Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), appearing on Fox News Sunday, attacked “far left-wing blogs” for criticizing President Obama’s proposed non-security discretionary spending freeze. Bayh burnished his anti-spending credentials by noting his opposition to recent omnibus spending bills, although he supported the much larger American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and has repeatedly promoted the federal spending for creating thousands of jobs in his state. Speaking to Fox’s Chris Wallace, Bayh sided with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, and an advocate of draconian spending cuts during the recession:
If you look, I suspect Paul does not, but if you look at the far left-wing blogs and that kind of thing they’re severely criticizing the president for being too fiscally austere. My own take on this, Paul is right. Domestic discretionary spending increased last year. I voted against the omnibus, I voted against the “minibus” and that’s last year. the question is where do we go now? The freeze is important. He identified $20 billion if you aggregate over the next ten years is $250 billion less spending. Does it solve all our problems? No. But it’s a step in the right direction.
Watch it:
Bayh is a “deficit peacock” — someone who likes to harp on deficits, while at the same time voting for budget-busting expenditures like a $250 billion tax cut for the heirs of wealthy families. Despite Bayh’s preening, “far left-wing” blogs haven’t been the only critics of Obama’s freeze. Additionally, part of why progressives are criticizing Obama about is not that the spending freeze is too “austere,” but that it doesn’t go after defense spending. As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has argued, “If President Obama is serious about controlling spending, he can’t exempt the Pentagon.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concurs, telling reporters that the entire defense budget “should not be exempted” from the freeze.
During the Senate special election in Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown was criticized for his lack of support for LGBT rights. The Massachusetts Family Institute put out a report card showing that he supports the ban on gay men and women serving openly in the military, a position also noted by MassEquality, a leading state gay political group. However, in an interview with ABC News that aired today, Brown said he still hadn’t taken a position on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:
WALTERS: You’re a Lieutenant-Colonel. On Wednesday the President announced that he wants to work with Congress to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. What’s your view?
BROWN: I think it’s important, because as you know we’re fighting two wars right now. And the most — the first priority is to — is to — is to finish the job, and win those wars. I’d like to hear from the generals in the field — in the field — the people that actually work with these soldiers to make sure that, you know, the social change is not going to disrupt our ability to finish the job and complete the wars.
WALTERS: But Senator, your own view.
BROWN: That’s my view.
WALTERS: So you can’t say whether you’re for or against it?
BROWN: No. I’m going to wait to speak to the generals on the ground.
Watch it:
Shortly after President Obama’s inauguration, Fox News anchors and media personalities began attacking his administration and its policies. The White House fired back, calling Fox the “communications arm of the Republican Party.” Today on ABC’s This Week, host Barbera Walters asked Fox News CEO Roger Ailes if the White House and his network have “kissed and made up.” “We’re fine,” he said but added one caveat. “Well I’ll pick a fight if you want. I’d be happy to get into one.”
Arianna Huffington then called out Ailes, particularly because of Fox News host Glenn Beck’s radical rhetoric, talking about people “being slaughtered.” But Ailes dismissed the criticism, saying Beck was “probably accurate”:
HUFFINGTON: But Roger it’s not a question of picking a fight and aren’t you concerned about the language that Glenn Beck is using which is after all, inciting the American people. Three’s a lot of suffering out there as you know and when he talks about people being slaughtered, about who is going to be on the next killing spree.
AILES: He’s talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people so I think he was probably accurate.
HUFFINGTON: No he was talking about this administration.
Watch it:
For months, Beck has been linking progressivism to both communism and fascism. But more than just highlighting the atrocities committed by Hitler and Stalin, Beck has directly linked them to the progressive movement. “Progressives want you dead,” Beck said just this month. Beck once said that progressive “vampires” have the “taste of blood” and are going to “start getting more and more violent.”
Beck also recently aired a “documentary” on “the atrocities of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara — ‘the true unseen history of Marxism, progressivism and communism’ as Beck described it.” It turns out the film wasn’t all that “accurate,” as Ailes claimed. History professors called it a “complete lie” and that Beck “lives in a complete alternative universe.”
Indeed, Beck also once likened himself to “Israeli Nazi hunters,” saying that “to the day I die, I am going to be a progressive hunter.”
Today’s Fox News Sunday panel looked at Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to hold terrorist trials in federal courts rather than military commissions. The discussion quickly shifted to Holder himself, and whether he should be fired. NPR’s Juan Williams argued that Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer were lobbing “unjustified” attacks on Holder since the Bush administration repeatedly tried terrorists in civilian courts.
Krauthammer then cited the case of the failed Christmas Day bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, saying that the Obama administration should have assumed that he “has people who are working with him” because he’s Nigerian:
KRAUTHAMMER: You arrest a guy who’s got a bomb in his underpants. You know, it’s likely he didn’t do it at home in his kitchen. … The guy is Nigerian. You’ve got to assume — you have to assume that he has people who are working with him.
WILLIAMS: Because he’s a Nigerian?
KRAUTHAMMER: Why do you assume otherwise? It makes no sense at all. You capture a terrorist and in almost all of our plots there are groups of terrorists. [...]
WILLIAMS: We have made such progress in terms of breaking down al Qaeda and getting them in terms of the structure to malfunction that there are now more lone wolves now and it’s tougher to capture and know the extent of knowledge they have at any one moment. There was no evidence, on the face of it on that day, had come from an al Qaeda training camp.
When Williams asked whether Holder should be held “accountable for all intelligence failures, including intelligence failures by the British and everybody else who didn’t understand what Abdulmutallab was up to,” Kristol smirked and shrugged his shoulders. Watch it:
On Jan. 5, President Obama admitted that there were “human and systemic failures that almost cost nearly 300 lives” on Christmas Day. He added that it “was not a failure to collect intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.” Unlike what Kristol was trying to argue, it was not solely the fault of “incompetence” by Holder.
Transcript: More »
Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee were two of the main architects of the Bush administration’s torture program. As Bybee’s deputy, Yoo “was the author of much of the legal rationale for using waterboarding and other severe interrogation techniques.” He argued that interrogators who harm a prisoner would be protected “national and international version of the right to self-defense,” and illegal conduct must “shock the conscience.” Bybee headed the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel and signed off on the infamous 2002 torture memo. Newsweek now reports that a senior DOJ official has essentially cleared the two men of misconduct in an upcoming office of Professional Responsibility report:
While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors — Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor — violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action — which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.
A DOJ official said that Margolis “acted without input” from Attorney General Eric Holder. Emptywheel has more.
In recent weeks, CBS has been taking heat over its decision to allow Focus on the Family’s pro-life ad, featuring Heisman winner Tim Tebow, to air during the Super Bowl. The right wing quickly rushed to the defense of Focus on the Family. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin urged CBS to “just do the right thing. Don’t cave. Have the backbone to run the ad.” This week, the far-right American Family Association (AFA) launched an action alert asking people to let CBS know they support the ad.
CBS revealed that it is open to accepting other “responsibly produced” advocacy ads, besides the Focus on the Family spot. “We have for some time moderated our approach to advocacy submissions after it became apparent that our stance did not reflect public sentiment or industry norms,” spokesman Dana McClintock said.
However, yesterday CBS announced that it had rejected a commercial for a gay dating site called ManCrunch.com:
“After reviewing the ad, which is entirely commercial in nature, our standards and practices department decided not to accept this particular spot,” said CBS spokeswoman Shannon Jacobs. “We are always open to working with a client on alternative submissions.”
Elissa Buchter, a spokesperson for the site, called CBS’s rejection “straight-up discrimination.” A letter from CBS said that the ad was “not within the Network’s broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday.” The commercial “shows two men excitedly watching the game, before their hands brush as they both reach into a bowl of chips. Suddenly, the two begin making out, much to the shock of a guy sitting close by.” The New York Post concluded that the ad is “no more racy than nearly any beer commercial not starring the Budweiser Clydesdales.” Watch it:
CBS’s decision to accept the Focus on the Family ad was controversial because most networks have a policy of banning advocacy ads during the Super Bowl, and have rejected ones by groups such as MoveOn.org and PETA in the past. Last year, NBC rejected a 30-second public service announcement about marriage equality to run during the Super Bowl.
Andrew Sullivan writes, “In the past, issues ads were deemed non-kosher – but if it’s a Christianist and virulently anti-gay organization behind the ad, it appears to be ok. But if it’s a humorous commercial ad for a gay dating service, CBS says no. … There is one reason this ad was denied. Its gay content was deemed offensive to football fans, while an anti-abortion issues ad wasn’t. That’s called blatant discrimination and if it doesn’t lead to aggressive protests I’ll be very surprised.”
Last week, the Supreme Court’s five conservative justices joined together to invalidate a 63-year-old ban on corporate money in federal elections and in the process overruled a 20-year-old precedent permitting such bans on corporate electioneering. “There were principled, narrower paths that a court that was serious about judicial restraint could have taken,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent, essentially “accusing his colleagues of judicial activism,” in the words of the New York Times’ Adam Liptak.
Indeed, though “judicial activism” is a common scare phrase invoked by conservatives, the Roberts Court has “demonstrated that decades of conservative criticism of judicial activism was nonsense” because “conservative justices are happy to be activists when it serves their ideological agenda.” Politico reports that Democratic senators are saying that Justices “Roberts and Alito misled them during their confirmation hearings when they represented themselves as jurists who would respect precedent”:
Referring to the memorable analogy in which Roberts compared himself to a baseball umpire, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told POLITICO this week, “He’s not somebody who just measures balls and strikes. It’s been the most activist court that I’ve seen in my 17 years in the committee.” [...]
Conservatives regularly attack Democratic judges as “judicial activists,” but Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said, “It’s well past time” to call out conservative justices for their own brand of judicial activism. He said that making such arguments now could help the president if he has another chance to nominate a justice to the court.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a former judge and current Judiciary Committee member, called such complaints “hysterical.” He thinks the court’s decision last week was simply an effort to “to protect the Constitution’s First Amendment rights of free speech and association.” But his charge that Democrats are “hysterical” over right-wing judicial activism is odd considering he mused in 2005 that there might be a connection between violent attacks against judges and judges “making political decisions“:
CORNYN: I don’t know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that’s been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in — engage in violence.
Cornyn refused to apologize for or repudiate his remarks, saying that they had been “taken out of context to create a wrong impression.” But even conservatives thought he had crossed the line. Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Washington Post that Cornyn had “wandered somewhere off the Pacific Coast Highway” with his outrageous — and yes — “hysterical” attack on judicial activism.
Today, the Commerce Department reported that the U.S. economy grew at 5.7 percent from October through December, a “better-than-expected gain.” The expansion was the fastest in six years. White House economic adviser Christina Romer said the report is “the most positive news to date” on the economy. Speaking on Bloomberg television today, Mark Zandi — who was an adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign — heralded the positive numbers as a result of the stimulus passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama last February:
I think stimulus was key to the 4th quarter. It was really critical to business fixed investment because there was a tax bonus depreciation in the stimulus that expired in December and juiced up fixed investment. And also, it was very critical to housing and residential investment because of the housing tax credit. And the decline in government spending would have been measurably greater without the money from the stimulus. So the stimulus was very, very important in the 4th quarter.
Watch it:
President Obama held a candid, face-to-face conversation with House Republicans today at their annual retreat in Baltimore. After Obama gave his remarks, he had to answer tough questions from Republican lawmakers about health care, the budget, taxes, and other issues. Although the riveting exchange lasted over an hour, both CNN and MSNBC aired the entire event.
However, at 1:11 p.m. ET — when there was still 20 minutes left to go — Fox News decided to cut away and begin its commentary. Anchor Trace Gallagher’s immediate reaction was that Obama was being too “combative” and “lecturing” — like he was at his State of the Union address. Correspondent Bret Baier agreed, saying there was “a little bit of that,” but conceded that there was a “decent…give-and-take on the specifics.” Watch it:
Unsurprisingly, Fox is echoing a Republican talking point. Several Republicans complained that Obama was lecturing them in his State of the Union speech:
– “I felt like he was admonishing Congress and certainly lecturing Republicans, accusing us of being an obstructionist party, when what it is we’re about is trying to focus on the issue, which is control the spending and let’s go about creating an environment for jobs.” — House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)
– “The address was ‘more of a lecture, I thought, in tone,’ [Cornyn] said, but Obama ‘gives a great speech.’” — Rep. John Cornyn (R-TX)
– “In a word, ‘lecture’ [is what I thought of Obama's State of the Union speech]. I think there was quite a bit of lecturing, not leading in that, as opposed to Governor McDonnell’s follow-up comments, quite inspiring his connection with the people. He absolutely gets it, he understands government’s appropriate role.” — Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, 1/27/10, Fox News
Not only did Fox cut away from the Obama-GOP exchange, but the network then brought on Rep. Peter King (R-NY) — who was still in New York “because of the whole 9/11 controversy with the trials” — about 10 minutes later to start commenting on Obama’s performance. A look at what was happening on all the networks at that time:
House Republicans were fired up and ready to go for their conversation with President Obama at their annual retreat today. According to the New York Times, members of the conservative Republican House Conference said they were “itching to quiz the president and present their policy ideas rather than listen to another lofty presidential address.” Although such sessions generally occur behind closed doors, Republicans agreed to open it up after the White House said it was willing to do so. However, after Obama’s strong performance, some Republicans are now regretting that decision. As Luke Russert reported on MSNBC:
RUSSERT: Tom Cole — former head of the NRCC, congressman from Oklahoma — said, “He scored many points. He did really well.” Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it. … One Republican said to me, off the record, behind closed doors: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.”
Watch it:
“Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may turn out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months,” writes the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder. “Debating a law professor is kind of foolish — the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama’s weakness — his penchant for nuance — into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president.”
This afternoon, during a conciliatory visit with the House Republicans, President Obama suggested that the party’s bitter political attacks prevented any possibility of negotiation or compromise on health care reform. “If you were to listen to the debate, and frankly how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this was some Bolshevik plot,” Obama said. He added:
If the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me. I mean, the fact of the matter is that many of you — if you voted with the administration on something — are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own Party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion. Because, what you’ve been telling your constituents is: this guy’s doing all kinds of crazy stuff that is going to destroy America.
Watch it:
Obama described the health reform legislation as “a plan that is pretty centrist” and pointed out that it already incorporated modified versions of Republican proposals. He said that the legislation reflected the basic elements of a plan introduced in June of last year by a bipartisan group of former Senate Majority Leaders and reminded Republicans that they would have to negotiate with Democrats to incorporate their ideas into the final legislation. “Most independent observers would say” it is “similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton,” Obama added. In 1994, then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole proposed alternatives that included an individual mandate, subsidies for lower income Americans and benefit standards “at least equal to those offered federal employees.”
Throughout the health care debate, House Republicans have resorted to sensational rhetoric and deceitful attacks. In July, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) said that “Democrats released a health care bill which essentially said to America’s seniors: Drop dead.” Rep. Steve King (R-IA) predicted that “people die when they’re in line [for health care services],” and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) infamously said that the Democrats health care reform would “put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”
President Obama appeared before the House GOP retreat in Baltimore today to offer a defense of his agenda while making good on his State of the Union promise to welcome ideas from the opposition party. In his introduction, Obama gave a strong defense of the stimulus package — which most economists agree has worked — saying, “there’s not a single person in here” would who would not be “going home to more laid off teachers,” firefighters, and police officers. Obama also chided Republicans for taking credit for the benefits while also bashing it:
And then the last portion of it was infrastructure, which as I’ve said, a lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against. Now I say all this not to re-litigate past, but it’s simply to state that the component parts of the stimulus are consistent with what many of you say are important things to do — rebuilding our infrastructure, tax cuts for families and businesses, and making sure that we were providing states and individuals some support when the roof was caving in.
Watch it:
Every single House Republican voted against the stimulus package, but as ThinkProgress has documented, many have gone on to tout the benefits it is having in their respective districts. For instance, Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) sent multiple press releases publicizing “imperative” stimulus funds awarded to his state, without mentioning where the money had come from. In December, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) called the stimulus a “large-scale failure,” only to praise a stimulus-funded program as “critical” a few weeks later. Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) sent two press releases out on December 16th — one saying the stimulus had “failed” and the other hailing $1,044,140 in stimulus money for the Carroll County school system.
Tea Party activists and loyalists have recently criticized the National Tea Party Convention set to take place in Nashville, TN next month, balking at the expensive ticket prices and the fact that the “scammy” event is for-profit. “That’s not what the tea party is about,” said one local Tea Party leader. After reports spread about the controversy, the convention began to unravel, as featured speakers Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) decided to drop out.
Sarah Palin is also billed for a keynote speaking slot at the event. She will reportedly receive $115,000 for the appearance, and last night on Fox News, Palin said she has no intention of abandoning the convention:
VAN SUSTEREN: Do you intend to speak? And there’s the controversy about you getting paid. What’s your thought?
PALIN: Oh, you betcha I’m going to be there. I’m going to speak there because there are people traveling from many miles away to hear what that tea party movement is all about and what that message is that should be received by our politicians in Washington. I’m honored to get to be there.
Palin said she won’t “personally gain from being there” and will donate the speaking fee to “the cause” (although she did not say if her PAC is part of that “cause”). Later in the segment, Palin argued that the GOP and the Tea Party movement “need to merge” in order to prevent “divisions” and “divisiveness.” Watch it:
Perhaps Palin thinks the Tea Party and the GOP “need to merge” because far right wingers and teabaggers alike have attacked the former Alaska governor for endorsing Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) re-election campaign.
But it’s unclear whether such a merger can ever take place. Just yesterday, RNC chair Michael Steele said he does not want to “co-opt” the movement. And one controversial Tea Party leader recently complained that the RNC is ignoring him. “I’ve called them, lots of times. I called them this morning. I called them yesterday. It’s like they ignore you as they try to figure out a strategy on how to defeat you,” he said.
This weekend, Republican leaders will convene at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore to plot strategy, socialize, and plan both legislative and campaign themes for the year. Yesterday morning, ThinkProgress caught up with House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who confirmed that the Congressional Institute — a nonprofit run by Republican corporate lobbyists — is sponsoring the retreat. Normally, such lobbyist-sponsored soirées would be illegal under House ethics rules. But by forming an ostensibly nonpartisan educational front called the Congressional Institute, lobbyists are able to skirt any such oversight. However, Boehner told ThinkProgress that he did not know if any lobbyists would be present at the retreat:
TP: For your retreat this weekend, is the Congressional Institute attending or sponsoring at all?
BOEHNER: They’ve always sponsored retreats for both Democrats and Republicans.
TP: Are any of their lobbyists attending this weekend?
BOEHNER: I don’t know. [...] I said I don’t know.
Watch it:
Boehner is wrong when he claims that the Congressional Institute sponsors Democratic retreats. According to the Politico, House Democratic retreats are not paid for by any special interest funds or the lobbyist-run Congressional Institute.
To fact-check Boehner’s sheepish reply that he simply didn’t know if lobbyists would be at the retreat, I visited the Renaissance hotel in Baltimore yesterday afternoon. Upon arriving at the front desk, I spoke to Patrick Deitz, a staff assistant for the Congressional Institute, who confirmed that Congressional Institute board member Michael Johnson was upstairs at the retreat, and that Dan Meyer, another board member, was on his way. Johnson, a lobbyist at the OB-C Group, touts himself as a “Republican heavyweight” whose firm represents the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, JP Morgan Chase, and the health insurance giant WellPoint. Meyer, a longtime Republican operative and chairman of the Congressional Institute, works for the Duberstein Group, where he represents BP, Goldman Sachs, HealthNet, and AHIP, the umbrella trade group for the health insurance industry. Meyer’s colleague at his lobbying firm, Steve Champlin, urged insurance industry executives last year to fight ruthlessy to kill health reform, proclaiming, don’t “give comfort to the enemy who is down.”
After informing Deitz and other Congressional Institute staffers that I work for ThinkProgress and wanted to interview some of the lobbyists in attendance, another staffer, named Mary, told me to leave the building or else I would be arrested. Mary, who refused to give her business card or last name, told Deitz not to tell me his last name either. During the course of the conversation with Congressional Institute staffers, a gaggle of men dressed in business attire discussed technology policy behind me. One of them had a name tag that read John Sampson; who according to his LinkedIn profile is the chief lobbyist for Microsoft.
Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that ThinkProgress will be able to attend, or even approach the building, for the lobbyist-organized GOP retreat. If we could, we might witness quite a reunion. Many of the lobbyists running the Congressional Institute are former top staffers to Newt Gingrich, who is addressing the gathering. Here is a picture of Congressional Institute board members Meyer and Arne Christenson — now a lobbyist for American Express — plotting strategy for Gingrich back in 1995.
Responding to the State of the Union, Boehner was quick to attack the administration for supposedly lacking transparency. But for a retreat planning public policy, Boehner apparently prefers to keep the corporate lobbyists involved behind closed doors — and even refuses to acknowledge their attendance.
In an online chat earlier this week, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz defended Fox News’ conservative orientation by saying there is a “distinction” between Fox’s opinion shows and news programming. “Just as you have to make a distinction between The Post’s news pages and its left-leaning editorial page,” said Kurtz. As Jamison Foser pointed out at the time, the idea that the Post’s op-ed pages are “left-leaning” is laughable. As if to prove that point today, the Post’s op-ed page features columns by two former Bush speechwriters, “Obama’s biggest critic,” and a former National Review editor:
Business columnist Robert Samuelson also has a piece saying that the Obama administration’s “blunder” of pushing for health care reform has caused “business planning and the willingness to expand” to suffer. The print edition of the Post also has a short item from liberal Eugene Robinson. This isn’t the first time that the Post has loaded its op-ed page overwhelmingly with conservatives.
Yesterday, ThinkProgress joined a handful of journalists for a wide-ranging discussion with David Axelrod, Senior Adviser to President Obama. In his State of the Union address on Wednesday night, Obama announced a discretionary spending freeze that excluded the massive budgets of the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
“Can you tell the American people that there aren’t any savings to be found in the Defense and Homeland Security budgets?” ThinkProgress asked Axelrod. The President’s Senior Adviser acknowledged, no, “I can’t tell you that” there aren’t savings which can be found there.
Axelrod highlighted prior efforts by the administration to rein in defense spending and insisted that further cuts could still be made. Yet the Pentagon budget — which is expected to exceed $700 billion when Obama unveils his budget on Feb. 1st — remains inexplicably exempt from the spending freeze.
“We live in a dangerous world,” Axelrod said in trying to justify the special exclusion for the defense budget. “What we can’t do at a time when we’re in two wars and we have a very determined enemy in Al Qaeda, we can’t stand down,” he added in an interview with Fox News. Yet, rather than carve out an exclusion to fund troops in the field, the administration opted for a more expansive exclusion. And while cuts might indeed be made to certain programs, the overall Pentagon budget will be allowed to increase without having to face the difficult tradeoffs that other departments will.
Asked whether politics played any part in the decision to carve out a special exclusion for national security-related budgets, Axelrod denied that it did. “There weren’t any meetings that I was in where that was talked about,” he told us.
As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has argued, “If President Obama is serious about controlling spending, he can’t exempt the Pentagon.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concurs, telling reporters yesterday that the entire defense budget “should not be exempted” from the freeze.
U.S. gross domestic product grew 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to an estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The figure surpassed the 4.8 percent rise that economists were expecting. It’s the the best performance since the third quarter of 2003.
48 million Americans watched President Obama’s State of the Union address, “a better than average audience” compared to recent speeches. Fox News led the cable networks, while Fox led broadcast outlets. Only two recent addresses had larger audiences.
Facing “mounting pressure from New York politicians concerned about costs and security,” the Obama administration is now considering moving the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed out of New York. The White House still believes a civilian trial can be held “successfully and securely” in the U.S, but left the decision for an possible alternative site to the Justice Department.
President Obama will “appear before roughly 130 House GOP lawmakers at their annual three-day retreat held in Maryland this weekend.” “We’re eager for the president to come to our retreat tomorrow. We’re going to have an honest conversation about America’s priorities and trying to find ways to find some common ground,” House Minority Leader John Boehner told a press conference yesterday.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates will unveil the Pentagon’s plan to prepare for repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday. “The Defense Department leadership is actively working on an implementation plan,” a Pentagon spokesperson said yesterday.
Yesterday in Washington, DC, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) exhorted citizens to “get angry about the fact that they’re being killed and our planet is being injured by what’s happening on a daily basis by the way we provide our power and our fuel.” In West Virginia, climate activists are not just getting angry, they’re taking action — blocking the demolition of Coal River Mountain by coal company Massey Energy. The activists, members of the aptly named organization Climate Ground Zero, have been living in trees for over a week to prevent bulldozers from reaching the summit:
High up in the trees near the summit of Coal River Mountain, two activists dangle in the air near a mountaintop removal mine site. Eric Blevins and Amber Nitchman are still preventing the expansion of mining on the summit of Coal River Mountain, a mountain that has the best wind energy (and therefore economic) potential in the area.
Employees of coal baron Don Blankenship, the “scariest polluter in the United States,” have been blasting the tree-sit activists with air horns and flood lights. Following hundreds of phone calls from supporters of the non-violent civil disobedience action, Gov. Joe Manchin (D-WV) met today with Climate Ground Zero representatives and “asked the activists to scale down their campaign.”
Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME)
Today, the Senate followed through, and considering all of the deficit fearmongering that has been going on in Congress, you’d think that it would have passed by a fairly wide margin. But no. Instead, the rules passed on a party line vote of 60-40.
And the blanket Republican opposition is particularly interesting considering that some Senate Republicans used to support PAYGO, even when it was opposed by their own party. For instance, in 2004, three current Senate Republicans — Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — joined 47 Democrats in adopting PAYGO, against the majority Republicans’ wishes (although the rule was ultimately scuttled when Congress failed to pass a budget). The next year, the same three senators were joined by Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) in a failed attempt to implement the rule.
Yet all four of them opposed the rule today. Here’s what they’ve had to say in favor of PAYGO in the past:
VOINOVICH: I just don’t understand how we can continue to go this way. We’re living in a dream world. This deficit continues to grow.
COLLINS: [PAYGO is] much-needed restraint for members of Congress as we wrestle with fiscal decisions.
SNOWE: I believe now is the time for both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to commit to pay-as-you-go rules for both revenues and spending.
Just last year, Snowe approved of Obama’s advocating for PAYGO. And in the last few weeks, all of these Republicans have voiced concerns about the deficit and spending. So what changed? And why did all the supposed deficit hawks in the Senate — like Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) — vote against it as well? Could it be that they’re actually deficit peacocks, who “like to preen and call attention to themselves, but are not sincerely interested” in addressing deficits?
In last night’s address, Obama chided Senate Republicans, saying that “just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions. So let’s show the American people that we can do it together.” They’re not off to a good start.
Cross-posted at The Wonk Room. DJ Carella contributed research to this post.
The Hill reports that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) indicated this afternoon that he is “meeting with all different kinds of groups” to get input on the immigration reform bill that he is currently drafting with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), including former CNN news anchor Lou Dobbs:
Senate Democrats have reached out to former CNN anchor and prominent illegal-immigration opponent Lou Dobbs in an effort to build broad bipartisan support for immigration reform…Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is spearheading the Democrats’ effort to put together a comprehensive reform bill, met with Dobbs on Wednesday.
Winning the support of Dobbs, who became a prominent critic of illegal immigration and proposals to grant amnesty to illegal workers, could provide a significant boost to reform efforts…Schumer noted that Dobbs, who left CNN in November, is “changing his views on immigration.”
Schumer most likely met with “Mr. Independent” in an effort to use Dobbs’ appeal to attract more supporters from the center and center-right of politics. However, that strategy could backfire. To begin with, the majority of independents already support comprehensive immigration reform. Also, many of Dobbs’ most loyal supporters are right wingers who abandoned him as soon as he turned away from the hardline approach to immigration he advocated on CNN. And while a self-described “wiser Lou Dobbs” who favors an earned path to legalization for undocumented immigrants has emerged since he left CNN, the Latino and immigrant community is still largely skeptical about his change of heart. Many Latinos and immigrants are already disappointed by President Obama’s passing mention of immigration reform in last night’s State of the Union address.
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