McCain Has No Answer For Tackling Al Qaeda Strongholds In Pakistan and Afghanistan
McCain Has No Answer For Tackling Al Qaeda Strongholds In Pakistan and Afghanistan
Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Sen. John McCain’s speech yesterday attracted a lot of media attention for what he said about Iraq –but it is what he DIDN’T say on Afghanistan and Pakistan that should worry most Americans.
Conservatives like McCain have demonstrated that they may be strong on rhetoric but actually lacking in clear ideas on how to truly tackle the continued threat posed by the global Al Qaeda movement.
As the threat from Al Qaeda becomes more diffuse, U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies have reached a strikingly unanimous conclusion that the core organizational leadership has reformed itself. Its location? Pakistan.
Al Qaeda has, in the words of the Director for National Intelligence’s February 2008 Annual Threat Assessment, “retained or regenerated key elements of its capability, including top leadership, operational mid-level lieutenants, and de facto safe haven in Pakistan’s border area with Afghanistan, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or the FATA.” The CIA, State Department, and Joint Chiefs of Staff have all echoed this warning in recent months. The threat is not exclusive to America: terror plots in Denmark, Germany, and Spain, as well as a score of attacks within Pakistan itself, have all been traced back to the FATA.
If Pakistan represents the center of gravity in the fight against Al Qaeda, you would not be able to tell it from any policies put forth by a conservative political establishment still fixated on Iraq. As Congress’ independent non-partisan investigatory body, the Government Accountability Office, recently concluded, the Bush administration still lacks a unified strategy for dealing with the FATA that incorporates all elements of U.S. national power.
And for most of Bush’s tenure in office, a loyal Congress has abdicated any responsibility for holding the administration accountable for this. In its two years from 2005-2006, the 109th Congress managed to hold just one single hearing on Pakistan in all the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight committees of both the House and Senate combined. Since the shift in power that brought more progressives into the 110th Congress, there have been at least fifteen congressional hearings on Pakistan alone.
McCain, the presumptive leader of the American conservative movement, simply follows in the path of the Bush administration’s lack of attention to what is one of the most pressing national security challenges. Read the rest of this entry »
McCain’s 2013 Economy: $780 Billion Deficit
McCain’s “magic carpet ride” speech yesterday asked us to consider America in 2013 in the fourth year of a John McCain presidency.
We did. Here’s what we found:
In 2013, after McCain’s four years of Bush-style fiscal irresponsibility, tax breaks for corporations, and more tax cuts for the wealthy, America would have a $780 billion deficit (4.3% of GDP) and national debt of $8.5 trillion (47% of GDP). That’s over $1.5 trillion more debt than would be accumulated under a continuation of current Bush policies.
John McCain’s 2013: More of the same, but worse.
NYT Editorial Board ‘Divorced From Reality’ On Taxes
NYT Editorial Board ‘Divorced From Reality’ On Taxes
Our guest bloggers are Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, fellows at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
New York Times editorial, April 24: This is the reality: To restore the health of the budget, let alone keep ambitious campaign pledges for spending more money, the next president, regardless of which party wins, will have to tax the American people more than any of the candidates has been willing to admit. Senator John McCain’s tax talk is particularly divorced from reality.
New York Times editorial, today: Senator John McCain scored some points on Thursday merely by acknowledging how much has to change. Mr. McCain said in a speech that if elected, he will … eliminate a tax meant for the rich that is crushing the upper-middle class.
The Times today praises John McCain for his proposal to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. The McCain campaign itself estimates that proposal will cost $60 billion a year, with no plan to pay for the cut. With 47 million people uninsured, with 37 million people living in poverty, with a “war and economic crisis” (in the Times’ words), a $60 billion tax cut for the upper-middle class surely is not a national priority.
And who will really benefit? John McCain says that his plan will benefit 25 million middle-class families, and Factcheck.org buys into the logic of that claim. But this would be true only in a world without the AMT “patch” that Congress has repeatedly enacted to shield the middle class. Although Congress each year enacts only a one-year patch, the patch is supported by large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans. There is a debate about whether to pay for the patch, but Douglas Holtz-Eakin is right to say that it is only in “fantasyland” that would Congress fail to extend it.
So, by a sensible logic—and by the McCain campaign’s own logic in pricing this proposal at $60 billion—the guts of McCain’s proposal is to go beyond the patch and fully repeal the AMT. And as between the patch and full repeal, according to the Tax Policy Center, more than 90% of the benefits would go to taxpayers making more than $200,000 a year, and nearly 50% of the benefits would go to taxpayers making more than $500,000. Only 3.6 million taxpayers would benefit, not 25 million. Here’s the distribution of winners:
As the Times instructed in its April editorial, “anyone making anywhere near a quarter-million dollars a year is in the top 3 percent or so of taxpayers.” It would be nice to give these families another tax break, above and beyond the patch. Of course, it would be nice to eliminate taxes for everybody. But leaders need to have priorities. And editorial boards too.
Contradicting McCain, Holtz-Eakin Says Wind Industry Needs Subsidies
Contradicting McCain, Holtz-Eakin Says Wind Industry Needs Subsidies
On Monday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave a major address on global warming policy at the North American headquarters of the Danish wind-turbine manufacturer Vestas, a location criticized as “hypocritical” for his longstanding and active opposition to federal support for the domestic wind industry. In 2004, he introduced legislation that would have eliminated the renewable energy production tax credit, and his continued opposition prevented renewal of the tax credit in 2007 and 2008. He has also vigorously opposed any form of a federal renewable electricity standard.
When asked by Grist magazine in October on his position on subsidies for green technologies like wind and solar, McCain responded:
I’m not one who believes that we need to subsidize things. The wind industry is doing fine, the solar industry is doing fine. In the ’70s, we gave too many subsidies and too much help, and we had substandard products sold to the American people, which then made them disenchanted with solar for a long time.
But in a press telebriefing Monday following McCain’s address, top adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said:
When you look at wind and the production tax credit and you look at some of the other alternatives, they cannot given the current market conditions totally be successful without existing production tax credits.
Pressed by Living on Earth’s Jeff Young whether McCain supported the renewable energy production tax credit, Holtz-Eakin said, “He would want to make sure that we did not at this point in time stop the wind and solar from progressing.”
As each day goes by, it’s becoming more difficult for Holtz-Eakin, who made sure to tell reporters on the call that he is a “PhD economist,” to keep track of McCain’s incoherent policies and inconsistent promises.
UPDATE: Gristmill’s Kate Sheppard pressed McCain yesterday on his opposition to renewable energy subsidies but his support for nuclear industry subsidies. McCain did not address the contradiction, but did say: “I am unashamed and unembarrassed by my advocacy for nuclear power.” Also at Gristmill, Charles Komanoff finds:
Over the past 25 years, the entire federal subsidy for wind power [$3.75 billion] has been no greater than the subsidy bestowed on nukes each year from the fifties through the eighties [total $154 billion].
Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »
Coal Industry Sponsors CNN, CNN Praises Coal
CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi has been promoting coal-to-liquids technology and praising “clean coal, 99 percent clean” for an entire month. On Tuesday, CNN held a no-holds-barred coalfest, promoting coal-to-liquids and coal gasification technologies, calling coal “seductive,” and criticizing “blogs” who “go nuts” and “environmentalists” who “want to get rid of coal.”
What’s motivating CNN to closely mirror coal-industry talking points?
One hopes it has nothing to do with this:
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is a $45 million front group for over 40 companies in the coal industry.
McCain’s Healthcare Plan: ‘Guaranteed’ Empty Rhetoric
McCain’s Healthcare Plan: ‘Guaranteed’ Empty Rhetoric
Yesterday, former Hewlett Packard CEO and McCain campaign surrogate Carly Fiorina had an enlightening interview with BlogHer touching on John McCain’s healthcare plan.
We’re all familiar with the rhetoric that is McCain’s proposal. When asked exactly how McCain would ensure that people, particularly children, were able to get healthcare, she had an answer we’ve never heard before: “guaranteed access.” Fiorina said:
[T]he combination of guaranteed access, tax credits, and a set of health care and health insurance options that are more affordable and more accessible will ensure that children have access to both health insurance and health care.
Listen to it:
Fiorina’s answer came in a question about children’s health care — namely, how would McCain ensure that parents use his tax break to pay for their children’s health insurance rather? Fiorina replied with particularly peculiar circular logic: McCain’s plan has “guaranteed access.”
Yet there’s nothing “guaranteed” about McCain’s health care plan. First, it would make it difficult, if not impossible, for people with preexisting conditions — including Sen. McCain himself, a cancer survivor — to obtain health insurance. Second, it would dismantle the system through which the vast majority of working Americans — and their families — get health coverage today, by ending employer-based insurance.
In fact, McCain’s vote against expanding SCHIP ensured that more children would be denied the very “guarantee access” the program promises. BlogHer should have asked McCain how he would guarantee access for uninsured American children whose parents are forced to decide between purchasing a private health insurance plan and paying off an inflated mortgage that keeps their child out of a homeless shelter.
Sorry, Carly. “Guaranteed access” is nothing more than empty health care rhetoric, like the rest of McCain’s health care plan.
Joe Arpaio’s Immigrant Witch Hunt Will No Longer Be State-Sponsored
Joe Arpaio’s Immigrant Witch Hunt Will No Longer Be State-Sponsored
Our guest blogger is Henry Fernandez, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund focusing on state and municipal policy.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s unconstitutional Latino witch hunt will no longer be subsidized by the State of Arizona. It turns out that while Arpaio had his deputies stopping anyone who looked like a Latino immigrant, there were 60,000 real felons running around Arizona. Apparently Governor Janet Napolitano has had enough. This week she took $1.6 million from Arpaio and redirected it to a new state-run fugitive task force to get real criminals off the street. Of course this was supposed to have been Arpaio’s job all along.
For those not familiar with Arpaio, he is a media hound, once even doing a pilot for a comedic Fox TV police reality show. On another occasion, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down his efforts to run his own reality show via webcam over the internet because it violated prisoner rights. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. How any of this clowning would have reduced crime remains unclear.
Without his own show, Arpaio encourages TV news cameras to ride along with his deputies as they hunt down undocumented immigrants. Lacking any particular insight into who is or is not an immigrant, Arpaio’s tactics have consistently disrupted the lives of Latino U.S. citizens and terrorized families in Phoenix and surrounding towns. He even requires that victims and witnesses of crime prove their immigration status. This absurdity actually encourages crime by ensuring that many immigrants will not report crime.
48,000 individuals charged with or convicted of felonies, including violent crimes, are currently on the loose in Maricopa County. Despite the obvious need to apprehend these people, Arpaio spends his time elsewhere. Cameras in tow, he sweeps into Latino neighborhoods with large numbers of deputies and stops as many people as possible on the basis of alleged motor vehicle violations, looking for undocumented immigrants. That these immigrants are generally hard working and not a threat to anyone, does not matter to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office. Nor does the fact that lots of citizens who do not realize their tail light is burned out are subjected to interrogation to prove their right to reside in the United States.
The Bush Administration’s Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) has cheered on Arpaio’s behavior. ICE’s lack of concern for the civil rights of Latinos is not surprising given the large number of lawsuits currently pending against ICE by Latino citizens who allege that their homes were invaded by gun wielding federal agents demanding that they prove their right to reside in the country in which they were born.
Reasonable elected officials in Arizona have long called for an end to Arpaio’s defiance of the Constitution. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has asked the FBI to investigate Arpaio for a “pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.”
The Governor’s decision will make Arizona residents safer, even if it does not stop Sheriff Arpaio’s quest for attention.
In The Year 2013…
Coming on the heels of this truly bizarre ad, today John McCain imagined what a dreamy place the world would be at the end of his first term:
The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.
“Violence still occurs” — this must be what McCain meant when he said that “the war will be over soon…although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years.” Got that? The insurgency will go on, but the Iraq war will have been won. Just like the surge has worked, despite the past month of intra-Shiite violence, suicide bombings, the continuing lack of political reconciliation, and the empowering of Sunni tribal elements hostile to the central government. If this doesn’t look like success to you, it’s probably because you don’t have a reputation to rehabilitate.
In regard to the “smaller military presence,” does this mean that John McCain no longer wants to stay in Iraq for a hundred years? By our count McCain has shifted at least four different times on this question. Has McCain has discarded the fantasy of using Iraq as a permanent base from which to project U.S. power in the region? Wait until the next speech!
If this wonderful outcome McCain describes is achieved, and I truly hope it will be, it will have been achieved because Americans rejected the war policies of John McCain, which effectively amounts to the “sunk cost” fallacy of a gambling addict, with the promise of many future trips to the casino. It’s also worth noting that if a liberal candidate offered this kind of ponies-and-rainbows blather (try harder, Salter!), he or she would be mercilessly attacked, probably by John McCain. But John McCain will probably get a pass, because he’s a straight talker. Have you heard that he hates war?
McCain’s Budget Would Create Largest Deficit In 25 Years, Largest Debt Since WWII
McCain’s Budget Would Create Largest Deficit In 25 Years, Largest Debt Since WWII
Sen. John McCain promises that, as president, he would “cut taxes and balance the budget.” But his current economic plan would create deficits as deep as 5.7% of GDP by the end of a two term presidency — the highest federal budget deficit in 25 years — and would accumulate the biggest debt since the second World War, according to a new analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. McCain’s current fiscal plan would recklessly exacerbate the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration further by gutting revenues far below the average level of the past 25 years.
For the past 25 years, deficits have never been more severe than 5% of GDP, with surpluses as high as 2.4% of GDP in the year 2000. Under McCain, yearly deficits would increase sharply, beginning with $505 billion in FY2009 (3.4% of GDP) and skyrocket to $1.2 trillion (5.7% of GDP) by FY2017. In 2018 these deficits would reach 6% of GDP, tied with the largest deficits since WW2 in 1983. Current Bush policies would keep the deficit in 2017 to $660 billion (3.1% of GDP).
According to the study, McCain’s economic plan, (which includes a corporate tax cut, a full repeal of the AMT, and an extension of the Bush tax cuts) would leave a debt of $12.7 trillion (the highest since 1951 when America was still holding debt from WW2) by the last budget of a two term presidency starting in 2009 (FY2017). This debt is $3.5 trillion more severe than the one resulting from an extension of current Bush policy, which would leave a debt of $9.2 trillion (43% of projected GDP).
McCain would slash government revenues, which have averaged 18.3% of GDP for the past 25 years, to their lowest levels since before 1962. Revenues would average only 16.3 percent of GDP for the duration of his two terms. Under current Bush policy, revenues would remain above 18 percent of GDP.
This analysis currently incorporates the most generous possible savings McCain has offered thus far: an $18 billion cut of wasteful earmarks and a $15 billion “freeze” in wasteful spending, with the savings grown at the rate of GDP growth over his presidency. These “savings,” which come no where near paying for his reckless tax cuts, already include “heavy cuts in after-school programs, student aid, public broadcasting, and job training.” To fill the gaping remaining hole, McCain supporters have suggested policies that would lead to “massive cuts” in Social Security.
Read the full report.