July 22, 2011
Ezra Klein: "We have 11 calendar days to raise the debt ceiling... At this point, there are three serious options on the table. A $4
trillion deal that includes some revenues, a $1 trillion-$2 trillion
deal that's all spending cuts but leaves much of the job until after the
election, and a deal in which Republicans don't come to a negotiated
agreement with President Obama but they grant him the authority -- and
let him take the blame -- for raising the debt ceiling. Those are our
three options, and Congress needs to pick one. Time is running short."
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told President Obama tonight he is "pulling out of debt negotiations to work directly with the Senate about a fall-back plan to lift the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by the Aug. 2 deadline,"
USA Today reports.
In response, Obama said he is summoning House and Senate leaders to the White House Saturday morning "to explain to me how we are going to avoid default."
Washington Post: "In subsequent statements, both sides blamed the other for an impasse
that threatens to plunge the nation into a fiscal crisis if the
government fails to meet a looming deadline to raise the federal debt
ceiling."
It's important to note that Obama and Boehner waited until the financial markets had closed for the weekend before making a public statement.
A new
Pew Research survey finds the Republican party has made significant gains among white voters since Barack Obama became president.
Key finding: A 2-point Republican edge among whites in 2008, 46% to 44%, has widened to a 13-point lead today, 52% to 39%. In sharp contrast, the partisan attachments of black and Hispanic voters have remained consistently Democratic.
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) said he will "push harder for a same-sex marriage measure in Maryland next year if it mirrors legislation that passed in New York after changes were made to protect religious freedom," the
Washington Post reports.
Said O'Malley: "I think we can learn from what they did. One of the things we're looking at in the drafting is how their clauses with regard to religious freedom were different from ours. That might improve our efforts. And I certainly plan to be very active in support of it, and we'll have other announcements in upcoming months."
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is "leaning to moving Arizona's presidential primary to the last Tuesday in January in hopes of getting a jump on most other states," the
Yuma Sun reports.
"Brewer does not need permission to make the change: The state law which sets the primary for the fourth Tuesday of February specifically gives the governor unilateral power to move it up to any date she wants. The only requirement is that she makes her decision at least 150 days before the new date."
"There was some talk here of trying to put a seven second delay on the
microphones for this ceremony. But I can't imagine why the hell that
would be necessary."
-- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, quoted by
ABC News, noting how he and Vice President Joe Biden were taught to "speak plainly and directly. And sometimes that's gotten us in trouble."
In the mail:
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber.
The author writes in the
Washington Post: "The peculiar willingness of American families to accept, at a time of 9.2 percent unemployment, that our real problem is the need to cut government spending to balance the budget can only be explained as a classic example of magical thinking (I'm an anthropologist, I know magical thinking when I see it): perhaps if we can balance our collective budget, I will be able balance my family's budget too."
Charlie Cook parses the latest NBC News/
Wall Street Journal poll:
"One potentially useful exercise is to sort the candidates into brackets. If you add up the Romney, Pawlenty, and Jon Huntsman votes in the July survey, it totals 34 percent, basically one out of three Republican primary voters. Add up the Bachmann, Perry, Paul, Cain, and Rick Santorum voters, the more conservative of the two brackets, and it's 44 percent. Gingrich always goes his own way, so it's hard to assign him and his 8 percent to either bracket. Fourteen percent of Republicans don't express a favorite in this field."
Dispelling rumors that his troubled campaign is on life support,
Lloyd Grove confirms that Newt Gingrich is still running for president.
Said Gingrich: "Quitting isn't an option."
Ted Gaines (R) and Beth Gaines (R), the California legislature's only married couple, "find themselves in an odd predicament from the latest draft maps by California's independent redistricting commission," the
Sacramento Bee reports.
"Beth's Assembly career apparently would benefit by her continuing to live in the couple's Roseville home, but Ted's Senate career could be in jeopardy unless he pulls up stakes and moves."
Politico reports that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) changed his position on gay marriage in March -- he now supports it -- and wrote an op-ed in the
Boston Globe earlier this month explaining his reversal, but no one seemed to notice or care.
Donald Trump told
Fox News that he might get back into presidential race as an independent candidate.
Said Trump: "I'm going to see who going to the Republican nominee. I'm going to be looking at the economy. If the economy continues to do badly, which I think it will, because the administration does not know what they are doing. If the economy continues to do badly, and if the Republicans pick somebody that I think is the wrong person and isn't going to win, I would seriously consider running as an independent. The reason I have to do it that way is because as you know what I'm doing doesn't allow me to run sooner than May."
Supporters of Texas Gov. Rick Perry will hold another meeting next week "as the potential presidential candidate tries to determine if he can obtain enough financial backing to launch a successful campaign,"
Real Clear Politics reports.
One key attendee: Henry Barbour, a nephew of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and "a veteran GOP operative who will support Perry if he runs."
Real Clear Politics reports that Tim Pawlenty "has invested about $1 million in advertising, direct mail, transportation arrangements and other straw poll-centric ventures. The number is far smaller than what former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney doled out in advance of his 2007 Ames victory but it nonetheless surpasses what Pawlenty's competitors have spent and suggests an implicit acknowledgment of the do-or-die situation he faces."
Paul Krugman: "For those who know their 1930s history, this is all too familiar. If either of the current debt negotiations fails, we could be about to replay 1931, the global banking collapse that made the Great Depression great. But, if the negotiations succeed, we will be set to replay the great mistake of 1937: the premature turn to fiscal contraction that derailed economic recovery and ensured that the Depression would last until World War II finally provided the boost the economy needed."
President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner "are moving toward a deficit-reduction deal that could cut as much as $3 trillion in spending and overhaul the tax code by the end of next year to raise up to $1 trillion," the
Wall Street Journal reports.
First Read: "But there are two big hurdles left: 1) on the substance, and 2) on soothing egos. On the substance, the most contentious matter is how you "trigger" the provisions to guarantee completing tax and entitlement reform. The Democrats have offered a trigger of letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those making $250,000 or more. Republicans, meanwhile, have countered that if those Bush tax cuts are hanging in the balance, they'd offer a trigger of their own to ensure Dem action: scaling back Obama's health-care law and eliminating the mandate. Bottom line: If entitlement and tax reform is completed on time, then the Bush tax cuts and the health-care law don't get touched."
"And that brings us to soothing egos. There would be two winners if this
deal gets reached: President Obama and John Boehner. Obama gets his
deal, avoids default, and advances his brand -- as the
Washington Post's
Fixers write -- of being able to bring people together when others have
failed. Boehner gets his deal too, accomplishes something historic, and
provides some stability for his House majority. But here's the deal: No
one else wins."
Karl Rove was asked on
Fox News whether Sarah Palin can run a non-conventional campaign for president.
Said Rove: "Her people think so. They've talked with people about it, whom I've talked to, and they've been very explicit about it -- that she doesn't need to go to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, press the flesh and go to all these local events in order to cultivate the local leadership. She can talk to people over that. She doesn't need to cultivate the fundraisers and the bundlers, because her mere presence in the race will generate the cash needed for the campaign."
National Journal: "The day of reckoning on the debt ceiling is coming, and for no one in Congress is it more portentous than for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. A political figure of unarguable talent and ambition, the Virginia Republican could one day pursue any number of jobs: speaker of the House, governor of his home state, U.S. senator. Some Republicans believe that Cantor fantasizes about being the nation's first Jewish president."
"Whatever his long-term goals, the next several weeks will go a long way toward deciding Cantor's future."
"It's a circus. These people are clowns. They are wearing make-up."
-- Buddy Roemer, in an interview on
Fox News, on lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
See more...
A new
Fox News poll
shows the national scene for the Republican presidential nomination
much less certain than their last poll in early June, as Mitt Romney
takes 17% (down 6 points), Rick Perry has 14% in his first appearance in
the poll, and Michele Bachmann takes 10% (up 4 points).
The
Obama matchup: "Romney does best against the president and is the only
GOP candidate to keep Obama's edge to single digits. Obama tops Romney
by 6 percentage points. In addition, Romney is the only Republican in
these early matchups to top Obama among independents -- by 6
points... Finally, the poll shows women voters are neither more nor are
they less likely to back Bachmann than any of the other Republicans over
Obama."
Meanwhile, a new
CNN/Opinion Research poll finds Romney at 16%, Perry at 14%, Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani at 13% and Bachmann at 12%.
Top Pentagon leaders will notify Congress as early as today that the Defense Department is ready to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military, the
Wall Street Journal reports.
The action means the ban will formally disappear in late September.
Morning Score has a
letter
from the National Republican Senatorial Committee to over 300 partners
at the law and lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro -- where Michigan U.S. Senate candidate
Pete Hoekstra works -- that seeks to switch their fundraising allegiance
after the Michigan Democratic Party attacked Hoekstra for his
association with Dickstein Shapiro, the firm that defended Bernie
Madoff.
From the letter: "It is remarkable that a well
respected law firm such as Dickstein Shapiro, which has contributed over
$250,000 to Democratic committees over the course of the last two
cycles - including $17,000 to Michigan Democrats - would have its
reputation so readily targeted by the very beneficiaries of its
political largesse... To the extent that I, or anyone at the National
Republican Senatorial Committee, could be of assistance to Dickstein
Shapiro in re-evaluating in which party to place its political capital."
July 21, 2011
First Read notes a 1993 appearance on
Meet the Press by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) during the debate over a congressional budget deal.
TIM RUSSERT: Is the energy tax a fight until death, or are you willing to compromise a little bit with Senator Boren, modify if a bit--
SEN. MOYNIHAN: Fight until death over taxes? Oh no. Women, country, God, things like that. Taxes? No.
Nate Silver: "If the states are laboratories of democracy, then the Republican Party's research pipeline has run dry. Moderate Republican governors, a thriving species before last year's elections, are all but extinct."
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