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5:20 PM
Note to readers: taking a short break
MoJo Blog is taking a break for the Thanksgiving holiday. We'll be back on Monday, Nov. 29. Happy Thanksgiving!
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12:23 PM
Medicare redux?
There's a lot of focus on how, exactly, President Bush is ever going to convince Congress to pass an unwieldy Social Security reform bill that either cuts benefits or increase the deficit. In the latest issue of the New Republic, Noam Scheiber offers up one theory: The Republican leadership will simply use the same sort of budget gimmickry and arm-twisting they used to pass last year's Medicare Bill, while bringing the increasingly compliant AARP (the influential lobbying group for seniors) on board:
[T]he president is likely to be no more specific than necessary to get the ball rolling on the Hill. Once he places Social Security on the agenda, Congress can coalesce around a plan that establishes private accounts--this year's goodie for seniors--but with few or no benefit cuts and no way to pay for it over the long term. (Aarp recently announced that it opposes privatization but left the door open to private accounts that are "added on" rather than "carved out" of the existing system, leading some to suspect the organization is open to a deal.) The sop to conservatives, suggests Norquist, would be a vague promise to impose benefit cuts through future legislation, similar to the backloading of the "pain" in the Medicare bill. Then, to make the numbers work out, the GOP will once again cook the books--this time exploiting a quirk in the way the Social Security actuaries evaluate the solvency of the trust fund. (The actuaries only consider whether the trust fund has enough money to pay benefits, not where the money comes from; the GOP can simply propose borrowing trillions of dollars from the rest of the federal budget and the actuaries will be forced to sign off.) And, of course, the GOP will take care to reward this year's choice interest group--the securities industry--on which it will likely rely to make the final lobbying push on the Hill.
That sounds plausible, and Bush may well pull it off. What's stopping him? Too many commentators—such as Alan Murray in the Wall Street Journal today—are assuming that fiscal conservatives like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will block any sort of irresponsible, budget-busting proposal that relies on massive borrowing. But more likely, the president will be able convince them to support even the worst of bills so long as private accounts are included. If fiascoes like the Medicare Bill are any indication, it's ideology—and not sanity—that usually prevails.
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11:10 AM
Corporate giving still favors GOP
Thanks to the McCain-Feingold bill becoming law, corporations were unable to contribute unlimited soft money to the Democrats and Republicans like they had in elections past. However, existing corporate PACs were still able to contribute to candidates, and that was good news for conservatives.
According to the non-profit Political Money Line, Republicans saw a 10-1 advantage over Democrats, with 245 of the 268 most active corporate PACs donating more to the GOP than to Democrats. As registered political committees, these PACs could raise up to $5,000 annually from each corporate employee, and spend up to $5,000 in each congressional or presidential race. The biggest GOP backers included:
- Cooper Industries PAC: All $208,000 to Republicans. Cooper Industries, based in Houston, makes hardware and electrical and automotive products.- Flowers Industries PAC: All $131,500 to GOP candidates. Flowers Industries, a bakery company, is based in Thomasville, Ga.
The PAC of Phillips International, a publishing company based in Potomac, Md.: All $113,500 to Republicans.
- Harris Corp. Federal PAC: $168,500 to Republicans, $4,000 to Democrats. Harris, based in Melbourne, Fla., is an international communications equipment company.
Illinois Tool Works for Better Government Committee: $139,500 to Republicans, $5,000 to Democrats.
As many experts have noted, corporations largely stayed out of the soft-money game this year. But their hard-money spending shows their political loyalties haven’t changed.
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3:18 PM
Filibusters, judges, radicals...
Sarah Posner of the Gadflyer has all the dirt on Senate Republican efforts to eliminate the filibuster, so that Democrats won't be able to oppose Bush's judicial nominees. The holdup, as I understand it, is that a few Republicans are worried that getting rid of the filibuster will come back to haunt them if the Democrats ever come back to power.
Speaking of judges, Jeffrey Rosen has a much-recommended piece in the New Republic this week on possible judicial nominees. There are, Rosen contends, two kinds of conservatives: "principled conservatives" and "conservative activists." Now Roe v. Wade is obviously going to be a hot-button issue, but Rosen argues that liberals might actually be better off scrapping their litmus test and focusing more on confirming "principled conservatives"—who tend to respect precedent (and abortion rights are part of precedent). The "activists", meanwhile, are intent on throwing away 200 years of constitutional doctrine, and they should be blocked at all costs. Unless, of course, there's no filibuster, at which point Democrats will have to try to take their case to the public.
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2:54 PM
More Social Security gimmickry
From the looks of things, the Bush administration's latest Social Security proposal is: Use some fancy accounting methods, wave your hands, confuse a lot of people, and pretend everything's okay:
Republican budget writers say they may have found a way to cut the federal deficit even if they borrow hundreds of billions more to overhaul the Social Security system: Don't count all that new borrowing.
As they lay the groundwork for what will probably be a controversial fight over Social Security, Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration are examining a number of accounting strategies that would allow the expensive transition to a partially privatized Social Security system without -- at least on paper -- expanding the country's record annual budget deficits. The strategies include, for example, moving the costs of Social Security reform "off-budget" so they are not counted against the government's yearly shortfall.
Since the administration insists on being as obscure as possible—and I don't think the Post explains the issue well—here's a quick primer to what's going on. The Social Security Trust Fund, where all our payroll taxes go, is currently taking in more in taxes than it pays out—so it runs a modest surplus. Over the years, the federal government has been raiding this Trust Fund surplus, so as to mask the size of its own federal deficit.
That means that once the Trust Fund starts paying out more benefits than it takes in in taxes—somewhere around 2017—it will have to start asking the federal government for all that surplus money back. Since the government would never simply stop taking care of seniors, it will give that money back, at which point the federal deficit will suddenly look like it's "jumped". In reality, though, nothing has changed here. (The government will just borrow from someone else to pay what it owes Social Security.) But then at some point even further down the road—say, 2040—the Trust Fund will have spent all its surplus, and then it will have to start borrowing, at which point we really are increasing the deficit.
Now in the Post article, Glenn Hubbard is proposing that the federal government repay all that borrowed Social Security surplus back now rather than in 2017, so that we get that apparent "jump" in the deficit out of the way. Nothing tricky there. The problem is that if you also want to privatize Social Security, and have workers divert their taxes into personal accounts, then the actual Social Security deficit comes much, much sooner. As we've pointed out, people who are around 40-50 right now would probably lose much of what they put into the system during their lifetime.
Social Security can get around this new dilemma simply by borrowing more money to pay those 40 and 50-year-olds, but then, alas, it's increasing the actual deficits even further. And when prominent economists are already predicting "Economic Armageddon" because of current deficits, that makes people a bit jumpy. So here's where the "creative accounting" comes in—the Bush administration will argue that by borrowing now, they're actually reducing our long-term deficits, since it can cut benefits far, far in the future for people who have been saving in private accounts for a long time. Et voila! Short-term deficits don't matter!
The assumptions in all this are that a) bond markets don't freak out and raise interest rates, b) we'll actually find people to lend us all that money, and c) that Americans will get enough of a return in their private accounts to offset their benefit cuts far in the future. Sound familiar? It was exactly these sorts of assumptions that led the Reagan administration in the '80s to claim that their deficits would pay for themselves. It's sort of like saying that spending on education or health care shouldn't be counted since they're investments that pay for themselves in the long term. And funny, I don't think Republicans would've bought that argument if John Kerry had made it.
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1:43 PM
Iraqi papers report good news. Really!
We've repeated ourselves endlessly here, but a major concern on Iraq these days is that the Sunni Arabs may not come out to vote in January, which will leave them disenfranchised, unhappy, and probably ready to continue their insurgency for years—or worse, spark a civil war. (A real civil war, mind you, not the small-scale stuff that's going on now.) Now if that happens, the U.S. may simply withdraw and let the Iraqis butcher each other, but that's another story entirely.
Anyways, with that in mind, here's some actual good news to brighten the mood: Al-Mutamar, a biweekly paper issued by the Iraqi National Congress, is reporting that interim president Ghazi al-Yawer is planning to form a new political party to run in the January 30 elections. To explain: Yawer is a massively popular figure among Sunnis, and he has strong tribal ties in Mosul—if there's anyone who can pull Sunni voters back into the political process, it's him. The downside is that he's still a secular exile, and doesn't have much influence over those religious Sunni groups who are planning to boycott the election. And it also doesn't address Sunni concerns that they'll get shafted in Iraq's new government—even if they do get out the vote. But hey, it's not often that we're optimistic about things in Iraq, so there you go.
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12:57 PM
Still counting and recounting
Thanks to Ralph Nader, New Hampshire’s recount is already underway, and Ohio is likely next. Third-party candidates Michael Badnarik and David Cobb filed a lawsuit Monday seeking a statewide recount. Like Nader, they don’t expect to overturn the state’s election result, but to find out where errors need correcting. Between them, Badnarik and Cobb say they have raised more than $150,000 to cover recount costs.
But the recount that most bears watching is in Washington state, where only 261 votes separated gubernatorial candidates Dino Rossi and Christine Gregoire. By state law, any margin smaller than 2,000 votes triggers an automatic recount, and Democrat Gregoire has already picked up 25 votes as of Monday night.
However, the GOP wants some ballots excluded, and has filed a lawsuit to achieve that goal. Republicans argue that when optical-scanning machines can’t read a ballot, said ballot should be discarded instead of counted by hand -- arguing the technicality that counties not using the machines don’t need to correct for them. As the Associated Press reports:
State Elections Director Nick Handy disputed the GOP's argument that "undervotes" -- ballots that don't register a vote for a particular candidate -- are handled one way in optical-scan counties and a different way in punch-card counties. "The methodology is different but the standard is the same," Handy said.In King County, a Gregoire stronghold, officials had found another 710 votes with markings apparently clear enough to be tallied, county elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said Monday night. However, any votes Gregoire picks up from those ballots could be offset because the same recount process is happening elsewhere in the state, including Republican-leaning counties where Rossi won handily.
And that’s the point. The recount will determine which candidate the voters of Washington actually wanted, and trying to derail it on a technicality is an incredibly partisan exercise.
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12:06 PM
Abbas' balancing act
Mahmoud Abbas cleared the first hurdle in his race for the Palestinian leadership yesterday, as Arafat’s Fatah party formally nominated him as its candidate in the Jan. 9 election. The party chose Abbas instead of Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie or, more importantly, Marwan Barghouti -- a candidate popular with the Palestinian "street" but serving life in prison for planning suicide bombings against Israel.
The choice of Abbas is a sign that Fatah leadership is willing to take a moderate approach. Now comes the larger obstacle -- getting enough Palestinian voters to agree.
As Ilene Prusher writes in The New Republic, the same qualities that made Abbas a valuable to Arafat and the PLO over the years are potential obstacles to his election:
"[His] credentials were built on funding the guerrilla movement rather than actually fighting, and he was an intellectual -- he'd studied law in Damascus and did a Ph.D. dissertation on Israeli politics in Soviet Moscow. He was also a moderate: In the Israeli public's mind, there is no string of bloody attacks directly attached to Abbas's resumé. In fact, Palestinian insiders say, Abbas has been arguing for direct negotiations with Israel as far back as the early 1970s, when other PLO colleagues favored bombings and hijackings. He has gone on record saying that the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which began four years ago this September, is failing to achieve its aims through armed confrontation, and that Palestinians would do better to pursue their struggle through non-violent means."
Abbas, in his public speeches and in his brief term as prime minister, has talked about "fighting terrorism," an admirable position but one that angered the many potential voters who view groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad differently.
On Tuesday, he reached out to hard-liners by promising not to bend on the refugees' "right of return," an issue that derailed earlier peace attempts:
"We promise that we will not rest until the right of return of our people is achieved and the tragedy of our diaspora ends. We will stick to Palestinian steadfastness in support of the dream you (Arafat) lived for and you promised to your people."
The events of the past two days seem to encapsulate Abbas’ challenge. He’s still the presumed favorite to win the election. But without Arafat’s popularity across Palestinian factions, he'll find it difficult to keep right-wing factions from undermining the moderates, or vice versa.
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11:02 AM
Bush loses arms race
During the presidential debates, John Kerry properly lambasted the administration for its support of "usable" new nuclear weapons, particularly the development of "bunker busters." It now turns out George Bush can’t count on Congress to back him up on this, as the spending bill it passed over the weekend eliminates funding for the program.
As Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.)told the Chicago Tribune:
"This is the biggest victory that arms control advocates in Congress have had since 1992, when we were able to place limits on nuclear testing. If we are to convince other countries to forgo nuclear weapons, we cannot be preparing to build an entire new generation of nuclear weapons here in the U.S."Markey's right, and the "bunker buster" would represent a dangerous new step in nuclear proliferation. They would shift nuclear ambitions from deterrence to usability, spread deadly radiation into the soil and likely underground water supplies, and spark a new round of arms races that give terrorists more opportunities to acquire nuclear weapons.
Still, this is only a temporary victory for arms control. Bush will no doubt include a similar request in his next budget, and it will be up to the new, presumably more conservative Congress to make sure he doesn't get his way.
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4:13 PM
Al Qaida, still in business
Last week, Newsweek reported that the Al Qaeda threats presumed to target the U.S. election were more likely threats against Great Britain. Monday afternoon, British security forces reportedly foiled just such an attack.
ITV news network's political editor, citing a government source, reported that Al Qaeda planned to hijack airplanes and crash them into London's Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf:
"I simply do not know the details of how they found out, how they stopped it, how close the plot got, but I am in no doubt that this was a genuine feeling on the behalf of those in the security services that they had managed to foil a plot and make us safer."
While the public waits for the release of those details, the incident serves as yet another reminder that Al Qaeda is still out there, rebuilt and plotting while the U.S., Britain and their allies are stuck fighting an insurgency in Iraq.
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4:07 PM
How to frame Social Security
Some misguided commentators (ahem) have recently tried to argue that President Bush has no "mandate" for privatizing Social Security, since he didn't campaign on it. This argument looks increasingly weak: A recent USA Next poll revealed that 56.3 percent of voters support diverting payroll taxes into private accounts. But what's the catch? Those same voters want to make sure that privatization does not lead to benefit cuts, tax hikes, or deficit increases. Of course, as we've pointed out before, any private accounts scheme would have to do one of these.
Kevin Drum has suggested that Bush might get around this problem by simply stopping payments to the Social Security Trust Fund. That little trick would make it seem like no one was getting their benefits cut, though in reality it would force the future "bankrupt" date for Social Security to arrive sooner rather than later, at which point benefits would have to be cut or the deficit increased. But for the present, Bush could just wave his hands and suggest that no, no, we're really getting a free lunch.
Anyways, I bring this up because it seems that there's one clear way for Democrats to frame this issue: They have to start explaining right now that there is no such thing as a "free lunch" on Social Security. Any changes to fix the system will have to involve some form of sacrifice. If they do this convincingly, Bush won't be able to hoodwink voters and pretend that he can painlessly fix the system when he finally comes out with his proposal. The minority party can then credibly put forward their own, alternative plan for Social Security, without being accused of "hating economic freedom" or other such nonsense.
Naturally, there's always risk involved in telling voters that they'll need to make sacrifices. But it may not be the political death knell some would think. A March CBS/NYT poll found that 86 percent of voters understand that the deficit is at least a "somewhat serious issue." And according to an AP/IPSOS post-election poll, voters preferred deficit reduction over further tax cuts by a two-to-one margin. (These numbers come from Clay Risen's excellent New Republic cover story this week, suggesting that the Democrats can use deficit reduction as a political rallying cry.) Voters, it appears, can handle hard truths. And getting those truths out there is the only way Democrats can have even a semi-honest Social Security debate.
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2:52 PM
Gitmo on the Hudson update
During the Republican National Convention in New York, the NYPD arrested numerous protestors and bystanders, detaining many in a hastily assembled facility at Pier 57. (including Mother Jones writer JoAnn Wypijewski, who reported on the experience).
On Monday, lawyer Jonathan Moore filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of nearly 2,000 people who contend they were wrongly detained:
"All that was missing were the orange jumpsuits," Moore said. "Under the guise of terrorism and the fear of terrorism, we are all losing our rights..."They created their own little 'Guantanamo on the Hudson' equipped with chain-link fences and razor wire and guards armed with machine guns escorting prisoners everywhere."
The mass arrests in New York were a disgrace. While President Bush and others touted the value of "freedom" inside the convention, the streets outside demonstrated how quickly some basic freedoms could be rescinded.
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1:39 PM
Oh, right, Afghanistan.
With all the attention on Iraq these days, events in Afghanistan have been pushed out of the news. For those wondering what's going on over there, I recommend taking a peek at Afghanistan Watch, an in-depth blog run by the folks at The Century Foundation.
A recent post asks what George W. Bush's re-election means for Afghanistan. The good news is that Bush will probably continue to remain politically involved with the country—thanks to the dogged efforts of Afghan envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. As well, the Pentagon is at least putting forward a new plan to combat the surge in opium production—though its anyone's guess whether Congress will actually authorize the money. The bad news, meanwhile, is that the Pentagon will probably withdraw troops from the region even as the security situation deteriorates, and Bush will probably toe the line at any much-needed increases in reconstruction funds. Now that doesn't mean that Afghanistan's going to slip back into failed statehood; but the president certainly isn't erring on the side of caution.
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1:14 PM
Elections may be the least of Iraq's worries
As Jeff observes below, there's certainly no obvious answer as to how Iraq is going to hold a vote in the midst of all this violence. I would only add, though, that imperfect elections are not necessarily the key problem here. Transitional elections are almost always chaotic—think El Salvador in 1982, South Africa in 1994, or even Afghanistan earlier this year. Even if many Sunni Arabs can't get to the polls in January, a stopgap measure like that suggested by Juan Cole could help smooth over polling irregularities: Simply allocate by fiat 20 percent of National Assembly seats to various Sunni groups.
The really crucial concern is whether major political groups have a forum within which to work out their differences. Unfortunately, this is precisely what hasn't happened in Iraq—we decided to rig the interim Iraqi National Conference with pro-American allies rather than set up a loya jirga-type forum for major Iraqi groups to hash things out. So now Sunni Arabs, even if they do get 20 percent of Assembly seats, have everything to lose from a democratic process that will essentially make them a permanent, unprotected minority. The only rational thing for them to do, in this event, is to continue fighting in the hopes of winning a better deal.
Where does the U.S. fit in here? A number of Pentagon advisers are now suggesting that the U.S. rapidly draw down its troops post-election. If that happens, then the new elected government will either be able to defend itself on its own and straggle along, or else it won't, and Iraqi will have a major civil war on its hands. (Not surprisingly, military commanders are opposed to a draw-down.) One way out of this whole impasse might be to invite in the United Nations as a neutral moderator to help resolve political differences (especially in Kirkuk and Mosul), and perhaps to help negotiate a federalist arrangement in Iraq along the lines proposed by Moffawaq al-Rubaie—who, it should be noted, is extremely close to Shiite kingmaker Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Pentagon officials are opposed to this plan for unknown reasons, but that may change soon if they see that even the best-laid elections won't magically make all of Iraq's problems go away.
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12:27 PM
Voting issues for the post-Arafat era
Colin Powell is in the Middle East, meeting with Israeli and Palestinian officials ahead of the Jan. 9 Palestinian elections. While the possibility of violence disrupting the vote is of major concern, Palestinians also need to determine who can vote -- and make sure they have access.
As the Associated Press reports, Powell’s mission includes making sure elections can go forward fairly:
Israeli leaders assured Powell they will do their utmost to allow the vote to take place, including easing travel restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Powell said the Israelis expressed a willingness to allow Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem to vote, a contentious issue because Israel fears doing so could undermine its claims to the entire city. Powell said both sides agreed that the model used in the last Palestinian elections in 1996 -- allowing east Jerusalem residents to cast absentee ballots -- could be followed again.
While absentee ballots would certainly help in ensuring Palestinian franchise, there’s also the question of whether refugees living outside Palestinian territories can vote. As Helena Cobban writes in the Christian Science Monitor:
"But excluding from the vote those Palestinians living outside the homeland is a deeper and potentially more serious problem. The current plan is to hold the election under rules defined in the Oslo peace process in 1993. Back then, excluding diaspora Palestinians from the rolls might have been forgivable, because the election envisaged there (which was duly held in 1996) was for head of the Palestinian National Authority -- a body that everyone agreed was only temporary…"In nearly all other transition-related elections in the world in recent years - in South Africa, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq - provision has been made to include in the vote those made refugees by the preceding years of strife and conflict. Palestine's refugees, inside and outside the occupied territories, deserve no different. Enfranchisement would give the refugees a solid sense of political inclusion, and involve them constructively in the search for a workable solution."
The U.N. maintains lists of registered Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. On the other hand, letting refugees vote could rekindle the contentious “right of return” debate that Israel rejected in the Oslo agreement. If Palestinian leadership wants to take up the issue of refugee voters, that would necessitate talks with Israel and the U.S. There’s less than two months to go if that’s to happen.
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10:56 AM
Is Jan. 30 realistic?
This weekend, Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi confirmed he still plans to hold elections Jan. 30, at least temporarily denying fears that he would postpone the vote and extend the current state of martial law. As of Sunday, nearly 200 political parties have registered. But what Allawi hasn't explained is how he can hold secure nationwide elections while major population centers like Mosul are in chaos.
Shiite Ayatollah al-Sistani is still driving a get-out-the-vote effort among the country's Shiite majority, having issued an October fatwa requiring all eligible voters to participate.
"Without a fatwa from [al-Sistani], it's difficult for people to participate in this election because of the threats and apathy about the future. But if we have a religious edict, that definitely has an important impact," Baghdad University professor Jaber Habib told the Los Angeles Times. "With such a fatwa issued, I can't imagine anyone [Shiite] not voting."
Still, most Sunni parties plan to boycott the election, putting Allawi in a tight spot politically. On Monday, he announced an investigation into the U.S.-led raid of a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, an attempt to ease Sunni fears about his government's relationship with the U.S. Iraq's neighbors, meeting Monday in Egypt, have acknowledged Allawi's predicament, urging him to reach out to the Sunni minority while backing his description of insurgents as terrorists.
Even if Allawi can bridge the gap and fend off a boycott, the security situation isn't close to allowing meaningful electoral participation. He insisted again Monday that voting will go forward:
"The forces of darkness and terrorism will not benefit from this democratic experience and will fight it. But we are determined that this experiment succeeds."
As to how the experiment can succeed under current conditions, there's no obvious answer.
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10:39 AM
Who's reading over those Congressional bills?
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) is right: The key issue in this whole uproar over the Istook amendment on examining IRS returns is that virtually no one in Congress was given time to read the entire spending bill. Conference chairmen could have slipped almost anything they wanted to in there. Even more alarming, an old (and must-read) article by the Boston Globe's Susan Milligan notes that the House leadership has made this a regular practice:
The amount of time spent openly debating bills has dropped dramatically, and lawmakers are further hamstrung by an abbreviated schedule that gives them little time to fully examine a bill before voting on it. The House typically holds no votes until Tuesday evenings -- and then usually on non-controversial items such as the renaming of post offices -- then adjourns for the week by Thursday afternoon. The Iraq war resolution was debated just two days in 2002; the defense authorization bill, which customarily undergoes weeks of floor discussion, was debated and voted on this year in two days.
Lawmakers say they are still finding items in the Medicare package that passed last winter that they find objectionable, such as the financial penalty on seniors who wait to sign up for the Medicare prescription drug plan.
So much for representative government. There's been a lot of talk by Democrats lately about holding the majority party accountable for their misdeeds—by appealing directly to the public. The implied model here is Newt Gingrich's success back in the 1994 midterm elections, when Republicans retook the House by painting the Democrats as hidebound, corrupt, and oh yes, unaccountable. Now that strategy may or may not have been the reason for the GOP's victory—after all, a 1994 post-election New York Times poll revealed that 73 percent of voters had never even heard of Gingrich's "Contract with America"—but it's still well worth bringing these issues to light, and the Istook amendment offers a golden opportunity.
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9:53 AM
Death by a thousand cuts
As the 108th Congress met for the last time over the weekend, the Republican Party went wild. From allowing Tom DeLay to keep his leadership position even in the event of an indictment, to slipping in a secret amendment giving Appropriations Committee chairmen the right to look at anyone's tax returns, they had quite the little party.
There's something more going on here, though, than mere "overreach" on the part of the majority party. Take one of their recently passed measures, slipped into the omnibus spending bill, that would allow medical services to refuse to provide abortions. As Julie Saltman points out, besides being horrible policy, this is almost certainly unconstitutional. But that seems to be the whole point, doesn't it? As with the partial-birth abortion ban—a law that ran into similar legal troubles—Republican strategy seems to be to pass a minor bill, watch it get thrown out by the courts, and then rail against those activist judges who want to "force" doctors to perform abortions.
This, I think, is the sort of thing we can expect. The GOP won't try to use their further-entrenched minorities simply to pass wildly radical acts and bills—although there will be some of that. More frequently, they'll attack in small doses here and there, trying to inflict death by a thousand cuts. Josh Marshall, for instance, suggests that the Istook amendment on IRS returns is meant to chip away at the ability of liberal groups to do advocacy. That may well be, and that's exactly what Democrats need to look out for. They'll be on the defensive in ways they never thought they'd have to be on the defensive, and they're going to have to figure how to deal with it, fast.
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9:25 AM
Why was the intelligence bill so important?
The consensus on the failed intelligence reform bill seems to be that it's an outrage and House Republicans (and maybe the president) should be held accountable. Democrats will no doubt bang this point home—and well they should—but from a non-hack perspective, it's important to figure out exactly what about the intelligence bill was so crucial.
The rationale behind creating a National Intelligence Director, as well as a unified Counterterrorism Center, was always to promote intelligence sharing between agencies. But note that the current set-up doesn't necessarily hinder such sharing. Prior to the thwarted Millennium Plot in 1999, "information about terrorism flowed widely and abundantly," according to the 9/11 Commission Report—primarily because everyone was on edge and nervous about Y2K. The agencies are presumably on edge today, in a post 9/11 world, and cooperation seems to have measurably improved of late.
There is one critical reform, however, that absolutely needs to take place: Someone—be it a National Intelligence Director (NID) or someone in the Pentagon—ought to take charge of coordinating our intelligence on WMD proliferation. At present, no one really does this. As Ashton Carter, an assistant secretary of defense under Clinton, told Congress earlier this year, the Defense Department does a miserable job using its technical capacities to track proliferation. To fix this, the proposed Senate bill would have allowed the NID firm control over reconnaissance agencies in the Pentagon. (In this, the Senate bill actually goes much further than the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, allowing the NID to "reprogram" existing projects.)
Alas, Donald Rumsfeld, along with a few House Republicans, managed to scuttle all reform precisely because of this provision—the single most important provision in the entire bill. (They managed to drum up some nonsense about interrupting the chain of command.) Given the importance of nuclear proliferation—and our utter failure to prevent it to date—this ought to be a major point of focus.
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