WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner is rejecting President Obama’s offer to make historic cuts to the federal government and the social safety net, saying in a statement Saturday evening that he can not agree to the tax increases Democrats insisted on as part of the bargain. Boehner made his decision after speaking with the president by phone on Saturday afternoon, a day ahead of a major White House meeting with Democratic and GOP leadership, a Republican source familiar with situation said. Obama had proposed to Republicans a “grand bargain” that accomplished a host of individual things that are unpopular on their own, but that just might pass as a huge package jammed through Congress with default looming. Obama offered to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts on the table in exchange for a tax hike of roughly $100 billion per year over 10 years. Meanwhile, government spending would be cut by roughly three times that amount. It’s no small irony that the party’s dogmatic opposition to tax increases is costing the GOP its best opportunity to roll back social programs it has long targeted. Republicans are now banking on a smaller deficit reduction deal that would still make major cuts, somewhere in the range of $2 trillion. “Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes,” Boehner said in a statement. “I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.” While taxes are being put forward as a major cause of the collapse of the grand bargain, a Republican familiar with the discussions said that the two parties couldn’t come to an agreement on cuts to entitlements. “The White House would not agree with the core elements of tax reform proposed by the Speaker,” said the official. “A gulf also remains between the Speaker and the White House on the issue of medium and long-term structural reforms.” When word leaked out this past week that Obama was proposing cuts to entitlements, Democrats in Congress and outside advocates kicked their opposition into high gear, making it clear that no bargain would win their support if it contained any cuts to Social Security or Medicare beneficiaries. That opposition may have broken the back of the bargain. UPDATE: White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer issued the following statement: “The President believes that solving our fiscal problems is an economic imperative. But in order to do that, we cannot ask the middle-class and seniors to bear all the burden of higher costs and budget cuts. We need a balanced approach that asks the very wealthiest and special interests to pay their fair share as well, and we believe the American people agree. “Both parties have made real progress thus far, and to back off now will not only fail to solve our fiscal challenge, it will confirm the cynicism people have about politics in Washington. The President believes that now is the moment to rise above that cynicism and show the American people that we can still do big things. And so tomorrow, he will make the case to congressional leaders that we must reject the politics of least resistance and take on this critical challenge.” Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) released the following statement late Saturday night: I am disappointed that Republicans are unable to work with us to take a historic step forward that would have dramatically reduced our long-term deficit. We asked Republicans to consider a balanced approach that would have required shared sacrifice, but they would not. We still need to make sure we avert the economic catastrophe that would occur if we were to let America fail to pay its bills for the first time in our history, and I am confident that we will. Americans have a right to expect their leaders to rise above partisanship and do the right thing for our economy and the middle class. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) released the following statement: The President has called the Republicans’ bluff by offering them exactly the type of grand bargain they said they wanted, only to have it rejected. Speaker Boehner had shown in the last week that, if it were up to him alone to decide, the nation would not be risking default to protect the wealthiest two percent of Americans. But in the end, neither the olive branch extended by the President nor the pragmatic streak shown by Speaker Boehner was enough to overcome the far right’s obsession with defending tax breaks for millionaires and other special-interest tax loopholes. Some on the Republican side would like to confuse the issue by pretending it was tax hikes on the middle class that they were trying to prevent, but none were ever on the table. This decision to reject the President’s offer means as much as a trillion-dollar gulf remains between the two sides on a debt limit deal, and Republicans should be put on notice that no matter how hard they try, their plan to end Medicare as we know it will never fill in that gap.
Continue reading …The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security held a hearing on proposed changes to Social Security future benefits and the impact those changes would have on the program, future beneficiaries, workers and the U.S. economy. Proposals include raising the current retirement age and tax increases. Now, this comparison from former chairman of the Bush-era Social Security advisory board, Syl Scheiber, really illustrates the Beltway Bubble. He tries to explain how the chained CPI is calculated: “If the price of a Mercedes goes up, that maybe you don’t buy a Mercedes, you switch and buy an Audi or something.”
Continue reading …Stephanie Condon of CBS News reports the Party of Charlie Rangel is attacking freshman Republicans as sleaze-oids: “Democrats are launching a series of robocalls today against six vulnerable House Republicans who have been caught in ethics scandals.” The calls focus on six relatively new GOP members: Reps. Scott Tipton of Colorado, David Rivera of Florida, Frank Guinta of New Hampshire, Charlie Bass of New Hampshire, and Stephen Fincher of Tennessee were all elected in 2010. Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida came into office in 2007. “House Republican leaders pledged a zero tolerance policy to ethics problems in their conference, but their answer has been to turn a blind eye, ” said Jesse Ferguson of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm of House Democrats… Most of the allegations noted in the robocalls surfaced before Election Day 2010, but there have been new developments since then in most cases. For instance, Fincher came under scrutiny in 2010 for allegedly failing to disclose a loan of $250,000 to his campaign, but the Federal Election Commission has since opened an investigation into the charge. The robocall targeting Guinta focuses on an investigation into his campaign funding, while the call targeting Rivera highlights a series of charges against the congressman, including the accusation he received ” secret payments ” from his mother's company. Perhaps CBS could add the story of Rep. Laura Richardson, recently profiled by David Freddoso.
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Click here to view this media As Ryan Grim noted in his article this week, despite some House Republicans threatening impeachment if President Obama resorted to this to keep the United States from defaulting on its debt, but at least one Republican member of the Senate thinks the Constitution would trump the law — 14th Amendment Option May Be Legit, Says Leading Senate Republican : Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said on Thursday that the Constitution may trump the debt ceiling, allowing the administration a way out of the default impasse. Negotiators are considering gutting the social safety net in exchange for a vote to lift the debt ceiling. Grassley, in a conference call with local reporters, said that there may be another way out. “There’s one thing that hasn’t been talked about yet, and I haven’t checked on the constitutionality of it — and I read the Constitution, but I don’t remember reading this — but in the 14th amendment, there’s something that says something about the debt of the United States government shall be honored,” Grassley said, according to a recording of the call. “The 14th Amendment includes a public debt clause that insists the obligations of the government ‘shall not be questioned.’” “So people are looking at the fact that maybe the debt ceiling bill that Congress presumably has to pass for the government to borrow more maybe is contrary to that constitutional provision, and that the administration may take out [loans] on their own — just to borrow money — and say that they can ignore the law,” he said. Grassley said that he was personally supportive of the debt ceiling, because it focuses attention on spending, but that if its existence was unconstitutional, there was nothing he or his colleagues could do. “I think it’s a discipline that Congress uses effectively from time to time, maybe not to cut down on the amount of spending but to have a refresher course,” he said. “It’s a good discipline, so it bothers me if the Constitution provision would trump it, but that would be up to the courts to say. But who’s going to argue against the Constitution? It’s the basis of our government; it’s the law of our land, and everybody has to abide by it.” “The Constitution trumps the law, obviously,” he said. Read on…
Continue reading …President Obama may be upbeat in public about the latest budget talks, but John Boehner? Not so much. No budget deal is “imminent,” the House speaker said today, and the parties still face “serious disagreements.” Boehner sounded a bit more optimistic only yesterday, telling House Republicans there was a 50-50…
Continue reading …Turnaround is Fair Play – Ezra Klein Creates New Twitter Hashtag to Ask Questions of John Boehner
July 8, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media After President Obama held his first Twitter town hall this week and took a question from Speaker of the House John Boehner among many others, The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein who was filling in for Martin Bashir decided that turnaround was fair play for John Boehner. Klein has started a new hashtag on Twitter where you can ask questions you’d like to see John Boehner answer and he promised to read some of them on the air this Friday. The new hashtag is #ASKBOEHNER for anyone on Twitter that would like to submit a question. My question would be “John Boehner, where are the jobs?”
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Minister’s suggestion of a mandatory rest day for all domestic workers reignites a long-running debate over workers’ rights If you’re a domestic maid in Singapore, there’s no such thing as the weekend. Since employers are not legally bound to grant days off, the weeks never end. In the country that officially works the longest hours in the world, where one in six families has domestic help, the legal right to a day off has long seemed unthinkable for maids. But a government minister’s suggestion that a mandatory rest day could minimise stress has reignited a long-standing debate in Singapore over workers’ rights. Halimah Yacob, Singapore’s minister for community development, health and sports, says domestic workers need one day a week to “rest and recuperate”. The government has said it is “studying the suggestion”. But no legal right to a day off isn’t the only problem for Singapore’s 201,000 domestic workers, for whom there is, perhaps not surprisingly, no minimum wage either. It’s the attitudes of their employers – and indeed the country at large – that stands in the way of progress. “Are maids really that overworked?” asked schoolteacher Low Ai Choo, in a letter to the local Straits Times . “My maid has a day off once a month. Every time she comes back from her outings she appears even more tired and listless, and needs to recuperate from her outing. “My maid is the one who goes to bed by nine every night and my husband and I are the ones still up way beyond nine to tuck in our children and catch up with school work.” Low is one of many employers reacting angrily to Yacob’s suggestion, which came after the International Labour Organisation (ILO) agreed last week to give domestic workers a day off every week, as well as other basic labour rights. Singapore, along with the UK, was among 63 member states that abstained from the vote. For some domestic employers such as Choo, the real issue lies in Singapore’s “workhorse” mentality, whereby everyone – not just maids – could do with more time to relax. Singaporeans work the longest hours in the world according to the ILO, clocking up an average of 46.6 hours a week. New parents often struggle with the work-life balance, as statutory maternity leave in Singapore is limited to 16 weeks and there is no right to paternity leave. In the UK new mothers can take up to 52 weeks’ maternity leave and fathers up to two weeks. Many domestic workers in Singapore are hired as live-in cooks, cleaners and nannies, and some agencies, such as Best Maid, capitalise on Singapore’s strong work ethic. “In Singapore, [a] maid is not a luxury, but a necessity,” reads the company’s website. But not everyone can afford domestic help. On top of the salary, employers are required to pay a £2,500 security bond on their maid, as well as a monthly fee of around £135 throughout the standard two-year contract. Such rules can encourage employers to be less concerned about the welfare of their workers than “getting value for money”, says Vincent Wijeysingha of the charity Transient Workers Count Too. “Unlike more liberal countries where your rights are protected by law, here it all comes down to the personal goodwill of the employer, he said. “Many think, ‘I already pay so much for her, I don’t want to let her out of the house where she might find a boyfriend, get pregnant and make me lose my security bond.’” While physical abuse of domestic workers has decreased in recent years, psychological abuse is very common, says Bridget Tan of the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics, which counsels some 1,000 runaway domestic workers every year. “Newcomers usually have their mobiles taken away, aren’t allowed to communicate with family or neighbours and get no day off. The working conditions here are making people go crazy.” Domestic helpers – nearly one-third of which come from the Philippines – work an average of 14 hours a day, with only 12% given one day off per week, according to a new report. Employers negotiate contracts directly with their workers, with many offering a monthly payment of around £25 if no rest day is taken. Salaries range from around £125 to £350 a month, although many workers receive no pay for the first six to 11 months of their contract due to agency fees. Mandatory rest days are already enshrined in employment law in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and it seems Singapore’s domestic employers may soon have to follow suit in allowing their employees some relaxation time, says Edmund Pooh of Universal Employment Agency. “It will be difficult for them to attract good workers if they don’t.” For Filipina worker AJ, 40, who uses her weekly day off to attend computer classes and socialise with friends, more time to rest can only be a good thing. “I came here for a better life – we all did,” said the former agricultural worker. “But you cannot work from 6am to 9pm every day with no rest and so little pay. Sometimes I really do think they just consider us a commodity, like we are for sale.” Singapore Employment law Work-life balance Work & careers guardian.co.uk
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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Hours after the shooting stopped, a car chase ended and a gunman wanted for killing seven people took three hostages, Michigan authorities still hoped that the suspect might surrender without another death. But instead, he took his own life. Police in Grand Rapids tried to talk an agitated Rodrick Shonte Dantzler into giving up late Thursday. They said his thoughts seemed to swing between surrender and asking officers to shoot him. “He was talking about coming out, giving himself up,” Police Chief Kevin Belk said. “He decided at the last moment to fire the gun.” The 34-year-old ex-convict from Grand Rapids killed himself with a single shot to the head, ending the standoff with his hostages unharmed. But authorities say Dantzler left behind a pair of bloody crime scenes – the result of an unexplained rampage in which he killed his daughter, an ex-girlfriend and five others, including a second child who police couldn’t immediately identify. “It makes no sense to try to rationalize it, what the motives were,” Belk said. “You just cannot come up with a logical reason why someone takes seven peoples’ lives.” The names of the dead were not immediately released. Autopsies were scheduled for Friday. Records show that Dantzler was released from state prison in 2005, after serving time for assault less than murder. A spokesman for the prison system said Dantzler had not been under state supervision since then. Police initially got a 911 call early Thursday afternoon from someone saying that a man had admitted to killing three people, Belk said. Police went to Dantzler’s home, but he wasn’t there and officers couldn’t find him. It wasn’t long before authorities got a call from a woman who said her relatives had been shot. Next came a call about someone finding four gunshot victims at another house. Officers soon found three bodies in a home on Plainfield Avenue. An hour later, they discovered the other four across town in a ranch-style house on a cul-de-sac called Brynell Court. Two of the dead were children. Kyle Gietzen lives with his wife a few blocks from the home where three bodies were found. He was nearby and saw five to six officers trying to break in the front door, while several others went to the back door. He said he didn’t know what had happened until later. “I had no idea anybody had been shot,” he said. “I just thought it was a drug sting or something. It’s awful.” While police were investigating the seven homicides, Belk said police received a report of a “road rage” shooting. Dantzler had apparently shot at a man through the rear window of the vehicle he was driving. Police spotted him, and began a chase that included Dantzler crashing into a patrol car in the city’s downtown and exchanging gunfire with officers, during which a female bystander was shot in the shoulder. Karissa Swanson, 18, said her mother, 35-year-old April Swanson, was the woman who was shot, and that she had known Dantzler for many years. Karissa Swanson told The Associated Press that her mother was driving and chatting with her sister on her cellphone when Dantzler suddenly pulled up beside her. “My mom turned her head and he was right there, yelling her name, like, `April, April, I gotta talk, I gotta talk to you,’” Karissa Swanson said. “So my mom hung up the phone and called the police and was like, `He’s right next to me.’” The daughter said Dantzler chased her mother until they got caught at a stoplight, at which point he shot at her car. Karissa Swanson said her mother was shot twice. Pickup driver Robert Poore, who also was shot during the chase, told WOOD-TV that the bullet ricocheted off a titanium plate that had been inserted in his nose during cancer treatment when he was a child. He escaped with minor injuries. Dantzler drove a sport utility vehicle north from downtown and onto Interstate 96, crossing a grassy median and heading the wrong way down the highway while more than a dozen squad cars pursued him. Belk said he crashed the vehicle while driving down an embankment into a wooded area of the highway, which remained closed hours later. “I look in my rearview mirror and see this big white SUV coming up behind me,” said Carrie Colacchio, who lives a little more than a mile away from where Dantzler later took his three hostages. “The only way to get out of it was to push the gas pedal.” Colacchio said she couldn’t turn off the road or slow down or go any other way, and she reached about 85 mph. “I almost got smacked,” she said. “I had to go up on the curb.” From the highway, Dantzler made his way toward a nearby single-family home, firing several shots as he forced his way inside and took hostages he did not know, police said. Dozens of officers with guns drawn cordoned off the neighborhood, near a small lake in the northern part of the city, as authorities shut down nearby Interstate 96. That was around 7:30 p.m. During the next five hours, Dantzler fired sporadically at officers and inside the house. He vacillated between threatening to shoot the hostages and pleading with police to take him out, even asking negotiators whether there were snipers outside the home and where he should stand, Belk said. “The suspect fired at our officers many times throughout the night,” he said. “Even in the home, there was an exchange of gunfire. He fired as they made entry to the house.” Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell expressed huge pride for the police department, lauding those involved for their relentless pursuit of the suspect as he shot at them and “the patience that they showed the hostage negotiating team that resulted in three lives being saved.” Officers entered the house to protect the hostages, and remained inside throughout the negotiations with Dantzler. He changed course after several hours and asked how he could surrender. Belk said officers were talking with him about how to turn himself in when they heard the gunshot. “Obviously, we’re extremely disappointed at the outcome,” Belk said. “We would much rather have had the suspect surrender and have him in custody.” ___ Associated Press writers Kathy Barks Hoffman in Grand Rapids, and Corey Williams, Jeff Karoub and David N. Goodman in Detroit contributed to this report.
Continue reading …Debt Ceiling News: Pelosi, Democrats, broad array of groups object to including Social Security-Medicare cuts in talks
July 7, 2011 No Comment
Many progressives and Democratic leaders are sounding off against the Obama administration for the idea that cuts in benefits to our safety-net programs are acceptable in the debt ceiling debate: The top House Democrat says she and fellow Democratic lawmakers will oppose including cuts in Social Security or Medicare benefits in any package aimed at reducing huge federal deficits. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made the remark to reporters Thursday after returning to the Capitol from President Barack Obama’s budget talks with congressional leaders. The leaders are looking for a compromise package that would extend the government’s borrowing limit while also slicing trillions off future budget deficits. Signals have emerged that the White House would consider culling savings from Social Security and Medicare. But Pelosi, a California Democrat, says Democrats believe those two programs should not be used to pay for tax breaks for the rich. Chuck Schumer and Van Holland were on Andrea Mitchell today and they say that they also are against benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare, but pushed the idea that they could find ‘savings’ in Medicare to help with the debt ceiling negotiations. ” The devil is in the details ,” said Schumer. Right. Like most American voters will be able to understand that cutting waste out of Medicare by using “savings” they can find via drug prices will resonate. Typical Liberal claptrap. Schumer also said that there needs to be a balance between spending cuts and raising revenues from closing tax loopholes. That got Mitchell a bit unnerved and she nervously stated: Mitchell: You’re not saying it has to be one for one, cause there had been a previous position in previous talks where three to one would be… Schumer: No, we’re not saying…there has to be balance. We’re not going to take a hundred dollars of cuts for one dollar in revenues, but we’re not specifying exactly what that balance should be. However, it’s gotta be some decent form of balance. Yes, how awful would that prospect hold for the Villagers? A real negotiation with real revenues being raised against massive spending cuts during a time of high unemployment. Schumer wouldn’t describe what the word balance means to her. We’ve heard as much as a 5-1 ratio for cuts over tax increases and that’s pretty shocking to me as it is Rep. Ellison Questions Putting Social Security Into Debt Ceiling Deal: It Isn’t Adding To Deficit, It ‘Loans Us Money’ CQ via email: Progressives Vow to Oppose Any Debt Deal That Cuts Entitlements By Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are vowing to oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid listed as part of any deficit reduction package combined with a proposal to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona, a co-chairman of the liberal faction, said he was one of about 15 members of the group signing a letter to President Obama that makes the case that “job creation is the most important issue facing the country — not deficit reduction.” The Hill : Obama move on Social Security puts him at odds with Dem leaders Reid, Pelosi Is it surprising that Paul Krugman would write: The Obama-Keynes Mystery I’m not alone in marveling at the extent to which Obama has thrown his rhetorical weight behind anti-Keynesian economics; Ryan Avent is equally amazed, as are many others. And now he’s endorsing the structural unemployment story too. To those defending Obama on the grounds that he’s saying what he has to politically, I have two answers. First, words matter — as people who rallied around Obama in the first place because of his eloquence should know. Yes, he has to make compromises on policy grounds — but that doesn’t mean he has to adopt the right’s rhetoric and arguments. The effect of his intellectual capitulation is that we now have only one side in the national argument. Second, since Obama keeps talking nonsense about economics, at what point do we stop giving him credit for actually knowing better? Maybe at some point we have to accept that he believes what he’s saying. The question then is why. As I’ve tried to show many times, the facts overwhelmingly refute the anti-Keynes talking points. Neither the invisible bond vigilantes nor the confidence fairy have made an appearance. So why is Obama talking up those talking points? TPM reports: House Dems Stunned By White House Debt Proposal, Read Obama The Riot Act Multiple senior House Democratic aides tell TPM that caucus members were caught off guard by news stories about President Obama’s push for deeper deficit and spending reductions — and particularly about the White House’s willingness to cut Social Security as part of a grand bargain to raise the debt limit. AARP had earlier signaled they might be open to adjustments to Social Security, but now they’ve changed their tune and are firmly opposing the move. The top advocacy group for seniors, AARP, is sounding the alarm over reports that cuts to Social Security and Medicare may be included in a deficit deal. CEO Barry Rand issued a lengthy statement on Thursday demanding that the White House and Republican leaders take the issue off the table and address any changes to the programs in separate negotiations. “AARP is strongly opposed to any deficit reduction proposal that makes harmful cuts to vital Social Security and Medicare benefits,” Rand said. — “AARP will fight any cuts that are proposed to this important program, including proposals to reduce the cost of living adjustment for beneficiaries (COLA)–such as the proposed chained CPI–which AARP also believes should not be considered as part of the debt ceiling or deficit reduction negotiations,” he said. Digby reminds us what FDR’s legacy is: The Grand Bargain Arrives Under pressure from the right, he (FDR) pulled back a lot of New Deal programs the next year and it caused unemployment to go back up, so rhetoric isn’t everything. But he had no illusions about how political power is won and used for the greater good and he didn’t give the Republicans tools to gain political power by pretending they were anything but the opponents they were. His lasting legacy, however pragmatically it was envisioned and implemented, was that people trusted the Democrats for generations and the New Deal programs were woven into the fabric of America. Liberalism, not conservatism, was the default ideology because Roosevelt made his arguments in stark and clear ideological terms. Some are writing that this is all a master plan that the administration is hatching to trap Conservatives and win Obama all the Independents for the upcoming election because he’s being the adult, or something like that. Some are just too hopelessly optimistic. And check out Ezra’s graph on spending cuts and tax increases under various presidents and see how lopsided this administration proposed plan stacks up against the rest. enlarge Credit: Washington Post deficit-reduction deals passed by Presidents : It’s safe to say at this point that the White House is starting to get the credit it wants for working hard to find a compromise even as Republicans work hard to resist one. But that’s not a triumph of messaging. It is, if anything, an understatement based on the White House’s willingness to give congressional Republicans a much more lopsided deal than Reagan, Bush or Clinton presided over. Republicans might be fools for passing on it, but if and when they finally say “yes,” a lot of Democrats are going to be wondering whether the Democrats were suckers for offering it.
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