Government Executive - Authors - Major Garrett

Obama Has the Speech, ISIL Has the Territory

Major Garrett, National Journal — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 10:11:26 -0400

President Obama told us this would happen. He even said U.S. policy should prepare for it.

Obama did not necessarily see the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria coming or imagine its cross-border pulverizing of Iraqi forces in Mosul and across much of north and western Iraq. He didn’t see great swaths of Syria and Iraq falling into hands of Sunni radicals too bloodthirsty for al-Qaida. Nor did he see ISIL fighters driving U.S.-made military trucks and Humvees or firing U.S.-made weapons with U.S.-made ammunition.

The particulars eluded Obama. They eluded virtually everyone who, after U.S. forces left Iraq, nonchalantly watched Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki intensify his autocratic and divisive ways in Baghdad, alienating Sunni and Kurdish leaders and the towns and territories they represented. Any critic of Obama’s Iraq policy now (the specific grievance being the lack of a U.S. residual force of some undefined number -- 10,000? 20,000? or 30,000? -- must credibly explain how those troops would have redirected Maliki’s arrogant and mistrustful political energies toward consensus or inclusiveness. They wouldn’t have. Period. To pretend so now, after the fact, is fantasy and folly. There’s no time for either. Iraq has had enough of both—its own and imported from Washington.

Washington stood by, collectively and with bipartisan indifference, while Maliki stirred the hornet’s nest of Sunni resentment. While ISIL was fortifying itself with equipment and sharpening its fighting skills in Syria, it silently stoked Sunni grievances inside Iraq, often at the local level. When it pounced during the political transition after Iraq’s most recent election, it routed a demoralized Iraqi army and found common cause with Sunnis fed up with Maliki’s authoritarian boot and serial corruption.

But Obama saw this larger problem coming and warned the storm clouds were gathering. At least he sounded like he did. In one of the meatiest and most important military policy speeches of his presidency, Obama told the country on May 23, 2013, that it must view the war on terrorism as a new conflict—with seemingly random battlefields and disparate foes with local orientations and occasionally international ambitions. The speech’s venue was the National Defense University.

“America is at a crossroads,” Obama said. “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us. What we can do—what we must do—is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger to us, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold.”

Obama then described threats outside of Afghanistan and Iraq and the need for America and its allies to nimbly respond.

“What we’ve seen is the emergence of various al-Qaida affiliates. From Yemen to Iraq, from Somalia to North Africa, the threat today is more diffuse, with al-Qaida’s affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula—AQAP—the most active in plotting against our homeland.

“Unrest in the Arab world has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria.”

Aspects of ISIL’s approach can be found in what Obama said next.

“Other of these groups are simply collections of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory. That means we’ll face more localized threats ... in which local operatives—perhaps in loose affiliation with regional networks—launch periodic attacks against Western diplomats, companies, and other soft targets, or resort to kidnapping and other criminal enterprises to fund their operations.”

ISIL(Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) could be described as an amalgam of all these terrorist threats—local and regional, ideological and opportunistic, methodical and criminal, militaristic and political.

“So that’s the current threat,” Obama said. “Lethal yet less capable al-Qaida affiliates; threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad; homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We have to take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them.”

It was an important speech. It sought to define an end to the concept of post 9/11 warfare and explain the new battle space. It did all of those things. But it did not change policy. It did not take Obama’s strategic and operational insights—of which there were many—and usefully apply them where they belonged: Syria. It is that battle-scarred country and its ghastly three-year civil war that gave rise to ISIS/ISIL and may give rise to lone-wolf terrorists who may wreak havoc later in Europe or the U.S. (something Obama also warned of—in a generic sense—in the National Defense University speech).

The conflict now raging in Iraq and the territorial gains of ISIL are of stupendous regional importance. Nothing on the map can compete with the potentially negative consequences of a collapsed Iraq, an ISIL force controlling parts of Iraq and Syria, armed to the teeth and financed with millions. This is all imaginable now. It’s beyond a pity that what Obama said in 2013 roused neither him nor his national security team to apply its laudable insights in Syria or Iraq.

Obama’s speech was the best and worst of his presidency. It brimmed with nuanced and thoughtful rhetoric and offered a keen perspective on future threats and lofted many emphatic words about new policies ... and accomplished precisely nothing. The speech did not yield new and creative thinking within the Pentagon or State Department, at least that is evidenced by any productive work preparing for or dealing with ISIL. It did not sensitize the Obama team to the growing menace--along an east-west continuum in Syria and Iraq--that might arise from the Syrian civil war, Sunni militancy, and Iraqi political grievance and alienation.

The acid test of this Obama speech must be ISIL. The speech asked the country and Obama’s team to view the global terrorism threat anew and to gather intelligence--which the Kurds were trying to provide about ISIL, by the way--about perils unforeseen. Obama said it. It ought to have mattered in Syria and Iraq. There’s scant evidence it did.

Even those who wish Obama well have noted a White House tendency to devote far more energy to the development of a big speech than the follow-up to enforce or alter policy afterward. In the Obama White House, there’s always another big speech.

Obama is not the first president to find policy implementation harder than rhetorical flourish. But it borders on malpractice that a speech as big as this one didn’t reverberate. More than most presidents, Obama knows words matter. How much different things might be now if Obama’s words had mattered to his national security team months ago.

The author is National Journal correspondent-at-large and chief White House correspondent for CBS News. He is also a distinguished fellow at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs.

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Analysis: Enforcer in Chief Must Reach Far Beyond the Power of the Pen

Major Garrett, National Journal — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 09:39:00 -0500

President Obama has discovered the limits of his phone and pen, and he unconsciously revealed them during his State of the Union address.

Obama had earlier used the phone to lobby top corporate CEOs to pledge not to discriminate against the long-term unemployed. This he did as part of what he calls the "convening" powers of the presidency—the ability to have your calls answered by anyone and persuade them to take collective action. That's on the puny scale of presidential powers but, for reasons known only to Obama, holds special allure just now. Obama will build on Tuesday's rhetoric with a Friday event highlighting corporate commitments.

Can the president have forgotten he already used more-traditional presidential powers—signing legislation—to address this issue? He signed a 2011 bill providing tax breaks to companies that hired unemployed and disabled veterans and 2010 legislation that cut payroll taxes for companies that hired the unemployed. Obama has thus shelved real power, that which lies in legislating, and opted for a theatrical gesture of an unenforceable pledge from corporate America. When I asked White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer about using words instead of legislation to help the long-term unemployed, he said public pledges resonate.

"When companies come to the White House and say to the entire world that they're going to do this, that is a very real commitment," Pfeiffer said.

And about settling for pledges instead of new legislation?

"This builds on that, because we have helped some people; we need to help more by getting some of the largest corporations in this country, many members of the Fortune 100, committing to adopt a new set of policies that will ensure that more workers get hired. It's real progress."

Provided the pledge conforms with the underlying economics of profit, wages, productivity, investment, and business expansion. administration officials don't deny that pledges alone can't overcome any of these fickle little realities. If the economics allow, workers will be hired. That was true Monday. It will be true today. Pledge or no pledge, and convening authority notwithstanding.

As for the pen, it, too, has limits, as was painfully evident when the White House sought headlines for an executive order Obama intends to sign requiring a $10.10 wage for federal contract workers. After releasing the news, officials admitted Obama hadn't yet signed the order and could offer no clue when he would, admitting that the pen stroke could be weeks or even months away. Talk about decisive.

The specifics revealed that the order would apply only to future federal contracts. That means no pay raise for workers under existing contracts, cold comfort to those who have recently gone on strike at the Pentagon and the Smithsonian to protest low wages. The White House could offer no immediate estimates of how many workers would benefit from the soon-to-be-signed executive order.

The announcement elicited grudging praise from progressives who lobbied the White House to raise the wages of current federal contract workers. Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America, offered the clichéd and wilted praise of disappointment, calling the executive order "a step in the right direction."

But.

"It offers little comfort to the more than 2 million janitors, food-service workers, and others who are laboring in government buildings for minimum wage today," Dean said. "This action, while a step forward, suggests he may still be unwilling to take the fighting stance necessary to deliver the big wins over growing inequality that our country desperately needs."

Pfeiffer told me Obama's doing all he can—meaning confronting the limits of the pen.

"These are contracts," Pfeiffer told me. "You can't rewrite them. We're not going to rip them up, so we are doing as much as we can to help as many workers as possible. We're talking hundreds of thousands of workers over the course of time."

I asked Pfeiffer how much time. His answer: "Distant."

The phone and the pen a president can wield. But neither move the nation nor leave a lasting impression. Legislation does. And that requires persuasion, cooperation, perseverance, and compromise, among other things.

Immigration will be the test for Obama for the remainder of this year. The phone and pen will be useful only to negotiate with lawmakers and to rewrite underlying legislation.

But first the House has to write it. That makes this moment crucial for House Republicans as well as Obama. The table is set for action. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has committed to a set of immigration-reform principles. He will present them to House Republicans at their retreat later this week. This may sound like simple process and low-wattage maneuvering. It is not.

Boehner knew that talk radio and entrenched conservative opponents would mobilize at the first sign of leadership movement toward immigration legislation. As part of this, the GOP leadership staff hovered closely over the immigration language in Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers's GOP response. In the main, Boehner is daring hard-liners in his conference to take a run at him and other pro-reform House GOP leaders during the retreat, betting that debate and nose-counting will give him an edge. Not an immediate one, but a sense of the current playing field and the difficulty of the bill-writing task ahead.

If Boehner continues to move the immigration train along the tracks—and nothing in the past two months suggests he won't—Obama will have to give House Republicans that which the legislative process most needs. And that, put simply, is a promise to enforce the law as written, something Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who, this column noted last month, would become a leader on the issue, has identified as central to the coming legislative tangle. It is a hoary concept, enforcing the law as written. It glows with the dusky patina borne of age, resilience, and being treasured. It is also, constitutionally speaking, the simplest and most direct and lasting presidential power of all. Biographies are written about it. Truly.

The stumbling block that could inhibit House Republicans from summoning the political will and legislative nerve to surmount tea-party-inspired protests is a sense that Obama will not enforce new border and interior security requirements. Republicans fear White House shortcuts in Obama's haste to accelerate a path to full-citizenship status for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. But this fear is not paralyzing. There is already an elaborate semantic exercise going on behind the scenes to determine the linguistic elasticity between legal status and citizenship. Hence the premium on trustworthiness where enforcement—once the language is agreed upon—is concerned.

Obama's history with the Affordable Care Act suggests a certain expedient flexibility that aggravates Republicans almost as much as the law itself. To achieve immigration reform, Obama will have to use his phone to call lawmakers and his pen to settle on the final wording of the law. And if that legislation is passed and Obama affixes his signature, the power to enforce the law will be preeminent.

So, the key to Obama's year has nothing to do with his flamboyant use of the phone and pen. It rides instead on the less gaudy and haughty constitutional powers every previous president has understood. And wielded to lasting effect.

The author is National Journal Correspondent-at-Large and Chief White House Correspondent for CBS News. He is also a distinguished fellow at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs.

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What the 50-Year War on Poverty Tells Us About Government

Major Garrett, National Journal — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 11:29:00 -0500

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared war on a visible, indefatigable enemy—poverty.

“Many Americans live on the outskirts of hope,” Johnson said in his State of the Union address. “Some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.” (Listen here.)

Even during Johnson’s presidency, critics wondered if the “war” was purely rhetorical. Those with an eye to the future worried that Johnson signed two fateful pieces of legislation in August of 1964—the Economic Opportunity Act that set the War on Poverty in motion, and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that concretized America’s costly commitment to Vietnam.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King called the War on Poverty a failure buried under the boots, artillery, and helicopter skids of Vietnam.

“A few years ago, there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor—both black and white—through the poverty program,” King said in an April 4, 1967, speech at Riverside Church in New York City. “There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war.”

The War on Poverty was barely an infant then. It’s 50 now. This epic societal struggle has consumed one-fifth of our republic’s history. It started, as a matter of policy, with the 1962 publication of the book The Other America, by Michael Harrington. A 1963 review in The New Yorker drove the topic into the upper reaches of John F. Kennedy’s White House until the book landed in JFK’s hand. Poverty, along with civil rights, became new priorities for Kennedy. Following his assassination, Johnson carried both torches.

Since then, America has spent $20.7 trillion on the War on Poverty—defined as means-tested government assistance to the poor. This includes housing, food, Medicaid, cash assistance, Head Start, and tax breaks like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Roughly one in three Americans receives some form of means-tested poverty assistance. And, yes, that’s trillion. With a “T.”

The statistic comes from Robert Rector, a conservative scholar at the Heritage Foundation, who argues the War on Poverty has not changed the statistical level of poverty but has changed the circumstances of being poor. By that, Rector means that the impoverished in America have creature comforts—air conditioning, TV, cable or satellite hookups, and computers—the poor in other countries can only dream of.

But Rector argues the only way to judge the War on Poverty is by the standard Johnson set forth—to improve self-sufficiency.

“We are not content to accept the endless growth of relief rolls or welfare rolls,” Johnson said upon signing the Economic Opportunity Act. “We want to offer the forgotten fifth of our people opportunity and not doles. Our American answer to poverty is not to make the poor more secure in their poverty but to reach down and to help them lift themselves out of the ruts of poverty and move with the large majority along the high road of hope and prosperity.”

Rector doesn’t see it.

“The question at the heart of this is can someone maintain an income above poverty thresholds without government aid,” Rector said. “By that standard, actually there’s no progress here. The capacity for self-support has not improved at all.”

I ran all of this by Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s former top economist, who oversaw implementation of President Obama’s stimulus law.

“That $20.7 trillion number represents around 6.6 percent of gross domestic product since 1964,” Bernstein said. “It’s a typical silly D.C. trick to give big numbers out of context to scare people. One could do this with any other part of the budget. How many trillions have we spent on defense since 1964? And yet there are still wars. And bad guys. Why doesn’t Rector complain about that?”

Bernstein cites figures that indicate the biggest driver of means-tested poverty spending has been Medicaid.

“Outside of Medicaid, spending on low-income programs was relatively constant as share of GDP, ranging between 1.5-2 percent,” Bernstein said. “The largest increase is from the Earned Income Tax Credit, a pro-work wage subsidy that Ronald Reagan loved.”

While it’s true Reagan and many conservatives since have praised the Earned Income Tax Credit, Reagan also advocated welfare reform but was rebuffed. After winning control of Congress in 1994, Republicans prevailed upon President Clinton to sign it in 1996. Liberals at the time predicted devastating consequences and were wrong. Welfare rolls declined, states and the federal government saved money, and privation decreased. Statistically, nothing has done more to reduce the prevalence of poverty among children and single mothers. Even during the Great Recession, poverty for children and single mothers did not climb above pre-welfare-reform levels.

The lessons?

“Welfare reform had very good timing, as it coincided with the tightest labor market in decades,” said Bernstein, adding that an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit and higher minimum wage aided those entering the workforce. “Welfare reform pushed a lot of people into the labor market, and many of them did relatively well. If you tried it today, I seriously doubt it would turn out that way.”

Obama never launched his own war on poverty, but his stimulus law pumped $831 billion into the economy—all of it deficit-financed and designed to soften the blow of the Great Recession.

I asked former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich about the War on Poverty, welfare reform, and the Recovery Act. He described the War on Poverty’s biggest success as lifting seniors out of a life of income insecurity and fear. Like Bernstein, he lauded the EITC. His most interesting comments concerned the Obama stimulus.

“The Recovery Act was helpful in avoiding what would have otherwise been another Great Depression,” Reich told me. “Ironically, though, had we plunged into another Great Depression, we probably would have summoned the political will to transform our economy in ways that spread the benefits of subsequent growth far more widely (as we did in the New Deal). As it is, 95 percent of the economic gains since the Great Recession ended in 2009 have gone to the richest 1 percent of Americans.”

I asked Reich what he meant about transforming our economy and spreading the benefits of future growth.

“The hardship wrought by the Great Recession was far more limited, falling on a smaller subset of society,” Reich said. “As such, Obama didn’t have the broad-based political support required to create, for example, wage insurance, a reemployment system, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, a minimum guaranteed income, or any other program comparable in scope and effect to the New Deal.”

All of which got me to thinking about what Dr. King called for in a 1967 book called Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? In it, King, like Reich, called for a guaranteed income, calling it the most efficient method of confronting poverty.

Fifty years of spending. Twenty trillion and counting. Not much statistical change. The same ideas, marginalized as ever—even with Obama, Democratic supermajorities, and a Great Recession.

Perhaps Reich’s deeper point is worth pondering. The War on Poverty may have rendered privation a subset issue for the nation, sheltered and pushed out to the margins—never dominant because the safety net prevents a cataclysm. In other words, what stands in the way of King’s and Reich’s ideas is the very set of policies considered then and now to be insufficient.

That means new ideas and new politics are required. Because the old stuff is radioactive. The spending continues. The statistics don’t change much. And 50 years is time for a serious reassessment. Every American knows it. Time for us to stand next to the War on Poverty and look in the mirror.

The author is National Journal Correspondent-at-Large and Chief White House Correspondent for CBS News. He is also a distinguished fellow at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs.

This article appears in the January 8, 2014, edition of NJ Daily as The 50-Year War.

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Analysis: How We Could Do More for Our Vets

Major Garrett, National Journal — Wed, 29 May 2013 15:19:14 -0400

I spent several hours on Memorial Day at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall. There is nothing notable or exceptional about my presence. I was too young to serve, and no name close to me is there for the etching, tears, or swollen sense of loss. Two cousins of mine (their sense of modesty seeks anonymity) served and came home alive and whole. One served two tours in Vietnam—the second as an artillery officer. He remained in the Army as part of the generation of junior officers who dedicated their post-Vietnam careers to improving the tattered, demoralized, and generally ill-disciplined fighting force that emerged from Southeast Asia. He retired as a colonel after tours in Germany and South Korea, among other places, and several years as an artillery instructor at what is now Joint Base Lewis-McCord.

My cousin suffers from Parkinson's and has for almost 20 years. His care, of course, is covered, and the costs rise as his condition deteriorates. It's a slow decline, as anyone who has witnessed Parkinson's can attest. But my cousin is as brave and heroic to me as he was when I was a child. Back then, I helped my mother tape water-tight (or so we hoped) care packages headed for impossibly distant Vietnam. I thought about my cousins at the wall. I thought about their needs and how, in the main, they are being met.

I also thought about how many times at sporting events I have risen in unison with the crowd to applaud post-9/11 war veterans given seats of honor. I remembered how we didn't do that for my cousins or any of their war-torn Vietnam comrades. You might imagine that made me feel better about our times. It did not. I began to wonder if there wasn't something transparently easy and indulgently comforting about a round of applause at a sporting event. Maybe the applause allows us to feel better—gives us the satisfying sense we are doing right by our veterans. I don't oppose the gesture, and I want it to continue. But I wonder if our veterans deserve something more—something enduring and attentive to needs that last long after the final score is posted and the hearty applause fades away.

That led me to ponder these inescapable facts. According to the Census Bureau, there are 2.5 million 9/11-era veterans. Their rate of service-connected disability is 26.7 percent—far higher than the 20.2 percent rate for the 7.5 million Vietnam-era veterans. The reality is most veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, despite being deployed multiple times, have returned and will return alive. In the Korean War, 2 percent of combat veterans died. In Vietnam, it was 1.7 percent. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it is currently 0.3 percent. This is the result of professional training, precise mission execution, and breath-taking advances in battlefield medicine. For this, we can be grateful. But we also must do more than applaud.

As I have seen with my cousin, the costs of war cast a long shadow. The shadow for Iraq and Afghanistan vets with artificial limbs and traumatic brain injury are already ever-present. The cost of caring for these veterans now is growing every year and will keep growing over time. In 2010, the House Veterans' Affairs Committee predicted $1.3 trillion in lifetime medical costs for post-9/11 veterans. Those estimates imagined between 30,000 and 60,000 troops in Iraq or Afghanistan through 2020. The Iraq war is over and Afghanistan is winding down. Those cost projections may be too high, but $1 trillion in future expenditures is not unrealistic.

And it's not just a question of cost. It's one of service. According to the most recent estimates, there are 800,000 pending disability claims at the Veterans Administration, and hundreds of thousands have been in process for at least four months. Some claims can take up to a year to process. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" raised this issue, as only he can, seriously and satirically. There is some progress. From March to May, the four-month-or-longer backlog fell by 8 percent to just over 538,000. That's still a scandal. Worse still, the administration's goal is to reduce wait times to no-more-than-four-months by 2015.

Combat veterans need better service, and they need it now. Their lives wither while they wait for the bureaucracy to process payments for that which they lost on the battlefield. Annual increases in appropriations won't do the trick. Combined annual spending on veterans' care is now more than $140 billion. That figure is up 41 percent from 2009—and we're still way, way behind. Combat veterans deserve better. What to do?

Go into debt.

Yes. Go into debt. There are three principle needs combat veterans have that we as a nation are obliged to finance or at least promote: health care, housing, and life-long counseling. All are expensive, but they are vital to any combat veteran's successful reentry into civilian life. If we imagine $1 trillion in health care costs alone, we better imagine a future where we are willing to pay. Will that future exist after the Afghanistan war is over? Will we still be applauding 9/11-era veterans in 2016? I don't know. But I have my doubts. The time to fund these known and knowable costs is now.

With debt.

I propose $1 trillion in a debt-financed trust fund for health care, counseling, and housing. These are basic needs, and with the absolute guarantee of funding, the VA can offer two choices: stay in the existing disability system or receive as-needed funding for immediate needs in these three areas. Does anyone doubt that ready cash would allow combat veterans to re-enter civilian life with less financial stress, hardship, and needless waiting?

As for the "cost" of debt, it's never been lower. And it's unlikely ever to be as inexpensive as it is now. According to Treasury Department figures, we spent $359 billion servicing our $16.06 trillion debt last year. That is the lowest amount devoted to interest payments on the national debt since 2005. We spent $352 billion that year … on a national debt of $7.93 trillion.

I'm not advocating debt for roads or railroads or tax cuts or—dare I say it?—wars. I'm advocating debt for costs we know are real and that we know will grow to provide immediate financial lifelines to combat veterans we are now sentencing to unconscionable wait times for disability claims and other services.

In his Memorial Day remarks at Arlington National Cemetery, Obama said this about how little the hardships of military life and war-fighting touch the average American: "Today, most Americans are not directly touched by war. As a consequence, not all Americans may always see or fully grasp the depth of sacrifice, the profound costs that are made in our name."

I propose paying those costs up front. Now. With debt. Debt that's inexpensive and that can render real and permanent benefits to those who deserve it most. We can sort out the details of who qualifies and for how much. That is easy compared with summoning the political will now to acknowledge the costs, admit the politics of paying them will only become more precarious in the years ahead, and biting the debt bullet now.

The debt that is owed is real. We can and should repay it—starting now.

And here's the bumper sticker: Debt to Vets, Debt for Vets.

This article appears in the May 29, 2013, edition of National Journal Daily.

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Analysis: Obama Appears at a Loss to Define the Way Forward in Syria

Major Garrett, National Journal — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:11:22 -0400

President Obama did not start the Syrian crisis, and the blood-soaked civil war has never lent itself to easy choices. In fact, the choices have always been among the hardest any U.S. president has faced in the region.

Syria is more than a country, and its civil war is more than a brutal and bloody story of a dictatorial regime pulverizing a largely defenseless civilian population. Syria sits at a strategic crossroads and has for decades been the conduit of cash and operational expertise linking meddlesome Iran to the east with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Obama ran and won on ending the Iraq war and has never had an interest in starting one in neighboring Syria. Neither, for that matter, have U.S. allies Jordan and Israel. For two years, Obama and the Israelis and Jordanians have calculated that Syria's regime--led by Bashir Assad--would cave to outside pressure and not choose ruination for his country's cities, its history, and its people.

Assad has not caved. He has hunkered down and fought. This decision did not come without less-appreciated strategic advantages for the U.S. and its allies. There is a very cold and practical analysis of these advantages within the White House, and it has in significant ways influenced Obama's policy.

A Syria bedeviled by civil war is less financially and operationally active in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. A besieged Syrian regime makes Tehran shiver as it contemplates a future without a client state on the doorstep of the places it most wants to destabilize--Israel and Jordan. A teetering Syria draws the attention of other Gulf powers like Saudi Arabia. That complicates Iran's calculations as well, as it fears Saudi encroachment where it once pulled most if not all of the strings.

The administration saw this pragmatic side of the civil war. The "realists" argued that these strategic pluses gave the U.S. time to adapt to the complex post-Arab spring chess board of evolving Middle East politics and alliances. What the U.S. could do well, it did. That meant humanitarian aid in Jordan and wherever it could be provided--through whatever means--inside Syria. The U.S. was also cautious not to lionize unreliable or disorganized dissident forces, waiting for them to coalesce. That they have not done so only reinforced the "realist" voice of caution about the U.S. picking sides.

And for all the sudden Republican interest in no-fly zones and beefed-up arming of the rebels, the GOP was largely silent about Syria in the 2012 campaign and devoted no attention to developing a better policy that would pass muster with war-weary voters or advance U.S. interests. Even now, the country has no appetite for a Syrian conflict. In the latest CBS News poll, only 24 percent said we had a responsibility to intervene in Syria, while 62 percent said we had no responsibility. Even among those following Syria's horrors closely (10 percent), 47 percent said we had a responsibility and 48 percent said we did not.

Obama's approach to this scenario reminds me of a minor scene in the 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia. In it, the commanding officer of all British war efforts in Arabia, Gen. Edmund Allenby, is challenged by a junior officer about his decision not to intervene more decisively on the side of the Arab Bedouin fighting the Turks in 1917.

The junior officer is Col. Harry Brighton, a fictionalized amalgam of British officers who backed T.E. Lawrence's irregular war against the Turks. He wants Allenby to do more for Lawrence and the Bedouin as both teeter on collapse after many early successes.

"Look, sir," Brighton implores Allenby. "We can't just do nothing."

"Why not?" Allenby replies with a sigh. "It's usually best."

In essence, the Allenby policy has been U.S. policy in Syria. Humanitarian assistance is not nothing. But if you talk to reporters like my CBS colleague Clarissa Ward, they will say it feels like nothing. For rebels and dissidents starving for weapons and civilians wailing and dying under the onslaught of unchecked Syrian air power, they see Obama's policy as the equivalent of Allenby's. And they live with it and die with it every day.

This was all visible until Obama, fearing Assad might use chemical weapons to cling to power, developed his "red line" deterrent approach. Obama assumed that by threatening unspecified action against Assad, the dictator would refrain from using chemical weapons and nerve agents and accept some political exit that would save his skin and maybe those of a few regime sycophants. That approach has largely worked.

But with evidence now that chemical weapons have been used--sarin twice in the past month, according to Secretary of State John Kerry--the rhetorical vagueness of Obama's "red line" is now under justifiable scrutiny. What is the red line, when is it crossed, and what are the consequences? Such are the uncomfortable questions of an Allenby-plus policy.

On Friday, Obama said the U.S. would not tolerate the "systematic use of weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations." Adding the modifier "systematic" sent shivers down the spine of Syrian civilians and U.N. aid workers in no position to defend themselves from such an onslaught.

At Tuesday's press conference, Obama appeared at a loss to define the line, the policy, or the consequences.

"I've got to make sure I've got the facts," Obama said about the chain of evidence of sarin use by the Syrian regime. "If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, then we can find ourselves in a situation where we can't mobilize the international community to support what we do."

All would agree it would be unwise to "rush to judgment" or lose international community backing. But Obama appeared incapable of describing next steps--larding caution about judgment atop a policy that appeared suffused with caution already.

"If I can establish, in a way that not only the United States but also the international community feel confident is the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, that is a game-changer.... By 'game-changer,' I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us."

Rethink the range of options available. That sounds like Allenby-minus.

The administration, according to The Washington Post, is now considering sending the rebels lethal arms. Many details remain unresolved, and consultations with Russia could slow the final decision and mean weeks more fighting without new military facts on the ground.

This may be a sign that Obama is moving away from Allenby. Or it may be a signal that he's using the threat of a Russian green light for lethal arms to signal to Assad he has one last chance to opt for a political solution and leave with his life.

Obama may be buying time with fuzzy rhetoric. If he isn't, North Korea and Iran will take notice, and complications with both nations and their nuclear ambitions will multiply.

This article appears in the May 1, 2013, edition of National Journal Daily.

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Analysis: Living With the Nuances, Ironies, and Flexibility of Sequestration

Major Garrett, National Journal — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 08:36:12 -0500

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the Twitpic Sequester Olympics.

Brad Woodhouse, communications director for the Democratic National Committee, got the games going late Tuesday with a picture from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and a long line of weary travelers. The Twitpic, shot by Jim Neal, a Democrat who ran for the Senate in North Carolina in 2008, was supposedly of a three-hour wait to pass through O’Hare’s customs checkpoint.

There’s no reason to doubt the authenticity of the Twitpic. But long lines at O’Hare’s customs checkpoint are nothing new, and sequestration can in no way be blamed—at least, not yet. Crain’s Chicago Business wrote on Dec. 24 how O’Hare customs checks were long, inefficient, and a threat to tourism. “While most passengers are processed in less than an hour, customs delays of two or three hours or more are increasingly common at O’Hare, even though international passenger arrivals are down more than 8 percent from a 2007 peak of nearly 5 million,” Crain’s wrote. “The problem is expected to get much worse next summer, when five new foreign carriers start serving O’Hare.”

What the Twitpic heralds, however, fills me with dread. I can see into Twitter’s future and espy raucous, roiling debates (the kind that would make Woodward and Sperling blush) over the accuracy of Twitpics of airport baggage lines, Customs ports of entry, border-crossing stations—any place where federal workers either are or aren’t. Behold the Twitpic Sequester Olympics, wherein part of our political debate will be consumed with pictures and commentary about how much of our nation does or does not resemble the DMV. How stirring.

Oh well, sequestration is here to stay. You could see that on President Obama’s face as he glumly settled in with his still-unformed Cabinet for the first time in the second term. Obama said the federal government would “manage it as best we can.” The cuts come to $85 billion in budget authority over two years. The Congressional Budget Office, by the way, estimates the actual reduction in outlays this year will be $42 billion.

Management is an open question now, because it is hard to know when the budget cuts will cause noticeable disruptions. Even Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appeared perplexed when, after telling a Politico breakfast on Monday that major airports were “already” experiencing sequestration-induced delays, specifics proved elusive.

“I want to say O’Hare, I want to say LAX [Los Angeles International], I want to say Atlanta [Hartsfield], but I’d have to check,” Napolitano said. “The New York airports got through OK, but that is going to be temporary.”

But those airports reported no serious delays—hence the Woodhouse Twitpic.

Beneath these early takes on sequestration is the intriguing question of flexibility. How much does the federal government have and can it, for example, shift resources to protect vital services and cannibalize less important tasks for the greater good? There appear to be two solid and accurate answers—the first one well-understood, the second less so.

On the question of the across-the-board nature of the discretionary cuts, there is no discretion. Agencies and departments must cut by the percentage assigned by the Office of Management and Budget. OMB calculates the cuts as 8 percent for defense and 5 percent for non-defense over the fiscal year. That translates to 13 percent and 9 percent, respectively, when compressed into the seven remaining months of the budget year. Those cuts are legally binding and must be made.

What about what remains? Isn’t there discretion over what sequestration’s supposed meat cleaver leaves behind? It cannot all be gristle.

OMB offers a valuable clue. In guidance sent to all agencies on Feb. 27, Danny Werfel, OMB controller, instructed “heightened scrutiny of certain types of activities funded from sequestered accounts.” Specifically, Werfel advised agencies to be careful in spending “post-sequestration” dollars on “hiring new personnel, issuing discretionary monetary awards to employees, (and) incurring obligations for new training, conferences, and travel.”

Reads like flexibility to me. Agencies can manage and prioritize. In fact, Werfel said all planning—before and after sequestration—“must be guided by the principle of protecting the agency’s mission to serve the public to the greatest extent practicable.” Apparently, the White House no longer considers taxpayer tours part of its mission.

Republicans have been needling the administration mercilessly on the point of flexibility, begging Obama to employ it. That, of course, accepts the premise that these spending cuts could harm public services and bite hard at home.

There’s another hilarious curiosity about the GOP’s sudden gushing enthusiasm for federal bureaucratic flexibility. May I rudely remind Republicans that congressional earmarks—an industry that grew exponentially under their stewardship of Congress—were justified (for public consumption, anyway) as an instrument to frustrate meddling federal bureaucrats who could not be trusted to manage taxpayer dollars.

In other words, Republicans trust themselves, but not bureaucrats, to spend tax dollars. And they trust bureaucrats, but not themselves, to cut spending. I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up.

One last point. Over the weekend, Obama began calling Republican senators in search of partners for a deficit-reduction deal that might include tax reform and serious reductions in entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid. This is the “grand bargain” Holy Grail that has played, at times, more humorously in Washington than Monty Python in London. After losing the election, GOP leaders began to see sequestration as the best—and quite possibly only—mechanism to force Obama back into serious “grand bargain” conversations.

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Analysis: Hysteria over fiscal cliff may spur deal

Major Garrett, National Journal — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 10:49:33 -0500

Already, local news stations are running “fiscal cliff” countdown clocks. Fevered curiosity over the ebb and flow of cliff negotiations is rising and may soon creep near the Kardashian or One Direction pop-culture summit. When the fate of marginal tax rates and the Medicare eligibility age compete with boy bands and wannabee wannabees, you know legislative hysteria is on the loose.

And this is a good thing. After all, everything else in this great nation’s political tool kit has failed. Governing for governing’s sake is dying, if not dead. Bipartisanship and compromise as legislative art forms are more lost than Jon Stewart at CPAC. And politics as a means of comprehending and responding to economically transformational technologies has never been our strong suit (See: Gilded Age, the) -- it’s just worse and more dangerous now.

So, hysteria is all we’ve got left. The politicians want it and need it to cut a fiscal-cliff deal.

Hysteria, like a hangman’s noose, focuses the mind. It can transform rock-ribbed ideologies into Silly Putty -- or at least soggy holiday fruitcake. It can turn voters and those who represent them into instant pragmatists. When fiscal-cliff negotiations and not reindeer hooves become this year’s holiday clatter, it will be because voters know what is the matter: Washington, if it remains paralyzed, will sentence the country to the first premeditated recession not imposed by German bankers (pity the Greeks) in the history of Western civilization.

America won’t stand for it. Not this time. The hair-trigger loathing of Congress is real. President Obama, though reelected, has no hope of a second-term legacy of immigration reform, tax reform, or climate-change legislation (if he even wants it) if he drives the nation off the cliff.

No one will follow Obama back out of the recessionary wilderness -- where even liberals who might cheer him for “protecting” Medicare and Medicaid (the centerpiece of GOP entitlement demands -- Social Security reforms are just a bargaining chip) will find a bone-chilling political gloom. After all, you can’t sustain entitlements in a country where middle incomes continue to fall, jobs grow more scarce, and tax collections continue at their current anemic pace.

Obama knows this, which is why he ordered up a White House report on the dangers to retail sales and consumer spending if the Bush-era tax cuts for middle-income earners expire. And top Obama economist Alan Krueger extolled the virtues of preserving the “temporary” 2 percent payroll tax. This big Democratic priority is now also a cliff bargaining chip. The so-called “cliff divers” in the Democratic Party can’t have everything. If they want to preserve Medicare and Medicaid, they have to bow to GOP demands on means testing, higher age eligibility, and new flexibility and autonomy for governors to manage Medicaid funds.

Hysteria can make heretofore inflexible Democrats more so. It’s already had a transformational effect on congressional Republicans. Senate Republicans, even those such as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia who are facing potential primaries, know that sequestration-mandated defense cuts will hurt far more of their middle- and low-income constituents than high-income earners whimpering about seeing deductions for mortgage interest or charitable contributions scaled back (or marginal rates increased). Other GOP senators are similarly positioned. Hysteria over across-the-board defense cuts to personnel and defense contractors and the effect they will have on job losses -- direct and indirect -- will go viral faster than “Gangnam Style.”

This is why Republicans and their backers in business crave a big deal. They’ve held off the higher tax revenue wave as long as possible. They will trade it for entitlement savings and less-aggressive defense cuts. U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue met on Monday with Obama’s top economic advisers in sessions that Donohue’s allies describe as “very constructive.” Donohue wants a grand bargain and may be asked to provide political cover to Republicans who support raising taxes. John Engler, head of the Business Roundtable, got similarly good vibrations from White House meetings on Monday. Together, the two business groups could provide more political cover than Chris Christie’s fleece.

One last advantage of hysteria: It won’t come again and it won’t possess its current potency -- which means the accumulated sense of relief and forgiveness of politicians who avert a cliff catastrophe will never be as great. Secondarily, any Republican or Democrat who casts a tough vote in December for higher taxes and/or big changes to Medicare or Medicaid will have more than a year to gird for a primary challenge and to inherit the economic upside of avoiding a recession. Hysteria, forgiveness, and time are all, in this context, exquisitely finite.

And that’s why hysteria may be the best thing America, a temperamentally equable nation, may have going for it.]]>

Obama counters Boehner's opening bid on fiscal cliff

Major Garrett, National Journal — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 15:39:36 -0500

“We have to combine spending cuts with revenue,” Obama said from the East Room in his first formal rejoinder to Boehner’s postelection openness to higher tax revenues but not higher marginal rates. “That means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes.”

Obama, the first Democrat in modern times to campaign and win reelection with a plan to raise income taxes, invited the bipartisan congressional leadership to the White House next week for the first of many meetings seeking to resolve fiscal-cliff issues. Obama said that his victory and the exit-poll data behind it prove the country is ready to raise taxes to Clinton-era levels for individuals with adjustable gross income above $200,000 and for families above $250,000.

“I refuse to accept any approach that isn’t balanced,” Obama said. “I’m not going to ask students and seniors and middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me making over $250,000 aren’t asked to pay a dime more in taxes. I’m not going to do that.”

After pausing for 13 seconds of sustained applause, Obama drove the message home.

“I just want to point out this was a central question during the election,” the president said. “It was debated over and over again. On Tuesday night we found that the majority of Americans agree with my approach. Our job now is to get a majority in Congress to reflect the will of the American people. I believe we can get that majority.”

While on the surface Obama’s rhetoric sounded confrontational, subtle changes in language may prove telling. During the ugly days of recrimination after the pursuit of a grand budget bargain failed in August of 2011, top White House aides spoke derisively of Boehner’s inability to find votes or seal a deal. The phrase “Boehner couldn’t deliver a pizza” became a clichéd West Wing summation of House GOP disorder.

Obama could have said that it was up to Boehner to compromise or find the votes. Instead he said it was “our job” to find the votes in the House and that “we” can achieve a majority. That puts Obama and the persuasive powers of the presidency squarely in the legislative game. And even as he said he wouldn’t approve a deal that didn’t ask the wealthy to pay more in taxes, Obama didn’t explicitly call for higher rates as the only means of achieving the goal of higher revenue.

That leaves both sides some room — though not a lot — to negotiate the details and semantics of higher revenue, tax reform, and deficit reduction. Obama and Boehner have now laid down their tax markers, which they contend reflect the will of the people. Each is half right. The question is can they meet half way.

On spending cuts, Obama’s words carefully left wriggle room. Saying he would not ask students, seniors, and middle-income families to “pay down the entire deficit,” he left room for cuts affecting all three in the context of a “broader deficit-reduction package.” And because Boehner already has agreed to higher revenue along with spending cuts, shrinking government appears on something of a fast track. The remaining question is the depth and breadth of the cuts.

Boehner has now said three times that he won’t support, and the House couldn’t pass, higher income-tax rates on the wealthy. That’s his marker. Everything else appears negotiable unless and until Obama can change votes within the House GOP conference or flexible definitions of higher tax revenue can be negotiated.

When asked at his Friday press conference about whether he could provice details of a possible deal on taxes and spending, Boehner refused, saying he didn’t want to eliminate options for him or Obama. That signals seriousness and purposefulness that might reassure Wall Street and its downcast sell-off psyche in the wake of an election that reinforced the gridlocked power structure of old.

Obama also called on the House to pass a pending Senate bill extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all taxpayers below the $200,000 and $250,000 adjusted gross income level. He said that would alleviate some of the uncertainty stalking financial markets and clouding consumer confidence.

“Let’s not wait,” Obama said. “Let’s extend the middle-class tax cuts right now. I’ve got the pen ready to sign the bill right away. I’m ready to do it.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid echoed the call.

But Boehner knows that the Bush tax rates are his one remaining lever. He’s holding firm with a House-passed bill that extends all Bush tax cuts for one year while negotiations proceed on tax reform and a big deficit-cutting deal. He appears disinclined to hand it over before negotiations get serious.

“The increased tax rates that would be allowed under the Senate-passed bill are part of the fiscal cliff that economists are warning us to avoid. Those increased tax rates will destroy jobs in America by hurting small businesses across the country," Boehner said in a statement responding to the president.

One note on the negotiations: Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., a frequent participant in so-called Gang of Eight budget talks, said on Friday that all ad hoc groups should remain on the sidelines. “Now is not the time for any of us — Republicans, Democrats, rump groups, or gangs — to be publicly promoting our own plans,” Corker said in a statement that landed strategically between Boehner’s press conference and Obama’s remarks. “Right now the only two people who are likely to get a result by year’s end are President Obama and Speaker Boehner.”

Obama and Boehner said now was the time to get to work and minimize drama, conflict, and theatrics. At week’s end those ethos appeared to hold, the repeated East Room standing ovations for Obama notwithstanding.

In the coming days, the most important audience reaction will be on Wall Street. Stocks gained slightly Friday morning but gave back those advances immediately after Obama spoke. The market shed 434 points the two days after Obama’s reelection and the retrenchment of Democratic power in the Senate and GOP clout in the House. Investors are beating a hasty retreat out of fear Washington won’t avert the fiscal cliff.

Yes, Obama and Boehner are still weighing the voters’ verdict from Tuesday. But if appearances deepen initial impressions of more gridlock, the loudest and costliest verdicts may come from the stock exchanges. Real capital, not just political capital, is at stake.]]>

Romney campaign denies acting rashly on Libyan situation

Major Garrett, National Journal — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:11:24 -0400

Caught up in the middle of a roiling and deadly foreign policy crisis, Mitt Romney’s campaign denies it acted rashly in condemning the Obama administration’s reaction to fatal assaults against U.S. diplomats in Libya and a violent raid against the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Senior Romney advisers, who declined to speak on the record, said on Wednesday the protests at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, where U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed along with three others, demanded a comment from the GOP nominee. The larger point of Romney’s statement, which faulted the administration for initially siding with protesters in Cairo, was that Obama is misreading the violent underbelly of the Arab Spring and jeopardizing U.S. interests in the region.

“This was a story that was building the entire day,” a senior Romney official said of the developments that took place late on Tuesday and into Wednesday morning. “With the killing of a U.S. diplomat it is the type of thing where the Republican nominee for president has to have a response. This was a big deal. And the statement was about the consistent failure of this administration to engage constructively with the aftermath of the Arab Spring.”

Romney himself took the incident as an opportunity to criticize President Obama, calling an impromptu press conference while campaigning in Jacksonville, Fla. Romney focused on a statement the American embassy in Cairo issued as protestors were gathering outside its compound.

"I think it's a terrible course for America to apologize for our values," Romney said. "They clearly sent mixed messages to the world. And the statement that came from the administration -- and the embassy is the administration ... was a statement which is akin to apology and I think was a severe miscalculation."

The Obama campaign and White House officials said they were stunned by Romney’s criticism, calling it out of bounds in the midst of an on-going diplomatic tragedy.

But the Romney official said the campaign’s tough criticism of the White House was meant to set in motion a larger debate about U.S. interests in a region full of new and potentially hazardous political transformation.

“This is an opportunity and a chance for us to debate existing administration policy,” the senior official said. “It will be a part of a larger criticism about the president’s policy in the region.”

Yet, even Romney surrogates questioned the timing of Romney’s statement, which referred to the death of an American official, and originally carried a midnight eastern standard time embargo to avoid political criticism on 9/11.

“They probably should have waited,” said former Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H. “You look at the way things unfolded, you look at the timing of it, they probably should have waited.”

Asked if the Romney campaign had any doubts or second thoughts about the timing, substance or tone of its statement, the official said: “none.”

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo released a statement before the storming of the compound that criticized a web video fundamentalist Muslims said insulted the Prophet Mohammed, sparking the unrest.

“There were reports that crowds were gathering in Cairo and unrest was beginning,” a senior Romney adviser said. “Violence was brewing. It’s a class CYA move by the State Department now to say the statement came out before the violence began.”

Romney’s statement landed amid grief-inducing news of the deaths of Stevens and three other Americans, the official mourning over which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton began on Wednesday morning.

“Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” Clinton said. “America's commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear. There is no justification for this. None.”

President Obama also was set to address the violence and its aftermath at the White House later Wednesday morning.

Eric Katz contributed to this story.

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Decision to move Obama's speech inside sparks scramble

Major Garrett and Jim O'Sullivan, National Journal — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:16:13 -0400

The decision to relocate President Obama’s acceptance speech tonight from Bank of America Stadium to the Time Warner Cable Arena left thousands of would-be attendees frustrated and hunting for other venues to watch what was expected to be a triumphant sequel to Obama’s outdoor address in Denver four years ago.

Convention officials and Obama aides rejected suggestions, gleefully pushed by Republicans, that fears of disappointing attendance had prompted a political calculation to move to the guaranteed-capacity indoor arena. The weather, organizers said, left them no choice but to cancel. One senior official said the Obama campaign had an overflow list of 19,000 who could not be seated in the stadium.

“Our goal from the very beginning was, how to make this the most open and accessible convention in history, and we decided as late as operationally possible,” Democratic National Convention Committee CEO Steve Kerrigan told Convention Daily, describing the decision as “heartbreaking.”

Instead, delegates and donors will be allowed inside, while the people expected to fill at least 50,000 of the stadium seats that were set aside for those carrying “community credentials,” including supporters from four surrounding states, have been encouraged to join a Thursday pre-speech conference call with Obama and to host watch parties in their homes.

“We spent thousands of dollars to come down here, and we can’t go. That’s really unfair,” said Gwendolyn Clarke, who said she had driven from New York City with her daughter to watch the stadium speech, hoping to defray the cost by selling water bottles outside the arena. “When you give money and time and don’t get in, that’s not fair. If you’re not famous enough, you don’t get in.”

Republicans were quick to impugn Obama’s motives.

“You can’t believe a thing this administration says,” said John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire and a top Romney surrogate, during a Charlotte press conference. “They promised you, rain or shine, the president would be speaking there. And then when they couldn’t get a crowd, they brought him inside.”

Aside from the obvious optical disadvantages and too-easy metaphors—Obama forced to downsize four arduous years after making history—the reelection effort, more critically, loses tangible electoral tools that will be important in swing states North Carolina and Virginia.

The Obama campaign’s methods were on display in the way tickets were distributed to the now-canceled outdoor event. The so-called community credentials were not handed out at offices and events. Instead, people had to apply for them and then go online to activate them. Campaign officials said that 65,000 had activated their tickets and an additional 19,000 were on what they called “a hard waiting list.”

Kerrigan said that the shut-out spectators were notified on Wednesday by e-mail that they could not attend.

Among those who had been given tickets to the speech were 6,000 North Carolinians who had signed up for the campaign’s “9-3-1” program. That meant they had to volunteer for nine hours over three shifts to get one seat. That represented 54,000 hours of registering new voters, calling other North Carolinians to sign them up.

Top officials made the decision around 8 a.m. Wednesday, after a conference call with Kerrigan, senior campaign strategist David Axelrod, campaign manager Jim Messina, and his deputies Stephanie Cutter and Julianna Smoot. A key organizer speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations said that officials had backup plans in place, but details remained unresolved. “They had the contingency plan; it was all mapped out. Now they have to execute it,” the organizer said.

Kerrigan said that organizers would need to do “a little bit of programmatic shifting,” including a downsized schedule. Stage events will now launch closer to 4 p.m., he said, rather than the previously planned earlier start. The stage, Kerrigan said, will be smaller than the stadium version.

Later Wednesday, convention officials said there would be no balloon drop inside the arena, a traditional staple of conventions’ final nights. Balloons typically are installed before a convention begins.

Until the announcement about 10 a.m. on Wednesday, the campaign had stuck with its full-speed-ahead intentions on keeping tonight’s show outdoors. Campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Air Force One during the flight to Charlotte, “There were several weather forecasts that were calling for a 30-to-40 percent chance of thunderstorms tomorrow night—which, just to put that in real terms for you, what it means, we would have had to possibly evacuate the stadium if there were thunderstorms.”

Secret Service agents said that uptown Charlotte’s security and street-closures plan would not change from Wednesday because the Time Warner Arena is already secured. Several road and parking restrictions around the stadium set to take effect starting Wednesday evening and ending on Friday have been canceled because of the venue change.

The level of door security is not expected to change for convention-goers regardless of the venue—none of the prohibited items, including umbrellas, will be allowed into the arena during Obama’s speech. But the crowds are expected to increase dramatically, exacerbating already-clogged streets and long security lines.

“The checkpoints are already established, so what’s here is here,” said one Secret Service agent patrolling the perimeter of the arena on Wednesday morning, who would only speak on the condition of anonymity. But for Obama’s speech, the agent cautioned, “you can probably count on it being three times as busy.”

Catherine Christman, a media consultant leading a group of convention attendees from South Carolina colleges and universities, said she was sorry to lose out on watching the speech in person. “It’s a bit of a scramble, but it doesn’t look like logistically it’s going to work out,” she said. “Of course, we’re all disappointed.”

Whether the complications surrounding the speech muzzle its message or dent Obama’s aura of competence remains an open question. Democratic Sen. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania said, “In Washington, it’s an interesting thing to bat around, I think, but it’s not going to matter. People are going to listen to what he’s going to say.” For Gwendolyn Clarke’s daughter Courtney, though, the disappointment of being denied attendance had turned her off Obama altogether. She did not plan to watch the speech on television, she said, and went further.

“You can rest assured, Courtney will be voting for Ryan and Romney,” Courtney said.]]>

Obama Campaign Is Brutal This Time

Major Garrett, National Journal — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 01:00:00 -0400

President Obama's reelection effort isn't the toughest, or most aggressive, in American history.

It only looks and feels that way compared with the gauzy memories most have of the lilt, sunshine, and post-partisan pixie dust of 2008.

Never mind that Obama was tough in the clutch during his primary cage match with then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and unstinting in his criticism of John McCain as a heroic but nevertheless remanufactured jalopy off the George W. Bush assembly line.

Obama did trade in 2008 on aspirations of a political world without petty partisan differences, "tit-for-tat" haggling over wedge issues, or real or imagined flip-flops. Now it often feels as if Obama's reelection talking points strain to rise to tit-for-tat seriousness. What they undoubtedly lack, according to senior advisers to GOP candidate Mitt Romney, is a conviction that limits exist and that the brutal work of attempting to disqualify Romney is just that. Brutal.

Romney advisers believe that Obama's playing a dangerous game, imagining he is more likable than he is and betting that running against his 2008 brand won't discourage voters who genuinely thought Obama was and would be different.

"Obama can't run on what he's done and he can't run on what he represents anymore," said a senior Romney adviser. "Voters will see that and that gives us a chance to tell Romney's story and win."

Romney's team will devote a good part of its convention week to lamenting — for political purposes — Obama's campaign coldness and harshness (Obama even brought out the shaggy-dog line of attack about Romney's dog Seamus in Iowa last week). The first day's theme in Tampa, Fla., "We Can Do Better," is all-inclusive. Political tone is part of it. Romney's convention stage managers will use all the tools of sets and lighting and presentation to create an atmosphere of warmth and accessibility — a visual and tonal attempt to contrast Romney with Obama's penchant for punching and counterpunching. This is Romney's last chance to create some kind of glow; last week's scorn over Obam's harshness — and the ensuing debate over its sincerity — was a tactical prelude to Tampa.

Democrats laud Team Obama's tenacity, in part because they want to protect the hard-won gains of his first two years. They want a harshly protective president to defend health care, bank regulations, and green-energy investments, not to mention education spending, Medicaid, Medicare, and environmental regulations. Discouraging words about the combative Obama — former Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis notwithstanding — are rare.

Obama's campaign didn't flinch or even fake a wince when Vice President Joe Biden said that Romney's desire to undo Obama's raft of new Wall Street regulations would put Americans "back in chains." That Biden said it in a Southern drawl he kept conspicuously under wraps during 30-plus years in the Senate and two presidential campaigns mattered not at all — or that it was said in Danville, Va., a city with a deep history of racial scars arising out of civil-rights protests, arrests, and police violence. All this racially layered context evaporated, Obama's team said, next to Biden's underlying point about the evils of any attempt to eradicate the Dodd-Frank regulations of big banks.

Romney called Biden's remarks consistent with a reelection campaign based on "anger" and "hatred." Team Obama shrugged, knowing that in a battle defined by consistently underwhelming economic news and unmet promises on deficit reduction, job creation, and wage growth, the deficiencies of Romney must appear more threatening or displeasing than the realities of Obama's first term.

Obama advisers readily admit they have spent the summer trying to cut the ground out from under Romney by making him appear secretive and heartless. Not just someone who is wealthy, but who has a bullying side. It's the Romney project.

That's the underlying message behind the attacks on Bain Capital, Romney's private-equity firm, and the endless fascination team Obama has in Romney's tax returns. After implying Romney might have committed a felony in the filing of a form to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Obama team then subcontracted to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada the task of smoking out Romney on taxes.

In 2008, it would have been hard to fathom an Obama campaign standing alongside a surrogate who alleged a rival candidate paid no income taxes — an allegation based on anonymous, uncorroborated hearsay evidence.

"This whole thing with Harry is absurd when you think about it," Obama senior adviser David Axelrod toldNational Journal, referring to Romney's reaction, not Reid's charge. "Because he (Romney) could end this whole discussion in 10 minutes. He could come and say ‘Here they are, here’s my last 10 years of tax returns. Here’s my last 23 I gave to John McCain and as you can see I paid taxes every year, net taxes every year. SoHarry Reid you’re a f****** liar. Easy."

Obama's campaign last week dialed its request for tax records back to five years, which Romney summarily ignored. But Reid's tenacity and audacity (a different kind than Obama wrote about) kept the issue alive and forced it into a Romney question-and-answer session. That's where Romney said he's paid no less than a 13 percent effective federal tax rate over the past 10 years.

This was vindication of Obama's hardball tactics. They forced Romney to reveal more than he intended. An outlandish charge with no foundation nevertheless drew blood and made news. This, Obama's team believes, is what must be done to win. It marvels at what it calls Romney's unwitting complicity.

"He’s been very collaborative in this project by being so furtive and so secretive on so many things," Axelrod said. "He’s contributed to his own problem by failing to lay down a foundation. Whether it’s that he didn’t pay taxes or whether he paid a very low rate or whether he took advantage of some dubious loopholes, I just don’t know what it is. We are not painting a picture of something that isn’t there."

Additionally, Obama's team knows it's been taking flak for months from Romney's allies in the super PAC community and makes no apologies for hitting back with a vengeance at Romney, whom many Obama senior advisers believe weeps crocodile tears over campaign rhetoric while leaving the toughest attacks to super PAC allies. While it's true Obama has spent more head-to-head than Romney ($85.3 million to $50.3 million, largely because Romney can only spend general election donations after the convention), the pro-Romney and pro-GOP super PACS have tilted overall spending in Romney's favor ($168.5 million for Romney to $102.7 million for Obama, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group).

"Campaign to campaign (spending) doesn't mean s***," Axelrod said. "What matters is gross spending. I said a long time ago that they've contracted their hits out to contract hit men."

Obama's campaign also believes its intense swing-state focus on abortion and contraception issues has been given new and possibly crippling heft with Rep. Todd Akin's comments about "legitimate rape" as he seeks to unseat Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri. The Romney campaign swiftly distanced itself from Akin, but Romney's running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, cosponsored legislation with Akin that unsuccessfully sought to redefine "forcible rape" in the federal code. Tough commercials on this are in the works as are radio ads in swing states battering Romney and Ryan for domestic spending cuts in Ryan's GOP budget blueprints.

Obama's team trafficked in sweetness and light in 2008, or so it seemed. That was the opportunistic play. It contrasted helpfully with the allegedly dark political arts of the Clintons and Bush's unpopular performance as a warrior president presiding over an economic meltdown. Optimism is fool's gold now and no longer the opportunist's path. Disqualification is the coin of the realm. And Obama's team is buying.

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Romney-Ryan Pros and Cons

Major Garrett, National Journal — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:00:00 -0400

Not because it's convenient but because it's true, Ryan brings five potential advantages and five potential hazards to Mitt Romney. Unlike anyone else Romney could have picked, Ryan is multifaceted politically and genuinely memorable on the gritty substance of fiscal policy. Next to Romney, Ryan stands equally balanced between promise and peril.

The decisive factor in which way the Ryan factor tilts - toward advantageous momentum or disorganized defeatism - depends entirely on Romney. The nominee will determine what he makes of or what is made of Ryan.

Yes, Ryan is a big pick with risks and opportunities galore. But Ryan can't turn the epic battle with President Obama into victory or defeat. Only Romney can. Unlike any other potential running mate, Ryan gives Romney a wider array of ingredients for victory and defeat - and a more tuned-in public hungry to see what he makes of this audacious move.

Advantages:

1. Governing. I wrote in early April that Romney would pick Ohio Sen. Rob Portman in large part because I concluded he provided the strongest governing skills. What is known about Romney -- by those closest to him and, if he's successful, the country -- is that he's deadly serious about governing and getting things done if he wins. I thought Portman could do more than any available option. Many top House and Senate Republicans subsequently disagreed. They respect and admire Portman but argue Ryan alone has the respect of every Hill Republican. Remember, the Ryan budget that is now party orthodoxy started as a Ryan notion. House GOP leaders didn't initially back it and left it out of their 2010 manifesto. Senate Republicans barely took notice of Ryan's after-school project. When Republicans won the House, GOP leaders told Ryan they would back his budget -- if he found the votes. Ryan did. With lengthy and sometimes exhaustive sessions going over budget minutiae and his power-point presentation, Ryan gathered the votes one by one. This process conferred upon Ryan unmatched budget credibility - on the policy and the politics. When Gingrich criticized the Ryan budget as "radical and right-wing social engineering," the conservative intelligentsia and grassroots conservatives rebelled. "One of the big challenges of a Romney presidency will be corralling and working closely with congressional Republicans who, left to their own devices, could be quite restive," said top GOP lobbyist Jack Howard of the Wexler Group. "Paul Ryan commands a deep reservoir of well-earned respect." Eric Ueland, chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, agrees. "He is tight with many House members, and will be able to fit in well with the Senate as its presiding officer and become the key hinge between the Hill and the Romney administration." Ryan, if he had to, could sell Romney budget and tax policy to Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine. Both would take him seriously and probably follow - even if they would rather not.

2. Energy. Everyone who makes it to Congress has it. But Ryan has more than most. He's kinetic. All the time. He leads fellow Republicans in P90X workouts in the House gym and moves through the Capitol with the idealist's tempo - not the cynic's grudging trudge. Ryan devours data and stays awake at night analyzing sovereign debt loads and bond spreads. Wherever he goes, Ryan is likely to infect the converted and the curious with a kind of authentic vibe not commonly associated with seven-term Hill lifers.

3. Authenticity. Ryan won over House GOP leaders and rank-and-file House Republicans through the art of relentless persuasion in the new context of a tea party-inspired GOP majority eager (unlike Bush-era majorities) to cut spending. Ryan is not the only reason but he's a big reason why it is easier in the GOP House to undo fee-for-service Medicare than it is to pass a long-term surface transportation bill. Ryan is authentic about his belief in entitlement reform and, more importantly, the politics of risk in a new era of $15 trillion debt. Many Democrats consider it rapacious policy and brain dead politics, but Ryan remains undeterred and that sense of purpose was enough to create common cause with Sen. Ron Wyden on a less aggressive form of Medicare reform. "The dedication and thought given to his budget proposals, the reasonableness of his approach, and his earnest efforts to make improvements with thoughtful Democratic input will shine most brightly with the best surrogate you can get on all this: Ryan," said Ueland. "Ryan will carry the message of real hope and serious change from the same-old, same-old of the past four years. He's the strongest messenger yet on these issues, when strength is what the country needs." If Romney can replicate and channel Ryan's authenticity, he will fill in a large and nagging void.

4. Alliteration. Romney and Ryan rolls off the tongue. You may see R squared references as a not-so-subtle joke about the numbers-heavy wonkery of nominee and running mate. More to the point, grassroots Republicans will donate in droves (yes, small amounts, but symbolically important) for a Romney-Ryan ticket and snap up bumper stickers. Romney's camp raised at least $2 million on announcement day. Ryan adds alliteration and a sense, among GOP devotees, of cool. Whereas Romney was a bit distant and aloof, Ryan could help him break through.

5. Substance. Yes, Romney has a 59-point economic program. But no one in the GOP knows, genuinely, what's in it or if they would follow it. They know much more about Ryan's budget, why they did vote for it (three times in most cases) and why it's the biggest and most internally galvanizing policy idea in GOP circles since the Kemp-Roth tax cuts of 1981 (proposed in 1977). Ryan wrote speeches for Kemp. Ryan has the substance of budget baselines down like most people know sports statistics, reality show plot turns, or the hottest pop music downloads. He can inject into Romney's generally spongy policy shop some real lumber and intensify the focus on short-term and long-term policy choices and the politics behind them. Tea partiers prefer Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul's ideas, but they are political non-starters now and Paul has shown no ability yet to convert the skeptical. On substance, Ryan has. He's written budgets and passed them. No Senate Democrat has for three years running. And the Budget Control Act, which Ryan backed, is not a budget. It's a set of short-term aggregate spending numbers - the budgetary difference between chicken broth and Chicken Kiev.

But Ryan comes with real and pronounced risks. Here are the hazards:

1. Fear. These are unsettled times and middle class anxiety about job creation and wage growth is palpable. Frustration is high and a sense reflexive dissatisfaction with talk of a "new normal" of diminished economic horizons aggravates voters. But that doesn't mean they want more tax cuts for the rich (meaning extending the Bush tax cuts for those families with taxable income above $250,000) or that they are ready to turn Medicare into cash subsidy program with free market insurers as the gate-keepers of care and coverage. Polls show deep skepticism about both. And for all of Ryan's effectiveness in winning GOP support for his budget, there is a pass-it-and-forget-it quality to the debates. Republicans don't hide the Ryan budget (it's impossible) but they don't hang a lantern on it, either. Democrats do whenever and wherever they can -- portraying Ryan's policies as a scheme to lard more butter and jam on the bread of the wealthy while dispensing parched crumbs to the poor and middle class by carving up domestic discretionary and entitlement spending. Democrats will sow that fear and try to drive voters away from Ryan's dynamism by portraying his ideas as an accelerated Bush-era road to economic ruin. "This plays right into the narrative of a heartless Romney that puts efficiency and the bottom line above everything else, even if it comes at the expense of people," said one former top strategist for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "Medicare and Social Security are the policy avenues in which the Democrats can attack Romney - with credibility - on that front." Romney today took pains to say his budget will be his and Ryan has merely pointed the way forward. But Romney will own Ryan's budget. If he doesn't, he risks alienating the very conservatives so revved up by Ryan. And if Romney equivocates on the Ryan budget he will signal to swing voters maybe something is wrong with Ryan's ideas - thereby giving credibility to Democratic criticism. If Romney and Ryan can't withstand these attacks, Ryan will drag the ticket down by allowing the presidential debate to shift from a referendum on Obama's stewardship of the economy to a broader one about the economy and entitlements.

2. Inexperience. Ryan is a committee chairman and a 14-year veteran of Congress. But he doesn't know the presidential zoo. As Republicans readily point out, Ryan is far more experienced than Obama was when he ran for president. But Obama's at the top of the pyramid and knows the rigors of a full-blown national campaign. Among the top four on both tickets, Ryan is the only pure newbie. And because, by all accounts, Ryan adds energy, substance, and political chops to the ticket any misstep will be amplified.

3. Talkative. Ryan loves to talk and pauses cheerfully in the Speaker's lobby for any reporter. He will even unplug his ear buds to take a question, interrupting, more often than not, Led Zeppelin riffs. Ryan takes all questions and likes the give-and-take of ideas, politics, and congressional lethargy (which he hates). All this is an asset for a politician on the move and who wants to burnish his image as an inexhaustible idea furnace. But it's dangerous for a running mate in a climate where every utterance is microscopically inspected and subject to nasty re-translation by rival campaign operatives. Ryan is at ease defending each line of his budget. Romney might not want him to be so accessible or chatty. Democrats will want to make Ryan a central issue and he will feel duty-bound to defend and protect his work-product. Learning to defer and deflect won't come quickly or easily to Ryan. Risks abound.

4. Overshadow. Ryan already has. Romney had to awkwardly clean up his Norfolk botch of introducing Ryan as the "next president." Conservative reaction and support hailed Ryan as a substantive breath of fresh air, a true and bold leader. And they meant it. Ask yourself if this was true about Romney. Ryan is the dynamo, Romney the...nominee. When adjectives pile up more frequently and more favorably for the running mate than the nominee, voters grow confused and then, inevitably, disinterested. Voters don't elect vice presidents. Ask Lloyd Bentsen. If Romney needs Ryan to excite the base and inject adrenaline, he's visibly playing second fiddle. Voters often sense this and move on...away. On this point, a senior congressional Republican aide offered this observation: "I'm fascinated by Romney's CEO/corporate approach to the selection. He identified a weakness in his business -- insufficient "vision" -- and rather than trying to make that product himself, he identified and acquired a smaller firm that was already successfully producing it. Whether Romney Inc. can successfully assimilate Ryan's little start-up company in the next 90 days and get folks to buy the new product is obviously the big question."

5. Washington. Ryan is pure Beltway. Fourteen years in Congress and several more in think tanks and as a speech-writer and ladder-climber. Ryan and his budget and his successful advocacy for it are pure stories of triumphant Washington ideology. This gives Romney no room to hold his nose and point a disapproving finger at Washington. He may have gained with Ryan in other ways, but he has just bulldozed one campaign pillar.]]>

Analysis: If reelected, would Obama be able to govern?

Major Garrett, National Journal — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:00:00 -0400

But is it? Can voters tolerate the lurch from preaching hope and change to mocking Romney’s off-key rendition of “America the Beautiful” and hurling contestable allegations that he oversaw the outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries? And even if they do, does Obama’s team see a governing path for a reelected president who has so toxically attacked his rival?

In private conversations they will not allow to be quoted, Obama’s top campaign advisers believe that he will win reelection by 51 percent to 49 percent. That’s a smaller popular-vote percentage than Obama’s 52.9 percent in 2008. If this happens, Obama will be the first president since Andrew Jackson to win reelection with a lower percentage of the popular vote than his first election (James Madison was the other one who did this).

Even so, Obama will claim a mandate, but it will, by definition, be smaller than the one he captured in 2008. The Republican House, a by-product of voter unhappiness with his first two years in office, will likely remain, although with slightly smaller numbers. The wild card is the Senate. Obama and Romney advisers both expect the chamber to follow the top of the ticket, with a narrow majority either way.

To win, senior Obama advisers concede they must impeach the witness, meaning they have to deprive Romney of the ability to speak credibly during the GOP convention or in the three presidential debates about the economy, job creation, or any other financial insights he may possess for these troubled times. The relentless attention focused on Romney’s reign at Bain Capital, his tax returns, a Swiss bank account, a Bermuda corporation, and other exotic financial details is all about the preemptive disqualification of the candidate.

“Romney is Exhibit One of why his own argument is false,” said Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, head of the Democratic Governors Association. “His personal story cuts the knees out from the theory that rich people reinvest and create jobs. This guy doesn’t even buy his own bullshit. He cries crocodile tears in front of factory gates. It would be irresponsible for the president not to point that out.”

Doing so is harsh, partisan, and unforgiving—precisely the kind of politics that Obama previously denounced. But some Democrats blame Romney as much as Obama for making the attacks stick so easily. “Remember, this campaign looks tough and negative because the Romney campaign has been so incompetent,” said a top Democratic ad strategist. “There is no muscularity to their response. So it looks like the clubbing of a harp seal.”

As for the elasticity of Obama’s likability, Democrats are convinced that there’s no snapping it, that Obama can be as harsh as he needs and survive virtually unscathed. They do acknowledge private fears that if the economic news continues to darken, Obama’s record may prove more disqualifying than the seeds of doubt they plant about Romney.

Right now, polling and focus groups support that theory. Obama’s approval rating and likability have not suffered so far. Congress, especially Republicans, register historically low approval ratings. Top advisers say that Obama has weathered the real storms of the recession and three consecutive summers of underwhelming job growth. Getting tough now, they say, just shows Obama’s grit, something worried voters want to see during times of woe.

And yet, even if a scorched-earth campaign bent on crippling Romney’s credibility yields a victory, Obama is almost sure to encounter a new Congress with a shrunken popular-vote mandate, an even more narrowly divided Senate, and a House majority even more ideologically antagonistic than it is now (if that is possible). “It’s a mess,” a senior House Democratic aide said. “I don’t know that there’s any way to predict how we get anything done in the next four years.”

Even so, most Democrats are delighted with Obama’s newfound taste for the jugular, one that many say was woefully AWOL during scrapes with Republicans over extending the Bush tax cuts in 2010 or the debt-ceiling showdown in 2011.

Lawmakers know that a dizzying array of difficult issues with long political fangs await them after the election: more than a trillion dollars in across-the-board spending cuts over the next decade; the expiration of tax cuts on marginal rates, payroll, dividends, and capital gains; and Medicare doctor reimbursements. Will a divisive campaign fought over Romney’s Bain terrain and 1040 forms yield results in the face of such daunting tasks? Democrats say that’s secondary to victory.

“I don’t think the campaign will impact the sense of urgency of addressing the problems after the election,” said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. “What it will affect is who wins. The campaign is going to be scorched earth on both sides. The difference is Obama will still be president.”

Top Obama advisers say that the president has no choice but to trade on his likability; preserving it in a losing effort would amount to political malpractice. “Political capital comes from strength,” a top campaign adviser said. “If Obama wins and wins big enough, he’ll have the political strength to push things through. If he wins but is perceived as weak, then the Republicans will block everything he wants to do and he’ll be a four-year lame duck.”

Right now, Obama’s team will take any victory, even the narrowest kind that leaves much of Obama’s old persona bleached and battered. Why? Without victory, there is no governing. As Vince Lombardi said: “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”
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Analysis: Unfairly maligned solicitor general has last laugh on health care ruling

Major Garrett, National Journal — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 09:18:00 -0400

Standing in the corridor outside the Oval Office, Obama kept watching and waiting – perhaps hoping for a better outcome, perhaps seeking more information. White House officials were a bit opaque on this.

No matter. Split seconds later, White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler, on the phone with an administration lawyer at the Supreme Court, got the word that the Court had upheld the law and that Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Ruemmler, with Chief of Staff Jack Lew nearby, gave Obama two thumbs up.

Obama hugged Ruemmler, went to the Oval Office, picked up the phone and called his solicitor general, Donald Verrilli Jr., to congratulate him and thank him for a job well done.

Obama knew the abuse Verrilli took from critics who speculated (some down-right feared) that his hesitant and sometimes halting presentation during oral arguments doomed the health care law. Obama never bought into that criticism and the White House defended Verrilli at the time, dismissing critics as sports fans, not necessarily well-informed ones at that.

On Thursday, senior White House officials cheered Verrilli for presenting the Court with two legal justifications for the law – one under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, the other under Congress’s power to tax. The word that came up routinely: validation. Yes, there’s a twist there. In January, Obama said that the penalty wasn’t a tax. The Supreme Court swept aside semantics and said it didn’t care what Congress called the penalty in the law; it operated as a tax and therefore was a tax. That was a victory for Verrilli, one that few court watchers and virtually no pundits predicted.

There was a bit of triumph for Ruemmler, too. For a year now, she has predicted throughout the West Wing that the Court would uphold the Affordable Care Act and that Roberts would write the opinion. The Court did that, finding that the law passed legal muster.

Obama’s legislative legacy is secure until it meets the acid test of Election Day. But senior advisers are noncommittal about the role health care will play in the campaign, offering only bland guarantees that they will respond to attacks, but also contending there is no reason to rewrite or even update the stump speech.

As for the Republican assault that the health care law is a tax increase on individuals who don’t buy health insurance, the White House will argue it’s a tax (called a “shared responsibility payment” in the law) individuals will decide whether or not to pay. If they don’t buy insurance, they are choosing to be taxed. If they buy insurance, there’s no tax. Details on the tax itself.

The White House will also argue that tax cuts in the law help small business defray it's costs. So far, however, government data shows fewer than 200,000 small businesses in 2010 qualified for the tax credit. That’s well below White House and Small Business Administration estimates.

Lastly, the White House said that Obama will generally soft-peddle the Supreme Court victory while Republicans vow to push for repeal in the House next month and presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney makes it his top priority if elected. Top advisers say the country doesn’t want the law repealed – citing polling data revealing many discrete parts of the bill have broad support – and is even less interested in another partisan bloodbath over health care. From the White House perspective, Republicans will appear as if they are rooting for a health care clash while Obama tries – as he prefers – to rise above the fray.

In essence, the White House now embraces a tax it didn’t call a tax and the prospect of a health care debate it’s not all that interested in fighting.

Kind of unexpected. Then again, not many predicted such a good day for Verrilli, either.]]>

Issa letter hammers Obama on 'Fast and Furious' gun operation

Major Garrett, National Journal — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:41:59 -0400

The chairman of the House oversight committee investigating White House involvement in the botched “gun-walking” program that led to the 2010 death of U.S. Border Patrol agent accused President Obama on Monday of downplaying his involvement in the program or intentionally obstructing the Congress' inquiry.

The letter from Rep. Darrel Issa, R-Calif., to Obama questioned the legal basis of the White House move to withhold subpoenaed documents from the Government Reform and Oversight Committee under protections afforded Obama by executive privilege. The Justice Department denied Issa's committee the subpoenaed documents last week, prompting the GOP-led committee to vote along party lines to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

The full House is scheduled to consider the contempt citation this week. The White House contends it's legally entitled to withhold documents related to internal deliberations on policy and advisory discussions among Obama's senior advisers. It was the first time Obama, who pledged a new era of government transparency, has exerted executive privilege.

Issa said the assertion of executive privilege, which occurred after 16-months of negotiations between his committee and Justice officials over documents related to the gun-walking program called Fast and Furious, raised two troubling questions.

"Either you or your most senior advisers were involved in managing Operation Fast & Furious and the fallout from it...or, you are asserting a presidential power that you know to be unjustified solely for the purpose of further obstructing a congressional investigation," Issa wrote. "To date, the White House has steadfastly maintained that it has not had any role in advising the Department with respect to the congressional investigation. The surprising assertion of executive privilege raised the question of whether that is still the case."

Issa's committee has subpoenaed documents it believes relevant to Justice and White House deliberations that led to a false Justice Department submission—in Holder's name—in February 2011 that Fast and Furious was not a gun walking operation. The committee had been told by whistle-blowers that Fast and Furious allowed large quantities of AK-47 firearms and variants to "walk" into Mexico. Two of those firearms were discovered at the scene where Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed near Rio Rico, Az., on Dec. 14, 2010.

The White House dismissed Issa's letter.

“The Congressman’s analysis has as much merit as his absurd contention that Operation Fast and Furious was created in order to promote gun control," said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. "Our position is consistent with Executive Branch legal precedent for the past three decades spanning Administrations of both parties, and dating back to President Reagan’s Department of Justice. The Courts have routinely considered deliberative process privilege claims and affirmed the right of the executive branch to invoke the privilege even when White House documents are not involved.”

Issa has at times suggested Fast and Furious might have been initiated as part of a larger push for tighter U.S. gun control laws. The chairman largely abandoned that theory on the Sunday talk shows.

The Bush administration in its second term initiated the gun-walking program in an attempt to prosecute gun-runners and drug traffickers in Mexico. Under a larger program called Operation Gun Runner, an ill-fated program called Operation Wide Receiver was conducted from 2006-2007. It was riddled with inefficiency and poor inter-agency cooperation and communication. It yielded no arrests or indictments on Bush's watch. The Obama administration reviewed the dormant Bush-era cases and brought charges against nine people accused of low-level gun trafficking offenses. In October 2009, the Obama administration expanded efforts to pursue high-level Mexican drug and arms traffickers. Building on Wide Receiver, efforts at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives greatly expanded the use of surveillance of firearms purchases. These efforts grew into Fast and Furious.

At the heart of Issa's inquiry is how much Justice and the White House knew about the origins of Fast and Furious, its scope and its operational ambitions.

As he did on the Sunday talk shows, Issa held out hope for a compromise over the disputed documents. The full House has never before voted to hold an attorney general in contempt of Congress.

"I remain hopeful that the Attorney General will produce the specified documents," Issa said. Short of that, the chairman urged Obama to "define the universe of documents over which you asserted executive privilege and provide the Committee with the legal justification from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)."

Issa acknowledged Justice has provided in excess of 7,600 documents, but said the high-stakes dispute is now over those related to Justice's initial denial—nearly three months after agent Terry's death—that that Fast and Furious was a gun-walking operation.

"These key documents would help the Committee understand how and why the Justice Department moved from denying whistle blower allegations to understanding they were true; the identities of officials who attempted to retaliate against whistle blowers," Issa wrote, adding the committee also want to learn "whether senior (Justice) Department officials are being held to the same standard as lower-level employees who have been blamed for Fast and Furious by their politically-appointed bosses in Washington."

Issa also asked Obama to explain "what extent were you or your most senior advisers involved in Operation Fast and Furious and the fallout from it" and sought documents related to "any communications, meetings, and teleconferences between the White House and the Justice Department between February 4, 2011 and June 18, 2012, the day before the Attorney General requested that you assert executive privilege."

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Commerce secretary takes leave of absence

Major Garrett and Jim Tankersley, National Journal — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 08:11:18 -0400

Commerce Secretary John Bryson, involved in separate traffic accidents in California over the weekend, informed President Obama on Monday evening that he is taking medical leave to cope with an unspecified illness. Deputy Secretary Rebecca Blank will serve as acting secretary in his absence.

Bryson had a seizure, according to a spokeswoman earlier in the day.

"Secretary Bryson informed the White House tonight that he will be taking a medical leave of absence from his position as Commerce secretary as he undergoes tests and evaluations," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement.

"The president’s thoughts are with Secretary Bryson and his family during this time. Secretary Bryson assured the White House that the Commerce Department staff will not miss a beat in their work helping America’s businesses compete,” Carney said.

Earlier Monday, the Commerce Department announced in a statement that Bryson suffered a seizure that may have caused the erratic driving that led to the traffic mishaps and the authorities subsequent discovery of an unconscious Bryson behind the wheel. Law enforcement officials said there was no evidence of drug or alcohol as a contributing factor in the accidents, though Bryson was cited in one case for fleeing the scene of an accident.

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Vice president again dumb like a fox

Major Garrett, National Journal — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:47:03 -0400

Joe Biden did it again.

He walked for two days into a fusillade of ridicule and speculation that he wandered off the reservation and drove the finely crafted and "evolving" White House policy on same-sex marriage into the ditch.

In fact, Biden cleared the path for President Obama to declare to ABC's Robin Roberts that he now supports gay marriage. Biden set in motion a three-day saga that dominated the political air space.

In the zero-sum world of what's likely to be an airtight campaign, any day Obama can redirect the national conversation away from the economy is a good day in Chicago and a bad day in Boston. Romney can't get back the last three days and will probably lose most of Thursday in the analytical aftermath of Obama's embrace of gay marriage.

It may sound cynical, but this math is real. The focus on gay marriage allowed Obama to speak to a key voting bloc, one that also punches well above its weight in terms of campaign dollars. Obama's recipe for reelection is melding motivated constituencies. This isn't 2008 and waves of enthusiasm. This is micro-targeting and constituent corralling. In the gay community and among those sympathetic to its agenda, Obama has earned their energy, votes, and dollars.

Did Obama sacrifice huge swaths of swing voters? Probably not. The polls have shifted to net favorable on the question of same-sex marriage and independents are unlikely to punish Obama for a policy position consistent with everything else he's done on gay issues. Social conservatives will, of course, be aggrieved. But they were already.

Also, consider this on the gay-marriage pronouncements: Biden was first, Obama second. That the two happily reversed the common order of things ought to tell you something about their relationship (solid), their understanding of tactics (advanced), and how they can play Washington's chattering class for fools (easily).

Biden is central to White House decision-making on foreign policy and is Obama's best and most trusted surrogate when it comes to conveying administration economic policy to white working-class voters.

To summarize, Biden's relationship with Obama is sustaining and central to current White House thinking on politics and policy. Biden is a team player with no presidential ambitions—a vital component to a productive working relationship with the president. Obama learned this lesson from President George W. Bush. Pick a vice president who won't spend half his day scheming to succeed you. That way they can do more work for you.

Biden's stout loyalty conveys to political grunt work, too. Biden is the fundraiser-in-chief for House and Senate Democrats (ask them, they'll tell you in grateful detail) and therefore gets the rubberiest of the rubber chicken gigs. When Obama is feted at big-dollar fundraisers in Hollywood and Manhattan, Biden is pocket change in Hibernia and Manhattan, Kansas.

In fact, the seed for Biden's personal transformation on gay marriage was planted, according to Biden, at a fundraiser hosted by a married gay couple.

One last thing to consider in the Biden and Obama relationship: It shares a common denominator in the form of Bill Clinton and top staff who worked for Clinton. Clinton and Biden have always been allies and forged deep bonds on issues like violence against women, community policing, and gun control. The former president is now raising money for Obama, playing a central role in campaign videos, and advising Obama on his campaign.

That's Clinton's outside work. His devotees are doing a lot of inside work. Biden's chief of staff, Bruce Reed, was Clinton's domestic-policy adviser. Steve Ricchetti, now a counselor to Biden, was one of Clinton's deputy chiefs of staff. Obama's current chief of staff, Jacob Lew, was Clinton's budget director.

There are more, but the point is this: Much of what Obama did on gay rights before Wednesday's announcement was to undo or undercut Clinton-era policies, namely "don't ask, don't tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. Reed and Ricchetti especially remember the grueling politics of both issues (gays in the military engulfed the earlier days of the Clinton presidency).

They also remember, as Clinton painfully does, the ugly public spat with Hollywood producer, media mogul, and heavyweight Democratic donor David Geffen. After having given Clinton, Democrats in Congress, and Democratic causes more than $1.2 million before Clinton's 1992 election, Geffen cut Clinton off one year later in protest over "don't ask, don't Tell." Geffen enthusiastically backed Obama in 2007 and derided much of the Clinton presidency.

It is more than mildly ironic that Obama has now solidified his standing with Geffen (guaranteeing regular access to his financial backing and clout within the gay community) by relying on architects of the Clinton policy on gays Geffen abhorred. These architects now work for or are aligned with Biden, the figure who helped set the carefully orchestrated evolution of Obama on gay marriage in motion.

This is not coincidental. It's central to the story, the new policy, and the reshaped politics.

Biden isn't the vital player. That's still Obama. But Biden happily plays the "fool" while consistently outmaneuvering those who think the bigger story can be found in his malaprops and exasperating candor.

Face it, Biden isn't a cartoon. He's pretty close to being—as the vice president himself once famously put it -- "a big f***ing deal."

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Michigan and Arizona: Bruising GOP primaries brighten Obama’s prospects

Major Garrett, National Journal — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 13:34:00 -0500

When President Obama accused Republicans who opposed the auto industry bailout of peddling a “load of you know what,” he might have been describing the residue in Michigan and Arizona for Republicans now that the two primaries are over.

Obama is in better shape in both states since the GOP circus came to town, with higher favorable ratings than before and with an elevated profile among key constituencies, like blue-collar voters and women who have new appreciation of his handling of the auto bailouts and the contraception issue. The bruising primary campaigns didn’t elevate Obama all by themselves. The slightly improving economic picture helped. But the tone and substance of the GOP primaries gave Obama newfound traction that, for now, has led to a big lead in Michigan and a dead heat in Arizona.

In Michigan, where Mitt Romney eked out a victory, an NBC News/Marist poll has Obama up 18 points over Romney (51 percent to 33 percent). In 2008, Obama won Michigan by 16 points. After underwhelming poll numbers in the fall—Romney led Obama 46 percent to 41 percent in an EPIC/MRA poll in mid-November—Obama’s prospects have brightened considerably in Michigan and it may be harder now for the GOP to consider it a potential swing state.

Democrats do consider Arizona a potential swing state, despite Obama’s 9-point loss there to Republican Sen. John McCain four years ago and despite the fact that Arizona has backed a Democratic presidential candidate only once since 1948—Bill Clinton in 1996. New polling puts Obama in the running in Arizona and Democrats believe GOP positions in favor of the state’s tough immigration law will energize Hispanic voters and create turnout problems for Republicans in November.

During the primaries, Romney embraced Arizona’s tough immigration law and its use of police searches of suspects thought to be undocumented. He also described a process of “self deportation” that would occur if undocumented workers cannot keep jobs because of tighter identification screening. Lastly, Romney has said he would sign only a part of the so-called DREAM Act, which provides a path to citizenship for undocumented residents who serve in the U.S. military. That’s a narrower commitment than the underlying legislation, which would also provide a path to citizenship for undocumented residents who pursue a college diploma.

“These extreme positions are going to haunt him should he make it to November,” wrote Democratic National Committee spokesman and strategist Brad Woodhouse in a memo seeking to identify GOP weaknesses after Arizona and Michigan.

The deeper problem for Romney in Arizona, as it has been elsewhere, is the loss of support among independents. In a November Pew Research Center poll, Obama was losing independents to Romney by 53 percent to 41 percent. In a Pew poll this month, the president was winning independents 51 percent to 42 percent.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that in both states Republicans have been hurt by the “echo chamber” primary in which attacks have dominated and the challengers have spent more time positioning around and against each other than explaining their plans for the future. “It’s a party talking to itself, not independent voters,” LaBolt said.

In Michigan, Romney and Santorum’s opposition to the GM and Chrysler bailouts—started by President George W. Bush but enlarged and managed by Obama—has cost Republicans support not only among auto workers but among owners and employees of small businesses who depend on the economic activity that the Big Three generate. “Any day Romney is talking about autos is a good day for us,” LaBolt said.

Woodhouse said Romney has lost ground in Michigan that he’s unlikely to regain. “Mitt Romney has badly damaged himself with the working- and middle‐class voters who make up Michigan’s electorate,” he said. “If Mitt Romney had his way, GM and Chrysler’s doors would be closed today and the American auto industry would no longer exist.”

The fight the Republican candidates picked over the Obama administration’s handling of a controversial contraception ruling also wound up as a big plus for Obama the candidate. The administration's negotiated agreement appeased Catholic employers who had objected to paying for contraceptive services, while Republicans, particularly Santorum, who personally opposes the use of contraceptives and some prenatal testing for birth defects, were left struggling to defend positions largely out-of-step with the lifestyles of moderate women and independents.

Late last year, Obama’s support dropped among women, but his standing with them has improved in recent weeks, as the economy inched upward and the birth control issue became a bigger part of the debate, according to polls by the Associated Press-GfK.

While Republicans have been competing in Arizona and Michigan, the Obama campaign has been stepping up its voter-identification and mobilization efforts. The reelection campaign already has eight offices in Michigan—in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Pontiac, Ann Arbor, Flint, Lansing, and Kalamazoo. In Arizona, three offices are open in Phoenix, Flagstaff, and Tucson. Another will open soon in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale and will focus on Hispanic outreach.

The campaign is also aggressively organizing voter-registration drives and social events to contact new voters. From now until March 31, the reelection has 73 such events scheduled in Detroit, 22 in Grand Rapids, and 59 in Ann Arbor. The same kind of grassroots activity is planned in Arizona. From now until April 22, the campaign will conduct 69 organizing events in and around Phoenix. The Tucson area will have 40 events between now and March 29, and Flagstaff will host 16 between now and March 20.

“Unlike every other president, President Obama didn’t let his election organization go away,” LaBolt said. “He has kept his supporters actively engaged. The goal is to persuade new people and turn up participation.”

The movement in the polls in Arizona and Michigan in Obama’s direction suggests some of that work is being done by Republicans. A whole load of it, in fact.

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Standoff on payroll tax holiday extension continues

Major Garrett — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Top aides say the Senate majority leader remains adamant and will not relent to House GOP demands to appoint conferees and resolve differences between the House and Senate payroll-tax cut bills. Reid's associates say they expect "some blowback" in public opinion following the House's rejection of the Senate bill, but they don't see the Democrats losing the tactical polling advantage. That's the firewall behind Reid's implacable hostility to the House GOP gambit, and it won't change -- and he won't budge -- unless and until public mood shifts against Democrats and the White House.

Senate Democrats don't expect that to happen in the coming days, betting that the inevitable focus on holiday celebrations and shopping will give Republicans little room and scarce traction to blame Democrats for the payroll-tax stalemate. In this, Reid notes with savvy sympathy the studied silence of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has said nothing publicly about the House GOP uprising and through a spokesman offered only tepid reassurances that he would assist Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans in their clash with Reid.

Internally, Senate Democratic polling remains favorable in the key battleground states for 2012 candidates, Democrats say. Public polling so far has begun to reflect a shift away from Republicans on trustworthiness to deal with taxes. The Washington Post-ABC News survey showed an abrupt switch on the question from October until now. In October, President Obama trailed Republicans 39 percent to 46 percent but now leads them 46 percent to 41 percent. Even so, Obama's overall approval ratings and approval of his handling of the economy do not yet reflect this shift and remain below 50 percent and, in some cases, stuck in the low- to mid-40s.

The chore ahead for Republicans is to shift the payroll-tax debate from the two-month Senate compromise to an as-yet undefined one-year payroll-tax cut with unspecified spending cuts. The difficulty, as even Republicans concede, is the simplicity of messaging. All Democrats have to do is defend a two-month tax cut that won a huge bipartisan majority in the Senate. House Republicans must persuade large swaths of voters that it's more important to pursue a conference committee -- with an unknown result because Republicans can't decide on the most desirable outcome -- just because Republicans voted against the Senate compromise.

Put another way, Democrats are asking voters if they care about a tax cut; House Republicans are asking if they care about a legislative process. Internally, process can trump politics and policy. Externally, it usually dies a swift and unlamented death.

House Republicans tried on Tuesday to put a price on Reid's head, arguing he's only in favor of a $166 payroll-tax cut per person (the average pro-rated amount of a two-month extension) while Republicans want a $1,000 tax cut (the average of a year-long cut).

"The American people are beginning to wonder what the leader of the other body has against the middle class," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

To make that message stick, House Republicans will have to conspicuously prowl the Capitol this holiday week, to visibly underscore their desire to "work" on a compromise. But rank-and-file Republicans will depart, leaving the eight House GOP conferees marooned in an empty Capitol awaiting a conference committee that doesn't now and may never exist. Cantor informed his GOP colleagues they will receive 24 hours' notice to return to Washington, should developments warrant.

Reid, aides say, will digest these maneuvers from Washington while his wife, Landra, undergoes treatments for breast cancer. He has no plans to return to the Capitol and has received no indication from the White House that Obama will leave for his traditional Hawaiian holiday vacation. Democrats readily admit if Obama were to leave, that would undercut Reid's position because it would signal the work will be for Reid to finish and it can only be finished if Reid relents and gives Republicans a conference committee.

At this point, there's no indication Obama or Reid will break. House Republicans will have to move them. To do that, they first have to move the public. The next 48 hours, therefore, may not only decide the fate of the payroll-tax cut extension, but reveal whether House Republicans can, having picked a fight with Reid, do more than circle a vacant ring, flailing at empty air and indifferent shadows.

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House speaker calls for Congress to continue work on payroll-tax package

Major Garrett — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

"It's time to stop the nonsense," Boehner told a news conference. "Why do we have to go to the lowest common denominator?"

Boehner said Senate Democrats must come back to Washington and admit that their bill is dead and cannot be resurrected. Boehner also noted that President Obama "has said repeatedly" that Congress should not leave Washington until the payroll tax cut is extended, and Democrats "echoed exactly the same thing."

Boehner said Senate Democrats should "put their vacations on hold."

"It's time for us to do our work," he said.

Senior House GOP aides said the strategy they are now pursuing is to stay in Washington all this week until Senate Democrats relent and return to negotiate a compromise bill.

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House delays payroll tax deal vote until Tuesday

Major Garrett — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

"The overwhelming sentiment in our conference is that [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid, D-Nev., is the one who should be ashamed and that we should vote in light of day," said one senior House GOP source. "At the rate we were going we would have been here voting at 5 a.m."

The Rules Committee will consider several measures Monday night that the House will vote on Tuesday. Tuesday's votes will include a rule, a motion to reject the Senate plan and a motion to form a conference committee to hash out differences with the Senate, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said.

This is in line with the leadership's earlier plans to reject the Senate's two-month extension of the payroll-tax cut but to not do so outright. The procedural moved is designed to gain the upper hand in end-game negotiations with the Senate. The maneuver will allow the Senate bill to remain at the House desk and available for future use, should the need arise, to become the vessel for a payroll-tax compromise. This will also mean the lawmakers are not voting directly on rejecting the two-month payroll-tax-cut compromise.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Senate Democrats must come back to Washington and admit their bill is dead. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says he will not call back the Senate before Christmas and maintains that Senate Democrats won't be blamed if taxes are raised for the average working family by approximately $1,000.

"My House colleagues should be clear on what their vote means today," Reid said. "If Republicans vote down the bipartisan compromise negotiated by Republican and Democratic leaders, and passed by 89 senators including 39 Republicans, their intransigence will mean that in 10 days, 160 million middle-class Americans will see a tax increase, over 2 million Americans will begin losing their unemployment benefits, and millions of senior citizens on Medicare could find it harder to receive treatment from physicians."

Boehner will likely name his conferees before the House votes to form a conference committee, against Democratic objections, on Tuesday.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has told Boehner he will offer GOP support in the Senate for unanimous consent to appoint conferees to pressure Reid, the aides say. House Republicans are contemplating other ways to publicly force Reid's hand, including holding a conference committee that cannot convene because for a lack of Democratic attendance. Despite Boehner's call for Congress to continue its work, most House Republicans will be allowed to return to their districts. Senior House GOP aides say only leadership and conferees will actually stay in Washington.

"There's nothing for our other members to do until the Senate does something," one top-level aide said. "So most members won't be here."

The House threat to attack the Senate for going on vacation rather than negotiating a compromise bill represents a reversal of the situation less than two weeks ago. At the time President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders, concerned the House would pass its preferred payroll-tax cut extension then leave town without letting the Senate alter it, were threatening to stay in Washington and to launch daily attacks on Republicans for leaving.

Republicans are now throwing those statements back at Democrats in an effort to increase pressure on Reid to agree to a conference.

These are the latest developments in a fight that was renewed unexpectedly this weekend after the deal to extend the 2 percent payroll-tax cut for two months was agreed to by the Senate but then rejected by House Republicans.

Each side is locked in combat and seeking advantage as the benefits will evaporate on Jan. 1 if no agreement is reached. The measure also would extend unemployment benefits and spare doctors from a 27 percent Medicare reimbursement pay cut.

Senate Democratic aides said there is no pressure on them to return and leadership is betting Boehner will cave after losing the coming public-relations war over who is to blame if the payroll-tax cut isn't extended.

Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., predicted that there won't even be a conference committee. "If there was a conference-and there's not going to be, in my opinion-they would have the same problems we've been having the last two weeks trying to get to an agreement," Hoyer said. But House Republicans, particularly the unruly freshmen class, said it is the Senate who will blink. At a news conference with about 10 other freshmen, Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., said the Senate is "playing a very ugly game of political chicken with the American people."

Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., chided the Senate for only passing a two-month measure when the House passed a one-year deal.

"Twelve months is short, two months is ridiculous," he said.

The displeasure voiced by the freshmen was echoed by others in the conference. "It's clear to me that this freshmen phenomenon that happened last year is starting to flex its muscle a little bit," said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark.

Senate Republicans were not spared from the ire of their House counterparts.

Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., said he is "troubled" that the Senate approved the deal in an 89-10 vote, meaning most Republicans voted for it.

The intrasquad sniping among Republicans continued all day as some Senate Republicans said its the House GOP that is in the wrong.

Republican Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Richard Lugar of Indiana, and Scott Brown of Massachusetts all urged Boehner to move the Senate version. Those senators hold seats Democrats hope to pick up next year.

"There is no reason to hold up the short-term extension while a more comprehensive deal is being worked out," Heller said in a statement. "What is playing out in Washington, D.C., this week is about political leverage, not about what's good for the American people."

Earlier, Brown blasted the House GOP position in a statement. "The House Republicans' plan to scuttle the deal to help middle-class families is irresponsible and wrong," Brown said. "I appreciate their effort to extend these measures for a full year, but a two-month extension is a good deal when it means we avoid jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of American families."

The White House has made its displeasure clear with Republican leaders' apparent about-face.

"We need a partner in this," said White House press secretary Jay Carney. Referring to the Senate compromise, Carney said: "We had a partner in this. Blowing up the process now is playing politics with the paychecks of 160 million Americans."

Dan Friedman, Ben Terris, Shane Goldmacher, Katy O'Donnell, and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

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GOP move could break spending logjam

Major Garrett — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Congress now shooting for weekend wrap-up

Dan Friedman and Major Garrett — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

If their optimism proves founded, they will avert a partial government shutdown for the third time this year.

Congress needs to approve a catch-all spending bill that encompasses the remaining nine annual appropriations bills and a package that extends the payroll-tax holiday and federal unemployment benefits before leaving Washington for the holidays. Some even predicted Congress would pass both by Friday night.

"That's my best guess," Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said on Thursday afternoon.

Manchin's prediction comes as a development out of the House signaled that an agreement has been struck on the outstanding issues that were holding up both measures.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., will reopen the pending omnibus spending package that had been shelved earlier this week and rewrite language that sought to reinstate the President George W. Bush-era travel ban to Cuba, a move designed to address White House concerns and win the backing of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., according senior Republican and Democratic staffers.

Rogers was reluctant to make the move and is doing so, Republicans say, with the understanding from Reid that if the Cuba travel and gift language is dropped and President Obama's existing travel policy is protected, Reid will release the conference report for full House and Senate consideration. Rogers worked with Reid's staff late into Wednesday night and continued talks on Thursday morning. A deal announcing this arrangement is anticipated soon.

Conferees came within inches of an agreement on the spending bill Monday, but Democrats refused to sign the conference report in order to get more of what they want out of the payroll-tax bill. In response, on Wednesday night, Republicans took the contents of the conference report and released a separate package that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, intended to bring to the floor.

"It's bicameral, bipartisan, and it's done," Boehner told reporters.

The House Rules Committee is meeting at 3 p.m. to consider the stand-alone bill, but now the hope in top GOP and Democratic circles is the conference report will become the vehicle for consideration. If the deal doesn't mature in time, the Rules Committee will then take up the GOP's three-bill package that incorporates the conference agreement and does not change the Cuba language.

The White House also wants Republicans to reprogram funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, arguing the already agreed-upon level is too low for the CFTC to adequately regulate the $600 trillion derivatives trading market - a new task assigned the agency in the Dodd-Frank financial regulations law. Obama signed the Agriculture Appropriations bill on Nov. 18. It set the CFTC's budget for 2012 at $205 million, a $3 million boost from 2011 and $103 million less than the White House request.

House Republicans consider the matter of CFTC funding closed and have no intention of renegotiating funding for the agency that's already been signed and approved by Obama.

"Things are looking up, and I'm looking up," said Rogers in the House Speaker's lobby, putting his hands together with eyes looking up, as if praying.

"We're making some progress," he continued. "I'm feeling optimistic. I'm optimistic that the senators will be released to sign the conference report. So, we'll have the bill pending as well as the conference report." Asked if that would happen on Thursday, Rogers again said he was optimistic.

"There are just a few things yet to be concluded" in negotiations, he said. He would not detail those items, but said House GOP members will be given an update on the status of talks at a closed-door conference later on Thursday afternoon.

Bringing the conference report to the floor on Friday is "under discussion," Rogers said.

To make that deadline, the House rule requiring that a measure be introduced three days before it is considered on the House floor must be waived.

The continuing resolution funding most the government expires at midnight Friday. Some talk of passing another short-term resolution to keep the government lights on while lawmakers hash through their differences continues but will likely be moot if Congress manages to send the omnibus to Obama by Monday morning.

Progress was also under way on the Senate side, where leaders say they are shifting from public politicking to deal-making.

After meeting with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Wednesday evening, Reid said on Thursday: "The Republican leader and I have been in discussions.... We hope that we can come up with something that would get us out of here at a reasonable time in the next few days."

He said the year-end bill would include a payroll tax extension, extended federal unemployment benefits, tax extenders and a so-called "doc fix" preventing physicians who accept Medicare from taking pay cut.

McConnell agreed with Reid's assessment.

Republicans said the shift on Thursday reflected Democratic concessions. Democrats believe they enjoy a political advantage battling the GOP over extending the payroll-tax cut and unemployment benefits - an assessment many Republicans privately share.

Billy House and Ben Terris contributed to this report.

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Why the near shutdown matters

Major Garrett — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

That's right. The new Republican-led House fought the Democratic Senate and Obama White House until the 360th day of the 2011 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1 of 2010. Call it the 12 months' war -- a mere skirmish in advance of the battle sure to break out over proposals due in November from the bi-partisan select committee on deficit reduction.

In the end, the terrain was the same -- exactly the same -- as the three sides fought over in the Spring, when the nation inched within hours of a government shutdown. House Republicans won budget cuts in that conflict that they were adamant to protect now. In fact, the entire tussle over offsetting $1.5 billion out of $3.65 billion in proposed disaster assistance had nothing to do with any durable principle and everything to do with Republicans not adding a cent to the budget they'd negotiated in May. Those hard-won gains have gained an almost mythological importance to House Republicans and the tea party-inspired freshmen.

In the end, House Republicans won that part of the fight. Monday's deal adds no new spending to the 2011 budget. The stopgap spending bill funds all government operations until Nov. 18, pending its expected approval in the House. The deal also, as will be explained in greater detail, addresses disaster funding more directly. Even so, It sets up another clash later this year or early next when Congress and the White House must face the costs of an array of natural disasters the current deal on federal disaster funding will not cover.

And it is this future budgetary battle space Senate Democrats believe they have won an important tactical advantage.

To sort all of this out, it's important to look at the numbers for 2011 and 2012 as well as how the Monday deal temporarily, but only temporarily, solves the disaster assistance crisis.

The House Republicans wanted to protect the 2011 discretionary spending total of $1.050 trillion hammered out in the deal that averted a government shutdown in May. All allocations for disaster assistance in that budget year had to be offset. That's why House Republicans sought to cut up to $1.5 billion from federal grants supporting fuel efficient vehicle production and, in the final hours of the conflict, $100 million from renewable energy grants.

This strategy was designed to force the White House and Senate Democrats to cut programs they like in order to respect the budget cuts they negotiated in the Spring. Instead, the White House and Senate Democrats played a stalling game - one that increased the chances of a government shutdown and hallowed out the Federal Emergency Management Agency's ability to respond to the batch of late summer disasters that befell the nation.

In the end, that spared the administration from having to accept the GOP premise that budget cuts should finance at least some disaster aid. In an atmosphere of economic fragility and fears of a double-dip recession, the White House didn't want to give an inch in this direction. It also wanted to protect the loan programs for green technologies.

And it succeeded. The White House, according to Senate Democratic aides, found a way to keep FEMA's disaster relief efforts - meager though they are now due to lack of funds - afloat until Friday. Earlier FEMA estimates, deemed authoritative as late as Friday, projected FEMA would run out of money for its Disaster Relief Account by no later than Wednesday. The ability to last until Friday came in response to administration demands to make every dollar stretch until the end of the fiscal year on Friday.

In doing so, the White House and Senate Democrats averted the need for budget offsets. Why? Because House Republicans already agreed to abide by the spending totals in the 2012 budget year as part of the debt ceiling deal reached in August. That budget of $1.043 trillion was recognized in the House Republican stop-gap spending bill. No offsets for FEMA disaster assistance would be necessary starting Saturday. In essence, the deal is the House approach to 2012 disaster funding with no 2011 offsets.

And so it will be. In fact, it is now understood by all sides - the White House, Senate Democrats and House Republicans - that FEMA will get all of the 2012 allocation of $2.65 billion right away - via upfront funding through the Office of Management and Budget.

That will allow FEMA to meet immediate disaster needs and longer term reconstruction needs. With funds having run so short for weeks, FEMA has only been able to cope with immediate, emergency needs. Long-term reconstruction projects have stalled but will soon restart.

But it is widely understood by all sides that FEMA will need more than $2.65 billion to address all the disaster requests associated with Hurricane Irene, the Texas wildfires, the Virginia-based earthquake, and Tropical storm Lee. When those funds are sought, Congress will have to decide how to find the funds.

By agreeing in advance that 2012 FEMA funds do not have to be offset, Republicans will be hard-pressed to demand offsets for additional disaster aid. The debt ceiling deal created an extra $11 billion in disaster reserve funds to be called upon as required.

In fact, the $2.65 billion in FEMA funding for 2012 incorporates $800 million from the disaster reserve fund. The rest, $1.8 billion, is the allocation under the $1.043 discretionary funding total for all government operations as negotiated in debt-ceiling-inspired Budget Control Act.

When more funds are needed for FEMA later this year or early next year, Democrats believe they have won both tactical arguments to add that spending to the deficit - Republicans didn't object to no offsets of the $1.8 billion or the $800 million from the disaster reserve fund.

As the dust settles, it's clear Republicans were fighting to protect the spending cuts they won in the 2011 budget and Democrats and the White House were protecting spending to come in 2012.

Maybe it was a two years war.

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House Republicans regrouping on CR, pondering two options

Major Garrett and Susan Davis — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400