House Republicans Stop Effort to Limit Tax Cuts By Alan Fram, Associated Press

The Republican-led House defeated a fresh Democratic effort yesterday to limit Congress’s ability to approve new tax cuts, averting an embarrassing setback to President Bush’s agenda of continued tax reductions.

By a near party-line 209 to 209 vote — one vote short of the majority Democrats needed to prevail — the House turned down the Democratic provision urging budget bargainers to reimpose rules requiring that tax cuts or benefit increases be paid for with other budget savings. …

Democrats said Republicans were simply defending their treasured tax cuts while denying the obvious — that both the spending and revenue sides of the budget must be constrained to trim the mammoth shortfalls of recent years.

”I think it’s a conscious failure to accept reality, or perhaps worse, an attempt to spin, to deceive,” said Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii).

Republicans argued the rules would make it harder for Congress to extend tax cuts that will begin expiring after this year….

Dodge as You Go (editorial)

In the 1990s, Republicans seemed to agree that budget discipline was good for the country. They supported a stricter version of this pay-as-you-go rule, they made sure it applied to the House as well as the Senate, and it did some good. But Republican leaders are no longer concerned about fiscal integrity. Making certain that tax cuts can be enacted and extended without any procedural hurdles has become the central — you might say the only — budgeting principle of the Bush administration and its congressional allies.

Thus yesterday’s scene of legislating-by-strong arm. In a familiar episode of rule-stretching and bullying, a vote scheduled for five minutes was stretched to nearly half an hour. At one point, 19 Republicans defied their leadership to support the motion. But eight eventually switched their votes, creating a 209 to 209 tie. That meant the motion failed — and at that point, the vote was hurriedly gaveled to a close. “A meaningless vote but an important principle,” said a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), explaining the need to make certain that tax cuts would be exempt from pay-as-you-go constraints.

Other principles used to carry some weight in the U.S. House of Representatives: allowing lawmakers to vote their consciences, not manipulating voting rules to get the desired result, and opposing a reckless amassing of budget deficits selfishly left for other generations. But that was under the leadership of other speakers, and other presidents.

WeCount.org

We need a united front to defeat Bush – a coalition, led by John Kerry and the Democrats, which embraces the values of the 33% of Americans who are not members of the two major parties. Tell political leaders that you want this coalition to be created through public negotiations – where politicians representing a broad spectrum come together to find common ground.

Echoing the New Deal Coalition built by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 to defeat conservative Herbert Hoover, let’s unite Democrats, Greens, independents and even Republicans who feel betrayed by the current administration behind John Kerry. Together we can create a mandate for change in November.

A new era of American politics – one built on a foundation of cooperation, trust and respect – is here. And while we may not agree on everything, our common vision starts with ousting George W. Bush. Please join us.

CNN.com – A look at Bush’s reversals

Some previous Bush reversals in the face of criticism:

He argued a federal Department of Homeland Security wasn’t needed, then devised a plan to create one.

He resisted a commission to investigate Iraq intelligence failures, but then relented.

He also initially opposed the creation of the independent commission to examine if the 2001 attacks could have been prevented, before getting behind the idea under pressure from victims’ families.

He opposed, and then supported, a two-month extension of the commission’s work, after the panel said protracted disputes over access to White House documents left too little time.

He at first said any access to the president by the commission would be limited to just one hour but relaxed the limit earlier this month.

I would add these from the 2000 campaign:

”The US military shouldn’t be involved in nation building.” and

”I’m a uniter, not a divider.”

No, wait, that last one was simply a lie told to get elected. mjh

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: Lush Limbaugh Bloviates As Usual

Lush Limbaugh to VP Cheney: Mr. Clarke, to get back to him for a moment, is saying that actually if we would just take some more time and talk to these people, understand why they hate us, we might be able to forge some kind of peace with them.

NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. March 26, 2004 | PBS

MICHEL MARTIN, ABC reporter: Dick Clarke is a great weight. This is not some kind of, you know, squishy liberal who you know thinks that you need to hug the terrorist and you know find out what went wrong in their childhoods.

I mean, the book on him before the Bush Administration was that [Clarke] was too aggressive in seeking a military response to terrorism. I mean here is a guy who wanted to bomb the training camps in Afghanistan. And the reason that this argument did not prevail, it was believed at the time, that there was not the political consensus to support that either domestically or internationally. But it just has to be remembered that the criticism of this man before the Bush administration was not that he was soft. But that he was too quick to react.

BILL MOYERS: One of the president’s top political strategists, Charles Black has been reported as saying, you know, this will all blow over by this weekend. Next week, the agenda will change, we’ll be talking about something else.

See how the machine works: lie, smear, move on, change the subject as quickly as you can. mjh

NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. March 26, 2004 | PBS

BRANCACCIO: You raise this issue of partisanship. Do you ever worry that you’re being used for those purposes? I had the radio on the other day. And there was conservative talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, going on about some of the 9/11 widows suggesting that you’ve been coached by the Democrats.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: It sounds to me not only were women coached, but it sounds to me like somebody fed them to the networks.

BREITWEISER: I would have encouraged him to do his homework a little bit better. I voted for President Bush and so did my husband. I believed in him. And I believe when a President takes an oath of office, he takes an oath of office to lead, protect and serve. I think that the least President Bush could do for the families is to come forward and open a dialogue and discuss 9/11.

BRANCACCIO: And you’re not seeing in that committee, at those hearings, this working together to making the world a safer place?

BREITWEISER: No, and that’s what I’m saying. If we can’t even get along on a commission that was set up by the families working so hard, begging to have this commission. We literally begged. If they can’t even remove politics from it, if they have to go down to that level, how in the God’s name can we expect the world to come together? …

NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. March 26, 2004 | PBS

MICHELE MITCHELL (NOW correspondent): This is Eugene Hickok, the Undersecretary of Education. He’s got some weight when it comes to who receives that $77 million. And how do you decide what programs are deserving of the investment?

EUGENE HICKOK, UNDERSECRETARY OF EDUCATION: Well, as a matter of fact, it’s called the Fund for the Improvement of Education. It is the only truly discretionary money the Secretary has.

MITCHELL: Discretionary means the secretary can give it to whoever he wants, without having to ask Congress. And the organizations that actually got money had a single goal: to steer public opinion away from public education toward mainly private alternatives, like those school voucher programs, where private academies would be reimbursed for the cost of teaching students who choose to opt out of public school systems.

It’s a tough sell. Vouchers have been consistently voted down in the states for nearly 30 years. But the President hasn’t stopped selling.

BUSH [Milwaukee, July 2, 2002]: You call it whatever you want to call it — vouchers, choice, whatever it is. Freedom for parents is what I call it.

MITCHELL: This push for school vouchers has been a windfall for the President’s campaign buddies. If you are a Republican pal, or you donated money to the party, or you’ve been active in conservative education circles, then your day has arrived. … But remember, this money is going to promote private alternatives to public education. And look at who’s getting that taxpayer funding.

Groups like K-12, a profit-making company run by Bill Bennett. Who’s he? Bill Bennett: Ronald Reagan’s former secretary of education, who has spent decades railing against public education. Here’s his company’s Web site. According to the department’s own numbers, Bennett’s group got 14 million taxpayer dollars to promote “virtual” home schooling.

MITCHELL: The Education Leaders Council was Undersecretary Gene Hickok’s outfit before he joined the administration. Since then, it got nearly $16 million to promote a new program tracking school performance over the Internet.

And that same group started the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, billed as a conservative alternative to teacher certification. Now, Home schoolers can become teachers by taking an Internet exam. This new program got $35 million.

And those numbers don’t include the additional $12 million going to other groups, many with overlapping boards of directors, who are selling the idea of school vouchers to targeted audiences: white suburban soccer moms, African Americans and Hispanics. …

But while taxpayer money for public education is being used to promote privatization, the public schools themselves continue to struggle. Fourteen states are criticizing the administration for underfunding by $8 billion its centerpiece program, No Child Left Behind. And that’s just the tip of it.

PRESIDENT BUSH [February 13, 2004]: No child left behind. I like the sound of that.

MITCHELL: It always sounds great when politicians talk about improving education, But in fact, the 77 million dollars, by promoting private alternatives to public schools may hurt the long term funding for public education.

LARRY NOBLE, CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS: If you can’t get the money from Congress directly, because there’s a lot of opposition to the school voucher program. A lot of thought that it takes money away from public education, then what do you do? Well, you go to your friends within the administration, you go to your friends within the Department of Education, and you go after the discretionary money. The money that they can give out without having to really answer to Congress, without having to really answer to the American public.

MITCHELL: But remember, this is not just about promoting an agenda Congress never approved. There are serious questions about how this money is being used, or misused, who’s making money, or wasting it.

The Radical Right despises the Department of Education and would do anything to destroy it. In the meantime, they’re happy to take handouts from that same department and use that money to undermine public education. mjh

Rice 9/11 Testimony May Be Released By Mike Allen, Washington Post Staff Writer

After resisting for months, White House officials worked yesterday to negotiate a compromise that would allow public release of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the independent commission looking into the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001[* see very important info at end of this article. mjh], according to administration aides.

These aides said the White House believes Rice’s refusal to testify is becoming a political problem and officials are looking for a way out. The leading possibility is for Rice to submit to another private session with the commissioners and allow them to release a transcript, the aides said.

But officials said commission members insisted anew yesterday that they want Rice to testify under oath and in public. …

*The White House did not allow a recording to be made of what Rice said when she met privately with the commissioners for four hours in February.

Why is it necessary for Rice to testify a second time? Because no transcript of the first was made, at White House insistence. Absolutely shocking! mjh