Friday Capitol Letter

May 23, 2008

In the House…. On Wednesday, the House passed a $54-billion tax package that expands individual and business tax credits and creates $17 billion in renewable energy incentives. The bill passed in a largely party-line vote, with the GOP balking over its failure to address the AMT and how the legislation proposed paying for such credits--namely, by closing the loophole that allows hedge fund managers and offshore corporations to dodge taxes. The package now moves to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain reception. On Thursday, bypassing a veto threat from the White House (which objects to a proposed $700 million cut in missile defense), members passed a $601 billion FY09 defense spending bill. Senate debate on the measure is expected in June.

The House also voted 324-84 to authorize the federal government to sue OPEC in U.S. court over alleged price fixing. In another overwhelming vote, the House unanimously backed legislation to provide $2 billion in tax breaks to military families.

In the Senate….Half the GOP bucked McCain and Bush on the war supplemental alongside their colleagues in an upset vote this week, approving the inclusion of additional domestic spending in the bill by an emphatic 75-22 margin. The measure approves, among other programs, a 13-week extension in unemployment insurance, low-income heating subsidies and--most conspicuously for the presidential race--Sen. Webb's proposal to expand education benefits for veterans. (Absent from the vote, which came as a not-so-tacit rebuke of his own far less generous GI plan: McCain.) In a further signal of the current political clime, Republican senators also voted to block the administration from implementing new rules that would shift billions in federal Medicaid spending onto state governments. The war supplemental now returns to the House, where members have yet to approve the measure's war-funding provisions.

Five Years of Mistaken Imprisonment

May 22, 2008

At first, Murat Kurnaz's voice stubbornly refused to come through. The satellite connection faltered, and the first Guantanamo detainee to ever share his experiences before Congress began to testify -- soundlessly.

It was a fitting metaphor for the five years Kurnaz lost during his silent ordeal in Guantanamo. A German national, like up to 95% of other Guantanamo detainees, in 2001 Kurnaz was sold into U.S. custody by bounty hunters--in his case, the Pakistani police. His charges? Affiliation with a nonviolent Muslim missionary group (which has 40 million members) and friendship with a suspected suicide bomber (who, as it turned out, is very much alive, living in Germany, and nothing of the kind). Not surprisingly, as recently declassified documents show, U.S. officials figured out Kurnaz was innocent of any terrorist activities by January 2002. "I told my story over and over," said Kurnaz, who testified on Tuesday after technical setbacks via satellite link from Germany. "My name over and over." But it was only in 2006, after six months of negotiations in which German chancellor Angela Merkel had to directly intercede, that Kurnaz was released.

Instead, he was kept inside Guantanamo for years and tortured. As the members listening blanched, he recalled being shackled by his wrists and hoisted into the air--a practice the Spanish Inquisition used to dislocate victims' shoulders, and a tactic lawyers later testified had been used on others at Gitmo. At one point, said Kurnaz, he hung like that for five days, with doctors only intermittently releasing him to ensure that he could survive.

This Week On Tap

May 19, 2008

This week, election-season fireworks are expected as Sen. Harry Reid tries to shepherd through a series of House-backed votes on the $250-billion war supplemental bill, including a $52-billion new GI education benefit, unemployment aid and possible Dec. 2009 withdrawal mandate. The Senate will also consider a handful of other tucked-in proposals, such as a measure to lift the cap on seasonal agriculture workers' visas, and another to block White House-proposed administrative changes that would cut federal Medicaid support by $15 billion.

Meanwhile, defense and finance issues share top billing in the House, as members take up the FY09 defense authorization bill and a $57-billion tax bill to extend and expand incentives for renewable energy development, as well as business and individual tax breaks. Also this week, a conference committee meets to hash out the final FY2009 federal budget resolution, with both sides hoping to secure a joint agreement before Congress heads home for Memorial Day.

On Tuesday, Senate committees will mark up mortgage legislation and discuss the Pentagon's FY09 budget requests with Defense Secretary Gates. On Wednesday, the Senate Rules Committee considers three FEC nominees, a task made easier since Hans von Spakovsky withdrew his name from consideration on Friday. (Von Spakovsky's past involvement in the DOJ's politicization and voter suppression had deadlocked nominations for months, rendering the FEC short four commissioners and toothless.) On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee host David Petraeus and Ray Odierno to confirm their new commissions to head U.S. Central Command and Multinational Force Iraq, respectively.

Friday Capitol Letter

May 16, 2008

In the House....This week, members furiously tangled over the war supplemental spending bill, which would fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through at least March 2009. While Speaker Pelosi had engineered a multi-vote series that would allow liberal Democrats to separately vote their consciences against the war funding, in a surprise Thursday move, the GOP--bridling over the Speaker's strong-arm tactics--refused to help pass the war spending measure and abstained. The measure failed 141-149. Anti-war Democrats, stunned, burst into applause on the floor: according to Rep. Wu, it was "the first time that Congress has voted to defund a war." In separate follow-up votes that day, the House also backed a Dec. 31, 2009 deadline for troop withdrawal and a 13-week extension in unemployment benefits, as well as a $52-billion expansion of veteran education benefits, paid for by a "patriot tax" on wealthy individuals. (The Senate is expected to reject the withdrawal deadline and veteran-benefits tax, and restore the war funding.) Also this week, the House voted to support the subsidy-laden, five-year farm bill by a veto-proof margin. On Tuesday, the House backed legislation directing Bush to temporarily stop filling the emergency oil reserve, and members also approved a resolution offering condolences to Burma's citizens.

In the Senate....On Wednesday, a fairly boilerplate discussion over a bipartisan bill that would permit public safety workers collective bargaining rights exploded when the GOP offered a surprise amendment containing Sen. McCain's much-criticized GI bill. Members defeated the move in a 55-42 vote, and a planned Friday vote on the bill dissolved over controversy on how to handle future amendments.

On Thursday, Senate Republicans defected en masse from the White House to join the House in an enthusiastically veto-proof approval of the farm bill. Later that night, the Senate cast a near-unanimous vote to scrap FCC-proposed rules that permit one company to own both a newspaper and television station in the same market. (The House has yet to consider the measure.) By an overwhelming 97-1 margin, the Senate also backed legislation to temporarily halt the filling of the national oil reserve--a bill Bush has opposed, but in the face of overwhelming pressure is expected to sign.

Also this week, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $193-billion war supplemental spending bill. The legislation fully funds Bush's request, but further includes about $10 billion in domestic spending. (As Sen. Byrd said: "The president says that by adding money for the American people, we are holding American troops hostage. Horse-blank.") The House Armed Services Committee followed its Senate counterpart and approved a bill to increase troop pay by 3.9%.

On Wednesday, following a three-year battle, the administration at last agreed to list the polar bear as "threatened with extinction," but was quick to qualify that statement, reiterating that the move wouldn't influence global warming or energy policy.

Meanwhile this week in a speech hosted by the Heritage Foundation, Defense Secretary Gates lambasted the military's tendency to focus on expensive, yet-to-be-developed weaponry at the expense of meeting the war-fighting needs of troops on the ground now. He further stressed the need to provide for veterans when they return home, and not focus exclusively on funding weapons that might be needed in future wars. "I have noticed too much of a tendency towards what might be called Next-War-itis," Gates told the crowd.

Farm Bill Follies

May 16, 2008

Over on Swampland, Joe Klein takes justified digs at Obama and Clinton for their support of the $300-billion farm bill, which both Bush and McCain have opposed. There's a whole litany of reasons why the farm bill is a failure, as detailed in last fall's excellent cover story in TIME--it fuels obesity, degrades the environment, promotes megafarms (the top 10% of subsidized farmers absorb three-quarters of the bill's subsidies) and the depopulation of rural America. Most obviously, the farm bill is an easy whipping boy for those concerned with federal pork, and with negotiators doling out baksheesh like a $126-million tax break for racehorse owners (a nod to Sen. McConnell's home state), that's not surprising.

More importantly, however, the bill stands as a timepiece that marks how badly skewed U.S. policy remains against the rest of the developing world. If there ever was a moment to revise our nation's morally defunct food policies, with hunger riots sweeping countries from Cameroon to Haiti, now would've been that time. But this year, Congress again begged off reforming the farmer subsidies that, if removed--to take just one example--could, according to one study, boost the income of an average West African cotton farmer's income by as much as 6%.

What's more, in supporting the current farm bill, Congress has voted emphatically to continue depriving the hungry of billions in food assistance. As we wrote this February, for decades rather than allowing the purchase of local food aid abroad, successive U.S. farm bills have endorsed a policy that requires the overwhelming majority of food aid to be purchased from American producers before being packaged and shipped--laboriously and slowly--overseas. The policy is disastrous: especially with rising fuel costs, the cost of overhead now absorbs some 65 cents of every dollar we spend on such so-called food aid. (A report by the OECD found that this policy--while beneficial to U.S. producers--wastes about $750 million a year.) Like farm subsidies for millionaires, the policy would be almost comically wasteful if it didn't say so much about our politics, and if the stakes for millions of people abroad weren't so high.

Medicaid vs. the War

May 16, 2008

This week, buried under the current Congressional tussle over war spending, a fight over the future of Medicaid has quietly been percolating. Last fall, the Bush administration attempted an end-run around Congressional authority, proposing a set of unilateral changes in Medicaid rules that would cut federal payments. All told, the newly imposed rules would shift some $15 billion in federal costs to the states, reducing and in some cases cutting off rehabilitative services for the disabled, low-income children and assistance to hospitals and nursing homes.

Opposition from all 50 state governors was vociferous and fast-coming. This April in an an overwhelming 349-62 vote, the House passed a moratorium blocking the regulations, while this week, the House-passed war supplemental again endorsed a measure to scrap the rules. But as Ryan Grim reports, it now looks like Senate Republicans may be lining up behind the White House to support the cuts anyway.

Unlike the federal government, states--like the average American family--have to balance their spending. Currently, given that some 25 states already face budget shortfalls, if federal backing is cut, support for those services simply isn't there. And if the GOP decides to fall in line over the rules, come fall, they'll find themselves in the untenable position of trying to defend the indefensible: supporting another $183 billion for occupation overseas while simultaneously cutting millions in their home state for the sick and poor.

Winter Soldiers, Part II

May 15, 2008

Over the past two months since this year's Winter Soldier event, a parade of luminaries has gone before Congress to testify about the Iraq War: distinguished generals, cabinet secretaries and various think-tank dignitaries. One group, however, has been conspicuously absent from the conversation: soldiers.

Today, Iraq Veterans Against the War sought to remedy that, in a packed, three-hour forum on Capitol Hill in which the Congressional Progressive Caucus invited over a dozen veterans, gravely suited, to share their experiences. "We pretty much know what the Americans we sent did to Iraq," Rep. Lee told the crowd. "What we don't really know is what Iraq has done to them. That's why we're here today. To bear witness to their truth."

Echoing themes from Winter Soldier, soldiers like Sergeant Kristofer Goldsmith--who last Memorial Day tried to kill himself after being stop-lossed back into the war--spoke about war's psychological toll. Others, like Sergio Kochergin, testified about the practice of planting weapons on accidentally murdered civilians. Still others recalled taking "war trophy" pictures with dead Iraqis--or in Army lingo, "sand niggers"--and driving Iraqi detainees out into the middle of the desert before releasing and lobbing rocks "the size of softballs" after them as they fled.

Drugging U.S. Detainees

May 14, 2008

Last month, Congressional Quarterly reported that there was little doubt that the government--under John Yoo's 2003 memo--had approved the use of mind-altering drugs to weaken the resistance of terrorist suspects during interrogation. Today, the Washington Post details how federal immigration agencies have likewise been using this strategy: injecting over 250 deportees with dangerous psychotropic drugs to keep them incapacitated until they were out of the country.

Raymond Soeoth, a Christian minister from Indonesia, was forcibly injected after asking to say goodbye to his wife. Amadou Diouf, a Senegalese married to a U.S. citizen, was injected on the plane when he tried to show the captain his temporary deportation stay:

Collapse of the Middle Class

May 12, 2008

One of the few national politicians willing to speak unflinchingly about how the so-called "robust" U.S. economy has failed vast swaths of America, last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders asked constituents to share their stories of how they're coping with rising prices of medicine, gas, heating fuel and food. Since then, over 700 responses from Vermont and across America have flooded his office. The letters -- a painful installation of the hollowing-out of middle-class America -- should be required reading for any elected official here in DC. Some excerpts:

I am 55 years old and clean homes for a living. I am divorced and work 6-7 days a week-10 to 14 hours a day trying to make ends meet...I drive to get to my jobs and my fuel costs have more than doubled. I use to spend $60.00 a month for fuel and now it is closer to $300.00.

We have two small children (a baby and a toddler). Due to the increasing fuel prices we have at times had to choose between baby food/diapers and heating fuel, we've run out of heating fuel 3 times so far and the baby has ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.

This Week on Tap

May 12, 2008

This week, the House debates the $300-billion farm bill, which contains key funding for various food programs, but meanwhile--in a time of food crisis and record farm income expected to hit $92.3 billion--remains heavily saddled with farmer subsidies. While Bush has continued to oppose the legislation, it's possible that both chambers have enough votes to override his threatened veto. Speaker Pelosi may also try to bring up the lraq war supplemental, which last week was stymied by Blue Dog opposition to the bill's proposed expansion of veterans' benefits (which the group argues would violate pay-go).

Also this week, the Senate will continue debate on the Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2007. Beginning Tuesday, several attached energy amendments are up for consideration, including Sen. McConnell's proposal to drill in ANWR and Reid's proposal to suspend filling the national reserve if the 90-day average price of crude oil remains above $75 a barrel. Following its expected House passage, the Senate is likewise expected to take up the farm bill, and attempt to proceed to consideration of HR980 (passed 314-97 by the House in July), which would grant police, fire fighters and other local safety officers minimum collective bargaining rights.

Meanwhile, Congress holds hearings on the global food crisis, domestic responses to nuclear terrorism, the Credit Card Fair Fee Act (a bill that would allow merchants a role in negotiating credit card interchange fees, which have risen 117% since 2001, and Visa and Mastercard continue to unilaterally set), and the U.S. responsibility to help victims of Agent Orange.