House Republicans Plan Two Month Vacation, Leaving Key Bills Awaiting Action

By Josh Israel on Sep 14, 2012 at 6:34 pm

House Republican Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced Friday that after next week, the House will stand in recess until November 13. His plan for a nearly two month vacation will undoubtedly allow more time for campaigning, but will leave several vital bills awaiting action.

Among the important legislation the House will likely not address before the November elections:

1. Violence Against Women Act re-authorization. Though a bipartisan Senate majority passed the a strong re-authorization bill in April, the Republican House leadership refused to allow a vote on the Senate version of the bill. The House passed a watered down version on a mostly-party lines vote, leaving victims to wait for House action.

2. The American Jobs Act. Republicans have been blocking President Obama’s jobs legislation for more than a year. Though House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) promised in 2010 that a GOP Congress would focus on job creation, he has blocked this bill’s immediate infrastructure investments, tax credits for working Americans and employers, and aid to state and local governments to prevent further layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials.

3. Tax cuts for working families. In July, the Senate passed a bill extending tax-cuts for the first $250,000 in annual income. The Republican House leadership has refused to consider the bill, holding it hostage to their demands for a full extension of Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires.

4. Veterans Job Corps Act. The Senate is currently considering bipartisan legislation to help America’s veterans find jobs. The Air Force Times reports that the Republican House has “shown no interest” in the legislation to support those who served the country.

5. Sequestration. A spokesman for Boehner said earlier this week that stopping budget cuts he voted for last August “topped our July agenda and remains atop our agenda for September.” While House Republicans have complained about the imminent spending reductions and passed a bill that would require President Obama to find offsets for spending cuts they don’t like, Republican Leader Canter could not name a single compromise he was willing to make to get a deal.

6. Farm Bill. Despite strong support for a 5-year farm bill from even conservative groups like the Farm Bureau Association — the House leadership has not scheduled a vote on the bill. The current law expires September 30. Without passage, 90 percent of the work of the Department of Agriculture could be defunded.

7. Wind tax credit. The Senate may act next week to renew an expiring wind energy tax credit. Despite bipartisan support — including from original author Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Examiner notes that the House is unlikely to pass the renewal. Despite GOP calls for energy independence, the expiration has threatened the wind energy industry and already led to job cuts.

These, in addition to drought assistance, postal service reform, addressing the Estate Tax, cybersecurity legislation, fixes for Medicare reimbursement rates and the Alternative Minimum Tax, and all 12 of the FY 2013 Appropriations Bills remain unaddressed.

Four years ago, Republicans objected when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) adjourned Congress for a five-week August recess without bringing up their energy legislation. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) shouted “Madame Speaker, where art thou? Where oh where has Congress gone?” Now, they plan a two month vacation, even if it means allowing vital programs to expire and working families to suffer.

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NEWS FLASH

Court Strikes Down Wisconsin Union-Busting Law | Wisconsin Judge Juan Colas ruled that Governor Scott Walker’s (R-WI) law eliminating collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions was unconstitutional under both the Wisconsin and United States constitutions. The law, which does not save the state any money but crushes the political and economic influence of unions, has been in effect for roughly one year. It is unclear, per ABC’s reporting, whether union restrictions will be suspended immediately pending a likely Walker appeal.

Economy

Former Wall Street Executive: Complexity Of Today’s Banks ‘Makes You Weep Blood Out Of Your Eyes’

By Pat Garofalo on Sep 14, 2012 at 5:20 pm

Former Bank of America Executive Sallie Krawcheck

Back in July, former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill — who is largely credited with convincing lawmakers in Washington to shatter the Depression-era regulations separating commercial banks from risky investment banks — said that the nation’s biggest banks should be broken up. This led to an outcry from Wall Street executives, who claim that banks need to be big and complex in order to be competitive.

But at least one more former Wall Street executive thinks that banks today are too big to manage. Former Bank of America executive Sallie Krawcheck said yesterday that the complexity of Wall Street banks “makes you weep blood out of your eyes“:

On Thursday, one former Wall Street executive put the issue in vivid terms as she raised concerns about the complexity of financial behemoths.

“It makes you weep blood out of your eyes,” said Sallie L. Krawcheck, who ran Bank of America’s wealth management division before a management reshuffling last year.

“If you look at the job of the board, if you look at the job of investors, it’s the concern about complexity,” she said, speaking from the stage at the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit in Manhattan.

Before, during, and after the financial crisis, many people noted that banks have simply become too big to oversee effectively, a notion that was reinforced by JP Morgan’s $9 billion trading debacle earlier this summer. “These banks are not just too big to fail, they’re too big to manage,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) told ThinkProgress. “I think these banks will be stronger and healthier and probably more profitable if they’re smaller.”

Krawcheck “did not endorse any one strategy to resolve banks’ complexity, but she said the proposal to break up banks and the regulation known as the Volcker Rule were two possible ‘means to an end.’” Republicans in Congress, though, are trying to ensure that the Volcker Rule — meant to restrict banks’ from trading for their own benefit with taxpayer-backed dollars — never fully comes into being.

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Security

McCain Fights With Sean Hannity On Foreign Policy: ‘You Were Wrong About Libya’

By Ben Armbruster on Sep 14, 2012 at 5:13 pm

John McCain

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Fox News host Sean Hannity got into a bit of a spat last night after Hannity pushed a set of right-wing talking points on President Obama’s foreign policy that even McCain thought went to far. Hannity said Obama “apologized” for the attackers that killed four American foreign service officers but McCain pushed back. “I’m not sure there was an apology,” McCain said.

Hannity then attacked Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi for meeting with Iranian leaders. “President Morsi did go to Tehran and condemn Bashar Al-Assad, which was a pleasant turn of events,” McCain again pushed back. But Hannity wouldn’t budge and McCain then had enough, criticizing Hannity and his network for being “wrong” about Libya:

HANNITY: How is it that Sean Hannity and a few others of us out here predicted with pin-point accuracy that the Muslim Brotherhood would be in charge in Egypt? Their first task when they took over the parliament was to declare Israel, our closest ally, an enemy, their number one enemy. How is it that the administration with all their intelligence and the CIA — how is it that they didn’t see this coming?!

And they kept telling the American people, this is democracy. I don’t think the Muslim Brotherhood is democracy. They want Sharia Law implemented now in Egypt.

MCCAIN: Well, first of all. It is not clear that that’s true. It was and you people on Fox that said in Libya, we didn’t know who they were and let’s not help these people. They had an election and they elected moderates and rejected Islamists and yes, there are al Qaeda factors and there are extremists in Libya today. But the Libyan people are friends of ours and they support us and they support democracy — so you were wrong about Libya.

HANNITY: I don’t think I was wrong about Libya at all.

MCCAIN: Yes, I do. I know you were.

Moments later, as McCain was speaking, Hannity cut him short, saying, “Senator, thanks for being with us.” Watch the clip:

(HT: Crooks and Liars)

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Justice

Corporate Law Firms Now Paying $280,000 Signing Bonuses For Supreme Court Clerks

By Ian Millhiser on Sep 14, 2012 at 5:10 pm

Major corporate law firms are now paying recent Supreme Court clerks, many of whom are only two years out of law school and can be as young as 28 years old, a $280,000 signing bonus simply for showing up to their first day of work. That’s in addition to base salaries around $185,000 for the first year out of clerkship and a year-end bonus in the five figures. Lawyers who clerked for lower federal court judges can earn signing bonuses as high as $60,000, and that’s also in addition to base salaries and bonuses similar to their colleagues who clerked for a justice.

Lest there be any doubt, these kinds of big dollar payments can have a significant impact on the shape of U.S. law. Federal law clerks are overwhelmingly drawn from the nation’s top-performing law students, and excellent attorneys can often change the outcome of court decisions. Simply put, there is a reason why every conservative official in the country wants to hire Republican superlawyer Paul Clement to present their most constitutionally indefensible arguments. The kinds of law firms that can afford to pay six figure recruitment bonuses primarily represent major corporations and other well moneyed clients, not the kind of ordinary Americans who are already at a disadvantage in this Supreme Court.

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NEWS FLASH

Republican Threats To Women’s Access To Contraception Could Affect Millions | With renewed attacks on Sandra Fluke’s activism in support of access to affordable birth control, an increasing number of religious organizations suing for the right to deny contraceptive coverage for their employees, and the passage of a Missouri law that allows any employer to drop birth control coverage from their insurance plans if they morally object to it, the War on Women has intensified in the past few weeks. The National Women’s Law Center crunched the numbers to find how many women could be impacted by federal and state-level attacks on contraceptive coverage, if Republican lawmakers have their way:

– 47 million women would lose contraceptive coverage with no co-pay if the House successfully repeals President Obama’s health care reform law.

– 40.2 million women could have their decision about birth control taken out of their hands if Congress allows employers to choose to deny workers contraception coverage in their insurance plans.

– 7 million women would lose access to affordable birth control through their Medicaid plans if states do not accept the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare.

– 4.7 million women would lose their access to contraception from the Title X family planning program if the House succeeds in ending the funding for the program.

– 2.2 million women would not be able to continue to get their birth control if conservative lawmakers succeed in their repeated attempts to defund Planned Parenthood.

Economy

Cantor Calls Marriage Great For Fighting Poverty, Would Still Prevent Same-Sex Couples From Marrying

By Guest Blogger on Sep 14, 2012 at 4:15 pm

In a speech today at the Family Research Council’s Value Voters Summit, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) assailed virtually every one of President Obama’s policies. He then offered a staunch defense of the economic benefits of marriage, saying, “Marriage has lifted more people out of poverty than any government program ever”:

We all know, as do most Americans in their hearts know, that the way for us to allow the pursuit of happiness is through individual effort. It is not through government program. And that is why we believe in traditional marriage, because marriage, more than any government program ever has or ever will, has lifted up people out of poverty, even those who felt there was no hope. Marriage has proven to be that formula which has been more successful at allowing for that pursuit of happiness. And that is why we stand tall and stand proud for traditional marriage.

Watch it:

For starters, as the Economic Policy Institute noted, when it comes to poverty, “the problem is a jobs and employment problem, not a marriage problem, as some commentators have suggested.” But this particular line of reasoning is interesting coming from Cantor, who has such a well-documented history of standing against same-sex marriage, despite its economic benefits.

When Washington state legalized same-sex marriage, conservative estimates of its potential economic effect were that it would add $88 million to the state and local economies in just three years and an additional $8 million in tax revenue. Even more impressive, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in July 2012 that same-sex marriage generated $259 million for the NYC economy in just one year.

Despite undeniable economic benefits, Cantor consistently acts against same-sex marriage, voting in favor of amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage and also to define marriage as an institution between one man and one woman. The Human Rights Campaign gives him a 0 percent rating on support for gay rights.

– Greg Noth

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Security

Fox Hosts Iraq War Architect To Discuss The Alleged ‘Failure Of The Obama Doctrine In The Middle East’

By Ben Armbruster on Sep 14, 2012 at 4:02 pm

Fox News on Friday hosted Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the war in Iraq, to discuss an alleged “failure of the Obama doctrine in the Middle East,” as host Megyn Kelly described it. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer made the (bogus) charge yesterday on Fox, and Kelly, without any sense of irony, asked Wolfowitz to respond. Krauthammer “is exactly right,” the former Bush administration official said.

Yet Wolfowitz later backhandedly praised Obama’s Middle East policy, lamenting that the successes of the new democracy in Libya (of which President Obama’s Middle East policy helped bring about) don’t get much media attention:

HOST MEGYN KELLY: Your thoughts on Charles Krauthammer’s assertion that this is — what we are witnessing now is the failure of the Obama doctrine in the Middle East.

WOLFOWITZ: I believe that what Charles Krauthammer said is exactly right about the apologetic posture that Obama has taken with the Muslim world, in particular the Arab world. [...]

In Libya it’s very important to emphasize that your viewers may not know because this doesn’t get covered but back in July they had an election. The Libyan people voted freely and fairly for the first time in over forty years and the Muslim Brotherhood came in a distant second and these extremists who seem to be behind the attacks … didn’t even show. ….

Watch the segment:

So things are going relatively well in Libya, but Obama’s Middle East policy is a failure. Got it.

“Our viewers may not know that you were one of the people who believed that we needed to go to war in Iraq,” Kelly told Wolfowitz. Believed? Try: Paul Wolfowitz was a high ranking Bush administration official who pushed this country into a needless war that wound up costing trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and tens of thousands wounded — not to mention the cost in Iraqi lives and treasure.

And Wolfowitz was the one who rebuked a high ranking U.S. military officer who said (rightly as it turned out) the United States would need hundreds of thousands of troops to go to war in Iraq. “The notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark,” Wolfowitz said in February 2003.

“When weighing [the] possible benefits against the costs of the Iraq intervention,” CAP’s Matt Duss once observed, “there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy.” And Fox hosts Wolfowitz to talk about some fantasy about the failure of the current president’s Middle East doctrine? Very rich indeed.

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Justice

Conservative Group Ignores Court Order Requiring It To Disclose Donors Behind TV Ad

By Josh Israel on Sep 14, 2012 at 3:40 pm

Freedom Path ad

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia District heard arguments Friday on an appeal in the Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission case. A district judge ruled in March that outside groups engaging in signficant “electioneering communications” — ads run near federal elections that mention candidates but do not explicitly tell viewers to elect or defeat them — must disclose the donors funding their efforts. The impact of this ruling is limited, because most groups have exploited a loophole allowing them to circumvent the rules. Nevertheless, one group impacted by this decision has thus far failed to identify its big-money donors.

After years of failing to enforce disclosure rules mandated by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (commonly known as McCain-Feingold), Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) successfully sued the Federal Election Commission, demanding that it do so. The FEC said in July that it would enforce the ruling, retroactive to the date it was issued. Until such time as a court overturns the ruling, the Commission ordered, all reports of electioneering communications made from March 30, 2012-onward would need to include disclosure of all donors to the group who contributed $1,000 or more. As ThinkProgress reported, that meant just one group would have to amend its earlier filings to name its donors: Freedom Path. An officer for that Utah-based 501(c)(4) committee, which spent thousands of dollars on ads praising Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Mitt Romney, told ThinkProgress at the time that his group would have to consult with their legal counsel before making a statement on whether it intends to comply with the new rule.

Six weeks later, Freedom Path has not yet amended its reports. The Federal Election Commission’s report analysis division has not contacted the group to ask for additional information. The Commission has taken no enforcement action against Freedom Path to date, though it does not make ongoing enforcement investigations public. As a result, voters cannot determine who was truly speaking in the group’s advertising, even though this disclosure is currently required by law. Freedom Path did not respond to multiple emails and phone messages asking for comment.

Just one group — Mayors Against Illegal Guns Action Fund — has reported a new electioneering communication expenditure since the FEC’s July order. It did identify its donors in its filings.

Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told ThinkProgress that any group that’s making significant electioneering communications is “required by law to disclose their donors. All groups should be doing so… It’s important [and] the FEC needs to enforce that law.”

But, he added, “Equally as troubling, or perhaps even more troubling, is the fact that many [501](c)(4)s are now playing a game of inserting very brief mention of express candidate advocacy at the end of their ads seemingly for the purpose of avoiding donor disclosure… They game the system and maintain the anonymity our deep pocketed donors by simply inserting a few words at the end of the ad, where they’re barely noticeable.”

The DISCLOSE Act — which would have required donor disclosure for those more overt “independent expenditures” allowed by the controversial Citizens United ruling — was blocked by Senate Republicans in July, on two party-line votes.

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LGBT

Hate Group Prays For Homosexuals ‘Caught In This Destructive Lifestyle’

By Zack Ford on Sep 14, 2012 at 3:07 pm

The Family Research Council, currently playing host to Paul Ryan and other Republican members of Congress at the Values Voters Summit, has sent out a new prayer target that includes gays and lesbians. FRC has been trying to push back on its designation of a hate group, but this particular call to prayer disproves its own point by describing homosexuality as a “destructive lifestyle,” further demonizing a group that is already a vulnerable target for hate-motivated violence:

In mid-August, following a shooting assault on FRC’s D.C. headquarters, FRC President Tony Perkins made a public appeal to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to end its ceaseless campaign falsely characterizing FRC as a “hate group.” Leo Johnson, FRC’s courageous building manager, took a bullet yet managed to prevent what would almost certainly have otherwise been a mass shooting.

The gunman’s actions came after a two year effort by the SPLC, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and a network of homosexual advocacy groups to marginalize FRC and some of our pro-family allies as “hate groups.” Sadly, because they cannot prevail in civil debate, these groups have resorted to name-calling.

But the dedicated Christian staff at FRC does not hate homosexuals. Indeed, by publishing Biblical and scientific truth, our aim is redemptive. We pray for those caught in this destructive lifestyle for their liberty. We labor to advance public policy that strengthens faith, family and freedom, and physical, moral and spiritual safety for our children (Accusation, Liberal Defense,Speaker’s Answer, FRC Response).

Please pray that God will give FRC and our friends courage ceaselessly to proclaim truth as it pertains to marriage and human sexuality. May God grant us favor in fashioning public policy that fosters marriage and human sexuality that reflects God’s wisdom and righteousness! (Dt 17:18; Ps 5:11; Is 10:1; Mt 19:3 ff; Eph 5:22-33; Titus 1:8 ff; Heb 13:4; Jude 7)

(HT: Good As You.)

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