President Obama's weekly address

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Republicans' ban on earmarks short-lived

The Associated Press has the story:

Only three days after GOP senators and senators-elect renounced earmarks, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican, got himself a whopping $200 million to settle an Arizona Indian tribe's water rights claim against the government.

Kyl slipped the measure into a larger bill sought by President Barack Obama and passed by the Senate on Friday to settle claims by black farmers and American Indians against the federal government. Kyl's office insists the measure is not an earmark, and the House didn't deem it one when it considered a version earlier this year.

But it meets the know-it-when-you-see-it test, critics say. Under Senate rules, an earmark is a spending item inserted "primarily at the request of a senator" that goes "to an entity, or (is) targeted to a specific state."

There Will Be Blood

Today's column by Paul Krugman is excellent:

These days, national security experts are tearing their hair out over the decision of Senate Republicans to block a desperately needed new strategic arms treaty. And everyone knows that these Republicans oppose the treaty, not because of legitimate objections, but simply because it’s an Obama administration initiative; if sabotaging the president endangers the nation, so be it.

How does this end? Mr. Obama is still talking about bipartisan outreach, and maybe if he caves in sufficiently he can avoid a federal shutdown this spring. But any respite would be only temporary; again, the G.O.P. is just not interested in helping a Democrat govern.

My sense is that most Americans still don’t understand this reality. They still imagine that when push comes to shove, our politicians will come together to do what’s necessary. But that was another country.

Mitch gets fact-checked

The folks at FactCheck.org bust Mitch McConnell for distorting the truth:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell misrepresented public opinion about the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of the year. In his weekly remarks Nov. 20, he made this unequivocal statement:

McConnell, Nov. 20: Americans don’t think we should be raising taxes on anybody, especially in the middle of a recession.

But American opinion on the Bush tax cuts is not as clear as McConnell portrays it. Of five recent polls, only one shows a majority favored extending the tax cut for all Americans.

Editorial comic roundup

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President Obama's weekly address

In this week’s address, President Obama called ratifying New START this year “fundamental” to America’s national security. Failure to ratify the treaty this year not only would mean losing our nuclear inspectors in Russia, but also it would undermine the international coalition pressuring Iran, put to risk the transit routes used to equip our troops in Afghanistan, and undo decades of American leadership and bipartisanship on nuclear security. After six months, 18 hearings, and nearly one thousand questions answered and with the support of several Republicans including Colin Powell, George Schultz, Jim Baker, and Henry Kissinger, it is time for the Senate to act.

McConnell's lack of respect

The New York Times weighs in on Mitch McConnell's arrogance:

There was supposed to be a bipartisan summit at the White House on Thursday, but only the Democrats showed up. The Republican leadership of the House and Senate somehow couldn’t find any time in their schedules to meet with the president of the United States. If this is what cooperation and mutual respect is going to look like over the next two years, then settle in for more trench warfare and far less progress.

It has been more than two weeks since President Obama issued a postelection invitation for Congressional leaders to join him for dinner on Nov. 18 to discuss “how we can move the American people’s agenda forward.” Republicans left him hanging, refusing to commit to a date even as the office of Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said he was encouraged that the president wanted to discuss areas of agreement.

...Beyond the practical implications of this rudeness, there is an increasingly obvious lack of respect for the president and the presidency, with Republicans interpreting their electoral victory as a mandate to act with hubris. Steny Hoyer, the outgoing House majority leader, noted Thursday that he couldn’t remember a single instance when Democrats did not change their schedule to accommodate a request to meet with President George W. Bush. Mr. McConnell has already made it clear that defeating Mr. Obama is more important than negotiating on legislation. Apparently, that also goes for snubbing Mr. Obama.

McConnell's priorities in view

There's a must-read editorial in today's Herald-Leader:

...according to former President George W. Bush's memoir, McConnell [in September 2006] asked the commander in chief to draw down the number of troops in Iraq to help Republicans survive in that November's elections. (Through a spokesman, McConnell declined to comment on "any advice he may have given the president on improving his political standing.")

This incident, the subject of a story in The Courier-Journal last week, may be the most telling — and stunning — example of the hypocritical and cynical methods McConnell has employed throughout his lengthy political career.

...Indeed, cynical may be too nice a word to describe McConnell's proposal.

Despicable sounds like a better fit for someone willing to sacrifice American lives in the pursuit of winning and keeping political power.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Recovery Act added 2.7% to 3rd quarter GDP

Today the White House issued this press release:

WASHINGTON, DC – The Council of Economic Advisers today released its latest quarterly report on the economic impact of the Recovery Act. The report shows that the Act played a key role in changing the trajectory of the economy. Specifically, the Recovery Act added 2.7 percent to third quarter GDP growth and by some measures has exceeded the original goal of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010.

The report also shows that the third quarter was the biggest yet for public investment spending, with more than $33 billion outlaid for clean energy, transportation and other infrastructure projects. According to CEA’s analysis, public investment spending was responsible for over 1 million jobs nationwide through the third quarter of 2010.

This is the fifth quarterly report the Council of Economic Advisers has submitted to Congress on the employment and economic impact of the Recovery Act. The report can be viewed in full HERE.


The Council of Economic Advisers Fifth Quarterly Report on the Economic Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Key Findings

• As of the third quarter of 2010, the Recovery Act has raised employment by 2.7 to 3.7 million jobs.
• The Recovery Act has raised the level of GDP as of the second quarter of 2010 by 2.7 percent.
• Public investment spending increased significantly in the third quarter with more than $33 billion paid out to support projects in areas like health IT, building construction and transportation infrastructure.
• Public investment spending was responsible for more than 1 million jobs in the third quarter.
• Clean energy investments were responsible for nearly a quarter of the 1 million public investment jobs – or 224,500 clean energy jobs.
• Less than $20 billion of discretionary program funding remains “unobligated” – and the majority of those funds have already been awarded.
• Eight states – California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas – have now seen an impact of over 100,000 Recovery Act jobs.

Kentucky newspapers on Mitch's earmark flip-flop

Kentucky's two major newspapers published editorials today regarding Mitch McConnell's flip-flop on earmarks. The Herald-Leader had this to say:

...voters are demanding change. But tax cuts and anything-goes regulation of business, as Republicans want, is not change. If tax cuts and deregulation produced prosperity, the economy would have been soaring, not crashing, two years ago at the end of Bush's term.

It's great news if rejecting earmarks is a sign Republicans are ready to make the hard choices that will be needed to put the economy and federal budget on better footing.

But if, as we suspect, it's just more political posturing, well, Americans should demand more than mere symbolism.

The Courier-Journal added:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's about-face this week on congressional earmarks isn't some sort of revised policy position reached through consideration of new facts or arguments. It's a 180-degree turn on how Kentucky's senior senator has done business, an abandonment of a practice that is at the core of who he is and what he believes his tenure means to this state.

...Earmarks are a mostly symbolic issue. Their most strident foes describe them in terms of spending billions of dollars. Even if all such expenditures were wasteful — and they aren't — prohibiting them would hardly make a dent in dealing with problems that are measured in the trillions. Consider: Simply extending all the Bush-era tax cuts, as most Republicans want to do, would cost about $4 trillion over 10 years.

Symbolic gestures, such as a halt to earmarks, have popular appeal, and they can force the political elite of Sen. McConnell's stature to scurry for cover. But they don't solve big challenges.

Why the Senate should ratify New START

The US secretary of state and secretary of defense penned a joint op-ed for today's Washington Post explaining why the Senate should ratify the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Here's an excerpt:

For decades, American inspectors have monitored Russian nuclear forces, putting into practice President Ronald Reagan's favorite maxim, "Trust, but verify." But since the old START Treaty expired last December, we have relied on trust alone. Until a new treaty comes into force, our inspectors will not have access to Russian missile silos and the world's two largest nuclear arsenals will lack the stability that comes with a rigorous inspection regime.

Before this session of Congress ends, we urge senators to approve an arms control treaty that would again allow U.S. inspectors access to Russian strategic sites and reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by both nations to a level not seen since the 1950s.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April, builds on foundations laid by American leaders from both political parties over the past four decades. It has broad bipartisan backing. Six former secretaries of state, five former secretaries of defense and three former national security advisers have endorsed ratification, along with seven former commanders of U.S. Strategic Command and the entire current U.S. military leadership. They understand that nuclear dangers did not disappear with the Soviet Union and that we have a responsibility - to Americans and our allies - to keep our eyes on the world's other major strategic nuclear arsenal.

Editorial comic roundup

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President Obama's weekly address

In this week’s address, President Obama calls for Congress to address the issue of earmarks -- items inserted into spending bills without adequate review. The President has time and again called for new limitations on earmarks, and the Obama Administration has put in place higher standards of transparency, including www.earmarks.gov. This week, the Administration updated www.earmarks.gov with more information about where last year’s earmarks were actually spent, and made it easier to look up members of Congress and the earmarks they fought for. In these challenging times, working across the aisle to address this issue will signal the government’s commitment to fiscal responsibility, shine a light on a Washington habit that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, and take a step towards restoring public trust.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

PolitiFact: We rate Rand Paul's statement 'False'

The folks at PolitiFact have debunked the latest talking point from Rand Paul:

Paul said [on this weekend's edition of This Week with Christiane Amanpour] that the "average federal employee makes $120,000 a year. The average private employee makes $60,000 a year." Most people hearing that would assume he was talking about salary alone, but he was talking about total compensation, including benefits such as retirement pay and paid holidays. Although studies show federal employees typically earn more than their private-sector counterparts, the difference is nowhere near as much as the doubling Paul says. So we rate his statement False.

McConnell's true colors

There's an excellent editorial in today's Courier-Journal regarding Mitch McConnell's astonishing hypocrisy:

In [George W Bush's] new memoir, Decision Points, the former president tells of a meeting he held in September 2006 with Mr. McConnell, then the Republican whip in the Senate. The occupation of Iraq was going horribly, American and Iraqi casualties were rising sharply, costs had mushroomed into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and Iraq was teetering on the brink of full-scale sectarian civil war. Mr. McConnell was concerned, and he gave the president his advice.

But why was he concerned? It wasn't because of bloodshed, destruction, a hemorrhaging budget or a slide toward disaster. He was fearful that the morass in Iraq would cause the Republican Party to take a beating in the approaching mid-term elections. And what was his advice? He urged the president to “bring some troops home from Iraq” to lessen the political risks, Mr. Bush writes.

...At the time that Sen. McConnell was privately advising Mr. Bush to reduce troop levels in Iraq, he was elsewhere excoriating congressional Democrats who had urged the same thing. “The Democrat[ic] leadership finally agrees on something — unfortunately it's retreat,” Sen. McConnell had said in a statement on Sept. 5, 2006, about a Democratic letter to Mr. Bush appealing for cuts in troop levels. Sen. McConnell, who publicly was a stout defender of the war and Mr. Bush's conduct of the conflict, accused the Democrats of advocating a position that would endanger Americans and leave Iraqis at the mercy of al-Qaida.

McConnell's attack on health reform is 'absurd'

From Greg Sargent of the Washington Post:

As you may have heard, Mitch McConnell has thrown in his lot with states suing to overturn Obamacare, filing a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the individual mandate is unconstitutional.

I just checked in with a constitutional law professor -- this seemed like a good hook to ask an expert to take a look at this claim, since it's so widespread -- and he dismissed McConnell's argument as "absurd."

Mitch McConnell World

Today's Courier-Journal includes this must-read editorial:

What the public is getting now from Sen. McConnell is warmed-over campaign trail bombast about the “left-wing agenda” of the Democrats. He and other GOP congressional leaders prattle on, for example, that an overwhelming majority of the American people want this year's health care reform bill repealed. Actually, public opinion surveys show the country almost evenly divided on that point. Given that Democrats can easily block repeal in the next Congress, the question becomes whether voters two years from now will genuinely want to return their health care coverage back to the tender mercies of the insurance companies. Whatever the answer at that time, the country will not be well served now during continuing economic misery by a distracting argument over an issue that has already been addressed and cannot in the short term be undone.

The first showdown, beginning with the convening next week of a lame-duck congressional session, will be over the Bush-era tax cuts. Republicans benefited in the most recent election from voters' unease over rising deficits, a serious long-range challenge but not the most urgent economic issue at the moment. Yet, the Republicans want to make the tax cuts permanent, which would cost a ruinous sum of almost $4 trillion — that's trillion — over the next 10 years, with no conceivable source of spending cuts to offset such recklessness. A far saner approach would be to end the cuts for the top 2 percent of American households now — saving $700 billion — and to extend the middle-class cuts for just one year or three (but not two years, which would put this political football into play in the next federal election year) in order to pump more money now into an ailing retail economy.

By insisting on permanent cuts for even the wealthiest taxpayers, the Republicans, and Sen. McConnell, make clear whose interests they are really in Washington to serve. The issue now becomes whether Mr. Obama and the Democrats have the will and political courage — using offices American voters entrusted to them — to fight back.

Stephen Colbert on Rand Paul

Great stuff from The Colbert Report.

Mitch gets fact-checked

FactCheck.org looks into some statements that Mitch McConnell made on Face the Nation this weekend:

Mitch McConnell equated letting the Bush tax cuts expire for upper-income earners with raising "taxes on small businesses." But that’s misleading.

...McConnell also claimed, wrongly, that the "vast majority of Americans feel very, very uncomfortable" with the new health care law. According to Pollster.com’s weighted average of polls, 49.4 percent of those surveyed oppose the law while 42.1 percent favor it. The Real Clear Politics average produced a slightly larger split with 51.3 percent opposing the law and 40.1 percent favoring it. But 49 percent isn’t a majority at all, and 51 percent barely is, though certainly isn’t "vast."

McConnell also continued to incorrectly cast the health care law as a government takeover.

Editorial comic roundup

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President Obama's weekly address

As Congress prepares to focus on taxes when it returns to work later this month, President Obama calls on both parties to work together and focus on the areas where all sides agree. First, the President underscores that middle-class families need permanent tax relief, so Congress should permanently extend tax cuts for all families making less than $250,000 a year – 98 percent of the American people. And second, he notes that, with the nation’s challenging fiscal situation, the country simply cannot afford to borrow another $700 billion on permanent tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.

Medicare and the Republicans

There's an excellent editorial in today's New York Times:

John Boehner, the likely next House speaker, tipped his hand in late September, telling an audience at the American Enterprise Institute that he would push to “repeal the $550 billion worth of Medicare cuts; and let’s see how many votes that bill gets in the House and Senate.”

What Mr. Boehner has yet to explain is how he would pay for that $550 billion. Those savings are a major reason why health care reform is projected to reduce the deficit over the next two decades and to extend the life of Medicare’s trust fund for hospital insurance by 12 years, thus shoring up the very program that Republicans say they want to save.

...Now that the campaign is over, Americans should demand that Mr. Boehner explain his plan for Medicare. Specifically: What will he do to “rescue” Medicare, without driving up the deficit or weakening the trust fund?

Governor Beshear's weekly address