White House Blasts Enzi

Robert Gibbs laid into Senator Mike Enzi, who is a member of the “Gang of Six” negotiating health care reform.  Gibbs said that Enzi was repeating “generic Republican talking points.”  It’s about time.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs laid into Wyoming Republican Sen. Mike Enzi Monday for repeating …  

… ”generic Republican talking points” in the GOP’s weekly radio address.
 
“It appears at least in Sen. Enzi’s case, he doesn’t believe there’s a pathway to get bipartisan support and the president disagrees,” Gibbs said. “Sen. Enzi’s clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship.”

That’s all fine, and it really is about time that President Obama call it like it is.  But why not take on Chuck Grassley, who is raising money against health care reform while allegedly negotiating a solution to health care reform?

Chuck Grassley is facing a potentially difficult primary challenge in 2010. As such, he’s been working hard to cover his right flank. That would all be fine except for one thing: As ranking member of the Finance Committee, Grassley is responsible for developing a workable compromise on health-care reform. But as this fundraising letter (pdf) shows, Grassley is running against health-care reform back in Iowa.

The Republicans are not negotiating in good faith.  Why does Obama keep touting the benefits of bipartisanship?  He’s the only guy in Washington trying to be bipartisan, it seems.  Everyone else is polarized just like usual.

Of course, the negotiations in the Senate appear to be breaking down, so this is moot in practice.  But it matters a great deal to how President Obama deals with Congress and how strong he appears to be.  Right now he looks weak.

I still think something will pass this fall.  But what?  Will it be anything like what the president wants? 

President Obama’s political future relies on this.  I’m ambivalent on health care reform.  I don’t know how I feel about it yet.  Maybe it’s because I don’t know how it would work.  And maybe that’s part of the problem with how Obama is perceived at the moment.  But Obama said that this is his defining issue.  That’s a lot of political capital at stake.  How successful he is during the rest of his presidency depends on this.  I want the president to succeed. 

By the way, it would be nice if the Republicans would negotiate in good faith.  Something is going to pass.  I hope it contains the best ideas of both parties.  But the Republicans need to act in good faith.  And the White House needs to call it out when they don’t.

No By Proxy

Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday by a 13-6 vote.  All Republicans on the committee, except Lindsey Graham, voted no.  I’m actually surprised that Sotomayor got a Republican vote at all.  But that’s not the point of this post.

Why can’t the Republican senators show up and vote in person?  If you want to vote “no”, that’s your right, but at least do it in the light.  Show up and cast your own vote in person.

It looked bad enough that only one Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court on Tuesday. What made the proceedings shameful, though, is that half of the senators voting no couldn’t be bothered to stick around and cast their votes in person.

The clerk called out the name of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). “No by proxy,” responded Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.)?

“No by proxy,” said Sessions.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)?

“No by proxy,” said Sessions.

You could see why they might want to hide. Supreme Court confirmations have for years felt the strengthening tug of partisanship, but the absent Republicans voted to reject a nominee even while acknowledging that her judicial record is, as Cornyn put it, “in the mainstream.”

About that “strengthening tug of partisanship,” it’s time the Senate got back to voting on a nominee’s qualifications for the job, not the politics of it.  Let’s face it, if Obama had nominated John Roberts, Obama wouldn’t have gotten much more support than he did for Sotomayor, who seems well qualified to be a Supreme Court justice.  Yes, Democrats voted based on politics, too, which doesn’t make what the Republicans did with Sotomayor any less wrong.

And, if you want to be an obstructionist (as Republicans seem wont to do these days), show up and vote in person.  “No by proxy” is weak and is a cop out.  Not only are the Republicans the party without ideas, they’re also the party without a backbone.

Souter Retiring

The Washington Post is reporting that Justice Souter will retire from the Supreme Court in June, at the end of the term.  He has not officially announced this yet.

That, of course, means that President Obama will have the opportunity to make the longest-lasting impact on the nation with his choice of who will replace Souter.  If Obama chooses someone young, that person could be on the court for 25 years or more.  So speculation is running wild with ideas of who is on the short list and who will get the nod.

Robert Barnes (in the Washington Post) has a good start for a list (I’m just copying in the names he lists, with their current positions):

Those often mentioned as possibilities are, in no particular order:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor (born 1954), U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

Judge Diane Wood (born 1950), U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw (born 1954), U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan (born 1960).

Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears (born 1955).

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (born 1959).

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) (born 1956).

Judge Ruben Castillo (born 1954).

Kathleen Sullivan (born 1955) Sullivan is a constitutional scholar and former dean of Stanford Law School.

Harold Hongju Koh (born 1954) Koh is dean of the Yale University Law School.

I don’t really have any opinion on who should get the job (I’m not a court watcher), but Kathleen Sullivan intrigues me a bit based on her advocacy for gay rights and also abortion rights.  She probably would not be too palatable for the Republicans, however.

Speaking of the Republicans, The Fix takes a look at what Souter’s retirement could mean for the Republicans.

The retirement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter comes at a time when the national Republican party finds itself in a state of flux — caught between an establishment wing who is seeking to re-brand it to make it more attractive to independents and a conservative base that wants a return to the roots.

Will President Obama’s next nominee to the Court help unite the Republican party to oppose a common adversary or further expose the rifts that divide it?

Most party strategists we spoke to in the wake of the Souter announcement argued the former scenario is more likely — dependent of course on Obama picking someone who most Republicans believe is too far to the left ideologically for the Court.

[snip]

Put simply: no matter who President Obama picks as his next Supreme Court nominee, this moment will likely be viewed in retrospect as a clear “gut check” moment for the GOP. Do they stand and fight as one? Splinter? Or take a pass entirely?

That last question is a good one.  What will they do?  I’d be willing to bet that we will see an outcry no matter who Obama nominates.  I can hear it now: “She’s too liberal!”  “She supports abortion rights!”  “He’s not a judge now!”  The Republicans have consistently said no over and over to Obama’s policies and ideas.  I’m sure they will now, too.

The Republicans’ lives will be made more complicated by the fact that Democrats need only one vote to cut off debate and end filibusters (assuming they can stay united, of course).  I’d also remind Republicans of the same things they said when Bush made his choices of Roberts, Miers (unsuccessful) and Alito — they should give the nominee an up or down vote and should vote based on the nominee’s qualifications, not his or her ideology.

It’s a huge opportunity for Obama.  The court’s leanings aren’t likely to change much — it’s only one nominee and there still will be a strong conservative bloc on the court.  But it’s a chance to install a justice in the mold of what he described on the campaign trail — compassionate, empathetic, with a healthy respect for the rule of law. 

UPDATE:

The text of the President’s comments in the White House press room after talking with Justice Souter:

Now, the process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as President. So I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives — whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.

I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes. I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role. I will seek somebody who shares my respect for constitutional values on which this nation was founded, and who brings a thoughtful understanding of how to apply them in our time.

As I make this decision, I intend to consult with members of both parties across the political spectrum. And it is my hope that we can swear in our new Supreme Court Justice in time for him or her to be seated by the first Monday in October when the Court’s new term begins.

I’m very heartened by his criteria.

Specter Changes Parties

Arlen Specter, the senator from Pennsylvania, has switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.  That’s good news for the Democrats, since it means that when (if?) Al Franken is seated (it’s past time for that, too), they will have a 60-vote majority in the Senate.  That, of course, gives them a filibuster-proof majority.  And it’s a huge blow for the Republicans, further exacerbating all the defections from Republican to Democrat that happened last fall.  I’m sure Mitch McConnell is apoplectic right now.

From all reports, Specter was going to face a very tough primary challenge from Pat Toomey, a former Congressman.  So there may be some political self interest happening here, with Specter thinking about a possible primary defeat and Pennsylvania’s sore loser law, which would have prevented him from running as an independent, as Joe Lieberman did.

From The Fix (linked above):

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.

Specter’s decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next Senator from Minnesota. (Former Sen. Norm Coleman is appealing Franken’s victory in the state Supreme Court.)

“I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary,” said Specter in a statement. “I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.”

He added: “Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”

Specter as a Democrat would also fundamentally alter the 2010 calculus in Pennsylvania as he was expected to face a difficult primary challenge next year from former Rep. Pat Toomey. The only announced Democrat in the race is former National Constitution Center head Joe Torsella although several other candidates are looking at the race.

I’d suspect that this would immediately make Specter the frontrunner in a general election, and probably blows any other Democrat out of the water.  We’ll see.  But still, very good news for the Democrats.

Norm Coleman’s Ridiculous Court Fight

Norm Coleman, Al Franken’s Senate opponent in Minnesota, just can’t seem to face the reality that he has lost.  But still he fights on, quixotically.  He has repeatedly lost in state court; a three-judge panel yesterday allowed 351 previously-rejected absentee ballots to be counted.  That resulted in Franken’s lead growing from 225 votes to 312, which Coleman immediately said was an error by the court.  He then said that he would appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court.  Does anyone think that if he loses there that federal court — and a years-long fight — doesn’t loom large?

That denies the citizens of Minnesota a representative in Washington.  It also, not incidentally, denies the Democrats in the Senate a 59th vote, which would bring them very close to the 60-vote margin needed to stop filibusters.  That’s immaterial in my view.  Coleman has lost.  He needs to face up to reality and concede.

If he doesn’t, that could put Governor Tim Pawlenty — who has presidential aspirations in 2012 — on the spot.  It would be a no-win position for him.  Does he want to anger the voters in his own state who voted for Franken and who think that he should be seated in the Senate, or does he want to anger his party base which he will need to win a Republican nomination?  It’s a Solomonic problem, but there’s no baby to split in two.  He’ll have to make a choice.

This battle seems to be part of a larger Republican strategy: If you can’t win at the ballot box, win in the courtroom.  The problem here is that it can’t be won in the courtroom or the ballot box and all Coleman is doing is dragging out the inevitable.

Something in a Politico piece (via the Minneapolis Star Tribune) caught my eye:

To Republicans, the battle is about drawing a line in the sand after taking a brutal Election Day beating and claiming the moral high ground on voter-protection efforts — an argument typically associated with Democrats.

Does anyone really believe that “voter protection” is the real reason behind Coleman’s stalling action?  If you believe that, I have some nice beach front property I’d love to sell you.  No, it’s about politics and keeping as much power away from the other guy as possible.

The Republicans were beaten soundly last November.  They ran out of ideas, and it showed.  They still have no ideas and have no real leaders with new ideas.  (Don’t give me Newt Gingrich — he served four years as House Speaker and resigned from the House after losing House seats in the 1998 election.  He’s had three wives, and treated the first quite poorly, discussing divorce terms with her while she was recovering from cancer surgery.  Nice guy.)  They’ve shown that they’re leaderless and bereft of ideas since Obama took office, voting no on the stimulus and again on Obama’s budget. 

Coleman’s court battle looks to me to be a continuation of the delay and obfuscation tactics that Republicans are employing these days.  Regaining moral authority?  Right.

Judd Gregg’s Withdrawal

On its face, Judd Gregg’s withdrawal doesn’t mean much.  It doesn’t hurt Obama much, but it certainly does make Gregg look bad.  When you dig a little deeper, though, you start to see the real issue. 

Bill Kristol put it best in his Post-Partisan post today:

Republicans on the Hill with whom I’ve spoken are in a sense relieved; they were worried that clever “post-partisan” or bipartisan tactics by Obama could split and weaken an already uncertain and demoralized GOP.

Honestly, can you believe it?  What happened to country first?  It seems to have gone the way of the dodo in the Republican Party.  For them it’s party first.  We shouldn’t be surprised — the entire Bush era was about hyper-partisanship.  They truly have lost their way.

Don’t make any mistake.  This isn’t about the census, as some have speculated.  The Census Bureau always works closely on the census with the White House.  So this isn’t about having his toes stepped on.  It’s not about the stimulus — the details of that were announced before Gregg’s nomination was announced.  It’s not about policy or ideology – Gregg knew where the Obama administration stood on the issues before he was interviewed for the position.  No, someone in the Republican Party put a lot of pressure on Gregg to withdraw.

Kristol nails it, although I think he’s guilty of burying his lede.  (The quote I used is from the middle of the last paragraph of his post.)  It’s about Republican party unity and resisting Obama every way they can.  If that wasn’t the case, why else would Republicans all of a sudden remember that they’re supposed to be deficit hawks? 

They’re trying to stymie the president at every turn at this point in our history.  They’ve managed to make the stimulus bill less than it needed to be (read Krugman if you need information on that).  They’re doing this as Americans are losing their jobs at a very fast rate.  (As I write this post, the stimulus bill was just passed in the House and again no Republicans voted for it.  Now to the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to invoke cloture and force a vote on the actual bill.) 

I have to ask — what other explanation could there be as to why the Republicans are acting the way they are now?  It’s quite clear to me that they’ve declared war on Obama and will oppose him at every turn.  That’s sadly ironic, because he’s trying to clean up the mess a Republican president left.

Stimulus: This Is Really, Really Bad

Paul Krugman’s opinion is clear.  This stimulus plan is terrible.  Here’s his post from Saturday on it:

I’m still working on the numbers, but I’ve gotten a fair number of requests for comment on the Senate version of the stimulus.

The short answer: to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts.

According to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic. So the original $800 billion plan was too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand. The plan should have been at least 50% larger.

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.

It’s always politicians who, in the name of politics, keep doing what’s wrong in the name of doing what’s right.  Is it a lack of political backbone?  Is it a lack of personal backbone?  Is it being totally oblivious in their ivory towers in Washington?  Is it just idiocy?  I don’t know.  But it certainly is a mess.

It’s been quite clear for a long time — especially since the election — that a large stimulus that actually addressed our problems was needed.  It needed to contain spending on infrastructure, help for the drowning state governments, extensions and benefit increases for those on unemployment benefits, COBRA health insurance help for the unemployed, job creation, mortgage foreclosure help for consumers, and then — after all that — maybe tax cuts (I’m sure I’m leaving out other things that should have been done before tax cuts).  It needed to give the economy a big kick and get it moving again.

Perhaps it’s a liberal meme on my part, but it seems to me that passing tax cuts — especially payroll tax cuts – to individuals is useless because many people are out of work.  What does $20 more a month in my paycheck do to get me spending if my partner is out of work?  Nothing.  What good does a business tax cut do to help keep businesses out of bankruptcy and help keep them from laying off employees?  Not much.  No, the business tax cut is definitely a Republican meme, and it’s tired.

I’d like to know where the Republicans’ budget consciousness was when Bush was president.  I’d like to know why — after eight years of failed Republican fiscal policy — we should listen to the Republicans even one little bit in getting this stimulus passed?  I think, actually, that this was Barack Obama’s error in working on this bill.  He tried too hard to bring the Republicans into the fold and give them a voice.  He honestly tried to act in a bipartisan — or post-partisan – manner, only to have the Republicans slap him in the face with the vote in the House and then the filibuster threat in the Senate. 

Bipartisanship is needed.  But the Republicans need to come partway down the path.  And they’ve shown that they’re incapable or unwilling in working on this critical stimulus bill.  But I digress.

Even a flawed stimulus bill is better than none.  And make no mistake, this bill is deeply flawed, as Krugman points out.  We need a $1.2 trillion bill, according to his numbers.  I’d believe him.  The Senate bill means that 600,000 fewer Americans will be working over the next two years.  He might be more liberal than not, but the Nobel Prize for economics tells me that he’s probably right.  We need to listen to him and people like him more.  And then maybe we can begin to recover from this recession.

Unemployment Now at 7.6%

Unemployment keeps going up.  The economy lost 598,000 jobs in January, more than economists had expected.  They had been expecting about 524,000 job losses.  It’s the worst month — in terms of job losses — since 1974.  The unemployment rate of 7.6% means that 11.6 million people are now out of work.

This graph from the Washington Post shows just how bad the job losses have been.

SOURCE: Bureau of Labor Statistics | The Washington Post - February 06, 2009

From a Washington Post article:

At present, 11.6 million people are out of work, a headline number likely to figure into ongoing debate in the Senate today over the Obama administration’s proposed economic stimulus package.

President Obama has warned of possible double-digit unemployment if the government does not act quickly, and the head of his Council on Economic Advisers used the new numbers to reemphasize the point.

“If we fail to act, we are likely to lose millions more jobs,” council chairman Christina D. Romer said in a news release.

U.S. businesses and institutions have shed jobs for 13 consecutive months, and the increasing pace of the job losses might indicate worse to come. Since the recession began in December 2007, 3.6 million payroll positions have been lost, with about half of that decline coming in the past three months, according to data released this morning by the Labor Department.

Major companies in recent weeks have announced plans for tens of thousands of fresh layoffs, creating momentum that might push the unemployment rate even higher in coming months. Rising joblessness, among other economic issues, has undercut retail spending and steered the auto industry into a historic sales slump, and is one of the chief problems lawmakers are hoping to address with massive government spending.

[snip]

Based on measures such as the number of jobs lost, the decline in hours worked and other statistics, “this recession is steeper than any recession of the last 40 years, including the harsh recession of the early 1980s. This is a horror show we’re watching,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal economic think tank.

That’s a staggering number — 3.6 million payroll jobs have been lost in the past 13 months.  More are coming.  It’s also a sobering thought — this is the deepest recession of the last 40 years, and it’s not even half over.  It is indeed a horror show.

And still the Senate is going back and forth about the stimulus package, trying to cut its size.  There are many people who think that $900 billion actually isn’t big enough, that we need more than $1 trillion in stimulus.  It’s certain that the economy needs a big kick right now to get it going again, and the only entity that can do that right now is government.

Perhaps the stimulus isn’t perfect.  My opinion is that there are too many tax cuts in the bill and not enough spending.  I think we should spend on infrastructure, help for the states, extending jobless benefits, and job creation programs — things that get people back to work and back spending — right now.  (An aside — for the Republicans to say that this bill is not a stimulus and is instead a spending package is disingenuous at best.  Of course it’s a spending package.  Are stimulus packages not spending packages?  The government is going to spend money to stimulate the economy.  Of course it’s spending.  Give me a break from the tired rhetoric.  It’s not needed and it is counterproductive.  Read Steven Pearlstein’s column in today’s Washington Post for a lesson in the economic reality of stimulus.)

President Obama is correct.  If government fails to act — and if it fails to act boldly enough – we will see double-digit unemployment.  The recovery, also, will be delayed and will not be as robust.  We need this stimulus and we need it now.

Panetta for CIA

Barack Obama isn’t getting any love for his pick of Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton’s former White House Chief of Staff, to head CIA.  (Obama must feel a bit like he did when the gay community objected when he chose Rick Warren to give the invocation on Inauguration Day — surprised that his base objected, especially after such a decisive win in November.) 

Obama really could have handled it a bit better — a heads-up to Dianne Feinstein, the new Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, would have gone a long way to smooth the way.  Now Obama is getting what amounts to a brush-back pitch from Feinstein.  No more crowding the plate; Obama needs to be mindful of others’ turf, especially that of high-ranking members of his own party.  (Feinstein wasn’t much mollified by overtures from both Barack Obama and Joe Biden.)  Part of Feinstein’s pique could also be that she wants someone in the intelligence community that she knows, someone whom she can control a bit … just speculation on my part.

I think that Panetta is an excellent choice, if a bit unorthodox.  His outright repudiation of torture represents a clean break with the Bush Administration’s policies.   It’s true that Panetta does not have intelligence experience.  But he is an excellent manager and team builder, and I’d argue that an outsider is precisely what the intelligence community needs right now.   He would know how to bring people in around him who have that experience and how to clean house.

Obama must be doing something right with this pick — if cleaning house at CIA is his goal — because the intelligence community is upset by the pick.

President-elect Barack Obama said yesterday that he has selected a “top-notch intelligence team” that would provide the “unvarnished” information his administration needs, rather than “what they think the president wants to hear.”

But current and former intelligence officials expressed sharp resentment over Obama’s choice of Leon E. Panetta as CIA director and suggested that the agency suffers from incompetent leadership and low morale. “People who suggest morale is low don’t have a clue about what’s going on now,” said CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield, citing recent personnel reforms under Director Michael V. Hayden.

It may be true that things have gotten much better at CIA.  But it’s a fact that the country was ill-served by CIA during George Tenet’s tenure as CIA Director, especially during the run-up to the Iraq War.  The nation was ill-served again when the CIA moved suspected terrorists to secret prisons in Eastern Europe and other countries that looked the other way if torture was used during interrogations.  The nation was ill-served again when CIA began water-boarding its captives.  Yes, some house cleaning needs to happen at CIA.  Perhaps the intelligence community’s objections are due to some nervousness about possible lost jobs.  They should be worried; some of them deserved to be fired years ago.