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As Combat Troops Lose Paychecks, Dozens of Senators, Reps. Say They Will Forego Pay During Shutdown

By Guest Blogger on Apr 8, 2011 at 8:00 pm

With the government just hours away from shutdown and the Obama Administration already preparing to halt pay for combat troops and furlough 800,000 federal workers, dozens of members of Congress have announced that they will skip pay during a government shutdown.

More than twenty-four senators have already signed a pledge written by Sen. Jon Manchin (D-WV) promising to “forego my federal salary until we reach an agreement” by either returning it to the Treasury or donating it to charity. They’ve been joined by a bi-partisan group of House members, including Reps. John Boehner (R-OH), Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI) who say they will donate any pay they receive during the shutdown to charity.

Earlier this month, the Senate rejected a bill put forward by Sen. Barbara Box (D-CA) to cut off congressional pay in the event of a shutdown. President Obama and congressional leaders will still be paid even if they fail to reach a budget agreement tonight.

Meanwhile in a development military families have called “absolutely devastating,” combat troops will not receive pay during the shutdown. Furloughed civilians working at military bases are also at risk of losing their security clearance, and thus their jobs, if they run into financial trouble while out of work. The shutdown would also hamper the economic recovery, halting funding for basic infrastructure, blocking tax refunds and small business loans, and exacerbating state budget crises.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) has said she will not forgo her paycheck, telling MSNBC that “it’s very difficult for me to say, ‘Hey, I can give up my paycheck,’ because the reality is, I have financial obligations that I have to meet on a month-to-month basis that doesn’t make it possible for me.” Unfortunately many military families, and federal workers, have no choice but to give up their paychecks– and still face those monthly financial obligations.

– Kevin Donohoe

Politics

Kyl Walks Back Planned Parenthood Claim: It ‘Was Not Intended To Be A Factual Statement’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 8, 2011 at 6:45 pm

As ThinkProgress reported earlier today, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) defended Republicans’ willingness to shut down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood by falsely claiming that abortion is “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” In reality, just three percent of its work is related to abortion. This afternoon, CNN brought on Planned Parenthood’s Judy Tabar to discuss his comment. During the interview, CNN anchor TJ Holmes relayed a statement from Kyl’s office walking back the comment, claiming the statement was not meant to be “factual”:

HOLMES: We did call his office trying to ask what he was talking about there. And I just want to give it you verbatim here. It says, ‘his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions.’

Watch it:

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 8, 2011 at 6:18 pm

Gonna shut you down:

— “The sweeping budget blueprint that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., released this week marked the fifth time since 1980 that Republicans have followed an electoral breakthrough by attempting to restructure Medicare or Social Security.”

— The Purple Health Plan seems like a relatively small variant of the new Affordable Care Act status quo.

— If you live in New York City you can come see me speak on a panel tomorrow afternoon or (more fun) see me drink at the afterparty later.

— Paul Ryan’s bad infrastructure ideas.

— Mike Huckabee says the GOP should cut a deal.

— Profiles in cowardice.

Beach Boys, “Shut Down”.

Security

Why Are Visa Applicants Forced To Travel To Mexico’s Most Dangerous City?

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Apr 8, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Almost anyone who wants to come to the U.S. — either as a visitor or a resident — has to physically visit a U.S. consulate in their country of origin to apply for a visa and undergo an interview by an Embassy officer. In Mexico, those applying for U.S residency can only do so at one location: the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez — where over 3,000 people were killed in 2010 alone. Osha Gray Davidson has an interesting article up on Mother Jones in which he raises the question of whether the U.S. purposefully choose to put the only consulate in Mexico with the capacity to issue immigrant visas in the country’s most dangerous city:

On immigration-related websites like the Juarez, Mexico Discussion Forum and Immigrate2US, members often speculate as to why, of all of the cities in Mexico, they are forced to go to the Murder Capital. Some see it as a deliberate move to discourage people from applying. “This process is built to break one down,” wrote a member of the Juárez forum. “And most importantly, to instill fear.”[...]

“The websites say stay away, don’t travel there,” one woman complained to me. “But for families who are trying to do the right, legal, thing and go through the immigration process, they do not give us any other option.”

According to the article, U.S. officials claim that the consulate’s location is completely unintentional. “The decision was made years ago…before the increased drug-related violence along the border area,” stated Nicole Thompson of the U.S. State Department. A consulate employee also pointed out that the consulate is located in the one of the city’s safer areas. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department warns its own citizens to “defer unnecessary travel” to Juárez because of the deadly violence.

The problem with that though is that anyone who isn’t coming from within that safe area has to travel through the toughest parts of Ciudad Juárez. While it’s true that “the war is between the cartels and gangs” as Thompson claimed, civilians often get caught in the crosshairs. In fact, one visa applicant already has. Gray Davidson tells the story of Susan O’Brien (a pseudonym) and her husband, Sabas. Sabas entered the U.S. illegally and left so that he could apply for legal immigrant status to be with his U.S. citizen wife and child. During the time he spent in Ciudad Juárez he was kidnapped and killed.

Up until 1988, immigrants visas were once processed at all nine of the U.S. consulates in Mexico. In 1992, Ciudad Juárez became the only place where Mexicans could apply to legally enter the United States. State Department officials claim the consolidation was purely administrative and that it would be a huge hassle to continuously move the consulate around in response to Mexico’s turbulent drug war.

But it seems to me that it’s in the nation’s interest to make it easier for those who want to enter the U.S. through legal channels to do so. It’s bad enough to deny all those undocumented immigrants who made the treacherous journey across the border in search of a better life a path to legalization. Asking Mexicans to risk their lives to “get in the back of the line” to be in the U.S. legally is unacceptable and, as far as I can tell, unnecessary when there are eight other U.S. consulates to choose from.

Politics

Government Shutdown Would Force Recall Of Some Federal Workers Overseas

By George Zornick on Apr 8, 2011 at 5:45 pm

This morning on the Senate floor, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) tried to downplay the effects of a government shutdown, which now seems all but assured. Kyl said if there was a shutdown, it would likely be brief, and “while there would be some dislocations and inconveniences, I do think the media exaggerates a little bit the result of a shutdown over the weekend.”

Unfortunately, however, even a brief shutdown could have wide-ranging and expensive effects. The Constitution forbids any funds from leaving the U.S. Treasury if they haven’t been appropriated by Congress, and so all non-essential government services will cease immediately in the event of an appropriations lapse. In some cases, this means requiring federal workers all over the globe to return home immediately.

For example, NASA researchers in Greenland who are monitoring Arctic land and sea ice would have to return to the United States right away, and bring all of their equipment with them. Their work is aimed at quantifying the loss of Arctic ice due to global warming, and their mission may have to be abandoned entirely:

“ALL NASA IceBridge personnel now in Greenland would return home if there is a government shutdown,” agency spokesman Steve Cole said in an email yesterday.

That means sending NASA’s P-3B research plane back to the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s eastern shore. The space agency’s King Air plane would return to its home at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

Reassembling IceBridge scientists, planes and crew in Greenland would be “a pretty big production,” he said. “It takes several flights just for delivering people and cargo.”

It’s doubtful that NASA — which, like the rest of the federal government, has operated under a series of temporary funding measures since October — would be able to find the cash to pay for those flights.

Also, some overseas workers with with the Federal Trade Commission — which promotes consumer protection, and policies anti-competitive business practices — would also have to return home:

Those employees in a travel status, including those overseas on short and long-term assignments, will be contacted and instructed, as appropriate, either to stay where they are (although in a furloughed status) or to return to their duty stations at the earliest practicable opportunity.

Yesterday, Steve Benen reported that even the threat of a shutdown is forcing many government agencies to create contingency plans to take their websites offline, which will incur significant expenses.

The Republican position that this standoff is about spending is already hard to believe, since the amount of cuts have already been agreed upon and negotiations are stuck on “riders” that would restrict funding of women’s health services. It’s even further undercut by the fact the shutdown will actually increase government spending.

Related Posts

Yglesias

The Affordable Care Act Contains Plans To Reduce The Growth In Health Care Costs

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 8, 2011 at 5:32 pm

The debate over the budgetary impact of the Affordable Care Act quickly became polarized between Democrats, who said that Congress should rely on the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of the legislation, and critics who for reasons that were never made clear to me said it made sense to initiate a one-time exception to the rule and assert without argument that the CBO is wrong. Lost in this argument were assertions from the other side that the CBO was being too pessimistic. But there’s a decent argument that they were.

The basic shape of things is that the CBO was only willing to score crude quantitative means of reducing health care costs. If you cut a spending formula, the CBO will score that as a saving. If you tax certain kinds of insurance plans, the CBO will score a reduction in demand for those plans. But the CBO refused the score the idea that certain incentive programs and pilot initiatives would actually drive more efficient organization of health care. That, however, is a scoring rule they adopted, it’s not a claim that it’s impossible to provide health care more efficiently. And you can’t deny that there are an awful lot of initiatives tucked here and there in the Affordable Care Act that are intended to do this. The CBO didn’t want to score them, but they are in there, and they were put in there by smart people who believe they’ll work.

Some of those smart people—David M. Cutler, Karen Davis, and Kristof Stremikis—did a paper on this for CAP back in May of 2010. Here’s a taste:

Other estimates, however, suggest that an aggressive approach to health care modernization could result in significantly greater cost reductions. Beeuwkes-Buntin and Cutler estimated a 1.5-percentage-point reduction in cost increases annually from significant health care reform, or more than $700 billion in the 10-year window. These savings would come from two primary sources. First, administrative expenses incurred by provider groups would decline as electronic medical records, and incentives to use them appropriately, are widely disseminated. The potential for administrative savings has been stressed by both provider groups and insurers, and they are distinct from the reduction in insurance administration noted above. Second, reform would lead to fewer and less-costly acute care episodes. Potentially substantial savings could be had by preventing certain illnesses from recurring through better coordination of care and by rationalizing what is done when a person becomes sick by bundling payments, paying more for quality care, and sharing savings with accountable provider organizations.

Similarly, Hussey, Eibner, Ridgely et al. estimate that savings of more than 10 percent are possible, largely from payment reforms like bundled-payment systems. Realizing these savings over a decade implies cost reductions of nearly 1.5 percentage points annually. A more conservative mid-range set of assumptions suggests that such reforms could reduce growth in national health expenditures by about one percentage point per year.

Now maybe you think Cutler, et. al. are wrong about this. Indeed, maybe time will show that they are wrong. But it’s mistaken to argue that progressives have no vision for further controlling the growth in health care costs. The belief is that some of this stuff will pan out. And the hope is that once we see what’s panning out, we’ll have a better idea of how to build on the successes. That’s the plan.

Yglesias

The Income Tax: Brought To You By World War II

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 8, 2011 at 5:31 pm

Very interesting chart from Catherine Mulbrandon shows us how the income tax went from being a marginal to a mass phenomenon:

Income tax has a certain logic as a wartime measure, especially given the super-full employment conditions that pertained at the time. Over the long term, however, I think people will come around to the future that a consumption tax with a progressive rate structure makes a lot more sense when we’re not amidst a total war.

LGBT

State LGBT Watch: Trans Protections Advance In CT, Face Challenges in TN

By Zack Ford on Apr 8, 2011 at 5:00 pm

Another mix of good and bad news from the states, as the Arkansas Supreme Court overturns Act 1, the 2008-passed ban on same-sex adoption, and civil unions advance in Delaware.

- ARKANSAS: In a unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex adoption, passed by referendum in 2008, is unconstitutional. The decision relied primarily on citizens’ right to privacy. Proponents of the ban have called the decision “anti-child.”

- CONNECTICUT: Earlier this week, the legislature’s Judiciary Committee advanced a bill that would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and expression.

- DELAWARE: The state Senate passed a bill offering civil unions for same-sex couples. The measure is also expected to pass the House before the end of next week, despite robo calls from opponents of the measure.

- MARYLAND: The Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee held hearings yesterday on a bill that would end transgender discrimination, but has not yet voted to advance it to the full Senate, where the Senate President has promised to expedite it.

- MONTANA: State Rep. Ken Peterson (R) helped block a measure that would have scrubbed the state’s unconstitutional sodomy laws from the books, insisting “homosexual acts” should still be prosecuted so that “homosexuals can’t go out into the heterosexual community and try to recruit people or try to enlist them in homosexual acts.”

- NORTH CAROLINA: The House of Representatives has introduced a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage.

- TENNESSEE: The state legislature moved swiftly to advance a bill blocking cities from protecting LGBT people from discrimination, after Nashville approved such a measure earlier this week. The Family Action Council of Tennessee continues to push its “bathroom predator” video.

Keep track of how LGBT issues are advancing in the states at our State LGBT Watch.

Politics

RNC Chair Reince Priebus Validates Birther Donald Trump’s Candidacy With Introductory Phone Call

By Travis Waldron on Apr 8, 2011 at 4:55 pm

Real estate mogul and confirmed birther Donald Trump received an “introductory” phone call from Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus Thursday, the same day Trump announced he was sending investigators to Hawaii to research President Obama’s birth. Just a day before, a new poll showed Trump running in a statistical dead-heat with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), also a presidential candidate, and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly have denounced Trump’s birther conspiracy. But with Priebus’ call, the RNC appears willing and ready to embrace a Trump candidacy. Politico reports:

Nonetheless, the call is validation of Trump’s role on the national scene and his draw for the GOP right now, at a time when many Republicans are bemoaning their choices for 2012 and looking for something fresh.

Trump’s birther strategy, meanwhile, doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. He is scheduled to meet this morning with Tea Party leaders and Arizona state Rep. Carl Seel (R) to discuss the state’s birther bill, which would require presidential candidates to prove they are natural born citizens.

Climate Progress

GOP Threatens To Shut Down Government So Coal Companies Can Blow Up Mountains

By Brad Johnson on Apr 8, 2011 at 4:25 pm

With the government mere hours away from shutdown, the budget debate has centered around policy riders that GOP lawmakers insist must be included in any funding bill, most controversially involving Planned Parenthood funding. In an interview with CNN this morning, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) said Tea Party Republicans are also willing to shut down the government on behalf of mountaintop removal coal mining in the “down-to-the-wire federal spending-bill talks”:

Mountaintop mining was put on the table late in the game. Who knew that was going to lead to the shutdown of the federal government? You know, it would unconscionable at this stage not to avert a shutdown and the economic damage it would cause to this fragile recovery.

Watch it:

In February, the coal-powered House approved a number of amendments to the budget bill (H.R. 1) that would prevent the EPA from updating rules on mountaintop removal permitting, coal ash storage, emissions of coarse particulate matter, and a variety of other clean air and clean water safeguards. Three of these riders were aimed specifically at reversing the actions of the Obama Administration to strengthen permitting requirements for mountaintop removal mines — and thus reinstate the polluter-friendly rules set up by the Bush Administration.

Update

At The Green Miles, Miles Grant notes this coal-fueled assault comes even as Appalachian residents have come to the Capitol to stop the destruction of their homeland:

The move comes on the same week that over 150 citizens with the Alliance for Appalachia converged on Capitol Hill for the Week in Washington to end mountaintop removal.


Update

,Conrad now says that the GOP demands on mountaintop removal and greenhouse pollution have been taken off the table. “They’ve apparently backed off of that,” he told reporters.


Update

,WSJ reports there may be a rider ordering an economic study of limits on mountaintop mining:

Ms. Boxer said that the spending measure may include language ordering a study of the EPA’s efforts to regulate mountaintop-removal mining, which is common in Appalachia region and involves blasting off mountaintops to get at the coal underneath. “We’re working on the details,” Ms. Boxer said.


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