GOP Congressman: Romney Tax Plan Follows The Bush ‘Recipe’

By Travis Waldron on Oct 11, 2012 at 4:20 pm

The tax plan proposed by Mitt Romney, which he says will avoid adding to the debt and won’t cut taxes for the rich, will work exactly the way the 2003 high-income Bush tax cuts worked, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) said during an appearance on CNN on Thursday. Romney has faced criticism over how his tax plan will provide a 20 percent, across-the-board tax cut without adding to the debt or raising taxes on the middle class. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan analyst, recently found that Romney’s plan as outlined is mathematically impossible.

But Hensarling has confidence that it will work, because the Republican Party has tried this before. In fact, Hensarling said, Romney’s tax plan will work just because it followed the “recipe” outlined by earlier GOP-led tax cuts, including the 2003 Bush tax cuts:

HENSARLING: This is the tax plan: fairer, flatter, simpler, more competitive tax code. We broaden the base by getting rid of a lot of these special interest deductions, exclusions — by one estimate, one-third of the tax code is what is known as tax expenditures.

HOST: Why couldn’t Paul Ryan explain that 11 days ago?

HENSARLING: My guess is he could have had he had time. But we did this in ’03, it was done in the Reagan administration, it was done under President Kennedy under JFK, and guess what: when you follow this recipe, you get more jobs, more economic growth, and more tax revenue.

Since their passage, the Bush tax cuts have been a major driver of the nation’s increased debt and deficits. Without the Bush tax cuts, in fact, the nation’s debt would be at sustainable levels.

Even worse, the Bush tax cuts, which the Romney plan maintains before cutting taxes even deeper, were heavily skewed toward the rich and failed to lead to the economic and job growth Republicans promised. The decade following was one of the worst on record for economic, job, and income growth.

Hensarling is correct: the Romney tax plan certainly follows the Bush recipe. That recipe, though, is one that leads to fewer jobs, slower economic growth, and even bigger debts and deficits.

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Security

Romney Campaign Edits Website To Incorporate New Red Line For Iran

By Hayes Brown on Oct 11, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Governor Mitt Romney’s campaign has updated its website to include a new so-called “red line” on Iran’s nuclear program. Previously, the site’s Iran section claimed that a President Romney would not tolerate Iranian possession of a nuclear weapon. The updated version of the site hinges on Iran’s nuclear weapons capability:

Below is a screenshot from a Google cached version of Romney’s site from September 29, 2012:

The shift is significant because it represents a much lower threshold for potential military action. Rather than disallowing the actual possession of, or run up to, a nuclear weapon, Romney’s position instead rules out Iran developing the ability to produce a bomb, which arguably, Iran is currently able to do. President Obama has said that it is his administration’s policy to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, leaving no option off the table in doing so.

Romney has shifted back and forth on the “capability” issue. His campaign advisers first floated the preventing a nuclear weapons capable Iran policy back in July. But Romney walked that back last month, saying his policy is the same as Obama’s, only to reverse it back to where his advisers laid it out in July. Now it appears that the Romney camp is officially settling on “capability” as the website change suggests. Moreover, the Romney camp, like the Senate just last month, doesn’t define “capability,” which is troublesome as various lawmakers in favor of this language have offered a wide array of meanings resulting in corresponding wide array of “red-lines” to initiate military strikes.

A recent Institute for Science and International Security report has determined that Iran has shortened the time it would take for it to achieve the ability to process uranium up to the ninety percent enrichment level that would make it weapons-grade. However, the same report notes that such a move would be detected by both the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) and the United States. One of the few possible reasons given by ISIS that Iran would move towards weapons-grade uranium enrichment would be a preemptive strike against its nuclear program.

Romney’s shift also comes at a time when Israel is pulling back its threats of military action against Iran’s program, having concluded that the IAEA’s assessment that Iran has slowed progress towards a nuclear weapon is correct. (HT: Foreign Policy)

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NEWS FLASH

Nordstrom Endorses Marriage Equality | In an email to 56,000 employees, nationwide, the Seattle-based Nordstrom announced its support for marriage equality. The company’s executives — all three eponymous members of the Nordstrom family — wrote “It is our belief that our gay and lesbian employees are entitled to the same rights and protections marriage provides under the law as our other employees. We also believe supporting freedom to marry will help us create a more attractive and inclusive workplace for our current and prospective employees. Again — this decision is consistent with our long-time philosophy of inclusivity and equality for our customers and employees.” Washington State voters will vote on Referendum 74 next month, which would enact marriage equality in the Evergreen State.

Climate Progress

Dept. Of Commerce Slaps Tariffs On Chinese Solar Cells: Will It Impact China’s Domestic ‘Solar Shakeout?’

By Climate Guest Blogger on Oct 11, 2012 at 4:00 pm

by Melanie Hart, with Stephen Lacey

The Department of Commerce has issued a final decision in a year-long solar trade case. And it’s made the Chinese very upset.

After investigating whether China is providing unfair subsidies to domestic solar manufacturers, thus allowing companies to dump product into the U.S. market below cost, the Commerce Department has confirmed its decision to slap tariffs of up to 35 percent on Chinese-made solar cells.

Over all, the tariffs are slightly higher than expected, with mixed results for different companies. The chart below, provided by the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy, shows the differences between the preliminary anti-dumping tariffs (AD) designed to penalize dumping and the countervailing duty tariffs (CVD) that were designed to counteract domestic subsidies in China:

Tariffs Still Apply only to Cells

Crystalline silicon solar panel manufacturing is a four-step process: (1) producing silicon crystals, (2) turning crystals into wafers, (3) turning wafers into cells, and (4) turning cells into panels.

The Commerce Department’s initial countervailing duty and antidumping rulings apply tariffs specifically to Chinese-manufactured photovoltaic cells, sold either as-is or manufactured into panels. The problem: that creates a potential loop hole. Chinese manufacturers can simply offshore the cell-production (step #3 above), keep the rest of the production process in-country, and evade U.S. tariffs even though the final product (step #4 above) is still manufactured in China.

Some of the big Chinese solar panel manufacturers have already invested substantial resources to set up that exact process and evade the tariffs. That does not sit well with some U.S. solar panel manufacturers. Several members of Congress recently petitioned the Department of Commerce to close that loophole.

What does this decision mean?

Health

Mitt Romney’s Constantly Evolving Stance On Abortion Rights

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Oct 11, 2012 at 4:00 pm

This week, presidential candidate Mitt Romney further complicated his ever-evolving stance on women’s issues when he said he wasn’t aware of any abortion-related legislation that would be part of his agenda as president — despite the fact that he is on the record as supporting at least three anti-abortion pieces of legislation.

But Romney has never been easy to pin down on abortion-related issues. When it comes to women’s health, and particularly the issue of safe and legal access to abortion services, the presidential candidate has had a long and convoluted evolution throughout his political career — shifting from pro-choice to pro-life, amending his stated intentions for the future of Roe v. Wade, and waffling over whether the power to regulate abortion legislation should rest with the states or the courts. ThinkProgress has compiled a timeline of Romney’s constantly changing stance on abortion:

5/27/1994: Romney supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.

During a 1994 Massachusetts Senate debate, Romney emphasized his commitment to supporting a women’s right to safe and legal abortions. “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country,” he said. “I have since the time my mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a U.S. Senate candidate. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years, that we should sustain and support it. And I sustain and support that law, and the right of a woman to make that choice.”

9/8/1994: A Romney spokesperson says Mitt has been consistently pro-choice.

After Sen. Edward Kennedy’s campaign criticized Romney for not being a true supporter of abortion rights, a Romney spokesperson told reporters, “Mitt has always been consistent in his pro-choice position.”

9/21/2002: Romney is “unequivocally” pro-choice.

In a 2002 interview with WBZ-TV, Ann and Mitt sought to clarify that Mitt Romney will not limit women’s reproductive freedom. “When asked whether I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose, I make an unequivocal answer — yes,” Romney said.

5/27/2005: Romney is pro-life, but says he will maintain the pro-choice status quo.

Romney committed to keeping the current pro-choice laws in Massachusetts in place, deferring on his own beliefs on the subject of abortion because he says they are a distraction. “I’m absolutely committed to my promise to maintain the status quo with regards to laws relating to abortion and choice, and so far I’ve been able to successfully do that,” Romney said at a news conference.

Read more

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Election

Montana Tribal Members Sue For Equal Access to Polls

By Guest Blogger on Oct 11, 2012 at 3:57 pm

Our guest blogger is Erik Stegman, Manager of the Half in Ten campaign for the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

By artist Steven Paul Judd for the Native Vote Campaign

Angry about a lack of voting services in their communities, a group of Montana tribal members filed suit in federal court on Wednesday seeking an order for local election officials to provide satellite voting stations on their reservations. The plaintiffs, members of the Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Fort Belknap tribes, allege under the Voting Rights Act that it is discriminatory to make them drive long distances to county seats to exercise their right to vote. In some cases, they have to drive as far as 113 miles round trip to vote.

The suit alleges:

“Allowing a non-Indian majority county to establish in-person absentee locations at county courthouses but denying the same level of voter access to Indian majority communities is evidence of an invidious discrimination by state and county officials.”

O.J. Seamans (Lakota), Executive Director of Four Directions, a national voting rights organization and party to the suit, said the organization offered to help pay for the satellite voting offices, but county officials refused. “Right now, practically speaking, most Native American Indians in Montana have one day to vote in person—November 6—and no more days to late-register. White people have 20 days. That’s not equal access,” Seamans told Indian Country Today Media Network.

While registered voters in most large cities in Montana are able to vote early at their local county clerk and recorder’s office 30 days before election day, those voters are mostly non-Indian. There are almost 50,000 voting age American Indians in Montana, representing 6.5% of the state voting age population. According to the most recent census, the poverty rate for American Indians and Alaska Natives (28.4%) is nearly double the national rate (15.3 %).

This comes during an election where the stakes are high for tribes in Montana. Recent polls place current Senator and member of the Indian Affairs Committee, Jon Tester in a statistical dead heat with candidate Denny Rehberg. And, President Obama was officially adopted as a member of the Crow Tribe in 2008—one of the tribes with plaintiffs bringing the suit. Both Obama and Tester were supporters of legislation important to tribes such as the Tribal Law and Order Act and the SAVE Native Women Act. Due to their unique nation-to-nation relationship as sovereign governments with the President and Congress, federal elections are especially important for tribal members.

Nationally, tribes have been organizing their members to turnout through efforts like Native Vote.

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LGBT

Republican Congressional Nominee Breaks With Party To Support Marriage Equality

By Scott Keyes on Oct 11, 2012 at 3:45 pm

CA-47 Republican nominee Gary DeLong

Though his party’s official platform calls for a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage, a Republican congressional candidate in California is bucking that position in favor of equality.

Appearing at a League of Women Voters forum in California’s newly-formed 47th congressional district, Republican nominee Gary DeLong was asked to name an example of an idea where he disagreed with his party. He cited three: he’s pro-choice, pro-environment, and pro-marriage equality. “I support gay marriage. They don’t,” said DeLong:

MODERATOR: What is your record on supporting ideas or legislation that you believe in but your party was opposed? How would you handle going against your party’s position and what issues might be involved or have been involved?

DELONG: [...] There’s a number of things I disagree with the Republican Party on. I’m pro-choice. They’re pro-life. I support gay marriage. They don’t. I come from a coastal city. I’m very environmentally-oriented. Candidly, the Republican Party is not. There are many, many things I disagree with the Republican Party on.

Watch it:

Though Republicans as a whole remain staunchly opposed to LGBT rights, there have been a few pro-equality voices emerging recently. For instance, Republican leaders have helped raise money for Richard Tisei (R), an openly gay man running in Massachusett’s 6th congressional district. And in a recent interview with ThinkProgress, Tea Party Rep. Scott Tipton (R-CO) said he supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which makes it illegal to fire an employee for being LGBT.

In the current Congress just one Republican — Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) — is on the record supporting marriage equality.

DeLong’s Democratic opponent, Alan Lowenthal, also supports marriage equality.

California’s 47th congressional district, which comprises parts of Anaheim and Santa Ana, is considered a swing district.

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Justice

Republican Party Lawsuit Seeking To Make Citizens United Even Worse Is Headed For The Supreme Court

By Ian Millhiser on Oct 11, 2012 at 3:40 pm

Billionaire Casino Mogul & GOP Donor Sheldon Adelson

Citizens United v. FEC gave corporations unlimited ability to spend money on elections, so long as these attempts to buy elections did not involve direct contributions to a candidate. Shortly thereafter, a lower court ushered in the era of super PACs.

To date, however, the courts have left federal limits on contributions directly to candidates or political parties largely unmolested. Under federal law, individual donations to candidates are limited to $2,500 per candidate, per election, and total contributions to candidates, political party committees and similar organizations are limited to $117,000 every two years. Thus, GOP billionaire Sheldon Adelson can currently give tens of millions of dollars to groups trying to elect Republicans that are separate from the Republican Party, but there remains a cap on how much he can give the GOP directly.

A lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee now wants to eliminate most of these modest restrictions on election buying, and eliminate the $117,000 cap on donations by people like Adelson. Moreover, because of a federal law that requires the Supreme Court to hear certain campaign finance cases, the Supreme Court is now almost certain to take the case — potentially handing the Republican Party their biggest Supreme Court victory since Citizens United.

As the lower court decision rejecting the GOP’s attempt to suspend the donation limits explains, the likely impact of a Republican victory would be enabling billionaires to launder as much money as they want through political party committees to the candidates of their choice:

Eliminating the aggregate limits means an individual might, for example, give half-a-million dollars in a single check to a joint fundraising committee comprising a party’s presidential candidate, the party’s national party committee, and most of the party’s state party committees. After the fundraiser, the committees are required to divvy the contributions to ensure that no committee receives more than its permitted share, but because party committees may transfer unlimited amounts of money to other party committees of the same party, the half-a-million-dollar contribution might nevertheless find its way to a single committee’s coffers. That committee, in turn, might use the money for coordinated expenditures, which have no “significant functional difference” from the party’s direct candidate contributions. The candidate who knows the coordinated expenditure funding derives from that single large check at the joint fundraising event will know precisely where to lay the wreath of gratitude.

Notably, this opinion was authored by Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who is arguably the most conservative judge in the country. Brown once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.” She authored an opinion earlier this year suggesting that any effort to regulate labor, business or Wall Street is constitutionally suspect. Yet even Brown acknowledges in her opinion the corrupting impact of unlimited money pouring directly to a political party.

Nevertheless, Judge Brown is obligated to follow previous Supreme Court precedents protecting campaign finance laws. The justices are not. Her opinion upholding the donation limits is now headed to the same five Republican justices who couldn’t figure out how corporations buying elections might lead to corruption when they decided Citizens United.

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Economy

Former Treasury Secretary: Romney Tax Plan is ‘Daughter of Voodoo Economics’

By Guest Blogger on Oct 11, 2012 at 3:32 pm

During an appearance at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers offered a harsh analysis of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s tax plan, saying we were in “uncharted territory of being wrong.” Summers also addressed the five “studies” the Romney campaign cites in support of its budget, two of which come from the Wall Street Journal. He said, “It’s a modest abuse of language to refer to a Wall Street Journal editorial as a study, much less two Wall Street Journal editorials.” (ThinkProgress addressed these studies here.)

Summers, who backed up the Tax Policy Center’s analysis that found the math of the Romney plan to be impossible, said the tax plan was the “daughter of voodoo economics,” riffing off the term George H.W. Bush used to describe Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economic policies:

SUMMERS: I’ve seen it where if you really parse the arithmetic closely and imagined what the CBO would do, the challenger’s errors were in the tens of billions of dollars. I’ve seen it where if you really parsed the errors, the challenger’s errors were in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This is the first time that the challenger’s errors have, on my accounting, been measured in the trillions of dollars. This is daughter of voodoo economics.

It’s easy to say that my plan is to eat ice cream sundaes and chocolate cake and hamburgers as much as I want. My plan is to lose 60 pounds. And my plan is to avoid painful exercise. And those are all my objectives and I’m committed to every one of them. You can do that, but it isn’t likely to get you — you don’t know quite where you’re going to go if you’ve got all three of those objectives.

I think what’s important to recognize, and I think what the nature of political discourse tends to lead one not to see, is that we’re sort of in uncharted territory of being wrong.

Watch it:

Romney says his plan would cut taxes “across the board” by 20 percent, and — by closing loopholes and eliminating deductions — would not contribute to the deficit. However, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) says that if Romney closed every single deduction in the tax code — including those for home mortgages and charitable contributions — 95 percent of Americans would see their taxes increase. Those making more than $200,000, though, would see a net tax break.

It’s virtually impossible that these tax cuts would not substantially increase the deficit because, as TPC’s Roberton Williams observed, “Nothing comes to mind to broaden the tax base enough to pay for the lower rates.”

– Greg Noth

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Climate Progress

By 2020, Indonesian Palm Oil Plantations Will Release More CO2 Than Canada

By Climate Guest Blogger on Oct 11, 2012 at 3:00 pm

by Katie Valentine

Palm oil plantation expansion in Indonesia is set to release more than 558 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2020, according to a report published Sunday in Nature Climate Change. That’s more than Canada’s yearly CO2 emissions.

The study, conducted by researchers from Yale and Stanford, examined palm oil plantation development in the Kalimantan region of Indonesia from 1990 to 2010. Using Landsat satellite images and carbon accounting, the researchers analyzed land cover changes over the 20-year period, estimated the carbon emissions from the plantations and projected the levels of carbon emitted between 2010 and 2020 under Business as Usual and protection scenarios. Here’s what they found:

In 1990, oil palm plantations covered 903 square kilometers of Kalimantan – by 2010 that number had grown to 31,640 km2.
Between 2000 and 2010, forest clearing for palm plantations contributed to about 57 percent of Indonesia’s total deforestation.
Palm growth occurs on government-awarded land leases, 79 percent of which remain undeveloped. The development of the remaining leases would convert 93,844 km2 of land to palm plantations, 90 percent of which is forested and 18 percent of which is peatland.

It’s oil palm’s method of growth that makes it such a high-emissions crop. In Indonesia and Malaysia, which grow and produce 90 percent of the world’s palm oil, rainforests are cleared and sometimes burned to make way for plantations. The emissions from this deforestation are multiplied when the clearing occurs on peatlands, which store vast quantities of carbon. The study found that, as of 2010, 13 percent of Kalimantan’s palm oil plantations were situated on peatlands.

The study comes after the EPA’s decision this January to deny palm oil’s use as a biofuel in the Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates that 36 billion gallons of biofuels be incorporated into American transportation fuel mix by 2022. The EPA’s analysis of the use of palm oil for biodiesel found that it reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent, falling short of the 20 percent benchmark necessary for a fuel to be included in the standard.

Many scientific and environmental groups applauded the EPA’s decision but claimed the agency underestimated palm oil emissions in its analysis, arguing that the greenhouse gas emissions from palm oil’s lifecycle are actually higher than petroleum-based diesel. During an extended commenting period for the EPA analysis, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report that attempts to correct several of the EPA’s conclusions on palm oil.

The commenting period for the analysis closed April 27, but the EPA has yet to make a final decision on palm oil’s use as a biofuel. As of May, the palm oil industry has hired lobbyist Holland & Knight to help convince the EPA of palm oil’s viability as a renewable fuel. In its analysis, the EPA estimates that 104,000 hectares, or 1,040 km2, of land in Indonesia and Malaysia would be converted to palm plantation if palm oil were accepted as a biofuel source.

But even if the EPA sticks to its original ruling, the fight against palm oil is far from over: palm oil accounts for more than 30 percent of the world’s vegetable oil production, and worldwide demand of the oil is expected to double by 2020. According to the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70 percent of demand for palm oil is food related. This figure puts at least some of palm oil’s future in the hands of consumers: we can’t help make the EPA’s decision (since the commenting period is over), but we can wage a campaign against palm oil in our favorite foods and avoid products made with palm oil.