Posts tagged Republicans

The Fiscal Games

18
5 months ago
by dcpetterson in

I’ve writ­ten about the upcom­ing Con­gres­sional fis­cal chal­lenges sev­eral times before. It’s sort of a tra­di­tion by now. I feel oblig­ated to doc­u­ment the play-​​by-​​play for the cur­rent games so as to keep the story mov­ing along.

Games

Games

We are rapidly approach­ing the Fis­cal Pot­hole. Much has hap­pened in the last two weeks. We’ve got less than four weeks until the dead­line hits. Come the New Year, the Bush-​​era tax cuts expire, the 2011 Debt Ceil­ing cut­throat sequester goes into effect, unem­ploy­ment insur­ance pay­ments run out, the FICA Tax Hol­i­day once comes to another end, the Medicare Doc Fix needs to be fixed again, and the Alter­na­tive Min­i­mum Tax needs its annual goos­ing. To top it off, Amer­ica runs back up against the debt ceil­ing shortly thereafter.

Will we sur­vive this cat­a­stro­phe? Can dis­as­ter be averted? What have the play­ers been doing? Activ­ity comes fast and furi­ous. Who will survive?

Pres­i­dent Obama sub­mit­ted to Con­gress a plan that tack­les all of these issues, quite an ambi­tious achieve­ment. It includes a four tril­lion dol­lar deficit reduc­tion over ten years, extends the Bush tax cuts for every­one in Amer­ica on the first $250,000 of income, extends the pay­roll tax credit and bonus depre­ci­a­tion for busi­ness invest­ment, makes per­ma­nent the Alter­na­tive Min­i­mum Tax and Medicare Doc Fixes, along with another pack­age of rou­tinely expir­ing tax pro­vi­sions — mostly for busi­nesses — known col­lo­qui­ally as tax exten­ders. That’s just the begin­ning. (more…)

House of the Rising D

138
6 months ago
by Monotreme in

[Updated from pre­vi­ous ver­sion, errors cor­rected and new infor­ma­tion added. Thanks to com­menters for their suggestions.]

It was a good-​​enough Elec­tion Day for House Democ­rats, although they fell far short of cap­tur­ing the 25 seats needed to regain the majority.

At this writ­ing, news ser­vices have called House seats for 194 Democ­rats and 233 Repub­li­cans, with eight seats still being decided. Of these eight races, seven are led by Democ­rats, none are led by a Repub­li­can, and one will have two Louisiana Repub­li­cans (from an open gen­eral elec­tion bal­lot) run­ning against each other in a runoff. If the cur­rent leads hold, the 113th Con­gress will have 201 Democ­rats and 234 Repub­li­cans. That would be a gain of nine seats for the Democ­rats over the 112th Con­gress (plus replace­ments for vacant seats once held by two elected Demo­c­ra­tic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives). The com­po­si­tion of the 112th Con­gress (which serves through Jan­u­ary 2, 2013) is 190 Democ­rats and 240 Repub­li­cans with five vacan­cies. There are 435 Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the House, so 218 seats make a major­ity for most votes. (more…)

Ballot Watch: The South (Part 1, The Solid South)

6
7 months ago
by Monotreme in

This is Bal­lot Watch. Today is the 13th in the series of arti­cles on the upcom­ing bal­lot ini­tia­tives and some key local elec­tions. Some of these cov­ered top­ics in com­mon with mul­ti­ple states, but the remain­der look at a state level. With the sec­ond of the two-​​part arti­cle on the South which runs next Mon­day, our series closes.

This region includes the states of the Con­fed­er­acy, minus Texas and Vir­ginia, which were cov­ered in sep­a­rate geo­graphic Bal­lot Watch divisions.

Of the ten states in this region, the only com­pet­i­tive states for Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates are North Car­olina (15 elec­toral votes) and Florida (29 elec­toral votes). I’ll cover those two states (what I call the “Swing­ing South”) in my last Bal­lot Watch on Mon­day Octo­ber 8.

In the Sen­ate, the South (as depicted here) is rep­re­sented by four Democ­rats (Kay Hagen, North Car­olina; Mary Lan­drieu, Louisiana; Mark Pryor, Arkansas; and Bill Nel­son, who is retir­ing both to and from Florida) and 16 Republicans.

The only white Demo­c­ra­tic mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the South, Geor­gia Con­gres­sional Dis­trict 12 Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Bar­row (D-​​Savannah, GA) is run­ning, but his seat is in dan­ger of flip­ping to the Repub­li­cans. Over­all, 65 Repub­li­can and 25 Demo­c­ra­tic House mem­bers rep­re­sent this region.

How did the Solid South get this way? Sim­ply put, racial pol­i­tics and ger­ry­man­der­ing. (more…)

Democratic Convention: Day 2

265
8 months ago
by dcpetterson in

From a New York Times article:

Wednes­day night is attack night. Eliz­a­beth War­ren, who is try­ing to unseat Sen­a­tor Scott P. Brown of Mass­a­chu­setts, will offer up her par­tic­u­lar brand of Democratic-​​base appeal, while for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton will play the part of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan, the Repub­li­can vice-​​presidential can­di­date who slammed Mr. Obama in Tampa, Fla., on Wednes­day night. Expect to hear a broad take­down of the Repub­li­can agenda.

Last week, we heard Repub­li­cans repeat­edly ask­ing the ques­tion Rea­gan posed in 1980: Are you bet­ter off today than you were four years ago? In prepa­ra­tion for tonight’s fes­tiv­i­ties, let’s take a look at where we were in Sep­tem­ber of 2008. (more…)

Obama Has Led Better

70
9 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Lilly Led­bet­ter with Pres­i­dent Barack Obama at the cer­e­mo­nial sign­ing of the Lilly Led­bet­ter Fair Pay Act

Pun­dits and politi­cians who oppose the Pres­i­dent this year like to mock Pres­i­dent Obama’s record. In fact, com­mon wis­dom has it that Repub­li­cans wanted the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to be a ref­er­en­dum on Pres­i­dent Obama rather than a choice between him and his Repub­li­can oppo­nent. Putting aside some of the inten­tional mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of that record, what can we say about what the Pres­i­dent has been doing? It would be worth­while to dis­cuss the things Pres­i­dent Obama has done, in a series of arti­cles lead­ing up to the election.

Let’s start at the begin­ning. The very first bill that Pres­i­dent Obama signed into law, on Jan­u­ary 29, 2009, was the Lilly Led­bet­ter Fair Pay Act. The bill was named after a woman who retired from Goodyear Tire and Rub­ber Com­pany in 1998, who then sued her for­mer employer for hav­ing paid her less, through­out her career, than her male coun­ter­parts. Unfor­tu­nately, the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had expired on her claim; accord­ing to what was then the cur­rent law, a claimant had to allege dis­crim­i­na­tion within 180 days of its occur­rence. Ms. Led­bet­ter had been hired many years pre­vi­ously, and the dis­crim­i­na­tion had been ongo­ing for many bad years — since 1979 — with­out legal action.

Some­how, that made it okay. The Supreme Court said so. (more…)

Not the Game Change

76
9 months ago
by dcpetterson in
, member of the United States House of Represe...

Not just Palin around

What does the choice of Paul Ryan as Vice Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date mean for the cam­paign of Willard “Mitt” Romney?

A vice pres­i­den­tial run­ning mate is often cho­sen for a num­ber of rea­sons — to bal­ance the ticket geo­graph­i­cally or ide­o­log­i­cally, to sat­isfy the demands of some branch of the president’s party, to attract a par­tic­u­lar group of vot­ers, to fill some per­ceived weak­ness in the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Does Ryan bring any of this to the ticket?

Back in May, many com­men­ta­tors were not­ing Romney’s need and desire to avoid mak­ing the sorts of mis­takes Sen­a­tor John McCain made in his dis­as­trous 2008 cam­paign. Among them was his choice of then Alaska Gov­er­nor Sarah Palin as a run­ning mate. At first glance, the choice of Ryan seems to have met the require­ment to be unPalin. But how well does Ryan sat­isfy this?

In as far as the tra­di­tional rea­sons for choos­ing a Vice Pres­i­dent — ticket bal­ance, party demands, attract­ing vot­ers, per­ceived weak­ness — Ryan is not the usual sort of choice. As regards what is per­haps the most vital need this time around — to not be Romney’s Palin — he fails mis­er­ably. (more…)

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