported 8.6 million unique visitors to its Web site. Below is a look at how the state exchanges did.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/04/us/opening-week-of-health-exchanges.html
Interactive Map
Where Poor and Uninsured Americans Live
The 26 Republican-dominated states not participating in an expansion of Medicaid are home to a disproportionate share of the nation’s poorest uninsured residents. Eight million will be stranded without insurance.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/02/us/uninsured-americans-map.html
By JACKIE CALMES
Published: October 5, 2013
WASHINGTON — President Obama urged Americans who have flocked to the new government-run Web marketplaces for health insurance policies not to give up because of the technical problems attributed to greater-than-anticipated demand. Fixes are under way, he said.
Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Associated Press released on Saturday, said he did not have any figures to counter scattered reports that just a very small number of people have succeeded in signing up for insurance coverage since state and federal Web sites began enrollment on Tuesday for the so-called insurance exchanges. Those are a central part of Mr. Obama’s health care law, which was passed in 2010 to extend coverage to those who do not get insurance benefits on the job.
People “definitely shouldn’t give up,” Mr. Obama said. Citing the slow start to a similar program for Massachusetts residents several years ago, the president predicted that when the six-month window for enrollment ends in March, “we are going to probably exceed what anybody expected in terms of the amount of interest that people had.”
House Republicans — who forced a shutdown of the federal government, which also started on Tuesday, by demanding that the health care law be defunded or delayed as a condition for their approving financing for the government in the new fiscal year — were quick to jump on the snags as validation of their opposition to the program.
Yet Mr. Obama and other Democrats have countered that public demand caused technical problems with the new state and federal Web sites, evidence of the popularity of what the health care program has to offer.
“The interest way exceeded expectations, and that’s the good news,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “It shows that people really need and want affordable health care” from insurers that have bid to compete in the insurance exchanges.
As for the problems that frustrated many of the millions who have visited the Web sites, Mr. Obama said help was on the way. “Folks are working around the clock and have been systematically reducing the wait times,” he said.
With the health care law at the center of the continuing budget dispute between the White House and the Republican-led House, Mr. Obama reiterated that he would negotiate with Republican leaders only once they agreed to finance the government and increase the nation’s borrowing limit, which will be reached on Oct. 17.
Referring to Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama said: “What I’ve said to him is we are happy to negotiate on anything. We are happy to talk about the health care law, we’re happy to talk about the budget, we’re happy to talk about deficit reduction, we’re happy to talk about investments. But what we can’t do is keep engaging in this sort of brinksmanship where a small faction of the Republican Party ends up forcing them into brinksmanship to see if they can somehow get more from negotiations by threatening to shut down the government or threatening America not paying its bills.”
The president also repeated, as many Republicans have acknowledged, that the House could pass measures both to finance and reopen the government and increase the nation’s borrowing limit, averting a catastrophic default, if Mr. Boehner would allow votes.
Both sides say that House Democrats and more moderate Republicans would provide the majority support needed to send both measures to Mr. Obama to be signed.
With the more troublesome deadline looming for raising the debt limit, Mr. Obama did not explicitly rule out taking some unilateral action to increase it — though senior administration officials have.
“I don’t expect to get there,” he said, citing news reports that Mr. Boehner has privately told House Republicans that he would not allow a breach of the debt ceiling to occur.
*
Related
In Practice: Shutdown Din Obscures Health Exchange Flaws (October 4, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/news/affordable-care-act/2013/10/04/shutdown-din-obscures-health-exchange-flaws/
Your Money: Questions Often Asked About Health Law (October 5, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/your-money/estimating-income-and-other-questions-on-the-health-care-plan.html
*
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/politics/obama-urges-patience-with-insurance-exchanges.html
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The Uninsured Are Spread Throughout Red States, Too
Booklets outlining health insurance options for Californians is seen at a Senior Information & Resource Fair in South Gate, California September 10, 2013.
(ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
The people who stand to gain the most from the health care law don't live in just Democratic House districts.
By Ronald Brownstein
October 3, 2013
The big irony behind the scorched-earth Republican offensive against President Obama’s health care law is that its expansion of coverage to the uninsured would benefit House districts represented by Republicans nearly as much as those represented by Democrats.
In the confrontation that precipitated this week’s government shutdown, the near-universal refrain of Republican House members has been that they will “do whatever we can, as much as we can, to protect the people of our districts from the harmful effects of this law,” as Rep. James Lankford of Oklahoma put it. Regardless of what other provisions they consider harmful, that posture unavoidably means House Republicans are seeking to “protect” a surprisingly large number of their constituents from the right to obtain health insurance with federal assistance.
Recently released census data show that, on average, the share of residents without insurance is almost as high in districts represented by House Republicans as in those represented by Democrats. Slightly more Republicans (107) than Democrats (99) represent districts where the uninsured percentage is above the national average. Even about half of the 80 conservative members whose letter hatched the strategy of funding government only if Obama agreed to defund the 2010 Affordable Care Act represent districts where the uninsured share exceeds the national average.
This dynamic underscores how thoroughly ideology is trumping interest as Republicans convert the budget and debt showdowns into their Thermopylae for blocking Obamacare. Because so many House Republicans represent districts with low coverage levels, these members are effectively seeking to prevent a substantial flow of federal dollars not only to uninsured individuals in their communities but also to hospitals, doctors, and other providers who now are delivering significant levels of uncompensated care. “This is really an ideological stand—and in American politics, it [eventually] tends to be more about economic self-interest,” says Robert Blendon, a Harvard School of Public Health professor who studies public opinion and health care.
The near-convergence of insurance availability in Democratic and Republican districts reflects American politics’ ongoing class realignment. In Congress, Democrats represent an upstairs-downstairs coalition of well-educated, largely white suburban districts and heavily minority, mostly urbanized lower-income districts. Republicans represent many affluent places but rely increasingly on exurban and rural districts crowded with older and noncollege whites, many of whom lack insurance.
Using data from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, released last month, my colleague Michael Mellody ranked all 435 districts by their share of uninsured residents. Heavily minority Democratic seats dominated the list’s top rung, but many Republican districts in blue-collar and rural areas placed in the upper half, too. For instance, in the Appalachian-tinged North Carolina district of Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, who spearheaded the anti-Obamacare letter, nearly 27 percent of the working-age population (ages 18-64), and about 18 percent of the total, lack health insurance. In Lankford’s Oklahoma City-based district, 28 percent of working-age people and 20 percent of all residents lack insurance. “We have organizers in Waco, Jacksonville, and the Cincinnati suburbs, and in those places they are doing the same things we are doing in more-urban areas,” says Anne Filipic, president of Enroll America, a nonprofit group backing the law.
The Uninsured by Congressional District
Congressional districts with the highest percentage of uninsured are in the Southwest and tend to be in areas with a large Hispanic population. Massachusetts has the lowest percentage of uninsured due to its state-run health insurance, which has been in place since 2006.
[interactive/zoomable national map embedded]
Interactive by BRIAN McGILL; Source: Census Bureau, American Community Survey
In all, census data show that 15.6 percent of residents in the average Democratic district are uninsured, compared with 14.1 percent in the average GOP district. Likewise, the share of working-age people who lack insurance is nearly as high in GOP districts (19.9 percent) as in Democratic ones (21.7 percent). On both measures, virtually identical numbers of Democrats and Republicans represent districts where the uninsured share of the population exceeds the national average by at least 10 percent. And, reflecting the GOP’s growing downscale tilt, the share of whites without insurance is actually higher in the average Republican district (11.1 percent) than in the typical Democratic one (10.2 percent).
These numbers suggest that time is the pivot in this struggle. Republicans understandably feel emboldened now, while the law faces implementation challenges and broad public skepticism. But if Obama holds firm through 2016—as top advisers insist he will—the incentive for more GOP members could gradually shift from ideology to interest. Hospitals, doctors, and the uninsured themselves in red districts may quickly grow accustomed to the federal dollars that will flood in to expand coverage after Jan. 1. “Once they are in, it is going to be [almost] impossible to take insurance away from them,” one senior White House aide predicts.
Most House Republicans represent such safe districts that their electoral calculations probably won’t change much even if more of their voters receive federally assisted insurance. But it may be tougher to ignore the institutional demands from local medical interests benefiting from expanded insurance coverage that lightens their load of uncompensated care. “You have hospitals, doctors, and pharmacists who all say [to them], ‘Take the money,’ ” Blendon notes.
That mounting pressure is why Blendon joins those who believe that if Republicans can’t uproot the law soon, they never will. Judging by the ferocity of the confrontation, the key players on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue share his conviction.
This article appears in the October 5, 2013, edition of National Journal Magazine as Uninsured See Red.
Copyright © 2013 by National Journal Group Inc.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/innovations-in-health/the-uninsured-are-spread-throughout-red-states-too-20131003 [with comments] [also at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/where-are-the-uninsured-americans-who-will-benefit-from-obamacare/280283/ (with comments)]
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Without Health Insurance: Those Left Behind
Jeannie Phan
Letters
Published: October 6, 2013
*
To the Editor:
“Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/health/millions-of-poor-are-left-uncovered-by-health-law.html?pagewanted=all ]” (front page, Oct. 3) reminded me of my discovery 35 years ago — shortly after being appointed commissioner of Maine’s Health and Human Services Department — that states had wide latitude in shaping their Medicaid programs. Income eligibility, scope of services and reimbursement rates were largely left to the states to determine. Generally, the Northern-tier states opted for more generous benefits and the Southern states for fewer. Just like today.
Geography matters, with access to medical care profoundly influenced by where you live. Are citizens of Mississippi citizens of Mississippi first — or citizens of America first? Would the states even need to be involved if an efficient way could be found to treat all citizens equally from coast to coast, allowing them the same medical benefits wherever they live? Actually, for those over 65, it’s been done already and is called Medicare.
MICHAEL PETIT
President, Every Child Matters
Washington, Oct. 3, 2013
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To the Editor:
The news that Obamacare is failing to provide poor African-Americans across the United States with health benefits is not surprising when considered within our nation’s history.
The signature program of the modern welfare state, Social Security, excluded agricultural and domestic workers, mostly black groups of laborers, when it was signed in 1935. Many states have chosen not to participate in parts of the Affordable Care Act that would have expanded Medicaid to millions of poor black citizens. In both cases, arguments can be made that race was or was not a key factor in the decisions.
But regardless of motives, the consequence persists: 150 years after emancipation, African-Americans still lack access to social welfare programs that millions of other Americans enjoy.
MARCUS SCHWARZ
Los Angeles, Oct. 3, 2013
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To the Editor:
I was very disappointed by the headline “Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law.” As it happens, most of these people are not left uncovered by the health law; they are left uncovered by Republican governors’ refusal to opt in to the law. It’s a critically important distinction, and the headline should have acknowledged it.
JACK LERNER
Los Angeles, Oct. 3, 2013
The writer is a clinical associate professor of law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
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To the Editor:
The Supreme Court deserves the blame for the atrocity you describe in which a huge number of the poorest Americans are deprived of the benefits of Obamacare. The court gave states the right to choose to participate in the old Medicaid program, which covered far fewer people, without joining the new one. This is nonsense: there’s only one Medicaid program, and Congress, which created it, logically has the right to set its terms.
For the first time in history, the court decreed that states have the power to revise a federal spending program. This is the court at its worst: terrible legal reasoning leading to serious harm to millions of people.
ANDREW KOPPELMAN
Chicago, Oct. 3, 2013
The writer is a professor of law at Northwestern University and the author of “The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform [ http://www.amazon.com/Tough-Constitution-Assault-Health-Reform/dp/0199970025 ].”
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To the Editor:
Not only will millions of low-income people be left uninsured, but the working poor among them will see their tax dollars providing health care to people on Medicaid in other states. Here’s a thought: why do we need Medicaid? Why not end Medicaid, reconfigure the Affordable Care Act premium subsidy program to include all low-income people, and put the money we now give the states for Medicaid into funding the subsidies?
The rules would be the same for all Americans, no matter in which state they reside. People would be free to choose their own coverage. And the states would no doubt be relieved not to have to administer indigent health care. Everyone wins.
BARBARA HARTLEY
Benson, Ariz., Oct. 3, 2013
The writer is a family doctor.
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© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/opinion/without-health-insurance-those-left-behind.html
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You Might Hate Obamacare, But It's Saved These People's Lives
10/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/i-am-obamacare-_n_4046470.html [with (over 9,000) comments]
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Rich People Just Care Less
By DANIEL GOLEMAN
October 5, 2013, 2:25 pm
Turning a blind eye. Giving someone the cold shoulder. Looking down on people. Seeing right through them.
These metaphors for condescending or dismissive behavior are more than just descriptive. They suggest, to a surprisingly accurate extent, the social distance between those with greater power and those with less — a distance that goes beyond the realm of interpersonal interactions and may exacerbate the soaring inequality in the United States.
A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power. This tuning out has been observed, for instance, with strangers in a mere five-minute get-acquainted session, where the more powerful person shows fewer signals of paying attention, like nodding or laughing. Higher-status people are also more likely to express disregard, through facial expressions, and are more likely to take over the conversation and interrupt or look past the other speaker.
Bringing the micropolitics of interpersonal attention to the understanding of social power, researchers are suggesting, has implications for public policy.
Of course, in any society, social power is relative; any of us may be higher or lower in a given interaction, and the research shows the effect still prevails. Though the more powerful pay less attention to us than we do to them, in other situations we are relatively higher on the totem pole of status — and we, too, tend to pay less attention to those a rung or two down.
A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain. In 2008, social psychologists from the University of Amsterdam and the University of California, Berkeley, studied pairs of strangers telling one another about difficulties they had been through, like a divorce or death of a loved one. The researchers found that the differential expressed itself in the playing down of suffering. The more powerful were less compassionate toward the hardships described by the less powerful.
Dacher Keltner [ http://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/dacher-keltner ], a professor of psychology at Berkeley, and Michael W. Kraus [ http://www.psychology.illinois.edu/people/mwkraus ], an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, have done much of the research on social power and the attention deficit.
Mr. Keltner suggests that, in general, we focus the most on those we value most. While the wealthy can hire help, those with few material assets are more likely to value their social assets: like the neighbor who will keep an eye on your child from the time she gets home from school until the time you get home from work. The financial difference ends up creating a behavioral difference. Poor people are better attuned to interpersonal relations — with those of the same strata, and the more powerful — than the rich are, because they have to be.
While Mr. Keltner’s research finds that the poor, compared with the wealthy, have keenly attuned interpersonal attention in all directions, in general, those with the most power in society seem to pay particularly little attention to those with the least power. To be sure, high-status people do attend to those of equal rank — but not as well as those low of status do.
This has profound implications for societal behavior and government policy. Tuning in to the needs and feelings of another person is a prerequisite to empathy, which in turn can lead to understanding, concern and, if the circumstances are right, compassionate action.
In politics, readily dismissing inconvenient people can easily extend to dismissing inconvenient truths about them. The insistence by some House Republicans in Congress on cutting financing for food stamps and impeding the implementation of Obamacare, which would allow patients, including those with pre-existing health conditions, to obtain and pay for insurance coverage, may stem in part from the empathy gap. As political scientists have noted, redistricting and gerrymandering have led to the creation of more and more safe districts, in which elected officials don’t even have to encounter many voters from the rival party, much less empathize with them.
Social distance makes it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our own.
Freud called this “the narcissism of minor differences,” a theme repeated by Vamik D. Volkan [ http://www.vamikvolkan.com/ ], an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who was born in Cyprus to Turkish parents. Dr. Volkan remembers hearing as a small boy awful things about the hated Greek Cypriots — who, he points out, actually share many similarities with Turkish Cypriots. Yet for decades their modest-size island has been politically divided, which exacerbates the problem by letting prejudicial myths flourish.
In contrast, extensive interpersonal contact counteracts biases by letting people from hostile groups get to know one another as individuals and even friends. Thomas F. Pettigrew [ http://pettigrew.socialpsychology.org/ ], a research professor of social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, analyzed more than 500 studies on intergroup contact. Mr. Pettigrew, who was born in Virginia in 1931 and lived there until going to Harvard for graduate school, told me in an e-mail that it was the “the rampant racism in the Virginia of my childhood” that led him to study prejudice.
In his research, he found that even in areas where ethnic groups were in conflict and viewed one another through lenses of negative stereotypes, individuals who had close friends within the other group exhibited little or no such prejudice. They seemed to realize the many ways those demonized “others” were “just like me.” Whether such friendly social contact would overcome the divide between those with more and less social and economic power was not studied, but I suspect it would help.
Since the 1970s, the gap between the rich and everyone else has skyrocketed. Income inequality is at its highest level in a century. This widening gulf between the haves and have-less troubles me, but not for the obvious reasons. Apart from the financial inequities, I fear the expansion of an entirely different gap, caused by the inability to see oneself in a less advantaged person’s shoes. Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.
Daniel Goleman [ http://danielgoleman.info/? ], a psychologist, is the author of “Emotional Intelligence [ http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/055338371X ]” and, most recently, “Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence [ http://www.amazon.com/Focus-The-Hidden-Driver-Excellence/dp/0062114867 ].”
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Related Posts from Opinionator
Wrong Side of History
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/wrong-side-of-history/
How Did Conservatives Get This Radical?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/how-did-conservatives-get-this-radical/
How Dr. King Shaped My Work in Economics [Stiglitz]
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/how-dr-king-shaped-my-work-in-economics/
The New Economic Risk: Complacency
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/the-new-economic-risk-complacency/
Is This a Government Which I See Before Me?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/is-this-a-government-which-i-see-before-me/
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The Great Divide is a series about inequality.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-great-divide/
*
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/rich-people-just-care-less/ [with comments]
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Why the Government Shutdown Is Unbiblical
By Jim Wallis
Posted: 10/03/2013 2:04 pm
One of the most depressing things I heard on the first day of the government shutdown was that it was a record fundraising day for both parties. Washington, D.C., is no longer about governing; it is just about winning and losing. But the people who will lose the most during a government shutdown -- and then an impending United States government default on paying its debts -- are those who live day-to-day on their wages, those at the lower end of the nation's economy, and the poorest and most vulnerable who are always hurt the most in a crisis like this. And what happens to those people is the focus of the faith community; that is our job in politics -- to talk about what happens to them. Faith leaders have been meeting to discuss what we must do in response to this political crisis brought on by absolute political dysfunction.
The government shutdown seems to have gotten the attention of the nation. And if this ends in a default on our debt, the potentially catastrophic crashing of the economy will certainly wake us up. The only positive I see in this crisis is that the right issues -- the moral issues -- might finally get our attention.
Let me make myself clear on the politics here: Debates over fiscal matters -- budgets, taxes, and spending -- are supposed to take place within the political process, in negotiations, compromises, conferences between the Senate, House, and White House, and settled by elections. We can't use government shutdowns and debt repayments as bargaining chips in these debates. Most political leaders I know, both Republicans and Democrats, believe in government and governing. They may differ over how big or small or limited, but they are not hostile to government itself.
The issues here are deeper than politics now; they are moral, and, I would argue, theological. Too often our political affiliation drives our theological worldview instead of our theology driving our politics. The Bible speaks clearly about the role of government, and that is what really is being challenged here. It's time for those people of faith who want to shut down the government to read their Bibles. Because pressuring the nation to shut down the government, instead of keeping debate within the political process, is contrary not only to our best political traditions, but also to what our Scriptures say. And underlying this current crisis, there is a clear hostility to government itself, government per se, from a group of political extremists that I believe is unbiblical. It is a minority of our elected officials who are demonstrating their anti-government ideology. But that extreme minority has captured their party and the political process, and has driven the nation into dangerous crisis based upon fear.
This kind of crisis should cause people of faith to fast and pray and read their Bibles. And whether or not you are a person of faith, you might find it interesting to see what the Bible says about the mess we are now in.
The biblical purpose of government is to protect from evil and to promote the good -- protect and promote. Government is meant to protect its people's safety, security, and peace, and promote the common good of a society -- and even collect taxes for those purposes. Read Romans 13 by the apostle Paul and other similar texts. The Scriptures also make it clear that governmental authority is responsible for fairness and justice and particularly responsible to protect the poor and vulnerable. Read Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, the Psalms, and even the book of Kings to see that God will judge kings and rulers (governments) for how they treat the poor. And it wasn't just the kings of Israel who were held accountable for the poor, but also the kings of neighboring countries -- all governments. That's what the Bible says; so let me be as clear as I can be.
There are two ways the political extremists are being unbiblical. First, to be hostile to the role of government is unbiblical according to the Scriptures. Second, because of their hostility to government, many of those who are promoting this crisis are also hostile to the poor, who are supposed to be protected by the government. They blame the poor for their poverty instead of asking how government can protect the most vulnerable and even help lift them out of poverty.
The facts and the faces of those who suffer first and worst from these crises must be lifted up -- and that is the role of the faith community. Already, thousands of children are losing their Head Start programs, mothers with children are losing WIC (Women, Infants, and Children program), and many of those most dependent on their paychecks are now losing them.
Jeremiah, speaking of King Josiah, said, "He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well." The subsequent line is very revealing: "'Is that not what it means to know me?' declares the Lord" (Jer. 22:16). Of Solomon, the Scriptures say, through the words of the queen of Sheba, "Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king to execute justice and righteousness" (1 Kings 10:9). Psalm 72 begins with a prayer for kings or political leaders: "Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. ... May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor" (Ps. 72:1-4).
There is a powerful vision for promoting the common good here, a vision of prosperity for all the people, with special attention to the poor and to "deliverance" for the most vulnerable and needy.
That vision of "common good" is what we have lost, and there is nothing more important in our public life than to find it again.
For people of faith, government is never ultimate but needs to play the important and modest role of servant. The criteria for evaluation and judgment of civil authority is whether it is serving the people, whether it is guarding their security, whether it is maintaining a positive and peaceful social order, whether it is helping to make the lives of its citizens better, and, in particular, whether it is protecting the poor. To be opposed to government per se, especially when that opposition serves the ultimate power of other wealthy and powerful interests, is simply not a biblical position. Transparency, accountability, and service are the ethics of good government. "Of the people, by the people, and for the people" is still a good measure and goal of civil authority.
But people of faith will ascribe ultimate authority only to God, to whom civil authority will always be accountable.
Jim Wallis is president of Sojourners [ http://sojo.net/ ]. His book, On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned About Serving the Common Good [ http://ongodsside.com/ ], is now available [ http://www.amazon.com/On-Gods-Side-Religion-Politics/dp/1587433370 ]. Watch the Story of the Common Good here [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9pdXzJB1l0 ].
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/why-the-government-shutdo_b_4038418.html [with comments]; the YouTube, as embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otRopS2TUHA
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Re: Gov. Shutdown; An Appeal to Paul Krugman and the NY Times: Stop Being Polite, It's Time to Expose Extremist Religion's Threat to Our Democracy
By Frank Schaeffer
Posted: 10/07/2013 7:21 am
For almost 9 years I've been warning Huffington Post readers of the danger religious right fundamentalist activism is to our country. With the advent of the shutdown I'm tempted to say "I told you so." The shutdown is the religious right's biggest "victory" and a loss for the rest of us that threatens everything we love. But it's not all "their" fault. Some of our best and brightest dropped the ball too. Our chattering classes have been too polite about religion, in fact mostly silent.
For instance, someone I admire very much -- Paul Krugman -- and the New York Times have unintentionally sinned against their readers. They are far too tolerant of the evil of religion-gone-bad. They are being overly polite about the horrible effect religion and evangelical fundamentalist religion in particular, has had on our American "shutdown" politics. They are analyzing the shutdown but offering no solutions because they duck the truth. Until Krugman and the Times editorial board and the rest of the media, attack the religious extremist root cause of the shutdown nothing can change.
Krugman's latest brilliant column in the Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/opinion/krugman-the-boehner-bunglers.html ] illustrates my point handily. I'll reproduce some of it here and add what he was too polite to say. Maybe I'm more attuned to what Krugman won't say -- that right wing religion has become right wing politics -- because I was once an evangelical leader with a famous evangelical father (religious right founder Francis Schaeffer [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Schaeffer ]). I fled. But I remember.
One other thing, I know from experience: Not all evangelicals or Roman Catholics are of the right or part of the problem. For instance my friend and Huffington Post columnist Jim Wallis [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/ ], or the people running the Wild Goose Festival [ http://wildgoosefestival.org/ ] with their in-gathering of progressive believers are on the side of sanity and compassion. But the good guys don't run the religion show in America.
What Krugman did not say is the heart of the story of why sane America can't come to grips with what has happened to us.
Krugman writes:
The main answer, which only the most pathologically "balanced" reporting can deny, is the radicalization of the Republican Party. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it last year in their book, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/its-even-worse-than-it-looks-how-the-american-constitutional-system-collided-with-the-new-politics-of-extremism-by-thomas-e-mann-and-norman-j-ornstein/2012/04/30/gIQA2ohKsT_story.html ]," the G.O.P. has become "an insurgent outlier -- ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."
True, but to help readers understand why this is so you'd need to tell the truth: Mann and Ornstein's description is a perfect description of the religious right evangelical and conservative Roman Catholic base that has worked for and voted in the Republican extremists. Let me rephrase. The evangelical Protestant movement ever since it became the anti-feminist, anti-science and anti-public education party has been an insurgent outlier -- ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
The only reason that the Republican Party has become resistant to facts is that it's most ardent mass of voters is blind to reality because of their religious beliefs. As I show in my new book on religious delusion American style, And God Said, "Billy!" [ http://www.amazon.com/And-God-Said-Billy-ebook/dp/B00F3O69Q2 ], exploring the roots of religious delusion is the only way to understand contemporary American politics.
Krugman writes:
But there's one more important piece of the story. Conservative leaders are indeed ideologically extreme, but they're also deeply incompetent. So much so, in fact, that the Dunning-Kruger effect [ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201006/when-ignorance-begets-confidence-the-classic-dunning-kruger-effect ] -- the truly incompetent can't even recognize their own incompetence -- reigns supreme.
True enough, but that level of counter intuitive incompetence can't be understood until you take into account the religious commitment to non-"worldly" values of the religious right and their radical Roman Catholic outliers. To the evangelicals incompetence is a godly virtue. Do the work "in the Lord's way." Eschew "worldly" values, like reason, and look for miracles as the route to blessing and victory.
Krugman writes:
To see what I'm talking about, consider the report [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?pagewanted=all (the first item in this post)] in Sunday's Times about the origins of the current crisis. Early this year, it turns out, some of the usual suspects -- the Koch brothers, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation and others -- plotted strategy in the wake of Republican electoral defeat. Did they talk about rethinking ideas that voters had soundly rejected? No, they talked extortion, insisting that the threat of a shutdown would induce President Obama to abandon health reform.
True. But again, all evangelicals ever do is plot strategy to sell their myth-based theology to a world that is fact-orientated. And so do the right wing Roman Catholic intellectuals like Krugman's colleague at Princeton, professor Robert George, who (according to the Times) has been plotting strategy [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/magazine/20george-t.html?pagewanted=all ] against president Obama now through an entire presidency in order to push for a no-contraceptive zone for Catholic institutions as a means to put the president at odds with all religious people.
Strategy to sell myths (say Roman Catholic "Natural Law [ http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v23n2/how_roman_catholic_neocons.html ]" or evangelical faith in a literal 6 day creation) is the only tactic fundamentalists have. Look at their home school movement. It isn't about education. It is all a strategy to keep their children away from people who might present the facts to them about everything from global warming to evolution to birth control. It is about strategy not about truth. The Koch brothers know that their mass of right wing voters are fundamentalists (with a few Ayn Rand followers in the libertarian wing thrown in). That's all that is left.
Religion has so gutted the GOP that the sole remaining strategy is always the same: to be the party of extreme religion but to try and not look that way. Krugman and the Times and the media in general only help the GOP perpetuate the lie that they are a normal political party by ignoring the religion at the heart of the GOP mess.
Krugman writes:
Even more remarkable, in its way, was the response of House Republican leaders, who didn't tell the activists they were being foolish.
Yes, but the traditional moderate GOP leaders have learned to bite their tongues for years now. Their prime voters, their activists and their foot soldiers are the same people who believe what they see in the Creation Museum. What else can the GOP leadership do but get into the practice of never saying what's true?
Krugman writes:
Many people seem perplexed by the transformation of the G.O.P. into the political equivalent of the Keystone Kops -- the Boehner Bunglers? Republican elders, many of whom have been in denial about their party's radicalization, seem especially startled. But all of this was predictable.
It has been obvious for years that the modern Republican Party is no longer capable of thinking seriously about policy. Whether the issue is climate change or inflation, party members believe what they want to believe, and any contrary evidence is dismissed as a hoax, the product of vast liberal conspiracies [ http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-paul-believes-in-an-inflation-conspiracy-theory-here-are-all-the-reasons-why-its-wrong-2012-2 ].
For a while the party was able to compartmentalize, to remain savvy and realistic about politics even as it rejected objectivity everywhere else. But this wasn't sustainable. Sooner or later, the party's attitude toward policy -- we listen only to people who tell us what we want to hear, and attack the bearers of uncomfortable news -- was bound to infect political strategy, too.
Yes, but it's also inexplicable without naming names. The evangelicals like Billy Graham and the magazine he founded (Christianity Today) made magical thinking respectable in modern 20th century America. Then the religious right took things to another level.
Billy -- who I grew up knowing and who visited our home -- avoided politics after getting burned by his close association with Nixon. But in a sort of allegory of what befell all evangelicals, as the Washington Post noted [ http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2010/05/the_franklin_graham_crusade.html ] , his son Franklin became one of the most extreme of the new breed of far right activists. (As I mentioned in another article here in HuffPo [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/franklin-graham-religious_b_838863.html ] , I met Franklin several times while we were both coming of age as the sons of religious leaders.)
In writing "Whether the issue is climate change or inflation, party members believe what they want to believe, and any contrary evidence is dismissed as a hoax, the product of vast liberal conspiracies" Krugman described the evangelical movement as taken over by the likes of Franklin Graham with his gay-bashing, pro-Sarah Palin crusades. Not attacking the delusional thinking at the heart of this political fiasco is like trying to describe what led to World War Two without mentioning fascism. It is a dereliction of journalistic duty.
Krugman writes:
Unfortunately for all of us, even the shock of electoral defeat wasn't enough to burst the G.O.P. bubble; it's still a party dominated by wishful thinking, and all but impervious to inconvenient facts.
And just why is the GOP "all but impervious to inconvenient facts"? What does Krugman think that people are like who are indoctrinated from their mother's knee forward with a literal view of the Bible? Did you expect people who believe Noah carted all the dinosaurs onto the ark to also be able to think out policy issues or elect people who can think clearly? It's time to be rude and to ask where these folks go to church and attack what they hear there, rather than give a pass to dumb religion. Dumb religion is seriously threatening this country.
Krugman writes:
Meanwhile, the government is shut, and a debt crisis looms. Incompetence can be a terrible thing.
True, but there's another kind of incompetence. It comes from the squeamish niceties of smart educated secular people like Krugman who are too polite to do us much good. Religion gone badly is dangerous. Our elite media folks need to tell the truth.
As Krugman said, "the government is shut, and a debt crisis looms." Man up Krugman, NYT editors et al and tell us plainly why this is so. The problem isn't the GOP. The problem is what the mass of extremist GOP voters believe.
Church and state are no longer separated. They have been folded into one deadly destructive, economy-threatening entity by the Republicans. It's time to stop being any less forcefully truth-telling about religion than we are about politics. The shutdown is a slow motion religious extremist attack on America no less deadly that a suicide vest attack. It's time to call these people out on their own terms for what they believe before they take us all down with them.
Frank Schaeffer [ https://www.facebook.com/frank.schaeffer.16 ] is a writer. His latest book And God Said, "Billy!" [ http://www.amazon.com/And-God-Said-Billy-ebook/dp/B00F3O69Q2 ] explores the roots of religious delusion.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/re-gov-shutdown-an-appeal_b_4056548.html [with comments]
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The Radical Christian Right and the War on Government
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talks to reporters.
AP/J. Scott Applewhite
By Chris Hedges
Posted on Oct 6, 2013
There is a desire felt by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, to destroy the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment, radically diminish the role of government to create a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and force a recalcitrant world to bend to the will of an imperial and “Christian” America. Its public face is on display in the House of Representatives. This ideology, which is the driving force behind the shutdown of the government, calls for the eradication of social “deviants,” beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once these “deviants” are removed, other “deviants,” including Muslims, liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will also be ruthlessly repressed. The “deviant” government bureaucrats, the “deviant” media, the “deviant” schools and the “deviant” churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these “deviants” will be annulled. “Christian values” and “family values” will, in the new state, be propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless indoctrination.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International [ http://www.purifyingfire.org/ministries.htm ] ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism [ http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dominionism ] or Christian Reconstructionism. This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.
The cult of masculinity, as in all fascist movements, pervades the ideology of the Christian right. The movement uses religion to sanctify military and heroic “virtues,” glorify blind obedience and order over reason and conscience, and pander to the euphoria of collective emotions. Feminism and homosexuality, believers are told, have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian right, is a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Antichrist, attacking hypocrites and ultimately slaying nonbelievers. This cult of masculinity, with its glorification of violence, is appealing to the powerless. It stokes the anger of many Americans, mostly white and economically disadvantaged, and encourages them to lash back at those who, they are told, seek to destroy them. The paranoia about the outside world is fostered by bizarre conspiracy theories, many of which are prominent in the rhetoric of those leading the government shutdown. Believers, especially now, are called to a perpetual state of war with the “secular humanist” state. The march, they believe, is irreversible. Global war, even nuclear war, is the joyful harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms billions of apostates to death.
Dominionists believe they are engaged in an epic battle against the forces of Satan. They live in a binary world of black and white. They feel they are victims, surrounded by sinister groups bent on their destruction. They have anointed themselves as agents of God who alone know God’s will. They sanctify their rage. This rage lies at the center of the ideology. It leaves them sputtering inanities about Barack Obama, his corporate-sponsored health care reform bill, his alleged mandated suicide counseling or “death panels” for seniors under the bill, his supposed secret alliance with radical Muslims, and “creeping socialism.” They see the government bureaucracy as being controlled by “secular humanists” who want to destroy the family and make war against the purity of their belief system. They seek total cultural and political domination.
All ideological, theological and political debates with the radical Christian right are useless. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. Its adherents are using the space within the open society to destroy the open society itself. Our naive attempts to placate a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to it that we too have “values,” only strengthen its supposed legitimacy and increase our own weakness.
Dominionists have to operate, for now, in what they see as the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They work with the rest of us only because they must. Given enough power—and they are working hard to get it—any such cooperation will vanish. They are no different from the vanguard described by Lenin or the Islamic terrorists who shaved off their beards, adopted Western dress and watched pay-for-view pornography in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack. The elect alone, like the Grand Inquisitor, are sanctioned to know the truth. And in the pursuit of their truth they have no moral constraints.
I spent two years inside the Christian right in writing my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America [ http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461 ].” I attended services at megachurches across the country, went to numerous lectures and talks, sat in on creationist seminars, attended classes on religious proselytizing and conversion, spent weekends at “right-to-life” retreats and interviewed dozens of followers and leaders of the movement. Though I was sympathetic to the financial dislocation, the struggles with addictions, the pain of domestic and sexual violence, and the deep despair that drew people to the movement, I was also acutely aware of the dangerous ideology these people embraced. Fascist movements begin as champions of civic improvement, communal ideals, moral purity, strength, national greatness and family values. These movements attract, as has the radical Christian right, those who are disillusioned by the collapse of liberal democracy. And our liberal democracy has collapsed.
We have abandoned our poor and working class. We have created a government monster that sucks the marrow out of our bones to enrich and empower the oligarchic and corporate elite. The protection of criminals, whether in war or on Wall Street, is part of our mirage of law and order. We have betrayed the vast and growing underclass. Most believers within the Christian right are struggling to survive in a hostile world. We have failed them. Their very real despair is being manipulated and used by Christian fascists such as the Texas senator. Give to the working poor a living wage, benefits and job security and the reach of this movement will diminish. Refuse to ameliorate the suffering of the poor and working class and you ensure the ascendancy of a Christian fascism.
The Christian right needs only a spark to set it ablaze. Another catastrophic act of domestic terrorism, hyperinflation, a series of devastating droughts, floods, hurricanes or massive wildfires or another financial meltdown will be the trigger. Then what is left of our anemic open society will disintegrate. The rise of Christian fascism is aided by our complacency. The longer we fail to openly denounce and defy bankrupt liberalism, the longer we permit corporate power to plunder the nation and destroy the ecosystem, the longer we stand slack-jawed before the open gates of the city waiting meekly for the barbarians, the more we ensure their arrival.
© 2013 Truthdig, LLC
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_radical_christian_right_and_the_war_on_government_20131006 [with comments]
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/04/1244320/-TIME-Magazine-s-Cover-M-a-j-o-r-i-t-y-R-u-l-e [with comments]; http://www.flickr.com/photos/25976845@N06/10093228445/sizes/l/in/photostream/ , via http://www.flickr.com/photos/25976845@N06/10093228445/
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
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