The Washington Report – May 29, 2015

Washington Report

Best,

Joyce Rubenstein and the Capstone Team (John Rogers, Steve Moffitt, Alan MacLeod, Diane Rogers, Erik Oksala and Ross Willkom)

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MEMORIAL DAY TRIBUTE – AT ARLINGTON Politico: “President Barack Obama marked his seventh Memorial Day as commander in chief on Monday, noting that it is the first marking of the holiday in 14 years in which the United States is not engaged in a massive ground war overseas. …The president also noted the 70th anniversary of the allied victory in World War II.”

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TIME-TESTED ARM TWISTING TACTIC (TTATT) FAILS Politico: “Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to use a time-tested tactic to break his fellow senators’ will and get what he wants: the threat of missing their vacation after a grueling, six-week work period. It didn’t work. … A trio of libertarian-leaning senators objected to McConnell’s attempts to offer even a two-day extension of the [PATRIOT ACT] programs … Now the Senate will come back in session this SUNDAY, May 31 at 4 p.m., just eight hours before the bulk data collection programs – as well as provisions allowing roving wiretaps and surveillance against suspected terrorists not affiliated with a known terrorist group – expire. … McConnell said the rare Sunday session will give his colleagues “one more opportunity to act responsibly,” and extend the full authorities.”  RECESS HOMEWORK NYTs: “Senior lawmakers are scrambling this week in rare recess negotiations to agree on a face-saving change to legislation that would rein in the NSA’s dragnet of phone records. …Three senators need to be won over for the Senate to pass the USA Freedom Act… “Some leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, along with supporters in the Senate, hope they can assuage the concerns of Senate Republicans by adding a certification process to ensure that telephone companies had developed the technology they needed to store the reams of data that were now gathered by the government. If the technology could not be certified, a longer transition period would kick in.”

The NYTs is suggesting both sides’ arguments are flat-out wrong because A.) the program has “never thwarted a terrorist attack,” and B.) “no evidence has emerged that the program has been misused for political or personal gain.” Read it and sound smart

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BATTLE BREWING POST-RECESS: TRADE DEAL Politico: “Of course, if Obama could convince his own party to back his trade pitch, this wouldn’t be a problem in the first place… Conservative dissenters are conducting their fight quietly behind closed doors – even though they may be the key to approving the deal. So far, about 40 to 45 of the 245 House Republicans, most of them in the far-right wing, are hard ‘nos’ on a bill their own party leaders support as fervently as Obama, according to the independent assessments of three House aides. If they are able to boost their numbers by even a handful of votes, it would imperil the legislation, which passed the Senate late Friday, because Democrats are expected to provide at most 25 ‘yeas’ toward the 217 votes needed for passage.” JUST AN UP OR DOWN VOTE “But while Democratic opponents and their allies in the labor movement are raising the specter of lost manufacturing jobs if the massive Asia-Pacific trade deal and an even bigger pact with the European Union are approved, a number of conservative dissenters have rallied around their worry about giving Obama too much power. Under the fast-track bill, Congress would surrender the right to amend the final trade deals and agree to give them up-or-down votes.”

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EVERYONE IN SHOCK … FORMER SPEAKER HASTERT INDICTED Chicago Sun Times: “He rose to one of the highest elected offices in the land, serving for eight years as Speaker…But past misconduct against a longtime acquaintance from the hometown where Dennis Hastert decades ago taught high school history and coached wrestling haunted the powerful Republican, federal prosecutors say.  So between 2010 and 2014, Hastert allegedly withdrew $1.7 million in hush money from his bank accounts, handing it over to the acquaintance to keep quiet, according to a stunning grand jury indictment handed down Thursday. He’d agreed to ultimately pay $3.5 million, it’s alleged. Then, when the FBI got suspicious and asked Hastert if he made withdrawals as large as $50,000 because he didn’t trust the banks, he allegedly lied, telling the feds, ‘Yeah . . . I kept the cash. That’s what I’m doing… He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of structuring the alleged hush money payments to avoid detection, and of lying to the FBI. … Hastert became the GOP choice for speaker almost by accident [after] former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) stepped down.” INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW … WHAT IS HE HIDING? Washington Post: “We may never know… What we do know: Prosecutors say he was willing to pay $3.5 million to cover it up….The indictment’s allusion to Hastert’s tenure as a wrestling coach and teacher was provocative. So was its reference to Individual A. Individual A claimed to have known Hastert ‘most of’ his or her life. Individual A met with Hastert repeatedly ‘in or about 2010’ and ‘discussed past misconduct’ by Hastert against him or her that ‘had occurred years earlier.’ And, allegedly, Hastert paid Individual A off.”

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THE SUPREMES AND 4 WORDS IN A 900 PAGE DOCUMENT Politico: “… Looking to late June, when the Supreme Court will decide whether federal [health] exchanges in several dozen states are constitutional. WHAT’S AT STAKE in the King v. Burwell case are the lives of millions of Americans who receive health care subsidies from Uncle Sam. Knocking down the credits would leave a huge chunk of the population out of pocket, paying for insurance they’re required to have but no longer have the means to afford – big trouble. THE BACKSTORY: NYTs: “They are only four words in a 900-page law: ‘established by the state.‘ But it is in the ambiguity of those four words in the Affordable Care Act that opponents found a path to challenge the law, all the way to the Supreme Court. How those words became the most contentious part of President Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment has been a mystery. Who wrote them, and why? ON PURPOSE Were they really intended, as the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell claim, to make the tax subsidies in the law available only in states that established their own health insurance marketplaces, and not in the three dozen states with federal exchanges?” … OR JUST SLOPPY? “The answer, from interviews with more than two dozen Democrats and Republicans involved in writing the law, is that the words were a product of shifting politics and a sloppy merging of different versions. Some described the words as ‘inadvertent,’ ‘inartful’ or ‘a drafting error.’ But none supported the contention of the plaintiffs, who are from Virginia. ‘I don’t ever recall any distinction between federal and state exchanges in terms of the availability of subsidies,’ said Olympia J. Snowe, a former Republican senator from Maine who helped write the Finance Committee version of the bill. ‘It was never part of our conversations at any point,’ said Ms. Snowe, who voted against the final version of the Senate bill. ‘Why would we have wanted to deny people subsidies? It was not their fault if their state did not set up an exchange.'”

WHAT WILL REPUBLICANS DO? Politico:  “… [there are] various GOP contingency plans should SCOTUS knock down the exchanges. The main problem? They disagree on what exactly to do: extend the exchanges for a time? Or start a totally new system right away? “[Thirty-one] senators have signed on to a bill written by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) that would restore the subsidies for current Obamacare enrollees through September 2017…would also repeal Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates and insurance coverage requirements. But even if Johnson could somehow persuade Obama and Senate Democrats to accept his plan… the bigger problem will be his Republican colleagues in the House…. When asked about Johnson’s bill, Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Utah), said only ‘Eerrrrrrntt!’ in imitation of a game show buzzer, and gave a thumbs down. ‘If you’re voting for an extension, you’re essentially voting for the continuation of Obamacare – that’s a real problem,’ said Republican Study Committee Chairman Bill Flores of Texas, who said he is planning to release an Obamacare replacement plan in the coming days.”

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THE BIG IDEA “Here’s How You Add 2.4 Million Jobs to the Economy,” by Bloomberg‘s Peter Gosselin : “The U.S. is paying a big price in growth, jobs and wages by practicing the kind of fiscal austerity that it criticizes European nations for pursuing. … If federal, state and local governments were cutting taxes, increasing spending and expanding hiring as they did during all but one recovery since World War II, the economy would be growing 3% a year rather than slightly over 2%, the average of the past six years.” More Detail.

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THE ROAD AHEAD FOR THE DEFENSE BILLS MorningD: “As Congress comes back … next week, things will quickly get busy on Capitol Hill with the defense authorization and appropriations bills. The Senate has to deal with its PATRIOT Act mess – the upper chamber is scheduled for a rare Sunday session with hours to go before the surveillance provisions expire. But soon afterward, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) could be headed to the Senate floor. A June Senate floor debate for the NDAA, however, would put the bill months ahead of where it’s been in recent years, when it was typically one if the final items considered for the year. IN THE HOUSE The full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up its defense spending bill on Tuesday after the Defense Subcommittee approved its measure in a closed session last week. AND THEN THERE’S THAT The bill is expected to come to the House floor later in the month although it’s more politically complicated this year because of the $38 billion in additional war funds being used to get around the Budget Control Act spending caps. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet scheduled its defense markup, but a committee aide said the panel is expected to take up the measure in June as well.”

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WHAT THEY WON’T BE DEBATING: AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE Politico: “Lawmakers in both parties asked the president to send them an AUMF proposal tailored to the modern fight against Islamic militants – one that would give the current president and future ones latitude to take on the sudden threat with the explicit imprimatur of Congress. The president did that in February, sending a perfunctory draft targeting the Islamic State.” “But after an all-out lobbying push this winter, the proposal was spurned by Republicans as too restrictive and by Democrats as too open-ended. The White House now argues that its job is finished, and any further action on a war vote must come from within Congress. But other than the row between Boehner and Pelosi there’s been barely a peep on Capitol Hill over the past two months. Meanwhile, on Wednesday the U.S. coalition launched 26 airstrikes on Iraq and Syria.”

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SENATE NDAA SPARKS DISPUTE WITH FEDERAL EMPLOYEES UNION Politico: “Sen. John McCain is picking a fight with a powerful union for federal employees by seeking a change in the law so the Pentagon can lay off civilian employees based on performance – a major personnel reform that opponents have already blocked in the House. The controversial measure is included in the Senate version of this year’s NDAA that was approved earlier this month by the SASC. The measure by the committee’s chairman knocks the Pentagon for failing to come up with a plan to reduce the size of its headquarters staffs, which have ballooned over the past decade. And the bill, which is up for a vote on the Senate floor as early as next month, would require the Pentagon to slash the size of the headquarters staffs by 7.5% next fiscal year, along with matching personnel reductions across the department and the military branches. … But most concerning to labor unions is that the provision would allow the reductions in the civilian and contract workers to come from layoffs based largely on an assessment of employee performance – as opposed to the current approach that gives heavy weight to seniority and veteran status to determine whom to keep and whom to let go.”

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NEW IMMIGRATION DECISION AND THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION The Fix: “[This week] a federal appeals court blocked the Obama Administration’s plan to offer an estimated 4 million undocumented immigrants some relief from the threat of deportation. Since then, the decision has largely been discussed as a blow to immigrant groups, a restraint on Obama’s executive authority and, most often, another potential setback to his legacy. But there are at least 20 men and women vying for the Republican nomination in 2016 who now face an almost certain onslaught of questions about precisely where they stand on the nation’s existing immigration policy. Democratic contenders face some of the same questions, but for Republicans, immigration is a kind of vice in which they can’t help but be squeezed. The party’s conservative, mostly white and older base, wants to know whether the candidates support a path to citizenship, which it largely opposes as a form of “amnesty.” Latino voters, the nation’s fastest growing racial group with which Republicans must make inroads, overwhelmingly supported Obama’s immigration plans.  And polls show Americans as a whole tend to favor comprehensive immigration reform proposals that include a path to citizenship. Immigrant advocacy groups are tracking the GOP candidates’ positions closely and making their findings readily available to the public. And pleasing all of these groups at once will be hard, if not impossible. So the more this issue is current and requires candidates to take positions, the worse for the GOP field.

ON ONE SIDE  A March Washington Post/ABC News poll found that while a slight majority (51%) prefer a president who supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, a full 45% would not. When pollsters dug deeper, they found that a full 70% of Republicans prefer a candidate who opposes a path to citizenship, and only 24% see things the other way.

AND ON THE OTHER SIDE Democrats were almost a mirror image of Republicans, with a full 68% describing themselves as interested in a candidate who would support a path to citizenship, while 28% said they would not.

AMONG HISPANICS Immigration has consistently ranked among the top issues of concern to Hispanic voters, along with the economy, education and health care. In 2012, the national exit poll found that 77% of Hispanic voters said undocumented immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for legal status (i.e. not quite citizenship), while just 18%t said these immigrants should be deported. BIG, BIG ISSUE FOR HISPANICS In 2010, Pew’s chief demographer estimated that a full 45% of undocumented immigrant adults live in a household with a spouse or children who are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. These so-called “mixed status” families’ daily lives are shaped by the threat of deportation. And, in 2012, immigrant activist groups capitalized on those experiences and financed Spanish-language outreach efforts such as  “Su Voz, Mi Vota” (Your Voice, My Vote). It encouraged Latinos legally eligible to vote to register and do so with the undocumented and their needs in mind.

MATRIX-TYPE BACKBENDS NECESSARY Even if Republican candidates prove themselves particularly skilled at … twists and turns in front of the political press, the close-in, town hall, breakfast at the Main Street cafe-type events that define what it means to run in early primary and caucus states will make it highly unlikely that any candidate can mount a serious campaign without answering a few questions about immigration.

TO THE POLLS A February NBC/Marist College poll of the potential Republican caucus and primary-goers in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina found that between 43 and 49 percent would find a candidate who supports immigration reform and a path to citizenship “mostly or totally unacceptable.” Those aren’t the kind of overwhelming majorities that would prohibit any ambitious Republican (like Jeb Bush) from publicly supporting some type of immigration reform, but the poll found the kind of opposition that candidates aren’t likely to ignore either. At the same time, support for immigration reform tends to rise among all kinds of voters across the political spectrum when pollsters add qualifications such as requiring the undocumented to pay back taxes or a fine, pass a background check or learn English. IN 2012, those same complicated immigration politics led Mitt Romney to declare himself, during a GOP primary debate, to be in favor of a program of “self-deportation. … It was largely thought to be a major gaffe — one in which Romney tried to over-compensate for his lack of conservative credentials as other candidates were trying to get to his right. Then, Romney changed course during the general election. He voiced support for what he described as immigration reforms that would create a path to citizenship for soldiers and the highly educated such as scientists. In the end, Romney claimed the majority of the nation’s white vote and most of the Republican base, but garnered just 27% of the Latino vote — less than GOP nominee John McCain four years prior. This … prompted all manner of hand-wringing and soul-searching about the future election prospects of a Republican Party. But then the election faded, and the GOP has largely failed to unite behind any real immigration reform proposals apart from border security. Otherwise, the issue has largely been left to simmer — often beneath the surface. But now, a court case filed by just more than two-dozen Republican-dominated states puts this issue in the news again — and could keep it there in the run-up to the 2016 election.”

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NEBRASKA AND THE CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR OPPOSINGTHE DEATH PENALTY The Fix: “Nebraska is now the first Republican state in more than 40 years to abolish the death penalty. Lawmakers there voted to abolish it last week, and on Wednesday they successfully overrode the Republican governor’s veto to do so. SO HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? While the legislature is technically nonpartisan, it is for all intents and purposes under GOP control. And Republicans in Nebraska are successfully arguing that getting rid of the death penalty is a fundamentally conservative position. In the face of botched executions, a shortage of lethal injection drugs and decades-long appeal times (Nebraska hasn’t executed someone on death row in 20 years), lawmakers … say keeping people on death row is a classic case of big, ineffective government. “Its something that’s been on the books. It’s not being implemented. It is costing our state money,” said Sen. Colby Coash. “So we’re approaching this from a good-government perspective and saying, ‘Look, this is a program that’s not working. We should just get rid of it.'” Coash and other lawmakers in the unicameral legislature have apparently rallied enough support to avoid a veto by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts, who supports the death penalty (in fact, he just ordered a batch of drugs from India to carry out executions). MORE FROM SEN. COASH “We’re a very pro-life state. … I consider myself pro-life, and I’ve always struggled with taking the life from anybody.” And outside of Nebraska, some conservatives are making a third political argument for abolishing the death penalty: It’s too lenient of a punishment. … But conservatives pushing to [more widely] abolish it could have a tough sell among their own. The Washington Post – ABC News Poll found that 60% [of Americans] favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder, but that same poll found about eight in 10 Republicans – 79% — favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder. TREND OR ANOMALY But it’s not clear yet if, in voting to abolish the death penalty, Nebraska Republicans are the start of a trend or just an anomaly. Thirty-two states still have the death penalty on the books, though many are putting a moratorium on it while a divided Supreme Court considers whether certain drugs used in a gruesome, botched Oklahoma lethal injection last year represent cruel and unusual punishment.”

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NEWS ORGANIZATIONS GRAPPLE WITH 2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE IN WHICH EVERYONE IS RUNNING  HuffPost: “It was Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Tuesday, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania on Wednesday, and ex-New York Gov. George Pataki on Thursday. After the announcement-free Friday, the political media circus that already has traveled this week to Burlington, Vermont; Cabot, Pennsylvania; and Exeter, New Hampshire, will arrive Saturday in Baltimore, where former Maryland Gov, Martin O’Malley becomes the second Democratic challenger to Hillary Clinton. Clinton was trailed this week by journalists — and Republican contender Carly Fiorina — in South Carolina, where Sen. Lindsey Graham is scheduled to make his presidential announcement on Monday. Three days after that, it’s former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s turn in Dallas. And by mid-June, Donald Trump is scheduled to announce … something. WHEW The ballooning field has placed news organizations in uncharted territory and forced upon them difficult editorial decisions. How do you cover a Republican race that could swell to 18 candidates? HOW TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN NEWSWORTHY AND SIDE-SHOW? Given the unprecedented number of presidential announcements and candidate “cattle calls” scattered around the country, five TV networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, and CNN — have begun pools that share responsibilities for covering events earlier than in previous presidential cycles. The networks rotate which is responsible for manning a camera and providing satellite trucks for speeches, a cost-cutting measure that can help newsroom budgets as even more candidates join the competition.

“Our social media culture rewards vanity candidates, unfortunately … That’s a resource suck. And it is going to hurt serious second-tier candidates collectively. … Some of the vanity candidates may be fun coverage, entertaining, but that doesn’t mean that they’re worthy … I think that’s going to be the challenge for all producers and all executives and all editors … which is, can you show some restraint in covering the vanity candidates? If you can, then your resources aren’t going to be as stretched as it appears.”

– Chuck Todd, Moderator of Meet the Press

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COOL OR NOT COOL? Politico: “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker defended his decision to sign a law in Wisconsin mandating ultrasounds for women before they get abortions, calling ultrasounds “just a cool thing out there. In an interview on “The Dana Show,” the Wisconsin Republican and 2016 presidential hopeful boasted to host Dana Loesch, “We defunded Planned Parenthood, we signed a law that requires an ultrasound. Which, the thing about that, the media tried to make that sound like that was a crazy idea…” PLANNED PARENTHOOD RESPONDS  President Cecile Richards said … that “Women are very clear that forced government ultrasounds are not ‘cool.’”

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WELCOME BACK TO THE POLITICS OF HAIR The Fix: “Hillary Clinton dyes her hair and Rand Paul cuts his own.  Apparently, we have to talk about a politician’s hair. This week Clinton talked about how previous Presidents entered the White House with youth and vigor only to see their hair go grey and white as they left office. She remarked that she has been coloring her hair for years, so, you’re not going to see her turn white in the White House.”

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UNDERSTANDING FOX NEWS Politico: “And it came to pass that the earth turned and another campaign season spun into view and the liberal commentariat rose from its siesta to begin its usual moping about the perverse political powers wielded by the Fox News Channel. This time, the sentinel waking the commentariat to the alleged Fox menace is not a liberal but a self-described conservative, Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett, a prolific writer on politics and economics who has worked for congressional Republicans (Ron Paul and Jack Kemp), Republican presidents, (Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) and conservative and libertarian policy shops, broke with his party a decade ago when he leveled President George W. Bush as an opportunistic pork-barreller in his book Impostor: ‘How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.” Bartlett recently added a media component to his critique in a paper titled “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics,” which has heated the blood of liberals to the boiling point. …

THE CONSERVATIVE (BARTLETT) VIEW — Fox News isn’t just bad for America, which is the usual liberal complaint. It’s also bad for the Republican Party because it has stunted the GOP’s growth with a news agenda that ships “misinformation” to the party’s far-right base. This is the so-called Fox “echo chamber” effect you [may have] read about. ACCORDING TO CHAMBER THEORISTS, Fox “breeds extremism” within the Republican Party by (1) convincing viewers to reject other news feeds as biased and (2) to partake only of Fox content and like-minded conservative radio fodder. The echo chamber, so the theory goes, has deluded the party into thinking that support for its radical-right views is greater than it really is. This, in turn, has convinced the party to run radical candidates who aren’t as electable as they seem to be. And all this extremism prevents the GOP’s presidential candidates from reaching centrist voters, who are essential for victory. THE LIBERAL VIEW The reliably liberal Frank Rich appreciates better than most Fox’s essential harmlessness. In a piece published last year in New York, he concluded that aside from infuriating liberals, Fox flexes little political power. The median age of a Fox viewer is 68, eight years older than the MSBNC and CNN median age, and its median age is rising. “Fox is in essence a retirement community,” Rich writes, and a small one at that! “The million or so viewers who remain fiercely loyal to the network are not, for the most part, and as some liberals still imagine, naïve swing voters who stumble onto Fox News under the delusion it’s a bona fide news channel and then are brainwashed by Ailes’s talking points into becoming climate-change deniers,” he writes.”

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FIFA:  DOES ANYONE CARE? WashPost: “In the end, it only took a $150 million scandal to make Americans care about soccer. FIFA, the notoriously corrupt and yet seemingly invincible governing body of world soccer, has finally landed itself an indictment. … The charges against a handful of senior FIFA officials include money laundering, racketeering, bribery and fraud. In short, the federal lawsuit alleges what millions of soccer fans have suspected all along: that FIFA officials have been using the organization’s massive influence to line their pocketbooks.” AND THIS JUST IN …  FIFA PRESIDENT RE-ELECTED DESPITE ARRESTS OF TOP AIDES.

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SHOUT OUT FOR THE NATIONAL SPELLING BEE “Co-Champs For Second Straight Year”  NPR: “Gokul Venkatachalam [14, from Chesterfield, Mo.] was served his final word (nunatak) [with no definition] and volleyed it right back, n-u-n-a-t-a-k. … an Inuit term for an exposed, rocky geographic element amid an ice field or glacier … By correctly spelling ‘scherenschnitte’ – a German term for cut-paper art – Vanya [Shivashankar], 13, of Olathe, Kan., [tied with Gokul] became the first sibling of a former champion to take home the trophy.”

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FAREWELL BOB Mr. Bob Schieffer, who has hosted the CBS program “Face the Nation” for 24 years wll retire after Sunday morning.  Schieffer, who has interviewed every president since Richard Nixon, is a familiar face to millions of Americans through nearly 50 years as a journalist. A real pro.