In surprise move, GOP lawmakers show first signs of backing down over debt crisis by giving Congress time to pass a budget
Republicans showed the first sign of backing down over the looming debt ceiling crisis on Friday, in the face of relentless pressure from President Barack Obama.
Congressional Republicans, who only last week had been threatening to close down the federal government, emerged from closed-door negotiations at a party retreat to announce they will present a bill next week to increase the debt limit by a further three months.
The White House gave the move a cautious welcome to the news.
It is an unexpected bonus for Obama just days before the start of his second presidential term, and gives him breathing space so that instead of another showdown between White House and Republicans in Congress at the end of next month or in March, the issue could be pushed back until summer.
Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the House, said: “Next week, we will authorise a three-month temporary debt limit increase to give the Senate and House time to pass a budget.”
The GOP came close to closing down the federal government in 2011 when they initially refused to raise the debt ceiling.
A messy compromise was eventually worked out. But Obama said earlier this month, after yet another economic showdown, he would not negotiate with the Republicans over the debt limit.
Obama, ramping up pressure on opponents in Congress, held a press conference at the White House on Monday, warning them that if they were not prepared to raise the ceiling, then they would have to take the blame for government closing down.
Obama’s strategy appears to have worked, with the Republicans worried about the electoral consequences of government grinding to a halt, which would mean hundreds of thousands of people – from welfare recipients to veterans – no longer receiving their cheques, federal staff going on forced leave and agency after agency being shut down.
The Republican cave-in was announced from their retreat near Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, where they have been discussing overall strategy in the wake of the November elections.
In what appears to be a political gimmick, the Republicans are to attach to the bill extending the debt limit for three months clauses that would see members of Congress have their pay withheld unless they can reach agreement on a separate issue: a budget that cuts spending.
The Republicans had been using the debt ceiling crisis as leverage to try to force Obama into accepting deep spending cuts, particularly in welfare.
Cantor, in a statement, said of the proviso in next week’s bill about the three-month extension: “If the Senate or House fails to pass a budget in that time, members of Congress will not be paid by the American people for failing to do their job. No budget, no pay.”
The Republicans are banking on the idea of members’ losing their pay being popular with voters.
But both the White House and the Democratic leadership in the Senate dismissed the idea, saying they wanted a “clean bill”, focused solely on raising the debt ceiling.
The White House, in a statement, said: “The president has made clear that Congress has only two options: pay the bills they have racked up, or fail to do so and put our nation into default.
“We are encouraged that there are signs that congressional Republicans may back off their insistence on holding our economy hostage to extract drastic cuts in Medicare, education and programs middle class families depend on. Congress must pay its bills and pass a clean debt limit increase without further delay. And as he has said, the president remains committed to further reducing the deficit in a balanced way.”
The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, said if the House passes a clean bill raising the debt ceiling, even temporarily, the Senate would be happy to consider it.
A spokesman said Reid saw the move as the Republicans beginning to back off from their threat to “hold our economy hostage”.
Separate from the debt ceiling, a deal on spending is within reach. Obama has already agreed to consider changes to the index that determines welfare benefits, something the Republicans have been pushing for but Democrats have resisted, and to raise the age at which Medicare kicks in, another Republican proposal.
He and the Republican House speaker, John Boehner, are not too far apart either over a global figure for spending cuts.
Posted by admin | Posted on 19-01-2013
Category : Business
Tags: campaign, change, democrats, guardian.co.uk, network, news, obama, social media, state, term, us congress, us politics, us taxation, white, years
Network that boosted re-election bid re-tooled to generate support for action on guns, immigration, climate and economy
Barack Obama has launched a new digital campaign that aims to harness the massive database of supporters’ emails he amassed over two presidential elections and use it to propel the ambitious agenda for his second term in office.
Organizing for America, the digitally-savvy re-election campaign that saw Obama returned to the White House in November, has been recast as Organizing for Action and redirected to generate popular backing for the president’s substantial legislative programme. Announcing the re-branding of the network, Obama predicted that it would become “an unparalleled force in American politics – it will work to turn our shared values into legislative action”.
Whether or not such grandiose aspirations can be realised in practice will become clear over the next four years. The network was boosted by a digital tool kit called Dashboard which does seem to have been a significant factor behind Obama’s comfortable victory over Mitt Romney on 6 November.
The tool kit was custom-built for the 2012 Obama re-election campaign. It digitally linked data on millions of American voters, including their email addresses, through Dashboard as well as through social-media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, to an army of staff and volunteers knocking on doors in the key swing states.
That ability to connect supporters with political organisers online will now be used to underpin the president’s ambitions in the White House. He will use it to try to undercut opposition from Republicans in Congress and from hostile lobby groups as he tries to drive through a packed legislative programme that includes gun control, comprehensive immigration reform, measures to combat climate change and negotiations over the fiscal cliff.
In a video accompanying the launch, Michelle Obama said that Organizing for Action represented “the next phase of our movement for change. We got millions of Americans out to vote in this last election but all that hard work was about more than one election – we want to finish what we started.”
Organizing for Action will be headed by Jon Carson, a former White House environmental adviser who was national field director of Obama’s first presidential election campaign, in 2008. Carson said the new-look OFA would be “volunteer-led” and guided by core principles of “respect, empower, include”.
As Carson’s statement attests, there is no shortage of jargon and rhetoric in the new digital push. But at its heart is a revolutionary concept: that campaigning is not confined to the presidential race every four years, but is a permanent state of being that is sustained throughout the four years of a president’s term.
Obama is clearly hoping that the power of the network might help to overcome some of the gridlock in a deeply divided Washington. The first test of that will be the bruising fight ahead with the powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, that has sworn to oppose Obama’s efforts to curb gun violence through a smorgasbord of executive orders and legislative reforms.
In his speech announcing his proposals on Wednesday, Obama was explicit about his intentions to mobilise outside popular support as a means of buffering him for the battle ahead.
“I will put everything I’ve got into this, but I tell you the only way we can change is if the American people demand it,” he said.
Posted by admin | Posted on 17-01-2013
Category : Business
Tags: democrats, gun, law, newtown shooting, president, republicans, state, universal, us congress, us gun control, us politics, us senate, world news
Signing orders makes a good photo op, but the president needs a broad coalition and busy campaign to get laws past Congress
President Obama’s press conference on gun violence is being hailed as “sweeping” and “the biggest gun-control push in generations”.
The president announced 23 executive actions, which he admits “are in no way a substitute for action from members of Congress”. He then proposed Congress “must act soon” on universal background checks on gun purchases, limiting high-capacity magazines, and restoring the ban on so-called assault weapons.
Should we expect any of this to actually pass?
Anyone who thinks this is a slam-dunk is kidding themselves. Any gun control legislation would have to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
But you already thought of that. More interesting is the fact that Senate Democrats will likely pose an even bigger hurdle.
Still scarred from overreaching on this issue a decade ago, in 2014 Democrats will have to defend Senate seats in states like Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina and South Dakota. (Until recently, West Virginia would have been on this list; Senator Jay Rockefeller’s decision to retire only serves to reinforce this message.)
Do we really think Harry Reid wants to put his vulnerable Senate members on the line by having them cast a tough vote that might be moot anyway, if the House rejects the legislation?
On the other hand, Newtown does seem to have resonated more than past shootings. Meanwhile, from a ridiculously mishandled press conference, to producing an unwisely conceived video mentioning President Obama’s daughters, to releasing an ill-advised target-shooting video game app, the National Rifle Association seems to be, well, shooting itself in the foot. It’s almost as if they’re trying to help Obama.
What is more, the White House might have powerful allies in this fight. As I’ve noted, they appear to be attempting to co-opt “stakeholders” like Walmart (the largest gun retailer in the nation).
Just as the White House enlisted Big Pharma to pass Obamacare, enlisting a big business with red state bona fides – as opposed to the effete, big city brand of, say, a Michael Bloomberg – would certainly provide cover for red state Democrats. And that would dramatically increase the odds of passing something.
Why might Walmart play along? For one thing, a law requiring universal background checks – closing the so-called “gun show loophole” – would presumably be good for the bottom line.
Pushing for the return of an assault weapons ban is probably a bridge too far, politically. It didn’t have an appreciable impact, in terms of curbing gun violence, after Bill Clinton championed it in the 1990s, but it did lead to more gun sales – and more Democratic loses. As liberal Bill Scher concedes, over at the New Republic:
“Obama doesn’t need an assault weapons ban.”
Assuming congressional leaders craft legislation that pushes for background checks and banning high-capacity magazines, even that would require running an actual campaign. President Obama would have to enlist a disparate coalition of stakeholders and political leaders, and probably also barnstorm the nation to sell it. (And if it passed, groups like the NRA would still to continue to lobby against the law, though perhaps not competently.)
It won’t be easy. The smart money’s still on stasis, but the unknown factor remains how much Newtown has changed the political environment.
The nation would have to be convinced this is not a liberal scheme to slouch down a slippery slope toward universal registration, leading inexorably, in the minds of second amendment advocates, to confiscation. Instead, they will have to be persuaded that this really is a common-sense approach to keeping our kids safe.
Posted by admin | Posted on 11-01-2013
Category : Business
Tags: democrats, geithner, hope, raising, senate, spending, us politics, years
The president’s hopes of an easy nomination process have been dashed by senators vowing to block Jack Lew’s appointment
Barack Obama urged the US Senate to quickly confirm Jack Lew as the new US treasury secretary on Thursday, describing him as a man capable of forging bipartisan compromises.
But the overture was immediately rebuffed by Jeff Sessions, the most senior Republican on the Senate budget committee, who accused Lew of being dishonest and promised an “aggressive” campaign against his nomination.
Sessions appeared to dash hopes of an easy nomination process. “Jack Lew must never be secretary of treasury,” he said. Sessions said comments made by Lew two years ago, when he claimed that Obama’s budget plans would steer the US to a position where “we’re not adding to the debt any more”, were “outrageous and false”.
Lew had been widely expected to sail through the nominating process but the Sessions warning reflects the deeply polarised nature of Washington, especially over budget and tax issues. Obama formally announced at a press conference at the White House that Lew, his chief of staff, would be his nominee to replace Tim Geithner. Lew and Geithner flanked the president as he gave a statement praising both men.
Lew, a long-time Democrat, has been involved in budget battles going back to the early 1980s, through the Clinton years and in the Obama administration. In spite of Republicans having frequently emerged bruised from the encounters, describing him as uncompromising, the commonly held view in Washington was that he was well-enough liked to make it through the nomination process unscathed.
Obama, in his statement, anticipated the coming battles with Republicans in Congress, beginning with a showdown over the $16.4tn (£10.2tn) debt ceiling late next month and further battles over deep spending cuts. The president claimed Lew was well qualified for the job of balancing the budget. He said: “Under President Clinton, he presided over three budget surpluses in a row.” In words aimed at Republicans in Congress, he added: “So for all the talk out there about deficit reduction, making sure our books are balanced this is the guy who did it. Three times.”
He described Lew as low-key, more interested in a discussion with other policymakers rather than appearing on television. “Over the years he has built a reputation as a master of policy who can work with members of both parties and forge principled compromises.”
The Republicans want cuts in welfare programmes, but the Obama administration wants to protect key elements, such as healthcare for the elderly, Medicare, and for the poor, Medicaid, and would rather cut defence spending. The Obama administration also wants tax revenue raising measures included in the mix.
With this in mind, Obama said of Lew: “Maybe most importantly, as the son of a Polish immigrant, a man of deep and devout faith, Jack knows that every number on the page, every dollar we budget every decision we make, has to be an expression of who we wish to be as a nation, our values, the values that says everyone gets a fair shot at opportunity and says we expect all of us to fulfil our obligations as citizens in return.”
Obama added: “Jack has my complete trust … So I hope the Senate will confirm him as quickly as possible.”
This completes the top trio of cabinet appointments, Obama having already nominated John Kerry as secretary of state and Chuck Hagel as defence secretary. Obama praised Geithner for helping to restore the economy after its collapse.
The Republicans want Obama to begin cutting federal spending in return for raising the $16.4 trillion borrowing limit, a potential re-run of a standoff that almost saw the federal government close down in 2011. Obama said earlier this month that raising the debt ceiling should be routine for Congress and he will not engage with Congress this time.
As Treasury secretary, Lew’s signature will appear on currency. His series of loops has started speculation over whether he will try for a more readable signature, as did Geithner. Obama joked that if Lew did not make at least one of his loops legible, he wound rescind his nomination.
Posted by admin | Posted on 03-01-2013
Category : Business
Tags: cliff, democrats, fiscal, options, raising, revenue, win
Democrats still have some revenue-raising options after their fiscal cliff win.
Here is the original post: Democrats can still close the Romney Loophole
