I remain deeply concerned by the security situation in Cote d’Ivoire. I strongly support the role that United Nations peacekeepers are playing as they enforce their mandate to protect civilians, and I welcome the efforts of French forces who are supporting that mission. Tragically, the violence that we are seeing could have been averted had Laurent Gbagbo respected the results of last year’s presidential election. To end this violence and prevent more bloodshed, former President Gbagbo must stand down immediately, and direct those who are fighting on his behalf to lay down their arms. Every day that the fighting persists will bring more suffering, and further delay the future of peace and prosperity that the people of Cote d’Ivoire deserve.
The people of Cote d’Ivoire have suffered too much throughout this period of unrest. The United States joins with the international community in our deep concern about reports of massacres in the western region of the country, and the dangers faced by innocent civilians – particularly the most vulnerable. All parties must show restraint and respect the rights of the Ivoirian people, and I welcome President Alassane Ouattara’s pledge to ensure accountability for those who have carried out attacks against civilians. Meanwhile, the United States will continue to support a future in which Laurent Gbagbo stands down, and President Ouattara and the government of Cote d’Ivoire can move beyond this current crisis and serve all of the Ivoirian people.
Republican Paul Ryan's budget proposal is brave, radical, and smart.
By Jacob WeisbergPosted Tuesday, April 5, 2011, at 6:09 PM ET
For the past 30 years, Republicans have been hypocrites about spending. They've raged against big government without ever proposing the kinds of cuts necessary to bring federal expenditures in line with tax revenues. Democrats have been more fiscally responsible, producing an actual budget surplus during Bill Clinton's second term. But they've been little better than Republicans when it comes to confronting the nation's long-term fiscal imbalance, which is driven by the projected growth in entitlement spending.
And before they reject everything in Ryan's plan, liberals might want to consider whether some of what he proposes doesn't in fact serve their own ultimate goals. Ryan's proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher provides an easy political target. But it's hard to make a principled liberal case for the program in its current form. To do so, you have to argue that government-paid health care should be a right only for people over the age of 65, and for no one else. Medicare covers doctor and hospital bills at 100 percent, regardless of income. This gives doctors and patients an incentive to maximize their use of the system and waste public resources. Choosing to pay 100 percent of Warren Buffett's medical bills while cutting Head Start reflects a strange set of social priorities, to say the least.
Ryan's alternative to Medicare hardly seems as terrible asPaul Krugmanmakes out. Seniors would enter the health care world the rest of us live in, with co-payments, deductibles and managed care. Eventually, cost control would require some tough decisions about end-of-life care and the rationing of high-tech treatments that have limited efficacy. But starting with a value of $15,000 per year, per senior—the amount government now spends on Medicare—Ryan's vouchers should provide excellent coverage. His change would amount to a minor amendment to the social contract, not a fundamental revision of it.
Effectively constraining the growth of Medicare could make it possible for Democrats to do a lot else that's important to them in the future. In 2010, Medicare spending was $519 billion, as compared with $666 billion forallnon-defense domestic discretionary spending. Growing at more than 7 percent a year, Medicare is projected to eventually consume nearly all federal tax revenues. It is crowding out everything else that Washington does or might want to do. Conversely, cutting Medicare's growth rate to near the overall rate of the economy would do more than anything else to enable the kind of activist government liberals support—investment in kids, education, jobs, and infrastructure. Ryan's goal isn't to empower the federal government. But if your goal is a more interventionist public sector, you might find yourself on Ryan's side of the Medicare debate.
Of the alternatives we face in controlling long-term spending growth, moving Medicare to a voucher system seems only mildly unfortunate—and nothing as compared with a debt-driven economic crisis that could stem from inaction. As Ryan rightly points out, this kind of crisis could come at any time and could cast a pall over the country's entire future. Keeping Medicare as a fee-for-service program simply isn't worth that risk. If anything, liberals should go further than Ryan did in this plan, adding a means-test that would diminish Medicare subsidies for upper-income beneficiaries.
There are, of course, some sleight-of-hand tricks in Ryan's plan. What he claims would restore fiscal balance would do nothing of the kind over the next decade, leaving $400 billion in annual deficits as far as the eye can see. That's because he slips a large tax cut into his "reform," leaving government revenues perpetually two percentage points lower than spending expenditures as a share of GDP. What's needed is not more tax cuts but a modest tax increase, of the kind theSimpson-Bowles fiscal commissionproposed. That failure is easily remedied, however, by adopting a top rate higher than the 25 percent he proposes, though still lower than the current 35 percent level.
Ryan also evades a lot of difficult particulars. He seldom spells out domestic spending cuts, preferring to kick the can down the road by applying "caps." He skirts the question of which deductions and tax subsidies he'd eliminate to pay for these lower rates. Unfortunately, you don't get big savings unless you eliminate mortgage interest and charitable deductions, which would be politically unpopular. Ryan includes theHeritage Foundation's projectionsabout job growth triggered by his plan—4 percent unemployment in 2015 vs. 5.9 percent without the plan—that are a supply-side fantasy. His anti-bailout rhetoric is silly pandering. I could go on.
But more than anyone else in politics, Rep. Ryan has made a serious attempt to grapple with the long-term fiscal issue the country faces. He has a largely coherent, workable set of answers. If you don't like them, now you need to come up with something better.
Posted ByJosh RoginTuesday, April 5, 2011 - 12:57 PM
Sen.John Cornyn(R-TX) will soon become the first senator to introduce a non-binding resolution expressing the sense of the Senate on the war in Libya, and it calls for regime change to be the explicitpolicy of the United States.
Cornyn could introduce his resolution as early as today. The resolution, which was obtained byThe Cable(PDF), states, "the policy of the United States should be to removeMuammar al-Qaddafifrom power and to use military force, if necessary, to achieve that goal."
The resolution also calls on PresidentBarack Obamato submit a plan to achieve Qaddafi's ouster, and to seek congressional authorization for the military intervention in Libya.
Cornyn's stance on Libya is contrary to Obama's policy in two ways: It explicitly calls for using U.S. force to oust Qaddafi and at the same time insists that Congress must approve any military action, even retroactively.
The resolution quotes Obama and other administration officials repeatedly insisting that the long-term policy is that Qaddafi should "step down." It then demands that Obama spell out exactly how that goal will be achieved and what U.S. objectives are in a post-Qaddafi Libya.
Cornyn's draft resolution also rejects the administration's assertion that aMarch 1 resolutioncalling for a no-fly zone in Libya, which passed by voice vote in the Senate, sufficed as "congressional authorization" for the extensive military operations the United States has engaged in to enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973.
Cornyn's resolution has little chance of being passed by the Senate; it is not likely to be supported by either Democratic leadership or many Senate Republicans, who would prefer a resolution that endorses the Obama administration's limited action in Libya.
Sens.John Kerry(D-MA),John McCain(R-AZ), andJoe Lieberman(I-CT) areworking on a draftof what they hope will be a consensus-winning resolution. McCain said that he wants to make sure the resolution is made up of "language that can receive an overwhelming vote in the Senate. It would not be a good signal, otherwise."
Senate Armed Services Committee chairmanCarl Levin(D-MI), one of Obama's staunchest defenders on Libya, is also said to be working on a separate resolution.
But other Republican senators are complicating the issue by insisting their views on the Libyan intervention get an airing. Like Cornyn, Sen.Marco Rubio(R-FL) also wants the Senate to officially endorse regime change, a step Senate Majority LeaderHarry Reid(D-NV)adamantly opposes.
Reid's office told theWashington Postthat Rubio's "rash suggestions could commit our troops irrevocably to a regime change and nation-building effort that could take months or years and cost billions of taxpayer dollars."
Meanwhile, Sen.Rand Paul(R-KY), who is against the Libya war, angered Reid andhalted work last weekon a small business bill by adding an amendment that would force the Senate to vote on whether the president has the right to wage war without congressional consent in cases where there is no imminent threat to the nation.
Paul is shining a spotlight on then-candidate Obama's2007 statementto theBoston Globe, in which he said, "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
Sooner rather than later, however, the Senate will have to find a way to express its will on the Libya war. Just whose resolution will come up for a vote, though, is still unclear.
Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is expected to leave that post by the fall and has been mentioned as a contender for the CIA directorship if current CIA Director Leon Panetta succeeds Robert Gates as defense secretary. UPI/Roger L. Wollenberg
Published: April 5, 2011 at 10:40 AM
WASHINGTON, April 5 (UPI) -- A potential musical chairs for top jobs in U.S. defense and national security is taking shape, several government officials said. Army Gen.David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is expected to leave that post by the fall and has been mentioned as a contender for the CIA directorship, National Public Radio reported. Current Director Leon Panetta is considered the top prospect to replace Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said he will step aside this year, the officials said. The White House and Pentagon officials offered no comment, NPR said. Petraeus worked with the CIA as commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. There had been speculation Petraeus would take the top NATO military job in Brussels after the current commander, U.S. Adm. James Stavridis, completes his tour. Stavridis is expected to become the next chief of naval operations, government officials said. Petraeus is not being considered for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military job in the Pentagon, when Adm. Michael Mullen leaves later this year, officials told NPR.
New entitlement program threatens to add tens of billions to national debt
April 4th, 2011- WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators John Thune (R-S.D.), Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) today introduced the Repeal the CLASS Entitlement Act, which would fully repeal the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, a new long-term care entitlement program included in Obamacare. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the $86 billion CLASS Act could end up adding tens of billions of dollars to the long-term budget.
"The CLASS Act threatens to put taxpayers on the hook for a massive new entitlement program," said Thune. "Our country's existing entitlements are well past the point of sustainability, and we cannot add yet another program to this existing burden. I look forward to working with my colleagues to move this bill through Congress and fully repeal the onerous CLASS Act without delay."
"The CLASS Act is a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff blush," said Graham. "It's billed as an insurance program for long-term care, but really it's just a huge and very costly government accounting trick. Remember Enron accounting? Well, I believe even Enron executives would be embarrassed by the accounting gimmicks created by the CLASS Act."
Experts predict the CLASS Act will attract enrollees who require high medical payouts, which will increase premiums for others and discourage young and healthy works from entering the risk pool.
Democrats have stated similar concerns over the CLASS Act's sustainability. The president's own Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has stated that the CLASS Act is "totally unsustainable," and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has called the program "a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would be proud of."
President Obama's Assistant Secretary for Aging, Kathy Greenlee, recently admitted that premiums collected in the CLASS Act were double counted as funding the program and as savings achieved in the health care law.
In the last session of Congress, Thune introduced an amendment to strip the CLASS Act from the health spending bill, and the effort received a majority of the Senate's support (51-47), but fell short of the necessary 60 vote threshold. Twelve Democrats voted to strip the program from the bill due to questions for long-term sustainability.
Posted by Jesse Lee on April 05, 2011 at 03:37 PM EDT
Speaking in the White House Briefing Room today after a meeting with Congressional Leaders of both parties, the President laid out his guiding principles for the negotiations on last year's budget and looking ahead:
From the outset, my goal has been to significantly cut our domestic spending but, at the same time, make sure we’re making key investments in things like education, infrastructure, innovation -- the things that are going to help us win the future.
He was blunt in saying that the American people expect Congress to get a deal done to avoid a government shut-down and that the consequences for our economy would be unacceptable. He was also clear that he and Democrats in Congress “have more than met the Republicans halfway at this point” by agreeing to same dollar figure in cuts that Republican Leadership originally proposed:
And I just want to set the context for this now. Again, I’m going to repeat. Speaker Boehner, Chairman Rogers, the Republican appropriations chairman -- their original budget proposed $73 billion in cuts. We have now agreed to $73 billion worth of cuts. What they are now saying is, well, we’re not sure that every single one of the cuts that you’ve made are ones that we agree to; we’d rather have these cuts rather than that cut. That’s not the basis for shutting down the government. We should be able to come up with a compromise in which nobody gets 100 percent of what they want, but the American people get the peace of mind in knowing that folks here in Washington are actually thinking about them -- because they’re going through a whole lot of struggles right now.
Going forward, the President said unequivocally that his White House would be willing put in as much time as necessary to avoid a shutdown, and that he expected Congressional leaders to do the same:
The only question is whether politics or ideology are going to get in the way of preventing a government shutdown. Now, what does this potentially mean for the American people? At a time when the economy is just beginning to grow, where we’re just starting to see a pickup in employment, the last thing we need is a disruption that’s caused by a government shutdown. Not to mention all the people who depend on government services, whether you’re a veteran or you’re somebody who’s trying to get a passport or you’re planning to visit one of the national monuments or you’re a business leader who’s trying to get a small business loan. You don’t want delays, you don’t want disruptions just because of usual politics in Washington.
So what I said to the Speaker today, and what I said to Leader Reid, and what I’ve said to the two appropriations chairs, is that myself, Joe Biden, my team, we are prepared to meet for as long as possible to get this resolved.
PresidentGeorge W. Bushentered 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 PresidentBill Clinton‘s administration and only slightly better than PresidentGeorge H.W. Bushdid in his four years in office.
Here’s a look at job creation under each president since theLabor Departmentstarted 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.
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 14speechin 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, theNew York Timesreportedthat 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, asTable 1.1of 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 theBureau 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 evenhalfthe 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 welast lookedat 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 askedJames 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 BYFACTCHECK.ORGON TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2011 AT 5:56 PM
