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Massive Water Main Break Floods @UCLA Campus http://t.co/WA0ACd2ZZ5 pic.twitter.com/XrLnmR5Irl
— Austin Hunt (@iAustinHunt) July 30, 2014
Tuesday's Mini-Report, 7.29.14
Today's edition of quick hits:
* Sanctions: "While rejecting comparisons to the Cold War, President Obama on Tuesday announced new sanctions against Russia for supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine. The sanctions, building off measures announced two weeks ago, will target Russia's energy, arms, and finance sectors of the economy."
* Related news: "The United States has concluded that Russia violated a landmark arms control treaty by testing a prohibited ground-launched cruise missile, according to senior American officials, a finding that was conveyed by President Obama to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in a letter on Monday."
* Gaza: "Israel's aerial assaults on targets in Gaza broadened on Tuesday, with barrages that destroyed Hamas's media offices, the home of a top leader and what Palestinians said was a devastating hit on the only electricity plant, plunging the enclave of 1.7 million into deeper deprivation with no power, running water or sewage treatment."
* Mississippi's last abortion clinic "won a major victory at the conservative 5th Circuit of Appeals, which said a law intended to make the state 'abortion-free' and close the clinic was unconstitutional. 'Pre-viability, a woman has the constitutional right to end her pregnancy by abortion,' wrote E. Grady Jolly, a Reagan appointee, for the panel."
* Senate Dems have an idea: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that if the House passes a $659 million border bill with policy changes, he could use it as a vehicle for comprehensive immigration reform."
* House GOP leaders aren't fond of the idea: "Speaker John A. Boehner vowed the House would not allow the Senate to add any 'comprehensive immigration reform bill or anything like it, including the DREAM Act' to the House's $659 million border bill Tuesday."
* Cabinet: "The Senate voted unanimously on Tuesday to confirm Robert A. McDonald, the 61-year-old former chief executive of Procter & Gamble, to take the helm of the sprawling and embattled Department of Veterans Affairs after a scandal over the manipulation of patient wait-time data led to the ouster two months ago of Eric Shinseki."
* NSA: "After plenty of setbacks in Congress, advocates of surveillance reform are giving it another shot."
* Oh my: "Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly (R) had choice worlds for the Environmental Protection Agency's new rule on power plant emissions Monday, moving beyond the usual 'war on coal' language and likening the proposed regulations to an act of terrorism."
Clawson regrets 'air ball'
It was one of the most cringe-worthy moments of any congressional hearing in recent memory. Freshman Rep. Curt Clawson (R-Fla.), during a House Foreign Affairs Committee last week, spoke to two senior officials from the U.S. State Department and Commerce Department, respectively, but the Republican congressman told them, "I'm familiar with your country; I love your country," assuming they were from India.
They're not. The officials, Nisha Biswal and Arun Kumar, may have Indian surnames, but they're Americans who were giving congressional testimony on behalf of the Obama administration.
Making matters slightly worse, after Biswal clarified matters, Clawson didn't apologize, instead telling the officials, "OK, let's see some progress."
The dust has obviously settled and Clawson eventually did the only thing he could do.
Clawson won a special election last month to replace Trey Radel, who resigned following a cocaine bust. The political novice, who was a businessman and college basketball player before running for office, apologized in a statement sent to our Gannett colleague, Ledyard King."I made a mistake in speaking before being fully briefed and I apologize. I'm a quick study, but in this case I shot an air ball," Clawson said.
This might have been a more straightforward apology without the "being fully briefed" comment -- the congressman really shouldn't blame his staff for this one -- but the apology otherwise gets the job done.
As for Biswal, she took the high road.
Parties, presidents, and economic power
Derek Thompson highlighted an interesting economic trend that Republicans very likely find discouraging: "[I]n the 70 years, the U.S. economy has been better, across many metrics, when a Democrat has been the president." In particular, Thompson noted a "fantastically interesting" paper (pdf) from Princeton professors Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, who reported that from 1947 to 2013, in literally every category, Democratic presidents outperformed Republican presidents.
Which leads to the obvious question: Why? For Dems, a bit of good fortune may be involved.
Why is the US economy so unapologetically partisan? Do the laws of supply and demand have a liberal bias? Are Democrats better at governing for growth? Do these graphs prove something fundamental about the superiority of Keynesianism?Maybe none of the above. Blinder and Watson propose that the answer has less to do with policies -- taxing, spending, redistributing -- and more to do with dumb luck. "The Democratic edge stems mainly from more benign oil shocks, superior [productivity growth], a more favorable international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term future," they wrote.
I should mention that the observation itself isn't entirely new. Michael Kinsley covered this fairly closely six years ago, and he pushed back, albeit gently, against the "dumb luck" explanation.
"Some people believe that the president has little or no effect on the economy. If so, that would be a serious flaw in this exercise," Kinsley wrote in 2008. "But it would also be a serious flaw in the exercise called democracy, since people tell pollsters that the economy is the most important issue for them in deciding whom to vote for. No doubt any particular bad year in any of these statistics can be explained by some extrinsic special event -- a war, for example. But surely patterns that emerge over half a century account for these."
The House GOP's underwhelming response to a crisis
Three weeks ago, President Obama presented a pretty credible solution to the humanitarian crisis at the U.S./Mexico border. The White House requested $3.7 billion in emergency funding that would build detention centers, add immigration judges, and beef up border security, all while expediting deportations to discourage an additional influx.
A week later, asked if his chamber would approve Obama's plan, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters, "I would certainly hope so," though he cautioned against optimism.
My Grand Unified Theory of Boehner has long held that the Speaker's political instincts are fairly sound, but he invariably has to take a less reasonable course because his radicalized caucus will tolerate nothing else. In the case of the border crisis, Boehner wanted to approve Obama's proposed solution, but House Republicans ruled out the possibility, and with two days remaining before Congress takes a five-week break, they finally came up with a counter-offer.
Republicans hope to pass $659 million in supplemental spending for the border crisis before leaving for the August recess, Speaker John A. Boehner said after a GOP conference meeting Tuesday.The Ohio Republican said the House will "attempt to move this bill" on Thursday and that he anticipated the measure would have "sufficient support," but that there was still "a little more work to do to" to shore up the votes.
This is not a bill anyone should take pride in. After complaining literally for months about this crisis, the fact that this proposal is the best the House GOP could come up with is pretty powerful evidence to bolster the post-policy thesis.
To address the crisis, the White House wants to spend nearly $4 billion, while Senate Democrats are writing a related package that would spend nearly $3 billion. House Republicans, meanwhile, want to spend $659 million -- about a fifth of the original total eyed by the Obama administration -- two-thirds of which would go to border security.
Apparently, no one told the GOP lawmakers that the current crisis doesn't really have anything to do with border security. That, or lawmakers were told, but they didn't care.
Tuesday's Campaign Round-Up, 7.29.14
Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:
* In Kentucky's closely watched U.S. Senate race, the new Bluegrass Poll shows Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) narrowly leading Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), 47% to 45%. The poll measures support from likely voters. The previous Bluegrass Poll had Lundergan Grimes with a narrow lead, but it polled registered voters.
* Michelle Nunn's (D) Senate campaign in Georgia sprung a leak yesterday, when "a detailed memo outlining" her game plan appeared in National Review, a conservative political magazine. As Benjy Sarlin added, "Most of the sections in the 144-page document are unremarkable, if annoying, for a campaign to see aired outside its offices."
* In Michigan, a new statewide poll shows Rep. Gary Peters (D) leading Terri Lynn Land (R) in their U.S. Senate race, 43% to 38%. The five-point advantage is up from Peters' three-point lead in the same poll last month.
* In Kansas' surprisingly competitive gubernatorial race, incumbent Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has outraised his challenger, Paul Davis (D), but the governor relied on a $500,000 loan from his lieutenant governor to get the advantage.
* In West Virginia's U.S. Senate race four years ago, Democrat Joe Manchin ran an ad shooting a gun at a cap-and-trade bill. In West Virginia's U.S. Senate race this year, Democrat Natalie Tennant is running an ad in which she turns the lights off at the White House.
* In New Hampshire, former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) still hopes to turn around his struggling comeback bid, and launched a new anti-immigrant television ad this week. In the spot, Brown, running in a new state, condemns "the pro-amnesty policies of President Obama and Senator Shaheen," falsely blaming these policies for the recent humanitarian crisis.
Wanted: U.S. Ambassadors
According to the United Nations, there are 193 nations in the world. Of that total, the United States maintains embassies in 169 countries around the globe. But on the show the other day, Rachel highlighted a striking statistic: in a fourth of those embassies, the ambassador's office is empty, because the Senate hasn't confirmed anyone.
There are practical consequences of this. Unaccompanied children from Guatemala, for example, are reaching the U.S./Mexico border, and officials are working on possible solutions. But there's a limit on the amount of diplomatic work that can be done in the Central American country, since the U.S. has no ambassador to Guatemala. We don't have an ambassador to Russia, which also happens be a pretty consequential country right now.
There are a variety of factors contributing to the problem, but there's reason to believe our embassies may soon receive some new ambassadors after all.
There's a chance at least some of the ambassadors caught in a legislative holding pattern might be confirmed before the August recess.While the process of filling the diplomatic corps has been slow in the aftermath of the "nuclear option" standoff last fall, Sen. Ted Cruz said Monday that he had withdrawn his more recent objection.The Texas Republican had placed a hold on State Department nominees.... Cruz had placed the hold because of last week's brief Federal Aviation Administration ban on flights by U.S. carriers to Tel Aviv, Israel.
Cruz's conspiracy theory was pretty outlandish, even for him, but as part of his tantrum, the far-right senator announced a blanket hold on all State Department nominees, regardless of merit. The Texas Republican lifted that hold yesterday.
But before any ambassadors-in-waiting start packing their bags, the Washington Post reported that regardless of Cruz's antics, "the pace of ambassador confirmations is unlikely to quicken. Republicans still demand a cloture vote that eats up debate time and slows the process, which is akin to placing a hold on them."
Cutting taxes for the wealthy? Again?
In his unnervingly dishonest op-ed for USA Today this week, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) assured voters his party isn't just obsessed with going after President Obama. "At the same time," he argued, "we remain focused on the American people's top priority: jobs and the economy."
What possible rationale could there be to justify such a claim? It's actually pretty simple: House Republicans continue to pass tax cuts. Ergo, Boehner thinks he's telling the truth when he claims the GOP is focused on "jobs and the economy," all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
It didn't get much attention, but late last week, House Republicans quietly approved yet another tax break, this time advancing a tax policy that benefits the wealthy while hurting the poor. Danny Vinik had a good piece on this:
Here's how the [Child Tax Credit] currently works: Couples receive a maximum credit of $1,000 per-child, meaning they can lower their tax bill by that amount. For instance, a couple with two kids and an income of $50,000 would owe $8,356 in federal income taxes. With the CTC, they would reduce their tax bill by $2,000, to $6,356. However, not everyone is eligible for the credit. Those with income below $3,000 cannot collect it. And for couples, the credit begins phasing out at $110,000 and is entirely phased out at $150,000. For singles, those numbers are $75,000 and $115,000, respectively.Thus, the current design of the CTC creates a marriage penalty. For instance, imagine a couple where each person makes $60,000. Separately, they would both be eligible to collect the full credit. But combined, their income ($120,000) would exceed the current phase-out threshold for couples filing jointly. Therefore, the couple could maximize their after-tax income by living together, but not marrying.
Now, there's very little to suggest this disincentive actually has a real-world impact, but House Republicans nevertheless advanced a policy they've wanted for years: they made it so that a couple can collect the same tax break, even if they file jointly. The same bill raised the phase-out ceiling to $150,000 and indexed it to inflation. The price tag: $115 billion over the next decade.
What's wrong with that? If you're a deficit hawk, quite a bit, but there's a more glaring concern here: the House GOP measure was structured to punish the poor while benefiting the rich.
2.1 million reasons why Dems love the GOP's anti-Obama push
In 1998, congressional Republicans, filled with irrational rage towards a Democratic president in his sixth year, launched an impeachment crusade the American mainstream saw as wildly unnecessary. The electoral results were striking: Bill Clinton's Democratic Party had the best sixth-year midterms of any administration in a century.
The history is not lost on contemporary Democrats. If GOP overreach 16 years ago alienated Republicans from the public at large and encouraged Democratic voters to show up for the elections, maybe history can repeat itself now that the GOP is once again launching an outlandish crusade against another Dem White House.
But let's be clear about the circumstances: Democrats aren't just shining a bright light on the GOP's impeachment talk and anti-Obama lawsuit because they're hoping for a replay of 1998. They also have quantifiable evidence that the strategy is having the desired effect. Wesley Lowery reported yesterday:
The Democrats' congressional campaign arm pulled in $2.1 million in online donations over the weekend -- the best four-day haul of the current election cycle -- largely propelled by fundraising pitches tied to speculation that House Republicans could pursue the impeachment of President Obama. [...]The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has brought in more than 114,000 donations since Thursday -- when the House Rules committee voted to press forward with a lawsuit contesting President Obama's use of executive action, which some Democrats have suggested is a temporary stand-in for impeachment proceedings -- spurred in part by nine e-mail fundraising pitches that directly reference the prospect of a GOP-attempt at pursuing impeachment.
In a statement to the Washington Post, DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said, "Grassroots Democrats across the country see Republican leaders in the House refusing to rule out impeaching the President even as they vote to use taxpayer funds to sue him. It's no surprise that there's outrage at this dramatic partisan overreach by a historically unpopular Republican Congress."
Update: Israel told Roll Call that House Democrats raised $1 million in online contributions in 24 hours on Monday, mostly from small-dollar donors.
In an interesting twist, Dems are so pleased by recent Republican rhetoric that some on the right are accusing Democrats of making the whole thing up.
The climate crisis isn't just scary; it's expensive
Attempts to debate climate change on moral terms have largely failed; Republican policymakers have heard the arguments and they remain unmoved. So too have related arguments -- those who believe in climate science have raised related warnings about national security, public health, and environmental conditions. In each instance, GOP policymakers have said they just don't care.
For the White House, these attitudes have caused a rhetorical shift of sorts. If Republicans don't like spending money, perhaps it's time to remind the GOP that inaction on the climate crisis would be very expensive. The Washington Post reported today on a new analysis from President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.
The White House issued a report Tuesday warning that the United States could face billions of dollars in added economic costs if it delays action to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change. According to the report, each decade of delay will make it 40 percent more expensive to eventually reach the identical global climate target. [...]The Council of Economic Advisers based its findings on 16 studies that incorporated a range of economic models. It concluded that a global temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) as opposed to a rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) "could increase economic damages by approximately 0.9 percent of global output. To put this percentage in perspective, 0.9 percent of estimated 2014 U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is approximately $150 billion."
Hundreds of billions of dollars here, hundreds of billions of dollars there, pretty soon we're talking about real money.
Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, told reporters yesterday, "If anything, we understate the cost of delay."
Rebecca Leber added that the White House's latest approach "helps frame climate action as taking out insurance today against the worst of global warming's impacts, just like a responsible homeowner would buy insurance. Putting numbers to the cost of inaction takes aim directly at a classic Republican rebuttal -- that it's better to wait for the so-called 'unsettled science' to settle on exact timing and magnitude of global warming's consequences."
Iowa's Ernst dabbles in nullification extremism
In 2010 and 2012, Republican primary voters nominated some pretty outrageous candidates who were so extreme, they alienated the American mainstream and helped deliver key victories to Democrats. The names are as familiar as they are infamous: Todd Akin, Sharron Angle, Richard Mourdock, Christine O'Donnell, et al.
There's a sense that the GOP learned valuable lessons from these fiascos, and made a conscious, concerted effort to nominate fewer extremists for statewide contests in 2014.
Iowa's Joni Ernst is a notable exception.
As Rachel noted on the show last month, Ernst has said she would ban abortions and many forms of birth control; she would privatize Social Security and abolish the minimum wage; she would back an anti-gay amendment to the Constitution; she's open to impeaching President Obama for unknown reason; and she believes there's secret information that Saddam Hussein really did have weapons of mass destruction.
Yesterday, Ben Jacobs ran a report that's arguably the more alarming revelation to date: the right-wing U.S. Senate candidate "appears to believe states can nullify federal laws."
In a video obtained by The Daily Beast, Ernst said on September 13, 2013 at a forum held by the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition that Congress should not pass any laws "that the states would consider nullifying.""You know we have talked about this at the state legislature before, nullification. But, bottom line is, as U.S. Senator why should we be passing laws that the states are considering nullifying? Bottom line: our legislators at the federal level should not be passing those laws. We're right ... we've gone 200-plus years of federal legislators going against the Tenth Amendment's states' rights. We are way overstepping bounds as federal legislators. So, bottom line, no we should not be passing laws as federal legislators -- as senators or congressman -- that the states would even consider nullifying. Bottom line."
Jacobs' report added that Ernst, during her brief tenure as a state senator, hasn't sponsored pro-nullification legislation, but she did back a resolution that says "the State of Iowa hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States." It was introduced in response to "many federal mandates [that] are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."
I can appreciate why issues like nullification may seem esoteric to everyday concerns on the minds of Iowa voters, but it's important to appreciate how this fits into a simple truth: the more the picture of Ernst comes into sharper focus, the more radical she appears.
Chutzpah Watch, Mississippi edition
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) has gone out of his way to make sure the Affordable Care Act doesn't work in his home state. It's ironic, then, to hear him complain about the results.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) blamed President Barack Obama for a reported increase in uninsured Mississipians. The problem is, Bryant didn't acknowledge that he's been a staunch opponent of expanding Medicaid under Obamacare and refused to encourage enrolling in private coverage through Healthcare.gov.
Bryant directed his blame at Obama in response to a question about a WalletHub study that showed an increase in the percentage of uninsured Mississippians. The study found that the uninsured rate increased by 3.34 percentage points to 21.46 percent of Mississippi's population, according to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
The Republican governor characterized the results as "a broken promise" from President Obama.
It's an interesting trick, isn't it? Bryant has done as much as he can to sabotage the ACA in Mississippi, and by standing in the way of Medicaid expansion, among other things, the governor has largely succeeded in hurting his state on purpose. As "Obamacare" sharply reduces the uninsured rate elsewhere, Mississippi is being left behind, by its governor's design.
And so he's blaming the White House.
It's as if you gave me a car, I took off the wheels and refused to put gas in the tank, and then blamed you when the car doesn't go anywhere. In this case, Bryant is blocking the law's full implementation and whining that the law isn't working effectively. Under the circumstances, shouldn't the governor be bragging? He is, after all, getting the results he set out to achieve.
Away from Mississippi, meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act's successes are becoming increasingly undeniable.
Fixing the V.A. and other headlines
Senate votes to confirm the new Sec. of Veterans Affairs today. (The Hill)
Rep. Jeff Miller thinks he can sell the new V.A. reform bill to his fellow Republicans. (AP)
NC to stop defending amendment outlawing same-sex marriage. (WRAL)
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) blocked a resolution acknowledging the reality of climate change. (The Hill)
Doctor held for pointing AR-15 rifle toward women at Phoenix airport. (AZfamilly.com)
The U.S. says Russia has violated the 1987 arms-control treaty. (NY Times)
Israel strikes fuel tanks at Gaza's only power plant. (NBC News)
