Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record

• JANUARY 9, 2009, 12:04 PM ET

President George W. Bush entered office in 2001 just as a recession was starting, and is preparing to leave in the middle of a long one. That’s almost 22 months of recession during his 96 months in office.

His job-creation record won’t look much better. The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton‘s administration and only slightly better than President George H.W. Bush did in his four years in office.

Here’s a look at job creation under each president since the Labor Department started keeping payroll records in 1939. The counts are based on total payrolls between the start of the month the president took office (using the final payroll count for the end of the prior December) and his final December in office.

Because the size of the economy and labor force varies, we also calculate in percentage terms how much the total payroll count expanded under each president. The current President Bush, once taking account how long he’s been in office, shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records. –Sudeep Reddy

The chart can be sorted by any of the following categories.

President	Jobs created	Jobs at end of term	Jobs at start of term	Payroll expansion	Jobs created per year in office	Population growth	Percent change in population
George W. Bush	3.0 million	135.5 million	132.5 million	2.3%	375,000	22.0 million	7.7%
Bill Clinton	23.1 million	132.5 million	109.4 million	21.1%	2,900,000	25.2 million	8.9%
George H.W. Bush	2.5 million	109.4 million	106.9 million	2.3%	625,000	12.5 million	4.8%
Ronald Reagan	16.0 million	106.9 million	90.9 million	17.6%	2,000,000	17.3 million	7%
Jimmy Carter	10.5 million	90.9 million	80.4 million	13.1%	2,600,000	9.8 million	4.3%
Gerald Ford	1.8 million	80.4 million	78.6 million	2.3%	745,000	5.1 million	2.3%
Richard Nixon	9.4 million	78.6 million	69.2 million	13.6%	1,700,000	12.3 million	5.7%
Lyndon Johnson	11.9 million	69.2 million	57.3 million	20.8%	2,300,000	11.3 million	5.6%
John F. Kennedy	3.6 million	57.3 million	53.7 million	6.7%	1,200,000	8.2 million	4.3%
Dwight Eisenhower	3.5 million	53.7 million	50.2 million	7%	438,000	23.3 million	12.8%
Harry Truman	8.4 million	50.2 million	41.8 million	20.1%	1,100,000	N/A	N/A

NOTE: Earlier version of this chart had transposed the headings on the Jobs at start of term and Jobs at end of term columns.

Barbour Inflates Obama’s Job Losses

March 15, 2011

Haley Barbour grossly exaggerated the nation’s job losses under President Barack Obama in a March 14 speech in Chicago.

Speaking to the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, the Republican governor of Mississippi urged his audience to look at the Obama administration’s record "in the last two years" on spending and job creation.

Barbour, March 14: Well, let’s look at their record: in the last two years the federal government spent $7 trillion and our economy lost 7 million jobs. I guess we ought to be glad they didn’t spend $12 trillion!

Although not in Barbour’s prepared remarks, the New York Times reported that Barbour added to his joke when actually delivering his speech, saying: "I guess we ought to be glad they didn’t spend $12 trillion. We might have lost 12 million jobs.”

Barbour was going for a laugh, but he’s taking liberties in his laugh line. Let’s look at the record.

It’s true that the federal government has spent about $7 trillion over the past two fiscal years: $3.5 trillion in fiscal year 2010 and an estimated $3.8 trillion in the current fiscal year, as Table 1.1 of the president’s latest budget proposal shows. (It’s not exactly "the last two years," since the current fiscal year doesn’t end until Sept. 30, but it’s close enough.)

But Barbour is dead wrong about job losses in the last two years. He’s not even close.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total nonfarm employment (the standard for measuring jobs) decreased by 3.24 million in Obama’s first two years in office, from January 2009 through January 2011. The job loss is even less if you look at "the last two years" — that is, the most recent 24-month period, from February 2009 through February 2011. By that measure, the job loss was 2.32 million jobs. That’s a lot of people out of work in either case, but it’s not even half the number that Barbour claimed.

It’s true that nearly 8.8 million jobs were lost between the most recent peak in January 2008 and when the job slump ended in February 2010, according to recently revised BLS figures. (The loss was even worse than BLS had thought when we last looked at this subject.) About half were lost under Bush and half under Obama. But in the past year nearly 1.3 million jobs have been regained.

Any way you look at it, Barbour was way off.

We asked James Richardson, Barbour’s spokesman, how the governor arrived at the 7 million figure. We are waiting for a response and will pass it along if we get one.

– Lauren Hitt

POSTED BY FACTCHECK.ORG ON TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2011 AT 5:56 PM

  

Budget talks go nowhere, raising fear of federal shutdown

By David Lightman and William Douglas | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and congressional leaders failed to agree Tuesday on a plan to keep the government funded past Friday, heightening fears that many federal activities could shut down this weekend.

Obama met for an hour and 20 minutes at the White House with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who’ve been trying for weeks to iron out a compromise.

“We’re now closer than we’ve ever been to getting an agreement,” Obama said after the meeting. “The only question is whether politics or ideology are going to get in the way of preventing a government shutdown."

At the Capitol, that appeared to be happening, as the public rhetoric grew harsh. If Reid and Boehner, who later reconvened for private talks, don’t reach a deal Tuesday night, Obama wants them back at the White House for more talks Wednesday.

“And if that doesn’t work, we’ll invite them again the day after that,” the president said, “and I will have my entire team available to work through the details of getting a deal done."

Government spending authority runs out Friday. If no agreement is reached on providing new funding for the rest of the fiscal year, through Sept. 30, many federal activities are expected to begin shutting down Saturday, such as museums, monuments and national parks.

Obama and his aides refused again to give specifics of their contingency plans for a shutdown. In the past, hundreds of thousands of “non-essential workers” across the country have been told not to report to federal work during budget shutdowns, while others deemed essential did go to work. So far, the Obama administration isn’t saying which workers will be told to stay home and what federal functions won’t be performed.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the federal budget office would start sending agencies memos in coming days about which operations to close if necessary. He said that the uniformed military would continue to get paid, but he referred questions about details to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which didn’t respond to questions, as it hasn’t for days.

Boehner offered a tentative solution Tuesday: extending the funding deadline another week while cutting $12 billion from current spending and funding the Pentagon for the rest of the fiscal year.

Forget it, Obama said.

“We’ve already done that twice,” he said, referring to previous short-term budget extensions. “That is not a way to run the government. I can’t have our agencies making plans based on two-week budgets.”

Democrats are willing to cut $33 billion from spending for the final six months of this fiscal year. The House of Representatives, on a party-line vote, approved $61 billion in cuts on Feb. 19 and added dozens of social-policy changes, such as cutting funds that would implement the 2010 health care overhaul legislation.

Privately, people close to the budget talks say that most of those social changes are likely to be dropped. But in return, Republicans want to cut more than $33 billion.

The budget drama unfolded Tuesday on two levels: Publicly, leaders hardened their rhetoric, but privately, signals suggested that a deal was in reach.

Reid’s public tone was the angriest. After the White House meeting, he accused Republicans of kowtowing to the tea party, the conservative grass-roots movement that helped elect dozens of GOP congressmen last year.

“We thought for several days we were very close to an agreement,” Reid said, but the White House meeting and other negotiations “really indicated to me … that the leadership in the House is being guided by the tea party.”

Boehner fired back. “If the government shuts down, the American people will know it was because Senate Democrats failed to do their job,” he said. “We can still avoid a shutdown, but Democrats are going to need to get serious about cutting spending, and soon.”

Meanwhile, some conservatives indicated that they were eager to end this scrap and move ahead with negotiations on the budget for fiscal 2012, which begins Oct. 1. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., unveiled a 73-page plan that contained sweeping budget changes — and restructuring of the government — that many conservatives have long sought. That’s where many Republicans want to take their stand, not behind the relatively minor spending cuts over the next six months that are hanging up Reid and Boehner.

”We’re trying to get to where a long-term solution is at hand,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

Ryan’s plan would reduce spending below Obama’s projected levels by $6.2 trillion over the next 10 years. His Republican-majority committee plans to write legislation incorporating his proposals Wednesday. The full House is expected to consider it next week.

The plan could provide conservatives with a convenient way to accept a deal this week for fiscal 2011, followed by a vote next week for Ryan’s plan, which tackles long-term issues and would make dramatic changes to Medicare, Medicaid and the tax system.

Ryan’s plan follows other recent budget proposals, notably the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's report in December, which spelled out how to cut spending by $4 trillion over a decade, and President Barack Obama’s $3.73 trillion fiscal 2012 budget, which would add $13 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

Ryan’s plan resists cuts in defense spending other than those that Defense Secretary Robert Gates already proposed. It retains the Bush-era tax reductions for top earners, which Obama wants to end eventually. And it would make big changes in how beneficiaries get Medicare and Medicaid assistance.

Medicaid would become a “block grant” program with Washington sending money to state capitals, which would decide how much to spend on recipients. Currently Medicaid is a federal-state shared program that provides health coverage to the poor according to rules set by Washington.

For Medicare, which pays for medical services for those 65 and older, House Republicans would have recipients choose private-insurance plans and the government would subsidize those plans. People now 55 and older would retain the existing Medicare plan.

Democrats and liberal groups bitterly criticized Ryan's plan.

“Representative Ryan’s proposal is partisan and ideological,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said in an illustrative statement. “He provides dramatic tax cuts for the wealthiest, financed by draconian reductions in Medicare and Medicaid. His proposals are unreasonable and unsustainable.” Steven Thomma contributed to this article.

ON THE WEB

Quinnipiac poll

House roll call on FY11 budget bill

List of House bill’s policy changes

Planned Parenthood

More on this Story

• Story | N.C. U.S. Rep. Price: Boehner listened too closely to 'tea party types' on budget
• Story | GOP leaders likely to drop social issues in budget compromise
• Story | Alaska farm research jobs may be lost in federal budget cuts
• Graphic | More would blame GOP for government shutdown
• Graphic | If there is a government shutdown
• On the Web | House Budget Committee – Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Resolution
• On the Web | More politics coverage from McClatchy

Rep. Paul Ryan, GOP Unveil 2012 Budget Proposal

Uploaded by PBSNewsHour on Apr 5, 2011

NewsHour Politics: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/topic/politics/

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., touted his 2012 budget proposal Tuesday.

The plan would cut some $6 trillion in spending over the next decade

Ryan gets props for bold plan, raps for one-sided focus

 

Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. | Steven Elliott/MCT

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Budget experts gave high marks for courage and low marks for the details in a bold Republican plan offered Tuesday to slash government spending by about $6 trillion over 10 years while overhauling costly medical programs for the elderly and poor.

The proposals from Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the chairman of the House Budget Committee, would reverse retirement policies that became staples of American life with President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs of the mid-1960s. They come against a backdrop of two decades of widening income inequality, in which America's top earners have won ever-increasing shares of society's wealth.

Ryan's is the opening move in a political chess match that's likely to unfold over several years. His plan effectively would end Medicare for seniors, revamp Medicaid for the poor, scrap the 2010 health care law, roll back nonmilitary federal spending overall and lower individual and corporate tax rates.

Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" plan has virtually no chance of enactment in the next two years, with Democrats in charge of the Senate and the White House, because it relies almost exclusively on cutting spending in programs that Democrats cherish. However, the plan does frame a Republican vision for 21st-century government, one that's likely to help American voters choose the future they want in 2012.

Independent analysts praised Ryan for getting ahead of President Barack Obama by daring to propose bold changes to costly programs that, unless overhauled, will send the national debt soaring as baby boomers — 75 million Americans born from 1946 to 1964 — reach retirement age soon.

"I give him credit for putting out a proposal. He's ahead of the president on this, because the president says he cares about debt reduction but hasn't proposed anything specific," said Leonard Burman, a tax and budget expert at Syracuse University.

"I think Chairman Ryan should be commended for his leadership and courage to lay out a specific framework that would achieve spending cuts even greater" than earlier commissions proposed, said David Walker, a former U.S. comptroller general who's crusaded for years on the need to tackle the looming threat of federal debt.

The most controversial part of Ryan's plan is its eventual elimination of Medicare, the federal health plan for seniors, and its significant changes to Medicaid, the joint state and federal program that provides health care to the poor.

Ryan would give states block grants for Medicaid and end federal rules specifying who gets what benefits, leaving those determinations to state governments.

On Monday, 17 Democratic governors wrote congressional leaders to protest Ryan's Medicaid plan, which they said "would shift costs and risk to states. Such a cost shift would severely undercut our ability to provide health care to our residents and adequately pay providers. ... In the face of state and federal budget pressures and rising health care costs, we need federal policy that creates cost savings, not cost shifting."

Under Medicare today, the federal government covers about half the health expenses of Americans 65 and older. Ryan's plan would end this program for anyone who retires after 2021 and replace it with a "premium support" program. Older Americans would choose among several private insurance plans that would operate on a federally regulated exchange. The federal government would subsidize their plans.

The government would save trillions, but costs would shift to retirees. While the government would adjust payments to the broad inflation rate, medical inflation — the rise in health care costs — has outpaced the overall rise in prices across the economy for the past 15 years.

Experts at the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute, which studies health and retirement issues, said Ryan's plan would affect the healthy and unhealthy quite differently.

"The good news for somebody that's really, really healthy is that they need only $75,000 (in savings) to cover post-retirement medical expenses," said Dallas Salisbury, the president of the institute. "The bad news for people post-age 65, it can be more than $500,000 to $600,000 to pay for" post-retirement health problems.

A senior today, on average, costs the Medicare system about $185,000, half of which the senior pays, Salisbury said. If Medicare ends, affected seniors would have to save at minimum another $90,000 to make up for lost Medicare contributions.

While Ryan's Medicare proposals may be faulted, experts said they confronted a grim reality: The payroll tax would have to triple to cover the cost of promised future benefits, or Medicare spending must be slashed in half to balance the budget. Neither option is politically feasible; hence the need for tough tradeoffs.

"You may like or not like the specifics of what Ryan is proposing ... but hey, something dramatic has to be done, because this is not sustainable," Salisbury said.

On another controversial front, Ryan's plan assumes that tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would remain in place over the next decade.

"While the problem is primarily a spending problem, it is going to take some additional revenues in order to achieve agreement," Walker said, underscoring that Democrats won't go along with budgets that simply cut spending while leaving tax cuts for the top earners in place.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned Tuesday that deficit reduction must allow the expiration of last year's two-year extension of tax reductions for the top 2 percent of earners.

"It's critically important," Geithner said, testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee. He noted that the country would have to borrow $1 trillion over 10 years to pay for the lost revenue from those cuts. "We cannot afford to do that; it is not a responsible act to do that."

Fiscal watchdogs such as the Concord Coalition say the extension of Bush-era tax cuts for the other 98 percent of earners is equally unaffordable and also should be on the negotiating table for fixing the federal budget.

Ryan proposes bringing individual and corporate taxes down to a top rate of 25 percent, but gives only vague details on how to pay for it, saying unspecified loopholes will have to be closed. In reality, this would involve curtailing popular tax breaks such as the mortgage interest deduction for individuals and a wide range of them for corporations.

In a statement, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised Ryan's plan as "an important first step" but was silent on its vague promise to close corporate tax loopholes.

Lowering tax rates was the easiest part of Ryan's plan, Burman said, but it can't be viewed in isolation.

"Cutting the corporate tax rate is a good idea if you could do it in a fiscally responsible way, which he doesn't do," Burman said. "The whole thing sort of locks in place grossly inadequate levels of revenues, and virtually all the deficit reduction is done on the spending side."

Americans, he said, "want a bigger government than he's laying out here, and we ought to figure out a way to pay for it."

On balance, budget experts don't expect changes on the scale of Ryan's plan to become law anytime soon.

"My view is that it's not likely that you are going to see significant actual reforms before the 2012 election," Walker said.

RYAN'S PLAN WOULD:

• Eliminate $6.2 trillion in government spending compared with President Barack Obama's 10-year budget blueprint, $5.8 trillion from current baseline budget projections.
• Reduce federal deficits by $4.4 trillion compared with the president's budget over 10 years.
• Eliminate what it calls $800 billion in taxes called for under the 2010 health care overhaul, and leave in place $1.5 trillion in Bush-era tax cuts over the next 10 years.
• Set the top individual and corporate tax rate at 25 percent while promising to end unspecified loopholes and popular deductions.
• End Medicare in 2021, replacing it with "premium support" programs.
• Replace Medicaid system with block grants to states.
• Freeze most government spending at below-2008 levels.
• Exempt the Pentagon from deep spending cuts.
(David Lightman contributed to this article.) ON THE WEB Ryan plan National commission report Bipartisan Policy Center report CBO report on deficit reduction

The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It

( Debt Held by the Public vs. Intragovernmental Holdings )

Current	Debt Held by the Public	Intragovernmental Holdings	Total Public Debt Outstanding
04/04/2011	9,650,003,952,066.04	4,593,927,612,150.53	14,243,931,564,216.57

Union Leader Says It’s Time To Start Collecting Signatures

April 1, 2011

By JOSELYN KING Political Writer , The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register

BELLAIRE - Groups opposed to Ohio Senate Bill 5 - passed Wednesday - already plan to put the measure up for referendum in the Nov. 2 general election, a local union leader said.
They were just waiting for Gov. John Kasich to sign the bill into law, according to Michael Dossie, president of the Eastern Ohio Education Association. Kasich did that Thursday night.
SB 5 reduces collective bargaining rights for Ohio's public employees.
"Once he signs, the referendum begins," Dossie said.
The law's opponents need to have at least 1,000 initial signatures to begin the referendum process, he continued.
A minimum of 231,148 signatures - equal to 6 percent of the total vote for governor in 2010 - must be gathered to get the referendum on the November ballot, he said.
In addition, petition signatures representing 3 percent of last year's gubernatorial vote must be gathered in 44 of Ohio's 88 counties, according to Dossie.
The referendum must be filed within 90 days of the governor's signature, and those collecting signatures will get 10 days to go out and get more signatures if more are needed. From there, it will go on to the Ohio Ballot Board, where the ballot language will be crafted.
"The language is going to be very simple," he continued. "It's going to ask, 'Shall the law be approved?' Yes or no."
Rep. Alan Landis, R-Dover, was among the 58 Ohio House members voting in favor of SB 5 this week. He termed his vote "a business decision ... and a tough one."
"By voting for the bill, I voted to get it out of the Ohio House," he said. "The passage allows the bill's opponents to put it on the ballot and let everyone decide. I'm in favor of letting the people look at it, and letting the people decide."
Landis said the measure "affects every Ohioan in one way or another."
"We've had a lot of issues not dealt with over the years, and we had to deal with issues of the past so we can move into the future," he said. "In light of our budget deficit, we can't not deal with this."
Rep. Lou Gentile, D-Steubenville, opposed SB 5.
"I voted for my constituents, who don't think it's necessary," he said. "Our top priority in the Ohio House should be to create jobs. This bill doesn't create one job. It hurts the middle class and the local economy.
"What's being done is against the will of people," he added. "Those people in the chamber watching ... you could see their frustration with this process. They don't feel like they're being heard."

Arizona Proposes Medicaid Fat Fee

• APRIL 1, 2011

By JANET ADAMY

Arizona's governor on Thursday proposed levying a $50 fee on some enrollees in the state's cash-starved Medicaid program, including obese people who don't follow a doctor-supervised slimming regimen and smokers.

Associated Press

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, center, at her January inauguration ceremony.

The plan, if approved by the Republican-dominated legislature, would mark the first time the state-federal health-care program for the poor has charged people for engaging in behavior deemed unhealthy.
Some companies have insurance surcharges for employees who smoke, but they aren't a staple of government-administered health programs.
Republican Gov. Jan Brewer proposed the idea as part of a broader plan to raise money that would allow the state to offset recent cuts she engineered to its Medicaid program. If ratified, the measure would revive coverage of organ transplants, which Arizona limited last year as a way to save money. It would also reduce the number of childless adults disqualified from Medicaid to 135,000, compared with the original proposal of 250,000.

"If you want to smoke, go for it," said Monica Coury, spokeswoman for Arizona's Medicaid program. "But understand you're going to have to contribute something for the cost of the care of your smoking."
She said the proposal is a way to reward good behavior and raise awareness that certain conditions, including obesity, raise costs throughout the system.
Ms. Brewer's surcharge would apply only to only certain childless adults: Those who are obese or chronically ill, and those who smoke. They would need to work with a primary-care physician to develop a plan to help them lose weight and otherwise improve their health. Patients who don't meet specified goals would be required to pay the $50, under terms of the proposal.
In Arizona, 25.5% of residents were obese as of 2009, according to figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ranking it about in the middle among states. About 46% of Arizona's Medicaid enrollees smoke daily, according to a 2006 survey by the state's Medicaid agency.
State Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, said such a fee would unfairly penalize those who can't control their weight. "If someone is obese because they're severely disabled or can't exercise, we shouldn't be punishing them," she said. "I mean, it's not their fault." Ms. Sinema said she would vote against the plan—mostly because of the enrollment cuts—and said such changes would require approval by voters rather than lawmakers.
Such a Medicaid fee typically would need authorization from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington, and federal rules could prevent Arizona from enacting it. Mary Kahn, a spokeswoman for the agency, said no such levy has ever been approved.
Ms. Coury suggested federal rules may not apply to those affected by the proposal, because Arizona extends coverage to them beyond what Washington requires.
Unlike private insurers, which often charge different premiums based on customers' health status, Medicaid must enroll all those who meet its eligibility requirements.
Medicaid's rising cost has become one of the biggest problems for states struggling to balance their budgets. It is one of states' top two expenditures, along with education, and has ballooned in recent years as more people lose jobs and otherwise fall on hard times.
Ms. Coury said Arizona officials hadn't yet finalized how they would determine whether a person was obese or had sufficiently followed a wellness plan, but that measures such as body-mass index could provide some guidance. All childless adults enrolled in Medicare who smoke would be required to pay the annual $50 fee.
If approved as is, the provision would take effect Oct. 1.

Why does James Inhofe support Ivory Coast's Gbagbo?

Posted By Elizabeth Dickinson Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 5:12 PM

 

As the situation in the Ivory Coast rapidly deteriorates, Sen. James Inhofe (Okla. - R) has written to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling for new elections in the Ivory Coast, a signal of support for outgoing president Laurent Gbagbo who has refused to step down from office after losing an internationally certified presidential ballot in November.
Inhofe's position starkly contradicts the administration's policy on the Ivory Coast, where Gbagbo has been widely accused of targeting civilians and opposition supporters during the four month stand-off. U.S., European, U.N., and African Union policy has called for the outgoing president to step down immediately. Today, the U.N. Security Council slapped tough sanctions on his regime, adding to existing American, European, and African sanctions already in place. 
So how did an Oklahoma senator come to support a man that most see as an obstacle to peace in the Ivory Coast?
Salon got the first bite out of this story, reporting that Inhofe and Gbagbo met through a Christian group known as the Fellowhip. Read that side of the story here.
When I spoke to Sen. Inhofe by phone today, he told me that he had known Gbagbo for years. "We have a lot of friends in common." I asked him if he had been able to communicate with Gbagbo since the November election, to which he replied: "I have been able to, but I have not."
Inhofe first wrote to the State Department to contest the Ivorian elections on February 9, when he says that he provided documented evidence that the vote had been flawed. 
Then, earlier this week, a former member of Gbagbo's outgoing government, Mel Eg Theodore, visited Inhofe to discuss the political stand off in the Ivory Coast. Theodore told me this afternoon by phone that he arrived in Washington from Abidjan just two days ago to meet with U.S. officials about the country's political stand off. He said he "didn't have  chance" to meet with the State Department, but he claimed that evidence of the fraud -- including voting records -- was sent to Foggy Bottom months ago.
"We have received things from those purporting to be from Gbagbo," a state department official told me today. "And we have seen some things that have clearly been manufactured. We know that the U.N. [which certified the election results] has maintained copies of all of the voting records as well.
"We share his concern for the violence on the ground, but we remain clear that Gbagbo must step down."
In his letter to Clinton, Inhofe claims to have spoken with Ivorian officials. He also told me he had conferred with five "sub-Saharan African" heads  of government "who are very close to this issue and who agree [the election] was stolen, no question about that." The heads of state, he said, had chosen not to make their allegations publically in hopes of preventing more bloodshed.
Inhofe writes that he also wants to prevent further bloodshed on the ground in calling for new elections, though a switch in U.S. policy at this stage would likely prolong the political deadlock.
Theodore denied that the Gbagbo government had been involved in committing atrocities against the Ivorian people. "Always it is lies and lies and more lies," he told me.
"Right now there is no fighting in the streets. Abidjan is more than quiet, it is even ghost city."