Government Executive - Authors - Naureen Khan

Deficit Reduction Among Top Priorities for Political Insiders

Michael Catalini, Naureen Khan, and Peter Bell, National Journal — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:41:59 -0500

On a National Journal poll of political insiders, deficit reduction ranked among the top priorities for Democrats, tying with tax reform in popularity. Republicans rated it as even more pressing.

What two issues should be the top priorities for your party this year?

DEMOCRATS (107 VOTES)

Deficit reduction: 21%
Energy: 7%
Guns: 14%
Immigration: 64%
Jobs: 66%
Tax reform: 21%

Deficit reduction

“Deficits imperil the economy and could destroy the safety net; and Washington could actually fix the problem.”

Energy

“Our constituencies want action on climate change. Now is the time.”

Guns

“Now that Obama has made guns a signature issue, he has to be able to claim victory on his priorities.”

Immigration

“This will be the best year to do comprehensive immigration reform for years to come.”

“Democrats must lock in the image with the fast-growing Hispanic communities, as we have done for decades with African-Americans, that they can be at ‘home’ with our party.”

“Gotta get immigration done, at least to thank the Latinos who gave Obama his margin.”

Jobs

“Jobs solve so many problems! Everyone wants a balanced budget, but they would prefer to be employed!”

“If the unemployment rate continues to hover around 8 percent, the midterm elections will be difficult for Democrats. Jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Tax reform

“Create jobs and have everyone pay a fair share, and most of the other problems—except guns, which will never be solved—will go away.”

What two issues should be the top priorities for your party this year?

REPUBLICANS (94 VOTES)

Deficit reduction: 54%
Energy: 7%
Guns: 3%
Immigration: 50%
Jobs: 57%
Tax reform: 24%

Deficit reduction

“Prevent Obama from spending us into economic oblivion.”

“Controlling the ‘size and scope of government’ is key to the base, and immigration is key to party growth.”

Energy

“Access to affordable energy leads to job creation.”

Guns

“We’ve got to stop standing in the way of gun reform—it makes us look crazy.”

Immigration

“Do Republicans really want immigration used against them again in ’14, ’16, and beyond? Do comprehensive now, and give a future candidate a chance to be heard by more than 47 percent of the electorate.”

“Settle the issue, start the healing.”

Jobs

“Since when did 7.8 percent unemployment become the new normal?”

“Jobs would indicate we actually were awake.”

“The country is growing too slowly to fix any other problem.”

Tax reform

“Make Democrats defend the absurd current revenue code.”

Click here to see more results, including how the parties view sequestration.

(Image via larry1235/Shutterstock.com)

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What happens If we go over the fiscal cliff?

Naureen Khan, National Journal — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 14:14:42 -0500

President Obama and lawmakers were expected to return to Washington this week in a last-ditch attempt to keep the country from plunging over the so-called “fiscal cliff” after last week’s breakdown in negotiations. Some economists have said the toxic cocktail of spending cuts and tax increases, slated to begin taking effect in the New Year, has the potential to knock the country into another recession, but with a mere four days to go until the deadline, hopes are waning that the nation’s leaders will be able to come to a palatable agreement.

National Journal has a refresher course on exactly what going over the cliff would mean over the next year and in the long-term.

Taxes

Bye-bye Bush-era tax cuts. The reductions known collectively as the Bush-era tax cuts—a major point of contention in cliff negotiations—will expire on Dec. 31, meaning that tax rates would rise for every income bracket in 2013, including low- and middle-income Americans.
AMT for about 30 million more people. The Alternative Minimum Tax Cut, designed to apply largely to only affluent taxpayers, would apply to 30 million more taxpayers next year because Congress will have failed to pass an inflation adjustment, as it usually does.
No more payroll tax holiday The 2-percent reduction in payroll taxes—from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent—will also end on Dec. 31. The holiday, championed by the Obama administration in 2010, increased the average worker’s take home pay by about $1,000 a year—money that they’ll have to live without in 2013.
Miscellaneous A slew of tax cuts for individuals and businesses—like the Earned Income Tax Credit, a form of aid for low-income workers that was expanded under the provisions of the 2009 stimulus, and the Research and Experimentation Credit for businesses—are also set to time out on Dec. 31, as well as a number of corporate tax breaks that all told total $109 billion.
Taken together, about 90 percent of American households would see their tax bills rise in 2013, and on average, by $3,446, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Spending Cuts

Big bad sequestration—$1.2 trillion of automatic spending cuts, slated to go into effect over the course of nine years, will kick in beginning on Jan. 1 if lawmakers can’t come up with an alternate budget deal, as mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011. For 2013, that means $109 billion in cuts, half from the national defense budget and half from non-defense spending. Although federal furloughs and layoffs would not occur immediately, they would likely come eventually in a worst-case scenario, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Certain social safety net programs, like Social Security, veteran’s benefits, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (otherwise known as food stamps) are exempt from the cuts, but there are plenty of other federal programs that will feel the pain. That includes everything from Pell Grants to Head Start to federal disaster relief to the salaries of federal workers.
Unemployment insurance runs out—Eligibility for unemployment benefits was expanded in the midst of the recession and has been extended regularly during the recovery, but come the New Year, many jobless Americans who have already exhausted state benefits will stop receiving federal payments as well.
No more Doc Fix Medicare payments to doctors would be reduced by 27 percent, or about $11 billion, because Congress will not have acted to keep the cuts from going into effect, as mandated by another mid-1990s deficit reduction measure.

What happens next in Washington?

Some have termed the fiscal cliff more of a slope, because many of the tax provisions will not take effect until Americans file their income taxes and because it will also take some time for the effects of the spending cuts to be felt. That gives lawmakers slightly more wiggle room—as in the country could fall off the cliff, and Congress would feel an added urgency to iron out a deal when it reconvenes in January, with Americans already beginning to feel its effects. Congress could also punt, voting to override the sequester and extend the Bush tax cuts and the payroll holiday, while vowing to take up the big deficit-reduction and tax reform debate at a later date—although we’ve all seen how that plan has played out in the past.

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Millennial poll: Obama is so yesterday

Naureen Khan, National Journal — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:42:00 -0400

The Harvard Institute of Politics’ national survey of 18- to 29-year-olds, released on Wednesday, found that while likely young voters favor Obama by a 19-point margin—55 percent to Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s 36 percent—only 48 percent say that they definitely plan to vote next month.

On every issue, from the economy to immigration to health care to foreign affairs, young voters said they trust the president more than Romney. Nonetheless, the Romney supporters appear to be more enthusiastic, with 66 percent who support the former Massachusetts governor saying they will definitely vote, compared to 55 percent of Obama backers.

In 2008, Obama won Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia with the help of young voters. If all the under-30s had stayed home, the historically red states would have remained in the GOP column.

The poll results point to disappointment, not necessarily in Obama, but in the political system as a whole. Sixty-two percent said that Obama inherited circumstances too big and too complex to be remedied in one term, while only 33 percent said that the president has failed.

Meanwhile, almost four in 10 millennials said that it doesn’t matter who is elected because Washington is broken. A quarter of them said that neither candidate represents their views, and almost three-quarters admitted to not being politically active.

All signs indicate that young voter turnout will not be shattering any records on Nov. 6. In 2008, 18- to 29-year-old voters posted the third-highest turnout since 1972, and broke for Obama over Republican nominee John McCain by a 2 to 1 ratio.

“If I’m on the president’s campaign I would be concerned. Young voters are one of his key coalition demographics,” said John Della Volpe, the institute’s polling director. “But a part of this is not just about the candidates, it’s a lack of interest in the election process and whether those votes matter.”

The survey was taken over the Internet from Sept. 19 to Oct. 3, and had a sample size of 2,123 adults ages 18 to 29. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.]]>

Ron Paul honored as small-government crusader, minus pesky specifics

Naureen Khan — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:55:56 -0400

The tribute video to former presidential candidate and retiring 12-term Rep. Ron Paul of Texas at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday featured soaring music, testimonials from his conservative colleagues in Congress, and footage of Paul’s devoted fans.

“It’s the American story, forging your own path. Not because it’s the easy, way but because it’s the right way,” the narrator said in the opening seconds. “And for those with dedication, character, faith, and conviction, sometimes that lonely path paves the way forward for millions.”

Fade to Paul emerging from the shadows to address his fervent supporters, like a 77-year-old rock star.

The notably brief tribute to the libertarian icon focused almost entirely on his push for smaller government. Not mentioned: Paul’s controversial positions and many clashes with the Republican Party over the last two decade, right up to the current convention.

He has advocated killing off federal agencies, from FEMA and the IRS to the Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Interior, and Education departments. He is a passionate opponent of American military intervention abroad. He has refused to fully endorse nominee Mitt Romney, and his supporters have caused a ruckus in Tampa this week.

It’s a safe bet that many in the GOP still agree with the initial assessment of South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. “When I first got to the House, I thought Ron Paul was nuts,” he said in the video.

The reason there was a video tribute at all is because Paul refused the speaking slot offered to him in Tampa, unwilling to allow convention planners to vet his speech. It was far from the only point of conflict between Paulites and the party.

During the roll call of states on Tuesday, when delegates officially nominated Romney, the former Massachusetts governor was the clear winner with 2,061 votes. Paul received 190 votes, but his name was never mentioned from the stage. Convention secretary Kim Reynolds refused to read out the final delegate counts for any candidate other than Romney. The Texas delegation revolted and began shouting out the Paul totals themselves after each state, with others in the hall also taking up the cry.

Earlier that afternoon, Paul backers booed House Speaker John Boehner when he pushed through a rule change that will require all convention delegates to vote for the winner of their state’s primary or caucus, making it harder for insurgent candidates like Paul to accrue votes in the future. And the convention refused to seat Paul delegates from Maine altogether, ruling that their election was invalid. They didn’t go without a fight. From the balcony in the arena, they chanted "Seat Maine now!"

By Wednesday, a long chain of Paul supporters had turned Maine's plight into a hallway chant: "As Mainegoes, so goes the nation. As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”

Inside the hall, there was mostly harmony as Paul supporters watched the best Republicans could muster for their hero. One man held aloft a sign that read, “It's More Than a Man. It's a Movement.”

Harrison Whitaker, a 24-year old Texas delegate from Ft. Worth, was unimpressed. “I’ve seen better YouTube videos,” he said of the tribute.

He added that he hasn’t felt welcome or respected by Romney delegates all week. “I can feel the hate when they look at me, and I don’t like it,” he said.

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Secret Service decrees: No baseballs, bananas at the convention

Naureen Khan, National Journal — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 09:49:30 -0400

Planning on bringing a baseball, “whole fruit,” or a camcorder into the Republican National Convention? Don’t count on getting it through security unscathed.

All three are explicitly prohibited on a list of 25 items not allowed into the convention security perimeter that was put together by the Committee on Arrangements and approved by the U.S. Secret Service.

Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie said the agency does not comment on how it sets procedure—for example, why footballs are ostensibly allowed but baseballs are not—but that even the silliest-seeming of rules are for attendees’ own good.

The banned items range from the obvious (“weapons, firearms, or knives, regardless of size,” “explosives,” and “razor blades”) to the irksome (“containers of any type”—sorry, folks, no Starbucks cups or even bottled water—and, as one reporter learned firsthand, an otherwise-innocuous banana).

Different agents and police officers offered different answers throughout the day as to how strictly the rules would be enforced inside the security perimeter, in a mark of the confusion being created by impending arrival of Isaac, the storm that threatens to lash the state’s west coast tomorrow, and the attendant delay in the start of convention festivities.

Law-enforcement officials have repeatedly said they have prepared for any and all scenarios, but doesn’t mean that the whims of Mother Nature aren’t throwing organizers for a loop.

At press time, the current answer on the overriding umbrella question—maddeningly on the list of prohibited items—was that small ones would be permitted, but those of the golf variety would be tossed. Ryan Price, the GOP convention’s director of operations, told a Tampa television station that 13,000 umbrellas—in Republican red, of course—as well as ponchos and other protective rain gear were in the organizers’ arsenal, although convention spokesman Kyle Downey professed to know nothing about that. Covered walkways explicitly set up to shield delegates from the elements also had to be taken down because the heavy winds expected tomorrow could flatten them.

“Safety is our primary concern,” Downey said. “We’re going to act accordingly.”

Details, nonetheless, were scant. By Sunday, the secure perimeter in downtown Tampa around the convention venue was a maze of barbed-wire fences, barricades, and road closures layered on top of a thicket of sometimes-contradictory directions and rules about where to go.

There are eight checkpoints where bags are searched and scanned—and where prohibited items meet their end—according to an official convention map; and credentials were being triple-checked, if not quadruple-checked. Some cars waited in line for an hour to be sniffed by patrol dogs and swept by security, and longer lines are surely in store as delegates and elected officials start streaming into the Tampa Bay Times Forum in higher volumes.

The mild disorder wasn’t for lack of bodies. Indeed, the most familiar sight in downtown Tampa has not been milling delegates or politicos, but the thousands of police officers, state troopers, and National Guardsmen.

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Report from ex-House GOP leader says stimulus helped Florida

Naureen Khan, National Journal — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:36:49 -0400

A report commissioned by a prominent Florida Republican isn’t taking the usual GOP line on the Obama administration’s stimulus package.

A newly-released audit from the office of Republican Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, a Mitt Romney supporter and former member of the U.S. House Republican leadership, says that the 2009 stimulus bill did benefit the state of Florida.

“Based on reports received by the [Office of Energy], the State of Florida has benefited from the investment of [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] funds,” the report says, pointing to jobs created and retained as well as energy cost savings through the distribution of stimulus funds.

The report was undertaken to see how well Florida’s Office of Energy was implementing energy programs, grants, and other activities, and comes out just in advance of the festivities in Tampa for the Republican National Convention. The finding that a Florida Republican was conceding the benefits of the stimulus program was first reported by Media Trackers, a conservative nonprofit watchdog group in Florida.

Putnam served in the House from 2001 to 2011 and rose to become House Republican Conference chairman, the third-ranking GOP leadership post. Although he was considered a rising star in the party, he resigned from that post after Republican losses in the 2008 elections, saying the highly partisan nature of the job made it difficult to work with Democrats.

Putnam also serves on the Farmers and Ranchers for Romney coalition and is host of the Florida delegation’s daily breakfast meetings during the RNC.

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Negative talk about Obama spikes in poll

Naureen Khan, National Journal — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:24:05 -0400

Heading into the Democratic and Republican conventions, a new “Conversation Nation” poll suggests people are feeling markedly less enamored of their commander in chief this week.

Negative chatter about President Obama spiked 13 points last week, according to the latest data from the weekly National Journal-Keller Fay Group poll measuring adults’ conversations about politics. That boosted “mostly negative” talk about the president to 45 percent, compared with 31 percent that was mostly positive (a 10-point drop from the week before). It was the second highest percentage of bad-mouthing that Obama has registered since early June, a troubling sign for a president who has stayed competitive during a painfully sluggish economy in part because of his personal likability.

Positive word of mouth about presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney was on the rise as Obama’s became less positive. The trend toward negative conversations about Obama coincided with Romney running mate Paul Ryan’s first week on the campaign trail, and with Romney’s decision to go on offense against Obama for what he called angry, desperate and hateful campaign tactics.

Negative talk about Romney has consistently outweighed positive talk since early June, but the latest data shows that changing. Thirty-four percent of the daily talk about Romney last week was negative on average and 36 percent was positive. If the programming at the GOP convention in Tampa next week does a good job of introducing Romney to voters, those numbers could improve further.

The results from respondents in the Conversation Nation poll suggest Americans are tuning into the presidential election more as Romney has picked his running mate and the conventions near. Daily talk about each of the presidential and vice presidential candidates increased over the last week, with chatter about Ryan peaking at nearly 20 percent on Aug. 18—significantly higher than Joe Biden’s 11.4 percent on the same day. Discussions about Romney, meanwhile, continue to lag behind Obama, but he is closing the gap—on Aug. 19, almost 37 percent of Americans said they had a conversation about the president while 33 percent reported talking about Romney.

Talk relating to the presidential election continues to happen mostly the good old fashioned way—78 percent of the conversations were conducted face-to-face, with only 10 percent on the phone and an even more paltry 5 percent taking place via the Internet and social media.

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Joe Biden to firefighters: Romney doesn't 'get' you

Naureen Khan, National Journal — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:09:22 -0400

PHILADELPHIA – Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday gave an audience of firefighters his view of GOP rival Mitt Romney: “I don’t think he just gets you.”

Biden offered the assessment in the context of the White House’s support of allowing the George W. Bush tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest Americans while pushing the “Buffett rule” calling for those in that income bracket to pay a higher percentage of their earnings in taxes.

“Wealthy people are just as patriotic as poor folks. They’re just as decent as any middle-class folk I know. The difference here is, no one asked them to do anything,” Biden told the 3,200 workers gathered for International Association of Fire Fighters convention. “This is about shared responsibility.”

In the next breath, Biden added that Republicans push for “top-down” policies because “they have to make room for more benefits and more opportunities for the very wealthy.”

Biden characterized Romney as “a good family man, a guy who means well,” echoing the approach that the former Massachusetts governor often takes before describing President Obama as clueless on the economy.

“Part of the problem is,” Biden said, “I don’t think he just gets you, I don’t think he really understands. I mean this sincerely—I don’t think he understands what you’re all about, what makes you tick, what makes you decide to go into this profession that you couldn’t pay enough to 90 percent of the population, including me, to do what you do every day."

Biden thanked the firefighters for their service, especially in the wake of last week’s deadly theater shooting in Aurora, Colo. “The American public is reminded once in a while nationally just what you do,” Biden said.

The former Delaware senator also got personal when talking about what first responders mean to him and the country. He made an apparent reference to a 1972 car accident in which his wife and infant daughter were killed and his two sons were critically injured.

“Who shows up, like you did for my family, with the jaws of life?” Biden asked.

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Governors from both parties agree: They're fed up with Washington

Naureen Khan, National Journal — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 08:16:32 -0400

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. —To Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, the partisan rancor in Washington is reminiscent of an elementary school classroom.

“It reminds me of a little bit of…the old cartoons of taking the pigtails of the little girl who’s ahead of you in second grade and putting it in the ink well,” Hickenlooper said. “And the throwing spitballs and the teasing. They just can’t resist poking the other person across the aisle and causing a little bit of a ruckus.”

Indeed, at the annual National Governor’s Association meeting this weekend, collective griping over the gridlock in D.C. was a rare point of bipartisan consensus. The paralysis in the nation’s capital, after all, has tangible ramifications for the state’s executives, the governors said.

Questions loom over the Medicaid expansion that the Supreme Court made optional with its ruling last month, with many governors saying they need more clarity from the federal government before they can move forward—unlikely, given that the fate of the health care law may hang in the balance of the November elections. Even more pressing, the so-called “fiscal cliff” threatens to bust state budgets around the country when automatic tax hikes and spending cuts go into effect at the start of the year if federal lawmakers fail to forge a compromise.

“The biggest issue I have with the federal government is that they don’t act,” said Republican Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska at the opening National Governor’s Association press conference. “What I’d prefer is for president and Congress to make some tough decisions and then maybe go on vacation for a couple of years.”

Democrat Jack Markell, governor of Delaware, offered a startlingly similar assessment from the other end of the political spectrum.

“Some of my friends who work in Washington tell us the worst day in our states is better than the best day in Washington and I think there’s probably a lot of truth to that,” he said. “Washington may be caught in the grip of partisan paralysis but in state capitals, we really don’t have that choice.”

States, Markell pointed out, can’t borrow money and balanced budgets are not optional.

“It’s almost a perfect storm in Washington,” Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican from Oklahoma, told National Journal. “There are so many issues that are out there that governors are saying wait a minute, it’s hard to for us to make decisions on our state budgets with some of these core issues when we don’t know what Congress is going to do between now and the election and the end of the lame duck session.”

Hickenlooper said he’s running out of ideas for what it would take to bring consensus and compromise. World War II led the country out of the Depression; hopefully, this time around, it won’t come to that. “It takes some cathartic event of something and I don’t know what the cathartic event is going to be,” he said. “I thought it was the budget crisis last year—I thought we were going to move past that point.”

But away from the central roundtable of the governors' meeting—when class wasn’t in session, so to speak—many of the governors weren’t beyond throwing spitballs on their own, a symptom of a heated presidential election year in which no one seems immune.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, kicked the weekend off with a press conference in which he accused the Obama team of waging a campaign of “division and misrepresentation.” Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, accused Republicans’ blocking the President’s agenda in Washington “unpatriotic,” while fellow Gov. Pete Shumlin, Democrat from Vermont, said his GOP compatriots who had not committed to a Medicaid decision were “disingenuous.”

“The American people are sick and tired of spineless politicians,” he said.

On the same day that the Obama campaign released a blistering ad against Romney, juxtaposing the Republican nominee singing “America the Beautiful” while the offshore tax havens he listed on his returns flash across the screen, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley conspiratorially whispered to reporters, “Barack Obama has a much better voice than Mitt Romney.”

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How far can labor take Democrats in a big-money era?

Naureen Khan, National Journal — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:31:09 -0400

Joe Biden bounded onto the stage at the annual convention of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees in Los Angeles with a grin from ear to ear. Down-home Delaware Joe had come to deliver a fiery pep talk to an audience that's down in the dumps.

“You guys are under full-blown assault” by Republicans, the vice president told members of one of the nation’s largest unions representing public-sector workers. “They hear 'labor,' and they think enemy. They hear 'labor,' and they see an opportunity to scapegoat labor for the problems they created. They don’t understand what we’re about.”

The tone of Biden's Tuesday speech — Rah-rah! Go team! We're all in this together! — was a telling barometer of where unions find themselves on the brink of a critical election: reeling from a failed recall challenge to GOP Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, facing attacks to strip them of their collective-bargaining power in other states, and watching their membership and national clout decline.

If there’s a moment for soul-searching and a recalibration of strategy, this is it.

Look at 2012 as labor’s rude welcome to politics in a post-Citizens United world. The controversial Supreme Court decision, handed down in 2010, opened the floodgates for unlimited campaign contributions just as a wave of Republican governors and legislators, intent on cutting budgets and curbing union pay and influence, came into power. The result: Unions were forced into showdowns with challengers who had the backing of well-heeled conservative financiers, and in some cases, were humiliatingly rebuked.

The November elections are poised to be the next big test: Can unions prove themselves relevant in the big-money era? Or will they continue their fade to 20th-century relic?

The post-mortems of labor’s effort to recall Walker for his union-busting policies are varied as they are numerous, but there’s one common denominator among them: the bludgeoning Democrats and labor took on the fundraising front. According to an analysis by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group, unions and other groups supporting the recall mustered $19 million; Walker and his allies spent $47 million through late May.

Union leaders and strategists readily acknowledge that they won’t ever be able to compete dollar-for-dollar in this election cycle or any other as long as the current rules stand. Instead, they’re recommitting themselves to what they say has always been their strength: an ever-more sophisticated ground game and advanced get-out-the-vote operation. Moreover, labor leaders said, they too intend to take advantage of Citizens United. For all the inequities it has exacerbated on the fundraising front, the decision will allow unions for the first time in a presidential election to use their money to reach out to nonmembers.

“Citizens United creates a more challenging battlefield for unions. Whereas they already had to be smart and efficient about how they spent their money, they now have to be even smarter and more efficient at turning it into votes,” said Guy Molyneux, a Democratic pollster who works closely with labor organizations. “Is that enough to totally make up for all the money on the other side? No one really knows yet. We’ll see how it plays out.”

The AFL-CIO revealed last week that it is pulling back direct contributions to political candidates, including President Obama, and pouring more money into its own internal infrastructure. “It’s hard, if not impossible, to imagine raising the kind of money that the Kochs and others can put on the table,” said Michael Podhorzer, political director of the AFL-CIO. “Our view is, in this election and even more important in the long run, the traditional ground game and the new kind of ground game are going to be essential in trying to balance that money.”

The Service Employees International Union, another major force in politics, unveiled a wide-reaching voter-contact offensive on Tuesday that will entail 13 million phone calls, knocking on more than 3 million doors, and reaching three times as many members of the general public as the group had in years past to support Obama. The effort will be concentrated in eight presidential battlegrounds — another novelty — and will target portions of the electorate sympathetic to Democrats and unions, namely African-Americans, Hispanics, and younger voters. At the same time, SEIU has partnered with Priorities USA, the super PAC backing President Obama, to launch a $4 million Spanish-language ad campaign earlier this month.

Overall, SEIU says it plans on spending roughly what it spent on political activities in 2008 — around $80 million. AFSCME has signaled that it intends on surpassing its 2008 figure with spending in the ballpark of $100 million. So unions are not completely strapped for cash.

Yet their spending now seems quaint next to the amount of money being wielded by individual billionaire financiers on the conservative side. Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson alone has given $71 million to various Republican-allied super PACs and organizations, The Huffington Post reported — and that’s just so far.

The picture is complicated by the fact that union resources have been sapped by the costly fights waged over their basic ability to function, such as the Wisconsin recall election instigated by labor. “It’s a win-win for the other side when they engage unions in these fights,” said Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO. “Every dime that unions are forced to spend on these fights is a dime that unions can’t spend to defend their members, organize, and support candidates who support workers’ rights.”

Democratic strategists nonetheless said unions still have a role to play in the Democratic Party, even if they can't bankroll candidates to victory. “It doesn’t mean they’re not relevant,” said pollster Mark Mellman. “It means they’re not Sheldon Adelson.”

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Impassioned Biden reassures public workers

Naureen Khan, National Journal — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 17:23:43 -0400

Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday delivered a rousing defense of public workers and the labor movement at the annual convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Los Angeles.

“You guys are under full-blown assault,” he said, speaking to members of one of the nation’s largest unions. “This is the greatest assault on working-class people and their unions that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

Public workers have faced cuts to salaries and benefits as their unions have stared down the prospect of having collective-bargaining powers severely restricted in states currently governed by Republican governors and legislatures. Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney threw fuel on the fire when he was accused of endorsing that kind of belt-tightening -- even at the risk of slashing firefighters, teachers, and police officers.

Biden said that a Romney presidency would see more of the same policies enacted on the federal level.

“They hear 'labor,' and they hear 'enemy,' ” Biden asserted in his fiery remarks. “They hear 'labor' and they see an opportunity to scapegoat labor for the problems they created.”

“We owe you,” Biden said. “You shouldn’t be nullified.”

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A Gingrich administration could be expensive

Julia Edwards and Naureen Khan, National Journal — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:47:00 -0500

Newt Gingrich has branded himself a visionary politician since his days in Congress and prides himself on his grand -- some would say even grandiose -- ideas for transforming the nation. That propensity to think big extends to all parts of his presidential platform, from tax reform to the space race, and occasionally puts him at odds with his party’s resolve to slash government spending. We take a look at some of the former House speaker’s most ambitious ideas – including two-track tax and Social Security systems -- and how much they would cost. From least expensive to most:

Immigration: Newt Gingrich’s proposal to deal with the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country calls for a new system of citizen panels that would decide whether certain illegal immigrants who have deep ties to the United States could be granted legal status (but not citizenship). Gingrich says he would charge Congress with setting clear, objective legal standards for the proceedings and task the Department of Justice with setting up the process itself. Although details of the proposal remain murky, experts agree that it would require the creation of a massive new bureaucracy and a significant investment of time and resources (such as training volunteers and space for the panels to conduct their meetings).

Gingrich has likened these citizen panels to the World War II-era draft boards set up under the Selective Service System. That agency, still in existence, has an annual budget of $24.2 million. In 1944, however, during the height of the draft and when the community boards were in full swing, Selective Service had a budget of $61.2 million a year, or more than $850 million in today's dollars.

Moon Base: Newt Gingrich’s vow to build a permanent moon base by the end of his hypothetical second term as president has earned him ridicule from his opponents, and kudos from fellow space enthusiasts (yes, there is indeed a Tea Party in Space). Gingrich has said he would only use 10 percent of NASA’s total budget to create prizes and other incentives to spur private-sector space innovation. That would amount to about $1.8 billion a year of taxpayer dollars if the NASA budget remained at its current levels. What’s the total sticker price of a base on the moon? Estimates have ranged over the years. Then-NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in late 2006 that it would cost $104 billion to establish the lunar outpost, but that didn’t include the cost of maintaining and staffing the base continuously. The Bush administration put the price tag at around $230 billion when it toyed with the idea of a permanent presence on the moon, before the program was ultimately shelved.

Tax Reform: Gingrich has proposed giving taxpayers a choice: They could keep paying under the current structure or pay a flat rate of 15 percent. The corporate rate would plummet from 35 percent to 12.5 percent. There would be no tax on capital gains, dividends or interest income. Gingrich would keep just a few deductions and credits, among them the mortgage interest and charitable gift deductions and the earned income and child tax credits. The Tax Policy Center estimates that Gingrich’s proposal would add an average $1 trillion a year to the federal deficit. “We are used to seeing numbers such as this describing the 10-year revenue loss of some tax plan” – not one year, writes the center’s Howard Gleckman, describing the sticker shock Gingrich’s plan could induce. Gingrich and his advisers say economic growth and spending cuts would keep the deficit down.

Social Security: Gingrich wants to bring a version of the Chilean retirement system to the United States. He would create a “voluntary option for younger Americans to put a portion of their Social Security contributions into personal Social Security savings accounts” run by investment firms. There are at least two huge possible costs associated with such a plan.

As in Chile, the government would guarantee that “all workers with personal accounts will receive at least as much in retirement as they would under the current Social Security system.” So if a personal account lost money or didn’t yield as much as a government account, the U.S. Treasury would make up the difference. A Social Security actuarial analysis of a similar plan in 2005 found that the guarantee could add $2 trillion to the federal debt. Gingrich says that in three decades, the Chilean government has not had to shell out any money for the guarantee.

Second, since benefits to current retirees are financed by payroll taxes paid by younger workers, the government would have to fill the gap left when some of those workers put money into private accounts instead of into the government Social Security pool. The actuarial analysis in 2005 estimated that gap at $1.4 trillion to $2.2 trillion over 10 years. The Gingrich plan says transition funding “can all be more than covered” by cuts he proposes to dozens of social welfare programs.

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Ron Paul takes End the Fed campaign to Washington

Naureen Khan — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Paul, who is enjoying a bump in recent polls in Iowa, said, "There's no reason to fully trust everything our government tells us, especially when things are going badly, whether it's on foreign policy or monetary policy, because they use the fear tactics to frighten people into 'Boy, the whole world is going to collapse unless we bail out the big banks and the big corporations.' "

The Republican House member from Texas decried "the endless fearmongering to scare the people and the Congress into spending money. If you didn't have the Federal Reserve, it would come to a halt. It wouldn't happen.... This has been such a grand deception."

Paul has argued that the crisis in the money markets in Europe and elsewhere can be resolved only when currency is sound and "when it is recognized and accepted as such by individuals, through the actions of the market, without coercion." He has pushed for a return to the gold standard.

"Confidence in the dollar is plummeting, confidence in the euro has been shattered by the European bond crisis, and beleaguered consumers and investors are slowly but surely awakening to the fact that government-issued currencies do not hold their value," Paul wrote in a recent op-ed. " … Throughout history, gold and silver have been the two commodities that have most fully satisfied the requirements of sound money. This is why people around the world are flocking once again to gold and silver as a store of value to replace their rapidly depreciating paper currencies."

After his speech, Paul told reporters that he thinks he got only 90 seconds in the last candidate debate on Saturday "because I go after the status quo, and I'm afraid that they don't like to hear about it. Because I challenge the welfare state as well as the banking system as well as our foreign policy.

"I mean, the bailouts. Look at who they bail out. They bail out the wealthy and that's how the monetary system works. The Federal Reserve serves the interest of these very wealthy people."

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FAA workers greet news of deal with cautious optimism

Naureen Khan — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Idled FAA workers and contractors could return to their jobs as soon as Monday if President Obama signs the bill into law this weekend.

"I'm just thrilled that they did the right thing," said Mark DePlasco, a 52-year-old controller who manages air-traffic facilities in California. "I think yesterday's press gauntlet just pressured them into taking action."

Two senators were present to approve a House bill extending FAA's funding into mid-September, bringing a close to days of stress and anxiety for FAA workers who had no idea when they would be able to return to work. The unanimous consent procedure in the Senate took all of 30 seconds.

But employees are handling the news with guarded optimism.

The FAA funding extension runs through September 16 and Congress has only a few days after they return from recess to hammer out the details of another short-term extension or a long-term bill. Employees have not yet received notice about when or if they will receive retroactive pay for the last two weeks.

"I don't think we're completely out of the woods yet," said Fred Rasche, a 49-year-old electrical engineer who has worked for the FAA for the last 27 years. "I would hope that they wouldn't do this again-send all these people home."

"Going through life with uncertainty with your livelihood -- you can't make any long term commitments," echoed Michael Weatherby, who works at the William J. Hughes Technical Center outside of Atlantic City, N.J., the largest aviation-research facility in the world.

When they return to work, employees will try to get back to business as usual on the hundreds of projects that were left hanging as lawmakers squabbled over a few minor provisions in a long-term bill and then left Washington for a month-long recess without a resolution.

Planning ahead will be all the more difficult when there is the possibility of another shutdown hanging over their heads, employees said.

"I'm going to prepare for the worst knowing it could end up like this again-I won't be making any major purchases," DePlasco said. "I'll be frugal the next month and a half just to see what happens."

If there's a silver lining to the whole mess, Rasche said that it's shown him the importance of having his voice heard in the political process. He had never been in touch with his representative before. On Wednesday, he was on Capitol Hill speaking to congressional aides about his predicament.

"This is kind of a wake-up call," Rasche said. "What [lawmakers] do up there does matter and it does impact our lives."

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Congress goes on vacation, furloughed FAA workers go to unemployment

Naureen Khan — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400

No, Rasche isn't officially among the ranks of the 14 million jobless in America seeking employment. Instead, the 49-year-old electrical engineer finds himself in the crosshairs of what seems to him a nonsensical political squabble in Washington-albeit one that's wreaking havoc on his personal finances.

Rasche, an employee of the Federal Aviation Administration for the last 27 years, is one of 4,000 workers who've been furloughed because of the congressional impasse over funding.

While lawmakers have fled the nation's capital for a month-long recess leaving the mess unresolved, Rasche and other furloughed workers are busy reworking family budgets.

"From my perspective, we had no warning," he said. "We were caught flat-footed."

Congress has signed off on 20 stopgap funding extensions since 2007, and FAA workers and contractors had no reason to believe that another wouldn't be granted until the details of a long-term bill could be ironed out.

No such luck in this summer of soaring tempers and dug-in heels. Rasche and thousands of employees have been out of work for two weeks-July 22 was their last day.

Rasche cashed in a life insurance policy and has been scaling back on other purchases. His wife, thankfully, has a job and is preparing to look for another. He figures he has enough money to pay his mortgage for August and possibly September. After that, things start looking a little more dicey. If all else fails, he'll dip into the college funds of two of his children, ages 14 and 17.

"We work very hard doing our jobs and we like our jobs and now we're being furloughed during this time when everybody is talking about jobs," Rasche said. "It's just doesn't make sense to us. People are worried about how they're going to pay their bills."

The sentiment is all too common among FAA employees who find themselves at the whim of a petulant Congress. The worst of it may be the feeling of tied hands and maddening uncertainty, employees said.

"It's causing horrible anxiety," said Mark DePlasco, a controller who manages air traffic facilities in California.

A member of the FAA Manager's Association, DePlasco, 52, counts himself lucky that he has enough savings to get him through the next few weeks. He's heard from other members of the organization who are less fortunate -- the only income-earners in their family who have elderly parents as well as children to care for.

"We don't know when this will end. It could end Friday, it could end September when they get back, it could end October I guess…. It'll bankrupt me and it'll bankrupt everyone else," DePlasco said.

"We hear soundbites from Washington about jobs, jobs, jobs and the reality is they're telling us to go to the unemployment lines," said Michael Weatherby, 43, who works in information security for the William J. Hughes Technical Center outside Atlantic City, N.J., the largest aviation-research facility in the world.

"We can't do anything about it and my managers can't do anything about it and then to watch the government just go on vacation and leave us here without paychecks -- it's insanity."

While Rasche, DePlasco and Weatherby had nothing but praise for the way Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood and FAA administrator Randy Babbitt have gone to bat for their employees -- imploring Congress to come back and pass an extension -- the employees didn't have such warm words for the rest of the Washington establishment.

"Government doesn't seem like it's working anymore," Rasche said. "Things are broken."

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