This past weekend, conservative activists and Tea Party groups gathered in Chicago for the Right Nation 2010 convention. Among those who attended was former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the chairman of one of the original Tea Party groups, FreedomWorks.
During the event, ThinkProgress sat down with Armey at a blogger’s roundtable. No sooner than we took our seats did Armey come out guns-blazing against Social Security. He called it a “corrupt government practice” that steals people’s money “under false pretenses.” He went on to call Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”:
ARMEY: The government uses the concept of a trust fund to take your money under false pretenses. For years, I wrote about and talked about and taught about what I call ‘corrupt government practices,’ because they’re always so quick to talk about corruption. One of the corrupt government practices is stealing your money under false pretenses. I’ll give you a to wit: social security. When they had the Alan Greenspan commission, they knowingly raised payroll taxes more than what was necessary to meet the flow of output. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme. They knew very well that the extra $250 billion would be spent on their social schemes.
Watch here:
Though Tea Party candidates continue to flail on whether or not they would like to privatize Social Security, Tea Party groups like FreedomWorks mince no words about what their plan is for the hugely-successful social safety net. In a Politico interview, Armey said that if he could do one thing as president of the United States, he would make “all government programs…voluntary.” However, the American public remains adamantly opposed to this plan, with two of every three Americans uncomfortable with the idea of privatizing Social Security.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is often described as the “kingmaker” of the tea party movement for his efforts to remake the Senate in his ultraconservative image, having already spent $3.3 million this year supporting tea party candidates through his Senate Conservatives Fund.
But appearing on Fox News host Andrew Napolitano’s show “Freedom Watch” this weekend, DeMint acknowledged that he’s had some help promoting what Napolitano described as the “tea party tidal wave” that has recently handed far-right candidates the GOP Senate nominations from Delaware, Alaska, and elsewhere. Namely, DeMint thanked Fox News:
NAPOLITANO: He’s a leader — I’m calling him the godfather of the tea party movement. … I think you’re entitled to a victory lap. I mean this has just unbelievable! A series of political battles for the heart and soul of the Republican Party regularly, consistently and systematically now won by the individual liberty, small government, sound money side, which we call the tea party, and of which you are a prime mover.
DEMINT: Well Judge, I can’t take the credit for this. This is all about the people, and people standing up and speaking out and getting informed. And I think in the media, we’re seeing what Fox is doing, and radio talk shows and blogs. People are more informed and engaged, and I think they’re feeling the power shift back to their hands.
Watch it:
Fox would likely run and hide from DeMint’s praise, as they repeatedly maintain they are a legitimate news organization. Last year, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox’s parent company, even said, “I don’t think” Fox News “should be supporting the tea party.” Apparently, Murdoch needs to watch his own network more often. As ThinkProgress, Media Matters, and others have repeatedly documented, Fox has consistently promoted, supported, and even helped organize tea party rallies.
Meanwhile, they’ve also supported conservative GOP candidates like the ones DeMint backs. “[A]t least twenty Fox News personalities have endorsed, raised money, or campaigned for Republican candidates or causes, or against Democratic candidates or causes, in more than 300 instances and in all 50 states,” according to a Media Matters survey conducted in April. Meanwhile, a recent Pew research survey finds that Fox News’ viewership has increased in recent years due almost entirely to an influx of Republicans, 40 percent of whom now say they regularly get their news there. That’s up from just 25 percent in 2002. Of course, Fox’s parent company also recently gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.
In July, Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer admitted that his network has covered the tea party movement “with greater vigor than our competition, and we were rewarded with viewers.” It “was better television,” Hemmer explained.
Speaking to a law school audience in San Francisco last Friday, Justice Antonin Scalia expressed some strange views about the Constitution and gender equality:
Scalia also said he doesn’t believe the Constitution bans sex discrimination.
The 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War in 1868, guarantees due process and equal protection and in recent years has been interpreted by courts to prohibit sex discrimination as well as racial discrimination.
But Scalia said he believes the amendment doesn’t apply to discrimination against women because that use of the measure was not intended in 1868.
He said he personally opposes bias against women, but said it can be banned by laws rather than reliance on the Constitution.
“If the current society wants to outlaw sex discrimination, hey, we have legislatures,” Scalia said.
Scalia’s odd stance on gender equality is nothing new. In a 1996 Supreme Court decision limiting gender discrimination in Virginia’s higher education system, he cast the sole dissenting vote in favor of allowing the state to continue to deny educational opportunities to women (Justice Thomas was recused from the case).
What is new, however, is that Scalia may have significantly more support on the present Supreme Court than he did in 1996. Justice Thomas, who has even gone so far as to call for a return to the days when federal child labor laws and laws banning whites-only lunch counters were considered unconstitutional, would almost certainly be moved by Scalia’s claim that women’s rights under the Constitution must remain exactly the same as they were in 1868. Similarly, as a young lawyer in President Reagan’s Justice Department, Chief Justice Roberts penned an article claiming that only race discrimination — and not discrimination on the basis of other categories such as gender — is limited by the Constitution.
Justice Alito does not appear to have weighed in on the question of how much protection the Constitution gives women against gender discrimination, but as a lower court judge, he penned a dissent which would have “eviscerated” the law banning race and gender discrimination in the workplace. Alito was also the author of the Supreme Court’s unforgivable decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, which cut off many women’s ability to seek equal pay for equal work until President Obama signed a law overturning the decision.
In other words, the Supreme Court could be just one vote away from turning Scalia’s vision into a reality.
General Motors recently announced that, thanks to federal efforts to keep the American auto industry from going under, it would be able to rehire 483 workers at its Spring Hill, Tennessee plant to manufacture “three variants of Ecotec four-cylinder engines.” The $438 million arrangement will start producing engines for the Buick, Chevrolet, and GMC models by 2011.
As auto blog Jalopnik reports, the plant recently held a ceremony to welcome back the new workers to begin production of the Ecotec engines. Attending the ceremony were three local Republican legislators, Sens. Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, and Rep. Marsha Blackburn. Ironically, all three of these lawmakers opposed the plans to save General Motors and other U.S. auto companies. This didn’t stop Corker from taking credit for the federal rescue, anyway. At the event he claimed he “contributed to strengthening the auto industry in this country.” Jalopnik reports that “irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker”:
Happy days came back Friday to Spring Hill, Tenn., when General Motors announced it would rehire 483 laid-off workers to build four-cylinder engines. On hand to cheer the news: Three Republican lawmakers who opposed the bailout that saved GM.
As part of its $50 billion bankruptcy arranged by the Obama administration, GM shuttered the Spring Hill plant’s assembly line last year, shedding 2,000 jobs in the process, but kept building four-cylinder engines. The new plan calls for $483 million in spending to upgrade the engine line, pending a deal on state incentives.
The irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, and one UAW official made clear from the stage that the union still remembered which politicians had voted to rescue Wall Street but opposed an auto industry bailout.
Jalopnik goes on to note that when the auto industry rescue was being negotiated, Corker was speaking very differently about federal efforts to revive GM. At the time, Corker said that the Obama administration “has decided they know better than our courts and our free market process how to deal with these companies. … This is a major power grab.”
Earlier this year, radical right-wing congressman Steve King (R-IA) introduced a discharge petition in the House to repeal health reform. Thus far, his measure has attracted 173 signatures. Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS) became the first Democrat last week to sign the petition. King told conservative blogger Ed Morrissey he’s “likely to get more Democrats.”
But King seems more worried that the leadership of his Republican caucus — some of whom have said they won’t campaign for a full health care repeal — won’t carry through with a pledge to repeal ObamaCare. Roll Call reports that King is now demanding a “blood oath” from House Minority Leader John Boehner to include a repeal of health care reform in every appropriations bill next year, even if a government shutdown results:
“We must not blink,” he said, noting that money cannot be spent without the House voting to pass it. “If the House says no, it’s no.”
Their new tea party backers won’t tolerate anything less than a full repeal of the health care law, he said.
“They will leave us if we go wobbly,” he said. “I am worried about that, but that’s why I think it’s got to be a blood oath.”
King said, in the event a government shutdown occurs, he wants to ensure “there wouldn’t be a repeat of 1995 where the House caved.” Earlier this month, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) said shutting down the government would be the right thing to do, even if means halting veterans benefits.
The Washington Post reports that Republicans “haven’t said much about what would replace” health reform if it were repealed, noting that “a GOP bill rejected by the Democratic-led House last year is the closest thing to a starting point. That plan would cover an additional 3 million people by 2019, compared with nearly 33 million under the Obama health-care law.”
Tax experts say that that if the Republicans’ argument that the Bush tax cuts effect half of all small business income is to be believed, that would mean President Obama himself would be considered a “small business.” That’s because the GOP is basing their figure “on a broad definition of the term that experts say includes authors, actors and athletes who employ few if any workers.”
Afghan citizens went to the polls Saturday in the country’s second legislative election since 2001, but independent observers “raised new warnings about the scale of fraud, intimidation and unrest that could undermine the credibility of the new Parliament.” One civic watchdog group “alleged extensive ballot-stuffing and security problems almost immediately after the polls closed Saturday.”
Pop star Lady Gaga plans to visit Maine today for a rally aimed at convincing the state’s two moderate Republican senators to vote for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Gaga announced the Portland rally via Twitter last night, and used an appearance on MTV’s Video Music Awards last week to push repeal of the law.
Yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press, President Bill Clinton “dismissed” New Gingrich for saying President Obama has a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview. While Gingrich should “know better,” Clinton said that’s “his schtick” when “he’s running” and “out there playing politics.”
Five key Democratic Senators — Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Claire McCaskill, Mark Pryor, and Mary Landrieu — say that they haven’t made up their minds about whether they’ll vote for the DREAM Act. The vote is expected to take place this week.
The federal government declared BP’s oil well dead, “nearly five months after it blew out of control, unleashing an environmental calamity in the Gulf of Mexico.” “We can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead,” said Adm. Thad W. Allen, who was put in chard of the federal response. The well “poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico,” he said.
According to Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA), social conservatives can be confident that their “lightning-rod issues” like abortion will be included in the new House GOP Contract with America. While “hot-button controversial social issues” were not in the 1994 version, such issues will make it in this year’s “governing agenda” “thanks to the ‘clever’ thinking of” America Speaking Out Chairman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
And finally: After dueling with Daily Show host Jon Stewart over his penchant for wearing ascots, CNN commentator Roland Martin has launched his own line of the neck ties, with the tag line, “the new definition of swagger.” The website for the Roland S. Martin Collection by Verse 9 allows users to upload their own photos wearing ascots.
ThinkProgress is hiring! Details here.
Anti-masturbation activist, witchcraft-dabbler, and GOP senate candidate Christine O’Donnell dodged her Sunday show appearances in order to attend a partisan fundraising picnic in Delaware today. She used the opportunity to try to laugh off the revelation that she “dabbled into witchcraft” when she was younger:
Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is making light of comments she made more than a decade ago about having dabbled in witchcraft when she was in high school.
“How many of you didn’t hang out with questionable folks in high school?” she asked fellow Republicans at a GOP picnic in southern Delaware on Sunday.“There’s been no witchcraft since. If there was, Karl Rove would be a supporter now,” O’Donnell jokingly assured the crowd.
O’Donnell’s strategy for the time being appears to be a concerted effort to avoid answering tough questions about her background by simply offering unchallengeable statements in public appearances at which media are present.
Discussing the firestorm around Christine O’Donnell’s surprise victory in Delaware’s U.S. Senate GOP primary last week, Bill Kristol insisted on Fox News Sunday today that he had no problem with where O’Donnell stood on the issues. He explained that as a “fellow wing-nut” he would “agree with all the votes she would cast in the Senate” and he therefore would be inclined to vote for her if he lived in Delaware. But Kristol’s praise was fleeting. He noted that he would have voted for her establishment-picked opponent Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) in the primary because “Christine O’Donnell is a bit of a flake I think… or has been in the past.” Watch it:
Retired General and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell criticized the Tea Party movement’s inflammatory attacks against President Obama this morning during an appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press, singling out the rhetoric of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. Powell said that while “there’s nothing wrong” with people like Sarah Palin “going out there, presenting her views and animating American political life,” “one of the problems that I’m having with all of this right now is that there is a certain undercurrent of thought that is not helpful.” “When people want to attack the President, attack him. Presidents are used to being attacked. But let’s not go down low,” Powell said.
Pressed by host David Gregory to respond to Newt Gingrich’s recent suggestion that Obama was displaying anti-colonial Kenyan behavior, Powell warned Americans to “think carefully” about Gingrich’s accusations and went on to debunk some of the right-wing’s conspiracy theories:
POWELL: I would just tell my fellow Americans, think carefully about what was just said. Think carefully about some of the stuff that is coming across the blogs and airwaves. Let’s make a couple of points. One, the President was born in the United States of America. Let’s get rid of that one, let’s get rid of the birther thing. Let’s attack him on policy, not nonsense. Next, he is a Christian, he is not a Muslim…And I think we have to be careful when we take things like Dinesh D’Souza’s book, which is the source of all of this, and suggest that somehow the President of the United States is channeling his dead father through some Kenyan spirits. This doesn’t make any sense. Mr. Gingrich does these things from time to time with a big, bold statement. He did it with Sotomayor, she is a “reverse racist.” He did it with Elena Kagan, she ought to be taken off the nomination for Supreme Court justice. And he does it occasionally to make news and also to stir up dust.
Watch it:
Powell said that this kind of rhetoric “may appeal to the fringe elements of the party,” but won’t appeal “to all Republicans” or “the whole country.” He also suggested “it might be good for the President to have the Republicans owning one of the two bodies of our Congress, because then they have responsibility.” “You can’t just say ‘no’ to everything. You can’t just sit around beating up the President,” he added.
It’s unlikely, however, that Gingrich will take Powell’s advice and stop stirring up dust. At yesterday’s Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C., Gingrich accused HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of “Soviet tyranny” and suggested that the Congress should pass a law “that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States.”
Yesterday, Delaware GOP U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell canceled her scheduled interviews for this morning on Fox News Sunday and CBS’s Face the Nation after a video from 1999 surfaced in which she said she had “dabbled into witchcraft.” The AP reported that “O’Donnell canceled so that she could attend a Republican campaign event Sunday in Delaware’s Sussex County.” But today on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace said that O’Donnell’s campaign and O’Donnell herself gave conflicting reasons for the cancellation:
WALLACE: This is not the program we were planning to bring you. Christine O’Donnell, the surprise winner of the Republican Senate primary in Delaware, agreed to come here live in Washington today to take our questions, however late Friday night, her campaign canceled saying O’Donnell was “exhausted” and had to return to Delaware. Saturday morning O’Donnell called me and said this: “I got triple-booked. I had been invited to go to church and then a picnic. I have to keep my priorities to Delaware voters.”
Watch it:
Talking with Wallace today, Karl Rove — who has been engaged in a battle with the right and O’Donnell over whether she’s the best GOP candidate in Delaware — said that O’Donnell “made a smart decision by not getting on the Sunday shows this week,” adding, “she shouldn’t have accepted in the first place.”
Later on Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer said he wasn’t aware of O’Donnell’s “witchcraft” comment when her campaign canceled the interview. “After we became aware of this,” Schieffer said, “we emailed the campaign again and asked them if in fact that was the reason that she decided to cancel the the appearance. We got back an email that said, ‘No, that is not the reason. We weren’t aware that [Bill Maher] had released this tape until yesterday afternoon.’”
O’Donnell did find time to travel to Washington, D.C. to speak at the conservative so-called “Values Voters” summit on Friday. O’Donnell’s campaign was seemingly able to avoid any scheduling conflicts for her to attend.
This morning, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Alaska Republican senatorial candidate Joe Miller about recent data from the Census Bureau which found that a stagering one in seven or 43.6 million Americans are living in poverty, the highest level since 1994. Noting that Miller had previously claimed that unemployment benefits were unconstitutional Wallace asked, “without unemployment benefits, a lot more, millions more would be living in poverty — what would you do for them?” Miller initially ducked the question, but when Wallace persisted, Miller accused Americans of suffering from an “entitlement mentality” and argued that providing unemployment benefits was not among Congress’ enumerated powers:
MILLER: I think the question is what is the role of the federal government? Right now, we’ve grown the federal government to such a size that we have what, I think in absolute terms now, $13.4 trillion in debt if you look at the future unfunded obligations, which a lot of those are the entitlement programs, by some estimates $130 trillion. That’s unsustainable. That’s just the facts. [...]
WALLACE: But Mr. Miller, if I may, I’m not sure you answered my question. Why are unemployment benefits unconstitutional and in a time of a tough economy, a recession, a now a kind of jobless economy, what are you going to do for the 44 million people who are living in poverty?
MILLER: I think what you need to look at is the context. We have an extension of unemployment benefits several weeks ago, which is beyond what we had in the past in this country. What we have in this country is an entitlement mentality. It’s an entitlement, not just as individual but even at the state level… everything that fails the government should be involved in bailing out. And the constitution provides enumerated powers. And I guess my challenge is to anybody that ask, show me the enumerated power. And then look at what the tenth amendment that says if it’s not in the constitution, it’s a power that belongs to the state and the people.
Watch it:
Miller’s radical tenther views aside, unemployment benefits have become essential in today’s economic climate and have kept millions of American families out of poverty. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’s (CBPP) Arloc Sherman has analyzed the latest Census numbers and found that unemployment insurance kept 3.3 million Americans out of poverty in 2009. “In other words, there were 43.6 million Americans whose families were below the poverty line in 2009, according to the official poverty statistics, which count jobless benefits as part of families’ income. But if you don’t count jobless benefits, 46.9 million Americans were poor,” the Center concluded.
Miller may have the most extreme views on unemployment benefits but as Zaid Jilani notes, he’s not the only conservative to strongly oppose extending the benefit. Republicans in the Senate have repeatedly locked arms to block extending the benefits for unemployed Americans, putting the wellbeing of jobless people in peril. And as the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo notes, a major chunk of 2009’s unemployment benefits were funded by the stimulus bill, which “House Republicans unanimously opposed.”
As ThinkProgress reported, last night on his HBO show, Bill Maher aired a clip from an Oct. 29, 1999 show of Politically Incorrect, in which Republican senate candidate Christine O’Donnell revealed that she “dabbled into witchcraft.” As O’Donnell’s comments begin to attract national attention, it appears the tea party candidate is trying to avoid media scrutiny. She was schedule to appear on CBS’ Face the Nation tomorrow, but host Bob Schieffer has tweeted that O’Donnell canceled:
O’Donnell isn’t even heeding her consigliere Sarah Palin’s advice, who urged her this week to “speak through Fox News.” O’Donnell was scheduled to appear on Fox News Sunday tomorrow, but has canceled that appearance as well.
Diane Banister, whose PR firm booked the Sunday show appearances, told the AP in an email that “O’Donnell canceled so that she could attend a Republican campaign event Sunday in Delaware’s Sussex County.”
Earlier this month, after health insurers across the country announced that the early health care benefits were forcing them to increase premiums by up to 9 percentage points, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote a letter to the industry arguing that “any potential premium impact from the new consumer protections and increased quality provisions under the Affordable Care Act will be minimal” and pointed to actuary estimates which found that the early consumer protections would result in marginal increases. “I want AHIP’s members to be put on notice: the Administration, in partnership with states, will not tolerate unjustified rate hikes in the name of consumer protections,” Sebelius said.
This morning, speaking at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C., Newt Gingrich likened Sebelius’ letter to “Soviet tyranny” and said that a Republican-controlled House should ask for her resignation and defund her office in the Department of Health and Human Services:
GINGRICH: When Secretary Sebelius said the other day she would punish insurance companies that told the truth about the cost of Obamacare, she was behaving exactly in the spirit of the Soviet tyranny. And if she’s going to represent left-wing thought police about Obamacare, she should be forced to resign by the new Congress.
This idea that we the people have to tolerate some bureaucrat being paid with our taxes to dictate free speech to us should end in January by the Republican Congress zeroing out her office and explaining that they would be glad to pay for it when someone is there who recognizes the rights of the American people.
Watch it:
But the insurance industry has a long history of artificially inflating its premium requests. The Wonk Room wonders why Gingrich is willing to put full trust in its accounting practices.
Before she stole the hearts of tea party activists, Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell was best known for her regular and bizarre punditry on 22 different episodes of Politically Incorrect. The host of that show, Bill Maher, now has an HBO show called Real Time.
Last night, Real Time aired its first show of the current season. Maher began by mocking O’Donnell, calling her “an uemployed, anti-masturbation activist and a close friend of mine.” “I created her,” Maher told the audience, turning to the camera and stating, “You owe me Christine O’Donnell.” Maher said that he has great fondness for O’Donnell, adding, “She does not have a mean bone in her body, or any other bone in her body.”
Later in the show, Maher played a previously-unaired Oct. 29, 1999 clip of O’Donnell on Politically Incorrect, in which O’Donnell said she once “practiced witchcraft”:
O’DONNELL: I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. … I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. [...]
One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. … We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.
Watch it:
Maher joked that he’s going to show a fresh clip of O’Donnell every week on his show until O’Donnell agrees to appear again on his show. “I’m just saying, Christine, it’s like a hostage crisis,” he said, “every week you don’t show up, I’m going to throw another body out.”
Learn more about the woman who wants to become a United States Senator in our ThinkProgress report: The Old Adventures Of New Christine.
Radical deniers of global warming science are measuring the drapes in the U.S. Capitol, planning to strip seats from supporters of President Obama’s efforts to stem greenhouse gas pollution. Exclusive analysis from the Wonk Room has identified the top Senate and House races that pit science versus snake oil this November. Meet the fossil-fueled deniers, who call science “crap” in order to defend their “Drill Baby Drill” philosophy:
“While I think the earth is warming, I don’t think that man-made causes are the primary factor.” — Ken Buck (CO-SEN) [KBDI-TV, 3/10]
“I think we ought to take a look at whatever the group is that measures all this, the IPCC, they don’t even believe the crap.” — Steve Pearce (NM-2) [Politico, 8/18/10]
“I don’t, however, buy into the whole … man-caused global warming, man-caused climate change mantra of the left. I believe that there’s not sound science to back that up.” — Sharron Angle (NV-SEN) [Climatewire, 5/26/10]
“Global warming is more a religion than a science.” — David Harmer (CA-11) [Halfway to Concord, 9/25/09]
“It’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time.” — Ron Johnson (WI-SEN) [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 8/19/10]
Seven key climate races in the Senate (with the 538.com estimated likelihood of a Republican pickup):
(92%) PA: Joe Sestak v. Pat Toomey
(72%) CO: Michael Bennet v. Ken Buck
(52%) NV: Harry Reid v. Sharron Angle
(42%) CA: Barbara Boxer v. Carly Fiorina
(33%) WI: Russ Feingold v. Ron Johnson
(30%) WA: Patty Murray v. Dino Rossi
(20% Democratic pickup) NH: Paul Hodes v. Kelly Ayotte
Eight key climate races in the House:
(76%) NM-2: Harry Teague v Steve Pearce
(63%) IA-3: Leonard Boswell v Brad Zaun
(63%) IL-14: Bill Foster v Randy Hultgren
(62%) CA-11: Jerry McNerney v David Harmer
(58%) IN-9: Baron Hill v Todd Young
(43%) FL-22: Ron Klein v Allen West
(26%) NM-1: Martin Heinrich v Jon Barela
(26%) IL-17: Phil Hare v Bobby Schilling
Newly-released data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows “that the fraction of Americans living in poverty rose sharply to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008—the highest since 1994.” With 43.6 million Americans in poverty, it’s important for progressives to look to policies that can alleviate the country’s poverty problem.
Looking to the Census data, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’s (CBPP) Arloc Sherman discovers one of these policies. Sherman finds that unemployment insurance kept 3.3 million Americans out of poverty in 2009:
An exclusive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of the new survey data shows that unemployment insurance benefits — which expanded substantially last year in response to the increased need — kept 3.3 million people out of poverty in 2009.
In other words, there were 43.6 million Americans whose families were below the poverty line in 2009, according to the official poverty statistics, which count jobless benefits as part of families’ income. But if you don’t count jobless benefits, 46.9 million Americans were poor.
CBPP illustrates this number through a chart it created:
As ThinkProgress has documented, conservatives have done everything they can to delay extensions of unemployment benefits. Republicans in the Senate have repeatedly locked arms to block extending the benefits for unemployed Americans, putting the wellbeing of jobless people in peril. And as the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo notes, a major chunk of 2009’s unemployment benefits were funded by the stimulus bill, which “House Republicans unanimously opposed.”
Conservatives have also demonized Americans — who, in the midst of recession are unable to find decent work — who receive unemployment insurance. NV GOP Senate candidate called the recipients of jobless benefits “spoiled,” former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich complained that “welfare” was keeping Americans from wanting to seek work, and conservative TV personality and Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein said the unemployed in need of benefits are “unpleasant people…who do not know how to do a day’s work.”
Part of the GOP’s election strategy this year has been to try to claim that it is the Party of fiscal conservatism. As part of that campaign, Republicans regularly repeat the mantra that in order to get the deficit under control, the federal government needs to “cut spending” (despite also calling for $700 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy that aren’t paid for). They argue that if they were in control of government they would do just that. But all too often, when asked what spending cuts they would enact, Republicans don’t have an answer.
Yesterday on ABC’s Top Line, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) offered an example of the GOP’s obfuscation. Calling for extending all the Bush tax cuts, Gregg said, “The issue right now is the profligate spending of this Congress and this Presidency.” But when Gregg was asked for specific cuts, he couldn’t offer any:
HOST: Help us square this then. The increase in the deficit by extending the tax cuts, seems to me there’s not enough spending cuts that can be made to make up for the deficit that we’re continuing to build up.
GREGG: We’re building the deficit because of the spending, that’s where the deficit is coming from…that massive explosion of spending is where the problem is. It’s not on the revenue side, it’s on the spending side. So why put in all this additional spending. Why don’t you just starting cutting spending first because that is where the problem is.
Similarly, CNBC host Larry Kudlow asked GOP U.S. Senate candidate in California Carly Fiornia what she would cut. All she could muster was bringing spending back to 2008 levels. Another CNBC host asked Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) last month what he would cut. “We’ve got spending to cut in the short term what we’ve got is a huge problem in the long term,” said Cantor, who repeatedly couldn’t give an answer on what he would cut when pressed by the host.
And in March, ThinkProgress asked Rep. John Boozman (R-AR) repeatedly what he would cut in order to reduce federal spending and he couldn’t identify any specifics. Watch the video compilation:
Other Republicans have tried to answer this question but have come up a bit short. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said in July that he would “would rescind the unspent stimulus funds,” which at the time, meant that he would do away with $55 billion in middle class tax cuts. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MI) suggested eliminating the Affordable Care Act, thinking it would save $1 trillion, but it would actually increase the deficit by $143 billion.
The 2008 presidential election ushered in an unprecedented amount of campaign spending, with the presidential candidates taking in over $1.7 billion in donations. But, according to new research, corporations and their allies will trounce 2008’s “political spend-a-thon” in the 2010 midterm election season. “Liberated” by the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, corporations and “well-established political players” will pump in 10 to 15 percent more cash in 2010 to “disrupt” races with more negative ads:
After the astronomical sums of cash thrown into the 2008 campaign, everyone’s pumping in even more — about 10 to 15 percent more— according to Kip Cassino, vice president of research at the media analysis firm Borrell Associates.
“Unlike a lot of industries in the United States right now, which are seeing some downturns, political spending is absolutely a growth industry,” Cassino says.
Fueling it, he says, is corporate money — dollars liberated by the Supreme Court when it ruled that corporations and unions can be unrestrained in their campaign spending.
Cassino says corporate funds probably account for a 10 percent jump in advertising.
And of course, those advertisements are almost always negative.
“The unwritten charter of these groups is to really be disruptive and try to go in there and turn a race on its head — or put a candidate on the defense,” says Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. “And by that nature, most of those ads that they’re gonna run this fall are gonna be negative ads.“
The political players looking to up the ante include “big budget groups” like GOP operative Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is “the biggest collection point for corporate contributions.” American Crossroads “committed to raising tens of millions of dollars” while the Chamber will spend $40 million more than 2008 this year and “may go higher.” Along with a 2007 decision backing the Federal Election Commission’s drastic undercutting of disclosure rules, “business and its allies” can continue to support right-wing candidates and “wildly misleading” ads without anyone knowing who is pulling the purse strings.
Yesterday, the Census Bureau released a report showing that one in seven Americans is currently living in poverty, and that the median income decreased by nearly five percent during the last decade. At the same time, Congress is debating whether to adopt President Obama’s plan to allow the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans to expire on schedule, or whether to extend the entire package of cuts as Republicans desire. Today, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) about the poverty data, and whether there is a disconnect between the real economic pain that people are feeling and lawmakers squabbling over tax rates for the wealthy. Bayh agreed that there is a disconnect, but then concluded that the poverty increase means lawmakers should forget about “fairness and things like that” and cut taxes for the rich:
TODD: Yesterday, the Census came out and said one in seven Americans are living below the poverty line. Do you look at that story today — you know, you open up your USA Today, right, and you see that story — and you see Washington is debating the tax rates for the wealthy, and you sit there and say, isn’t that a disconnect in America right now?
BAYH: It is a disconnect, Chuck. What we need to be focused on is growth, how do we create jobs, how do we expand businesses. That needs to be job one right now. And all these other issues involving, oh, fairness and things like that can wait.
Watch it:
As The Wonk Room explained, Bayh is pushing Congress to forget about income inequality that is the worst it has been since 1928, in order to spend $830 billion giving millionaires a tax break equal to almost two and a half times the median household’s income.
Newly-minted Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell was virtually unknown nationally until her upset victory over Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) this week. But as the national media’s spotlight has descended upon the tea party darling, bizarre and troubling statements from her past have poured out one after another.
Even former Bush adviser Karl Rove raised concerns about O’Donnell’s “nutty” comments and dubious professional history. O’Donnell has run several failed campaigns over the past decade, and has a “long history of publicly promoting what might pass for Victorian sexual mores” for a parade of far-right Christian groups. Indeed, O’Donnell has offered her views on everything from the role of women in the Lord of the Rings — “I aspire to be soft…like Arwen, but realistically I’m a fighter like Eowyn” — to “freak dancing” (it leads to “date rape”).
Combing through the past 20 years of O’Donnell’s public record, ThinkProgress has put together a new report: The Old Adventures of New Christine — a digest of O’Donnell’s own words on everything we have learned about her.
While O’Donnell has said her thinking has “matured,” the digest provides important insight into her world-view and past advocacy. We’ll continue to update the digest as more information comes out, so let us know in the comments section if there’s anything we missed.
Check out the O’Donnell digest here.
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