Democrats had a promising 2012 strategy -- and it was already working. Then Obama started talking "grand bargain"
Steve Kornacki
Monday, Jul 25, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/07/25/obama_medicare_2012/index.html
When Barack Obama used a press conference late last Friday to once again embrace cuts to Medicare and Social Security as part of a debt ceiling deal, he noted that Nancy Pelosi "sure did not like the plan that we are proposing."
Can you blame her? Forget about whatever philosophical objections she might have to reducing entitlement spending: Obama's posture these past few weeks threatens to wipe out a 2012 campaign strategy that has the potential to deliver significant gains for Pelosi's House Democrats.
Let's remember how we got here. Three months ago, House Republicans handed Democrats a gift that seemed like it would keep on giving clear through the 2012 elections, lining up in near-unanimity behind a plan that would essentially reconfigure Medicare as a voucher program.
Speaker John Boehner, it was clear, embraced the Paul Ryan-authored plan not because he wanted to but because he believed he and his conference had to. Putting the House GOP on the record in support of a truly radical overhaul of Medicare and enduring the resulting abuse from Democrats and pundits, Boehner seemed to calculate, was necessary to show good faith to the GOP's Tea Party base. That base, after all, had revolted during the 2010 midterm primary season, knocking off seemingly entrenched GOP incumbents and candidates favored by the party establishment. And it would do so again in 2012 if Republicans on Capitol Hill didn't demonstrate that they had "purified" themselves ideologically.
So Boehner made the Ryan plan a major part of the GOP's agenda and when it came for a vote in mid-April, all but a few Republicans supported it -- and every Democrat voted no.
For Democrats, this offered a chance to recycle a game plan that worked well for them back in 1995 and 1996, the last time a new Republican majority took power in the House. Then, as now, the GOP targeted Medicare and Democrats made a show of fighting them, warning seniors about potentially catastrophic benefits reductions and using the issue to portray congressional Republicans as dangerously extreme ideologues. A variation of this ad was run by Democrats in virtually every competitive congressional district in the '96 campaign.
The result: Two years after the 1994 Republican revolution, 18 Republican incumbents were defeated for reelection. It wasn't enough to win back the chamber for Democrats, but it was clearly a successful strategy -- particularly in swing districts in the Northeast and the Rust Belt and along the Pacific Coast.
Not surprisingly, then, Democrats began dusting off that '96 playbook almost as soon as the Ryan plan cleared the House in April. And thanks to the unexpected resignation of Republican Rep. Chris Lee, they soon had an opportunity to test it out, in a special election in a GOP-friendly district in Western New York -- pretty much the kind of district that flipped to the Democrats back in '96. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic nominee, made Medicare the central issue of her campaign, with ads like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU2lHv8Jnwo
The result: A sizable victory for Hochul in the May 24 special election. Suddenly, the idea that Democrats might actually post the 25-seat gain needed to win back the House in 2012 didn't seem out of the question. At the very least, it seemed, they had found a winning issue sure to bring them within striking distance of control heading into the 2014 cycle.
But then came the "grand bargain." For the past several weeks, Obama has aggressively and publicly pursued a deficit-slashing deal with Boehner that, in exchange for relatively slight revenue increases, would make deep domestic spending cuts, even in Medicare and Social Security. The grand bargain now seems dead, but Obama has now provided an abundance of emphatic sound bites in which he makes it clear that he believes entitlement spending can and should be cut and that doing so would strengthen -- and not harm -- the programs. In other words, he has handed the GOP the tools to create the perfect response to ads like Hochul's during the '12 campaign.
The basic political logic behind Obama's move is obvious. As Ed Kilgore noted this morning, he is pursuing a reelection strategy that depends on convincing swing voters that he's a reasonable, compromise-friendly pragmatist -- and that the GOP is beholden to an irrationally ideological base. There are even those who believe Obama always knew the grand bargain wouldn't work, and that he pushed it so hard just to demonstrate how unwilling the GOP is to compromise.
Some liken this to the strategy Bill Clinton pursued in '95 and '96, making Newt Gingrich and the GOP Congress his enemy, but there's one key difference: Back then, Clinton and congressional Democrats were on the same page when it came to Medicare. Clinton refused to sign a GOP budget that cut Medicare spending by $270 billion, forcing a dramatic government shutdown instead. And congressional Democrats then used that showdown as the basis for their unrelenting Medicare attack ads. Obama, though, has now undermined his congressional party's Medicare message.
Does this mean he's destroyed his party's best chance of winning back the House next year? That's one possible interpretation. It's also possible that if Obama succeeds in defining the GOP as a fundamentally radical party and is able to win reelection on that basis that congressional Democrats will also benefit -- that an anti-GOP tide will lift in '12 even without the Ryan plan playing a big role. And, of course, it's also possible that, however the current standoff is ultimately resolved, the public's attention will quickly return to the weak economy and poor job growth and that voters in '12 won't end caring much about Medicare, the debt ceiling, or GOP extremism.
What is clear, though, is that Obama has made his party's strategy for next year's election a lot more complicated.
Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More: Steve Kornacki
Showing posts with label Nancy Pelosi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nancy Pelosi. Show all posts
Friday, July 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Austan Goolsbee Defends President Romney’s Economic Plan
Scarecrow
Sunday June 5, 2011
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/06/05/austan-goolsbee-defends-presidents-romneys-economic-plan
If I’d been asleep for the last decade and woke up to ABC This Week’s interview of Presidential economic advisor Austan Goolgbee, I would assume that Mitt Romney won the 2008 election, that he was predictably following Republican dogma about how to recover from a severe financial collapse and recession and that intelligent media folks like Christiane Amanpour were realizing those standard GOP policies aren’t working.
Goolsbee correctly told us that a smart economist wouldn’t get overly excited about one month’s jobs and growth numbers but would instead look at the overall trend. Of course what he wouldn’t want to concede is that GDP grew at a meager annual rate of 1.8 percent over the first three months of 2011 and so far was predicted to grow at only 2.8 percent for the next three. And the overall trend for job growth was still not enough to make a serious dent in unemployment unless you believe taking 5-10 years to get back to full employment is okay.
So Goolsbee was in denial from the opening moment because he didn’t have a decent story to tell even in his own framework. When Amanpour asked him what the Administration could or should be doing to improve conditions, he ticked off items you’d expect to hear from a typical GOP Presidential adviser: we’ve got to get the debt under control; we have a White House effort to identify and get rid of governmental regulations that are preventing the private sector from growing the economy; we should pass “free trade” agreements backed by the Chamber of Commerce; and we should leverage limited public dollars to release billions in private funding for investments.
Goolsbee’s bottom line: “It’s now up to the private sector.” That’s exactly what you’d expect from President Romney’s economic adviser.
It took Paul Krugman and Chrystia Freeland, over the absurd denials by Martin Regalia of the Chamber of Commerce, to remind ABC’s audience that business confidence and concerns about taxes and regulations aren’t the problem: business polls repeatedly show businesses aren’t expanding/hiring much because the demand for their products is weak. Demand is weak because the recession and the housing market crash depleted consumers’ wealth and they’re worried about losing their homes and jobs. You don’t need a degree in economics to grasp the logic of that. When private spending is still depressed, only government spending is keeping the economy afloat, and the stimulus is phasing out.
Goolsbee pointed to Joe Biden’s talks, but it’s blindingly obvious the Biden effort is counter-productive. Democrats should be demanding it be refocused on jobs or shut down.
Regalia’s main talking point, completely unsupported by theory, logic or facts, is that the economy would boom if only the government would “get out of the way.” It’s a wonderful myth if you’re fronting for Wall Street, trying to defang the puny financial regulations from Dodd-Frank, and think the greatest threat to Wall Street’s continued looting is Elizabeth Warren. But we should remember the “get out of the way” mantra the next time Wall Street self immolates, tanks the economy and a former Goldman Sachs CEO become Treasury Secretary gets on his knees to beg Nancy Pelosi to bail out every major Western bank on the planet.
I’m sure I imagined all this. The country wouldn’t possibly be dumb enough to elect an unprincipled moral chameleon like Mitt Romney President. And we’d never put up with someone as defensive and unconvincing as Goolsbee was today, though we’d wonder how the voters got taken.
No, that couldn’t be real, so when I really wake up, I’ll let you know what the adviser for the actual Democratic President said today about the sagging economy and the undefensible unemployment numbers.
Sunday June 5, 2011
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/06/05/austan-goolsbee-defends-presidents-romneys-economic-plan
If I’d been asleep for the last decade and woke up to ABC This Week’s interview of Presidential economic advisor Austan Goolgbee, I would assume that Mitt Romney won the 2008 election, that he was predictably following Republican dogma about how to recover from a severe financial collapse and recession and that intelligent media folks like Christiane Amanpour were realizing those standard GOP policies aren’t working.
Goolsbee correctly told us that a smart economist wouldn’t get overly excited about one month’s jobs and growth numbers but would instead look at the overall trend. Of course what he wouldn’t want to concede is that GDP grew at a meager annual rate of 1.8 percent over the first three months of 2011 and so far was predicted to grow at only 2.8 percent for the next three. And the overall trend for job growth was still not enough to make a serious dent in unemployment unless you believe taking 5-10 years to get back to full employment is okay.
So Goolsbee was in denial from the opening moment because he didn’t have a decent story to tell even in his own framework. When Amanpour asked him what the Administration could or should be doing to improve conditions, he ticked off items you’d expect to hear from a typical GOP Presidential adviser: we’ve got to get the debt under control; we have a White House effort to identify and get rid of governmental regulations that are preventing the private sector from growing the economy; we should pass “free trade” agreements backed by the Chamber of Commerce; and we should leverage limited public dollars to release billions in private funding for investments.
Goolsbee’s bottom line: “It’s now up to the private sector.” That’s exactly what you’d expect from President Romney’s economic adviser.
It took Paul Krugman and Chrystia Freeland, over the absurd denials by Martin Regalia of the Chamber of Commerce, to remind ABC’s audience that business confidence and concerns about taxes and regulations aren’t the problem: business polls repeatedly show businesses aren’t expanding/hiring much because the demand for their products is weak. Demand is weak because the recession and the housing market crash depleted consumers’ wealth and they’re worried about losing their homes and jobs. You don’t need a degree in economics to grasp the logic of that. When private spending is still depressed, only government spending is keeping the economy afloat, and the stimulus is phasing out.
Goolsbee pointed to Joe Biden’s talks, but it’s blindingly obvious the Biden effort is counter-productive. Democrats should be demanding it be refocused on jobs or shut down.
Regalia’s main talking point, completely unsupported by theory, logic or facts, is that the economy would boom if only the government would “get out of the way.” It’s a wonderful myth if you’re fronting for Wall Street, trying to defang the puny financial regulations from Dodd-Frank, and think the greatest threat to Wall Street’s continued looting is Elizabeth Warren. But we should remember the “get out of the way” mantra the next time Wall Street self immolates, tanks the economy and a former Goldman Sachs CEO become Treasury Secretary gets on his knees to beg Nancy Pelosi to bail out every major Western bank on the planet.
I’m sure I imagined all this. The country wouldn’t possibly be dumb enough to elect an unprincipled moral chameleon like Mitt Romney President. And we’d never put up with someone as defensive and unconvincing as Goolsbee was today, though we’d wonder how the voters got taken.
No, that couldn’t be real, so when I really wake up, I’ll let you know what the adviser for the actual Democratic President said today about the sagging economy and the undefensible unemployment numbers.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Obama Using Unemployed As an Excuse To Get What He Wanted
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/12/03/obama-using-unemployed-as-an-excuse-to-get-what-he-wanted-all-along/
Obama Using Unemployed As an Excuse To Get What He Wanted All Along
Jane Hamsher
Friday December 3, 2010
It’s been clear for some time that President Obama made the political calculation that he does not want any of the Bush tax cuts to expire. He doesn’t want to be the guy in 2012 running for President on having “raised taxes during a time of recession.”
But the President also doesn’t want the political blowback of angering people who cheered him on the campaign trail when he promised to let the tax cuts expire. And so rather than just come out and just say that, he’s been actively trying to kill a Chuck Schumer deal to keep them from expiring on income of more than $1 million a year. It was a plan that put the GOP in an awkward position, and had thrown them off message in recent days — hard to be the people fighting for the 315,000 families who fall into that category over the 2 million set to lose their unemployment benefits by the end of the year.
The President argued against the Schumer deal, we are told, because he was concerned about “the cost [to the deficit] and the risk of redefining the middle class as those making over one million.”
Okay, let’s look at the numbers. I’ll use Jonathan Cohn’s, because they’re the most conservative I’ve seen:
Proposal - Amount added to the deficit over 10 years - Cost of addition
Extending tax cuts on income up to $250,000 - $3.2 trillion –
Extending tax cuts on income up to $1 million - $3.6 trillion - $400 billion
Extending all tax cuts - $4 trillion - $800 billion
So the President who is “ready to accept” a deal to extend all tax cuts “temporarily,” at a cost of $4 trillion dollars to the deficit over 10 years, doesn’t want to accept a deal that would cost $3.6 trillion because it’s important to limit the cost to $3.2 trillion.
Come on. Let’s stop pretending. Obama didn’t want any of the tax cuts to expire, just as he didn’t want a public option in the health care bill. But he doesn’t want to say that, just like he didn’t want to say he had dealt away the public option. So once again, he expresses his “support” for the promises he made on the campaign trail, while he accepts the political reality that inevitably leads…. to what he really wants.
The hard part is always orchestrating the “political reality” that leaves Obama no option but to do the thing he really wanted anyway, especially when his party controls both houses of Congress (See: Countdown to Lieberman)
Obama is not a “poor negotiator,” as some would have. He’s getting exactly what he wants, just as he did in the health care bill. And the naked truth of his cynical charade has become horribly, gapingly obvious.
Dave Dayen:
Did They Ever Want to Let the Tax Cuts Expire in the First Place? No.
If the stigma of raising taxes bugged you (it didn’t bug the last Democratic President, who won re-election after raising taxes) or if you thought the economy couldn’t take the hit, you could always go back with some shiny new “Obama tax cuts” later. You could have decoupled the tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income with the rest. You could have done any number of things. But the truth of the matter, the ugly truth, is that all that campaigning in 2006 and 2008 was a clown show. There was no real intention to raise taxes on millionaires.
Digby:
According To Plan
If they had been serious about doing what Obama ran on they could have gotten it done as an economic imperative in the early heady months. And the Republicans would have had no choice but to vote for extending the middle class tax cuts a year and a half ago when the millionaire tax cut would have still been in place. The only reasonable explanation for not doing it is that the Dems never really wanted to decouple them in the first place.
Now we are told that the President is negotiating a “deal” that includes an extension of all the tax cuts — in exchange for extending unemployment benefits.
It appears that the plan, all along, was to hold the extension of unemployment benefits hostage so those in need can once again be used as the poster children for this “necessary” compromise. Last month, Nancy Pelosi held one of her famous dinner theater kabuki votes to extend unemployment benefits, and the final vote was 258-154. Which, under ordinary rules, would have meant passage. But because she brought it to the floor using legislative tactics that required 290 votes, it failed.
Pelosi did this, we’re told, to “portray Republicans as unsympathetic to the plight of Americans still struggling to seek employment, particularly as the holiday season is set to begin.” In reality, she used the unemployed to play a game of political one-upsmanship that assured they’d still be held hostage when a “deal” was struck to extend all the tax cuts under a “last minute crisis” at the end of the year.
The rich don’t want their tax breaks to end, so the poor are pulled in to act as human shields. It happens time and again, and I wish this is something our more conservative constituencies could understand: government efforts to “help the poor,” are never really meant to help the poor. At least not in recent memory. It’s just part of a PR campaign to facilitate the otherwise inexplicable looting of the taxpayer trough by powerful interests capable of buying political influence.
And so the noble sentiment of helping their victims will once again be used to paint a smiley face on the ugly, rapacious greed of the oligarchs. This despite the fact that only 26% of Americans want all the tax cuts extended. Even among Republicans, support for extending all the tax cuts is only 46% — less than half.
But as Michael Bennet said, the game is rigged.
So when the Senate finally comes to an “agreement,” we can all thank President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and the members of the Catfood Commission for their fine performances this holiday season. They worked together to stage an elaborate show for the benefit of the public to demonstrate that they care so very much about the deficit, even as they all colluded to dramatically expand it.
Bravo.
Obama Using Unemployed As an Excuse To Get What He Wanted All Along
Jane Hamsher
Friday December 3, 2010
It’s been clear for some time that President Obama made the political calculation that he does not want any of the Bush tax cuts to expire. He doesn’t want to be the guy in 2012 running for President on having “raised taxes during a time of recession.”
But the President also doesn’t want the political blowback of angering people who cheered him on the campaign trail when he promised to let the tax cuts expire. And so rather than just come out and just say that, he’s been actively trying to kill a Chuck Schumer deal to keep them from expiring on income of more than $1 million a year. It was a plan that put the GOP in an awkward position, and had thrown them off message in recent days — hard to be the people fighting for the 315,000 families who fall into that category over the 2 million set to lose their unemployment benefits by the end of the year.
The President argued against the Schumer deal, we are told, because he was concerned about “the cost [to the deficit] and the risk of redefining the middle class as those making over one million.”
Okay, let’s look at the numbers. I’ll use Jonathan Cohn’s, because they’re the most conservative I’ve seen:
Proposal - Amount added to the deficit over 10 years - Cost of addition
Extending tax cuts on income up to $250,000 - $3.2 trillion –
Extending tax cuts on income up to $1 million - $3.6 trillion - $400 billion
Extending all tax cuts - $4 trillion - $800 billion
So the President who is “ready to accept” a deal to extend all tax cuts “temporarily,” at a cost of $4 trillion dollars to the deficit over 10 years, doesn’t want to accept a deal that would cost $3.6 trillion because it’s important to limit the cost to $3.2 trillion.
Come on. Let’s stop pretending. Obama didn’t want any of the tax cuts to expire, just as he didn’t want a public option in the health care bill. But he doesn’t want to say that, just like he didn’t want to say he had dealt away the public option. So once again, he expresses his “support” for the promises he made on the campaign trail, while he accepts the political reality that inevitably leads…. to what he really wants.
The hard part is always orchestrating the “political reality” that leaves Obama no option but to do the thing he really wanted anyway, especially when his party controls both houses of Congress (See: Countdown to Lieberman)
Obama is not a “poor negotiator,” as some would have. He’s getting exactly what he wants, just as he did in the health care bill. And the naked truth of his cynical charade has become horribly, gapingly obvious.
Dave Dayen:
Did They Ever Want to Let the Tax Cuts Expire in the First Place? No.
If the stigma of raising taxes bugged you (it didn’t bug the last Democratic President, who won re-election after raising taxes) or if you thought the economy couldn’t take the hit, you could always go back with some shiny new “Obama tax cuts” later. You could have decoupled the tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income with the rest. You could have done any number of things. But the truth of the matter, the ugly truth, is that all that campaigning in 2006 and 2008 was a clown show. There was no real intention to raise taxes on millionaires.
Digby:
According To Plan
If they had been serious about doing what Obama ran on they could have gotten it done as an economic imperative in the early heady months. And the Republicans would have had no choice but to vote for extending the middle class tax cuts a year and a half ago when the millionaire tax cut would have still been in place. The only reasonable explanation for not doing it is that the Dems never really wanted to decouple them in the first place.
Now we are told that the President is negotiating a “deal” that includes an extension of all the tax cuts — in exchange for extending unemployment benefits.
It appears that the plan, all along, was to hold the extension of unemployment benefits hostage so those in need can once again be used as the poster children for this “necessary” compromise. Last month, Nancy Pelosi held one of her famous dinner theater kabuki votes to extend unemployment benefits, and the final vote was 258-154. Which, under ordinary rules, would have meant passage. But because she brought it to the floor using legislative tactics that required 290 votes, it failed.
Pelosi did this, we’re told, to “portray Republicans as unsympathetic to the plight of Americans still struggling to seek employment, particularly as the holiday season is set to begin.” In reality, she used the unemployed to play a game of political one-upsmanship that assured they’d still be held hostage when a “deal” was struck to extend all the tax cuts under a “last minute crisis” at the end of the year.
The rich don’t want their tax breaks to end, so the poor are pulled in to act as human shields. It happens time and again, and I wish this is something our more conservative constituencies could understand: government efforts to “help the poor,” are never really meant to help the poor. At least not in recent memory. It’s just part of a PR campaign to facilitate the otherwise inexplicable looting of the taxpayer trough by powerful interests capable of buying political influence.
And so the noble sentiment of helping their victims will once again be used to paint a smiley face on the ugly, rapacious greed of the oligarchs. This despite the fact that only 26% of Americans want all the tax cuts extended. Even among Republicans, support for extending all the tax cuts is only 46% — less than half.
But as Michael Bennet said, the game is rigged.
So when the Senate finally comes to an “agreement,” we can all thank President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and the members of the Catfood Commission for their fine performances this holiday season. They worked together to stage an elaborate show for the benefit of the public to demonstrate that they care so very much about the deficit, even as they all colluded to dramatically expand it.
Bravo.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
The Public Option's Last Stand: A Matter Of Will, Not Votes
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/the-public-options-last-s_n_495383.html
Ryan Grim
ryan@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost
The Public Option's Last Stand: A Matter Of Will, Not Votes
03-11-10
The public option faces its last stand. With more than 40 senators publicly willing to vote for a health care reform reconciliation package that includes the option, the opportunity to reinsert it into the final bill has never been greater, though the battle is nearly over without having been fought.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democrat in charge of rounding up votes for the health care reconciliation bill, said on Thursday that he will whip support for whatever package comes through the House. With 50 Democratic votes, Vice President Joe Biden could then break the tie and send the bill directly to the White House. If any amendments are adopted, it slows the process down by requiring the House to vote once again.
That balance of power gives House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) extraordinary leverage of a historical nature. Pelosi, however, has yet to concede in negotiations that it is the obligation of the House to go first. And the deal that is being reached is driven largely by the White House. But both the Senate and the White House need Pelosi. And the House, of course, has already passed a health care bill with a public option.
If the House does move first, the Senate would essentially face an up-or-down vote on whatever Pelosi sends over. Durbin was asked by HuffPost if he would whip a reconciliation package from the House that included a public option. An analysis of past statements and positions taken by members of the Democratic caucus indicates that there could plausibly be 53 votes for a public option and perhaps several more.
Durbin, in response to the question, said at first that it was hypothetical, but then answered, "I think there will come a time when we reach agreement on what the reconciliation package includes, with the understanding that any changes in the House or Senate could slow down or stop the process."
So whatever comes from the House, that's what you will whip?
"That's basically it," he said. "I hope that what comes from the House is what we agree on going into this debate."
Has that been agreed to yet?
"Not yet," said Durbin.
"Dick Durbin just offered Nancy Pelosi a rubber stamp, something that will never happen again -- especially in a 50-vote reconciliation environment," said Adam Green, when told of Durbin's remark. Green is a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has been pushing for a public option.
If the public option is going to work its way back into health care talks, it will have to do it in the next day or two, before the parties finalize negotiations.
The White House and congressional leaders have not taken much notice of the revived debate over including a public option in the last several weeks, other than to insist, as the administration did, that it doesn't have "political support."
Yet without any whip effort from the Senate or the White House, 41 individual senators have publicly said that they are willing to support a public option through the reconciliation process. The full list is here.
That list does not include several senators who have said they support the public option but may not want to upset the delicate political balance, including Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), both vocal public option backers.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has not taken a position on supporting the public option through reconciliation, but he has previously said he supports it. What's more, as Finance Committee chairman, he has called this health care reform the most important public policy effort he has ever been involved in. He would be unlikely to kill it over the public option, especially given his state's support for it.
Rockefeller, Harkin and Baucus make it 44.
HuffPost also spoke to Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) this week. Hagan has previously said that she supports the public option and told HuffPost she'd be open to voting for it through reconciliation, but had to see the details. Begich said that he wouldn't let the health care bill overall "live or die" over the issue of the public option. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) declined to answer when asked by HuffPost about the public option, but he is a reliable Democratic vote and it is difficult to imagine him bucking his leadership on such an important vote. Kohl has previously stated his support for the public option.
Adding Kohl, Begich and Hagan to the total gets Durbin and the White House to 47.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told HuffPost she wasn't sure how she would vote, but she has been a reliable supporter of the president going back to the campaign. She would be the last person to kill health care, Obama's signature domestic policy priority.
Her vote would give Democrats 48.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) has said in the past that he would support a health care bill with a public option.
His vote would bring the number to 49 - one shy.
Sen. Bob Byrd (D-W.Va.) said he would support health care reform done through reconciliation. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who is retiring, has said he's open to using reconciliation to pass health care. Either of their votes would put Democrats over the top and both are gettable with an effort from leadership and the White House.
That would allow senators such as Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Jim Webb (D-Va.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) to vote no.
And if both Byrd and Bayh refused to support the final bill, there's always Sen. Ben Nelson. The Nebraska Democrat badly wants to vote to change the "Cornhusker Kickback," for which he's been pilloried at home and across the nation. Voting for reconciliation is the only way to do it.
In that case, Ben Nelson makes 50 -- or, with Bayh and Byrd, 52.
Ryan Grim
ryan@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost
The Public Option's Last Stand: A Matter Of Will, Not Votes
03-11-10
The public option faces its last stand. With more than 40 senators publicly willing to vote for a health care reform reconciliation package that includes the option, the opportunity to reinsert it into the final bill has never been greater, though the battle is nearly over without having been fought.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democrat in charge of rounding up votes for the health care reconciliation bill, said on Thursday that he will whip support for whatever package comes through the House. With 50 Democratic votes, Vice President Joe Biden could then break the tie and send the bill directly to the White House. If any amendments are adopted, it slows the process down by requiring the House to vote once again.
That balance of power gives House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) extraordinary leverage of a historical nature. Pelosi, however, has yet to concede in negotiations that it is the obligation of the House to go first. And the deal that is being reached is driven largely by the White House. But both the Senate and the White House need Pelosi. And the House, of course, has already passed a health care bill with a public option.
If the House does move first, the Senate would essentially face an up-or-down vote on whatever Pelosi sends over. Durbin was asked by HuffPost if he would whip a reconciliation package from the House that included a public option. An analysis of past statements and positions taken by members of the Democratic caucus indicates that there could plausibly be 53 votes for a public option and perhaps several more.
Durbin, in response to the question, said at first that it was hypothetical, but then answered, "I think there will come a time when we reach agreement on what the reconciliation package includes, with the understanding that any changes in the House or Senate could slow down or stop the process."
So whatever comes from the House, that's what you will whip?
"That's basically it," he said. "I hope that what comes from the House is what we agree on going into this debate."
Has that been agreed to yet?
"Not yet," said Durbin.
"Dick Durbin just offered Nancy Pelosi a rubber stamp, something that will never happen again -- especially in a 50-vote reconciliation environment," said Adam Green, when told of Durbin's remark. Green is a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has been pushing for a public option.
If the public option is going to work its way back into health care talks, it will have to do it in the next day or two, before the parties finalize negotiations.
The White House and congressional leaders have not taken much notice of the revived debate over including a public option in the last several weeks, other than to insist, as the administration did, that it doesn't have "political support."
Yet without any whip effort from the Senate or the White House, 41 individual senators have publicly said that they are willing to support a public option through the reconciliation process. The full list is here.
That list does not include several senators who have said they support the public option but may not want to upset the delicate political balance, including Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), both vocal public option backers.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has not taken a position on supporting the public option through reconciliation, but he has previously said he supports it. What's more, as Finance Committee chairman, he has called this health care reform the most important public policy effort he has ever been involved in. He would be unlikely to kill it over the public option, especially given his state's support for it.
Rockefeller, Harkin and Baucus make it 44.
HuffPost also spoke to Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) this week. Hagan has previously said that she supports the public option and told HuffPost she'd be open to voting for it through reconciliation, but had to see the details. Begich said that he wouldn't let the health care bill overall "live or die" over the issue of the public option. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) declined to answer when asked by HuffPost about the public option, but he is a reliable Democratic vote and it is difficult to imagine him bucking his leadership on such an important vote. Kohl has previously stated his support for the public option.
Adding Kohl, Begich and Hagan to the total gets Durbin and the White House to 47.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told HuffPost she wasn't sure how she would vote, but she has been a reliable supporter of the president going back to the campaign. She would be the last person to kill health care, Obama's signature domestic policy priority.
Her vote would give Democrats 48.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) has said in the past that he would support a health care bill with a public option.
His vote would bring the number to 49 - one shy.
Sen. Bob Byrd (D-W.Va.) said he would support health care reform done through reconciliation. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who is retiring, has said he's open to using reconciliation to pass health care. Either of their votes would put Democrats over the top and both are gettable with an effort from leadership and the White House.
That would allow senators such as Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Jim Webb (D-Va.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) to vote no.
And if both Byrd and Bayh refused to support the final bill, there's always Sen. Ben Nelson. The Nebraska Democrat badly wants to vote to change the "Cornhusker Kickback," for which he's been pilloried at home and across the nation. Voting for reconciliation is the only way to do it.
In that case, Ben Nelson makes 50 -- or, with Bayh and Byrd, 52.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Pelosi, Rahm do not scare Rep. DeFazio
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/72889-pelosi-rahm-do-not-scare-rep-defazio
Pelosi, Rahm do not scare Rep. DeFazio
By Walter Alarkon
12/18/09
Rep. Peter DeFazio’s phone rang. On the other end was Rahm Emanuel.
The White House chief of staff last month expressed frustration with DeFazio’s resignation calls for President Barack Obama’s top two economic aides — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House chief economist Larry Summers — and appealed for cooperation, according to DeFazio.
But Emanuel, known for his blunt manner and ability to bend members of his party to his will, did not raise his voice with the Oregon Democrat.
“Rahm does not yell at me,” DeFazio said, “because he knows that I yell back.”
Others are learning that DeFazio, who has served in the House since 1987 and describes himself as a “progressive populist,” is not easily intimidated. He has emerged in recent months as one of the most vocal liberal critics of the Obama administration, blasting the president’s team for not getting tough enough with Wall Street. He’s also taken on his own party for failing to move left-leaning legislation through the Congress.
Personal calls from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former Vice President Al Gore couldn’t persuade him to vote for the Speaker’s climate change bill. He also opposed the $787 billion stimulus, citing concerns that only 7 percent was devoted to infrastructure spending.
DeFazio was one of only two Democrats to vote against those measures and the $700 billion bank bailout. (The other was Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) a Blue Dog conservative.)
Yet he’s also a pro-gun Democrat who has a B rating from the National Rifle Association.
“I would have less of a voice and I would have less respect if I voted for things I didn’t believe in because of pressure from the leadership,” DeFazio told The Hill in an interview.
Obama himself has taken notice.
“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama told DeFazio during a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, according to members afterward.
But poking a stick at those in power is what DeFazio does.
He gives partial credit for his special brand of liberalism to having worked at a country club as a teenager. Each summer, his father ran a camp for troubled inner-city kids on Cape Cod, where they caddied for golfers at a country club. DeFazio would work alongside the kids.
“They were servants for the rich, as was I,” he said. “I shagged golf balls for rich people. I carried golf clubs for rich people, and I learned very early on, when I was pretty young, that this was a group of people that had nothing special to offer to me or to society.”
His populism has played well back home. DeFazio won his 2008 election with 82 percent of the vote, even though his district isn’t overwhelmingly Democratic. Obama won it by 11 percentage points, but President George W. Bush won nearly as many votes as Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004.
“He is incredibly popular in a district that is actually somewhat difficult for a Democrat,” said Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.), who says DeFazio does it by standing up for his beliefs.
DeFazio has been a leading liberal voice complaining that the Democratic Congress and White House have failed to capitalize on significant victories in last year’s elections. His latest target is the Senate, where he says Democrats’ struggle to move healthcare legislation is preventing the Congress from sending a job-creation bill to the president’s desk. With the unemployment rate at 10 percent, House Democrats see jobs as the No. 1 campaign issue heading into the midterm election year.
“It’s just incredible frustration,” DeFazio said. “The killing ground of the Senate is ultimately, potentially, the killing ground of the Democratic Party.”
DeFazio and other House Democrats led what he called a “revolt” at a caucus meeting several weeks ago. Though Democratic leaders called the meeting to discuss the president’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, rank-and-file members began talking instead about jobs.
DeFazio stood up and called for attaching a new job-creation bill to the annual defense-spending measure, which typically gets bipartisan support and is considered must-pass legislation. His speech and others in favor of a new jobs bill drew cheers from colleagues, said House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.).
DeFazio has spent most of his time over the past year pushing for the $500 billion, six-year transportation reauthorization bill. DeFazio, the chairman of the House Highways and Transit subcommittee, has argued infrastructure could lead to far more jobs and have a much more lasting impact than tax cuts or other stimulus spending. While Pelosi has thrown her support behind the bill, sponsored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the Senate and the White House, reluctant to raise the gas tax or other levies to pay for the bill, have said that it should be taken up next year.
DeFazio wants to tax Wall Street to help pay for the programs. Specifically, he wants a tax on financial transactions, which economists have said could generate $150 billion. Though Geithner has opposed it, DeFazio is holding out hope that Obama will find ways to get tougher on Wall Street.
He praised the president this week for dialing up his criticism of Wall Street bankers and the bonuses they’re expected to receive, just months after receiving billions in federal bailout dollars.
“That was one good speech by the president, but he’s got to mean it, he’s got to live it, he’s got to do it every day,” DeFazio said. “And these are tough people; these are the most powerful people in the world. They seem to control a majority of his economic team.”
Pelosi, Rahm do not scare Rep. DeFazio
By Walter Alarkon
12/18/09
Rep. Peter DeFazio’s phone rang. On the other end was Rahm Emanuel.
The White House chief of staff last month expressed frustration with DeFazio’s resignation calls for President Barack Obama’s top two economic aides — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House chief economist Larry Summers — and appealed for cooperation, according to DeFazio.
But Emanuel, known for his blunt manner and ability to bend members of his party to his will, did not raise his voice with the Oregon Democrat.
“Rahm does not yell at me,” DeFazio said, “because he knows that I yell back.”
Others are learning that DeFazio, who has served in the House since 1987 and describes himself as a “progressive populist,” is not easily intimidated. He has emerged in recent months as one of the most vocal liberal critics of the Obama administration, blasting the president’s team for not getting tough enough with Wall Street. He’s also taken on his own party for failing to move left-leaning legislation through the Congress.
Personal calls from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former Vice President Al Gore couldn’t persuade him to vote for the Speaker’s climate change bill. He also opposed the $787 billion stimulus, citing concerns that only 7 percent was devoted to infrastructure spending.
DeFazio was one of only two Democrats to vote against those measures and the $700 billion bank bailout. (The other was Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) a Blue Dog conservative.)
Yet he’s also a pro-gun Democrat who has a B rating from the National Rifle Association.
“I would have less of a voice and I would have less respect if I voted for things I didn’t believe in because of pressure from the leadership,” DeFazio told The Hill in an interview.
Obama himself has taken notice.
“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama told DeFazio during a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, according to members afterward.
But poking a stick at those in power is what DeFazio does.
He gives partial credit for his special brand of liberalism to having worked at a country club as a teenager. Each summer, his father ran a camp for troubled inner-city kids on Cape Cod, where they caddied for golfers at a country club. DeFazio would work alongside the kids.
“They were servants for the rich, as was I,” he said. “I shagged golf balls for rich people. I carried golf clubs for rich people, and I learned very early on, when I was pretty young, that this was a group of people that had nothing special to offer to me or to society.”
His populism has played well back home. DeFazio won his 2008 election with 82 percent of the vote, even though his district isn’t overwhelmingly Democratic. Obama won it by 11 percentage points, but President George W. Bush won nearly as many votes as Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004.
“He is incredibly popular in a district that is actually somewhat difficult for a Democrat,” said Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.), who says DeFazio does it by standing up for his beliefs.
DeFazio has been a leading liberal voice complaining that the Democratic Congress and White House have failed to capitalize on significant victories in last year’s elections. His latest target is the Senate, where he says Democrats’ struggle to move healthcare legislation is preventing the Congress from sending a job-creation bill to the president’s desk. With the unemployment rate at 10 percent, House Democrats see jobs as the No. 1 campaign issue heading into the midterm election year.
“It’s just incredible frustration,” DeFazio said. “The killing ground of the Senate is ultimately, potentially, the killing ground of the Democratic Party.”
DeFazio and other House Democrats led what he called a “revolt” at a caucus meeting several weeks ago. Though Democratic leaders called the meeting to discuss the president’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, rank-and-file members began talking instead about jobs.
DeFazio stood up and called for attaching a new job-creation bill to the annual defense-spending measure, which typically gets bipartisan support and is considered must-pass legislation. His speech and others in favor of a new jobs bill drew cheers from colleagues, said House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.).
DeFazio has spent most of his time over the past year pushing for the $500 billion, six-year transportation reauthorization bill. DeFazio, the chairman of the House Highways and Transit subcommittee, has argued infrastructure could lead to far more jobs and have a much more lasting impact than tax cuts or other stimulus spending. While Pelosi has thrown her support behind the bill, sponsored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the Senate and the White House, reluctant to raise the gas tax or other levies to pay for the bill, have said that it should be taken up next year.
DeFazio wants to tax Wall Street to help pay for the programs. Specifically, he wants a tax on financial transactions, which economists have said could generate $150 billion. Though Geithner has opposed it, DeFazio is holding out hope that Obama will find ways to get tougher on Wall Street.
He praised the president this week for dialing up his criticism of Wall Street bankers and the bonuses they’re expected to receive, just months after receiving billions in federal bailout dollars.
“That was one good speech by the president, but he’s got to mean it, he’s got to live it, he’s got to do it every day,” DeFazio said. “And these are tough people; these are the most powerful people in the world. They seem to control a majority of his economic team.”
Bernanke Named Time's Person of the Year
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126096701015693553.html
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Bernanke Named Time's Person of the Year
DAVID WESSEL
Time magazine named Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, as its person of the year.
"The main reason … is that he is the most important player guiding the world's most important economy. His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression, and he still wields unrivaled power over our money, our jobs, our savings and our national future. The decisions he has made, and those he has yet to make, will shape the path of our prosperity, the direction of our politics and our relationship to the world," the weekly said in a story posted on its Web site.
Mr. Bernanke was chosen over runners-up Gen. Stanley McChrystal, "the Chinese worker," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and runner Usain Bolt.
Write to David Wessel at capital@wsj.com
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Bernanke Named Time's Person of the Year
DAVID WESSEL
Time magazine named Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, as its person of the year.
"The main reason … is that he is the most important player guiding the world's most important economy. His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression, and he still wields unrivaled power over our money, our jobs, our savings and our national future. The decisions he has made, and those he has yet to make, will shape the path of our prosperity, the direction of our politics and our relationship to the world," the weekly said in a story posted on its Web site.
Mr. Bernanke was chosen over runners-up Gen. Stanley McChrystal, "the Chinese worker," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and runner Usain Bolt.
Write to David Wessel at capital@wsj.com
Monday, August 24, 2009
How To Not Provide Health Care
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/congress_deadlocked_over_how_to
Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care
August 18, 2009 Issue 45•34
WASHINGTON—After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.
"Both parties understand that the current system is broken," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. "But what we can't seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue."
"Ultimately, though, it's our responsibility as lawmakers to put these differences aside and focus on refusing Americans the health care they deserve," Pelosi added.
The legislative stalemate largely stems from competing ideologies deeply rooted along party lines. Democrats want to create a government-run system for not providing health care, while Republicans say coverage is best denied by allowing private insurers to make it unaffordable for as many citizens as possible.
"We have over 40 million people without insurance in this country today, and that is unacceptable," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said. "If we would just quit squabbling so much, we could get that number up to 50 or even 100 million. Why, there's no reason we can't work together to deny health care to everyone but the richest 1 percent of the population."
"That's what America is all about," he added.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said on Meet The Press that Republicans would never agree to a plan that doesn't allow citizens the choice to be denied medical care in the private sector.
"Americans don't need some government official telling them they don't have the proper coverage to receive treatment," Boehner said. "What they need is massive insurance companies to become even more rich and powerful by withholding from average citizens the care they so desperately require. We're talking about people's health and the obscene profits associated with that, after all."
Though there remain irreconcilable points, both parties have reached some common ground in recent weeks. Senate leaders Harry Reid (D-NV) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) point to Congress' failure to pass legislation before a July 31 deadline as proof of just how serious lawmakers are about stringing along the American people and never actually reforming the health care industry in any meaningful way.
"People should know that every day we are working without their best interests in mind," Reid said. "But the goal here is not to push through some watered-down bill that only denies health care to a few Americans here and a few Americans there. The goal is to recognize that all Americans have a God-given right to proper medical attention and then make sure there's no chance in hell that ever happens."
"No matter what we come up with," Reid continued, "rest assured that millions of citizens will remain dangerously uninsured, and the inflated health care industry will continue to bankrupt the country for decades."
Other lawmakers stressed that, while there has been some progress, the window of cooperation was closing.
"When you get into the nuts and bolts of how best not to provide people with care essential to their survival, there are many things to take into consideration," Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said. "I believe we can create a plan for Americans that allows them to not be able to go to the hospital, not get the treatment they need, and ultimately whither away and die. But we've got to act fast."
For his part, President Barack Obama claimed to be optimistic, even saying he believes that a health care denial bill will pass in both houses of Congress by the end of the year.
"We have an opportunity to do something truly historic in 2009," Obama said to a mostly silent crowd during a town hall meeting in Virginia yesterday. "I promise I will only sign a clear and comprehensive health care bill that fully denies coverage to you, your sick mother, her husband, middle-class Americans, single-parent households, the unemployed, and most importantly, anyone in need of emergency medical attention."
"This administration is committed to not providing health care," Obama added. "Not just for this generation of Americans, but for many generations to come."
Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care
August 18, 2009 Issue 45•34
WASHINGTON—After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.
"Both parties understand that the current system is broken," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. "But what we can't seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue."
"Ultimately, though, it's our responsibility as lawmakers to put these differences aside and focus on refusing Americans the health care they deserve," Pelosi added.
The legislative stalemate largely stems from competing ideologies deeply rooted along party lines. Democrats want to create a government-run system for not providing health care, while Republicans say coverage is best denied by allowing private insurers to make it unaffordable for as many citizens as possible.
"We have over 40 million people without insurance in this country today, and that is unacceptable," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said. "If we would just quit squabbling so much, we could get that number up to 50 or even 100 million. Why, there's no reason we can't work together to deny health care to everyone but the richest 1 percent of the population."
"That's what America is all about," he added.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said on Meet The Press that Republicans would never agree to a plan that doesn't allow citizens the choice to be denied medical care in the private sector.
"Americans don't need some government official telling them they don't have the proper coverage to receive treatment," Boehner said. "What they need is massive insurance companies to become even more rich and powerful by withholding from average citizens the care they so desperately require. We're talking about people's health and the obscene profits associated with that, after all."
Though there remain irreconcilable points, both parties have reached some common ground in recent weeks. Senate leaders Harry Reid (D-NV) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) point to Congress' failure to pass legislation before a July 31 deadline as proof of just how serious lawmakers are about stringing along the American people and never actually reforming the health care industry in any meaningful way.
"People should know that every day we are working without their best interests in mind," Reid said. "But the goal here is not to push through some watered-down bill that only denies health care to a few Americans here and a few Americans there. The goal is to recognize that all Americans have a God-given right to proper medical attention and then make sure there's no chance in hell that ever happens."
"No matter what we come up with," Reid continued, "rest assured that millions of citizens will remain dangerously uninsured, and the inflated health care industry will continue to bankrupt the country for decades."
Other lawmakers stressed that, while there has been some progress, the window of cooperation was closing.
"When you get into the nuts and bolts of how best not to provide people with care essential to their survival, there are many things to take into consideration," Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said. "I believe we can create a plan for Americans that allows them to not be able to go to the hospital, not get the treatment they need, and ultimately whither away and die. But we've got to act fast."
For his part, President Barack Obama claimed to be optimistic, even saying he believes that a health care denial bill will pass in both houses of Congress by the end of the year.
"We have an opportunity to do something truly historic in 2009," Obama said to a mostly silent crowd during a town hall meeting in Virginia yesterday. "I promise I will only sign a clear and comprehensive health care bill that fully denies coverage to you, your sick mother, her husband, middle-class Americans, single-parent households, the unemployed, and most importantly, anyone in need of emergency medical attention."
"This administration is committed to not providing health care," Obama added. "Not just for this generation of Americans, but for many generations to come."
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Cheney kept CIA program from Congress
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/11/cheney.surveillance/
Cheney kept CIA program from Congress, source says
Story Highlights
Cheney ordered CIA to withhold info on counterterrorism program, source tells CNN
Program reportedly initiated after 9/11 attacks, stopped by CIA Director Panetta
House Democrats recently wrote letter claiming CIA misled Congress for years
From Pam Benson
CNN National Security Producer
7-11-9
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CIA withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress during the Bush administration on direct orders from then-Vice President Dick Cheney, current CIA director Leon Panetta told members of Congress, a knowledgeable source confirmed to CNN.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly ordered the CIA to withhold information about counterterrorism.
The disclosure to the House and Senate intelligence committees about Cheney's involvement by Panetta was first reported in the New York Times. Efforts to contact Cheney for reaction were unsuccessful late Saturday.
The source who spoke to CNN did not want to be identified by name because the matter is classified, and CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined comment on the report.
"It's not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing," Gimigliano said. "When a CIA unit brought this matter to Director Panetta's attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect."
The fact that Panetta recently briefed lawmakers on an unspecified counterterrorism program was first revealed Wednesday, when a letter from seven House Democrats to Panetta was made public. The June 26 letter characterizes Panetta as testifying that the CIA "concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week."
The letter contained no details about what information the CIA officials allegedly concealed or how they purportedly misled members of Congress.
A knowledgeable source familiar with the matter said the counterterrorism program in question was initiated shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
The program was on-again, off-again and was never fully operational, but was rather, a tool put on the shelf that could have been used, the source said. Panetta has put an end to the program, according to the source.
The disclosures follow a May spat between the spy agency and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who accused the CIA of misleading Congress during a secret 2002 briefing on harsh interrogation techniques being used on terrorism suspects. The CIA responded that Pelosi was told about the harsh techniques, including waterboarding, at the briefing.
However, the June 26 letter from the seven House Democrats noted that Panetta told CIA employees in a May 15 letter -- a response to the Pelosi allegation -- that it was not CIA policy to mislead Congress. The letter from the House Democrats asked Panetta to correct his May 15 statement "in light of your testimony."
Asked about the Democrats' letter, CIA spokesman George Little said Panetta "stands by his May 15 statement."
"This agency and this director believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently informed. Director Panetta's actions back that up," Little said in a statement. "As the letter from these ... representatives notes, it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees."
The latest revelations come as lawmakers consider expanding the number of House and Senate members privy to the kind of secret briefing that Pelosi received.
The White House opposes a measure that would increase the number of briefing participants from the current eight to 40 members of Congress. A White House memo warned President Obama's senior advisers would recommend a veto of the bill if it contained the expanded briefing provision.
Cheney kept CIA program from Congress, source says
Story Highlights
Cheney ordered CIA to withhold info on counterterrorism program, source tells CNN
Program reportedly initiated after 9/11 attacks, stopped by CIA Director Panetta
House Democrats recently wrote letter claiming CIA misled Congress for years
From Pam Benson
CNN National Security Producer
7-11-9
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CIA withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress during the Bush administration on direct orders from then-Vice President Dick Cheney, current CIA director Leon Panetta told members of Congress, a knowledgeable source confirmed to CNN.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly ordered the CIA to withhold information about counterterrorism.
The disclosure to the House and Senate intelligence committees about Cheney's involvement by Panetta was first reported in the New York Times. Efforts to contact Cheney for reaction were unsuccessful late Saturday.
The source who spoke to CNN did not want to be identified by name because the matter is classified, and CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined comment on the report.
"It's not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing," Gimigliano said. "When a CIA unit brought this matter to Director Panetta's attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect."
The fact that Panetta recently briefed lawmakers on an unspecified counterterrorism program was first revealed Wednesday, when a letter from seven House Democrats to Panetta was made public. The June 26 letter characterizes Panetta as testifying that the CIA "concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week."
The letter contained no details about what information the CIA officials allegedly concealed or how they purportedly misled members of Congress.
A knowledgeable source familiar with the matter said the counterterrorism program in question was initiated shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
The program was on-again, off-again and was never fully operational, but was rather, a tool put on the shelf that could have been used, the source said. Panetta has put an end to the program, according to the source.
The disclosures follow a May spat between the spy agency and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who accused the CIA of misleading Congress during a secret 2002 briefing on harsh interrogation techniques being used on terrorism suspects. The CIA responded that Pelosi was told about the harsh techniques, including waterboarding, at the briefing.
However, the June 26 letter from the seven House Democrats noted that Panetta told CIA employees in a May 15 letter -- a response to the Pelosi allegation -- that it was not CIA policy to mislead Congress. The letter from the House Democrats asked Panetta to correct his May 15 statement "in light of your testimony."
Asked about the Democrats' letter, CIA spokesman George Little said Panetta "stands by his May 15 statement."
"This agency and this director believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently informed. Director Panetta's actions back that up," Little said in a statement. "As the letter from these ... representatives notes, it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees."
The latest revelations come as lawmakers consider expanding the number of House and Senate members privy to the kind of secret briefing that Pelosi received.
The White House opposes a measure that would increase the number of briefing participants from the current eight to 40 members of Congress. A White House memo warned President Obama's senior advisers would recommend a veto of the bill if it contained the expanded briefing provision.
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/us/politics/12intel.html
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
By SCOTT SHANE
July 11, 2009
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.
Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.
The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.
The law requires the president to make sure the intelligence committees “are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.” But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”
In addition, for covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden, the law says that briefings can be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight, consisting of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees.
The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.
An intelligence agency spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, declined on Saturday to comment on the report of Mr. Cheney’s role.
“It’s not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “When a C.I.A. unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect.”
Members of Congress have differed on the significance of the program, whose details remained secret and which even some Democrats have said was properly classified. Most of those interviewed, however, have said that it was an important activity that should have been disclosed to the intelligence committees.
Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.
In the tense months after Sept. 11, when Bush administration officials believed new Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment, intelligence officials brainstormed about radical countermeasures. It was in that atmosphere that the unidentified program was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress, officials said.
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said last week that he believed Congress would have approved of the program only in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, he said, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.
One intelligence official, who would speak about the classified program only on condition of anonymity, said there was no resistance inside the C.I.A. to Mr. Panetta’s decision to end the program last month.
“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” the official said. “That’s worth remembering amid all the drama.”
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for George J. Tenet, who was the C.I.A. director when the unidentified program began, declined to comment on Saturday, noting that the program remained classified.
In the eight years of his vice presidency, Mr. Cheney was the Bush administration’s most vehement defender of the secrecy of government activities, particularly in the intelligence arena. He went to the Supreme Court to keep secret the advisers to his task force on energy, and won.
A report released on Friday by the inspectors general of five agencies about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program makes clear that Mr. Cheney’s legal adviser, David S. Addington, had to approve personally every government official who was told about the program. The report said “the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program” frustrated F.B.I. agents who were assigned to follow up on tips it had turned up.
Mr. Addington could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
Questions over the adequacy and the truthfulness of the C.I.A.’s briefings for Congress date to the creation of the intelligence oversight committees in the 1970s after disclosures of agency assassination and mind-control programs and other abuses. But complaints increased in the Bush years, when the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies took the major role in pursuing Al Qaeda.
The use of harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, for instance, was first described to a handful of lawmakers for the first time in September 2002. Ms. Pelosi and the C.I.A. have disagreed about what she was told, but in any case, the briefing occurred only after a terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, had been waterboarded 83 times.
Democrats in Congress, who contend that the Bush administration improperly limited Congressional briefings on intelligence, are seeking to change the National Security Act to permit the full intelligence committees to be briefed on more matters. President Obama, however, has threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill if the changes go too far, and the proposal is now being negotiated by the White House and the intelligence committees.
Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat of Illinois on the House committee, wrote on Friday to the chairman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat of Texas, to demand an investigation of the unidentified program and why Congress was not told of it. Aides said Mr. Reyes was reviewing the matter.
“There’s been a history of difficulty in getting the C.I.A. to tell us what they should,” said Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat of Washington. “We will absolutely be held accountable for anything the agency does.”
Mr. Hoekstra, the intelligence committee’s ranking Republican, said he would not judge the agency harshly in the case of the unidentified program, because it was not fully operational. But he said that in general, the agency had not been as forthcoming as the law required.
“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
By SCOTT SHANE
July 11, 2009
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.
Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.
The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.
The law requires the president to make sure the intelligence committees “are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.” But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”
In addition, for covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden, the law says that briefings can be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight, consisting of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees.
The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.
An intelligence agency spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, declined on Saturday to comment on the report of Mr. Cheney’s role.
“It’s not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “When a C.I.A. unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect.”
Members of Congress have differed on the significance of the program, whose details remained secret and which even some Democrats have said was properly classified. Most of those interviewed, however, have said that it was an important activity that should have been disclosed to the intelligence committees.
Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.
In the tense months after Sept. 11, when Bush administration officials believed new Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment, intelligence officials brainstormed about radical countermeasures. It was in that atmosphere that the unidentified program was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress, officials said.
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said last week that he believed Congress would have approved of the program only in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, he said, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.
One intelligence official, who would speak about the classified program only on condition of anonymity, said there was no resistance inside the C.I.A. to Mr. Panetta’s decision to end the program last month.
“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” the official said. “That’s worth remembering amid all the drama.”
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for George J. Tenet, who was the C.I.A. director when the unidentified program began, declined to comment on Saturday, noting that the program remained classified.
In the eight years of his vice presidency, Mr. Cheney was the Bush administration’s most vehement defender of the secrecy of government activities, particularly in the intelligence arena. He went to the Supreme Court to keep secret the advisers to his task force on energy, and won.
A report released on Friday by the inspectors general of five agencies about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program makes clear that Mr. Cheney’s legal adviser, David S. Addington, had to approve personally every government official who was told about the program. The report said “the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program” frustrated F.B.I. agents who were assigned to follow up on tips it had turned up.
Mr. Addington could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
Questions over the adequacy and the truthfulness of the C.I.A.’s briefings for Congress date to the creation of the intelligence oversight committees in the 1970s after disclosures of agency assassination and mind-control programs and other abuses. But complaints increased in the Bush years, when the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies took the major role in pursuing Al Qaeda.
The use of harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, for instance, was first described to a handful of lawmakers for the first time in September 2002. Ms. Pelosi and the C.I.A. have disagreed about what she was told, but in any case, the briefing occurred only after a terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, had been waterboarded 83 times.
Democrats in Congress, who contend that the Bush administration improperly limited Congressional briefings on intelligence, are seeking to change the National Security Act to permit the full intelligence committees to be briefed on more matters. President Obama, however, has threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill if the changes go too far, and the proposal is now being negotiated by the White House and the intelligence committees.
Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat of Illinois on the House committee, wrote on Friday to the chairman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat of Texas, to demand an investigation of the unidentified program and why Congress was not told of it. Aides said Mr. Reyes was reviewing the matter.
“There’s been a history of difficulty in getting the C.I.A. to tell us what they should,” said Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat of Washington. “We will absolutely be held accountable for anything the agency does.”
Mr. Hoekstra, the intelligence committee’s ranking Republican, said he would not judge the agency harshly in the case of the unidentified program, because it was not fully operational. But he said that in general, the agency had not been as forthcoming as the law required.
“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Tiananmen Anniversary Muted in Mainland China
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/04/AR2009060403101.html
Tiananmen Anniversary Muted in Mainland China
By Ariana Eunjung Cha and K.C. Ng
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 5, 2009
BEIJING, June 4 -- Mainland China remained quiet Thursday on the 20th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown, while tens of thousands of people staged a protest in Hong Kong.
Beijing, the capital, was on virtual lockdown. Key foreign news Web sites were blocked, dissidents were placed under house arrest, and police blanketed the vast square where a still-undetermined number of pro-democracy activists were killed in a violent clash with the military June 4, 1989. Journalists were kept away from the scene.
Several foreign governments called on Beijing this week to revisit its policy of ignoring the crackdown. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement Wednesday that China "should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal."
On Tuesday, Congress urged China to agree to a U.N.-backed inquiry into the crackdown, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she had directly petitioned President Hu Jintao to free the estimated 30 people still being held for participating in the protests.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel commented in a speech Thursday that "June 4, 1989 . . . marked a terrible sacrifice in Tiananmen Square."
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, who has pushed for closer ties with the mainland, said: "This painful chapter in history must be faced. Pretending it never happened is not an option."
Over the years, Beijing has taken a two-pronged approach to the massacre. Domestically, the incident is ignored in history books, and discussion about it is banned to the point that many young people know nothing of what happened. In arguments directed to the international community, Beijing has said the crackdown was necessary to ensure social stability, which it says was a precondition for the market-driven changes that have since transformed China into the world's third-largest economy.
On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang limited his remarks to a sentence: "On the political incident that took place in the 1980s, the party and the government have already reached a conclusion."
In the weeks before the anniversary, authorities erased most traces of the massacre from the capital. Twitter and other Internet services that people could have used to coordinate gatherings were blocked, as were news Web sites such as CNN and the BBC. Foreign newspapers and magazines that had been covering commemorative protests in Hong Kong were delivered with pages ripped out. Writers, activists and even mothers of victims were put under surveillance or house arrest.
On Thursday, the only place on Chinese soil where a large-scale protest took place was Hong Kong, the former British colony that has maintained its own legal system since it reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.
Police estimated that 62,800 people, dressed either in white or funereal black, showed up for a vigil in downtown Victoria Park. Organizers put the figure closer to 150,000. Either way, the turnout was the largest since the annual event was first held in Hong Kong in 1990.
Xiong Yan, one of the 21 student leaders placed on Beijing's "most wanted" list in 1989 and now a U.S. resident, attended the vigil, but Wuer Kaixi, No. 2 on the list, was back in Taiwan after being denied entry.
The Tiananmen Mothers -- a Chinese democracy group led by Ding Zilin, whose teenage son was killed at the square -- thanked the Hong Kong people for their support. In a statement, the group accused the Chinese government of using "the economy to lure and buy people."
Lester Lai, 22, a recent university graduate, said he had come to the vigil because "economic progress is never an excuse for a government to kill its people."
Deng Ying, a 30-year-old tourist from the mainland, said that in China, the authorities take advantage of the fact that they can ban "anything they are unhappy about."
In this instance, she said, Hong Kong was acting as "China's conscience."
Special correspondent Ng reported from Hong Kong.
Tiananmen Anniversary Muted in Mainland China
By Ariana Eunjung Cha and K.C. Ng
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 5, 2009
BEIJING, June 4 -- Mainland China remained quiet Thursday on the 20th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown, while tens of thousands of people staged a protest in Hong Kong.
Beijing, the capital, was on virtual lockdown. Key foreign news Web sites were blocked, dissidents were placed under house arrest, and police blanketed the vast square where a still-undetermined number of pro-democracy activists were killed in a violent clash with the military June 4, 1989. Journalists were kept away from the scene.
Several foreign governments called on Beijing this week to revisit its policy of ignoring the crackdown. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement Wednesday that China "should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal."
On Tuesday, Congress urged China to agree to a U.N.-backed inquiry into the crackdown, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she had directly petitioned President Hu Jintao to free the estimated 30 people still being held for participating in the protests.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel commented in a speech Thursday that "June 4, 1989 . . . marked a terrible sacrifice in Tiananmen Square."
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, who has pushed for closer ties with the mainland, said: "This painful chapter in history must be faced. Pretending it never happened is not an option."
Over the years, Beijing has taken a two-pronged approach to the massacre. Domestically, the incident is ignored in history books, and discussion about it is banned to the point that many young people know nothing of what happened. In arguments directed to the international community, Beijing has said the crackdown was necessary to ensure social stability, which it says was a precondition for the market-driven changes that have since transformed China into the world's third-largest economy.
On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang limited his remarks to a sentence: "On the political incident that took place in the 1980s, the party and the government have already reached a conclusion."
In the weeks before the anniversary, authorities erased most traces of the massacre from the capital. Twitter and other Internet services that people could have used to coordinate gatherings were blocked, as were news Web sites such as CNN and the BBC. Foreign newspapers and magazines that had been covering commemorative protests in Hong Kong were delivered with pages ripped out. Writers, activists and even mothers of victims were put under surveillance or house arrest.
On Thursday, the only place on Chinese soil where a large-scale protest took place was Hong Kong, the former British colony that has maintained its own legal system since it reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.
Police estimated that 62,800 people, dressed either in white or funereal black, showed up for a vigil in downtown Victoria Park. Organizers put the figure closer to 150,000. Either way, the turnout was the largest since the annual event was first held in Hong Kong in 1990.
Xiong Yan, one of the 21 student leaders placed on Beijing's "most wanted" list in 1989 and now a U.S. resident, attended the vigil, but Wuer Kaixi, No. 2 on the list, was back in Taiwan after being denied entry.
The Tiananmen Mothers -- a Chinese democracy group led by Ding Zilin, whose teenage son was killed at the square -- thanked the Hong Kong people for their support. In a statement, the group accused the Chinese government of using "the economy to lure and buy people."
Lester Lai, 22, a recent university graduate, said he had come to the vigil because "economic progress is never an excuse for a government to kill its people."
Deng Ying, a 30-year-old tourist from the mainland, said that in China, the authorities take advantage of the fact that they can ban "anything they are unhappy about."
In this instance, she said, Hong Kong was acting as "China's conscience."
Special correspondent Ng reported from Hong Kong.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Obama Admin Continues To Protect Bush Torture
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-admin-continues-to-protect-bush-torture-criminals-denies-photos-show-rape.html
Obama Admin Continues To Protect Bush Torture Criminals; Denies Photos Show Rape
Government sets up crude strawman by claiming London Telegraph is lying, when they were merely quoting the military’s own appointed investigator into the torture scandal, whose report confirmed that rape of women and children took place
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The White House and the Pentagon have ridiculously denied the facts of their own internal military investigation by claiming that photos taken at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities do not show prison guards raping women and children, in a continuation of the Obama administration’s zealous mission to protect the perpetrators of the Bush torture program who broke national and international law.
As we reported earlier today, in an interview with the London Telegraph, Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, confirmed the details of his original army report, that the unreleased photos showed rape and sexual abuse of women and minors.
“At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee,” reports the Telegraph, adding, “Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.”
Taguba also verified the credibility of eyewitness statements from other detainees that described an American-Egyptian male translator in uniform raping teenage boys.
“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba told the Telegraph.
Taguba was only reiterating the results of a 2004 military investigation into the torture scandal, which he was appointed to undertake by CENTCOM, and yet the Pentagon and the White House have today laughably attempted to deny the facts of their own internal investigation.
The government is trying to pull off a crude bait and switch ploy in claiming that certain photos they considered for release but decided to keep private do not show the rape of women and children. The facts of Taguba’s military report detail that rapes did occur and they were photographed by other prison guards. By claiming that a certain restricted selection of photos do not show rape, the government is trying to enforce the notion that no rapes occurred whatsoever.
They are also setting up a strawman argument by blaming British newspapers and in particular the London Telegraph for falsely reporting that the photos show rape, without mentioning the fact that the newspapers are merely reporting what the military’s own investigator, U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, told them was in the official military report into the torture scandal.
It’s a crude con game that a 5-year-old could pull apart.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Daily Telegraph newspaper had shown “an inability to get the facts right,” reports Reuters.
How can they get the facts wrong when they are merely relaying what CENTCOM’s own appointed investigator told them?
“That news organization has completely mischaracterized the images,” Whitman told reporters. “None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article.”
Again, in framing the issue in this context, the Pentagon is attempting to absolve itself and discredit the fact that U.S. prison guards did rape women and minors, a subject that is only now getting wide coverage, much to the chagrin of the criminally complicit Obama administration, despite it being explained in black and white in Taguba’s military report over five years ago.
Taguba merely confirmed to the Telegraph what was in his original report, eyewitness statements from other detainees that described an American-Egyptian male translator in uniform raping teenage boys, while others took pictures.
Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
Further details were also made public by New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who in July 2004 told an ACLU conference,
“Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay?” said Hersh. “Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs similarly chastised the Telegraph for quoting the military’s own investigator, stating that the “article is wrong and mischaracterizes the photos that are in question.”
Asked if he had actually seen the photos, Gibbs replied, “I have not seen the photos,” proving that his phony righteousness was not based on reality but what he had been told to say by his bosses.
In perpetrating this charade, the Obama White House is merely advancing its mission to protect Bush officials and CIA agents from prosecution for torture and sexual abuse. As we have discovered, this is because top Democrats like Nancy Pelosi are complicit in the illegal torture program because they gave their approval for it to be instituted in the first place.
Obama Admin Continues To Protect Bush Torture Criminals; Denies Photos Show Rape
Government sets up crude strawman by claiming London Telegraph is lying, when they were merely quoting the military’s own appointed investigator into the torture scandal, whose report confirmed that rape of women and children took place
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The White House and the Pentagon have ridiculously denied the facts of their own internal military investigation by claiming that photos taken at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities do not show prison guards raping women and children, in a continuation of the Obama administration’s zealous mission to protect the perpetrators of the Bush torture program who broke national and international law.
As we reported earlier today, in an interview with the London Telegraph, Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, confirmed the details of his original army report, that the unreleased photos showed rape and sexual abuse of women and minors.
“At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee,” reports the Telegraph, adding, “Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.”
Taguba also verified the credibility of eyewitness statements from other detainees that described an American-Egyptian male translator in uniform raping teenage boys.
“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba told the Telegraph.
Taguba was only reiterating the results of a 2004 military investigation into the torture scandal, which he was appointed to undertake by CENTCOM, and yet the Pentagon and the White House have today laughably attempted to deny the facts of their own internal investigation.
The government is trying to pull off a crude bait and switch ploy in claiming that certain photos they considered for release but decided to keep private do not show the rape of women and children. The facts of Taguba’s military report detail that rapes did occur and they were photographed by other prison guards. By claiming that a certain restricted selection of photos do not show rape, the government is trying to enforce the notion that no rapes occurred whatsoever.
They are also setting up a strawman argument by blaming British newspapers and in particular the London Telegraph for falsely reporting that the photos show rape, without mentioning the fact that the newspapers are merely reporting what the military’s own investigator, U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, told them was in the official military report into the torture scandal.
It’s a crude con game that a 5-year-old could pull apart.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Daily Telegraph newspaper had shown “an inability to get the facts right,” reports Reuters.
How can they get the facts wrong when they are merely relaying what CENTCOM’s own appointed investigator told them?
“That news organization has completely mischaracterized the images,” Whitman told reporters. “None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article.”
Again, in framing the issue in this context, the Pentagon is attempting to absolve itself and discredit the fact that U.S. prison guards did rape women and minors, a subject that is only now getting wide coverage, much to the chagrin of the criminally complicit Obama administration, despite it being explained in black and white in Taguba’s military report over five years ago.
Taguba merely confirmed to the Telegraph what was in his original report, eyewitness statements from other detainees that described an American-Egyptian male translator in uniform raping teenage boys, while others took pictures.
Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
Further details were also made public by New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who in July 2004 told an ACLU conference,
“Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay?” said Hersh. “Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs similarly chastised the Telegraph for quoting the military’s own investigator, stating that the “article is wrong and mischaracterizes the photos that are in question.”
Asked if he had actually seen the photos, Gibbs replied, “I have not seen the photos,” proving that his phony righteousness was not based on reality but what he had been told to say by his bosses.
In perpetrating this charade, the Obama White House is merely advancing its mission to protect Bush officials and CIA agents from prosecution for torture and sexual abuse. As we have discovered, this is because top Democrats like Nancy Pelosi are complicit in the illegal torture program because they gave their approval for it to be instituted in the first place.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Panetta fires back at Pelosi on interrogations
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pelosi16-2009may16,0,7605785.story
Panetta fires back at Pelosi on interrogations
The CIA director says agency records show that officials truthfully briefed the House speaker in 2002. He also urges CIA employees to tune out the uproar.
By Greg Miller
May 16, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- CIA Director Leon E. Panetta on Friday fired back at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying agency records showed officials had briefed her truthfully about its interrogation program. He also urged the CIA workforce to ignore the political rancor consuming Capitol Hill.
Panetta's assertions came one day after Pelosi accused the agency of misleading Congress by failing to inform her during a fall 2002 briefing that the CIA had used waterboarding and other severe methods on an Al Qaeda suspect.
Panetta's written statement, which was directed to CIA employees but released publicly, marked a rare instance in which the secretive agency's leadership has chosen to publicly challenge a high-ranking lawmaker.
"Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," said Panetta, a former member of the House of Representatives from Monterey. "That is against our laws and our values."
The statement is likely to keep Pelosi at the center of a roiling controversy over CIA interrogation methods that President Obama banned during his first week in office. As it has evolved, it now pits Pelosi against Panetta, another prominent California Democrat.
Republicans have accused Pelosi of hypocrisy for being a vocal critic of the CIA's interrogation operations even though she appears to have made little attempt to alter the program when she first learned about it more than six years ago.
CIA records indicate that Pelosi attended a briefing in September 2002 during which she was told about agency interrogation techniques that had been used. The records do not indicate with certainty that waterboarding was covered.
A month earlier, the CIA had used the simulated drowning method on Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times.
Pelosi has maintained that she was not told that waterboarding was being used, only that it was a method under consideration. But on Thursday she raised the stakes by accusing the CIA of deliberately concealing the truth.
"The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed," she said Thursday. She acknowledged that five months later she was informed by a senior aide that waterboarding was being used.
The Obama administration has sought to avoid being drawn into the controversy, but Panetta emerged Friday to defend the agency. Panetta did not directly say that Pelosi was wrong in her assertion, citing agency records.
"Our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed.' "
In his statement, Panetta also asked agency employees to overlook the controversy.
"My advice -- indeed, my direction -- to you is straightforward," Panetta told employees. "Ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. . . . Our task is to tell it like it is -- even if that's not what people always want to hear."
greg.miller@latimes.com
Panetta fires back at Pelosi on interrogations
The CIA director says agency records show that officials truthfully briefed the House speaker in 2002. He also urges CIA employees to tune out the uproar.
By Greg Miller
May 16, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- CIA Director Leon E. Panetta on Friday fired back at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying agency records showed officials had briefed her truthfully about its interrogation program. He also urged the CIA workforce to ignore the political rancor consuming Capitol Hill.
Panetta's assertions came one day after Pelosi accused the agency of misleading Congress by failing to inform her during a fall 2002 briefing that the CIA had used waterboarding and other severe methods on an Al Qaeda suspect.
Panetta's written statement, which was directed to CIA employees but released publicly, marked a rare instance in which the secretive agency's leadership has chosen to publicly challenge a high-ranking lawmaker.
"Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," said Panetta, a former member of the House of Representatives from Monterey. "That is against our laws and our values."
The statement is likely to keep Pelosi at the center of a roiling controversy over CIA interrogation methods that President Obama banned during his first week in office. As it has evolved, it now pits Pelosi against Panetta, another prominent California Democrat.
Republicans have accused Pelosi of hypocrisy for being a vocal critic of the CIA's interrogation operations even though she appears to have made little attempt to alter the program when she first learned about it more than six years ago.
CIA records indicate that Pelosi attended a briefing in September 2002 during which she was told about agency interrogation techniques that had been used. The records do not indicate with certainty that waterboarding was covered.
A month earlier, the CIA had used the simulated drowning method on Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times.
Pelosi has maintained that she was not told that waterboarding was being used, only that it was a method under consideration. But on Thursday she raised the stakes by accusing the CIA of deliberately concealing the truth.
"The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed," she said Thursday. She acknowledged that five months later she was informed by a senior aide that waterboarding was being used.
The Obama administration has sought to avoid being drawn into the controversy, but Panetta emerged Friday to defend the agency. Panetta did not directly say that Pelosi was wrong in her assertion, citing agency records.
"Our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed.' "
In his statement, Panetta also asked agency employees to overlook the controversy.
"My advice -- indeed, my direction -- to you is straightforward," Panetta told employees. "Ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. . . . Our task is to tell it like it is -- even if that's not what people always want to hear."
greg.miller@latimes.com
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Aide told Pelosi waterboarding had been used
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/12/pelosi.waterboarding/
Source: Aide told Pelosi waterboarding had been used
Story Highlights
Source says Nancy Pelosi was told by intelligence officer of waterboarding
The source also said because she wasn't personally briefed, Pelosi didn't object
She did support letter voicing concern about waterboarding, source says
Pelosi has been previously adamant she didn't know waterboarding was used
Tue May 12, 2009
From Deirdre Walsh
CNN Congressional Producer
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah.
Source says Nancy Pelosi didn't object about waterboard usage because she wasn't personally briefed about it.
This appears to contradict Pelosi's account that she was never told waterboarding actually happened, only that the administration was considering using it.
Sheehy attended a briefing in which waterboarding was discussed in February 2003, with Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, who took over Pelosi's spot as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
This source says Pelosi didn't object when she learned that waterboarding was being used because she had not been personally briefed about it -- only her aide had been told.
The source said Pelosi supported a letter that Harman sent to the administration at the time raising concerns. The source asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of matters discussed in classified intelligence briefings.
Pelosi admits attending one briefing in September 2002, but at a news conference last month, she was adamant that she did not know waterboarding was used.
"At that or any other briefing, and that was the only briefing that I was briefed on in that regard, we were not -- I repeat, we were not -- told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used, " Pelosi said on April 23.
Some Republicans have called for Pelosi to testify at congressional hearings.
The number two House Democrat -- Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland -- said Tuesday, "I think the facts need to get out" regarding what members of Congress had been told about harsh interrogations.
But when asked whether Pelosi testifying would be appropriate, Hoyer did not directly answer the question, saying, "The issue is what was done. If you don't have the facts pounded on the table, they (Republicans) are pounding on the table, or they are pounding on Speaker Pelosi. Take your pick. But they are doing so as a distraction, as a distraction from what was done in this case."
Source: Aide told Pelosi waterboarding had been used
Story Highlights
Source says Nancy Pelosi was told by intelligence officer of waterboarding
The source also said because she wasn't personally briefed, Pelosi didn't object
She did support letter voicing concern about waterboarding, source says
Pelosi has been previously adamant she didn't know waterboarding was used
Tue May 12, 2009
From Deirdre Walsh
CNN Congressional Producer
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah.
Source says Nancy Pelosi didn't object about waterboard usage because she wasn't personally briefed about it.
This appears to contradict Pelosi's account that she was never told waterboarding actually happened, only that the administration was considering using it.
Sheehy attended a briefing in which waterboarding was discussed in February 2003, with Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, who took over Pelosi's spot as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
This source says Pelosi didn't object when she learned that waterboarding was being used because she had not been personally briefed about it -- only her aide had been told.
The source said Pelosi supported a letter that Harman sent to the administration at the time raising concerns. The source asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of matters discussed in classified intelligence briefings.
Pelosi admits attending one briefing in September 2002, but at a news conference last month, she was adamant that she did not know waterboarding was used.
"At that or any other briefing, and that was the only briefing that I was briefed on in that regard, we were not -- I repeat, we were not -- told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used, " Pelosi said on April 23.
Some Republicans have called for Pelosi to testify at congressional hearings.
The number two House Democrat -- Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland -- said Tuesday, "I think the facts need to get out" regarding what members of Congress had been told about harsh interrogations.
But when asked whether Pelosi testifying would be appropriate, Hoyer did not directly answer the question, saying, "The issue is what was done. If you don't have the facts pounded on the table, they (Republicans) are pounding on the table, or they are pounding on Speaker Pelosi. Take your pick. But they are doing so as a distraction, as a distraction from what was done in this case."
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Top Democrats Complicit In Torture Cover-Up
http://www.prisonplanet.com/top-democrats-complicit-in-torture-cover-up.html
Top Democrats Complicit In Torture Cover-Up
The Obama administration is resisting an independent inquiry into the Bush torture program because top Democrats like Pelosi were complicit in approving illegal methods
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, April 24, 2009
We now know why top Democrats are protecting Bush administration officials from facing an inquiry into the illegal torture program - because several of them were actually complicit in giving their approval for such methods to be used.
The White House stressed again yesterday that it would not be pursuing an investigation of key Bush administration officials, despite the manifestly provable fact that the order to torture came from the very top, which was re-affirmed with the recent release of the Senate Armed Services Committee report.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stated yesterday, “I think the last few days might well be evidence of why something like this would likely just become a political back and forth.”
“By (definition), an independent commission would probably not be something that I would weigh in on if Congress were to create one of those,” he told reporters, according to AFP.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also said he opposed an independent torture probe, stating, “I think it would be very unwise, from my perspective, to start having commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are.”
In addition, upon the recent release of the torture memos, Obama’s right-hand man, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, told ABC News that top Bush administration officials “should not be prosecuted either and that’s not the place that we go.” Obama’s statement that accompanied the release of the torture memos stated, “In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”
Why are top Democrats so vehemently opposed to an independent inquiry into the blatantly illegal Bush torture program? This goes further than the crony self-interests of the two party monopoly - it turns out that top Democrats had foreknowledge of the torture and actually provided their unmitigated approval for the methods when presented with them by the CIA.
Despite Nancy Pelosi’s denial that Congress was informed that the CIA was illegally waterboarding detainees, the Senate committee report discovered that in 2002 Pelosi and three other members of Congress (one other Democrat and two Republicans) were given a virtual tour by the CIA of overseas detention sites and the torture tactics employed to try and make detainees talk. This was reported by the Washington Post in December 2007.
Democrats Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), all held oversight roles during this period. The Post reports that the lawmakers raised “no objections” to the interrogation methods demonstrated by the CIA and that in fact, “at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder.”
So in summary, at least four top Democrats were aware as far back as 2002 that the CIA was using torture tactics which were illegal under the Geneva Conventions on detainees. They gave their approval for such measures and, along with Republicans, advised that even harsher torture methods be employed.
Any independent investigation into the torture scandal will most probably uncover the fact that top Democrats like Pelosi, Harman, Graham and Rockefeller were complicit in approving the torture methods used by the CIA, which would also likely make them culpable to charges on the basis of knowingly covering up the fact that illegal actions which violate both the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution were taking place.
This is why Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic elite are so resistant to prosecuting Bush officials for devising the torture program - and have made every effort to protect them - because they were in on the fun and any truly independent inquiry would expose the fact that this whole debacle was a bipartisan cover-up from the very beginning.
Top Democrats Complicit In Torture Cover-Up
The Obama administration is resisting an independent inquiry into the Bush torture program because top Democrats like Pelosi were complicit in approving illegal methods
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, April 24, 2009
We now know why top Democrats are protecting Bush administration officials from facing an inquiry into the illegal torture program - because several of them were actually complicit in giving their approval for such methods to be used.
The White House stressed again yesterday that it would not be pursuing an investigation of key Bush administration officials, despite the manifestly provable fact that the order to torture came from the very top, which was re-affirmed with the recent release of the Senate Armed Services Committee report.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stated yesterday, “I think the last few days might well be evidence of why something like this would likely just become a political back and forth.”
“By (definition), an independent commission would probably not be something that I would weigh in on if Congress were to create one of those,” he told reporters, according to AFP.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also said he opposed an independent torture probe, stating, “I think it would be very unwise, from my perspective, to start having commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are.”
In addition, upon the recent release of the torture memos, Obama’s right-hand man, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, told ABC News that top Bush administration officials “should not be prosecuted either and that’s not the place that we go.” Obama’s statement that accompanied the release of the torture memos stated, “In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”
Why are top Democrats so vehemently opposed to an independent inquiry into the blatantly illegal Bush torture program? This goes further than the crony self-interests of the two party monopoly - it turns out that top Democrats had foreknowledge of the torture and actually provided their unmitigated approval for the methods when presented with them by the CIA.
Despite Nancy Pelosi’s denial that Congress was informed that the CIA was illegally waterboarding detainees, the Senate committee report discovered that in 2002 Pelosi and three other members of Congress (one other Democrat and two Republicans) were given a virtual tour by the CIA of overseas detention sites and the torture tactics employed to try and make detainees talk. This was reported by the Washington Post in December 2007.
Democrats Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), all held oversight roles during this period. The Post reports that the lawmakers raised “no objections” to the interrogation methods demonstrated by the CIA and that in fact, “at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder.”
So in summary, at least four top Democrats were aware as far back as 2002 that the CIA was using torture tactics which were illegal under the Geneva Conventions on detainees. They gave their approval for such measures and, along with Republicans, advised that even harsher torture methods be employed.
Any independent investigation into the torture scandal will most probably uncover the fact that top Democrats like Pelosi, Harman, Graham and Rockefeller were complicit in approving the torture methods used by the CIA, which would also likely make them culpable to charges on the basis of knowingly covering up the fact that illegal actions which violate both the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution were taking place.
This is why Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic elite are so resistant to prosecuting Bush officials for devising the torture program - and have made every effort to protect them - because they were in on the fun and any truly independent inquiry would expose the fact that this whole debacle was a bipartisan cover-up from the very beginning.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Gonzales blocked prosecution of Democrat...
http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/20/gonzales-blocked-prosecution-of-democrat-who-helped-keep-lid-on-wiretapping-story/
Gonzales ‘blocked prosecution of Democrat who helped keep lid on wiretapping story’
By John Byrne
April 20, 2009
A powerful California congresswoman was allegedly caught by an NSA wiretap in 2005 pledging to intervene in an espionage case involving Israeli lobbyists, Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein revealed Sunday.
Quoting former senior Bush Administration officials, the article also alleges that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales conspired to drop criminal action against the then-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman (D-CA), because he needed her help when a firestorm of criticism erupted in December 2005 after the New York Times published details about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.
According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.
Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program.
He was right.
On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”
According to a purported NSA transcript of the call between Harman and a suspected Israeli agent — which the article says was tapped legally under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and not part of the warrantless wiretapping program itself — Harman “was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference.”
“In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win,” Stein added.
Harman allegedly hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”
Harman was not chosen to lead Intelligence. Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tapped Rep. Silvestre Reyes.
The AIPAC case involved two lobbyists — Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen — who were charged with trying to obtain classified reports on US policy and sharing them with reporters and foreign diplomats.
A Harman spokesman vehemently denied the allegations.
“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,” Harman said in a statement to CQ. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.”
In 2006, Time revealed that the FBI was investigating Harman for supposedly trying to intervene in the AIPAC case. Later reports indicated, however, that the FBI had dropped the case for “lack of evidence.”
A source “with first-hand knowledge” of the taps told Stein the “no evidence” line was “bullshit.”
“I read those transcripts,” the source is quoted as saying.
However, Ron Kampeas, the Washington, DC bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, charges that “the Harman leaks smell to high heaven.” He suggests that the leaking of the story now may have more to do with the upcoming trial of the two former AIPAC lobbyists — and the weakness of the case against them — than with any past events.
Kampeas notes in particular that “the selected quotes from the alleged transcript do not necessarily add up to a quid pro quo.” He points out that the wiretapped conversation between Harman and the Israeli agent “took place in the summer or fall of 2005? and supposedly involved a promise to have Nancy Pelosi appoint Harman as chair of the Intel Committee if the Democrats took control of the House following the 2006 elections. However, those elections were then well over a year away, and Democratic victory was by no means assured.
Greg Sargent’s The Plum Line blog carries denials from NY Times editor Bill Keller that “Harmanhad any role in persuading him to hold its big warrantless wiretapping expose until after the 2004 elections, a controversial decision that may have altered the election’s outcome and changed history.”
“Ms. Harman did not influence my decision,” Keller stated in a quote relayed to Sargent by Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis. “I don’t recall that she even spoke to me.”
Sargent writes, “If this is right, this deals the story a blow. CQ reports that Harman’s alleged efforts to get the story spiked in 2004 was a key rationale for one of the story’s most explosive charges: That Gonzales knew he could count on Harman’s support for warrantless wiretapping in 2005, and hence got a separate FBI probe against Harman dropped.”
Keller’s December 16, 2005 statement on why the paper held back the wiretaps story only mentioned “the Administration” and “[o]fficials.”
“A year ago, when this information first became known to Times reporters, the Administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country’s security.
“Officials also assured senior editors of The Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions.
“As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time.
Gonzales ‘blocked prosecution of Democrat who helped keep lid on wiretapping story’
By John Byrne
April 20, 2009
A powerful California congresswoman was allegedly caught by an NSA wiretap in 2005 pledging to intervene in an espionage case involving Israeli lobbyists, Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein revealed Sunday.
Quoting former senior Bush Administration officials, the article also alleges that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales conspired to drop criminal action against the then-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman (D-CA), because he needed her help when a firestorm of criticism erupted in December 2005 after the New York Times published details about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.
According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.
Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program.
He was right.
On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”
According to a purported NSA transcript of the call between Harman and a suspected Israeli agent — which the article says was tapped legally under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and not part of the warrantless wiretapping program itself — Harman “was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference.”
“In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win,” Stein added.
Harman allegedly hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”
Harman was not chosen to lead Intelligence. Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tapped Rep. Silvestre Reyes.
The AIPAC case involved two lobbyists — Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen — who were charged with trying to obtain classified reports on US policy and sharing them with reporters and foreign diplomats.
A Harman spokesman vehemently denied the allegations.
“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,” Harman said in a statement to CQ. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.”
In 2006, Time revealed that the FBI was investigating Harman for supposedly trying to intervene in the AIPAC case. Later reports indicated, however, that the FBI had dropped the case for “lack of evidence.”
A source “with first-hand knowledge” of the taps told Stein the “no evidence” line was “bullshit.”
“I read those transcripts,” the source is quoted as saying.
However, Ron Kampeas, the Washington, DC bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, charges that “the Harman leaks smell to high heaven.” He suggests that the leaking of the story now may have more to do with the upcoming trial of the two former AIPAC lobbyists — and the weakness of the case against them — than with any past events.
Kampeas notes in particular that “the selected quotes from the alleged transcript do not necessarily add up to a quid pro quo.” He points out that the wiretapped conversation between Harman and the Israeli agent “took place in the summer or fall of 2005? and supposedly involved a promise to have Nancy Pelosi appoint Harman as chair of the Intel Committee if the Democrats took control of the House following the 2006 elections. However, those elections were then well over a year away, and Democratic victory was by no means assured.
Greg Sargent’s The Plum Line blog carries denials from NY Times editor Bill Keller that “Harmanhad any role in persuading him to hold its big warrantless wiretapping expose until after the 2004 elections, a controversial decision that may have altered the election’s outcome and changed history.”
“Ms. Harman did not influence my decision,” Keller stated in a quote relayed to Sargent by Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis. “I don’t recall that she even spoke to me.”
Sargent writes, “If this is right, this deals the story a blow. CQ reports that Harman’s alleged efforts to get the story spiked in 2004 was a key rationale for one of the story’s most explosive charges: That Gonzales knew he could count on Harman’s support for warrantless wiretapping in 2005, and hence got a separate FBI probe against Harman dropped.”
Keller’s December 16, 2005 statement on why the paper held back the wiretaps story only mentioned “the Administration” and “[o]fficials.”
“A year ago, when this information first became known to Times reporters, the Administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country’s security.
“Officials also assured senior editors of The Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions.
“As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time.
NSA spied on member of Congress
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/NSA_spied_on_member_of_Congress_0416.html
NSA spied on member of Congress and broke new laws, report says
RAW STORY
Thursday April 16, 2009
An article in The New York Times detailing new violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reports that in recent months the National Security Agency has been intercepting the communications of Americans on a scale going well beyond the broad legal limits established last year by Congress.
Even more shocking, the paper reveals that under the Bush administration the NSA spied on a member of Congress and sought to wiretap the lawmaker without a warrant.
Reports the Times:
And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.
The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.
According to the Times, the NSA unintentionally spies on many Americans because it can't distinguish between American and non-American calls as "it uses its access to American telecommunications companies’ fiber-optic lines and its own spy satellites to intercept millions of calls and e-mail messages."
The NSA's operational problems have "come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees and a secret national security court," and officials are concerned that the controversy "could damage the credibility of legitimate intelligence-gathering efforts."
The Justice Department has already issued a statement confirming the problems but insisting that it has taken "comprehensive steps to correct the situation and bring the program into compliance."
However, constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald suggests that "these widespread eavesdropping abuses enabled by the 2008 FISA bill -- a bill passed with the support of Barack Obama along with the entire top Democratic leadership in the House, including Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, and substantial numbers of Democratic Senators -- aren't a bug in that bill, but rather, were one of the central features of it."
"Everyone knew that the FISA bill which Congressional Democrats passed -- and which George Bush and Dick Cheney celebrated -- would enable these surveillance abuses," Greenwald continues. "That was the purpose of the law: to gut the safeguards in place since the 1978 passage of FISA, destroy the crux of the oversight regime over executive surveillance of Americans, and enable and empower unchecked government spying activities. This was not an unintended and unforeseeable consequence of that bill. To the contrary, it was crystal clear that by gutting FISA's safeguards, the Democratic Congress was making these abuses inevitable."
"There are exceedingly few specifics in [the Times] story detailing exactly what the abuses were," Greenwald says in conclusion "In other words, most of the information about the NSA's abuses remain concealed. We have learned only a small fraction of what took place."
NSA spied on member of Congress and broke new laws, report says
RAW STORY
Thursday April 16, 2009
An article in The New York Times detailing new violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reports that in recent months the National Security Agency has been intercepting the communications of Americans on a scale going well beyond the broad legal limits established last year by Congress.
Even more shocking, the paper reveals that under the Bush administration the NSA spied on a member of Congress and sought to wiretap the lawmaker without a warrant.
Reports the Times:
And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.
The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.
According to the Times, the NSA unintentionally spies on many Americans because it can't distinguish between American and non-American calls as "it uses its access to American telecommunications companies’ fiber-optic lines and its own spy satellites to intercept millions of calls and e-mail messages."
The NSA's operational problems have "come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees and a secret national security court," and officials are concerned that the controversy "could damage the credibility of legitimate intelligence-gathering efforts."
The Justice Department has already issued a statement confirming the problems but insisting that it has taken "comprehensive steps to correct the situation and bring the program into compliance."
However, constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald suggests that "these widespread eavesdropping abuses enabled by the 2008 FISA bill -- a bill passed with the support of Barack Obama along with the entire top Democratic leadership in the House, including Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, and substantial numbers of Democratic Senators -- aren't a bug in that bill, but rather, were one of the central features of it."
"Everyone knew that the FISA bill which Congressional Democrats passed -- and which George Bush and Dick Cheney celebrated -- would enable these surveillance abuses," Greenwald continues. "That was the purpose of the law: to gut the safeguards in place since the 1978 passage of FISA, destroy the crux of the oversight regime over executive surveillance of Americans, and enable and empower unchecked government spying activities. This was not an unintended and unforeseeable consequence of that bill. To the contrary, it was crystal clear that by gutting FISA's safeguards, the Democratic Congress was making these abuses inevitable."
"There are exceedingly few specifics in [the Times] story detailing exactly what the abuses were," Greenwald says in conclusion "In other words, most of the information about the NSA's abuses remain concealed. We have learned only a small fraction of what took place."
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Bill to tax bonuses an 'outrage' and unconstitutional
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Paul_Bill_to_tax_bonuses_unconstitutional_0319.html
Paul: Bill to tax bonuses an 'outrage' and unconstitutional
David Edwards and Rachel Oswald
Thursday March 19, 2009
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) yet again went against the grain in Congress when he stood up in the House and argued against a proposal that would tax 90 percent of AIG executive bonuses, saying that it was a "disgrace," a "distraction" and an "outrage" that undermined the Constitution.
"I rise in opposition to this rule and the bill because of the problem -- because of the lack of need for this and the disgrace that this has brought upon us," Paul said. "Yesterday, for instance, the Federal Reserve met and they came out and they announced that they would create new money to the tune of $1.25 trillion."
Paul, a dark horse Republican candidate for president in 2008 who still enjoys considerable popularity with a base of hardcore supporters, noted that the value of the dollar went down significantly after that announcement by the Fed.
"Today...on emergency legislation, we're going to deal with $165 million of bonuses, which obviously shouldn't have never been given, but who's responsible for this?" Paul said. "It's the Congress and the president who signed this [$787 billion stimulus bill that allowed the bonuses to go forward]. So this is a distraction, this is an outrage."
He chided his fellow House members who were considering supporting the new tax legislation for only caring about the millions in bonuses when they should be concerned with the trillions in deficits the country is facing.
"So everybody can go home that voted for this bill, say, 'Look, I'm clamping [down] on this $165 million but I don't care about the previous $5 trillion the Fed created and the $1.25 trillion they created yesterday,'" he said. "Think of the loss of purchasing power in less than 24 hours."
Paul urged his House members to support his bill, H.R. 1207, which would change the way the Federal Reserve is audited.
"Let's quit appropriating funds in an unconstitutional manner. Let's quit bankrupting this country," Paul said. "The Fed is not even required to answer any questions. So it's about time we have an open book about the Federal Reserve and solve some of these problems."
House passes tax bill Thursday afternoon
Despite the protestations of Paul and a few others, the House voted overwhelmingly to pass the bonus tax legislation Thursday afternoon.
Roll Call reports the vote was 328-93 to impose a 90 percent tax on employee bonuses at companies that received federal bailout funds.
"While the vote was bipartisan, the GOP was split on the bill, with Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) voting against it and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) voting in favor of it," reported Roll Call.
CNN notes that the measure, which now heads to the Senate for consideration, would tax individuals on any bonuses received in 2009 from companies getting $5 billion or more in money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Those with incomes more than $250,000 would see their bonuses taxed at the 90 percent rate.
"We can't have any concept of we're getting even, but we must have a concept that we're trying to show that Congress ... cannot tolerate that," said Charlie Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday.
Said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "We must also protect the American taxpayer from executives who would use their companies' second chances as opportunities for private gain. Because they could not use sound judgment in the use of taxpayer funds, these AIG executives will pay the Treasury in the form of this tax."
Speaking before the House on Thursday, Boehner questioned why they were only taxing 90 percent of the bonuses.
"Why 90 percent?... We can get 100 percent back because the Treasury Secretary has the ability to get it all back. The Administration has the ability to get it all back," Boehner said. "Why don’t we just get it all back? Why are we bringing this bill to the floor today to give members political cover when in fact the Treasury Secretary has the authority, the Administration has the authority to get all of it back?"
Paul: Bill to tax bonuses an 'outrage' and unconstitutional
David Edwards and Rachel Oswald
Thursday March 19, 2009
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) yet again went against the grain in Congress when he stood up in the House and argued against a proposal that would tax 90 percent of AIG executive bonuses, saying that it was a "disgrace," a "distraction" and an "outrage" that undermined the Constitution.
"I rise in opposition to this rule and the bill because of the problem -- because of the lack of need for this and the disgrace that this has brought upon us," Paul said. "Yesterday, for instance, the Federal Reserve met and they came out and they announced that they would create new money to the tune of $1.25 trillion."
Paul, a dark horse Republican candidate for president in 2008 who still enjoys considerable popularity with a base of hardcore supporters, noted that the value of the dollar went down significantly after that announcement by the Fed.
"Today...on emergency legislation, we're going to deal with $165 million of bonuses, which obviously shouldn't have never been given, but who's responsible for this?" Paul said. "It's the Congress and the president who signed this [$787 billion stimulus bill that allowed the bonuses to go forward]. So this is a distraction, this is an outrage."
He chided his fellow House members who were considering supporting the new tax legislation for only caring about the millions in bonuses when they should be concerned with the trillions in deficits the country is facing.
"So everybody can go home that voted for this bill, say, 'Look, I'm clamping [down] on this $165 million but I don't care about the previous $5 trillion the Fed created and the $1.25 trillion they created yesterday,'" he said. "Think of the loss of purchasing power in less than 24 hours."
Paul urged his House members to support his bill, H.R. 1207, which would change the way the Federal Reserve is audited.
"Let's quit appropriating funds in an unconstitutional manner. Let's quit bankrupting this country," Paul said. "The Fed is not even required to answer any questions. So it's about time we have an open book about the Federal Reserve and solve some of these problems."
House passes tax bill Thursday afternoon
Despite the protestations of Paul and a few others, the House voted overwhelmingly to pass the bonus tax legislation Thursday afternoon.
Roll Call reports the vote was 328-93 to impose a 90 percent tax on employee bonuses at companies that received federal bailout funds.
"While the vote was bipartisan, the GOP was split on the bill, with Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) voting against it and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) voting in favor of it," reported Roll Call.
CNN notes that the measure, which now heads to the Senate for consideration, would tax individuals on any bonuses received in 2009 from companies getting $5 billion or more in money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Those with incomes more than $250,000 would see their bonuses taxed at the 90 percent rate.
"We can't have any concept of we're getting even, but we must have a concept that we're trying to show that Congress ... cannot tolerate that," said Charlie Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday.
Said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "We must also protect the American taxpayer from executives who would use their companies' second chances as opportunities for private gain. Because they could not use sound judgment in the use of taxpayer funds, these AIG executives will pay the Treasury in the form of this tax."
Speaking before the House on Thursday, Boehner questioned why they were only taxing 90 percent of the bonuses.
"Why 90 percent?... We can get 100 percent back because the Treasury Secretary has the ability to get it all back. The Administration has the ability to get it all back," Boehner said. "Why don’t we just get it all back? Why are we bringing this bill to the floor today to give members political cover when in fact the Treasury Secretary has the authority, the Administration has the authority to get all of it back?"
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Senate passes $787 billion stimulus bill
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/13/news/economy/house_final_stimulus/?postversion=2009021318
Senate passes $787 billion stimulus bill
Senate votes to approve the historic legislation aimed at reviving the economy. Bill is now sent to President Obama for signing.
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer
February 13, 2009
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's a done deal. Still controversial, but a done deal.
The Senate on Friday evening passed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which was drawn up, amended and negotiated in record time.
The bill got 60 votes -- the minimum it needed to pass. Three Republicans -- Sens. Susan Collins, R-Me., Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Olympia Snowe, R-Me. -- voted for it. Earlier in the day, no Republicans in the House voted for the legislation, which nevertheless passed 246 to 183, with just 7 Democrats voting against it.
President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law soon.
"The goal at the heart of this plan is to create jobs. Not just any jobs, but jobs doing the work America needs done: repairing our infrastructure, modernizing our schools and hospitals, and promoting the clean, alternative energy sources that will help us finally declare independence from foreign oil," President Obama said Friday morning.
The Obama economic team estimates the stimulus plan will create or save between 3 million and 4 million jobs.
"We've done something today that's transformational for the nation," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in a press conference after the House vote.
During the House floor debate earlier on Friday, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wisc., characterized the bill as "the largest change in domestic policy since the 1930s."
Republican discontent
The bill's final passage would represent far less than the bipartisan victory Obama had hoped for weeks ago, a hope he tabled as it became clear that Republicans and some fiscally conservative Democrats were adamantly opposed to the size and contents of the bill.
Republican critics believe there are more targeted and effective ways to create jobs than the measures in the bill, including more spending on infrastructure and more tax relief.
They frequently cite the tag line to describe what Democrats have often said makes stimulus measures effective -- that they be timely, targeted and temporary. "This bill fails on all three points," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Friday.
In the House, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., blasted the bill as misguided.
"Republicans are not about saying 'No' but about saying 'Yes' to solutions that put Americans back to work," Pence said. "[This legislation] will not grow our economy. It will grow our government."
And they frequently cite the burden of such an expensive package on the country's record high deficit and the burden that will place on the next generation.
In response to Republican critics, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., cited provisions in it that will help families facing job loss, education expenses and mortgage troubles.
"Consider the impact on the next generation if their parents lose a job ... if their home is foreclosed upon ... if they're forced out of college because their parents can't pay the bills," Durbin said.
Democrats have also countered the Republicans' debt argument by noting that record deficit levels were achieved as a result of borrowing to pay for the cost of the Iraq war and to finance a series of tax cuts -- both decisions made during a Republican administration.
The compromise bill was crafted after intensive negotiations in recent days between the House, Senate and White House, although Republicans said repeatedly they felt excluded from the process. And on Friday, several said they did not think it was fair that they were being asked to vote on a 1,000-page-plus bill that was posted online only late Thursday night.
How the bill breaks down
The package devotes $308.3 billion -- or 39% -- to appropriations spending, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That includes $120 billion on infrastructure and science and more than $30 billion on energy-related infrastructure projects, according to key congressional committees.
It devotes another $267 billion -- or 34% -- on direct spending, including increased unemployment benefits and food stamps, CBO said.
And it provides $212 billion -- or 27% -- for tax breaks for individuals and businesses, although the biggest piece of that is for individuals. (Here's a quick breakdown of those breaks.)
Depending on how tax measures are categorized, the percentage of the bill devoted to tax relief is 35%, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Unlike the CBO, the committee counts all portions of tax credits that are refundable. A refundable credit is one that may be paid to tax filers even if the credit exceeds a tax filer's liability. In other words, it is money the government needs to spend. The CBO, by contrast, treats that money as an outlay.
Republicans have advocated for more tax relief in the bill -- they wanted at least 40% -- and they often oppose tax credits going to those who pay less in income tax than they receive in refunds.
Democrats counter that the lowest-income families do pay money into the system by way of payroll tax for Social Security and through sales taxes. And they note that it is those low-income families most likely to quickly spend any tax relief they get, thereby making it more stimulative for the economy.
What it can - and can't do
For months, economists -- both liberal and conservative -- have urged lawmakers to act quickly to help stem the economic downturn. They argue that while tax cuts can be put out more quickly than infrastructure spending, they may not be as stimulative as spending because tax filers are likely to save at least a portion of what they receive.
There also has been debate over how large the total package should be. Many economists think it should be larger -- to help combat what is expected to be a $2 trillion shortfall in the country's output this year and next. But at this point, though they're not enamored with every provision in the bill -- they say it's necessary to do something.
Proponents of the bill aren't promising the economic recovery package will be a panacea for the economy. "No one thinks this is the answer," said House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md.
But, they say, it's needed to stem the downturn and ease the financial strains hurting Americans. Indeed, Obama's economic team last month said they expect that the unemployment rate likely will go up in the near term but having a stimulus package could bring it down to around 7% by the end of 2010. That's slightly below the rate of 7.6% today.
- CNN's Ted Barrett and CNNMoney.com's David Goldman contributed to this report.
Senate passes $787 billion stimulus bill
Senate votes to approve the historic legislation aimed at reviving the economy. Bill is now sent to President Obama for signing.
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer
February 13, 2009
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's a done deal. Still controversial, but a done deal.
The Senate on Friday evening passed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which was drawn up, amended and negotiated in record time.
The bill got 60 votes -- the minimum it needed to pass. Three Republicans -- Sens. Susan Collins, R-Me., Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Olympia Snowe, R-Me. -- voted for it. Earlier in the day, no Republicans in the House voted for the legislation, which nevertheless passed 246 to 183, with just 7 Democrats voting against it.
President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law soon.
"The goal at the heart of this plan is to create jobs. Not just any jobs, but jobs doing the work America needs done: repairing our infrastructure, modernizing our schools and hospitals, and promoting the clean, alternative energy sources that will help us finally declare independence from foreign oil," President Obama said Friday morning.
The Obama economic team estimates the stimulus plan will create or save between 3 million and 4 million jobs.
"We've done something today that's transformational for the nation," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in a press conference after the House vote.
During the House floor debate earlier on Friday, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wisc., characterized the bill as "the largest change in domestic policy since the 1930s."
Republican discontent
The bill's final passage would represent far less than the bipartisan victory Obama had hoped for weeks ago, a hope he tabled as it became clear that Republicans and some fiscally conservative Democrats were adamantly opposed to the size and contents of the bill.
Republican critics believe there are more targeted and effective ways to create jobs than the measures in the bill, including more spending on infrastructure and more tax relief.
They frequently cite the tag line to describe what Democrats have often said makes stimulus measures effective -- that they be timely, targeted and temporary. "This bill fails on all three points," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Friday.
In the House, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., blasted the bill as misguided.
"Republicans are not about saying 'No' but about saying 'Yes' to solutions that put Americans back to work," Pence said. "[This legislation] will not grow our economy. It will grow our government."
And they frequently cite the burden of such an expensive package on the country's record high deficit and the burden that will place on the next generation.
In response to Republican critics, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., cited provisions in it that will help families facing job loss, education expenses and mortgage troubles.
"Consider the impact on the next generation if their parents lose a job ... if their home is foreclosed upon ... if they're forced out of college because their parents can't pay the bills," Durbin said.
Democrats have also countered the Republicans' debt argument by noting that record deficit levels were achieved as a result of borrowing to pay for the cost of the Iraq war and to finance a series of tax cuts -- both decisions made during a Republican administration.
The compromise bill was crafted after intensive negotiations in recent days between the House, Senate and White House, although Republicans said repeatedly they felt excluded from the process. And on Friday, several said they did not think it was fair that they were being asked to vote on a 1,000-page-plus bill that was posted online only late Thursday night.
How the bill breaks down
The package devotes $308.3 billion -- or 39% -- to appropriations spending, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That includes $120 billion on infrastructure and science and more than $30 billion on energy-related infrastructure projects, according to key congressional committees.
It devotes another $267 billion -- or 34% -- on direct spending, including increased unemployment benefits and food stamps, CBO said.
And it provides $212 billion -- or 27% -- for tax breaks for individuals and businesses, although the biggest piece of that is for individuals. (Here's a quick breakdown of those breaks.)
Depending on how tax measures are categorized, the percentage of the bill devoted to tax relief is 35%, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Unlike the CBO, the committee counts all portions of tax credits that are refundable. A refundable credit is one that may be paid to tax filers even if the credit exceeds a tax filer's liability. In other words, it is money the government needs to spend. The CBO, by contrast, treats that money as an outlay.
Republicans have advocated for more tax relief in the bill -- they wanted at least 40% -- and they often oppose tax credits going to those who pay less in income tax than they receive in refunds.
Democrats counter that the lowest-income families do pay money into the system by way of payroll tax for Social Security and through sales taxes. And they note that it is those low-income families most likely to quickly spend any tax relief they get, thereby making it more stimulative for the economy.
What it can - and can't do
For months, economists -- both liberal and conservative -- have urged lawmakers to act quickly to help stem the economic downturn. They argue that while tax cuts can be put out more quickly than infrastructure spending, they may not be as stimulative as spending because tax filers are likely to save at least a portion of what they receive.
There also has been debate over how large the total package should be. Many economists think it should be larger -- to help combat what is expected to be a $2 trillion shortfall in the country's output this year and next. But at this point, though they're not enamored with every provision in the bill -- they say it's necessary to do something.
Proponents of the bill aren't promising the economic recovery package will be a panacea for the economy. "No one thinks this is the answer," said House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md.
But, they say, it's needed to stem the downturn and ease the financial strains hurting Americans. Indeed, Obama's economic team last month said they expect that the unemployment rate likely will go up in the near term but having a stimulus package could bring it down to around 7% by the end of 2010. That's slightly below the rate of 7.6% today.
- CNN's Ted Barrett and CNNMoney.com's David Goldman contributed to this report.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Obama signs executive order to close Guantanamo
Robalini's Note: Despite my low opinion of Obama and the cult worship surrounding him, I do give him credit for at least doing the following...
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/22/guantanamo.order/
Obama signs executive order to close Guantanamo Bay
1-22-9
Story Highlights
President Obama signs orders to close Gitmo, ban torture
Sen. John McCain issues statement supporting Gitmo closure
Some congressional Republicans slam "politically correct" policies
GOP congressman says he's worried about where to house detainees
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Promising to return America to the "moral high ground" in the war on terror, President Barack Obama issued three executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration -- including one requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.
During a signing ceremony at the White House, Obama reaffirmed his inaugural pledge that the United States does not have "to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals."
The president said he was issuing the order to close the Guantanamo detention facility in order to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism."
A second executive order formally bans torture by requiring that the Army field manual be used as the guide for terror interrogations. That essentially ends the Bush administration's CIA program of enhanced interrogation methods.
"We believe that the Army field manual reflects the best judgment of our military, that we can abide by a rule that says we don't torture, but that we can still effectively obtain the intelligence that we need," Obama said.
"This is me following through ... on an understanding that dates back to our founding fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct not just when it's easy but also when it's hard."
A third executive order establishes an interagency task force to lead a systematic review of detention policies and procedures and a review of all individual cases.
The task force, Obama stated, will also "provide me with information in terms of how we are able to deal (with) the disposition of some of the detainees that may be currently in Guantanamo that we cannot transfer to other countries, who could pose a serious danger to the United States."
The president also signed a memorandum delaying the trial of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident who has been contesting his detention for more than five years as an enemy combatant in a military brig without the government bringing any charges against him.
Al-Marri's case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Al-Marri "is clearly a dangerous individual," Obama said. "We have asked for a delay in going before the Supreme Court to properly review the evidence against him."
During the second Bush term, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay became a lightning rod for critics who charged the Bush administration with torturing terror detainees. President George W. Bush and other senior officials repeatedly denied that the U.S. government had used torture to extract intelligence from terror suspects.
The decision to close the detention facility received immediate backing from Obama's general election opponent, Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain.
McCain, in a joint statement released with South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, said he supported Obama's decision to "reaffirm America's adherence to the Geneva Conventions, and begin a process that will, we hope, lead to the resolution of all cases of Guantanamo detainees."
A number of congressional Republicans, however, split with their former party standard-bearer and criticized Obama's decision.
"We cannot risk going back to the politically correct national security policies that left us vulnerable in the lead-up to 9/11," Michigan GOP Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a written statement. "Without a clear plan for the detention and interrogation of captured terrorists and combatants, we are unnecessarily risking the safety of our nation."
Obama's move also highlights a fierce struggle over where the prison's detainees will go next.
"The key question is where do you put these terrorists," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement issued Wednesday. "Do you bring them inside our borders? Do you release them back into the battlefield?"
Rep. Bill Young, R-Florida, said he has "quite a bit of anxiety" about the possibility of transferring detainees to United States facilities.
"Number one, they're dangerous," Young said. "Secondly, once they become present in the United States, what is their legal status? What is their constitutional status? I worry about that, because I don't want them to have the same constitutional rights that you and I have. They're our enemy."
Young said he asked White House Counsel Greg Craig what the government plans to do with two recently built facilities at the Guantanamo base, which he said cost half a billion dollars. He said Craig had not thought about what to do with them but pledged to discuss the issue further.
Young said he suggested reopening Alcatraz, the closed federal prison on an island in California's San Francisco Bay -- in current Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district.
"Put them in Alcatraz where supposedly they can't escape from," Young said. But he added that the suggestion "didn't go over well."
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/22/guantanamo.order/
Obama signs executive order to close Guantanamo Bay
1-22-9
Story Highlights
President Obama signs orders to close Gitmo, ban torture
Sen. John McCain issues statement supporting Gitmo closure
Some congressional Republicans slam "politically correct" policies
GOP congressman says he's worried about where to house detainees
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Promising to return America to the "moral high ground" in the war on terror, President Barack Obama issued three executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration -- including one requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.
During a signing ceremony at the White House, Obama reaffirmed his inaugural pledge that the United States does not have "to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals."
The president said he was issuing the order to close the Guantanamo detention facility in order to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism."
A second executive order formally bans torture by requiring that the Army field manual be used as the guide for terror interrogations. That essentially ends the Bush administration's CIA program of enhanced interrogation methods.
"We believe that the Army field manual reflects the best judgment of our military, that we can abide by a rule that says we don't torture, but that we can still effectively obtain the intelligence that we need," Obama said.
"This is me following through ... on an understanding that dates back to our founding fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct not just when it's easy but also when it's hard."
A third executive order establishes an interagency task force to lead a systematic review of detention policies and procedures and a review of all individual cases.
The task force, Obama stated, will also "provide me with information in terms of how we are able to deal (with) the disposition of some of the detainees that may be currently in Guantanamo that we cannot transfer to other countries, who could pose a serious danger to the United States."
The president also signed a memorandum delaying the trial of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident who has been contesting his detention for more than five years as an enemy combatant in a military brig without the government bringing any charges against him.
Al-Marri's case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Al-Marri "is clearly a dangerous individual," Obama said. "We have asked for a delay in going before the Supreme Court to properly review the evidence against him."
During the second Bush term, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay became a lightning rod for critics who charged the Bush administration with torturing terror detainees. President George W. Bush and other senior officials repeatedly denied that the U.S. government had used torture to extract intelligence from terror suspects.
The decision to close the detention facility received immediate backing from Obama's general election opponent, Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain.
McCain, in a joint statement released with South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, said he supported Obama's decision to "reaffirm America's adherence to the Geneva Conventions, and begin a process that will, we hope, lead to the resolution of all cases of Guantanamo detainees."
A number of congressional Republicans, however, split with their former party standard-bearer and criticized Obama's decision.
"We cannot risk going back to the politically correct national security policies that left us vulnerable in the lead-up to 9/11," Michigan GOP Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a written statement. "Without a clear plan for the detention and interrogation of captured terrorists and combatants, we are unnecessarily risking the safety of our nation."
Obama's move also highlights a fierce struggle over where the prison's detainees will go next.
"The key question is where do you put these terrorists," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement issued Wednesday. "Do you bring them inside our borders? Do you release them back into the battlefield?"
Rep. Bill Young, R-Florida, said he has "quite a bit of anxiety" about the possibility of transferring detainees to United States facilities.
"Number one, they're dangerous," Young said. "Secondly, once they become present in the United States, what is their legal status? What is their constitutional status? I worry about that, because I don't want them to have the same constitutional rights that you and I have. They're our enemy."
Young said he asked White House Counsel Greg Craig what the government plans to do with two recently built facilities at the Guantanamo base, which he said cost half a billion dollars. He said Craig had not thought about what to do with them but pledged to discuss the issue further.
Young said he suggested reopening Alcatraz, the closed federal prison on an island in California's San Francisco Bay -- in current Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district.
"Put them in Alcatraz where supposedly they can't escape from," Young said. But he added that the suggestion "didn't go over well."
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
All-digital TV? Please stand by
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-dtv9-2009jan09,0,6537360.story
All-digital TV? Please stand by
Paul Stephen \ For The Los Angeles Times
Millions lack the necessary gear and risk blank screens when the switch occurs. Obama seeks a postponement.
By Jim Puzzanghera and Christi Parsons
January 9, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- The transition to digital television next month has been hailed as the biggest advance in over-the-air TV since the advent of color, but it's shaping up as a black eye for the government and risks leaving millions of viewers without a picture.
On Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama asked Congress to postpone the federally mandated switch to all-digital broadcast television, called DTV, scheduled to take place Feb. 17.
The unspecified delay would give the government time to fix a consumer-help program that ran out of money this week. But it also would set back the long-promised benefits of digital TV, which offers sharper pictures and more free channels while opening valuable airwaves for public safety and wireless Internet access.
The government took in $19.6 billion last year by auctioning existing analog TV airwaves to telecommunications companies for new wireless services, but Congress allocated less than $2 billion to educate consumers about the transition and issue coupons to buy needed converter boxes.
Now an estimated 7.7 million households nationwide may find their screens going dark next month.
Although a delay is far from certain, given potential opposition from broadcasters, public safety agencies and telecom companies eager to start using those new airwaves, there was plenty of frustration Thursday with the way the digital TV transition has been managed.
"The list of who's to blame is long," said Joel Kelsey, a long-time critic of the transition as policy analyst with Consumers Union, which also called for a delay this week. "It was a giant miscalculation by our federal government."
Some lawmakers urged a delay to give the incoming administration more time to correct problems, but others thought the clamor for a postponement was "just panic." Some congressional leaders simply weren't ready to weigh in. A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said the relevant committees were working with Obama's transition team to solve the problems.
Congress decided in 2005 to require all TV stations to broadcast only in digital to free up airwaves for public safety use in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and for auctioning to telecom companies to shrink the federal deficit.
People with cable, satellite or phone company TV services will continue to receive broadcast stations. But those who rely on antennas must have either a newer TV with a digital receiver or get a converter box. No-frills versions of those boxes cost $40 to $70. To offset the expense, the federal government allocated $1.5 billion to provide households with up to two $40 coupons.
But Monday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said the program had used all allocated funds. The agency has a waiting list of about 1.1 million requests, which can be filled as unused coupons reach their 90-day expiration. So far, about 13 million of the 41 million coupons mailed have expired.
Still, the nearly 8 million households that rely on antennas and are unprepared for the conversion face the prospect of paying full price for converter boxes during a recession -- or watching their TVs go blank after the switch. About 535,000 of those homes are in the L.A. market, the Nielsen Co. says.
In a letter Thursday to key members of Congress, John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama's presidential transition team, said the Feb. 17 conversion should be delayed, though he did not specify for how long. But with the incoming administration facing economic and foreign policy crises, it does not want to add a major problem with TV viewing in its first weeks in office.
Podesta cited troubles with the converter box coupon program as well as inadequate efforts to educate the public about the switch, and the need to help elderly, poor and rural Americans prepare for it.
"With coupons unavailable, support and education insufficient and the most vulnerable Americans exposed, I urge you to consider a change to the legislatively mandated analog cutoff date," Podesta wrote.
Podesta said the waiting list for coupons could climb to more than 5 million by early February. Obama is planning to include an additional unspecified amount of money for the digital TV switch in the economic stimulus package that is still being drafted.
"The Obama administration deserves time to bring order to what has been an appallingly mismanaged process by the Bush administration," said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.).
Some Republicans said Obama was needlessly concerned when all Congress needed to do was make small fixes to the program.
"We don't need to bail out the DTV transition program because it isn't failing, and reintroducing uncertainty to the switch will make things worse instead of better," said Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas). "Ditching the deadline and slathering on more millions of taxpayer dollars, however, is just panic."
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has requested a temporary allocation of $250 million to resolve the coupon program backlog, said acting Administrator Meredith Atwell Baker. She said the Bush administration opposed a delay.
"Congress established everything about this program. We are just the implementers," Baker said.
The National Assn. of Broadcasters was cautious in its response Thursday, saying it was willing to work with Obama and the Congress "to ensure a successful DTV transition." And News Corp., which owns 27 broadcast stations, said it supported any efforts to make the transition a success.
Broadcasters have invested billions of dollars in preparing for the switch and are anxious to turn off their analog signals, which use large amounts of electricity. But stations also do not want to lose viewers because their TVs can't receive the digital signals.
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) has worried that a poorly run transition could delay the allocation of new airwaves to public safety organizations so they could solve communications problems that plagued response to the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. But she said Thursday she might have to support a delay.
"If the money wasn't provided and information isn't out there and large groups of people are going to be stranded [without broadcast TV], we have to take action," she said. "But it was avoidable."
jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com
cparsons@tribune.com
All-digital TV? Please stand by
Paul Stephen \ For The Los Angeles Times
Millions lack the necessary gear and risk blank screens when the switch occurs. Obama seeks a postponement.
By Jim Puzzanghera and Christi Parsons
January 9, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- The transition to digital television next month has been hailed as the biggest advance in over-the-air TV since the advent of color, but it's shaping up as a black eye for the government and risks leaving millions of viewers without a picture.
On Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama asked Congress to postpone the federally mandated switch to all-digital broadcast television, called DTV, scheduled to take place Feb. 17.
The unspecified delay would give the government time to fix a consumer-help program that ran out of money this week. But it also would set back the long-promised benefits of digital TV, which offers sharper pictures and more free channels while opening valuable airwaves for public safety and wireless Internet access.
The government took in $19.6 billion last year by auctioning existing analog TV airwaves to telecommunications companies for new wireless services, but Congress allocated less than $2 billion to educate consumers about the transition and issue coupons to buy needed converter boxes.
Now an estimated 7.7 million households nationwide may find their screens going dark next month.
Although a delay is far from certain, given potential opposition from broadcasters, public safety agencies and telecom companies eager to start using those new airwaves, there was plenty of frustration Thursday with the way the digital TV transition has been managed.
"The list of who's to blame is long," said Joel Kelsey, a long-time critic of the transition as policy analyst with Consumers Union, which also called for a delay this week. "It was a giant miscalculation by our federal government."
Some lawmakers urged a delay to give the incoming administration more time to correct problems, but others thought the clamor for a postponement was "just panic." Some congressional leaders simply weren't ready to weigh in. A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said the relevant committees were working with Obama's transition team to solve the problems.
Congress decided in 2005 to require all TV stations to broadcast only in digital to free up airwaves for public safety use in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and for auctioning to telecom companies to shrink the federal deficit.
People with cable, satellite or phone company TV services will continue to receive broadcast stations. But those who rely on antennas must have either a newer TV with a digital receiver or get a converter box. No-frills versions of those boxes cost $40 to $70. To offset the expense, the federal government allocated $1.5 billion to provide households with up to two $40 coupons.
But Monday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said the program had used all allocated funds. The agency has a waiting list of about 1.1 million requests, which can be filled as unused coupons reach their 90-day expiration. So far, about 13 million of the 41 million coupons mailed have expired.
Still, the nearly 8 million households that rely on antennas and are unprepared for the conversion face the prospect of paying full price for converter boxes during a recession -- or watching their TVs go blank after the switch. About 535,000 of those homes are in the L.A. market, the Nielsen Co. says.
In a letter Thursday to key members of Congress, John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama's presidential transition team, said the Feb. 17 conversion should be delayed, though he did not specify for how long. But with the incoming administration facing economic and foreign policy crises, it does not want to add a major problem with TV viewing in its first weeks in office.
Podesta cited troubles with the converter box coupon program as well as inadequate efforts to educate the public about the switch, and the need to help elderly, poor and rural Americans prepare for it.
"With coupons unavailable, support and education insufficient and the most vulnerable Americans exposed, I urge you to consider a change to the legislatively mandated analog cutoff date," Podesta wrote.
Podesta said the waiting list for coupons could climb to more than 5 million by early February. Obama is planning to include an additional unspecified amount of money for the digital TV switch in the economic stimulus package that is still being drafted.
"The Obama administration deserves time to bring order to what has been an appallingly mismanaged process by the Bush administration," said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.).
Some Republicans said Obama was needlessly concerned when all Congress needed to do was make small fixes to the program.
"We don't need to bail out the DTV transition program because it isn't failing, and reintroducing uncertainty to the switch will make things worse instead of better," said Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas). "Ditching the deadline and slathering on more millions of taxpayer dollars, however, is just panic."
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has requested a temporary allocation of $250 million to resolve the coupon program backlog, said acting Administrator Meredith Atwell Baker. She said the Bush administration opposed a delay.
"Congress established everything about this program. We are just the implementers," Baker said.
The National Assn. of Broadcasters was cautious in its response Thursday, saying it was willing to work with Obama and the Congress "to ensure a successful DTV transition." And News Corp., which owns 27 broadcast stations, said it supported any efforts to make the transition a success.
Broadcasters have invested billions of dollars in preparing for the switch and are anxious to turn off their analog signals, which use large amounts of electricity. But stations also do not want to lose viewers because their TVs can't receive the digital signals.
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) has worried that a poorly run transition could delay the allocation of new airwaves to public safety organizations so they could solve communications problems that plagued response to the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. But she said Thursday she might have to support a delay.
"If the money wasn't provided and information isn't out there and large groups of people are going to be stranded [without broadcast TV], we have to take action," she said. "But it was avoidable."
jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com
cparsons@tribune.com
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