Posts Tagged ‘Republicans’

GOP hawks use sharp rhetoric to fight deeper Pentagon budget cuts

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

Republican lawmakers are using increasingly sharp rhetoric to argue against additional cuts to defense spending, warning the military will cede its technical edge, manufacturing will further erode and conscription will return.

House GOP lawmakers have not shied away from bluntly sounding alarms about what nearly $1 trillion in defense cuts over a decade would bring. Some have gone so far as to warn that a “dismantled force” would threaten the American way of life.

A House Armed Services Committee Republican staff report that surfaced this week concluded that cuts deeper than the $350 billion agreed to as part of the August debt deal would force Pentagon officials to shrink the military to pre-9/11 levels. The study also said most of the military’s big-ticket weapons programs would be placed “at risk” of termination or big changes to cut costs.

GOP lawmakers and aides are increasingly convinced the Pentagon’s plans to buy over 4,000 F-35 fighters for the Air Force, Navy and Marines would be shrunk considerably — or the program would be shut down.

The Republican staff report predicts the Navy would retire around 60 ships — including two aircraft carriers — and Army vehicle programs would be terminated.

The GOP staff goes so far as to warn that more Defense Department budget cuts “could force America to return to the draft” because the Army and Marine Corps would collectively shed 200,000 troops to cut costs.

But not everyone in the national security realm agrees with the kinds of dire warnings being put forth by House Republicans.

House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said in a Friday interview that he agrees deeper Pentagon spending cuts would “have deep and profound impact on [the military’s] ability to carry out some missions.” More cuts would “fundamentally” alter what the military could do, leaving it with “nowhere near the power projection the current force has.”

Still, he labeled the GOP rhetoric “scare tactics.”

“I don’t believe what Republicans have been saying is completely accurate,” Smith told The Hill. “I don’t believe [additional cuts] would lead to a draft. … That sounds more like trying to alarm people enough to get their attention.

“I don’t think we’ve been having a sober discussion of the implications,” Smith said. “I think [GOP members] have been trying to make it look as bad as possible to dissuade people from making [additional] cuts.”

Gordon Adams, who ran national security budgeting for the Clinton administration, panned the HASC report.

“It appears the [GOP] staff started by asking, ‘What can I do by picking my targets to make this look like the end of Western civilization?’” Adams said. “It’s designed to scare people.”

Republican hawks and Pentagon officials — including outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen — use words like “devastate” and “break us” when describing what would happen to the military if it is forced to take the bulk of another $600 billion cut over the same decade.

That would happen if a special congressional deficit-reduction panel fails to find at least $1.2 trillion in cuts across the federal budget by Thanksgiving.

One leading House GOP hawk this week said deeper military cuts would significantly change America.

If those additional cuts are enacted, the “American way of life is at risk,” Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee, warned this week in an op-ed for The Hill.

“Members of Congress … are poised to preside over the dismantling of our military that will reshape the future of our nation,” Forbes wrote. “Deep, looming defense cuts have the potency to reconfigure a nation of today into what is unrecognizable to those coming of age 10 and 20 years from now.”

Warnings that the U.S. military would be unable to hold its own against future foes if all the possible cuts are enacted are unfounded, Adams countered.

“If you put the military the report describes — with the end strength and program cuts — we would be scared to death of that military,” Adams said.

Republican lawmakers are not alone in using sharp language.

Industry executives say their firms likely would soon lack the work to retain an ability — and workforce — to design new combat systems.

For instance, James Albaugh, Boeing’s commercial aviation chief, told reporters last month that there could soon come a time when few weapons manufacturers have the in-house engineering brainpower to design a new combat aircraft from scratch.

The possibilities of industrial design atrophy might not stop there, according to a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments report released late last month.

“It is not unrealistic to foresee a day in which the U.S. defense industry no longer possesses the design or production capabilities for certain weapons systems,” the CSBA wrote. “Indeed, this has already happened to the United Kingdom in the case of nuclear attack submarines.”

Forbes wrote that the nation’s ability to design and build war ships, avionics suites and other advanced systems would “suffer the slow and painful dismantling witnessed in the once-great American manufacturing bastions of textiles, furniture, televisions, computers and steel.”

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Lugar says House freshman Republicans lack parliamentary gifts

Friday, August 12th, 2011

Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) took a whack at freshman GOP members of the House on Thursday, claiming they lack experience and gifts for parliamentary procedure.

“They thought they had come to save Washington, save the country, save lots of things,” said Lugar, according to The Star Press. “Speaker John Boehner faced … a very difficult problem of maintaining some control over a great number of people who were not gifted in parliamentary procedure and really didn’t care to be gifted.”

Lugar also took the opportunity to take a swing at President Obama, whom he accused of abdicating leadership during the intense negotiations leading up to lifting the nation’s borrowing limit.

“Forgive me for sounding a little partisan in this respect, but the president offered absolutely no leadership with regard to all of this [keeping the government funded] except to say it would be unconscionable not to raise the debt ceiling,” said Lugar.

Lugar was speaking at the Muncie-Delaware County Chamber of Commerce at the Horizon Convention Center in Muncie, Ind.

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Republicans Dress Down Jim Jordan, RSC Aide

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

The GOP rank and file tore into Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio) on Wednesday for his role in coordinated attacks on Republicans who have backed Speaker John Boehner’s (Ohio) debt limit proposal.

According to participants, during a closed-door Republican Conference meeting Wednesday, Jordan and a top RSC staffer came under fire from their colleagues for their role in the attacks.

The RSC, Heritage Action for America and others have closely coordinated their opposition to Boehner’s debt plan — including circulating a public pressure hit list of Republicans prepared by the RSC.

Significantly, several of the Members on the list are also members of the RSC and were none too pleased that their dues were being used to gin up attacks against them, according to numerous lawmakers and staff.

The list was circulated to Heritage Action and other members of the Cut, Cap and Balance Coalition and Erick Erickson, an influential conservative blogger who has often waged open warfare against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other Republicans he views as too moderate.

In the email, a RSC junior staffer wrote: “Today is the day to kill the Boehner deal. We need statements coming up to the Hill every hour of the day in mounting opposition to the plan. If we keep this from ever coming to the Floor, we have a greater chance of victory than defeating a vote on the floor.”

In an apparent reference to a previous email from Erickson, the aide continued, “To echo Erick’s email, we need some serious heat up here,” before listing the Republicans whom the activists were to target.

During the meeting, Jordan apologized for the list and promised his colleagues that it would not happen again, participants said. RSC Communications Director Brian Straessle also apologized in a statement, saying, “This action was clearly inappropriate and was not authorized by the Chairman or any other members of the staff. This has never been — and never will be — the way we do business at the RSC.”

Reps. Renee Ellmers (N.C.), Bill Flores (Texas) and others who found themselves on the list gave angry speeches about the incident, and at least one lawmaker demanded Jordan fire the junior staffer for sending out the email.

Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.) also read the text of an email that Paul Teller, the RSC’s top staffer, sent to outside activists. According to a copy of the email, Teller wrote: “Guys — not feeling good. Just got out of Conference, and there was a lot of rally-‘round-the-Speaker sentiment, even while admitting the plan was ‘not perfect.’”

Teller’s email went on to complain about the process outlined in the closed meeting, noting that the “bill text will be available tonight and will likely be on the floor Wednesday morning, in clear violation of the 3-day layover rule. The CCB pledge is nowhere to be found in any of these deliberations.”

Walden, who bluntly told Teller that he was “privileged” to be in the GOP Conference meeting, then lit into the aide, arguing that, “You should not use that privilege to tear down this team for outside organizations.”

Following the meeting, Jordan insisted he had no knowledge of the emails and said he was discussing what to do about the aides internally.

But the RSC Member list is not the first time conservatives have stepped out of traditional bounds during the debt fight.

On Tuesday, former Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) took to the House floor to lobby his former colleagues to vote against Boehner’s plan, raising questions about the propriety of such actions.

Istook is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

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Republicans Dress Down Jim Jordan, RSC Aide

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

The GOP rank and file tore into Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio) on Wednesday for his role in coordinated attacks on Republicans who have backed Speaker John Boehner’s (Ohio) debt limit proposal.

According to participants, during a closed-door Republican Conference meeting Wednesday, Jordan and a top RSC staffer came under fire from their colleagues for their role in the attacks.

The RSC, Heritage Action for America and others have closely coordinated their opposition to Boehner’s debt plan — including circulating a public pressure hit list of Republicans prepared by the RSC.

Significantly, several of the Members on the list are also members of the RSC and were none too pleased that their dues were being used to gin up attacks against them, according to numerous lawmakers and staff.

The list was circulated to Heritage Action and other members of the Cut, Cap and Balance Coalition and Erick Erickson, an influential conservative blogger who has often waged open warfare against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other Republicans he views as too moderate.

In the email, a RSC junior staffer wrote: “Today is the day to kill the Boehner deal. We need statements coming up to the Hill every hour of the day in mounting opposition to the plan. If we keep this from ever coming to the Floor, we have a greater chance of victory than defeating a vote on the floor.”

In an apparent reference to a previous email from Erickson, the aide continued, “To echo Erick’s email, we need some serious heat up here,” before listing the Republicans whom the activists were to target.

During the meeting, Jordan apologized for the list and promised his colleagues that it would not happen again, participants said. RSC Communications Director Brian Straessle also apologized in a statement, saying, “This action was clearly inappropriate and was not authorized by the Chairman or any other members of the staff. This has never been — and never will be — the way we do business at the RSC.”

Reps. Renee Ellmers (N.C.), Bill Flores (Texas) and others who found themselves on the list gave angry speeches about the incident, and at least one lawmaker demanded Jordan fire the junior staffer for sending out the email.

Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.) also read the text of an email that Paul Teller, the RSC’s top staffer, sent to outside activists. According to a copy of the email, Teller wrote: “Guys — not feeling good. Just got out of Conference, and there was a lot of rally-‘round-the-Speaker sentiment, even while admitting the plan was ‘not perfect.’”

Teller’s email went on to complain about the process outlined in the closed meeting, noting that the “bill text will be available tonight and will likely be on the floor Wednesday morning, in clear violation of the 3-day layover rule. The CCB pledge is nowhere to be found in any of these deliberations.”

Walden, who bluntly told Teller that he was “privileged” to be in the GOP Conference meeting, then lit into the aide, arguing that, “You should not use that privilege to tear down this team for outside organizations.”

Following the meeting, Jordan insisted he had no knowledge of the emails and said he was discussing what to do about the aides internally.

But the RSC Member list is not the first time conservatives have stepped out of traditional bounds during the debt fight.

On Tuesday, former Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) took to the House floor to lobby his former colleagues to vote against Boehner’s plan, raising questions about the propriety of such actions.

Istook is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

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The Road Not Taken

Monday, July 18th, 2011

Over the past months, Republicans enjoyed enormous advantages. Opinion polls showed that voters are eager to reduce the federal debt, and they want to do it mostly but not entirely through spending cuts.

There was a Democratic president eager to move to the center. He floated certain ideas that would be normally unheard of from a Democrat. According to widespread reports, White House officials talked about raising the Medicare eligibility age, cutting Social Security by changing the inflation index, freezing domestic discretionary spending and offering to pre-empt the end of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a broad tax-reform process.

The Democratic offers were slippery, and President Obama didn’t put them in writing. But John Boehner, the House speaker, thought they were serious. The liberal activists thought they were alarmingly serious. I can tell you from my reporting that White House officials took them seriously.

The combined effect would have been to reduce the size of government by $3 trillion over a decade. That’s a number roughly three times larger than the cost of the Obama health care law. It also would have brutally fractured the Democratic Party.

But the Republican Party decided not to pursue this deal, or even seriously consider it. Instead what happened was this: Conservatives told themselves how steadfast they were being for a few weeks. Then morale crumbled.

This week, Republicans will probably pass a balanced budget Constitutional amendment that has zero chance of becoming law. Then they may end up clinging to a no más Senate compromise. This proposal would pocket cuts that have already been agreed on, and it would eliminate leverage for future cuts and make them less likely.

It could be that this has been a glorious moment in Republican history. It could be that having persuaded independents that they are a prudent party, Republicans will sweep the next election. Controlling the White House and Congress, perhaps they will have the guts to cut Medicare unilaterally, reform the welfare state and herald in an era of conservative greatness.

But it’s much more likely that Republicans will come to regret this missed opportunity. So let us pause to identify the people who decided not to seize the chance to usher in the largest cut in the size of government in American history. They fall into a few categories:

The Beltway Bandits. American conservatism now has a rich network of Washington interest groups adept at arousing elderly donors and attracting rich lobbying contracts. For example, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform has been instrumental in every recent G.O.P. setback. He was a Newt Gingrich strategist in the 1990s, a major Jack Abramoff companion in the 2000s and he enforced the no-compromise orthodoxy that binds the party today.

Norquist is the Zelig of Republican catastrophe. His method is always the same. He enforces rigid ultimatums that make governance, or even thinking, impossible.

The Big Government Blowhards. The talk-radio jocks are not in the business of promoting conservative governance. They are in the business of building an audience by stroking the pleasure centers of their listeners.

They mostly give pseudo Crispin’s Day speeches to battalions of the like-minded from the safety of the conservative ghetto. To keep audience share, they need to portray politics as a cataclysmic, Manichaean struggle. A series of compromises that steadily advance conservative aims would muddy their story lines and be death to their ratings.

The Show Horses. Republicans now have a group of political celebrities who are marvelously uninterested in actually producing results. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann produce tweets, not laws. They have created a climate in which purity is prized over practicality.

The Permanent Campaigners. For many legislators, the purpose of being in Congress is not to pass laws. It’s to create clear contrasts you can take into the next election campaign. It’s not to take responsibility for the state of the country and make it better. It’s to pass responsibility onto the other party and force them to take as many difficult votes as possible.

All of these groups share the same mentality. They do not see politics as the art of the possible. They do not believe in seizing opportunities to make steady, messy progress toward conservative goals. They believe that politics is a cataclysmic struggle. They believe that if they can remain pure in their faith then someday their party will win a total and permanent victory over its foes. They believe they are Gods of the New Dawn.

Fortunately, there are still practical conservatives in the G.O.P., who believe in results, who believe in intelligent compromise. If people someday decide the events of the past weeks have been a debacle, then practical conservatives may regain control.

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The Mother of All No-Brainers

Monday, July 4th, 2011

The Republicans have changed American politics since they took control of the House of Representatives. They have put spending restraint and debt reduction at the top of the national agenda. They have sparked a discussion on entitlement reform. They have turned a bill to raise the debt limit into an opportunity to put the U.S. on a stable fiscal course.

Republican leaders have also proved to be effective negotiators. They have been tough and inflexible and forced the Democrats to come to them. The Democrats have agreed to tie budget cuts to the debt ceiling bill. They have agreed not to raise tax rates. They have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.

Moreover, many important Democrats are open to a truly large budget deal. President Obama has a strong incentive to reach a deal so he can campaign in 2012 as a moderate. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, has talked about supporting a debt reduction measure of $3 trillion or even $4 trillion if the Republicans meet him part way. There are Democrats in the White House and elsewhere who would be willing to accept Medicare cuts if the Republicans would be willing to increase revenues.

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.

A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.

The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.

This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.

The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name. Economists have identified many factors that contribute to economic growth, ranging from the productivity of the work force to the share of private savings that is available for private investment. Tax levels matter, but they are far from the only or even the most important factor.

But to members of this movement, tax levels are everything. Members of this tendency have taken a small piece of economic policy and turned it into a sacred fixation. They are willing to cut education and research to preserve tax expenditures. Manufacturing employment is cratering even as output rises, but members of this movement somehow believe such problems can be addressed so long as they continue to worship their idol.

Over the past week, Democrats have stopped making concessions. They are coming to the conclusion that if the Republicans are fanatics then they better be fanatics, too.

The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.

If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.

And they will be right.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 5, 2011

An earlier version of this column misstated the amount of revenue increases needed in exchange for spending cuts. It is a few hundred billion, not a few hundred million.

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