On Nancy Pelosi’s statement that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy”:
It's getting wild and wacky when you hear the statement from the Speaker of the House. If I can give her the benefit of the doubt, what she probably intended — didn't actually say (I'm not sure why I'm defending her here) — is that once you enact the bill people will see all the good stuff in it and then they'll appreciate it and the negative public opinion on it will change.
I think that is the only argument the president and Pelosi have to persuade Democrats in the House who will get slaughtered in November over this bill.
What I see actually happening now is some of the House members who appear to be staunchly opposed might be wavering. If you take Bart Stupak, who is leading the anti-abortion faction — he is running up a white flag. He said there is a compromise that is reachable. I think in principle it is. You could find compromise language.
The problem is the procedure, because if you find compromise language it has to be done by the Senate after the House has accepted the bill that doesn't have the compromise language. As we heard Senator Alexander explain, that means that House Democrats have to have complete trust in Harry Reid and in the Senate Democrats.
And that, I think, is the issue — the procedural labyrinth here.
On the unpopularity of Obamacare despite the popularity of various individual provisions:
If you say to people, do you like this goodie, for example, no pre-existing conditions? Everybody will say, of course. If they say in principle do you want to insure the uninsured, who is going to oppose that? So all of that stuff separately will poll well.
But then if you actually invoke the cost, which is what we heard here with all of these questions — [poll] questions about cost and deficits, people understand that this is going to be overwhelmingly expensive. We are in a huge debt already now. We're going over a cliff in terms of fiscal sanity. Medicare is going broke — and we are adding a new entitlement?
And that's why when you put all the elements together and you ask as a package are you opposed or in favor, you get overwhelmingly negative results. Americans are able to add up the cost and the benefits and decide in this particular proposal and package, it's not worth it.
On developments in Afghanistan:
What is so interesting is how counter-intuitive their announcement is, the strategy is. Normally you don't announce months in advance we'll take x, y, z because you want the element of surprise. Here they announce the initial offensive and then Kandahar is next.
And I think it fits with the interesting strategy that McChrystal has because the objective is not the killing of the Taliban. The objective is to gain the confidence of the civilians.
If you announce in advance you will do Kandahar, the capital [of the province], the prize here, you hope that the small bands of the enemy roaming around will think twice about hanging around and facing the U.S. Marines, because they will lose.
And you are doing is appealing to the less fanatical and less ideological and the less suicidal enemy who will sneak around and join the population and give up the fight and become civilians. And we aren't against that.
The idea is once they get integrated in society, that's OK. You don't want a victory where you have to surrender on the battleship Missouri. What you want is to win the confidence of the population.
Reid: Filibuster Could Change in Next Congress
[Daniel Foster]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a speech today to progressive media in Nevada:
"The filibuster has been abused. I believe that the Senate should be different than the House and will continue to be different than the House," Reid said. "But we're going to take a look at the filibuster. Next Congress, we're going to take a look at it. We are likely to have to make some changes in it, because the Republicans have abused that just like the spitball was abused in baseball and the four-corner offense was abused in basketball."
On Missile Defense, Obama Strikes a Strange Balance
[Jamie M. Fly]
President Obama has made disarmament the centerpiece of his foreign policy. He has done this while simultaneously trying to argue that he supports robust missile defenses. As the administration struggles to conclude a new arms-control agreement with the Russians, he is finding that striking a balance between these two positions can be very difficult.
There is a powerful group of disarmament advocates in Washington that has been opposed to missile defense for years and now includes some of the chief proponents of the president’s disarmament agenda. Currently leading this group is missile-defense skeptic Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, which is bankrolling a media offensive using other organizations — such as the Glover Park Group, Think Progress, and the National Security Network — to advance the administration’s agenda on Capitol Hill and in the press. It seems that “getting to zero” isn’t cheap.
Another prominent missile-defense skeptic is Philip E. Coyle, III, a former Pentagon official who has criticized just about every aspect of U.S. missile-defense policy over the last decade. Mr. Coyle has been nominated by President Obama to serve as associate director for National Security and International Affairs in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House.
Coyle made a name for himself by questioning whether missile defense is technically possible, contradicting a proven track record of repeated successes by the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency. In a 2009 Arms Control Association presentation, he described the agency’s tests as being “scripted for success.” He has also questioned whether rogue regimes are even interested, let alone capable, of attacking the United States and its allies. In testimony last year in front of the House Armed Services Committee, he stated, “In my view, Iran is not so suicidal as to attack Europe or the United States with missiles.” Given Iran’s recent tests of missiles with increasing ranges and its successful launch of a satellite into orbit, Mr. Coyle’s questioning of the intentions of rogues such as Iran is incredibly naïve.
There is enough concern on Capitol Hill about Coyle’s views that a hold has been placed on his nomination. Some will argue that a position in the Office of Science and Technology Policy shouldn’t deserve much attention, let alone concern. It is true that this is a part of the White House that traditionally has not played a key role in major policy decisions. However, it is likely that an individual like Mr. Coyle would be unable to resist the urge to use his position to attempt to influence policy debates about issues, such as missile defense, that he has worked on for years.
This administration has tried to make the case that it supports effective missile defenses. It is thus surprising that the administration has chosen to nominate someone such as Philip Coyle to a White House position.
— Jamie M. Fly is executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.
'The Rules Committee Can Do Just About Anything'
[Daniel Foster]
UPDATED: 5:47 P.M.
As I noted below, Democrats on the House Rules Committee are considering adopting a special rule that would allow the House to “deem” the Senate health-care bill to have been passed by the very act of voting on reconciliation fixes to it.
This is all a bit obscure, so let me try to put it as clearly as I can. This move would solve for House Democrats the problem of acting first. It would allow the House to pass a reconciliation measure on the health-care bill (complete with fixes to the Cadillac Tax etc.) without first passing the Senate version. It would thus defuse the threat — ingeniously pounded into rank-and-file House Democrats' heads by Senate Republicans — that the House could pass the Senate bill without the Senate in turn passing the “fixes”, and worse, that the president could sign the Senate bill into law, leaving wavering House members on the hook for supporting it.
That's the rub on the politics of this thing, and I wouldn't blame you for stopping right here.But those of you who are procedural masochists might be wondering how the process itself would work.
Well, each bill brought to the floor of the House is debated under its own “rule” setting the length and structure of debate, including which if any amendments can be considered. A given bill's rule is created by the — you guessed it — Rules Committee and presented to the whole House for a simple majority vote prior to consideration of the bill itself. In this case, the Democrats would bring a “self-executing rule” to the floor that allowed for the adoption of the Senate bill when, and only when, the reconciliation sidecar is passed, thereby avoiding the need to bring the Senate bill to the floor for a separate up-or-down vote.
What exactly is a self-executing rule? CRS gets into the nitty gritty, calling it a “two-for-one” procedure:
This means that when the House adopts a rule it also simultaneously agrees to dispose of a separate matter, which is specified in the rule itself. For instance, self-executing rules may stipulate that a discrete policy proposal is deemed to have passed the House and been incorporated in the bill to be taken up. The effect: neither in the House nor in the Committee of the Whole will lawmakers have an opportunity to amend or to vote separately on the “self-executed” provision. It was automatically agreed to when the House passed the rule.
Last year, House Democrats used a “self-executing rule” to push through the controversial Waxman Amendment to the cap-and-trade bill. In that case, after weeks of committee mark-up and debate on one version of the bill, a special rule was brought to the House at 3:47 A.M. on the morning of the final vote, which in effect scrapped the existing bill and replaced it with a new version from Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), including a never-before-seen 309-page amendment, the adoption of which was self-executed by the narrow (217-205) adoption of the rule.
Remember, House rules aren't supposed to set policy, they are supposed to set the terms for debate. But the rule on the Waxman proposal guaranteed its passage, without debate or opportunity for amendment.
Here's how former House Rules Committee staff director DonWolfensberger described that process:
Despite the fact that few Members had a clue as to what was in the new bill as modified by Waxman’s amendment, the rule was called up just six hours after it had been reported. The rule squeaked by, 217-205, and the bill subsequently passed later that day by an even slimmer margin, 219-212.
Nor was the Waxman Amendment a lone case. Indeed, a similar trick has been used to increase the national debt for years, under the so-called “Gephardt Rule” (House Rule XXVII) adopted by the last House Democratic majority. The rule states that upon passage of each year's budget resolution, a concurrent resolution raising the debt limit by the amount required in that budget is automatically considered passed, thus sparing members separate, potentially embarrassing votes on increasing government borrowing.
Unlike in the Senate, where individual Senators have broad discretion to steer debate and introduce amendments, the legislative process in the House is rigidly governed by the Rules Committee. This limits the Republicans' options in fighting a self-executing rule for Obamacare. As one Republican House staffer put it to me today, “the Rules Committee can do just about anything if they can get the votes to pass the rule.”
And the Senate was supposed to be undemocratic, right?
From the Nov. 11, 1977 issue of NR (back when the Man from Plains was running the show) — three great essays by Clare Boothe Luce, Rick Brookhiser, and Russell Kirk. Now if that ain’t a blast from the past, what is?! Make sure you get your copy — and Morning Jolt, The Goldberg File, and NRO Digest — by signing up now at NRO Newsletters.
The president’s recent budget proposal would raise taxes by $3 trillion over the next decade. Yet the president would put most of these new revenues into new spending rather than deficit reduction. Overall, the national debt would double over the next decade — a total of $74,000 per household in additional debt dumped into the laps of our children and grandchildren.
My new paper, “Obama Budget Raises Taxes and Doubles the National Debt,” details the president’s tax-and-spend spree. It also details President Obama’s numerous budget gimmicks, such as:
·Rosy Economic Scenario. The White House projects that in 2020 the economy will be nearly $1 trillion larger (adjusted for inflation) than the CBO estimates. If the economy performs closer to the CBO projections, it will raise budget deficits even higher.
·Excluding Cap-and-Trade Costs. The President’s budget simply removed the costs of the House-passed $800 billion cap-and-trade plan that he endorsed.
·A $132 Billion “Magic Asterisk.” The President’s budget vaguely claims $132 billion in “program integrity” savings. The White House says this includes cleaning up waste in entitlement programs and increasing IRS enforcement of tax laws.Of course, government waste is easy to identify and difficult to eliminate. The federal government’s track record on rooting out waste is abysmal, and promises to close the “tax gap” of unpaid taxes have not translated into progress.
·$23 Billion Terminations and Cuts? President Obama also hypes up his $23 billion in proposed spending cuts and terminations (less than 1 percent of all spending). He doesn’t mention that last year, every dollar saved from his $7 billion in spending cuts went into new government spending. Not a dollar went towards deficit reduction. And this year he proposes more of the same.
·The Baseline Assumes War Spending Rises Forever. Repeating his much-maligned gimmick from last year’s budget, the president first creates a fantasy baseline that assumes the Iraq surge continues forever (which was never U.S. policy), and then “saves” $728 billion against that baseline by ending the surge as scheduled under his policies. It is like a family “saving” $10,000 by first assuming an expensive vacation and then not taking it.
·Low-balling Discretionary Spending. ThePresident’s budget assumes that non-war, non-emergency discretionary spending will expand by just 30 percent over the next decade, just slightly faster than inflation. But in reality, discretionary spending surged by 104 percent during the past decade. This free-spending Democratic Congress provides no reason to expect sudden austerity. If discretionary spending instead grows at the same rate as the economy (about 5 percent nominally per year), it would add about $400 billion to the 2020budget deficit.
·PAYGO. The President bases much of his budget restraint on Pay-as-You-Go rules that purportedly guarantee that all new spending must be offset. Except that PAYGO exempts all discretionary spending (40 percent of the budget). It exempts the automatic annual growth of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which threatens Washington’s long-run solvency. It exempts the endless stream of emergency “stimulus” bills. The few places it does apply, Congress waives the law. PAYGO is designed to serve more as a talking point than as a tool for deficit reduction.
·Deficit Commission. Rather than take the lead and propose entitlement reforms that would reduce the deficit, the president has appointed a commission to devise a plan. While some commissions may be useful, this one likely will not. The deficit commission currently plans to write its recommendations in a back room without public hearings or public buy-in. These recommendations won’t be unveiled until after the election, where they would be voted on by a lame-duck Congress — if they are even voted on at all (there is no “fast-track” procedure guaranteeing a vote). The American people will be unlikely to embrace major tax and spending changes thrust upon them with so little transparency and voted on by an unaccountable lame-duck Congress.
Joe Biden’s trip to Israel fits neatly into the context of the Obama administration’s internal struggle over Israel policy. Since January 2009, two factions have promoted alternate mechanisms for getting Jerusalem to do Washington’s will: The far left seeks to achieve this through confrontation, while the center left seeks to reassure the Israelis through close cooperation.
The far left prevailed initially, as evidenced by Hillary Clinton’s May 2009 declaration that Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” But this approach bombed, permitting the center left to take over in about September 2009.
The center left still rules the roost, as Biden’s twin statements yesterday indicate. First, he offered his administration’s “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.” Then he slammed an Israeli decision to build new housing units in Jerusalem as a step that “undermines the trust we need right now.”
The center-left approach is better than the far-left approach, but neither has a chance of succeeding. What Israel needs is not hectoring about its residential housing policies but an American ally that encourages it to win its war against the irredentist Palestinians of both Fatah and Hamas.
Just in Time for the Commercial Paperback Edition!
[Rich Lowry]
Banquo's Ghosts, the heart-pounding thriller, is now out in a tiny, airport-worthy paperback edition. As it happens, The Weekly Standard has just run a review that might have seemed in most circumstances exceptionally late (although it meets the wedding-gift standards of within the year). But it's actually perfectly timed and a rave by the very gifted Noemie Emery. Here's the beginning:
Imagine a Christopher Buckley novel set in the world of 24 and Jack Bauer, and you have Banquo's Ghosts, the fiction debut of National Review's Rich Lowry (along with Keith Korman) — which is really two genres in one. A Buckley novel takes political life and tweaks it ever so slightly so that it comes out just like itself — if not more so — and Ghosts, by this standard, does not disappoint.
Read the whole thing here, and please pick up Banquo on the way to your flight or, in a few months, the beach.
New Hampshire Votes Against Gay Marriage
[Maggie Gallagher]
New Hampshire town meetings yesterday gave voters the chance to vote for a nonbinding resolution favoring putting a marriage amendment on the ballot. Bishop John McCormack of the Diocese of Manchester encouraged a yes vote in an op-ed that ran in the Union-Leader Tuesday.
Of the vote results reported by the Union-Leader, along with a couple from the Concord Monitor, seventeen towns approved and three rejected the article.
Voting for a marriage amendment were: Charlestown (620-305), Kingston (719-346), Milton (385-285), Littleton (912-627), Wakefield (504-242), Dunbarton (77-58), Kingston (719-346), Windham (1,428-832), Epsom (422-225), Bedford (2,783-1,040), Hampstead (1,190-499), Allenstown (383-198), Auburn, Swanzey (542-422), Stark (unanimously), Pittsburg (64-4), and Belmont.
Rejecting were Newhampton, Salisbury (30-27), and Northumberland (57-104).
This is a partial list; still looking for full electoral info.
The sense around here for the last week or so has been that "only the House vote matters" in deciding the fate of Obamacare. But what if the Democrats can pass the bill with no House vote at all?
Astoundingly, House Democrats appear to be preparing to do just that:
House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.
Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.
Slaughter has not taken the plan to Speaker Pelosi as Democrats await CBO scores on the corrections bill. "Once the CBO gives us the score we'll spring right on it," she said. . . .
House members are concerned the Senate could fail to approve the corrections bill, making them nervous about passing the Senate bill with its much-maligned sweetheart deals for certain states. "We're well beyond that," Pelosi said Tuesday, though she did not clarify.
That the Democrats could take this extraordinary step to avoid passing the Senate bill tells you that they have zero trust in the Senate to pass reconciliation "fixes," and zero trust in the president not to sign the Senate bill should it reach his desk and a reconciliation effort collapse. But most crucially, it gives the lie — in a big, big way — to the Democratic narrative that health-care reform should and will be finished via simple "majority rule," and not bound up in the arcane rules of the United States Senate.
This morning, I wrote about an interview given by free-marketeer and glamor queen Virginia Postrel about health-care reform. In the interview, Postrel talks about the fact that she donated a kidney. This afternoon I got this e-mail in response by a very faithful Corner reader.
Enjoyed this; I agree with every word. I donated 3 yrs ago and would do it again, but it’s crazy that 7 people/day die waiting.
The kindness and benevolence of some people is quite remarkable.
We're already halfway toward socialized medicine, but not because of Obamacare. . . . as the population has aged, and as the government created new health care entitlements, the government has been slowly assuming a higher portion of health care spending in the United States—or "taking it over." . . . in the 1990s, a period in which Republicans controlled the House for six years, the share of health spending controlled by the government rose by 10 percent. The trend continued in the period from 2000 to 2008, when Republicans controlled the White House and largely controlled Congress.
But a Democratic acceleration of a takeover that proceeded under Republican Congresses is still a takeover. If we go by Gross's own words, warnings about a "takeover" and about "socialized medicine" are not "bogus" — they are rooted in the agreed-upon facts. And a takeover that amounts to one-sixth of the economy is a more objectionable takeover than one that amounts to one-twelfth of the economy — by my back-of-the-envelope, English-major calculation, roughly twice as objectionable.
Beck: Massa 'Lied' in Pre-Interview, 'I Almost Threw Him Out'
[Daniel Foster]
On his radio show today, Glenn Beck claimed he almost threw former congressman Eric Massa out of the studio during his televised interview on Tuesday. Beck said that the interview proved that Massa is not somebody "who can be trusted to tell the truth about his life."
Secretary Duncan Makes Ominous Noises
[Liam Julian]
Ominousness exudes with regularity from the federal Department of Education.
The latest emission comes with Secretary Arne Duncan’s announcement this week that his department’s Office of Civil Rights will “reinvigorate civil rights enforcement” in the nation’s schools in an effort “to make Dr. King’s dream of a colorblind society a reality.” There is an obvious contradiction in trying to create a colorblind society through an inherently hyper-color-aware approach. And there’s a panoply of problems with a big, brash federal office opening “equity” investigations into the discipline decisions, course allotments, teacher assignments, etc. of individual schools. Here’s just one:
Duncan said that the country must ensure “that low-income Latino and African American students” have the same access to AP (Advanced Placement) classes as do other students. This assumes that black and Latino pupils are mostly denied access to AP courses because of their ethnicities; the reality is that black and Latino high-school students are simply less likely than their white and Asian counterparts to have attained the requisite academic skills that would enable them to handle AP assignments. The solution is not to police the AP roll; the solution is to worry about the lousy elementary schools and middle schools where so many black and Latino kids are permitted to sit through years of classes while learning next to nothing in them.
Packing into AP courses students unprepared for AP coursework can have only deleterious results: Either an unprepared pupil will grow frustrated and fail, or his teacher will accommodate him by making the class easier. The first outcome is unfair to one group of students, the second outcome is unfair to another. This is not civil rights.
— Liam Julian, a Hoover Institution fellow, is managing editor of Policy Review.
Kyl: GOP Has the Votes to Stop Reconciliation
[Daniel Foster]
In another clear message to House Democrats that they can't count on the Senate to pass fixes to Obamacare via reconciliation, Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) said he believes the Republicans have the votes to strip key elements from a reconciliation bill.
Kyl suggested that the GOP would have enough votes to sustain points of order they might raise against a bill sought under budget reconciliation rules to make changes to the original health bill to win over the votes of House Democrats.
"There are a lot of things they want to see fixed that are going to be subject to parliamentary point of order in the Senate," Kyl said during an interview on Fox News. "And we believe we have the votes to sustain those points of order, which means that those things will come out of the legislation."
According to the plans under consideration, the House would pass the Senate's healthcare bill, but then take up another bill under budget reconciliation rules to make changes to that original bill. Those rules allow senators to make changes with only a simple majority vote instead of the 60 votes normally needed to end a filibuster. But the maneuver would also subject elements of that package to being stricken by the Senate parliamentarian or a vote of the Senate if the changes are judged to be not germane to the budget.
Kyl said that the Senate's ability to prevent some of the changes House Democrats have demanded should make those lawmakers think twice before voting to approve the Senate's healthcare bill.
"It is a very risky proposition for those Democrats in the House who are nervous about their reelection, and are banking on the Senate banking them out," he said. "It's probably not going to happen."
"So things that these House members think are important to put in the bill, to fix what was wrong with the Senate bill — like a lot of those backroom deals, for example — not all of those things can be fixed," the Arizona Republican added.
Kyl also said that the GOP would attempt to amend the reconciliation agreement, which should also make Democrats hesitate before counting on the Senate to make the kind of fixes for which House leaders have pushed.
"Who knows how many amendments might be adopted in the Senate," Kyl argued. "So it is not exactly going to be the way House leadership have portrayed it to members."
In Other News: McCaskill Gives WaPo 'Wayyy TMI'
[Daniel Foster]
If Michael Scott didn't kill "TMI," Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) surely did.
In a hard-hitting investigation of whether the Eastern Promises-style shower showdown between Rahm Emanuel and former congressman Eric Massa is the norm in Congress, the Washington Post asked Senator McCaskill if she had ever negotiated with nothing on but the radio:
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said she works out in the Senate gym, sometimes talking shop on the elliptical, "but obviously not as often as I should." But McCaskill wouldn't offer details about what happens inside the women's locker room.
"This is wayyyy TMI," she said, laughing. "I'm not going to discuss my showering habits. I'll leave that to Rahm Emanuel and Eric Massa."
To be fair, Congress's locker-room DADT policy seems to enjoy broad bipartisan support.
Added Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.): "It's protocol never to talk about what you talk about there."
Most liberals can't admit that they want to do health-care reform pretty much solely as a matter of social justice, that the bill is unpopular, and that they're willing to bend the rules any which way to get it done. Or so I argue here.
Like Jason Steorts, I am not sure where Matthew Scully and I disagree about the proper approach to animal rights. In my book, I criticized Scully for being overly emotional and anthropomorphic in his advocacy, and disagreed with his accusation made in Dominion that research scientists have “lost all regard for their subjects,” reducing “laboratory animals to the level of microbes or cell cultures one need not even treat as living, feeling beings at all,” a provocative claim that is not true of any legitimate research scientist. I also contended that Scully failed in Dominion to properly consider the tremendous good humans receive from animals — an issue he pointedly ignored in his review ofA Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy.
But I also complimented Scully in my book for demonstrating that one can support a radical approach to animal protection based on human duty. Thus on page 244, I wrote, “Dominion proves, if nothing else, that a ‘rights’ approach is unnecessary for supporting the most stringent prohibitions on the human use of animals.”
Scully seems furious with me for defending animal uses he loathes, most particularly the culling of elephant herds in the African parks. He also seems quite put out that I actually gave a fur trapper the opportunity to defend his means of earning a living. He claims that I don’t take specific stands on banning certain animal practices. But that wasn’t the point of my book. Still, I make it abundantly clear that I support proper laws against abuse and ensuring proper methods of husbandry. For example, I specifically supported the “Three Rs” in the life sciences — refinement, reduction, and replacement — which is a program that strives to reduce the numbers and uses of animals in research. I castigated Michael Vick, not only for abusing dogs, but also for debasing his own humanity in the way he tortured them. With regard to that case, I criticized a World Net Daily writer who claimed that the dogs were his property, and thus, he was free to do as he wished with them, writing that such a purely market-based approach would “permit people to torture puppies for pleasure and starve horses to death if they failed to win a race.” I supported increased research into humane slaughter — focusing at some length on the laudatory work of Prof. Temple Grandin with cattle. Indeed, I didn’t even support industrial farming, but rather noted that there were conflicting values at stake in the issue, inexpensive, nutritious food versus the treatment of the animals, writing that working out the proper balance, “requires extensive research and empirical analysis — not the hyper emotionalism of animal rights activists — so that the benefit to humans and alleged harm to animals can be assessed and balanced.”
What I do believe in, and stated so repeatedly, is a proper animal-welfare approach to deciding these issues. That isn’t enough for Scully. He is quite overwrought about the entire issue. My great sin, it seems, was that I didn’t rail against most uses of animals. Assuming proper standards of care, I just don’t see it that way, and perhaps therein lies the rub.
— Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow in human rights and bioethics at the Discovery Institute.
. . . continues to be the Crist-Rubio back-waxing controversy, although the John Roberts SOTU rebuke is gaining fast. You can click over and vote and comment.
How Will We Pay For All This Spending Mr. President?
[Veronique de Rugy]
The Hill reports that in a rare 100-0 roll call vote "The Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to tell the public when it isn't paying for new spending or tax cuts." The amendment, which would be applied to the job bill, "would create a running tally on the secretary of the Senate's website of any new mandatory spending that isn't paid for through offsetting spending cuts or tax increases."
Still, "Coburn wasn't optimistic over the chances his proposal will end up becoming law." That is because Democrats may replace it with one authored by Sen. Max Baucus "that requires the Secretary of the Senate to create a new website that links to Congressional Budget Office information," and "would only be updated every three months."
Sadly, no such amendment apply the spending the President doesn't acknowledge he is going to be pending.
Here is a chart that shows the projected deficits in the president's FY2011 budget side-by-side with the projected deficits in the most recent CBO report.
"Under the President’s budget, debt held by the public would grow from $7.5 trillion (53 percent of GDP) at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion (90 percent of GDP) at the end of 2020. As a result, net interest would more than quadruple between 2010 and 2020 in nominal dollars (without an adjustment for inflation); it would expand from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2010 to 4.1 percent in 2020."
By the way, a reader reminds me of what I wrote on the back page of NR six years ago — May 31, 2004 — contemplating Iraq round about now:
I know what I’d like: Iraq, circa 2010, is a functioning confederal state, not a perfect democracy, but a respectable one – not New Hampshire, not Norway, but not Zimbabwe, either. Think Singapore or Belize. It has a growing economy, an enlightened education system, a free press, and an expanding middle-class. Its representative at Arab League meetings votes with the King of Morocco more often than with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Its presence as a free society in the heart of the region changes the dynamic, encouraging reform in some of its neighbors (Jordan) and shriveling the dictatorships in others (Syria).
We're not there yet. Obviously, Iraq isn't Singapore or Belize economically, but its political culture, in far less promising circumstances, is catching up: It's respectable, restrained, and, all things considered, mostly admirable. In the same 2004 column, I quoted Thomas Friedman's then latest genius prescription for the "quagmire":
Mr. Bush needs to invite to Camp David the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the heads of both NATO and the U.N., and the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. There, he needs to eat crow, apologize for his mistakes and make clear that he is turning a new page.
Brilliant! That's why he's the Pulitzer-winning foreign-policy grandee of the New York Times, and I'm foraging for berries in the foothills of the White Mountains.
Incidentally, I don't know why Friedman is so hostile to The Flintstones. After all, isn't Bedrock — a primitive society with mod. cons. and gizmos — exactly like the China he so admires?
ChiComs! Meet the ChiComs! They're the modern stone-age autocraceee!
Re: How Long Does It Take to Fill Out Some Forms?
[Mark Krikorian]
Jonah: I suspect Mickey is out walking the neighborhoods of L.A., collecting signatures to get on the ballot. Pressing the flesh, kissing babies — you know, just like WFB did when he ran for mayor!
One of the slogans that propelled Tony Blair into power was that he would be "tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime." Well, despite the best efforts of the Labour party, the numbers are in:
Violent attacks are estimated to be 44 per cent higher than they were in 1998 after research on the way police record them allowed comparisons for the first time. The study, by the independent House of Commons Library, shows violence against the person increased from 618,417 to 887,942 last year.
Note this characteristic detail (my emphasis added):
The devastating review comes despite repeated claims by the Government that violent crime has come down substantially since it took power. It is the first time such a trend in police recorded crime can be madewhich ministers have always insisted meant figures before that date were not, therefore, comparable. Instead, they have always used a separate the separate British Crime Survey which suggests violence has dropped by more than 40 per cent since 1998. because a change was made in counting rules in 2002
Poll: An Independent Crist Would Help Rubio
[Daniel Foster]
If Charlie Crist were to double-back on repeated avowals and run as an independent, he would tip the scales in Marco Rubio's favor, by siphoning off more Democratic votes than Republican ones. According to PPP, in a hypothetical three-way Senate race, Rubio leads with 34 percent of the vote, Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek trail with 27 percent and 25 percent respectively.
In this scenario Crist gets 35 percent of the independent vote, 32 percent of the Democratic vote, and only 18 percent of the Republican vote.
Indeed, Crist is more popular with Democrats than Republicans:
Crist's overall approval rating now is a 35/51 spread. He's most popular with Democrats at a 45% approval rating followed by independents at 29% and Republicans at 28%.
But with Crist's huge deficit among Republican voters, an independent run is still Crist's best remaining path to a Senate victory:
But even that's a long shot- among all Florida voters 24% want Crist as Governor a year from now, 15% want him in the Senate, and 47% would like to see him out of elected office. Crist finds himself now in a very difficult position.
Meanwhile the decline of Crist presents an opportunity to Democrats. Republicans are certainly still favored to keep this seat, but Marco Rubio as the nominee gives Dems a much better chance than Crist and this may yet be one of the most competitive races in the country this fall.
As the first same-sex couples married in Washington on Tuesday, the city is in the national spotlight as a pioneer in the gay-rights movement. But local officials say the historic event also has more practical implications for a city grappling with 12 percent unemployment: jobs. A study by the nonprofit Williams Institute predicted that legalizing same-sex marriage will create 700 jobs and contribute $52.2 million over three years to the local economy.
UPDATE: E-mailbag:
Ah, but what about the carbon footprint involved?
"The bigger windfall is expected to come from out-of-state couples — particularly from New York — seeking to get married in the nation's capital. The report estimated 12,500 such couples would travel to the District in three years...."
He’s at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (Checker Finn’s shop), and had a not-very-reassuring talk with a DoEd official regarding the Department’s new civil-rights initiative this week.
Lee Harris has a very good piece up at the American (he also has a new book coming out, which I hear is very, very, good) on David Brooks's Tea Party column. An excerpt:
The phrase “Wal-Mart Hippies” is certainly attention-getting, as was no doubt intended. After all, who would suspect that there lurked a secret affinity between the carefree flower children of late ’60s and the hard-working folks who shop at Wal-Mart? The two groups would seem a study in antithesis. The flower children of the ’60s put flowers in gun barrels and chanted sweet songs of peace. At Wal-Mart people buy guns to put bullets in and use them to shoot cute and cuddly animals. Hippies scorned work and lived in idleness. The Wal-Mart shopper often works two jobs just to squeeze by. Flower children listened to acid rock. The folks at Wal-Mart adore Country and Western. Hippies celebrated free love. The people who fill the aisles of Wal-Mart marry, settle down, and raise families—often quite large ones. The hippies grooved on Zen or chanted Hare Krishna. The Wal-Mart crowd happily keeps Jesus at the wheel. Flower children opposed war. The Wal-Mart shopper sends off sons and daughters to fight them.
But Brooks is not really comparing the Tea Party movement to the hippie movement of the ’60s. Instead, he is comparing it to the New Left of the same decade. In one respect he appears to have made an honest mistake. In his mind, the New Left and the hippie movement have strangely merged. Members of the New Left “went to Woodstock”—didn’t they? Actually, no, they didn’t. We should not confuse the carefree, frolicking hippie movement of that era with the mirthless and dour New Left of the same period. Hippies were whimsical spirits. The New Lefties were mirthless zealots. Hippies smoked pot and had fun. New Lefties read Lenin and plotted revolution. New Lefties regarded hippies as frivolous and fatuous. Hippies looked on New Lefties as the ultimate downers.
Let us concentrate on his main point. According to Brooks, the Tea Party movement should best be understood as a right-wing version of the New Left, and he lists a number of characteristics that they share: the desire to topple the status quo; a taste for conspiracy theories; a fear of being co-opted by agents of the establishment; a belief that human beings are basically good while power and authority are basically evil; a largely negative program based on an antagonism to the current state of things. In addition, Brooks points out that both the Tea Party movement and the New Left “go in for street theater, mass rallies, marches, and extreme statements”
In drawing these comparisons, Brooks scores several good hits. But his argument falls short in two important respects.
First, the set of characteristics Brooks has noted have been the common features of all the revolutionary movements throughout history, both great and small. The same points could be made about the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, the Puritan Revolution of the 17th century, the American and French revolutions of the 18th century, the myriad revolutionary movements that broke out in Europe during the 19th century, and the Russian revolution of the 20th century. All these movements sought to topple the status quo, believed in conspiracy theories, feared co-optation, distrusted authority, began by tearing down the old order, and employed street theater, usually in the form of riots and violent insurrections. In short, those features shared by the Tea Party and the New Left are the staple elements of all forms of political radicalism. This greatly undermines Brooks’s attempt to minimize the historical potential of the Tea Party movement. True, it shares features of the historically insignificant New Left movement of the ’60s; but it also shares features with historically portentous movements, like the Protestant Reformation and the American Revolution.
Second, Brooks completely ignores the most striking feature of the New Left—the very quality that distinguished it from the Old Left. The Old Left, in good Marxist fashion, based its revolutionary hopes on the men and women who must work for a living, while the New Left went out of its way to culturally alienate working-class Americans by supporting the Black Panthers, attacking patriotism, insulting the police, and demeaning military service. Drawn largely from major universities, and often springing from privileged and affluent backgrounds, the adherents of the New Left were elitist to the core, assuring that the appeal of the New Left would be narrowly limited to only a tiny segment of the American population. But that is precisely the point at which Brooks’ comparison between the New Left and the Tea Party movement falls to pieces. The Tea Party movement has mass appeal; the New Left did not.
Via Steve Hayward and Everythingisterrible.com, I give you the trailer for "Deadly Prey." I hear it was a huge hit on movie nights at Eric Massa's group house (major profanity warning):
I spent 20 years as a commissioned officer in the Navy, all of it in carrier aviation (F-14s and FA-18s), and even though I did a “crossing the line ceremony” (crossing the Equator), apparently like Massa, we NEVER had gay-ish hijinks like he describes then, or at any other time.
Maybe he just remembers the old SNL skits with Michael Palin (of Monty Python) about “Miles Cowperthwaite” and his time on the HMS Raging Queen with Captain Ned.
All of the best and I am thoroughly enjoying Liberal Fascism. I’m now a US History teacher in high school, and your book is a GREAT resource.
Sincerely (and anonymity, please).
And:
Jonah,
I am retiring shortly after 21 years in the Navy and have never heard of "tickle fights". I think if anyone above the third grade started a "tickle fight", they are inviting the beating they are sure to receive.
This guy makes me ashamed of my Service and I wish there were a way to disassociate him from the Navy.
It's also interesting to me that no reporter called him on this - there was a time when some reporter would have had military service or at least have been familiar enough with the military to know that this guy is full of it. Almost a virtual certainty that there's more to this story.
About a third of the way through my second reading of Liberal Fascism. I am finding that I missed some things the first time around so I'm really enjoying it.
Many council votes are routine, and members could argue that time spent with lobbyists, mayoral aides or even reporters is more valuable than responding to repeated roll calls. But few make that case. A spotty voting record can easily become a political liability.
So instead of being recorded as absent, the council members have a technological fix: The chamber's voting software is set to automatically register each of the 15 lawmakers as a "yes" unless members deliberately press a button to vote "no."
Hopefully, someone will slip through a motion to abolish the City Council entirely.
A senior House Republican aide tells National Review Online that GOP Leader John Boehner has asked Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.) to schedule a special conference meeting this week on earmark reform. Boehner’s decision comes on the heels of a growing movement in the GOP caucus, led by Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), to establish a yearlong moratorium on earmarks. For weeks, Flake has been trying to collect the 50 GOP signatures needed to have a conference session on the subject.
The new Republican push comes as House Democrats consider an earmark ban of their own in an effort to claim the high ground on the issue that has divided their Republican counterparts for several years. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested the idea of a yearlong caucus-wide earmark moratorium during a Democratic leadership meeting last week.
UPDATE:
From a GOP staffer:
In the room, Boehner said this: “We’re going to have to make a decision . . . Are we really willing to put it all on the line to win this thing?”
This is a very interesting video. Reason TV's Ted Balaker interviews former Reason magazine editor-in-chief Virginia Postrel about the strengths and the shortcomings of the American health-care system. What's fascinating about this clip is that Postrel — a very serious free-market intellectual — has had first-hand experience of the system both as a kidney donor and a breast cancer survivor. She came out of these experiences convinced that the system was really messed up and in serious need of reform, and yet, strongly against a single-payer, one-size-fits-all system.
When the administration released its budget in early February, the news seemed bad enough. By its own reckoning, the Obama administration’s budget plan would result in massive deficits and borrowing if adopted in full. According to the administration’s estimates, the president’s budget plan would produce deficits totaling $10.1 trillion over the period 2010 to 2020, and by 2020 federal debt would reach $18.6 trillion.
But now we learn that that was the rosy scenario.
According to CBO, the Obama budget plan would run up much larger budget deficits and pile up even more debt than the administration reported in February.
Over the period 2010 to 2020, CBO expects the Obama budget would run a cumulative deficit of $11.3 trillion — $1.2 trillion more than the administration predicted. By 2020, total federal debt would reach an astonishing $20.3 trillion — up from $5.8 trillion at the end of 2008.
The president likes to say he inherited a mess. He did in fact enter office during a deep recession that sent deficits soaring on a temporary basis. But his policies have unquestionably made an already difficult medium- and long-term budget outlook much, much worse. The problem is that President Obama is a world-class spender. He wants to pile massive new commitments on top of a bloated and unreformed government. He is willing to raise taxes to pay for some of his wish list, but far from all of it. For the rest, he plans to run up the nation’s debt with reckless abandon.
CBO’s numbers tell the story.
Over the next ten years, CBO says the Obama budget would increase federal spending by $2.3 trillion, including $0.8 trillion in net interest costs on the additional borrowing that would be required.
Bad as that is, it’s a lowball estimate. The president’s budget assumes that war-fighting funds will plummet from $130 billion in 2010 to just $50 billion in 2012 and every year thereafter. No one believes this will happen. More realistic assumptions would add $500 billion or more to the president’s defense funding request over a ten-year period.
The biggest problem in the federal budget is runaway entitlement spending. And so what would the Obama budget do? Increase entitlement spending, of course. By $1.9 trillion over ten years, according to CBO. In 2020, federal entitlement spending would reach $3.3 trillion, up from $2.1 trillion in 2009.
The administration has been touting a supposed three-year spending “freeze” as evidence of its determination to cut the budget back. But only a very small portion of the budget would be frozen, and only after the administration had spent two years stuffing in more funding. CBO expects that discretionary spending under the Obama budget, excluding war funds and Pell Grants (which would become an entitlement), will increase by $0.5 trillion over ten years.
Between 2010 and 2030, the population age 65 and older is expected to rise from 41 million to 71 million people. CBO projects spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in 2030 will reach 14.4 percent of GDP, up from 9.8 percent today. That will be like adding a whole new Social Security program to the budget without any additional revenue to pay for it.
The federal government is drowning in unaffordable entitlement commitments. President Obama’s response is to spend, entitle, and borrow even more, while he can. And then, with an even bigger government locked into the “baseline,” he plans to pivot and use the prospect of a debt crisis he made much more probable to push for a massive tax increase.
Unfortunately for the president, the public is already onto this game. And they want no part of it.
If you live in the vicinity of Stetson University in lovely Deland, know that on the afternoon of Sunday, March 21, our Jay Nordlinger will be there, interviewing Ignat Solzhenitsyn, son of, yes, but a most acclaimed conductor and pianist who will be giving a “performance/talk” entitled “A Schubert Sonata.” For more information about this great event, part of the ongoing John N. Apgar Jr. Lecture Series, click here.
George Will's Newsweek column this week was a topic on the radio this morning; in response I received the following interesting e-mail:
I’ve enjoyed your stint on the Bill Bennett radio show this week; I hope you are able to be on more often.
In the discussion about the 27 westerns in prime time in 1959 with strong male roles vs. today, someone noted that in today’s shows, the men were often single “divorced or widowers.” That compares closely to the westerns of the 50’s and 60’s. Just off the top of my head (and these may not be exactly the list from 1959, but my grandmother weaned me on western re-runs, so I think I’m close, and you’ll at least see the point): “Bonanza”; “Gunsmoke”; “Have Gun Will Travel”; “Rawhide”; “Wagon Train”; “The Rifleman”; “Wanted Dead or Alive”; “Cimarron Strip”; “Maverick”; “The Virginian”; “The Lone Ranger”; “Cheyenne”; “Laredo” – all featured a single male as the lead role. Frankly, the only major ones I can remember from that entire era that had a major “wife” figure were “Daniel Boone” and “The High Chapparal.” Then there’s “The Big Valley,” featuring a very strong-willed matriarch (not many soft edges on how Barbara Stanwyck played that role).
Be that as it may, there’s certainly been a decline in strong male leads on television. The success of “NCIS” would lead one to believe there’s still an appetite, though.
Indonesian counterterror authorities won international praise on Wednesday for killing a top-ranked Southeast Asian militant wanted for planning the deadly 2002 Bali bombings.
Police also revealed that bomb-making materials were found in one of two raids near Jakarta on Tuesday that killed fugitive Dulmatin and his two bodyguards. Indonesia's Police Chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri told reporters Wednesday that the bomb was not being prepared for President Barak Obama's visit to Jakarta this month, but declined to elaborate on a potential target.
Dulmatin, a 39-year-old Indonesian trained by al-Qaida in Afghanistan who used one name, was wanted for the suicide bombings that tore through two Bali nightclubs popular with Westerners, killing 202 people in Indonesia's deadliest terrorist attack. He was also blamed for the 2004 truck bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta that killed 11.
Dulmatin had been one of Southeast Asia's most-wanted fugitives and was thought to have fled to the Philippines.
It's a story of women, from those on the Mayflower to the one I'm blessed to call my wife, who looked across the dinner table, and thought, I'm smarter than that guy.
That's a version of American exceptionalism, I suppose — our popular culture's pathetic view of men is frequently exceptional. It's also harmful, unnecessary, and reflective of so much we see around us, not to mention an ingredient in way too many social pathologies. But in this case, it's not some silly primetime comedy displaying it for all the world to see. It's the president of the United States.
"Cap and trade" is more like "bait and switch." Reuters:
Like a savvy Madison Avenue advertising team, senators pushing climate-control legislation have decided to scrap the name "cap and trade" and rebrand their product as "pollution reduction targets."
UPDATE: E-mailbag, showing that certain kinds of Republicans are playing this game, too:
I recently got a letter from Senator Lindsey Graham with this incredibly dense statement. "there is no question we have an obligation to reduce carbon pollution"
I think Mark has it wrong. The real breakthrough will come when Friedman writes that Iraq's transition from villainous autocracy to democracy has merely set the stage for what Iraq really needs: "enlightened autocracy" you know, like the Chinese have. If only Saddam had invested in solar-powered windmills, we could have spared the bother.
As Cesar Conda and I mentioned yesterday (here and here), the legal profession's glitterati — for whom there is no difference between representing an accused criminal defendant entitled to counsel and volunteering their services to America's enemies in wartime for the filing of offensive lawsuits against the United States — ought to be embarrassed by their laughable analogy of the Gitmo volunteers to John Adams's representation of British soldiers indicted for murder after the Boston Massacre.
Tom Joscelyn has more thoughts on the subject at The Standard's blog, focusing on one of new breed of John Adamses: Eric Holder's former law partner, David Remes.
If You're Not Shampooing the Cat Tomorrow Night . . .
[Mark Steyn]
For some reason, NRO readers chastise me for not plugging live appearances here, so I thought I might as well make like Jonah, Andy, and everybody else, and get with the program.
I'll be appearing live at Hillsdale College in Michigan tomorrow night, Thursday. It's open to the public, admission free, and starts at 8 p.m. in the sports arena, which for some reason makes me feel I oughtta be like U2 and have some lasers or something. Instead, I'll be surveying the geopolitical scene and whatnot, but, if I'm really cookin', I'll get out my unicycle.
This claim in Slate is . . . off. "Something between 45 and 52 million U.S. women have abortions annually. . ." It's an interesting piece, actually, but that sentence needs a few changes.
