Sen. Toomey: GOP should risk shutdown to force spending cuts in debt-limit fight

By Alicia M. Cohn - 01/02/13 09:20 AM ET

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) on Wednesday called for Republicans to be ready to shut down the government to gain spending cuts in exchange for raising the nation’s debt-limit.

"We Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

Toomey’s comments come after the House and Senate passed a bill extending middle-class tax rates and avoiding January’s rate increases for most taxpayers.

But the measure which also delays the sequestration cuts until March faced strong opposition from House Republicans who said it failed to address spending cuts. Both sides are now gearing up for battles over the debt-limit, which Toomey said would provide the GOP the leverage needed to force significant deficit reduction.

The Treasury said Monday that the U.S. had reached its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit. Secretary Geithner said the department had begun instituting “extraordinary measures” to avoid default. 

Toomey said that markets would suffer less from the "temporary disruption" of a government shutdown than from Washington showing an unwillingness to tackle its deficit woes.

President Obama has already warned Republicans, though, that he will not tolerate another extended debate over the debt ceiling. The negotiations over increasing the debt ceiling in summer 2011 resulted in an extended standoff between Obama and Republicans, a threat of a government shutdown, and a credit downgrade for the country. Obama said he would not allow that to happen again.

“While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed,” he said on Tuesday night. 

“If Congress refuses to give the United States government the ability to pay these bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic — far worse than the impact of a fiscal cliff,” Obama added.

Toomey disagreed with Obama's argument that the debt ceiling is about paying past debts.

"It's to enable him to engage in the future spending that he wants," he said.

Toomey, who voted for the tax legislation passed New Year’s Day by the House and Senate, also responded to criticism from those on the right who saw the vote as a capitulation by GOP lawmakers to the president. 

The measure indefinitely extends the expiring Bush-era tax rates on annual family income up to $450,000, and for individuals up to a $400,000 cut off. It also lifts the top capital gains and dividends rates to 20 percent, extends unemployment benefits for a year, and delays for two months the automatic spending cuts triggered by the sequestering process. 

Democrats widely supported the legislation after a personal appeal by Biden but many Republicans continued to resist raising tax rates on any Americans, and also expressed dismay that the deal does not contain spending cuts.

It passed with only 85 Republican votes in the House, but all except five Republican Senators voted for it.

Conservative RedState blogger Erick Erickson on Tuesday called out Toomey by name, along with his GOP colleagues Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), writing they should be "ashamed" of their votes for the bill, which was negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Erickson added that any member of Congress who believes they have better leverage over Obama in the upcoming debt-ceiling debate "is fooling themselves to avoid having to realize what a fool they are."

Toomey said Republicans' backs were "up again the wall" on the bill, which sought to undo the tax rate hikes which went into effect on Jan. 1. 

"We spared as many Americans as we possibly could from a tax increase," he argued on MSNBC, calling it a "very unusual situation" where Congress was scrambling to halt laws already on the books.

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Maine And Maryland Couples Celebrate Marriage Equality As Laws Take Effect

Over the past week, same-sex couples in Maryland and Maine were able to start wedding as voter-approved laws in both states took effect. Celebrations began in Maine on Saturday and in Maryland New Year’s Day. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake officiated one of the first ceremonies just after midnight, calling the passed referendum “a remarkable achievement” for Maryland. Nine states and the District of Columbia now have full marriage equality.

Not all couples are rushing to get married, however. The Portland Press Herald notes that like opposite-sex couples, many same-sex couples are planning weddings where they can include their friends and family. One Maryland couple is even planning to invite strangers from Reddit to their April ceremony. Still, support was strong for couples who have already been waiting years to obtain legal recognition for their relationship, including a crowd singing “All You Need Is Love” outside the Portland City Hall and cheering on newlyweds early Saturday morning after midnight. This included Steven Bridges and Michael Snell, who were the first Maine couple to be married. Watch clips of their ceremony and the supportive crowd outside:

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Rep. Blackburn downplays party split over ‘fiscal cliff’ tax bill

By Alicia M. Cohn - 01/02/13 08:19 AM ET

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on Wednesday downplayed divisions within the Republican Party over the "fiscal cliff" tax bill, which passed late on Tuesday night. 

"We had a very spirited debate" as a conference, she acknowledged on CNN's "Starting Point." 

Only 85 House Republicans voted for the bill, which prevents a majority of expected tax hikes and delays the automatic spending cuts triggered by end-of-the-year "fiscal cliff" deadlines. 

The bill split the House GOP leadership, with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) voting in support and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) voting no. Another key leader, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), voted yes.

Many Republicans expressed dismay with the bill because it does not include significant spending cuts. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deal will add $3.9 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.

But Blackburn described behind-the-scenes discussions as "healthy" and "respectful."  

"What the Speaker of the House, leadership did was let the House work its will," she said.

Following the vote, McCarthy had said the party leadership did not whip votes for the bill. "There were good reasons to vote for it and good reasons to vote against it," he said.

Previous attempts by House Republicans to resolve the "fiscal cliff" had failed, with legislation either dead on arrival in the Senate or, in the case of Boehner’s “Plan B” tax proposal last month, dropped after leaders could not win enough GOP support. 

The bill that passed on Tuesday night was the result of a deal brokered by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and passed by the Senate early on New Year’s Day.

The measure extends indefinitely the expiring George W. Bush-era tax rates on annual family income up to $450,000, and for individuals up to a $400,000 cutoff. It also lifts the top capital gains and dividends rates to 20 percent, extends unemployment benefits for a year, and delays for two months the automatic spending cuts triggered by the sequestering process. Democrats widely supported the legislation after a personal appeal by Biden.

The tax deal, though, has set up further spending battles, with across-the-board cuts now slated to take effect in March and the president pushing for a debt-limit hike by late February. 

Blackburn pledged that with January’s tax hikes avoided, deficit reduction would be the focus of every House negotiation in the future. 

Republican members decided "we are done with kicking this can down the road. This will happen no more. We grabbed that can. And that can is called spending cuts," she said. "We are going to have very spirited, very thoughtful debates on cutting what this government wants to spend."

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Bozell: GOP's 'soul' at risk in Senate tax deal

Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser, said Tuesday the Republican Party would lose its soul if House lawmakers vote for Senate legislation raising taxes on the wealthy.

Bozell blasted the Senate bill for raising taxes on family income over $450,000 along with rates for capital gains and dividend income tax while doing little to cut spending. It passed by a vote of 89-8 early Tuesday with the support of 40 Republicans.

“The bill passed by the Senate last night is not a ‘deal,’ it’s a surrender,” Bozell, the chairman of ForAmerica, said in a statement. “The problem our nation faces is over-spending, and spending is ignored: the perfect Washington, DC ‘solution.’

“If the House passes this bill, the GOP loses its soul and co-owns the resulting fiscal disaster with President Obama,” he said. “Conservatives should want nothing to do with any Republicans, no matter how ‘conservative’ they tell us they are, if they support this monstrosity.”

Bozell sent a letter to Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus in November pledging to make it his mission to counsel conservative donors to shun the party if Republican leaders agree to raise taxes.

“I will make it my mission to ensure that every conservative donor to the Republican Party that I have worked with for the last three decades — and there are many and they have given tens of millions to Republican causes — gives not one penny more to the Republican Party or any member of Congress that votes for tax increases,” he warned.

Bozell has been active in conservative political circles for three decades and estimates he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for “an alphabet soup of conservative causes.”

He sent another letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) that month urging them to reject Obama’s call to raise taxes on the wealthy.

“Conservatives have one question to ask: 'If you now claim a tax increase on small business is the correct course of action, were you lying all along when you claimed this tax increase would decimate the economy?'” he wrote. “Because if you were not lying, you will now be willing participants in the destruction of American jobs in a time of economic crisis.”

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House GOP bill halves Sandy relief

House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled legislation to provide $27 billion in emergency relief to pay for Hurricane Sandy damage — less than half the $60.4 billion in aid passed by the Senate last week. 

The bill was released by the Appropriations Committee before noon. An amendment will be allowed to increase the funding by $33 billion to match the Senate total, however. 

That second slice of funding contains money to prepare for future storms and upgrade infrastructure. Supporters claim the measure will pay for itself in the long run by allowing better planning of repairs and preventing massive clean up in the future. 

Northeast Republicans, led by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), are scrambling to find the votes for that amendment by the time the House votes, as early as today. 

The amendment will be introduced by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), the spending cardinal in charge of energy and water projects. 

In a key victory for Democrats, the base bill does not contain the spending cut offsets demanded by conservatives for disaster aid in the past. 

"It is a fundamental responsibility to help families, businesses, and communities recover and rebuild following a natural disaster. I am pleased the House will consider emergency relief for those affected by Sandy, and I am working hard to ensure passage of the full $60.4 billion, as passed by the Senate," said incoming Appropriations Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.).

The $33-billion amendment requires that $3.5 billion in Army Corps of Engineer funding be offset in 2013 appropriations. 

This requirement was included in the Senate bill after a successful budget challenge was raised on the floor and, if passed, will further complicate spending talks in March when Congress tries to avert a government shutdown after a stopgap spending resolution runs out. 

"Given the size and scope of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, it is essential that Congress provide the victims of this storm and their communities with the necessary federal aid as soon as possible,” said Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.). “However, as we embark on these recovery efforts, it is essential that Congress make responsible decisions to get the most out of each and every recovery dollar.”

The bill includes new oversight provisions compared to the Senate version, the committee said. It includes more money, $9.7 billion to shore up the National Flood Insurance Program, than a Senate Republican alternative that failed on the Senate floor. That bill cost some $24 billion in total.

According to the committee, the base bill provides the Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Relief Fund with $5.4 billion, provides $5.4 billion in relief for New York-area transit agencies, $3.9 billion for the Housing and Urban Development Community Development Fund and $1.35 billion for the Army Corps.

The timing on the vote depends on resolving the "fiscal cliff." 

If the House is able to quickly pass the Senate bill on Tuesday it could then move to deal with Sandy, a GOP source said. House Republicans were conferencing in the early afternoon on whether to accept a Senate budget agreement passed early Tuesday. 

- Updated at 1 p.m. 

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GOP Congressmen Suggest Republican Senators Who Voted For ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Compromise Were Drunk

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), who is joining a growing number of Republicans trying to add more spending cuts to the last-minute fiscal cliff deal and send it back to the Senate, joked that Senators may have been drunk when they passed the measure in the early hours of Jan 1.

Responding to a question on CNN’s The Situation Room about why fiscal hawks like Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) supported the measure in the Senate, Issa implied that the 89 senators voted for the compromise because of the late night partying in celebration of the New Year. Pressed by host Wolf Blitzer for clarification, Issa said that he was just “having a little fun” with his answer:

BLITZER: All of those 89, including all of those conservative Republicans, including Pat Toomey and others, they were wrong?

ISSA: You know, Wolf, frankly I can’t account for what happens after midnight and all of that partying and revelry and drinking that goes on on New Years Eve at 2:00 in the morning. What I can tell you is they did half of a bill. The half of the bill certainly is going to be popular in the way of holding down taxes but the other half is there’s no spending reductions…. In other words, $4 trillion will be added to the debt over ten years with this tax cut unless we do some spending cuts to help offset it. Right now the president is still in a spending mood. We need to get him in a savings mood.

BLITZER: I just want to clarify one point, you said it was after the new year’s and they were partying. Are you suggesting that Mitch McConnell and your fellow Republicans in the Senate they were a little bit drunk when they voted on this last night?

ISSA: Of course not. I was having a little fun with you, Wolf. The fact is, it was after midnight. It was a piece of legislation intended to be passable, not necessarily to be right.

Watch it:

Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) made a similar comment to reporters, saying, “Our sense…was that a number of the [Senate] Republicans who voted for it must have been drunk.”

Following a Tuesday afternoon GOP conference meeting, House Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), are publicly opposing the Senate-passed measure. Members are reportedly working on adding an amendment that would reduce spending. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has vowed to block any further changes to the bill, leaving Boehner with the options of: 1) putting the Senate-passed bill to a House vote (and see it pass with Democratic votes and overwhelming Republican opposition) or 2) adding spending cuts that “they know Democrats can’t live with,” passing the revised bill through the House with little if any Democratic support, and see it go nowhere the Senate — sending the nation over the cliff.

The House will vote on the Senate bill as written, without a spending amendment, at around 9:30 PM. The measure is expected to pass, at which point it will go to President Obama for his signature.

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Ten Pardoned In 40-Year-Old North Carolina Case ‘Tainted By Naked Racism’

Forty years after the wrongful convictions of the “Wilmington 10,” North Carolina outgoing Gov. Bev Perdue (D) pardoned the ten individuals falsely found guilty of having firebombed a grocery store in a racially charged case riddled with evidence of perjury by crucial witnesses, overt racism in jury selection, and withholding of exonerating information. The sentence of a total of 282 years in prison for the ten individuals, nine of whom were African American and most of whom were activists in their teens at the time, prompted international outcry. The activist who received the harshest sentence, Benjamin Chavis, later became the executive director of the NAACP. Although an appeals court overturned the convictions in 1980, civil rights groups and others have been vocal in calls for official state recognition of error in the case a recent New York Times editorial called “one of the more shameful episodes on North Carolina history.”  Reuters explains:

“These convictions were tainted by naked racism and represent an ugly stain on North Carolina’s criminal justice system that cannot be allowed to stand any longer,” Perdue said. “Justice demands that this stain finally be removed.”

Wilmington, an historic port city on North Carolina’s coast, was gripped by racial tension in the years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination and the desegregation of schools.

Violence erupted on February 6, 1971, when demonstrators set off firebombs in the city’s downtown. Firefighters who responded to the blaze set at a grocery store were met with sniper fire.

Authorities blamed the Wilmington 10 for the grocery fire and for conspiring to attack the emergency workers. They were tried and convicted the following year. [...]

Last month, Perdue received the handwritten notes of the prosecutor who picked the group’s jury, and the records showed racism had played a dominant role in the process, she said on Monday.

“The notes reveal that certain white jurors believed to be Ku Klux Klan members were described by the prosecutor as ‘good’ and that at least one African-American juror was noted to be an ‘Uncle Tom type,’” Perdue said. “This conduct is disgraceful.”

Perdue issued the pardons Monday as she exits a term in office marked by dogged battles with the state’s conservative legislature on attempts to roll back environmental protection, workers’ rights, and reproductive rights. Even after the court reversal, some opponents reportedly lobbied against the issuance of pardons, arguing for a standard of justice by which defendants are guilty until proven innocent:

[A] group calling itself Citizens for Justice took out a quarter-page ad in the Wilmington Star News, asking Purdue not to grant pardons to the Wilmington Ten, essentially because, they say, it has never been proven that the nine black males and one white female civil rights activists didn’t conspire to firebomb a white-owned grocery store in February 1971, and fire weapons on responding fire and police personnel from a church steeple.

Retired white Wilmington police officers, and even former prosecutor Jay Stroud, have told Wilmington media that the Ten are guilty …

Both state governors and the president possess the power to mitigate harsh or unjust punishments by shortening sentences through a commutation, or invalidating convictions entirely through a pardon. Perdue’s pardons of the already-released individuals was a symbolic rejection of the state’s racially charged prosecution. But most pardons and commutations are sought in cases in which inmates continue to serve their time. In spite of evidence of individuals serving life sentences for their nominal and nonviolent role in drug deals, and the continued U.S. practice of mass incarceration, President Obama did not issue a single pardon or commutation in 2012.

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House Republican Says GOP Will Send Fiscal Bill Back To Senate

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL)

A just-released analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would increase the nation’s budget deficit by nearly $4 trillion over the next ten years (as compared to allowing the tax cuts to expire and deep spending cuts to take effect).

With House Republican Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and other members of his caucus opposing the bipartisan Senate deal, House Republicans are reportedly working to craft an amendment a majority would support. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has vowed to block any further changes to the bill.

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Obama might echo Pelosi's call for House vote on Senate budget bill

Congressional Democrats are working closely with the White House to corner House Republicans into an up-or-down vote on the Senate-passed "fiscal cliff" bill, according to a Democratic source.

If House Republicans seek to amend the Senate measure, Democrats on Capitol Hill would like to see President Obama call for a roll call vote on the bill that passed 89-8. Obama has endorsed that measure.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) demanded such a House vote on Tuesday, but it remains unclear if GOP leaders will allow it.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Hill that few if any House Republicans would back the Senate legislation.

House Republicans are huddling Tuesday evening to discuss their next step on the fiscal cliff.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has repeatedly called on Obama to send a fiscal cliff plan to Congress that can pass the House and the Senate.

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