I watched last night on Usa Network 10Pm -11:25Pm I was riveted, It was like looking at a parallel universe, a little different. Personally I liked when their Secretary of State told her secret service driver, she was going to run for President. I hope that Our Secretary of State will say she will run for President, in 2016. That gives her maybe two year to rest up for the battle.
Sigourney Weaver thinks it would be "amazing" if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton runs for president again in 2016. "In four years, maybe we'll be ready for her," Weaver said. "She's certainly ready for us."
Weaver sat down with David for a PRESS Pass interview to promote her upcoming mini-series Political Animals in which her character, Elaine Hammond, has striking similarities to Clinton. Hammond is a former First Lady, who ran for president, lost, and was appointed by her rival to be Secretary of State.
Weaver argues that Elaine is her own woman and says that the character was inspired by "not only the Clintons, but by a lot of the families who've been in the White House."
Speaking of inspiration, Weaver hopes her role will inspire more women to get in to politics.
"One of the reasons I wanted to do this show was to show a woman politician who is so herself and so direct and who brings the kind of female energy to politics that I've seen as a mother." She later continued, "because I do think it might actually encourage more women to run. We'd be very good. We'd certainly do as good a job if not better."
She is also not shy about her support of President Obama and her hope that he can accomplish a lot more in a second term. "I do think that if he gets four more years, it's been so frustrating for him and for a lot of his supporters that I think he'll just go for it."
Watch the entire interview with Sigourney Weaver above to hear more about Political Animals and how she thinks President Obama is a political animal himself.
US builds criminal cases in interest rate-fixing scandal
Prospect of charges could push financial institutions to settle with authorities
Dylan Martinez
/
Reuters, file
Bob Diamond, shown in 2010 after he was named Barclays PLC CEO, quit as result of a market-rigging scandal.
By BEN PROTESS and MARK SCOTT
updated
7/15/2012 1:05:56 AM ET
As regulators ramp up their global investigation into the
manipulation of interest rates, the Justice Department has identified
potential criminal wrongdoing by big banks and individuals at the center
of the scandal.
The department’s criminal division is building cases against several
financial institutions and their employees, including traders at Barclays,
the British bank, according to government officials close to the case
who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is
continuing. The authorities expect to file charges against at least one
bank later this year, one of the officials said.
The prospect of criminal cases is expected to rattle the banking
world and provide a new impetus for financial institutions to settle
with the authorities. The Justice Department investigation comes on top
of private investor lawsuits and a sweeping regulatory inquiry led by
the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Collectively, the civil and criminal actions could cost the banking industry tens of billions of dollars.
Moody's and Standard & Poor's both lowered their outlooks on Barclays to "negative" from "stable" in the wake of the interest rate manipulation scandal.
Authorities around the globe are examining whether financial firms
manipulated interest rates before and after the financial crisis to
improve their profits and deflect scrutiny about their health.
Investigators in Washington and London sent a warning shot to the
industry last month, striking a $450 million settlement with Barclays in
a rate-rigging case. The deal does not shield Barclays employees from
criminal prosecution.
The multiyear investigation has ensnared more than 10 big banks in
the United States and abroad. With the prospects of criminal action,
several firms, including at least two European institutions, are
scrambling to arrange deals, according to lawyers close to the case. In
part, they are trying to avoid the public outcry that stemmed from the
Barclays case, which prompted the resignation of top executives.
The criminal and civil investigations have focused on how banks set the London interbank offered rate,
known as Libor. The benchmark, a measure of how much banks charge one
another for loans, is used to determine the borrowing costs for
trillions of dollars of financial products, including mortgages, credit
cards and student loans.
Cities, states and municipal agencies also are examining whether they
suffered losses from the rate manipulation, and some have filed suits.
With civil actions, regulators can impose fines and force banks to
overhaul their internal controls. But the Justice Department would wield
an even more potent threat by bringing criminal fraud cases against
traders and other employees. If found guilty, they could face jail time.
The criminal investigations come at a time when the public is still
simmering over the dearth of prosecutions of prominent executives
involved in the mortgage crisis. The continued trouble in the financial
sector, including the multibillion-dollar trading losses at JPMorgan Chase, have only further fueled the anger of consumers and investors.
But the Libor case presents a potential opportunity for prosecutors.
Given the scope of the problems and the number of institutions involved,
the rate-rigging investigation could provide a signature moment to hold
big banks accountable for their activities during the financial crisis.
“It’s hard to imagine a bigger case than Libor,” said one of the government officials involved in the case.
The Justice Department has jurisdiction over the London bank rate
because the benchmark affects markets in the United States. It could not
be learned which institutions the criminal division is chasing next.
Will Barclays chief executive Robert Diamond bring others down with him? There are signs he will. ITV’s Chris Ship reports.
According to people briefed on the matter, the Swiss bank UBS
is among the next targets for regulatory action. The Commodity Futures
Trading Commission is pursuing a potential civil case against the bank.
Regulators at the agency have not yet decided to file an action against
the bank, nor have settlement talks begun. UBS has already reached an
immunity deal with one division of the Justice Department, which could
protect the bank from criminal prosecution if certain conditions are
met. The bank declined to comment.
The investigation into the global banks is unusually complex and it
could continue for years, and ultimately end in settlements rather than
indictments, said the officials close to the case. For now, regulators
are building investigations piecemeal because the facts of the cases
vary widely. That could make it difficult to compile a global
settlement, although some banks would prefer an industrywide deal to
avoid the harsh glare of the spotlight, said a lawyer involved in the
case.
American authorities face another complication as they build cases.
Investigators still lack access to certain documents from big banks.
Before gathering some e-mail and bank records from overseas firms,
the Justice Department and American regulators need approval from
British authorities, according to the people close to the case. But
officials in London have been slow to act, the people said. At times,
British authorities have hesitated to investigate.
By contrast, the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission have spent two years building cases together. Lanny Breuer,
head of the Justice department’s criminal division, has close ties with
David Meister, the former federal prosecutor who runs the commission’s
enforcement team.
In the Barclays case, the British bank was accused of reporting false
rates to squeeze out extra trading profits and fend off concerns about
its health. During the crisis, banks feared that reporting high rates
would suggest a weak financial position.
Lawmakers in London and Washington are examining whether regulators
looked the other way as banks artificially depressed the rates. On
Friday, it was disclosed that a Barclays employee notified the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
in April 2008 that the firm was underestimating its borrowing costs.
Despite the warning signs, the illegal actions continued for another
year.
But in April 2008, a senior enforcement official at the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission, Vincent McGonagle, opened an investigation.
He directed the case along with another longtime official, Gretchen
Lowe.
A British parliamentary committee grilled former Barclays executive Bob Diamond as he admitted some traders broke the rules by fudging numbers on key interest rates. NBC’s Michelle Kosinski reports.
At first the case stalled as the agency waited months to receive
millions of pages of documents when Barclays pushed back against the
American regulators, according to the officials close to the case. By
the fall of 2009, the trading commission received a trove of
information, providing a broad view into the wrongdoing.
A series of incriminating e-mail and instant messages, regulators
say, laid bare the multiyear scheme. In one document, a Barclays
employee said the bank was “being dishonest by definition.”
The case gained further traction in early 2010, when the agency’s
enforcement team engaged the Justice Department. The department’s
criminal division, led by Mr. Breuer, agreed that regulators had a
strong case. The investigation continued until January 2012, when the
trading commission notified Barclays lawyers that they were entering the
final stages before deciding about an enforcement action.
As part of the deal, regulators pushed the bank to adopt new controls
to prevent a repeat of the problems. Among other measures, the bank
must now “implement firewalls” to prevent traders from improperly
talking with employees who report rates.
The bank says that it provided extensive cooperation during the three
inquiries, and has spent around $155 million on its own three-year
investigation. Because it agreed to settle with British authorities,
Barclays received a 30 percent fine reduction.
In the United States, Barclays offered to pay a fine of $200 million
to the C.F.T.C., slightly below the initially proposed range, according
to government officials close to the case. Mr. Meister’s team soon
accepted the offer, securing the biggest fine in the commission’s
history.
On June 27, British and American authorities announced the deal with
Barclays, which agreed to pay more than $450 million total. “For this
illegal conduct, Barclays is paying a significant price,” Mr. Breuer
said then. Susanne Craig contributed reporting.
Watch the original 1966 NBC News documentary, "Mississippi: A Self-Portrait" in its entirety.
By Tim Beacham and Paul Ryan Dateline NBC
WARNING: Some of the language in this story could be considered shocking to some.
The
Mississippi Delta is thousands of miles and a lifetime away from
Southern California where Raymond De Fellita and Yvette Johnson grew up.
Ray
is white and pushing 50. He was raised in the Hollywood Hills, the son
of a successful filmmaker and novelist. Yvette, is black and more
than 10 years younger than Ray. She grew up in a gated community in San
Diego, the daughter of former NFL football star.
Until the spring
of 2011, the two of them had never met. But in a strange twist of fate,
both discovered that they shared a unique bond, rooted in an NBC News
documentary that aired only once, on a Sunday evening in May 1966.
The film, called Mississippi:A Self Portrait, was written,
produced and directed by Ray's father, Frank De Fellita. Yvette's
grandfather, Booker Wright, was its star. Although he made only a brief
cameo appearance in the film, it was an appearance that would have a
lasting impact of the lives of both Booker and Frank. And nearly 50
years later, it would draw Ray and Yvette together on a project to find
the meaning of that single moment captured on a grainy snippet of film.
As
a child, Ray watched the films his father had made when he worked as a
producer for NBC News in the 1960s. There were documentaries about the
Battle of the Bulge, the Ghosts of England, and Adoption. But Ray's
favorite by far, was Mississippi: A Self-Portrait.
"And I
remember when we used to screen the films at home. They were, by then,
10 years old." Ray says. "They looked to me much older, you know?
'Cause it was the 1970s and everyone in those movies was wearing thin
ties. And it's in black and white and it's like another world. But I
remember seeing Mississippi and finding the film striking. Largely because of Booker Wright."
Frank
De Felitta had set out for Mississippi to make his film in the Spring
of 1965--a perilous time in the Civil Rights Era. It was less than a
year after the murders of three Civil Rights workers who'd been helping
Mississippi blacks register to vote. Nearly 40 black churches had been
burned to the ground in Mississippi the previous summer. And the Delta
cotton town of Greenwood-- where Frank ultimately shot much of his
film-- had seen plenty of trouble. Ten years earlier, Emmit Till—a
15-year-old visiting from Chicago--had been lynched nearby for whistling
at a white woman. And Greenwood was home to Byron de la Beckwith--a man
who, at the time, had already been twice tried and acquitted for the
murder of Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers. Frank knew it would be a
dangerous undertaking.
Former
NBC News producer Frank De Felitta recalls a time he and his film crew
faced some real danger in 1960s Mississippi. This web exclusive is part
of the Dateline report 'Finding Booker's Place' from Sunday, July 15th,
at 7pm/6c.
"The FBI scared me," Frank remembers. "They told
me, 'We think you're crazy. You're not going to be welcomed. And we
can't help you. All we can give you are some phone numbers. All
throughout Mississippi we have agents.'"
According to Frank, Booker Wright came close to not even being in the film because Frank never intended to interview blacks.
"The
whole idea of the Mississippi picture was not to do the story of black
angst. We know that. We were trying to see whether Mississippians,
white Mississippians, can reconcile themselves to a better way of
treating the blacks."
For weeks Frank De Filleta says he wandered
around Greenwood, sampling white opinion. For the most part, whites
defended segregation and told Frank that they believed blacks were happy
with the status quo.
"I feel that God had a purpose in creating
the races separate," one middle-aged white woman told Frank and his
crew. "I am so proud of negroes who are so proud of being negroes.
They are what God made them. And I'm proud of being white because I am
what my white race has made me. I am white today because my parents
practiced segregation."
When Frank gathered the town's leaders,
they told him they thought the races were getting along just fine in
Greenwood. "I think our colored people are very happy, extremely happy
here in Mississippi," said one of them. "I think they feel the same way
about us."
Then one day, a member of Frank's crew suggested that
he meet a black waiter who worked at a “whites only” restaurant in
Greenwood.
"He came to me one day and said, 'I got a wonderful
black man. His name is Booker Wright. And he's a waiter at Lusco's
Restaurant. And what he does, is a minstrel scene. He does a singsong
of the menu. And that's the only menu they have. People wanna know the
menu, they get, 'Booker, go tell 'em.' And he'll sing them the song of
the menu. And it's absolutely delightful.'"
Once Frank saw Booker
Wright perform the menu recitation, he arranged to film the routine the
next day. So Booker Wright recited the menu for Frank's camera. Then,
without warning, he shifted gears and launched into a monologue that had
been 40 years in the making:
"Now that's what my customers, I say
my customers are expecting from me," he began. "Some people nice. Some
is not. Some call me Booker. Some call me John. Some call me Jim. Some
call me @!$%#! All of that hurts but you have to smile. The meaner the
man be the more you have to smile, even though you're crying on the
inside.
"You're wondering what else can I do. Sometimes he'll tip you,
sometimes he'll say, ‘I'm not gonna tip that @!$%#, he don't look for no
tip.’ I say, 'Yes sir, thank you.' I'm trying to make a living."
For nearly two minutes, Booker Wright, spoke straight to the camera, and straight from the heart.
"Night
after night I lay down and I dream about what I had to go through with.
I don't want my children to have to go through with that. I want them
to get the job they feel qualified. That's what I'm struggling for,"
Booker concluded.
"I went there to photograph a minstrel show,"
Frank says, "And I stayed there to hear a man talking about his life and
what his dreams are. And it was so moving."
But now, Frank De
Fellita says he was confronted with a classic documentarian's conundrum.
On the one hand, he knew he had great material for his film. On the
other hand, he knew including Booker Wright's comments in his film could
place Booker in grave danger since Mississippi was such a hot spot for
racial violence and intimidation at that time.
"I said to him,
'Well, look, this is brave of you to say that, but this movie will go
all over the country. They'll see it and they could come and kill you.'
He said, 'Well, so be it. I want to be heard.' I said, 'If you change
your mind, you can call me and say, “Don't show it.”’”
Booker
Wright never changed his mind, and just as Frank had feared, the
reaction in Greenwood once the film aired was swift and harsh. Booker
lost his job at the all-white restaurant where he'd worked for 25 years,
and he was badly beaten.
"He found himself in the hospital the
next morning," Frank remembers. "They beat him something terrible. He
was wounded all over his body. They didn't kill him. That, to me, was
amazing that they didn't kill him.
"I called him and got him in
the hospital," Frank says. "I said, 'I'm coming down to see you.' He
goes, 'No, no. I've done enough for you. I don't ever want to see you
ever again.' I said, 'What's wrong? I'm a friend.' He said, 'It's okay,
you're not really allowed to come see me.' He said that would just add
too much fire to the whole thing."
And that was the last time Frank ever spoke to Booker.
And
that’s where Yvette Johnson’s part of the story comes in. Booker
Wright was Yvette’s grandfather, but she never knew him. He died a year
before she was born, and she grew up in California, far from her
extended family in Mississippi. As an adult, Yvette found herself
longing to know more about her family's history. In 2007, after the
birth of her second son, Yvette decided to take the initiative.
"I
have a fantastic Aunt Vera who loves to tell stories," Yvette says. "I
called her one afternoon and just asked her 1,000 questions. And she
shared her whole life with me, which was fantastic, and through that I
could see sort of the story of the south. But she also shared with me
the story of her father, the sort of person he was like. There was a
definite shift in her tone when she talked about Booker Wright. And it
was like a seed was planted. And I just wanted to know more about him."
But
try as she might, there was little Yvette could learn about her
grandfather. He'd been born on a plantation and taken from his mother at
a young age to be raised by another family. Though illiterate, Booker
had managed by sheer force of personality to get a job at Lusco's
Restaurant in Greenwood, Mississippi at the age of 14. He rose through
the ranks to become a waiter at the restaurant, and was beloved by his
white customers for the way he recited the menu. Yvette was told that
through thrift and hard work, Booker saved enough money to open his own
cafe on the black side of town. He called it “Booker's Place.”
Yvette
says, "He was a well-respected businessman who had found sort of a
balance between being successful as a waiter in the white community
where he was known, enjoyed, cared about --he had what many whites at
the time would have called friends. But he also was very well-respected
in the black community because he had his own restaurant. "
Yvette
might have stopped her family search there, satisfied that her
grandfather had persevered and succeeded against the odds, except for
one thing. Her grandfather, she was told, had once appeared on
television during the height of the Civil Rights turmoil in Mississippi
and said something rather inflamatory. Yvette didn't know what he said,
or when or where the film might have aired.
"I thought it was like the 5pm news", Yvette says. "Just, like, you
know, between the weather and someone's house burning down, that they'd
stopped this black guy on the street."
Years of
searching for the missing snippet of her grandfather speaking on camera
had yielded nothing. But in March of 2011,the film found Yvette.
Raymond
De Fellita had decided to make a sequel to his father's Mississippi
film, and was trying to track down Booker Wright's descendants, to see
what had become of the children Booker had spoken of so movingly. When
Ray found Yvette, he sent her the footage she had heard about, but never
seen.
"I was amazed that it was the piece that it was", Yvette
says of first seeing Booker's speech. "It wasn't sort of an angry
moment, not thinking about the consequences. He knew what he was doing.
"My
heart broke for him as I watched it and he talked about the daily
humiliation. And part of me wanted to sort of reach back and comfort
him. I still didn't really understand 1965 Greenwood, I didn't realize
how much jeopardy he was putting himself in by saying those things."
Yvette
was hooked. Within weeks of meeting Ray, the two of them were off to
Mississippi with a film crew in tow. They set out to see how Greenwood
had changed since Booker's time, and to find out what legacy, if any,
Booker--and Frank DeFelitta--had left behind.
"You know, it was
great," says Ray. "To actually envision my dad in 1965 there, and I'm
actually sitting in the same restaurant. I'm wandering around with a
film crew in the same town. That's the part of the magic ride of
filmmaking."
Ray
De Felitta and David Zellerford discuss the significance of the
Tallahatchie Flats – old sharecropper's cabins given new life as tourist
lodgings. This web exclusive is part of the Dateline report 'Finding
Booker's Place' from Sunday, July 15th, at 7pm/6c.
And being
in Greenwood brought Yvette new understanding of Booker's legacy in
that town. "The impact of what he said was really felt in the white
community because so many whites knew him, so many whites felt they had
friendship with him," she says. "And to hear him say, 'No this isn't
friendship. This is humiliation for me...' It was a wake-up call."
Ray's
film about the experience--"Booker's Place"--premiered at the Tribeca
Film Festival this spring. It's now also available on-line.
Coincidentally,
a Dateline NBC producer had also found that old documentary about
Mississippi deep in the NBC News vaults. Drawn to the power of Booker's
words, he, too, decided to set out for Greenwood, Mississippi last, to
discover what the town had become and what had become of Booker's
descendants. Along the way he found Frank, and Ray, and Yvette, and
told their story too--which is now also the story of NBC's reporting on
race relations in America, then, and now.
The result is an episode of Dateline--"Finding Booker's Place", airing Sunday, July 15th, at 7pm/6c
--a powerful look back at a troubled time in America's past, and a look
at race relations in present day Greenwood, Mississippi. Booker
Wright's words come alive again, too, in the broadcast, as all the
people who Booker touched remember an ordinary man who had a remarkable
moment.
"I think sometimes in life there are these magical moments
and you don't know when one is coming," says Yvette. "But I just think
you know when you're in it. And it's time to stand up for what you
believe and to express what matters to you. And if you don't seize the
opportunity, you feel like you've compromised yourself. And so to me
that's the biggest takeaway: if we just keep our eyes open and if we're
willing to take a chance, to take a risk, then we can all make a
difference.”
In Primary Debate, Romney Suggested He Was At Bain Until 2002
Mitt Romney's campaign often says he stayed at Bain Capital only until 1999, and isn't responsible for outsourcing that occurred after he left the company.But documents reported by the Boston Globe suggest otherwise. Romney may have accidentally suggested he was at Bain until 2002 in a primary debate saying “I worked at one company Bain for 25 years.” Since Romney started at Bain in 1977, adding 25 years would have meant he left in 2002 according to his own count.UpdateAn earlier post failed to note Romney had said the one company he worked at was Bain.
posted
Read The 2002 Financial Disclosure Forms Listing Romney's Role At Bain As “Executive”
A reportfrom the Boston Globe todayclaims Romney left Bain Capital later than previously claimed, 2002 not 1999.The company says the issue is merely technical, and he was gone from the firm.posted
Mitt Romney's senior adviser Ed Gillespie, discusses the recent attacks the Obama campaign has launched against Romney's timeline of employment with Bain Capital.
By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer
Democrats pressed their attack Sunday on Mitt Romney’s record as head of the investment firm Bain Capital in the 1990’s.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the Senate majority whip, asked on NBC’s Meet the Press, “Why is Mitt Romney running away from his company, Bain Capital, like a scalded cat? Because there’s abundant evidence that under Bain Capital they were exporting American jobs to low-wage countries and he doesn’t want to be associated with it.”
Defending Romney’s record at Bain Capital, Romney campaign advisor Ed Gillespie told NBC’s David Gregory that outsourcing – U.S. companies setting up foreign operations to replace operations in the United States – was due partly to President Barack Obama’s policies of imposing “excessive regulations” and maintaining a high corporate tax rate.
Romney campaign senior adviser Ed Gillespie tells NBC's David Gregory that Mitt Romney thinks businesses "should be free to make decisions in the interest of their shareholders."
Gillespie charged that Obama’s policies are “forcing jobs overseas.”
Gillespie contended that some of the money in the $830 billion stimulus program which Obama signed into law in 2009 was channeled into companies and jobs in China, Finland, Mexico, and Denmark, instead of in the United States.
At the same time, Gillespie did not condemn outsourcing in every instance. He said that Romney believes that “American companies should be free – we have a free economy -- to make decisions that are in the interests of their shareholders, and what we need to do is make those decisions more attractive to invest here in the United States, rather than making it more attractive to go overseas, which is what the Obama policies do.”
The Obama campaign has spent the past few days accusing Romney of lying after the Boston Globe reported that he’d retained the title of chief executive and chairman of Bain Capital until 2002, three years beyond the date he said he ceded control.
With the Bain issue, the Obama campaign is repeating charges first made against Romney when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. His Democratic opponent, Shannon O’Brien, accused him of being culpable in layoffs at a Kansas City steel mill that went bankrupt in 2001 after Bain Capital had profited from an investment in the company.
Assistant Democratic Leader Sen. Dick Durbin says Mitt Romney needs to provide greater disclosure of his financial statements and Assistant Republican Leader Sen. Jon Kyl argues the attacks from the Obama campaign are baseless.
Fortune Magazine reported Thursday that “offering documents” that Bain Capital sent to potential investors in 2000 and 2001 provide contemporaneous evidence that Romney had no active role in managing the firm after 1999 when he left to run the Winter Olympics in Utah.
Romney “took a leave of absence from Bain to go and run the Olympics in Salt Lake City…..The International Olympic Committee was going to pull the Olympics from the United States which would have been a huge embarrassment for our country,” Gillespie said. Romney “left a life that he loved to help a country that he loved even more.”
Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy campaign manager, told reporters Thursday that either Romney had misrepresented his position at Bain in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission “which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments…”
Durbin sidestepped the question of whether Cutter’s use of the term “felony” was improper; instead the Illinois Democrat said the disclosure documents which Romney and Bain Capital filed with the SEC from 2000 to 2002 were “completely confusing” because they said he was the chief executive of the firm, and yet he has said he was no longer at the firm.
On the question of whether Romney ought to release his tax returns for years before 2010, Gillespie said that two years of returns were sufficient.
He contended that the Obama campaign was using the tax return issue to try to distract voters’ attention from the “dismal” state of the American economy. The real issue, he said, “is what are we going to do to make it where more Americans are filing their incomes taxes because they have a job?” He cited Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that 23 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed, or have left the work force.
Welcome to NBCNews.com
NBC News
updated
7/15/2012 10:16:51 PM ET
Dear readers, fans and friends,
For 16 years, it has been our privilege at msnbc.com to bring you one
of America’s favorite sources for insightful and compelling news and
information. We’ve been your source for breaking news, one-of-a-kind
stories, segments from NBC News and MSNBC shows, and live video coverage
of the most important news events of our time. Our team has never
stopped working to satisfy your curiosity, whenever and wherever you
are.
Today we’re taking on a new name — NBCNews.com. While our name is
changing, our commitment is not. In fact, in the weeks and months ahead,
we’ll be bringing you more of what you love today, and NBCNews.com will
stay true to its mandate of delivering the news you need with the
innovative spirit you’ve come to expect across all of our digital
platforms. Over the years, we’ve won dozens of awards for our digital
coverage, but the real reward has been serving you, our audience.
So while you’ll notice some changes to our logos and navigation, nothing’s going away.
In fact, there’s more to come: MSNBC TV will launch a new digital
home in 2013, as an extension of the MSNBC TV on-air brand, creating
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We’re more excited than ever for the future of digital news and look
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Keep on keeping curious,
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NBCNews.com is your home for insightful, original coverage — from breaking news to stories that affect your life.
Mitt Romney’s defense budget target is lofty
March 19, 2012|By Michael Kranish
WASHINGTON - It is one of Mitt Romney’s most striking anecdotes. The US Navy, he says, has fewer ships today than in 1917, and the US Air Force is smaller than it was in 1947. Notwithstanding that today’s fleets are far beyond the capability of those from yesteryear, Romney says it is evidence that America’s military dominance is at risk.
Romney’s solution is one of the most far-ranging, expensive, and perhaps least understood of his campaign. He has vowed to commit at least 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product - $4 out of every $100 in the nation’s economy - to “core’’ defense spending, not including many war expenses.
The cost appears to be far greater than when Romney first broached the idea several years ago, when the nation was spending closer to 4 percent of GDP on defense. Under next year’s budget, defense spending is projected to be about 3.2 percent - yet Romney has stuck by his 4 percent vow. Put another way, that means Romney proposes spending 61 percent more than Obama at the end of a decade-long cycle, according to the libertarian Cato Institute.
Enacting such an increase at the same time that Romney wants to slash taxes and balance the budget could cost trillions of dollars and require huge cuts in domestic programs. As Romney’s website puts it matter-of-factly, “This will not be a cost-free process.’’
An examination of Romney’s plan, however, shows how difficult it will be for him to achieve his goal. Even some of Romney’s advisers, while saying the Pentagon increases are essential, said in interviews that political and budgetary issues would probably make it impossible for Romney to increase defense spending to 4 percent of GDP in a first year - and tough even in a fourth year - of a presidency.
“No president in the next administration could take the defense budget to 4 percent in the next year,’’ said Mackenzie Eaglen, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has advised Romney on the issue. “That’s not a hard number and anybody would be crazy to suggest it is. It would have to be a very slow ramp-up and they would be hard-pressed to even achieve a 4 percent base budget by the end of the first term.’’
James Jay Carafano, a defense expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that even if everyone agreed on the first day of a Romney presidency to the 4 percent proposal, it probably wouldn’t be possible for several years due to lack of manufacturing capabilities. “If you look at the state of our industrial base, you couldn’t spend 4 percent on the military if you wanted to,’’ Carafano said. “People couldn’t build the ships and planes fast enough.’’
Romney has not been clear about when he would reach his goal of spending at least 4 percent of the nation’s economy on defense. His website describes a “floor of 4 percent’’ as a “goal.’’ His spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, said via e-mail that 4 percent is a “target.’’
In a statement, Saul said, “For his first term, Governor Romney has committed to reversing Obama-era defense cuts,’’ which she said would be “offset by cuts to other parts of the budget.’’ That suggests that Romney would not get to his target until a prospective second term.
Beyond the question of how and when Romney could achieve his goal is the broader debate about whether the nation’s military dominance is at risk, a subject that could be a major dividing line in a general election campaign.
Romney is correct in noting that core defense spending is slated to fall as a percentage of GDP if war costs are not included, analysts said. Obama has proposed a 2013 Pentagon budget of $525 billion, a $6 billion cut from a year earlier, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Romney has vowed to restore the cuts and increase spending.
But Obama campaign officials said that calculating the spending as a percentage of the nation’s economy does not tell the whole story, noting that, after next year, the defense budget is slated to increase in dollar terms.
“Thanks to the president and his foreign policy accomplishments, our nation is stronger and more secure than it was when he took office. The bottom line remains the same - we have the strongest military in the world and that won’t change,’’ Obama campaign spokesman Kara Carscaden said. She said that Romney’s proposal for spending 4 percent of GDP on defense is an “arbitrary’’ figure that shows he is “pandering to his Republican base . . . without giving a reason for the increase.’’
But Romney has said the military need is paramount. He has said the Pentagon is so devastated by cutbacks that the country risks losing its status as the preeminent power in the world. Indeed, a Gallup Poll released last week found that only 54 percent of those surveyed believe the United States has the world’s leading military, the lowest ranking in 13 years.
While proposing the increased spending, Romney has portrayed himself as perhaps the most hawkish candidate in the field.
He has vowed that Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon if he is president, and has questioned Obama’s timetable for withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan.
Speaking to voters recently in Michigan, Romney said that Obama’s cuts would leave the military decimated, citing as proof a comparison to decades ago.
“I’m not willing to pass on an America where the military has been shrunk by this president - where we’ve gone from the capacity to fight two wars down to only one - with a Navy that’s smaller, with an Air Force that’s smaller,’’ Romney said. “I mean, do you know the state of our military? I mean, do you realize we have fewer ships in our Navy than any time since 1917, and yet this president wants to slow down the purchases of ships? Do you know our Air Force is older and smaller than any time since 1947, when it was formed?’’
Politifact, the Pulitzer-winning fact check website, recently gave Romney’s assertion that the military is being decimated its lowest “truth-o-meter’’ rating: “pants on fire.’’
While the site did not quibble with the ship and plane numbers that Romney cited, it echoed a number of independent analysts in noting that today’s sophisticated fleets can’t be compared to those of many years ago.
“Romney’s numbers simply don’t add up,’’ said Paul Pillar, the CIA’s former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia.
Like a number of analysts, Pillar questioned how Romney can increase defense spending so dramatically while also promising to slash the deficit.
Christopher Preble, who analyzes defense issues for the Cato Institute and has studied Romney’s defense proposal, said it is misleading for Romney to suggest that the US military strength is at risk by comparing today’s military to that of long ago.
“We are spending roughly half of the military spending in the world. So presumably he is looking at polls and I guess expects that people will reward him for pledging to maintain a military second to none, skipping past the unfortunate truth that we already are,’’ Preble said. “At a minimum it is misleading and it does raise questions about the governor’s understanding of this problem.’’
Romney, in citing his figures on ships and planes, relied upon a report written by Eaglen, who outlined the information in a 2010 study that she wrote for the Heritage Foundation. Her study said that the Navy had 245 ships at the end of 1916 and had 283 in 2009.
It is not, of course, an apples-to-apples comparison. The Navy of 1916 did not even contain a category for aircraft carriers, while the current fleet has 11.
Asked in an interview if it made sense for Romney to compare today’s fleet to the number of ships from nearly a century ago in making his argument for increased military spending, Eaglen said that it is appropriate as long as context is provided.
She said it should be obvious that ships and crew are more capable than years ago, but said it is also true that more ships are needed to cover the earth’s waters.
“One ship, one aircraft, or one brigade can only be in one place at one time around the world,’’ she said. “So even with sophisticated technologies and people in the military, numbers still matter. A lot of deterring is achieved through physical presence of these assets. Quantity has a quality all its own.’’
Romney, on his campaign website, suggests that the current fleet should be expanded by 44 ships, although he does not commit himself to that number.
Similarly, Romney said the country needs to increase the number of aircraft as well as military personnel, all of which would require heavy new expenditures.
Romney’s challenge could be even greater if Congress fails to pass legislation this year that reverses further cuts that are slated to go into effect.
Under a process known as sequestration, the defense budget could be cut over a 10-year period beginning next January by about $500 billion, which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has opposed on grounds it would have a “serious impact’’ on maintaining national security.
Those cuts are slated to be automatic because last year’s congressional supercommittee on the deficit failed to reach a budget deal.
The matter could wind up being one of the first issues faced by whoever is elected president this November.
