President
Obama, Vice President Biden and their families participate in a national
day of service on Saturday. Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton led a
rally on the National Mall for Service day.
The National Mall
event also features service projects hosted by organizations from across
the country, opportunities to get involved right away, and special
programming throughout the day.
The President and First Lady
traveled to a school in DC to participate in a service day event and
speak to the volunteers there. Vice President Joe Biden and his family
helped pack care packages for soldiers and first responders.
Chelsea
Clinton is the national chair of the national day of service, which
includes events in all 50 states. President Obama also held a national
day of service on the Saturday before his first inauguration.
By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei January 18, 2013 04:42 AM EST
President Barack Obama, with a second-term team built for fight not compromise, has made it clear that he plans to change very little. No new faces in his innermost circle. No revolution in how he courts Congress. No new love for the permanent Washingtonians who feel a persistent chill from 1600 Pennsylvania. And so far, no new women in key positions in a West Wing some have long felt suffers from excess testosterone.
Many Obama insiders were embarrassed last week when the front page of The New York Times carried a photo, which had been released by the White House, showing Obama meeting in the Oval Office in December with 10 white men from his senior staff — with Valerie Jarrett’s leg, jutting from behind one of the guys, as the only sign of female input. Jarrett, in a 45-minute interview Thursday in the West Wing office that once belonged to Hillary Clinton and Karl Rove, argued that this was a case where “one picture really didn’t say a thousand words.”
“The reality is that this president has been surrounded by strong women his entire life,” she said. “Early on, women who had not been a part of the campaign came and worked in the White House, and they don’t know the president. … What the president wants is for people to come in and fight for their ideas — not so that they win, but because he will make better decisions if they’re advocating and telling him what they think. … So, I say, ‘Speak up! Speak up!’ ”
On her wall is a birthday gift from her boss – a frame containing the original petition to give women the vote in 1866, and the final resolution passed by Congress in 1919 – 53 years later. “Valerie,” Obama wrote. “You are carrying on a legacy of strong women making history! Happy Birthday, Barack Obama.”
Jarrett takes on the complaints of women who have worked in the West Wing head on, particularly the notion that you have to be able to shoot hoops, or play golf or talk shop or be a poker shark to gain the president’s confidence. “I don’t play golf. I don’t play basketball. I don’t really like cards,” she said. “I don’t think anybody questions whether or not I have a role to play here. And so I think it is irrelevant whether the president wants to do that in some of his free time. What’s really important is when we have something to say, does he listen to us? And he does.”
Besides diversity, the other big rap on Obama’s senior staff is insularity. The president has taken the comfort-food approach to his second-term team, with promotions for guys who have been with him going back to the ’08 campaign, and many fewer departures than even his own staffers had expected. To those who think he needs change of his own, his message since the election has amounted to: “It’s not me — it’s you.” We read Jarrett an email from a former West Wing colleague who said: “They really just need new people. Everyone is so dead tired. They need new energy, new life, new ideas.”
“That’s from somebody who left?” Jarrett asked. “Well, they probably left because they were tired. I think the people who are left behind are energized. I don’t get the sense of fatigue at all. … So, it sounds like somebody who probably needed a rest, and there’s no harm in that. … These are hard jobs, and people do burn out.”
Her title is White House senior adviser, but it’s Jarrett’s 21-year friendship with the president and Michelle Obama that gives her more power than arguably any other aide in government. On paper, Jarrett’s portfolio includes the White House Office of Public Engagement; the Council on Women and Girls; and the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs, which works with local officials, mayors and governors. In reality, her clout stems from unlimited, almost mystical, access to the Obamas. Jarrett has been subject to extremely harsh press over the years and has rarely been asked bluntly about the slams. We ticked off several of them, and she didn’t flinch.
“Look, it’s a tough town,” she said. “Chicago is, too. I come from a tough town; this is a tough town. I’m always trying to improve. I think I take criticism constructively. I cannot erase a 21-year friendship, nor would I want to. And I try very hard to make sure that I am available to people here — particularly, I think, women often come to me. I am older than most of the people here, so I try to be a resource.”
“I’m kind of old to change,” added Jarrett, 56. “But if somebody were to come to me and say, ‘You know what, Valerie? I think if you were to do this it would be more helpful,’ of course I would listen to that.”
Has anyone ever done that? She thought about it a second. “Actually not so much,” she said. “Not so much. But that [would be] very different than [an] anonymous quote in a profile. You know?”
There has been one clear change in Obamaworld since the president was resoundingly reelected on Nov. 6 and it comes from Jarrett’s cluster of issues. Business leaders in D.C. and New York, who felt this White House alternated between ignoring and alienating them, say they have been invited to the White House more in the past two months than they had in the past four years.
The White House says there has not been a single day post-election, including weekends, that Obama or his senior staff has not reached out to business leaders — in person, over the phone or via email. Obama has spoken to more than 50 CEOs, financial-services executives and small-business leaders since Election Day, and the White House has hosted meetings with 300 small-business owners from more than 30 states.
Jarrett was close to business in Chicago — chair of the Board of the Chicago Stock Exchange, and a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. But you’d never know that from the belly-aching by CEOs who are convinced her liberal leanings make her hostile to free markets, and to them.
“I don’t take it personally at all,” she said. “I don’t think it was ideological. … We have been more aggressive in our engagement, but I also think our country is in a different place than it was four years ago. Dodd-Frank was controversial. I think the banks obviously spent a lot of money lobbying against it. So that was a source of friction. I think if you were to leave it up to some folks, they might have said, ‘We will self-regulate. .. We understand we made a mistake — we get it now.’ … Because the stakes were so high and the bailout numbers were so great, what the president said is, ‘I’m just not willing to take that chance. I think the American people deserve better protection than that.’ So, I think that was a big source of tension.”
Now, she says, the administration has more of an “alignment of interest” with the business community. “We are now in a position where the president wants to really focus on a growth agenda which will create jobs, which requires us to invest strategically in ways that are going to be helpful for businesses to expand and hire people,” she said. “The business community very strongly agrees with us that one should not negotiate over the debt ceiling. … And if you look at our second-term agenda — whether it’s immigration reform or furthering our energy policies or investing in infrastructure, corporate tax reform — there are many issues where we are completely aligned with the business community, because it’s a growth agenda and they want to grow.”
Broad tax reform looks like it’ll be a victim of the three upcoming fiscal cliffs, and the breakdown in communication between House Republicans and the White House — a Murderer’s Row of political booby traps that mean the opening of Obama’s second term is likely to be the hundred days of hell. But Jarrett said reforming the corporate Tax Code remains important to the president, and she still hopes it’ll happen.
“I think that there is an interest on both sides of the aisle to do so,” she said. “A big part of our agenda is to position the United States for long-term sustainable growth and health, and those jobs come from the private sector. And so, we have to prime the pump in … It depends on our dance partner … the Republicans in Congress.”
But they WANT tax reform, we interjected. “Well, but do they want it in a balanced and fair way?” she said. “So that’s the question.”
Here’s something else that will change in the second term, and that the White House also telegraphed during the lame-duck session: Both Obama and Jarrett are going to spend more time traveling outside Washington, aiming to bring beyond-the-Beltway pressure on lawmakers. That’s part of the reason Jarrett, despite a clogged pipeline to Capitol Hill, predicts both gun control and immigration packages will pass this year. “That’s what the American people want,” she said. “So our goal is to engage them in that process and let their voices be heard, and I think ultimately when that happens, Congress acts.”
So the White House will be enlisting allies the president has met on his travels, and Cabinet secretaries and administration officials will be doing more community outreach as they travel. “If someone is going somewhere to give a speech, add on an opportunity to meet with some local leaders and tell them about our agenda,” she said. “He’s very confident that now, with the American people, with that wind at his back, there really are no limits to what we can accomplish.”
Obama will carry that message through in his second inaugural address, which she said will have “a very hopeful message” that emphasizes the vital role played by every citizen.
Jarrett says when her time in the West Wing is done, she expects she’ll go back to the Windy City. And what will Obama do in his post-presidency? “Spend a lot of time in Hawaii, I hope,” she said with a laugh.
The biggest change in Obama over the four years, she said, is the certitude of his decisions. Close aides say he has never been a hand-wringer and is even less so after the first term. “He still agonizes, but he is more confident because of his experience,” she said.
The greatest misperception about Obama, she said, is the appearance that he isn’t enjoying himself. “People shouldn’t confuse how serious he takes his job for how serious he takes himself,” she said. The two of them recently watched “Lincoln” in the family theater. Asked what she learned from the movie, she replied: “Change is always hard.”
Why House Republicans Are Retreating on the Debt Ceiling
By David Weigel | Posted Friday, Jan. 18, 2013, at 4:27 PM ET
Slate.com
Why House GOP leaders decided to surrender on the debt ceiling—for now.
House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) issued a statement today
regarding a temporary debt limit increase Photo by Alex Wong/Getty
Images
“Next week,” said Cantor. “We will authorize a
three month temporary debt limit increase to give the Senate and House
time to pass a budget.”
Without action, the United States is scheduled to
hit the debt limit in late February, maybe early March. Republicans were
proposing something equally bland and radical. They would raise the
debt limit without demanding spending cuts equal to the new borrowing
authority. They would not demand a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment,
as they did in 2011, the last time we stumbled into this faux crisis.
No, all they wanted was a commitment from the
Democratic Senate. The upper house had to pass a budget by the end of
the grace period. If it didn’t, said Cantor, “members of Congress will
not be paid by the American people for failing to do their job.” The 27th
Amendment doesn’t let Congress cut its own pay hastily, so the money
would be held in escrow, until the Senate passed something. Republicans
wouldn’t demand anything in particular for that “something”—no equal
cuts, no defunding of Planned Parenthood. They would just shame the
Democrats, something that began quickly on Twitter with a #NoBudgetNoPay
hashtag.
How did Republicans end up here? According to
participants in the three-day retreat, the party’s first real all-hands
meeting since the election had a resigned, realistic tone. Members were
assigned to read articles like Ramesh Ponnuru’s post-election wrap,
“The Party’s Problem.” Ponnuru had debunked a warm-blanket Republican
theory that Mitt Romney’s cartoonish elitism had cost them the election.
“Romney was not a drag on the Republican party,” wrote Ponnuru. “The
Republican party was a drag on him.”
The message to the conference was that the debt
limit wasn’t actually all that great of a lever for change. Thursday,
the longest day of the retreat, began with Boehner trying to sell the
conference on a short-term debt limit increase. He was aided quickly by
Rep. Paul Ryan, who walked members through the math of the debt limit,
and talked up the short-term punt.
“They showed us a slide of five or six times in the
last 30 years where we’ve come to some really good agreements,” said
Rep. John Fleming, a conservative from Louisiana who’d sponsored
legislation that would prevent the debt limit from being abolished in a
budget deal. “Leading up to every one of those was several short-term
increases. It keeps the pressure up until finally both sides decide,
‘You know what? We’ve got to get this off the table until we get a
solution everyone can live with that fixes America’s problems.’”
As the discussion veered into “messaging,” guests
and nonessential staffers were asked to leave the room. Ryan strolled
over to the media room, where he said members were being educated on
“the consequences of all the deadlines that are coming.”
“We have to recognize the realities of divided
government that we have,” he said. “We’re discussing the possible virtue
of a short-term debt limit extension so we have a better chance of
getting the Senate and the White House involved in discussions in
March.”
Republicans convinced themselves that hiking the
debt limit for a few months would dramatically change the narrative. In
February, the president would give a State of the Union speech, where he
could lambaste Republicans for causing a crisis. By April 15, the White
House would have to propose a budget. But if Republicans pushed back
the debt limit, they’d get to vote first on the continuing resolution,
the spending package that funds the government. Next they’d vote on what
might replace sequestration, the mandatory $1.2 trillion of cuts
inherited from the 2011 debt limit deal. They’d have “credibility,” as
Rep. Mick Mulvaney put it, when the next debt limit deadline came up.
“Take the small one first, take the middle one
next, and take the debt ceiling last,” said Mulvaney, a Boehner critic
who’d lost a vote this week on paying for Hurricane Sandy relief with
across-the-board budget cuts. “None of us are talking about default. We
understand the risk of default to the country.”
On Thursday and Friday, conservative members
discussed what might be added to sweeten a debt limit deal. They could
change statutory language so that, in the event the debt limit was
breached, the government would prioritize debt payments and Social
Security checks, while stiffing everything else. “Whether or not we keep
the national parks open is not what people think of when they hear
default,” said Mulvaney. “It’s certainly not what the markets think.”
But the leadership’s preferred debt limit hike will
be relatively clean. As the meeting ended, Boehner spokesman Michael
Steel joined a couple of reporters in the parking lot and walked them
through accelerating Lewis Carroll-esque questions about the meaning of
reform. Hadn’t the speaker ruled out any debt limit hike that didn’t
include spending cuts? “The Boehner rule is cuts or reform
for any increase in the debt limit,” said Steel. Forcing the Senate to
vote on a budget, with the threat of withholding pay, was reform.
Several times, Republican House leaders have asked the conference to
back a compromise bill, then pulled it when the votes weren’t there. And
Republicans haven’t given more clues as to what they want from the next
inevitable debt limit fight. But they’ve realized how bad they’ve been
made to look. When one reporter asked Ryan if he was willing to “shoot
the hostage” and hit the debt limit, he rolled his eyes. “I don’t want
to use any metaphors such as that, at all.”
Go for the Throat!
Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.
By John Dickerson|Posted
Friday, Jan. 18, 2013, at 6:13 PM ET
President Obama, left, and Vice President Biden announce the
administration's new gun law proposals on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
On Monday, President Obama will preside over the grand reopening of
his administration. It would be altogether fitting if he stepped to the
microphone, looked down the mall, and let out a sigh: so many people
expecting so much from a government that appears capable of so little. A
second inaugural suggests new beginnings, but this one is being
bookended by dead-end debates. Gridlock over the fiscal cliff preceded
it and gridlock over the debt limit, sequester, and budget will follow.
After the election, the same people are in power in all the branches of
government and they don't get along. There's no indication that the
president's clashes with House Republicans will end soon.
Inaugural speeches are supposed to be huge and stirring. Presidents
haul our heroes onstage, from George Washington to Martin Luther King
Jr. George W. Bush brought the Liberty Bell. They use history to make
greatness and achievements seem like something you can just take down
from the shelf. Americans are not stuck in the rut of the day.
But this might be too much for Obama’s second inaugural
address: After the last four years, how do you call the nation and its
elected representatives to common action while standing on the steps of a
building where collective action goes to die? That bipartisan bag of
tricks has been tried and it didn’t work. People don’t believe it.
Congress' approval rating is 14 percent, the lowest in history. In a
December Gallup poll, 77 percent of those asked said the way Washington works is doing “serious harm” to the country.
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The challenge for President Obama’s speech is the challenge of his
second term: how to be great when the environment stinks. Enhancing the
president’s legacy requires something more than simply the clever
application of predictable stratagems. Washington’s partisan rancor, the
size of the problems facing government, and the limited amount of time
before Obama is a lame duck all point to a single conclusion: The
president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about
bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys
the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the
throat.
President Obama could, of course, resign himself to tending to the
achievements of his first term. He'd make sure health care reform is
implemented, nurse the economy back to health, and put the military on a
new footing after two wars. But he's more ambitious than that. He ran
for president as a one-term senator with no executive experience. In his
first term, he pushed for the biggest overhaul of health care possible
because, as he told his aides, he wanted to make history. He may already
have made it.
There's no question that he is already a president of
consequence. But there's no sign he's content to ride out the second
half of the game in the Barcalounger. He is approaching gun control, climate change, and immigration with wide and excited eyes. He's not going for caretaker.
How should the president proceed then, if he wants to be bold? The
Barack Obama of the first administration might have approached the task
by finding some Republicans to deal with and then start agreeing to some
of their demands in hope that he would win some of their votes. It's
the traditional approach. Perhaps he could add a good deal more
schmoozing with lawmakers, too.
That's the old way. He has abandoned that. He doesn't think it will
work and he doesn't have the time. As Obama explained in his last press
conference, he thinks the Republicans are dead set on opposing him. They
cannot be unchained by schmoozing. Even if Obama were wrong about
Republican intransigence, other constraints will limit the chance for
cooperation. Republican lawmakers worried about primary challenges in
2014 are not going to be willing partners. He probably has at most 18
months before people start dropping the lame-duck label in close
proximity to his name.
Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in
passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to
delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over
controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their
coalition's most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that
will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray.
This theory of political transformation rests on the weaponization
(and slight bastardization) of the work by Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek.
Skowronek has written extensively
about what distinguishes transformational presidents from caretaker
presidents. In order for a president to be transformational, the old
order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust
themselves. Obama's gambit in 2009 was to build a new post-partisan
consensus. That didn't work, but by exploiting the weaknesses of today’s
Republican Party, Obama has an opportunity to hasten the demise of the
old order by increasing the political cost of having the GOP coalition
defined by Second Amendment absolutists, climate science deniers,
supporters of “self-deportation” and the pure no-tax wing.
The president has the ambition and has picked a second-term agenda
that can lead to clarifying fights. The next necessary condition for
this theory to work rests on the Republican response. Obama needs two
things from the GOP: overreaction and charismatic dissenters. They’re
not going to give this to him willingly, of course, but mounting
pressures in the party and the personal ambitions of individual players
may offer it to him anyway. Indeed, Republicans are serving him some of
this recipe already on gun control, immigration, and the broader issue
of fiscal policy.
On gun control, the National Rifle Association has overreached. Its Web video mentioning the president's children crossed a line.* The group’s dissembling about the point of the video and its message compounds the error. (The video was also wrong).
The NRA is whipping up its members, closing ranks, and lashing out.
This solidifies its base, but is not a strategy for wooing those who are
not already engaged in the gun rights debate. It only appeals to those
who already think the worst of the president. Republicans who want to
oppose the president on policy grounds now have to make a decision: Do
they want to be associated with a group that opposes, in such impolitic
ways, measures like universal background checks that 70 to 80 percent of
the public supports? Polling also suggests that women are more open to
gun control measures than men. The NRA, by close association, risks
further defining the Republican Party as the party of angry, white
Southern men.
The president is also getting help from Republicans who are calling
out the most extreme members of the coalition. New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie called the NRA video "reprehensible." Others who have national
ambitions are going to have to follow suit. The president can rail about
and call the GOP bad names, but that doesn't mean people are going to
listen. He needs members inside the Republican tent to ratify his
positions—or at least to stop marching in lockstep with the most
controversial members of the GOP club.
When Republicans with national
ambitions make public splits with their party, this helps the president.
(There is a corollary: The president can’t lose the support of
Democratic senators facing tough races in 2014. Opposition from within
his own ranks undermines his attempt to paint the GOP as beyond the
pale.)
If the Republican Party finds itself destabilized right now, it is in
part because the president has already implemented a version of this
strategy. In the 2012 campaign, the president successfully transformed
the most intense conservative positions into liabilities on immigration
and the role of government. Mitt Romney won the GOP nomination on a
platform of “self-deportation” for illegal immigrants—and the Obama team
never let Hispanics forget it. The Obama campaign also branded
Republicans with Romney's ill-chosen words about 47 percent of Americans
as the party of uncaring millionaires.
Now Republican presidential hopefuls like Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, and Bobby Jindal are trying to fix the party's image.
There is a general scramble going on as the GOP looks for a formula to
move from a party that relies on older white voters to one that can
attract minorities and younger voters.
Out of fear for the long-term prospects of the GOP, some Republicans
may be willing to partner with the president. That would actually mean
progress on important issues facing the country, which would enhance
Obama’s legacy.
If not, the president will stir up a fracas between
those in the Republican Party who believe it must show evolution on
issues like immigration, gun control, or climate change and those who
accuse those people of betraying party principles.
That fight will be loud and in the open—and in the short term
unproductive.
The president can stir up these fights by poking the fear
among Republicans that the party is becoming defined by its most extreme
elements, which will in turn provoke fear among the most faithful
conservatives that weak-willed conservatives are bending to the popular
mood. That will lead to more tin-eared, dooming declarations of
absolutism like those made by conservatives who sought to define the
difference between legitimate and illegitimate rape—and handed control
of the Senate to Democrats along the way. For the public watching from
the sidelines, these intramural fights will look confused and
disconnected from their daily lives. (Lip-smacking Democrats don’t get
too excited: This internal battle is the necessary precondition for a
GOP rebirth, and the Democratic Party has its own tensions.)
This approach is not a path of gentle engagement. It requires
confrontation and bright lines and tactics that are more aggressive than
the president demonstrated in the first term. He can't turn into a
snarling hack. The posture is probably one similar to his official
second-term photograph: smiling, but with arms crossed.
The president already appears to be headed down this path. He has
admitted he’s not going to spend much time improving his schmoozing
skills; he's going to get outside of Washington to ratchet up public
pressure on Republicans. He is transforming his successful political
operation into a governing operation. It will have his legacy and agenda
in mind—and it won’t be affiliated with the Democratic National
Committee, so it will be able to accept essentially unlimited donations.
The president tried to use his political arm this way after the 2008
election, but he was constrained by re-election and his early promises
of bipartisanship. No more. Those days are done.
Presidents don’t usually sow discord in their inaugural addresses,
though the challenge of writing a speech in which the call for
compromise doesn’t evaporate faster than the air out of the president’s
mouth might inspire him to shake things up a bit. If it doesn’t, and he
tries to conjure our better angels or summon past American heroes, then
it will be among the most forgettable speeches, because the next day
he’s going to return to pitched political battle.
He has no time to
waste.
Correction, Jan. 18, 2013: This article originally identified a National Rifle Association online video as a television ad. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Red-state Democrats may break with White House
From left, Sen. Mark Begich, President Barack Obama, Sen. Harry Reid and Sen. Tom Udall. | AP Photos
By: John Bresnahan and Manu Raju January 18, 2013 05:35 PM EST
For Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his top lieutenants, the
challenges of balancing the 2014 Senate map and President Barack Obama’s
second-term agenda could cause as many headaches as anything
Republicans throw at them.
Overall, 20 Democratic-held Senate seats are up for grabs next year,
versus 13 for Republicans. Democratic incumbents face reelection in
solidly red states like Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana and South
Dakota, all of which Obama lost by double-digit margins in November.
A little more than a year after Obama is sworn in to another term,
there will be high-profile Senate races in swing states like Colorado,
North Carolina and New Hampshire. One red-state Democrat — Sen. Jay
Rockefeller (W.Va.) — has already announced his retirement, putting in
play a seat that has been in Democratic hands for nearly three decades.
While Obama is now riding high in public-opinion polls — and the GOP
is struggling with historically low approval ratings — senior Democratic
senators and aides say the president must face a stark political
reality even as he begins his second term as commander in chief.
Newly
reelected and emboldened red-state Democrats, as well as senators up for
reelection in 2014, want and need to show independence from the White
House. For these Democrats,
a visit or endorsement by Obama is not going
to help them win, although they will be happy to have his money or
checks from his donor network.
From guns to immigration to budget fights — especially possible cuts
to the popular Medicare and Medicaid programs — these upcoming battles
will expose the fault lines within the Democratic Party. Obama will have
to juggle the political needs of red-state Democrats even as he tries
to outmaneuver a House GOP leadership pulled to the right by its
hardliners.
Reid singles out those who are up for reelection and does whatever he
can to promote their agenda and protect them from politically charged
votes, aides said Friday.
“What you have in the Democratic Caucus — probably more so now than
the Republican [Conference] — you have a sizable amount of moderates,”
Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), up for reelection in 2014, told POLITICO.
“We are kind of practical, let’s get things done, we’re willing to try
some new stuff. But we’re not going to do the same ol’, same ol’. I
think that’s a struggle with the administration at times.”
“We may have some other agenda ourselves,” added Sen. Tom Udall
(D-N.M.), who also faces voters in two years. “We may as a Senate decide
that we want to do something about jobs. The Senate may decide it wants
to do something about small business and a tax package. We may want to
do something on tax reform itself. Our agenda depends on our 55 senators
— [and] what we decide we want to put on the floor.”
A senior Democratic aide said the White House must recognize the
“blunt political reality” that 20 Democratic senators will face
reelection in a cycle in which control of the Senate is at stake.
“And if they want to actually get stuff done, they’re going to have
to make an effort to work with us, and personally reach out to the Mark
Pryors, and the Mary Landrieus and listen to those folks and make them
feel heard,” the aide said. “It can’t feel like an oppositional
relationship, it has to feel like we’re partners with generally the same
but sometimes slightly different options on how to get there.”
The aide added: “Gun control will be a test of that. That’s going to require a lot of hand-holding.”
While the 2014 Senate map may favor Republicans, the GOP would have
to essentially run the table in six of seven red states where Democrats
hold seats to win a majority. Opposing Obama on some issues may even
help some Democratic incumbents, all of whom are leading or very
competitive in early polls.
“To the extent that they break with the president, it could be — I
don’t want to say it is — a big advantage for them in deep-red states,”
said a Democratic strategist.
Several Democrats who are up for reelection and from red states told
POLITICO they are skeptical of elements of — if not all — of Obama’s
aggressive gun control agenda.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who could face a tough reelection and has
previously opposed reinstating the assault weapons ban, said there
needs to be “more emphasis on [mental health issues and counseling
families in crisis] as well as enforcing some of the laws that are
already on the books.” She added it was important for Washington “not to
overreact one way or another.”
Begich added: “To start saying we’re going to have more laws and more regulations, I think, would be problematic.”
Udall voiced similar sentiments, though he suggested more of an openness to tightening background checks.
“When you talk about gun rights and the situation in the West, there
are very mixed feelings in terms of pushing a nationwide package — a
one-size-fits-all package,” Udall said,
questioning the effectiveness of
an assault weapons ban.
“Everybody ought to be at the table,” said Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.),
who is also up in 2014. “And we ought to be talking about violent
images and games. They’re readily available. We ought to be talking
about mental health services and to what extent we can take a step
forward and identify people who hurt themselves and others. And we need
to be talking about the access to firearms that’s greater than any other
developed country in the world, including some countries that are
similar to us like Canada, who have much lower rates of mass killings
[than] we do. So everything has got to be on the table.”
Reid must navigate these concerns within his caucus while facing
heavy pressure from liberals and gun control advocates pushing hard for
every element of the president’s agenda.
Senior Democratic aides expect
Reid — a gun rights supporter despite recent distance from the National
Rifle Association — to take the temperature of his caucus next week.
Universal background checks, Senate aides say, is probably the one
element of the agenda most Democrats can get behind. Other than that,
it’s not at all clear what Democrats will be willing to pass.
And Reid said he wouldn’t stage votes on guns that don’t stand a
chance to pass the House. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said his
chamber will wait for the Senate to act before taking up the gun issue,
but many House Republicans — concerned about NRA-backed primary
challengers next year — would rather keep the status quo on federal gun
laws despite the national uproar since last month’s shootings in
Newtown, Conn.
On immigration, there’s more unanimity among
Senate Democrats and Reid’s leadership team over supporting a
comprehensive bill. Right now, the focus will turn to a small bipartisan
group of senators trying to cut an immigration deal, and if they do,
that would likely emerge as the main vehicle this year.
But the White House is expected to unveil its own sweeping
immigration bill, which could b
e largely ignored if a bipartisan Senate
deal starts to gain steam.
Added to the problems: There are also a number of senators from red
and swing states who are nervous about advancing on such a polarizing
issue. And there are several who hope the Senate will begin to focus on
the No. 1 campaign issue in 2012: jobs.
“My No. 1 priority is jobs and the economy, and that is what I want
the U.S. Senate to focus on,” said freshman Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly
of Indiana, a state Obama lost by 11 points last year. “Overall, the
Senate needs to address the pressing needs of our still-recovering
economy and cutting spending to get our fiscal house in order in a
bipartisan way.”
Mark Udall said he welcomes tough votes on guns, immigration or
revamping U.S. energy policy, but said the economy is still the biggest
issue.
“That’s what people [in Colorado] expect me to do. That’s what my
reputation in part rests on,” Udall said. “Anything we do that counters
people’s emphasis on that, we will be punished for that, I believe. We
should be criticized. Anything that we do that moves our economy forward
and creates certainty [for the business community], I think we have got
to be acknowledged for it and the voters will have to decide if they’re
going to reward us on Nov. 2, 2014.”
With tensions between Senate Democratic leaders and the White House
still raw over the fiscal cliff battle, cutting spending, especially big
changes to Medicare or Medicaid, will be difficult to navigate as they
head into a confrontation with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling
and extending government funding past the current March 27 deadline.
The House Republicans are planning to vote on raising the debt
ceiling for three months and stop pay for members of Congress if the
Senate doesn’t pass a budget, GOP officials said Friday.
But a Reid spokesman said the Senate would consider only a clean debt ceiling bill but felt the GOP movement was encouraging.
No matter how the debt ceiling battle turns out, Obama is almost
certain to face new pressure from 2014 Senate Democrats over cutting
deeper into the budget.
“I’m going to underline something very strong here: The president
must propose — or we should — a combination of spending cuts,” Begich
said. “We cannot do this budget just on the revenue issue that we did at
the end of last year.”
Friday, January 18, 2013
GOP to seek three-month extension of debt limit
Provided
that the Senate passes a budget, House Republicans said they would vote
to lift the debt ceiling limit for three months without offsetting
spending cuts. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
By Michael O'Brien, NBC News
Updated 2:26 p.m. - Republicans
will act to push the deadline at which the U.S. government would
default on the national debt to mid-April, demanding that Democrats pass
a budget in exchange for a long-term extension in borrowing authority.
House
Republicans said they will take up legislation next week to temporarily
extend the debt limit for three months, past the mid-February deadline
when the government, according to the Treasury, would reach its legal
limit on borrowing to finance the government's obligations.
"Next
week, we will authorize a three month temporary debt limit increase to
give the Senate and House time to pass a budget," House Majority Leader
Eric Cantor, R-Va., said.
"Furthermore, if the Senate or House fails to pass a budget in that
time, members of Congress will not be paid by the American people for
failing to do their job. No budget, no pay."
"We
are encouraged that there are signs that congressional Republicans may
back off their insistence on holding our economy hostage to extract
drastic cuts in Medicare, education and programs middle class families
depend on," White House press secretary Jay Carney said in response.
"Congress must pay its bills and pass a clean debt limit increase
without further delay."
Such a move would push the deadline for
default to mid-April, around the time at which the House and Senate are
typically expected to produce and pass budgets. To secure a longer-term
extension in the debt ceiling, Republicans said Friday, the Senate must
finally pass a budget.
"Before there is any long-term debt limit
increase, a budget should be passed that cuts spending," House Speaker
John Boehner, R-Ohio, told GOP lawmakers at the conclusion of their
retreat, according to remarks released by his office.
Republicans
have vocally criticized the Democratic-controlled Senate for failing to
produce a budget in recent years, a mark of the upper chamber's
unseriousness in the eyes of many conservatives. Democrats have used the
two budgets authorized by House Republicans as a political cudgel
against the GOP; the Senate's failure to pass a budget has been
partially meant to escape similar political culpability.
"We are
going to pursue strategies that will obligate the Senate to finally join
the House in confronting the government’s spending problem," Boehner
said. "The principle is simple: no budget, no pay."
Republicans'
new strategy cuts against a strain of thought within the GOP that
suggests that default would not be as catastrophic for the economy as
many experts have warned. These Republicans have argued for using the
debt ceiling deadline -- and the specter of default -- as leverage to
extract spending cuts or entitlement reforms from President Barack
Obama.
"It is reassuring to see Republicans beginning to back off
their threat to hold our economy hostage," Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid, D-Nev., said in response. "If the House can pass a clean debt
ceiling increase to avoid default and allow the United States to meet
its existing obligations, we will be happy to consider it."
But
Republicans are facing increasing political pressure to act, and prevent
default. The party's favorable/unfavorable rating was near its worst
ever in Thursday's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll following a
drawn-out battle over the fiscal cliff, a political fiasco many
Republicans aren't eager to repeat. And Obama gave a press conference
earlier this week explicitly refuse bargaining over the debt limit.
J. Scott Applewhite / AP
Speaker
of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, right, and House Majority Leader
Eric Cantor, R-Va., left, walk to a second Republican conference meeting
to discuss the fiscal cliff bill passed by the Senate Monday night and
now awaits a vote in the GOP-controlled House, at the Capitol in
Washington on Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013.
In recent days, high-profile Republicans had steadily backed away
from the prospect of defaulting on the national debt, sending signals
that they'll extend the nation's borrowing authority for at least a
little while longer.
"We will raise the debt ceiling. We're not
going to default on our debt," Texas Sen. John Cornyn, Republicans' No. 2
in the upper chamber, told the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle. "I will tell you unequivocally, we're not going to default."
And Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the House Budget Committee chairman and former vice presidential nominee, told reporters at House Republicans' retreat on Thursday that lawmakers were "discussing the virtue of a short term debt limit extension."
They join Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in acknowledging the
need for a debt ceiling increase; more and more members of the
conservative media have also questioned the political wisdom behind
using the debt limit as leverage in the spending debate.
What's
more, traditionally GOP-friendly business groups have privately urged
lawmakers against wrangling over the debt limit, which has become a
factor weighing upon Republicans' strategy.
"There was serious
displeasure and concern within the financial services community over the
way Republicans handled the debt ceiling issue in 2011," said one
business advocate tied into Republican politics. "It was the financial
community that helped deliver the resources for a Republican takeover in
2010 and now House Republicans are at risk of jeopardizing their
credibility with their free market allies. Cutting spending and helping
the economy are not mutu
Army spouses club offers 'special guest membership' for same-sex wife
Courtesy of Ashley Broadway
Ashley
Broadway, left, married her 15-year companion, Lt. Col. Heather Mack,
in November — their first chance to hold a formal ceremony after the
2011 repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell."
By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor
An
on-base club for Fort Bragg spouses extended a "special guest
membership" Thursday night to the lesbian spouse of an Army lieutenant
colonel, marking another twist in a six-week-long saga that prompted a
pro-gay Marine Corps directive and that has drawn the attention of gay
and lesbian activists nationwide.
The Association of Bragg
Officers’ Spouses (ABOS) offered Ashley Broadway an invitation to join
the group as a “special guest,” but not as a full member — meaning she
can attend all club functions but cannot vote on club matters
— according to an email to NBC News by the association’s board.
Broadway immediately rejected the overture, calling it “extremely
demeaning.” Broadway married her 15-year companion, Lt. Col. Heather
Mack, in November — their first chance to hold a formal ceremony after
the 2011 repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the policy that kept gays from openly
serving in the military. The couple has a 2-year-old son and Mack is due
to give birth to their second child on Sunday.
“I correlate ‘guest membership’ to saying, ‘Heather, you can be
gay and be in the military but we’re not going to treat your spouse as
equal.’ I can be in this club but I can’t have full membership? That’s
not acceptable,”
Broadway said in an interview with NBC News Thursday
night. “I’m either going to be a member or not. I applied to be a full
member with a vote.
“I am declining their offer.”
In a statement mass emailed Thursday evening, the Bragg officers club
said some information reported in the media about Broadway’s membership
application “has been false or misleading,” including assertions that
the board changed its bylaws after Broadway applied.
“In
mid-November, ABOS received an inquiry from ... Ashley Broadway,
requesting information on the eligibility for membership in ABOS of a
same sex spouse. As this was a case of first impression, she was told
that such a request would need to be studied,” read the club’s
statement.
Since going public
with her story, Broadway has maintained that she received a phone call
during the first week of December from a club representative, informing
her that Mary Ring, the group’s president, had rejected her application
because Broadway does not have a military spouse identification card.
(The U.S. military does not recognize same-sex marriage under the
Defense of Marriage Act and does not offer benefits — or ID cards — to
same-sex spouses.) Broadway also serves as director of family affairs at
the American Military Partner Association, a fact mentioned by ABOS
leaders in their explanation of the events.
“ABOS’ membership
application does not explicitly require a valid (Department of Defense)
ID Card but some member benefits and events do require a valid DoD ID
Card,” the club’s statement continued. “ABOS received Ms. Broadway’s
letter requesting reconsideration on Friday, December 7 and by Monday,
December 10 a similar letter to the ABOS President was published on her
organization’s website.
“ABOS’ by-laws were never changed
retroactively in an attempt to exclude anyone. The ABOS Board’s
bi-annual review of the by-laws began in July 2012, at which time the
by-laws were removed from the ABOS website and continue to be under
review,” the statement said. “Since the by-laws were written and adopted
well before the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’, the term ‘Spouse’ is
not defined.”
In a separate email to NBC News, the club’s board maintained that
Broadway was never rejected by the Bragg social club because “a formal
application was never filed,” and that she simply had inquired about
membership eligibility of a same sex spouse and was told the club would
need “time to look at the issue.”
The "special guest" invitation
to Broadway sparked criticism and skepticism Thursday night from Stephen
Peters, president of the American Military Partner Association, a
Washington, D.C.-based resource and support network for lesbian and gay
military families.
“So that leaves the question of: If the bylaws
and the application do not explicitly require a valid DoD ID card, why
is she still being denied full membership?” Peters asked. “What do
certain unnamed ‘events’ requiring a valid DoD ID card have to do with
anything?"
Before the ABOS website was made fully password
protected and before the group took down its Facebook page – both done
after initial reports of Broadway’s membership battle surfaced – the
American Military Partner Association took screenshots of both sites.
The ABOS website and Facebook page “were changed retroactively in order
to add the requirement of an ID card after Ashley applied for
membership,” according to Peters. Those screenshots were shared Thursday
with NBC News.
As of Thursday night, the website was fully accessible and no longer password protected.
“It's
fantastic that they have finally contacted Ashley after a month of
silence, but if the ABOS mission is to support all military families,
why are they continuing to deny same-sex military spouses full
membership?” Peters asked. “Offering ‘guest membership’ to Ashley is
like offering her ‘second-class membership status.’ There is no valid
reason why she should not be offered full membership as outlined in the
organization's bylaws.”
Citing the Broadway flap, the U.S. Marine Corps on Dec. 9 issued a branch-wide directive that same-sex spouses be allowed to participate in spouses clubs at all Marine bases.
On Wednesday, Pentagon officials said they support a decision by leaders at Fort Bragg not to intervene in the matters of its on-base spouses club.
The
legal basis for the Pentagon’s stance is a Department of Defense
“instruction” drafted in 2008, three years before the repeal of the
“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, a Pentagon spokesman said. That directive
ensures that “non-federal entities” operating on U.S. military
installations don’t discriminate on the basis of “race, color, creed,
sex, age, disability, or national origin.” There is no mention of
discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Broadway, meanwhile,
has been nominated for the Fort Bragg Military Spouse of the Year award,
a precursor to the Army Military Spouse of the Year award and —
perhaps, ultimately — the 2013 Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of
the Year award, which represents all branches. She is one of about 10
Bragg spouses nominated for the award from that base. Online voting for the base-level award takes place Jan. 22.
Just the facts: Gun violence in America
Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images file
People
wait to be reunited with loved ones after a school shooting at Gardena
High School on January 18, 2011 in Gardena, Calif. According to reports,
a student had brought a gun into school in a backpack and the weapon
accidentally fired, injuring two students.
By NBC News staff
As
lawmakers at the state and federal level weigh various measures to stem
gun violence, here are some facts and figures on guns and crime,
compiled by the NBC News research department.
Every day in the U.S., an average of 289 people are shot. Eighty-six
of them die: 30 are murdered, 53 kill themselves, two die accidentally,
and one is shot in a police intervention, the Brady Campaign reports.
Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 335,609 people died from guns --
more than the population of St. Louis, Mo. (318,069), Pittsburgh
(307,484), Cincinnati, Ohio (296,223), Newark, N.J. (277,540), and
Orlando, Fla. (243,195) (sources: U.S. Census; CDC)
One person is killed by a firearm every 17 minutes, 87 people are
killed during an average day, and 609 are killed every week. (source:
CDC)
Homicides by weapon:
Handguns comprised 72.5 percent of the firearms used in murder and
non-negligent manslaughter incidents in 2011; 4.1 percent were with
shotguns; 3.8 percent were with rifles; 18.5 percent were with
unspecified firearms.
13.3 percent of homicides were done with knives or other cutting instruments.
5.8 percent of homicides were from the use of hands, fists, feet, etc. (source: FBI)
Guns and kids:
82 children under five years old died from firearms in 2010 compared
with 58 law enforcement officers killed by firearms in the line of duty
(sources: CDC, FBI)
More kids ages 0-19 died from firearms every three days in 2010 than died in the 2012 Newtown, Conn., massacre (source: CDC)
Nearly three times more kids (15,576) were injured by firearms in
2010 than the number of U.S. soldiers (5,247) wounded in action that
year in the war in Afghanistan (source: CDC, Department of Defense)
NRA head: Controversial ad 'wasn't about the president's daughters'
By Eun Kyung Kim, TODAY contributor
The
president of the National Rifle Association defended his organization’s
use of President Obama’s children in a web ad about armed guards at
schools, insisting Thursday “it wasn’t about the president’s daughters.”
The
video is aimed at anyone critical of the NRA and skeptical of the
organization’s proposal of how to make schools safer, David Keene told
TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie.
“We believe that every parent ought to
be able to be comfortable, knowing that their children are safe, and if
that requires armed security, it’s as good for the working man as it is
for the president,” he said.
In
the 35-second spot, Obama is called an “elite hypocrite” for dismissing
the idea of adding armed guards to schools while accepting Secret
Service protection for his girls.
“Are the president’s kids more
important than yours?” the narrator asks at the beginning of the spot.
“Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools
when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?”
The
White House called the ad “repugnant and cowardly” and criticized the
organization for using the president’s children as “pawns in a political
fight.”
Advertising executive Donny Deutsch called the ad “disgusting” for inserting the president’s children into the issue.
“This is a disgusting, vulgar ad,” he said.
The
video also features a picture of NBC “Meet the Press” host David
Gregory, whom Keene grouped as among those “who have attacked the NRA
and the very idea of school security.”
NBC News released a
statement Wednesday, saying it “firmly objects to the use of our
journalists in any political ad. David Gregory's role as moderator of
'Meet the Press' is to ask tough questions of guests representing all
sides of the issues."
Also Wednesday, Obama unveiled an ambitious gun control program
that includes numerous congressional programs and 23 executive actions.
Among them: mandatory background checks for anyone who wants to buy a
gun, including individuals who purchase weapons from a private seller.
Keene expressed concern over how such a rule would be fairly enforced.
“It
becomes more problematic when you talk about the farmer who buys a new
shotgun and sells his old one to his neighbor over the fence, or the
father who sells to the son or all those kinds of things,” Keene said
Thursday. “The laws need to be certain. And they need to fair and fairly
enforced.”
Another proposal Keene criticized was the effort to limit the size of ammunition magazines.
“This
all sort of makes you feel good, but in fact it doesn’t do much,” Keene
said. “If you are out there, and if you’re crazy, and if you’ve got a
gun like this and if you’re going to shoot people with it, it takes a
second or so to change the magazine.”
The new official portrait, right, was taken on December 6, 2012. The previous one (left) is from 2009.
By Eun Kyung Kim, TODAY contributor
What a difference four years makes! He’s quite a bit grayer and his smile, much wider.
President Obama’s official portrait for his second term, posted Friday to the White House Flickr page, holds a different tone than the photo taken four years ago right after he won his first presidential election.
Obama
posed for the new portrait in the Oval Office, with the American and
presidential flags on either side of him. This time around, more of
Obama’s torso is shown, as his arms are folded across his body, but he
holds a wide grin missing from his last head-and-shoulder photo.
White House photographer, Pete Souza, took the portrait on Dec. 6, 2012.
Obama's
new portrait made us want to remember how other presidents transformed
during their time in the White House, so we took a look back at how the
last three Commanders-in-chief aged in office:
Getty file
George
H.W. Bush was inaugurated in 1989, and had picked up a snazzy pair of
shades by the time he left office in January of 1993.
When Bill Clinton was inaugurated at age 46, he was the nation's third-youngest president:
Getty file
Bill Clinton left office with a full head of gray hair eight years after he began.
Here's George W. Bush in January of 2001 and again in January of 2009:
Getty file
President George W. Bush had a few more gray hairs by the time he left office compared to when he began his first term.
Cheat Sheet: Watching the presidential inauguration with NBC News
By NBC News
An
estimated 600,000 to 800,000 attendees are expected in Washington, D.C.
on Monday for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. Can’t make
the trip to the nation’s capital? Fear not, NBC News will have you
covered on TV and myriad other platforms. We’ll carry full Inauguration
Day coverage live on NBC News and your local affiliate, beginning Monday
at 10 a.m. ET. You can also get the full inauguration experience away
from the television.
Consider this your guide on how to follow,
like, fan and participate in inauguration festivities from the device or
social network of your choice.
NBCNews.com and the NBC Politics App NBCNews.com and the NBC Politics app (available
on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) will carry live streams of NBC News'
special coverage beginning Monday at 10 a.m. ET and provide full
analysis, video and updates all day long. Utilizing Storify, we’ll also
be curating the best social media reaction and photography from around
Washington and the nation.
Inauguration Social Gallery
On NBCNews.com we’ll be curating user generated photography with the help of Chute.
This hub, a beautifully designed photo experience pictured above, will
be a place to view pictures taken by users and NBC News correspondents
in and around the Washington, D.C. area as festivities take place. Some
of the best images may also make it onto the TV broadcast. To join in,
tweet your geotagged inauguration images using the hashtag #NBCPolitics.
Social TV
NBC
News will optimize an experience with second-screen platform Zeebox.
Released in late 2012, Zeebox has already been downloaded one million
times in the U.S. and offers users a unique way to follow along with the
broadcast on their desktop, iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Within the
app, users will have a curated view of real-time social media reaction
along with the ability to share images, quotes, participate in surveys,
questionnaires and more. For more information, visit zeebox.com.
On GetGlue,
NBC News has created a unique sticker to commemorate the special
occasion. The only way to unlock and receive your sticker is to check-in
to the broadcast on GetGlue.
Twitter
Viewers can be a part of the inauguration experience on Twitter by following and joining the conversation using the hashtag #NBCPolitics and following @NBCPolitics and @NBCNews.
Not sure who else to follow? We’ve pulled together a list of some of
the best sources for analysis, photos and more throughout the day. View
that list at https://twitter.com/NBCNews/inauguration. As an added bonus for you to join in on the fun, some of the best #NBCPolitics tweets will also appear on-air during our broadcast.
And one last Twitter surprise: NBC News White House Producer Shawna Thomas (better known to the Twitter crowd as @ShawnaNBCNews) will take the reins on the @NBCNews account on Inauguration Day to offer insight and analysis.
Facebook
Turn to NBC News and NBC Politics
on Facebook for a livestream of inauguration coverage in its entirety.
Additionally, check out photos from the scene, highlights, surveys,
analysis and more.
Instagram
Follow @NBCNews
on Instagram for a visual look at life in capital during this big
weekend through the eyes of NBC News photographers and producers.
Why gun groups say 'no way' to assault weapons ban
Fulfilling
a promise made in Newtown one month ago, President Obama is set to
reveal proposals to curb gun violence. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.
By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News
With
assault weapons firmly in the crosshairs of state and federal
lawmakers, gun-rights groups say they are not willing to give an inch
when it comes to restricting access to the weapon of choice in recent
mass shootings.
From arguments over what exactly defines an
assault weapon to enthusiasts who say the guns are just plain fun to
shoot, defenders of assault weapons say the White House and others are
misguided in their focus on banning them.
“I can’t possibly
imagine what logic people are following that somehow another law, just
one more law, will solve these issues,” said Keith Morgan, president of
the West Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun group.
“People are killed in greater number by cars, bats, hammers, hands,
and feet,” he added. “Examining the tool and attempting to ban the tool
will have absolutely no effect. We’re dealing with a people problem.
We’ve got to find a people solution.”
President Obama on Wednesday
called for a renewed ban on "military-style" assault weapons, among the
most popular guns in America. They were used by both accused Aurora
movie theater shooter James Holmes and Connecticut gunman Adam Lanza.
But gun-rights advocates like Morgan argue that despite the guns’ roles
in high-profile mass killings, they are used in a relatively small
number of homicides.
According
to the FBI’s Unified Crime Report for 2011, handguns were used 6,220 of
the 12,664 homicides reported. Rifles accounted for 323 homicides, with
knives and other unnamed firearms making up most of the rest.
Julie Jacobson / AP
Sig Sauer representative Adam Painchaud explains one of the company's newest products, the MPX 9mm pistol caliber submachine gun, at the 35th annual SHOT Show, Jan. 15, in Las Vegas.
Other gun-rights advocates are willing to entertain a conversation about assault weapons, but they remain dubious.
“If
someone can show me how it can save lives, we’ll look at anything,”
said Jim Irvine, chairman of the Buckeye Firearms Association. He
remains unconvinced, however, that an assault weapons ban would have
done anything to prevent mass shootings like that in Newtown, Conn.
“I don’t like a bunch of dead kids, so I don’t see why we waste time on stale policies,” Irvine said.
The debate about what works will play out in the halls of Congress as well as state capitals, but also in American living rooms.
A
survey released this week by the Pew Research Center found generous
support among most Americans for at least some new controls on guns. The
poll found that a majority of the public – 55 percent – would favor a
ban on assault weapons. That support broke somewhat along party lines,
with 69 percent of Democrats and 44 percent of Republicans favoring a
legislation restricting assault weapons.
California, Connecticut,
Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York already place
some prohibitions on assault weapons.
In
California, which has some of the nation’s toughest regulations on
assault weapons, the law lists 75 assault weapon types by name,
according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. California is also
one of three states that employ a “one-feature” test to identify assault
weapons, banning all weapons that have one military-style feature, such
as a pistol grip or telescoping stock.
Some pro-gun activists, like Paul Valone of Grass Roots North Carolina, dismiss the category of assault weapons entirely.
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
A Rock River Arms AR-15 rifle.
“It’s
relatively easy to circumvent a firearms ban based on cosmetic
features. A pistol grip does not change the function of the firearm,”
Valone said. “None of these things make any difference whatsoever.”
New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law on Tuesday that tightened the
state’s existing ban on assault weapons by applying the one-feature
test.
The last federal ban on assault weapons lapsed in 2004. It
was criticized by gun control proponents for allowing gun makers to
easily circumvent restrictions may making small changes to existing
models of rifles.
That law required guns to have two military-style
features to be considered assault weapons.
Ross Meyer, a manager
at Gun World and Archery, a Nevada gun store, said some of his customers
buy AR-style weapons for defense – but many also simply enjoy shooting
the guns.
“A
lot of them, it’s just kind of fun to go out and shoot,” said Meyer.
His store sold out of the 150 AR-style weapons it had in stock within
three days of the shooting in Newtown. “And then also the high-capacity
magazine, that’s fun to have.”
“Semi-autos are just one of the most fun to go out and shoot when it comes to the recreation of it,” Meyer said.
Activists
contend that there’s no political gain for them in sitting down at the
table to discuss restrictions on assault weapons.
“As a strategic
measure, it would be a horrific mistake for Republicans to play this
game again,” said Michael Hammond, legislative consultant for Gun Owners
of America, a national pro-gun rights group that claims 300,000
members.
Longtime conservative activist Larry Hunter is a
co-organizer of Gun Appreciation Day. The day, which Hunter said is
intended to promote Second Amendment rights, is scheduled for January
19. Hunter sees any ban on assault weapons as an encroachment on
American’s constitutional rights.
“I hope it’s a non-starter,”
Hunter said of any new ban on assault weapons.
“But I think the world
has changed so dramatically since it was first enacted and then allowed
to expire, we have to take very seriously the possibility that they will
do something.”
