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Immigration

Over 100 Economists Call On Congress To Pass Immigration Reform

By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee on May 23, 2013 at 10:12 am

Douglas Holtz-Eakin

In an open letter released by the American Action Forum (AAF) on Thursday, 111 conservative economists signed a pro-immigration reform letter sent to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). In an effort to garner conservative support to the immigration reform debate, the letter cited the economic benefits of passing an immigration legislation that would help to reduce the deficit.

The letter does not aim to win over Republicans like Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) who staunchly oppose legalization, but it will help Republican leaders on the sideline whose allegiance relies on the signing power of prominent conservative-leaning, pro-immigration supporters like AAF president Douglas Holtz-Eakin and former Republican presidential advisers, R. Glenn Hubbard, Arthur Laffer, Edward Lazear, and Lawrence Lindsey. Additionally, Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) released a statement showing his support of an immigration overhaul.

Of one of the many reasons that these conservative economists support the bill, Holtz-Eakin wrote, “according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) an additional 0.1 percent in average economic growth will, over a ten-year period, reduce the federal deficit by over $300 billion.” The CBO is a nonpartisan group that has joined a legion of economic organizations that have concluded that long-term legalization creates positive economic benefits. The CBO findings comes on the heels of a letter written by Stephen Gross, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration who was commissioned by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to find out the economic impact of the Senate immigration bill. Gross also found that the decade-long legalization process would generate more than $275 billion in revenue for Social Security.

The direct effects of immigration reform would induce a labor-force growth, which in turn would raise the gross domestic product. “A reformed and efficient immigration system” in which a longitudinal study has shown to keep federal benefit systems afloat, would as Holtz-Eakin’s letter puts it, “promote economic growth and ease the challenge of reforming unsustainable federal health and retirement programs.”

Economy

Nancy Pelosi Calls For Federal Paid Sick Leave Legislation

By Travis Waldron on Mar 26, 2013 at 3:00 pm

Marking the 20th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act in Boston yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called for federal legislation that would allow workers to earn paid sick leave each year. The FMLA allows workers unpaid leave to care for family members or newborn children, but Pelosi said she wanted legislation that would require workers to earn up to seven paid sick days each year, the Associated Press reports:

Pelosi said federal laws should guarantee that workers can earn paid time off.

“It’s not just about women, it’s about families,” Pelosi said Monday. “Many men take advantage of the Family and Medical Leave Act.”

Three million Americans missed work because of illness in February, and many of them likely did so without leave. 40 percent of private sector workers and 80 percent of low-income workers do not receive paid sick days, increasing the spread of costly illnesses and driving down productivity in a way that hurts both businesses and the overall economy. Nearly 80 percent of America’s food workers receive no paid sick leave.

Massachusetts state lawmakers are pushing a proposal to give workers one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked. Passing paid sick leave into law would make it just the second state to require paid sick days. Portland joined Seattle, Washington DC, and San Francisco as the fourth American city to require paid sick leave earlier this month. Philadelphia also approved a paid sick leave provision this month, though it is likely to veto it for a second time.

The push for federal paid sick leave legislation began in 2004, and the Healthy Families Act, which would allow workers to earn seven sick days a year, has been regularly re-introduced since then. It has not advanced, however, as opponents of paid sick leave continue to use misleading studies to claim that it will hurt American businesses.

LGBT

Congressional Democrats To SCOTUS: Times Have Changed Since DOMA Passed

By Zack Ford on Mar 1, 2013 at 3:05 pm

A coalition of 212 Democrats in Congress have submitted an amicus brief of their own calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV). In addition to articulating many of the familiar arguments against DOMA, the lawmakers explain that times have changed since Congress — including 25 signatories of this brief who voted for it then — originally voted for the law in 1996. They argue that the increased visibility and understanding now available about the lives of the gay community reveals :

When Congress enacted DOMA, gay and lesbian couples could not marry anywhere in the world. Some States still criminalized same-sex relationships, inviting further discrimination against gay men and lesbians in employment, family relations, and housing. Gay men and lesbians were still often portrayed as mentally unstable, sexually promiscuous, and morally deficient. In short, it was a different world for gay men and lesbians, and many were understandably reluctant to speak openly about themselves or their families. A number of Members, like the constituents we serve, did not personally know many (if any) people who were openly gay, and majority attitudes toward that minority group were often viscerally fearful and negative.

As a result, when the question of same-sex marriage arose in 1996, reflexive beliefs and discomfort about same-sex relationships dominated congressional debate. From our perspective—including those of us who voted for DOMA—debate and passage of the law did not necessarily arise “from malice or hostile animus,” but instead from “insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves.” Bd. of Trs. of Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett (Kennedy, J., concurring). While fear and distrust of families different from our own may explain why DOMA passed by comfortable majorities in 1996, it does not obviate the need for a constitutionally permissible justification for the law.

It’s noteworthy that they quote Justice Kennedy here, as he is considered to be the swing vote on the Court. Indeed, Kennedy’s quote speaks to what is more commonly known as privilege, as in white privilege, male privilege, or in this case, heterosexual privilege. There were no doubt many intentionally anti-gay perspectives that motivated the passage of DOMA, but not all who voted for it consciously held animus against the gay community. Many likely dealt with a more subconscious uninformed sense that heterosexuality is “normal,” and thus felt threatened by the perceived abnormality of homosexuality.

In 1913, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Indeed, the amount of basic information available about the nature of sexual orientations and the prevalence of LGBT families is now impossible to ignore. Any current Justice who rules against marriage equality will have no grounds to plead ignorance.

Update

Curious which Democrats did not sign the brief? Here’s the list.

Economy

Why Democrats Are Right To Push For More Revenue In The Next Budget Deal

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 7, 2013 at 3:05 pm

Fresh off the deal to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff,” Congressional Democrats are gearing up for the next round of budget negotiations. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said yesterday that the fiscal cliff deal was “not enough on the revenue side,” with the caucus seeming to settle on $1 trillion as a goal for increased revenue this year:

Democrats say they want to raise as much as $1 trillion in new revenues through tax reform later this year to balance Republican demands to slash mandatory spending.

Democratic leaders have had little time to craft a new position for their party since passing a tax deal Tuesday that will raise $620 billion in revenue over the next ten years.

The emerging consensus, however, is that the next installment of deficit reduction should reach $2 trillion and about half of it should come from higher taxes.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are trying to portray the fiscal cliff deal as the final word on taxes. “The tax issue is behind us,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pronounced yesterday.

However, budget deals cut over the last year have already cut a substantial amount of spending. In fact, even with the revenue included in the fiscal cliff deal, there have been $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue signed into law by President Obama. That ratio increases to 3 to 1 when reduced interest payments on the debt are included.

As Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, following the GOP’s all-cuts plan going forward would blow that ratio up to 5 to 1:

If this Republican view holds, then when all of the deficit reduction efforts are tallied together, spending cuts will outpace revenue increases by nearly 5 to 1 — hardly a balanced approach. If future deficit reduction comes through an even split of revenues and spending cuts, total spending cuts will still outpace revenue increases by nearly 2 to 1. (These ratio estimates do not include the effects of interest savings; if those savings are included, the share of savings that come from spending cuts rises further.)

On its current path, revenue will not get close to where it was the last time the federal budget was balanced.

Politics

Republican Congressman Insults Nancy Pelosi’s Appearance: ‘There’s No Facelift With John Boehner’

By Scott Keyes on Jan 5, 2013 at 8:30 am

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

An outspoken Republican congressman castigated House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s looks during a radio interview Friday.

Speaking with guest host Larry O’Connor on the Dennis Miller Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) argued that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was functionally equivalent to Pelosi because both held one-on-one backroom negotiations with the president. Gohmert then went on to deride Pelosi’s appearance: “Well, let’s give him credit. There’s no facelift with John Boehner.”

O’CONNOR: So basically John Boehner became Nancy Pelosi without the charm?

GOHMERT: For the last two years. Well, let’s give him credit. There’s no facelift with John Boehner. He is who he is.

O’CONNOR: Oh!

Listen to it:

Gohmert is no stranger to outlandish statements. He co-sponsored a birther bill soon after President Obama took office, wants to shut down the entire federal government, and recently pushed a pet theory that President Obama helped oust ex-Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi “so that al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood could take over Libya.”

Justice

Thanks To Gerrymandering, Democrats Would Need To Win The Popular Vote By Over 7 Percent To Take Back The House

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 2, 2013 at 9:00 am

America Wanted This Woman To Be Speaker of The House

As of this writing, every single state except Hawai’i has finalized its vote totals for the 2012 House elections, and Democrats currently lead Republicans by 1,362,351 votes in the overall popular vote total. Democratic House candidates earned 49.15 percent of the popular vote, while Republicans earned only 48.03 percent — meaning that the American people preferred a unified Democratic Congress over the divided Congress it actually got by more than a full percentage point. Nevertheless, thanks largely to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans have a solid House majority in the incoming 113th Congress.

A deeper dive into the vote totals reveals just how firmly gerrymandering entrenched Republican control of the House. If all House members are ranked in order from the Republican members who won by the widest margin down to the Democratic members who won by the widest margins, the 218th member on this list is Congressman-elect Robert Pittenger (R-NC). Thus, Pittenger was the “turning point” member of the incoming House. If every Republican who performed as well or worse than Pittenger had lost their race, Democrats would hold a one vote majority in the incoming House.

Pittenger won his race by more than six percentage points — 51.78 percent to 45.65 percent.

The upshot of this is that if Democrats across the country had performed six percentage points better than they actually did last November, they still would have barely missed capturing a majority in the House of Representatives. In order to take control of the House, Democrats would have needed to win the 2012 election by 7.25 percentage points. That’s significantly more than the Republican margin of victory in the 2010 GOP wave election (6.6 percent), and only slightly less than the margin of victory in the 2006 Democratic wave election (7.9 percent). If Democrats had won in 2012 by the same commanding 7.9 percent margin they achieved in 2006, they would still only have a bare 220-215 seat majority in the incoming House, assuming that these additional votes were distributed evenly throughout the country. That’s how powerful the GOP’s gerrymandered maps are; Democrats can win a Congressional election by nearly 8 points and still barely capture the House.

For two months, the nation has suffered through a “fiscal cliff” argument that threatened to plunge the nation into another recession. If the incoming Congress bore any resemblance to the one the American people voted for, however, this threat would have disappeared on Election Day because Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi would have no problem rounding up the votes to eliminate this so-called cliff and set America back on the path to economic growth.

Worse, top Republicans are already threatening to use the looming debt ceiling fight to torpedo the entire U.S. economy unless Congress agrees to slash Social Security or Medicare benefits for seniors. They will have the leverage to attempt this because the incoming House bears no resemblance to the one America actually voted for. And individual Republican House members will be able to engage in this political dangerous game of chicken comfortable in the knowledge that partisan gerrymandering makes many of them untouchable in a general election.

Partisan gerrymanders, like the one that now all but locks the GOP majority in place, have been the subject of repeated court challenges. America can thank the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court for allowing these gerrymanders to continue.

Update

Thanks to Dana Milbank for highlighting this analysis in his column this weekend. I have made a spreadsheet ranking the 2012 House races and showing how much Democrats would need to win the national popular vote in order to win each seat (assuming all Democratic gains over their 2012 totals are uniform throughout the country) available here.

LGBT

House GOP Secretly Authorized $500,000 To Defend Unconstitutional Anti-Gay Law

By Josh Israel on Dec 13, 2012 at 5:28 pm

It has come to light that House Administration Committee Chairman Dan Lungren (R-CA) secretly approved a $500,000 increase to a contract with a private law firm to defend the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in federal court. While the increase was approved in September, neither the public nor the Democratic House minority was informed until this week, Roll Call reports.

The contract now authorizes Bancroft PLLC and former Solicitor General Paul Clement (R) to spend up to $2 million in to defend DOMA — the second increase to what was originally a $1 million cap. The U.S. Department of Justice stopped defending the 1996 law in February 2011 after determining the law to be in conflict with the U.S. Constittuion.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) denounced the increased expense in a statement:

It’s bad enough that Speaker Boehner and House Republicans are wasting taxpayer dollars to defend the indefensible Defense of Marriage Act – and losing in every case. Now, they have reached a new low – signing a secret contract to spend more public money on their legal boondoggle without informing Democrats. Their actions are simply unconscionable; their decisions are utterly irresponsible.

Hiding this contract from voters in the midst of an election season was a cynical move at best, and a betrayal of the public trust at worst. With Americans focused on the creation of jobs and the growth of our economy, Republicans should not be spending $2 million to defend discrimination in our country.

Though Lungren lost re-election in November, the Republicans maintained control of the House — and its operating budget.

At a Thursday press conference — ironically focusing on his view that “Washington has a spending problem” — House Speaker John Boehner was asked about the expenditures. The Ohio Republican angrily responded that if the Department of Justice won’t defend the law of the land, Congress will.

Economy

Pelosi Threatens To Force A Vote On Bush Tax Cuts For Middle Class

By Aviva Shen on Nov 30, 2012 at 4:50 pm


With Republicans balking at the prospect of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the top 2 percent of Americans, Democrats are losing patience. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said Friday that the House GOP will not hold a vote on a middle-class tax bill that excludes the top income brackets, even though the Senate has already approved one.

In response, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced Friday that Democrats plan to bring the legislation to a floor vote next week no matter what. The Democrats plan to use a discharge petition, which can force a bill to the floor if it has been stuck in committee for 30 legislative days. In a new statement, Pelosi dared her Republican colleagues to reject the plan to extend tax cuts for 98 percent of the country:

The clock is ticking, the year is ending, it’s really important, with tax legislation, for it to happen now. We’re calling upon the Republican leadership in the House to bring this legislation to the floor next week. We believe that not doing that would be holding middle-income tax cuts hostage to tax cuts for the rich. Tax cuts for the rich which do not create jobs, just increase the deficit, heaping mountains of debt onto future generations.

And so, to that end, we are – we will be introducing, if the bill, if there is no announcement of scheduling of the middle income tax cut, which, by the way, has tremendous support in the Republican Caucus – I think we would get a 100 percent vote on it if it came to the floor. If it is not scheduled, then on Tuesday we will be introducing a discharge petition which you know with – if we get 218 signatures, would bring the bill automatically to the floor. That would mean that we need some Republicans who support middle income tax cuts, to sign on with us.

Watch it:

In order to make a discharge petition work, Pelosi needs 20 Republicans to sign on to the measure. Several Republican legislators, notably Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), have called for Republicans to accept President Obama’s deal on middle-class tax cuts.

Health

Democratic Leader Opposes Cutting Medicare Benefits To Strike A Fiscal Cliff Deal

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Nov 15, 2012 at 4:15 pm

As lawmakers prepare to strike a deal to prevent the so-called “fiscal cliff,” some Democrats have suggested compromising with Republicans in Congress by offering up deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. At a press conference on Thursday, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) confirmed that she is not among the Democratic lawmakers who support making a deal at the expense of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

Asked whether she would be willing to accept “structural changes” to Medicare and Medicaid in order to get Republicans to agree to new revenue, Pelosi harshly critiqued that euphemism for obscuring the fact that slashing benefits would harm seniors and struggling Americans. She responded that she would not support those types of adjustments to social programs as part of a debt deal:

PELOSI: Those issues — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — they should be in their own realm. Whatever adjustments would be made in Social Security should be there to strengthen Social Security, not to subsidize a tax cut for the wealthiest people in America and say that’s how we balance the budget. The same thing with Medicaid and Medicare… Sen. Reid and others have spoken out, we’re not going to touch any of the entitlements, so I think that gives you some indication of the likelihood of something like that happening… Unless somebody wants to define — you are asking me if I would support what they’re saying. I don’t know what they’re saying by “structural.” Is that a euphemism for “I’m going to cut your benefit if you’re a middle-aged senior”? Is that what structural change means? No, I don’t support that.

Watch it:

One “structural change” currently being floated is potentially raising the Medicare eligibility age above 65, a policy that is included in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget. But that type of reform would actually only serve to shift the cost burden onto employers, states, and the older Americans who fall between 65 years old and the new eligibility age. Raising the eligibility age to 67 would have a negligible effect on Medicare’s long-term spending growth — since the program’s younger beneficiaries tend to be healthier and have fewer medical costs — while increasing the out-of-pocket insurance costs for the seniors who would have been covered by Medicare before the eligibility threshold changed.

And as Pelosi points out, that type of adjustment would simply be a concession to the Republicans who insist on offering tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — and wouldn’t actually help strengthen the future of the nation’s health care programs.

Security

Pelosi Attacks Republicans For Withholding Embassy Security Funding

By Ben Armbruster on Oct 3, 2012 at 9:38 am

Nancy Pelosi

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday shot back at Republicans criticizing the Obama administration after the fallout of the Libya Consulate attacks, pointing out that they withheld hundreds of millions of dollars the State Department had asked for last year for embassy security and construction.

House Republicans wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggesting that the Obama administration was negligent in providing security for the consulate in Benghazi where four U.S. diplomats were killed in an attack on Sept. 11 and asked Clinton for more information. Noting that the investigation into what happened is still ongoing, Pelosi, in an interview with CNN, asked, “how can you ask the secretary to come before the information is known?”

The Minority Leader then pointed out that it was Republicans who may have some responsibility in the matter, as they turned down the administration’s request for nearly $300 million for embassy security:

PELOSI: It’s also important to note that the Republican appropriation in Congress gave the administration $300 million less than it asked for for the State Department, including funding for security.

BLITZER: Are you suggesting that there was a financial aspect to what happened in Benghazi, Libya. That the U.S. was not enough money to protect American diplomats?

PELOSI: No what I’m saying is Congress has the right of oversight but it also has the power of the purse. … We also have to look to ourselves for that funding question. $300 million less than what the administration asked for.

Watch the clip:

CAP senior fellow and budget expert Scott Lilly noted last month that in the last two years, Congress has cut the Obama administration’s request for funding to increase diplomatic staffing and boost embassy security:

[E]ven more inexcusable are the repeated and deep cuts made to embassy security and construction. Thousands of our diplomatic personnel are serving overseas in facilities that do not come close to meeting the minimal requirements for security established by the so-called Inman commission’s report on overseas diplomatic security to President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state more than two decades ago.

Nor is it likely to change anytime soon. In the 2011 continuing resolution, Congress, at the insistence of the House of Representatives, slashed the president’s request for embassy security and construction and forced another cut in fiscal year 2012. Altogether Congress has eliminated $296 million from embassy security and construction in the last two years with additional cuts in other State Department security accounts.

Lilly notes that more funding cuts for the U.S. Foreign Service are set to come under the sequestration required under the Budget Control Act. “Those cuts are largely the result of the draconian and unrealistically low budget caps placed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) on all discretionary spending,” Lilly said.

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