Blind Faith in Republicans
Most Americans think a GOP Congress would be better at running the economy, but few can tell you just what that means.
By Mark Willen, Senior Political Editor, The Kiplinger Letter
Voters have high hopes for Republicans. By every indication, they plan to send a lot more of them to the next Congress, maybe even enough to take control of the House of Representatives.
It’s not hard to understand why voters are unhappy with President Obama and his Democratic Congress. They’re tired of waiting for the economy to improve. They want a real recovery, with real jobs and pay raises, and they’re unhappy about the rapid growth of government and a corresponding escalation of the deficit. They believe the national debt is out of control. And they blame Obama for most of that.
Republicans have been fueling that anger but so far have been relatively shy about offering alternatives. They promise to change that by offering a policy plan in September, after a monthlong recess they’ll use to listen to voters and craft ideas. A lot is riding on that plan — at least in terms of voter hopes.
A recent poll by the Benenson Strategy Group shows just how much. The survey, conducted for Third Way, a moderate think tank, found that voters are counting on the GOP to come up with fresh ideas. Almost two-thirds said they expect Republicans to promote “a new economic agenda that is different” from former President Bush’s agenda. And that’s what they want. By 49% to 34%, they said if the choice is between Obama’s economic agenda and Bush’s, they prefer Obama. They don’t want to go back to the old ways.
So far, though, a return to the Bush era is exactly what Republicans have offered. As the expiration of the Bush tax cuts draws near, several GOP leaders have gone on record saying they want them all extended, and they insist there is no need to find offsetting savings to avoid exploding the deficit. Republicans have long argued that tax cuts grow the economy and pay for themselves, though the numbers don’t show that. The first round of Bush tax cuts came in 2001, and the 2002 deficit rose to 1.2% of GDP (from a surplus in 2000). The second round of tax cuts came in 2003, and the 2004 deficit rose to 3.5% of GDP. There were other factors involved — notably higher spending for the war against terrorism and a recession, and Republicans say the deficit would have been worse without the tax cuts. But that argument — that it would have been worse otherwise — is the same one they dismiss when Obama uses it to defend the 2009 stimulus, which incidentally included more than $300 billion in tax cuts.
There are things that Republicans can usefully propose. A more pro-business policy that removes the uncertainty would help a lot, though businesses probably need to expect more regulation as long as Obama is president. A revamping of the tax code is sorely needed, but it has to be something other than cuts and more cuts. A resolve to work with the debt commission’s whole package of ideas, including tax hikes and entitlement cuts, is a necessity. More than anything, a real plan to create jobs is needed.
Still, even if Republicans take back the House, delivering on their goals won’t be easy — not with Democrats controlling the Senate and White House. It will take bipartisan cooperation, which has not exactly been plentiful. Two years of complete gridlock may satisfy those Obama critics who just want to stop him in his tracks, but by itself, it won’t get the nation any closer to a more stable and prosperous economy.
Leak May Hurt Efforts to Build War Support
WASHINGTON — The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs discussed leaked military documents on Monday.
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Fallout from the Afghanistan War Files
What 92,000 classified documents reveal about the Taliban’s strength and American security.
Related
Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Julian Assange, the founder of the Web site WikiLeaks.org, in London on Monday.
The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
“We don’t know how to react,” one frustrated administration official said on Monday. “This obviously puts Congress and the public in a bad mood.”
Mr. Obama is facing a tough choice: he must either figure out a way to convince Congress and the American people that his war strategy remains on track and is seeing fruit — a harder sell given that the war is lagging — or move more quickly to a far more limited American presence.
As the debate over the war begins anew, administration officials have been striking tones similar to the Bush administration’s to argue for continuing the current Afghanistan strategy, which calls for a significant troop buildup. Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the Afghan war effort came down to a matter of American national security, in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee two weeks ago.
The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, struck a similar note on Monday in responding to the documents, which WikiLeaks made accessible to The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel.
“We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can be planned. That’s why we’re there, and that’s why we’re going to continue to make progress on this relationship.”
Several administration officials privately expressed hope that they might be able to use the leaks, and their description of a sometimes duplicitous Pakistani ally, to pressure the government of Pakistan to cooperate more fully with the United States on counterterrorism. The documents seem to lay out rich new details of connections between the Taliban and other militant groups and Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
Three administration officials separately expressed hope that they might be able to use the documents to gain leverage in efforts to get more help from Pakistan. Two of them raised the possibility of warning the Pakistanis that Congressional anger might threaten American aid.
“This is now out in the open,” a senior administration official said. “It’s reality now. In some ways, it makes it easier for us to tell the Pakistanis that they have to help us.”
But much of the pushback from the White House over the past two days has been to stress that the connection between the ISI and the Taliban was well known.
“I don’t think that what is being reported hasn’t in many ways been publicly discussed, either by you all or by representatives of the U.S. government, for quite some time,” Mr. Gibbs said during a briefing on Monday.
While agreeing that the disclosures were not altogether new, some leading Democrats said that the new details underscored deep suspicions they have harbored toward the ISI.
“Some of these documents reinforce a longstanding concern of mine about the supporting role of some Pakistani officials in the Afghan insurgency,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee. During a visit to Pakistan this month, Mr. Levin, who has largely supported the war, said he confronted senior Pakistani leaders about the ISI’s continuing ties to the militant groups.
And others said that the documents should serve as an impetus to correct deficiencies in strategy.
“Those policies are at a critical stage, and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent,” said Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and has been an influential supporter of the war.
The White House appeared to be focusing some of its ire toward Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, the Web site that provided access to about 92,000 secret military reports spanning the period from January 2004 through December 2009.
White House officials e-mailed reporters select transcripts of an interview Mr. Assange conducted with Der Spiegel, underlining the quotations the White House apparently found most offensive. Among them was Mr. Assange’s assertion, “I enjoy crushing bastards.”
At a news conference in London on Monday, Mr. Assange defended the release of the documents. “I’d like to see this material taken seriously and investigated, and new policies, if not prosecutions, result from it,” he said.
The Times and the two other news organizations agreed not to disclose anything that was likely to put lives at risk or jeopardize military or antiterrorist operations, and The Times redacted the names of Afghan informants and other delicate information from the documents it published. WikiLeaks said it withheld posting about 15,000 documents for the same reason.
Pakistan strongly denied suggestions that its military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency.
A senior ISI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under standard practice, sharply condemned the reports as “part of the malicious campaign to malign the spy organization” and said the ISI would “continue to eradicate the menace of terrorism with or without the help of the West.”
Farhatullah Babar, the spokesman for President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, dismissed the reports and said that Pakistan remained “a part of a strategic alliance of the United States in the fight against terrorism.”
While Pakistani officials protested, a spokesman for the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said that Mr. Karzai was not upset by the documents and did not believe the picture they painted was unfair.
Speaking after a news conference in Kabul, Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, was asked whether there was anything in the leaked documents that angered Mr. Karzai or that he thought unfair. “No, I don’t think so,” Mr. Omar said.
Reporting was contributed by Adam B. Ellick and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan; Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Kabul, Afghanistan; and Caroline Crampton from London.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/asia/28wikileaks.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Three of every four oil and gas lobbyists worked for federal government
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a proportion that far exceeds the usual revolving-door standards on Capitol Hill, a Washington Post analysis shows.
Key lobbying hires include 18 former members of Congress and dozens of former presidential appointees. For other senior management positions, the industry employs two former directors of the Minerals Management Service, the since-renamed agency that regulates the industry, and several top officials from the Bush White House. Federal inspectors once assigned to monitor oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico have landed jobs with the companies they regulated.
With more than 600 registered lobbyists, the industry has among the biggest and most powerful contingents in Washington. Its influence has been on full display in the wake of the BP oil disaster: Proposals to enact new restrictions or curb oil use have stalled amid concerted Republican opposition and strong objections from Democrats in oil-producing states.
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Even considering the generally friendly relationship between
K Street and Capitol Hill, the number of well-connected oil lobbyists is remarkable. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics calculates that fewer than one in three registered lobbyists in 2009 had revolving-door connections — less than half the oil industry rate found by The Post.
Officials with the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group that tracks Interior Department officials who cross over to the oil sector, said they were surprised by the findings. “With these numbers, you can see how the revolving door between the Hill and industry allowed problems in the agency to happen and not be addressed,” said Mandy Smithberger, an investigator for the group.
As both the House and Senate consider limiting the influence of revolving-door lobbyists, the topic will be a focus of a congressional hearing Thursday chaired by Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), who has experienced the phenomenon firsthand: One of his former aides, Jesse McCollum, signed on as a BP lobbyist two weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Towns’s office declined to comment; McCollum did not respond to a message.
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The Post analysis found that BP and other companies involved in the gulf disaster employ as lobbyists more than three dozen former lawmakers, congressional staffers and bureaucrats. BP alone has hired at least 31 internal and external lobbyists with government experience, records show.
The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s leading trade group, employs 48 lobbyists with previous federal experience, the analysis shows. They include former senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), who helped deregulate the natural gas industry, and former congressmen Jim McCrery (R-La.) and Charlie Stenholm (D-Tex.), both of whom strongly backed oil interests while in Congress.
“If you want somebody to work on energy issues, you don’t hire health-care workers,” said Jack N. Gerard, the group’s president and chief executive.
Few former government officials who joined the oil industry wanted to discuss their new roles. More than 30 individuals, companies and lobbying firms contacted by The Post, including BP, declined to comment or did not respond to messages.
Vince Cable: ‘Banks ripping us off’Watch
