Category Archives: United States Senate

April 26, 2013 · 10:32 AM

SENATE: SORRY, POOR PEOPLE!

Senate fixes the (part of the) sequestration (that affects rich people)!

Washington is not just broken, it needs an exorcist!

Salon

Just in time for members to fly home, Congress averts the one cut it cares about. Hint: Not Head Start!

After a month or so of the sequestration budget cuts only affecting people Congress doesn’t really care about, the cuts hit home this week when mandatory FAA furloughs caused lengthy flight delays cross the country. Suddenly, sequestration was hurting regular Americans, instead of irregular (poor) ones! Some naive observers thought this would force Congress to finally roll back the purposefully damaging cuts that were by design never intended to actually go into effect. Those observers were.. sort of right! The U.S. Senate jumped into action last night and voted to… let the FAA transfer some money from the Transportation Department to pay air traffic controllers so that the sequestration can continue without inconveniencing members of Congress, most of whom will be flying home to their districts today. The system works! (For rich people, like I’ve been saying.)

The Washington Post says, “The Senate took the first step toward circumventing sequestration Thursday night” though in fact what they did was work to ensure that the sequester continues not affecting elites, who fly regularly. I am embarrassed that I did not predict this exact outcome in my column Tuesday morning. The Senate, which can’t confirm a judge without months of delay and a constitutional crisis, passed this particular bill in about two minutes, with unanimous consent. The hope is that the House can get it taken care of today, I guess in time for everyone to fly to Aspen or wherever people whom Congress listens to fly to on Fridays.

After that Congress will be done fixing all the various problems with the design and implementation of the sequestration:

But House action on a broader deal to undo the across-the-board cuts appears remote. House conservatives say much of the impact has been exaggerated by the White House, and they have relished the success of forcing visible spending cuts on a Democratic administration.

“I think it’s the first time we’ve saved money in Washington, D.C.,” said Representative Raúl Labrador, Republican of Idaho. “I think we need to move on from the subject.”

Move on, people who may become homeless! We fixed the airports, what more do you want?

There was a big to-do yesterday about a Politico story insisting — explosively! morning-winningly! — that Congress was trying to exempt itself from Obamacare. Because this is Politico, the story was based on equal parts misunderstanding of policy and desire to create a fuss. The actual story is that Republicans proposed forcing members of Congress and their staffs to only use healthcare plans created by Obamacare or available in the exchanges. Democrats passed the amendment, as a sort of fuck you. But the exchanges are designed for people who don’t have employers who pay for healthcare. Congressional staffers get employer-sponsored health benefits. The exchanges are explicitly not designed for employees of large employers who pay for healthcare, so some people are right now trying to figure out how to make sure staffers continue to get healthcare. It may end up not being a big deal, or it may require a tweak to the law. But it’s not a scandal. (Honestly it’s all a pretty good argument for ditching employer-based healthcare in favor of universal single-payer but then again everything is.)

But the fuss was already created. The story will live forever, and no amount of debunking in the world will kill the popular myth that Congress attempted to secretly “exempt” itself from Obamacare. So self-serving!

Their staffers are generally the poorest people members of Congress know, and trying to make sure their healthcare is paid for is seriously the closest our legislature gets to altruism. But while the story of Congress working to make sure its staffers don’t have to shoulder the entirety of their premium costs because of Republican political stuntmanship was treated as a scandal and an example of everything rotten about Congress, the story of Congress hurriedly making sure the well-off minority of Americans who fly regularly don’t get briefly inconvenienced — while ignoring the costs of brutal cuts on programs for low-income Americans facing housing or hunger crises — is treated as a wonderful and encouraging display of bipartisanship.

Have a great flight home, senators!

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March 7, 2013 · 10:09 AM

A tale of two Senates

This is interesting…

NBC News- First Read

A tale of two Senates on display last night… Obama’s dinner with 12 GOP senators vs. Rand Paul’s filibuster… Paul’s filibuster actually forces a debate… Principle vs. politics… Obama’s dinner gets positive reviews, but it raises three questions… And Obama follows that dinner with lunch with Paul Ryan and Chris Van Hollen… And Messina defends OFA.

By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Brooke Brower, NBC News

*** A tale of two Senates: On a day when much of Washington was snowed in — or rained/slushed in, as it turned out — we saw a night of contrasts among Republican senators. On the one hand, President Obama dined with 12 GOP senators at a fancy boutique hotel, where they talked about ways to end the budget impasse between Democrats and Republicans. It was a hat tip to the “good old days” that many folks in DC claim existed but sometimes is exaggerated. On the other hand, there was Rand Paul, who was later joined by some of his colleagues, mounting a nearly 13-hour old-school filibuster against Obama’s pick to head the CIA due to the administration’s drone policy. In many ways, it was a tale of the Old Senate vs. the New Senate. One was warm and cordial, behind closed doors, and attended by those who have had a history of working across the aisle; the other was boisterous, great for TV, and largely fueled by the Tea Party (Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz). To be sure, there were some key exceptions to this dynamic: Tea Party Sen. Ron Johnson joined the Obama dinner, while a Democratic senator (Oregon’s Ron Wyden) took part in the Paul filibuster. Still, the contrast was striking, and it highlighted the two tensions inside the U.S. Senate — the desire to work together and the desire to hold things up, whatever the reason.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., walks off the floor of the Senate to applause after his filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to be CIA director on Capitol Hill, early Thursday, March 7, 2013.

*** Marathon Man: Say what you will about Rand Paul’s marathon filibuster — whether it was a noble cause, a vanity project with 2016 overtones, or a protest over a hypothetical — but it makes the case for filibuster reform requiring senators to actually SPEAK if they want to hold things up. Why? Because it truly forced a debate, in this case over the administration’s drone policy targeting terrorists. Just look at the conversation it started. And compare that with yesterday’s other filibuster, against Obama judicial nominee Caitlin Halligan, whose nomination was blocked without a marathon speaking performance. Guess what: We know a lot more about the administration’s drone policy than why Halligan shouldn’t serve on the D.C. Circuit. (Apparently, the reason for the filibuster against Halligan had to do with the NRA and gun manufacturers.) As the New York Times Gail Collins writes, “Would any Republican have spent a night fending off hunger, thirst and the need for bathroom breaks to stop Halligan’s nomination? We’ll never know. All McConnell had to do was just say no. Harry Reid, the majority leader, needed 60 votes to proceed. End of story. End of Halligan.”

*** Principle vs. politics: We’ll say one more thing about Paul’s filibuster last night: We’re pretty sure he would have mounted it against a Republican White House, too. (Remember how his father, Ron, railed against the Bush administration’s Iraq war. When it comes to issues that civil libertarians hold near and dear, the Pauls are true believers.) But can you say the same about the other Republicans who participated in the filibuster? Would they have blasted a Republican administration’s drone policy? After all, some of these senators agree with the policy. It was fascinating how some Republican senators seemed to wait to see which way the wind was Tweeting before climbing aboard. We’ll let others guess the motivations some had (2016 was in the air for some, 2014 for others, nabbing a piece of the spotlight for themselves for others). But this was Rand Paul’s moment, no matter how many others tried to climb aboard his bandwagon.

*** Obama’s dinner gets positive reviews, but it raises three questions: As for Obama’s dinner last night, it went very well, according to various NBC conversations with the GOP participants. It was serious. It was respectful. And it was informative. (In fact, one senator told us that he learned, for the first time, the actual cuts that the president has put on the table. Leadership hadn’t shared that list with them before) And the overall suggestion from the dinner was that Obama would have to give cover for any cuts to Medicare, while Republicans would have to pony up additional revenue to get it. But here are the questions no one was able to answer: How do you get to the next step? How do these talks become legislation? And after working around leadership, how do you bring them back into the fold to ultimately try to pass any deal? A final point: You can tell that last night’s dinner had new Chief of Staff Denis McDonough’s fingerprints on it. Yes, the expansive dinner was Sen. Lindsey Graham’s idea, and the guest list was also his. But don’t forget that McDonough had a great relationship with Graham (and McCain) when he served as Obama’s deputy national security adviser. Oh, want more evidence the damage the sequester debate had on Obama? He has just a 45%-46% approval rating in the latest Quinnipiac poll.

*** Last night’s dinner followed by Obama’s lunch with Paul Ryan: And after last night’s dinner, NBC News has confirmed that Obama is having lunch today at 12:25 pm ET with House Budget Committee Chairman (and failed VP nominee) Paul Ryan at the White House. NBC’s Frank Thorp has confirmed that Ryan’s Democratic counterpart, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, will also attend the lunch. Per Politico, “The idea for the chat-and-chew came during an extended phone conversation between Obama and Ryan earlier this week… By speaking directly with Ryan, Obama is hoping to enlist a powerful ally in convincing leadership to abandon its insistence on subjecting all future measures on the debt, deficit, taxes and entitlement reform to “regular order,” the tortuous committee process dominated by party conservatives, according to a person close to the process.”

*** Messina defends OFA: After President Obama’s Organizing of Action has receiving plenty of criticism — including from us — for offering potential access to big donors, former Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina writes a CNN op-ed trying to soften the criticism. He states that Organization for Action is an issue advocacy group, not an electoral one (he even uses the phrase “social welfare” group); he argues that it will disclose all of its donors on a quarterly basis; and he contends that the organization won’t accept donations from corporations, federal lobbyists, or foreign donors. As for the access, Messina adds, “But just as the president and administration officials deliver updates on the legislative process to Americans and organizations across the ideological spectrum, there may be occasions when members of Organizing for Action are included in those updates. These are not opportunities to lobby — they are briefings on the positions the president has taken and the status of seeing them through.” In other words, these folks will be able to meet with the president. Here’s another thing to consider: While OFA won’t take corporate money, nothing is there to stop, say, a particular CEO from writing a $500,000 check. This op-ed was clearly intended to calm down the critics, but other than eliminating the possibility of corporate donors, it doesn’t get to the larger criticism that campaign-finance advocates are upset about.

*** The end justifying the means: The larger question this op-ed doesn’t answer is why does the president, when presented with a campaign finance fork in the road, always take the one that is the “ends justifies the means” course. By creating and supporting an organization like this, the president is setting a precedent for future presidents to go around their own political parties when searching for support and they are only contributing to what everyone from BOTH 2012 campaigns claim is a problem: the growing role of big money in politics.

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February 17, 2013 · 9:40 AM

“Hubris”: New Documentary Reexamines the Iraq War “Hoax”

Hubris:

Noun
  1. Excessive pride or self-confidence.
  2. (in Greek tragedy) Excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.

Members the Senate are increasingly coming up with Benghazi questions to justify slowing down the process of approving President Obama’s nominees for his cabinet.   When they heard that UN Ambassador Susan Rice might be considered for the Secretary of State position upon Hillary Clinton’s departure, they claimed that Rice lied about Benghazi on national TV.  They promised that she would not be approved because of those lies.

Now certain key Senators are holding the Secretary of Defense nominee hostage because of…wait for it…more Benghazi questions.  Chuck Hagel, the DOD nominee had nothing to do with Benghazi at all.

The hypocrisy is astounding.  Here’s why…

Mother Jones

An MSNBC film, hosted by Rachel Maddow and based on Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s book, finds new evidence that Bush scammed the nation into war.

A decade ago, on March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq that would lead to a nine-year war resulting in 4,486 dead American troops, 32,226 service members wounded, and over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians. The tab for the war topped $3 trillion. Bush did succeed in removing Saddam Hussein, but it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction and no significant operational ties between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda. That is, the two main assertions used by Bush and his crew to justify the war were not true. Three years after the war began, Michael Isikoff, then an investigative reporter for Newsweek (he’s since moved to NBC News), and I published Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, a behind-the-scenes account of how Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their lieutenants deployed false claims, iffy intelligence, and unsupported hyperbole to win popular backing for the invasion.

Our book—hailed by the New York Times as “the most comprehensive account of the White House’s political machinations”—was the first cut at an important topic: how a president had swindled the nation into war with a deliberate effort to hype the threat. The book is now the basis for an MSNBC documentary of the same name that marks the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war. Hosted by Rachel Maddow, the film premieres Monday night in her usual time slot (9PM ET/PT). But the documentary goes beyond what Isikoff and I covered in Hubris, presenting new scoops and showing that the complete story of the selling of that war has yet to be told.

One chilling moment in the film comes in an interview with retired General Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command. In August 2002, the Bush-Cheney administration opened its propaganda campaign for war with a Cheney speech at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The veep made a stark declaration: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” No doubt, he proclaimed, Saddam was arming himself with WMD in preparation for attacking the United States.

Zinni was sitting on the stage during the speech, and in the documentary he recalls his reaction:

It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program. And that’s when I began to believe they’re getting serious about this. They wanna go into Iraq.

That Zinni quote should almost end the debate on whether the Bush-Cheney administration purposefully guided the nation into war with misinformation and disinformation.

But there’s more. So much more. The film highlights a Pentagon document declassified two years ago. This memo notes that in November 2001—shortly after the 9/11 attacks—Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks to review plans for the “decapitation” of the Iraqi government. The two men reviewed how a war against Saddam could be triggered; that list included a “dispute over WMD inspections.” It’s evidence that the administration was seeking a pretense for war.

The yellowcake uranium supposedly bought by Saddam in Niger, the aluminum tubes supposedly used to process uranium into weapons-grade material, the supposed connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden—the documentary features intelligence analysts and experts who at the time were saying and warning that the intelligence on these topics was wrong or uncertain. Yet administration officials kept using lousy and inconclusive intelligence to push the case for war.

Through the months-long run-up to the invasion, Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, would become the administration’s No. 1 pitchman for the war with a high-profile speech at the UN, which contained numerous false statements about Iraq and WMD. But, the documentary notes, he was hiding from the public his deep skepticism. In the film, Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff at the time, recalls the day Congress passed a resolution authorizing Bush to attack Iraq:

Powell walked into my office and without so much as a fare-thee-well, he walked over to the window and he said, “I wonder what’ll happen when we put 500,000 troops into Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and find nothing?” And he turned around and walked back in his office. And I—I wrote that down on my calendar—as close for—to verbatim as I could, because I thought that was a profound statement coming from the secretary of state, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

Wilkerson also notes that Powell had no idea about the veracity of the intelligence he cited during that UN speech: “Though neither Powell nor anyone else from the State Department team intentionally lied, we did participate in a hoax.”

A hoax. That’s what it was. Yet Bush and Cheney went on to win reelection, and many of their accomplices in this swindle never were fully held accountable. In the years after the WMD scam became apparent, there certainly was a rise in public skepticism and media scrutiny of government claims. Still, could something like this happen again? Maddow remarks, “If what we went through 10 years ago did not change us as a nation—if we do not understand what happened and adapt to resist it—then history says we are doomed to repeat it.”

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February 15, 2013 · 5:26 PM

McCain Admits Republicans Put Grudges Ahead of National Security in Hagel Filibuster

PoliticusUSA

Republicans have offered up a litany of excuses for filibustering former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel’s appointment as Defense Secretary, and none of them make a lot of sense. But the award of biggest fail belongs to John McCain. John McCain filibustered Hagel yesterday over Hagel’s criticism of Bush, but in 2008 McCain’s harsh unleashing on Bush left no stone unturned.

Republicans are supposed to be rebranding their party, but instead, they’re busy making history by filibustering a defense secretary nominee. This is the first time the filibuster has been used against a defense secretary nominee (note: Republicans are pretending it wasn’t a filibuster). Perhaps Republicans aren’t concerned about national security after all.

Of the many reasons given for obstructing the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) offered the most insane. After McCain threatened to block Hagel unless the Obama administration answered his questions about Benghazi (McCain was too busy giving interviews on camera complaining about the lack of information on Benghazi to actually attend one of the briefings on Benghazi), and the Obama administration complied, McCain moved the goal post again. Now he’s holding a grudge over Hagel’s criticism of Bush. Apparently McCain thinks that aligning the party with George W Bush will be helpful.

Yesterday McCain cried to Fox News that Hagel has said mean things about George W Bush and people don’t forget that:

To be honest with you Neil, it goes back to there is a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly. At one point said he was the worst President since Herbert Hoover. Said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War which is nonsense. And was very anti his own party and people. People don’t forget that.

If “people” (aka: Republicans) are as petty as McCain said they are, then that would mean that the Republican Party put their grudges about Bush ahead of national security.

This probably isn’t the best argument McCain could have made for the GOP poutrage vote.

Furthermore, this is the same McCain who told the Washington Times in October of 2008 that he rejected many of Bush’s failed policies, and that he would not be four more years of W. McCain listed Bush’s many failures:

“Spending, the conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government, larger than any time since the Great Society, laying a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America, owing $500 billion to China, obviously, failure to both enforce and modernize the [financial] regulatory agencies that were designed for the 1930s and certainly not for the 21st century, failure to address the issue of climate change seriously,” Mr. McCain said in an interview with The Washington Times aboard his campaign plane en route from New Hampshire to Ohio.

“Those are just some of them,” he said with a laugh, chomping into a peanut butter sandwich as a few campaign aides in his midair office joined in the laughter.

Those are harsh words. McCain spared Bush nothing, raking him over the coals on his out of control spending, his financial regulatory agency failures, his $10 trillion debt, and of course, “(T)he conduct of the war in Iraq for years”, accused the man who now claims that criticizing the surge is a reason Hagel should not be nominated. Americans await McCain voting against himself, should he be nominated for anything, because people don’t forget.

41 Republicans voted against Hagel’s nomination to head the Pentagon, but he did get 4 votes from Republicans, giving him close the number he needs to overcome a Republican filibuster (essentially 59, he needs 60).

McCain admitted that Hagel is likely to be confirmed after recess, which sounded exactly like it reads: After Republicans get over their preschool recess pout, they will concede that — SIGH — having someone running the Pentagon is probably a decent idea. However, they will have achieved their goal of undermining Hagel and Obama in the eyes of the world, since Hagel will miss a defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels next week. Republicans must be pleased to force America’s defense secretary out of the NATO conference. This is coming from the party that made security at Benghazi an issue. They’d better hope nothing happens unitl they come back from recess. USA! USA! USA!

We can only hope that the rest of the world understands that Republicans are a minority insurgent party that doesn’t represent most Americans, and thus their lack of support is indicative of nothing other than their hurt feelings that they lost yet another national election. Hagel, after all, represents a stark rebuke of the modern day Republican Party. Hagel called out the Iraq debacle at the time, and although he supported McCain’s 2000 run, by 2008 he had drifted to the center (also known as away from crazy).

McCain’s latest excuse is just another reactionary hit, aimed at the messenger instead of the problem. Hagel’s criticisms were valid, and the neo cons will never forgive him for being right. The Republican Senators’ temper tantrum over Hagel should be recalled the next time a Republican tries to suggest that the problem in DC is that Obama won’t work with them.

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· 8:19 AM

The costs of the GOP’s Chuck Hagel filibuster

Republican senators contend that blocking Hagel’s confirmation isn’t purely political.

Chuck Hagel will eventually be nominated.  After all, does the Republican Party want to show the world just how unreasonable they are during rising global crises on a daily basis?

The void between outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the confirmation of Chuck Hagel is dangerous, considering the ongoing Afghanistan war and nuclear threats from Korea.

The Week

Republicans managed to make history, blocking a cabinet nominee with majority support. What’s the damage?

Well, they did it: Thursday evening, Senate Republicans staged what amounts to the first-ever successful filibuster of a presidential cabinet nominee, mustering enough votes to leave Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel — himself a former Senate Republican — one aye short of confirmation. Four Republicans voted with all 55 members of the Democratic caucus to proceed to an up-or-down vote that Hagel is sure to win — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) changed his vote to “no” at the end, a procedural move that will allow him to bring up the vote after the upcoming recess. But President Obama, Hagel, the Pentagon, and outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, now have to wait at least 10 days until Senate Democrats get another shot at ratifying a new defense chief.

David Weigel at Slate, who has been a tireless guide through the labyrinthine Hagelian drama,argues pretty persuasively that everybody (but Hagel himself) won something in Thursday night’s vote. The anti-Hagelian “troika of the Washington Free Beacon, Breitbart.com, and Jennifer Rubin,” for example, have gained at least 10 more days to dig up (or invent) a disqualifying skeleton in Hagel’s closet. But while Republicans successfully “humiliated the administration, yet again,” and “humbled” Hagel, whom most Republicans have grown to dislike, they’ve also become “villains on a vote they’ll eventually lose.” So, let’s count the costs — to the GOP, the nation, and the military — of the GOP’s filibuster of Chuck Hagel:

1. Republicans come out looking pretty shabby
“The impressive thing about the anti-Hagel effort is how politically tone-deaf it is,” says Daniel Larison at The American Conservative. Republicans in Washington “are desperate for a winning issue, but Senate Republicans seem to be missing the point that stalling Hagel’s confirmation (which will happen eventually) isn’t a winning issue for them.” Quite the opposite, in fact. “In the short-term, they will take a justified beating in the press for their ridiculous tactics,” but they’re also “making sure that all of the moderates, independents, and realists that they have alienated over the last 10 years will keep running away from them.” Laurence Vance at the libertarian LRC Blog seems to agree: “I am no fan of Hagel,” he says, but it’s clear that Republicans are throwing up roadblocks just “because Hagel is not seen as being as bloodthirsty and war-crazed as they are. The GOP cannot be reformed.”

2. They’ve set a dangerous precedent
Filibustering Hagel, simply put, “is just insane,” says Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. “If there’s one thing practically everyone agrees about, it’s that presidents should basically get to pick their own cabinets.” You only try to derail nominees in extreme circumstances, and that’s hardly the case here. Hagel is “a standard issue DC pol with no skeletons in his closet, no bizarre views, and no scandals in his background,” and normally his nomination wouldn’t even be controversial.

The “potentially serious short- and long-term consequences” of this filibuster “should worry both parties,” says Steve Kornacki at Salon. Once you “shatter tradition” by pulling this maneuver once, it very well “might lead to similar filibusters in the future — both for Obama’s nominees and for nominees of future presidents from both parties.” Yes, “future Republican Cabinet nominees for major posts are now much more likely treated in the same way,” says The American Conservative‘s Larison. “That won’t be good for future Republican administrations or the government as a whole.”

3. This could revive filibuster-neutering efforts
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who lost a fight to radically scale back the Senate filibuster last month, reminded his Democratic colleagues that they could have avoided this setback if they’d agreed to the stronger measures he proposed. “It is deeply disappointing that even when President Obama nominates a former conservative colleague of the GOP caucus, the minority is abusing the rules and the spirit of ‘advise and consent,’” he said. “If our step we took last month is to be successful, extraordinary stunts like today’s filibuster can’t happen.”

Well, “if this isn’t enough to get Reid to revive the threat of filibuster reform, nothing will be enough,” says Greg Sargent at The Washington Post. Agreed, says Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly. Reid is an institutionalist who is loath to take away senators’ privileges, but “he needs to pick up the threat for real, shake it at Senate Republicans, and mean it.”

4. The military is stuck in limbo
Panetta didn’t have any plans to work past this week, and now he has to lead the U.S. military for at least another week and a half, including a trip to a big NATO summit he assumed Hagel would attend. Nobody knows “what foreign challenge will face this country perhaps within the next 10 days,” Reid warned his colleagues Thursday. “It would be nice if we had a secretary of defense.” The White House made a similar argument, noting pointedly that “we have 66,000 men and women deployed in Afghanistan, and we need our new secretary of defense to be a part of significant decisions about how we bring that war to a responsible end,” the focus of the NATO summit. “This waste of time is not without consequences.” But the sentiment wasn’t only from Democrats. With all the challenges the Pentagon faces, including looming budget cuts, “I just think it’s important to have a secretary of defense in place,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), one of the two Republicans who’ve committed to voting for Hagel.

The damage from this standoff could be more far-reaching than the temporary water-treading at the Pentagon, though. The GOP filibuster and breakdown in longstanding comity on defense issues, especially in the Senate Armed Serviced Committee “is way over the line — disgraceful!” military expert and former SASC staffer Charles Stevenson tells The Atlantic‘s James Fallows. Republicans are poisoning the Senate but “also hurting the institution of the office of Secretary of Defense and thus undermining our system of civilian control.” This pitiful hounding of Hagel shows that “the Republican Party has abrogated its role — really, abandoned any interest — in shaping or seriously discussing American foreign policy,” says Fred Kaplan at Slate.

Why risk incurring those costs to probably just delay Hagel’s confirmation? That’s what Senate Democrats, and plenty of observers, want to know. “What more are you trying to get out of this?” asked a frustrated Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on the Senate floor. Senate Republicans aren’t providing very good answers. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) said they wouldn’t block Hagel’s confirmation if the White House answered their question about whether Obama spoke with Libyan officials on the night of the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi — the White House answered the question, McCain said he was satisfied with the response, then he and Graham voted to block the confirmation anyway.

But if Senate Republicans aren’t giving persuasive answers — Graham says he’ll “feel better about it” in 10 days, while McCain told Fox News that “there’s a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly…. He was anti-his own party and people” — The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza got some straight talk from “a handful of smart Republican types — both inside and outside the Senate.” They collectively give three reasons for filibustering Hagel:

1. There’s no downside. While the fight over Hagel is consuming official Washington — and enraging the Democratic base — Republican strategists believe that not only are few regular people following all of this, but the former Nebraska senator isn’t someone with all that many allies outside of Washington….
2. The beefs with Hagel are legit. Several operatives rejected the notion that the Hagel blockade is largely about politics….
3. It’s a Republican rallying cry. Republicans thought they would be in the Senate majority right now. And they thought they might also have Mitt Romney in the White House. Neither of those things happened…. In short: The Senate GOP conference needs something to rally around and Hagel’s nomination serves as a useful exercise to do just that. [Washington Post]

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February 13, 2013 · 7:27 AM

Senate Armed Services Committee approves Hagel 14 to 11

Well, that was somewhat of a squeaker for Chuck Hagel, but he made it…

The Washington Post

Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee backed former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska to lead the Pentagon on Tuesday afternoon, paving the way for the full Senate to vote on President Obama’s nominee this week.

The committee vote predictably split along party lines, with the 14 Democrats voting in favor of moving the nomination to the floor and 11 Republicans voting no. One Republican was absent.

Democrats backed the former Republican lawmaker despite a performance during his Jan. 31 confirmation hearing that even supporters called underwhelming. Republicans on the committee continued to voice strong reservations about Hagel, who has faced persistent questions about his views on Iran, Israel and nuclear policy.

“The next secretary of defense will have to deal with a world on fire,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said before the vote, explaining his opposition.

Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said efforts to portray Hagel as a radical ideologue were off base, and he pushed back on Republican demands for more information about the nominee, including additional details about his finances.

“Despite efforts of some to portray him as outside the mainstream of American foreign policy, Senator Hagel has received broad support from a wide array of senior statesmen and defense and foreign policy organizations,” Levin said.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) declined to heed calls for a walkout, which some Republicans had advocated, but did not mince words in expressing how unimpressed he was by Hagel as he voted against his former colleague.

“His performance before this committee was the worst I have seen of any nominee for office,” he said, complaining that Hagel had failed to agree with McCain’s view that the 2009 troop surge in Iraq had been a strategic success. “Senator Hagel’s judgment was wrong, continues to be wrong.”

In explaining their support, some Democrats invoked the importance of deferring to a president’s Cabinet picks. Several said they were hopeful that Hagel’s experience as an enlisted soldier during the Vietnam War gave him a valuable perspective. But none offered a ringing endorsement.

“I think we owe deference to a president for choices to executive positions,” Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) said. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said she had confidence in Hagel but wished he had been “much feistier” during his confirmation hearing.

Republicans used the eight minutes each got to speak before the vote to continue to challenge Hagel’s bid to lead the Pentagon during a time of steep budget cuts, a waning war in Afghanistan and a flurry of national security threats around the globe.

“We saw with his nomination something truly extraordinary, which is the government of Iran formally and publicly praising the nomination of a defense secretary,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said. Cruz said that having Hagel at the helm of the Pentagon would make “military conflict in the next four years substantially more likely” because it could “only encourage the nation of Iran to continue and accelerate its program to develop nuclear weapons capacity.”

 

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January 8, 2013 · 9:58 AM

Poll: 77 percent say Washington politics causing serious harm

Finally, someone asked the American people about the toxic politics going on in Washington.

The resounding answer should make pols and pundits alike take notice and work at fixing the problem…asap.

The Hill

A vast majority of Americans worry that politics in Washington is causing serious harm to the country, according to a new Gallup survey released Monday.

Of those surveyed, 77 percent said the way politics works is causing the nation serious harm, versus just 19 percent who say the effects were not serious. Republicans were most pessimistic, with 87 percent arguing federal politics was damaging the country. But support for the sentiment was broad — 79 percent of independents and 68 percent of Democrats responded in the same way.

“The finding that most Americans think politics are hurting the country fits with a number of additional measures showing that Americans hold the federal government in general and Congress in particular — the main instruments of how American politics work — in low regard,” said Gallup’s Frank Newport in a release.

“The 19 percent of Americans who do not feel negatively about the way politics are being handled is quite close to Congress’ current 18 percent job approval rating,” he added. “Confidence in Congress as an institution — the percentage with a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it — is at 13 percent, and 10 percent and 14 percent of Americans rate the honesty and ethics of members of Congress and senators, respectively, as high or very high.”

But despite a gloomy opinion of Congress and politics, Americans remain optimistic about the future. Of those surveyed, 52 percent said they believed the way politics worked would improve in Washington over the next 10 years.

That optimism is driven primarily by Democrats, who believed in a better coming decade by a 63-34 percent margin. By contrast, 56 percent of Republicans were pessimistic, believing politics would get worse over the next 10 years. Young respondents were the most likely to be optimistic, with 55 percent of those between 18 and 29 years old hopeful about the future. Older voters were more evenly split on whether things would improve.

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