Following up on my post below, I just heard Jim Miklasewski on NBC Nightly News say that Obama’s orders today are designed to give himself wiggle room to distance himself from Bush’s policies but not force him to live up to his campaign promises. Seriously. As I said earlier, I don’t know that this is what Obama intended, but it’s what the political media are interpreting his actions to mean.
I’m sure I don’t need to go into the moral dimension of this issue, but I think the administration needs to set the press straight on this if he means to have a successful foreign policy. Trying to split the baby on these issues is impossible and it will undermine his moral authority in the rest of the world if they think he’s being cute. (You can bet the intelligence community will leak any information that indicates he isn’t sincere.)
If he means to make a clean break, he should make it clear to the media that it’s what he means. They aren’t seeing it that way.
I had to laugh a little bit when I heard that George Mitchell was being called upon as Mideast Envoy, not because there’s anything funny about him or the mideast, but because of something that George W. Bush used to say back in the beginning of his tenure that always cracked me up.
No matter what happens, out new president will not be saying silly things like this:
Tuesday, April 2, 2002 “We’ve got a plan,” Bush said. “It’s a security plan called Tenet; it’s a political plan called Mitchell.
And remember, at the time, this was the man everyone was comparing to Churchill.
I was on this phone call today with Tom Malinowski from Human Rights Watch and others discussing the Obama executive orders on torture, and everyone is guardedly optimistic about what this means for the rule of law. If the gray areas on “other dispositions” besides trying or releasing Gitmo detainees and the wiggle room on extra-legal torture techniques are cleared up, we have a blueprint for restoring the rule of law. We need to be vigilant, however, to close whatever loopholes there may be.
This didn’t seem to matter to one reporter on the call, who up front ADMITTED HE HASN’T BEEN FOLLOWING THE ISSUE and asked what would happen if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had to be set free because we waterboarded him. This is someone who has confessed to practically every terrorist act of the last 40 years, wants to be a martyr, and for whom there is enough evidence untainted by torture to progress to trial.
The question was certainly colored, if not outright prompted, by a false report from the Pentagon in the waning days of the Bush tenure, claiming that 61 freed detainees from the prison camp have “returned to the batlefield.” Expect to hear a lot about this in the coming days, like from this Kyra Phillips bobblehead report:
Kyra Phillips: It’s one of the biggest fears about releasing terror suspects from Gitmo, that they’ll go back to their alleged old ways.
New Pentagon figures actually say 61 released detainees have been linked to some kind of terror activity, up from 37 as of March, 2008. About 520 Gitmo prisoners have been freed or transferred to other prisons around the world.
Let’s be clear: the Pentagon report itself only cited 18 “confirmed” cases of former detainees returning to the battlefield, and offered NO EVIDENCE on that beyond an assertion. The other 43 are “suspected of participating in terrorist activities.” Moazzam Begg is a writer who has led activist efforts to close Guantanamo. I’m willing to bet that he’s included in the 61. The three detainees featured in the movie “The Road To Guantanamo” are ALSO included in the 61. In short, anyone who has criticized the United States is part of that number.
But Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University Law School has represented some of the detainees and says the Pentagon has failed to produce evidence of early claims that former detainees have returned to the battlefield.
“The numbers are wrong about who has returned to the fight; their numbers and names are wrong about who has been in Guantanamo. And, of course, the characterization of ‘returned to the fight’ is far broader than they would like to admit,” said Denbeaux. “What they would like is to be understood to mean as ‘return to the battlefield,’ but, of course, that hasn’t happened. So what they mean by ‘return to the fight’ is engaging in propaganda battles and criticisms of the United States at home and abroad.”
This is a propagandistic lie designed to ensure that those loopholes stay open. And the media is totally complicit in aiding and abetting this. I heard on the radio coming in this morning some talking head yammering about how some detainees are “too dangerous to release, but they haven’t committed a crime yet so we can’t prosecute them.” What is this, Minority Report? All of this nonsense designed to preserve the status quo has to be coming from somewhere. The media is just a conduit.
Given all this, it’s a wonder how people have enough information to reject torture and indefinite detention. Maybe it’s because, unlike the Christopher Hitchenses and media sycophants of the world, they have a value system.
Just when it seemed we could finally move from complaints about Barack Obama’s oath of office, the right finds something new to whine about. When Obama took the oath on Tuesday, he used the same Bible that Lincoln used in 1861. When he followed up with another oath last night, he raised his right hand, but kept his left hand by his side. This, apparently, is making some people unhappy. The lead story on Drudge right now reports, in all caps, “No Bible Used At Obama Re-Swear.”
This re-oath thing seems to have gotten the media sleuths all excited too. At the Gibbs presser this afternoon, there were half a dozen questions about it, with a lot of suspicion about why they did it without a lot of fanfare and without a video of the ceremony. These muckrakers obviously think they smell a story, but it’s unclear what in the world it might be. Do they think Obama isn’t really the president?Obviously, the simple truth is that Drudge still rules their world. And that tells you everything you need to know about the political press corps. .
In his post today, Glenzilla thoroughly parses the new Washington Post poll which indicates that solid majorities of the American people believe that torture should not be used in any circumstances, that terrorist suspects should be tried in regular courts and that there should be official investigations into the Bush era torture regime. It would seem that the beltway elite’s characterization of people who hold such opinion as being “liberal score settlers” would both indicate that a majority of the country is liberal and that they actually believe that torture is wrong. Imagine that.
This brings up an interesting dilemma for our old pal Christopher Hitchens who held a fabulous village gala the other night at his place and said:
“I know something for a sure thing,” Hitchens continued. “The demand for torture and other methods I would describe as illegal, the demand to go outside the Geneva conventions — all this came from below. What everyone wants to say is this came from a small clique around the vice-president. It’s not educational. It doesn’t enlighten anyone to behave as if that were true. This is our society wanting and demanding harsh measures.” Therefore, he went on, the demand for prosecution or other measures against Bush administration officials would likewise have to come from below, via the grassroots. “Otherwise it’s just vengeful, I suppose, and partisan.”
But, as I wrote earlier, when Hitchens talks about coming from below he really means the media elite who “represent” Real Americans. They don’t listen to the polls, they listen to their guts, which are a far more reliable gauge of what the grassroots really believe than polls or elections.
Meanwhile, here’s Town Crier Chuck Todd reassuring us all that these new executive orders won’t allow the terrorists to kill us all in our beds:
Todd: There are still some loopholes. Those who are worried that somehow there isn’t going to be a way to get intelligence out of them… for instance, while there is a mandate, one of these executive orders says that the Army Field Manual is what needs to be used to decide how to interrogate these folks, there is also going to be an allowance by this new commission to come up with a protocol to deal with intelligence, you know detainees that are detained from the intelligence battlefield, not necessarily the actual combatant, you know, one that would be soldier to soldier.
Now the administration says this does not mean they will invite new methods of interrogation back into the fold, but like I said Andrea, you could go through here with a fine tooth comb and could find plenty of loopholes that would allow certain things to happen.
Now, it’s hard to make sense out of that, and I don’t know specifically what loopholes he’s talking about, but it’s clear that Chuck Todd is seeking to reassure everyone that some kind of torture will be allowed if it’s really necessary. (Boy that’s a relief, huh?)
In fact, the whole tenor of the coverage of today’s executive orders seems to be about how Obama has done this because Guantanamo and torture “look bad” but that he’s got to find some legal means to circumvent constitutional principles because well … he just does:
Pete Williams: The most controversial aspect of this is that there will still be a category of detainees that can’t be released but can’t be put on trial because there isn’t enough evidence or because the evidence was obtained in some way that couldn’t be used in court and they seem to say in this document, “we’re still probably going to have to hold those people if they’re dangerous, we just don’t know how,” so one of the things this document says is to the government, look at our legal options, there must be some legal way to do this.
And, of course, human rights groups have been saying “you can’t have it both ways” you can’t both detain them and not put them on trial.
Where do those human rights groups get those crazy ideas?
I honestly don’t know why we shouldn’t apply this logic across the board. If the authorities “know” that someone is guilty of murder but they don’t have any evidence or coerced an unreliable confession out of them under torture, why isn’t there some legal way to hold this alleged murderer anyway? Indeed, it would save a lot of time and money if we could just dispense with the whole trial process at all — if the government just “knows” when someone is dangerous and that they’ve committed crimes then what’s the point of all this “proof” business in the first place?
I have no idea what Obama really has in mind with these orders — although they are certainly a welcome step in the right direction this commission he’s forming to assess interrogation techniques seems superfluous to me. The Geneva Conventions aren’t obscure on these points and neither is the scholarship on effective interrogation techniques. I assume that he’s simply trying to appease the intelligence community by not being unequivocal in the first few days.
But regardless of his intentions, it’s clear that the media has decided that he’s trying to have it both ways. I’m sure that’s very reassuring to them — they all love torture and indefinite detention (except for themselves and their friends, who “suffer enough” if they are simply publicly embarrassed.) But if Obama’s intention is to send a clear signal that America is not going to torture and imprison people in violation of the law and the constitution, the media that’s supposed to convey that view isn’t getting the message.
Let’s hope they are just being myopic and stupid as usual. If they aren’t, or this “confusion” is allowed to stand, then it’s likely that the foreign policy benefit of changing the policies are going to be compromised. I hear that the foreigners have the internet these days.
Here’s the Center For Constitutional Rights’ statement on today’s orders.
Josh Marshall has posted an email from Theda Skopkel about Barney Frank’s comments on the Grand Bargain:
The idea that “elites” will “get serious about repairing the safety net” if they are FIRST given billions of dollars of payoffs to shareholders who made bad decisions is the height of naivete. There are no corporatist institutions in U.S. politics that can enforce this kind of bargain, that can corral all the interests and get them to carry through on mutual promises. That is why Obama and the Democrats will get for the people in general exactly what they push through right now and will squander opportunities if they give money and leverage to “elites” first! This is what Ira Magaziner imagined with health care back in 1992 — that he could get up front understandings with powerful interests by giving them concessions in the Health Security proposals, and they would let it get through Congress later. (I remember sitting in his office as I took notes for BOOMERANG and having him complain to me that he could not understand why the business roundtable types “lied” to him about what they would do!) Of course, they turned on him the moment Congress got ahold of things. Same thing will happen here. The banking/Wall Street interests will sucker Obama and Barney Frank into giving them yet more (unpopular and ineffective and very expensive) handouts — and, then, when the improvements to health care, college funding, etc. come up later they will suddenly be fiscally responsible with the public’s money. And, of course, they will have plenty of blue dogs and small business lobbies and others to hide behind as they make this manuever. Mark my words, this is my prediction…. U.S. institutions frustrate bargains and can only be moved by big pushes of popular leverage at key moments of crisis.
Yes, indeed.
In fact, by putting social security, medicare and medicaid publicly on the table, especially this early, it’s kind of hard to see what the American people are supposed to get out of this at all. (Again, I assume there is some thought that they can call health care reform “entitlement reform” and maybe they can. But I have very strong doubts that you can do that kind of super-clever “rebranding” without preparing the ground a little bit better than it’s been prepared so far.)
Whether either Frank or Obama actually believe what they are saying is unknown as yet. But the fact is that history is littered with progressives who thought they could count on the wealthy to fulfill their end of a Grand Bargain. It’s not a good bet.
Obama is following through on his promises. He is closing the Guantanamo prison and restricting the interrogation tactics used by the CIA. Before we get to the details, on the top line this is great news.
President Barack Obama is ready to issue orders on Thursday to close Guantanamo prison and overhaul the treatment of terrorism suspects, in a swift move to restore a U.S. image hurt by charges of torture.
A draft executive order obtained by Reuters on Wednesday sets a one-year deadline to close the controversial U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where foreign terrorism suspects have been detained for years without trial.
Obama, who was sworn in as president on Tuesday, is expected to issue the order on Guantanamo on Thursday. He will also ban abusive interrogations and order a review of detention policies for captured militants, said congressional aides and a White House official […]
“It’s exactly the kind of bold action that is necessary,” said Elisa Massimino, executive director of the Human Rights First advocacy group. “Both the speed and the content will send a clear message to our own people and the rest of the world that what he said … he meant.” […]
Another presidential order would ban CIA use of “enhanced” interrogation methods by making all U.S. agencies abide by the Army Field Manual, which bans techniques such as waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning the CIA says was used on three terrorism suspects.
Outgoing CIA chief Michael Hayden has defended the harsh techniques and called the Army manual too restrictive but says the agency would abide by limitations. The CIA declined comment on the reports.
Obama is also expected to order a review of all U.S. detention policies.
Obama is really setting a bad precedent of keeping campaign promises and abiding by the rule of law. It’s like the oath of office reboot, setting the horrible precedent of acknowledging mistakes and seeking to rectify them. Who does this guy think he is?
Aides sent around the draft order on Guantanamo today, and I think my favorite part is “the individuals currently detained at Guantánamo have the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.” 1300 years of Western law restored in one sentence.
The rest of the details look fairly good. They’ll essentially either try or release detainees, although there’s this gray area of “other disposition” which needs to be clarified. With people like Marty Lederman now telling the President what he can and cannot do, I’m hopeful that this won’t turn into a loophole. But it won’t be for lack of trying by those who want to demagogue the issue.
GRAHAM: I do believe we can close Gitmo, but what to do with them? Repatriate some back to other countries makes sense, if you can do it safely. Some of them will be tried for war crimes. And a third group will be held indefinitely because the sensitive nature of the evidence may not subject them to the normal criminal process, but if you let them go, we’ll be letting go someone who wants to go back to the fight. … So we’ve got three lanes we’ve got to deal with: Repatriation, trials, and indefinite detention.
Indefinite detention is inconsistent with the Constitution and international law, as well as the stated rights granted under habeas corpus. And it cannot be allowed as a “third way” here. I think that civil liberties groups understand this and will be vigilant in ensuring that detainees be only tried or released. I can warm to the idea that this process will take up to a year (especially given the state of the evidence, which is haphazard at best according to prosecutors), but there have to be bright lines. Here’s Anthony Romero, putting it much more diplomatically than I would.
“This is the first ray of sunlight in what has been eight long years of darkness, of trampling on America’s treasured values of justice and due process. The order is remarkable in its timing and its clear intent to close down Guantánamo and unequivocally halt the Bush administration’s shameful military commissions. While the order leaves some question as to how some detainees will be released or prosecuted, we trust that’s not President Obama’s intent and hope that any ambiguity is due to the fact that this order was done on day one in record time. We are confident that President Obama understands that indefinite detention without trial must end once and for all and that detainees should be either prosecuted in a federal court or, if there is no evidence against them, released or transferred to countries where they will not be tortured. Our centuries-old justice system is well-equipped to handle these cases, and it’s a great relief to finally have a president who is committed to upholding American values and the rule of law. Although we have a long road ahead to get to an America we can be proud of again, change has begun.”
I’m confident that the ACLU will keep pushing for justice. And while they’re at it, they ought to trust but verify on torture. The most recent report before today’s news that Obama would bring the CIA under the Army Field Manual included a “loophole” that would allow torture in extreme cases.
However, Obama’s changes may not be absolute. His advisers are considering adding a classified loophole to the rules that could allow the CIA to use some interrogation methods not specifically authorized by the Pentagon, the officials said. They said the intent is not to use that as an opening for possible use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning.
That’s completely unacceptable and would be counter-productive. In addition, even if the entire government is brought under the Army Field Manual, we’re STILL not done. As bmaz notes, even techniques allowable under the AFM can be combined in a fashion to effectively torture.
This is where Susan Crawford’s stark admission comes into play. As Crawford admits, most all of the techniques used on al-Qahtani were actually permissible, but the layering of techniques compounded them into unmistakable torture.
Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani’s health led to her conclusion. “The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.
Crawford has exposed to bright sunlight the lie that is Barack Obama’s, and other politicians’, simple minded reliance on the Army Field Manual as cover for their torture reform credentials. Interrogators can stay completely within the Army manual and still be engaging in clear, unequivocal torture under national and international norms, laws and conventions.
It could be that this is the “loophole” sought by Obama advisers, to allow the combination of certain techniques. Appendix M of the Army Field Manual may allow this latitude. That would need to be excised so that there is no ambiguity about the complete end to the torture regime.
Overall, we have an excellent set of proposals here, but the gray areas need to be filled in with the ideals of justice. President Obama said that the rule of law “will be a touchstone of my Administration”. He has every opportunity to prove it.
…more hints that extra-legal interrogation processes may be allowed. Don’t defend it, don’t mend it, just end it, Mr. President. Most Americans support you banning torture.
They have no self-awareness at all, not even the slightest bit of humility or self-doubt. They just lay it out there.
They are not entirely wrong on every point. There are some eternaltruths contained in their little scold, although it’s very interesting that they are only now discovering them.
Even in a city of cynics, the Inauguration of a new president — and the infusion of new ideas, new personalities and new energy that comes with it — summons feelings of reverence.
Barack Obama, especially, is the object of inaugural good feelings. He has assembled an impressive White House and Cabinet team. The country is clearly in his corner. With the economy gasping, and two wars dragging on sullenly, even many Republicans who ordinarily might enjoy seeing Obama fail now root for him to succeed. The stakes are simply too great.
Amid all these high hopes, it may seem needlessly sour to point out why expectations must be kept in check. But it is also realistic.
Here are seven reasons to be skeptical of Obama’s chances — and the Washington establishment he now leads:
1. The genius fallacy
Basically this just says that now that the Democratic grown-ups are back in town we no longer like grown-ups.
2. The herd instinct
This one is interesting. They noticed that a lot of bad policy was implemented by bipartisan votes in the last few congresses. So, now they are against bipartisanship. At least the kind where both parties fall in line behind the president. They seem to have no problem with bipartisanship wherein the Democratic president implements Republican policies.
Indeed, their main concern about excessive bipartisanship is that the Republicans will allow president Obama to enact a stimulus plan:
3. We are broke.
Wouldn’t you know it?
Apparently, they think this business about a terrible recession and a financial crisis is just an excuse to spend money:
The past several months have produced a rare convergence. Something that politicians of both parties find pleasurable — spending money — has overlapped with what economists and policy experts of all ideological stripes said is urgently necessary. As “Saturday Night Live’s” Church Lady used to say, “How convenient.”
One month from now, Democrats will likely have passed the massive stimulus bill and Obama will have signed it into law. The new Treasury Department will be well on its way to spending the second $350 billion chunk of the $700 billion bank bailout fund.
After this rush of activity, the ability to spend during the balance of Obama’s first term — never mind if there is a second — will be sharply constrained.
Instead, the new administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill will awaken to another first: the prospect of the national deficit approaching $2 trillion. For most, these numbers are simply too big to ponder. But ponder this: This country has never reckoned with deficits like these.
So, guess what happens next:
Wait, it gets worse. Remember those entitlement programs the elderly and poor need more than ever: Social Security and Medicare? In budget terms, they are more troubled than ever.
Social Security’s surpluses “begin to decline in 2011 and then turn into rapidly growing deficits as the baby boom generation retires,” according to one recent report. “Medicare’s financial status,” the report said, “is even worse.”
Basically, the government needs more money than ever at a time when people are losing jobs, income and confidence.
According to all the smart people Social Security is in imminent trouble — a casual reader might even think it was going broke in two years.(That must be why my very ancient Dad was asking me the other day if I thought he had enough money to last him because his social security was running out.)
So, before we even get started, the wealthy elites of the political media have laid down the gauntlet. They’ll put up with the spending that’s needed to bail out the banks of course and they’ll allow Obama to have his stimulus. But it’s with the clear understanding that they expect him to pony up on the back end with “entitlement reform.”
4. Words, words, words
Basically, this says that Obama’s gift of oratory and persuasion is nothing but hot air and that he’s naive if he thinks he can use the bully pulpit to any good effect.
In other news, George W. Bush is apparently no longer the reincarnation of Winston Churchill.
This one is really rich:
He rarely challenges the home team.
Obama frequently talks of the need to transcend partisanship. And he invokes his support for charter schools — a not-terribly-controversial idea — as evidence that he is willing to challenge Democratic special interest groups.
In fact, there are few examples of him making decisions during the campaign or the transition that offended his own party’s constituencies, or using rhetoric that challenged his own supporters to rethink assumptions or yield on a favored cause.
Has Obama ever delivered a “Sister Souljah speech”? Ever stood up to organized labor in the way that Clinton did in passing North American Free Trade Agreement?
This is not a good sign. By Obama’s lights, the national interest usually coincides with his personal interest. Back to you, Church Lady.
There’s a shocker. He hasn’t stuck it to the liberals enough to get their respect.
I’m not sure what they are looking for. Perhaps he could really screw us good by endorsing torture? (I thought FISA was a jolly good soljahing, but I guess it wasn’t sexy enough.) He could escalate the war in Iraq, I guess. That would certainly hurt.
But let’s get serious here. This is really how the villagers define bipartisanship: it’s when both parties screw liberals in order to gain the respect of the permanent establishment. Inviting the oily Rick Warren to speak at the inaugural obviously didn’t get that job done. In fact, considering how he’s stretched his trust among the liberal base with his blatant cozying up to the right and his constant hectoring about “ideology” being the root of all evil, it looks to me as if he’s going to have to do something really huge in terms of policy to prove to these people that he can give his liberal base a proper rogering. Unfortunately for him, conservative policies have been so discredited that he will only end up screwing himself. Not to mention the country.
Liberalism is all he has at the moment if he wants to succeed.
Everyone is winging it.
True. And that means something terrible is going to happen. I would agree. Especially if the administration pays even the slightest attention to what these people think.
The watchdogs are dozing.
The big media companies that once invested in serious accountability journalism are shells of their former selves. The Tribune Co. — in other words, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune…
“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise,” McClellan wrote. “In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
Rigorous reporting is even more important when you have one-party rule in Washington. Democrats, like Republicans, are simply less likely to scrutinize a president of their own. The end result here: Don’t expect the Democratic Congress to investigate the Obama administration or hold a bunch of tough oversight hearings. That means the only real check on Obama is the same one it’s always been — the voters.
This from the people who admit that Drudge rules their world. Whatever. (I don’t know why it never occurs to people that there may be some cause and effect at work.)
A lot of this is just beltway navel gazing. But the two vital points they make that are very dangerous to the country’s health are the insistence that the country is too broke to fix its problems (at least without putting the old and the sick on the ice flow — if it wasn’t melting) and the idea that in order to be taken seriously Obama simply has to do more to stab his own supporters in the back with a serious folly like NAFTA. These are very, very insidious pieces of conventional wisdom that we are seeing all over the political media and unless the Obama team starts challenging them, they are going to be stuck with far less room to maneuver than they need.
I don’t know how many of you recall the Clinton inauguration, but there was a similarity of style if not scope in the way the media went gaga — and then turned on a dime. The Republicans were much stronger then, the times were less challenging and the election didn’t have the historic cast that this one does. But it did have the same sense of giddy excitement among the cognoscenti that rapidly deteriorated into an aggressive hostility almost overnight. Nothing ever repeats itself exactly — and the Obama team seems to have learned from that experience — but the forces of the status quo are strong and they will work with all their might to ensure that they are not required to have their own “skin in the game.” That’s for the little people.
So, assuming that Obama has the intention of making bargains with these people, or even choosing one from column A and one from column B, he must recognize that they don’t actually believe in bargains and they don’t share. They see themselves as the owners of the country, period. The basic question for Obama, for any president, is whether he sees himself as one of them or one of us.
It’s hardly worth pointing out that conservatives like Jim DeMint think they’re noble freedom fighters saving the world from the grip of socialism. Incidentally that’s verbatim.
“We have to have a remnant of the Republican Party who are recognizable as freedom fighters,” Mr. DeMint said. “What I’m looking to do as a conservative leader in the Senate is to identify those Republicans, and even some Democrats, and put together a consensus of people who can help stop this slide toward socialism.”
DeMint is out of his gourd, but he’s not really the problem. The problem is that Barack Obama remains committed to securing the votes of people like this and will weaken his own legislation in an effort to do so.
President-elect Obama and his advisers are resisting attempts to include a provision in the economic stimulus bill backed by congressional Democrats that would allow bankruptcy judges to shrink mortgages.
In a hastily convened Democratic Caucus meeting last week, Obama economics adviser Jason Furman made it clear to lawmakers that Obama thinks the so-called “cramdown” provision would cost GOP votes and endanger bipartisan support in the Senate.
He committed to dealing with the issue after the bill passes, as did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Lead supporters of the cramdown provision say the time to deal with the issue is now. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said it’s worth losing some Republican support to help homeowners.
“I would take that risk,” Nadler said. “I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of Republican votes anyway.”
Exactly. “Cramdown” would allow bankruptcy judges to restructure the amount owed on a home in a way that would give lenders and homeowners the impetus to modify terms of the loan. The lenders take a haircut but it’s a better situation for them than a foreclosure, and those who get to keep their homes can continue to contribute to the economy. It’s a great idea and a major step toward reforming the hideous 2005 bankruptcy bill.
The reason Obama wants it out of the recovery seems purely ideological. He has made a fetish of bipartisan support, and will not risk a few votes on the margins to limit foreclosures now. And what buy-in on this “grand bargain” has he received from the business community? Surprise, calls for more tax cuts.
And anyone who thought K Street would stop seeking its share of the stimulus pie after convincing Democrats to add the mysteriously named “net operating loss carryback” to the stimulus … well, you’d be wrong. K Street wants more tax breaks for businesses — and the latest one is called the “cancellation of indebtedness (COI) waiver.”
The second half of this Journal article explains the COI tax break well. Essentially, any company buying up its own outstanding debt at a discount price — which usually means a private equity firm that has taken over a struggling corporation — the purchaser of debt has to pay taxes on the amount of debt it forgives. If I buy up your $100 debt at a discount of $40, leaving you on the hook to me for $60, the cancelled $40 of debt is still taxable.
The Chamber of Commerce, and 35 other trade associations in the home building and retail sectors, are seeking a COI waiver that would allow cancelled debt to be tax-free.
Here’s some more recommendations from those nice fellows at the Chamber of Commerce (who essentially have their hands up the asses of half the Republicans in Washington, if not more). They’re concerned about the “balance” of tax and spending provisions and would like it awfully so much if the businesses they represent could be handed bagfuls of money. Isn’t the era of comity grand?
The Chamber believes that a truly effective stimulus package must have the proper balance of tax and spending provisions to trigger near-term economic growth while underpinning long-term economic growth. The Chamber supports the tax relief provisions in H.R. 598 […] However, in sum, the Chamber believes that the tax provisions in H.R. 598 are simply too small to have the desired impact.
In addition to tax relief for debt repurchase, the Chamber believes other provisions could also ease the liquidity problems plaguing the economy. Notably, the Chamber supports:
Temporarily allowing foreign subsidiary earnings of U.S. companies to be repatriated at a reduced tax rate would ease liquidity challenges, relieve stress on the commercial paper market, help companies meet funding requirements in employee pension plans, and generally increase available funds. This could be achieved while generating revenue for the Treasury.
Making TARP funds available to expand access to the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) for “Tier 2” commercial paper would ease liquidity problems, thereby thwarting unnecessary job loss and enabling companies to better meet their working capital needs. Making TARP funds available to capitalize a Federal Reserve liquidity facility for new commercial mortgages and unsecured commercial real estate loans to permit commercial real estate credit markets to restart and clear in an orderly fashion.
Lease newly-available offshore oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), which could yield as much as $1.3 trillion in new royalty income to the federal government, create more than 75,000 new jobs, and reduce the cost of H.R. 598.
Reduce the corporate capital gains rate to 15% to encourage unlocking of appreciated assets held by companies. This would generate substantial tax revenues for the government and provide much needed capital that would be redeployed more efficiently into the economy.
Oh, and they think that all environmental laws should be eliminated so that infrastructure projects can begin “without delay.” And they aren’t much into expanding health care eligibility for COBRA because it would “impose significant administrative burden on and economic costs to employers.”
Wednesday, a group of House Republicans will argue that Obama’s Hill colleagues haven’t embraced his vision of shared sacrifice, arguing that Democratic leaders cut the GOP out of negotiations over the new administration’s first big bill.
Some members of the group, organized by Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia and Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, are upset that Democrats abruptly canceled a meeting last week with Republicans before unveiling the $800 billion stimulus. The GOP group has requested to meet with Obama later this week.
Republicans, led by Minority Leader John A. Boehner, complained that Democrats were refusing to work with the GOP on a package that focuses more heavily on tax cuts for middle-class households and small businesses.
Republicans would love Democrats to “sacrifice” some of their power and negotiate.
See, the President said he would bring people together and yet nobody’s working with us to eliminate taxes and destroy government.
Obama would be right not to listen to any of this, but he clearly wants to open with a big bipartisan victory. There’s a case to be made that giving Republicans and Blue Dogs some ownership of the stimulus would make it easier to go back to them for other important legislation, like re-regulation of the financial sector. But that assumes that Republicans would take that ownership seriously, that they would even allow themselves to vote for this if they didn’t get essentially the bill George Bush would sign, and that they care about consistency or coherence. They don’t. They care about trench warfare.
.cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url(‘http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png’) !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underlinI confess that my tolerance for the gasbags during this inauguration period has been stretched to the limits. I can hardly bear them during normal times, but when there is a big event like a state funeral or this inauguration and they riff and pontificate for hours about “meaning” it’s nearly unbearable.
These are the times when I desperately need The Daily Show and Colbert. If it weren’t for them, I’m afraid I’d start to think I’d gone crazy. c_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url(‘http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png’) !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;} If you missed last night’s show, you can watch it here. The interview with Bishop Gene Robinson is a gem. (Pam’s got the transcript at her place if you can’t watch the vid.)