This Week in Politics (WEEK OF 2/11/10-2/17/10)

By: Joe Lesnefsky
 
*Obama Selects His Deficit Panel
*One year out, what has the stimulus actually done?
*Senator Bayh will retire, could the GOP take the Senate?
*Summit on Health Care next week
*New Skepticism on Climate Change
 
President Obama has decided to name Former Republican Senator Alan K. Simpson and former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine B. Bowles to co-chair a bi-partisan committee on how to reduce the mounting national debt.  The President’s intent is to have an 18-member committee “significantly reduce the National Debt by 2015” (Washington Times).  Former Senator Boyd thinks that reducing government spending and actually utilizing the veto power will easy accomplish this goal.  In fact Boyd asserts “To say that all we have to do is take care of waste fraud and abuse, and foreign aid is like a sparrow’s belch in the midst of a typhoon.”
(New York Times)
 
One year after it was signed in to law, Vice President Biden gave a report on the status of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, colloquially known as the stimulus package.  Vice President Biden stated that 20 million Americans have received extended unemployment, 95% of families have seen reduced taxes, clean energy infrastructure has been developed, 6 million people out of poverty, and thousands of civil servants have been able to keep their jobs.  Critics of the bill say that  jobs have not been created-President Obama promised that unemployment would not exceed 8%, it currently stands at 9.7%-and the promised infrastructure improvements have not been accomplished.  Currently the President is trying to extend many of the programs initially enacted by the stimulus package which will amount to a $1.5 trillion debt over the next decade, twice the initial estimate.  Ultimately, the critics are worried that deficit budget spending is becoming the norm instead of a temporary measure to help the economy recover (Washington Times).     
 
Especially with the announcement this week by Senator Bayh (D, IN) that he would not be running for re-election this year, there is a possibility that the GOP could pick up quite a few seats in the Senate.  In three states, Delaware, Indiana, and North Dakota, a GOP victory is very possible.  Fierce campaigns for seats opening up in states like Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada and Pennsylvania  give 5 more opportunities for the GOP to take a Senate seat away from a Democratic senator.  Finally, emboldened by the recent victory by newly elected Senator Brown in Massachusetts, the GOP plans to actively campaign for opening seats in Democratic strongholds like Connecticut and California.  However a caveat: there are four Republican held seats that may be strongly contested in the states of Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Ohio.  An ideal situation for the GOP would be the addition of these 10 seats as well as maintaining the 4 being contested, which would put 51 Republicans in the Senate (Wall Street Journal).
 
Next week President Obama will be moderating a summit on the Democrat’s new health care bill, and is expected to encounter stiff opposition from Republicans.  One of the main issues up for debate extending care up to 30 million Americans at the expense of government oversight of doctors treatment options as well as forcing people with privately held insurance to join the government plan, even if they are happy with their current healthcare.  According to a recent poll, 56% of Americans prefer a smaller government run plan providing fewer services versus 34% saying they would like a larger government plan providing more services.  The Republicans plan to use this fact to say that public opinion is in their favour.  A major setback for the GOP, however, is that they do not have their own well formed health care plan, besides some small addendums to the current health care situation (Yahoo News).
 
Recently, many of findings of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC have been contested by “shady” scientific practices conducted by many scientists working for this group.  Many of the claims made by the group such as the complete melting of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 and climate change impact on the rainforest lack a sound scientific basis.  In addition, the sole copy of temperature data used in climate change studies was lost during a recent computer hack, and now there is no way to substantiate these studies’ claims.  Further, there is conjecture that the data recorded by many temperature recording stations have been unfairly weighted, or even ignored.  All in all, these poor scientific practices have caused skepticism over the conclusions of many climate change studies. (Wall Street Journal)
 
Quote of the Week:
 
“I’ll just say I’m very frustrated and I can’t believe what’s happening to our country.”
 --Former Republican Senator Alan K. Simpson on his appointment to co-chair the Deficit Panel (New York Times)

THIS WEEK IN POLITICS (WEEK OF 1/28/10-2/3/10)

By: Gwendolyn Gorse

Scott Brown will be sworn into the Senate tomorrow, a week earlier than planned.  Mr. Brown submitted a letter requesting an earlier date so he could "participate in key votes."  Senate Republicans hope that his seating will help to block the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, who they fear is too biased on the side of labor unions.  Scott Brown has made it clear that he will not vote "lock-step" with the Republicans, calling himself a "Scott Brown Republican," but has said that he does not support the health care bill passed by the Senate in December (Bacon).

John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, has produced a documentary entitled Global Warming: The Other Side.  The documentary investigates the controversy surrounding charges that climate scientists have manipulated data in order to convince the public that humans are changing the global climate.  Among the evidence presented, Coleman asserts that temperature data from some weather stations were ignored.  This comes just months after the release of incriminating e-mails from British University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (Williams).

After not meeting with the Dalai Lama during his last visit to the US, President Obama has announced that he will meet with the Tibetan leader this month.  Chinese officials have responded that the meeting "will certainly threaten trust and co-operation between China and the United States" ("Dalai Lama").

Ahmen Ressam, the Algerian man convicted of smuggling explosives across the U.S.-Canadian border with the intention of bombing the Los Angeles International Airport in 1999, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2005.  On Tuesday, however, a US appeals court ruled that this sentence was too short and removed the original judge from the case, declaring that the judge's conclusions were "clearly erroneous."  Federal guidelines suggest that Ressam should receive 65 years to life in prison.  The case will be randomly assigned to another judge in Seattle (Elias).

QUOTABLE
 
"They're not willing to do big ideas. They're doing ideas that create perception but don't do anything big.  The spending freeze for example. You're talking what, $10 billion on a $1.6 trillion deficit?"  -Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH)

THIS WEEK IN POLITICS (WEEK OF 1/13/10-1/20/10)

By: Gwendolyn Gorse

Unarguably, the biggest news of the week occurred last night in Massachusetts.  The late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat will now be filled by Republican Scott Brown, increasing the number of Republicans to 41.  Democrats now lack the 60 required seats to ensure that liberal legislation such as the health care bill will reach President Obama's desk.  Scott Brown will be Massachusetts' first Republican Senator since 1972 (Lister).

After his first year in office, President Obama's approval rating has  dipped to 50 percent.  43 percent of Americans disapprove of his actions as President ("Gallup").  In addition, a the latest Post-ABC News Poll has found that 51 percent of Americans oppose the proposed health care reform.  39 percent of those say they strongly oppose it.  The bill is supported by 44 percent (Balz and Cillizza).

A congressional hearing has been planned for next week to investigate the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's actions during the height of the financial crisis - specifically, its advice to AIG to limit disclosures about billions of dollars it paid to other financial institutions.  In addition, the House has passed legislation ordering an audit of the Federal Reserve and the Senate is considering a bill that would strip the Fed of its supervisory powers.  Chairman Bernanke has said that he will "welcome a full review" (Dennis).

F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller has said that, while Al-Qaeda's infrastructure has been dismantled in Afghanistan, its offshoots are growing and spreading in Pakistan, Yemen, and the Horn of Africa ("F.B.I.").

Erroll Summers has withdrawn his name from consideration after controversy followed his nomination as head of the Transportation Security Administration.  During the confirmation process, it was confirmed that he misused confidential federal records about his ex-wife's boyfriend in the 1980's.  President Obama accepted his withdrawal "with great sadness."  The TSA is still missing leadership at a time when the nation is still reeling from an attempted terrorist attack on Christmas day ("Obama").

QUOTABLE
 
"Obama now has the highest disapproval rating in the history of Gallup polling for a president entering his second year in office. He has been handed a series of political humiliations. If he takes all of this as motivation to 'stay the course,' the humiliations have only begun."  -Michael Gerson of the Washington Post

THIS WEEK IN POLITICS (WEEK OF 11/21/09-11/27/09)

By: Gwendolyn Gorse

Senate Democrats voted 60-39 to bring the newest version of the health care bill to the floor for debate, overcoming a Republican filibuster.  Sen. Harry Reid has said that he aims to pass the bill through the Senate by Christmas, negotiate with the House of Representatives in January, and give a completed bill to President Obama by the State of the Union address in late January.  Democrats remain divided, however, over the issue of a public option (Murray and Kane).

Controversy was sparked last week after thousands of e-mails hacked from a climate-change research center were posted on the internet.  The e-mails revealed that some of these researchers have been working to block scientists arguing against human-caused climate change from publication in scholarly journals.  One researcher exclaimed that they would "keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"  The Copenhagen climate-change summit is scheduled to begin in less than a month (Johnson).

White House officials met with Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Sen. Kent Conrad, last Tuesday to discuss the establishment of a bipartisan commission tasked with controlling the national deficit.  Estimates put the deficit at 5 percent of GDP over the next decade, but President Obama's goals are to reduce the deficit to 3 percent.  This announcement has generated anger among those who oppose Obama's health care overhaul and climate change legislation, slated to cost $1 trillion and $821 billion, respectively (Weisman and McKinnon).

House Democrats David R. Obey (WI), John P. Murtha (PA), and John B. Larson (CT) introduced a bill last Thursday which would impose a surtax in order to pay for the counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  “For the last year, as we’ve struggled to pass health care reform, we’ve been told that we have to pay for the bill — and the cost over the next decade will be about a trillion dollars.  Now the president is being asked to consider an enlarged counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan, which proponents tell us will take at least a decade and would also cost about a trillion dollars. But unlike the health care bill, that would not be paid for. We believe that’s wrong," they said.  Murtha also admitted that he knew the bill would not pass, but wanted to illustrate the moral obligation to pay for the military efforts ("Democrats").

President Obama now claims the fourth-fastest drop below majority approval, according to a new Gallup Poll.  49 percent of Americans now approve of Obama's performance (Jones).

QUOTABLE
 
"You've got to look at their actions, not their words, and their actions are to massively expand the government."  -Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), responding to White House efforts to create a commission to decrease the national deficit.