Justin's Political Corner
‘I am not a dictator,’ says Obama after failure of sequester talks with Congress leaders
(Photo: Charles Dharapak / AP)
President says midnight budget cuts are the “choice” of Republicans who stonewalled any compromise to avert them.
WASHINGTON — The Violence Against Women Act is finally heading to the president’s desk this week after a dragged out political fight over expanding protections to Native American, LGBT and immigrant victims of abuse.
The House voted 286 to 138 on Thursday to pass the bipartisan Senate version of VAWA.
The vote came just after the House rejected its own GOP bill, 166 to 257, which drew loud cheers in the chamber. Sixty Republicans voted against the GOP bill.
Throughout the debate, House Republicans maintained that their bill would have covered all women. But the reality is that it didn’t go as far as the bipartisan Senate bill. The House bill stripped out protections for LGBT victims of abuse, it didn’t give tribal courts new authority in certain domestic violence cases and it added new eligibility restrictions for U Visas for abused immigrant women. The House bill also entirely left out two separate measures attached to the Senate bill: the SAFER Act, which helps law enforcement address a backlog in untested rape kits, and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which targets human trafficking.
The House Republican bill appeared doomed before it hit the floor. It had zero support from Democrats, and a growing number of Republicans were saying they couldn’t support it.
WASHINGTON — The House Ethics Committee said Wednesday it will continue an investigation of Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock over allegations he solicited donations of more than $5,000 per donor to a super political action committee. The committee also said it’s continuing a probe of whether a trip New York Democrat Bill Owens took to Taiwan was arranged by lobbyists for the country’s government.
Both cases had been referred to the House committee by the Office of Congressional Ethics, a separate, outside ethics office. The House committee announced its decision to continue looking into each case on Wednesday, while releasing OCE’s report on both cases.
In a statement, the ethics committee said that in both cases merely “conducting further review … does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred, or reflect any judgment on behalf of the committee.” The committee also said it would refrain from further comment pending completion of initial reviews.
Both Schock and Owens said they expect to be exonerated by the House committee.
Schock’s case involves an allegation he asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., to contribute $25,000 from his leadership PAC to a super PAC that backed Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., in a House primary against Rep. Don Manzullo. Kinzinger won the March 2012 primary. Redistricting following the 2010 census put the two congressmen in the same and the primary.
According to the OCE report, the Super PAC backing Kinzinger, the Campaign for Primary Accountability, received a minimum of $115,000 that came from “efforts of Rep. Schock and his campaign committee.”
Schock told investigators that he never requested the $25,000 from Cantor. According to the OCE report, Cantor told investigators that Schock had asked him if he would give the $25,000 donation to back Kinzinger. Cantor said he then gave money from his committee to the super PAC backing Kinziger in the primary.
The case involving Owens relates to a December 2011 trip he and his wife took to Taiwan. Owens and his wife were invited by the Chinese Culture University of Taiwan. But the trip may have been arranged by lobbyists for the country. Lawmakers are prohibited from taking trips that are paid for by lobbyists.
Owens said he expected the investigation would clear him of wrongdoing.
H/T: Huffington Post
Al Gore, environmental activist and former vice president, said he was “very pleased” to hear President Barack Obama pledge to combat climate change in his inauguration speech. He urged the president to “follow through” on his commitment.
“There are some actions he can take that do not require congressional approval,” Gore said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”
Gore argued the president should expand current Environmental Protection Agency regulations, saying such action would be protected by the Supreme Court.
“There is a law on the books that requires the EPA to regulate pollution. The Supreme Court has agreed with the obvious interpretation that global warming pollution is pollution,” he said. “It’s been applied to new coal plants. It should be applied to all facilities.”
Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council have also called on the president to keep his distance from Congress on climate change.
WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — Without help from Congress, the U.S. Postal Service is likely to default on a big bill due Wednesday to the federal government — $5.5 billion to prepay health care benefits for retirees.
Postal officials have said they’re bracing for default on the payment. They also don’t have the money to make a $5.6 billion payment due Sept. 30.
Congress alone has the power to help the service. The Senate passed a bill to help the service back in April, but the full House has yet to consider the issue.
The service is in a financial bind, having reported several quarters worth of multi-billion-dollar losses due to the recession, declining mail volume and the congressional mandate to prefund retirement health care benefits for future retirees.
While default would be a first for the Postal Service, it’s largely symbolic. Postal officials have pledged that employees and subcontractors will continue to be paid and mail will be delivered as normal.
h/t: fox2now.com
WASHINGTON — House Republicans Tuesday unveiled legislation to get rid of AmeriCorps, the national service program, and cut off federal funding for National Public Radio, public television and Planned Parenthood.
The moves would come in a controversial spending bill that pays for labor, health and education programs for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
The measure is dead on arrival with Democrats but contains many provisions to please tea party conservatives.
“This bill is an extremely partisan proposal, stands little chance of even being brought up on the House floor, and will rightly be disregarded by both the Senate and the president,” said Rep. Norm Dicks of Washington, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.
The cuts to community service programs, funded at $1 billion this year, would slash such programs by 74 percent on the path to eliminating them entirely, save for a program for senior citizens. National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service are familiar targets, too, but have been rejected before. NPR is seen as left-leaning while Republicans say PBS could get along just fine without taxpayer help.
But to find the $6.3 billion in cuts across the measure, Republicans went well beyond simply slashing Democratic initiatives. Funding of $10.7 billion to administer the Social Security program, for instance, would be cut $1.1 billion below President Barack Obama’s request, cutting funding for computers upgrades, new hires and “program integrity” money designed to find mistakes and combat fraud. Medicare and the Medicaid health program for the poor and disabled would absorb an even larger cut to operating funds.
The legislation would, however, maintain heating subsidies for the poor at $3.4 billion and Title I school funding at $15 billion and give a slight boost to special education for the disabled. Head Start would get a small increase and grants for local community action groups that serve the elderly and the poor would be maintained at the current budget of $712 million.
h/t: HuffPost Politics
A group of House Democrats filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking a federal appeals court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, according to Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner.
However, 60 Democrats — including 15 who had co-sponsored a bill repealing the DOMA — chose not to sign on to Tuesday’s brief to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case hinges on DOMA’s ability to prevent same-sex spouses from receiving federal benefits, which was declared unconstitutional in February 2012 by a U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
The brief, filed by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and 131 other Democrats, argues that the law was motivated by “the desire to disapprove of and disadvantage gay and lesbian couples.” Pelosi and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) have consistently opposed the law as part of the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), which, under Republican leadership, has been defending it in court since the Obama administration’s withdrawal of support for the law last year.
The House Democrats’ brief then argues that DOMA is unconstitutional because Congress hastily passed it in 1996 for political reasons and because the law undercuts Congress’ interest in protecting families and respecting state sovereignty.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced Wednesday that the full House would consider a resolution finding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress next week. The House Oversight Committe voted Wednesday afternoon to find Holder in contempt because they allege he failed to turn over documents related to the committee’s investigation into the botched ATF operation known as Fast and Furious.
h/t: TPM LiveWire
BREAKING: Eric Holder found in contempt of Congress by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, 23-17.
— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) June 20, 2012
President Obama appeared on a White House conference call Monday to urge Americans to pressure their Senators into supporting the Paycheck Fairness Act currently before the Senate. Women are a key constituency for Obama in the general election fight, and working for greater pay equity between men and women has been a central component of the president’s administration. Republicans view the act as political posturing, claiming the pay equity problem had been solved with the Lily Ledbetter Act, the first bill Obama signed into law upon becoming president.
