Tag Archives: Center for American Progress

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$53 Billion For Iraq, $0 For America …Judd Legum, ThinkProgress


For the past decade, Congress has had no problem spending over $120 billion to rebuild schools, roads, bridges and other essential infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, America‘s infrastructure is crumbling and millions of people are out of work. Contact your member of Congress and tell them it’s time to rebuild America.

It just takes a second using our form: http://www2.americanprogress.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=163

All the Republican leaders in Congress voted to approve massive amounts of funding to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan without a penny in offsets. But now they are opposing President Obama’s proposal to rebuild America even though it’s fully paid for.

Contact your member today and demand we invest at least as much in our own communities as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. And let us know what you hear back from your representatives.

Best,

Judd

Judd Legum
judd@thinkprogress.org
202-682-1611

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Economy: A Sensible Budget Alternative


Yesterday, the Senate nixed two budget-cutting proposals — the House GOP budget bill and the Senate Democratic alternative — and exposed “the fault lines within the Republican and Democratic parties over fiscal issues.” Three Tea Party Republicans “who want deeper cuts” joined all Democrats in a 44-56 vote against the GOP bill. But 11 Democrats joined all Republicans in a 42-58 vote the Democratic plan, with some arguing it cut too little and others arguing it cut too much. The government is currently funded until March 18, after which most federal services will cease if a new funding bill for the remaining six months isn’t passed. White House budget director Jacob Lew said the rejection of the two bills “made it abundantly clear that we are going to need to work together on a bipartisan basis.” But a look at the GOP’s idea of compromise reveals an aggressive need to balance the budget on the backs of the disadvantaged while simultaneously impairing economic recovery. At the Center for American Progress yesterday, Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY) advocated an “all of the above” approach that “incorporate[s] mandatory cuts and revenue raisers into the mix” rather than “continuing the fixation on domestic discretionary cuts” in order to reign in the deficit responsibly. While recognizing there are tough decisions ahead to reach budgetary goals, Americans are signaling support for a progressive proposal that can responsibly avoid stymieing economic growth and hurting middle-class families at the same time.

THE SLASH AND BURN: Intent on fulfilling their pledge, House Republicans plowed through the federal budget to reach $57 billion in spending cuts in H.R. 1, their continuing resolution to fund the government through 2011. Bypassing pragmatic cuts to outdated programs and subsidies, the House GOP took their ax to vital public investments and our nation’s most vulnerable populations. It would leave 10,000 low-income military veterans and 10,000 long-term disabled people without housing assistance, nearly one million low-income students without academic support, numerous pregnant women and mothers without food and health care assistance, 11 million patients without health care received at Community Health Centers, and at least 5 million children without access to anti-poverty services when the number of children in poverty is at a record high. While leaving the Pentagon’s record-high budget request intact, Republicans still jeopardized national safety by cutting funding to food safety regulators, local law enforcement, and air transportation safety. And despite making job creation their top priority, the House GOP turned H.R. 1 into a job-killer out to kneecap economic competitiveness by drastically reducing investment in public infrastructure, cutting nearly 50 percent of federal job training funding and potentially driving the unemployment rate “up to 9.7-10 percent.” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and numerous economists have stated that the GOP bill could “cost about 700,000 jobs through 2012.” H.R. 1 ended up being so detrimental to “the drivers of long-term economic growth and job creation” that President Obama promised to veto the bill if passed. “This is a highly politicized slash-and-burn budget,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said after it failed. “This debate is about more than dollars and sense. It’s about real people with real lives.”

THE RESET: The Democratic budget proposal “coalesced around a spending bill that cuts government funding by $6 billion in 2011” — a far less damaging alternative. However, as The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein indicates, the Democratic baseline still fails to “accelerate our economy” because it focuses solely on deficit reduction without offering any spending on economic investments. In a speech at the Center for American Progress yesterday, Schumer called on Congress to “reset” its approach to deficit reduction. “We need to stop falling into the trap of measuring fiscal responsibility in terms of willingness to cut government, and instead focus on what matters — reining in the deficit,” he said and proceeded to offer a more responsible way to do so. First, Schumer revived his proposal from last year to institute a surtax on millionaires and billionaires — a proposal, he noted, that was “the most popular proposal” among Americans in a recent poll. He also advocated for closing the tax gap by going after tax dodging and income sheltering by big corporations, a gap that “has gotten as high as over $300 billion a year this past decade.” Pointing to mandatory spending as “the largest contributor to the deficit,” Schumer also suggested Congress reduce unnecessary subsidies handed out to industries that don’t need them every year. In an interview with ThinkProgress‘s Pat Garofalo, Schumer said oil and gas subsidies “stick[] out like a sore thumb” because “the entire rationale for it is gone.” With the price of oil at $100 a barrel, “the subsidy, in economic terms, doesn’t mean anything other than to make some people wealthy who are already wealthy,” he said. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) agreed, advocating similar millionaire surtaxes and elimination of tax breaks for oil companies to address the deficit. Schumer pushed back hard against cuts to Social Security. “Social Security doesn’t have any problems until 20 years from now,” he said, adding that the deficit needs to be reduced long before then.

THE MAIN STREET VIEW: While House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) might think “Americans don’t have a clue” about the problems facing our economy, the perspective from outside the beltway is pretty clear. Most Americans want to see a compromise on the federal budget to avoid a government shutdown, but 56 percent of Americans chose creating jobs over cutting spending as the more important government priority. Fifty-nine percent of Americans favored repealing the Bush tax cuts, and 49 percent thought defense spending should be a top priority for cuts, “even if it means eliminating programs that bring jobs to your state.” However, Americans “across all ages groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was ‘unacceptable’ to make significant cuts to entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit.” What’s more, a sizable majority supported making wealthier Americans share more of the sacrifice — be it through reduced Social Security and Medicare payments or, the most popular option, a surtax on millionaires. Overall, Americans overwhelmingly rejected cuts to social programs. The progressive plan outlined by the Center For American Progress’s Michael Ettlinger, Michael Linden, and Reece Rushing “brings the budget into primary balance by 2015 and brings our deficits to sustainable levels” through pragmatic cuts in 2015, including “eliminating roughly $35 billion in corporate subsidies” and “targeting $60 billion in specific defense cuts for a 7 percent overall reduction.” Coupling responsible cuts at a more economically viable time while raising revenues — such as “applying a new 2 percent surtax to adjusted gross income above $1 million” — will help achieve important budget goals “while protecting middle-class families, continuing vital economic investments, and adequately funding other national priorities.” While tough choices must be made, “proposing to balance the budget only on tax increases or only on spending cuts” while the economy is still fragile “is both unrealistic and bad public policy.” Any feasible deficit reduction plan will balance both the budget and the sacrifice to avoid crippling the economy and hurting struggling middle-class families.

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Ethics:The ChamberLea​ks Scandal


An investigation by ThinkProgress has revealed that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce explored employing three “private security” firms to surreptitiously investigate the Chamber’s political foes (and even their families and children), and to wage an underhanded cyber-campaign against them. According to emails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton & Williams, which in turn solicited work from three computer security firms — HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively dubbed Team Themis, after the Roman goddess of law and order). Hunton asked Team Themis to develop tactics for damaging or discrediting progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com. The Chamber’s efforts to target opponents began after a ThinkProgress investigation last year raised questions about whether the business lobby was using money from foreign corporations to fund its political attack ads. According to one document prepared by Team Themis, the campaign included an entrapment project. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” to give to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then to subsequently expose the document as a fake to undermine the credibility of the Chamber’s opponents. In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to “generate communications” with Change to Win in an attempt to mislead and undermine them. Even more disturbingly, emails reveal that HBGary, which spearheaded the work for the Chamber, apparently thought families and children were fair game, as an executive with the firm circulated numerous emails and documents detailing information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives, such as where they attended religious services.

EMAILS LEAKED: ThinkProgress acquired the emails after they were leaked by the pro-WikiLeaks hacktivist community “Anonymous,” which was responsible for taking down websites of oppressive regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and those of American corporations that have censored WikiLeaks. Anonymous leaked the emails after HBGary executive Aaron Barr bragged to the Financial Times that he had identified the members of Anonymous, and planned to sell the information about them to Bank of America, which has supposedly been targeted by WikiLeaks, and to federal law enforcement officials investigating the “hacktivists” for their cyber attacks. Barr claimed that he had penetrated Anonymous; in response, Anonymous hacked into Barr’s email and published more than 40,000 company e-mails last week. Another 27,000 emails were published this weekend. Last week, it was revealed that Team Themis, on behalf of Bank of America, had planned to target proponents of WikiLeaks, such as Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald, who has been an outspoken defender of WikiLeaks. Themis planned “actions to sabotage or discredit” Greenwald, a PowerPoint presentation contained in the emails showed.

UNDERHANDED TACTICS: The emails, from late 2010 and early 2011, illuminate the espionage project as it developed. Members of Team Themis bragged to each other about exploiting vulnerabilities in social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook — likely in violation of terms of use policies — to collect information about their targets. In one November 24 email, after a conference call with Hunton & Williams, one team member wrote, “We need to blow these guys away with descriptions of our capabilities, IP, and talent. Make them think that we are [James] Bond, Q, and money penny all packaged up with a bow.” Disturbingly, this spying included target’s families. One target was Mike Gehrke, a former staffer with Change to Win. Among the information circulated about Gehrke was the purported “Jewish church” he attended in Washington and a link to pictures of his wife and two children. Barr’s profile of Brad Friedman, co-founder of The Brad Blog, included information about his life partner and his home address. This tactic of targeting opponents’ personal lives and family, it seems, was not simply a random event. Rather, it was a concerted and deliberate effort to use anything possible to smear the Chamber’s political opponents. Ironically, Barr had complained about the invasion of his own privacy after the emails were leaked, and Hunton & Williams was just named the “top firm for privacy” this week by Computerworld.

A ‘CAREFULLY WORDED NONDENIAL DENIAL’: On Friday, the Chamber released its second denial of involvement in the controversy, calling our investigation “baseless” and claiming that HBGary’s proposal “was never discussed with anyone at the Chamber” and that “the Chamber was not aware of these proposals until HBGary’s e-mails leaked.” However, as FireDogLake‘s Marcy Wheeler wrote, their response is a “carefully worded nondenial denial.” Using Hunton & Williams — the same law firm/lobby shop which the Chamber hired last year to sue the Yes Men — as a middleman allows the Chamber to hide behind the firm, but that doesn’t mean they were not involved. First, the emails clearly indicate that the “client” whom Team Themis was assisting was indeed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The reason why the Chamber can claim not to have “hired” HBGary is because until as recently as a week ago, the security firm was working on spec. As Wheeler pointed out, a February 3 email shows that Hunton & Williams simply got “HBGary to do a month of work for free to decide whether they want to hire them.” They were expected to be paid $250-300 thousand per month, and the deal was very close to being complete when the emails were leaked. The emails also reveal that lawyers from Hunton & Williams met with the Chamber numerous times in order to brief them on the status and progress of Team Themis. A January 13 email shows that the private security firms assumed the project was “a go.” An email from February 3 showed that Hunton & Williams wanted the firms to work on spec “and then present jointly with H&W to the Chamber” on or around February 14. It’s unclear whether that meeting will be still be taking place today.

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Stop the new attack on choice


 

 

    Tell Nancy Pelosi: Lead the fight against the anti-choice agenda

A woman’s right to choose is under attack!

 

Clicking on link below will automatically add your name to this petition to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: 

 

  

 

 

On Thursday, Representative Chris Smith introduced the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” — a chilling bill that will greatly reduce access to safe, legal abortions for women in this country.

This bill is undoubtedly only the first of many attempts by the anti-choice majority in the new Congress to restrict access to health care for women.

And while Republican control makes it likely that this bill will pass the House, weak or fragmented opposition from Democrats will only invite more extreme attacks on women’s rights.

As House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi has the ability to bring Democrats together against this radical expansion of abortion restrictions. But she needs to know that we have her back as she goes up against the extreme anti-choice members of Congress, including members of her own caucus.

Tell Nancy Pelosi that we need her leadership to bring Democrats together against this anti-choice bill. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Supporters of Rep. Smith’s bill say it simply codifies the current “Hyde amendment” into law, which prohibits federal funds from being used for abortion services.

That is a lie.

We heard the same lie from supporters of the notorious Stupak amendment during the health care fight, and we saw how that lie was effectively wielded to minimize opposition to what were in fact major attacks on reproductive choice. Rep. Smith’s bill not only includes the provisions in the Stupak amendment, it takes the attacks further.

Currently, 86% of private insurance plans cover abortion as part of a woman’s health care. If signed into law, the bill could be used to effectively end private insurance coverage for abortion for most women in the United States, even those who pay for private insurance themselves.

Among other provisions, the bill would deny tax credits to businesses or institutions that pay for or provide abortion services, even if no federal money is used for abortion procedures. It would also eliminate tax deductions for businesses that pay for insurance that covers abortions.1

It would also prevent someone from taking income tax deductions for medical expenses for any health plan that covered abortions. And if a woman who was risking blindness due to pregnancy paid for an abortion out of a tax-exempt health savings account, the money would be treated as income for tax purposes.2

In a number of ways, this bill is heir to the Stupak amendment, which showed how readily even some nominally pro-choice Democrats would stand aside in the face of significant attacks on choice.

In the wake of Stupak fight, we need Leader Pelosi to put up a fight against this bill and show the Republicans and anti-choice Democrats that women cannot be thrown under the bus again when it comes to reproductive health care.

Tell Nancy Pelosi that it is imperative that she bring Democrats together against this anti-choice bill and that we will have her back as she goes against the Republican leadership to secure women’s rights. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Your support will go a long way in rallying support against this extremist, anti-woman and anti-choice bill.

Thank you for protecting women’s health.

Becky Bond, Political Director
CREDO Action from Working Assets

1. “A quick note on the ‘No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,’” Nick Baumann, Mother Jones, 01-20-2011.

2. “Extreme Abortion Coverage Ban Introduced,” Jessica Arons, Center for American Progress, 01-20-2011.
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AFGHANISTAN: Grading America’s Nine-Year War


One year after announcing its Afghanistan strategy, which involved sending approximately 30,000 new U.S. troops to implement a broad counterinsurgency strategy to reverse the Taliban‘s gains, the Obama administration released a new  review Thursday noting “some real military gains, but [which] acknowledges that they remain fragile and that NATO troops will need more time to achieve their goals.” Reviewing the strategy, Center for American Progress expert Caroline Wadhams wrote in Foreign Policy, “One year later, tactical successes on the battlefield do not add up to lasting strategic progress in the war in Afghanistan. Des pite a huge infusion of money and troops, we appear to be standing in place.”  Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, Vice President Biden spoke about plans to begin transferring security authority to the Afghans themselves next year: ” We’re starting it in July of 2011 and we’re going to be totally out of there, come hell or high water by 2014.” The same day, a member of the NATO-led force was killed, “taking the total number of foreign troops killed in 2010 to 700, by far the deadliest year of the war since the Taliban were toppled in 2001.”

IS THE SURGE WORKING? : The administration’s review states that Taliban “momentum has been arrested in much of the country” and “reversed in some key areas.” However, analyst Josh Foust wrote that the review “gives no indication of what to expect moving forward. … While the implied threat of al Qaeda is peppered throughout the review document, there is no indication of how the large military campaign under way there now actually contributes to the national security of the United States — there are no details of which threats are being undone in Afghanistan or Pakistan.” Wadhams writes that “without shifts in the current political structures in Afghanistan, it will be sim ply futile for the United States and its NATO allies to wage continued war on behalf of a government that cannot consolidate domestic political support without indefinite massive international assistance and troops.” Meanwhile, Wired Magazine reported that “the air war over Afghanistan has reached a post-invasion high,” and “Afghan anger over air strikes is soaring as well.” Noting the problem of insurgent safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, Wired’s Spencer Ackerman characterized the strategy review this way: “One year and 30,000 new troops later, Afghanistan is peripheral to the Afghanistan war,” adding that the administration’s review makes clear that “this is a U.S. drone war in Pakistan with a big, big U.S. troop component next door.”

PAKISTAN: According to a November report by the Center American for Progress, core U.S. security interests in the region “center on reducing the risk of terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda and its affiliated networks against the United States and its allies. They also include increasing the political stability of the Pakistani state, a country of 170 million people with nuclear weapons.” The report concluded that “current U.S. efforts in Afghanistan are fundamentally out of balance, and they are not advancing U.S. interests and stability in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region.” A National Intelligence Estimate released earlier this month stated that “there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from h avens on its Afghan border.” Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, assured reporters that “[Pakistani military chief] General Kayani and others have been clear in recognizing that they need to do more for their security and indeed to carry out operations against those who threaten other countries’ security.” But Bruce Reidel, a former C.I.A. official  who led a White House review of Afghan strategy last year, said, “[W]e have to deal with the world we have, not the world we’d like. We can’t make Pakistan stop being naughty.”

AFTER HOLBROOKE: On December 13, Richard Holbrooke, “the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2009 and a diplomatic troubleshooter who worked for every Democratic president since the late 1960s and oversaw the negotiations that ended the war in Bosnia,” died in a Washington, D.C. hospital due to complications from a torn aorta. President Obama paid tribute to Holbrooke as “atrue giant of American foreign policy who has made America stronger, safer, and more respected.” Responding to Petraeus’ remembrance of Holbrooke as “my diplomatic wingman,” Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Matthew Yglesias wrote, &quo t;The affection and respect Petraeus expressed were doubtlessly both genuine, but the sentiment is mistaken. It reverses the proper relationship between civilian and military authorities — generals and their troops are supposed to serve political objectives outlined by civilians, not view civilians as adjuncts to military campaigns.” As CAP’s November Afghanistan report asserted, “[m]ilitary operations drive our strategy while the political and diplomatic framework essential for long-term stability in Afghanistan remains undeveloped.” Reversing this dynamic is a key challenge for the Obama administration, one that reaches beyond Afghanistan.