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Economy

Bob Woodward’s New Book Exposes Boehner’s Debt Ceiling Duplicity

By Aviva Shen on Sep 11, 2012 at 6:46 pm

During the debt ceiling fight in 2011, Republicans decried President Obama’s debt limit plan for its use of a so-called “gimmick” to reduce spending. The Democrats’ plan and Obama’s budget eliminated $1 trillion reserved for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) in Iraq and Afghanistan, which would not be spent anyway as the two wars were winding down. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and the Republican leadership repeatedly complained that the OCO savings were an imaginary “gimmick.”

But Bob Woodward’s new book, The Price of Politics, reports that Boehner adopted a markedly different tone during negotiations of what became the Budget Control Act behind closed doors, offering the OCO savings to the surprise of the Democratic leaders:

The leaders had essentially reached an agreement, but there was still a crucial question that had not been answered. What happened if the supercommittee couldn’t agree on the second $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction? What would be the trigger or enforcement mechanism to make sure $1.2 trillion was cut from spending?
We could use the $1 trillion in imaginary savings from the Overseas Contingency Operations, Boehner and McConnell said. The wars were ending anyway.
Reid was particularly surprised, he had pushed dozens of times to use this OCO money.
“We can never put that in writing,” Boehner said. “but you have our word.” It can never even be talked about, McConnell and Boehner said, never be repeated outside the room.
Reid and Pelosi agreed. Pelosi was happy to use the imaginary money. It was better than more entitlement cuts.
The deal was done.

After the deal was struck, Boehner gave Woodward a different account of the OCO savings, scoffing, “It’s the same old Washington kick the can down the road. But [Reid] thought when it got down to the end, maybe I’d buy it. But I never did buy it.”

Justice

GOP House Nominee Opposes The Death Penalty: ‘We Have Put Innocent People To Death’

By Scott Keyes on Sep 11, 2012 at 6:30 pm

IA-02 nominee John Archer (R)

A GOP congressional nominee in Iowa has a succinct — and tragic — reason for bucking his party’s stance on the death penalty: “we have put innocent people to death.”

John Archer, the Republican challenger in Iowa’s second congressional district currently represented by Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-IA), was asked during an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board today about any issues where he differs with his party. “I believe the Party platform calls for the death penalty and I’m personally opposed to the death penalty,” Archer said. He pointed to his experience clerking at the Illinois Supreme Court where, he saw, “firsthand” that “we have put innocent people to death.”

QUESTIONER: Are there any issues where you part ways with the Republican Party?

ARCHER: Yes. I believe the Party platform calls for the death penalty and I’m personally opposed to the death penalty. Having clerked for an Illinois Supreme Court Justice, I know firsthand, and unfortunately, we have put innocent people to death. Life is too precious to do that.

Though Archer did not specify a precise case, the morality of the death penalty has been in the headlines recently. An Ohio inmate who had spent 24 years on death row was freed last week after a Catholic priest discovered the prosecutor had withheld evidence showing the man’s innocence. Last month, a Texas inmate was executed despite the Supreme Court’s prohibition on putting mentally retarded individuals to death. Meanwhile, a Georgia man was put to death last year despite a worldwide campaign on his behalf noting that there was too much doubt about whether or not he was actually guilty.

Because of problems with the death penalty that Archer alluded to, including racial and socioeconomic inequities, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) last year made his state the 16th to abolish the death penalty, 11 years after Gov. George Ryan (R) imposed a moratorium on executions in the state.

Climate Progress

Arctic Death Spiral: The Video

By Joe Romm on Sep 11, 2012 at 6:11 pm

Last week, I reported that leading scientific experts were warning we could see a “near ice-free Arctic in summer” in a decade — if volume trends continue.

Here’s a short video showing those ominous trends from 1979 through early September 2012:

Since 1979, the volume of summer Arctic sea ice has declined by 75% and accelerating.…  This video by Andy Lee Robinson illustrates the dramatic decline from 1979 until September 2, 2012 (day 246). Sea ice volume is calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System [PIOMAS].

And that is why what’s happening in the Arctic deserves the label “death spiral.” The main conclusion of the PIOMAS modeling — thinner and thinner ice — has been verified by The European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 probe.

The serious consequences of the death spiral are discussed in these two post:

And you can hear some leading experts on the Arctic talk about sea ice trends in this Radio EcoShock show:

Rutgers scientist Jennifer Francis explains how this changes weather for billions of people in the Northern Hemisphere. Plus the Director of the Snow and Ice Data Center, Mark Serreze, on [the recent sea ice] record and what it means, and analysis from polar scientist Jennifer Bitz, U of Washington.

This post has been updated.

NEWS FLASH

Tommy Thompson Apologizes For Campaign’s Gay-Baiting ‘Mistake’ | Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) has apologized for the gay-baiting email and tweets sent by his campaign spokesperson sent out to demonize senate opponent Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D). Explaining that he was “very upset” when he heard what Brian Nemoir had distributed to conservative bloggers, Thompson said, “I thought it was a mistake, I’m sorry, and he’s apologized, I believe. He shouldn’t have done it.” Nemoir will remain on the campaign, but no longer serve as a spokesperson for it.

Education

REPORT: America Is Failing To Send Students From Less Educated Households To College

By Travis Waldron on Sep 11, 2012 at 6:00 pm

The United States is falling behind other industrialized countries when it comes to making a college education attainable for all of its citizens, according to a report released today. The report, from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, found that the United States is among the worst developed countries in ensuring that young people will obtain a college degree if their parents did not, as Bloomberg reports:

The odds that a young person in the U.S. will go to college if their parents haven’t — 29 percent — are among the lowest of developed countries. That’s according to a report released today by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development.

As the following chart from the report shows, the U.S. is ahead of only Canada and New Zealand in its ability to get students into college if their parents did not also earn a college degree:

One of the biggest barriers to entry for these students is the rising cost of college, since such students tend to come from lower-income families. College costs have soared in recent decades, becoming prohibitive for low-income students who can’t afford the cost.

These numbers are contributing to a growing education gap, as a report on inequality and the middle class from the Center for American Progress detailed earlier this year. That report found that “the probability that a top-scoring low-income student completes college is about the same as the probability that a low-scoring high-income student does,” and that the gap between high-income and low-income students is 30 to 40 percent larger than it was just a generation ago.

Health

Under Fire For Medicare Plan, Romney Tries To Distance Himself From Details In Ryan’s Proposal

By Guest Blogger on Sep 11, 2012 at 5:50 pm

Our guest blogger is Emily Oshima Lee, a research associate on the health policy team at the Center for American Progress.

In its first specific response to the recent CAP Action Fund report that detailed the exorbitant extra costs all seniors would have to pay under the Romney-Ryan premium support plan, Romney’s campaign claims that the CAPAF analysis is incorrectly based on the assumption that Romney’s premium support proposal includes a voucher cap. The CAPAF analysis did, indeed, assume that Romney’s premium support proposal would include a voucher cap – because he endorsed such a plan in December 2011.

The structure of the voucher program CAPAF used in its analysis is, in fact, identical to the cap Rep. Paul Ryan proposed in his 2012 House Budget Plan, which Romney has heartily endorsed multiple times, calling the plan “marvelous,” “an excellent piece of work,” and stating that he was “very supportive” of the plan that was “very much consistent with what [he] put out earlier.” A top Romney adviser even stated that Romney “would have signed” the Ryan budget, although Romney’s advisers have had trouble articulating which policies, exactly, he would support in the past. CAPAF felt that it was fair and reasonable to use the details of the Romney-endorsed Ryan budget to analyze the effects of the plan because Romney has failed to outline the specifics of his premium support proposal.

The question on the amount of the voucher, in fact, is featured as one of several “Frequently Asked Questions About Mitt’s Plan” on his campaign website. The question and response on his website read:

How high will the premium support be? How quickly will it grow?

Mitt continues to work on refining the details of his plan, and he is exploring different options.

The response does not provide any information on which options Romney is exploring, and certainly does not specify the rate of growth. As a recent Boston Globe article noted, “Romney’s plan is not clear about how quickly premium support payments would grow, and it does not explicitly reject the idea of a cap…Romney makes no guarantees that vouchers will keep up with insurance costs.” Yet, even as Romney fails to provide any specifics, his camp asserts that “there has been insufficient attention paid to the details of the various proposals.” Other than his statements of support for the 2012 House Budget Plan, Romney has not provided any details that might allow the public to figure out how his proposals, when implemented, would affect seniors, the national budget, and the solvency of Medicare.
Read more

Security

GOP Leader Uses Memory Of 9/11 Victims To Argue Against Military Spending Cuts

By Ben Armbruster on Sep 11, 2012 at 5:24 pm

The Hill reports that House Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) invoked the memory of 9/11 victims to argue against military spending cuts:

“We honor those who fell 11 years ago today. We honor those who fought to try to save some of those who died,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said in a press conference following a closed-door conference meeting. “The best thing that we can do as a people to honor those individuals is to make sure that it never happens again, and we have looming massive defense cuts that this House has acted to substitute.”

The “looming massive” cuts Cantor refers to is the nearly $500 billion military spending sequester mandated by the Budget Control Act. There are perhaps a variety of reasons that (mainly) Republicans warn against these cuts but Cantor is moving into different territory by using the memory of 9/11 victims to make his case.

The reality is that, while the arbitrary automatic cuts probably aren’t the best way to reduce the Pentagon’s bloated budget (there are alternatives), the military spending sequester would bring DOD’s baseline budget back to 2006 levels.

Justice

TV Host Jim Cramer Says Father Will Not Be Allowed To Vote Because Of Pennsylvania Voter ID Law

By Scott Keyes on Sep 11, 2012 at 5:20 pm

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's Mad Money

Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s finance program Mad Money, is seeing the effects of voter suppression laws firsthand.

This morning, Cramer tweeted about his father, a Pennsylvania resident who stands to lose his right to vote because of the state’s new restrictive voter ID law. Like thousands of Pennsylvania who could be disenfranchised in November, Cramer’s father lacks a voter ID because he’s a senior citizen and does not drive. Cramer also noted that he doesn’t have access to his citizenship documents.

Cramer’s father is one of 750,000 Pennsylvanians whose right to cast a ballot is in jeopardy this fall. Some residents don’t have access to an ID agency, others don’t have access to their birth certificate, and some are just too old for the computer system to recognize their age and give them an ID. In total, approximately one in ten otherwise-eligible Pennsylvanians don’t have an ID that officials would accept under the state’s new voter ID law.

The law’s fate is currently in the State Supreme Court, where hearings will begin this week. If they allow it to stand, it will be in effect for this year’s election.

A House Democratic Twitter account responded to Cramer with a promise that Rep. Bob Brady (D-PA), who represents part of Philadelphia, would “personally see to it that your dad gets the necessary ID and transportation to vote.” Yet even if Cramer’s situation is successfully resolved, hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians who don’t have children on national TV could still be turned away from the polls in November.

Update

As noted by TPM, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation came across Cramer’s tweet and are helping his father obtain a voter ID. But the matter remains illustrative of the challenges thousands of Pennsylvanians are going through to obtain IDs.

LGBT

Romney’s Insensitivity To LGBT People: ‘I Didn’t Know You Had Families’

By Zack Ford on Sep 11, 2012 at 5:20 pm

Boston Spirit magazine has dug a bit deeper into Mitt Romney’s past interactions with LGBT people, particularly during his time as governor. Many of these stories are known: his firing of two state employees ostensibly for marrying their same-sex partners, his dissolution of the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth,  his blocking of an anti-bullying guide because it contained the words “bisexual” and “transgender,” and his testimony against marriage equality to the Senate Judiciary Committee after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled the state’s ban was unconstitutional. But this new profile illustrates a more profound level of insensitivity to the experience of LGBT people than his past position statements suggest.

David Wilson and Julie Goodridge, two of the plaintiffs whose case led to the legalization of marriage equality in Massachusetts, described meeting with Romney to discuss their experiences. According to Wilson, “it was like talking to a robot. No expression, no feeling.” At one point, Romney remarked, “I didn’t know you had families.” Goodridge recalls her final exchange with the governor, which proved to her that he had “no capacity for empathy”:

GOODRIDGE: Governor Romney, tell me — what would you suggest I say to my 8 year-old daughter about why her mommy and her ma can’t get married because you, the governor of her state, are going to block our marriage?

ROMNEY: I don’t really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don’t you just tell her the same thing you’ve been telling her the last eight years.

Romney described the meeting to the press as “pleasant,” as Goodridge cried.

This lack of understanding for the experience of same-sex families seems to have played out even on the occasions in which he was open to supporting LGBT protections. Josh Friedes, who once served as advocacy director for the Massachusetts Freedom to Marry Coalition, explained Romney’s business-informed rationale:

FRIEDES: He made clear that he was willing to listen to business leaders about the issue of family recognition. The impression was that if business leaders told him certain benefits and protections would increase the productivity of gay workers, he would be open to supporting those. … It was not really about what these protections would do for gay families, but what they would do for the titans of industry… It felt like there was a lord/serf relationship.

Ardith Wieworka knows she cannot prove that she was fired as the state’s Office of Child Care Services just because she was going to marry her same-sex partner, but she remembers what Romney’s administration told her when they fired her: they wanted someone more “like them.”

Health

STUDY: Health Care Reform Helps Small Businesses

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Sep 11, 2012 at 4:55 pm

Opponents of President Obama’s health care reform law often justify their position by claiming Obamacare will hurt small businesses. But research on the subject in Massachusetts — where the health care reform that Mitt Romney enacted during his time as governor provides a test case for national health reform policy, thanks to its similarities to Obamacare — disproves this conservative talking point.

Economic researchers on a recent Georgetown University panel all agreed that Massachusetts’ small business owners were actually bolstered by health care reform, as the number of small businesses offering health care to their employees increased from 70 percent to 77 percent in the time since Romney enacted the reform in 2006. Linda Blumberg, an economist and senior fellow at the Urban Institute, said her organization’s research confirmed that small business owners are not struggling to afford the insurance plans that the health reform law requires them to provide for their employees:

“Our research demonstrated very clearly that there is no evidence that the reforms have had any negative impact on employment at all,” Blumberg said. Her organization studied specifically some industries that might feel a greater impact under the law—small employers or the retail and restaurant industries, which often don’t offer health insurance—and concluded the same. “In none of these sectors did we see reduced employment,” Blumberg said.

In fact, said Jack Connors Jr., a founding partner at Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, Inc., a Boston marketing firm, one of the largest in the United States, businesses could see a benefit when health insurance is “accepted as part of the compensation package for employees.”

“Many business leaders would say we have a competitive advantage,” Connors said.

Just like Obamacare, Romney’s health reform in Massachusetts is predicated on an individual mandate that requires employers to provide adequate health insurance coverage to their employees or risk paying a penalty. Although Republican lawmakers have decried Obamacare for strangling small business owners and middle-class workers, and have wasted about 89 hours and $51 million dollars in their attempts to repeal the law, the evidence from Romney’s home state suggests their efforts are doing little to protect small business interests.

Blumberg explained that her research on the economic effects of health care reform has left her confused about why Obamacare remains so politically contentious. “This was very much a compromise between liberal sensibilities and business sensibilities,” she explained. “So the entire perception of the federal law has been shocking to me, because this was really laid out as a moderate approach.”

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