…So says Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), citing (what else?) the snowy spell that hit the nation’s capital over the weekend, and is expected to dump as much as two additional feet beginning Tuesday.
To make up the lost time, Hoyer said, the House will be in session both Monday Feb. 22 and Friday Feb. 26 — after lawmakers return from next week’s President’s Day recess.
An updated 2010 House calendar is here.
When Congress passed new consumer protections for credit card holders last May, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) successfully attached a not-at-all-related amendment allowing firearms in national parks, so long as gun carriers comply with laws of the state in which the park is located. That law is now scheduled to take effect on Feb. 22.
In preview, the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees has released examples of some of the activities soon to be permitted under the new statute.
In Wyoming’s Yellowstone Park, for example, backcountry hikers will be free to openly carry firearms. At Virginia’s Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, concertgoers — including those picnicking on the lawn — will have the same opportunity. In Alaska’s Denali and Colorado’s Mesa Verde parks, handguns in holsters might soon be in fashion. Visitors to Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg National Park — a popular field-trip destination for the area’s public schools — will be able to carry rifles across those battlefields. The list goes on.
For it’s part, CNPSR opposes the changes, citing the heightened risk for rangers and the increased likelihood that wildlife — as well as natural and historical monuments — will become irresistible targets.
“A feeling of safety and security will be replaced by wariness and suspicion,” Bill Wade, chair of CNPSR’s executive council and former head of Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, said in a statement. “This diminishes some of the ’specialness and reverence’ our citizens have long accorded to their national parks.”
Too bad for Wade that his voice doesn’t carry quite so far on Capitol Hill as that of the National Rifle Association.
The federal government might officially be closed, and House Democrats might have canceled votes, but don’t tell Senate leaders that there’s more precipitation on the way. Word from the Hill this hour is that the upper chamber remains on schedule Tuesday, with plans to meet at 2 p.m. to debate two pending nominees: Joseph Greenaway for U.S. Circuit Judge and Craig Becker to join the National Labor Relations Board.
At 5 p.m. the Senate will vote (1) to confirm Greenaway and (2) to invoke cloture on Becker. Of course, this schedule could change at any time…
A great piece in The Washington Times today reveals a remarkable degree of hypocrisy from some GOP critics of last year’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill.
More than a dozen Republican lawmakers, while denouncing the stimulus to the media and their constituents, privately sent letters to just one of the federal government’s many agencies seeking stimulus money for home-state pork projects.
The letters to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, expose the gulf between lawmakers’ public criticism of the overall stimulus package and their private lobbying for projects close to home.
Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), for example, sought more than $50 million for two projects in his state, the Times found. Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) also blasted the stimulus bill as wasteful, yet two days before voting against it, Bennett “privately forwarded to [USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack] a list of projects seeking stimulus money,” the Times notes.
“I believe the addition of federal funds to these projects would maximize the stimulative effect of these projects on the local economy,” he [Bennett] wrote.
Still another vocal stimulus opponent, Rep. Joe “You Lie” Wilson (R-S.C.), was also busy lobbying for pork, the Times discovered, even as he was accusing the Democrats of promoting the “same old, tired big spending agenda.” A Wilson spokeswoman defended the discrepancy, telling the Times that the lawmaker “opposed the stimulus as a ‘misguided spending bill,’ but once it passed, he wanted to make sure South Carolina residents ‘receive their share of the pie.’”
Some government watchdogs had a different take.
“It’s not illegal to talk out of both sides of your mouth, but it does seem to be a level of dishonesty troubling to the American public,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Just out from the White House:
Michelle and I were deeply saddened today to hear about the passing of Congressman John Murtha. Jack was a devoted husband, a loving father and a steadfast advocate for the people of Pennsylvania for nearly 40 years. His passion for service was born during his decorated career in the United States Marine Corps, and he went on to earn the distinction of being the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress. Jack’s tough-as-nails reputation carried over to Congress, where he became a respected voice on issues of national security. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife of nearly 55 years, Joyce, their three children, and the entire Murtha family.
Georgia’s House Republicans have a simple warning for Democratic leaders still hoping to pass health care reform this year: Our state can’t afford it.
In a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the Republicans argue that the Democrats’ plans to expand Medicaid, a program funded jointly by state and federal governments, would squeeze the state’s already strapped budget and threaten other vital programs.
Georgia has estimated that the cost of the House and Senate passed unfunded mandates, for just new enrollees, would cost a staggering $2.64 billion under the House version (not including the Stimulus extension or a Primary Care Reimbursement increase) and anywhere from $1.54 billion to $1.79 billion under the Senate version.
This raises many concerns since Georgia currently cannot afford the cost of expanding Medicaid under the House and Senate bills. Due to the crippled economy, Georgia is facing significant budget problems and has been forced to make cuts to current services including K-12 education, public assistance, corrections, transportation and others.
Signing the letter were Georgia GOP Reps. Tom Price, Phil Gingrey, Jack Kingston, Nathan Deal, Lynn Westmoreland, John Linder and Paul Broun.
They have a point. Democratic leaders have proposed a Medicaid expansion precisely because it’s one of the cheapest ways to extend coverage for the uninsured, who tend to be lower-income folks. But Medicaid also suffers periodic funding problems because, as a safety net program, enrollment tends to jump during economic crises when states are least able to afford the additional costs — a fundamental funding flaw that neither the House nor the Senate bill addresses. Indeed, this was exactly the concern that led Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to insist that the federal government pick up the entire tab for the Medicaid expansion proposed in the Senate bill.
Recognizing that problem, Democrats included roughly $80 billion in federal Medicaid help in last year’s economic stimulus bill — a treatment of the symptoms, but not the root of the problem. If lawmakers want to avoid having to pass emergency Medicaid spending every time the economy turns south, they’d do well to tackle the underlying flaw in how the program is funded. The only other option, as the Georgia Republicans point out, is for states to slash other things.
As Republican leaders are urging President Obama to scrap the Democrats’ health care reform legislation and start the process from scratch, they’ve found an unlikely ally in Rep. Dennis Kucinich. The Ohio Democrat — a perennial presidential candidate — wants President Obama to consider government-sponsored, single-payer health coverage in lieu of the insurance industry-based reforms being proposed by Democratic leaders.
In a letter to Obama today, Kucinich argues that single payer is “the only health care [system] that has consistently proven to address each of the criteria you have outlined for a satisfactory heath care plan.”
As you know, Medicare for All increases quality, provides coverage for everyone, and controls costs.
The Ohio liberal is urging Obama to include a single-payer advocate as part of the bipartisan health reform summit the White House will host on Feb. 25. Indeed, Kucinich offered himself to be that advocate.
Statements are beginning to dribble out from Capitol Hill following the death this afternoon of 18-term Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.). Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who in 2006 had nominated Murtha in his unsuccessful bid to become House majority leader, called the Vietnam vet “a congressional giant.”
I nominated him because of his dedication to America, his love of country, his love for the men and women who serve America and his understanding of the practical aspirations of those Americans who struggle everyday. John Murtha was a Congressional giant.
Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) was also quick to issue a brief statement of praise and condolence. Murtha, Obey said, was so effective on defense issues because “he understood the misery of war.”
“Every person who serves in the military has lost an advocate and a good friend today,” Obey added.
With the death of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) Monday — just three days after he’d become the longest-serving congressman in Pennsylvania’s history — Capitol Hill has lost one of its most influential lawmakers, and perhaps the most proficient earmarker of them all. Not only was the 36-year Washington veteran a close confidant of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), but as chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, Murtha built a career on directing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal projects back to his downtrodden district.
In the process, he made few friends among critics of pork-barrel spending — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington deemed him recently to be among the top 20 most corrupt lawmakers on the Hill — but Murtha was unabashed. Indeed, he once called the Democrats’ push for ethics reform “total crap,” and he used to brag that his middle initial stood for “power.” But of course, for the residents of blue-collar Johnstown — Murtha’s hometown and a former steel mecca-turned-shell of itself — he was a godsend whose reputation no scandal or ethics lapse could tarnish.
A decorated veteran of Vietnam, Murtha’s voice carried a great deal of weight on issues related to Iraq and Afghanistan, most notably his undiluted 2005 endorsement of pulling troops out of Iraq.
“The war in Iraq is not going as advertised,” he said in November 2005. “It’s a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress.”
As The Hill’s Roxana Tiron points out today, “Murtha also questioned the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and would have been a pivotal voice in the congressional debate over the issue this spring.”
More immediately, Murtha’s death opens up the chairmanship of the defense funding panel, leaving Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.) — the third-ranking Democrat on the larger Appropriations Committee — next in line for the coveted spot. Indeed, although the decision is ultimately in the hands of Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), Dicks’ office is already predicting that the 17-term Washingtonian will snag the seat.
“He likely will succeed Murtha,” George Behan, chief of staff for Dicks, told the Seattle Times today.
And that’s good news for Seattle-based Boeing.
Since Scott Brown’s stunning Senate victory in Massachusetts last month, the thinking among a good number of moderate Democrats seems to be that simply having the House pass the Senate’s version of health care reform — complete with $100 million in special Medicaid funding for Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D) Nebraska — would leave them vulnerable on the campaign trail this year, even if separately they pass amendments plucking out some of the pork. This fear is alive among House Democrats, who don’t want to be seen as a rubber stamp for the Senate’s bill, and also Senate moderates, who are worried about an outcry against reconciliation, the budget process that, if invoked, would allow upper-chamber Democrats to pass the amending bill with a simple majority.
Today, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne points out why not adopting and amending the Senate bill would be an even larger political liability in November.
The real problem is that some Senate Democratic moderates are petrified that Republicans will make terrible trouble if the amendments are passed through the “reconciliation process,” which is fancy congressional talk for majority rule. …
But if Democrats are that intimidated by Republicans, they should just give up their majority. And this fear is politically shortsighted. Right now, every Democrat in the Senate has to defend a vote for the health-care bill anyway, with nothing to show for it — and this includes defending the Nebraska deal.
“By contrast,” Dionne adds, “voting for amendments to the original Senate bill would be a sign that Democrats heard the message from Massachusetts.”
Not to mention, it would signal that the Democratic majority is actually capable of moving big-change bills, which was the reason that voters sent them to Washington to begin with.
With unemployment tickling 10 percent (and likely to rise), Senate Democrats this week are hoping to push through a series of bills designed to encourage job creation. It’s as much a test of the Republicans’ commitment to bipartisanship as it is a gauge of the Democrats’ power to pass legislation in the wake of Scott Brown’s surprise Senate win in Massachusetts last month.
That is, with President Obama reaching across the aisle in ways not seen in modern history — and with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) insisting on crafting a jobs bill that can win the support of some pretty conservative Republicans, including Charles Grassley (Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) — GOP leaders have little claim to their habitual complaint that the Democrats simply want to ram legislation through Congress without any Republican input. So if we see stalling this week on a jobs bill, you can bet that it has less to do with the actual policy (all sides agree that struggling states need the help) than it does with the fact that the Republicans’ strategy has, for more than a year, been to delay legislation at all costs.
Related to the warnings from some economists that the official unemployment rate will likely jump again this year, a Labor Department official today conveyed this message to lawmakers: Don’t worry about it.
Testifying before the Joint Economic Committee, Keith Hall, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, told the panel that, yes, historically, as labor markets improve, the resulting increase in the labor pool has caused the jobless rate “to bump up temporarily” — a trend that will likely happen this year as well. “We’ve got a particularly high potential for that because so many people are unemployed and we’ve lost so many people out of the labor force,” he said.
But, he added, that spike, because it’s caused by the economy gaining strength, is ultimately misleading.
“If we start to see real improvement,” he said, “we shouldn’t get too concerned if the unemployment rate hits a bit of a speed bump and goes up for a couple of months.”
Unless, from Congress’s perspective, those couple of months arrive around November.
Democrats are reacting to today’s jobs report with an optimism that’s also notably guarded. (Despite the 0.3 percent drop in unemployment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for example, described the news tepidly as “a welcome step in the right direction.”)
Turns out, there’s probably good reason for the caution. Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics at Moody’s Economy.com, warned today that the nation’s unemployment rate — 9.7 percent in January — will likely jump back near 11 percent later this year. “We expect it to go back up,” he told TWI, adding that his group estimates that it will take almost five years (the end of 2014) before the figure gets down to 5.5 percent.
It’s not because the nation’s employers are readying a purge. Rather, Faucher explained, the news of recovery will likely stir those who’d stopped looking for jobs to relaunch their search, returning themselves to the pool of unemployed folks that the Labor Department uses to crunch its numbers. Practically, then, the jobs crisis won’t be getting worse, though officially the unemployment rate will increase.
The Democrats, it seems, are cautious enough to recognize that voters likely won’t recognize that distinction in November.
The story is a bit surreal, but goes something like this:
1) Republicans claim to hate government spending.
2) President Obama withholds some funding original earmarked for defense projects in Alabama.
3) In protest, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) puts a “blanket hold” on all Obama nominees, demanding more money for his state.
4) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declines to comment.
Proving that it’s tough to be a fiscal conservative and sincere.
And not just on health care reform. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), head of the Banking Committee, announced this morning that, after weeks of financial reform negotiations with the panel’s senior Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), the two sides “have reached an impasse.”
While I still hope that we will ultimately have a consensus package, it is time to move the process forward.
I have instructed my staff to begin drafting legislation to present to the committee later this month.
There’s been a great deal of speculation about whether the retiring Dodd would use his newfound freedom to go populist with his financial reform plans in a way that he might not have been if he’d sought re-election. That is, would the Connecticut Democratic insist on the creation of a consumer financial protection agency — as House Democrats, President Obama and consumer advocates are hoping for? Or would he scrap that plan in the name of getting Shelby on board — as he hinted at last month?
Today’s announced doesn’t offer any answers, but Dodd’s plan to move forward without Shelby certainly leaves the advocates with more hope than moving forward with him.
Some unsurprising comments this morning from Rand Paul, a Republican candidate to replace retiring Sen. Jim Bunning (R) in Kentucky. From the halls of Nashville’s National Tea Party Convention, Paul told CNN that “the number one reason why I run for office is because I’m worried about the debt.”
And that’s what you find at these tea parties. They don’t want more taxes, but they’re mostly concerned about the fiscal insolvency of our nation and that we could be ruining or bankrupting the nation, that we’re passing on a great debt to our children and grandchildren.
Unmentioned is how he (and Republicans in general) would do it. That is, by ruling out tax hikes of any kind to raise federal revenues, fiscal hawks like Paul mean that they could balance the budget solely with program cuts. But what would they cut? Medicare? We’ve recently seen the GOP reaction to the Democrats’ proposed Medicare cuts. Social Security? Over’s AARP’s dead body. Agriculture? Not with Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) atop the Finance Committee. Defense? Don’t even think about it.
In other words, all federal spending — even the most worthless — creates a job for someone, and therefore has a champion on Capitol Hill. It’s not a new trend, but it is easier to recognize in the middle of a jobs crisis when the federal government has become the spender of last resort.
All of which goes a long way to explain why it’s all incumbents — and not just Democrats — being threatened in November’s midterms.
Some perspective on the Labor Department’s latest unemployment figures, from the National Employment Law Project:
With January’s unemployment figures, the average duration of unemployment has hit another record high of 30.2 weeks, with a historic 41.2% of the unemployed remaining out of work for six months or longer. 11.5 million Americans are collecting some form of unemployment insurance. During the most recent previous peak in long term unemployment in 1983, a comparatively low 26% of unemployed workers were out of work for six or more months, and the average duration of unemployment peaked at 21 weeks.
“With the jobs hole this deep, Congress and the Administration must bravely stare into the headwinds of budget concerns and continue to fortify the safety net throughout this year,” Christine Owens, NELP’s executive director, said in a statement. ”Any faltering of their support will bring disaster for families, communities and the economy.”
Economists are pretty much in agreement that the government, as spender of last resort, must step in with more spending to fill the void left by the drop in consumer spending that’s undermined the jobs market. The short-term borrowing, they say, is much less threatening to the economy than continuation of double-digit unemployment that would surely result without that spending. Whether lawmakers on Capitol Hill have the appetite for it is another question altogether. Early indications are that they don’t.
The good news: Officially the nation’s unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent in January, down from 10 percent in December.
The bad news: That figure ignores (1) those working part time who’d rather be working full time, and (2) those who’ve simply stopping looking for work altogether. Also, most worker groups saw little or no improvement in their situation. From the Department of Labor:
Unemployment rates for most major worker groups — adult men (10.0 percent), teenagers (26.4 percent), blacks (16.5 percent), and Hispanics (12.6 percent) — showed little change. The jobless rate for adult women fell to 7.9 percent, and the rate for whites declined to 8.7 percent.
This combination of factors leads to this bit of tricky math: Even while January’s jobless rate fell by 0.3 percent, the number of unemployed workers rose by 20,000 — representing a shrinking work-force as folks throw in the towel and exit the labor pool. In fact, the number of people who have been jobless for more than 27 weeks hit another all-time high of 6.3 million in January — 183,000 higher than December and 5 million more since the start of the recession in December 2007. As this graph from Calculated Risk points out, that’s a problem unprecedented in recent history.
As Congress weighs its plans for tackling the nation’s enduring jobs crisis, the National Employment Law Project today laid out the stakes of inaction: Nearly 1.2 million Americans would lose their unemployment benefits next month unless Congress steps in to extend the filing deadline. By July, that number jumps to almost 5 million.
Under current law, unemployed folks have access to 26 weeks of state-sponsored insurance benefits before four separate tiers of emergency federal benefits kicks in. Confusing the arrangement, recipients must exhaust their current benefits before filing for the next tier. Trouble is, the filing deadline for all tiers is at the end of February.
The result? Roughly 380,000 workers currently receiving state benefits will miss the chance to apply for federal help, NELP estimates, while another 814,000 currently getting federal help wouldn’t be able to enter the next tier.
“Congress must swiftly act to maintain the lifeline for millions of jobless Americans caught in the undertow of record long-term unemployment in this ongoing downturn,” Christine Owens, NELP’s executive director, said in a statement.
There’s every indication that lawmakers will do just that. In December, the House passed a $154 billion jobs bill, including $41 billion to extend the UI filing window by six months. More recently, President Obama unveiled a budget proposal that includes $49 billion (roughly a seven-month extension) for the same purpose. “The Administration will propose legislation for later transmittal to extend the Emergency Unemployment Compensation and Extended Benefits programs,” the budget states.
And Senate leaders on Thursday outlined their plan to tackle the jobs crisis, which included mentions (but no specifics) of a UI extension.
The trouble facing Democrats as they continue to push for health care reform is that, in a country of roughly 300 million people, almost 260 million already have health insurance, and of those who don’t, a vast majority likely won’t face any medical emergencies this year. Contrast that with those without jobs, who feel the pain of their condition each and every day. That distinction goes a long way toward explaining why Obama now says that jobs are his top priority, and why Senate Democrats, at least for the time being, have shelved health care reform in favor of legislation designed to curb unemployment.
It doesn’t mean, though, that health care reform should remain on that shelf for too long. Indeed, officials monitoring the nation’s health care spending provided further evidence that health reform isn’t simply a moral imperative, but an economic one. In 2009, Americans spent roughly $2.5 trillion on health care, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — a figure representing 17.3 percent of the nation’s economy, up from 16.2 percent the year before. And things are projected to get much worse. CMS economists project that health spending will jump to $4.5 trillion in 2019, representing 19 percent of the economy.
Washington Post columnist David Broder points out today that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which currently represent 41 percent of federal spending, are projected to consume 60 percent of the federal budget in just 20 years — “crowding out almost everything else the country needs from government.”
Amid the flurry of numbers, Merrill Goozner discovered another bleak milestone. “Public sector involvement in health care this year will surpass private sector spending for the first time in U.S. history,” he notes today, attributing the growth to the recession-fueled decline in employer-sponsored health coverage. Fast forward a decade from now, and here’s what that means for the country:
In 2019, U.S. government agencies at the state and federal level ALONE will spend 10% of GDP on health. That’s a greater share of economic activity than many other highly industrialized nations that insure everyone, yet the U.S. will still have one in six or seven people without any coverage at all at some point during the year.
If this isn’t an economic case for health care reform, then nothing is.
