December 21, 2011

Acting House speaker: ‘Mr. Hoyer was in violation of the House rules’ [VIDEO]


Acting House speaker: ‘Mr. Hoyer was in violation of the House rules’ [VIDEO]

Published: 7:42 PM 12/21/2011 | Updated: 8:05 PM 12/21/2011
Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, who served as the presiding officer in a pro forma session of the House Wednesday, told The Daily Caller that Minority Whip Steny Hoyer was in “violation of the House rules” when requesting to be recognized on the floor in an attempt to force a vote on the Senate’s two-month payroll tax cut extension. Fitzpatrick called Hoyer’s actions a “publicity stunt.”
Watch the interview:
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“I was the presiding officer on the floor of the House in a pro forma session when Mr. Hoyer requested to be recognized — in violation of the House rules, I might add,” Fitzpatrick told TheDC in an exclusive interview at the Capitol on Wednesday night.
“There’s a longstanding policy, it goes back through speakers of the House, all the way back to Tip O’Neill in 1981 that requires for unanimous consent that both parties’ leadership accede to the request for the unanimous consent offer. Mr. Hoyer is a former Majority Leader of the House, he knows the rules or should know the rules and it was my job to enforce them and I did.”
Hoyer directly criticized Fitzpatrick in a press conference after the session ended.
“Mr. Van Hollen and I just participated on the floor of the House and sought to seek recognition so that we could ask unanimous consent to place on the floor and to pass legislation which would give certainty and assurance to seniors, to the unemployed and to 160 million Americans who are at risk of losing their tax cut on January 1st… Unfortunately, as has happened so often, the acting speaker, Republican presiding officer, walked out. He walked out, would not render recognition and would not allow Mr. Van Hollen and I to make that unanimous consent request and move forward,” he said.
“This is unfortunate,” said Hoyer. “The irony is that he appointed five conferees, all of whom at one point or another have said that they are opposed to a one-year extension of the middle-class tax cut, and in fact, have made comments similar to the speaker’s that the middle-class tax cut is a gimmick.”
According to official House rules, “The Speaker has announced and enforced a policy of conferring recognition for unanimous-consent requests for the consideration of unreported bills and resolutions only when assured that majority and minority floor and committee leaderships have no objections.” The policy has been extended to reported bills as well.
Fitzpatrick fired back at Hoyer, saying he was attempting to turn the House floor into a press conference.
“Frankly, Mr. Hoyer was in violation of the House rules requesting to be recognized. He knew it was in violation of the House rules. Frankly, it was a publicity stunt on their part. They were trying to call essentially what amounted to a press conference on the floor of the House and I enforced the rules,” Fitzpatrick told TheDC.

Moving beyond Freddie and Fannie


Moving beyond Freddie and Fannie

By Bob Corker, Published: November 24

The term “permanent conservatorship” is an oxymoron. By its very construct, the conservatorship of a corporation is meant to be temporary. And yet three years after the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we are no closer to transitioning them off government life support than we were the day in 2008 when they came under direct government control.
This is unacceptable.





A delay in dealing with Fannie and Freddie was partly inevitable, as policymakers worried that any misstep could negatively affect a fragile housing market. But we have come to a point where continued inaction impedes the ability of the private market to take over a function the government has completely mismanaged. We must move beyond Fannie and Freddie, immediately.
This task will not be politically easy. Many of the institutions that have come to rely on the corporate welfare Fannie and Freddie provide have argued that we cannot have a housing finance system without the support of government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). This argument not only ignores the risks taxpayers are forced to bear but also fundamentally misrepresents the structure of the housing finance system.
Broadly speaking, the risks inherent in mortgage lending can be placed in two categories, interest rate risk and credit risk. Interest rate risk stems from the fact that homeowners can prepay their mortgages at any time, and they generally choose to do so when interest rates are low. This leaves the lender with the tricky job of managing an asset-liability mismatch. But the private sector has proved capable of the task. In fact, the development of the risk management infrastructure to deal with this challenge remains a great accomplishment of modern finance.
The second risk in mortgage lending is credit risk, or the risk that a borrower will default on his or her mortgage. Today, mortgage credit risk is almost completely priced and managed by the government. Having “crowded out” private investors by charging an insurance premium that was too cheap, the GSEs are saddled with $5 trillion worth of bad credit. This is a tragedy of our own making. During the boom years, the GSEs’ affordable housing goals were coupled with a Congress and an administration that saw only the bright side of rapidly increasing homeownership rates. That meant that as housing prices began to spike, it was impossible to make credit slightly more expensive. Without countercyclical market mechanisms able to operate naturally, as housing prices went higher, the GSEs simply raced each other to lower guarantee fees, out of fear that they might lose business from mortgage originators such as Countrywide and Washington Mutual. The result, we now know, was a government-induced bubble followed by a painful collapse.
This month I introduced legislation that can help bring private capital back into this market in an orderly fashion. The Residential Mortgage Market Privatization and Standardization Act would reduce the federal government’s exposure to GSEs by 10 percent per year for 10 years. It will do this by gradually diminishing the percentage of an agency mortgage-backed security that is backstopped by the taxpayer. This methodical process will allow for clear market signals, so everyone can easily see where the market and the government each price credit risk. Additionally, the bill includes some basic infrastructure improvements, such as creating uniform servicing agreements, putting in place some minimum underwriting standards — such as a 5 percent minimum down payment and requiring that loans be fully documented — and making available for public consumption the large amount of data sitting in the vaults at Fannie and Freddie. Such initiatives would put us on a path toward a sustainable housing finance system for the long run.
Ultimately, the market will price mortgage credit risk much more efficiently than does the government. We should not be deterred by red-herring arguments to the contrary. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are costing taxpayers billions of dollars every year. We must begin the process of unwinding the GSEs. “Permanent conservatorship” is not a credible plan.
The writer, a Republican from Tennessee, is a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

December 20, 2011

OBAMA‘S CLAIM THAT HE’S THE FOURTH BEST PRESIDENT


‘60 MINUTES’ EDITS OUT OBAMA‘S CLAIM THAT HE’S THE FOURTH BEST PRESIDENT

AP
President Barack Obama sat for an extensive interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” last week, though it appears the portion of the interview actually broadcast on TV left out a statement where Obama essentially declared himself the fourth best president in terms of his accomplishments.
The statement was only made available online as part of the full interview on “60 Minutes Overtime.”
According to a transcript posted on the “60 Minutes” website, Obama said he would hold his accomplishments so far as president against those of Lyndon B. Johnson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
“I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history,” Obama told CBS’s Steve Kroft.
Watch the full interview below. The statement comes at the very end, around the 56:10 mark of the 56:53-minute video:
Or just hear the relevant clip here:
(h/t Newsbusters)

December 12, 2011

Poll: Little love for big gov

By: MJ Lee
December 12, 2011 04:47 PM EST
Americans’ fear of big government - partly fueled by a sharp spike among Democrats since President Barack Obama took office - almost reached a record high this year and is far greater than people’s concerns about big business and big labor, a new Gallup poll Monday shows.

An overwhelming 64 percent of people surveyed said big government was the biggest threat to the country, compared to just 26 percent who said big business is their gravest concern and 8 percent who picked big labor.

The all-time high for percentage of people who said big government was the biggest threat to the country was in 1999 and 2000, when 65 percent named it the country’s biggest menace.

Republicans are most wary of the threat of big government than are Democrats or independents – 82 percent of GOPers said big government was the biggest threat to the nation, compared to 64 percent of independents and 48 percent of Democrats who said the same.

The percentage of Democrats who said big government was the most significant threat to the U.S., 48 percent, has seen a notable climb since 2009, when 32 percent of the political party said big government was the most dangerous to the country’s well-being.

GOPers have become increasingly concerned about big government since 2006 when President George W. Bush was in office – 68 percent of Republicans said 5 years ago that big government was the biggest threat to the nation – in 2009 and 2011, this percentage crept up into the 80’s.

The Gallup poll was conducted Nov. 28-Dec. 1 among 1,012 adults ages 18 and older, and has an error of margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

December 10, 2011

President Obama To Propose Medicare And Medicaid Cuts

Wed Sep 14, 2011 at 09:39 AM PDT

President Obama To Propose Medicare And Medicaid Cuts

by slinkerwinkFollow
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Most of this article is behind a subscription wall at the Financial Times, but here are the relevant portions, which are rather alarming. These sorts of deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid will not help those who desperately rely on these programs for health care, and neither will these cuts help President Obama look good to independent and moderate voters. They only instead serve to further undercut his chances at re-election in 2012, and these cuts are of his own making.
Barack Obama is expected to lay out a plan next week that would cut several hundred billion dollars from Medicare and Medicaid, the large government healthcare schemes for the elderly and the poor, as part of a pitch to cut future deficits by more than $1,500bn.Senior White House officials said the US president would base a detailed blueprint for fiscal reform, which is to be delivered on Monday, on an earlier speech he delivered in April on deficit reduction.
Here is more below from the article:
During those discussions in July, the White House had agreed to $425bn in cuts to Medicaid and Medicare – with $150bn extracted from Medicare providers such as doctors and hospitals, $150bn coming from Medicare beneficiaries, and $125bn coming out of reforms to Medicaid, administration officials said at the time. Among the menu of policy ideas to reach those targets were an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare. Allowing Medicare more flexibility to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical groups and preventing special deals delaying the entry of generic drugs into certain markets could also be part of the plan. Mr Obama’s plan could also feature a change in the way the US government measures inflation, switching to a less generous chained-consumer price index. The biggest impact of this measure – which could save between $250bn and $300bn over ten years – would be felt by recipients of Social Security, the retirement scheme. During the failed July talks, the White House agreed to put that change in place starting in 2015, but with protections for low-income workers.
The administration has also signalled there would be “discussion” of tax reform in Mr Obama’s recommendations to the committee – particularly on the corporate side. Business lobby groups are pushing the administration to propose a target for a lower corporate tax rate compared to the current 35 per cent level, which would then open the door to an agreement to eliminate subsidies and tax breaks for businesses.
The pursuit of deficit reduction, coming so soon on the heels of a moderately successful jobs pitch, is maddening. This is not what the American people want. Yet the President and the White House continue pursuing it. This is not going to help them draw a contrast against the eventual GOP nominee by flanking the GOP nominee from the right on deficit reduction. As you can see in the CNN poll as discussed by Jed Lewison, a plurality of the American people support the Obama jobs plan, and two-thirds want the focus to be on jobs, not the deficit.
If you had to choose, would you rather see Barack Obama and Congress pay more attention to reducing the budget deficit, or more attention to creating more jobs?
Jobs: 65
Deficit: 29
Both equally (vol.): 6
That above just says it all there. On Monday, the President is going to release his deficit reduction plan, which includes major cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Independent, moderate, and Democratic voters are going to take a look at that, and the President's approval rating, or his electoral standing will not improve. Why? He's returning his focus back to the deficit rather than to jobs.
I feel like I'm watching a train coming towards another train on the tracks, and there's very little room for error in switching the tracks so the trains miss each other, but there's not enough time to do it. And that time's running out.

Originally posted to slinkerwink on Wed Sep 14, 2011 at 09:39 AM PDT.

December 3, 2011

Gingrich: Poor Kids Don’t Work ‘Unless It’s Illegal’



DES MOINES, Iowa – After saying recently that child labor laws are “truly stupid,” Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Thursday told an Iowa audience that children in poor neighborhoods have “no habits of working” nor getting paid for their endeavors “unless it’s illegal.”
“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” the former House speaker said at a campaign event at the Nationwide Insurance offices. “So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of  ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”

Gingrich lately has been unspooling an urban policy, beginning with his comments at Harvard University last month when he discussed child labor laws. “It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods,” Gingrich said then, “entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.”

Children in poor neighborhoods, he said, should be allowed to serve as janitors in their schools to earn money and develop a connection to the school.

Child labor laws were adopted in the early part of the 20th century in response to widespread abuses in factories, where children were forced to work long hours for cheap wages. Groups like the National Child Labor Committee sprang up, and their efforts eventually culminated in adoption of free public education for all children and passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.

Gingrich suggested that present laws are too rigid. “You have a very poor neighborhood. You have kids who are required under law to go to school," he said. "They have no money. They have no habit of work. What if you paid them part-time in the afternoon to sit at the clerical office and greet people when they came in? What if you paid them to work as the assistant librarian? And I’d pay them as early as is reasonable and practical,” he said.

“I am prepared to find something that works, that breaks us out of the cycles we’re involved in right now, and finding a way for poor children to learn how to work and learning how to have money that they’ve earned honestly is an integral part of that,” Gingrich told about 400 people, mostly employees, in the Nationwide cafeteria.

Gingrich repeated the sentiment during an interview with ABC News on Friday: "It would be great if inner-city schools and poor neighborhood schools actually hired the children to do things," he said. "What if they cleaned out the bathrooms and what if they mopped the floors? What if, in that process, they were actually learning to work, learning to earn money, they had money on their own, they didnt have to become a pimp or a prostitute or a drug dealer?"

Also at the event, he became the second GOP presidential candidate to sign a pledge declaring support for the construction of a fence along the entire U.S. border with Mexico by the end of 2013. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has also signed the document by a group called Americans for

Securing the Borders.

“We will have absolute control of the border,” Gingrich said, adding that as president he would suspend federal regulations that get in the way and would divert half of 23,000 homeland security employees in the Washington area to the Southern border.
Sara Sorcher contributed.

December 2, 2011

China's Superior Economic Model

The free-market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history.

By ANDY STERN

Andy Grove, the founder and chairman of Intel, provocatively wrote in Businessweek last year that, "Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best of all economic systems—the freer the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better."


The past few weeks have proven Mr. Grove's point, as our relations with China, and that country's impact on America's future, came to the forefront of American politics. Our inert Senate, while preparing for the super committee to fail, crossed the normally insurmountable political divide to pass legislation to address China's currency manipulation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama all weighed in with their views—ranging from warnings that China must "end unfair discrimination" (Mrs. Clinton) to complaints that the U.S. has "been played like a fiddle" (Mr. Romney) and that China needs to stop "gaming" the international system (Mr. Obama).

As this was happening, I was part of a U.S.-China dialogue—a trip organized by the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the Center for American Progress—with high-ranking Chinese government officials, both past and present. For me, the tension resulting from the chorus of American criticism paled in significance compared to reading the emerging outline of China's 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development.

Some Americans are drawing lessons from this. Last month, the China Daily quoted Orville Schell, who directs the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, as saying: "I think we have come to realize the ability to plan is exactly what is missing in America." The article also noted that Robert Engle, who won a Nobel Prize in 2003 for economics, has said that while China is making five-year plans for the next generation, Americans are planning only for the next election.
The world has been made "flat" by the technological miracles of Andy Grove, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. This has forced all institutions to confront what is clearly the third economic revolution in world history. The Agricultural Revolution was a roughly 3,000-year transition, the Industrial Revolution lasted 300 years, and this technology-led Global Revolution will take only 30-odd years. No single generation has witnessed so much change in a single lifetime.
David G. Klein
 
The current debates about China's currency, the trade imbalance, our debt and China's excessive use of pirated American intellectual property are evidence that the Global Revolution—coupled with Deng Xiaoping's government-led, growth-oriented reforms—has created the planet's second-largest economy. It's on a clear trajectory to knock America off its perch by 2025.

As Andy Grove so presciently articulated in the July 1, 2010, issue of Businessweek, the economies of China, Singapore, Germany, Brazil and India have demonstrated "that a plan for job creation must be the number-one objective of state economic policy; and that the government must play a strategic role in setting the priorities and arraying the forces of organization necessary to achieve this goal."
The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model—so successful in the 20th century—is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA's results—a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1%—are pathetic.

This should motivate leaders to rethink, rather than double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism. As painful and humbling as it may be, America needs to do what a once-dominant business or sports team would do when the tide turns: study the ingredients of its competitors' success.
While we debate, Team China rolls on. Our delegation witnessed China's people-oriented development in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in Western China, which is led by an aggressive and popular Communist Party leader—Bo Xilai. A skyline of cranes are building roughly 1.5 million square feet of usable floor space daily—including, our delegation was told, 700,000 units of public housing annually.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government can boast that it has established in Western China an economic zone for cloud computing and automotive and aerospace production resulting in 12.5% annual growth and 49% growth in annual tax revenue, with wages rising more than 10% a year.

For those of us who love this country and believe America has every asset it needs to remain the No. 1 economic engine of the world, it is troubling that we have no plan—and substitute a demonization of government and worship of the free market at a historical moment that requires a rethinking of both those beliefs.

America needs to embrace a plan for growth and innovation, with a streamlined government as a partner with the private sector. Economic revolutions require institutions to change and maybe make history, because if they stick to the status quo they soon become history. Our great country, which sparked and wants to lead this global revolution, needs a forward looking, long-term economic plan.
The imperative for change is simple. As Andy Grove pointed out: "If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us."
 
Mr. Stern was president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and is now a senior fellow at Columbia University's Richman Center.

Questlove Blocked 3,500 Tea Party Extremists on Twitter Following Michele Bachmann Controversy


The Roots' drummer said in an interview that he has been called "colorful epithets in the past four days."

When The Roots played Fishbone's "Lyin' Ass B----" for Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann's walk-on music during her appearance on NBC talker Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, many have voiced their opinions.


The Roots' drummer Questlove (aka Ahmir Thompson) said in an interview with Pitchfork that since the incident, he has since received racial "epithets."
"I've seen some really colorful epithets in the past four days, but 'n----- f---head ghetto stick' is probably the one that takes the cake," he said. "I'm still trying to get my head around that one."
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Questlove said that it has also affected his social media usage, ultimately regretting the decision to play the song. "Blocking 3,500 Tea Party extremists [on Twitter] in a three day period is no fun, especially when you're a drummer dangerously close to carpal tunnel. In the end, was it worth it? Absolutely not," he added.
The musician revealed that the decision to play the 1985 track wasn't mulled over for very long.
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"It wasn't like a chess move where you have to think 12 steps ahead; you're just, like, "F---, all right, I'm gonna do it," in a kamikaze-type way," he admitted. "And I really didn't think about how it could be perceived as a misogynist swipe -- it didn't hit me until my [Twitter] timeline started showing up that it was seen that way. I was like, "F---, I forgot 'B----' is actually in the title."
Questlove said that there was a moment when he was afraid the band would be let go.
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"Last Wednesday, the day before [Thanksgiving]. We were seeing where she was going to go with it because, if you call the right channels, next thing you know advertisers are in the NBC building asking for proper action to be done," he recalled. "So we were definitely waiting with bated breath. And then her camp was like, "Look, it's Thanksgiving. Let's just put all this behind us and call it a day."
Late-night host Jimmy Fallon apologized to Bachmann a day after she appeared on the program, writing on his Twitter account Nov. 22, "I'm honored that @michelebachmann was on our show yesterday and I'm so sorry about the intro mess. I really hope she comes back."
The Roots' song choice came under fire shortly after Bachmann's appearance. Fox News' Todd Stames wrote, "Could you imagine if the network had pulled a similar stunt with First Lady Michelle Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? NBC is not commenting and Fallon doesn’t appear to have the fortitude to respond. So allow me to fill in the blanks: NBC, you disgust me."
Bachmann demanded an apology from NBC, who then sent a letter from Greg Vaughn, senior vice president of special programs and late night, on Nov. 23 apologizing for the incident and saying that what took place on TV was "not only unfortunate but also unacceptable."
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