Bachmann Claims That The Chamber Is Using A ‘Separate’ PAC To Fund Campaign Attack Ads
Bachmann Claims That The Chamber Is Using A ‘Separate’ PAC To Fund Campaign Attack Ads
Since ThinkProgress first reported on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s foreign sources of funding last week, the Chamber — and its enablers on the right and in the media — have engaged in a whitewash campaign that has deflected attention away from the core issue: that undisclosed monies from foreign entities may be improperly funding the Chamber’s political attack ads.
Yesterday on Fox Business, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) joined in when host Charles Payne asked the Minnesota lawmaker to comment on White House and Democrats’ calls for the Chamber to disclose its donors:
BACHMANN: This is about as low as it goes. It’s more than just disingenious, it’s a flat-out, patent lie. The Chamber of Commerce, who has been accused of taking foreign contributions to spend on elections, is absolutely not doing that. They have a separate political action fund and they use that only from American donors.
Watch it:
The Chamber does indeed have a political action fund. However, its PAC has so far raised $161,000 and spent only $104,000. Yet, the Chamber itself has spent more than $12 million so far this election season (and plans to spend $75 million), largely helping Republican candidates. Why is the Chamber spending so much while its PAC stays on the sidelines? Disclosure. Federal election law requires political action committees to reveal who is giving money to fund its campaign interests.
Prior to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the Chamber would have had to run its political ads out of its PAC, contributions to which are disclosed. But the Court’s decision allows large corporations — such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns without publicizing their donors. Citizens United provided the Chamber with an end-around campaign finance law. Indeed, after ThinkProgress’s report, the Chamber not only refuses to say where the funding for its $75 million campaign comes from, but also will not prove that it separates foreign from domestic funding. “We are not obligated to discuss our internal procedures,” a spokesperson has said.
“If I was an enterprising reporter…I might ask the Chamber of Commerce to let me see their donors,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today. “That seems like a pretty simple way to solve the debate…They say they take money from overseas, we know they are spending $75 to $80 billion running ads. Lets see where the money comes from to pay for those ads. There is an easy way to prove it all wrong.”
- Comments
- 75
Karl Rove And Chamber Defenders Raise ‘Absurd’ Red Herring About CAP Funding
Defenders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have adopted a new line of attack in trying to defend the Chamber against ThinkProgress’s report that detailed how the Chamber may be using foreign money to fund political attack ads in the United States. In recent days, Karl Rove, former RNC chair Ed Gillespie, and Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s chief lobbyist, have all parroted the line that since the Center for American Progress doesn’t disclose its donors, there is hypocrisy afoot and the ThinkProgress report must somehow be questionable. Watch a compilation:
Just to be clear, the Center for American Progress is not involved in running political ads like the Chamber is. CAP released a statement today explaining the difference:
Neither the Center for American Progress nor the Center for American Progress Action Fund electioneer or run candidate campaign ads. If CAPAF ever does run such ads, we will disclose the donors funding that activity. 501c4’s are not required to disclose donors and we do not see a disclosure problem with 501c4’s, like CAPAF, that continue to operate in the traditional role of a public education and issue advocacy organization; nor have we criticized the Chamber for its traditional work in support of its mission. Our concern is with organizations like the Chamber and others who have taken advantage of the Citizens United ruling to behave like a PAC by running massive amounts of candidate campaign ads without disclosing the source of funding for the ads. There is a long standing legal requirement for PACs to disclose donations, the Chamber and others are acting like PACs but without the disclosure.
As Greg Sargent writes at the Plum Line, “The comparison to the Center for American Progress is absurd, because it does not and has never run campaign ads…[and] even so, Rove’s assertions about these groups are still absurd, because we already know what their issue positions and agendas are.”
Rove and company are attacking the messenger with a false comparison, thereby sidestepping the central issue: will the Chamber reveal the well-heeled special interests behind their unprecedented political ad campaign?
Federal Judge Bars Enforcement Of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Federal Judge Bars Enforcement Of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Earlier today, Judge Virginia Phillip — the California federal judge who ruled that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and freedom of speech under the First Amendment — granted the Log Cabin Republican’s request for a broad injunction against further discharges:
(2) PERMANENTLY ENJOINS Defendants United States of America and the Secretary of Defense, their agents, servants, officers, employees, and attorneys, and all persons acting in participation or concert with them or under their direction or command, from enforcing or applying the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Act and implementing regulations, against any person under their jurisdiction or command;
(3) ORDERS Defendants United States of America and the Secretary of Defense immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation, or other proceeding, that may have been commenced under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Act, or pursuant to U.S.C. § 654 or its implementing regulations, on or prior to the date of this Judgment.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department filed an objection to the proposed injunction, insisting that the judge’s decision be limited to the plaintiffs in the suit. The government argued that a wide injunction would “foreclose the US from litigating the constitutionality” of DADT in other cases and frustrate the ongoing Pentagon review of the policy. The Justice Department will now have 60 days to make a decision on whether or not to appeal the case to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In an opinion that accompanied the injunction, Phillips explains that the plaintiff (the Log Cabin Republicans) “has established standing to bring and maintain this suit on behalf of its members. Additionally, Log Cabin Republicans has demonstrated the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act, on its face, violates the constitutional rights of its members. Plaintiff is entitled to the relief sought in its First Amended Complaint: a judicial declaration to that effect and a permanent injunction barring further enforcement of the Act.”
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
Landrieu Will Not Lift Hold On Budget Director Despite End Of Drilling Moratorium
Last month, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) announced that she would be blocking “the nomination of Office of Management and Budget [OMB] director Jack Lew until the Obama administration lifts its deepwater drilling moratorium,” singlehandedly hobbling the OMB.
Today, the Obama administration announced that it will be ending its deepwater drilling moratorium. “The policy position that we are articulating today is that we are open for business,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters at a news conference. Yet Landrieu said in a statement today that she still refuses to lift her hold on Lew’s nomination, and will continue to “evaluate if today’s lifting of the moratorium is actually putting people back to work” and “whether or not drilling activity in both shallow and deep water is resuming” over the next month before making a decision:
Democratic senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana today applauded the Obama administration for lifting the moratorium on deepwater oil drilling but said she will continue to block the nomination of Jack Lew to head the Office of Management & Budget.
“I am not going to release my hold on Jack Lew,” Landrieu said in a statement. “Instead I will take this time to look closely at how [the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management] is handling the issuing of permits and whether or not drilling activity in both shallow and deep water is resuming.” Landrieu said she will use the remaining month before Congress convenes on November 15 for the lame-duck session to “evaluate if today’s lifting of the moratorium is actually putting people back to work.”
In her statement, Landrieu adds that she wants there to be “an action plan to get the entire industry in the Gulf of Mexico back to work. This means that the administration must continue to accelerate the granting of permits in shallow and deep water, and provide greater certainty about the rules and regulations industry must meet. I strongly believe that we can do this safely and swiftly.”
Although Landrieu argued that the drilling moratorium “could cost more jobs than the spill itself,” the actual economic impact of restoring the rule of law to offshore drilling has been minimal, while the economic, environmental, and psychological impacts of the oil disaster continue to grow.
“We hope that, as we work through the normal course of a policy that ensures that oil drilling is done in a safe way, certainly that Senator Landrieu would judge Jack Lew on the merits of being a budget director, not of playing politics and getting issues that are ancillary to what he does involved in that equation,” said Gibbs, reiterating his claim last month that Landrieu’s hold is “outrageous.”“Jack didn't have anything to do with issuing the moratorium, doesn't currently have anything to do with the moratorium. He passed two Senate committees with more than 40 votes and only one dissenting vote. And obviously a budget director in a time of economic concern and concern about our long-term fiscal picture is somebody that you need at work,” Gibbs said.
Hatch Complains It Would Be ‘Idiocy’ To Cut Funding For Stimulus-Funded Project
For decades, the Central Utah Project (CUP) has provided much-needed irrigation and power generation for the state’s citizens. It is no surprise then, as Utah’s Desert News reports today, that local leaders plan to “fight” to preserve funding for CUP upon hearing rumors that federal dollars for the project may be threatened. One of these local politicians is Sen. Orrin Hatch (R), who said it would be “idiocy” to not give the project the funding it needs to do its work:
Concern there is political consideration in the Obama administration to zap funding for CUP in 2012 has top policymakers in Utah launching a pre-emptive strike to protect against any diminishing of dollars. “My gosh, it would be idiocy to not finish this project,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said. [...]
Although actual budgetary decisions will not be made for months to come, Hatch said even a hint of eliminating funding is serious enough to raise alarm. “This is a serious decision that should not be a political decision,” Hatch said. “It is not a matter of politics, it is a matter of doing what is right.”
Yet while Hatch is now acting as a strong defender of CUP and warning against the loss of any federal funding of the program, he fails to mention that some of the project’s greatest support came from last year’s stimulus package, as the Salt Lake Tribune noted:
The cash also has fueled a $70 million surge in work on the Central Utah Project, further exploiting Utah’s share of the Colorado River with a new pipeline through Spanish Fork Canyon. And stimulus money is paying to remove 2 million tons of Atlas uranium tailings from the banks of the Colorado near Moab — a project delayed for years before the stimulus passed.
Hatch, like most of his congressional Republican colleagues, opposed the stimulus bill. He even went as far as to call the bill a “wasteful hodgepodge of liberal spending.” It appears that while Hatch may now be sanctimoniously lecturing others about not playing politics, that is exactly what he was doing when he railed against last year’s stimulus bill.
For more, check out our ThinkProgress report: “Stimulating Hypocrisy”
Wall Street Will Pay Record-Breaking Compensation While Americans Still Struggle With Financial Crisis
Wall Street Will Pay Record-Breaking Compensation While Americans Still Struggle With Financial Crisis
The financial meltdown of 2008 spurred lawmakers to crackdown on the notorious pay packages that characterized Wall Street largess. Seeking to limit the spending sprees, Congress enacted direct restrictions on compensation in the Wall Street reform law to ensure firms were responsible to taxpayers and their shareholders.
However, while excessive compensation underpinned the “irrational risk” taken by financial employees to “focus on short-term results at the cost of long-term success,” it appears that nothing has changed. According to a new Wall Street Journal survey, Wall Street firms are continuing their rapid return to pre-crisis revenue levels. In celebrating their taxpayer-assisted comeback, firms are on pace to spend $144 billion in compensation this year, setting a new record high in pay for the second consecutive year:
About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms—which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges—are set to pay $144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to the survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms[...]
Overall, Wall Street is expected to pay 32.1% of its revenue to employees, the same as last year, but below the 36% in 2007. Profits, which were depressed by losses in the past two years, have bounced back from the 2008 crisis. But the estimated 2010 profit of $61.3 billion for the firms surveyed still falls about 20% short from the record $82 billion in 2006. Over that same period, compensation across the firms in the survey increased 23%.
It is important to note that the methodology of the survey was not published and this year’s compensation may not constitute a record if you aren’t comparing that sum to total Wall Street pay in 2007. However, the study does highlight that, while Wall Street profits are down 20 percent from pre-crisis levels, firms have actually increased pay by 23 percent. And, in surveying bankers and finance professionals’ expectations for bonuses, 50% expect an increase in bonus pay from last year. Banks may also skirt the Bush tax cut expiration to ensure employees can still take home a large compensation.
As CBS’s Jill Schlesinger points out, this pay scheme “will no doubt drive folks on Main Street crazy because they will rightly feel banks” are “back on track, while the rest of the country is left grappling with sagging home prices and retirement accounts that are far from their pre-crisis highs.”
Indeed, while Wall Street bonuses alone “run to millions of dollars for top staff,” the average income for the American worker is $68,914. And, according to a recent survey, 43% of American workers now have less than $10,000 in retirement savings and only 16% percent said “they have confidence in their ability to save enough for a comfortable retirement.” Despite the advice of most financial experts, a record number of people are also making hardship withdrawals from their retirement accounts because “taking loans and hardship withdrawals from their company-sponsored retirement accounts may be the only source of savings they have to bridge the growing gap between their earnings and the cost of living during the economic downturn.” On top of retirement trouble, Americans are facing record numbers of foreclosures and harassment at the hands of the same banks that engineered the housing crisis.
But, according to Wall Street firms, the average American worker and the executive “top talent” have very different worth. “The pay scale for Wall Street is different [from] the pay scale for America,” said one financial lobbyist. “I don’t think the issue is a dollar amount. It’s being paid what you’re worth.”
Ron Johnson Calls On Chamber Of Commerce To Disclose Funding Of Attack Ads
Ron Johnson, the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate for Senate in Wisconsin, has enjoyed the support of several outside groups during his election campaign: he benefited from $1.3 million in television advertising from various political action committees and other groups, including ads from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that attack his opponent, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), for his support of health care reform.
Such groups are not required to reveal who is funding the political attacks. As ThinkProgress detailed last week, the Chamber of Commerce may be using foreign funds to support its attack ads in the United States, which would be a violation of federal election laws. Last night during a debate in Wausau, WI, Feingold pressed Johnson to call on these groups to disclose their funding sources. Johnson agreed and called for disclosure:
JOHNSON: You want to be able to select who can have free speech and who doesn’t want to have free speech.
FEINGOLD: I want everybody to have free speech, but I want them to be able to — as you just said, they ought to disclose. You haven’t even called on these people to disclose. You just said you’re for disclosure. You won’t even call on them to disclose.
JOHNSON: I’d be happy to have them disclose.
FEINGOLD: Well then why don’t you ask them to do it?
JOHNSON: Disclose.
Watch it:
So far, the Chamber has refused to provide evidence they are not using foreign money to fund political attacks, saying “We are not obligated to discuss our internal accounting procedures.” Perhaps if more candidates like Ron Johnson that benefit from Chamber attacks call for disclosure, the Chamber will feel compelled to reveal the well-heeled special interests behind their unprecedented political ad campaign.
Pat Toomey: Global Warming Pollution Is ‘Very Much Disputed’
Pat Toomey: Global Warming Pollution Is ‘Very Much Disputed’
Pat Toomey, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, agrees with Christine O’Donnell about global warming. Like O’Donnell and the rest of the GOP Senate candidates, Toomey questions the overwhelming scientific evidence that manmade pollution from burning billions of tons of oil and coal is warming the planet. “There is much debate in the scientific community as to the precise sources of global warming,” Toomey claimed in June, even though the National Academies of Science have explained that the “compelling case that climate change is occurring and is caused in large part by human activities is based on a strong, credible body of evidence.” Responding to a caller on WITF radio on Friday, Toomey expanded on his ignorance of scientific reality:
My view is: I think the data is pretty clear. There has been an increase in the surface temperature of the planet over the course of the last 100 years or so. I think it’s clear that that has happened. The extent to which that has been caused by human activity I think is not as clear. I think that is still very much disputed and has been debated.
Listen here:
“I just can’t see the argument for doing great economic damage, costing tens of thousands of jobs here in Pennsylvania, for a very uncertain gain, if any,” Toomey concluded, attacking policy to limit greenhouse pollution. Toomey’s top contributors include coal giant Murray Energy ($16,655) and Koch Industries ($15,000).
Yet because O'Donnell and Angle have the crazy bar so high in so many other, more attention-grabbing ways, this sort of stuff from the relatively buttoned up Toomey passes unnoticed.
McCain Tells Tea Partiers: GOP Is ‘Party Of Hell No’ And Fox News Is ‘The Best Place To Get Your News’
McCain Tells Tea Partiers: GOP Is ‘Party Of Hell No’ And Fox News Is ‘The Best Place To Get Your News’
Our guest blogger is Sam Holdren, a social worker and progressive activist in Arizona.
This past weekend, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) addressed a tea party rally in Arizona. Recall, during his primary campaign, many tea partiers opposed McCain and favored his opponent J.D. Hayworth. Speaking at the 2nd annual Tucson Tea Party rally Saturday, McCain was greeted with a warm reception. And he proceeded to compliment the right-wing base for “changing America.”
McCain also proudly celebrated the Republican accomplishments of obstructionism, borrowing a line from his former running mate Sarah Palin. “You know the President says that, quote, we’re the party of no,” McCain told the tea partiers. “ No, we’re not the ‘party of no.’ We’re the ‘party of hell no.’” In his opening remarks, McCain also thanked Fox News for its strong support of Republican causes, endorsing Fox as “the best place to get your news.” Watch it:
The Republican Party has a vested interest in the success of Fox News. The right-wing network has carried the party’s message for them and several of their commentators, and hosts are helping Republican candidates get elected. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) recently credited Fox for many of the tea party victories against establishment candidates. Republicans owe it to Fox to legitimize and perpetuate the tea party, so why not make a commercial for the network while you’re at it.
Woman Claims Nevada GOP Gov. Candidate Brian Sandoval Employed Her While She Was Undocumented
Woman Claims Nevada GOP Gov. Candidate Brian Sandoval Employed Her While She Was Undocumented
Ana Padilla, a Nevada woman who immigrated from Guatemala illegally in 1986, has come forward to claim that Nevada GOP gubernatorial nominee Brian Sandoval employed her while she was undocumented, and “never asked me for documentation.” Padilla, who has since obtained U.S. citizenship, said she cleaned Sandoval’s house every Monday for more than six months, often while Sandoval was home, but that his family “never asked for her legal status or mentioned an I-9 form needed for Social Security taxes.” Padilla said she was initially excited about Sandoval’s candidacy, and wanted to help him. But once she learned about his right-wing stance on immigration, she decided to go public with her story:
Nearly 13 years later, Ana and her seven children are now U.S. citizens. She told us she had not seen the Sandovals since working for them, until she caught a gubernatorial debate on television. “I was so happy. I told my husband, ‘look, it is Mr. Sandoval.’ I’m going to be in the Republican Party and see if we can help him.”
Ana says she was happy to see another Latino running for office. She says that elation turned to disappointment when she heard Sandoval say he does not support amnesty for illegal immigrants. “In the time I worked with him, he supported me,” said Padilla. “Now he says he does not support Latinos that are already here?”
Ana says she no longer supports anyone in the gubernatorial race. She says she is coming out about this now, because she wants people to know what Sandoval stands for.
The Sandoval campaign has flatly denied Padilla’s charges, blaming them on his Democratic opponent Rory Reid. “Brian and Kathleen do not know this person. Obviously, this is another desperate and dishonest attack by Rory Reid’s failing campaign. It is further proof that Rory will say anything to get elected,” a statement said. Channel 2 News in Reno noted that they “did not learn of this story from the Reid campaign” but rather from an appearance Padilla made on a local Spanish radio station.
Sandoval, who is Latino, has taken a hard line on immigration to appeal to right-wing GOP primary voters. He supports Arizona’s harsh immigration law and, ironically, has advocated for cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. He also opposes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, “now or ever.”
Of course, Sandoval’s fellow Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman in California — who is has also taken a hard-right stance on immigration — was recently implicated in a similar scandal after her former housekeeper came forward saying Whitman’s family employed her for years, despite knowing she was undocumented. (HT: Huffington Post)
ThinkFast: October 12, 2010
ThinkFast: October 12, 2010
President Obama said in a statement Monday that he hopes Peter Diamond, who just recieved a Nobel Prize in economics, “will be confirmed by the Senate as quickly as possible” for a spot on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. As ThinkProgress’s Ian Milhiser notes, the confirmation has been blocked by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), who claims Diamond doesn’t have proper “macroeconomic experience.”
On CNN last night, Rich Iott, the Tea Party candidate in Ohio’s 9th Congressional district, defended wearing a Nazi costume in the past, saying that it was part of a historical lesson. “The whole purpose of historical re-enacting is to educate people one-on-one,” Iott said. “And that is done by going out and participating in re-enactments.”
Writing in Politico, MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough proclaims, “These days, Newt Gingrich’s modus operandi is to smear any public figure who fails to share his worldview.” His “insults are so overblown and outrageous that after the rhetorical dust settles, the reputation most damaged is his own,” concludes Scaborough.
Obama renewed his call to spend an additional $50 billion on infrastructure, saying yesterday that it would create badly needed jobs. “Nearly 1 in 5 construction workers is still unemployed and needs a job,” Obama said. “And that makes absolutely no sense at a time when there’s so much of America that needs rebuilding.”
Today on Capitol Hill, University of Chicago professor Robert Pape will present findings arguing that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 is caused by military occupation. While there were a total of 12 suicide attacks from 2001 to 2005 in Afghanistan, the 2006 increase in troops caused a “dramatic spike” in suicide attacks – over 450 – and “they are growing more lethal,” Pape said.
“Top-tier” Republican House candidate Kristi Noem refused to commit to supporting Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) as speaker if Republicans win the House. Asked whether Noem would support Boehner, a spokesperson said, “She will support a Republican candidate for speaker. It’s premature to see how that shakes out, between now and January.”
And finally: Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) revived his comedy career briefly Friday while waiting to pass through security at Reagan National Airport in D.C., telling fellow Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) that he prefers security lines where they pat you down — “the way my marriage is going these days.”
ThinkProgress is hiring! Details here.
GOP Candidate Allen West Disses GOP Leaders, Gives ‘Boilerplate’ Pledge To America A ‘D’
GOP Candidate Allen West Disses GOP Leaders, Gives ‘Boilerplate’ Pledge To America A ‘D’
Even before House Republicans unveiled their “Pledge to America” governing agenda last month, conservative pundits and tea party activists were dismissing it as feeble and hollow. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) even turned on the GOP leadership, saying “the Pledge really didn’t go far enough.” In an interview published today in Politico, tea party-backed GOP House candidate Allen West said the Pledge deserves a “D” grade, and suggested that some Washington Republicans “whore” themselves to special interests:
West quickly staked out his ground against his party’s potential future leadership. He said the Pledge to America, championed by Boehner, deserves a grade in the “D” range. He said it was missing key policy plans on immigration, earmarks and term limits. The section on national security was “same old stuff…missile defense, rah, rah, rah,” he said.
“It’s very important that in the first 90 to 120 days that the Republican Party very quickly has to earn the trust of the American people once again,” West said. “And I don’t think that the Pledge to America went very far in gaining that trust. It’s what we call in the military, boilerplate.” [...]
“I don’t want to be up there – and I’m going to say it very clearly – I’m not going to whore myself out to special interest PACs, you know, finance or anything of that nature,” West told POLITICO.
Ironically, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is heading to Florida today to campaign for West. But West was reticent to support the leader, saying, “If John Boehner is speaker, I’m going to hold his feet to the fire.” He also split with Boehner on several key issues, saying for example, that he doesn’t support fully repealing the Affordable Care Act because “there are parts of that health care law – preexisting coverage, things of that nature – that are good and I agree with them on.” Moreover, he pointed out that talking about repealing the law is pointless because it could not be done as long as President Obama is in office.
And like a growing number of tea party candidates, West was lukewarm about Palin’s qualifications to be president, saying, “We don’t need to be worried about who’s going to be running for president in 2012, we need to be focused on this.”
Fed Nominee Whom Sen. Shelby Deemed Too Unqualified To Confirm Wins Nobel Prize
Fed Nominee Whom Sen. Shelby Deemed Too Unqualified To Confirm Wins Nobel Prize
Richard Shelby thinks this Nobel laureate is unqualified to set monetary policy.
Earlier today, Federal Reserve Board nominee Peter Diamond won the Nobel Prize in Economics along with two of his colleagues. Yet, despite the fact that President Obama nominated this Nobel laureate to the Fed nearly six months ago, his nomination is currently being blocked by just one senator. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) believes that this year’s winner of the highest honor in the economics profession is unqualified to actually set economic policy:
[U]nder an arcane procedural rule, the Senate sent Mr. Diamond’s nomination back to the White House on Thursday night before starting its summer recess. A leading Republican senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, said that Mr. Diamond did not have sufficiently broad macroeconomic experience to help run the central bank. [...]
As Mr. Shelby noted, Mr. Diamond is not a specialist in monetary economics — the control of the supply of credit and the setting of interest rates — which is the Fed’s traditional purview. But of the five current governors of the Fed, only two, Mr. Bernanke and the vice chairman, Donald L. Kohn, are academic economists who specialize in monetary economics. The other three include a former community banker, a former Wall Street executive and a legal scholar.
Shelby, of course, has a history of this kind of abuse of the Senate Rules to prevent eminently qualified nominees from being confirmed. Earlier this year, Shelby briefly took over 70 nominees hostage in an attempt to strongarm the administration into awarding a $35 billion defense contract to his state — although he later lifted these holds once they became politically embarrassing.
But Shelby, of course, is only able to get away with these kinds of shenanigans because the Senate’s rules are shockingly easy to abuse. Indeed, while it is common wisdom that 60 senators are required to get virtually anything done, the reality is much bleaker — most Senate business now requires all 100 senators to consent.
The reason for this is because dissenting senators can force the Senate to waste hours or even days effectively doing nothing in order to pass a single bill or confirm a single nominee. Indeed, as a recent Center for American Progress white paper explains, there isn’t enough time in two entire presidential terms to confirm all of a new president’s nominees by the time that president leaves office:
In other words, the entire government can be hollowed out by a tiny group of senators with a vendetta. Today, Sen. Shelby thinks that a Nobel laureate doesn’t know enough about economics, so that nominee must languish without an up or down vote. Tomorrow, another senator could disapprove of a nominee’s haircut, and that alone may be sufficient to spike the nomination.
Despite Saying He Would Vote For Health Reform, WV Governor Manchin Says He Would Repeal Entire Law
Despite Saying He Would Vote For Health Reform, WV Governor Manchin Says He Would Repeal Entire Law
The Hill’s Michael O’Brien is reporting that West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin (D-WV) — “who is in a tough fight for a Senate seat” and has previously said that he would repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act — is now insisting that he’d vote for repealing the entire law “if it can’t be fixed”:
DOOCY: I know a while back you did support the president’s reform of the health care system in the United States. You were behind it. Now, however…
MANCHIN: See, no I wasn’t. Let’s be accurate on that.
DOOCY: Well you, I’ll give you a chance. You were supportive of it. Now, you’re calling for repeal of part of it.
MANCHIN: I still and have always been in support of health reform. If anybody believes that a child should be left off of their parents and also pre-existing conditions and small businesses and all those things should go uninsured, something is wrong in America. Now with that, the president’s plan — ‘Obamacare,’ as it’s been called — is far too reaching. It’s overreaching. It needs to have a lot of it repealed. But you can fix that. If you can’t fix that, repeal the whole thing.
Watch it:
In September, after the Wonk Room posted a video showing Manchin saying he would have voted for the Affordable Care Act if he had been in Congress, his campaign admitted that “he said at the time that he would vote to do that.” His staff told us that Manchin opposed only “several sections” of the law “including any provisions that allow for the funding of abortions and the provisions that are cumbersome to small businesses.” “He also believes people’s personal responsibility and healthcare choices should not be taken away by overreaching regulations,” the campaign said.
During a March 17 panel on health care at the National Governors Association, however, Manchin said, “I’d be for it” when asked if he would support the health bill. “I think you’ve got to move the ball,” he said. “I have never, since I’ve been in the legislative process and since I’ve been governor, I’ve never gotten a perfect bill. I’ve never gotten a bill exactly the way I’ve wanted it. … Let’s try, let’s try to make this. Bring us all in. Let’s make it work.”
Newt Gingrich Was Also Once A Proud Member Of The ‘Party Of Food Stamps’
Newt Gingrich Was Also Once A Proud Member Of The ‘Party Of Food Stamps’
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has launched a new crusade to label Democrats as the “party of food stamps.” He told reporters in Minneapolis this week that “it’s perfectly fair to say [Democrats] are earning the title of the party of food stamps,” and, in a memo to Republican candidates, urged them to use this framing as a closing argument before the November elections. Gingrich quipped, “It turns out that Barack Obama’s idea of spreading the wealth around was spreading more food stamps around.” And despite the obvious economic evidence, Gingrich does not believe food stamps can be stimulative to the economy. “I don’t understand…liberal math,” he said.
If there were a “party of food stamps,” however, it would certainly have bipartisan membership — including Gingrich himself. In 2002, the Bush administration sought to expand the food stamp program to all legal immigrants, who had previously been excluded by Congressional Republicans during the 1996 welfare reforms. The Bush proposal extended food stamps to 363,000 more people. The New York Times reported that the move was likely intended to curry favor with Hispanic voters, and while it wasn’t popular with many conservatives, Bush did find a strong supporter in Newt Gingrich:
In an interview today, Newt Gingrich, the House speaker in 1996, said: “I strongly support the president’s initiative. In a law that has reduced welfare by more than 50 percent, this is one of the provisions that went too far. In retrospect, it was wrong. President Bush’s instincts are exactly right.”
Gingrich’s “food stamps” memo perversely tries to credit Congressional Republicans with job gains during the Clinton years, and to blame President Obama and Democrats for a recession that began under the Bush administration. His previous support for food stamps makes the attack even more befuddling.
Cantor Opposes Foreclosure Moratorium: ‘People Have To Take Responsibility For Themselves’
Cantor Opposes Foreclosure Moratorium: ‘People Have To Take Responsibility For Themselves’
In recent weeks, there have been extremely disturbing revelations about how the nation’s biggest financial institutions handle foreclosures. After widespread reports about “robo-signers” — bank officials who would sign foreclosure forms without even reading them — several large financial institutions declared they were halting their foreclosure process. For example, a Bank of America official admitted in a bankruptcy case that she signed 7,000 to 8,000 foreclosure documents a month and “typically” did not read them “because of the volume,” and last week, Bank of America announced it was stopping all foreclosures across the country until it could be sure the process was fair to homeowners.
Several lawmakers have joined the banks in calling for foreclosure moratoriums until banks can carry the process out in a fair and legal manner. And a bipartisan group of attorneys general is also demanding action — for example, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, is asking 30 lenders to stop foreclosures until they can prove it’s being done legally.
On Fox News Sunday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) called for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures, saying “it’s absolutely imperative that we keep people in their homes.” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) disagreed strongly, however, saying he was “just perplexed” at Wasserman Schultz’s answer, and that “people have to take responsibility for themselves.”
CANTOR: I’m just perplexed to that answer, Bret… what we’re seeing if you do that, if you impose a moratorium on foreclosures what you are telling people and institutions that lend money is they do not have the protection to take the risk they need to, to extend credit for people will get a mortgage. You’ll shut down the housing industry if that is the case[...]
What we’re talking about, Debbie, you have 10 percent, if that, of the population who are now in a foreclosure situation or in a mortgage that they have been unable to meet the obligations… Now, come on, people have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don’t need government intervening in every step of every aspect of this economy.
Watch it:
Congressional Republicans have largely been silent on a foreclosure moratorium, as the Wonk Room has noted. But now, apparently, they are ready to take a stand — in defense of the housing industry. Nina Easton of Fortune Magazine piled on later on Fox News Sunday as well. “I thought it was really troubling when Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz said we need to keep people in their homes,” Easton said. “What she should have said was ‘keep people in their homes they can’t afford.’”
But of course, people may be losing their homes when they should not, due to the banks’ reckless foreclosure process. Sorting out the potentially thousands of homeowners who may have been improperly foreclosed upon is going to be a monumental task, as is reorganizing the process to ensure that no more homeowners are improperly thrown out of their homes. This is about more than simply those homeowners: it’s about upholding the rule of law and due process. A moratorium and investigations are more than warranted, despite the seeming desire of Cantor and other Republicans to protect big financial institutions.
Gillespie Claims NY Times And Wash. Post Have ‘Refudiated’ ThinkProgress On Secret Corporate Spending
Gillespie Claims NY Times And Wash. Post Have ‘Refudiated’ ThinkProgress On Secret Corporate Spending
On Face the Nation this morning, host Bob Schieffer grilled both White House advisor David Axelrod and GOP strategist Ed Gillespie on the millions of dollars being secretly funneled by Wall Street and the oil industry to defeat Democratic candidates this November, and particularly the role of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Gillespie, along with Karl Rove, is the mastermind behind American Crossroads, a group tied to the Chamber which also funnels corporate money into attack ads. As first revealed by a ThinkProgress report, the Chamber solicits funds from foreign corporations — including state-owned oil companies — that go into the same general account that funds their $75 million electioneering campaign. Using a neologism coined by Sarah Palin, Gillespie argued that the Washington Post and the New York Times had “completely refudiated” the report:
GILLESPIE: The Washington Post and The New York Times both completely refudiated this charge of foreign money being funneled through the Chamber of Commerce into American campaigns. The charge of illegal criminal activity, that was based on a blog posting that the President of the United States repeated, that was put on a website that’s affiliated with Center for American Progress, a liberal nonprofit advocacy group that does not disclose its donors.
Watch it:
In fact, neither the Post nor the Times “refudiated” the ThinkProgress report. Both merely quoted Chamber of Commerce officials who only discussed the limited “AmCham” funds, only one of several avenues for foreign funding of the Chamber. Both articles recognized that there is no outside oversight of the Chamber’s money flow. “Money, however, is fungible,” the New York Times editorial board explained, “and it is impossible for an outsider to know whether the group is following its rules.” As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent writes, “The Chamber still hasn’t addressed in any detail the core allegation against it.”
Only Gillespie has made the “charge of illegal criminal activity.” Although it is illegal to solicit foreign funds for electioneering, the essential fact is that there are no disclosure requirements that provide oversight to know whether or not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is obeying the law. The Chamber successfully lobbied to kill the DISCLOSE Act, which would have closed the loopholes opened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Earlier in the program, Axelrod explained:
This issue of this special interest spending is very important. It’s never happened before, that organizations are are spending this kind of money. And the American people need to ask why is the oil industry, Wall Street and others spending this kind of money to defeat candidates and elect others in this sort of secretive way? You know, that is a threat to our democracy.
Unlike the Chamber, the Koch brothers, and Ed Gillespie, the Center for American Progress strongly supports the DISCLOSE Act and broad campaign finance reform.
After Embracing Privatizers, Tenthers, Tea Partiers, & An Ex-Witch, Cantor Distances GOP From Nazi Reenactor
After Embracing Privatizers, Tenthers, Tea Partiers, & An Ex-Witch, Cantor Distances GOP From Nazi Reenactor
Appearing today on Fox News Sunday, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) finally revealed just how extreme a GOP candidate needs to be in order to be rejected by their party leadership. Reacting to Ohio GOP Congressional candidate Rich Iott’s membership in a Nazi reenactment group that “salute[s]” Nazi sympathizers who viewed the Third Reich as “the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life,” Cantor expressly repudiated Iott’s candidacy in an exchange with Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL):
WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: You have one candidate in Ohio who actually thinks it’s a good bonding experience to reenact Nazi battles with his son. [...]
CANTOR: Now Debbie went and launched into her attacks as to some of the reports about some of the candidates that are running, particularly the one in Ohio having to do with a Nazi reenactment. She knows that I would absolutely repudiate that and do not support an individual that would do something like that.
WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: Well you haven’t.
CANTOR: I’m doing it right here.
Watch it:
Cantor did the right thing by repudiating Iott, but his decision to do so is surprising in light of the fact that Cantor and other GOP leaders have consistently refused to denounce the most extreme right-wing candidates in this election cycle. Here are just a few examples of the kind of radical views that are perfectly at home in today’s Republican Party:
- Eliminating Medicare” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, proposed phasing-out Medicare by replacing the entire Medicare program with a privatized voucher system and then having that voucher gradually decrease in value over time. Yet Republicans have kept Ryan as their chief budget policymaker in the House, and Cantor even co-authored a book touting himself and Ryan as the party’s new “Young Guns.” Some Republican candidates have even claimed that Medicare is unconstitutional.
- Privatizing Social Security: Countless GOP lawmakers and candidates — including Republican budget chief Ryan — want to privatize Social Security, even though privatization imposes significant new risks on seniors, creates new administrative costs, forces benefit reductions, and costs more money than the present system. Some of these candidates also believe that Social Security is unconstitutional.
- Tearing Up The Constitution: Beyond the fringe claims that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional, leading GOPers have embraced repealing the Constitution’s grant of citizenship to all children born in the United States, repealing the constitutional right to elect your own senators, and one leading GOP Senate candidate claimed that it is unconstitutional for the United States to belong to the United Nations.
- Former Witches Against Masturbation: The National Republican Senatorial Committee even cut a $42,000 check to Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, an anti-masturbation activist who “dabbled into witchcraft” and who wants to stop the “whole country from having sex.”
Lest there be any confusion about what positions GOP candidates are allowed to embrace, ThinkProgress is happy to provide this handy chart explaining which stances the GOP does and does not view as too extreme:
Bolton: Democracy Is Not ‘Always The Answer’
Bolton: Democracy Is Not ‘Always The Answer’
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that “[m]embers of Pakistan’s spy agency [ISI] are pressing Taliban field commanders to fight the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan.” Referring to the story Thursday night on Fox News, war hawk John Bolton — potential GOP presidential candidate in 2012 — made an astonishing claim regarding the type of government that should be in control of Pakistan: that the country was better off under military authoritarian rule, which (allegedly) would have been easier to “lean” on to prevent the ISI from helping the Taliban:
BOLTON: [D]emocracy and civilian governments in Pakistan have been so discredited because of incompetence and corruption. I thought the Musharraf government, military, authoritarian rule that it was, was the most likely kind of government to be able to make the changes we made. [...] I would have kept Musharraf in power. I think the Bush administration made a mistake in pushing him out. In Pakistan they call the military the “steel skeleton” because it really is the only thing that holds the country together. That offends some people who think democracy is always the answer. Personally, I would put American interests above that. I wouldn’t have gotten rid of Musharraf.
Watch it:
So it seems that Bolton has officially taken himself out of the democracy promotion crowd. But his prescription for stability in Pakistan appears to be at odds with what he himself said in 2007, that the military regime that governed the country at the time was untrustworthy and “filled with fundamentalists“:
Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile may be technically secure, Bolton said but the issue isn’t whether the weapons are locked away. “It’s a political issue,” the former U.S. ambassador said. “If the military comes unstuck, if it divides, then the technical fixes won’t protect those weapons.”
Musharraf is in a difficult spot, Bolton said. “Even the military is filled with Islamic fundamentalists that he’s tried to keep in lower positions.”
“But they’re pervasive,” he said. “And he doesn’t have the flexibility of a real military dictator.”
Bolton has even reportedly said that he “did not think one democracy should tell another democracy not to act like a democracy.” Maybe now he feels that this is permissible or perhaps he is just looking back to his non-democratic roots. “I’m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I’m here to stop the count,” Bolton told election workers recounting ballots cast in Florida’s disputed presidential race between George Bush and Al Gore in December 2000.
GOP Congressional Candidate Dan Webster’s Really Bad Math: The Entire World’s GDP Couldn’t Sustain U.S. Debt
GOP Congressional Candidate Dan Webster’s Really Bad Math: The Entire World’s GDP Couldn’t Sustain U.S. Debt
Despite their history of running up the national debt when they are actually in power, leading conservatives have made complaining about the national debt a central theme of their political campaigns.
It was this theme that GOP candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives Dan Webster was touting at a meeting with voters late last month. While fearmongering about the amount of public debt the United States now holds, the congressional candidate went as far as to say that “you could combine all the economies of the world and you could not sustain the borrowing that we’re doing”:
WEBSTER: We’re borrowing 4 billion dollars a day, that’s impossible. We are in trouble. We’re in big trouble. Even Hillary Clinton said two weeks ago that if the borrowing continues it will be a threat to national security. That’s not us. That’s them saying that. Even the congressional budget office has said that is unsustainable. You could combine all the economies of the world and you could not sustain the borrowing that we’re doing. So we have to turn off the faucet.
Watch it:
When Webster refers to the “the borrowing that we’re doing,” he’s talking about the $1.3 trillion dollar budget deficit. It is simply incorrect that the rest of the world’s economies combined would not be able to sustain those levels of debt. The CIA World Factbook estimates that the Global World Product — the sum of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the world’s nations — was approximately $58.15 trillion for 2009. Meaning that the global economy produced 44 times as much in 2009 as it would take to completely pay down the U.S. budget deficit.
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog Roll