Aerial photo of site for Fisker Automotive facility in Delaware, made possible by a clean energy loan program

by Dave Roberts in a Grist cross-post

Here we go again.

ABC News and iWatch have a big new report out that desperately tries to lend an air of scandal to another Department of Energy loan guarantee. It’s a remarkable package, nearly 3,000 words and three ABC News segments full of handwaving and innuendo suggesting that there’s something shady going on, using the word “Solyndra” as often as possible, but in the end there’s … nothing. Not a single bit of evidence of wrongdoing or corruption. It’s a gigantic nothingburger. It just describes the loan program working exactly as it was intended to, but in a tone of dark insinuation.

The fact that there’s no there there will of course not impede the U.S. scandal machine. Already the Drudge Report has linked it, Sarah Palin has Tweeted it, right-wing blogs are flogging it … Next thing you know, other media will be hyping it to, because, you know, “questions have been raised.” And it’s off to the races all over again.

Just for the record, let’s walk through the facts.

The loan program in question is the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program, established in 2007 by the energy bill passed under George W. Bush. It’s intended to speed the introduction of more efficient vehicles into the U.S. market and help stand up domestic industries to supply those vehicles.

The ATVM program was fully funded in 2008 and began issuing loans in 2009. In June of that year, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the first three recipients: $5.9 billion to Ford, $1.6 billion to Nissan, and $465 million to electric automaker Tesla.

Then, in September 2009, DOE announced a fourth recipient: $529 million to California-based Fisker Automotive. The loan was finalized in April 2010 and announced at an event with Vice President Joe Biden.

At the time, Fisker had one vehicle under development and another planned, both plug-in hybrids; the loan was split between them. The smaller portion, $169 million, was devoted to helping Fisker work with U.S. suppliers to finish up the Karma, a $97,000 four-door luxury sedan. The larger portion, $359 million, was devoted to Project Nina, Fisker’s plan to develop a mid-market plug-in sedan. The company expects the Nina to cost around $39,000 and be in mass production (75,000-100,000 a year) by late 2012, with delivery to begin in 2013.

Everything seems to be going roughly according to plan. Fisker hasn’t missed any loan payments or asked for any further loans. Some regulatory issues pushed the Karma production schedule back a bit, but the first few are on the road now and there are 3,000 pre-orders for more. In October 2009, Fisker purchased the Wilmington Assembly plant in Delaware, which was owned by General Motors from 1947 until it was shut down in July 2009, to manufacture its Nina. The DOE loan is being used, in part, to renovate and upgrade the plant. In June 2011, Fisker started its first round of hiring, bringing on 120 engineers, technicians, and production workers at the plant.

So far so good, right? Sounds like what the 2007 Congress envisioned and Obama promised: a boost for a promising new U.S. company; jobs in an industry that’s been hit hard by the downturn; groundwork put in place for what promises to be a huge growth market. Where’s the scandal?

Like I said, the ABC/iWatch story is filled with vague insinuations, but I’ll try to extract and address the main charges, such as they are.

1. This is a subsidy for rich people.

The Karma is extremely expensive — around $100,000. It is indeed a car for rich people; the very first one off the production line went to Leonardo DiCaprio. Al Gore’s in line for one too. Yes, DiCaprio and Gore; this is a field day for gossipy media.

However, some perspective is in order. A small start-up trying to break into an automotive market dominated by huge, well-established incumbents has to start at the high end. It doesn’t yet have economies of scale or mass production capabilities; it needs to prove that it can create a working, reliable car; and it just needs to attract attention. Tesla did the same thing for the same reason. It’s a way to attract more investment.

So in a sense, yes, all government assistance to electric vehicles (or batteries) is “a subsidy to rich people” for the moment, because cutting-edge new products are expensive. The whole point of the assistance is to drive the cost down and accelerate the introduction of the products to a larger mass market.

Tesla and Fisker are both starting with high-end models and then moving aggressively into lower cost mass-market models. And remember: The bulk of the loan to Fisker is to support the Nina.

2. The cars are made in Finland.

As founder Henrik Fisker said, “There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle. They don’t exist here.” So the Karma is being assembled at a plant in Finland.

ABC seems convinced that we should be outraged by this. Taxpayers lending money to a company building cars overseas! Scandal-ish!

But, again: The DOE loan is specifically earmarked for spending inside the U.S. None of it will be spent in Finland. And, again: Fisker is in the process of upgrading a plant in Delaware to manufacture its next car.

And finally, I don’t know about you, but when I hear that a U.S. electric-vehicle company can’t find a manufacturer in the U.S. capable of assembling its cars, my first thought is not, “Well, screw that company, let’s not help them!” It’s, “Criminy, we need to get started creating the industrial infrastructure to support a domestic electric-vehicle industry!”

3. Fisker is a risky bet.

The ABC story makes this point as though it’s exposing some dark secret. But of course it’s f’ing risky! That’s the whole point: to help companies on the cutting edge, companies trying to break into established markets and shake up the status quo. Those companies are, by definition, risky. That’s why Congress set aside $7.5 billion as a loan loss reserve.

And Fisker isn’t that risky. It’s attracted $650 million in private investment since the DOE loan went through. It’s got a car in production. It’s gearing up to produce another. (The Nina is by far the riskiest element of this, simply because it doesn’t exist yet, so no one knows if it will live up to its cost and range projections.) There is always the risk that gas prices will do one of their random plunges right when Fisker introduces its mass-market plug-in, but if that risk were going to scare investors away then there would never be an electric-vehicle market at all.

The administration is to be lauded for taking risks, not scolded. Let’s just hope the endless media scandalmongering doesn’t destroy political will to take chances.

4. Fisker investors are close with the Obama administration.

This is the tricky one. The fact is, the world of big-time cleantech investors is relatively small and the people who are part of it are more likely than the average bear to be Democrats. They believe in clean energy; they are experts in it and advocates for it; for obvious reasons, they raised money and voted for Obama. Many advised his campaign and some advise his administration.

It is therefore inevitable that if government supports cleantech, some of that support is going to go to companies run or funded by big Democratic players. This is part of what’s made it so easy for the media to cast a vague pall of suspicion over the loan programs.

ABC and iWatch did a story in March straining mightily to make hay out of this. But it’s worth reading that story closely. It lists a number of cleantech loan recipients with ties to the Democratic Party. But that’s all it does, in the end: list them. At no point does it establish that there was any improper political influence in the process of reviewing and granting loans. Of course it does the usual he-said she-said — Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns (Fla.) charges favoritism; the administration denies it — but at no point is there any actual evidence of favoritism. At all.

The best ABC and iWatch can come up with is that a rich donor named Steve Westly, a cleantech investor with money in a number of companies that received DOE loans, served briefly on a White House advisory council on clean energy. As a DOE spokeswoman said, “Attending two meetings of a non-binding public advisory panel hardly gave companies supported by Steve Westly a leg up — especially considering the board has no decisionmaking role, isn’t involved in making grants or loans, and never even discussed those companies.”

Anyway, a certain amount of suspicion and skepticism is inevitable and probably healthy. Crony capitalism is bad no matter who’s doing it. And I’m not going to lie: If it were the Bush administration and fossil-fuel investors involved, I’d be extremely suspicious.

But the Bush administration was routinely and openly corrupt; the Obama administration has been, despite all the recent atmospherics, remarkably corruption-free. Unless some actual evidence of collusion or impropriety emerges — and to date there has been none — there’s no reason to assume otherwise … unless you’re a media outlet hungry for clicks and ad revenue.

Anyway, as you can see, ABC and iWatch have managed quite a feat here, pumping up the impression of scandal with absolutely nothing to base it on. We probably shouldn’t be surprised. ABC’s Brian Ross is famous in the blogosphere for mangling an RFK Jr. quote to gin up controversy. And iWatch — a project of The Center for Public Integrity that seemed so promising when it launched — has produced a depressingly large amount of empty clickbait. (I give you this gem: “Limousine liberals? Number of government-owned limos has soared under Obama.” I mean really.) The headline for the Fisker story on the iWatch site right now is “Another Energy Boondoggle?”, which manages not only to inaccurately imply that Fisker is a boondoggle, but also to inaccurately call Solyndra a boondoggle!

There’s more involved here than Obama’s political fortunes. America desperately needs a forward-looking energy policy. It needs to be acting aggressively to support the cleantech industries that are going to dominate the 21st century. But that is simply going to be impossible if a vacuous, click-hungry press corps is going to gin up controversy out of every single investment. That’s what Politico and iWatch are doing: training politicians to play it safe, to be timid in the face of the country’s challenges.

The clicks aren’t worth it, y’all.

As news outlets hype the ABC News piece about Fisker Automotive, a company that received an Obama administration loan program while creating jobs both in Finland and Delaware, Republicans are likely to pounce as well. Already, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) appeared on Fox News to tout the Fisker story as part of a larger narrative about the failure of the Obama administration’s loan program. “On Solyndra, people are going to draw comparisons about [Fisker],” piped Fox News’ Bill Hemmer.Republicans exaggerated and misconstrued the controversy over Solyndra, a failed solar company that received a subsidized loan (originating from the Bush administration), to call to cutting all clean energy loan programs.

But before Republicans turn on the right-wing echo chamber to twist the Fisker story into some sort of case of wrongdoing, they should consider this ThinkProgress report about GOP lawmakers who have requested the same type of clean energy loans. According to the report, at least 62 requested green energy subsidies from the Obama administration. Both the Indiana and Louisina Republican delegations requested taxpayer money for energy efficient start-up car companies — using the same type of program obtained by Fisker Automotive:

– Reps. Todd Young (R), Larry Bucshon (R), Marlin Stutzman (R), Todd Rokita (R) and Dan Burton (R) signed a letter along with other Indiana lawmakers to Secretary Steven Chu requesting expedited action on a clean energy loan to Carbon Motors Corporation. The grant, the lawmakers claimed, would bring 1,500 jobs to Indiana while achieving “a positive impact on the environment.” View a copy of the Indiana letter supporting Carbon Motor’s Department of Energy grant request here. All five lawmakers voted ‘aye’ in a protest vote against Department of Energy clean energy grant programs.

– Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wrote two letters to Secretary Steven Chu asking for clean energy loans for a plant that would build electric cars. The letter, sent in June of 2009, claimed that the company could create 4,000 jobs. The Associated Press and Climate Progress have reported on the letters here.

– Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) sent a letter to Secretary Steven Chu requesting “expedited consideration” of a fuel efficiency loan grant for V-Vehicle Company to build a plant in his state. The entire Louisiana congressional delegation cosigned the June 2, 2010 letter, including clean energy critics Reps. Bill Cassidy (R), John Fleming (R), Steve Scalise (R), and Rodney Alexander (R). Vitter also sent letters recommending clean energy loan guarantees for Red River Environmental Products and Next Autoworks Company. View a copy of Vitter’s clean energy loan requests here. Fleming, Cassidy, Scalise, and Alexander voted “aye” in a protest vote against Department of Energy clean energy grant programs.

Read the rest of the report here.

AP Photo/Julie Jacobson

In a call to arms this afternoon at the National Clean Energy Summit, Vice President Joe Biden made the case for continued investments in renewable energy, explaining that “we have to unleash” innovation in the sector to stay competitive and rise to the environmental and economic challenges of the day.

“If we don’t develop renewable energy, we will make the biggest mistake in this nation’s history,” he explained a crowd of over 700 policymakers, investors, students and other business professionals in Las Vegas.

He also criticized political opponents of clean energy investments who have fought to de-fund major R&D and deployment programs, explaining “the President and I are not going to listen to those voices.”

Biden did not lay out any new policy priorities in today’s speech. Instead, he used the platform to reiterate the Obama Administration’s support for investing in renewable electricity and fuels. In his January State of the Union Address, Obama called this period of history “our generation’s Sputnik moment,” and outlined a broad plan to get 80% of the nation’s energy from clean resources by 2035.

With the potential for significant reductions in long-term spending on certain energy programs, the Administration may find it difficult to make the investments needed to come close to achieving that goal. While Biden didn’t address those specific challenges, he did make it clear that that the White House was at least standing behind the goal rhetorically.

“I have one specific message. Our country has a choice. Are we going to rise to the challenges like our grandfathers and grandmothers did? Or are we going to be a follower?”

Budget negotiations this fall will be a true test.

To see the rest of today’s speeches and roundtables at NCES, you can watch the live streaming here.

MADDOW: In terms of the timing of that, if that goes as you say it’s possible that it could go. If that repeal happens, the timing is that the Defense Department is studying the issue through December. They’ve got another, I think, 60 days or something that they– after which they would have to delay any repeal process. So, we’d be looking at, best-case scenario for repeal, would be sometime in the spring. With the policy under such intense scrutiny, that study underway at the Defense Department, progress being made both in the courts and politically, why not suspend the discharges of people under the policy now, pending that Defense Department review? Why keep kicking people out now while all of this movement is happening towards ending the policy?

BIDEN: Because that is the compromise we basically had to make to get the votes to finally repeal it. In other words, everybody’s looking for, in my view, if I could just wave a wand, it would just be flat repeal. No one else would be able to suspend it. And everyone who was suspended would be able to come back if they wanted to. But the truth of the matter is, we had to build a consensus for this. Working very hard on the telephone. Calling people. And everybody’s looking forward to the orderly elimination of this law. I would prefer it not be orderly. I prefer it just end, boom, done. But that’s why that hasn’t happened. It’s resulted in us getting over 55 votes, I think we’ll get 55 vote, to flat repeal it.

Watch it:

Despite Biden’s explanation, many activists have argued that Obama could sign an executive order banning further military separations or increase the thresholds for separations.

BIDEN: There’s an entire way of life in jeopardy. This is just not about jobs. This is just not about whether or not the waterfowl is polluted and you can’t — this is an entire way of life that’s in jeopardy. And to sit there and say that we’re being — in effect, as I understood the statement — that he was ashamed we’re being tough on an oil company who caused the problem — I mean, I — look, I just think that it’s pretty important to the people of Louisiana all the way through Florida and even in his home state of Texas that people disassociate themselves from that.

That’s not the role — there’s no shakedown. It’s insisting on responsible conduct and a responsible response to something they caused. And I find it outrageous to suggest that if, in fact, we insisted that BP demonstrate their preparedness, to put aside billions of dollars — in this case, $20 billion — to take care of the immediate needs of people who are drowning — these guys don’t have deep pockets. The guy who runs the local marina, the guy who has one shrimping boat, the guy who has one small business — he can’t afford to lose $10,000, $12,000, $15,000, $30,000 a month. [...]

What is wrong with that? How is that a shakedown? I mean, I just — I don’t know, I find it pretty astounding, the comment.

Watch it:

Transcript:

Q Vice President Biden, you said this is pretty much basic, and you said there’s still millions of Americans who believe that they’re in a depression still. Do you — with that, do you believe there should be targeted approaches for minorities, particularly African Americans, as well as Hispanics and even teens, when it comes to the unemployment rate?

And also, on another subject, what are your thoughts about Mr. Barton’s comments this morning?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, since you know I never say what’s on my mind — (laughter) — I probably shouldn’t comment on Mr. Barton’s comment.

Q Oh, come on.

Q Please –

Q Is it that bad?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: They’re encouraging me, what can I say? (Laughter.)

MR. GIBBS: Well, okay, you should –

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Look, look — (laughter.)

Q How big of a deal was it? (Laughter.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank God my mother wasn’t around. (Laughter.) Look, guys, I find it incredibly insensitive, incredibly out of touch. The reason why I got involved in politics, the reason why the President and I ran, the President got involved, is the one primary role for government is to protect people who are being taken advantage of; protect people who are in an extreme straits and not able to take care of the circumstances themselves.

I’ve been down in the bayou area off and on for the last 36 years. My daughter went down to Tulane — I was worried she was not going to come home. I think I know the area relatively well as an outsider. There’s an entire way of life in jeopardy. This is just not about jobs. This is just not about whether or not the waterfowl is polluted and you can’t — this is an entire way of life that’s in jeopardy. And to sit there and say that we’re being — in effect, as I understood the statement — that he was ashamed we’re being tough on an oil company who caused the problem — I mean, I — look, I just think that it’s pretty important to the people of Louisiana all the way through Florida and even in his home state of Texas that people disassociate themselves from that.

That’s not the role — there’s no shakedown. It’s insisting on responsible conduct and a responsible response to something they caused. And I find it outrageous to suggest that if, in fact, we insisted that BP demonstrate their preparedness, to put aside billions of dollars — in this case, $20 billion — to take care of the immediate needs of people who are drowning — these guys don’t have deep pockets. The guy who runs the local marina, the guy who has one shrimping boat, the guy who has one small business — he can’t afford to lose $10,000, $12,000, $15,000, $30,000 a month.

And so the thing the President did — and I was so proud of him — is when we had the meeting with BP — and they were cooperative in the meeting. They were cooperative. He said, look, what I want you to do is take care of those people now who, if they don’t get help now, are going to be under, gone. Gone.

And I might add, this fund is not a ceiling, and people can go back to it as many times as they can prove they have been damaged and they need help. And the cleanup costs are all BP’s costs, separate, apart and above that $20 billion.

What is wrong with that? How is that a shakedown? I mean, I just — I don’t know, I find it pretty astounding, the comment.

Soon after making the comment, Baker responded to someone off-air, saying, “What do you mean racist? That’s not racist, it’s an observation. He’s the guy changing himself. Not me.”

Fox News’ official Twitter account first tweeted Biden’s quote:

Immediately after President Obama signed the health care reform legislation, Fox News’ Trace Gallagher brought up the “news,” saying that it was crossing their “urgent wires.” “We’ll play that for you if we can,” he promised. Bret Baier called Biden’s comment “striking”:

GALLAGHER: We also had crossing the urgent wires…the possibility that Vice President Joe Biden might have slipped up and dropped an f-bomb when he was addressing the President. [...]

I want to add some more context about what I was saying about the comment that Vice President Joe Biden made to the President and it says here, in our urgent queue, that when he was hugging the President, he leaned over and said, “This is a big bleeping deal.” We’ll play that for you if we can. [...]

BAIER: It was pretty striking for Vice President Biden to turn to the President and say, “This is a big blanking deal,” using the f-word with the microphones picking it up, and I’m sure we’ll take about that later.

Watch it:

Of course, Fox is eager to find a source of distraction to avoid covering the substance of the health care policy. Over the course of the year-long health care debate, Fox propagated baseless stories about “death panels,” fears about a “government takeover,” and claims that health care being “unconstitutional.”

On Tuesday, Israel’s Interior Ministry announced plans “to build 1,600 new housing units for Jews” in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Biden released this statement in response:

I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem. The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel. We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai apologized on Wednesday “for causing domestic and international distress” with the timing of the announcement, and Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly told Biden, “No one was seeking to embarrass you or undermine your visit — on the contrary, you are a true friend to Israel.” But Meir Margalit, a member of Jerusalem’s City Council told Israel’s Ynet News that the ministry “meant to sabotage the announcement that Netanyahu issued today regarding the renewal of indirect negotiations with the Palestinians. It is also a kind of slap in the face of the American administration.”

Despite Netanyahu’s apology, his position in favor of settlement expansion is clear. As Max Blumenthal reports, “a day before Biden’s arrival, Netanyahu appeared onstage with Pastor John Hagee in Jerusalem.” Hagee is a radical American cleric who opposes the two-state solution and supports unlimited Israeli settlement expansion with millions of American dollars. “If America puts pressure on Israel to divide Jerusalem we are following the blueprint of the Prince of Darkness,” Hagee has said. “Amos 3:2 states that any nation that divides the Land of Israel will come under the severe judgment of God.”

Hagee’s views are 180 degrees opposite of the goals of the United States and the international community to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu’s appearing onstage with Hagee is a strong indication that his stated support for the creation of a Palestinian state is less than genuine.

Biden’s comments do no such thing; instead they note that the withdrawal of American troops — something that conservatives for years have said would be a disaster — has gone very well. In February, President Obama announced a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq — an issue that he campaigned on and was vigorously opposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who advocated keeping U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely. Biden was pointing out that conservatives were wrong that withdrawal would, as Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol argued, “likely lead to carnage on a scale that would dwarf what is now occurring in Iraq.”

On ABC’s This Week today, former Vice President Cheney further distorted Biden’s comments and took credit for a withdrawal plan he opposed, saying that Biden should be “thanking George Bush.” Biden, however, pushed back against Cheney’s distortions on Meet the Press and Face the Nation, maintaining that the Iraq war “wasn’t worth it.” Biden argued that the Obama administration has managed the drawdown “very very well,” noting that the administration has acted as a “catalyst” for political reconciliation, which was the source of violence and the primary obstacle to a successful withdrawal. He also pointed out that in January 2009, the Bush administration had no political plan for Iraq. Watch Cheney and Biden:

Cheney’s attempt to take credit for the withdrawal represents a total turnaround. Just last summer, Cheney worried that Iraq withdrawal will “waste all the tremendous sacrifice” of US troops. Cheney has long fear-mongered on the implication of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. During the 2008 campaign, he even called the demands from Democrats in Congress for a timetable for withdrawal an act of “betrayal.”

Appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live yesterday, Vice President Biden — who serves as the constitutional President of the Senate — called out the Republican abuse of the filibuster:

I was a senator for 36 years. I got there when I was 29 years old. So I’ve been through seven presidents — eight now. And I’ve never seen a time when the operating norm to get anything passed was a super majority of 60 votes. No matter what — no matter what the bill is, it’s filibustered. It’s required to get 60 votes.

You can’t rule by a super majority. You can’t govern if you require a super majority. And I think it’s getting to the point where it’s been abused, this idea of the filibuster or the threat of extended debate.

And I think the public is taking it out — the — the Congress as a whole, Republicans and Democrats, are — are extremely low on the polls, in the Congress.

Watch it:

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made a rare public plea to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), urging him to use the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform. Noting that a “constitutional majority is 51 votes,” Pelosi said the need for 60 “isn’t legitimate in terms of passing legislation”:

“Yes, the filibuster has its place, it may even have its place in health care — it’s a very big issue. But does it have its place on every appointment and every piece of legislation? We have over 200 bills over there that haven’t been taken up. Most of them, 70 percent of them, were passed with over 50 Republican votes in the House.

The GOP’s abuse of the filibuster is unusual. There are now double the number of cloture votes as there were a decade ago, and triple the numbers of 20 years ago. The filibuster does not appear in the Constitution and many believe it would be ruled unconstitutional were the Supreme Court not “extremely shy of challenging the internal workings of Congress.”

Yesterday, in a meeting with President Obama at the White House, top civil rights leaders said Republican obstructionism had hurt African-American communities. National Urban League President Marc Morial told reporters, “Whether you agree with the filibuster or not, it was desgined as an extraordinary measure.” Benjamin Jealous, President of the NAACP, said Democrats “should be trying to do more in the reconciliation process.”

Even Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), a traditionalist who has defended the Senate’s arcane procedures, said Tuesday that the Republicans’ consistent use of the filibuster is “abusive” and “evidence of a dysfunctional institution.”

Among the many challenges our administration inherited was the slow but steady decline in support for our nuclear stockpile and infrastructure, and for our highly trained nuclear work force. … For almost a decade, our laboratories and facilities have been underfunded and undervalued. … The budget we will submit to Congress on Monday both reverses this decline and enables us to implement the president’s nuclear-security agenda. To achieve these goals, our budget devotes $7 billion for maintaining our nuclear-weapons stockpile and complex, and for related efforts. This commitment is $600 million more than Congress approved last year. And over the next five years we intend to boost funding for these important activities by more than $5 billion.

This should address the stated concerns of conservative GOP Senators who wrote a letter last month worrying about the state of the nuclear stockpile in the face of future cuts in the nuclear arsenal. In other words, conservatives argue, reasonably enough, that if you have fewer nukes then we have to be sure that the remaining nuclear weapons are good to go. The problem however, is that instead of focusing on expanding resources to programs that maintain the reliability of our remaining nuclear weapons, prominent conservatives in the Senate stamp their feet demanding that we start building new nuclear weapons. This is like instead of taking your perfectly fine car to get a tune-up, you just decide to buy an entirely new one. It’s wasteful and unnecessary.

Numerous studies have pointed out that there is no need to build a new nuclear warhead or test nuclear weapons as long as there is adequate funding to maintain the nuclear stockpile. Biden’s increase in funding will ensure that, as the Arms Control Association notes, “the United States can continue maintain a reliable arsenal without resuming nuclear testing or building newly-designed nuclear warheads.”

Yet many conservatives prefer just to pretend these studies don’t exist. Senators like Jon Kyl (R-AZ), want to build new nuclear weapons and want to conduct new nuclear tests and pledge to fight tooth and nail against ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Many are predicting that because of this opposition, CTBT will go nowhere in the Senate, as it needs 67 votes. But with still 59 Democrats, and with Republican non-proliferation advocates like Senator Dick Lugar, not to mention the Senators from Utah and Nevada that have a strong opposition to ever testing nukes again, there is a fighting chance that this treaty could get passed. Importantly, Biden didn’t walk away from it and included CTBT ratification as part of the Administration’s core nuclear security agenda in his op-ed:

Our budget request is just one of several closely related and equally important initiatives giving life to the president’s Prague agenda. Others include…and pursuing ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Instead of shirking from the fight, the Administration should plow forward and push the CTBT, because as former Republican Senator from Utah, Jake Garn, wrote today in the Deseret News, “Ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will make our country safer.”

“As long as I have served, … I’ve never seen, as my uncle once said, the constitution stood on its head as they’ve done. This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators,” Biden said. “No democracy has survived needing a supermajority.”

Biden is right about the unprecedented nature of GOP obstructionism. According to a study by UCLA Political Scientist Barbara Sinclair, only 8 percent of major legislation was subjected to the filibuster during the 1960s. That number rose to a staggering 70% during the 110th Congress — the last two years that President Bush was in office — and filibustering has only grown more common since President Obama took office. Biden and his former Senate colleagues are not powerless against this expansion of the filibuster, however. Every two years, when the Senate’s newly-elected members take their seats, a brief window opens up allowing 51 senators (or 50 senators plus the Vice President) to eliminate the filibuster by simple majority vote.  If the Vice President is determined to end the era of right-wing obstructionism, all he has to do is whip up 50 votes.

BIDEN: You know, I honest to God don’t know. What I learned from Mike Mansfield when I first got there, I told you the story, is never question another man’s motive.

SCARBOROUGH: Right.

BIDEN: Question his judgment. I think Joe’s judgment is wrong on this. But you’ve seen it across the board. You know Joe, you and I both served in the Congress. Great big bill coming up, everybody figures their maximum point of leverage is right before the deal’s made. So, you’ve got everybody lining up out there saying, “if I just am willing to hold out now, I’ll get everything I want.”

Asked about Lieberman’s flip-flop, Biden quipped that “if we held flip-flops against everybody in Congress, we probably wouldn’t have many people there.” He added that he was “confident” Lieberman would ultimately vote for the bill. Watch it:

Before Wilson issued his apology last night, Hoyer told WTOP that “there’ll be time enough to consider whether or not we ought to make it clear that that action is unacceptable in the House of Representatives.” On ABC’s Good Morning America today, Vice President Biden responded to Wilson by saying, “I was embarrassed for the chamber and a Congress I love.”

Israel Air Force F-15s (wikimedia)

Over the weekend, Joe Biden made some news with these remarks on the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran:

BIDEN: Look, Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Whether we agree or not?

BIDEN: Whether we agree or not. They’re entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed. What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues. If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.

This is being read by some, including Marc Lynch, as a “green light” for an Israeli attack. Like Robert Farley I think the most straightforward reading of what Biden said is rather different, he’s trying to distance the United States from any possible Israeli military action by making it clear that what Israel does or doesn’t do is decided in Israel rather than in Washington.

The main problem with this, I think, is that probably nobody’s going to believe it. Already you see many Americans taking Biden’s statement that the U.S. doesn’t control Israeli policy to “really” mean that the U.S. is encouraging Israel to attack.

One interesting fact that didn’t make it into the story. Since March, Biden has talked, usually in conference calls, to dozens of mayors and 47 of the 50 state governors about the Recovery Act. The three governors who have not yet been on the line, though they have been invited: Alaska’s Sarah Palin, Texas’ Rick Perry and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal. You can draw your own conclusions.

Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told The Associated Press that the administration is taking no position on the labor dispute itself. But, he said, “We have always respected picket lines, and administration officials will not cross this one.”

“We appreciate the Obama administration’s support of fire fighters,” said International Association of Fire Fighters General President Harold Schaitberger. “This is another example of the administration’s unqualified support for workers and organized labor.”

This is AIPAC summitteering I can believe in:

Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. John Kerry pledged to confront Iran and protect Israel, but called on the Jewish state to freeze settlements. In their addresses Tuesday on the closing day of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference, both said President Obama was committed to removing Iran’s nuclear threat. [...]

“Israel,” [Biden] said, “must work toward a two-state solution, not build settlements, dismantle outposts and allow Palestinians access to freedom of movement.” [...]

“Israel, too, must take hard steps toward the path to peace,” Kerry said, calling for greater freedom of movement for Palestinians and a settlement freeze.

That’s good stuff. Will we see policy follow through from the administration and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?