Senate Narrowly Confirms Mulvaney As Trump's OMB Director & Senate Confirms Trump's Budget Nominee Mulvaney in a Close Vote 16FEB17

THE drumpf/trump-pence administration continues it's class warfare with the confirmation by the senate of mick mulvaney as fotze of the OMB / Office of Management and Budget. mulvaney is an enemy of the poor, the retired, working and middle classes, basically of anyone not part of the 1%. He is a proponent of cutting Social Security and Medicare, of pushing back the retirement age to the point that you work all your life and then die. He is a tea-bagging grover norquist republican serving the greed and lust for power of the rich and corporate America. At least all Senate Democrats and Sen John McCain r AZ voted against mulvaney. From +NPR and +Bloomberg .....

Senate Narrowly Confirms Mulvaney As Trump's OMB Director

February 16, 201711:07 AM ET

BILL CHAPPELL

Twitter

Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., faced sharp questions during his confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill last month.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

Rep. Mick Mulvaney, President Trump's pick to lead the White House's Office of Management and Budget, won a close confirmation vote in the full Senate on Thursday, two weeks after the Senate Budget Committee advanced the South Carolina Republican's nomination by a 12-11 vote.

In a back-and-forth voice vote, the tally was 50-47 when Sen. Mitch McConnell's name was called. His "aye" vote sealed the nomination with 51 senators in favor. As the votes rolled in, groups of Democrats and Republicans huddled on the Senate floor, locked in conversation.

Immediately after the vote, McConnell took the floor to begin consideration of another Trump nomination — that of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt for the post of U.S. EPA administrator.

Democrats who opposed Mulvaney's nomination spoke of his view that Social Security and Medicare must be overhauled — a move that, as NPR's Scott Horsley reported last month, Trump promised not to undertake.

At least one Republican — Sen. John McCain of Arizona — had said he would vote against Mulvaney's confirmation, in a move McCain said was based on the congressman's position on defense spending. In the past, McCain also faulted Mulvaney for his role in the 2013 government shutdown.

Mulvaney "is a prominent member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of around 40 conservatives that grew out of the Tea Party movement," as we reported when his nomination was announced.

In the House, Mulvaney played a prominent role in the shutdown of the federal government over a budget impasse in late 2013. He had advocated for a similar shutdown back in 2011.

Mulvaney's confirmation follows a setback for Trump: On Wednesday, his labor secretary nominee, fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, withdrew his name from consideration after failing to get enough support from Republicans.

Senate Confirms Trump's Budget Nominee Mulvaney in a Close Vote

Mick Mulvaney, who has focused his Washington career on driving down federal spending -- even at the risk of shutting down the government and defaulting on the debt -- won confirmation Thursday as President Donald Trump’s budget chief.

The Senate’s 51-49 vote to put the South Carolina congressman in charge of the Office of Management and Budget sends Mulvaney into the center of all federal spending decisions. Among them: funding the government for the rest of fiscal 2017, because the current spending law runs only through April 28.

Mulvaney will present Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget request to Congress in the coming months, and has said he would recommend the president pay for infrastructure investment and a military buildup with deep spending cuts, including to entitlements.

“He will do a spectacular job of this,” Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi said on the Senate floor. “He will be a voice for fiscal restraint, responsible budgets and for honest budgeting that avoids the use of gimmicks such as emergency funding designations for non-emergencies.”

Mulvaney was first elected to Congress as part of the 2010 Tea Party wave. He built a record as an aggressive advocate for budget cuts, and as an opponent of using emergency war funds to avoid caps on military spending

That led Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain to oppose the nomination because of Mulvaney’s record on military spending. Aging Committee Chairman Susan Collins of Maine and Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran waited until Wednesday evening to signal their support.

All Senate Democrats voted against confirmation.

“He has used debt ceiling and shutdown as a leverage to gain his way on points of lesser importance than whether the government stays open,” Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine said in a Senate floor speech.

Democrat Bill Nelson of Florida, where the Census Bureau estimates that 19.4 percent of the state’s population is 65 or older, said he worried that Mulvaney would push to restrain the growth of entitlement programs by making seniors wait until age 67 for Medicare and age 70 for Social Security.

“He called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. He further has said he supports turning Medicare into a voucher system,” Nelson said on the Senate floor.

In his confirmation hearing, Mulvaney told senators he would recommend that Trump reverse his campaign promise not to cut Medicare and Social Security, because phased-in cuts for future seniors now would keep the program solvent.

“I talked to him about my concern that he had never voted for a budget or a debt limit increase and he said that he recognized he would have a very different role as an OMB director than he would as a congressman from South Carolina,” Collins said in an interview after a private meeting with Mulvaney.

As a congressman, Mulvaney opposed a stopgap spending bill needed to keep the government running into the early months of the Trump administration, objected to using budget gimmicks to let the Pentagon avoid the pain of automatic spending cuts, and was one of the ringleaders of a breakaway group of lawmakers who bristled at the willingness of their fellow Republicans, then led by Speaker John Boehner, to govern through compromise.

Their group, the House Freedom Caucus, was a thorn in Boehner’s side and a contributing factor to the Ohioan’s 2015 decision to quit without finishing his term in office.

Shutdown Provocateur

Mulvaney was one of the leaders of the effort to defund Obamacare that resulted in a 16-day partial government shutdown. The government reopened without cuts to Obamacare.

He also wasn’t successful when he pushed his colleagues to offset the extra dollars spent on emergencies such as Hurricane Sandy by subtracting money approved for some other government purpose.

He so distanced himself from the governing wing of the Republican Party that he refused at campaign time to kick in money to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

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GOP wants to SELL our National Parks, not open them & GOP’s hypocritical obsession: National parks?! 10&8OKT13

WE all remember the publicity stunts at National Parks and Monuments the repiglicans and tea-baggers staged during the federal government shutdown last month (that they created). Only the voluntarily ignorant believed their wailing and moaning. THE truth is they have been systematically underfunding the National Park Service for the past few years, decreasing their market value, with the intent of privatizing our national park system enriching their corporate masters who have bought their political offices. Anyone who lives in an area with privatized toll roads, or has paid attention to the multiple problems of the privatized prison system and the cost the taxpayers are incurring to keep them operating knows privatization of our national park system is not the solution, adequate funding is. From Daily Kos & Salon....

There really has been much public whining and gnashing of teeth by the GOP because the National Parks are closed as a result of the GOP shutdown.  The GOP would have Americans believe that they value our National Parks and are outraged - outraged! - that the parks are closed.
Oh really?

A powerful Republican chairman in the House of Representatives just shared with his constituents his desire to begin selling our national parks. Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida was caught on video in a local town meeting. Here is what he said:"I got attacked in a previous town meeting for not supporting another national park in this country, a 200-mile trailway. And I told the man that we don't need more national parks in this country, we need to actually sell off some of our national parks."

continued....

... Unfortunately, Rep. Stearns isn't the only prominent politician who thinks of the conservation legacy of Theodore Roosevelt as just so much surplus property. Some of the current candidates for leader of the free world have also mused about putting America's national heritage on the chopping block, and the House of Representatives has actually passed or considered favorably a series of radical bills in this Congress that amount to an all-out war on the concept of holding public lands in trust for future generations.

There is a video of Rep. Stearns at Think Progress.   And more from that link:

This is not the first time Republican members of Congress have advocated selling off Americans’ public lands without clarifying how taxpayers would get a fair return for them.  Last fall, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) proposed selling off 3.3 million acres of the public lands that belong to all of us.  And former Rep. Richard Pombo proposed selling national parks to mining companies in 2005. Republican presidential candidates have also recently been confused about the tangible and intangible values of our national parks and public lands.  Mitt Romney told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he doesn’t know “what the purpose is” of public lands, Rick Santorum told Idahoans that public lands should go “back to the hands” of the private sector, and Ron Paul advocated for public lands to be turned over to the states.

See also this excellent article from Salon:

Our national parks have been underfunded for years, not days, and the damage this has caused will last far longer than the shutdown. Inadequate resources have debilitated our parks for decades.  In 1998, for example, a Government Accounting Office study concluded that the dwindling funds were not a short-term problem. “Because of advanced, continuing deterioration, some of these assets may be lost permanently,” it said.  Ten years later, USA Today ran a story with the headline, “National program for ruins in ruins,” about the inadequately funded Vanishing Treasures program, tasked with protecting the country’s archaeological sites.  The aughts have not been kinder.  According to the Center for American Progress, since 2010, Congress has cut the parks budget by 13%, leading to the seasonal closure of national parks including the Great Smoky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. Most recently, the National Parks Group accused the Appropriations Committee-approved budget, which among other travesties completely removed funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, of having its “roots in fantasy rather than reality” and putting “national parks, historic places and cultural treasures… at ever-increasing risk.”  As Nicholas Kristof wrote in August, “[O]ld bridges have collapsed. Trails disturbed by avalanches have not been rebuilt, and signs are missing.” According to the National Forest Service, Kristof reported, only an estimated one-quarter of the country’s 158,000 miles of trails meet internal standards.  The Sierra Club told Salon that the national parks need $11.5 billion worth of maintenance. Half of this is reportedly needed for roads and bridges, whose disrepair poses serious public safety threats. The amount allocated in the 2012 budget? $2.2 billion.
For Congress, though, it’s not enough just to defund our parks so they slowly fall into total, unusable ruin. In this country, it’s also important that we “Drill, baby, drill,” not to mention, “Log, baby, log” and “Mine, baby, mine.” All of these efforts create serious threats to our parks.  In September 2012, the National Park Service identified forty-two park units where non-federal oil and gas drilling is or could be happening in the future.  At the time, twelve had active oil and gas operations.  Yet for plenty of politicians, this is still not enough.  In the 2011 primaries, Michele Bachmann proposed drilling for oil in the Florida Everglades, one of the country’s most endangered ecosystems.  Joe Miller, the Tea Party candidate for Senate in Alaska, has run on a platform that includes turning the pristine Denali National Park and Preserve, the home to Mount McKinley, the U.S.’s highest peak, into an oil well.  And GOP thought leader Grover Norquist says to hell with all of it, let’s just turn them over to the states, or better yet, sell them to the private sector.

The GOP would love nothing better than to sell off (give away) our National Parks to their cronies and campaign contributors for drilling, condos, clear cutting, strip mining, whatever. As usual, Republican mendacity knows no bounds.  No surprise there.
#NationalParksHypocrisy
Please share the Salon article by tweeting!

Originally posted to JLFinch on Thu Oct 10, 2013 at 10:08 AM PDT.

Also republished by DK GreenRoots and National Parks and Wildlife Refuges. 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/10/1246005/-GOP-wants-to-SELL-our-National-Parks-not-open-them?detail=action 

GOP’s hypocritical obsession: National parks?!

Republicans may pretend to care during the shutdown, but their policies put the parks in danger

Deena Shanker
 

Ted Cruz, Theodore Roosevelt National Park (Credit: Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com/AP/Valerie J. Naylor)
 
Call me crazy, but I think the National Parks are having their Best Week Ever. Thanks to the government shutdown, they’re getting more attention in a few days than they normally get all year. Even more than when Yosemite was burning last month, when it was filled with hantavirus-carrying mice last year, or when, in 1993, the constant stream of visitors were, as one official put it, “loving the park to death.”
Suddenly, reopening National Parks like Yosemite has become one of the country’s top priorities.  The Republicans are especially concerned, with Arizona State Representative Brenda Barton using the closure to call Obama “De Fuhrer” on Facebook, and to try to strip park rangers of their authority to do their jobs — which right now, sadly, include keeping the parks closed.  Just to show how committed they are to the country’s parks, the Republicans are even including the National Park Service in their piecemeal funding plan, making opening the parks more important than providing Americans with affordable health insurance.
Let’s be honest here for a second, though, guys. Reopening the parks is not going to solve their problems. Sure, it will allow the return of the more than 282 million people that visit them, not to mention the $76 million per day that the local communities earn from those visitors, but the obstacles faced by the parks — which include some actual, physical, roadblocks — run much higher than a few days of closure.
Our national parks have been underfunded for years, not days, and the damage this has caused will last far longer than the shutdown. Inadequate resources have debilitated our parks for decades.  In 1998, for example, a Government Accounting Office study concluded that the dwindling funds were not a short-term problem. “Because of advanced, continuing deterioration, some of these assets may be lost permanently,” it said.  Ten years later, USA Today ran a story with the headline, “National program for ruins in ruins,” about the inadequately funded Vanishing Treasures program, tasked with protecting the country’s archaeological sites.  The aughts have not been kinder.  According to the Center for American Progress, since 2010, Congress has cut the parks budget by 13%, leading to the seasonal closure of national parks including the Great Smoky Mountains and the Grand Canyon.

---

---

Most recently, the National Parks Group accused the Appropriations Committee-approved budget, which among other travesties completely removed funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, of having its “roots in fantasy rather than reality” and putting “national parks, historic places and cultural treasures… at ever-increasing risk.”  As Nicholas Kristof wrote in August, “[O]ld bridges have collapsed. Trails disturbed by avalanches have not been rebuilt, and signs are missing.” According to the National Forest Service, Kristof reported, only an estimated one-quarter of the country’s 158,000 miles of trails meet internal standards.  The Sierra Club told Salon that the national parks need $11.5 billion worth of maintenance. Half of this is reportedly needed for roads and bridges, whose disrepair poses serious public safety threats. The amount allocated in the 2012 budget? $2.2 billion.
For Congress, though, it’s not enough just to defund our parks so they slowly fall into total, unusable ruin. In this country, it’s also important that we “Drill, baby, drill,” not to mention, “Log, baby, log” and “Mine, baby, mine.”  All of these efforts create serious threats to our parks.  In September 2012, the National Park Service identified forty-two park units where non-federal oil and gas drilling is or could be happening in the future.  At the time, twelve had active oil and gas operations.  Yet for plenty of politicians, this is still not enough.  In the 2011 primaries, Michele Bachmann proposed drilling for oil in the Florida Everglades, one of the country’s most endangered ecosystems.  Joe Miller, the Tea Party candidate for Senate in Alaska, has run on a platform that includes turning the pristine Denali National Park and Preserve, the home to Mount McKinley, the U.S.’s highest peak, into an oil well.  And GOP thought leader Grover Norquist says to hell with all of it, let’s just turn them over to the states, or better yet, sell them to the private sector.
If there’s any rallying call that gets the conservative base more excited than “Down with Obamacare” it’s “Up with the Keystone Pipeline.”  Though it’s not getting the same kind of coverage as the healthcare bill, that 1,700-mile pipeline is also a pawn in this shutdown game.  Its wide swath of supporters – which includes Republican leaders John Boehner, Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, and Steve King – must not have seen the letter from the U.S. Department of the Interior that listed potential negative environmental impacts on seven national parks, five trails, two rivers, a wildlife refuge, and a national historic landmark.
And we can’t forget about our old friend climate change, which is having its own fun with the parks.  The National Parks Conservation Association lists disappearing glaciers and Joshua trees, thriving insect pests, wildfires, flash floods, and rising sea levels as just some of the negative impacts parks are enduring as a result of climate change.  A 2011 Reuters article reported on impacts in Alaskan parks specifically, ranging from “thawing permafrost triggering mudslides onto a key road” to “glaciers receding from convenient viewing areas, while their rapid summer melt poses new flood risks.”  But shutdown leaders like Boehner, Cruz, Bachmann and King don’t waste their time worrying about pesky problems like melting glaciers, and certainly not the impact that they can have on our national parks. They’re too busy blaming Democrats for shutting down the government.
There’s a reason our parks are falling apart: Nobody cares.  The number of people visiting parks has dropped precipitously.  According to a 2011 Kristof column, the National Park Service says there were “35 percent more backcountry campers in the national parks in 1979 than in 2010.”  If Americans aren’t taking the time to explore our national parks, why should Congress spend the time (and money) to keep them in good condition?
So if we want to support our parks, we need to do more than demand they reopen.  First, we need to visit them — and not just for them, but for us. Research has shown that spending time outdoors is 50 percent more effective than indoor exercise when it comes to improving mental health..  Then we need to fight for their conservation, adequate funding, and the recognition that they belong to all of us – whether the government is running or not.  As Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, “There is nothing so American as our national parks… The parks stand as the outward symbol of the great human principle.”
The tragedy is not that the shutdown has closed our national parks. The tragedy, rather, is that our national parks have been slowly shutting down for a long, long time and nobody is paying attention.

Deena Shanker is a writer and occasional attorney living in New York City. You can follow her on Twitter @deenashanker. More Deena Shanker. 
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/08/gops_hypocritical_obsession_national_parks/ 

UPDATEDx3: Huff Po: Pete Sessions is House leader who said "I cannot even stand to look at you".& Harry Reid Told Caucus That Pete Sessions Was Behind Obama Insult, Senators Say 22&24OKT13

If Rep pete sessions r TX can't stand to look at Pres Obama, he shouldn't have gone to the meeting with him. Instead, he decided to publicly insult the President, fueling the rabid hatred of his tea-bagger constituency of Pres Obama. What he also accomplished is to show the sane people in his Texas district, those whose politics differ from the President's but who can at least look at him, that he (Rep sessions) plans on continuing the repiglican / tea-bagger obstructionism that caused the federal government shutdown this month, that has made congress the least productive government body in the federal government system, and so the least approved part of the federal government by the American people. Pres Obama didn't take the bait, he responded as a reasonable, mature leader, something Rep sessions will never be. We can only hope the President and the Democratic caucus in congress realizes as long as there are repiglican tea-baggers like Rep sessions controlling the US House there will be no reasonable and honest negotiations on the federal budget and debt ceiling, only demands for draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and to the social safety net programs that have already been severely cut by sequestration. Pres Obama and congressional Democrats MUST stand firm and reject these demands. From Daily Kos and HuffPost.....

UPDATE 3: Well, it looks like this story continues...The Huffington Post now reports it was Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) who allegedly told President Obama he could not bear to look at him at a meeting earlier this month.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) let his Democratic caucus know last week in a private meeting that a top House Republican told President Barack Obama, "I cannot even stand to look at you," according to two Democratic senators who were present, and confirmed by two Senate Democratic aides who said they independently learned of the exchange from two other senators.

More:

One of the two Democratic senators who spoke to HuffPost said that Reid told the caucus about the incident last Tuesday and named Sessions. He also told the caucus that he was "sorry" to have to tell them about it, per this senator, but gave Obama credit for his "dignified" response to Sessions. Reid reportedly told the caucus that Obama responded to Sessions by saying he understood they disagreed on many issues and he respected their differences.

Sessions' office is denying the charge and the WH is attributing the kerfluffle to a "miscommunication" made during the reading back of the meeting's transcript. UPDATE 2: Hmmmm...now Chad Pergram of FOX is tweeting that he contacted Durbin's office and the Senator is sticking with his story:

Durbin's office says the sen stands by his comments that Hse ldrshp R said they can't stand to look at Obama, even after Carney debunked it

TPM has it, too (h/t eztempo) as does Huffington Post, which included this tidbit in an article earlier this evening:

But two Democratic aides, both of whom requested anonymity, told The Huffington Post that the incident was relayed to members during a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting shortly after it allegedly happened. And Durbin isn’t backing down from the claims he originally made on his Facebook page on Sunday. “Sen. Durbin stands by his comments,” Durbin spokesman Max Gleischman told The Huffington Post.

Thanks for the find, PorridgeGun. The fact that Durbin discussed the incident with others just after it happened seems to indicate the story is legit. IMPORTANT UPDATE:  Thanks to hulibow and Paleo for pointing out WH spokesman Jay Carney denied Durbin's account at today's briefing. Here is the text:

QUESTION: Just to follow up on that. In terms of the president talking to Republicans, can you rule out -- there was the number two Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin, said on his Facebook page that someone in recent exchange with the president said he can't even stand, this member of Congress, that he can't even stand to look at the president. Can you say whether that happened? JAY CARNEY: I will say this, I spoke with somebody who was in that meeting and it did not happen.
QUESTION: Did the White House speak to Senator Durbin about this?
CARNEY: I don't know. My understanding is that, again, from participants in the meeting that that didn't happen.
QUESTION: Did anything like it happen that would --
CARNEY: Not that I'm aware of, Jackie.

This is just a quick diary to call attention to a story published tonight on The Hill's blog site. To put it short, this story, if true, turns my stomach, and says a lot about why Obama needs to continue to stand strong against House Republicans and FOR Democratic priorities. And why we all need to stand with him.
Summary under the jump...

According to The Hill, Sen. Dick Durbin said:

...a leading House Republican told President Obama that they could not 'even stand to look at you' during negotiations over the government shutdown. ...Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a Facebook post that the alleged confrontation happened during a meeting between Republicans and the president.
"Many Republicans searching for something to say in defense of the disastrous shutdown strategy will say President Obama just doesn't try hard enough to communicate with Republicans," Durbin said. "But in a 'negotiation' meeting with the president, one GOP House Leader told the president: "I cannot even stand to look at you.'"
"What are the chances of an honest conversation with someone who has just said something so disrespectful?" the Illinois Democrat added.

Like most of you, I've become sick to death of the "both sides do it" false equivalency thing our press does so well. I used to be a reporter. And an editor. What I was taught in J school was that stories needed to be balanced in that both sides got a say, as in a chance to respond to bad news or allegations. I was never taught not to tell the truth, only to allow comment on both sides, and to present the facts objectively. This is not what has been happening in our media at a national level and I hope stories like this might penetrate a bit. How CAN Obama "negotiate" with people who say they can't even look at him? How is there any equivalency in position when it is so clear one side just "cannot stand" him?
This is a bit of a mess as a diary, but I think this small story deserves discussion and I hope that posting it here will give it some national mention.
Please don't read The Hill comments, which are run over by teabaggers. I did my best trolling as a Virginia indy, but that place is infested.
UPDATE: Here is the link to Durbin's comments. So Durbin stands by them and this is more than gossip.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/23/1249847/-House-leader-tells-Obama-I-cannot-even-stand-to-look-at-you-How-will-CNN-spin-it?detail=email

Harry Reid Told Caucus That Pete Sessions Was Behind Obama Insult, Senators Say

Posted: 10/24/2013 10:51 am EDT  |  Updated: 10/24/2013 4:15 pm EDT

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told his Democratic caucus last week in a private meeting that a top House Republican said to President Barack Obama, "I cannot even stand to look at you," according to two Democratic senators who were present.
The account was confirmed by two Senate Democratic aides who said they independently learned of the exchange from other senators.
A White House official said Thursday that the administration did relay such a message to Reid, but that it was the result of a miscommunication.
“While the quote attributed to a Republican lawmaker in the House GOP meeting with the President is not accurate, there was a miscommunication when the White House read out that meeting to Senate Democrats, and we regret the misunderstanding," the official said in a statement.
Asked to clarify, then, what the White House meant to tell Senate Democratic leaders about Obama's meeting with House Republicans, the official said only, "Not going to read out the details of private meetings with the President, or private meetings between WH and Dem leaders."
The two senators who spoke to HuffPost did not hear the Republican make the remark, but said a top White House aide who was present later told Senate Democratic leaders that the lawmaker who made the remark was Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Rules Committee.
Reid then told the caucus about the incident on Tuesday and named Sessions, according to one of the two Democratic senators who spoke to HuffPost. Reid also told the caucus that he was “sorry” to have to tell them about it, per this senator, but gave Obama credit for his “dignified” response to Sessions. Reid reportedly told the caucus that Obama responded to Sessions by saying he understood that they disagreed on many issues and he respected their differences.
Two Senate Democratic aides told HuffPost that White House deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors was the one who told Democratic leaders about the Sessions incident.
The revelation from the senators sheds new light on a Capitol Hill whodunit that burst into the public sphere when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) shared the exchange on his Facebook page on Sunday. The alleged incident took place in the throes of the government shutdown, when Obama was meeting with different factions of lawmakers to try to find a resolution to the debacle. (Neither of the two senators who spoke to HuffPost are Durbin.)
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney flatly dismissed the story.
“I looked into this and spoke with somebody who was in that meeting and it did not happen,” Carney said during his daily briefing.
Sessions spokeswoman Torrie Miller said Thursday that the lawmaker never made those comments.
“He did not,” Miller said. “I think it was made clear yesterday from Jay Carney that the exchange you are referring to did not happen.”
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), has been demanding an apology from Durbin.
“Senator Durbin’s accusation is a serious one, and it appears to have been invented out of thin air," Buck said in a Wednesday statement. "The senator should disclose who told him this account of events, retract his reckless allegation immediately, and apologize."
But Durbin isn’t backing down from his original claims.
"Sen. Durbin stands by his comments," Durbin spokesman Max Gleischman told HuffPost Wednesday.
A request for comment from a spokesman for Reid was not returned.
This story has been updated with comment from a senior White House official.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/harry-reid-pete-sessions_n_4156453.html 

Stop Republican hostage-taking by abolishing the debt limit The Republican Coup of 2013 22&20OKT13

OUR economy can't take another battle over the debt ceiling, especially when there is nothing in the US Constitution about limiting the national debt. We, the people, don't have to tolerate being held hostage by a minority of right wing extremist in congress who are angry they can't get their way because they don't have enough votes, even among congressional republicans. Sign this petition telling congress to abolish the federal debt limit, and share it with others. This should be passed before the next fiscal battle in JAN 2014. From Daily Kos and Credo..

Craig, join Daily Kos and CREDO in urging Congress to abolish the debt limit. Click here to sign our petition.

Republican hostage-takers came dangerously close to willfully and recklessly driving our economy over a cliff. But it doesn't have to be this way.

America is virtually alone in the developed world in having a debt ceiling, and there’s nothing in the Constitution about it.

We can make sure that Republicans never take our entire economy hostage again by abolishing the debt ceiling. If Republicans want to cut spending, then they can just use the budget process.

Please join Daily Kos and CREDO in signing our petition to Congress: abolish the debt limit.

Keep fighting,
Paul Hogarth, Daily Kos

Sun Oct 20, 2013 at 03:15 PM PDT

The Republican Coup of 2013

by Jon PerrFollow for Daily Kos

On April 7, 2009—less than three months after Barack Obama first took the oath of office—the Daily Show's Jon Stewart perfectly summed up the red-hot, right-wing rage that hasn't cooled since. "I think," Stewart explained to frothing-at-the-mouth tea party supporters, "you might be confusing tyranny with losing."
Nevertheless, just days later thousands of the GOP's furious faithful turned out for Tax Day Tea Party rallies, events funded by conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks and promoted by Fox News, displaying signs proclaiming "Taxed Enough Already" and "No Taxation without Representation." That was more than a little ironic. After all, President Obama and the newly elected Democratic majorities in the House and Senate had just delivered tax relief for 95 percent of working households with the largest two-year tax cut in American history. And by 2010, federal tax revenue as a percentage of the U.S. economy had plummeted to the lowest level since 1950. So much for the need to water the Tree of Liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
But four-plus years later, the Republicans' scorched-earth strategy is no laughing matter. After spending most of his first term demonizing Barack Obama, conservatives are hell-bent on erasing his agenda reaffirmed by the American people less than a year ago. And as the events of the last few weeks show, many Republicans are more than willing to shutter the U.S. government and destroy the American economy to do it.
Not that Republican leaders hesitated to bring the government to a screeching halt the moment George W. Bush left the Oval Office to "replenish the ol' coffers." The unprecedented campaign of GOP obstructionism which literally began the night of Obama's inauguration quickly shattered the previous mark for filibusters, blocked President Obama's judicial nominations at record rates and even stood in the way of any appointee to head agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
During most of Obama's first four years in office, another Republican weapon of choice was, as Arizona Republican Jon Kyl's office acknowledged, the talking point "not intended to be a factual statement." Barack Obama isn't a Muslim and wasn't born in Kenya (or any place other than Hawaii). The Bush recession which began in December 2007 did not become the "Obama Bear Market" months before the Democrat even won the election, let alone take the oath of office. Tax cuts don't "pay for themselves" and the 2009 stimulus did not fail to "create a single job" and "make the economy worse." There were (and are) no "death panels. That 2009 Politifact Lie of the Year was succeeded in 2010 by another Affordable Care Act myth, "a government takeover of health care."
But it was on health care reform where the GOP waged—and is still waging—a war to stop President Obama and the Democratic Party at all costs. While Obama pondered this summer why the GOP's "number one priority, the one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have health care," the answer was never a mystery. The health care reform initiative had to be what South Carolina Senator turned Heritage Foundation President Jim Demint in 2009 called "his Waterloo" because the alternative was Waterloo for the Republican Party. As I summed it up in "The Real Reason for the GOP's All-Out War on Obamacare" below:

At its core, the Republicans' scorched-earth opposition to Obamacare has never been so much about "freedom" or "limited government" or any other right-wing ideological buzzword as it has been about political power, pure and simple. Now as for the past 20 years, Republicans have feared not that health care reform would fail the American people, but that it would succeed. Along with Social Security and Medicare, successful health care reform would provide the third and final pillar of Americans' social safety net, all brought you by the Democratic Party. To put it another way, the GOP was never really concerned about a "government takeover of health care", "rationing", "the doctor-patient relationship" or mythical "death panels," but that an American public grateful for access to health care could provide Democrats with an enduring majority for years to come.

For two decades, Weekly Standard Bill Kristol has been quite clear on that point. Kristol, who in 1993 and 1994 led the Republican effort to undermine Democrat Bill Clinton's health reform plan lest it "revive the reputation of the party... as the generous protector of middle-class interests," told Fox News' Neil Cavuto two weeks after Obama's inauguration the GOP should emulate the roadblock Republicans of the 1990's to halt his economic recovery package first and everything else—most of all health care reform—later:

"But the loss of credibility, even if they jam it through, really hurts them on the next, on the next piece of legislation. Clinton got through his tax increases in '93, it was such a labor and he had to twist so many arms to do it and he became so unpopular... ...That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it's very important for Republicans who think they're going to have to fight later on on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues. It's very important for them, I think, not just to stay united at this time, though that's important, but to make the arguments."

In November 2009, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) laid out the stakes for Republicans in an interview with CNS. Hatch, who ironically had co-sponsored an individual mandate bill in 1993, explained in this way:

HATCH: That's their goal. Move people into government that way. Do it in increments. They've actually said it. They've said it out loud. Q: This is a step-by-step approach --
HATCH: A step-by-step approach to socialized medicine. And if they get there, of course, you're going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody's going to say, "All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party."
Q: They'll have reduced the American people to dependency on the federal government.
HATCH: Yeah, you got that right. That's their goal. That's what keeps Democrats in power.

The usual suspects among the right-wing think tanks amplified that message. Just days after the 2008 election, Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute insisted, "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to GOP's survival." James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute similarly warned that the passage of a Democratic health care bill could "kill conservatism." He quoted a Republican strategist who fretted:

"Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that's it."

But Democrats did take the White House in 2008. And despite conservative fear-mongering and demagoguery, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became the law of the land in March 2010. The right-wing euphoria about the GOP's overwhelming triumph in the November 2010 midterm elections soon dissipated into bitter disappointment. In 2012, President Obama was comfortably re-elected and Democrats retained their Senate majority in a campaign in which health care reform was, after only the economy, the most prominent issue. (While the Democrats' gains were limited in the House, they nevertheless won its popular tally by over a million votes.) Over 40 repeal votes by the House died on arrival in the Senate. With the Supreme Court having upheld the constitutionality of the ACA in June 2012, Republicans were left with only two approaches. First, despite the fact that health care is worst where the GOP does best, Republicans set out to undermine the implementation of Obamacare in almost every state they controlled. And to prevent the Obama administration from implementing the Affordable Care Act nationwide, they targeted the federal government itself with the same weapon they first threatened to detonate in the summer of 2011. That weapon was also nuclear.
The debt ceiling of the United States.
Raising the debt ceiling—that is, increasing Uncle Sam's borrowing authority in order to pay bills already incurred—used to be a routine part of governing for both parties. Since 1980, it has been boost 42 times, including on 17 occasions by Ronald Reagan (who tripled the national debt) and seven more by George W. Bush (who nearly doubled the debt again). Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor voted for all of those debt ceiling hikes. Of course, they had to and not just because the cost of two wars, the Bush tax cuts, the Medicare Part D prescription drug program and TARP added trillions of dollars of red ink during Bush's tenure. There was another reason debt ceiling increases had to be approved, one which Speaker Boehner (along with Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Lindsey Graham and other GOP luminaries) acknowledged in 2011:

"That would be a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said, 'we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs.' And you can't create jobs if you default on the federal debt."

But in the summer of 2011, House Republicans became the first party with both the votes and the intent to block a debt ceiling increase. They threatened to trigger a global economic cataclysm unless President Obama and his Democratic allies agreed to draconian spending cuts. (That's why former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill warned that his GOP allies "who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al Qaeda terrorists [and are] really putting our whole society at risk.") The extortion worked, resulting in the $1.2 trillion, 10-year budget sequester. Speaker Boehner, who crowed "I got 98 percent of what I wanted," wasn't the only Republican leader exulting in the wake of the August 2011 deal they extracted. A gloating Mitch McConnell promised he and his party would be back to blackmail the president again:

"I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn't think that. What we did learn is this -- it's a hostage that's worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done."

Despite triggering a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard and Poor's and reversing U.S. consumer confidence and job creation, McConnell told CNBC's Lawrence Kudlow just days later that for Republicans, hostage-taking would be the new normal.

"What we have done, Larry, also is set a new template. In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling, it will not be clean anymore. This is just the first step. This, we anticipate, will take us into 2013. Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order."

In 2013, the hostage would be Obamacare. But in the weeks and months after Obama's second inauguration, that wasn't the only item on the Republican ransom note. By March 2013, Politico reported, "House GOP leadership is also eyeing several bills to hike the debt cap with different budgetary reforms [which] include increasing the Medicare eligibility age, means testing Medicare and changing the formula for calculating government benefits." By May, another approach "gained significant traction -- and has been ricocheting around K Street and Capitol Hill -- would directly wed increases in the debt ceiling to progress in tax reform." By July, the price went up again as some Republicans began demanding President Obama essentially approve the Paul Ryan budget that had garnered the votes of 95 percent of Congressional Republicans three years running.
In other words, the Republicans were seeking a de facto coup d'état by other means. The government the American people twice elected would be defenestrated, not through violence, but by blackmail.
While those and other conditions for raising the debt ceiling would appear, disappear and reappear in the months to come, by the end of the summer, the core demand was set. Led by Heritage Action and its front man Ted Cruz, Republicans would demand the defunding of Obamacare and the delay of its individual mandate as the price for shutting down the government and triggering a sovereign default by the United States. In August, 80 GOP members of Congress signed a letter calling on Speaker Boehner to do just that. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Stephen Moore detailed how the plan laid out by Michael Needham of Heritage Action became the House GOP's battle plan:

"I really believe we are in a great position right now," says Michael Needham, the 31-year-old president of Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the nation's largest conservative think tank. By "we" he means the Republican Party and the conservative movement; their "great position" refers to the potential to win the political battle over the government shutdown.

As events this week showed, Needham was wrong. The twin threats to render the United States ungovernable and sabotage the U.S. economy boomeranged against the GOP. The American people rightly blamed Republicans for their shuttered government. Sen. Graham acknowledged the role the polls played in the collapse of the GOP's attempt at extortion, lamenting "Of course they had an impact." In defeat, Speaker John Boehner admitted Wednesday he didn't have the nerve to execute the American economy he and his party were holding hostage. (As Newsweek reported, both Fitch and S&P were just hours away from downgrading U.S. credit.) Despite the failure of their coup attempt, Republicans remain unbowed. While Boehner warned that "Our drive to stop the train wreck that is the president's health care law will continue," Louisiana Rep. John Fleming promised "we're going to start this all over again." As for Paul Ryan, the GOP wunderkind turned vice presidential nominee who voted against the deal as well as the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission plan, "compromise" means the adoption of his budget plan ("To break the deadlock, both sides should agree to common-sense reforms of the country's entitlement programs and tax code") the Senate, the president and the American people already rejected.
And no doubt, Ted Cruz will be back, as will many of the other 17 GOP senators and 144 representatives who voted Wednesday to let the United States default. Some are already threatening to pursue impeachment. But Cruz's opposition to this week's "terrible deal" wasn't because "it does absolutely nothing to provide relief for the millions of Americans who are hurting because of Obamacare." As he recently admitted to Sean Hannity of Fox News, Ted Cruz like so many other Republicans is afraid Americans will like the Affordable Care Act:

"If we don't do it (defund Obamacare) now, in all likelihood, Obamacare will never, ever be repealed. Why is that? Because on January 1, the exchanges kick in, the subsidies kick in," and added that "their plan is to get the American people addicted to the sugar, addicted to the subsidies, and once that happens, in all likelihood, it never gets..." "It's over," Hannity cut in, "it never gets repealed."

To those Republicans who organized their failed putsch over white wine and single-malt scotch on K Street, President Obama on Thursday had a simple message:

"You don't like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it," Obama said. "But don't break it. Don't break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That's not being faithful to what this country's about."

Or as Jon Stewart put it to the tea partiers four years ago, don't confuse tyranny with losing.

 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/20/1248470/-The-Republican-Coup-of-2013?detail=action

The Post-Shutdown GOP Civil War in 23 Quotes 17OKT13

MORE from the front lines of the civil war raging in the republican party. The Democrats have the advantage, and if the repiglicans and tea-baggers want another fight in JAN  & FEB next year the Democrats better stick to their game plan, you know, the party platform they were elected on, do not give in to hostage takers, do not compromise on making corporate America and the 1% meet their obligations to the American social contract and no cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid! From Mother Jones.....

Fighting words on the right in the wake of the debt ceiling and government shutdown crises.

—By Dana Liebelson

| Thu Oct. 17, 2013 11:38 AM PDT

Mørkvoß/Flickr and Rona Proudfoot/Flickr

The just-concluded government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis revealed a deep and profound split within Republican ranks, as tea party crusaders pushed for brinkmanship to thwart Obamacare and establishment-minded GOPers freaked out over the historic hit their party was receiving in public opinion polls. Even after the conflict was settled (at least for a few months)—with the congressional Republicans essentially waving a white flag—the civil war within GOP and conservative circles continued unabated. Once the deal went down, mainstream GOPers immediately blamed the "suicide caucus" for harming the party and pledged to block future shenanigans of this sort, and tea partiers in and out of Congress dismissed the "surrender caucus" and vowed to continue the fight as the next D-Days approach (January 15 for funding the government, and February 7 for the debt ceiling).
This ugly episode hasn't resolved the tensions within the GOP and the conservative movement—it has exacerbated them. Here is a list of post-deal quotes from key players in this civil war that show the internecine battle is not likely to end soon.

THE WE-TOLD-YOU-SO ESTABLISHMENT
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): "We're not going to go through the shutdown again. People have been too traumatized by it. There's too much damage…We're not going to shut down the government again. I guarantee it."
Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.): "This party is going nuts."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): "For the party, this is a moment of self-evaluation, we are going to assess how we got here…If we continue down this path, we are really going to hurt the Republican Party long-term."
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.): "On our side of the aisle, we've wasted two months focused on something that was never going to happen. I won't say that I did, but a number of folks did. What we could have been doing all this time is focused on those mandatory changes that all of us know our country needs, and we’ve blown that opportunity. I hate to say it.”
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.): Called Republicans advocating for the shutdown "lemmings with suicide vests…They have to be more than just a lemming. Because jumping to your death is not enough."
Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Penn.): On his long-held belief that the government shutdown wouldn't work: "I was correct in my analysis, and I'd say a lot of those folks were not correct in theirs."
Karl Rove: "Barack Obama set the trap. Some congressional Republicans walked into it. As a result, the president is stronger, the GOP is weaker, and Obamacare is marginally more popular. The battles over spending, taxes, and debt have not been resolved, only postponed. It's time Republicans remembered that bad tactics produce bad outcomes."
Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.): "All you need to do is look about 200 miles south of here to see the mess that Republicans and Democrats have made of our national government and we should haul all their rear-ends to Camden today to see how bipartisanship works and government works together."
 http://youtu.be/39PSpdPI5-c

Published on Oct 16, 2013

Rutgers Camden Nursing Building, 10-16-2013. (Transcript Below)

Governor Christie: Now I don't know, I'm looking around, I might be the only Republican within like shouting distance around here, I don't know. But the point is these nursing students don't care whether the new building that they're going to get to learn, and grow, and perfect their profession in is built by a Republican or a Democrat. They don't care whether the economic development that they'll see sprouting around this comes from a Republican or a Democrat initiative. These men over here who are going to build this building for us don't care whether that building project came from a Republican or from a Democrat. And the point of being down here is not just to put a spotlight on Camden, but to put a spotlight on the fact that when we work together, when we find common ground, when we're willing to put aside our partisan differences to find the things that we know are important to the people of our state and get them done these are the kind of things that happen. And for the people who give us these jobs in the first place, frankly they could give a damn about all the politics, they want us to get the job done. And all you need to do is look about 200 miles south of here to see the mess that Republicans and Democrats have made of our national government and we should haul all their rear ends to Camden today to see how bipartisanship works and government works together.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah): "Heritage used to be the conservative organization helping Republicans and helping conservatives and helping us to be able to have the best intellectual conservative ideas…Right now, I think it's in danger of losing its clout and its power around Washington, DC."
http://youtu.be/c7Xeah718Hs

Published on Oct 17, 2013

via MSNBC's The Daily Rundown - 10/17/13

TRANSCRIPT:

HATCH: Well, I'll be honest with you. The right is a multiplicity of various groups, some of which aren't even Republicans, but who think they can control the Republican Party. And some of which have been good think-tanks in the past, but now are losing their reputation because of some of this radicalness...

TODD: Are you referring to Heritage?

HATCH: Well yeah! Of course I am. Heritage used to be the conservative organization helping Republicans and helping conservatives and helping us to be able to have the best intellectual conservative ideas. There's a real question on the minds of many Republicans now, and I'm not just thinking for myself, for a lot of people - is Heritage going to go so political that it doesn't amount to anything anymore? I hope not. I'm going to try to help survive and do well. But right now I think it's in danger of losing its clout and its power around Washington, DC.

Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.): "The reality is there's a much larger population within our caucus that recognizes reality for what it is."

*            *            * 

THE WE-WILL-RISE-AGAIN REBELS
Rep. John Fleming (R-La.): Said that the agreement will "get us into Round 2. See, we're going to start this all over again.”
Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho): "I'm more upset with my Republican conference, to be honest with you…If anybody should be kicked out, it's probably those Republicans—and not Speaker Boehner—who are unwilling to keep the promises they made to American people."
Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kans.): "I would say the surrender caucus is the whiner caucus, and all they do is whine about the battle, as if they thought being elected to Washington was going to be an easy job."
Erick Erickson, editor in chief of RedState: "We must advance. Two Republicans in the Senate caused this fight that their colleagues would have surrendered on more quickly but for them. Imagine a Senate filled with more. We have an opportunity to replace Mitch McConnell in Kentucky with a better conservative. We should do that…as more Americans watch Obamacare fail them through the Republican primary season, conservatives will be able to put the focus on Republicans who funded Obamacare instead of fighting it. Whether they like it or not, Republicans in Congress will find their names on ballots in 2014. They cannot hide or escape fate."
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.): "Absolutely, I think [the shutdown and debt ceiling fight were] worth it! It's been worth it because what we did is we fought the right fight."
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.): "My No Obamacare Exemption for Washington language has been blocked out by Harry Reid, Barrack Obama and others who want to keep their special subsidy. But it's not going away and neither am I."
Americans for Prosperity: "Our activists are more engaged than ever in this fight, and we intend to hold politicians accountable for their promise to stop overspending."
Michael Needham, Heritage Action for America president: "I admire what the House has done in the last couple weeks. It's unfortunate that the Senate hasn't been responsive to the American people…and really has undercut the House throughout the last two weeks."
http://youtu.be/UkBQRCZ1PEo

Published on Oct 16, 2013

Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham discusses House and Senate budget deals and Obamacare. He explains what Heritage Action is doing to fight on behalf of the millions of Americans who oppose Obamacare.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas): Called the agreement "a bad deal," and when asked whether Congress would be back in the same situation in a few months, he didn't hesitate: "Yes."
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah): "The media keeps asking, was it worth it? My answer is that it is always worth it to do the right thing. Fighting against an abusive government in defense of protecting our individual rights and freedoms is always the right thing…In Washington, victories are rarely immediate and very few are permanent. Obamacare wasn't enacted overnight and it won't be repealed overnight. We must remind the American people of the harmful effects of this law at every opportunity."
Matt Kibbe, FreedomWorks president and CEO: "Republican leadership has completely lost its way. Not only is this proposal a full surrender—it's a complete surrender with presents for the Democrats."
The Tea Party Patriots: "The Senate deal is a complete sellout. Speaker Boehner and the House should stand firm and reject this deal to reign [sic] in the Executive branch's power before it is too late…The House 'Leadership' must stop playing 'flinch' with themselves, and instead, play hardball with the White House, the Senate, and the House."
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas):  "The American people rose up and spoke with an overwhelming voice and at least at this stage Washington isn't listening to them…But this battle will continue."

Dana Liebelson

Reporter

Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. Her work has also appeared in The Week, TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. RSS | Twitter

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 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/gop-post-shutdown-civil-war