Will Catholic Bishops and the Religious Right Save Obama?

Joe Conason's column is released once a week.

By Joe Conason | Joe Conason – 16 hrs ago

What is most striking about the showdown over contraceptive freedom is not the political victory that President Obama earned by standing up for women's reproductive rights, although his Republican adversaries are certainly helping him to make the most of it. Those adversaries don't seem to realize they have fallen into a trap, whether the White House set them up intentionally or not.

While the Catholic bishops and their allies on the religious right insist that this is an argument over the First Amendment, their true, longstanding purpose now stands revealed to the public. They would begin by imposing their dogma on every woman unlucky enough to work for an employer who shares it — an agenda that is deeply unpopular even among the Catholic faithful, let alone the rest of the American electorate. Then they would impose it on everyone, as the theorists of the religious right suggest every time they deny the separation of church and state.
The bishops have nothing to lose except their flock, whose respect for the hierarchy has plunged anyway over its resistance to reform and its failure to punish abuses far graver and more sinful than contraception. If they had to stand for election, not many of them would be left standing. And if they had to face a referendum on this current matter, they would lose resoundingly to the president, according to the latest survey data.

In a poll taken last Friday for the Coalition to Protect Women's Health Care, Public Policy Polling found that 57 percent of Catholic voters endorse the Obama "compromise" that would ensure continued prescription birth control for women working in religious institutions, without requiring those institutions to pay directly for that coverage. Only 29 percent sided with the bishops, the religious right and the Republicans , while 5 percent actually think the religious institutions should pay for contraceptive coverage regardless of their doctrine. The cross-tabs of the PPP poll show that Latino Catholics, Catholic independent voters and Catholic women support the Obama solution by wide margins. (The most recent poll by Fox News Channel shows the same overwhelming approval for the president's position among the general public, with 61 percent of voters on his side versus only 34 percent against.)

Those statistics are no threat to the bishops, of course, but represent a profound problem for the Republican leaders and candidates who have signed up for this male geriatric crusade against modernity. Mitt Romney, for instance, seems to believe that by stoking evangelical paranoia about a supposed "war on religion" by Obama, he will subdue evangelical paranoia about his Mormonism (which, by the way, expressly permits birth control). His pandering commenced when he announced his 2012 candidacy, but grew still more intense this week when he accused the president of perpetrating an "assault" on religion.

Such tactics are unlikely to placate the prejudices arrayed against Romney — and even if they did, he will pay a very high price next fall for joining the angriest and most extreme culture warriors on this issue. Congressional Republicans will be courting the same danger if, as promised, they propose legislation that would overturn the Obama compromise and deprive women working for religious institutions of equal rights to contraceptive services.

The president should hold fast. He has proved that it is possible to uphold the principle of full access to birth control, which has been the pro-family social policy of the American majority for half a century, while respecting the religious convictions of all Americans. The wild ranting of his enemies is only helping him now — and may yet ruin them in November.

Joe Conason is the editor in chief of NationalMemo.com. To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Obama sends export agency reform bill to Congress

Reuters – 3 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged lawmakers on Thursday to grant him the power to reform and consolidate federal agencies, sending a bill to Congress that would help him fend off election-year charges by Republicans that he favors big government.

The law would reinstate a power last wielded by President Ronald Reagan, a hero to the Republican Party, as Obama campaigns for re-election in the November 6 election.

The White House said last month it would start by using the authority, if granted, to close the Commerce Department and shift a number of export-focused agencies, including the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, into a new agency.

"We cannot allow redundant bureaucracy and unnecessary red tape to stand in the way of creating good jobs here at home," Obama said in a statement to announce that the Consolidating and Reforming Government Act of 2012 had been sent to Capitol Hill.

Republicans, campaigning to deny him a second White House term, portray the president as a tax-and-spend liberal responsible for a bloated government. But they said they were ready to work with him on this issue, if he would do their legislative proposals the same courtesy.

"We're happy to take a look at it, just as we hope the president will take a look at the nearly 30 jobs bills the House has already passed," said Brendan Buck, spokesman for House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress.

(Reporting By Alister Bull; Editing by Peter Cooney)

The State Department Holds FY2013 Budget Briefing

State Dept. Budget Briefing

Washington, DC
Monday, February 13, 2012
State Department officials brief reporters on their department goals as spelled out in President Obama's proposed FY2013 budget.
Following the release of the President's proposed FY2013 budget, State Department officials held a briefing on aspects of the department's budget. Thomas Nides, the Deputy Secretary of State, and Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator, spoke. Deputy Secretary of State Nides serves as Chief Operating Officer of the Department and assistant to Secretary of State Clinton. USAID Administrator Shah is the 16th Administrator of the USAID and leads the efforts of more than 8,000 professionals in 80 missions around the world.

Updated: Wednesday at 7:47am (ET)

DoD Holds Briefings on FY2013 Budget Proposal

Washington, DC
Monday, February 13, 2012
Coinciding with President Obama's release of next fiscal year's budget, the Defense Department is set to hold four press briefings Monday afternoon addressing different aspects of their slice of the budget.
At 2pm ET, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Robert Hale and Lt. Gen. Larry O. Spencer will brief press from the Pentagon. The Defense Department plans to cut $487 billion from the budget over the next 10 years. Hale will discuss the overall budget and how cuts will affect military readiness.
Then, at 3:15pm ET, Army Budget Director Maj Gen. Phillip McGee and Deputy Director Barbara Bonessa will hold their press briefing. Officials will lay out specifics on trimming the budget and programs that will be cut. The Army is expected to cut about 80,000 soldiers and reduce the number of combat brigades from 45 to as few as 32 as part of wide-ranging changes to the army’s force structure to cut costs.
Navy Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget Rear Adm. Joseph Mulloy holds a briefing at 4pm ET. He will discuss specific programs that will be cut to help trim the Defense Department budget.
And at 4:45pm ET, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Budget Maj. Gen. Edward Bolton and Deputy Marilyn Thomas hold the day's final Defense Department briefing. They will talk about the Defense Department’s new FY 2013 budget request, its affect on the Air Force and how it will maintain readiness and capabilities with budget reductions. The U.S. Air Force is proposing to cut 123 fighters and 133 airlifters to help cut costs.
The President's 2012 Fiscal Year budget proposal requested $670.9 billion for the Defense Department, which was about $37.3 billion less than the previous year's request.


Video Playlist

• Defense Department FY2013 Budget Briefing
• Department of the Army FY2013 Budget Briefing
• Department of the Navy FY2013 Budget Briefing
• Department of the Air Force FY2013 Budget Briefing

Treasury Department's 2013 Budget Request(House)

Feb 16,2012

House Committee Budget

Secretary Geithner testified on the Treasury Department's fiscal year 2013 budget request.

Treasury Department's 2013 Budget Request(Senate)

Feb 14, 2012

Senate Committee Finance

Secretary Geithner testified on the Treasury Department's fiscal year 2013 budget request. He said President Obama's $3.8 trillion package will reduce deficits significantly over time and put the nation back on a sustainable .. Read More

Secretary Geithner testified on the Treasury Department's fiscal year 2013 budget request. He said President Obama's $3.8 trillion package will reduce deficits significantly over time and put the nation back on a sustainable budget path.The proposal includes raising revenues, one of which is a tax hike on the top two percent of wage earners. Republican committee members argued the increase will only hurt small businesses who are the main job creators.

Health and Human Services 2013 budget.(Senate)

Feb 15, 2012

Senate Committee Finance

Secretary Sebelius testified about the fiscal year 2013 Health and Human Services budget.

President Obama's 2013 Budget Request (Senate)

Senate Committee Budget
Feb 14, 2012

Jeffrey Zients testified on President Obama's fiscal year 2013 budget proposal.

Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Request

Feb 13, 2012

Office of Management and Budget

Obama administration officials spoke to reporters about the fiscal year 2013 budget proposal. Live coverage of this program was interrupted for a pro forma House session.

President Obama's 2013 Budget Request (House)

Feb 15, 2012

House Committee Budget

Jeffrey Zients testified on President Obama's fiscal year 2013 budget proposal.

New defense cuts threaten bases, shipyards

1
day

ago

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, right, accompanied by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, testifies on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer

At a time when President Barack Obama is proposing more than $120 billion in new and enhanced tax incentives for companies to manufacture in America, not overseas, one part of the nation’s industrial base -- a sector where foreigners aren't allowed to fully compete -- is under siege.
Smaller defense budgets proposed by Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will cancel some made-in-America ships, airplanes and unmanned aerial vehicles and slow down the purchase of others.
The Obama budget also threatens to shut manufacturing and repair facilities, such as the 212-year old Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which sits on an island between Maine and New Hampshire.
Obama’s budget blueprint calls for defense outlays to drop by 5 percent over the next two years, and fall from 19 percent of federal spending this year to 13 percent by 2022.
In a four-hour hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, Panetta defended his call for fewer ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other hardware.

And he made the case for his proposal for two more rounds of the base realignment and closure (BRAC) process that would close bases and shipyards across America.
But he faced concerns and criticism from both Republicans and Democrats on the committee -- about the threat to blue-collar manufacturing and repair jobs as well to national security.
Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., told Panetta that “perhaps most disturbing of all” was the fact that at a time when U.S. strategy is increasingly focusing on East Asia and the Pacific, “this budget would reduce shipbuilding by 28 percent.”
Sen. Roger Wicker, R- Miss., whose state is home to the Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, pointed to the 8.3 percent unemployment rate and noted that Obama’s budget proposal has various job creation ideas -- such as transportation infrastructure -- in it.

The Grio's Perry Bacon, Former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, and the Huffington Post's Jon Ward discuss the latest political news, including the GOP candidates' public comments about the President's budget.

“It makes no sense to me -- at a time when there is an effort to create more jobs with other spending -- to cut defense spending, which gives us the ‘two-fer’ of protecting the country and protecting the industrial base, which is a whole lot of Americans working to provide us with the infrastructure we need,” Wicker said. “It is a fact, is it not, that this budget will have an adverse effect on our industrial base?”

Panetta replied, “We’ve taken a lot of steps to try to protect against that happening, because we absolutely have to protect our industrial base and those industries that support the defense budget. We can’t afford to lose any more and, for that reason, we design an approach that will keep them in business …”

But keep them in business with fewer manufacturing jobs, Wicker noted.

“There will be, I understand that, and that does have some impact,” Panetta admitted.

Later in the hearing, pressed by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Panetta said he would make sure that “we keep our industrial base busy, serving our needs.”

“Once that industrial base is gone, you never get it back and once those trained workers go into other fields you’ve lost them forever,” Collins told Panetta. “And that would greatly weaken our capabilities.”

Armed Services Committee members such as Sen. Joe Lieberman, I –Conn., are also opposing delays in building the Virginia-class submarine, which is built in Connecticut and repaired in New Hampshire.

As for closing excess bases and shipyards, Panetta said, “I don’t know of any other way” to cut infrastructure and get the savings needed “without going through that kind of process.”
When Panetta served as a House member from California in 1991, he saw BRAC first hand when the BRAC commission closed Ft. Ord near Monterey, costing more than 16,000 jobs.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

President Barack Obama's newly-proposed 2013 budget, has been criticized by Republicans as a political document in an election year – calling it "dead on arrival." Economist Greg Ip takes a closer look at Obama's plan

“I’ve been through the process; frankly I don’t wish the process on anybody,” he told Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D- N.H., who was defending the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
“Twenty five percent of my local economy was hit by virtue of a BRAC closure,” Panetta told her. But he said the community did use the closing as an opportunity to develop a college campus.
“I see very little support for the president’s proposal on BRAC,” Collins said, in an interview during a break in the hearing.
“If you look at the GAO reports on the last BRAC round, it has turned out to cost the government money, rather than saving money -- at least for the first five years. So I think there’s a great deal of skepticism both about the savings that would be produced and also whether there really is excess capacity.”
She said she did not think Congress would vote to launch another BRAC round. Portsmouth was on the hit list in 2005, but the BRAC commission overrode the Pentagon recommendation that it be closed. “Tony Principi, the BRAC chairman at the time, described Portsmouth Naval Shipyard as ‘the gold standard in naval yards.’”
The economic impact of closing the shipyard would huge in southern Maine, Collins said: “It’s a major employer in York County and beyond York County. Half the workers are from New Hampshire -- it affects both states”
In bipartisan accord was her Democratic neighbor, Shaheen who said after hearing, “The number one priority is national security. The Portsmouth Naval shipyard was created … because of national security – but there are a lot of good jobs there. To look at the equation without factoring that in, along with costs, would be shortsighted.”

One dissenter on the committee was Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., who said he did not consider defense manufacturing as “a job creator for America.” He also said he does think it’s necessary to consider another BRAC round -- “as hard as that is for my colleagues.”

Tompom

Defense is over half of the discretionary spending in the budget. I understand big ships are pretty vulnerable to anyone with a motorboat and a missile, or an airplane etc. They are handy to get large numbers of troops to foreign countries - but there are probably other viable options options that are at least as quick and cheaper.
Building expensive, outdated behemoths just to create jobs doesn't seem like a very good idea to me. If we sink our economy to produce expensive toys today, we won't have any power tomorrow.

• 95 votes

#1 - Tue Feb 14, 2012 4:54 PM EST

Greg-621390

All these politicians care about is making it look like they give a hoot about the people who put them in office. Most of them own stocks in the companies that are pillaging the government at every turn. Everyone knows that the whole acquisition system for DOD is a complete disaster and ends up costing tax payers more and more each year. Notice of course that all but one of the negative comments come from republicans that have facilities on the chopping block. This is all part of the pork barrel spending that everyone complains about yet, when it comes to something like this, the President is an a$$. Perhaps if Congress gave the President line item veto authority, there could be a more direct approach at killing these BS pork barrel projects that every member of Congress wants in the budget. Just as many posts have stated: it seems that the 97% has been forced to make cuts over the past couple years in order to live within their means and just to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. But, this isn't the case with the government. So, we can do one of two things make budget cuts or raise taxes, otherwise the deficit will continue to rise. So, as most of the American public has been forced to cut out about every enjoyment in life that they had in order to survive it's time for others that have been making huge profits to pick up their fair share of the burden. Congress needs to overhaul taxes and place more of a burden on the top 3%, who have been living high on the hog at the expense of the other 97%. Then, they need to look at tax reform for businesses. If they choose to build there products overseas and then bring them to the US I say put a tariff on them. This includes tariffs on all the call center jobs that companies like AT&T have shifted overseas. If businesses aren't going to choose to bring jobs back to America, then make it less lucrative for them and better for the rest of us. 50% of this nation lives in poverty and the lowest economic class, there is no reason why those who live in their million dollar homes and go out and spend $500 on a meal at a restaurant, shouldn't have to pull their weight. I believe in the security of our nation otherwise, I wouldn't have spent 21 years in uniform but, perhaps instead of playing police for the world and having bases all over the place that cost billions of dollars a year to run with foreign workers maybe we need to bring our troops back to the US, place them all around the nation providing better security within our borders and let the government spend money running bases that employ Americans, who will pay US taxes. Hell, we still don't have a budget for the fiscal year that began October 1st, does anyone really think that the current Congress can come to any compromise? I say vote them all out and let's look at a fresh start.

william whittemore-3007421

Yeah, Tompon is out of touch a little bit and has no idea what he is talking about. All you have to do is do a little past history research to find out that after every war the government cut back on the military and defense spending. Guess what happened when we got caught up in another war? We were caught with our pants down and lacking the resources to fight the modern battlefield. The Navy has to be stronger than the other services. It cost a lot of money to send troops and equipment from point A to point B. Also, our adversaries aren't waiting for us to catch up with them in the technology department. The Navy punches a hell of a lot of firepower whether you know it or not. Especially the submarines.

• 15 votes

#1.16 - Tue Feb 14, 2012 6:09 PM EST

2013 Transportation Department budget request.

Feb 15, 2012
Senate Committee Budget

Secretary Ray LaHood testified on the 2013 Transportation Department budget request.