test
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Former CIA bin Laden chief, Michael Scheuer writes that Obama could distract from scandals with unnecessary war in Syria
In an all out, pull no punches article on the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity (RPI) website Tuesday, former CIA bin Laden chief and author of several books including Imperial Hubris, Dr. Michael Scheuer looks into the current mess of the Obama administration and the potential to cause a distraction that would be an effort to save his skin.
The investigations into the trio of scandals, in time, could reveal either gross incompetence in the White House or possible criminal actions. Because of this, Scheuer writes that sending American troops into Syria could “distract Americans from his administration’s rampant felonies”.
Scheuer writes, “what better way to quiet the hounds of just retribution than by consigning U.S. soldiers and Marines to death in a useless intervention in Syria, a place where no genuine U.S. national interest is at stake.”
In his prediction he goes on to say, “Odds are that we are going to see the same old story: Obama will intervene militarily in Syria, get Americans worried about the safety of their soldier-children, stoke their patriotism and fierce support for the troops, and – voila – the Obama-butt-kissing media will refocus the victims of the Obama-ites’ domestic felonies on an unnecessary war in the Levant.”
And it’s just not just “ the Obama-butt-kissing media”, but also the Democrats and Republicans, Scheuer notes.
“With Democrats ever ready to leave Americans to fend for themselves, Obama’s diversionary campaign – obscure impeachable offenses by launching an unnecessary war – will be abetted by Senators McCain, Graham, Lieberman, and dozens of other U.S. Senators and Congressman intent on war with Syria.”
Scheuer also calls out the radio talking heads that would line up in support of US military in Syria like every other military intervention–Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin et al. and take up arms if they believe in the cause that much.
I remember writing something similar about 3.5 years ago on the blog, Desk of Brian. When a guy named Tim Graney challenged Dr. Paul for the House seat in the primaries and called Paul’s constitutional view of foreign policy, “His Weak, Stick-Your-Head-In-The-Sand Foreign Policy”.
I called out Graney, Hannity and the rest for not donning a uniform and fighting in these wars they love to promote so much.
Let’s hope and pray that Mr. Scheurer’s predictions don’t come to fruition and Mr. Obama doesn’t get us involved in any shenanigans in Syria.
Scheuer’s article was published on RPI the same day that the Menendez-Corker bill passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a wide margin.
The investigations into the trio of scandals, in time, could reveal either gross incompetence in the White House or possible criminal actions. Because of this, Scheuer writes that sending American troops into Syria could “distract Americans from his administration’s rampant felonies”.
Scheuer writes, “what better way to quiet the hounds of just retribution than by consigning U.S. soldiers and Marines to death in a useless intervention in Syria, a place where no genuine U.S. national interest is at stake.”
In his prediction he goes on to say, “Odds are that we are going to see the same old story: Obama will intervene militarily in Syria, get Americans worried about the safety of their soldier-children, stoke their patriotism and fierce support for the troops, and – voila – the Obama-butt-kissing media will refocus the victims of the Obama-ites’ domestic felonies on an unnecessary war in the Levant.”
And it’s just not just “ the Obama-butt-kissing media”, but also the Democrats and Republicans, Scheuer notes.
“With Democrats ever ready to leave Americans to fend for themselves, Obama’s diversionary campaign – obscure impeachable offenses by launching an unnecessary war – will be abetted by Senators McCain, Graham, Lieberman, and dozens of other U.S. Senators and Congressman intent on war with Syria.”
Scheuer also calls out the radio talking heads that would line up in support of US military in Syria like every other military intervention–Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin et al. and take up arms if they believe in the cause that much.
I remember writing something similar about 3.5 years ago on the blog, Desk of Brian. When a guy named Tim Graney challenged Dr. Paul for the House seat in the primaries and called Paul’s constitutional view of foreign policy, “His Weak, Stick-Your-Head-In-The-Sand Foreign Policy”.
I called out Graney, Hannity and the rest for not donning a uniform and fighting in these wars they love to promote so much.
Let’s hope and pray that Mr. Scheurer’s predictions don’t come to fruition and Mr. Obama doesn’t get us involved in any shenanigans in Syria.
Scheuer’s article was published on RPI the same day that the Menendez-Corker bill passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a wide margin.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Tories force David Cameron to enshrine EU vote in law
DAVID Cameron has bowed to pressure from Tory rebels by guaranteeing in law his promise to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU.
In an effort to draw a line under the party's turmoil, the Conservatives will today publish a Bill ensuring an in-out vote before the end of 2017.
The Prime Minister's change of heart came 48 hours before more than 100 Conservative MPs and ministerial aides were due to vote against the Queen's Speech because it lacked such a measure. Mr Cameron's surprise move, announced while he was in the US, took senior Lib Dems by surprise and will lead to a stand-off at the top of the coalition.
Nick Clegg's office said that the Deputy Prime Minister would refuse to allow government time for the Bill, which makes it almost impossible for the measure to pass into law even if it could command a Commons majority.
But the move is as much about setting up electoral dividing lines with Labour and the Lib Dems and trying to restore order to restive Conservative ranks.
US President Barack Obama came to Mr Cameron's aid yesterday, warning mutinous Tories against a hasty exit from the EU. As the Prime Minister struggled with another day of internal rows over Europe, Mr Obama gave an unequivocal endorsement of Mr Cameron's "negotiate now, vote later" European strategy.
He warned that the special relationship would suffer if Britain cut its ties with Brussels. Britain's EU membership was "an expression of its influence", he said. But, in a change of emphasis from the White House, he acknowledged that Mr Cameron was within his rights to try to fix Britain's relationship with the EU.
"David's basic point, that you probably want to see if you can fix what's broken in a very important relationship before you break it off, makes some sense to me," Mr Obama said.
The President's endorsement, delivered alongside the Prime Minister at a White House press conference, put a spring in the step of Mr Cameron's entourage but is unlikely to cut much ice with Eurosceptic Tories.
In Westminster, cabinet ministers remained quiet after Mr Cameron chided Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, and Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, for saying they would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were held today. He also accused the likes of Lord Lawson of Blaby, who began the latest debate last week with his call in The Times for Britain to quit the EU, and Michael Portillo, who argued that any negotiation would get nowhere, of "throwing in the towel".
But Tories from either end of the party's spectrum on Europe were at loggerheads. Lord Forsyth of Drumlean became the latest former cabinet minister to write off Mr Cameron's EU strategy, saying that the task the Prime Minister had set himself was impossible and that he had no hope of persuading Brussels to reform.
"To use an analogy, I think David Cameron is thinking he can persuade the golf club to play tennis," the peer told the BBC.
The amendment, and the Tory Bill, would write into law Mr Cameron's commitment to an in-out EU referendum in 2017, on new terms that he plans to negotiate.
Mr Obama's carefully delivered riposte represented a major and rare intervention by a US President into British domestic politics.
He urged voters to wait and see the new relationship Mr Cameron could deliver. "I, at least, would be interested in seeing whether or not those are successful before rendering a final judgment," he said.
The White House had previously been opposed to any move towards a British exit, a move that it believes would make its dealings with Europe more difficult.
Another Tory row was brewing as some MPs expressed interest in standing as "Tory-UKIP" candidates in the 2015 general election.
Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone backed the idea of local arrangements, which allowed Conservative candidates to seek the endorsement of Nigel Farage.
Conservative high command is resisting the idea but Mr Bone said that harnessing the Tory and UKIP vote to one candidate would deliver Mr Cameron an overall majority.
"There's clearly a holy grail there if we can get the Prime Minister to give a bit," he said.
In an effort to draw a line under the party's turmoil, the Conservatives will today publish a Bill ensuring an in-out vote before the end of 2017.
The Prime Minister's change of heart came 48 hours before more than 100 Conservative MPs and ministerial aides were due to vote against the Queen's Speech because it lacked such a measure. Mr Cameron's surprise move, announced while he was in the US, took senior Lib Dems by surprise and will lead to a stand-off at the top of the coalition.
Nick Clegg's office said that the Deputy Prime Minister would refuse to allow government time for the Bill, which makes it almost impossible for the measure to pass into law even if it could command a Commons majority.
But the move is as much about setting up electoral dividing lines with Labour and the Lib Dems and trying to restore order to restive Conservative ranks.
US President Barack Obama came to Mr Cameron's aid yesterday, warning mutinous Tories against a hasty exit from the EU. As the Prime Minister struggled with another day of internal rows over Europe, Mr Obama gave an unequivocal endorsement of Mr Cameron's "negotiate now, vote later" European strategy.
He warned that the special relationship would suffer if Britain cut its ties with Brussels. Britain's EU membership was "an expression of its influence", he said. But, in a change of emphasis from the White House, he acknowledged that Mr Cameron was within his rights to try to fix Britain's relationship with the EU.
"David's basic point, that you probably want to see if you can fix what's broken in a very important relationship before you break it off, makes some sense to me," Mr Obama said.
The President's endorsement, delivered alongside the Prime Minister at a White House press conference, put a spring in the step of Mr Cameron's entourage but is unlikely to cut much ice with Eurosceptic Tories.
In Westminster, cabinet ministers remained quiet after Mr Cameron chided Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, and Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, for saying they would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were held today. He also accused the likes of Lord Lawson of Blaby, who began the latest debate last week with his call in The Times for Britain to quit the EU, and Michael Portillo, who argued that any negotiation would get nowhere, of "throwing in the towel".
But Tories from either end of the party's spectrum on Europe were at loggerheads. Lord Forsyth of Drumlean became the latest former cabinet minister to write off Mr Cameron's EU strategy, saying that the task the Prime Minister had set himself was impossible and that he had no hope of persuading Brussels to reform.
"To use an analogy, I think David Cameron is thinking he can persuade the golf club to play tennis," the peer told the BBC.
The amendment, and the Tory Bill, would write into law Mr Cameron's commitment to an in-out EU referendum in 2017, on new terms that he plans to negotiate.
Mr Obama's carefully delivered riposte represented a major and rare intervention by a US President into British domestic politics.
He urged voters to wait and see the new relationship Mr Cameron could deliver. "I, at least, would be interested in seeing whether or not those are successful before rendering a final judgment," he said.
The White House had previously been opposed to any move towards a British exit, a move that it believes would make its dealings with Europe more difficult.
Another Tory row was brewing as some MPs expressed interest in standing as "Tory-UKIP" candidates in the 2015 general election.
Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone backed the idea of local arrangements, which allowed Conservative candidates to seek the endorsement of Nigel Farage.
Conservative high command is resisting the idea but Mr Bone said that harnessing the Tory and UKIP vote to one candidate would deliver Mr Cameron an overall majority.
"There's clearly a holy grail there if we can get the Prime Minister to give a bit," he said.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Israel Sees U.S. Response to Syria as Gauge on Iran
As President Obama wrestles with how to respond to new assessments that Syria appears to have used chemical weapons, leaders in Israel say they will be watching for clues about how he might handle the Iranian nuclear issue in the future.
In Syria’s case, Mr. Obama has said that the use of chemical weapons would “change my calculus,” but he has not said how. Even while Israel appeared to be egging on Mr. Obama toward taking action, with officials here saying Tuesday that it appeared sarin gas had been used by the Syrian government, those officials also conceded that none of the military options were good.
“If you bomb the sites, you could cause exactly the catastrophe you are trying to prevent,” said an Israeli military officer who has spent considerable time studying the options. “If you just go in to secure the weapons, you can get stuck” in the middle of a civil war, he added, with American troops and their allies suddenly targets, and no easy way out.
But to the Israelis, how Mr. Obama navigates the next few weeks will be viewed as a gauge for what he might do later regarding the potentially bigger confrontation in the region.
“There is a question here: when a red line is set, can we stick by it?” Zeev Elkin, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said Friday in a radio interview. “If the Iranians will see that the red lines laid by the international community are flexible, then will they continue to progress?”
Mr. Obama, during his visit to Israel and Jordan last month, repeated that Iran would not obtain a nuclear weapon on his watch. Yet judging when it would be too late to stop Iran is an even greater intelligence challenge than determining whether chemical weapons were used in Syria near Aleppo and Damascus.
“In the case of chemical weapons, you have forensic evidence,” one former aide to Mr. Obama noted recently. “Ground samples. Tissue samples. In the Iranian nuclear program, unless they conduct a test, you are never likely to have that kind of certainty. It’s more art than science.”
Mr. Obama’s polices in the Arab uprisings have been specific to each country, making it hard to draw lessons of how action in one would predict action in the next. He pressed former President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to step down, and led an international bombing campaign to stop Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s attacks on rebels in Libya. But he effectively supported the king of Bahrain through the uprising in that tiny nation, which is host to the largest American Navy base in the region.
White House officials clearly understand the stakes in Mr. Obama’s decision on Syria. On the one hand, they say, he is deeply mindful of the mistakes made exactly a decade ago in Iraq; for that reason, they say, he is insisting on what the White House called on Thursday “credible and corroborated facts.”
On the other hand, if the president waits for courtroom levels of proof, what has been a few dozen deaths from chemical weapons — in a war that has claimed more than 70,000 lives — could multiply. Israeli officials, in interviews, made clear that they see the limited use of sarin so far as a test by President Bashar al-Assad — and fear that a lack of international reaction would tempt him to deploy chemicals more broadly.
“If you ask me why they used it, I would say it was just to test the world,” an Israeli military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of army rules. “If somebody would take any reaction, maybe it would deter them from using it again.”
Amos Harel, the defense correspondent for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, said in a column Friday that this week’s wrestling over chemical weapons might have been as much about Iran as it was Syria. He noted that a speech Tuesday by Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, Israel’s top military intelligence analyst, asserting that sarin had been used was followed by one in which Amos Yadlin, the former chief of military intelligence in Israel, declared that Iran was at or about to cross the red line set by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It’s possible that mention of chemical weapons was also intended as a wake-up call to the U.S.,” Mr. Harel wrote. “Israel may have expected that the Americans would stick to their guns in the Syrian case, as well, as a way of sending a regional signal that would also be understood in Tehran.”
Iran, too, may well be watching Mr. Obama’s decision-making on Syria closely. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has huge stakes in the survival of Mr. Assad, his only real ally in the region. And United States intelligence analysts believe that Iran’s leaders have interpreted two decades of American drift on the North — during which Mr. Obama’s three immediate predecessors all said they would never tolerate the country’s obtaining nuclear arms — as a sign that Washington will not wage war to stop even a rogue nation from obtaining nuclear arms, or the ability to build them.
If the United States intervened in Syria to secure its chemical stockpiles — perhaps organizing the Arab League, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council or NATO to share the job — Israeli officials say it would be a signal that Mr. Obama would most likely back up his warnings to Iran the same way. But the prospect of such a move also worries many in Jerusalem: one senior official said he feared that an intervention in Syria could also obfuscate “the problem of greater concern” for Israel, stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
All this is a reminder that red lines are never quite as clear as they sound at first. But failing to set limits has its own risks, as one of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party allies in Israel’s Parliament, Tzahi Hanegbi, said in an interview Friday with Israel Radio.
“There is also a problem in not setting red lines,” Mr. Hanegbi said. “Because then you admit from the outset that there is no line whose crossing is considered grounds for taking action.”
Still, Mr. Hanegbi said, Israel was not trying to force Mr. Obama’s hand. “I think that we have no interest in the world getting sucked into the fighting in Syria.”
In Syria’s case, Mr. Obama has said that the use of chemical weapons would “change my calculus,” but he has not said how. Even while Israel appeared to be egging on Mr. Obama toward taking action, with officials here saying Tuesday that it appeared sarin gas had been used by the Syrian government, those officials also conceded that none of the military options were good.
“If you bomb the sites, you could cause exactly the catastrophe you are trying to prevent,” said an Israeli military officer who has spent considerable time studying the options. “If you just go in to secure the weapons, you can get stuck” in the middle of a civil war, he added, with American troops and their allies suddenly targets, and no easy way out.
But to the Israelis, how Mr. Obama navigates the next few weeks will be viewed as a gauge for what he might do later regarding the potentially bigger confrontation in the region.
“There is a question here: when a red line is set, can we stick by it?” Zeev Elkin, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said Friday in a radio interview. “If the Iranians will see that the red lines laid by the international community are flexible, then will they continue to progress?”
Mr. Obama, during his visit to Israel and Jordan last month, repeated that Iran would not obtain a nuclear weapon on his watch. Yet judging when it would be too late to stop Iran is an even greater intelligence challenge than determining whether chemical weapons were used in Syria near Aleppo and Damascus.
“In the case of chemical weapons, you have forensic evidence,” one former aide to Mr. Obama noted recently. “Ground samples. Tissue samples. In the Iranian nuclear program, unless they conduct a test, you are never likely to have that kind of certainty. It’s more art than science.”
Mr. Obama’s polices in the Arab uprisings have been specific to each country, making it hard to draw lessons of how action in one would predict action in the next. He pressed former President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to step down, and led an international bombing campaign to stop Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s attacks on rebels in Libya. But he effectively supported the king of Bahrain through the uprising in that tiny nation, which is host to the largest American Navy base in the region.
White House officials clearly understand the stakes in Mr. Obama’s decision on Syria. On the one hand, they say, he is deeply mindful of the mistakes made exactly a decade ago in Iraq; for that reason, they say, he is insisting on what the White House called on Thursday “credible and corroborated facts.”
On the other hand, if the president waits for courtroom levels of proof, what has been a few dozen deaths from chemical weapons — in a war that has claimed more than 70,000 lives — could multiply. Israeli officials, in interviews, made clear that they see the limited use of sarin so far as a test by President Bashar al-Assad — and fear that a lack of international reaction would tempt him to deploy chemicals more broadly.
“If you ask me why they used it, I would say it was just to test the world,” an Israeli military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of army rules. “If somebody would take any reaction, maybe it would deter them from using it again.”
Amos Harel, the defense correspondent for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, said in a column Friday that this week’s wrestling over chemical weapons might have been as much about Iran as it was Syria. He noted that a speech Tuesday by Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, Israel’s top military intelligence analyst, asserting that sarin had been used was followed by one in which Amos Yadlin, the former chief of military intelligence in Israel, declared that Iran was at or about to cross the red line set by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It’s possible that mention of chemical weapons was also intended as a wake-up call to the U.S.,” Mr. Harel wrote. “Israel may have expected that the Americans would stick to their guns in the Syrian case, as well, as a way of sending a regional signal that would also be understood in Tehran.”
Iran, too, may well be watching Mr. Obama’s decision-making on Syria closely. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has huge stakes in the survival of Mr. Assad, his only real ally in the region. And United States intelligence analysts believe that Iran’s leaders have interpreted two decades of American drift on the North — during which Mr. Obama’s three immediate predecessors all said they would never tolerate the country’s obtaining nuclear arms — as a sign that Washington will not wage war to stop even a rogue nation from obtaining nuclear arms, or the ability to build them.
If the United States intervened in Syria to secure its chemical stockpiles — perhaps organizing the Arab League, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council or NATO to share the job — Israeli officials say it would be a signal that Mr. Obama would most likely back up his warnings to Iran the same way. But the prospect of such a move also worries many in Jerusalem: one senior official said he feared that an intervention in Syria could also obfuscate “the problem of greater concern” for Israel, stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
All this is a reminder that red lines are never quite as clear as they sound at first. But failing to set limits has its own risks, as one of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party allies in Israel’s Parliament, Tzahi Hanegbi, said in an interview Friday with Israel Radio.
“There is also a problem in not setting red lines,” Mr. Hanegbi said. “Because then you admit from the outset that there is no line whose crossing is considered grounds for taking action.”
Still, Mr. Hanegbi said, Israel was not trying to force Mr. Obama’s hand. “I think that we have no interest in the world getting sucked into the fighting in Syria.”
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
President Obama to return $20,000 of salary to Treasury
Sharing a bit of budget pain, President Barack Obama will return 5% of his salary to the Treasury in a show of solidarity with federal workers smarting from government-wide spending cuts.
Obama's decision grew out of a desire to share in the sacrifice that government employees are making, a White House official said Wednesday. Hundreds of thousands of workers could be forced to take unpaid leave — known as furloughs — if Congress does not reach an agreement soon to undo the cuts.
The president is demonstrating that he will be paying a price, too, as the White House warns of dire economic consequences from the $85 billion in cuts — called a sequester — that started to hit federal programs last month after Congress failed to stop them. In the weeks since, the administration has faced repeated questions about how the White House itself will be affected. The cancellation of White House tours in particular has drawn mixed reactions.
A 5% cut from the president's salary of $400,000 per year amounts to $20,000.
Obama will return a full $20,000 to the Treasury even though only a few months remain in the fiscal year, which ends in September. He will cut his first check this month, said the White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The president and first lady Michelle Obama reported almost $790,000 in adjusted gross income in 2011, the most recent year for which their tax returns have been made public. That figure was down from the $1.7 million they brought in the year before and the $5.5 million they reported in 2009. About half of the family's income in 2011 came from Obama's salary, with the rest coming from book sales. The Obamas reported more than $172,000 in charitable donations.
“The salary for the president, as with members of Congress, is set by law and cannot be changed,” Obama spokesman Jay Carney said late Wednesday. “However, the president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury.”
Wednesday's notice followed a similar move a day earlier by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who committed to taking a salary cut equal to 14 days' pay — the same level of cut that other Defense Department civilians are being forced to take. As many as 700,000 civilians will have to take one unpaid day off each week for up to 14 weeks in the coming months.
Obama isn't the first president to give up part of his paycheck. Herbert Hoover put his salary in a separate account, then divvied it up, giving part to charity and part to employees he felt were underpaid, according to an interview he gave in 1937. John F. Kennedy donated his presidential salary to various charities, according to Stacey Chandler, an archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
George Washington refused pay during the latter part of his military career, according to researchers at Mount Vernon. He tried to refuse a presidential salary, but Congress required that the position pay $25,000.
Among lawmakers, Sen. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat, said Wednesday that he, too, would return part of his income to the Treasury, although he did not specify how much of his $174,000 salary he would give up. Begich said his office started furloughing staffers in mid-March and more than half of his staff will have their pay cut this year.
“This won't solve our spending problem on its own, but I hope it is a reminder to Alaskans that I am willing to make the tough cuts, wherever they may be, to get our spending under control,” Begich said.
A number of lawmakers have from time to time taken steps to show they're not immune as the federal government looks to tighten its belt. An aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said McConnell returns a substantial part of his salary to the Treasury every year. The Senate this month adopted by voice vote a symbolic amendment permitting — but not requiring — senators to give 20% of their salaries to the Treasury as part of the Democrats' budget resolution. Also in March, as the spending cuts started bearing down, the GOP-controlled House imposed an 8.2% reduction on lawmakers' personal office budgets.
The White House, after declining for weeks to provide specifics for how the president's own staff had been affected, said Monday that 480 workers on the budget staff had been notified they may have to take days off without pay.
Carney wouldn't say whether notices have gone out to Obama aides outside the Office of Management and Budget, including senior staff in the West Wing. But he said pay cuts remained a possibility for additional White House employees if a budget deal to undo the cuts isn't reached.
“Everybody at the White House and the broader (executive office) is dealing with the consequences — both, in many cases, in their own personal lives, but in how we work here at the White House,” Carney said. He added that the White House also has been trying to cut costs by slowing down hiring, scaling back supply purchases, curtailing staff travel, reducing the use of air cards for mobile Internet access and reviewing contracts to look for savings.
Like lawmakers' pay, Obama's salary is set by law, so he must accept the funds and then write a check to the Treasury each month for the portion he plans to relinquish. Obama's decision, first reported by The New York Times, won't affect the other perquisites afforded the president, from a mansion staffed with servants to the limousines, helicopters and Boeing 747 jumbo jet at every U.S. president's beck and call. The White House did not say whether Vice President Joe Biden would make a similar gesture.
The 5 percent that Obama will hand back mirrors the 5% cut that domestic agencies took when the reductions went into effect. The Pentagon's budget took an 8% hit. Every federal agency is grappling with spending cuts, which the White House has warned could affect everything from commercial airline flights to classrooms and meat inspections.
The cuts were written into a 2011 deficit-reduction measure as a trigger to force future action. The idea was that lawmakers, eager to avert the consequences of bluntly slashing $1 trillion over a decade, would have no choice but to come together to find smarter ways to reduce federal spending.
But the two parties were at odds over whether more tax revenues were needed as part of the solution, and an intense campaign by Obama and his Cabinet to illustrate how the cuts could affect critical programs failed to spur an agreement by the March 1 deadline. As the cuts started taking effect, lawmakers turned to other issues, including an increase in the national debt ceiling, and there are no signs that a deal to undo the cuts retroactively will come anytime soon.
Obama's decision grew out of a desire to share in the sacrifice that government employees are making, a White House official said Wednesday. Hundreds of thousands of workers could be forced to take unpaid leave — known as furloughs — if Congress does not reach an agreement soon to undo the cuts.
The president is demonstrating that he will be paying a price, too, as the White House warns of dire economic consequences from the $85 billion in cuts — called a sequester — that started to hit federal programs last month after Congress failed to stop them. In the weeks since, the administration has faced repeated questions about how the White House itself will be affected. The cancellation of White House tours in particular has drawn mixed reactions.
A 5% cut from the president's salary of $400,000 per year amounts to $20,000.
Obama will return a full $20,000 to the Treasury even though only a few months remain in the fiscal year, which ends in September. He will cut his first check this month, said the White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The president and first lady Michelle Obama reported almost $790,000 in adjusted gross income in 2011, the most recent year for which their tax returns have been made public. That figure was down from the $1.7 million they brought in the year before and the $5.5 million they reported in 2009. About half of the family's income in 2011 came from Obama's salary, with the rest coming from book sales. The Obamas reported more than $172,000 in charitable donations.
“The salary for the president, as with members of Congress, is set by law and cannot be changed,” Obama spokesman Jay Carney said late Wednesday. “However, the president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury.”
Wednesday's notice followed a similar move a day earlier by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who committed to taking a salary cut equal to 14 days' pay — the same level of cut that other Defense Department civilians are being forced to take. As many as 700,000 civilians will have to take one unpaid day off each week for up to 14 weeks in the coming months.
Obama isn't the first president to give up part of his paycheck. Herbert Hoover put his salary in a separate account, then divvied it up, giving part to charity and part to employees he felt were underpaid, according to an interview he gave in 1937. John F. Kennedy donated his presidential salary to various charities, according to Stacey Chandler, an archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
George Washington refused pay during the latter part of his military career, according to researchers at Mount Vernon. He tried to refuse a presidential salary, but Congress required that the position pay $25,000.
Among lawmakers, Sen. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat, said Wednesday that he, too, would return part of his income to the Treasury, although he did not specify how much of his $174,000 salary he would give up. Begich said his office started furloughing staffers in mid-March and more than half of his staff will have their pay cut this year.
“This won't solve our spending problem on its own, but I hope it is a reminder to Alaskans that I am willing to make the tough cuts, wherever they may be, to get our spending under control,” Begich said.
A number of lawmakers have from time to time taken steps to show they're not immune as the federal government looks to tighten its belt. An aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said McConnell returns a substantial part of his salary to the Treasury every year. The Senate this month adopted by voice vote a symbolic amendment permitting — but not requiring — senators to give 20% of their salaries to the Treasury as part of the Democrats' budget resolution. Also in March, as the spending cuts started bearing down, the GOP-controlled House imposed an 8.2% reduction on lawmakers' personal office budgets.
The White House, after declining for weeks to provide specifics for how the president's own staff had been affected, said Monday that 480 workers on the budget staff had been notified they may have to take days off without pay.
Carney wouldn't say whether notices have gone out to Obama aides outside the Office of Management and Budget, including senior staff in the West Wing. But he said pay cuts remained a possibility for additional White House employees if a budget deal to undo the cuts isn't reached.
“Everybody at the White House and the broader (executive office) is dealing with the consequences — both, in many cases, in their own personal lives, but in how we work here at the White House,” Carney said. He added that the White House also has been trying to cut costs by slowing down hiring, scaling back supply purchases, curtailing staff travel, reducing the use of air cards for mobile Internet access and reviewing contracts to look for savings.
Like lawmakers' pay, Obama's salary is set by law, so he must accept the funds and then write a check to the Treasury each month for the portion he plans to relinquish. Obama's decision, first reported by The New York Times, won't affect the other perquisites afforded the president, from a mansion staffed with servants to the limousines, helicopters and Boeing 747 jumbo jet at every U.S. president's beck and call. The White House did not say whether Vice President Joe Biden would make a similar gesture.
The 5 percent that Obama will hand back mirrors the 5% cut that domestic agencies took when the reductions went into effect. The Pentagon's budget took an 8% hit. Every federal agency is grappling with spending cuts, which the White House has warned could affect everything from commercial airline flights to classrooms and meat inspections.
The cuts were written into a 2011 deficit-reduction measure as a trigger to force future action. The idea was that lawmakers, eager to avert the consequences of bluntly slashing $1 trillion over a decade, would have no choice but to come together to find smarter ways to reduce federal spending.
But the two parties were at odds over whether more tax revenues were needed as part of the solution, and an intense campaign by Obama and his Cabinet to illustrate how the cuts could affect critical programs failed to spur an agreement by the March 1 deadline. As the cuts started taking effect, lawmakers turned to other issues, including an increase in the national debt ceiling, and there are no signs that a deal to undo the cuts retroactively will come anytime soon.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Obama to Nominate Justice Aide for Labor Post
President Obama plans to announce Monday that he will nominate Thomas E. Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, to be the next secretary of labor, a choice that promises to provoke a debate with Republicans about voting rights and discrimination.
Mr. Perez would replace Hilda L. Solis, who stepped down in January after four years running the Labor Department. Word of his possible selection has been circulating in Washington for days, and a White House official informed reporters that the president would make it official on Monday.
The announcement comes just days after a Justice Department inspector general’s report found that the voting rights section has been torn by “deep ideological polarization” with liberal and conservative factions in sharp conflict. The divisions date back to the George W. Bush administration, and most occurred before Mr. Perez was confirmed in October 2009. He portrayed the report as largely clearing the section on his watch.
But the report also raised questions about testimony he gave, and Republicans made clear that they would take issue with his handling of some cases over the last three and a half years. His critics question, for example, whether he acted inappropriately in persuading the City of St. Paul to drop a lawsuit seeking to limit fair housing claims when there is no intentional bias.
Liberals and labor leaders have hailed Mr. Perez, calling him a strong champion for workers and those who have faced discrimination. While at the Justice Department, he has pursued a record number of discrimination or brutality claims against local police and sheriff’s departments, including that of Joe Arpaio, the outspoken sheriff in Maricopa County, Ariz., who was accused of “a pattern of unlawful discrimination” against Latinos.
Mr. Perez also challenged voter identification requirements imposed by South Carolina and Texas, and his division reached the three largest residential fair lending settlements in the history of the Fair Housing Act. Under him, the voting section participated in the most new litigation in the last fiscal year than in any previous year.
Mr. Perez, 51, who would be the only Hispanic in the cabinet if confirmed, is the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. His father died when he was 12, but his family pressed the value of education so much that all four of his siblings became doctors. Mr. Perez graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School.
He has spent a career fighting discrimination cases as a federal prosecutor, then, under President Bill Clinton, as deputy chief of the civil rights division that he now heads, and finally as head of civil rights enforcement at the Health and Human Services Department. He also served as an elected council member in Montgomery County, Md., and as the state’s secretary of labor, licensing and regulation.
The timing of the inspector general’s report on the voting section seems to ensure that it will come up during Mr. Perez’s confirmation hearings. The report found a toxic environment in which conservatives and liberals fought and maligned one another through the Bush administration and into the Obama administration.
The examples it cited generally preceded Mr. Perez, and he wrote the inspector general that he had made a point of correcting the situation. “Since 2009, the Civil Rights Division and the Voting Section have undertaken a number of steps to improve the professionalism of our workplace and to ensure that we enforce the civil rights laws in an independent, evenhanded fashion,” Mr. Perez wrote.
The inspector general, however, raised questions regarding Mr. Perez’s testimony about a case that preceded his time. Mr. Perez told the Civil Rights Commission in 2010 that no senior department officials were involved in a 2009 decision not to pursue further a case of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers. But the report noted that in fact senior officials did participate in discussions about the case, although the final decision was made by career lawyers as Mr. Perez had testified.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said the report showed that Mr. Perez was “woefully unprepared to answer questions” about a matter that he expected to be asked about. “This is troubling as it suggests a failure to also prepare for hearings before Congress, including the Senate Judiciary Committee, when questioned on this same topic,” he said in a statement.
Moreover, Mr. Grassley said the report made clear that Mr. Perez had not done as much as he had said to end harassment of conservatives in the voting rights section. “The reports shows that despite claims that it’s a new era in the Civil Rights Division, they are sadly mistaken, and it’s business as usual,” Mr. Grassley said.
While conservatives have called him a radical, Mr. Perez has not backed off his aggressive approach, even as his name was up for consideration for the Labor Department job. Just last Thursday, he announced an investigation into excessive force complaints against the Cleveland Police Department.
Mr. Perez would replace Hilda L. Solis, who stepped down in January after four years running the Labor Department. Word of his possible selection has been circulating in Washington for days, and a White House official informed reporters that the president would make it official on Monday.
The announcement comes just days after a Justice Department inspector general’s report found that the voting rights section has been torn by “deep ideological polarization” with liberal and conservative factions in sharp conflict. The divisions date back to the George W. Bush administration, and most occurred before Mr. Perez was confirmed in October 2009. He portrayed the report as largely clearing the section on his watch.
But the report also raised questions about testimony he gave, and Republicans made clear that they would take issue with his handling of some cases over the last three and a half years. His critics question, for example, whether he acted inappropriately in persuading the City of St. Paul to drop a lawsuit seeking to limit fair housing claims when there is no intentional bias.
Liberals and labor leaders have hailed Mr. Perez, calling him a strong champion for workers and those who have faced discrimination. While at the Justice Department, he has pursued a record number of discrimination or brutality claims against local police and sheriff’s departments, including that of Joe Arpaio, the outspoken sheriff in Maricopa County, Ariz., who was accused of “a pattern of unlawful discrimination” against Latinos.
Mr. Perez also challenged voter identification requirements imposed by South Carolina and Texas, and his division reached the three largest residential fair lending settlements in the history of the Fair Housing Act. Under him, the voting section participated in the most new litigation in the last fiscal year than in any previous year.
Mr. Perez, 51, who would be the only Hispanic in the cabinet if confirmed, is the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. His father died when he was 12, but his family pressed the value of education so much that all four of his siblings became doctors. Mr. Perez graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School.
He has spent a career fighting discrimination cases as a federal prosecutor, then, under President Bill Clinton, as deputy chief of the civil rights division that he now heads, and finally as head of civil rights enforcement at the Health and Human Services Department. He also served as an elected council member in Montgomery County, Md., and as the state’s secretary of labor, licensing and regulation.
The timing of the inspector general’s report on the voting section seems to ensure that it will come up during Mr. Perez’s confirmation hearings. The report found a toxic environment in which conservatives and liberals fought and maligned one another through the Bush administration and into the Obama administration.
The examples it cited generally preceded Mr. Perez, and he wrote the inspector general that he had made a point of correcting the situation. “Since 2009, the Civil Rights Division and the Voting Section have undertaken a number of steps to improve the professionalism of our workplace and to ensure that we enforce the civil rights laws in an independent, evenhanded fashion,” Mr. Perez wrote.
The inspector general, however, raised questions regarding Mr. Perez’s testimony about a case that preceded his time. Mr. Perez told the Civil Rights Commission in 2010 that no senior department officials were involved in a 2009 decision not to pursue further a case of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers. But the report noted that in fact senior officials did participate in discussions about the case, although the final decision was made by career lawyers as Mr. Perez had testified.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said the report showed that Mr. Perez was “woefully unprepared to answer questions” about a matter that he expected to be asked about. “This is troubling as it suggests a failure to also prepare for hearings before Congress, including the Senate Judiciary Committee, when questioned on this same topic,” he said in a statement.
Moreover, Mr. Grassley said the report made clear that Mr. Perez had not done as much as he had said to end harassment of conservatives in the voting rights section. “The reports shows that despite claims that it’s a new era in the Civil Rights Division, they are sadly mistaken, and it’s business as usual,” Mr. Grassley said.
While conservatives have called him a radical, Mr. Perez has not backed off his aggressive approach, even as his name was up for consideration for the Labor Department job. Just last Thursday, he announced an investigation into excessive force complaints against the Cleveland Police Department.
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