More of Sarah Palin and the Iowa State Fair

posted at 12:45 pm on August 11, 2011 by Tina Korbe

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So far, the Hot Air Express’ schedule in Ames looks like this: One campaign event down, several more to go, plus the big draws of the debate and straw poll. But, all of a sudden, no event looks to be more exciting than the Iowa State Fair Friday — and not just because a certain spotlight-coveting, fun-loving Alaskan will be there.

According to the fair’s motto, “nothing compares.” Butter sculptures! Big-name entertainment! Fair food! It’s really not that hard to figure out why Sarah Palin would want to be there. Sure, she wants to stoke speculation that she might still run for the presidency (even though my suspicion is that she won’t), but she suggests she also just wants to stick it to a president who admonished the American people to “eat their peas”:

In an email to supporters, Palin said she was “excited to try some of that famous fried butter-on-a-stick, fried cheesecake-on-a-stick, fried twinkies, etc.”

“I’ll enjoy them in honor of those who’d rather make us just ‘eat our peas’!” she said, in a dig at President Obama.

Can you really blame her for wanting to eat a fried Twinkie? (Michelle Obama could and would, of course — before she’d go back to drinking her milkshake — but that’s neither here nor there.)

Of course, Palin won’t be the only prominent politician to appear at the fair. Mitt Romney will speak at the opening ceremonies today and Michele Bachmann will speak Friday, just before the crucial straw poll. But Palin does have the distinction of being the only prominent Republican non-candidate to put in an appearance.

Fair food and speculation-stoking aside, why, really, does Palin plan to attend? From the sound of the ad she released alongside her bus tour relaunch, it might be for the purely patriotic reason of expressing pride in small-town America. It could be for self-aggrandizement, for the pleasure of standing in the spotlight just because she can. It could be for a wholly unexpected reason — an endorsement, for example (although that seems highly unlikely). Maybe Palin decided to appear as a favor to the openly campaigning candidates in Iowa who will be somewhat overshadowed by Rick Perry’s announcement Saturday. After all, her considerable weight guarantees media coverage to the state that was supposed to be the uncontested center of attention this weekend before Perry’s people leaked his plans.

But regardless of why Palin planned this particular trip to Iowa, thinking about her in relation to this appearance makes me realize she is, herself, a little like the Iowa State Fair in that she is entirely in a class of her own. Like it, she boasts excellencies — a large and apparently happy family, signature accomplishments in her home state of Alaska, books, TV appearances, a clearly-and-compellingly-articulated conservative message, beauty, charisma, energy, etc., etc., etc. Like it, she boasts eccentricities — that memorable accent, her reality TV show, the start-and-stop nature of both her governorship and this bus tour, etc., etc., etc. She draws a big crowd, nobody feels indifferently toward her and, sometimes, she palls on even her biggest fans. That, perhaps, is the most important comparison: Just as it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the fair, such that funnel cake tastes sickeningly sweet in your mouth, it is possible to promote, to debate, to discuss Sarah Palin too much (and I know I’m guilty of this, too!), such that she becomes a caricature of herself instead of a real person and even people who like her find the discussion cloying. But she owes it to herself and we owe it to her, too, to remember and acknowledge the reality of Sarah Palin just as often as we remember the myth. Like the rest of us, she’s illuminated by talents, but also marred by flaws. No one compares — and yet everyone does.

Breaking: Reid appoints John Kerry, Patty Murray, and Max Baucus to Super Committee

posted at 6:05 pm on August 9, 2011 by Allahpundit
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That’s precisely what we need to reach a grand bargain. Hard-left dial tone Patty Murray and a guy who spent the past Sunday muttering in front of TV cameras about a “tea-party downgrade.” Bonus fun fact about Murray via Amanda Carpenter: She’s the head of the DSCC this election cycle, which means there ain’t no way no how no chance she’s signing off on any deal that involves even minor Medicare reform.

Not sure what to make of Baucus, though.

    Murray is expected to co-chair the committee, officially named the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, along with a still unnamed House Republican. A spokesman for Reid did not respond to a request for comment.

    Reid’s decision to tap Murray will likely be met with scrutiny, as she is also chairing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 2012 election cycle. But she is also a member of leadership, a senior member of the Budget Committee, and a woman on what is likely to be a male-dominated committee.

    Baucus is chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee with jurisdiction over many areas, including entitlement programs, that the committee is expected to examine. Kerry, meanwhile, was selected for his stature and Senate tenure.

None of the three were members of the Gang of Six, but Baucus was part of the Biden deficit group that Cantor walked away from over taxes. Could he potentially be the seventh vote for a deal on the Super Committee? He comes from a red state, he’s an institution in the Senate, and he’s not up for reelection until 2014. He’s as insulated from a tough vote as one can be. He’s also, as noted in the quote, chairman of the Finance Committee, so if he blessed a deal, that would give it added credibility in the Senate. And he’s been reasonably good on taxes, so he might side with Republicans on tax reform. The bad news? He duly wet himself over Paul Ryan’s budget and he’s earned some fans at AARP for supporting “doctor fix,” which contributes mightily to Medicare continuously running over budget. He’s probably not signing off on any serious entitlement reform, in other words, although if the GOP can come up with some revenues via tax reform, that might encourage him to join them in a modest first step. He floated that idea himself, in fact, after Biden’s group melted down, proposing new Medicare cuts in return for new revenues. Then again, Baucus was on Obama’s Deficit Commission and ended up voting no on the final plan. Of course, so did Paul Ryan.

I’ll leave you with this thought, in case you’re under the mistaken impression that anything will be accomplished by this process:

    Congress may undermine the deal that raised the U.S. debt ceiling by failing to agree on a plan to curb the deficit and then softening the impact of automatic spending cuts that would kick in to achieve the budget targets.

    That’s the view of five former directors of the Congressional Budget Office…

    While the cuts are supposed to be automatic, Congress can delay or override them if they prove too painful — defense spending would be reduced by 9.1 percent over a decade while non-defense programs would be cut 7.9 percent. That’s what lawmakers did with the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act, the template for the trigger.

Update: Weigel sees a new “the Democrats caved again!” narrative brewing on the left over Baucus. “So the Democrats will have one of their compromisers on the committee. Unless the GOP puts up one of its compromisers — a neo-Gang of Sixer, or someone like Bob Corker — the Baucus move alone means a committee that leans right.”

London rioter: “We’re just showing the rich people that we can do what we want”

posted at 4:45 pm on August 9, 2011 by Allahpundit
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Two clips to usher in night four of Droogfest 2011. The common thread is that in both cases you’re watching rampaging cretins behave in a quasi-civilized manner. In the first, two giggly girls chat calmly with the BBC about the “mad fun” they’re having; in the second, rioters handle a wounded boy gingerly … before proceeding to rob him. Maybe we can let the lot of them off easy with a modified version of the Ludovico technique.

If you missed it in Headlines this morning, read Brendan O’Neill’s essay on the riots as a byproduct of welfare-state decay. At the Corner, Iain Murray elaborates:

    Another left-wing friend of mine in the UK has another interesting theory — that the particular targeting of electronics and clothes shops represents an explosion of consumerism. Stay with me, because I think he has a point and I’d like to explain why. Much of the British underclass has had easy access to credit over the past decade or so — and why not, when they are on a secure income stream of state benefits — and they have spent this for the most part on TVs, video games, and “chav” fashion. That easy credit — which I should emphasize was encouraged by the loose monetary policy of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair — has now dried up, so they are looking to take for free what they previously got for nominal sums. There is more evidence for that conclusion in this BBC recording of two girls saying that the riots were about taking what they wanted, for free…

    I think what we are seeing in Britain is a conflation of two liberal dreams — that of the 1960s, in which parenting and tradition went out the window, and that of the 2000s, in which self-help was replaced by easy credit, benefits, and an all-mighty “health and safety” bureaucracy — together with the unfinished nature of the Thatcher revolution. Mrs. T enabled economic Thatcherism but was unable to finish the project of what I termed social Thatcherism, whereby a free society recognized the importance of what once were called manners.

    The result is a feral underclass without any understanding of tradition from right or left.

O’Neill ends by laying into British cops for their paralysis, a ubiquitous critique in stories about the riots after three days of window-smashing. There are a lot of reasons for that. The police have in fact held back, only now considering water cannons and plastic bullets after millions in damage. The prime minister and the mayor of London were both on vacation when the riots began and Scotland Yard’s leadership recently resigned over the phone-hacking scandal, so for several days there’s been no one in charge. The Home Secretary, who was also on vacation, is prone to saying moronic things like, “The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon, the way we police in Britain is through consent of communities,” even as young degenerates ransack local communities without their consent. And of course it’s comforting in a moment of chaos to focus on the failings of the police, who are, unlike the rioters (oops, I mean “protesters”), accountable to the public. Build a better force and in theory you ensure this can’t happen again. In theory:

    Business owners accused police of adopting a softly-softly approach which left their shops and businesses vulnerable to attack by baying mobs.

    While police were criticised in some quarters for being far too slow to get to riot scenes, officers were accused by shopkeepers in Hackney of standing just yards away from looters as windows were smashed and armfuls of goods were scooped up…

    Firearms units trained to use the rubber bullets are braced in case they are needed. It would be the first time ever the baton rounds have been used in British disturbances.

    Mr Kavanagh said Scotland Yard was ‘not going to throw 180 years of policing with the community away’ as the prospect of using the ammunition for the first time at a British disturbance was raised.

Imagine how bad things could get if they did that. There might be riots.

There are many ways to measure the awfulness of what’s happening but chew on these two while you watch. According to residents in Birmingham, looters are literally stealing the clothes off of people’s backs, stopping them and forcing them to strip. The Daily Mail has a too-bad-to-check photo via Twitter. Beyond that, in the Middle East and elsewhere, there’s gloating going on both by authoritarian governments, who are mocking the Brits for not liquidating all of their troublemakers on the spot, and by the victims of those authoritarian governments, who are mocking the rioters for turning their “protests” into a pretext to steal DVD players. All of which is to say, this is a complete fiasco by any yardstick.

Onto the videos. I’ve included a third (audio) clip below as a little bonus; yes, that is indeed Hulk Hogan’s voice you’re hearing. Click the image to watch.

Palin knocks it out of the park

posted at 10:05 am on August 9, 2011 by J.E. Dyer
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Few people in the public eye have said anything useful about the recent unpleasantness with the national debt and the national credit rating.  The president hasn’t.  The vice president hasn’t.  Surprisingly few of the declared Republican candidates have.  The MSM haven’t.  They’re busy trying to make the expression “Tea Party downgrade” go viral.

Indeed, at this hour of reckoning, with the Dow plunging and markets in turmoil around the world, the MSM have achieved another playground-taunt triumph with the silly Newsweek cover featuring an unflattering photo of Michelle Bachmann.  These people seem to have no sense of proportion, no judgment, no recognition that things have become serious and the time for sophomoric media jabs is past.

Who cares how they can make Bachmann look on a magazine cover?  The tabloids demonstrate several times a year that they can make the world’s most beautiful women look like something from the back of the refrigerator, if they photograph them in bad light with a telephoto lens.  The Bachmann cover is the equivalent of a slam-book entry, about as intelligent as holding your nose and chanting “You smell!” at a classmate.  Ridicule is the cheapest thing there is – and in politics, it’s usually deployed to shift the focus from a needed debate to specious topics and emotion.  I’d call it a reversion to high school, but it would be an insult even to middle-schoolers to pin it on their age group.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan have had good, inspiring, on-target things to say about the US fiscal crisis.  Michelle Bachmann has had good things to say.  John Bolton had an important piece making the case that national security is inextricably linked with fiscal security, a much-needed point in the context of the recent debate.

But Sarah Palin came through today with a Facebook post that strikes the right tone and is at once simple, direct, and comprehensive.  It doesn’t rail at past mistakes, nor does it come across as a raised-voice, you’ve-got-to-get-this-people communication.  Palin takes it for granted – with refreshing common sense – that we are in a crisis, its features are obvious, and the task now is to deal with it, not continue to argue whether it’s really a crisis or how big it is or whose name we can pin on it.

She makes no bones about the significance of the problem we face.  I am particularly impressed with her point that if we don’t square ourselves away, the specter hangs over us of IMF staffers showing up on our doorstep with China and France and Germany arrayed behind them, ready to throw folders on a desk and start telling us how much we can spend on cable TV and incidentals each month.  Whether things would really play out for the US as they are playing out for Greece and Ireland is a valid question, but Palin is quite correct that the pitched confrontation is on the horizon now, as it was not six weeks ago – and she has the courage to face that possibility head-on.  It’s not pleasant to mention it, but it’s the right thing to do.

The last third of Palin’s post is devoted to laying out what we need to do.  Grow the economy by releasing the regulatory clamps on it, starting with the energy sector.  Cut spending and reform entitlements.  She doesn’t pretend the latter would be easy, but she faces head-on the fact that it is inescapably necessary.  I urge you to read her post for the discussion of particulars.  It is material and convincing without being in the weeds.

The piece is positive and encouraging for its forthrightness.  There is nothing “clever” to be done in this situation; it’s all straightforward.  The US federal government has to cut spending and let the economy grow, even if that means breaking the stranglehold of unions on the public trough and overruling advocacy groups and government bureaucrats who don’t want the economy to grow.  Pretending that the federal budget is too complex to be governed by the ordinary rules of accounting – or that the US is too special to be limited by the ordinary definition of fiscal solvency – is a dodge, not a sign of insight or expertise.

Palin focuses like any good executive on the big picture.  We have to cut spending and get government out of the economy’s way so it can start pumping out revenues again.  These things are increasingly obvious to everyone, and moreover, they constitute a plan.  Talking ourselves into corners about other, tangential things isn’t even interesting any more.  It feels so wrong that it’s hard to watch anyone’s news program at the moment: no one seems to be talking about what matters.

What is interesting is how few in our national political life have put the case together, as Palin has, without temporizing or bloviating.  I haven’t heard anyone else do what she does with this post.  She acknowledges the actual, enormous scope of the problem, envisions a solution, and outlines what to do to achieve it, with encouragement that it can be done.  It is sad and a little frightening that so many Americans have become unable to see this for what it is:  leadership.  Almost everyone else is focused more narrowly, on one aspect of the problem or another, and a good few commentators don’t seem to even have the vocabulary or the mental infrastructure to address the problem itself; they can only express opinions about the impossibility of the politics surrounding it.

It is the opposite of stupid to recognize the problem’s stark and simple outlines when all around you are swinging blindfolded at piñatas.  We spend too much, and we suppress economic growth and revenues with regulation.  Palin articulates that clearly.  Her ability to reach out directly through social media, and put her case in her terms, is a net positive for our current political climate.  She remains one of the best reasons to not let the MSM dictate our ideas and preferences to us.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

Rick Perry: I support constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage and abortion

posted at 5:25 pm on August 3, 2011 by Allahpundit

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Two caveats to his otherwise strict support for the Tenth Amendment, both of which happen to serve the agenda of social conservatives whose votes he’s depending on. He backed away from his “states’ rights” defense of legalizing gay marriage last week; here’s the inevitable climbdown on abortion too, which he described as a states’ rights issue a few days ago. Follow that last link and re-read the post to see why it was predictable. I’m surprised he didn’t anticipate the tension his Tenther rhetoric on these issues would cause with his base, which he could have defused by mentioning his support for the amendments straightaway. There’s nothing necessarily inconsistent in that position: You can be a strong federalist and still condone federal solutions for exceptionally grave evils like slavery which the states, for various reasons, can’t be trusted to police as diligently as they should. That’s the core of the pro-life argument for an anti-abortion amendment — it’s a matter, literally, of life and death. What’s Perry’s argument, though, for why gay marriage qualifies as an “exceptionally grave evil” warranting a nationwide ban? Is smoking, say, an evil sufficiently grave to require a constitutional amendment outlawing it? (Don’t answer that, liberals.) He’s not in a legal trap here but he is in a philosophical one. And a political one, of course, as the press will use this to throw him off his economic message. Specify, please, which behaviors are so pernicious that we can’t risk letting parochial state legislatures deal with them.

Incidentally, as with Fred Thompson four years ago, the media’s “Perry as GOP savior?” hype is already being replaced by the “Perry as overhyped flop?” counter-narrative. Here’s Politico’s new piece wondering whether a tea-party-flavored Bush soundalike can get traction with the current conservative base. (One state Republican chairman compares Perry to “Will Ferrell doing a George W. Bush imitation.”) And here’s CNN noting that Perry’s upcoming prayer event, which can accommodate 71,000 people, has had just 8,000 registrants thus far. I doubt Perry cares — the real audience for that event is in Iowa, not Texas — but they’ll build that counter-narrative with any available brick. Exit question via Democratic pollster PPP: Does the GOP need Romney to win?

Tea Party won the first skirmish of a long, long fight

posted at 2:05 pm on August 3, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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Did anyone win in the recently concluded deal that reduced the upward trajectory of federal spending?  In my column for The Week, I argue that Barack Obama certainly was the big loser, having blown an opportunity that he himself cultivated for months to demonstrate leadership.  While the deal doesn’t feel like a win to Tea Party activists at the moment, I argue that they won an important opening skirmish:

    Reid gave up on tax hikes, not because he got tired of talking about them, but because there isn’t any appetite for tax hikes on Capitol Hill — thanks to the power and influence of the Tea Party. The cuts mandated in this compromise might be paltry, especially at first, but they represent a step in the right direction. For the first time in perhaps decades, Congress will approach budget shortfalls by looking at where spending can actually be reduced rather than where revenue can be raised.

    That is a remarkable paradigm shift, and one worthy of celebration after a decade of exploding deficits from Congresses controlled by both parties. Without the Tea Party, that paradigm shift would never have occurred. Indeed, without the Tea Party and their victorious candidates, the debt-ceiling increase would have been a routine vote noted only by a few bloggers and the back pages of most newspapers.

    Understandably, most Tea Party activists see this as business as usual and not the kind of transformative, instant change they envisioned. But just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, it will take much more than one vote or one budget to build the kind of limited, fiscally responsible America that these activists desire. The expansion of the federal government has gone on for decades, and it will take many battles and victories, small and large, to reverse it. This is a long journey, and the Tea Party helped push the nation into taking a step in the right direction.

There are two dangers in incremental victories, which are closely related to one another.  The first is that they tend to discourage activists who want big, unmistakable, validating victories.  However, those will only come with big, unmistakable majorities in Congress and a different President in the White House.  Given the relative weight of the Tea Party caucus on Capitol Hill in this Congressional session makes the win here even more remarkable. It’s very important to remember that our political system is heavily weighted against radical change in the short term, and that lasting change takes patience and long-term planning.

The second danger is that the activists will turn on each other and on their nominal allies.  If that happens, they will lose the ability to grow their standing in Congress.  Worse, they will alienate those who want to work towards the same general goals but who may differ on tactics and time lines.  That will bring incremental progress to a halt, while at the same time pushing activists into giving up altogether.  We need to avoid a “Mission Accomplished” mentality, but more importantly recognize that incremental progress is not futile.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the ledger, Barack Obama comes out as the biggest loser in this fight.  I give an explanation for that in my column, but two media reports today confirm this as a consensus position.  First, The Hill takes us inside the negotiations, where John Boehner apparently ordered the President out of negotiations at one point:

    GOP aides and lawmakers, speaking on background, portrayed Boehner as the calm negotiator who repeatedly exasperated President Obama.

    Boehner last month asked the networks to televise his response to Obama’s address to the nation, a request which infuriated the White House, Republican sources said.

    On July 23, they claim, the White House called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), telling her not to participate on a call with Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Pelosi informed Reid, who declined to participate, and the call was canceled, the Republican sources said. (A Pelosi spokesman could not be reached for comment.)

    Later that day, the four leaders met with Obama at the White House. At one point, GOP officials said, the Democratic and Republican leaders asked Obama and his aides to leave the room to let them negotiate.

Reid reneged on the agreement that was reached at that point under pressure from the White House, according to the Hill’s account based on their GOP sources.  Obama had to send Joe Biden into the final negotiations instead.  But it’s not just Republicans who are painting Obama as a bumbling negotiator, as the LA Times reports:

    Moreover, many Democrats — including some ordinarily sympathetic to the president — feel part of the problem is of Obama’s own making. …

    Given the acrimony and the high-stakes deadline, the impasse posed a severe test of Obama’s negotiating skills. On the fly he sought to improve his relationship with Boehner, inviting the speaker to play a round of golf early in the talks. But White House officials believe that personalities aren’t at the root of congressional paralysis. …

    Others are more critical, comparing Obama unfavorably with presidents who made broad use of their executive powers in times of crisis: Harry Truman, who nationalized the steel industry in 1952 in the face of a steel strike, for example, or John F. Kennedy, who denounced steel executives for price increases and threatened them with an antitrust investigation.

    “I am just sorely upset that Obama doesn’t seize the moment,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said as the final deal was coming together. “That’s what great presidents do in times of crisis. They exert executive leadership. He went wobbly in the knees.”

The White House apparently hopes that the deal will eventually be popular enough for Obama to benefit, but the problem with that idea is that Obama had nothing to do with the eventual deal.  His only stated demand — higher taxes — got taken off the table more than a week before the compromise.  At the end, Obama ended up accepting a Congressional diktat rather than leading the path to a solution.  Obama ended up as little more than a spectator at his own leadership opportunity, and everyone knows it

Siwss Franc Retreats From Maximums

Swiss francThe Swiss franc fell from its record high levels against the other major currencies today, as the country’s central bank takes extreme measures  against the franc’s appreciation.

The Swiss currency retreated from its record maximum levels against the US dollar, the euro and the Great Britain pound today. It also decreased from the 3-year high vs. the Japanese yen.

The currency reacted sharply to the Swiss National Bank decision to reduce the target range for the 3-month LIBOR from 0–0.75 percent to 0.0.25 percent. The central bank’s statement also says that the bank will “very significantly increase the supply of liquidity to the Swiss franc money market over the next few days” (that is, a currency intervention). The bank intends to increase its sight deposits from the current CHF30 billion to CHF80 billion. In addition, the statements cites the worsening of its global economic outlook:

    The Swiss National Bank (SNB) considers the Swiss franc to be massively overvalued at present. This current strength of the Swiss franc is threatening the development of the economy and increasing the downside risks to price stability in Switzerland. The SNB will not tolerate a continual tightening of monetary conditions and is therefore taking measures against the strong Swiss franc.

USD/CHF rose from 0.7646 to 0.7769 as of 8:56 GMT today. EUR/CHF went up from 1.0849 to 1.1083. CHF/JPY fell from 101.12 to 99.38.

If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the Swiss Franc, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.

Earlier News About the Swiss Franc:

    Swiss Franc on Record Against Everything (2011-08-01)
    New Record of Franc Against Euro (2011-07-18)
    CHF Reaches Record vs. USD, EUR & GBP (2011-07-14)
    New Worries Return Demand for Franc (2011-07-09)
    US Employment Improves, Reducing Need for Swissie (2011-07-07)


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Awww: Obama campaign to blame debt negotiations for lower fundraising this summer

posted at 12:45 pm on August 3, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

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You know how it is when you keep putting off important tasks, like mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, and resolving budget standoffs with Congress. If you don’t handle them when you’re supposed to do so, they end up getting resolved at the most inconvenient times:

President Barack Obama’s campaign expects to raise tens of millions of dollars less this summer than it did in the spring because negotiations over the nation’s debt limit forced Obama to cancel several fundraisers.

Obama’s campaign said Wednesday it canceled or postponed 10 fundraisers involving the president, Vice President Joe Biden andWhite House chief of staff Bill Daley in the past month because of the debt talks, scrubbing events in California, New York and elsewhere.

Only weeks after the president’s campaign reported collecting a combined $86 million with the Democratic National Committee, Obama’s team is trying to lower expectations about its fundraising juggernaut while signaling to its army of volunteers and activists that they need to fill the void. Obama is coming off a bruising battle with congressional Republicans over raising the government’s debt ceiling and is expected to face a formidable challenge from Republicans in 2012 against the backdrop of a weakened economy.

“We’re going to raise significantly less in the third quarter than we did in the second quarter,” said Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager. “We will not be able to replace all of these events just because of his busy schedule. We always knew that he had his job and we had to do this around his schedule, and the truth is we just have to deal with canceling a month’s worth of events.”

Well, if Congress had addressed the debt ceiling and deficit reduction during 2010, Obama wouldn’t have had to spend three whole weeks in Washington negotiating with John Boehner. Democrats failed to pass a budget for FY2011 while they had large majorities in both chambers of Congress. Harry Reid refused to raise the debt ceiling in December during the lame-duck session, specifically because Reid wanted Republicans to get their hands dirty on the debt ceiling.

Obama doesn’t have any excuses, either. Almost as soon as Reid bailed on raising the debt ceiling, Obama’s team began raising the specter of default. What did Obama do to avoid the problem? In February, Obama submitted a budget request that increased the rate of deficit spending. When that flopped, Obama promised to produce a plan to reduce the deficit, using a national address in April to underscore the point. And then …. nothing. No plan, no specifics, just nothing until July, when Republicans offered plan after plan and Obama refused to accept them until utterly forced to do so.

If the President had done his job in February or even April, then none of this would have been necessary. Instead, Obama chose to lead from behind. If that caused him to miss fundraisers, it’s no one’s fault but his own. And that might be a much bigger reason for lower fundraising numbers this summer, fall, and winter

Biden to Gabby Giffords: “Welcome to the Cracked Head Club”

posted at 8:30 pm on August 2, 2011 by Allahpundit
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Via Breitbart TV. Since we’re grooving on insane left-wing double standards today, here’s the second thing this guy has said in the past 24 hours that would have become a national media scandal had his party affiliation been different. And before one of our three lefty readers wonders — no, this isn’t a Fox scoop. Other reporters heard Biden say it, including one from the Boston Globe. Which raises the question, what’s the dumbest part of this? That he’d joke about a cracked skull with Gabby Giffords, who may very well prove to be permanently disabled from having “joined the club”? Or that he found it amusing enough to share the anecdote with reporters later on? Free advice for conservatives and independents: Do not attempt this “joke.” Not only is it tone-deaf and callous, but you won’t get graded on the curve afterward. (“Oh, that Joe!”)

Giffords herself, you’ll be glad to know, is coming along well enough that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz thinks she can make it back to Congress. But reports early this morning that she’s planning to run for reelection turned out to be wrong. They’re hopeful that she’s well enough, but it’s still wait-and-see.

Open thread: Senate to vote on House-passed debt deal at noon Update: Senate passes debt deal, 74-26 Update: President ends this saga, signs debt deal

posted at 11:20 am on August 2, 2011 by Tina Korbe

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After a dramatic night in the House of Representatives last night, the disappointment of a debt deal that passed the House heads to the Senate, where it faces seemingly fewer obstacles than it faced in the House.

But that doesn’t mean passage will be “easy.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said no amendments will be allowed and the plan requires a supermajority of 60 votes to pass. One notable “no” vote will come from Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). The senator who has been sounding the warning bell about an eleventh hour deal for months — and who has kept the count as to how many days the Senate has gone without passing a budget resolution (825!) — explains why he can’t support the deal:

“We’re getting pretty far away from the traditions of this body when you don’t publicly debate a budget, you create a committee of limited numbers of people to produce legislation that can’t be amended,” Sessions says in the video. “For those reasons, I feel like as a Senator and the ranking member on the Budget Committee who’s wrestled with this for some time, I would not be able to support the legislation. Though, I truly believe it is a step forward, and I respect my colleagues who’ve worked hard to try to bring it forward.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), whose name has become almost synonymous with the push for a balanced budget amendment, is still a “no” vote, as is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) remain “yes” votes, of course.

Senate Democrat opposition to the deal doesn’t rival Democrat opposition in the House, where Rep. Emanuel Cleaver created news by calling the deal a “sugar-coated satan sandwich” and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi implied it also features “satan fries on the side.” But I’ll keep an eye out for any likely “no” votes from the left side of the aisle.

Again, though, the bill is broadly expected to pass. Bill Hemmer just said the guidance Fox News has received suggests the Senate will give it at least 70 votes — so it won’t even be close. After that, attention will turn to the 12-member special commission.

Meanwhile, rumors of a downgrade despite the deal continue to circulate.

Update I: Reid is on the Senate floor right now, saying, “We were on the brink of disaster, but, one day before the deadline, we were able to avert that disaster. … There’s principally one winner through all of this: the American people. … The result of this Tea Party direction of this Congress has been very disconcerting. It stopped us from arriving at a conclusion much sooner. …”

Update II: Bill Hemmer just tweeted and AP reports that 60 senators have already voted “yes” for the deal, which means it passes. But the roll call continues. Guy Benson tweets that four Democrats have voted “no” so far: Sen. Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), Sen. Tom Harkin (Iowa) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT).

Update III: The deal has passed, 74 to 26. Three more Dem “no” votes: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.). Now awaiting the president’s speech from the Rose Garden …

Update IV: In his Rose Garden speech, the president issued veiled instructions to the deficit-reduction joint committee created by the debt deal — instructions that amounted to, “Raise taxes.” For more, see my upcoming post in just a bit.

Update V: The president just signed the debt deal. Aaaannnddd … it’s over. For now.

New ObamaCare mandate: no co-pays on contraceptives

posted at 12:45 pm on August 2, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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The ObamaCare bill has resulted in an explosion of ambiguity and arbitrary rulings, mainly focused at first on temporary waivers for some insurers and employers on requirements for meeting the threshold of payouts to premiums.  The Department of Health and Human Services stopped issuing waivers under pressure from Congress to explain their methodology, but a new ruling by Kathleen Sebelius will likely prompt even more protests.  The Obama administration ordered insurers to cover prescription contraceptives and a range of other “women’s wellness” services and products without co-pays:

    Health insurance plans must cover birth control as preventive care for women, with no copays, the Obama administration said Monday in a decision with far-reaching implications for health care as well as social mores.

    The requirement is part of a broad expansion of coverage for women’s preventive care under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Also to be covered without copays are breast pumps for nursing mothers, an annual “well-woman” physical, screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer and for diabetes during pregnancy, counseling on domestic violence, and other services.

    “These historic guidelines are based on science and existing (medical) literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

    The new requirements will take effect Jan. 1, 2013, in most cases. Tens of millions of women are expected to gain coverage initially, and that number is likely to grow with time. At first, some plans may be exempt due to a complex provision of the health care law known as the “grandfather” clause. But those even plans could face pressure from their members to include the new benefit.

Let’s put this in its proper context.  Thanks to this new mandate, insurers will eat hundreds of millions or perhaps billions of dollars in additional costs each year.  Guess how they will recoup those costs?  Premiums will rise across the board, meaning that everyone will pay the additional cost as well as the specific patients getting the services and products.

Does this solve some sort of pressing gap in society?  Not really.  As the Huffington Post report notes, contraceptive use is already nearly universal.  The report quotes a government study that shows 90 million prescriptions for contraceptives are dispensed annually.  Clearly, there is no big gap in access due to having co-pays for the Pill.  If poor women had problems paying the additional cost, then HHS could have ordered Medicaid to end co-pays, a power that was already within their jurisdiction before ObamaCare’s passage.

So where does this end?  Do we next mandate an end to co-pays on Lipitor because cholesterol is a problem in American health?  I can tell you that the co-pays on that medication are higher than on most and probably represent more of a barrier to access than co-pays on the Pill, let alone access to breast pumps and counseling on domestic violence.

This is a preview of life under ObamaCare.  This edict got handed down from the mountain purely for political purposes.  The Obama administration wants to bolster its standing with women ahead of the next election; this mandate will probably get featured in an endless series of campaign ads.  “President Obama protects women!” the copy will read.  In the meantime, rational provider-patient cost sharing on non-critical products and services will be discarded, forcing the rest of us to eat the cost in higher premiums.  It’s the ultimate in arbitrary exercises in authority.

And people wonder why employers, who have to price the costs of adding positions, aren’t hiring any more.

Progressive caucus co-chair: There’s no way I’ll support this horrible deal; Update: Reid approves deal

posted at 5:15 pm on July 31, 2011 by Allahpundit
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I call upon these hardline, hostage-taking ideological fanatics to compromise for the good of America.

    “This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it. Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage…

    Republicans have succeeded in imposing their vision of a country without real economic hope. Their message has no public appeal, and Democrats have had every opportunity to stand firm in the face of their irrational demands. Progressives have been rallying support for the successful government programs that have meant health and economic security to generations of our people. Today we, and everyone we have worked to speak for and fight for, were thrown under the bus. We have made our bottom line clear for months: a final deal must strike a balance between cuts and revenue, and must not put all the burden on the working people of this country. This deal fails those tests and many more.

    The Democratic Party, no less than the Republican Party, is at a very serious crossroads at this moment. For decades Democrats have stood for a capable, meaningful government – a government that works for the people, not just the powerful, and that represents everyone fairly and equally. This deal weakens the Democratic Party as badly as it weakens the country. We have given much and received nothing in return. The lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want. While I believe the country will not reward them for this in the long run, the damage has already been done.

His proposed solutions? Either a clean debt-ceiling hike, which will do nothing to check the growth of spending that’ll eventually utterly destroy that “capable, meaningful government” he loves so much, or the Fourteenth Amendment option, which would add a constitutional crisis and total fiscal uncertainty to the country’s current basket of political goodies. Even so, it’s awfully nice of him to toss this grenade and complicate the Democrats’ messaging in case Boehner can’t get enough Republicans to push the deal through the House. Fun fact about the Congressional Progressive Caucus: It’s the largest on the left with fully 75 members, which means if they vote as a bloc tomorrow then Pelosi and Hoyer are already down to fewer than 120 Democrats who might be willing to help Obama out by voting with Boehner.

As for the GOP’s remaining core objection to the deal, it’s a byproduct of the progressives’ core demand highlighted above:

    Defenders of the plan will say that the defense cuts may never come about, or that if the committee makes some cuts but not enough, only the remainder would be subject to a 50-50 sequestration. This is no small consolation to House and Senate pro-defense lawmakers who fear that the committee won’t do its job and that draconian defense cuts will follow.

    Why would Republicans give so much on defense? An adviser close to the talks says: “This is the only thing Democrats are getting. It was more important than taxes.” If so, and national defense cuts are now a “get” for the Democratic Party regardless of our national security needs, this is shameful. And if Republican negotiators give in, then the Democrats are going to have to come up with lots and lots of votes to make sure the bill passes both houses.

According to HuffPo’s Sam Stein, all Democratic leaders had signed off on the deal as of 4:30 p.m. ET, which I guess means Pelosi thinks she really can deliver “lots and lots of votes.” She had better: Fox News’s Chad Pergram says he’s already hearing from conservative/tea party House members that they can’t support this deal either, which means Boehner will need a broad centrist coalition to get things done.

Stand by for updates, as usual.

Update: Reid’s office says he’s onboard, provided that the caucus approves the package. Bernie Sanders replies by calling it “grotesquely immoral” and “bad economic policy.” And here’s something fun from Chuck Todd: “The holdup on announcing the deal appears to be uncertainty of how House gets to 216.”

Update: In case you’re worried about the Super Commission recommending tax increases:

    Republicans favorable to the deal feel as though they have three safeguards against the committee recommending tax increases and Congress going along: 1) The members appointed by Boehner and McConnell, who will presumably not be Gang of 6 types (McConnell would be wise to appoint Kyl, Sessions, and Toomey); 2) a tax increase would not get through the House and probably not have 50 votes in the Senate; 3) the baseline dynamic mentioned earlier.

That doesn’t solve the problem with heavy defense cuts in the trigger, but presumably the GOP thinks it can undo those with separate legislation before the cuts kick in.

Update: Desperate times:

    Progressives and the CBC plan presser on Monday to ask Obama to invoke 14th Amendment to avoid debr crisis. 11 am.

Update: A GOP side explains to James Pethokoukis why it’ll be so hard for the Super Commission to try to raise taxes:

    It has an undefined mandate of deficit reduction but the way that is constructed would essentially make it impossible to raise taxes. Anything scored by CBO is based on current law. Current law assumes that taxes are going to go up by three-and-a-half trillion dollars next year [over ten years]. So anything you do to the tax code, unless it starts off with a $3.5 trillion tax increase, it’s going to be adding to the deficit … It’s almost impossible for them to touch taxes because if they do, almost anything will be scored as a tax cut, making it that much more difficult to reach the $1.5 trillion that they need to get to.

That’s the “baseline dynamic” mentioned in Rich Lowry’s post quoted above.

Progressive caucus co-chair: There’s no way I’ll support this horrible deal; Update: Reid approves deal

posted at 5:15 pm on July 31, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly

I call upon these hardline, hostage-taking ideological fanatics to compromise for the good of America.

    “This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it. Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage…

    Republicans have succeeded in imposing their vision of a country without real economic hope. Their message has no public appeal, and Democrats have had every opportunity to stand firm in the face of their irrational demands. Progressives have been rallying support for the successful government programs that have meant health and economic security to generations of our people. Today we, and everyone we have worked to speak for and fight for, were thrown under the bus. We have made our bottom line clear for months: a final deal must strike a balance between cuts and revenue, and must not put all the burden on the working people of this country. This deal fails those tests and many more.

    The Democratic Party, no less than the Republican Party, is at a very serious crossroads at this moment. For decades Democrats have stood for a capable, meaningful government – a government that works for the people, not just the powerful, and that represents everyone fairly and equally. This deal weakens the Democratic Party as badly as it weakens the country. We have given much and received nothing in return. The lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want. While I believe the country will not reward them for this in the long run, the damage has already been done.

His proposed solutions? Either a clean debt-ceiling hike, which will do nothing to check the growth of spending that’ll eventually utterly destroy that “capable, meaningful government” he loves so much, or the Fourteenth Amendment option, which would add a constitutional crisis and total fiscal uncertainty to the country’s current basket of political goodies. Even so, it’s awfully nice of him to toss this grenade and complicate the Democrats’ messaging in case Boehner can’t get enough Republicans to push the deal through the House. Fun fact about the Congressional Progressive Caucus: It’s the largest on the left with fully 75 members, which means if they vote as a bloc tomorrow then Pelosi and Hoyer are already down to fewer than 120 Democrats who might be willing to help Obama out by voting with Boehner.

As for the GOP’s remaining core objection to the deal, it’s a byproduct of the progressives’ core demand highlighted above:

    Defenders of the plan will say that the defense cuts may never come about, or that if the committee makes some cuts but not enough, only the remainder would be subject to a 50-50 sequestration. This is no small consolation to House and Senate pro-defense lawmakers who fear that the committee won’t do its job and that draconian defense cuts will follow.

    Why would Republicans give so much on defense? An adviser close to the talks says: “This is the only thing Democrats are getting. It was more important than taxes.” If so, and national defense cuts are now a “get” for the Democratic Party regardless of our national security needs, this is shameful. And if Republican negotiators give in, then the Democrats are going to have to come up with lots and lots of votes to make sure the bill passes both houses.

According to HuffPo’s Sam Stein, all Democratic leaders had signed off on the deal as of 4:30 p.m. ET, which I guess means Pelosi thinks she really can deliver “lots and lots of votes.” She had better: Fox News’s Chad Pergram says he’s already hearing from conservative/tea party House members that they can’t support this deal either, which means Boehner will need a broad centrist coalition to get things done.

Stand by for updates, as usual.

Update: Reid’s office says he’s onboard, provided that the caucus approves the package. Bernie Sanders replies by calling it “grotesquely immoral” and “bad economic policy.” And here’s something fun from Chuck Todd: “The holdup on announcing the deal appears to be uncertainty of how House gets to 216.”

Update: In case you’re worried about the Super Commission recommending tax increases:

    Republicans favorable to the deal feel as though they have three safeguards against the committee recommending tax increases and Congress going along: 1) The members appointed by Boehner and McConnell, who will presumably not be Gang of 6 types (McConnell would be wise to appoint Kyl, Sessions, and Toomey); 2) a tax increase would not get through the House and probably not have 50 votes in the Senate; 3) the baseline dynamic mentioned earlier.

That doesn’t solve the problem with heavy defense cuts in the trigger, but presumably the GOP thinks it can undo those with separate legislation before the cuts kick in.

Update: Desperate times:

    Progressives and the CBC plan presser on Monday to ask Obama to invoke 14th Amendment to avoid debr crisis. 11 am.

Update: A GOP side explains to James Pethokoukis why it’ll be so hard for the Super Commission to try to raise taxes:

    It has an undefined mandate of deficit reduction but the way that is constructed would essentially make it impossible to raise taxes. Anything scored by CBO is based on current law. Current law assumes that taxes are going to go up by three-and-a-half trillion dollars next year [over ten years]. So anything you do to the tax code, unless it starts off with a $3.5 trillion tax increase, it’s going to be adding to the deficit … It’s almost impossible for them to touch taxes because if they do, almost anything will be scored as a tax cut, making it that much more difficult to reach the $1.5 trillion that they need to get to.

That’s the “baseline dynamic” mentioned in Rich Lowry’s post quoted above.

Open thread: Senate to vote on debt bill at 1 p.m., or maybe not; Update: Reid’s bill filibustered, 50/49; Update: Deal all but done? Update: Reid signs off on debt ceiling agreement

posted at 12:09 pm on July 31, 2011 by Allahpundit
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They’re supposed to vote at 1 p.m., but according to Plouffe and another “Democrat familiar with the situation,” there’s still no bill. What’s the hold up? In all likelihood, they’re haggling over the “triggers” that’ll happen if the new Super Commission can’t agree on, or Congress won’t accept, new deficit reduction proposals later this year. Jen Rubin’s hearing the following from a Republican source on the Hill:

    The second tranche works like this: If a new congressional commission introduces a plan totaling at least $1.5 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving and it’s passed by Christmas there are no across-the-board cuts. Or, if a balanced budget amendment is passed and sent to the states, then across-the-board cuts are avoided. However, if there is no commission package passed AND the BBA is not passed and sent to the states, then across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion including Medicare and defense (the details of which aren’t final) go into effect. If the across-the board-cuts go into effect, the debt ceiling is only raised $1.2 trillion (likely insufficient to keep the government operating for long), meaning “we could do this all over again, depending on economic growth.” In other words, if we went to sequestration the total debt ceiling increase would be $2.1 trillion in two doses.

So there’s the BBA concession: Democrats can avoid new cuts in the second stage entirely if they pass the amendment. As for the automatic Medicare/Pentagon reductions, that’s obviously designed to make both sides in Congress think twice before rejecting the Super Commission’s recommendations. The precise formula for that is still being negotiated too. According to Jake Tapper, the White House wants fully 50 percent of the automatic cuts to affect the Pentagon and 50 percent to be spread across various other discretionary programs. GOP hawks won’t go for that, especially since the only alternative might be approving a Commission package that includes new revenues.

As I write this, the Senate has just begun its session and Reid is insisting that they’re “cautiously optimistic” about a deal but not there yet. Here’s your thread for tracking today’s drama. Exit question: How many Republican and Democratic votes will this bargain get in the House? Progressives are reportedly already murmuring about balking because of the lack of revenue in the deal, which means Boehner will need a majority of his previous Republican majority on yesterday’s vote to get this through. (Here’s one vote forecast.) I wonder if they’ll do it on the first try or, a la TARP, if it’ll take a market panic and subsequent re-vote to get it done. Stand by for updates.

Update: The post-deal spin starts before the deal is even struck:

    “I don’t think we’ve been hurt at all,” McConnell said on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’.

    “The American people wanted us to do something about out-of-control spending and … the debt ceiling is going to produce what many people would believe is a complete change in the trajectory of the federal government beginning to get spending under control,” said McConnell, who is likely to be largely responsible for any package that wins muster with Congress.

Update: John Bolton sounds the alarm for hawks:

    Every indication is that the debt-ceiling negotiations are leaving the defense budget in grave jeopardy. By exposing critical defense programs to disproportionate cuts as part of the “trigger mechanism,” there is a clear risk that key defense programs will be hollowed out.

    While the trigger mechanism comes into play only if the Congressional negotiators fail to reach agreement on the second phase of spending cuts, it verges on catastrophe to take such a national security risk.

    Defense has already taken hugely disproportionate cuts under President Obama, and there is simply no basis for expanding those cuts further. Republican negotiators must hold the line, since the Obama Administration plainly will not.

Update: Senate Republicans will huddle at 1:45.

Update: Turns out we did have a 1 p.m. vote after all. Now that there’s a deal in the works, Reid evidently decided that it wouldn’t panic markets if he introduced his current bill and let the GOP filibuster. Which they did: The vote was 50/49 (Reid voted no in order to preserve his right to reintroduce it, so they actually had 51 votes in favor.) Why he bothered forcing a vote, I simply don’t know. I guess it lets him use the “obstructionist Republicans” talking point for a few more hours, but that’ll evaporate as soon as there’s a deal. Oh well.

Stand by for the roll. At least two Dems voted no on this thing, intriguingly.

Update: Here we go. Via Fox reporter Chad Pergram, three Democrats voted no: Manchin, Ben Nelson, and of course Reid himself. So how’d they get to 50? Er, Scott Brown voted yes.

Update: Lefty Greg Sargent wonders how Republicans managed to use the threat of hitting the debt ceiling as leverage over Democrats when even most Republicans concede that it’s a scenario to be avoided at all costs.

Update: Ace is thinking about “trigger” gamesmanship down the line:

    Republicans let the automatic cuts happen, but then immediately propose reinstating most of the money to Defense.

    This winds up causing automatic cuts to domestic discretionary, but no big cuts to Defense; most Democrats would probably have to vote for this.

    But it has a bad effect: We’d have approved $2.1 trillion in debt ceiling increase while only (guestimating) cutting, say, $1.6 – $1.7 trillion in cuts.

I.e. the GOP could try a defense version of “doctor fix.” Assuming Medicare is also part of the trigger, though, Democrats would respond by demanding that that money be reinstated too — and Republicans would have to vote for it to block the left’s “Paul Ryan and his conservative friends want to kill your grandma” election messaging.

Update: Come to think of it, if Medicare’s part of the trigger, then Democrats will follow Ace’s scheme to reinstate that money later even if the GOP doesn’t try the same move for defense. (Again, they do this all the time in “doctor fix.”) And even if the GOP does try the same move, why would Democrats care? They want to protect entitlements much more passionately than they want to see the Pentagon’s budget slashed, so they’d agree to reinstate the Pentagon’s money as the price of reinstating Medicare. The fundamental problem here, as always, is that Democrats don’t care about cutting spending. If there’s nothing built into this deal that prevents reinstating the money that would be cut when the trigger kicks in — and I’m not sure how there could be procedurally — then the trigger isn’t worth much.

Update: Dick Durbin identifies another reason why Democrats aren’t crazy about this deal, especially the cuts up front.

Update: Even some tea partiers are ready for compromise.

Update: Tapper says they’ve almost got it worked out:

    The agreement looks like this: if the super-committee tasked with entitlement and tax reform fails to come up with $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction that passes Congress, the “neutron bomb” goes off, — as one Democrat put it — spending cuts that will hit the Pentagon budget most deeply, as well as Medicare providers (not beneficiaries) and other programs.

    If the super-committee comes up with some deficit reduction but not $1.5 trillion, the triggers would make up the difference…

    And the debt ceiling will be raised by $2.4 trillion in two tranches: $900 billion immediately, and the debt ceiling will be raised by an additional $1.5 trillion next year – either through passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment, which is unlikely, or with Congress voting its disapproval.

That’s the same as what Jen Rubin reported this morning. After the Super Commission announces its plan for deficit reduction, Congress has three options: (1) enact that plan, (2) pass a BBA and avoid any further immediate cuts entirely, or (3) do nothing and let across-the-board cuts go into effect, which would hit both Medicare and the Pentagon. That’s the last piece of this to be negotiated — how much of those cuts would be to defense specifically as opposed to being truly across-the-board? The harder the military would be hit, the more pressure the GOP will be under to avoid those cuts by passing the Super Committee plan, which could of course include taxes. And that’s not the only tax pressure: “Democrats say –- if tax reform doesn’t happen through the super-committee, President Obama will veto any extension of Bush tax cuts when they come up at the end of 2012, further creating an incentive for the super-committee to act.”

It sounds like the House will vote on this tomorrow before the Senate will. That struck me as backwards at first blush, since having the Senate rubber-stamp it first will put pressure on the House to follow suit. But since the House will have a harder time with this than the Senate, the thinking presumably is that the House needs to be free to tweak the bill to get the votes if need be.

Update: How many Democratic votes will this thing get in the House? Don’t answer until you’ve read this. Boehner may need his caucus to carry the load yet again. One key liberal objection, as Weigel notes, is that tax hikes aren’t one of the triggers that would kick in if Congress rejects the Super Committee. The GOP simply won’t agree to that, which is why Democrats are demanding heavy Pentagon cuts as a lesser substitute.

Update: Byron York on Obama’s nuclear weapon:

    As the hours to Tuesday’s deadline tick away, President Obama will have increasing leverage in his negotiations with Republicans. The president has a nuclear weapon which he has not used thus far in the crisis but will certainly use if the issue remains unresolved in the next 24 hours. That weapon is an address to the nation in which a sober-faced Obama reluctantly lays out what government spending will continue past the debt deadline and what spending will not continue. Many insiders, both Republican and Democrat, believe Obama has been badly overexposed at times in the debt battle, but that would be a speech everyone watches. The president would be the man dealing with disaster (even if it is one he helped create), while he dispatches aides and surrogates to blame it all on GOP radicalism.

True, one last eleventh-hour bid to panic the public might shake loose the last few votes they need to pass this thing. But see the previous update. I’m not so sure the GOP is his big problem this time.

Update (Tina Korbe): Fox News is now reporting that Harry Reid has signed off on the latest iteration of the debt ceiling increase agreement, pending caucus approval.

Open thread: Senate to vote on debt bill at 1 p.m., or maybe not; Update: Reid’s bill filibustered, 50/49; Update: Deal all but done? Update: Reid signs off on debt ceiling agreement

posted at 12:09 pm on July 31, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly

They’re supposed to vote at 1 p.m., but according to Plouffe and another “Democrat familiar with the situation,” there’s still no bill. What’s the hold up? In all likelihood, they’re haggling over the “triggers” that’ll happen if the new Super Commission can’t agree on, or Congress won’t accept, new deficit reduction proposals later this year. Jen Rubin’s hearing the following from a Republican source on the Hill:

    The second tranche works like this: If a new congressional commission introduces a plan totaling at least $1.5 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving and it’s passed by Christmas there are no across-the-board cuts. Or, if a balanced budget amendment is passed and sent to the states, then across-the-board cuts are avoided. However, if there is no commission package passed AND the BBA is not passed and sent to the states, then across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion including Medicare and defense (the details of which aren’t final) go into effect. If the across-the board-cuts go into effect, the debt ceiling is only raised $1.2 trillion (likely insufficient to keep the government operating for long), meaning “we could do this all over again, depending on economic growth.” In other words, if we went to sequestration the total debt ceiling increase would be $2.1 trillion in two doses.

So there’s the BBA concession: Democrats can avoid new cuts in the second stage entirely if they pass the amendment. As for the automatic Medicare/Pentagon reductions, that’s obviously designed to make both sides in Congress think twice before rejecting the Super Commission’s recommendations. The precise formula for that is still being negotiated too. According to Jake Tapper, the White House wants fully 50 percent of the automatic cuts to affect the Pentagon and 50 percent to be spread across various other discretionary programs. GOP hawks won’t go for that, especially since the only alternative might be approving a Commission package that includes new revenues.

As I write this, the Senate has just begun its session and Reid is insisting that they’re “cautiously optimistic” about a deal but not there yet. Here’s your thread for tracking today’s drama. Exit question: How many Republican and Democratic votes will this bargain get in the House? Progressives are reportedly already murmuring about balking because of the lack of revenue in the deal, which means Boehner will need a majority of his previous Republican majority on yesterday’s vote to get this through. (Here’s one vote forecast.) I wonder if they’ll do it on the first try or, a la TARP, if it’ll take a market panic and subsequent re-vote to get it done. Stand by for updates.

Update: The post-deal spin starts before the deal is even struck:

    “I don’t think we’ve been hurt at all,” McConnell said on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’.

    “The American people wanted us to do something about out-of-control spending and … the debt ceiling is going to produce what many people would believe is a complete change in the trajectory of the federal government beginning to get spending under control,” said McConnell, who is likely to be largely responsible for any package that wins muster with Congress.

Update: John Bolton sounds the alarm for hawks:

    Every indication is that the debt-ceiling negotiations are leaving the defense budget in grave jeopardy. By exposing critical defense programs to disproportionate cuts as part of the “trigger mechanism,” there is a clear risk that key defense programs will be hollowed out.

    While the trigger mechanism comes into play only if the Congressional negotiators fail to reach agreement on the second phase of spending cuts, it verges on catastrophe to take such a national security risk.

    Defense has already taken hugely disproportionate cuts under President Obama, and there is simply no basis for expanding those cuts further. Republican negotiators must hold the line, since the Obama Administration plainly will not.

Update: Senate Republicans will huddle at 1:45.

Update: Turns out we did have a 1 p.m. vote after all. Now that there’s a deal in the works, Reid evidently decided that it wouldn’t panic markets if he introduced his current bill and let the GOP filibuster. Which they did: The vote was 50/49 (Reid voted no in order to preserve his right to reintroduce it, so they actually had 51 votes in favor.) Why he bothered forcing a vote, I simply don’t know. I guess it lets him use the “obstructionist Republicans” talking point for a few more hours, but that’ll evaporate as soon as there’s a deal. Oh well.

Stand by for the roll. At least two Dems voted no on this thing, intriguingly.

Update: Here we go. Via Fox reporter Chad Pergram, three Democrats voted no: Manchin, Ben Nelson, and of course Reid himself. So how’d they get to 50? Er, Scott Brown voted yes.

Update: Lefty Greg Sargent wonders how Republicans managed to use the threat of hitting the debt ceiling as leverage over Democrats when even most Republicans concede that it’s a scenario to be avoided at all costs.

Update: Ace is thinking about “trigger” gamesmanship down the line:

    Republicans let the automatic cuts happen, but then immediately propose reinstating most of the money to Defense.

    This winds up causing automatic cuts to domestic discretionary, but no big cuts to Defense; most Democrats would probably have to vote for this.

    But it has a bad effect: We’d have approved $2.1 trillion in debt ceiling increase while only (guestimating) cutting, say, $1.6 – $1.7 trillion in cuts.

I.e. the GOP could try a defense version of “doctor fix.” Assuming Medicare is also part of the trigger, though, Democrats would respond by demanding that that money be reinstated too — and Republicans would have to vote for it to block the left’s “Paul Ryan and his conservative friends want to kill your grandma” election messaging.

Update: Come to think of it, if Medicare’s part of the trigger, then Democrats will follow Ace’s scheme to reinstate that money later even if the GOP doesn’t try the same move for defense. (Again, they do this all the time in “doctor fix.”) And even if the GOP does try the same move, why would Democrats care? They want to protect entitlements much more passionately than they want to see the Pentagon’s budget slashed, so they’d agree to reinstate the Pentagon’s money as the price of reinstating Medicare. The fundamental problem here, as always, is that Democrats don’t care about cutting spending. If there’s nothing built into this deal that prevents reinstating the money that would be cut when the trigger kicks in — and I’m not sure how there could be procedurally — then the trigger isn’t worth much.

Update: Dick Durbin identifies another reason why Democrats aren’t crazy about this deal, especially the cuts up front.

Update: Even some tea partiers are ready for compromise.

Update: Tapper says they’ve almost got it worked out:

    The agreement looks like this: if the super-committee tasked with entitlement and tax reform fails to come up with $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction that passes Congress, the “neutron bomb” goes off, — as one Democrat put it — spending cuts that will hit the Pentagon budget most deeply, as well as Medicare providers (not beneficiaries) and other programs.

    If the super-committee comes up with some deficit reduction but not $1.5 trillion, the triggers would make up the difference…

    And the debt ceiling will be raised by $2.4 trillion in two tranches: $900 billion immediately, and the debt ceiling will be raised by an additional $1.5 trillion next year – either through passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment, which is unlikely, or with Congress voting its disapproval.

That’s the same as what Jen Rubin reported this morning. After the Super Commission announces its plan for deficit reduction, Congress has three options: (1) enact that plan, (2) pass a BBA and avoid any further immediate cuts entirely, or (3) do nothing and let across-the-board cuts go into effect, which would hit both Medicare and the Pentagon. That’s the last piece of this to be negotiated — how much of those cuts would be to defense specifically as opposed to being truly across-the-board? The harder the military would be hit, the more pressure the GOP will be under to avoid those cuts by passing the Super Committee plan, which could of course include taxes. And that’s not the only tax pressure: “Democrats say –- if tax reform doesn’t happen through the super-committee, President Obama will veto any extension of Bush tax cuts when they come up at the end of 2012, further creating an incentive for the super-committee to act.”

It sounds like the House will vote on this tomorrow before the Senate will. That struck me as backwards at first blush, since having the Senate rubber-stamp it first will put pressure on the House to follow suit. But since the House will have a harder time with this than the Senate, the thinking presumably is that the House needs to be free to tweak the bill to get the votes if need be.

Update: How many Democratic votes will this thing get in the House? Don’t answer until you’ve read this. Boehner may need his caucus to carry the load yet again. One key liberal objection, as Weigel notes, is that tax hikes aren’t one of the triggers that would kick in if Congress rejects the Super Committee. The GOP simply won’t agree to that, which is why Democrats are demanding heavy Pentagon cuts as a lesser substitute.

Update: Byron York on Obama’s nuclear weapon:

    As the hours to Tuesday’s deadline tick away, President Obama will have increasing leverage in his negotiations with Republicans. The president has a nuclear weapon which he has not used thus far in the crisis but will certainly use if the issue remains unresolved in the next 24 hours. That weapon is an address to the nation in which a sober-faced Obama reluctantly lays out what government spending will continue past the debt deadline and what spending will not continue. Many insiders, both Republican and Democrat, believe Obama has been badly overexposed at times in the debt battle, but that would be a speech everyone watches. The president would be the man dealing with disaster (even if it is one he helped create), while he dispatches aides and surrogates to blame it all on GOP radicalism.

True, one last eleventh-hour bid to panic the public might shake loose the last few votes they need to pass this thing. But see the previous update. I’m not so sure the GOP is his big problem this time.

Update (Tina Korbe): Fox News is now reporting that Harry Reid has signed off on the latest iteration of the debt ceiling increase agreement, pending caucus approval.

Open thread: Senate to vote on debt bill at 1 p.m., or maybe not

posted at 12:09 pm on July 31, 2011 by Allahpundit
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They’re supposed to vote at 1 p.m., but according to Plouffe and another “Democrat familiar with the situation,” there’s still no bill. What’s the hold up? In all likelihood, they’re haggling over the “triggers” that’ll happen if the new Super Commission can’t agree on, or Congress won’t accept, new deficit reduction proposals later this year. Jen Rubin’s hearing the following from a Republican source on the Hill:

The second tranche works like this: If a new congressional commission introduces a plan totaling at least $1.5 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving and it’s passed by Christmas there are no across-the-board cuts. Or, if a balanced budget amendment is passed and sent to the states, then across-the-board cuts are avoided. However, if there is no commission package passed AND the BBA is not passed and sent to the states, then across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion including Medicare and defense (the details of which aren’t final) go into effect. If the across-the board-cuts go into effect, the debt ceiling is only raised $1.2 trillion (likely insufficient to keep the government operating for long), meaning “we could do this all over again, depending on economic growth.” In other words, if we went to sequestration the total debt ceiling increase would be $2.1 trillion in two doses.

So there’s the BBA concession: Democrats can avoid new cuts in the second stage entirely if they pass the amendment. As for the automatic Medicare/Pentagon reductions, that’s obviously designed to make both sides in Congress think twice before rejecting the Super Commission’s recommendations. The precise formula for that is still being negotiated too. According to Jake Tapper, the White House wants fully 50 percent of the automatic cuts to affect the Pentagon and 50 percent to be spread across various other discretionary programs. GOP hawks won’t go for that, especially since the only alternative might be approving a Commission package that includes new revenues.

As I write this, the Senate has just begun its session and Reid is insisting that they’re “cautiously optimistic” about a deal but not there yet. Here’s your thread for tracking today’s drama. Exit question: How many Republican and Democratic votes will this bargain get in the House? Progressives are reportedly already murmuring about balking because of the lack of revenue in the deal, which means Boehner will need a majority of his previous Republican majority on yesterday’s vote to get this through. (Here’s one vote forecast.) I wonder if they’ll do it on the first try or, a la TARP, if it’ll take a market panic and subsequent re-vote to get it done. Stand by for updates.

Update: The post-deal spin starts before the deal is even struck:

“I don’t think we’ve been hurt at all,” McConnell said on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’.

“The American people wanted us to do something about out-of-control spending and … the debt ceiling is going to produce what many people would believe is a complete change in the trajectory of the federal government beginning to get spending under control,” said McConnell, who is likely to be largely responsible for any package that wins muster with Congress.

Update: John Bolton sounds the alarm for hawks:

Every indication is that the debt-ceiling negotiations are leaving the defense budget in grave jeopardy. By exposing critical defense programs to disproportionate cuts as part of the “trigger mechanism,” there is a clear risk that key defense programs will be hollowed out.

While the trigger mechanism comes into play only if the Congressional negotiators fail to reach agreement on the second phase of spending cuts, it verges on catastrophe to take such a national security risk.

Defense has already taken hugely disproportionate cuts under President Obama, and there is simply no basis for expanding those cuts further. Republican negotiators must hold the line, since the Obama Administration plainly will no

Deal update: $2.4T in cuts and ceiling hikes — both in two parts

posted at 8:42 am on July 31, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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ABC reports this morning that Congressional leaders have already begun briefing their caucuses on the eleventh-hour deal that emerged from the White House last night. Jonathan Karl notes that the deal is contingent on getting enough support from each House caucus to form a majority, and in the Senate to avoid a filibuster. We’ll come back to that in a moment, but Karl also updates the story on the deal. The topline numbers are apparently $2.4 trillion in matching spending cuts and debt-ceiling raises instead of $2.8 trillion, but now both are split into two parts:

The current framework would give the president the authority to raise the debt ceiling in two parts: roughly half of it now and the balance at the end of the year.

Each increase would be subject to a Congressional resolution of disapproval.

If Congress voted to disapprove that increase, however, the President could veto their disapproval.

The AP reported earlier on the $2.4 trillion number, too, although they say the cuts will be “slightly more” than the debt-ceiling boost. That’s still enough to get Barack Obama past the 2012 election, but not by much. It guarantees that the debt ceiling will be a 2012 election issue, although by now that was a given anyway.

However, the added McConnell wrinkle is interesting — and potentially a big win for Republicans. Essentially, Republicans get to claim credit for the cuts while laying blame for the debt increases on Obama. If they “disapprove,” Obama will veto the disapproval and end up owning all of the political baggage for the debt-ceiling increases. That’s a steep price to pay for Obama just to protect himself through the next election, although he could turn it on its ear and refuse to veto the second increase disapproval and force this fight all over again. That would, however, put the country back in “crisis” mode, and that would still be all on Obama.

This brings the deal closer to what I predicted yesterday; in fact, it almost matches it exactly. But can the leaders get the votes for it? If Obama endorses this deal, most Democrats will have no choice but to back it; after all, they have been doing the most Chicken Little screeching about the consequences of legislative failure. Boehner and McConnell will lose a significant number of Republicans, but both will probably hold a majority of their caucuses. I’d expect an agreement along these lines to pass quickly through Congress, maybe fast enough to avoid having to pass a $50 billion, two-week extension to gain time for the debate.

Update: Added “ceiling” to headline for more clarity.

Update II: McConnell tells CNN that they are “very close” to a deal. I’d interpret that to mean that they’re shopping the deal to the caucuses to make sure they can get the votes.

Reid postpones vote to “give everyone as much room as possible” for deal; Update: $2.8T in cuts and debt-ceiling boost, no tax hike?

posted at 11:45 pm on July 30, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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The late breaking news from the nation’s capital tonight is that the late-breaking news from the capital early tomorrow morning has been postponed:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday that he would postpone a vote on his bill to raise the debt limit to give negotiators at the White House more time to work.

He said the Senate would vote on his plan at 1:00 p.m. Sunday, instead of 1:00 a.m., as was originally scheduled. …

“I believe we should give everyone as much room as possible to do their work,” he said. “I spoke to the White House, quite a few times this evening, and they’ve asked me to give everyone as much time as possible to reach an agreement if one can be reached.”

The Senate adjourned at 10:13 p.m. Saturday and will reconvene at noon Sunday.

Translastion: The remarks by John Boehner and Mitch McConnell earlier today appear to have been accurate. CBS’ Mark Knoller had been tweeting earlier that Dan Pfeiffer was poo-pooing the notion that a deal was brewing, but that he has “covered WH long enough to know when pool kept late on Sat night something’s going on.” And as I predicted earlier tonight, the first stage may be a very short-term debt-limit increase to get time to finalize a deal:

If they get a tentative deal, Pres Obama will agree to short term extension of debt limit to allow time to enact deal.

If Obama told Reid to extend the vote for another 12 hours, then the White House must figure that they’re close to a deal.

Update: Jimmie Bise links to ABC, which reports the tentative parameters of the deal:
Debt ceiling increase of up to $2.8 trillion
Spending cuts of roughly $1 trillion
Vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment
Special committee to recommend cuts of $1.8 trillion (or whatever it takes to add up to the total of the debt ceiling increase)
Committee must make recommendations before Thanksgiving recess
If Congress does not approve those cuts by late December, automatic across-the-board cuts go into effect, including cuts to Defense and Medicare.

So Obama gets all of the increase in one fell swoop, but no tax hikes, apparently, plus a total of $2.8 trillion in reductions for projected spending (none of the plans actually made cuts in spending) in areas guaranteed to hurt both parties. The vote on the BBA is a win for Boehner, but only in the sense that Republicans get Democrats on the record for opposing it. It’s a deal we could have reached two weeks ago, but were never going to reach until time ran out.

Update II: Via Jeff Dunetz, National Journal’s Major Garrett also gets a similar story from his sources, but the news is a little better:
2.8 trillion in deficit reduction with $1 trillion locked in through discretionary spending caps over 10 years and the remainder determined by a so-called super committee.
The Super Committee must report precise deficit-reduction proposals by Thanksgiving.
The Super Committee would have to propose $1.8 trillion spending cuts to achieve that amount of deficit reduction over 10 years.
If the Super Committee fails, Congress must send a balanced-budget amendment to the states for ratification. If that doesn’t happen, across-the-board spending cuts would go into effect and could touch Medicare and defense spending.
No net new tax revenue would be part of the special committee’s deliberations.

I expect plenty of hyperventilating at the term “Super Committee,” but it’s basically the kind of ad hoc committee that Congress can authorize at any time. It sounds a lot like the BRAC process used by Congress to identify military bases for closure. The prohibition on net tax revenue gains is a big, big win for Republicans if it holds. I should note that Jimmie Bise in his post believes that the second round of cuts might be actual cuts; if so, then this is an even bigger win.

Note too that the second round of cuts appears to be guaranteed; if the Super Commission can’t agree on specific and precise reductions, then an across-the-board cut goes into place.

Update III: Jen Rubin hears the same deal from the offices of two “senior” Republicans on the Hill.