House OKS troop withdrawal bill

The House has passed the conference committee version of the war-funding bill, complete with veto-attracting timetables. Two Republicans voted for the bill. 13 Democrats voted against -- six of them because it didn't go far enough. It goes to the Senate tomorrow, and could hit Bush's desk by Monday. If it reaches his desk: he might just scrawl "return to sender" across the front and give it back to the Congressional courier.

The details for the curious:

The bill passed yesterday sets strict requirements for resting, training and equipping troops but would grant the president the authority to waive those restrictions, as long as he publicly justifies the waivers. The bill also establishes benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet: Create a program to disarm militias, reduce sectarian violence, ease rules that purged the government of all former Baath Party members and approve a law on sharing oil revenue.

Unless the Bush administration determines by July 1 that those benchmarks are being met, troops would begin coming home immediately, with a goal of completing those withdrawals by the end of the year. If benchmarks are being met, troops would begin coming home no later than Oct. 1, with a goal of completing the troop pullout by April 1.

After combat forces are withdrawn, some troops could remain to protect U.S. facilities and diplomats, pursue terrorist organizations, and train and equip Iraqi security forces.

As well, Congress killed some of the $20 billion in pork they had padded the legislation with. They should have killed it all, especially given that Bush's promised veto makes it moot. Pork greases the wheels of politics, but $20 billion is just obscene.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Will nobody blink?

I realize that escalating rhetoric often has little to do with what will finally happen, but the bellicosity displayed in the Bush/Congress set-to over Iraq funding is pretty remarkable.

Defying a fresh veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass legislation within days requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq beginning Oct. 1, with a goal of completing the pullout six months later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday.

Reid said the legislation "immediately transitions the U.S. military away from policing a civil war." He said that troops that remain in Iraq after next April 1 could only train Iraqi security units, protect U.S forces and conduct "targeted counter-terror operations."

The Nevada Democrat outlined the elements of the legislation in a speech a few hours after Bush said he will reject any legislation along the lines of what Democrats intend to pass. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," the president said.

So what's emerging from the conference committee is, remarkably, harder-line than either the House or Senate versions. The House version had hard deadlines but an 18-month timeframe; the Senate version had a shorter timeframe but no deadlines, only "goals." This hybrid version appears to combine the Senate's timetable with at least some of the House deadlines.

As such I think it's a bad idea. I didn't mind either individual version, because they were either very soft limits or the timeline was sufficiently long not to have an immediate effect. But the new version simply moves too fast.

If you truly believe that what's going on in Iraq is an intractable civil war, the bill makes sense: we have no business being there in that case. But if you believe, as I do, that Bush deserves one last chance to show he can win this thing, then an Oct. 1 deadline is simply too soon at this point.

All this may simply be attempts at blame-placing for the veto everyone knows will be coming by the end of this week. What happens after that will depend, in part, on who is more successful in the framing effort. Most likely result, I think, will be a "clean" spending bill that only runs through, say, Sept. 30. That means Bush will have to make another funding request in late summer -- right about when we should be starting to get a verdict on the surge.

But what if they're both serious? What if neither backs down? If no bill is passed, no more money is appropriated, and the war ends unless Bush can find ways to fund it out of discretionary monies -- which just isn't going to happen.

One would think that Bush would rather sign a bill with timetables than accept that. But there are other factors at work here. Neither side really wants an immediate, precipitous pullout, so each is hoping the other will blink first. Beyond that, Bush might see such a pullout as politically advantageous, because the effects would be more calamitous than a gradual pullout over the next year. He could then blame Congress for all the attendant trouble, instead of accepting that blame himself.

But much as I dislike Bush, I'm not cynical enough to believe he would do that to the Iraqis. I think he truly believes we need to stay in Iraq and can win in Iraq. So he's not going to abandon the war just to make political points at home.

So if it comes to pure stubborn, expect Congress to blink first. And then expect a short-term funding bill that will see this debate renewed -- with firmer Congressional resolve if the surge is going badly -- in the fall.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Standoff over Iraq

In what the White House insisted was a "dialogue" instead of negotations, President Bush met with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over the emergency appropriation bills for Iraq and Afghanistan.

During an hourlong meeting at the White House, the president told lawmakers directly he will not sign any bill that includes a timetable for a troop withdrawal, and they made it clear Congress will send him one anyway.

Hmm. Well, I hope the cookies were good. Otherwise that was a rather complete waste of time.

Okay, maybe not totally wasted: the Democrats got in at least one good dig:

Several officials said the session was polite. But they said it turned pointed when Reid recounted a conversation with generals who likened Iraq to Vietnam and described it as a war in which the president refused to change course despite knowing victory was impossible. Bush bristled at the comparison, according to several officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. One quoted him as saying, "I reject" the comparison.

Actually, it was good simply to have direct talks on the issue so both sides could get a clear sense of the other's mood. Talking through the media is all very well, but there's no good substitute for face-to-face when money and lives are at stake.

NPR's Political Junkie was speculating that Congress would adopt the nonbinding Senate plan, and Bush might sign it. I agree with the former; the latter depends on how Republicans weigh the politics and how strong Bush's connection to reality is the day the bill lands on his desk.

Reid, Pelosi, Bush, Iraq, politics, midtopia

DeMint scores again

Central Sanity has a nice example of Republican Sen. Jim DeMint (a man I've started to really like, even though he's way too conservative for me on most things) again holding Democrats' feet to the fire on ethics and budgetary matters.

What makes it a win for the rest of us and not just partisan point-scoring is that it worked.

Under pressure from GOP conservatives, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee announced new rules Tuesday to overhaul the way lawmakers send taxpayer dollars to their districts and states.

The move by Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., came as conservatives including Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., increased the pressure to change the much-criticized, often secretive way in which "earmarks" are inserted into appropriations legislation.

The rules would require all earmarks - the footnotes in bills that lawmakers use to deliver federal bacon to their states - be clearly identified in documents accompanying appropriations bills. The requesting senator, the recipient of the earmark and its purpose would have to be made public and posted on the Internet.

Senators would also be required to certify that neither they nor their spouses would benefit financially from any earmark.

Shame on the Dems for having to be prodded into it. Good that, having been prodded, they did the right thing.

ethics, politics, midtopia

Dems show spine, but judgement is another matter

Ratcheting up the pressure on the White House, Sen. Harry Reid has co-sponsored a bill that would end funding for the Iraq war within a year.

Reid announced that he had teamed up with Sen. Russell Feingold, one of the Democrats' strongest war critics, on legislation to set a deadline of March 31, 2008, for completing the withdrawal of combat forces and ending most military spending in Iraq.

For his part, President Bush blasted the Democratic strategy, even as the military sped up redeployments to Iraq -- an example of how difficult it is to sustain current troop levels in Iraq, much less sustain the entire surge, which is only 40 percent complete at the moment.

Reid is pursuing a two-track strategy here, because Congress is also debating a compromise funding bill in preparation for Bush's expected veto of the recently passed measures. The compromise would dispense with timetables but include nonbinding calls for troop withdrawals to begin.

Republicans call Reid a hypocrite, because in November he said "We're not going to do anything to limit funding or cut off funds" for the war.

Reid, however, has his own explanation:

Reid had previously opposed setting a firm end date for the war, a stance he has backed away from in recent months as others in his party moved to increase pressure on Bush. He officially converted after visiting wounded soldiers last week at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

"Talk about a way to be depressed," Reid said yesterday in a talk-radio interview with liberal host Ed Schultz. "The American people, I repeat, have to understand what is happening. It is not worth another drop of American blood in Iraq. It is not worth another damaged brain."

You can debate whether that's a good rationale, but at least he's got one.

And frankly, that's just a distraction. Because this move is a part of the complex dance between Congress and the White House over Iraq. This is, quite simply, an escalation of that dance because Bush has refused to accept the timetables in the recently passed funding bills.

I think it's fair to say that where contrary views are concerned, Bush generally only responds to 2x4s upside the head. With this move, the Dems are contemplating supplying just such a piece of lumber. Bush won't accept timetables? Reid's response is "Fine. No timetables, no money at all."

Is Reid cutting off funds for the troops? He would say no: Congress has passed the necessary funding bills. If Bush doesn't like the strings, whose fault is that? The president would apparently rather not have any funding than have funding with strings attached. That's his choice, but he can't say Congress refused to give him money.

So it's a toss-up who would deserve the blame for a lack of money: Bush for vowing not to accept any strings on the money Congress gives him, or Congress for refusing to give him money without strings. This fight will be won on public opinion grounds: The winner will be the side that the public blames the least.

Constitutionally speaking, I think Congress is in the stronger place here: it's up to them to determine the broad outlines for conduct of the war, and up to Bush to carry out the mission within that outline.

Politically speaking, though, the president might have the upper hand. While Democrats can cut off funding simply by refusing to act, there's not much political support for an immediate aid cutoff. So a funding bill of some sort will be passed. Further, there's probably not enough support in Congress to actually pass the Feingold bill, so Reid's co-sponsorship of it is something of an empty threat. At best it's yet another sign of hardening Democratic resolve on Iraq -- a signal to Bush that there are more and worse fights down the road, and he had better start planning according.

Some side notes:

1. There are infinite wrinkles in this little game. Congress could, for instance, pass a temporary funding bill with no strings attached, allowing the larger ballet to stretch out for months and holding the threat of a funding shutoff as a constant cudgel over Bush's head.

2. I think the $20 billion in pork that went into the funding measures is going to do more damage to the Democrats than whether Harry Reid flip-flopped. I recognize that pork greases the wheels of Congress. But $20 billion was simply a ridiculous amount of money. A couple of billion would have been more reasonable.

3. Political timing plays a role here. Much of what is done now will be forgotten by the time the 2008 elections roll around. And for those elections, both parties in Congress want Iraq off the table. For the Democrats, beginning an exit from Iraq would be a feather in their cap with their antiwar supporters. It would also make the 2008 election more about domestic issues, a perennial Democratic strength. Congressional Republicans, for their part, would like Iraq to be a nonfactor as well. It's a drag on their poll numbers on its own, and also serves as a direct and highly visible link to an unpopular lame-duck president. Republicans will let Democrats take the rap for putting a halt to it, but unless things in Iraq improve rapidly they won't work too hard to thwart the process.

4. Many of the people criticizing the Dems for doing this are the same ones who called the Dems "spineless" and "unwilling to simply yank funding", and called the timetable bills "meaningless" and "symbolic." Note the rhetorical win-win there: If they refuse to pull funding, they're cowards engaged in mere "symbolic" acts; if they pull the funding, they're undercutting the troops, encouraging terrorists and playing politics with our soldiers' lives. The only acceptable course is to keep giving Bush what he wants. Bleh: partisan logic makes me nauseous.

As it turns out, the Dems were not only serious but they have spines as well. Whether that spinage is being used in a good cause is, to me, the proper area for debate. I think as a negotiating tactic, Reid's move is just fine. But I think Bush's surge needs time to show it can work, so any bill that simply yanks funding immediately is a poor idea.

As a compromise, Congress should consider a "clean" bill that funds Iraq operations through the end of summer. That gives the surge time to work, but forces Bush to come back and request another installment after the August recess. At that point we'll have a good idea of whether the surge is working and sustainable, and thus be able to make some hard decisions on continued funding.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Earmark watchdog shuts down

Coming on the heels of the Democrats using $20 billion in pork to buy votes for their war-funding bill, this has me a little bit wary:

The federal agency that tracked pork-barrel spending during the 12 years of the Republican congressional majority has discontinued the practice....

The Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan agency of the Library of Congress created to conduct research for members of Congress on legislative issues, changed its policy in February -- a month after Democrats took control of the Congress and vowed to curb the number of special-interest projects inserted into spending bills or even reports that don't require a vote.

The stated reason:

CRS said the Office of Management and Budget recently has been taking on a greater role in monitoring earmarks. And with both chambers of Congress this year establishing new guidelines and clearer definitions of earmarks, the agency said its role as a scorekeeper of earmarks is obsolete.

Fair enough, if true. And some of it is. The OMB, for instance, decided to get tough on earmarks back in February. And Congress has indeed passed tougher earmark guidelines.

But the OMB policy is simply that, a policy -- one that can be rescinded at any time. And we have yet to see how the new Congressional guidelines will work -- or if they will work -- in practice. Perhaps we should see how the new mechanisms work before scrapping one that has served us well for 12 years.

Further, while OMB will track earmarks, it won't do earmark research for Congress members the way CRS does -- er, did.

Congressional Republicans make two other good points:

Republicans said they want an independent observer because pork is often in the eye of the beholder and estimates of the amount vary widely....

Mr. DeMint said no other agency or group has the resources, expertise and access to provide Congress with data on earmarks.

Yup.

There's no evidence that Democrats pressured CRS to drop the monitoring. But CRS should reconsider it's decision and continue tracking earmarks for at least another year until we see how the replacement mechanisms hold up.

pork, earmarks, politics, midtopia

Senate Iraq timeline survives

Senate Republicans failed to kill a timeline for ending combat operations in Iraq during debate on a war funding bill today. That means it will be included in the final bill, which is expected to pass either tomorrow or Thursday.

After that it will be reconciled with the House version, then sent to the White House for an appointment with Bush's veto pen.

Two interesting tidbits:

1. Three Senators switched their votes to support the bill: Democrat Ben Nelson and Republicans Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith.

2. The Senate also attached its minimum-wage package (and accompanying small-business tax breaks) to the bill -- an odd decision, considering the likelihood of a veto.

So how do the bills stack up? While there are warts -- the $20 billion in pork, for starters, of which the Democrats should be ashamed -- I think this is more than a mere waste of time.

As I noted last week, once Bush vetoes it the real politicking begins. But even if the Dems cave in and give Bush the "clean" funding bill he wants, this wasn't a waste of time.

Whatever else it does, the bill expresses the opinion of Congress (and, incidentally, the voters, if polls are to be believed) in very forceful terms -- especially because much of the opposition to the bill came from Democrats who didn't think it went far enough.

That may not matter to Bush. But you can be certain the message will be received in other places -- like, say, Baghdad. The Iraqi government now knows that support past the 2008 elections is highly uncertain unless it gets its act together. So whether the deadline is March 2008 or September 2008 or January 2009, it's very real and very serious.

The real test of our Iraq policy remains the surge. If it works and is sustainable, we stay. If it doesn't, we leave.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

House passes Iraq timetable

By a razor-thin margin -- 218-212 -- the House of Representatives passed a war funding bill that includes a hard deadline to end combat operations in Iraq: September 2008.

I've already opined that the timetable is reasonable, giving Bush a year and a half to show progress. And even if the deadlines were enforced, it's not like we would abandon Iraq as of then. We would simply shift from doing front-line work ourselves to providing aid and training for the Iraqi military. And if Bush does manage to show progress, I'm sure he would find that the deadline, to quote Captain Barbossa, "is more of what you might call guidelines than actual rules." What Congress passeth, Congress can changeth.

Bush, however, exploded.

Just over an hour later, an angry Bush accused Democrats of staging nothing more than political theater and said that if the spending bill is not approved and signed into law by April 15, troops and their families "will face significant disruptions."...

"A narrow majority in the House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility by passing a war spending bill that has no chance of becoming law and brings us no closer to getting the troops the resources they need to do their job.

"These Democrats believe that the longer they can delay funding for our troops, the more likely they are to force me to accept restrictions on our commanders, an artificial timetable for withdrawal and their pet spending projects. This is not going to happen."

Bush's rhetoric is self-serving, of course: Whatever you think of the wisdom of its chosen course, this is Congress asserting its responsibility, not abdicating it. Abdication is what the Republican-led Congress engaged in for three years.

And if funding the war is so important, he can simply sign the bill. The money is there, and the restrictions don't kick in for quite a while. Apparently the funding isn't critical enough to keep him from vetoing it.

As political theater, this cannot be beat. As a practical matter, though, the deadline is probably a goner. The first hurdle is the Senate, where it will have trouble passing. If the Senate passes a bill lacking the timetable, that will have to be resolved in conference committee. If the deadline survives that (and the conference version passes the Senate), it faces a likely Bush veto, which will almost certainly be sustained.

At that point -- or, more likely, much earlier -- Bush and Congress will have to sit down and hammer out what sort of funding bill both sides will accept. The politics are uncertain, because both sides can accuse the other of holding our troops hostage to politics. My gut says Bush will win that battle of perception by claiming the timetable provision does not belong in the funding bill. But Congress can argue that the timetable is directly relevant to the funding.

Further, they could make the point that the timetable is a limitation on Bush, so how much sense does it make to pass it as a standalone measure that Bush will simply veto? Attaching it to the funding bill is the only way Congress can exert meaningful pressure on the president.

Problem is, that would mean Congress is using a tactical argument to try to counter a moral and strategic one. And critics could plausibly point out that if Congress cannot muster enough votes to force the timetable on Bush straight up, perhaps it is still too early to be doing such forcing.

I don't buy that particular logic but I'm still somewhat in the latter camp, mostly because I believe we need to give the "surge" time to show results before we start imposing withdrawal deadlines. More on that in my next post.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Senate adds Iraq deadline to spending bill

The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to approve a $122 billion appropriations bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that includes language setting March 2008 as a goal for ending combat operations in Iraq. That sets up a major floor battle over passage of the legislation.

The House will vote on a similar bill by Friday.

Passage is by no means certain. And Democrats are building support through a time-honored method: bribery.

Congress has loaded up President Bush's request for "emergency" spending on the Iraq war with more than $20 billion in "pork" for members' districts.

Money for peanut storage in Georgia, spinach growers in California, menhaden in the Atlantic Ocean and even more office space for the lawmakers themselves is included in what has ballooned into a $124 billion war bill.

"This emergency supplemental bill has more ornaments hanging over our many branches of government than the White House Christmas tree," Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., said.

While I understand the practical aspect of such largesse -- and while the Democrats promised only to expose pork, not totally eliminate it -- I'm disappointed. I'm especially disappointed by the amount. Surely it doesn't require $20 billion to buy a few dozen votes. If you're going to spend my money on bribes, at least get value for the dollar.

It may all be moot anyway. If the deadline stays in the bill expect Bush to veto it, since it contains a direct challenge to his war authority. And expect that veto to be sustained. We'll then get a whole new squabble over who is playing politics with our soldiers' lives while they try to put together a replacement bill that Bush will sign. It will be a matter of who blinks first: Bush, who needs the money to remain in Iraq, or Congress, which doesn't want to be seen as undercutting the troops. I'd say "expect a compromise", but I'm not sure what that compromise would be.

If it comes to a confrontation, though, expect Bush to win unless Congress is prepared to shut down the Iraq adventure right now, today. They're not, they won't, and Bush will get his money without strings attached. This time.


pork, budget, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Mars' water is frozen, like NASA's budget

Using ground-penetrating radar, scientists have found that the south pole of Mars is covered with a layer of almost pure water ice -- enough water to cover the planet to a depth of 36 feet if it melted.

Even better, that's just the south pole. The north pole has another massive ice cap, and there's evidence that there's even more water stored underground all across the planet.

There are still plenty of technical obstacles to setting up any sort of manned station on Mars, notably the extreme cold (average temperature: -81 degrees) and thin, unbreathable atmosphere. But huge amounts of accessible water make it at least thinkable.

Other things, however, make it less thinkable. Like NASA's budget problems. Besides prompting NASA to propose scuttling useful precursor programs like the Lunar Robotics Office, the agency this week admitted it would not have a replacement for its aging space shuttles by the planned 2014 deadline. For now the delay is only a year, to 2015. But with the shuttles scheduled to be retired in 2010, that leaves a five-year gap where manned flights -- and trips to the International Space Station -- will be the domain of Russia or private organizations. Not to mention the up-and-coming space programs of India, China and Japan.

NASA's entire budget is a relatively paltry $16.8 billion. We could eliminate it entirely and still not make a meaningful dent in the budget deficit. Given the agency's usefulness -- politically, economically, militarily and scientifically -- surely we can shield it from the vicissitudes of the budget wars. If there's one thing that deserves strong support, it's scientific inquiry, the exploitation of space and (long term) developing the capacity to colonize or extract resources from other worlds.

Mars, space, politics, midtopia

Showdown over Iraq? Not this time

The House is racing toward a vote on a bill that would require U.S. troops to leave Iraq by mid-2008. And while Bush is using his bully pulpit to try to forestall that, passage is nearly certain.

The Senate is a different matter, because Democrats have been unable to muster the 60 votes needed for passage. And until it does, nothing changes.

Even if both houses of Congress passed such a bill, the president would almost certainly veto it. So this particular battle appears destined to end not with a bang but with a whimper.

So the battle now shifts to a different front: what restrictions, if any, to place on Bush's latest funding request for Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's a different fight in two respects. With the Iraq war resolutions, Congress needed to muster positive action to oppose Bush. With the funding bills, Bush is the one who needs positive action to get the money he wants. So Congressional Democrats have as much leverage as they could want, and the power of the Republican Senate minority to block action is mostly irrelevant.

But that's only if Democrats dare use that leverage. Because the second difference is that any move to cut or restrict funding, unless handled very carefully, could be painted as cutting the legs out from under our troops in the field. Indeed, that could be an actual unintended consequence, not just partisan Republican spin.

So we will now be treated to the sight of Congress trying to use the rather blunt instrument of its funding power to coerce relatively nuanced changes in our Iraq policy.

They could achieve the nuance pretty easily with narrowly crafted amendments, but those amendments would have to get by the Senate Republicans, and then they might face constitutional challenges.

In fact, consider this scenario: A bill passes and the administration challenges the amendments in court. That ties up the funding request until the challenge is resolved. But nobody wants to be seen as treating the troops' welfare as a political football, so Republicans force the Democrats to strip out the offending amendments and pass a "clean" funding bill while the amendments undergo court review.

I await with great curiosity what the Democrats will come up with.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Dems set pullout date for Iraq

The House wants them all gone by August 2008; the Senate merely sets a "target date" of March 2008.

Here's a comparison of the proposals.

The House version would accelerate the pullout if the Iraqi government fails to meet certain benchmarks. It also retains John Murtha's "training standards" requirement for troops deployed to Iraq, but allows the president to waive it.

The House version will be attached to Bush's request for $100 billion in new funding authority for Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate version is a standalone measure.

This is notable for three things: First, it shows the Democrats have the backbone to confront Bush on this directly. Second, it apparently has majority (though, obviously, not unanimous) support in the Democratic caucuses. Opposition comes mostly from liberal Democrats, who don't think the proposal goes far enough or moves fast enough. Third, the deadline is clearly calculated to get Iraq off the table before the 2008 presidential elections. It'll still be an issue, of course, but not in the way it would be if there were still active combat operations going on.

You'll be shocked to know that House Minority Leader John Boehner doesn't think so. He said it amounts to "failure at any cost" and that the generals on the ground, not Congress, should be making troop decisions.

Boehner's wrong on both counts. Yes, Congress should not be involved in tactical or even strategic military decisions. But they are properly involved in setting the scope and shape of the war. If Congress has the power to start wars, it has the power to end them. As for this being "failure at any cost", that's Republican framing at its best. We wouldn't be having this discussion if the war in Iraq, however unjustified, were going well.

But are the measures a good idea?

I think they're reasonable. What it essentially does is give Bush and the Iraqi government a year and a half to show results. That's why it's not popular with the most antiwar Democrats; they're tired of giving Bush chances, and want the troops home now.

Further, it doesn't imply that we would totally abandon Iraq by the deadline. It's merely a deadline to shift from U.S. combat operations to supporting Iraqi government combat operations. If Iraq is unable to stand on its own by the end of 2008 -- five years after we invaded -- it's reasonable to conclude that they never will be able to do so.

The various certification requirements are smart politics, pointing out the damage that the war is doing to our military and forcing Bush to go on record about it. But giving Bush the ability to waive them eliminates any criticism that they are materially interfering with his handling of the war.

Finally, the big thing to remember is that any deadline set by Congress can always be changed by Congress. If things suddenly start going well in Iraq, you can bet that Congress will extend or abandon the requirements. Presidential election or no, everyone will want to be able to say they were a midwife for success.

Of course, the White House has bluntly vowed to veto any bill containing either measure, and there's no way Congress will pass this with veto-proof majorities. So this whole discussion is probably moot.

Although it'll be interesting to see what happens after that. If Bush vetos the war-funding bill because of the pullout provision, for example, the House will have to decide whether to reauthorize the funding without that provision, or go in another direction. They could simply cut the funding, for instance, so that it provides only enough money for operations up to the first benchmark deadline. They then could decide whether to grant further funding based on whether that benchmark was reached. If it wasn't, they could authorize funding solely for withdrawal and handover operations.

So this is merely the first shot in a battle that will be fought until either Bush turns Iraq around or Congress pulls the plug.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Earmark discipline

You want a Congressional achievement? Here's one.

The spending bill passed by the Senate on Wednesday contains not one shred of new pork. And the bill is not accompanied by a report, which in the past is how many earmarks found their way into the budget.

It's not that simple, of course. Sen. Tom Coburn charges that the bill still contains between $11 billion and $17 billion in hidden earmarks, and there apparently is a growing campaign to keep funding previous earmarks. And Congress has not yet done away with narrowly targeted tax breaks that by some measures cost up to three times as much as earmarks.

But even $17 billion is better than the $64 billion in earmarks that was larded into the budget bills that died with the 109th Congress. That cut dwarfs Bush's call to cut the number and value of earmarks in half. And while keeping previous earmarks alive is odious, at least Congress isn't adding more to the pile.

Even better, the White House is doing more than talking about earmark reform. The Office of Management and Budget has ordered federal agencies to ignore earmarks that are not written into law. That would appear, in one fell swoop, to solve the problem of hiding earmarks in reports, as well as eliminating the pressure to keep funding previous years' earmarks.

A previous OMB memo carefully defined earmarks and made rules for cataloging them, making them that much harder to hide.

Both are moves the administration could have made any time in the past six years, so let's mute the applause a little bit. And it's executive branch policy, not law, so it's rescindable at any time. But give credit where credit is due: it's a powerful and practical move that plugs the holes in Congress' earmark rules. I'll take this sort of hypocrisy any day.

budget, earmarks, politics, midtopia

While Congress fiddles....

The minimum wage bill saw a lot of action in the Senate but few actual results.

As promised, Harry Reid let the Republicans propose a line-item veto amendment on the bill. That was rejected 49-48, but could come back up again because that vote was far less than the 60 needed to invoke cloture and cut off debate.

However, the immediate debate moved on to other grounds, namely Republican insistence that the wage increase be paired with tax breaks for small businesses to help cushion the blow. Senate Democrats are amenable, but the House could force the issue on two fronts: the House bill doesn't contain tax breaks, and it's the House's prerogative to propose tax measures.

The lack of tax breaks led Senate Republicans to block the wage bill, so it's currently at an impasse.

I would have liked to see the line-item veto pass, but it had its chance and is done. If there's a reasonable opportunity to revive it, fine, but it should not be used to hold up the wage bill.

Overall, the House should compromise in this case. The proposed tax breaks are reasonable: extending a tax credit for employers that hire low-income workers, and a simplified expense deduction for small businesses. Further, as required by the new pay-as-you-go rules, the $8.3 billion cost will be offset by a cap on tax-deferred executive pay and the elimination of an array of tax shelters. That provision alone is worth the price of admission, as such tax-deferred paydays are at the root of many a tax-avoidance scheme. House Democrats would be foolish to let a fit of pique get in the way of such progress.

Negotiations continue, and the Senate will take another crack at it soon. Let's hope reason prevails.

taxes, economy, politics, midtopia

Unpleasant math

What can $1.2 trillion buy?

Less than half of that would let us double cancer research funding, treat every American who has diabetes or heart disease and immunize every child on the planet against measles, whooping cough, tetanus, tuberculosis, polio and diptheria -- all for a decade.

$350 billion would provide a decade of universal pre-school.

$100 billion over a decade would be enough to fully implement the 9/11 Commissions recommendations and provide more aid to Afghanistan.

Or you could choose, as we have, to blow it all on Iraq. And that's a relatively conservative estimate.

The sheer scale of waste and forgone opportunities boggles the mind.

Iraq, budget, money, politics, midtopia

Now in session

The Minnesota Legislature opened its session today, with a situation mirroring the national one: both chambers controlled by Democrats (or the DFL, as they're known here) and the governor's seat occupied by a Republican.

One major difference, though, is in that Republican: Tim Pawlenty has already acknowledged the need to change course on several things, and he was always more clueful and willing to compromise than Bush is. So there's actually some hope that this legislature will be able to get some good things done.

Here are some of the things I've asked my elected representatives to do. A lot of the big issues (like civil liberties, health care, education or Iraq) are missing, and that's deliberate: I consider these items that need addressing, but are at risk of being lost in the shuffle.

To my local representatives:

1. Fund transit projects like the Central Corridor and Northstar, and start looking at ways to expand it into the western suburbs.

2. Legalize instant-runoff voting, both as an option for local elections and as a requirement for statewide contests.

3. Allow grocery stores to sell wine. It's a small thing, but I strongly dislike it when an industry (liquor stores, in this case) uses the law to insulate itself from competition.

4. Stop balancing the state budget on the backs of property taxpayers.

Nationally, I've asked my representatives to:

1. Sign on to tighter ethics rules and more transparent government.

2. Adopt "pay as you go" rules and aggressively reduce the deficit.

3. Reform Social Security by eliminating the earnings cap (thus replenishing the "trust fund" by recouping money from the taxpayers who most benefited from raiding it) and indexing benefit increases to inflation.

The list is hardly exhaustive. Feel free to list your political priorities in the comments.

Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Thanks for the laughs, Mr. President

Bush is lecturing Congress on fiscal accountability.

President Bush said Wednesday he'll submit a proposal to balance the budget in five years and exhorted Congress to "end the dead of night process" of quietly tucking expensive pet projects into spending bills.

So let's see.... by 2012, four years after he leaves office, the budget will be balanced.... and then we can start paying off the $2 trillion in debt Bush has piled up during his term. And then we can get started on the trillions piled up by the presidents before him, most notably Reagan.

I also find it curious that Bush didn't have a problem with pork-barrel spending as long as Republicans were in charge of Congress. But now that the Dems have taken over -- Katie bar the door!

Still, however genuine his (political) deathbed conversion may be, let's hope he means it. Better a reluctant, late and hypocritical convert to fiscal sanity than continued red ink.

Bush tossed in another knee-slapper with a Wall Street Journal op-ed that called for -- get this -- bipartisanship.

If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate. If a different approach is taken, the next two years can be fruitful ones for our nation. We can show the American people that Republicans and Democrats can come together to find ways to help make America a more secure, prosperous and hopeful society. And we will show our enemies that the open debate they believe is a fatal weakness is the great strength that has allowed democracies to flourish and succeed.

Bush has a long history of talking a good game and then doing the opposite. His "I'm a uniter, not a divider" line remains a classic in the genre, along with such hits as "I'm a fiscal conservative" and "I do not want war with Iraq."

It's hardly surprising that his "reaching out" to the Democrats consists mostly of a threat to veto anything he doesn't like. It's consistent with his history: to Bush, bipartisanship means "we'll get along fine as long as you do it my way."

The good news, such as it is, is that the Republicans don't want to be seen as obstructionist, and don't want Bush to still be defining the party in 2008. So if Bush remains Bush, members of his own party will be elbowing each other aside to be the first to tie him to a rail and run him out of town.

It is entirely possible that Washington will devolve into partisan gridlock; such is the political maturity of many of our elected officials. But for now I hold out hope that the forces at play lean toward effective compromise instead.

Congress, Bush, politics, midtopia

How much does the government owe?

Would you believe $53 trillion?

And the 2006 deficit alone? $4.6 trillion.

That's based on a GAO analysis (pdf) that looks at the present value of future liabilities the government has racked up over the next 75 years.

Are the numbers real? Yes. Are they meaningful? Sort of.

The figures come in answer to the following question: "If the current budget situation continues, what will be the cumulative difference between federal revenue and federal outlays in the next 75 years?"

Note all the important qualifiers: "If the current situation continues" and "75 years." The estimate ignores things like economic growth and population growth and then projects current conditions out over a very long time frame.

That time frame is important, because the longer the time period, the less accurate the projection becomes. It is extremely unlikely that current conditions will prevail for the next three quarters of a century, and even small changes can have big effects on such long-term guesses. Do the same projection in five years and you'll get a much different answer.

Further, the time frame makes the numbers look more scary than they really are. The $4.6 trillion deficit for 2006, for example, works out to about $61 billion a year -- big, but manageable.

Finally, this is not money actually spent; it's money we've implicitly promised to spend, assuming federal policy doesn't change in the next seven decades. Most of it represents Social Security and Medicare payments that won't come due for years -- but for which we've made no preparation, in part because we're using the Social Security "surplus" to pay for current government operations. So far the government has borrowed nearly $2 trillion from Social Security; if that money were instead held in trust, the multiplier effect of 75 years would go a long way toward reducing that $53 trillion.

So we're not really $53 trillion in the hole. What the figure mostly shows is the difference between our promises and our willingness to pay for them.

But they do serve as a wakeup call. The longer we run deficits and refuse to start saving for our long-term obligations, the greater the pain will be in the end -- either through higher taxes or greatly reduced government services. We need to end deficit spending sooner rather than later, start paying money back into the Social Security reserves and make some decisions about the intent and breadth of entitlement programs.

President Bush's tax cuts, mind-bogglingly expensive invasion of Iraq (with a final price tag estimated to be in the trillions) and ill-considered Medicare drug benefit have certainly worsened the problem, but he's not the only one to blame. We all share the blame to one extent or another, for wanting more government than we're willing to pay for.

I've commented before on how unethical it is to live large now and leave the bill for our grandchildren. What the GAO report demonstrates is how large that bill actually is. It's time to act like grownups and pay our own way. Anything else is simply unconscionable.

Social Security, GAO, deficit, budget, politics, midtopia

Quick! Hide the money!

Governmental transparency is good -- unless it involves legislative salaries.

Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., introduced a bill that would remove all information on House employees from public records....

Wicker’s spokesman, Kyle Steward, said the Web site is what prompted his boss’ interest in drafting legislation. Seward said Wicker plans to reintroduce the measure when the new Congress returns next month.

“While he is an advocate of the free flow of information, he does not think it adds to the public discourse to publish individual staff members’ salaries,” Steward said.

The bill is a direct reaction to LegiStorm, a site that went online a few months ago and allows easy access to, and comparison of, staff salary records.

I understand how he feels. My father was a professor at a big state university. He was particularly prominent in his field, and as a result was one of the highest paid professors at the school.

The university was required to make its top salaries public, and every year our local newspaper published the list, with my dad's name near the top. And every year my dad complained about his pay being splashed all over and talked about. He felt his privacy was being violated for no good reason.

His ire was understandable, but it ignored the same fact that Wicker's bill does: that the people in question are public employees, being paid out of the public purse. And the public's interest in knowing how its money is spent outweighs the privacy concerns of people who have chosen to work for governmental entities.

The same principle is why the pay of a public corporation's top executives are public domain: so shareholders can see how their money is being spent. If a CEO doesn't want his pay to be known, he should only work for privately-owned companies.

Wicker's bill died when the lame-duck session ended, but he says he plans to reintroduce it in the new session. Consider writing your representative to explain why passing it would be a bad idea. The public has the right to know the public's business.

politics, ethics, politics, midtopia

Surplus time!

The state budget news is in, and the headline, anyway, is good: a $2.2 billion surplus.

Surpluses are good, of course. Especially if the state uses them wisely -- to replenish reserves, lower tax rates and pay down debt, for example, rather than blow them on rebates or expensive new programs.

But let's not forget how we got here. Gov. Pawlenty balanced the state budget largely on the backs of local taxpayers, and the effects are still being felt: on the same day the state announced its projected surplus, they also estimated that property taxes would rise 8.2 percent in 2007, for a three-year average of 7 percent per year.

So tone down the patting yourselves on the backs, guys. There was no magic here. The state technically held spending flat by cutting local aid -- but property taxes went up as a result. That had the effect of making taxes more regressive, since property taxes are essentially a flat tax, mitigated somewhat by the homestead exemption.

At least the governor has enough shame to suggest that part of the surplus should be used for property tax relief, as a way to undo some of the damage. But he suggested doing so through a one-time rebate. That's a bad idea: "Jesse checks", as Gov. Jesse Ventura's rebates were known, helped contribute to the huge deficit Pawlenty confronted when he took office, because the rebates drained state reserves.

DFL leaders, more sensibly, are pushing permanent tax relief instead. That would be more just, and have a more predictable effect on state and individual finances.

Finally, heed the caveats on that big number. Half of it is essentially a one-time deal, and the other half would be needed to cover inflation if state spending remains at current levels. Given that, the most prudent use might be to stick it into state rainy-day funds, to help avoid the surplus/deficit/surplus roller-coaster we've been on in recent years.

surplus, Pawlenty, budget, Minnesota, politics, midtopia