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Security

Harry Reid Calls GOP Attacks On Susan Rice ‘Outrageous,’ ‘Unmoored From Facts & Reality’

By Ben Armbruster on Nov 28, 2012 at 8:09 am

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Tuesday blasted three key Republicans who are attacking U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi incident. After facts trickled out about the Benghazi attacks trickled out in prior weeks that undermined their attacks on Rice, the senators, John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), seemed to back away from going after Rice.

But after their private meeting with the U.N. Ambassador, McCain, Graham and Ayotte came out swinging, claiming that Rice should have either disregarded talking points the intelligence community gave her for her Sept. 16 Sunday show appearances, or not said anything at all about the attacks given that some of the information given her turned out to be inaccurate.

Reid, in a statement released yesterday evening, shot back:

“The personal attacks against Ambassador Rice by certain Republican senators have been outrageous and utterly unmoored from facts and reality. I am shocked that senators would continue these attacks even when the evidence – including disclosures from the intelligence community about the information she presented – have made it clear that the allegations against Ambassador Rice are baseless, and that she has done absolutely nothing wrong.

“Ambassador Rice’s service as United States Ambassador to the United Nations has been impeccable. She has answered all questions raised in relation to the Benghazi attacks completely and repeatedly. The Senate committees of jurisdiction are in the midst of examining the events leading up to the Benghazi attacks, and I agree with those – including the ranking Republican members of both the Intelligence and Homeland Security committees – who have said we should let the committees do their work. There should be no place for such blatant partisanship in oversight of our nation’s intelligence community.

“The election is over. It is time to drop these partisan political games, and focus our attention on the real challenges facing us as a nation.”

Reid warned McCain earlier this month to quit politicizing the Benghazi attacks after Arizona Republican called for a Watergate-style special committee to investigate the administration’s response. “There is no evidence that any crime was committed,” Reid said.

McCain, his Republican allies and Fox News have been pushing baseless conspiracy theories on the Benghazi attacks, primarily that Rice and other Obama administration officials were involved in a “cover up.” Senior intelligence official debunked McCain’s latest charge — that the White House had changed Rice’s Benghazi talking points for political purposes — and it seemed like he would back off. But now McCain is back at it and even some of his best friends in the Senate refuse to sign on.

Update

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) defended Rice from the GOP attacks yesterday as well. “[I]t is so unfair to hold her responsible for something that she didn’t produce and which the intelligence community has specifically stood by,” he said.

Security

Harry Reid Shuts Down McCain On Libya: ‘End The Politicization Of National Security’

By Igor Volsky on Nov 17, 2012 at 11:10 am

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has rejected Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) request to establish a Select Committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11. In a strongly worded letter delivered to the former GOP presidential hopeful on Friday, Reid rebuked Republicans for politicizing the killings and baselessly claiming that the Obama administration is engaged in a cover-up of the incident. “I refuse to allow the Senate to be used as a venue for baseless partisan attacks,” Reid wrote, noting that several committees in the House and Senate are already investigating the tragedy.

Earlier this week, McCain, along with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), held around the clock press conferences and media appearances insisting that U.N. Ambassador misled the public when she described, five days after the attacks, the incident as a “spontaneous attack” inspired by an anti-Islam video. McCain and Graham promised to block Rice should she be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State; Ayotte said she would consider the nomination.

In his letter, Reid reminded McCain that “elections are over; it is time to put an end to the partisan politicization of national security and begin working together to strengthen our efforts to dismantle and destroy the terrorist networks that threaten us.” He also rebuked the Arizona senator for skipping a closed-doors committee hearing on Benghazi in order to hold a press conference demanding more information about the attacks:

I am concerned that a Select Committee, as you propose, would duplicate and, ultimately undermine the numerous investigations into the attack that are already proceeding in the Senate committees of jurisdiction, and may serve to further politicize an issue that has already been manipulated by Members of both the House and Senate in service of partisan agendas. [...]

For instance, on Wednesday, Senator McCain failed to attend a classified briefing held by the Senate Homeland Security Committee on this very issue. [...]

One of you, Senator McCain, has gone so far ast o make the outrageous claim that this event was “worse than Watergate” — despite the fact that there is no evidence that any crime was committed, no evidence of any cover-up, and no evidence that the administration has characterized the incident in any way that has not been consistent with the Intelligence Community’s contemporaneous assessments.

Indeed, the GOP’s accusations of an administration cover-up seemed to fall apart after testimony from former CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus on Friday revealed that the CIA approved the declassified talking points used by Rice during her television appearances. The hearings also confirmed that the agency had received conflicting intelligence reports in real time during the attacks.

While one stream of intelligence “from multiple sources, including video at the scene, indicated the group was behind the attack,” other reports “emerged at the same time indicating the violence at the consulate was inspired by protests in Egypt over an ostensibly anti-Islam film that was privately produced in the United States.” Twenty intelligence reports “indicated that anger about the film may be to blame.”

As Reid noted in his letter to McCain, several prominent Republicans have rebuked the GOP’s efforts to politicize the incident. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said, “It’s easy to try and jump to conclusions about what might have happened here. It’s probably better to let the relevant bodies do their work.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has also dismissed McCain’s call for a Select Committee.

NEWS FLASH

Senate Majority Leader: Cybersecurity Next On Senate Agenda | Despite a bleak outlook, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV_ announced that cybersecurity will be the next major issue on the Senate agenda following the Sportsman’s bill — presumably with a vote on the the same legislation that stalled earlier this year. The Obama administration has been drafting a cybersecurity executive order for months, which is rumored to be imminent.

NEWS FLASH

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand Backs Filibuster Reform | In a Tweet Thursday, Sen. Kirsten Gillbrand (D-NY) joined Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) call for filibuster reform. New York’s junior Senator — re-elected Tuesday by landslide 72 percent majority — joined Sen. Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) and seven Democratic Senators-elect in endorsing such a change:

Economy

Despite Republican Claims, America’s Entitlement Programs Are Already ‘Secure’

By Travis Waldron on Nov 9, 2012 at 10:55 am

With the 2012 election over, attention has turned to the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the package of expiring tax cuts and automatic spending cuts that will hit at the end of the year unless Congress decides to avert it beforehand. The debt ceiling will also need to be raised soon, and the negotiations between Democratic and Republican leaders has already taken a familiar turn toward entitlement spending and new revenues, with House Speaker John Boehner telling ABC News that he’d be willing to consider talking about new revenues (sort of) if President Obama and Democrats get serious about entitlement reform.

“I would do that if the president was serious about solving our spending problem and trying to secure our entitlement programs,” Boehner said in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer last night. “If you’re increasing taxes on small-business people, it’s the wrong approach.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), struck a different tone. “We are not going to mess with Social Security,” Reid said yesterday, according to Reuters.

While entitlements have become a consistent focus of Republican leaders like Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), why they must be a part of the end-of-year negotiations isn’t quite clear. Though the media is quick to buy into the idea that Social Security is going broke, the program is fully-funded for the next two-and-a-half decades, a luxury that other important federal programs that are funded on a year-to-year (or budget resolution to budget resolution) never have.

Republicans in the past have ignored the easiest ways to ensure Social Security’s long-term future, proposing benefit cuts in the form of raising the retirement age or changes to the formula used to calculate benefits. Instead, raising or eliminating the payroll tax cap that funds the program could ensure its long-term viability for another 75 years, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.

Medicare, meanwhile, has already been reformed, when Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010. That law, which Republicans repeatedly tried to repeal, cut $716 billion from Medicare without touching benefits, making reforms to provider payments, eliminating fraud, and extending its solvency for eight years. While Republicans were quick to slam Obama and Democrats for passing those cuts during the 2012 elections, they often forget it when begging Democrats to “get serious” about entitlement reform.

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Climate Progress

Sen. Majority Leader Reid: ‘Climate Change Is An Extremely Important Issue For Me, And I Hope We Can Address It’

By Joe Romm on Nov 8, 2012 at 4:52 pm

We are seeing a unique confluence of events put a carbon tax squarely back into the national debate: the debt crisis and fiscal cliff, Hurricane Sandy, and the results of the 2012 election.

Sen. Majority Leader Reid said Wednesday:

“Climate change is an extremely important issue for me and I hope we can address it reasonably. It’s something, as we’ve seen with these storms that are overwhelming our country and the world, we need to do something about it.”

Back in August Reid spoke to Greenwire following one of the most powerful public speeches on climate that any national policymaker has made in years:

Reid said he hopes the Senate will take up a bill to put a price on carbon emissions if Democrats maintain control of the chamber….

Reid now has a much stronger hand. Democrats picked up 2 seats in the Senate. A few months ago Republicans were thought to have a good chance of seizing control of the Senate — now they have undercut their chances of taking back the Senate even in 2014. And newly elected Senators Angus King (I-ME) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) both explicitly campaigned on climate change.

No, Reid can’t do this single-handedly. But President Obama, reelected with the help of a decisive youth vote that rightly puts climate change near the top of the list of their concerns, himself said on election night:

“We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”

In  the coming days and weeks, Climate Progress will explore the prospects for a carbon tax from all angles. We’ll also explore other policies that could potentially achieve the same kind of reductions. And we’ll try to set the record straight when we think the media doesn’t get it quite right, as with this CNN Money article, “Climate change is back on the table“:

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Security

McCain Suggests Harry Reid ‘Doesn’t Care’ About The Death Of US Ambassador

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Sep 30, 2012 at 9:53 am

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Sunday accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) of not caring about the deaths of four American diplomats, including US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens. All four men were killed in an attack on the American embassy in Libya on September 11th of this year.

Republicans have argued that President Obama botched the response to, and preparation for, the attack. But when asked whether Reid’s statement that the incident was being politicized, McCain politicized it further, saying that Reid “doesn’t care” about it:

CROWLEY: Senator Reid put out a statement yesterday where he called it sad and disappointing that some people seem more focused on trying this score cheap political points off when this intelligence information came than mourning the loss of the ambassador and the other three.

MCCAIN: Maybe Senator Reid doesn’t care about Christopher Stevens. Maybe he doesn’t care about those three other brave Americans.

CROWLEY: You know he does, though?

MCCAIN: Well, to make a statement like that. Well, to make a statement like that, of course, politicizes an issue that all Americans should be concerned about what information there was. No matter whether Democrat or Republican. He is the one that’s taking the cheap political shot.

Watch it:

Climate Progress

Senator Harry Reid Opens Clean Energy Summit With A Bold Speech On Climate Change: ‘We Must Act Today’

By Stephen Lacey on Aug 7, 2012 at 2:24 pm

Sen. Reid: “… deniers still exist, fueled and funded by dirty energy profits. These people aren’t just on the other side of this debate. They’re on the other side of reality.”

It appears that advocates of clean energy are getting the message: If you want to talk about clean energy in a political context, you must talk about the environmental imperative.

In a speech opening up this year’s 5th National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave one of the most powerful public speeches on climate that any national policymaker has made in years.

Reid joins Senators Al Franken, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders, and Sheldon Whitehouse, all of whom have made excellent climate speeches on the Senate floor in the last year. However, today’s speech was done in a much more prominent public forum in front of top journalists, regulatory officials, and policymakers.

Here’s the climate portion of the speech, which was used to set up the pressing need to develop more renewable energy and efficiency:

Twenty-five years ago, President George H.W. Bush promised to use the “White House effect” to combat the “greenhouse effect.” Yet a quarter century later, too many elected officials in Washington are still calling climate change a liberal hoax. They falsely claim scientists are still debating whether carbon pollution is warming the planet.

Of course, if those skeptics had taken a stroll along the Potomac River on a 70-degree day this February, they would have seen cherry trees blossoming earlier than at any time since they were planted 100 years ago. Washington experienced its warmest spring since record keeping began in 1895.

And back in the skeptics’ home states, the harbingers of a changing climate are just as clear as those delicate February blossoms – and infinitely more perilous.

This year alone, the United States has seen unparalleled extreme weather events – events scientists say are exactly what is expected as the earth’s climate changes.

The Midwest is experiencing its most crushing drought in more than half a century – or maybe ever. Presently, disasters have been declared in the majority of U.S. counties. More than half the country is experiencing drought, and seventy-five percent of the nation is abnormally dry this year.

Corn crops are withering and livestock are dying – or going to slaughter early – as heat waves parch America’s breadbasket, breaking records set during the Woody Guthrie Dust Bowl years.

Now ravaging wildfires have replaced the dust storms of the 1930′s. Devastating fires have swept New Mexico, Idaho, Colorado, Nevada and other parts of the Mountain West, destroying hundreds of homes and burning millions of trees. These fires are fed in part by vast areas of dead forest ravaged by beetles and other pests that now survive through warmer winters.

On the East Coast, extreme thunderstorms and high winds called “derechos” – literally meaning straight-line storms – have eliminated power for 4.3 million customers in 10 states in the mid-Atlantic region. One 38-year veteran of the utility industry told the New York Times this: “We’ve got the ‘storm of the century’ every year now.” At the height of this storm – while the power was out and the air conditioning wasn’t working – the East Coast experienced record high temperatures.

Down south, the Mississippi River is nearly dry in various places, with shipping barges operating in only 5 feet of water. Just Friday, barges were grounded because the water level was so low. And New Orleans’ water supply is now being threatened by salt water moving up the Mississippi due to extremely low water.

But while record drought has struck many parts of the United States, torrential rains have poured down in others. In June, the fourth tropical storm of the hurricane season – a season which typically begins in the fall – dropped 20 inches of rain on Florida.

And our nation’s infrastructure is literally falling apart because it wasn’t designed to withstand these conditions. Runways are melting, trapping planes. Train tracks are bending, derailing subways. Highways are cracking, buckling and breaking open. The water used to cool power plants – including nuclear power plants – has either run dry or reached dangerously high temperatures.

And that’s just in the United States – just through the month of July.

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Election

RNC Chairman Calls Harry Reid A ‘Dirty Liar’

By Josh Israel on Aug 5, 2012 at 11:27 am

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus today deflected Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) calls for Mitt Romney to release more tax returns by resorting to outright name-calling.

On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Priebus first said he would not respond to the comments and seconds later launched into a personal attack on Reid:

PRIEBUS: As far as Harry Reid is concerned, listen, I know you might want to go down that road, I’m not going to respond to a dirty liar, who hasn’t filed a single page of tax returns himself, complains about people with money, but lives in the Ritz-Carlton here down the street. So if that’s on the agenda, I’m not going to go there. This is just a made-up issue. The fact that we’re going to spend any time talking about it is just ridiculous.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say you’re not gonna respond, but you just called him “a dirty liar.” You stand by that? You think Harry Reid is a “dirty liar?”

PRIEBUS: I just said it.

Watch the video:

Assuming Priebus meant to say that Reid has not publicly released his tax returns, it is worth noting that given the level of the office, most successful presidential nominees have released their tax returns since the 1970s. The same tradition does not apply to those in Congress and Reid has never been a presidential candidate.

Reid, citing an anonymous source, claimed this week that Romney may not have paid any taxes for 10 years.

On Friday, Romney himself dismissed Reid’s attacks, lamenting the tone of the campaign. He said “I had hoped it would be a debate about the direction of the country. What we’re seeing instead is one attack after the other — misleading, false attacks.”

Justice

House Passes Year-Old Sop To Filibuster Reformers, Leaving Confirmation Crisis Firmly In Place

By Ian Millhiser on Aug 2, 2012 at 11:10 am

In January of 2011, several senators attempted major reforms to the Senate rules intended to thwart the kind of obstructionism that has reigned in the Senate every since Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took over as Minority Leader. This effort failed due to opposition from both Republicans and many senior Democrats. Filibuster reform’s opponents did, however, agree to pass a minor bill eliminating the requirement that certain military officers and low-level political appointees be confirmed by the Senate. That bill now passed both houses of Congress:

The House gave final congressional approval Tuesday to a bill that would save the slow-paced Senate some time by eliminating the need for confirming nominees to some 170 executive branch jobs and 3,000 military officer positions. . . . Among positions that will no longer need Senate approval are a chief scientist in the Commerce Department, directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the top press spokesmen for the Defense, Treasury and State departments, members of the Council of Economic Advisers, the commissioner of education statistics, the Homeland Security Department’s chief medical officer, director of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau and members of the Mississippi River Commission.

Although this bill is a positive development, its impact will be limited. It does nothing to prevent a minority of the Senate from attempting to shut down entire agencies by filibustering essential personnel. It does nothing to prevent widespread obstruction of judicial nominees. And it does nothing to prevent the minority choking the federal government by making it impossible for the Senate to confirm more than a small fraction of a president’s nominees.

As a 2010 Center for American Progress report explains, Senate rules allow a small minority of the Senate to waste up to 30 hours of floor time before a single nominee can be confirmed. When these 30 hours are multiplied across the all Senate-confirmed political appointees a president needs to fill, it adds up to more time than any president is allowed to stay in office:

After the bill that just passed the House becomes law, obstructionist senators will still have the power to force the majority to waste more than 1,000 days Senate work days before a president’s entire slate of nominees can be confirmed.

There is some reason to be optimistic that more meaningful filibuster reform could occur next year, however. Every two years, when newly elected senators are sworn in, a brief window opens up allowing the Senate to change its rules by a simple majority vote, rather than the 67 vote supermajority the Senate’s rules normally require. Although Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) opposed serious reform efforts the last time this window opened, he has since recanted. Last May, Reid delivered a floor speech where he agreed that the senators who supported significant rules reform “were right. The rest of us were wrong.”

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