Tag Archives: Barack Obama

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Let us stumble now to next big issue

Immigration reform.

Does anyone remember that immigration reform used to be the most pressing issue facing Congress? Then the Syria crisis erupted. Then came the battle over funding the government and the debt crisis. Each set of crises eclipsed the earlier set.

OK, now we have settled — for the moment — the government shutdown and the debt ceiling matters and the Syria crisis appears to be settling at least temporarily, we can look back toward immigration reform as something that needs to be decided.

The U.S. Senate passed an immigration reform package by a substantial bipartisan margin. It then got stalled in the House of Representatives, which — given that Republicans control the place — isn’t a big surprise any longer. The GOP remains dedicated to the proposition that its mission is to deny Democrats any legislative victory. So the fight has continued.

Immigration reform concerns a lessening of the pressure to deport those who are here illegally. About 11 million — give or take a few thousand — residents are here without permission. Many of them have led constructive and productive lives here. It is true that many have not. I’m waiting for a study that reveals the comparative percentages of illegal residents and U.S. citizens who have run afoul of the law.

The Senate-passed immigration bill creates a “pathway to citizenship” for those who are here illegally. It gives them a chance to become citizens if they choose to do so. Those who don’t then can seek legal resident status.

Foes of this bill call it “amnesty” and say it forgives those who have broken U.S. laws. The more ardent foes of immigration reform want to round them up and send them back to their native lands. Remember when eventual 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney vowed to make life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they would “self-deport” themselves back to their homeland?

Well, the budget battles are done. President Obama says immigration reform needs to return to the front burner. The House needs to finish the job begun in the Senate.

Get that one done, ladies and gentlemen, before returning to the budget squabbles that are sure to re-erupt right after the first of the year.

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Words have consequences, Rep. Chaffetz

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, used an interesting term to describe the influence senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett has on Obama administration policy.

He said Jarrett has “tentacles on every issue.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/330669-chaffetz-valerie-jarrett-has-tentacles-into-every-issue-at-the-white-house

Tentacles.

Not her hands. Not her fingers. She’s not merely involved. She has tentacles.

When I think of the term “tentacles,” I think of the slimy deep-sea creature that skulks along the ocean floor. Now I suppose Rep. Chaffetz, a tea party golden boy, is trying to ascribe some seedy description to the Obama administration’s senior political adviser.

Why is it such a surprise that President Obama relies on an individual to give him advice? President George W. Bush had Karl Rove. President Bill Clinton had his wife. President George H.W. Bush had Jim Baker. President Ronald Reagan relied on Mike Deaver.

I guess they all had “tentacles” on their respective bosses’ policies.

Jarrett is no different. It’s the pejorative term “tentacles,” though, that seems so irksome.

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JFK or the Gipper today? Forget about it!

Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe’s conservative columnist, believes John F. Kennedy’s name would be mud in today’s Democratic Party.

Perhaps so, given that JFK was no flaming liberal a la Barack Obama, John Kerry or Al Gore Jr.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/10/19/would-jfk-never-liberal-still-find-home-democratic-party/ZrxV7lJYHrvWxOjXItAuZJ/story.html

But allow me to finish the rest of that argument.

Just as Democrats wouldn’t embrace JFK today, the current Republican Party seems out of step with some of its own stalwarts — such as Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and, dare I say, Ronald Wilson Reagan.

All this is evidence of just how polarized the political climate has become in America. It’s become a place where working across the aisle is anathema to the so-called “true believers.” The result has been a government that no longer works as it should for the good of the entire country.

Kennedy was a pro-defense hawk. He hated communists. JFK sought to govern with muscle and was unafraid to threaten to use military force against our foes if the need presented itself … e.g., the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. A romantic thought has been kicked around for 50 years that had he lived and been re-elected in 1964 the Vietnam War would have ended much sooner, that Kennedy would have realized our involvement there was a mistake. I’m not quite so sure of that. Besides, who can know for certain what he would have done?

If we’re going to examine our partisan icons of the past, it’s good to look at all of them.

Goldwater is the father of the modern conservative movement. He became a classic libertarian who despised government interference in people’s private lives. Is that the GOP of today? Hardly.

Richard Nixon’s administration created the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the bogeymen that modern conservatives today want to abolish.

Ronald Reagan? Well, he made working with Democrats in Congress a virtual art form. His friendship with House Speaker Tip O’Neill became legendary, even while both men were at the height of their power.

They were icons in their day. Of the three GOP leaders of the past, only Reagan conjures up warm memories among today’s conservatives. My own view is that the Gipper would be disgusted at the open animosity his political descendants are exhibiting.

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Watch these jobs numbers carefully

The U.S. Labor Department is going to release some jobs numbers Tuesday, a bit later than planned.

Here’s my thinking on what we might see and what might be the reaction. The economy likely will not have added as many jobs as it has in recent months and the White House spin machine is going to kick into high gear to blame the slowdown on congressional Republicans.

The Labor Department was scheduled to send out those jobs numbers — along with the latest unemployment rate — on Oct. 4. It got delayed because part of the federal government had shut down three days earlier. That must have included those “non-essential” Labor Department analysts who crunch those numbers and release them to the public.

And why did the government shut down? It was largely because congressional Republicans kept insisting on a defunding of the Affordable Care Act. It didn’t happen. The government remained partially shuttered until just this past week, when the Senate leadership from both parties cobbled a plan together to reopen the government and lift the nation’s debt ceiling.

The impact of the shutdown, however, reportedly did have an adverse impact on the economy. Employers suspended their hiring; businesses stopped their buying, as did consumers; manufacturers slowed their output.

Some estimates put the net loss to the economy at something around $24 billion — although I haven’t yet heard anyone translate how the bean counters compute that dollar loss.

So, the latest jobs report might not be as rosy as recent reports. Republicans might try to blame it all on President Obama’s “failed economic policy,” even though the nation has added something like 8 million jobs — mostly in the private sector — during the past four years.

Democrats, meanwhile, will be able to play to citizens’ fresh memories about the government shutdown. It hurt the economy and the Labor Department numbers we get Tuesday might give Democrats more ammo to fire at their adversaries across the aisle.

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Banish non-scientific ‘polls’

I detest those instant “polls” that seek — ostensibly, at least — to gauge public opinion on contemporary issues.

The Amarillo Globe-News today posted one such “poll” question on one of its opinion pages. It asks readers whether they agree with Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s view that the House of Representatives should impeach President Obama.

OK. Let’s see. The Texas Panhandle in two presidential elections has given the president about 20 percent of the vote. Eighty percent of the vote went for Republicans John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. The tea party wing of the GOP — the party’s most strident voice at the moment — is entrenched firmly in this part of an extremely Republican state.

I’ll take a wild guess that when the results of this “poll” are tabulated, we’ll get roughly a 90 percent approval rating for Dewhurst’s call for a presidential impeachment.

This is just one example. The media do this kind of thing all the time. They ask for immediate responses to pressing national issues. TV networks do it. The one that just slays me comes from a liberal TV talk show host, Ed Shultz, whose MSNBC program “The Ed Show” asks viewers to send in their answers to questions relating to the topic of the evening.

A question might go something like this: Do you agree that the Republican Party is looking after the best interest of rich people while ignoring the needs of poor folks? The answers usually come back about 95 to 5 percent “yes.”

OK, I embellished that question … but not by very much.

These “polls” merely feed into people’s anger, their frustration and they serve no useful purpose other than to gin up responses on websites.

They provide not a bit of useful information.

I just wish the media would stop playing these games.

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Time for a new HHS secretary

Kathleen Sebelius has served the nation mostly with distinction during her time as Health and Human Services secretary.

Until now.

The rollout of the Affordable Care Act on Oct. 1 as been beset with mountains of trouble, relating mostly to the glitches in the website set up to manage the implementation of the act.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/19/21040394-sebelius-will-be-a-no-show-at-obamacare-hearing?lite

The mess-up has been huge. Is it Sebelius’s fault that her team of computer technicians haven’t been able to handle the huge traffic flow onto the site? No. However, the foul-ups have occurred on her watch. They involve the unveiling of President Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment. It has gone badly … to say the very least.

Now the HHS boss says she won’t take part in congressional hearings set for next month, citing scheduling conflicts.

I believe it’s time for her resign and hand the job over to someone else.

The criticism of the ACA rollout, of course, comes from congressional Republicans. What does anyone really expect? They’ve been critical of the law since its inception, its approval by Congress, its affirmation by the Supreme Court and its place at the center of the debate over whether to fund the government and increase the federal debt ceiling.

The very least one could have hoped would be for the unveiling of the law, which took effect while Congress was tying itself in knots over the budget, to occur smoothly. Yes, many millions of Americans have sought to enroll in some insurance plan. But didn’t HHS officials realize that going in? Didn’t Secretary Sebelius foresee the need to ensure that the system would work effectively?

The system has crashed repeatedly. The Obama administration admits it’s been a rocky start since the Oct. 1 rollout. Well, do you think?

Kathleen Sebelius has been on the job since the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency. And as her GOP critics have noted, she had time for an appearance on Jon Stewart’s comedy show, but doesn’t have the time to answer questions from Congress.

It’s time for Sebelius to go.

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What has happened to David Dewhurst?

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has been bitten by the critter that has infested a growing segment of the Republican Party.

He wants Congress to impeach President Obama. Imagine that: A Texas Republican running for re-election to a powerful statewide office has weighed in with the call for a presidential impeachment.

http://www.texasobserver.org/david-dewhurst-calls-obamas-impeachment/

This is not the man whom Texans have elected several times to statewide office. Something has happened to him.

Oh, I forgot. He lost a U.S. Senate race last year after being considered the prohibitive favorite; he got outflanked on his right by Ted Cruz and more than likely vowed never to let that happen again.

Therefore, he’s now calling for the president’s impeachment.

On what grounds? He says Obama has exerted executive authority that go beyond the Constitution. He mentioned something about the Sept. 11, 2011 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that the White House knew from the moment the fire fight began that our officials needed help immediately, but failed to respond.

I used to think of David Dewhurst as a public official with an unparalleled work ethic. No one outworked this guy. He possesses an outstanding command of legislative detail. I thought that trait served him well as the Texas Senate’s presiding officer.

Now the climate has changed. Tea party activists have taken command of the stage. They’re hogging the spotlight. They are out for political blood. Dewhurst, once thought to be an “establishment Republican,” is now sounding as ferocious as his nemeses on the right.

Perhaps the most astounding aspect of his impeachment call is that, as he told The Texas Observer, he was speaking as a “private citizen.”

Listen up, Gov. Dewhurst: You are not a private citizen.

Something has happened to a once-serious public servant. I’m worried about him — and about the state he has been elected to lead.

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Attention now turns to budget panels

Let us now focus our attention on some members of Congress — from both political parties — who have been given the task of working out a long-term federal budget agreement that prevents charades such as the one that just ended.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/17/politics/shutdown-over-main/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan — who chair the Senate and House budget committees, respectively — are going to begin talking between themselves. They’re both serious politicians (no irony intended, honest) but their task is monumental, given the institutional refusal of both legislative chambers to adopt any kind of strategic approach to these problems.

We came within a few hours this week of defaulting on our nation’s debt obligations. The two-week-long government shutdown sucked an estimated $24 billion from the nation’s economy. It turns out we’ll pay our bills and the government has reopened fully.

President Obama signed the bills into law late Wednesday and said the end of this budget battle removes the “cloud of unease” that had been hovering over the financial world.

I beg to differ, Mr. President.

The unease has just taken a brief respite. It’ll likely return in January and again in February. The money to run the government runs out in January; our borrowing limit expires in February. Many of us out here believe we’ll be right back at it again when those deadlines approach.

Of the two budget panel chairs, Ryan has the more difficult task, given the role the tea party wing of the GOP — of which he is a member — played in prolonging the ridiculous drama that unfolded. The House Republican caucus will continue to fight to eradicate the Affordable Care Act, which only just now has been implemented. They don’t like it and predict all kinds of catastrophe will befall the nation if it is allowed to live on.

Ryan is considered to be a serious and thoughtful young man. I’m withholding my final judgment on him. I’m not sure he’ll be able to resist the enormous pressure he’ll feel from the extreme right wing of his party, although I retain some faith he’ll be able to work constructively with Democrats on his committee and with the likes of Chairwoman Murray in the Senate.

Here’s a bit of advice from out here in the Heartland. Work until you get a deal. You have no need to take extended recesses between now and Christmas. You have much to do and the public — into whose faces you spit when you closed much of the federal government — pay you folks a pretty fair wage to solve these problems.

Finally, Democrats and Republicans can learn from the memories of two presidents — Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan. Both men knew how to work the system. They perfected the art of principled compromise.

Now … let’s get busy.

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Debt deal delays another crisis

As much as I hate the cliché “kick the can down the road,” I am beginning to hear the tinny sound of that can as it’s being given the boot.

President Obama and congressional Republicans may be on the verge of ending the current debt ceiling crisis with a six-week deal that buys them time to, what?, negotiate further on these fiscal matters.

I’m not yet sure what’s going to emerge from all this talking that’s occurring in D.C., but I fear that it’s going to merely delay the onset of the next fiscal crisis.

It’ll occur in about, oh, six weeks when the debt ceiling limit arrives yet again.

These yahoos know what’s at stake. They understand the consequences of failing to meet our nation’s financial obligations. Why are they even negotiating over this?

Congress’s approval rating is less than 10 percent; an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll puts it at 5 percent. Barack Obama’s poll numbers are much better, but they aren’t great; the Associated Press puts him at 37 percent.

There can be no doubt, none at all, about why our “leaders'” standing is in the tank.

It’s that damn can they keep kicking down the road.

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Paychecks still roll in for lawmakers

I am holding out hope that the government shutdown is close to being ended and that the bickering parties will strike a deal to raise the nation’s debt limit.

Before all that happens, I want to vent one more time against those lawmakers — and even the president and vice president — who continue to draw their pay while taking measures that send other federal employees home without pay.

Some of our members of Congress have done the right thing. U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., for example has donated his salary to food distribution organizations in his home state. He declared that Americans shouldn’t go hungry while a portion of their government has been shuttered.

There have been others of both parties and I salute them all for doing what I believe is the noble thing.

My own congressman, Republican Mac Thornberry of Clarendon? He’s still getting paid. Hmmm. I am guessing a man of his means isn’t exactly living off his $174,000 annual salary.

I am acutely aware that House members, senators and executive branch leaders surrendering their salaries for a brief period of time won’t balance the budget, it won’t bring us closer to good fiscal health and it won’t settle this dispute between the parties.

However, I’ve long respected those who lead by example. We elect these people to lead, to make tough decisions on our behalf and to demonstrate that they are men and women of their word.

One way to demonstrate their commitment is to share in the pain their decisions are having on others.

Giving up a few weeks’ pay is one of those ways.