Republicans took advantage of a 2011 video of Obama Wednesday noting there was a time when the President thought obtaining $1.2 trillion in revenue without raising taxes was possible.
Source: youtube.com
Republicans took advantage of a 2011 video of Obama Wednesday noting there was a time when the President thought obtaining $1.2 trillion in revenue without raising taxes was possible.
Source: youtube.com
Lawmakers from both parties say they think a deal will come before the end of the year. “The decisions we have to make are not intellectually demanding, they just take political courage,” Corker says.
Image by Danny Moloshok / Reuters
WASHINGTON — In spite of outstanding disagreements in talks to avert the looming "fiscal cliff," cautious optimism has begun to seep into congressional lawmakers' discourse.
“I think it’s better than 50% that we get an agreement before Jan. 1," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, said at a panel discussion Tuesday morning hosted by Bloomberg Government.
Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican, agreed, but added that disagreements over the debt ceiling could be “the line in the sand” between success and failure in the ongoing discussions.
Last week, House Speaker John Boehner insisted that negotiations to ward off the threat of an austerity crisis had reached a "stalemate." But this week, since Republicans submitted an offer to counter that proposed by President Barack Obama, the political class has expressed tacit hope that talks are once again progressing encouragingly.
When asked about a scenario in which Congress lets the "fiscal cliff" deadline pass, Corker did not even entertain the hypothetical.
"I just don't see this going past the end of the year," he countered.
"The decisions we have to make are not intellectually demanding," Corker added later. "They just take political courage."
“Losing…can prepare the way for great victories.”
Image by Mary Altaffer, File / AP
WASHINGTON — Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan hinted at a potential run for the Oval Office in 2016 Tuesday, speaking at the Jack Kemp Foundation Leadership Awards Dinner.
"Losing is part of politics and can often prepare the way for the greatest victories," Ryan said, discussing the Republican ticket's loss last month.
Ryan, the only past winner of the Kemp award, was the keynote speaker at the dinner honoring Sen. Marco Rubio, another potential candidate.
"As you may know, Marco is joining an elite group of past recipients for this award — two of us so far," he quipped. "I’ll see you at the reunion dinner — table for two. You know any good diners in New Hampshire or Iowa?"
"I’m sure the press won’t read too much into that one," he added.
“I think they learned their lesson with the debt ceiling,” Schumer says.
Image by Alex Wong / Getty Images
WASHINGTON — A group of Democratic senators predicted Wednesday that Republicans won't push the debt ceiling issue during ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations.
"I think they learned their lesson with the debt ceiling," said Sen. Chuck Schumer. "I don't think it's leverage at all. Any talk that that is leverage for them, I think, is false."
President Barack Obama and Democrats have insisted that Republicans agree to raise the debt limit as part of any fiscal cliff deal, and the president has proposed taking away Congress' future power over the limit. Republicans, meanwhile, have insisted that they will use the debt limit as a bargaining tool.
Speaking to a group of reporters Wednesday, the group of Democrats urged House Republicans to ignore outstanding obstacles to a fiscal cliff deal, such as the debt limit, in the short term, and to immediately move forward with a vote on extending tax cuts on income up to $250,000.
"We are not going to negotiate those details until there is a vote on tax cuts," Schumer said.
Schumer, joined by Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Mark Begich, stood next to a sign that bore the message "In 27 days middle-class taxes will go up $2,200 unless the House acts."
He seems to be enjoying himself.
Source: youtube.com
Members got demoted for breaking ranks, Boehner says. A leak from the Sea of Galilee.
Image by Alex Wong / Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Some Tea Party–friendly Republicans complained this week that they were "purged" from key leadership positions, but Speaker John Boehner responded in a closed-door conference Wednesday that the members' sin wasn't "ideology" — it was disloyalty.
The House Steering Committee decision to unseat four members "was not done lightly," Boehner told his conference, according to a Republican in the meeting. "This is something the Committee took seriously, and hopes never to have to do again," the source said Boehner said.
The conservatives have claimed that Boehner is rejecting Tea Party principles — but the reality may have more to do with party discipline: Other outspoken conservatives kept their roles, while those punished had already been in Boehner's black book for, in one case, allegedly leaking an embarrassing story about his colleagues.
“The Committee’s decision had nothing to do with ideology. For those suggesting otherwise, I’d respectfully suggest that you look at some of the people the Steering Committee put in charge of committees. I’d also suggest you look at some of the members who were added to the committees by the Steering Committee. If you do that and come away with the conclusion that there was a ‘conservative purge,’ I’d be interested hearing the rationale,” Boehner added, according to the source.
The decision to tank the slots from Reps. Justin Amash, Tim Huelskamp, and David Schweikert has enraged many conservative activists, and the members have pointedly claimed they were pushed out because of their ideological leanings on abortion, gay marriage, and federal spending.
“We were not notified about what might occur but it confirms in my mind the deepest suspicions that most Americans have about Washington DC: It’s petty, it’s vindictive, and if you have conservative principles you will be punished,” Huelskamp said during a Heritage Foundation event earlier this week.
But according to leadership aides, the decision had little to do with their views and more with what one aide described as the trio “not knowing how to be team players.”
Huelskamp and Amash have repeatedly been thorns in the side of leadership and, in some cases, their colleagues — in fact, one aide pointed out that Huelskamp voted against Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget.
And Schweikert engendered significant anger amongst elements of leadership during his reelection bid against fellow Republican Ben Quayle. He is also widely considered by leadership to be the source of an embarrassing story this summer about Republican members’ drunken swimming session in the Sea of Galilee.
Schweikert, notably, was also ousted from Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s Whip Team last year because of concerns with his loyalty. The Whip team is a key organ of leadership, designed to help round up support amongst Republicans for bills coming to the floor.
A Republican aide also pointed to the fact that Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican who has consistently broken with leadership over the war, was replaced on the Financial Services Committee by Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a protégé of Sen. Jim DeMint and one of the most conservative members of the House.
Additionally, Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan — who during the 2011 debt limit repeatedly criticized what he viewed as the party’s abdication to Obama on spending issues — also suffered no repercussions.
UPDATE: Schweikert has denied being the leak of the Sea of Galilee story, as have the reporters who originally broke the story.
As the Syrian rebels have secured border checkpoints from the government, they're stamping passports: “New Syria.”
Source: @jenanmoussa
The few people trying to get in and out of Syria right now can either smuggle their way in through a number of unofficial — and dangerous — methods, or they can pass through one of the checkpoints at the Turkish border that are now controlled by the Free Syrian Army.
The photo above shows the FSA's passport stamp. It reads "New Syria," according to journalist Jenan Moussa, who has been reporting from the city of Aleppo.
The passport stamp is one of the trappings of a state, and there are signs that the tide is beginning to turn against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad; weapons are streaming in from abroad to the rebel fighters, and the government troops appear to be weakening.
"I think they have been using some kind of stamp for a while so for me it is more of an assertion that 'we are in charge here,'" said Jeff White, defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
In its latest issue, the American Journalism Review writes that the stamps are mostly symbolic for now: "The ceremonial stamp on their passports doesn't make reporters legal in the eyes of government in Damascus." AJR calls Syria "the most dangerous place in the world for journalists."
Military awaiting Assad's orders to attack rebels.
Syrians try to cross the border from the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain to the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar after an air strike Dec. 3, 2012.
Image by Laszlo Balogh / Reuters
The Syrian military has loaded deadly chemical weapons into bombs and is preparing for orders from President Bashar Assad to use them against rebels, Fox News and NBC reported Wednesday.
Senior American officials told both NBC and Fox News that bombs were loaded with elements of sarin gas, with 60 days to use the bombs before the chemical agents would expire.
Sarin is a deadly nerve gas perhaps best known for its infamous use by Saddam Hussein against his own Kurdish people in Halabja in 1988. That single attack killed an estimated 5,000 civilians and injured another 10,000. Thousands more died from complications from the attack for years in Iraq.
A White House spokesman declined to comment to BuzzFeed outside of remarks made by press secretary Jay Carney om Monday. Carney said that "use or proliferation of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would cross a red line for the United States."
He added that "the Assad regime must know that the world is watching and that they will be held accountable by the United States and the international community if they use chemical weapons."
John Boehner is Rex Ryan, Harry Reid says.
Source: youtube.com
Longtime conservative agitator may now be bigger problem for Republican leaders on the outside.
U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) speaks during the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, June 17, 2011.
Image by Sean Gardner / Reuters
WASHINGTON — Sen. Jim DeMint is resigning from the Senate to take the helm of the Heritage Foundation, his office said Thursday.
DeMint’s departure from the Senate comes as something of a surprise. Although an official position in the Senate GOP’s leadership team was essentially closed to the conservative lawmaker, he has put together a band of like-minded hardliners over the last several years that has given him something of a power base within the Senate.
But DeMint, who was first elected to the Senate in 2004, has long chafed at the constraints of the Senate: His ability to actively attempt to oust moderate colleagues, for instance, has been greatly curtailed.
DeMint has also had, at best, strained relations with most of his conference, many of whom have viewed the ideologically rigid South Carolinian as a poor fit for the upper chamber’s genteel atmosphere.
DeMint’s relationship with leadership, meanwhile, has been all but nonexistent for several years. DeMint has long been critical, though generally obliquely so, of his leadership, repeatedly walking up to the line of outright defiance of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over specific policy issues as well as the larger direction of the party.
DeMint is closely connected to Heritage, which is one of the most influential conservative think tanks in the country.
His departure means that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will name a replacement, who will serve until the 2014 special election.
A number of potential replacements will likely begin jockeying for DeMint’s seat, most notably Reps. Tim Scott and Mick Mulvaney, as well as Haley herself.
DeMint’s departure from the Senate could also complicate the reelection prospects of Sen. Lindsey Graham. Many conservatives distrust Graham, but so long as DeMint was in the Senate, he was essentially forced to sit out a primary fight for his seat next year.
Now, however, DeMint won’t be under the same constraints and could attempt to play kingmaker in one or both races.
Coalition opposed to marriage equality asks Supreme Court to resolve whether the U.S. Constitution “requires Nevada to change its definition of marriage from the union of a man and a woman to the union of two persons.” Case comes on heels of several others awaiting action by the court.
A San Francisco sheriff's deputy confronts opponents of same-sex marriage in San Francisco, California, in 2010.
Image by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The group behind Nevada's constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a challenge to the measure, a week after a federal trial court judge upheld the amendment.
The move on Wednesday to ask the Supreme Court to accept the case before an appeals court has rendered its judgment in a matter, called a request for certiorari before judgment, is unusual. As the court is scheduled to consider 10 other petitions relating to cases that address the rights of same-sex couples on Friday, the filing — and its timing — does raise questions and could cause complications for the court and marriage equality advocates.
The 10 previously filed petitions involve cases addressing three laws: the federal definition of marriage contained in the Defense of Marriage Act; California's Proposition 8 marriage amendment; and Arizona's Section O, which would rescind domestic partner benefits for state employees.
There are several possible reasons why the group, the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage, wants to bypass the appeals court and go directly to the Supreme Court at this time, one made explicit in petition filed with the Supreme Court by the group and others implicit in its filing.
First, and most simply, people supporting maintaining marriage as only the union of one man and one woman won in this case.
In the underlying cases of all 10 other petitions before the court, the side favored by marriage equality advocates was successful. As the coalition writes in its filing before the court, "[T]his case has developed most comprehensively and thoroughly the societal interests justifying preservation of marriage’s man-woman meaning." Getting a ruling before the justices that supports a countervailing view from the other 10 petitions, even if the court doesn't accept the case, could be helpful for opponents of marriage equality in their framing of the cases.
The coalition likely also wouldn't mind bypassing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where an appeal of the trial court ruling would be heard, because the court is generally seen as more liberal than most appeals courts and has issued several rulings in recent years favoring LGBT rights and, specifically, same-sex couples' rights.
The stated reason given by the group is about the underlying legal issues at play in all of the relevant cases:
Of the "marriage" cases now before this Court, this case is optimal for resolving the fundamental issue for several reasons. This case is the only one that cannot be resolved without answering the fundamental issue.
In other words, the coalition is saying to the court, "This is the case you should take if you want to resolve the marriage question right now, once and for all." Because Nevada, unlike many other states without marriage equality, has offered substantially similar benefits to same-sex couples as it offers to opposite-sex married couples, however, there are ways the court could resolve the case without guaranteeing a right for same-sex couples to marry anywhere. The case could, though, more directly answer the question about whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry than courts of appeals have done in any other cases.
The coalition is attempting to push the larger issue in front of the court at a time when some marriage equality advocates are attempting to move related, but less direct, issues in front of the court through cases that wouldn't require the sort of broad answer to the marriage question that the coalition says is required by the Nevada case.
Finally, by filing the petition on Wednesday, it is possible the coalition is attempting to delay further the court's decision on which of the cases related to same-sex couples' constitutional rights it will be taking this year. In the past this year, it has appeared that the court held off on considering any of the petitions until all of them were fully briefed. And, with the court scheduled to discuss the 10 petitions at its conference on Friday, this petition could be a last-ditch effort to hold off a decision on which of those to hear.
The film was solicited and funded privately by Haim Saban without Secretary Clinton's knowledge. Director Richard Kaufman says it had nothing to do with 2016.
The short film honored Secretary Clinton at the Saban Forum gala dinner on Oct. 30, 2012, in Washington D.C., and stirred speculation about her possible run for the presidency in 2016.
A short film screened at the Saban Forum last Friday left New Yorker editor David Remnick without a doubt in his mind that, yes, “Hillary Clinton is running for President.” The eight-minute tribute, said Remnick, was like “an international endorsement four years in advance of the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.”
The Remnick dispatch blew up on Twitter Sunday night, and the video, posted days later, stoked suspicion of what new polls confirmed early Wednesday morning. Everyone — Democrats and Republicans, at home and abroad, active and retired — wants Hillary to run.
But Richard Kaufman, the man who made the film, says it had nothing to do with 2016. It was produced without Clinton’s knowledge, and solicited and funded privately by Haim Saban, Clinton mega-donor and founder of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, for its annual dinner, where Hillary Clinton was the keynote.
Kaufman said he laughed when he read Remnick’s interpretation.
“He’s just trying to stir something up,” said Kaufman. “It was very nice of him, but there was never that intention. There was never a discussion about 2016. This wasn’t done by her team. It was done by Haim to be praiseworthy — to say thank you for her work over the last four years."
Kaufman — founder of Goodspot, a Los Angeles production company — has worked with the Clinton family before. In 2008, he made the film that introduced Hillary Clinton on the second night of the Democratic National Convention. Daughter Chelsea narrated over gauzy images of Hillary past and present, and the knock-out line — “18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling — brought Denver to its feet. When Clinton became Secretary of State, Kaufman made three films, narrated by Matt Damon, for her global food security initiative.
But Kaufman did not collaborate with Clinton or her aides on the Saban film. Although the tribute appears to include an interview with Secretary Clinton, in which she talks about the importance of “face-to-face” diplomacy, those clips were outtakes from another project Kaufman worked on last year, he says.
The first time Clinton had seen or heard of the film was at the gala Friday night. Her reaction, said the filmmaker, was “genuinely moved.”
When Clinton came up to the podium to deliver her keynote, she took a moment of pause. “I am somewhat overwhelmed, but I’m obviously thinking I should sit down” she said. “I prepared some remarks for tonight, but then I thought maybe we could just watch that video a few more times.”
Work on the tribute film began six weeks ago, when Kaufman got a call from Saban.
The Israeli-American — who made his money bringing the “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” to American television — said he wanted to show a tribute video to Hillary Clinton, and he wanted Kaufman to make it.
“I want you to interview as many world leaders as possible,” said Saban.
"Basically my jaw dropped," remembers Kaufman. "That's no easy feat."
But, in coordination with Brookings, Kaufman put together a list of some of the biggest names in global politics — Benjamin Netanyahu, Tony Blair, Tzipi Livni, Shimon Peres, Henry Kissinger, and of course President Obama himself. They reached out to 13 leaders in total, and all but one — a leader in the Middle East dealing with turmoil in the region, said Kaufman — agreed, eagerly, to participate.
“I got to talk to these people for 15 minutes or so each, and from the first to the last person,” said Kaufman, “they were all so unanimously effusive and candid about Hillary. I didn’t want them to have prepared comments. I asked each of them to talk about something that was emotional or heartfelt or personal that we didn’t know — and that’s what they gave me.”
Kaufman didn’t travel to each country — the time constraints didn’t allow it — but instead set up his interviews using Skype, carefully coordinating the set, lighting, and camera work on the other end to keep the “cinematic look” consistent.
President Obama got the last spot in the film — a direct-to-camera message, delivered in the second-person, to Clinton herself.
“I'll say it again,” said Obama. “You've been one of the best secretaries of state in American history. And finally, Hillary, a lot's been said about our relationship, and here's what I know: you haven't just been one of my closest partners — you've become a great friend. I'm so grateful for your grace, you humor, your friendship."
The two-minute clip was orchestrated independently through the White House. Kaufman neither interviewed the president, nor gave him direction on his statement. “We let him have his own time,” said Kaufman.
Although portions of the film included comments on Secretary Clinton’s policy achievements — Netanyahu singled out the ceasefire deal Clinton helped facilitate last month — Kaufman said the tribute was “not meant to be a political film as much as all the people have been speculating.”
The interview with the Prime Minister was filmed shortly after the ceasefire. “I was making this as bombs were dropping on Israel.” said Kaufman, “There was a crisis in the Middle East, and so for everybody to take 15 minutes to talk to me was pretty special.”
Gail Chalef, communications director at the Brookings Institution, added that the video was shown as a way to honor Hillary as the evening’s keynote speaker. “I know there’s a lot of speculation about Secretary Clinton’s future, but that’s not why the video was created or what we were focused on,” she said.
Instead, Saban wanted something layered, something that would show “a 360-degree picture of her,” said Kaufman. “When we started looking at Hillary’s entire career, we saw what we called the three Hs — historic, heartfelt, and humor — and wanted to make sure we captured all three.”
A statement in the film by former Prime Minister Tony Blair — “I just have an instinct that the best is yet to come” — set off perhaps the most speculation about Clinton’s 2016 ambitions. Netanyahu also added, “I can tell you, I don’t think we’ve heard the last of Hillary Clinton.”
The two comments, said Kaufman, were spontaneous and made voluntarily by both leaders.
“This wasn’t meant to be a biography piece,” said Kaufman. “It wasn’t meant to only look back, but to look forward, too. Her legacy is still being written.”
A group of little boys hold “Free Syrian Army” flags and guns bigger than they are.
A video from Syria on YouTube shows little boys, all of whom appear to be under the age of 5 or 6, holding big guns and wearing opposition flags.
The video was posted on Wednesday and appears to originate from one of the Syrian rebel groups; it links back to this Facebook page for "Syria Justice and Freedom."
h/t Spencer Ackerman
High on cable. Cannabis Action Coalition's Steve Sarich opposes a Washington State law against driving while stoned.
Via: cnn.com
The House minority leader blames DeMint after Senate Republicans block disabilities treaty. “Anyone who's a party to that, I wish them well wherever they are going,” Pelosi says.
Image by Alex Wong / Getty Images
WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi won't miss Sen. Jim DeMint when he leaves the Senate next month.
DeMint will resign to head up the conservative Heritage Foundation, he announced Thursday.
But Pelosi isn't gutted by his decision — particularly in light of what happened earlier this week, when a group of conservative Republican senators blocked ratification of a U.N. disabilities treaty.
"I think what we saw the night before last in the U.S. Senate was one of the saddest…of all occasions," Pelosi told reporters.
Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and his wife, former Sen. Elizabeth Dole, appeared on the Senate floor in support of the measure, but that was ultimately not enough. A group of Republicans blocked the treaty anyway based on concerns that it would compromise American sovereignty.
DeMint was among those senators who opposed the measure.
"Anyone who's a party to that, I wish them well wherever they are going," Pelosi said.
With a new website reaching out to gays, the church makes its most definitive statement yet that people don't choose to be gay. Gay “lifestyle,” it says, is still a sin, though.
A screenshot from mormonsandgays.org.
In an evolution from its past teachings, the Mormon Church launched a new website Thursday asserting that sexuality is not a personal choice.
An official statement at the top of the site reads:
The experience of same-sex attraction is a complex reality for many people. The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is. Even though individuals do not choose to have such attractions, they do choose how to respond to them. With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.
The church maintains its longheld position that it is sinful to "act on" homosexuality, a range of actions that runs from romantic hand-holding to gay sex. But the church's unqualified statement that "individuals do not choose to have such attractions" represents a departure from past remarks by church officials.
As recently as 2008, Mormon apostle Elder Dallin H. Oaks said the church had no position on the "nature or nurture" debate and emphasized that "susceptibility or inclination to one behavior or another" could be resisted by faithful individuals.
More broadly, the new website — which can be found at the bluntly titled URL mormonsandgays.org — is the clearest illustration yet of the church's effort to soften its tone and reach out to gay Mormons and others who may have been hurt by its institutional support for having gay marriage banned in California.
Since 2008, when the church encouraged its members to get involved in the high-profile fight over Proposition 8 — and drew intense blowback from the LGBT rights movement and its allies — the church has worked to establish peace with the gay community. In 2010, it officially endorsed gay rights initiatives in Salt Lake City that stopped short of civil unions or marriage. And in recent years, the church has avoided playing a highly public role in other gay marriage battles.
Meanwhile, the public has grown more sympathetic toward same-sex marriage, with one Gallup poll this week showing more than half of Americans supporting it. And stories of gay Mormons struggling to reconcile their faith and sexuality have grown more common in the media.
This new site features videos of top church leaders talking about counseling with Mormons who suffered from AIDS in the '80s, and urging Mormon parents not to reject children who decide to pursue a gay "lifestyle."
"Let's not have families exclude or be disrespectful of those who choose a different lifestyle as a result of their feelings about their own gender," says Elder Quentin Cook, another apostle, in one video.
It also splashes across its homepage an article headlined, "Love One Another — The Great Christian Imperative," and shows videos of gay Mormons who are living a "chaste" lifestyle, both celibate and married to opposite-sex spouses.
Church spokesman Michael Purdy told the Deseret News that the site, which is two years in the making, was meant to clarify the church's position on homosexuality.
"There are some aspects of our belief and practice that are simply not well understood," Purdy said, adding, "Too often these types of big, important issues are dealt with in sound bites, and often by individuals who do not have the complete picture of what the church is doing."
An inexplicable article on the Iranian state television website. “But the entire royal family is decidedly German.”
Is Queen Elizabeth II the legitimate monarch of the United Kingdom? In an article published on Thursday, Iran's state television station questions the queen's right to the throne.
"The monarchy is believed to be an outdated institution in the modern world that moves towards democracy, because the Queen cannot be held to account at the ballot box and there is nothing to stop her abusing her power because under Britain’s law, civil and criminal proceedings cannot be taken against the Queen," Press TV notes.
Also: "the entire royal family is decidedly German." The British royal family did change its surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917, amid anti-German feeling, and British royals have had German descent since the beginning of the House of Hanover in 1714. But it's common for European royal families to have bloodlines reaching throughout the continent.
Furthermore, Press TV says "It is clear that the official Churches of England and Scotland, in which the Queen plays a role, cannot legitimize her power."
It's unclear what prompted Iranian television to take on the British monarchy, though the UK is one of many NATO countries that have enforced sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.
White House says Congress must act.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney gestures as he briefs reporters at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012.
Image by Charles Dharapak / AP
WASHINGTON — White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the administration has ruled out one option to ignore the debt ceiling if lawmakers fail to raise the limit by the time the U.S. reaches its borrowing limit in February.
"This administration does not believe the 14th Amendment gives the president the power to ignore the debt ceiling," Carney said, adding, "period."
The theory stems from Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states, "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."
It contends that the ceiling raises doubts about the credit of the U.S. government, and is therefore invalid, but Carney rejected that assertion on Thursday, saying Congress must act to pay for the bills it incurred.
The White House has demanded that Congress include a debt-ceiling increase as part of the fiscal cliff deal, while Speaker of the House John Boehner has said it would come with a "price tag." Disagreement over the debt ceiling nearly caused the U.S. to default on its obligations last summer, sending consumer confidence and the markets tumbling.
President Obama said Wednesday that efforts to use the debt ceiling as a negotiating tool "is not a game that I will play."
But Carney did not address one other long-shot bid to circumvent the borrowing limit: the trillion-dollar coin.
The South Carolina Senator is one of the few non-millionaires in the millionaire's club, with two 30-year mortgages listed totaling between $350,000 and $750,000 in debt and has almost no other financial assets besides two retirement accounts worth less than $15,000 each. He's leaving for the Senate for the Heritage Foundation, whose current president makes more than $1 million.
The Florida senator says his faith informs him as a policymaker, but said “not as a way to pass judgment on people.” Can the Republican Party square the circle?
Sen. Marco Rubio is being eyed as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016.
Image by Charlie Neibergall / AP
WASHINGTON — Sen. Marco Rubio said his faith teaches him that homosexuality is a sin, in response to a question Wednesday, about the issue, but added he does not use his faith "as a way to pass judgment on people."
Politico's Mike Allen asked Rubio at a breakfast event Wednesday morning if he thought homosexuality is a sin, drawing the unusual comment, a mark of the Republican Party's efforts to keep faith with the religious conservatives without appearing — as the party does to many younger voters — simply intolerant.
"I can tell you what faith teaches, and faith teaches that it is. And that's what the Bible teaches ... but it also teaches that there are a bunch of other sins that are no less. It teaches that lying is a sin, it teaches that disrespecting your parents is a sin, it teaches that stealing is a sin, it teaches that coveting your neighbor and what your neighbor has is a sin," Rubio said. "So, there isn't a person in this room that isn't guilty of sin. I don't go around pointing fingers in that regard."
On a personal level, he said, "I'm responsible for my salvation, and I'm responsible for my family's and for inculcating in my family what our faith teaches. And then they'll become adults and decide how they want to apply that in life."
Regarding his choices as a lawmaker or, presumably, candidate for other office, Rubio said, "As a policymaker, I can just tell you that I'm informed by my faith and my faith informs me in who I am as a person. But not as a way to pass judgment on people."
Rubio, who gave a speech at this year's Republican National Convention on the same night Mitt Romney accepted his party's nomination, often is considered a possible contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination — giving his remarks further importance than they might otherwise have.
Rubio has a mixed voting record on LGBT issues in his short time in Congress, having received a 47 percent ranking from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT rights group, in this Congress. Beyond his votes, he has opposed same-sex couples' marriage rights and recently recorded a call in support of the National Organization for Marriage's election efforts in 2012.
Of his Wednesday comments, though, HRC vice president for communications Fred Sainz said, "It's a shame that Senator Rubio falls outside the mainstream of the majority of people of faith who view supporting equality for LGBT people as an extension of their faith. If he's serious about his faith — and the application of the Golden Rule — he should sign up as a co-sponsor of equality-related federal legislation."
Sainz added, "Not all that long ago, many people used similar rationalizations to justify their opposition to any form of civil rights. It was wrong then and it's wrong now. My bet is that Senator Rubio has LGBT friends and family members, not to mention constituents."
In the 112th Congress, Rubio's primary vote supported by HRC was a vote against an amendment that would have stripped provisions from the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act aimed at protecting LGBT people, as well as provisions protecting immigrants and Native Americans.
On other measures scored by HRC, Rubio also did not vote on the nomination of now-Judge J. Paul Oetken. Thirteen senators, all Republicans, voted against the nomination. Although 28 Republicans voted yes on the nomination, six — including Rubio — did not vote on the nomination. Rubio did, however, vote against the nomination of another out nominee, now-Judge Alison Nathan. No Republicans supported her nomination, so, at least within the party, his vote was not out of the ordinary. The remainder of HRC's scoring was based on co-sponsorship of legislation, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and Rubio did not co-sponsor any of the legislation.