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Green

Senate Debates Giving Away The World’s Third Largest Copper Deposit To A Multi-National Mining Company

By Public Lands Team on Feb 9, 2012 at 2:33 pm

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Today the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on two Republican bills that would give one of the world’s largest copper deposits away to the Resolution Copper Company, owned by the large multi-national mining conglomerates Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. The deposit is located on public lands in the Tonto National Forest in Arizona.

Sens. John Kyl (R-AZ) and John McCain (R-AZ) are the biggest proponents of the bills in the Senate. Kyl testified today that

The legislation that came over to the Senate from the House is perfectly good legislation, it has all of the protections in it, and it has Congress making the decision.

Under the bill, the Resolution Copper Company would receive more than 2,000 acres of land with the copper deposit in exchange for approximately 5,000 acres of land that the company currently owns which would be set aside for conservation. The Resolution Copper Company plans to mine the copper deposit as soon as the transfer is complete.

The House version of this bill (H.R. 1904), which was debated today, would prohibit environmental review from taking place until after the land exchange had occurred. So, the extent of the environmental impacts would not be determined until after the land is made private, thereby limiting the ability of surrounding communities to work to stop or modify the mine should major problems be predicted.

Additionally, American taxpayers would not be properly compensated for the value of the copper that would come off of these lands when the area is made private in the land exchange. Instead, a single multinational corporation would benefit from one of the largest copper deposits in the world — a true example of giving away our public lands for corporate profits.

Finally, the Resolution Copper mine would be built on Oak Flat, a site that is sacred to Native American tribes. As Shan Lewis, president of the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona testified today:

Federal laws and policies are designed to protect Native sacred sites like Oak Flat.  The proposed land exchange that would be mandated by H.R. 1904 would circumvent these laws and policies and transfer ownership to of federal lands containing a sacred site of Apache, Yavapai, and other Native people to a company for mining activities that will destroy this sacred site.  Although ITCA is not opposed to mining in general, mining in this location that will result in the destruction of a sacred site is offensive to us and should not be condoned.

In past sessions of Congress, both McCain and Kyl have held up other Senate bills and nominations in order to try to move previous versions of the Resolution Copper bill.

Justice

14 GOP Senators Slam Senate GOP’s ‘Unconstitutional’ Filibuster*

By Ian Millhiser on Dec 7, 2011 at 11:00 am

Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Discuss Their Understanding Of The Constitution

Yesterday, Senate Republicans voted nearly unanimously to block Caitlan Halligan’s nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Only Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) broke party lines to join the 54-45 vote to allow Halligan to move forward — leaving Halligan six votes short of what she needed to break the GOP filibuster.

The Senate GOP’s decision to filibuster Halligan earned wide rebukes from Senate Republicans*, many of whom slammed this decision to filibuster a judicial nominee as unconstitutional:

  • Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “I would never filibuster any President’s judicial nominee, period. I might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote.”
  • Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA): “Every judge nominated by this president or any president deserves an up-or-down vote. It’s the responsibility of the Senate. The Constitution requires it.”
  • Tom Coburn (R-OK): “If you look at the Constitution, it says the president is to nominate these people, and the Senate is to advise and consent. That means you got to have a vote if they come out of committee. And that happened for 200 years.”
  • John Cornyn (R-TX): “We have a Democratic leader defeated, in part, as I said, because I believe he was identified with this obstructionist practice, this unconstitutional use of the filibuster to deny the president his judicial nominations.
  • Mike Crapo (R-ID): “Until this Congress, not one of the President’s nominees has been successfully filibustered in the Senate of the United States because of the understanding of the fact that the Constitution gives the President the right to a vote.”
  • Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “I think filibustering judges will destroy the judiciary over time. I think it’s unconstitutional”
  • Chuck Grassley (R-IA): “It would be a real constitutional crisis if we up the confirmation of judges from 51 to 60, and that’s essentially what we’d be doing if the Democrats were going to filibuster.”
  • Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX): “[T]he Constitution envisions a 51-vote majority for judgeships…. [Filibustering judges] amend[s] the Constitution without going through the proper processes…. We have a majority rule that is the tradition of the Senate with judges. It is the constitutional requirement.”
  • Jon Kyl (R-AZ): “The President was elected fair and square. He has the right to submit judicial nominees and it is the Senate’s obligation under the Constitution to act on those nominees.”
  • Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “The Constitution of the United States is at stake. Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges. The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent. But my Democratic colleagues want to change the rules. They want to reinterpret the Constitution to require a supermajority for confirmation.”
  • Jeff Sessions (R- AL): “[The Constitution] says the Senate shall advise and consent on treaties by a two-thirds vote, and simply ‘shall advise and consent’ on nominations…. I think there is no doubt the Founders understood that to mean … confirmation of a judicial nomination requires only a simple majority vote.”
  • Richard Shelby (R-AL): “Why not allow the President to do his job of selecting judicial nominees and let us do our job in confirming or denying them? Principles of fairness call for it and the Constitution requires it.”
  • John Thune (SD): Filibustering judicial nominees “is contrary to our Constitution …. It was the Founders’ intention that the Senate dispose of them with a simple majority vote.”

*All quotes are taken from when George W. Bush was president. But, of course, that doesn’t matter because — in the words of Cornyn — “we need to treat all nominees exactly the same, regardless of whether they’re nominated by a Democrat or a Republican president.”**

**Cornyn’s statement was also made when George W. Bush was president.

Economy

Kyl Could Support A Middle Class Tax Cut, But Only If The Rich Get A Massive Tax Break Too

By Travis Waldron on Dec 5, 2011 at 7:10 pm

As Democrats continue to push a renewal of the payroll tax cut included in last year’s deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, members of the Republican Party have reportedly grown concerned that if they do not go along with the proposal, they will lose their reputation as anti-tax zealots and get painted as defenders of the richest Americans. Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R), apparently, is not one of those Republicans.

Speaking on the Senate floor this afternoon, Kyl blasted the plan put forth today by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), which would partially pay for the extension by instituting a temporary surtax on Americans whose incomes top $1 million. Despite outlining his perceived problems with the plan, however, Kyl said he could be persuaded to vote for an extension — but only if Democrats agreed to again extend the 2003 Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans:

KYL: It was part of an overall agreement in which we said we will extend all of the existing tax rates — the so-called Bush tax cuts, that is the rates that have been in effect since 2001 and 2003, we would extend this temporary tax holiday from the payroll tax cut, we would extend all of those. And I supported that. That frankly was the right thing to do, to extend all of these existing rates. … Now if we can do that again, I’m all for it. I’ll support the extension of the payroll tax holiday.

Watch it:

The payroll tax cut extension as proposed by Democrats would ensure that, at a time when the middle- and working-classes are still inching toward recovery, the average household would pocket an extra $1,000 a year. Meanwhile, in Kyl’s home state of Arizona, the millionaires’ surtax used to pay for much of the extension would affect just 0.1 percent of all taxpayers — a whopping 3,173 people who bring home an average annual income of $3.5 million, according to a Citizens for Tax Justice analysis. And while proposals exist to pay for the extension, no such plan exists for the Bush tax cuts, despite a 10-year price tag topping $2.5 trillion and no meaningful job creation to show for the cost.

Kyl’s statement is a direct contradiction to comments he made just a year ago during debate about the Bush tax cuts. “My view, and I think most of the people in my party don’t believe that you should ever have to offset a tax cut,” Kyl told reporters in July 2010. Now that it is a Democratic tax cut on the table, however, Kyl not only opposes the Democrats’ attempts to offset the costs, he wants to ensure that the middle class doesn’t get a tax cut unless the wealthiest Americans — whose tax rates are already at historic lows — get one too.

Economy

GOP Sen. Kyl Pushes Raising Payroll Taxes On Middle Class But Refuses To Raise Taxes On Millionaires

By Tanya Somanader on Nov 28, 2011 at 11:45 am

In a clear display of misplaced priorities, congressional fiscal super committee member Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) entirely dismissed the idea of extending the payroll tax cut for middle class families yesterday, even though failure to do so “would reduce GDP growth by 0.5 percent and cost the economy 400,000 jobs.” “The payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation. We do not think that is a great way to do it,” he told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

But practically in the same breath, Kyl refused to even consider a small (and publicly-supported) tax increase on America’s millionaires to pay for the payroll tax cut extension. “Taxing the people who provide the jobs, you put off the day that we have economic recovery and job creation in this country. That’s precisely what the Democratic plan would do”:

KYL: The second problem is that by taxing the people who provide the jobs, you put off the day we have economic recovery and job creation in this country. And that’s precisely what the Democratic plan would do. It would hit those people, the small businesses who we all acknowledge are the ones who create the jobs coming out of economic difficulty. And that we think would be a big mistake in –

WALLACE: If I may, Senator Kyl, just to cut this short, are you saying no deal on extending payroll tax cuts?

KYL: The payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation. We don’t think that is a good way to do it.

Watch it:

Incidentally, a small tax increase on millionaires would not affect most small businesses and the businesses it does affect note that such minute increases make “zero difference” in their hiring practices. When Wallace noted that economists say a failure to extend the payroll tax cut along with jobless benefits could “cost more than half a million jobs,” Kyl responded, “I don’t know who those economists are. I just read a piece by a respected economist Art Laffer who says that isn’t true.” Of course, Laffer — a former Ronald Reagan adviser — is known for bragging about Reagan’s tax increases on low-income Americans.

Justice

Senate Minority Leader McConnell Signs On To Kagan Recusal Witchhunt

By Ian Millhiser on Nov 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Last week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) became the latest GOP lawmaker to fabricate a reason why he thinks Justice Elena Kagan must recuse from the Affordable Care Act litigation. On Friday, Senate Republicans escalated these frivolous assaults on Kagan’s ethical integrity even further — sending a letter signed by Sens. Mitch McConnell (KY), John Kyl (AZ), and Chuck Grassley (IA), the #1 and #2 Republicans in the Senate and the Senate GOP’s top lawmaker on the Judiciary Committee, to Attorney General Eric Holder laying out the exceptionally weak case for Kagan’s recusal:

Federal law requires recusal from a case if a judicial officer of the United States “has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case or controversy.” 28 U.S.C. § 455(b)(3). In addition, a federal judge must disqualify herself from participating in a matter if her “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Id. at § 455(a). It appears that former Solicitor General Kagan’s participation in the Obama Administration’s defense of the PPACA may satisfy both requirements for recusal.

Then-Solicitor General Kagan acknowledged to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year that, in fact, she played a “role” in the Obama Administration’s defense of the PPACA, including attending “at least one meeting” that discussed the litigation. But she minimized her degree of involvement in the litigation, characterizing it as not “substantial.” Federal law, however, requires recusal if a government official participated in a matter that is the subject of litigation; it does not require the government official’s past participation in that same matter to be “substantial” (as determined by the self-same government official).

Unsurprisingly, the letter from McConnell and his colleagues misrepresents Kagan’s actions. Although Kagan did testify at her confirmation hearing that she was once present in a meeting where the existence of the Affordable Care Act litigation was brought up, she also testified under oath that she did no work whatsoever as an attorney on this litigation. Being in a meeting where a particular lawsuit is mentioned does not constitute participation “as counsel, adviser or material witness” on a case any more than attending a football game makes you a coach.

Moreover, even though a far-right group filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking evidence that Kagan must recuse from the Affordable Care Act litigation, this request proved so fruitless that even the National Review’s Carrie Severino — a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas — was forced to conclude that the documents uncovered by this request contain no evidence requiring Justice Kagan’s recusal.

Yet, while McConnell’s letter is clearly just the latest chapter in a witchhunt seeking to discredit Kagan, it is nonetheless significant simply because McConnell’s name is on it. Previously, only a few senators such as Sessions and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — both of whom represent the Senate’s far right fringe — had jumped onboard the anti-Kagan witchhunt. The fact that McConnell, Kyl, and Grassley are now lighting up torches and demanding that Kagan be burnt at the stake indicates that this witchhunt is the official position of the Senate GOP caucus.

Justice

Senators McCain And Kyl Are Back To Obstructing Judges In One Of The Most Overloaded Courts In The Country

By Ian Millhiser on Aug 22, 2011 at 4:30 pm

The late Chief Judge John Roll of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona

Few if any courts are more handicapped by the judicial vacancy crisis than the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. After the murder of Chief Judge John Roll in the same mass shooting that targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), there are currently three vacancies on this court. And the Judicial Conference of the United States believes that eight additional judges are required to keep up with the court’s exploding caseload, where felony case filings alone nearly doubled from 3,023 in 2008 to 5,219 in 2010.

Yet, despite this pressing need, Arizona’s two senators have done little but throw roadblocks in the way of confirming new judges. Traditionally, a president will not nominate district court judges without consulting with a potential nominee’s home-state senators. Yet Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) delayed so long in sending names to President Obama that even the Republican chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals that includes Arizona was pleading with them to stop holding things up. When Obama nominated two people to fill the longest-standing vacancies on this court, court watchers hoped that this was the end of McCain and Kyl’s roadblocks — but it appears that the two senators are now back up to their old tricks:

President Obama did his part by nominating two women to fill those vacancies. One of those, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer Guerin Zipps already has the green light.

But Rosemary Marquez, a defense lawyer working out of a downtown Tucson office, is being held up by Arizona’s two Senators. [...]

The average judge nationwide handles 566 actions. An Arizona judge handles 854. And those numbers are constantly climbing.

Although nominees to more powerful court of appeals judgeships have previously been the subject of political warfare, conservative obstruction of district court nominees was unheard of prior the Obama presidency. District judges spend the overwhelming majority of their time on routine, non-ideological issues such as trial scheduling, sentencing hearings, and routine jury instructions. So, by blocking Marquez’ nomination to a district court, McCain and Kyl are depriving their constituents of a desperately needed public servant without even gaining much of anything ideologically in return.

Economy

The GOP’s Not-So-Super Committee

By Alex Seitz-Wald, Pat Garofalo and Tanya Somanader on Aug 10, 2011 at 4:34 pm

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced today their picks for the fiscal super committee created by the debt ceiling deal, naming Sens. Jon Kyl (AZ), Pat Toomey (PA), Rob Portman (OH), and Reps. Jeb Hensarling (TX), Dave Camp (MI), and Fred Upton (MI) to the body. The committee is tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction by November, and one of the key issues will be whether revenue increases are included. Basic economics and the American people call for increasing revenues, with a new CNN poll showing 63 percent of Americans want the committee to raise taxes on the wealthy, but several of the GOP picks are hard-right conservatives who likely oppose such a “balanced approach.” Other critical issue will be entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, and whether the committee makes cuts to military spending.

Here’s what you need to know about each of the GOP super committee members: Read more

Economy

The House GOP Budget Contained The Same War Savings That Republicans Are Now Complaining About

By Pat Garofalo on Jul 25, 2011 at 5:20 pm

Spending less on wars only counts when Republicans do it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) today unveiled a plan to raise the federal debt ceiling that would include $2.7 trillion in spending cuts and no new revenue. Of the $2.7 trillion in cuts, about $1 trillion would come from “winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Republicans have reacted to this by claiming that those savings aren’t real savings. As Time Magazine’s Jay Newton-Small reported:

House Republicans gripe that $1 trillion in Reid’s proposed savings aren’t actual “cuts,” but phantom money that was never going to be spent on the two wars. “It’s like me saying, I’m not going to buy 10 Cadillacs over the next 10 years: look I saved $100,000,” said one GOP aide.

However, the GOP found these savings to be completely adequate when they were included in the House Republican budget, authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). As the Center on Budget and Priorities noted, about $1.3 trillion in savings in the Ryan budget “comes simply from taking credit for spending less in future years for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Ryan derided these cuts as “phantom savings,” and then proceeded to include them in his budget anyway.

“It’s an accounting gimmick in effect, I know they rationalize that well, that appeared in the Ryan budget too,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). “It was as wrong in the Ryan budget as it is in this. […] Republicans, I don’t believe in the Senate, will support a bill that purports to cut spending if that’s the kind of the spending that it purports to cut.” However, nearly every Senate Republican, including Kyl, voted for those very cuts when they voted to approve the Ryan budget. “Of course we support it,” Kyl has said of the Ryan budget. But now that those savings are included in a Democratic plan, they suddenly cease to count.

Green

Kyl Defends Taxpayer Subsidies For Richest Oil Companies

By Brad Johnson on Jun 26, 2011 at 4:52 pm

Appearing on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) argued that budget talks should not include the reduction of oil and gas subsidies. Kyl, who abandoned budget negotiations with the White House this week, claimed that eliminating $2 billion in annual subsidies for the richest oil companies — instead of slashing programs that feed the poor and protect the middle class — would “hurt the American consumer”:

First of all, if you want gas prices to rise and pay more than $4 at the pump, go ahead and do this. That is not what we should be about right now. That kind of tax increase is going to flow right to the consumer. Everybody knows that. Secondly, you are picking out one industry in the United States, an industry that employs almost 10 million people, represents 7.5% of the Gross Domestic Product. You’re saying to them you are not going to get the same tax treatment that all other manufacturing corporations get in the United States. So we’re going to punish you, because you make a lot of money. It’s also true with those big profits, they have enormous costs of investment. Of course, you covered the issue of how much it costs to put one of those platforms out in the middle of Gulf of Mexico. Billions of dollars. Big money all the way around. You’ll hurt the American consumer if you impose more taxes on them.

Watch it:

Kyl is not telling the truth about oil and gas subsidies:

Eliminating Oil Subsidies Won’t Raise Gas Prices. Eliminating Big Oil’s subsidies would have very little effect on gas prices. The subsidies have little to no influence on the investment decisions oil companies make, especially with the price of oil around $100 a barrel. Instead, the tax breaks simply pad oil profits, and are funneled into “obscene” executive pay schemes and shareholder payoffs. Even the American Petroleum Institute, which opposes cutting the subsidies, has admitted that eliminating subsidies wouldn’t affect gas prices.

The Oil And Gas Industry Employs About 700,000 Americans, Not “Almost 10 Million”. A report prepared for the American Petroleum Institute in 2009 estimated the the oil and gas industry involves only 2.1 million direct jobs with 7.1 million indirect and induced jobs. But even the 2.1 million jobs figure is grossly inflated. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, oil and gas drilling — the industries directly affected by most of these subsidies — only employed 63,012 jobs in September 2009, the most recent reporting period. U.S. Department of Labor 2007 statistics indicate the drilling and production of oil and natural gas, plus support activities directly account for 425,025 jobs. If sectors such as oil refineries and natural gas distribution are included, even though they are unaffected by drilling subsidies, the total increases to 743,825 jobs. According to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data from 2009, the drilling and production of oil and natural gas directly generates 799,100 jobs.

Taxes aren’t dollars that disappear, and the payment of taxes isn’t a punishment for successful businesses, like the oil industry that gets over $7 billion in subsidies a year, far more than the Obama administration has proposed cutting. Taxes paid go back into the American economy, supporting the long-term investments that make the United States the richest nation on earth.

For example, taxes support public universities like Arizona State, where Kyl earned his bachelor’s and law degree. Taxes pay for the electoral system that Kyl joined as a member of Congress in 1986, where he has been taxpayer-funded ever since. Then again, Kyl has also directly received $333,332 from the oil and gas industry in political contributions over his career. Maybe he is just concerned about protecting his own personal oil and gas subsidies, which he receives on top of his taxpayer salary.

Politics

Arpaio Orders Deputies To Start Asking Undocumented Immigrants About Wildfires

By Marie Diamond on Jun 25, 2011 at 9:00 am

The fallout from Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) patently false statement that undocumented immigrants were responsible for the destructive wildfires in Arizona continued this week, as his fellow Arizona senator Jon Kyl (R) and Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio entered the fray. “Sheriff Joe,” as he’s called, may be the most notoriously ruthless law enforcement official in the country. He’s known for cramming detained immigrants into inhumane outdoor “tent cities” he proudly likens to concentration camps, and for parading prisoners around in pink underwear, in addition to his numerous legal violations.

Arpaio, who never misses an opportunity to scapegoat or harass immigrants, eagerly released a statement this week in response to McCain’s baseless charge. Arpaio announced he had instructed his deputies to question all detained undocumented immigrants about their connection to the wildfires, even though he admitted it’s “a long shot” that these interrogations will yield any information:

Deputies arrested 20 immigrants as they made their way through Maricopa County Wednesday morning.

All were reportedly from Mexico and said they were headed to locations in Texas, Tennessee, and New York state.

They all entered the border near where the fires are burning in southeast Arizona, according to the news release.

“It’s a long shot I know,” Arpaio said. “But since we already gather information from them about their U.S. entry points and travelling routes and methods, this is simply one more area of intelligence to explore that may help us to determine the origins of these fires.“

After McCain said at a press conference that there was “substantial evidence that some of these fires are caused by people who have crossed our border illegally,” U.S. Forest Service Officials rushed to dispute his charge. Spokesman Tom Berglund told ABC News “there’s no evidence” indicating immigrants had any role in the fire.

Arpaio, who promotes himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” is being investigated by the FBI, Justice Department, and a Federal Grand Jury for civil rights violations and abuse of power. His persecution of immigrants who apparently entered the country after the fires started is further evidence of his willingness to seize any excuse to subject migrants to degrading treatment for his own PR purposes.

Meanwhile, Sen. Kyl has repeatedly come to McCain’s defense this week, and continues to stand by their debunked claim that undocumented immigrants are to blame for the Arizona wildfires. He reiterated that position today on Hugh Hewitt’s conservative radio show. When asked what he thought of McCain’s comments, Kyl said, “Well, he was correct. I was right there.”

He went on to broaden the circle of guilt-by-suspicion to “drug smugglers,” saying “a lot of these fires are said to be, or we have substantial evidence, they’re caused by drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.” Like McCain, Kyl cited the Border Patrol and the Forest Service as the basis for his claim, even though the Forest Service has directly disputed it.

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