Quoth the craven

 

 

The time has come in the debt-limit fight for all Americans to declare their loyalties: Are you with the bank robbers, or are you with the dirty old men?

This unpalatable choice is as good a way as any to frame the debate in these last days before the default deadline.

On one side are House Republican leaders who, facing a rebellion of Tea Party conservatives, appealed for party unity by screening for members a clip of the 2010 film “The Town,” in which Ben Affleck’s bank-robber character tells the Jeremy Renner character: “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we’re gonna hurt some people.” Renner replies: “Whose car we takin’?” The clip ended before the shooting and beatings that followed.

On the other side are House Democratic leaders, who had to decide how to handle Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.), accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward a teenage girl (he claims it was consensual). Wu, who previously attracted attention by sending staff members photos of himself in a tiger costume,had no choice but to resign. But leaders accepted his plan to stay on the job for the debt standoff, thereby giving them one more vote against Speaker John Boehner’s debt plan.

It’s hard to decide which wins the craven crown: Exhorting colleagues by playing for them a call to criminal violence? Or trying to thwart the opposition by tolerating a 56-year-old colleague accused of forcing himself on a friend’s daughter?

Both are evidence of how desperate the warring parties are for any fleeting advantage in the fight. Someday, Democrats may rue wooing Wu to stay with them for the budget votes, and Republicans may do penance for embracing Hollywood violence. But this is not that day.

In the Democrats’ case, Wu’s grace period was a matter of arithmetic. Without him, Boehner would need 216 votes to pass his budget-cutting plan; with him, Boehner needs 217. And so Wu released a statement that he would “resign effective upon the resolution of the debt-ceiling crisis.”

That’s a delay Democrats are apparently comfortable with, even though this was not the first time this tiger has prowled: He was disciplined in college after a woman accused him of trying to force her to have sex, the Oregonian newspaper reported several years ago.

At a news conference Wednesday, I asked Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairman, whether she thought Wu should go sooner — and she demurred. “I think he made the right decision to resign,” she said.

The Republicans’ problem is more complicated. Though he has made few concessions, Boehner is facing a chorus of criticism from Tea Party activists who think he has not been belligerent enough. At a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, the co-founders of the influential Tea Party Patriots network said a poll of their supporters found 82 percent of them dissatisfied with House leadership and 74 percent inclined to see Boehner replaced.

One of the co-founders, Mark Meckler, called Boehner’s proposed budget cuts “phantom” and “fake.” Later in the day, the leader of a smaller group called Tea Party Nation called for Boehner to be ousted. And staffers for conservative lawmakers rallied interest groups to fight against Boehner’s plan.

To resist such pressure, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) thought the proper tone would be Affleck’s crime thriller, packed with sex, drugs, violence and profanity, and described by USA Today as having “murky morality.”

The selection evidently had the desired effect. After the clip, in which the Renner character asks whose car they’ll drive, Rep. Allen West (Fla.), a Tea Party favorite, announced to his colleagues: “I’m ready to drive the car!”

Over the next 24 hours, conservatives’ resistance to Boehner’s plan ebbed, and Wednesday morning, Rep. Louie Gohmert (Tex.), one of the few remaining holdouts, emerged from a caucus meeting feeling the pain McCarthy promised. “I’m a beat-up ‘no,’ ” he reported.

Democrats pretended to be offended by the film selection. “They could have used ‘Hoosiers,’ ‘Rudy’ or ‘Band of Brothers,’ ” protested Wasserman Schultz (the person would-be getaway car driver West called “vile” and “not a lady”). “Now is not the time to be thinking about putting the political hurt to the other party or the president.”

But Republicans have a defense. That effort to “hurt people” in “The Town” was planned as revenge on men who had hassled a young woman.

 

Advocates don’t want budget balanced on wounded veterans’ backs

Advocates for veterans Wednesday called on the federal government to honor its commitments to provide lifetime care for wounded service members, despite debt crisis pressure for budget cuts.

The calls came during a hearing before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee about the growing long-term human and financial costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

The Department of Veterans Affairs health-care system could face $40 billion to $55 billion in costs treating veterans from the conflicts over the next 10 years, depending on how troops are deployed in the future, according to an estimate presented at the hearing by the Congressional Budget Office.

Congress and the Obama administration must keep those costs in mind as they try to work out an agreement on the debt crisis, said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chairman of the committee. “We must remember that we can’t balance our budget at the expense of the health care and benefits our veterans have earned,” Murray said. “Their sacrifices have been too great.”

“I’m here to tell you, put your money where your mouth is,” Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, testified. “We are worth it.”

Crystal Nicely, wife of Marine Cpl. Todd Nicely, who lost his arms and legs during a patrol in Helmand province in Afghanistan last year when he triggered a makeshift bomb as he crossed a bamboo bridge, described the problems the couple has encountered seeking treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Todd Nicely attended the hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, walking in and out of the hearing room using prosthetic legs. He had to wait almost 70 days for paperwork confirming that he had lost four limbs to be approved, delaying his release from the military and holding up plans to prepare for the next phase of his life. The papers were signed this week, after Murray made inquiries to Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III, Crystal Nicely testified.

“It should not take my talking with a United States senator to make that happen,” she said. “More importantly, what about all the other wounded Marines who have not had the chance to ask for that kind of help?”

“Does it take senators kicking butt to get help?” asked Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass). “If a prompt determination can’t be made for someone who’s lost all four limbs, what hope is there for someone who has lesser wounds?”

“What is upsetting is the lack of support, compassion and benefits for these individuals,” Crystal Nicely said. “It needs to be just a little bit easier.”

The White House and Democratic congressional leaders have warned that payments to veterans might be at risk if a debt agreement is not reached.

Rieckhoff, who attended a briefing on the debt crisis Tuesday at the White House with representatives of other veterans organizations, said, “We came back with no real additional information.”

Veterans, including some suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other disabilities, “don’t know if the paychecks are coming,” he said. “They’re extremely concerned and scared.

“This is ridiculous. It’s outrageous,” Rieckhoff testified. “We need clarity from you all in this town, and we haven’t gotten any.”

A “virtual march on Washington” on Facebook, sponsored Wednesday by Disabled American Veterans, received heavy participation, according to a spokesman for the organization. “We’ve had thousands and thousands of comments,” Joseph Chennelly said. “It’s being heard. We’re making sure Congress and the White House are listening.”

 

The Influence Industry: Challenging the IRS on rules that keep donors secret

 

 

Two advocacy groups have filed a petition with the Internal Revenue Service challenging regulations that allow political organizations such as the conservative Crossroads GPS and the liberal Priorities USA to form as nonprofits under the tax code.

The issue comes down to disclosure of donors: Groups that form as nonprofits are not required to reveal them. By contrast, political groups registered with the Federal Election Commission must list all of their contributors.

The IRS allows political organizations to form as nonprofits as long as their “primary purpose” is something other than working on elections. The advocacy groups say in their petition that the IRS interpretation defies laws passed by Congress and interpretations by the courts.

“Everyone with eyes and a thought process knows that these ads are being run to influence the election,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, which drafted the petition.

The petition is the latest in a series of moves by advocacy groups pressuring the government to force disclosure of donations to organizations running political ads. The same groups, representing Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), sued the Federal Election Commission in April, saying its regulations did not reflect the law.

The IRS has in the past largely ignored the issue of political spending and donor disclosure by nonprofits, focusing instead on whether such groups should pay taxes.

If the tax agency doesn’t “act on the petition, then the next logical step for us would be to look at potentially pursuing this in the courts,” Wertheimer said. “We are going to pursue this in every way we appropriately can.”

The likelihood of the IRS rewriting its regulations is remote, but the agency has indicated some willingness to wade into the issue in the wake of the 2010 elections, which brought massive spending by nonprofit political groups.

The agency wrote in an annual review that it plans to begin looking at political nonprofits, and it recently denied nonprofit status to three groups that were training Democratic political candidates.

All in the family

An invitation to a “Lawyers for Romney Luncheon” in Washington this week reveals another link between the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign and an independent group aiding his presidential bid.

The invitation, acquired by the Sunlight Foundation, shows that the event was organized by a professional fundraiser named Lisa Spies. Her husband is Charles Spies, a lawyer at Clark Hill, who helped found the Restore Our Future PAC aiding Romney.

“Lisa runs a successful fundraising consulting firm with multiple clients,” Charles Spies said. “Her clients are, of course, separate from mine and my law firm’s.”

Mitt Romney’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Restore Our Future is a super PAC, which means it is allowed to raise money without the restrictions put on candidates, but it must keep all of its spending decisions separate from the official campaign. Any coordination on strategy would violate the law.

Three directors of Restore Our Future worked for Romney’s 2008 campaign: Charles Spies was the general counsel, Carl Forti was the political director, and Larry McCarthy was a member of the media team.

On the left, Priorities USA, a new group formed to raise and spend money to further President Obama’s reelection bid, has similar tight connections to the candidate it is supporting. Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney founded the group shortly after resigning from the White House. Burton is a longtime Obama aide and was the national press secretary for his 2008 campaign.

K Street’s spending slump

Congress may be as busy as ever trying to find a way to pass an increase in the debt ceiling, but lobbying spending appears to be continuing a downward trend that began with the sinking economy and has continued with a thin legislative calendar.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $9 million in the second quarter, the business association disclosed in its latest report. That’s the lowest quarterly total for Washington’s biggest lobbying player in two years.

The city’s two largest lobbying firms reported total contracts that were lower than a year ago. Patton Boggs had $9.5 million in revenue during the second quarter, down 7 percent from a year earlier, and Akin Gump reported $8.9 million, down 6 percent from the second quarter of last year.

 

Obama, White House seek to reassure base on debt ceiling talks

 

 

The White House is waging an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign to reassure core Democratic activists, following weeks of criticism from liberals who fear that President Obama has given too much ground in his debt-ceiling talks with Republicans.

Senior aides are holding conference calls to take questions from leaders of black and Hispanic organizations, local elected officials, and other political allies nationwide. Obama spoke by phone this week to a group of college student body presidents to seek their help in lobbying for a compromise. And top economic advisers have huddled in the West Wing in recent days with pastors and advocates for seniors, children and the poor — including one session with Easter Seals and families it serves to discuss the importance of Medicaid to disabled children.

Some efforts have taken place in public, as well, with Obama assuring a conference of Hispanic activists this week that he is looking out for low-income people and telling a public radio show last week that “a lot of the spending cuts that we’re making should be around areas like defense spending, as opposed to food stamps.” Speaking to Univision Radio, in one of two Hispanic-oriented radio interviews last week, Obama described the fight to protect the poor and the elderly as a “debate about our values.”

The push comes at an unusually tense time on the political left, as liberals fret over how far a Democratic president might go in reducing once-untouchable programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The White House effort, which involves stepped-up contact with Democratic lawmakers, appears designed not just to secure votes for passage of some kind of deal, but also to hold the party together coming out of the debt crisis and heading into next year’s election campaign.

“The White House is taking pains to make sure a broad range of advocates and service providers and faith groups are apprised of what they’re doing and get their rationale for why they’re doing it,” said Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, which advocates for aid to the poor and has participated in White House discussions. “Any group that they know there are constituents all over is important to them.”

White House officials say outreach has been stepped up to a wide range of groups in the Democratic base but also beyond it, to business organizations, veterans and advocates for military members, some of whom attended a recent White House briefing.

“There’s an intense interest in the discussions in Congress about reducing the deficit and preventing a default,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. “As a part of that process, we have spent time meeting with groups from diverse backgrounds, whether it’s veterans and military service organizations or groups representing low-income families.”

Still, even as the president seeks to gain leverage against House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) and other GOP foes, he has been forced to balance the competing demands of his own restive support network.

 

Tim Pawlenty struggles to step out of Michele Bachmann’s shadow

Then, as now, Pawlenty said he was conservative, yet Bachmann seemed to say it more loudly. He talked about his faith, and she talked about hers more. He said he was a true believer, but Bachmann was somehow more believable.

“Michele is very passionate, very much a go-getter, and Tim in his own way has charisma as well on a personal level,” said Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council. “But I think he just conveys it differently than Michele does in terms of his passion and concern on the issues. It’s just different.”

That dynamic is playing out at a critical moment on the trail, where, despite years of preparation within national GOP circles, Pawlenty is struggling to take hold. Meanwhile, Bachmann in a month of campaigning has rocketed past all her competitors, save front-runner Mitt Romney.

Bachmann and Pawlenty’s trajectories are set to collide during next month’s Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, an early test of strength in a critical state. With Romney sitting out the event, the straw poll is largely turning into a question of which Minnesotan Iowans prefer.

Pawlenty’s challenge is winning the kind of passionate support that comes so naturally to Bachmann, particularly among an electorate more apt to respond to tea party calls to action than establishment support.

It has been difficult for him on the stump, where he continues to lag in all public polls. Back in Minnesota, he won two terms as governor without gaining 50 percent of the vote, and even in his home town, voters struggled to feel a connection.

Republicans are not so easy to find in South St. Paul, the blue-collar town where Pawlenty grew up. But even among a group of beer-sipping conservatives in the basement of the old Croatian Hall, opinion is mixed about the former governor.

“Between Bachmann and Pawlenty, I would definitely take Bachmann,” said retired painter Jim Kammerer, 64. “I think he’s gone more to the right since he’s been on the presidential campaign, but he’s not convincing to me.”

Part-time cook Brian Williams, 49, saw more of what the Pawlenty campaign hopes voters will see. “People have said, ‘You know, he’s weak.’ What is he weak on? He held the state together, didn’t raise any taxes. I like him.”

The tiff between Pawlenty and Bachmann began over the weekend, when Pawlenty — gently — criticized Bachmann.

“These are really serious times, and there hasn’t been somebody who went from the U.S. House of Representatives to the presidency, I think, in over 100 years, and there’s a reason for that,” Pawlenty told CNN’s Candy Crowley.

 

Romney, visiting Ohio factory, says Obama’s policies are bad for business

PATASKALA, OHIO — Mitt Romney donned safety glasses and toured a rock-crushing-equipment factory here on Wednesday, saying President Obama’s economic policies have choked the manufacturer and thousands of other businesses across America.

Companies like Screen Machine Industries are at the center of the political fight over the government’s role in the private sector, an issue that is a key part of the debt-ceiling stalemate in Washington and that could define the 2012 presidential campaign.

 

Romney, visiting Ohio factory, says Obama’s policies are bad for business - The Washington Post

 

Romney, the early front-runner for the Republican nomination, and the factory’s owner see government as the problem — stunting growth at every turn with stringent environmental and labor regulations, a new health-care law, and trade policies that they say disadvantage U.S. companies.

Yet it’s been the government — and Obama’s policies in particular — that has helped propel Screen Machine’s growth at its sprawling new headquarters here, even during the recession. The company, which builds heavy-duty crushing and screening machines used in construction, mining and recycling, received four stimulus awards totaling $218,607. It is also benefiting from a 10-year deal with local and state governments to not pay taxes on its property, equipment or inventory, according to public records.

And Screen Machine, which is expanding its global sales, recently won a federal contract to deliver its machines to Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan. That base doubled in size to accommodate Obama’s troop surge.

This family-owned factory, which employs between 50 and 100 nonunion workers in the Columbus suburbs, and others like it are at the heart of a tug of war between the two political parties as each tries to show that its policies would help American manufacturers and small businesses. But the stories of factories like Screen Machine’s are not black and white, making their use as campaign backdrops fraught with peril.

In the debt debate, when Republicans talk about protecting small-business job creators, they’re talking about people like Steve Cohen. His family founded Screen Machine in 1966 and has expanded the company overseas to Russia, China, the Middle East and Africa. This week, Cohen said, the company received its first orders from Australia.

A call to end ‘uncertainty’

Romney, after climbing a stage on the steamy factory floor to the strains of Ohio State University’s football song “Hang on Sloopy,” hailed Screen Machine as an “extraordinary manufacturing facility.” In a 20-minute speech to more than 200 factory workers, supporters and community leaders, Romney attacked Obama for his stewardship of the “extraordinarily uneven” economic recovery.

Repeating many of the lines he has practiced on the stump, Romney criticized the president’s health-care law, his financial regulations and his environmental policies as creating an atmosphere of uncertainty that is stifling growth at Screen Machine and other companies.

“Uncertainty is the enemy of investment and growth,” he said. “What are the friends of investment and growth?”

 

Vote on Boehner bill is showdown between House Republican purists and realists

 

 

The run-up to the vote expected Thursday on House Speaker John A. Boehner’s proposal to provide a short-term increase in the national debt limit is quickly turning into a time of clarity for the chamber’s Republicans.

If GOP leaders are unable to muster enough support to get the plan out of the House, the only measure left would be a Democratic proposal by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), and voting with Reid is not a concession many House Republicans are willing to make.

“There’s only three choices,” said Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), a close Boehner ally. “One is to vote for Senator Reid’s plan. One is to default. And one choice is the Boehner bill. It should be pretty self-evident what the best choice is to someone who’s a Republican.”

Increasingly, the vote on Boehner’s proposal is shaping up not as a test of wills between moderates and conservatives, but as a faceoff between political purists who scorn the bill and realists who prefer it to the alternative.

“We came here to reduce the size of government and reduce spending, and this bill, I think, begins to accomplish that goal,” said Rep. Sean P. Duffy (R-Wis.), who decided Wednesday that he will vote for the measure. “It’s by no means perfect. But it’s the best bill we have.”

At a closed-door meeting for House Republicans on Wednesday, where leaders tried to rally support for the measure, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.) read from a blog post by conservative commentator Bill Kristol. “To vote against Boehner is to choose to support Barack Obama,” Kristol wrote.

But it is not an easy sale for a party that won back control of the House last year on promises to vote without regard to political consequences.

Boehner’s bill would postpone major entitlement reform and other deep cuts by passing such decisions to a new committee that would report its recommendations by year’s end. The proposal also would not require Congress to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, but only that it vote on one.

Some Republicans have vowed that they will not raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances.

Others preferred a conservative bill dubbed “cut, cap and balance” that passed the House this month but was killed in the Senate. It would have required Congress to vote to send the amendment to the states for ratification.

“The credit rating agencies have been clear that no matter what happens with the debt limit, the U.S. will lose its AAA credit rating unless we produce a credible plan to reduce the debt by trillions of dollars,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), chairman of the Republican Study Committee. The group comprises more than 170 House conservatives. “Cut, cap and balance is the only plan on the table that meets this standard,” he said.

House leaders expressed cautious optimism Wednesday that they were convincing members that the plan advanced by Boehner (R-Ohio) is the best that Republicans can hope to get.

It would avert a government default, take a bite out of the deficit and require Congress to adopt $1.8 trillion in additional cuts before the debt ceiling could be raised again next year.

Freshman Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), whose district in Staten Island and Brooklyn is home to many Wall Street professionals, said he decided Wednesday that he will vote for the bill after he was convinced that its failure would hand Democrats control of the debate.

“I don’t think it’s perfect. I don’t think it’s close to perfect. I don’t think it’s in the realm of what I expected to get,” he said.

But, Grimm said, it would require deep spending reductions over the coming years. “That’s historic. And that’s a step in the right direction.”

The public infighting has served to rally some Republicans. Behind closed doors, members erupted Wednesday over an e-mail that a staff member of Jordan’s Republican Study Committee sent to outside conservative groups. It listed undecided members who could be pressured to vote against the Boehner plan.

“I think it’s offensive when a group that you’re a part of uses your bullets to shoot you,” said Rep. Bill Flores (Tex.). “So I have a problem with it.”

Those entreaties did not quiet conservatives who are urging that the plan be abandoned: On Wednesday, the head of the group Tea Party Nation accused Boehner of surrendering to Washington’s status quo and called for him to be replaced.

The House proposal was panned at a small rally held at the Capitol by the Tea Party Express and the American Grassroots Coalition. The GOP that rode tea party energy and activism is hoping that some of it members can look past that relationship.

“Some people are new here and this is part of the learning curve,” LaTourette said. “At times you have to say ‘no’ to people you represent who are yelling at you, if you’ve reached the conclusion that it’s in the best interests of the country.”