The View from Right Field

The Return of Earmarks. Sigh.

It was sad last week to see Republicans in the House of Representatives giving up one of the real accomplishments on the last Republican House: the ban on earmarks.  In 2011, House Republicans passed a ban on earmarks, and since they wouldn’t approve earmarks, Congress couldn’t pass them and the President couldn’t sign them.  The entire Congress ultimately went along with the House Republicans, and in 2014, President Obama even said he would veto any bill containing earmarks.

The problems with earmarks were obvious.  Representatives and Senators were putting in specific appropriations for things they wanted done, not necessarily what needed to be done.  The more powerful a representative or senator was, the more money a district or state would get.  One of the most infamous earmarks was the $233 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska.¹

Predawn Search Warrants. Fun for Some. But Are They Necessary?

Late last month, FBI agents served a search warrant at the home of former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.  Which is fine.  If they think Mr. Manafort has evidence of something untoward, a search warrant is what you do.  What I don’t understand is why they felt the need to serve the search warrant before dawn.

This seems to be a not unusual time to serve search warrants.  Back when Democrats were investigating whatever they could about Scott Walker's campaigns, they would serve search warrants before dawn.¹  You sort of wonder whether some of those issuing such search warrants enjoy the idea of having people with guns knock on doors before dawn, while people are still asleep, to scare the heck out of the people upon whom the search warrant is being served.  (Especially if they think the people being served are engaged in some kind of evil activity.)  But do the ends of justice really require that it be done before dawn? 

Do We Have a Dysfunctional Congress – Or a Dysfunctional President?

As the presidential campaign heads into the fall, I assume President Obama will be out campaigning for Hillary Clinton and other Democrats.  And I assume he will spend a lot of time complaining about the “dysfunctional Congress” that he has had to deal with and that has frustrated his efforts.  Except, I am not sure it is only Congress that is dysfunctional.  It might be the President, too.

President Obama likes to say he was elected twice by the American people to deal with our problems.  It is certainly true he was elected twice.  And the first time he was elected, a Democratic Congress was elected, too.  The problem for him was it didn’t last long.

Which Democrat “Won” Iowa and What Difference Does It Make?

I am always fascinated by candidates who claim they “won” an early primary or caucus state, and the media that trumpets their victory, when they all got was a miniscule number of votes more than the other candidate.  For example, in Iowa last night Hillary Clinton apparently received 49.9% percent of the vote and Bernie Sanders got 49.6%.  This may or may not translate into one more delegate to the Democratic National Convention for Secretary Clinton than Senator Sanders.  But really, to use a phrase made famous in another context, “What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?” 

This is not Florida in November of 2000; it’s Iowa in February of 2016.  There are dozens of primaries and caucuses left, and hundreds of delegates to be elected.  What difference does 0.3% and maybe one extra delegate make at this point?  Especially if you remember that, in 2012, Mitt Romney was declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses the night of the vote, and only a couple of days later, after Mr. Romney got all of the credit for “winning,” did the absolute final vote total show that Rick Santorum actually got more votes.  (Oops.  And here.)  But what difference did those few hundred votes make anyway – other to the “winner”-obsessed media?

The fact is this was the first state.  What counts is that both candidates got virtually the same number of votes and that all of the other states are still coming up.  A few hundred votes one way or the other just isn’t that big of a deal.

Lois Lerner, the IRS, and Tea Partiers: Nothing to Look At Here, Just Move Along

The Justice Department announced Friday that it would not be bringing charges against Lois Lerner, or anybody else, in the political targeting “scandal” at the Internal Revenue Service.  If you remember, two and a half years ago, Ms. Lerner disclosed (probably because she knew the Internal Revenue Service’s inspector general would be issuing a report soon) that people at the IRS were targeting, or at least giving additional scrutiny to, applications submitted by tea party and other conservative groups.

I put the word “scandal” in quotation marks because, while Republicans think it was a scandal, and President Obama said, at the time, it was “inexcusable” and he was “angry’ about it, Democrats do longer think it was all that big of a deal.  Even though the IRS’s inspector general identified only tea party and other conservative groups as being singled out, Democrats started saying that liberal groups were looked at, too.  Also, it was just a matter of “mismanagement” and “poor judgment,” as the Justice Department said in its letter to Congress yesterday, not a real scandal.¹

The real scandal, Democrats say, was during the Nixon administration, when President Nixon tried to get the IRS to do audits of his political foes.²  Of course, the difference is, back then, the head of the IRS refused to do it, while Lois Lerner, et al, were apparently doing it on their own.  Which is exactly the problem – and the bigger worry. 

“Read My Lips, No New Taxes” vs. “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It” – Follow-Up

In my post comparing George H.W. Bush’s pledge “Read my lips, no new taxes” to Bararck Obama’s pledge “If you like your health plan, you can keep it,” I said, regarding the accuracy of President Obama’s pledge: “I would assume that President Obama knew this, too [i.e., that his pledge was not true].  He’s not stupid.”

See this short video from Jake Tapper on CNN.  President Obama knew his pledge was not accurate before the law was passed – but he still kept making it – even after the law was passed:

 

Bizarre.

“Read My Lips, No New Taxes” vs. “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It”

During the 1988 campaign, George H.W. Bush famously said, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”  In the fall of 1990, he wound up agreeing to raise taxes.  In 1992 he lost re-election in a three-way race with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot

During the 2008 campaign and since (until recently), Barack Obama said, “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.”  Because of the schedule for the implementation of Obamacare, the fact that this was not true for everybody did not become obvious to the general public until very recently, and Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012.

So, what is there to say about these two pledges?  First, a little history about George H.W. Bush’s pledge.  President Bush made the pledge during the 1988 campaign.  I believe (though some may disagree with me) that he meant it when he said it and that he intended to keep it.  But then, that terrible thing, circumstances, intervened. 

In the fall of 1990, President Bush was trying to get Congress to pass a budget.  Over the Columbus Day weekend, there was a short government shutdown.  President Bush was in a tough spot.  He had promised not to raise taxes, but Democrats in Congress (and the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress) would not pass a budget without a tax increase.*  President Bush agonized:

“I had to decide between a compromise on taxes or literally to shut down the government. … When push came to shove and our troops were moving overseas**, we needed a fully functioning government.  I simply had to hammer out a compromise to keep the government open ….”***

The Democrats would not give in, so President Bush did.  He agreed to a tax increase.  Whether that was the right thing to do or not, I don’t know.  But that was the reason he did it.

Now to President Obama’s pledge:  The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the President’s advisers have known for a long time that his pledge was not true for everybody.  There were some people who had health plans that they would not be able to keep:

“At one point, aides discussed whether Mr. Obama might use more in-depth discussions, such as media interviews, to explain the nuances of the succinct line in his stump speeches, a former aide said.  Officials worried, though, that delving into details such as the small number of people who might lose insurance could be confusing and would clutter the president's message. …

One former senior administration official said that as the law was being crafted by the White House and lawmakers, some White House policy advisers objected to the breadth of Mr. Obama's ‘keep your plan’ promise.  They were overruled by political aides, the former official said.  The White House said it was unaware of the objections. …

Richard Kirsch, the former national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, which pushed for the 2010 health law, said the words were reassuring – and true – for the vast majority of the people, and so his group never raised concerns about that claim.  Adding an asterisk to note that people who had ‘shoddy insurance’ might need to change plans was not practical, he said.

‘The actual, accurate statement is if you have good insurance, and you like it, you can keep it,’ said Mr. Kirsch, now a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal policy organization.”

In other words, the President’s advisers knew that the statement was not true for everybody.****  There would be a “small number” of people who would not be able to keep their health plan.  But “delving into details … could be confusing and would clutter the president's message.”

So, President Bush violated his pledge because circumstances changed and the nation might soon be at war.  As for President Obama’s pledge, his aides**** knew it was never true in the first place, but it didn’t work politically to say it right.

President Bush’s reason for breaking his pledge versus President Obama’s:  You decide.
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* Some things never change.

** The troops were going to the Middle East to follow through on President Bush’s statement in August, 1990, about Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait: “This will not stand.”  Back then, red-lines were red.

*** George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998), p.380.

**** I would assume that President Obama knew this, too.  He’s not stupid.

Does Anybody Tell the President Anything?

The Wall Street Journal reports today that President Obama’s White House counsel knew during the week of April 22 that IRS employees had targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups that applied for confirmation of their tax-exempt status.*  The White House counsel, however, didn’t tell the President about this.  President Obama says he didn’t learn of this abuse, which he has called “outrageous,” until it was reported in the news media on May 10.

Last fall (or earlier) Attorney General Holder found out about General Petraeus’s affair.  (Also here.)  He didn’t tell the President about it, however, until two months later, after the campaign was over.*

Exactly what does the President know?  How can he run the country if his aides won’t tell him what’s going on?
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* In other words, at the time the State Department, et al, was making big changes in what the CIA wanted to say about Benghazi, General Petraeus knew that Attorney General Holder was keeping secret the news of General Petraeus’s affair.'

UPDATE (5/21/13 9:30 am):  It now appears that the office of the White House counsel knew of the IRS probe the week of April 16, a week earlier than originally repoprted.  It's hard to keep up with this stuff.

IRS Admits Targeting Tea Party Groups

Let’s hope the brouhaha over Benghazi does not prevent another story from getting the notice it deserves.  An Internal Revenue Service official admitted yesterday that tea party and other conservative organizations were specifically singled out by the IRS for extra scrutiny of their tax exemptions.  The IRS said that groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their names were singled out for review.

According to the IRS, this targeting was done by lower-level employees in an IRS office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it was not a result of political bias.  The former may be true, though there obviously needs to be an independent investigation to make sure, but the latter is not plausible.  Whether the bias was deliberate or subconscious, it was political bias.  Period.

Obviously, such political targeting by the IRS brings back thoughts of prior administrations, where the targeting was directed by higher ups.

And so the question is this:  Assuming the political targeting in this case really was just done by local employees, which of these is the worst: (i) Targeting of people with particular political beliefs for extra tax scrutiny by high level government officials? (ii) An IRS so out of control that lower level employees can go around targeting certain groups because of their political beliefs without being stopped? (iii) A political atmosphere so corrosive against certain groups that lower level IRS employees think it is appropriate to single out those groups for extra scrutiny just because their names?

Cliff Negotiations

What does it say that Mitch McConnell is negotiating with Joe Biden instead of Harry Reid or Barack Obama?  Just asking.